The Animation Pimp

This musing on fraudulent James Frey was my first piece for The Ottawa Citizen and Arts honcho, Peter Simpson. February 2006, I think.

Since the summer of 2005, a few friends have suggested that I should read James Frey’s A Million Little PIeces. I had a semi-memoir called Stole This From A Hockey Card published in 2005 that dealt with addiction and identity. Being an addict, my friends naturally felt that Frey’s book was perfect for me. I had no interest. I’d lived my own battle and spent the last few years confronting it through writing. I didn’t need to read about it any more.

Then, in early January, Frey’s book was brought to my attention again. This time it was being reported that the guy might have made up a big chunk of the book. My first reaction was “so what?” all memory is by nature fiction. There are parts in my own memoir that might be untrue to my mother or stepfather (who are minor characters in the book). At times I even ask myself in the book if the things I’ve experienced are genuine or have they become unconsciously confused and distorted over the years. I write about my memory of watching some hockey games in the early 1970s as a kid, but then wonder if I really did watch them at that time or if they entered my memory through television replays I saw in later years. Besides, not to get too philosophical, but what is truth anyway? Plato, for one, believed that those who relied on their senses instead of their intellect were living in caves. These people see only the shadows of things (opinion), not the things themselves (knowledge). I prefer to think of truth has been a bit more murky and subjective. My truth, for example, might not necessarily be your truth.

For example, in Nick Tosches’ brilliant biography of Dean Martin called Dino, there are many segments that involve Tosches’ writing about Martin’s inner thoughts. Obviously, Tosches couldn’t have known what Martin was thinking. It doesn’t matter. Those poetic moments conveyed more about the essence or truth about Dean Martin than any amount of facts. And what about the scores of writers who have oh-so-thinly disguised their own lives behind the mantle of fiction? The list is endless: Marcel Proust, Jack Kerouac, Richard Meltzer, Charles Bukowski, Philip Roth etc… Would Kerouac’s Big Sur or Bukowski’s Ham on Rye, for example, be any better or worse if the reader knew that they were reading fact, not fiction? At the end of the day, I felt, Frey wrote a book about recovery. Clearly the book inspired many readers. Maybe a few of them sought help for their addictions. So, what’s the big deal if Frey embellished an arrest or sixteen?

In short, I didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

Then came Oprah.

When it came out that Frey not only fabricated a number of parts of the book, but that there appeared to be no good reason for doing so – other than to make the author seem like a real tough, big balls, bad ass – then I started to get annoyed. It was also revealed that Frey had actually initially submitted the manuscript for A Million Little Pieces as fiction – only to have it rejected approximately seventeen times. This was now more than a simple case of poetic license or unconscious error. Frey very consciously made-up parts of this book for no reason other than to paint himself in a more heroic fashion.

That’s when I got angry. Here I am writing books that put my “stuff” on the line as I seek some semblance of truth about myself and my life while this schmuck makes a mockery of it all. Frey’s notion of truth appears to be that which makes him more likeable and wealthy. Wait, there’s something familiar about that… someone who says something that they don’t necessarily prescribe to, but stand behind because they think other people will buy into it: politicians, speech writers, advertisers, celebrity endorsements, exercise and diet gurus (e.g. Weight lost/exercise peddler Suzanne Somers had liposuction). Let’s not overlook so-called “reality” TV shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race. They are so heavily dramatized and manipulated that fake “reality” shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office come off as far more factual and honest.

Why no outrage over these on-going equivocations? Must we rely solely on Oprah to show us what is truth?

I’m now reading the book. Naturally, it’s difficult to read it objectively. I’m constantly questioning every part.
And this leads to maybe the biggest truth about honesty and addiction. For years, people were cautioning me about my drinking, but I didn’t really listen and it wasn’t until I finally confronted myself that I stopped drinking. Maybe it’s the same case here. Should it matter to me, you, Oprah, or the readers if Frey is lying? Should any of us be relying so heavily on one voice to find our truth? In the end, as with life, you encounter and sample different experiences and voices and at the end of the day you decide what suits your life best. You find your own truth.

-

Meantime, Frey carries on. Despite appearing rather daft on Oprah and Larry King (you’d think that Frey could hire a media assistant to help him lie with more credibility), his book sales (which Oprah likely sees a percentage of) continue to climb. Could Frey’s next project be a memoir about writing a fake memoir? Better still, he could write a fake memoir about writing a fake memoir.

In the end, I guess I’m the schmuck. Instead of writing honest and un-heroic tales of dysfunction and addiction so that I could try and sort out my life, I should have juiced it up a bit with more lurid and juicy tales of gunplay, drunken fistfights, sex abuse, suicide attempts, and root canals. Might not have been my truth per se, but I’m certain it’s someone’s truth. In the end, it’s all works out. The reader gets an epiphany, and I get a great big bag of cash and fame. Everyone feels better.

What more is there?

-

There is a beautiful moment of irony about midway through James Frey’s book. After a former rock star visits the treatment to discuss his battles with addiction, a cynical Frey becomes angry at the musician’s apparently outlandish claims of abuse: “Were I in my normal state of mind, I would stand up, point my finger, scream Fraud, and chase this Chump Motherfucker down and give him a breathing. Were I in my normal frame of mind, after I gave him his beating, I would make him come back and apologize to everyone for wasting their precious time.”

Later on the same page, Frey writes: [T]o make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth. That this man is standing in front me and everyone else in this room lying to us is heresy. The truth is all that matters. This is fucking heresy.”

He said it, not me.

-

We will never really know what is or isn’t true in Frey’s book. Like dealing with an addict, there’s only so much we can know about the validity of his words. Only James Frey knows his truth and, in the end, he has to live in his skin, not us.

The weather network pisses me off. No, it’s not because of their very existence. Yes, the fact that we even have a weather channel speaks volumes about the cozy state of things in North America, but then again, if we can have an all sports highlight channel, why not a channel about the wind?

And no, it’s not because getting local weather (unless you’ve got Satellite TV) is a pain in the ass because you never know when it’s on and usually you have to sit through pollen commercials, inane weather history (did you know that in 1975, a storm disrupted an outdoor market in Burnaby? Did you care?), marine forecasts, or that David Suzuki of weather, David Phillips (you know, the genial looking guy who could pass for Bob Rae’s pops). No, what gets me is the increasingly alarmist tendencies of our Weather Network.

