Illustration by Andreas Hykade. Courtesy of Chris Robinson.

If there was a single animation film — no, make that film in general — that I was eager to see this year it was Chris Landreth’s Ryan. Landreth, who made the excellent films, Bingo and The End, has been working for a couple of years on this film about the life and world of former NFB animator and Oscar nominee (Walking), Ryan Larkin.

Background
Now truthfully I’m a bit biased towards this film. See one of our staff (Lesya Fesiak) at the Ottawa festival had heard through a friend about this old animator who was now panhandling on the streets of Montreal. I can’t remember how it all unfolded, but I think our idea was that maybe we could help him out by bringing him to the Ottawa 2000 festival. There would be no retrospective or anything like that. We wanted it to be very low profile so Ryan could just get a chance to maybe meet some old friends and see new films.

I was a bit uncertain. Was he insane? Would he be violent? There was only one way to find out. A group of from the office hopped in a car and drove to Montreal to meet him. Sure enough we found him on St. Laurent Street asking folks for change. We approached him, introduced ourselves, and asked him to have a drink with us. He was worried though about the business he would lose so we offered to cover whatever he lost in “salary” that night ($40 or something).

From there we headed to a nearby bar, shared some chicken wings and many pitchers of beer. Meantime Ryan told us his story and we told him ours. Ryan is an easy guy to like and we were all mesmerized with this unique person who was at once comical and heartbreaking, pathetic and inspiring. By the end of the evening I suggested that he come to Ottawa and watch some entries with my colleague Hayden and me. It would give him a chance to see some new work and decide whether he wanted to come to the festival.

He was hesitant because he feared losing his daily income. But we assured him that we’d take care of his meals, beer and accommodations. Finally we all said our goodbyes (I think Lesya and I were pretty stinko by this point cause she was singing Polish birthday songs at full volume) and headed back to Ottawa feeling very good about Ryan and even better about ourselves.

The film Ryan shows the former star animator Ryan Larkin as a fragile, incomplete man. All Ryan images © 1380098 Ontario Inc./National Film Board of Canada.

As it turned out, one of the jury members for our selection committee dropped out and we needed someone fast. So we figured Ryan was perfect. We already had Pjotr Sapegin, Andrei Svislotski (Klasky Csupo) and Chris Landreth and I admit I was worried about how Ryan might behave. On the other hand, I needed a drinking buddy and Ryan was perfect. I remember that first day we headed to the liquor store (this was the day before they started screenings), and Ryan carefully took his time checking each beer out. I was so impressed. But then I realized that he was looking at the alcohol content! That’s crazy. Clearly I wasn’t even close to being an alcoholic.

I was a bit worried that Ryan might get too drunk during selection, but he ended up being quite good. There were no problems. In fact, watching him watch all these new films — probably the first time he’d seen any animation in at least 10 years — was something else. He was clearly pleased to see all this work, and especially pleased to see his influence on the movement in some of those films (Walking is often shown in animation classes). It took Ryan a while to find his voice, but eventually he was giving very insightful input and wasn’t afraid to disagree with anyone.

The others clearly recognized that Ryan was a special breed, that something was not right, but they all treated him with incredible care and respect. He became — fittingly, given the events of his life — like a little brother to the others.