BEFORE: OK, I'm about to get really personal - the next couple of films are about animation, but not the Disney/Dreamworks type - I'm talking about indie animation, "South Park" kind of comes close but I'm now getting into the even indie-er, darker stuff. I have worked and lived as part of that world for over 30 years, and while I may have met the "South Park" creators once or twice, I knew Will Vinton personally. I worked for Will Vinton - OK, in a roundabout way - because I worked for Will's agent for a long time, a company that represented him and his studio to ad agencies to land them more commercials. Will ran something called the Creative Conference, so I got to fly to Portland, OR twice on the company's dime to attend.
In another one of those impossible coincidences, today is the first day of San Diego Comic-Con - and I used to run into Will now and then at that event, and this was after he lost his company - but he knew that I'd worked for him, he knew I worked for other animators, and he was always very friendly to me. So we'd hang out a bit at SDCC, or if he didn't have time or I was too busy working the booth, I'd at least get "the nod" which meant that we saw each other, he knew I was there and I knew he was there, and we'd catch up later, maybe at a party or an industry event.
Of course, I was Team Will in the conflict between him and Phil Knight, however I was also getting a paycheck from Laika, the new company that formed from his studio's ashes. The world of animation is actually pretty small, everyone kind of knows each other and works with each other and dates each other and I call it "incestuous" to a degree, but there's probably a better word for it. Maybe "insular" is better. Anyway, I had a front-row seat for some of the things in today's movie, or maybe it was second balcony, I'm not sure. Also, my ex-boss of 31 years was interviewed for this film, I'll have to hear his voice for the first time in months, but I've got to deal with that sooner or later.
Eddie Murphy carries over from "Luther: Never Too Much".
THE PLOT: The meteoric rise and dramatic fall of "Father of Claymation" Will Vinton is the subject of this fascinating portrait of one of cinema's unheralded innovators.
AFTER: I can't possibly be impartial here - I used to messenger out reels of Will Vinton's work to NYC ad agencies so my boss could bid on commercials they wanted to animate. I was there when a couple of WVS directors came to NY and took a meeting with BBDO creatives and they landed the m&m's job, which was their FIRST real CGI commercial project, and led to a decade's worth of commercials, a multi-million dollar account. That was a real feather in my boss's cap, his company got 10% of all the m&m's ads for a while, which basically paid my salary for years, too. I joke about how I "got paid in m&m's for years" but that's not very far off.
The company I worked for was so successful in landing work for Vinton Studios that my boss had to, over time, dump his other clients because once Vinton got into CGI, there were conflicts with the other animation studios he represented. And then after WVS became Laika, the company got bought and became the Laika East Coast commercial division. That lasted about five years, my checks came from Portland and I built up something like a retirement fund that I'm not ready to use just yet. But when I do, it's good to know it's there. At some point our four-employee business moved out of a residential apartment and found a new space in another Manhattan apartment building, which acted as a de facto hotel room if Will Vinton or another director came to town. (There was a Murphy bed, one I also slept in during the famous NYC black-out of 2003).
What Will Vinton wanted to be all about concerns creativity - he held that Creative Conference so that he could somehow crack this code about what it means to be creative, how many different ways can people be creative, and besides animation, painting, music, what other methods of creativity could there be? Some people say he was trying to be the next Walt Disney, to be the figurehead of a large group of talented people that he gathered together who could work together, bounce ideas off each other and by pooling enough people with different talents, they could make films from concept to completion all in-house. It's a nice idea, but could it work? For a while it did, funded by those California Raisins spots and then m&m ads, there was enough money to hire more people and ramp up production on two TV series, "The PJs" and "Gary & Mike". Then from there the ultimate goal was to get the film division back on its feet and profitable again.
One of the times I visited Portland, I got to see the giant airplane-hangar-sized building that the company bought that housed all of the sets for those 2 TV shows. Well, you have to spend money to make money, or so I've heard. But we know that everything good comes to an end, so in 2001 when both TV shows got cancelled, the company tried to pivot and keep the whole staff around, but just put them to work on a feature film instead of a TV show. The plan might have worked if Will hadn't taken on Phil Knight from Nike as a minority investor, and also set up a board of directors to oversee the process of investments as well as make major decisions about the company. During the process, Will had accidentally signed something that gave the board the right to remove him from the company, if there was a valid reason to do so, but also for no reason at all, if need be.
Phil Knight's son, Travis, had taken a position at the studio as an animator, after failing as a white rapper under the name Chilly T. (really, I swear.). By forcing Will out of the company he founded, there was speculation that essentially the senior Knight had planned all along to buy his son an animation company that he could run. But we know that this is not the case, because Phil Knight, during the legal proceedings that came after showing Will the door, claimed that this was not true. And we all know that nobody ever has lied during a legal action, right? But the end result was that Travis became the head of the company, moving up from animator to CEO, so whether or not that was the original intention doesn't matter, his daddy bought him an animation studio to run. We all knew it.
You can make a case that Will Vinton was a creative person first and maybe a business person second. You can say that he should have had a better plan for what the company should do in the event of its two TV shows being cancelled. You can say that maybe Will should never have given up any control of his company just to insure there would be more money coming in and he wouldn't have to lay off any staff. But considering all of that, his Academy Award and reputation couldn't prevent someone with more power and money and influence from using the power of the courts to take away what a very creative man had built up during his career.