Perhaps in need of a rating’s boost since other newscasters have jumped on ‘apocalyptic’ weather stories, the Weather Network seems to have modeled, in their modest way, the sensationalist style of CNN and FOX. When a storm is approaching, the Weather Network screen goes red. Now, it’s always done that, but it was my understanding that it used to happen only when a serious storm was approaching. These days, it seems to go red for any and all storms. Not only that, but now every storm warning comes with a small text that cautions that storms can turn into tornados! That’s like saying all humans are at risk of getting Fairbanks disease (a rare disorder that effects bone growth). In other words, it’s possible, but highly unlikely.

Do we really need an alert for every storm that passes? Seems to me that we lived with storms long before the network came along. Besides, I’m sure I’m not alone in the fact that I love a good downpour. So what if I get drenched on my bike? So be it. It’s life kids. In our neighbourhood, many of us sit out on our porches to watch and listen to the rain. It’s really a pleasant and serene experience. The kids love it too. Sure, there’s a risk of danger with a storm, but is it any greater than crossing the street, driving on a highway, or breathing?

I love knowing that a storm is coming, but if we’re going to have an advisory for every dark cloud, can’t it be more jovial” Maybe the screen can flash as dancing clouds, rain drops and wind jaunt across the screen? Perhaps they can use party horns or kazoos to make thunder and lighting noises? Oh wait, how about the opening of AC/DCs weather opus, Thunderstruck? The choices are many (perhaps we can use our interactive TV buttons to create the storm party screen of our choice?) but whatever your preferences let’s make storm advisories more celebratory and fun.

The same goes for snow days and power outages. People still talk fondly about the blackout of August 2003. Suddenly we were free from our technological shackles. The children played in the streets. Neighbours spoke to each other, had parties and barbecues. Sure, it wasn’t so fun for everyone, but I think there are many who would relish an annual blackout day when for a few hours, we step outside our insulated lives.
Seriously though, what does this alarmist nature say about our society? Are we being treated like babies? “Oh, the poor things need to be careful in the rain.” Have we become a society of wimps? What is perhaps even more telling is that we appear eager for something exciting and threatening to happen. Our lives have become so mechanized, complacent and insular that we appear desperate for any type of action or threat, something that will show us that we’re alive and have something to fight for.

But, it’s a storm. That’s it. That’s all. It’s not a reason to race out to Canadian Tire to stock up on emergency gear in preparation for the apocalypse, but it is a good reason to grab the family and neighbours and sit together outside to enjoy a communal moment.

What happened to the saying throw caution to the wind? Today, caution is the wind.

August 2007

I’m pleased to reveal my sensitive side in these poignant tributes to former pets.
Bitch killed the bitch

My mom killed my dog.
She pissed on the floor, Too many times
I say neglect:
“Maybe the dog wouldn’t piss on the rug
if someone took her for a fucking walk.”
Next day I come home from school
No dog. No mom.
The bitch is dead.

Crap
Baby crapped in the diapers.
I took them off.
They were empty.
Out of my eye
I saw the dog
Licking the floor

Piss
I don’t know why
But when ever anyone
Comes to our house
The dog pisses all over the floor

Fish
Big red is dead
That’s what I said.
Big red is dead
He got bloated
Stuck out like a pinecone
Next day he flipped over
Now he’s dead.

Experimental piece I wrote for the Holland Animation Festival in 2000. They rejected it.

A blank screen. A portion of space. You anticipate time visible.

Pierre Trudeau (former Canadian Prime Minister) once said, “The world is evolving as it should.” A cop out? Time becomes timeless when you are the master of the space. We used to have a PM/honcho who got advise from his dog and his dead mama (k/not dada). He remembered time and so did his mutt.

Time. Not the magazine, a stranger to time. Not talkin’ Morris Day time (ie. The Time from that Prince film). Morris was wrong. His was day time (now no time). I’m talking more then day time, or time. I’m talkin’ TIME(S). Time surrounds us, swallows us, defines us, drips off us, then fucks us (we DEAD). For centuries, state(s) and church(es) battled for control of time and space. Domination of the calendar led to ( t + s=c/p). Did ya ever look at a Fed Ex (temporal/spatial reduction of Federal Express) box (“The world on time”)? Whose time?. Their time. Gets there next day, but only within the framework of their time (before 9/before 12 (noon) ). T & S dissolve. FedX becomes the message. Sundays. Once god’s time. Now Gap time. Never our time. Church time now business time. But what is our time? Only recently did Ol’ Dirty Bastard demand: “take the white man’s clock off your wall.” Billy (reduct.) Faulkner called time a tomb of hope and desire. Is time so singular and stagnant? The time it takes to write (type) these words (digitized manipulations of space?) differs from you’re reading (scanning?) frame. The world I write (type) about itself spans eighty (80) years (itself a pre-defined, compartmentalization of time in which I’ve lived thirty-three (33)). You will always read it in a different time. Time organizes times. Even here, it restricts and colours (1200 word max.) what I can say. Everything, as Eddie Hall noted, happens in a time frame. How does this relate to René Jodoin? I dunno, but I guess it’s time I got to the . (pt.).

