John Canemaker is perhaps the hardest-working man in animation. He’s an independent animator, historian and author, and the driving force behind the animation program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

When it came time to visit John Canemaker, I decided to bring my copy of his excellent Winsor McCay biography for him to autograph — which I cleverly managed to leave on the bus on my way to his west side Manhattan apartment.

Fortunately, the book found its way to the bus depot where I was able to retrieve it later in the day. The mishap failed to put a damper on a fascinating interview with perhaps the hardest-working man in animation — an independent animator with a unique, personal vision; one of the best known and most respected chroniclers of the medium; and the driving force behind the animation program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Several times during the interview, John talked about tackling an overwhelming challenge by telling himself ‘things will work out’ — a philosophy that might seem simplistic were it not coupled with an unforgiving work ethic.

I first met John in the early 1980s when I was working on the educational children’s series The Great Space Coaster and arranged for The Wizard’s Son, his tale of a magical generation gap to run as part of the show. Fathers, sons and their problematic relationships occur and reoccur in John’s work. With <The Moon and the Son>, an intimate portrait of his volatile father (and at 28 minutes, his longest work to date) recently completed, a man who has conducted no small number of interviews found himself on the other end of the microphone…

The Early Days
Joe Strike: Where did you go to school? Did you have an art background?

John Canemaker: No, we were not an “art” family, we were rather poor. I actually took watercolor classes when I was in high school in Elmira [a small town in upstate New York].

JS: So you always had an artistic streak.

JC: Yeah, I always drew. I was always trotted out to the relatives, “Oh, draw Aunt so and so.” I was also into animation. I was in my pre-teens, maybe 12, when I started a film about Horace Horsefly. He was a round character, easy to draw. I had no idea how to get cels, so my mother and father who both worked at a hospital brought home old x-rays for me to use. We’d wash off the images and I would ink and paint on them. There was a certain blue tint left over from the x-rays that you can kind of see in the little piece of the film that’s in The Moon and the Son.

JS: Your dad built you an animation stand for the film.

JC: He also made an animation table for me to animate it on. It was based on plans that were in the Preston Blair book.

The Horace Horsefly thing never got completed — it got bogged down in production. I did finish something called Animation, Its History and Usage.

JS: It sounds very serious.

JC: It was. It was long for its time, it had a lot of live action. I had been fascinated by a history of animation I saw on the Disneyland TV show; they showed Felix the Cat and went way back to the beginning. I kind of took from that and made my own version. I think I ended up with about a 10-minute film.

JS: Did you incorporate footage from these cartoons?

JC: No, I was sort of recreating them or drawing things of my own — cavemen did this, and the Egyptians did this.

But when it came time for college I felt that I didn’t have the smarts and I knew I didn’t have the money. That was a totally closed avenue for me. I didn’t know how to get in. Nobody in my family ever went to college. Meanwhile, people are getting acceptances right and left, and I never even applied. So what was there? Nothing.

I remember being turned down for a job on a TV station in Syracuse and weeping in the back seat while my folks drove me back to Elmira, thinking I had no future. I didn’t know what I was going to do, so I thought I would just escape from Elmira, come to New York and be an actor.

I arrived with 60 bucks in my pocket. My parents dropped me off at the YMCA. I was a doorman at Radio City Music Hall, and a singing waiter in Greenwich Village. I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts for one year. I did four off-Broadway shows in 1964 and then started to do TV commercials and then got drafted. I was at Fort Dix for two years, working in Special Services. I helped put on shows for the servicemen. I also booked big bands like Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck.

I came back and saved some money and decided to pursue TV commercials as a performer. I did about 30 national TV commercials from 1969 through 1971. I did a kids show on CBS called Patchwork Family, in which I drew pictures.