Oregon Movies, A to Z » Oregon artist

The Portland That Was @ 2006 TBA Festival

Anne Richardson — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:01:31 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Portland That Was is a public history/public art project which uses 12 films from Dennis Nyback’s archive to engage the ghosts of collective memory in site specific ways. Mack McFarland and Dennis Nyback collaborated to create twelve short videos, drawing on Dennis’ films. Damon Eckhoff designed an interface which embedded YouTubes in a Google Map, and I produced.

Probably the most satisfying part of the project was the All Night Caravan which had audiences trooping around after Dennis and Mack as they went from site to site in downtown Portland. Shift 2 Bikes’ Ken Southerland helped with this, moving Dennis’ 16mm projector and equipment from place to place sans automobile, as Dennis screened his archival films against buildings, or, in one instance, a moving Max train.

Executed guerrilla style, without permits, and with crowd sizes from 20 to 100, the All Night Caravan was a one time event, which will likely never be repeated.

For the record, it was the college interns who worked on The Portland That Was who insisted on the All Night Caravan. They were adamant, so we complied. Security guards showed up at #4, and cops at #5, but the show went on.

1. Lincoln High School, now Lincoln Hall
Address: Across from 1620 SW Park
Film: THE SCREWDRIVER, 1941
7 minutes, black & white

Mel Blanc invented the voice of Woody Woodpecker while attending Lincoln High School. Blanc provides all the character voices in this early Woody Woodpecker cartoon, which features an unusually psychotic version of the much beloved cartoon character.

2. Keller Fountain
Address: across from 222 SW Clay
Film: WE ARE THE CITY, 1972
15 minutes, color

Portland filmmaker Tom Chamberlin made this educational film for use in classrooms across the country. Two Portland mayors, Terry Shrunk and Neil Goldschmidt, have cameos, as does the Forecourt Fountain, now known as Keller Fountain.

3. Keller Auditorium
Address: across from 222 SW Clay
Film: WILKIE & McNARY KNOW THEIR FARMING, 1940
10 minute, black & white

The Republican Party chose Oregon Senator Charles McNary as the running mate to their 1940 Presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie. A campaign rally was held at the Public Auditorium (the building which preceded the Keller Auditorium). That audience very likely saw this film.

4. Quest Fountain at The Standard
Address: outside 900 SW 5th
Film: THIS IS PORTLAND, 1971
8 minutes, black & white

Portland filmmaker Tim Smith was 15 when he sent up a locally produced television travelogue show “Don & Bettina” in this spoof starring his brother Duncan Smith and future Oregonian columnist Elinor Markgraf.

5. Pioneer Courthouse Square, site of the old Portland Hotel
Address: SW 6th between Yamhill & Taylor
Film: GEORGE OLSEN, 1940’s
10 minutes; black & white
Jazz age superstar George Olsen was born in Portland and played at the Portland Hotel before he was discovered and brought to New York.

6. Former Headquarters of PGE (in the Electric Building)
Address: outside 621 SW Alder
Film: IT CAN BE DONE, 1937
20 minutes, black & white

The employees of Portland General Electric made this short film to encourage Depression Era farmers to electrify.

7. Site of Northwestern, Inc., recording studio
Address: outside 415 SW 13th
Film: WHERE THE ACTION IS, 1965
8 minutes, black & white

Paul Revere and The Raiders recorded “Louie Louie” at Northwestern, Inc. in the spring of 1963. Two years later they were hosts of a daily half hour television show on ABC.

8. Low Brow lounge
Address: outside 1036 NW Hoyt
Film: BLITZ ME!, 1960’s
14 minutes, color and b & w

What may not be apparent to people visiting The Portland That Was today: Damon Eckhoff designed the YouTube/Google Maps interface from scratch. Google followed suit a month later, making this option available to Everyman. But Damon’s mashup was his own.

