In early 1978, I was working part time as a production assistant for Claymation film producer
Will Vinton Productions while finishing up my senior year of college. The film we were working on was a 27-minute version of
Rip Van Winkle, based on Washington Irving's 1819 short story. Despite screenwriter (and Will's wife)
Susan Shadburne's almost miraculous transformation of the story into something significantly more engaging and relevant than Irving's quaint, time-worn tale, I remained unconvinced that the film would transcend mediocrity. When I shared that opinion with Will, he responded rather forcefully: "This movie is going to win
so many awards, you're going to be blown away."
He was right.
We finished the film in late 1978, and immediately started sending it out to film festivals around the world. It won at least a bronze and sometimes a silver or gold in virtually every one. Then we screened it at a theater in Los Angeles just before the December 31 deadline to qualify it as a potential Academy Award nominee (still a long shot, I thought)...and waited.
Nominated!
On February 20, 1979, James M. Roberts, the Executive Director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, sent Will a telegram notifying him that
Rip Van Winkle had been nominated for an Academy Award.
I was, as Will predicted, blown away.
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| A scan of a photocopy of the telegram Will Vinton received notifying him that our Claymation short film Rip Van Winkle had been nominated for an Academy Award. |
As the nominee, Will would automatically get two free tickets to the Awards—one for himself, and one for Susan. Additional tickets, we soon learned, might be available for purchase by other members of the crew. We waited with bated breath for further word, and eventually it came: we would get six more tickets, at a cost of $20 each.
Cool. Except for one thing: there were not six, but
seven of us (besides Will and Susan) who wanted to go to the Academy Awards. We would have to draw straws.
As luck would have it, I drew the short straw. I would not be going to the Academy Awards. Booo!
However, fate had another idea in store for me: after pondering for a few days whether he really wanted to attend the Awards, animator Barry Bruce decided against it. He would sell me his ticket. At cost.
I was in eighth heaven. I had watched the Academy Awards ever since I was a kid, but I had never dreamed of attending—and now I was not only going to attend, but I would be there as a member of the crew that had produced a nominated film. I couldn't even wrap my 23-year-old brain around such an incredible stroke of luck.
Then reality started kicking in. As a recent college grad with bills to pay and a student loan to start paying off, I didn't have much disposable income. I would have to come up with about $200 more to help me cover the tux rental, plane ticket, hotel room, and food. I decided, against my better judgment, to ask my conservative (read: frugal) parents, who had rarely, if ever, lent money to any of their four kids. Fortunately, they were almost as excited as I was about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and they agreed to the loan. I was on my way.
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A scan of a photocopy of my ticket
to the Academy Awards. |
As the ticket said, the event was to be "formal," meaning...what? Don't wear your torn jeans, frayed T-shirt, and holey Pumas? To me, "formal" was what I had to wear to church every Sunday when I was a kid—slacks, a white shirt, and a clip-on tie. But I had been to a couple of proms, and "formal" for them meant a tuxedo. And virtually every man I had ever seen on the Academy Awards was dressed in a black tux, so I figured I had probably better not stray too far from the norm. On the other hand, did I want to look just like everyone else?
Not a chance. I decided against renting a black tux. Instead, I rented a brown one.
Big mistake. I failed to consider how conspicuous I might feel, being the only guy at the Academy Awards not wearing black. But for the moment, at least, I was reveling in my token act of rebellion.
Hollywood!
We all decided to stay in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, which had been the site of the first Academy Awards, in 1929. It was old and rustic and the beds were uncomfortable, but we liked the history—and the relatively low rates. Music composer/producer Bill Scream (his "professional" name) and I shared a room.
The night before the Academy Awards show, Will arranged for some of us to join the producers of another nominee in the Animated Short Subject category,
Special Delivery, for drinks at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a faux classy old pink building. Accompanying the Canadian producers of the film, Eunice Macaulay and John Weldon, was Marshall Ephron, the former host of a satirical TV show called
The Great American Dream Machine, which I used to watch on Oregon Public Broadcasting (our local PBS station). Even though these folks were "the enemy"—one of our two competitors for the Oscar—we got along famously (almost famously?) and enjoyed their intelligence, wit, and graciousness. We decided not to hate them if they won.
