Well, the good news is … That a lot more people will potentially get the chance to see “Dream On Silly Dreamer.” Given this great little movie by Dan Lund & Tony West will be screening tomorrow at the Kalamazoo Animation Festival International as well as on May 23rd at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, CA.
The bad news is … It looks like not everyone in the animation industry is so eager to embrace Dan & Tony’s whimsical tribute to Disney traditional animation. Witness this e-mail that I recently received from one industry vet who supposedly caught “Dream On” at its Newport Beach Film Fest screening:
Hey Jim,
I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time now. I’ve read you on every site you’ve written for, and I’m glad you’ve finally setup a permanent home at Jim Hill Media.I caught the screening of “Dream on Silly Dreamer” at the Newport Beach Film Festival last month and wanted to offer you my opinion on the film. My take is quite different from all the praise the film has been receiving in the online community, so feel free to post it on your site. Just do me the favor of blocking out any info that might identify me to my employers.
I think that my negative take on the film comes mostly from my background as a television animator. I’ve animated on shows for half of the 6 major networks. On shows like **** and ****. I’ve also animated for numerous cable networks on award winning shows and a countless number of pilots, pitches, and demos over the years. So, this opinion is coming with an insider’s view of the animation world.
There has always been a large division between the worlds of feature animation and television animation. Some claim that the people that can’t make it in the feature business go to television. Yet anyone with any experience knows this isn’t true. Both fields have their geniuses and their lackluster performers. So, I’d like to make clear that my displeasure with “Dream on Silly Dreamer” is not intended as a insult to the feature industry. I have the utmost respect for many of the animators that work in that field. In fact, feature animation is what made me want to become an animator to begin with, which is why I was so excited to see “Dream on Silly Dreamer”.
When I heard that the film was going to be playing at the Newport Beach Film Festival, I made sure I marked my calender so that I would not forget to be in attendance that weekend. I was eager to see the film that you and many others had been talking about so positively since last year. I was disgusted by Disney’s decision to halt production of traditionally animated features. So, my hopes were high for Dan Lund and Tony West’s documentation of the downfall of WDFA (Walt Disney Feature Animation). However, what I didn’t expect was the 45 minute “pity party” that the film turned out to be.
Admittedly, Lund and West were severely limited in their ability to tell the story of traditional animation’s demise at Disney, due to the fact that they had no access to Disney’s archive of animation. So, to chronicle the death of an art form, the filmmakers turned to the artists. This, in my opinion, was their fatal mistake. After about a 10 minute introduction to how feature animation works and how great it was to work for Disney back in the “magical” days of Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, we begin to hear stories of the animation boom of the mid-90’s.
They got huge bonuses. $100,000 or more in one check. More swag (free stuff) than you could shake a stick at. They had catered meals and non-stop parties. They needed to go out and get agents to negotiate deals. They even got a brand new building to animate in. Not that they were all that grateful for it. They show footage of one artist criticizing the building during it’s opening party, derisively calling it a “post-modern gas chamber”. That artist should come work in some of the cockroach-infested basements that I’ve animated in. Maybe then he would be a little more thankful. As you can tell, it was around that time in the film that my sympathy for these animators started to fly out of the theatre.
Maybe many of them had worked at Disney for their entire career? Or perhaps they had spent too many years in the comfortable hands of the mouse’s white gloves? But either way, it was clear to me that these artists were getting spoiled by the time that the 90’s rolled around. Perhaps if they had kept their egos in check, maybe the impending fall wouldn’t have hurt so badly.
I give credit to Lund and West for asking two artists if the animators were partially responsible for what happened to WDFA. Unfortunately, both times this question is raised, it is laughed off and blame is thrown at Eisner for firing Katzenberg, thereby creating Dreamorks and creating the competition that led to the salary wars. More blame is placed on Eisner for producing the “direct to video” sequels that watered down the product. All of this is true. But, the artists never admit that they may have played acrucial role in the demise of WDFA.In fact, the artists seem to adopt the executive credo of “success having many fathers, but failure being an orphan.” They enjoy saying how hard they worked on award-winning films like “Beauty and the Beast,” telling stories of long hours put into the film and how some artists even had marriages breakup due to their dedication to the studio. However, we hear nothing about long hours put into “Atlantis: The Lost Empire,” “Hercules,” or “Treasure Planet.” As a matter of fact, none of these movies are ever mentioned by name in “Dream on Silly Dreamer” Although the executives deserve the lion’s share of the blame for the failure of those movies, I don’t find it to be a coincidence that these titles aren’t mentioned. For the “silly dreamers”, it’s as if they were responsible for all the magic up until “The Lion King” and had nothing to do with every film after it.
I found the one true moment of humility and truth came towards the end of the film. A piece of animation shows a conveyor belt leading out of the feature animation building carrying away all the WDFA artists. Above the conveyor belt is a large neon sign with an arrow and the words ‘this way to real world.” That I could agree with. For years these artists had been lucky enough to be a part of a wonderful place that treated them better than most animators get treated in the industry. But, in reality, the animation world is nothing like the Disney company or a Disney movie. You work long hours without large bonuses, catered meals, or fancy animation studios. When a project ends, you get laid off and you hope that the next project is closer rather than farther away.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that Dan and Tony didn’t make a movie about the loss of a tradition and an art form. They made a movie about a group of animators that get laid off. Unfortunately that’s something that happens too often in this industry to people that work under worse conditions, and no one makes a movie about them.
Keep up the good work.
Sincerely,
****
So does this animator have it right, folks? Does “Dream On Silly Dreamer” really view the whole animation industry experience through rose-colored glasses? I’d be really interested to hear what other industry vets have to say, particularly those of you who have actually seen Lund & West’s film.
Your thoughts?