Animator Laura Di Trapani has been making films in Oregon since 1984. If you study with her at Portland State you will be learning from someone who has worked with Jim Blashfield, Gus Van Sant, Chel White, Will Vinton, and the late cartoonist John Callahan, as well as Childrens Television Workshop and Sesame Street.

Di Trapani belongs to the extraordinary sisterhood of Oregon animators which includes Joan Gratz, Rose Bond, Joanna Priestley, Marilyn Zornado.

On May 22, at 8:oo PM, Di Trapani will screen her current work in progress Exquisite Corpse at the Curious Comedy Theater, 5225 NE MLK Blvd, in Portland.

There never was before, and there will never be again, anyone like John Callahan.

A prolific and widely praised cartoonist who channeled deep sorrow into pitiless single panels of biting wit, he came to his artform only after he had been severely disabled by a car crash. John could still manipulate the controls on his motorized wheelchair, and he could still, using both hands, put pencil to paper. For pretty much everything else he needed help.  A recovered alcoholic who was deeply grateful to be alive, his  lacerating comic sensibility was showcased in cartoons which managed to offend nearly everyone.

His work migrated over to television with Nickelodeon’s Pelswick (ironically, a children’s show) in 2000, and with the  Australian-Canadian show Quads in 2001.

Earlier, in 1993, filmmaker Kelley Baker had produced the beautifully simple I Think I Was An Alcoholic, based on Callahan’s book by the same title. Animator Laura Di Trapani brought Callahan’s drawings to life, and Callahan himself narrated.

You can see I Think I Was An Alcoholic here.

I hereby claim I Think I Was An Alcoholic as an Oregon film, on the basis of multiple qualifying criteria.

Whatever the mysterious forces are which bring Oregonians to animation success, they were especially powerful in the mid-1980’s, when Will Vinton made the first feature length Claymation film in Portland. The following year, Matt Groening debuted The Simpsons and Brad Bird debuted Family Dog, both on network television, and Bill Plympton, working in NYC, was nominated for an Oscar for Your Face.

All four men are animation geniuses. If you are unsure that a successful advertising man like Will Vinton belongs in this group, see The Adventures of Mark Twain to appreciate just how miraculously odd he is as an artist.

If you remain skeptical of the size of Vinton’s contribution to American film, just watch the credits. Count the names who went on to other things — animator Mark Gustafson (The Fantastic Mr. Fox) and sound editor (now a director) Kelley Baker are just two.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It was Vinton who modeled the passionate engagement with technique which paved the way for Coraline.

I hereby claim The Adventures of Mark Twain as an Oregon film, based on many qualifying factors. It was made at the Will Vinton Studios in Northwest Portland, and written, directed, produced, animated — you name it— by Oregonians.

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute.

In Susan Shadburne’s Shadow Play, a blocked writer seeks sanctuary in an unlikely place – the house where years before she had become a bride and a widow on the same night. Rarely are the creative travails of being a artist depicted so accurately — at one point Dee Wallace Stone is found unconscious on the floor next to her typewriter, covered with blood —  so this is the film to see if you want to be talked out of the sudden impulse you had this morning to write the Great American Novel.

Cloris Leachman appears as the clueless mother-in-law, who just wants to help.

The credits of Shadow Play read like a Who’s Who of Portland film.

Don Zavin……Production manager

George Hood…Assistant editor

Tim Smith….Dialogue editor

Brian Lindstrom…..Production assistant/Assistant editor

Jacob Pander…..Assistant editor

Sue Arbuthnot……..Apprentice editor

Kelley Baker.……Sound effects editor

Marilyn Zornado…..Titles

Gus Van Sant……Slate

Also in the credits:

Walter Murch, who had recently worked with Will Vinton Studios to make Return To Oz, is listed as Special Creative Consultant.