Still running at the BFI in South Bank in London is its stop motion season, celebrating the work of handmade animation on the big screen. While I’ve seen and enjoyed some of this genre over the years, I was not necessarily a hardcore enthusiast. However, having recently had the privilege of hearing from two of its luminaries in person at the BFI I have a newfound respect for those that bring such masterpieces to life.
The speakers were Henry Selick, famous as the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline, among others, and the Oscar-winning legend that is Guillermo del Toro.
In his talk, (now available to view on its YouTube channel), Selick revealed that like so many animators his formative years were at Disney. I was especially delighted to hear that his first role there was working on the 1979 feature “Pete’s Dragon”. This was the first film I ever saw at a cinema. (It was the Odeon Hendon and was demolished two years later, which I’d like to make clear had nothing to do with me!).
Selick gave an amusing example of how his naturally darker approach clashed with the straightlaced; traditional style expected at the House of Mouse.
“I became a full animator under Glenn Keane – a really brilliant artist”, said Selick. “One day I was drawing cute foxes, but I was struggling with its little walk, and so to make it easier for myself I just drew the body, and was going to add the head later. I showed it to Glenn and was horrified. “You can’t, you can’t! It doesn’t work that way!”
Of course, when these mavericks make it big the movie studios are only too happy to jump on the bandwagon and use their new reputation as auteurs to give their film brand recognition. The Nightmare Before Christmas is a case in point. Originally a Tim Burton idea, he didn’t have time to direct it so asked his buddy Herny Selick to direct it. The film came out and did fine but it was some years later that Disney realised that it had a cult hit on its books – and chose to re-release it only this time with Tim Burton’s name as part of the title.
Telling this story Selick’s friendship and respect for Tim Burton was clear, but he was open about the studio’s tactics hurt.
“It was [Tim’s] original idea, and he designed the main characters, but it wouldn’t have happened with [my] team. “He publicly said at the time that this is Henry’s film, and I appreciated that: but it was difficult to get credit for the work that I did with my team, which I put together.”
On CGI and AI
Not surprisingly he doesn’t think much of CGI. “What they’ve chosen to do remains a very narrow area for the animated films. There’s so much more that could be done in terms of design types of stories.”
His contempt for AI was even more palpable, describing how they are good for two things—analysing data for medical advances and making fake trailers for modern movies as if they were made in the 1950s – for example, Alien if it was made in the 1950s. “Those are wonderful but apart from those two uses…”
Del Toro was equally blunt about the AI trend “I think that animation needs to be done by hand. [It’s] one of the few disciplines that is in danger by the way AI is being presented. I think AI is like f*****g Bitcoin! It’s not going to be what people think it’s going to be. Unfortunately, it’s not being put in the hands of the artists but bypassing the artist to be put in the hands of the bean counters, it will likely be misused before it’s used correctly, if ever.”
Del Toro was indeed very direct about how CGI and AI are bad news for animation.
“I think it’s a very dangerous moment for animation. When the term computer animation is used most people think that computers make the animation. Now people think animation is giving prompts and the computer does it.
Like Selick, Del Toro is dismissive of AI.
“AI has demonstrated that it can do semi-compelling screensavers! Essentially the value of art is not how much it costs and how little effort it requires but how much would you risk to be in its presence?”
As he says people will travel great distances to see the Mona Lisa or Starry Night in person, but would people pay to see AI art, and will it generate any kind of deep emotional response?
“[Is it] going to make them cry because they lost a son… because they misspent their youth? F**k, no. It’s not going to happen.”
The issue he says is that while artists understand that AI is just another tool, for the bean counters, “it’s a solution”.
“It’s like asking a monkey wrench to build you a garage. F**k that. It’s impossible. You cannot grab the monkey wrench and say, okay, fix my toilet. It’s a tool and not [one] that should be in the hands of anyone. It should be… optional and in the hands of the artist.”
Listening to Del Toro was inspiring with his ability to seemingly effortlessly come up with powerful aphorisms and I’m happy to just repost a few of these here.
On art
“Art is not a commodity—it’s a human right.”
On love
“I think the two worst myths, I think, are romantic love and perfection. They’re horrifying that we create standards that make everybody suffer for things that have very little to do with the real world. We are in a spasm of perfection where we demand things to either be the greatest or the worst, evil or good.”
On disobedience
“It’s important to say, don’t be disobedient to your parents. And my favorite thing is disobedience. I like it: I think we should all be disobedient. I think that obedience is not a virtue: it’s a condition and a slavish stupidity. Accepting somebody else’s truth without testing it is the worst thing you can do to your soul.”
On death
“Death teaches all of us how to be human. I really believe it. I mean, I haven’t gone through it—I’ll let you know how it goes! But I think that death is the metronome for existing.”
Dedication to the art
From both Selick then and Del Toro you get a sense of the tremendous dedication to stop motion as a medium despite the painstaking amount of effort it takes to create a movie using it. This devastating, yet humorous story from Del Toro illustrates this when he explained that his first feature was originally going to be a stop-motion animation, but an awful incident set him on a different page.
“It was a movie called ‘Omnivore’. We fabricated all the puppets and a few of the sets: 120 puppets and clay. We did the armatures and everything. I shot and animated the first minute. And my animation partner and I went to my parents’ house to watch TV and when we came back, [we discovered] they had broken into the lab destroyed all the puppets, defecated and p****d over everything. Oh, I thought, well, that’s an auspicious end—I’d better go into live action!
But it prepared me for the Weinsteins!”
Here’s to the crazy ones.
Having now enjoyed The Nightmare Before Christmas and Del Toro’s Pinocchio on the big screen (the former is also amazing at home on Blu-ray 3D!) I recommend you check these and the Laika movies out – they need our support as both Selick and Del Toro recognise
“I think will always be an outlier,” Selick says. “It comes back into focus, then goes back out of focus. But I can’t think of a better way to make a film.”
Del Toro is even more bleak. “Each of you is now an evangelist for a doomed religion. So please, go out and proselytize so that we can still exist in the future.”
I came away from the talks realising that these guys are the real deal. Their uncompromising dedication to stop-motion animation as a medium is second to none and the way they approach their art is uncompromising. They arguably make Lars von Trier seem like McG.
So let’s tip our hat to the stop motion directors. In may ways today’s real punk filmmakers. So, as the visionary Steve Jobs once said, “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