Filmmaker Rose Bond helped create this “making of” featurette by serving as the off camera interviewer. Howard Brotine edited it together. Both early, and wonderfully loyal, supporters of the Oregon Cartoon Institute!

Thanks, Howard!

Thanks, Rose!

If you happen to be in LA: On Nov. 13, 2010, Dennis Nyback and I will be giving a talk about The Portland That Was at the Reimagining The Archive conference at UCLA.

Salmon Poet (2009)

Anne Richardson — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:29:32 +0000

Sabrina Guitart met Walt Curtis at a poetry reading, and their spontaneous combustion of artistic kinship resulted in Salmon Poet, in which ”A poet from Oregon and a filmmaker from Barcelona evoke the spiritual journey of the salmon.”

Guitart was born in Paris, grew up in Barcelona, and graduated from Pacific University in 2000. She was working both as a still photographer and as a cinematographer when she met Curtis and they decided together to work on a film which would examine how the Oregon landscape had influenced his work, and hers.

I hereby claim Salmon Poet as an Oregon film.

Through The Wire, Bill Plympton illustrates Kanye West

Anne Richardson — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:55:15 +0000

As a follow up to their music video collaboration, Heard ‘Em Say (2004), Kanye West tapped Bill Plympton for a second project. Through The Wire is a book of West’s song lyrics, with illustrations by Plympton.

Plympton spent years as an illustrator before commiting full time to animation. He has remarked in conversation that he never looked back. Until this project.

Kanye West initiated their collaboration. Apparently he grew up watching Plympton’s work. Through The Wire is available now.

Tad Savinar

Anne Richardson — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:00:49 +0000

Tad Savinars Artists Statement at www.pdxcontemporaryart.com reads:

I am interested in creating a dialogue between my work and the viewer. Not a one-way diatribe, but a genuine back and forth conversation. In order to achieve this I use the tool of visual beauty to bring the viewer closer, language to engage them, content that is relevant to their lives, and irony to soften the blow.

Talk Radio (1988)

Anne Richardson — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:51:02 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

In 1985, performance artist Eric Bogosian visited The Art Gym on the Marylhurst campus to see painter Tad Savinar’s show, Talk Radio. Bogosian was struck by the complexity of Savinar’s engagement with the subject of radio talk shows, and he and Savinar worked together on a proposal to the Portland Center for the Visual Arts for a performance piece, with sets by Savinar and a monologue by Bogosian. This first stage version of Talk Radio was performed in Portland in 1985.

Bogosian took Talk Radio to New York, where Oliver Stone saw it performed at the Public Theater.

Oliver Stone made his film in 1988.

I hereby claim Talk Radio as an Oregon film, based on the role played by Tad Savinar who both inspired and co-created the original work.

Bill Plympton/Oregon filmmaker

Anne Richardson — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:46:38 +0000

From www.plymptoons.com, a great source of all things Plympton:

Born in Portland, Oregon to Don and Wilda Plympton, Bill Plympton grew up in a large family of three girls and three boys. For the six children it was often far too wet to play outside. Plympton credits Oregon’s rainy climate for nurturing his drawing skills and imagination. He also was a cub scout and played little league when the weather permitted. In 1964 he graduated from Oregon City High School where he participated in the art club. He went on to Portland State University, where he edited the yearbook and was a member of the film society, creating posters for them. It was here where he picked up his obsession for film – it was for this film society that he first attempted animation, making a yearbook promo that was accidentally shot upside-down, rendering it totally useless.

To avoid the Vietnam War, Plympton served in the National Guard from 1967 to 1972. In 1968, he moved to New York City and began a year of study at the School of Visual Arts. Making the Big Apple his home, Plympton served 15 years as an illustrator and cartoonist. Between toting his portfolio and catching cheap matinees, he designed the magazines: Cineaste, Filmmakers Newsletter, and Film Society Review. His illustrations have graced the pages of The New York Times, Vogue, House Beautiful, The Village Voice, Screw, and Vanity Fair. His cartoons appeared in such magazines as Viva, Penthouse, Rolling Stone, National Lampoon, and Glamour. In 1975, in The Soho Weekly News, he began “Plympton,” a political cartoon strip. By 1981, it was syndicated in over twenty papers by Universal Press Syndicate.