René Jodoin has sparred with time a long time. He spars because he knows the main event is lost. Ever step in, gloveless, gainst Sonny Liston (Tyson’s a pussy)? Ya just don’t. Jodoin is no fool. Jodoin knows there will be no parade. Jodoin’s work is about (re)thinking time. Time and space have been taken from us (see above) as we move less and less within our timeless interior plug-ins. Unbalanced.. Jodoin reminds us, as person/artist/producer, of our/his past. He attempts to make time visible if only to shatter it into possibilities, uncertainties, freedom. Just check out Alouette (1944), the early singing film with McLaren. Words and body parts explode across the screen. Words for the folks to read to sing to take time/space and fill their blank distant landscapes. Put Cecil Taylor on valium (or better yet listen to Taylor after inhaling) and you begin to grasp the films of Rene Jodoin. Slow, deliberate, harmonious spurts of energy, space, movement. Kinda like smoking thyme. Time slows down (try watching Jodoin’s early abstract pedagogical work (Introduction to Jet Engines) with a jazz score). Be U Tea Full! At times, time is assumed. Just watch Jodoin’s latest work, Entre Temps et Lieu (Between Time and Space, 1999). The objects move off the screen (I guess). They return (well, they re-appear/returning assumes a continuation). We don’t see the between. Time and space are assumed. Modern? society assumes/ignores time for space. Watch it with different jazz soundtracks. Each produce variables of time (s). In Rectangles and Rectangles (a punk rock film that trashes concepts, a word the Pistols ‘be ‘ard pressed ta de fine ), time is made visible through a blazing flash of colours and tempos. Then of course there’s da famous (legendary) zoom shot from Notes on A Triangle that rivals of the awesome tension and anticipation of the synth bridge in Won’t Get Fooled Again. While sad, tipsy Strauss bangs on the bar room ivory, flatness becomes an ongoing dimensional space as Jodoin’s camera moves in/through space. Time moves. Nothing special on a computer, but the guy cut them out!

“All time is a concept,” says Jodoin. “It doesn’t exist. Duration fits better because it doesn’t have a direction.” Paradoxically, duration requires time. “Duration is like a tempo. It’s melodic and almost has a rhythm. It’s almost like time de-activated.” Or time within time since time itself is timeless. Duration is our ruler of time. Remember the blank screen (see above)? Well once you’ve put something in it (on it?) you’ve already created laws (duration). The problem is where to go next. In Dance Squared, a briefly blank screen. A square tumbles then shatters. Infinite possibilities within seemingly limited options. Space/Time as flexible not restrictive. Let’s take Spheres (1969). Like a mime, McLaren made a movement (itself a moment), Jodoin imagined what the next movement (moment) would be. A guided temporal/spatial random (dis)placement that itself took two decades (in our time) to complete/abandon/guide.

Jodoin is out/in time. He loathes the myth of the artist as GOD. At the same time (actually, it’s not the same time, it’s later in the interview), he cautions the technical geeks. “Skill by itself is boring.” Skill alone is present minded. Problem of our time? Where is the individual? We are in a time(s) of the negation of the individual(s). Individual time(s?) is/are absorbed by large infrastructures and with it fade the individual/personality. People seek meaning through corporations. Sure the NFB was an infrastructure, but individuals like Jodoin, Grierson, McLaren, Dunning, Lambert, McKay, Ladouceur, and Munro (just to mention animation) defined the NFB. Corporations are not like that today. They are predefined spaces. Maybe this is why Canucks have always resisted definition. Always in-between, free-floating, always in the process of defining, refusing to be defined. This is our strength. We are neither “who are we?”whiners nor the beer drinking slugs that slur aloud “I yAM CA NA DeAN” before pukin up that swill (not ‘real’ Canadian beer).

Computers. Time’s discount? Time eater? Internal/ (over)External space. No more (need for) room. Corporate expansion (inspansion?) within us. With a computer, Jodoin works towards a new (? or ‘nother) way of creating/imagining. Computer artist as writer and/or adventurer. A re-balancing/thinking of time/space. “The computer offers you a mode of doing which relates to what it is. You can do what you’re saying. It’s like working your head vertically in time. It might not be good, but you don’t have to keep the material in your brain anymore.” The medium of the century is within the palms of the hands of those not too busy holding the monkey while downloading ‘the beast of the revelations’: mediocrity.com.

Jodoin is like a butterfly. A flurry of colours and movements in space with no seeming direction that always gets to the right place. Where? Dunno, but be a shame to see him there. Butterflies look better in process.

The best kid’s books touch both child and parent. I don’t mean in a Hollywood way where they fuse tepid animal stories with lame adult-orientated references, but rather in a way that is smart, respectful and understandable. Case in point: the excellent books by Montreal author/artist Roslyn Schwartz. Her popular series, The Mole Sisters follows two young mole sisters as they go on various adventures. Schwartz weaves simple, positive, almost wordless tales with beautiful art work and basic philosophical questions into a smart and joyous celebration of the mysteries of existence.

In one of the best of the ten books in the series, “The Mole Sisters and the question”, the sisters wander about asking, “Who are we?” The simple story introduces young readers to different types of species while asking a fundamental question about identity. In the end, they realize that the answer is simple: “We are the mole sisters” and then decide, “that’s enough thinking for today.” Schwartz’s minimal and deceptively simple text has a depth that is lyrical as Bob Dylan and as dense as any fragment from the Gospel of Thomas. No kidding.

Schwartz isn’t entirely clear on why she settled on moles, as seemingly unlikely choice, as main characters. “Who knows? I saw a mole on the way to school when I was a kid. It was gorgeous. One has to think up some reason but I don’t have any real idea on that one.”

The reasoning might be in doubt, but the results are not. The series was so popular that Ottawa’s Funbag Animation Studio approached Schwartz and her publisher to adapt the books for TV. Schwartz, an animator herself, had initially given some thought to animating the stories, “I did consider animating but it would take me two years to make a five-minute story. No way. I couldn’t do it. So I’m really happy that it got taken off my hands.” Funbag has since completed about 78 5-minute episodes.

With The Mole Sisters series at an end, Schwartz has a new work out called Tales from Parc Lafontaine. The book reflects on the lives of small creatures that live in a city park in Montreal.

Well, that’s enough thinking for today. “Sometimes,” as the Mole Sisters say, “it’s important to do nothing.”

So be it.
(The Ottawa Xpress, April 2007)

Just goin through various old texts. This was my opening speech from the Ottawa 2006 Festival. Oddly enough, there were a litany of idiotic moments that year, but too close to use. What did Alan Alda say in Crimes and Misdemeanors? Tragedy plus Time equals Comedy? Maybe. I dunno.