The structure of this documentary is such that the opening part has to mention Bob Gardiner, who was a part of Vinton's early career, they worked together on "Closed Mondays", an animated short that won an Oscar, and while Vinton may have coined the term "claymation" and really turned it into a viable business later on, Bob Gardiner had no interest in doing so, and he was known around Portland as a bit of a nutjob, he'd bring his Oscar with him to bars and see if people would buy him drinks. Bob had no interest in continuing to work in animation, and even if he did, he wasn't dependable enough to succeed at it - yet he accused Vinton of stealing his ideas and not giving him enough credit, and basically making Will the fall guy for everything that had gone wrong in his life. He'd spray paint messages on the studio walls and even send death threats to Will - which is not really the way to prove that you should be given a steady job.
So by telling the Bob Gardiner story, and also mentioning that Will got divorced twice, both times not giving his spouse much notice, there's a suggestion here that maybe karma is, in fact, a bitch. But assuming that Will Vinton mistreated Bob, or failed to give him credit, or stole his ideas or career, does that mean he deserved to have his company taken away from him? No, it does not. And shame on the documentary filmmaker if suggesting that was his intent. If a restaurant owner fires a waiter for doing a bad job, or not showing up or being unreliable, does that mean that down the line, he deserves to have someone buy the building and shut his restaurant down? No, of course not.
However, the prevalent theme that I've seen running through many of the Docs in this year's Block, is of course that after you get successful, it's a lot of work just to stay successful. Once you get to the top, how long can you stay on top? If Will Vinton aspired to follow in Walt Disney's footsteps, there was no guarantee he would be successful. And then once he had his own studio, 300 employees and a couple of TV series, success is still not guaranteed, because it only took a couple of cancellations and one scheming billionaire with an unemployed son to take it away. Somehow, against all rational thinking, the new studio that formed after became wildly successful, releasing films like "Coraline", "Paranorman", and "Kubo and the Two Strings". Now here is where some people might assume that the company might never have gotten there with Vinton at the helm, and maybe some new blood was exactly what the company needed to achieve its goals of success in the world of animated features. Ah, but don't forget that someone stacked the deck - the distribution deal for feature films was signed the DAY after Will Vinton was released from his contract. So come on, the fix was in.
Is this, like sounding familiar to any current news stories? Can I make some kind of connection here between Phil Knight v. Will Vinton and Donald Trump v. Paramount? Another very creative man, one I admire, is facing the end of his TV show because someone with more power and influence and an affinity for filing lawsuits decided that he didn't like somebody making jokes about him, and would hold up the sale of a major corporation in response. It's not right, it's a clear abuse of power, however sometimes it is the way the world works. You might think you're pretty good at this entertainment thing, but if somebody doesn't like the way you play the game, you'll find that at some point you have to just pick up your ball and go home, and hope to live to play another day for a different team. I know, it sucks, but to keep the sports analogy going, even if you get signed to a big league team like the Yankees, if your performance level isn't maintained, or the team owner just doesn't like you, there's some kind of clause in your contract that will lead to your being traded or just dismissed. Sometimes it doesn't seem fair or right, but playing the game doesn't mean that you're in charge of the game.
To Mr. Colbert, who's provided me with ample entertainment over the last couple of decades, I just want to say that sure, things look unfair right now, I get that. You were just trying to entertain Americans and point out the foibles and failings of our President, which is perfectly fine, and free speech is protected by the Constitution and all that. But by taking a political stand, you can easily alienate half of your audience - just something to consider. Also, it could be worse - it could always be worse, right - just imagine if Trump had forced Paramount to hire one of his sons as an executive producer of your show. Or worse, imagine if Don Jr. had taken your job as host and head of the company - because that's kind of what happened to Will Vinton.
Also, Will got sick around 2006, this is something to think about, too. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and pretty much retired in 2008 - and he did get to spend more time with his family while working on developing a few projects in those last 10 years of his life. So I think he was probably going to have to retire in a few years anyway, however this by NO MEANS suggests that it was OK for Phil Knight to boot him out of his own company in 2005. Not cool.
Directed by Marq Evans
Also starring Will Vinton, Craig Bartlett, Jerry Beck, Ted Berenson, Steve Box, Webster Colcord, David Daniels, Chuck Duke, Adam Elliot, Sam Fell, William Fiesterman, Richard Goleszowski, Hal T. Hickel, Gary Kachelhoffer, Peter Lord, Michele Mariana, Philip Marcus, Melissa Mitchell, Jeff Newitt, Chris Ohlgren, Nick Park (last heard in "Shaun the Sheep Movie"), Bill Plympton, Susan Shadburne, Brett Shuman, Tom Turpin, Marilyn Zornado,
with archive footage of Fred Armisen (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Carrie Brownstein (last seen in "The Oath"), Walt Disney (last seen in "Tom Hanks: the Nomad"), Hugh Downs (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Bob Gardiner, Michael Jackson (also carrying over from "Luther: Never Too Much"), Steve Jobs (last seen in "Join or Die"), Phil Knight (last seen in "McEnroe"), Travis Knight, Robin Leach, Spike Lee (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Jane Pauley (last seen in "Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind"), Charlie Rose (last seen in "Brats")
and the voices of Tim Allen (last heard in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad"), Christopher Moynihan (last seen in "Mascots"), Harland Williams (last seen in "The Turkey Bowl")
RATING: 6 out of 10 in-house characters that never really caught on like the California Raisins did.
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