All his life, Bill Plympton has been fascinated by animation. When he was fourteen, he sent Disney some of his cartoons and offered up his services as animator. They wrote back and told him that while his drawings showed promise, he was too young. It wasn’t until 1983 that he was approached to animate a film. The Android Sister Valeria Wasilewski asked Plympton to direct and animate a film she was producing of Jules Feiffer’s song, “Boomtown.” Connie D’Antuono, another of the film’s producers, “sort of held my hand through the whole process,” Plympton says. “It was a great way to learn to make a film.”

Immediately following the completion of “Boomtown,” he began his own animated film, “Drawing Lesson # 2.” Production of the live action scenes was slow due to inclement weather, so Plympton decided to start on another film. For this one, he contacted Maureen McElheron, an old friend with whom he had performed in a Country Western Band (he played pedal steel guitar), and she agreed to score “Your Face.” Due to budgetary considerations, she also sang. Her voice, eerily decelerated to sound more masculine, combined with a fantastically contorting visage helped garner the film a 1988 Oscar nomination for best animated short.

“Suddenly people began returning my phone calls,” remembers Plympton. He became very hot in the commercial business doing spots for such clients as Trivial Pursuit, Nutrasweet, Taco Bell, AT&T, Nike, Geico, United Airlines and Mercedes-Benz. His work also started appearing with more and more frequency on MTV and in the increasingly popular touring animation festivals. After a string of highly successful short films (“One of Those Days,” “How to Kiss,” “25 Ways to Quit Smoking,” and “Plymptoons”), he began thinking about making a feature film. His shorts were winning prizes like crazy and he wanted a new challenge – and, as he puts it, “I’d wanted to make a full-length movie ever since I was a kid.”

What came to be called THE TUNE was financed entirely by the animator himself. Sections of the feature were released as short films to help generate funds for production. These include “The Wiseman” and “Push Comes to Shove,” the latter of which won the 1991 Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival. With money from his short film prizes and commercial work, he was able to complete THE TUNE and realize a childhood dream. The completed TUNE also made the rounds of the film festivals, garnering the prestigious Houston WorldFest Gold Jury Special Award as well as a Spirit Award nomination for Best Film Score and was distributed nationally by October Films.

After personally drawing and coloring 30,000 cels for THE TUNE, Plympton moved to live-action. J. LYLE, his first live-action feature, is a wacky, surreal comedy about a sleazy lawyer who meets a magical talking dog that changes his life. “Making THE TUNE, I had a lot of ideas I realized wouldnt work with animation, but would be lots of fun with real people! I took those ideas and made J. LYLE. Besides, my hand needed a rest after drawing THE TUNE.” After a successful festival circuit, J. LYLE was released in theaters around the country. Like THE TUNE, J. LYLE was financed entirely by the animator himself.

Plymptons second live-action feature, GUNS ON THE CLACKAMAS, a behind-the-scenes look at an imaginary disastrous Western, was shot in Oregon and New York. Plympton says the idea came from the 1937 movie “Saratoga”, in which star Jean Harlow died during the filming and a stand-in was used to finish. “It was supposed to be a drama,” says Plympton, “but it ended up being funny. Every time Harlow was in a scene, a box or something blocked the view.” As with J. LYLE,GUNS ON THE CLACKAMAS got a limited theatrical release.

In 1996, Bill Plympton followed “Mala Noche” writer Walt Curtis around his Portland hometown to record him reading his poetry. This outrageous performance film hit the festival circuit in 1997 to stunned audiences. It is entitled WALT CURTIS, PECKERNECK POET.

