Animator Roman Going Head to Head With His Own Name

Phil Roman almost forgot the joy of animation as a way of life.

In building a multimillion-dollar cartoon company and taking it public, Roman found himself further and further estranged from the real reason he got into the animation business: the toons themselves.

No longer did he share his days with the lime-green Grinch or Felix the Cat or other cartoon characters he used to draw by the dozens and watch with immense pride as they came to life on TV. No longer did he live, breathe, think in a cartoon world.

Instead, as the chief executive of North Hollywood-based Film Roman Inc. and later the corporation’s creative director, Roman spent his days wading through a thicket of details such as matching scripts in Hollywood with drawings in Korea or scouring markets from Brazil to Germany to recoup production costs.

Roman was unhappy, but even at age 68, he wasn’t ready for retirement. In February, he resigned from Film Roman, a $38-million corporation he had started with four employees.

And last month, Roman took a step toward returning to his former, artistic self. He started a new cartoon company, Phil Roman Entertainment, which he plans to keep small enough so he stays directly involved in the creative sides of every project.

“The thing I really love is working with artists,” Roman said in an interview last week at his new offices in Studio City. “And that’s the exciting part of starting out small. I can be the one who goes over story boards and ideas and meets with the writers. I feel energized again.”

Roman’s plan is to jump into the narrow niche of independent cartoon producers who contract with bigger studios and create original material to sell to television networks.

Though he hasn’t signed any production deals yet, he is working on two prospective projects, including a Latino-oriented cartoon, believed to be the first of its kind.

Roman is still adjusting to his new digs, he said. Instead of a corporate headquarters humming with state-of-the-art graphics computers and 330 employees, he works out of a suite of rented cubicles with one photocopier and four people. Right now, he and his staff are just getting started: meeting with creators and writers and pitching shows and concepts to networks.

Roman delegates the logistical work to his assistants so he can focus on cartoon characters and ideas.

But in heeding his creative heart, Roman may be inviting an awkward situation. Only a handful of independent producers in the animation field exist, and now there will be a Film Roman Inc. and a Phil Roman Entertainment doing practically the same thing. What makes the situation stranger is that Roman is still holding more than $13 million of stock in Film Roman, making him the largest single shareholder, while Film Roman is still clinging to Roman’s name, with no plans to change it.

Asked if this could be a problem, Roman--who radiates positive energy and goodwill--smiled.

“No, this is great,” he said about the two Roman companies. “I get to start a new one and watch the old one grow.”

Maybe. But there could be other challenges. Though industry veterans say Roman has a golden name and a great track record, the cartoon business these days is dominated by vertically integrated corporations in which networks turn to studio partners to supply animation needs. That leaves fewer slots on TV for independent producers and more competition from well-financed corporations.

“It’s going to be very rough for Phil like it is for all of us,” said Jane Baer, founder of the Baer Animation Co. in Hollywood Hills. “Since the studios have bought networks, it’s almost like a curtain came down. If Phil can get one series, that will be enough to get him going. But that’s getting harder.”

Baer has known Roman since the late 1950s, when the two were rookie animators at Walt Disney Co. drawing pictures for the film “Sleeping Beauty.” Roman had just arrived in Los Angeles with 60 bucks in his pocket and a burning desire to draw cartoons. The son of immigrant Mexican farmers had wanted to be an animator ever since seeing “Bambi.”

He spent the next 25 years living his dream as a big-time animator, bringing to life colorful characters such as the title creature in “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” and Felix the Cat. In 1984, he founded Film Roman and directed a series of Emmy-winning Garfield specials. Roman liked drawing the cat himself.

Business kept booming, right up through the early 1990s when Roman landed the contract from Fox Television to produce “The Simpsons.” The next step, one that would pull him further away from the creative side of the business, was taking his private company public so he could raise more money for future projects.

“We were a great story back then,” Roman reminisced. “We were growing by leaps and bounds. We had ‘The Simpsons’ and other projects in the works. At the time, the premise was right to go public.”

But doing so in October 1996 didn’t shelter the company from the changes about to sweep through the animation industry. Six months later, Disney bought ABC, setting off a trend of vertical integration that soon affected Fox and CBS. The next blow came when UPN backed out of a show Roman had produced, an animated version of “The Blues Brothers.” The company’s stock, and Roman’s net worth, plummeted.

Investors lost confidence in Roman, who didn’t really like being head honcho, he said.

“I became a businessman only out of necessity,” he said.

In September 1997, he resigned as chief executive to become the company’s creative director. It’s not clear how much pressure he was under, but it’s telling that the company took a different direction by replacing Roman with a former Wall Street executive, David Pritchard. The company continues to struggle.

In the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, Film Roman reported losses of $2.9 million on revenues of $10.3 million. Its stock closed Monday at $4.65, less than half the initial offering.

For the year and a half he served as creative director, Roman worked more closely with artists but was still mired in corporate concerns such as budgets, schedules and outsourcing stages of the animation process to workshops in Korea.

“This business takes a lot of management,” Roman said. “I was getting drained.”

Roman vows not to put himself in a similar situation. He’s starting a new business to have fun, not to make money. He doesn’t have a lavish lifestyle, he said, and though he is worth more than $13 million, he and his wife, Anita, live in the same Lake Hollywood home Roman bought 25 years ago.

At Phil Roman Entertainment, he plans to keep the staff at no more than five, and contract with artists and writers instead of employing them in-house. Small is good, he said, because it gives artists more freedom to work directly with writers and gives him an opportunity to channel his 40 years of animation experience into every project.

His formula for success is that he doesn’t have one.

“I don’t believe in formulas,” he said. “The key is to do the best work you can and let the work speak for itself.”

Next week, Roman is off to an animation market in Cannes, France, to network with artists, writers and producers. More important, though, he’ll be searching for the next set of lovable cartoon characters to pour his energy into and make his own.