-it’s our 30th anniversary. It’s a special year. Most events would take this time to talk about how fantastic they are. We already know that and so do you so instead I’m gonna tell you about the greatest dumb moments in OIAF history

1984-1986 Festival moves to Toronto (which I get) and Hamilton (which I don’t). It bombs in both cities and returns permanently to Ottawa.
1990- Big Dogs Bite story
1990- a drunk juror disappeared out the back door of the NAC just seconds before they were to present an award on stage on closing night of Ottawa 90.
Sept 21, 1991 - I was hired
Summer 1992- Jury led by our current Honorary President Mark Langer revolts after former director, Tom Knott attempts to starve them to death with snack food.
1994- during pre-selection, the projection–tormented after being dumped by a girlfriend–burns a number of prints.
-Jonas Odell’s Revolver is robbed of Grand Prize
-1995. I take over as festival director.
1996- Frederick Back shakes head in disgust while watching Corky Quakenbush’s Ragin Rudolph in competition
1996- Designer loses all the catalogue files days before deadline.
1997- SAFO 97
1997- Korean animation guy decides that our producer Stephanie Siska is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. She does not think he is the most beautiful man she has ever seen. He is sad.
1998- Easily the weirdest year. no less than three staff members are fired. The first because they lost their mind opening night and began screaming at staff, party venue hosts, and strangers. A second for picking fights at Chez Ani. Then while firing a staff member at 2am while drunk (as everyone else was), two volunteers decide that it’s a good time to be assholes. I chase them out of the hotel and down the street.
1998- Selection Committee arrives hours after Jarvis (first son) is born.
1998- b’nai brith shows great intolerance towards polish film AGAINST racism. They decide that Black Burlesque–which is an attack against contemporary Polish racism– is actually anti Semitic. They disagree and say that if we feel differently then the matter should be brought to the hate crimes division of the local police. If we want to stay alive, we are told that we must insert a new rule assuring them we will not show improper films at the festival ever again. We are not told who will be the one to decide what IS improper. We do no such thing. Life moves on.
1998- refurbished IKEA clocks are given away as festival prizes. Priit Parn still reminds me about this.
1999- Office burns down 2 months before festival. Festival still goes on.
1999- new staff member leaves after first day because she is asked to carry a box.
2000–a film is accidently invited for competition. No, I will not reveal the name.
2000- During the awards ceremony, jury member Priit Parn not only stands on the far side of the stage from his colleagues, but while awarding Andreas Hykade the Grand Prix for Ring of Fire, Parn decides to tell everyone that he preferred Igor Kovalyov’s Flying Nansen.
2000- The Animation Pimp.
2001 - staff member makes mistake of writing an online diary of how much they hate the festival and staff (in great detail) and leaving it on the festival’s server.
2003- First we are told that we can no longer use the venue we had used since 1976 and then a few months later our friends at Telefilm Canada cut all of our funding. Strangely..this rather stupid period turns out to be golden as festival reaps great publicity.
Festival’s first REAL director Kelly O’ BRien dies TOO YOUNG.
2003- Upon returning from Annecy or some other festival, I am sent to immigration. Apparently “Chris Robinson” is wanted for a variety of crimes in the U.S.A. For about 20 minutes, I start to believe that I did commit these crimes. After everything is cleared up, I am then told that I will continue to be stopped until they get their man. To date, they have not got their man
2003- Estonian animator arrives in Ottawa late. He not only misses his festival shuttle, but he forgets what hotel he’s staying at. He spends the entire night in local bars until the festival opens again the next morning.
2003- Kelly got sprayed by a skunk. Attendees were warned to stay clear of her during the festival
2003- Final SAFO. A nervous and drunk JJ Villard goes up to take a bow after the screening of his film Son of Satan….he then stays up their and blows ass kisses to the jury and almost gets into a fight with a heckler. It musta worked…cause good ol JJ won the Grand Prize that year. When he received it, he embraced Nelvana’s Pat Burns like a long lost girlfriend.
2004- Staff member goes for lunch and never comes back. Turns out they had a gambling addiction and had gone to a casino. Hiring is always a crapshoot we learn.
- kelly orders food for wrong night at Boomstone’s party - receives hairy eyeball from boomstone for remainder of festival
2004- We realize that our closing ceremonies stink.
2004- Ryan Larkin shows me how to pee in public.
2004- Films by Jove decides that our audience is best served watching Soviet propoganda cartoons in Russian.
2004- Korean guy arrives and within minutes pronounces his love for Maral. A day later he is heard live on a local radio station professing his love and singing some Korean love song to her in Korean. Maral’s boyfriend seems pleased.
2004- Chinese animator pisses off a Chinese govt official at TAC. We fear for his life.
2004- A week later same Korean guy decides that another of our staff members (sonia?) is really the one for him. Unfortunately, once again he is not the one for her.
2005- Paul Reubens.
2005- Dutch director ROSTO begs me to let him say a few words before his film shows in competition. It’s unusual but I agree. Big mistake as he proceeds to insult the intelligence of our audience and come off as a meathead. The next day during a Meet the Filmmakers session he continues to tell us why he’s great and attacks everyone for asking stupid questions.
2006- I convince Kelly and rest of staff that it makes sense for me to come back as Managing Director for a year while Kelly takes care of 2nd child, Harrison.
2006- we learn that students are making fake party tickets and festival passes. Desire to kill grows…then fades…then grows
2006- TAC director, Maral causes a minor controversy when an email she sends about a panel on Canadian animation is misinterpreted as being a comment about Canadian TV animation SUCKING. Sharing an office with said TAC director, I sit back and enjoy the show. It is the first time since 1991, that I am not the target of controversy. Many times I laugh at her.
2006- my catalogue articles this year.
2006- Maral decides that this is her last year with us. It’s actually not an idiotic move, but we don’t want her to go so as far as I’m concern she’s a doof
and finally, in 2006, this.

In truth, when you realize that sort of stuff we’ve done and gone through, I think it’s all the more impressive that we’ve survived.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first publishing of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road – a novel that has become (whether rightly or not) the bible for the beatnik generation – Viking has released the original scroll version of the famous road book. In a three-week period in 1951, Kerouac banged out the book on eight sheets of tracing paper and then taped them together to form a 120-foot scroll. The published version didn’t appear until six years – and many revisions – later.

Having punctured the mystical balloon, there’s no denying the social and cultural importance of On The Road since it articulated the alienation of a post-war America. And while many embraced the prosperous age by spending on new cars, houses, and grey suits, others found that this wasn’t enough and Kerouac was one of them. The Beats were like punks. They couldn’t be bothered trying to change it so instead, they just rejected it. Like many other works by the Beat generation, On The Road was a big fuck you to the world.

