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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 4.1 - April 1999
On Winning an Oscar... |
compiled by Heather Kenyon
While the entire world recognizes the Oscar,
Animation World Magazine asked past Oscar winners Frédéric Back,
Gene Deitch, Faith Hubley, Tyron Montgomery, Frank Mouris and Jimmy Picker
what the statue has brought to their careers. Did it open doors? Guarantee
further film funding? Get them the career of their dreams? The answers will
surprise you.
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| Frédéric Back. |
Frédéric Back
"All Nothing was nominated for an Oscar in 1981. I then received
an Oscar in 1982 for Crac, which allowed me to undertake a more ambitious
project: The Man Who Planted Trees. This film got an Oscar in 1988,
and as a result I could carry out The Mighty River, despite a very
difficult situation and severe budget cuts for Société Radio
Canada, the producer of my films.
Since the success of Crac, I have received many propositions from outside,
mainly for commercials, with very generous funds. But I prefer to use my time
in favor of works that could have a beneficial effect on animation as an art
and be of some help to environmental concerns. The consequences have been
beyond my dreams!
Perhaps winning an Oscar has been too often an unduly tempting opportunity
to be engulfed in commercial productions. This very important success should
be used merely in favor of opportunities to create more and better short animations.
Animation is an extraordinary and complex form of art, that constantly invents
new paths and inspires many achievements in cinematography. Money should never
be a priority. It is very sad if success has a destructive effect on talents
and future wonders...beware, please."
Read "The
Mighty Animator, Frédéric Back," an Animation World
Magazine interview with the multiple-Oscar winning animator.
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| Gene Deitch's creation Nudnik fumbles the Oscar. Images courtesy of Gene Deitch. | |
Gene Deitch
"There are two things I feel about the Oscar: Not winning it is not an
artistic failure, and winning it is not necessarily an artistic success, but
as the most heavily hyped award on the planet, the Hollywood Oscar sure does
give you something to talk about! My Weston Woods Classic
Children's Collection, mostly tucked away in sweet little school libraries,
and on exceedingly hard-to-get Children's Circle videocassettes, has won way
over a hundred festival awards in all the assorted colors: gold, silver, and
bronze. I am extremely proud of those awards, but they never made the animation
history books. My most famous creation, Tom Terrific, never won any awards
at all, but the name made its way into the language. Yahoo! lists 15,741 entries
under a search for "Tom Terrific!" Five of my films were nominated
for the Oscar: Sidney's Family Tree, made when I was creative director
of CBS-Terrytoons, Nudnik, No.2, (Here's Nudnik), How to
Avoid Friendship, Self Defense for Cowards, and Munro, all
made in Prague for Rembrandt Films. Munro actually won. The Oscar,
oh yes, the Oscar certainly opened doors! We immediately got a contract from
MGM to produce Tom & Jerry cartoons, and from King Features, to do Popeye
and Krazy Kat. That meant money, and that kept me in Prague long enough to
marry my Czech production manager. So yes, the Oscar actually did change my
life."
Gene Deitch's fascinating life as an American living in Prague, and one
of the greatest romantic stories in animation, is captured in his book For
The Love of Prague. For more information about the book visit: www.fortheloveofprague.com/
Faith Hubley
"This answer is going to sound very surprising. Winning an Oscar
is usually disastrous. It is great for all the friends and family members,
but on the professional side, it breeds jealousy and resentment. It sets off
a kind of long, silent night. At least this is what has happened in my experience.
Getting a nomination and not winning is Heaven. We received a nomination in
1974, the same year as Chinatown, and I remember myself, my wonderful
husband John, and a group of folks from Chinatown -- we had a lot of
friends who had worked on that film -- and we were all sitting at the bar
singing, 'We are the losers. We are the losers. No one has to hate us, because
we are the losers...' We had the most wonderful time because we knew that
no one would be mad at us for winning. That was the best."
