Tugger Director Responds to Fraud Charges
AWN reported on August 18, 2010 that Jeffrey James Varab, the director of TUGGER: THE JEEP 4 X 4 WHO WANTED TO FLY, had been arrested in Osceola County, Florida on charges of securities fraud, which was originally reported in the ORLANDO SENTINEL. Varab has written the following letter to give his side of the accusations against him.
To anyone who is thinking, planning or just dreaming of producing and/or directing a independent animated feature film, this rebuttal is a must read!
(A Case Study of how one little Independent Animated Film was made and failed!)
I've been in the animation industry since being recruited by Eric Larson, one of Disney's original "nine old men" back in 1977. I spent my first almost five years at the Disney Burbank studio, (as noted in “Waking Sleeping Beauty”) and the following 12 years working in Europe for studios in Denmark, Ireland, France, and Sweden and for Universal Studios at the Amblin Animation Studio in London.
It was the Amblin studios that gave me the opportunity to be trained in the emerging CG industry when I was asked to move to San Rafael California to work at ILM on Spielberg’s "Casper" movie in 1993. When that film ended I was invited to return to Disney as supervising animator on “Mulan” and later as one of the first three people to develop the story, which became "Brother Bear." After Disney I worked for 20th Century Fox on "Titan A.E." and for Sony on "Eight Crazy Nights" as well as freelance animation on films such as “The Tigger Movie” and European features.
It was after working on “Eight Crazy Nights” that a dear friend of mine, George Parson, asked me to read an original story he had written some years earlier that he thought would make a nice low budget animated film. George knew that at that stage of my career I was looking for a story to direct in Orlando as an independent filmmaker. And I fell in love with the simplicity of George's original story "Tug the Tug Tractor That Wanted To Fly"!
As with most independent filmmakers, we had no money to make the film, but like many fool-hardy artists before, I and a four artists used our talents and passion as investments to create a "teaser trailer" that we hoped would help raise funding for the film. If you’re setting out to produce a film that you want to make its money back, the one thing I learned from the major studios and from Spielberg over the years was that well branded “concepts” have a better chance of succeeding in the marketplace, as well as securing good distribution deals. And with the encouragement of our head storyboard artist on Tugger, (Woody “Beryl” Woodman) who also happened to be a Jeep fanatic, I decided (with George's blessing) to change our "TUG" character to “Tugger” a Jeep!
With this one character identity change, a door of opportunity opened for us to secure major marketing partnerships. And over the coming 12 months I personally proceeded to successfully approach Chrysler/Jeep, Shell Oil and the United States Air Force Thunderbirds, who all signed on as contracted marketing partnership with our little (now titled) “Tugger the Jeep Who Wanted To Fly” movie.
Our movie was still structured on George's original story and character, but we were now making a film that we all saw as a once in a lifetime opportunity. Excitement kept building as new corporate partners and organizations joined our project. With this excitement of corporate partners came the investment funding we needed. Not in one single investment, but in small pieces over more than a year, that often caused us to run out of funding in mid production for weeks at a time.
Through one of our investors, (and eventual board member) we were able to secure the services of one of Orlando's top law firms, who managed our investor notes and reviewed all distribution and marketing contracts, and our business in general. We hired a top financial expert to draft the proper documents for investors, and even signed the famed "Arnold Palmer's Children's Hospital" as our charitable partner, as we always intended portions of profits to be directed to children's needs.
To anyone who is thinking, planning or just dreaming of producing and/or directing a independent animated feature film, this rebuttal is a must read!
(A Case Study of how one little Independent Animated Film was made and failed!)
I've been in the animation industry since being recruited by Eric Larson, one of Disney's original "nine old men" back in 1977. I spent my first almost five years at the Disney Burbank studio, (as noted in “Waking Sleeping Beauty”) and the following 12 years working in Europe for studios in Denmark, Ireland, France, and Sweden and for Universal Studios at the Amblin Animation Studio in London.
It was the Amblin studios that gave me the opportunity to be trained in the emerging CG industry when I was asked to move to San Rafael California to work at ILM on Spielberg’s "Casper" movie in 1993. When that film ended I was invited to return to Disney as supervising animator on “Mulan” and later as one of the first three people to develop the story, which became "Brother Bear." After Disney I worked for 20th Century Fox on "Titan A.E." and for Sony on "Eight Crazy Nights" as well as freelance animation on films such as “The Tigger Movie” and European features.
It was after working on “Eight Crazy Nights” that a dear friend of mine, George Parson, asked me to read an original story he had written some years earlier that he thought would make a nice low budget animated film. George knew that at that stage of my career I was looking for a story to direct in Orlando as an independent filmmaker. And I fell in love with the simplicity of George's original story "Tug the Tug Tractor That Wanted To Fly"!
As with most independent filmmakers, we had no money to make the film, but like many fool-hardy artists before, I and a four artists used our talents and passion as investments to create a "teaser trailer" that we hoped would help raise funding for the film. If you’re setting out to produce a film that you want to make its money back, the one thing I learned from the major studios and from Spielberg over the years was that well branded “concepts” have a better chance of succeeding in the marketplace, as well as securing good distribution deals. And with the encouragement of our head storyboard artist on Tugger, (Woody “Beryl” Woodman) who also happened to be a Jeep fanatic, I decided (with George's blessing) to change our "TUG" character to “Tugger” a Jeep!
With this one character identity change, a door of opportunity opened for us to secure major marketing partnerships. And over the coming 12 months I personally proceeded to successfully approach Chrysler/Jeep, Shell Oil and the United States Air Force Thunderbirds, who all signed on as contracted marketing partnership with our little (now titled) “Tugger the Jeep Who Wanted To Fly” movie.
Our movie was still structured on George's original story and character, but we were now making a film that we all saw as a once in a lifetime opportunity. Excitement kept building as new corporate partners and organizations joined our project. With this excitement of corporate partners came the investment funding we needed. Not in one single investment, but in small pieces over more than a year, that often caused us to run out of funding in mid production for weeks at a time.
Through one of our investors, (and eventual board member) we were able to secure the services of one of Orlando's top law firms, who managed our investor notes and reviewed all distribution and marketing contracts, and our business in general. We hired a top financial expert to draft the proper documents for investors, and even signed the famed "Arnold Palmer's Children's Hospital" as our charitable partner, as we always intended portions of profits to be directed to children's needs.
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Jeffrey. You pled GUILTY to 12 counts of FRAUD. Are you going to write a response article for that now?
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