The next morning, Will, Bill, and I drove to the house of an animator friend of Will's,
John David Wilson (who had animated the opening credits for
Grease) and his wife, Angel. After a pleasant but otherwise uneventful visit, Bill declared to me on our way back to the car that he was in love with Angel—who was, admittedly, quite angelic. But married. (Sorry, Bill!)
The Academy Awards!
Once back at the hotel, we all got dressed in our tuxes and then met outside by the pool for a photo. The driver of the limousine was kind enough to take a moment and shoot this goofy snapshot just before we all piled into the limo (yes, all eight of us) and headed across town to the
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, where the Awards ceremony would be held.
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| Left to right: Executive Producer Frank Moynihan (of Billy Budd Films, New York), his wife Annie, music composer/producer Bill Scream, animators Don Merkt and Joan Gratz, screenwriter (and Will's wife at the time) Susan Shadburne, Will, and 23-year-old me (in total shock and awe). Not in attendance: animator Barry Bruce and music composer Paul Jameson. (Photo by limo driver) |
I shot this photo of Will and Susan just after the above photo was shot. Cute couple, eh?
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Will Vinton and his wife, Susan Shadburne, just
prior to the 1979 Academy Awards ceremony.
(Photo by Rick Cooper) |
On the way to the Pavilion, the streets were lined with curious spectators, straining to get a glimpse at their favorite movie stars inside the limos as they passed. It was both thrilling and a little weird being inside one of those limos, seeing people's excited, hopeful faces and not wanting to disappoint them. And of course we inevitably
did disappoint them, because we were nobodies. Impostors.
Nobodies and impostors having the time of our lives. At one point during the drive-by, Executive Producer Frank Moynihan, the eldest and arguably most responsible member of our entourage (he was a former priest), slyly took off his jacket and spread it across the window closest to him so no one could see inside—resulting in mayhem outside, as onlookers strained even more desperately to see the obviously ultra-famous person inside who didn't want to be seen. It was a performance worthy of an Oscar for best comedic moment.
The limo driver parked the big car in an underground parking structure just across the street from the Pavilion, and we all piled out and headed up the stairs toward our next gauntlet: the red carpet, lined on both sides by hundreds of excited, hopeful fans seated on—or standing on—bleachers. There were movie stars and celebrities ahead of us and movie stars and celebrities behind us, so it was reasonable, I suppose, for the crowd to assume we must be movie stars and celebrities. Which was really kind of a sad joke, I thought, not only because we weren't movie stars and celebrities, but because even if we miraculously were to win the Oscar for Best Animated Short, we would still be nobodies because who cares about the stupid Best Animated Shorts, which are just the Academy's lame attempt to appease small-time filmmaker wannabes, who really just need to go back where they came from and leave Hollywood to the actual filmmakers?
None of us harbored any illusions about who we were, what we did for a living, where we did it, and what big-ass impostors we were, infiltrating the Academy Awards like teenagers sneaking in the exit doors of a theater to catch the latest installment of Star Wars. We didn't belong there, and we knew it. But as long as we were there, we were going to savor the moment, ignore what anyone else thought of us, and maybe have even a better time than all the ultra-serious, image-conscious, career-centered folks who belonged there.
Once inside, we split up and headed in different directions to find champagne, explore the Pavilion, people watch, or, in Will and Susan's case, connect with friends from Will's previous trip to the Awards in 1975, when he
won an Oscar for
Closed Mondays. Myself, I stuck close to the entrance, where I not only had ready access to all the champagne I could inhale (hey, we might
lose), but I could watch all the famous people enter the Pavilion. Now it was
I who was the excited, hopeful onlooker.
The only difference being that I was wearing a tux.
