Sorry for the late scrapbook edition. I’ve been busy trying to finish "Hair High" animation by May – whew!

I’ve had a few friends over for the Oscars. You can see the gathering in the following photos. As for my predictions: I was shocked that "Chubb Chubbs" won! It’s a mediocre story, with mediocre design, and mediocre humor. I believe it was the Hollywood references that did it for the Academy members. I voted for "Cathedral" because I felt it was different and quite fantastic vision of reality. I also loved "Mike’s New Car" from Pixar – the timing and characters are excellent and the look is unusual and wonderful.

Now to the feature animated awards – I liked "Treasure Planet" but if you’re going to spend 150 million on a film, the least you can do is have shadows. "Spirit" from Dreamworks – I felt it was very bland and for kids, ugly horse design. "Ice Age" – I thought was very good, nice design by my buddy genius Peter DeSeve, good humor and story and an all around excellent production by Chris Wedge. "Lilo and Stitch" was also a beautiful film, great story. I loved the watercolor backgrounds, and could easily have won.

But, this was the year of Miyazaki. Even though "Spirited Away" was a masterpiece of animation, it didn’t fair very well at the U.S. box office. My belief is that Miyazaki won for the body of his work, and also because he is the true author of the film and it’s not a big studio corporate film. He is involved and creates the entire story look and animation of his work. And that’s why I believe he won. Too bad he couldn’t be there to receive his honors, and also let America witness this genius of animation.

Speaking of judging – I’ve been accepted as a judge for the prestigious Annecy Animation Festival in France in early June. Come and say hello. I’ve been a judge before and I have a definite thoughts about the process. There are many criteria for judging and there are judges and some of them are as follows.

The filmmaker is poor or a minority – thus, deserves a prize

The politics: film is politically correct – thus, deserves a prize

It forges new artistic ground – and thus, deserves a prize

For me, there’s only one criteria and that is "do I want to see the film again? And that should be the only criteria. Otherwise, we’ll be stuck with a lot of well meaning films that are boring to watch, and that’s the reason I don’t win many prizes. The purpose of my films is not to please the critics (although that would be nice), nor to please grant givers (though that would be nice) and not to please judges (that would be nice), but to please myself and the audience, and we need more films like that.

See you all next week,
Bill Plympton