It’s easy to understand the attraction of On The Road for youngsters. Kerouac and his pals embark on a drug filled cross-country journey and meet an assortment of characters and experiences. It’s the dream of youth (and maybe the old farts too?): do be free of rules and society, to just BE. And while the book is often appropriated for the sex and drugs, this is a book about experience, about the search for the real, for something, anything authentic.

Kerouac had the idea for On the Road as far back as 1947. He toyed with various scenarios and characters and then decided that the best way to write it was ‘as it happened’. On The Road, he felt, would be a story from his life. But that’s not quite the way it ended up. The first published book went through several edits with real names replaced (e.g. Kerouac became Sal Paradise, Neal Cassady became Dean Moriarty) and with a softer tone.

With the scroll version of On The Road, readers can, for the first time, experience Kerouac’s explosive, spontaneous, raunchier, and truthful automatic writing style the way he intended. The book is more explicit and rowdy than the published version and real names (including Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs) have also been re-inserted.

Whichever version you want to read, there’s no denying that On The Road is good, real good, but it ain’t his best or even his fifth best. I know Castro hat donned twentysomethings will tell you otherwise - and hey, let’s be honest, Kerouac’s fifth best is a hell of a lot better than most writer’s best. Maybe On The Road is a masterpiece for feckless youngins’, but if you want to read great mature Kerouac, check out the Big Sur, his late life masterpiece that’s follows his booze-drenched decline.
Originally appeared in The Ottawa Xpress, Sept 2007

Autumn Rhythm
By Richard Meltzer
Da Capo Press
$19.95

Reviewed by Chris Robinson

For my money, Richard Meltzer is one of the great writers/thinkers/observers of our time, period. His writing can be playful, raw, and smutty, yet also perceptive, honest, and intelligent. Meltzer’s work rejects the boundaries between the high and low, the profound and profane: he can talk Foucault or Faulkner alongside more commonplace fare as bottle caps, condoms, and hockey players.

Meltzer’s latest book, “Autumn Rhythm,” is a collection of 15 texts, each divided into episodes that explore death, aging, and identity as reflected by such people as Charles Bukowski and wrestler Stan Stasiak, in addition to personal subjects as parents, father, cat, and self.

In the title piece, Meltzer ruminates on his fast-approaching geezer status (he’ll be 59 this year). Just like a geezer, he jumps from thought to thought, going over the past, present, and possible future of his life. The fragments range from the trivial (“there is nothing that concerns me less than the décor of my room,”) and smutty (a vivid description of what geezer sex might be like) to more poignant and profound commentaries: a painful observation of his dying cat; a knockout piece about the last recordings of Coleman Hawkins, Skip James, and Joe Callicott; and the excellent “Vanity and Culture,” a philosophical defense of his fondness for bars (“To grab some jargon from the existentialists, with a couple - three Hamm’s in your gut – hell: even Coors fucking Lights – potentiality begins to approximate actuality”).

“Beginning-Middle-End” opens with a vivid wet dream Meltzer once had about his mother. Meltzer then alternates a casual interview with his elderly mother with childhood memories of her. He comes to a painful realization: he doesn’t know this woman at all:

“Hey, I’ll cop to it: I do want my mommy – a mommy (or equivalent). Wish the hell I had one – what the fucking fuck.”

In “The Old Fuckeroo,” Meltzer examines his father, a man he describes as a “Pompous blowhard; stultifying omnipresence; dreary s.o.b. with a heart of gold, no, silver, no, aluminium; white collar drudge; earnestly mawkish drip-dry sap.” By the end, however, sadness and regret once again creep in:

“…[H]e would still never become someone I (or anyone) could exactly ‘talk to’ – he never mastered smalltalk or became approximately Real. Which today feels sort of tragic – or something – but that’s the fucking breaks.”

This is more than a family tale, however. In “Stan Stasiak’s Dead”, Meltzer attends the funeral of wrestler Stan Stasiak and is disappointed to find that the few people who eulogize him prefer to spout a stream of nothing niceties: “A generic funeral, a dismal affair… the nullification of a life rather than its celebration…” In “Stiff,” Meltzer recounts his encounters with Charles Bukowski, a man he once admired for setting “a standard, for measuring our own orneriness, our trashy facility, our fuckdance with our own weary detritus, our big stink.” Meltzer is let down when he discovers that Bukowski has become a walking, talking parody of himself.

In “Autumn Rhythm,” Richard Meltzer celebrates our blemished, fragmented pasts of failure, disappointment, and insecurity - and even a few minor triumphs here and there. For Meltzer, life, whatever its setbacks, is “a MAGNIFICENT peep, but a peep… then neverending stillness.”
September 2004 - Appeared in Stop Smiling

New column debuts today in The Ottawa Xpress.

Read it here

This was originally done in January 2002 for the now-defunct Belgian magazine, Plateau.

There is nothing remotely remarkable about bringing together two people who have very different opinions about art and commerce. If I were to walk along any street corner or eavesdrop within any gallery or office wall, we could easily find a multitude of polarized voices eager to articulate the validity of their utterances. But when these two people are celebrated independent animators who both abhor corporate numbing, it is indeed a unique gathering.

Bill Plympton, the creator of The Tune, I Married a Strange Person, How To Make Love to A Woman and the Oscar nominated, Your Face, is arguably one of the few animation celebrities. Plympton’s absurd, violent, and sexual snapshots of modern America have earned him both critical acclaim and public adulation. What separates Plympton’s blatantly commercial work from Disney or Warner Bros. Is their decidedly unique, ‘anti-slick’ aesthetic, and perhaps more importantly, his fierce independence. Not only does Plympton write, direct and animate his films, he also owns and funds all of his work using the profits from his short films and commercials.

George Griffin, on the other hand, couldn’t be more different. Griffin’s films are, with the possible exception of the infamous 1975 film, The Club and A Little Routine (1994), are decidedly non-commercial. Unlike Plympton, there is no real ‘Griffin’ style. And while Plympton’s work is often more a monologue than a dialogue, Griffin’s films weave together personal and collective histories within a self-reflexive landscape that continually, and fiercely, questions and reveals itself to its audience.

