ANIMATED SHORTS ARE HIS LONG SUIT

“We feel this show is more akin to ‘Saturday Night Live’ than Saturday morning,” said Terry Thoren, president of Expanded Entertainment and organizer of “Animation Celebration,” a collection of 22 short films showing at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in the Westside Pavilion.

“Some of the short films you see on ‘Saturday Night Live’ are worth the entire program; we’ve tried to put together a package of shorts that has the same kind of feeling. But I think these are the kind of films that should be seen in a movie house, with people clapping and spontaneous laughter. Many of these independent animation pieces don’t work well on television--they’re made to be seen on the big screen.”

Thoren, 34, is one of the most important figures in the marketing and promotion of independent animated films in the United States. In 1985, Expanded Entertainment took over the annual International Tournee of Animation, another collection of international shorts, and staged the first major international animated-film festival in this country. “Animation Celebration,” which followed in 1986, is currently playing in 15 cities across the country.

Although he hesitated to tell the story because it might sound “too corny,” Thoren recalled that his interest in film began when his junior high school football team won the city championship in Ithaca, N.Y., and every player received a season’s pass to a local movie theater.

“I think I was the only kid on the team who used it,” he said. “And I used it to see every single movie that came out. My dad’s a football coach and he wanted me to be a football player, but I was more interested in film making and promoting films than I was in athletics.”

While at the University of Colorado, Thoren served as director of the Western States Film Institute and worked on the initial Telluride Film Festival. In 1978, while Thoren was helping organize the first Denver International Film Festival, Landmark Theatres hired him to manage its Denver theaters. Two years later he became Landmark’s vice president in charge of marketing and special projects.

“I’d always been interested in animation, but I began to realize its potential as an alternative, adult art form when we programmed the first Denver festival,” Thoren said. “My assistant just lived and died for animation, and his enthusiasm made me enthusiastic. When I got to L.A., I started programming animation shows at the Nuart.”

But Thoren felt frustrated by the number of people “that didn’t turn out” for his animation shows. He joined with Landmark Theatres’ Gary Meyer and Steve Gilula to form Expanded Entertainment. Their efforts culminated in the five-day Los Angeles Animation Celebration in 1985--which led to the creation of the “Animation Celebration” package.

“Right on the heels of that event, we produced the 19th annual Tournee Animation,” Thoren said. “When it proved more successful than any prior Tournee, we realized there was an audience out there that was hungry for these shorts. And after watching the 450 films in competition in the festival--plus another 200 films that we had invited for showcases and retrospectives, we knew there were enough entertaining shorts to put together another high-quality compilation.”

Thoren’s plans for 1987 include release of the 20th International Tournee, a program devoted to the clay animation of Will Vinton and another “Animation Celebration” collection.

“Our emphasis is on creating a cycle,” he said. “Getting the money back to the animators, so they can continue making these personal films, and coming back with quality entertainment for the audience. There are so many great animators whose work has appeared in packages like this over the years--Paul Driessen, Richard Conde, Borge Ring . . . but there has to be a way to continually get their work out to the public, and I don’t think it can be done with just one tournee a year.”