The Triumphant Independent

The Triumphant Independent
an interview with John R. Dilworth
(continued from page 3)

Compassion...
As for telling a story, Dilworth says, "It's the most difficult thing you can do. So I'm most appreciative of writers and artists and other individuals who can think narratively, but can also open and allow the oddest things to occur. Flexibility is what I'm looking for. The ability to have the unexpected ingredients, and to make it work, to integrate it in the story so that it doesn't feel gratuitous or out of place."

Dilworth also looks for "humanness," which he defines as "the ability to portray a real emotion, a real reaction of somebody. "Look at Dirdy Birdy, when he's mooning -- when he's expressing his love to Furgerina -- you're just seeing him one-dimensionally, and when his heart gets broken, he really takes it hard. You know, there's a whole 'nother dimension to him. Then when he's encouraged, he recovers. Even as hard as Furgerina was in that film, she has sympathy for the bird.

"That sort of compassion is stirring through all my films. In Lilly Lany, when Lilly brought home the cat to Frank, Frank hated the cat. He wanted to throw the cat out. But the cat did some little tiny thing to Frank and he just buckled over.

"And even in Smart Talk with Raisin, when her brother was getting into trouble, she almost had to excuse why he was such a troubled kid by showing home movies of her brother a little younger than he is, and reveal the influences that made him the way he is. So there's all this compassion.

"Compassion is very good. To be able to identify with any character or thing. You know a rock could be compassionate, I guess. Even by being so non-objective. It's just a rock. But when it rains on it, it gets flooded. It just stays there."

The Personal Stuff
During the making of Courage, what has John Dilworth learned in his growth as an individual? He responds candidly, "The one thing I learned -- beyond anything else -- is greater tolerance, and patience, with others. Period. That's it.

"I don't think there's any way on God's earth that you're going to accomplish anything where you don't get along with everyone -- and that in itself is an art. That requires that you put aside your ego, any kind of judgements, and personal belief systems that you have, and consider people's personalities or their performance or their attitudes. The most important thing is, that you get the project done. And you have to have some semblance of a good time.

"The Tower of Babel, all those guys speaking different languages, they couldn't build that tower, right? Right. That's what I've learned. And I'm an incredibly impatient person with people. I can sit down at a desk and draw for hours and hours and hours and generate thousands of drawings in a day [but] I just have no patience with people. And I think that's what I've really come away with, doing a big project like a series.

"On the little films and commercials, it's compressed. And the time schedules are smaller, and there's less individuals. So there really wasn't a need to push myself as much as I did on the series. But the ability to get along with people, and to surpass all that sort of banality that gets in the way...it's your obligation. That's my personal belief. Otherwise things become undone, like a blanket that's worn out and there's just a few fibers pulling it all together. It could easily fall apart.

"I have a pretty demanding quality standard, but it could be adjusted if a certain feeling has been captured. Model details, proportions, are indisputable. That must remain. But if you capture the essence of something, you can overlook a lot of the inaccuracies of the model -- to a degree. Let's say 60 percent. You can take 60 percent of something being 'on model' for a creative decision.