Oregon Movies, A to Z » Marilyn Zornado

Will Vinton Talks: How He Broke In

Anne Richardson — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 03:23:18 +0000

Will Vinton, David Altschul, William Fiesterman and Marilyn Zornado at a 25th anniversary screening of The Adventures Of Mark Twain at the Whitsell Auditorium.

Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner won Oregon’s first Oscar in 1975 for their stop motion tour de force, CLOSED MONDAYS. Will grew up in McMinnville and began making films as an architecture student at Berkeley (where he happened to hear lectures given by Sheldon Renan!). The list of award winning animators trained at Will Vinton Studio includes Craig Bartlett, Barry Bruce, Joan Gratz, Brad Schiff (PARANORMAN), Travis Knight (CORALINE, PARANORMAN) and Mark Gustafson (THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX). Will continues to teach stop motion animation at Northwest Film Center.

Anne Richardson: Will, when you arrived here after Berkeley and were starting to make CLOSED MONDAYS, you were able to support yourself with day jobs working as a filmmaker. What was your very first job?

Will Vinton: I was initially hired by Dan Biggs, who was working for Northwestern, Inc. doing industrial documentaries. They had a recording studio and a nice little sound stage. This was in the days when Tektronix was big. Companies like that spent alot of money on media. Georgia Pacific was one of Dan’s big clients.

Anne Richardson: This is training films? Sales films?

Will Vinton: Training, sales, those were the main things. We did corporate image films. Maybe one third of the work was commercials. I was hired to do editing. Maybe about a year into working at Northwestern, Dan wanted to split off and service the Georgia Pacific accounts himself. So we decided to found Odyssey Productions. Bill DeWeese, the industrialist at Esco, had been a client in the past, so they worked out some terms, and he came on board. Reagan Ramsay, myself, Dan Biggs were the worker bees. Bill DeWeese was the president. Dan put together a terrific board of directors: Patty Kaplan, who was head of Evans Products Co.; Tom Moyers, Sr., Moyers Theaters; Bob Farrell, Farrell’s Ice Cream. The idea was to create a base of really good, strong, big clients – Evans, Tektronix, Georgia Pacific, Louisiana Pacific – and to base a company around doing commercials and industrials, but with the intention of growing to do entertainment.

Anne Richardson: Homer Groening set up his own advertising agency in 1958. Were you aware of him?

Will Vinton: Oh yeah. In fact I edited one of his productions. During the time I was freelancing for Northwestern, I did one for Homer which (laughs) I’ve always thought of as a cross between e. e. cummings and Benny Hill.

Anne Richardson: You told me once about finding help when you had to build special equipment to shoot claymation.

Will Vinton: When I was just starting out, I didn’t have a synchronizer, couldn’t afford one. Somebody told me about Walt Dimick whose father was a machinist and kind of a wild mechanical guy. I went to talk to him, and he felt sorry for me, and gave me a bunch of sprockets and hardware necessary to build a synchronizing part which allowed me to hold my film in place.

Anne Richardson: Did you have that same kind of mentor relationship with Homer Groening?

Will Vinton: No. I was just hired to do a freelance job. But it was important to me because it was one of my first jobs in Portland.

Anne Richardson: Did you feel inspired by Homer’s career?

Will Vinton: Well, you have to consider the films! Neither the e. e. cummings part or the Benny Hill part seemed to be exactly what I wanted to do. (laughs) What I did like about Homer COMPLETELY was the kind of wild freedom. That anything’s possible, and someone will pay you to do it.

Anne Richardson: Thank you, Will.

A crash course on Will Vinton’s place in Portland film history can be found here.

Sam Adams Clears Entire Wall To Make Room For Portland Directors Hall Of Fame

Anne Richardson — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 06:25:01 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mayor Sam Adams added to his collection of original portraits of Portland filmmakers last week, unveiling a brand new painting of Todd Haynes by Jasper Marks.

City Hall custodians grumbled about the amount of work they face – Portland’s active film scene means the entire wall will soon be filled. The Mayor did not announce whether Marks, who moonlights in another profession under the name Steven Cohn, would be asked to paint the entire series. Some people believe Arnold Pander may be approached to help out.

Here are the names of some of the directors who, taken in conglomerate, represent Portland’s cinematic wealth:

Aaron Katz

Brian Lindstrom

Chel White

David Weissman

Donal Mosher

Gus Van Sant

Irene Taylor Brodsky

Jacob & Arnold Pander

James Westby

Jim Blashfield

Joan Gratz

Joanna Priestley

Lance Bangs

Larry Johnson

Marilyn Zornado

Matt McCormick

Michael Palmieri

Mike Shiley

Peter D. Richardson

Rose Bond

Sue Arbuthnot

Vanessa Renwick

Will Vinton

It is because Sam Adams is only Mayor of Portland, and not Governor of the State of Oregon that the following filmmakers will escape inclusion on his Hall of Fame:

Alex Cox

Bruce Campbell

Bill Plympton

Chris Eyre

Matthew Lessner

James Ivory

James Longley

Shelley Jordon

Susan Saladoff

How Oregon Cartoon Institute Began: An Illustrated Guide

Anne Richardson — Fri, 21 May 2010 20:15:31 +0000

Basil Wolverton displays his pioneering “spaghetti and meatballs” approach to human anatomy.