In 1998, Bill returned to animation with I MARRIED A STRANGE PERSON. It’s a heartwarming story of a newlywed couple on their wedding night. Grant, the husband, starts experiencing strange, supernatural powers and Kerry, his wife, can’t cope. Whenever Grant thinks of something, it becomes reality, yet he doesn’t know where these magical powers come from. Once again Bill Plympton single-handedly drew and financed an animated feature extravaganza – only this time for adults and the politically incorrect. It was released by Lions Gate Films to good box office numbers and still plays today on cable TV.

Bill’s next animated feature, MUTANT ALIENS, the story of a stranded astronaut returning to Earth after 20 years in space, was completed in January 2001 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It won the Grand Prix in Annecy 2001 and was released in theatres in 2002. It has played all over the world to huge audiences.

Bills feature film, HAIR HIGH, is a gothic ’50s high-school comedy about a love-triangle that goes terribly bad, with two young, murdered teens returning to their prom to get revenge. It stars the voice talents of Sarah Silverman, David & Keith Carradine, and Dermot Mulroney, and was co-produced by Martha Plimpton. Plympton charted new territory in animation, this time by broadcasting all of his drawing for the film live on the web at www.hairhigh.com. The film was completed in January 2004, released in over 50 cinemas around the country and will soon be out on DVD.

Bills short film GUARD DOG has been a hit at film festivals and it brought Bill his second Oscar nomination in January 2005. Two equally successful sequels soon followed, “Guide Dog” in 2006 and “Hot Dog” in 2008. Throughout his career, Bill has always made 2 to 3 short films a year that keep bringing in a solid income from sales around the world.

His new feature film, IDIOTS AND ANGELS , featuring the music of Tom Waits, Moby and Pink Martini, is a much darker and more mysterious film than his previous comedies.

From www.plymptoons.com

Property (1979)

Anne Richardson — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:24:02 +0000

When theater director Penny Allen asked her neighbor, Eric Edwards, to shoot her first feature film, he brought along a friend named Gus Van Sant to do sound.

Poet Walt Curtis (pictured above) was in the cast. Van Sant first read Curtis’ unpublished novella, Mala Noche, as a result of this shoot.

Property is about a group of Portland friends who attempt to pool their financial resources to buy a house together. It gave a start to writer-director Penny Allen, cinematographer Eric Edwards, director Gus Van Sant and actor Cork Hubbert. It built on the careers of writer Walt Curtis (who appears as himself) and painter Henk Pander, who did set design.

I hereby claim Property as an Oregon film.

Pictures Must Be Miraculous

Anne Richardson — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:32:32 +0000

“I hate and distrust all art historians, experts, and critics. Their work not only is useless, it is misleading. They can say nothing worth listening to about art or the artist, aside from personal gossip, which I grant you can sometimes be interesting.” Mark Rothko

I honor Rothko as the greatest artist Oregon has produced. His abstract paintings, while mystifying to others, are instantly recognizable to all Portlanders as detailed portraits of the various mood states induced by our city’s sunless winters. I honor his epigrams “Silence is so accurate” and “Pictures must be miraculous.” I honor his reputation for being a contrarian of first rank, for deliberately creating paintings for his Four Seasons restaurant commission which he hoped would cause patrons to lose their appetites. But most of all, I honor him because I cannot find one instance in the recent biography by James E. B. Breslin of Mark Rothko ever going to see a movie.

Perhaps he did, and we just dont know about it.

He did study acting. He did this briefly, here in Portland, just before he began painting. He studied under Josephine Dillon, who would have paid more attention to him but she was busy falling in love with Clark Gable.

This is what Oregon Movies, A to Z is all about. Here it will all come down to movies. Let other people discuss the impact of Mark Rothko’s Portland childhood on his adult paintings. Let other people puzzle over the significance of the automatic drawings reputed to lie under his mysterious blocks of color. While everyone else gets the important stuff covered, I am going straight for the dessert. I am going to talk about Mark Rothko in terms of Clark Gable. At least I can do so knowing I have his gossipy blessing.