A brown tux.
In a sea of black tuxes.
Noticing this now, and realizing for the first time how I did, in fact, stand out, I felt my cheeks flush. I felt not only like an impostor, but like a grotesquely inappropriately attired impostor. What in hell was I thinking when I decided to rent a brown tux?
There was nothing I could do about it now, and probably no one cared anyway (assuming anyone even noticed), so I decided I might as well forget about it and just enjoy myself. Back to my people watching—and inhaling champagne (maybe this'll help me feel better about wearing this stupid tux!).
What people was I watching? Well, just a few feet to my left was
Yul Brynner, chatting away with
Mia Farrow. And coming through the doors and down the red carpet toward me were
Robin Williams,
Steve Martin,
Robert Wagner, and
Natalie Wood (the latter of whom would tragically die by drowning just two years later). Frankly, it was a little overwhelming, this gangly, geeky kid, standing there amidst this constellation of big stars. It was all I could do to try looking like I belonged.
And the Winner Is...
You know when you watch the Academy Awards and the cameras show mostly people in the front few rows? That's where the nominees sit, while everyone else is relegated to the nosebleed section. So, as the producer of Rip Van Winkle, Will (and Susan) got to sit with all the luminaries, while his crew (yours truly and the rest of us) sat up in the balcony, pretty much out of camera range. Just in case, however, I kept a big, shit-eatin' grin on my face, because I knew my parents and a few friends were watching, and if a camera did happen to tilt up my way, I wanted to look like I was having a grand old time.
Which, in fact, I was. Until the winner of Best Animated Short was announced. The Oscar went to our new friends from Canada for their truly wonderful, creative little gem, Special Delivery. It's a good thing we had shared drinks the night before, so there would be no hard feelings. But still...losing smarted a little.
A Few More Stars
On our way back to the limo, I spotted a few more movie stars:
Christopher Reeve (who had starred in the 1978 blockbuster
Superman),
Maggie Smith (who had just won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in
California Suite), and
Jon Voight (who had just won an Oscar for Best Actor in
Coming Home). At this point, Will and Susan were off to the Governor's Ball while the rest of us took the limo to a restaurant somewhere in Hollywood for a late dinner. The only thing I remember about the restaurant was that the waiter—a handsome dude who looked like he would rather be acting—threw all our flatware noisily on the table in a big pile and said something like, "You look like the kind of folks who prefer to do it yourselves." We all laughed politely, not wanting to further upset him. After that, we headed back to the hotel and tried to calm down enough to catch a few winks before flying home in the morning.
It wasn't easy. I don't know about everyone else, but my head was still spinning from all the excitement—and disappointment. I think I slept a total of about ten minutes that night.
Back to Reality
Even though we "lost" (nearly everyone I spoke with afterward said to me, "Well, you won just by being nominated!"), I was still floating several feel off the ground when we returned home. My head was so high from the experience that even if my feet were on the ground, I couldn't see them. And that wasn't a good thing, because my head had a tendency to float with the clouds as it was. Much as I tried to persuade myself that everything was fine, that my head and feet would come back to earth eventually, I was in serious need of some grounding. And being a 23-year-old dude with an abundance of testosterone and a booster shot of confidence, I naturally sought that grounding in, um, somewhat risky behaviors. And I'm not talking about drugs here (although alcohol helped lubricate more than a few of my encounters).
Fortunately, no permanent harm came to anyone as a result of my last gasp of adolescence, but eight months later I was married (and nine years later, divorced—and, finally, I would say, grounded).
One last fun thing happened as a result of the nomination: my hometown newspaper, the
Lake Oswego Review, published an
article about me in their semi-monthly supplement,
The Lake Oswegan Magazine. It didn't help get my feet back on the ground, but it did, perhaps, make some of my former classmates wish they had been nicer to me on the playground (I'm looking at
you, Craig Gordon!). Of course, now that they can see the color of the tux I wore to the Academy Awards, the taunting will start all over again... : )