With this in mind, I met with these two revered artists to discuss, not their films, but their ideas, passions, and visions of art, animation, and life.

What does the word art mean to you?

G: Disney said [that when] he heard the word ‘art’, he goes for his gun. I feel kind of the same way because it has as certainly changed enormously since the arrival of Warhol. I mean Duchamp and then Warhol. It’s like anything goes. In a sense everything we do in our culture is art. From the art to the archeologists. I think it’s we who make these very subtle distinctions about whether it truly qualifies to be in a museum. I find those distinctions often quite bogus.

B: In a sense I agree with George. When I think of the word art, I think of art museums and generally I try and stay away from that sort of filmmaking. I’m more of an entertainer than an artist and quite frankly I’m proud of that. I think the adulation of the fans is more important than breaking new ground and breaking new territories of conceptualism or minimalism.

G: But Bill if you are claiming that you are an entertainer not an artist then you are defining it in a very limited way because clearly you are an artist. You want to reach a broader audience and you use a kind of language that’s a more popular language. We all kind of speak, write and draw in a visual language that we can understand and maybe some kinds of animation reach a smaller audience, a chamber audience. There are so many wonderfully inventive films that satisfy on both levels that it’s a shame to define things [in this way]. I think that Bill is a good case in point because you’re drawing style is a kind of rough, pencil style. You brought something into cartoon animation that wasn’t really there before and that was an aesthetic quality as well as how you deal with comedy and subject matter.

What does animation mean to you?

G: For me, it’s changed an awful lot that last few years because of computers. It used to be something that you sort of stitched together frame by frame, but now with the computer doing its own stitching and its own organization, you could very easily say, “well, there are no frames anymore”, there’s a kind of continuum. Gosh, I think it’s got something to do with a synthetic organization that animators control, but beyond that all of my preconceptions have been washed away over the past few years.

B: What’s more important to me is the potential of animation against live action filmmaking. For me, animation is really liberation and the limits are neverending. It’s amazing that I can sit at my drawing board and do anything that I want with these people and with my story.

G: But you know there are so many instances of the live action film being re-structured, re-painted, and re-animated in a sense. So, you can scarcely say that one is animated, one is not. They’re all worked over on a frame by frame basis with digital technology. It’s hard to make a distinction.

Is this change a good thing? Is it good that people can now make their own films on their computer.

B: I definitely think it’s a good thing. I see a lot of people who probably never would have thought of doing animation and getting involved in animation. When I started doing animation in the mid-1980s it was extremely difficult just to get a pencil test. You had to shoot it in 16mm, take it to the lab, you had to wait a couple of days, you had to have a projector, you had to have all this technical equipment. Now any idiot with a computer can play with animation. I don’t use a computer for animation but I like the fact that it’s more democratic and it opens up the career of animation to everybody.

G: I’m not sure that I would agree with that last part because that’s one thing that has altered the scene enormously: the re-birth of the studios. Where does that place film students and art students who want a job? And if that’s what they want then they’re offered jobs quite early on in their creative life and I think that can be a problem for the independent.

B: England is producing the best independent films in the world right now as far I know and I wonder what the hell is wrong with the States? How come we’re not producing independent filmmakers? The studios are gobbling them up right out of film school. Guys are making lots of money. A couple of decades ago these same people would have been making independent films. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. If I was a young kid now I would probably jump to one of these big studios and have the time of my life. I recommend that young animators work for 5-10 years at a studio. Then I recommend that they leave the studio and, now [that] they have experience, start making their own films.

G: I think that’s pretty idealistic because if you’re working ten years, you’re getting a fat salary. Generally if you’ve worked your way up in the hierarchy, you give it your all and you won’t have enough energy to do both.

I’ve actually heard animators say that they would like to continue with their own projects, but they’re too burned out at the end of the day.

G: I think it would hurt. I actually was very fortunate because I worked in studios, but I never really became like a top flight animator or director. I was always kind of like still an apprentice. Even as an apprentice I started making my own films, so by the time I was finely fired I had enough under my belt so I could do small jobs and then eventually some commercials here and there.

Do you think about the audience when you are making a film?

G: I do, but it’s an audience of one usually. For me, it’s this little imp sitting on my shoulder that says, “well, do you really want to do that?”. It’s kind of a little monitor. But Bill, if I can speak for you, you really use laughter as one of things to define the audience’s response in a positive way for you. Where it’s not so much that for me. So it’s hard to gauge what makes a successful presentation of my work. In other words, I don’t think of the audience that much.

B: I think that’s a really important question that every filmmaker should ask themselves when they’re making a film because that does reflect on what eventually is the end product. For my own purposes, I generally think the audience is fifty percent me and fifty percent the people in the screening room. Initially, I try to make myself laugh and then I’ll do some testing and show it to some friends and people. They’ll give me feedback and then I’ll make changes because I do want the audience to like it. I think it’s important that the audience likes it. If the audience is not important then you shouldn’t bother showing it to an audience. For example, and I think George that you were there for this. It was in the Stuttgart Festival about 4-5 years ago. They did an American animation series and showed Under the Sea by Paul Glabicki. Real abstract. A bunch of circles, and lines and dots After about 2-3 minutes the audience got really angry and it just kept going and they kept yelling and this thing ended up being 24 minutes long. At the end of the film you saw that it was funded by all these organizations: the AFI (American Film Institute), Arts of the Humanities, and you know he was not thinking about the audience. His audience was the board of directors of all these funding organizations, not the people who would see the film. And I wondered why do they bother to show this film to an audience when obviously he didn’t want it to be shown to an audience.

G. Well Bill, I can recall getting into an argument with you in Stuttgart over that very issue. Not so much the film, but whether art should be funded. And I take exception to that point of view because the funders often are just people who write a cheque. The people who decide who gets the money are other filmmakers. They obviously liked what he was doing. And I would say that having an audience screaming and trying to kick in the projection doors is a very good reaction. The worst reaction would be stony silence and polite applause.

B: But it saddens me that our tax money was going to art work that no one wanted to see.

G: That’s really where we draw the line in the sand because you know the amount of money that goes to funding bombers and so forth and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.

B: I totally agree.

G: I reach for my gun when I here that line. Art is an endangered species.

