Perhaps it’s because of my intimacy with the subject, but I found one scene in particular very hard to watch (and I mean that in a good way). At one point, Landreth (now wearing a halo of sorts) brings up Ryan’s alcoholism. Ryan, the calm, reflective, scared, little boy, is caught off-guard. He claims that his beers are all that he has left. He doesn’t want to become a tea drinker. Landreth tells him that he just wants to see him stay alive and return to filmmaking. Suddenly Ryan erupts. He stands up and takes on the appearance of a demon with red spikes piercing out of his face. Ryan berates everyone and no one for his state. Everyone had robbed him and without money he has nothing. An intimidated Landreth backs off, his halo explodes and he wonders why he prodded Ryan to begin with.

Ryan makes the viewer feel the intensity, rawness and akwardness of an emotional interview between the filmmaker and his subject.

The scene is powerful, mature and tense stuff; something you don’t see much of in animation these days. The combination of Landreth’s inventive character design fuelled by the raw, awkwardness that you could only get through a real, unscripted interview gives this scene an intensity that I haven’t felt since Michele Cournoyer’s The Hat. There are no affected GRAND philosophical musings, no oh-so-gentle poetic imaginings about the beauty of childhood featuring hedgehogs and teddy bears, babies or other assorted artificial fluff stuff that too many of you sensitive animators flush on us. This is life with all its dank, dark, dirty warts.

This is the story of a real life gone astray. I don’t mean just Ryan’s life either. Landreth is drawn to Ryan because he sees aspects of his own life and family in Ryan. Landreth’s mother, Barbara, we learn, has followed a similar path.

Ryan is a film about failure. There is no happy ending. Landreth realizes that Larkin will not change and the film ends with Larkin back working the street. But there is a glimmer of hope; Ryan may not have changed, but by knowing him, he seems to trigger change in others.

I know Chris’ frustration because I really thought — even though people like Don McWilliams warned me not to get my hopes up — that I could help Ryan too. Other people had tried, etc… but I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to save Ryan. Why? Because I was an alcoholic too, because in Ryan I saw a possible future and if I could save Ryan I wouldn’t have to worry about myself. Saving Ryan was another distraction, another excuse for me to keep drinking and avoid taking responsibility for my own mess of a life.

Aftermath
I’ve only seen Ryan a few times since 2000, always with the hope that he’d changed. But nothing has. In fact, I started changing. I quit drinking and started to make amends for the swamp of a life I created before. But every time I saw Ryan he seemed the same. Had his 7UP bottle full of beer, his chicken wings, his excuses. Increasingly he began to irritate me. He was a mooch. Always expecting a handout. He always wanted money. He felt everyone owed him. I got tired of it and stopped visiting him.

Sometimes though I think that maybe he was right. Ryan often complained about how assorted junkies used to steal his art. Are we any different? Now that his art is all gone, maybe we’re sponging all that he has left — his life — for our own art.

Ah fuggit, all art is a sponge. So is life for that matter. Meantime, check out this technical and conceptual wonder of a film. By fusing innovative character design with an emotionally raw soundtrack, Chris Landreth has delivered us into a deeper, richer psychological reality and shown us a Ryan Larkin that our eyes could never see.

Chris Robinson is little more than a man. In his spare time he cares for the elderly. www.animationpimp.com.