As Oregon Cartoon Institute heads into its fourth year, I sat down to retrace the steps that led to its creation.

This timeline of development was originally written for Jill Hartz, at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Thank you, Jill, for providing me with the impetus to pull this together!

1990’s in New York

As I fly back and forth between Portland and New York, I begin noticing the way Oregon press underplays the fame of Oregon’s most well received artists (Chuck Palahniuk a great example ) while at the same time New York press omits the Oregon citizenship of an artist all together. I begin to understand the way this has created a misperception that Oregon does not produce artists.

I am particularly aware because David Chelsea has work (example above) appearing regularly in more than one New York newspaper — so I am paying attention to the odd sensation of picking up papers at my corner newsstand, and seeing the work of a Portland friend — whose career no one back in Portland knows about.

At about this same time Columbia sportswear begins showing up on the subways. The Simpsons are becoming a cultural mainstay. Elliott Smith, the Dandy Warhols, Courtney Love, Gus Van Sant — I start to feel surrounded by Portland even when I am 3,000 miles away.

1999 visiting Portland

David Chelsea tells me about Basil Wolverton.

I knew about Homer Davenport, the Hearst newspaper cartoonist from Silverton.

I’d heard about Mel Blanc, Portland’s most reknowned voice artist.

But I am stupefied by Wolverton. How could a guy from Central Point (pop: 12,000) influence an entire generation of Americans? And do it via Mad Magazine ?

A seed starts to sprout in my mind.

2001, in Portland

Dennis Nyback and I teach an avant garde film survey course at Northwest Film Center. Preparing for it, I discover avant garde animator Harry Smith was born in Portland.

Smith was both the disciplined, insightful, completely original collector behind Folkways’ enormously influential Anthology of American Folk Music and a self taught, extravagantly experimental, completely original filmmaker. I never dreamt he had anything to do with Oregon.

In my previous understanding, Oregon rarely produced nationally known artists.

Now with Harry “High Brow” Smith and Basil “Low Brow” Wolverton in the picture, I am completely confused.

2003 in New York

Standing in Kim’s Video, I stumble across a footnote in a book about Robert Crumb which identifies Carl Barks, creator of the comic books which were a huge influence on Crumb, as being from Merrill, Oregon.

I turn the book over to see who wrote it — D. K. Holm, from Portland.

At this point I compile a list of living and dead Oregon cartoonists and animators and send it to John Canemaker, asking what he thinks. He calls me, excited and impressed.

He adds two new names.

He tells me Marc Davis, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men, graduated from high school in Klamath Falls

and that Pinto Colvig, an early animator turned voice artist, is from Jacksonville.

2006 in Portland

Dennis and I interview Portland cartoonist John Callahan for The Portland That Was.

Callahan is surprised to learn that Mel Blanc, a life long hero, is from his own home town. Our intern, a graduate of Lincoln High School, the school Blanc attended, tells us she never heard of him.

About this time, graphic journalist Joe Sacco returns home to live in Portland, bringing with him his 1996 American Book Award.

Dennis and I return home too.

2007 in Portland

We hold the first Oregon Cartoon Institute public event, a three week screening series at Disjecta of 16mm animation from Dennis’ collection. Jim Blashfield and Rose Bond come and speak. Both have conducted far ranging film careers from Portland.

Blashfield made his acclaimed music videos here, and Bond her monumentally scaled installations. Both use animation.

Our model for engaging audiences emerges — we will use living artists as interpreters as we raise awareness about the dead ones. Chel White, Bill Plympton, Joan Gratz, Joanna Priestly, Marilyn Zornado and Will Vinton loan us 35mm prints for the final night of the Disjecta series, which takes place at the Hollywood Theater.

Second Oregon Cartoon Institute event: Dennis conducts video interviews with visiting and local artists at the Platform International Animation Festival. We put these online.

At this point, I thought we had found all the historic Oregon animation and cartooning figures there were to find.

I was wrong.

In the course of researching Oregon film history for the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival, I stumble across George Bruns, a four time Oscar nominee for animated film scores, from Sandy

and Dennis stumbles across Ralph Wright, who won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 1957. He’s from Grants Pass.

2009 in Portland

Third Oregon Cartoon Institute event: we co-sponsored Bill Plympton Day at the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival at Marylhurst.

Bill is as fascinated with this history as we are.

Not all our research comes from history books. Some comes from the news. Just when we weren’t looking, Brad Bird received first one, then two Oscars.

Looking ahead:

An interview about Oregon Cartoon Institute’s next public event, which will take place in 2011, can be found online at KBOO.fm. Conducted by S. W. Conser as part of his Words & Pictures series, this interview introduces our first artist in residence, Heather Perkins.

Oregon Cartoon Institute is all about partnerships. As soon as the details get finalized, we will announce our upcoming partnerships with others who share our goal of raising public awareness of this state’s rich animation and cartooning history.