B: But it’s not. I think there are artists out there like you who have really new ideas, styles, and techniques, but they’re entertaining. People like them. What’s so revolutionary about that. The Beatles did music that was unheard of and people liked that. Picasso did stuff that was unheard of and offensive, but people liked it. Why do art that nobody likes? Why finance art that nobody likes?

G: When you define it that way you are saying that not enough people like it and I think it’s a mistake to use a market approach to art.

B: It’s not a market approach.

G: You can say that Picasso was well liked. You will find many people who did not like Picasso and in fact Picasso was purchased and supported by an elite minority of rich folks. To say that no one likes the work is just an assumption on your part. Some films are not going to make you laugh. Some films are going to be quiet and thoughtful and they’re going to engage you in some way, maybe embarrass you in some way, and those are important works too.

B: I don’t want people to think that I want to please everyone. I Married a Strange Person is very graphic in terms of sex and violence and it offends a lot of people. A lot of reviews said that this was offensive trash, so I’m not out to please everybody, but I do want to do drawings that I find amusing and that other people find amusing too. That to me is the bottom line.

G: Yeah, but Bill what if you did something that you thought was really funny and you showed it to people who don’t laugh…what would you do? Take it out?

B: Absolutely. I’m not going to bore people.

G: But what if ten years later it’s shown that you were so far ahead of the time?

B: I’ll sneak a bunch of scenes in there that are really super and sometimes people don’t laugh. I can live with that, but if the whole film gets a negative response from an audience then I’m not going to show it. I don’t want to turn people off.
G: I don’t want to bore people either. But if someone at my film cried I would say that I did something right.

Tell me about your influences.

B: I think that this tells you a lot about the differences between George and I. It’s the Warner Bros. people like Tex Avery and Bob Clampett. Actually there are a couple of artists who have influenced me: Rene Magritte and Roland Topor. I find their stuff very influential. I was a fan of a lot of illustrators of course. Andrew Wyeth and those people. Of the filmmakers today I like John Woo, Quentin Tarentino, Peter Jackson, the Hong Kong filmmakers, the action directors. Terry Gilliam of course. David Lynch. People like that.

G: My list is real small. I revise it every so often too. I would say Sol Steinberg, an illustrator/cartoonist/artist who does work occasionally for the New Yorker magazine. What I like about his work is the spare sense of his design. It’s witty. It’s about language and he seems to have resurrected the use of the colour pencil and basically used drawing as a way of hitting at something very psychological and very appealing. His work is often about making art which I’m quite drawn to. There’s a live action filmmaker I really like named Atom Egoyan, who is Canadian. He made The Sweet Hereafter and many other films before that. Then I would mention Charlie Parker because I happened to be obsessed with his music. The whole sense of improvisation and thinking on his feet. Working within a kind of idiom that was new and sort of sounded like noise but with his instrument it made it come out together in a unified whole. Now that to me is a wonderful goal to have in making films. Actually there are a lot of animators who are musicians or frustrated musicians. That indicates a sense of rhythm and a spontaneity of performance that we all kind of enjoy.

How do you survive as an independent animator?

G: I do commercials. I do industrials. Whatever comes over the transom as they say. And then at one point there was some government money. Art councils that funded independent filmmaking, and still does on a very limited degree. But for the most part it’s using your own money to do it. And I have rarely made money back from the films I’ve done. You make sales to Europe. There’s some programmes here in the States. I’m not very good at marketing so I really haven’t pursued that as successfully as Bill. You have to accept the fact that it’s either going to be a labour of love and not expect it to pay for itself and just do other things to pay for it; or do films that really are geared to one market that you are aware of.

What kind of government funding is there?

G: The New York State Council of the Arts is one example where they’re way underfunded from their level of the 1970s, but they still do it. PBS (Public Broadcasting System) has some ways of funding, but it’s not very much. The NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) is pretty much comatose at this point and the AFI is too. They were funded by the NEA. So it’s virtually dried up.

B: Let me go back on one thing. I don’t want to misrepresent myself. I’m not bothered by Rockefeller Grants or private trusts funding art. When the taxpayer money goes to projects then I feel that it’s a waste of public money. In terms of my own films, initially when I started doing animation after Boomtown and had a little bit of success, this guy, he was a Russian emigre came to me and said “I’d like to finance your next film. Here’s $1000.” I was so excited. And then I was thinking about it and said, “Wait a minute I’ve got a $1000 and if this guy pays a $1000 and he owns the film and he’ll get to decide what the final cut will be.” And I thought, “I don’t like that.” So I decided to finance my films from the beginning and it always turned out well. Each short film has made more and more money. I’ve been fortunate that the animation explosion happened just when I started and there was a ready market for all my films. The shorts right now do very well. The feature films, which are financed through commercials, however have all lost money except for Mondo Plympton.

So, you’ve never had government funding at all?

B: No. I spit on government funding.

G: Grrr…let me go back. We’re never gonna solve this thing, but it’s a mistake to criticize government funding. The government does a lot of things that you think it shouldn’t do.

B: But anytime you ask the government to be the arbiter of art you’re asking for trouble. Look at Jessie Helms and people like that. These people do not want to decide America sees and they shouldn’t be the people who decide what America sees.

G: That’s in fact the problem. That’s its become politicized and it really shouldn’t have been. . Jessie Helms [is] appealing to the base passions of people and I think he’s woefully mistaken.

Bill, you talked about how fortunate you were to arrive in animation just as the animation ‘boom’ was starting. The Tournee of Animation, and Spike and Mike’s festival must have been key ingredients in your success.

B: That and MTV. Everywhere I go people know who I am because of MTV or Terry Thoren or Spike and Mike. And I have to thank them all for being there at exactly the time I started doing animation.

G: Are those sources active now. I know that of course MTV is a monster, but to what extent are the others helpful or harmful to independent animators now?

Well, the Tournee is non-existent.

B: With Spike and Mike, the festival of animation is not as popular as their Sick and Twisted, so in terms of artists, you’re right, they’re not that good. Manga is looking for interesting stuff. They are very healthy and have a big budget and are getting the films out there.

