Festival Founders Expand Roles : Animation: Veteran presenters of festivals of film shorts at La Jolla are now producing and encouraging new filmmakers in the field.

It’s hard to find truly sick and twisted animation. This is a problem for Spike Decker and his partner in presenting animation weirdness, Mike Gribble.

Best known locally for staging the twice-annual festivals of animation in La Jolla’s Sherwood Auditorium, the duo is constantly on the prowl for animation to fill their festivals, which are staged throughout the country. It’s especially difficult to find animation filmmakers willing to spend the time and money to make the decidedly non-commercial, often gross shorts that make up the “Sick and Twisted” late-night festivals, the collections of shorts that invariably deal with sex, violence or feces, which are screened separately from the regular animation festivals.

In response to the occasional dearth of shorts that fit their particular tastes, the duo has gone into the animation production business. More than just promoters, Spike and Mike, as they are commonly known, are now financing animators, encouraging them and helping them at every level of development.

Eight of the shorts currently screening in the adults-only “Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation” have been co-produced by the pair. (The “Sick and Twisted Festival” screens midnights on Fridays and Saturdays, and at 8:45 p.m. on Sundays through Sept. 6. The tamer “Best of the Festival of Animation” screens at 7:15 and 9:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays; 6:15 p.m. on Sundays.) Six more shorts co-produced by the pair are in the works for next year’s regular festival.

“Some years there just weren’t the right type of films available,” Decker said. “We’d get nothing but these Eastern European films that are 20 minutes long, and heavy and dark.”

Spike and Mike prefer shorter, more biting films. The styles can vary considerably, but they like to keep the pace of the overall festivals as brisk as possible. Humor is another required element that can often be hard to find.

“We can’t rely upon chance” to get films, Decker said.

This is not to say that in the past Spike and Mike were nothing more than promoters. Since they started presenting the festivals in 1977, they have been active in the animation community, working with animators and ensuring them an outlet for their work. It’s not an accident that the last two winners of the Oscar for animated shorts thanked the duo during their acceptance speeches.

But now they’ve gone a step further, in some cases working with the animators every step of the way, including the genesis of the idea and story boarding, as well as funding. Decker estimates they’ve spent about $125,000 to help produce this year’s crop of shorts.

“The kind of films they are making, usually people make them on the side and they have a job,” said veteran Dutch animator Paul Driessen. “It’s good if they are encouraged to do it.”

Many of the projects developed by Spike and Mike are being done by students from New York University and the California Institute for the Arts.

“They are definitely opening up doors for the younger people,” said Cal Arts student Miles Thompson, a graduate of San Dieguito High School.

Thompson has two shorts in the current lineup of “Sick and Twisted.” One of the films, “Dog Pile,” is best described as a film about a man who is more than a little anal about his lawn; the other, “Empty Roll” features a man attempting to overcome the trauma of finding the toilet paper roll empty.

In other words, in the realm of “Sick and Twisted,” the grosser the better. And while some young animators may frown on the festivals, to Thompson and others it is a chance to show off their style in a completed film, rather than a raw student project.

“It really gives you an opportunity to have something finished, on the screen being shown for the public,” Thompson said.

Much of Spike and Mike’s financing efforts are in the realm of experimental and cutting edge work, which is particularly difficult for the duo to find. Animation has become part of the mainstream, from advertising and films to corporate applications. The best young animators are often encouraged to focus their energies on the very real prospects of getting big-time jobs.

“This gives them a chance to be young and creative,” Decker said. “It’s hard to compete to do (these types of) films when Nike calls or Nickelodeon calls.”

More than simple benevolence toward the talented animators, there are also sound business reasons for Spike and Mike’s decision to dive into co-production. By co-producing, they usually buy the rights to show the film for three or four years, in effect beating the competition to the punch.

Sparked in part by a new interest in animation, from commercially-oriented computer animation to the success of animated films like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” there are more promoters doing animation festivals around the country. By financing the animators’ efforts, Spike and Mike ensure that they will lock up the work of some of the country’s top animators.

“They’re getting what they want and I get what I want,” said Thompson. “It’s a good working relationship.”

Add animation: Decker says attendance has remained strong for this year’s summer “Best of . . .” festival, even though the festivals have become an almost nonstop affair, between the lengthy run of the regular festival and the three-month run of the “Best of . . .” Despite the recession, competition and a host of other factors, he reports that attendance is actually slightly up this year.

Part of the reason has to be the energy and spontaneity of the shows, which are usually something more than simple screenings, thanks to the cast of characters which make such simple tasks as announcing the schedule of events before the show into a bit of theater.

This year’s star is “Scotty the Shredding Wonder Dog,” who entertains before most shows with his energetic tricks.

“The other night, the audience started chanting for him,” Decker said.

Former KNSD-TV (Channel 39) producer Kurt Snider, now an independent producer/photograher based in Los Angeles with his wife-to-be, former Channel 39 reporter Rory Bennett (now a producer with “Entertainment Tonight”), is off to Sumatra this week on an expedition with the San Diego Zoo. . . .

The latest technological advance: A new service provided by KIFM (98.1) and PacTel Cellular allows commuters to use their car phones to dial up live, location-specific traffic reports. . . .

Sandi Bannister, formerly of KFMB radio, is the new promotions director for KTTY-TV (Channel 69). . . .

Jim Seemiller is out as president of Adams Communications, the owner of KCBQ. There are no plans to replace him. General Manager Dave Siebert will take more control of the day to day operations of the station, and Adams’ corporate offices will be moved from San Diego to Los Angeles. . . .

“Howards End,” entering its fifth and final month at the Cove Theater, is joining the likes of “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “Cinema Paradiso” as a true art-house hit. Landmark Theaters reports that it has earned $250,000 in receipts in La Jolla, and it is on the verge of surpassing the local Landmark box office record set in 1986 by another Merchant-Ivory production, “A Room With a View.”

CRITIC’S CHOICE: WELLES’ ‘OTHELLO’ AT KEN

Fed up with Hollywood’s unwillingness to fund his elaborate plans, Orson Welles went to Italy in 1947 to shoot his vision of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, “Othello.” It soon became a cumbersome albatross around the neck of the mercurial director.

Struck by misfortune after misfortune, with a few funding catastrophes on top of it, the production appeared doomed. Some compared it to Xanadu, the great unfinished estate of Welles’ creation Charles Foster Kane.

But Welles never gave up, completing it after more than four years of flying stars back and forth from the U.S. and piecing together bits and pieces of film.

“Not really the best way to film Shakespeare,” Halliwell’s Film Guide points out.

But “Othello” is a fascinating film, one of the most discussed and picked over movies in history. It enraged Shakespeare fans because of the way Welles freely cut and spliced the original work. It was ignored by audiences at the time, but won top honors at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival.

The background of the extravagant and complicated production is essential to appreciating the film, which opened a week-long run at the Ken Cinema on Sunday night.

Modern-day viewers will enjoy trying to find the consistency gaffes in the film, the sudden, unexplained alterations in costumes and sets, and the changes in the physical appearances of the performers--the result of Welles’ piecemeal film construction. Those familiar with the project delight in noticing the way Welles cleverly managed to put together scenes around the problems of shooting segments years apart.

Film buffs and first-time viewers alike will be fascinated by Welles eerie, dark lighting and high-contrast black-and-white photography.