The Crime Story incident Part 1

In May of 1986, I graduated from Columbia College in Chicago and during my first Summer out of school I was looking for freelance and full time work of any kind. I was also working on finishing working on an animated film I had started during my final year at Columbia.

I was looking for both animation and live action work and began finding short gigs on various small projects. I remember working as a PA on a music video where a large group of extras gathered in a darker bar. While this was all happening, a make up person was putting the last bits of details on several Zombie characters to be shot after the Bar scene.

A new NBC TV series began shooting in Chicago and my roommate, Mike had managed to get a job as a PA. "Crime Story" was a new TV show produced by Michael Mann, set in Chicago during the early sixties, about a group of Chicago cops and the bad guys they were trying to catch. It only ran for 2 seasons and featured actor Dennis Farina, who served 18 years in the Chicago Police Department (1967 to 1985), during which he advanced from patrolman to detective, now in his first starring role on a TV series.

At one point of the production, my roommate got me a job as a PA and my first taste of TV series production work had begun. Some of these events are a little blurry since I wasn't on the show for very long and most of the work hours were long night shoots.

My first day on the job was to help get the craft services table set up for the shoot. Mike had more experience then I did and so he showed me what to do. While we were buying snacks and drinks for the crew, the crew was shooting at a location not too far away. Mike thought it would best to meet the crew at the next location and have the snacks set up there.

Mike had a car and we drove to the next location, got everything set up and waited for the crew to show up. As things turned out, we should have went to the first location to set up the tables because the shooting took longer than expected.

The next thing I know, a bunch of angry looking crew members are walking towards us and somehow they all know my name. A few start yelling and asking why we didn't show up at the location. Mike was trying to calm them down and keep them from ripping my head off. The term "Hangry" had not been invented yet.

All I know, is that my first day on the job had not turned out to be a pleasent experience. Over the next few days and mostly nights, I would have to work harder to be seen as being more dependable. I also learned all about Union rules throughout my time on the job.

When the Assistant Director (AD) asks you to tell the driver of the large truck to move slightly forward, the driver will not listen to you. You must then find his boss, the head teamster on the crew. Then the boss tells the driver and he does the task.

Also, when it came time for lunch or dinner, the crew would be watching the clock, any sign of delay and the crew could call a penality if they were not fed at the right time. Also the crew would eat first before the talent or extras. These were the laws of the jungle I was learning about on the job.

I remember I was given a walkie talkie and told to block off the street so no modern day cars would drive through the background of the shot. I did and had to turn a few drivers around until another PA ran up and needed to take my walkie talkie away to do something else. Now, I was just some weirdo who tried to stop traffic without any proof of authority or a walkie talkie.

And so, this was my week of learning about being a PA, from blocking areas from traffic to picking up a pack of cigarettes for the director to finally deciding that I didn't want to do this for a living. That was on Friday, Sept 5th 1988 when the accident occured.

What was the big event that changed my mind from working in live action and working in animation production? Find out  soon in Part 2.

Walking on Clouds

A lot of the time I find someone who I would like to interview and spend a good amount of time researching what they have done and contact them through email. This recent interview with Paul Demeyer was the result of a good friend of ours who recommended us to met each other through email.

And so, I contacted Paul and we discovered that we had a lot in common. For one, we both had won a Student Film Awards when we were in College. Paul has been working on his illustrated book about his life called "Walking on Clouds" and he includes a few pages about winning the award in 1977.

Then 10 years later, I won my Student Film Award for my animated film called "Cat & Rat" back in 1988 and I remember getting to see a screening with the crew of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". I had a long week and cannot recall how I got a ticket to the screening, I only remember I was in a seat on the first row looking straight up at the screen. I was one of the first people at Columbia College to see the film, but the worse viewing although I was so excited I didn't care.

So I contacted Paul and we can up with this interview which took me a while to edit together since we taked about so much. Anyway, here's the interview which I hope was worth the wait.

This year was the 50th anniversary of the Student Film Awards which I took Paul with me to see it in person. We had a great time and were amazed that most of the winners had a small crew which shared the award. We remember how awkward we had felt getting up on stage alone to accept our awards. We were impressed by how these new winners were all very confident and professionals at accepting their awards as well.

If you enjoyed this posting, please leave a comment below or go watch more Animateducated videos on YouTube! 

Robot Dreams arrives in US Theaters

I first became aware of Sara Varon's graphic novel when my son was in High School and brought it home from the library. I remember see that there was no dialogue throughout the entire book and liking the simple cartoon illustrations.

Years later, my son is now in college and I discovered that "Robot Dreams" has become a new 2d animated feature film by Pablo Berger. I saw the film at as a screener for the 51st Annie Awards through ASIFA Hollywood which I am a member.

"Robot Dreams" won for best independent animated feature at the Annies and was later nominated for an Oscar for best animated feature. Heron,(which won the Oscar). However, all this time the film had not been released in US theatres, until now.

Please enjoy these 3 interviews I have done beginning with Sara Varon, the artist/author of "Robot Dreams".

Here's an interview with Benoit Feroumont, who was the animation director of "Robot Dreams" and who helped get Pablo Berger's storyboards turned into the final animation.

And finally, here are two interviews with live action director Pablo Berger. The first one was part of a Q/A which was shown after a screening at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, talking about his first animated film, "Robot Dreams". 

And the last interview, I only had 10 minutes to interview Pablo Berger.  I asked him about several of his past films and a few questions about "Robot Dreams".

Well, I hope you enjoy the interviews above. Robot Dreams is a nice 2D feature which might be more touching for adults where as kids will see it on other levels. It is definitely a nice break from the Summer superhero or killer robot stories. 

Please leave a comment below to let us know what you thought of the film.

Two films you should see this Summer

Here are a couple of new documentaries that you might not know about, but will enjoy watching.

Friends of mine made this documentary about Albert Ruddy, who was the producer of "The Godfather". Directors are usually more well known than Producers by the general public and the result of only two meetings, Smith and Bradley discovered they had enough footage to make "Tough Ain't Enough: Conversation with Albert S. Ruddy".

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2831378/

The film was released to the film festival circuit in 2013, however only recently has the film been distributed by Indie Rights. 

Tough Ain't Enough is a very inspiring and fun documentary told by Al Ruddy himself about his adventures in the film industry as a producer. 

And finally, everyone can see and hear his story which is now streaming on Amazon Prime and Youtube.

"Dear Ike: Lost Letters to a Teen Idol" is a personal documentary about young Dion Labriola's quest to contact with the young actor Ike Eisenmann through writing many letters to him to star in an animated science-fiction epic he was developing in middle school. 

After an exhaustive string of failed attempts, a magical turn of events points Dion directly toward his goal in the most unexpected of ways - 40 years later.

Here's the Animateducated interview with Dion Labriola and link to watch "Dear Ike" for free through PBS SoCal.

Hope you get a chance to see these films and leave a comment below if you watched them.