What about the animation channels? I haven’t seen the Cartoon Network, but in Canada, we have a channel called Teletoon. I thought they might provide an outlet for independent aniamtors. But they are primarily showing old Hanna-Barbera, limited animation shows from the 1960s and 1970s. Has it been that way with the Cartoon Network in the U.S.A.?

B: Yeah.

G: You know I think there’s a problem there. It’s kind of the war I’m talking about. I mean I think that the Tournee and Spike and Mike served a wonderful function getting work out. It grew and grew and then it just popped. Just as MTV supported a lot of independent animators and then just stopped. Or it tried to get them to do work for very low budgets. I just think that when you make a pact with business interests, unless you are a very clever about it, you can get burned.

B: Yeah, but George look at Bravo and the Sundance Channel. There are always looking for stuff and they have open pocketbooks.

G: There are people doing their own series or pilots and so forth to fill the content void. I think that the re-use of the library is going to be the main money maker for these people. As it was for Nickelodeon. That’s going to be their cash cow and I don’t think they’re really committed. Am I gonna wait for Absolut Vodka to come around and help me become an independent filmmaker? I just think that that’s an avenue that is fraught with peril.

B: Well let me ask a bold question, George. Are you one of these guys who is waiting around for ten or twenty years for people to all of a sudden say…’wow! this George Griffin, all of a sudden we’ve caught up to his sensibility. Now he’s a brilliant filmmaker’?

G: Oh….good question. Do I detect a note of criticism there?

B: Yeah…that’s what you said to me. Don’t you feel like doing something boldly popular?

G: Well…let’s talk about that because I think you have made a decision to reach a certain audience that…but you’ve done feature films and I don’t plan to do that. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t like to be appreciated. That is a very strong carrot that is held up to a lot of animators.

B: Little Routine was popular.

G: Yeah, but I’m talking about feature-length film. That’s the main game in film. As short filmmakers we are marginalised. We are not very highly regarded. Sometimes I think there is this attempt to compensate by pushing out and doing a feature film as you’ve done. It does offer an illusory kind of avenue for some animators.

While we are discussing feature films…let me ask you this, Bill. Why do you continue to make feature films if you are losing money?

B: Because I think in the long run it will pay off big. You look at something like Snow White. It keeps coming out and making more money each time. I think that these features will be a gold mine in ten to fifteen years. Also, I like doing features. You get taken more serious when you do a feature. You’re almost on equal footing with a live-action director.

Do either of you that you’re making more compromises now?

G: I think that one could make that statement. I made stuff in the 1970s that was more for gallery audiences. I maybe took more chances then because it wasn’t really meant to entertain. I like to think that I haven’t become more conservative. I like to think that I have included some of these experimental techniques and tendencies in my work while trying to get to a broader audience. It’s always a danger of course. As you grow older you think, can I really muster up the juices and prime the pump once again. That’s a fear that I have.

B: For MTV or commercials, I’ll make compromises because the money is so good I don’t mind doing that, but in my own stuff I think that there is a little bit of self-censorship simply because no one is going to buy it if its totally obscene.

Where does your inspiration come from?

B: I did do drugs back in the 1960s and 70s. That freed up my mind. Also, I live in New York city, a very cartoon-like city. I find a lot of inspiration on the sidewalks of New York. But also every morning before I get up I like to lie in bed for two hours sometimes and let my mind wander and think of the weirdest things I can think of. I jot them down and make notes of them and one way or another they wind up in my films.

G: I actually find making films and drawing quite difficult. It doesn’t come naturally for me. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing, but I keep slogging through and then I find some kind of narrative thread that helps me through.

How has the New York animation ‘scene’ changed over the years?

G: There was more than one scene in the 1970s. There was ASIFA-East which I used to think of as being the uptown group. When I belonged to it I would show my films and other people showed experimental and independent films. They called it non-sponsored films. We met on our own and showed work and people came through town with their films. So there was kind of a feeling of a colleagiality. We got films shown at the New York film festival and we organized some gallery screenings and published this book called Frames. For me that was kind of the highlight. It seemed to dissipate in the 1980s just as things got more and more popular. MTV came on the scene. It’s not to clear whether there is a ‘scene’ now. There are still people doing things. There’s a scruffy element that’s breaking rules and trying new stuff that doesn’t always work. There are many more students now. There are animation programmes at every school and that was certainly not the case in the 1970s. Schools have really taken and delivered a lot of talented people to the outside world. And New York is a very big town. It’s possible that there are lots of factions turning out manifestos the way we were, but I haven’t seen them.
How do you see the future of your own work and animation in the U.S.A.?

B: I actually don’t think that the future for independent animation in New York or the States is that bright because the studios are gobbling up all the really talented people. In the past there were a lot of really interesting films coming out, but the younger generation is unfortunately going for the big bucks. For my own future, I’m happy to do one or two shorts a year and maybe a feature every three years and continue making money that way and maybe a couple of commercials.

Bill, you have a unique style, but don’t you ever just want to make something completely different?

B: No. I’ve been doing this style for 25 years and I really like it. I can do it fast. I really would not want to change my style. I’m not looking forward to computers or any other technique than the one I have now.

G: I had a burst of making a lot of films all at once. I ruminate longer for a film. I’m working on something now, but I suspect it will take me another year to finish it. I took 5 years between independent films. That’s kind of a long breathing spell. I share Bill’s pessimism though. Television programming is a problem. The writer becomes ascendent to the animator. As good as The Simpsons were, it’s a writer’s programme. The design and animation doesn’t show me much. And it’s great satire. It’s going to be script driven projects. I see very few exceptions to that. That’s the way television works. If you got some interesting new thing it might look great as a pilot and then there’s the deadening prospect of churning out thirteen of these things.

The pendulum has swung away from government funding. Will there be a time where it might swing back?

G: I don’t think so. I mean you had it in Canada because you have basically a socialist attitude towards government. We had money because there was enough of it to go around. People like Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were the forerunners of it. Before that it didn’t exist, except in the depression. I think that it was a blip that came and I’m sorry to see it going. But that’s not what has affected the retreat of independent animation. You have to look at the business of animation and how it grew, how it thrived and how it took over a certain momentum that was established long before. I made my first film before I got funded. I think that’s true of most animators. They just did it because they had to do it. As long as you have that kind of impulse you can still have interesting work coming out.