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The Trouble with Jimmy

The first hint should have been the name of the Norwegian TV series the film was based on: Two Wasted Wankers.

The CG animation feature Free Jimmy has been touring the festivals of Europe since its premiere in 2006, racking up such prestigious awards as the Annecy Cristal. At the same time, it has struggled to find distribution because of its uncompromisingly dark themes, including drugs, sex, and some hilarious grotesque violence. The production itself seemed cursed by this dark vision: it took six years to make and featured a series of misadventures worthy of a film in themselves.

It...

The first hint should have been the name of the Norwegian TV series the film was based on: Two Wasted Wankers.

The CG animation feature Free Jimmy has been touring the festivals of Europe since its premiere in 2006, racking up such prestigious awards as the Annecy Cristal. At the same time, it has struggled to find distribution because of its uncompromisingly dark themes, including drugs, sex, and some hilarious grotesque violence. The production itself seemed cursed by this dark vision: it took six years to make and featured a series of misadventures worthy of a film in themselves.

It all began because they had just finished the above-mentioned TV series, and they didn't want to split up the team. Preproduction began in Oslo in 2000, with the director of the film, Cristopher Nielsen, furiously feeding his team of hungry animators and modellers. "I was drawing the storyboard, scanning and doing animatics, working hard to catch up," he smiles almost nostalgically.

The problems began in 2002, when the production moved to England. "We managed to do all the modelling, then we were going to start to light the film," Nielsen sighed. "We were working in Maya and wanted to change to a better renderer." The decision was made to use RenderMan to light the scenes. As they struggled with the heavily programmer-based version available at the time, they kept looking at the door for the RenderMan expert to walk in. He never arrived, and it took nine months to light six shots.

Then the financial headaches started. The producers had taken out a loan that demanded repayment within the same tax year. "We were required to finish by March 2003, and we couldn't do it," Nielsen recalls. The animators, lighting, and modellers were not paid, but continued to work. Finally the English studio went into liquidation and the computers were repossessed. "We lost about 10 percent of our work," Nielsen grimaced.

Nielsen lived in limbo for two years, cleaning up files and treading water until the financial situation cleared up. Lawsuits were threatened. Another attempt was made to finish the film in India, but the deal collapsed. The original producer was forced to sell at a loss, and a new producer brought on board to finish the project. "I spent most of the time feeling sorry for myself," Nielsen says candidly. "No one ever expected the film to see the light of day."

Now that the film is circulating, we can confirm the judgement at Annecy: it is an original film, both in terms of the dirty comic-book look and the picaresque story line. It's solidly under the control of Nielsen, who has made no concessions at all to the children's market, nor to the political correctness of insistent development executives. The characters are amoral dimwits from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers tradition, as befits Nielsen's status as the reigning king of Norwegian underground comics. In the end, the film is not about how animals are exploited, but how our human obsessions and manias make their suffering inevitable.

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