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| Tyron Montgomery. |
Tyron Montgomery
"When I received the Oscar in 1997, Quest had already won more
than thirty festival awards, and it won a bunch more afterwards. The film
was well known by that time, and I had made plenty of contacts with all kinds
of companies, agencies and other filmmakers. The Oscar was just the cherry
on top and didn't really change very much...apart from the press asking for
interviews more often.
Still, it's a great prize to win, because it's highly recognized and the only
film award in the world everybody knows. People do give you more attention
as an Oscar winner and it does open some doors. But what counts in the end
is the quality of the work. I never got a job because of the Oscar, but because
people were impressed by Quest, especially by the film's visual power.
The Oscar could have changed my life more though, if I would have wanted it
to. I had some good offers from well known companies in the US, but I didn't
want to end up as a little cog in some animation factory. Staying independent,
I can choose my own rhythm and also work in other fields, not only in animation.
I have worked as a web-designer, visual effects supervisor, photographer,
graphics artist, director of photography, programmer, and even as a voice
actor. It's more fun this way and I'm actually quite happy I didn't accept
any offer to join another company on a full-time basis.
Summarizing what the Oscar means to me, I would say: `An expensive trip to
L.A. with a lot of fun -- and a nice decoration for the mantelpiece in my
office.'"
Frank Mouris
"The financial benefits of winning the 1973 Oscar for Frank Film
were more indirect than one might have expected. Our distributor sold and
rented many prints to most of the major libraries, museums and universities,
so we had a nice income supplement for a few decades, but it certainly wasn't
enough to live on. Caroline and I, singly and/or together, did get a number
of film grants over the years, enabling us to pay for most of the costs of
Coney and Screentest (animated documentaries), impasse
(abstract character animation), LA LA, Making It In L.A. (documentary
with animated slide sequences), and now (at last, at length, finally...) Frankly
Caroline (cutout animation again), but we certainly weren't paid for our
considerable time. The commercial work offered right after the Oscar was either
repetitious/simplistic (the titles for Rhoda), or risky (weekly bicoastal
commutes for Bicentennial Minutes; helicopter footage of a trip across
the USA), so we turned it down. Later, we enjoyed doing quickie television
commercials (is there ever enough time?) for Levi's Shirts and Nickelodeon
Toys, but mostly others just knocked off our style and did it for cheap. The
Oscar probably helped us get freelance animation work (Sesame Street,
MTV, VHI, HBO Comedy, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Nighttime Entertainment,
PBS, ITVS, Cartoon Network, PETA, Disney and Universal TV), but showing Frank
Film and our evolving showreel was at least as important.
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| Frank and Caroline Mouris' upcoming film, Frankly Caroline. © 1999 Frank and Caroline Mouris | ||
Caroline and I did Frank Film just to do that one personal film that
you do to get the artistic inclinations out of your system before going commercial.
Then we planned to join the industry, as you call it, armed with her MBA and
my MFA. Instead, we became fiercely independent filmmakers, only interested
in doing new films, whatever the genre, and not just repeating ourselves in
one area of film. You could say winning the Oscar gave us the courage to pursue
this personal film quest, but in fact, Frank Film had previously won
the Grand Prix at the Annecy International Animation Festival and most other
foreign and domestic film competitions and festivals. John Hubley was kind
enough to warn me at Annecy that it was hard to turn down commercial work
once you got into it, and that he and Faith were lucky to get a personal film
done every summer, so I should leave plenty of time for our own work. I guess
I took him a little too seriously, but when he died early, unexpectedly, it
was sobering. Caroline and I are thrilled to be back with another totally
hand-made film, Frankly Caroline, coming out in a few months."
Jimmy Picker
On winning for Sundae in New York (1983): "Now no one can
say I'm a bum!"
Heather Kenyon is editor-in-chief of Animation World Magazine.
Note: Readers may contact any Animation World Magazine contributor by sending an e-mail to editor@awn.com.