At Awards, Animation Gets the Brush-Off

When “American Beauty” won the Golden Globe for best dramatic film, industry pundits rushed to analyze how the award would affect the film’s position in the race for the Academy Award for best picture. That same evening, another best film award was presented--in the comedy/musical category--to “Toy Story 2.” No one talked about its chances for the Oscar.

Prizes from critics’ groups and Directors Guild Award nominations are supposed to have virtually assured Sam Mendes and Michael Mann of Oscar nominations, which will be announced Tuesday. “Iron Giant” swept the Annie Awards (the major animation honors), winning in every category in which it was nominated. But John Lasseter and Brad Bird, the directors of “Toy Story 2” and “Iron Giant,” were ignored by the DGA, which excludes animation directors.

The deafening silence from the bestowers of major awards, the media commentators who breathlessly analyze the awards and nominations and, in all likelihood, the academy, reveals the ongoing prejudice in Hollywood against animation. Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story 2” and Warner Bros.’ “The Iron Giant” rank among the best and best-reviewed films of 1999--Times film critic Kenneth Turan picked those films and the animated “Tarzan” and “Princess Mononoke” as his best films of the year.

The “Rotten Tomatoes” Web site, which surveys media criticism, cited 63 favorable reviews and two unfavorable ones for “Iron Giant”; “Toy Story 2” had no negative reviews. On its Tomatometer scale of “fresh” to “rotten,” “Toy Story 2” was the freshest movie of 1999; “Iron Giant” was No. 2. (“Being John Malkovich” ranked third; “The Insider,” sixth; “American Beauty,” seventh; another animated film, “Princess Mononoke,” was eighth.)

But quality and even financial success don’t translate into major awards for animated films. (If they did, “Toy Story 2’s” chances would be a lot better; the computer-animated film has taken in more than $237 million so far at the box office). In 1994, “The Lion King” outdrew “Forrest Gump” at the box office, but “Gump” garnered six Oscars, including best picture, director and adapted screenplay. “Lion King” won for song and original score, categories animation has dominated for the last decade. That dominance is hardly surprising, as animated films are the only musicals being made these days.

The first “Toy Story” was nominated for best original screenplay; “Beauty and the Beast” remains the only animated feature nominated for best picture. Neither won. Animators still grumble about the 1992 Oscar telecast, when “Beauty and the Beast” was nominated. Dismissing the animated film, Shirley MacLaine announced to Barbra Streisand during the ceremony that they would get together and make “real movies.” (“Beauty,” which lost out to the “real” movie “Silence of the Lambs,” spawned a hit Broadway musical and two direct-to-video sequels; plans for a “Silence” sequel remain up in the air.)

How is an animated film less “real” than a live-action film?

Directing an animated feature is even more complicated than directing a live-action film. The directors supervise the recording of the voices before the animation is done: With just storyboards and inspirational artwork, they must find the essence of the characters and convey it to the actors. They also have to ensure that the performance and appearance of each character remain consistent, even though dozens of animators, assistants and cleanup artists work on each one. How would the DGA nominees fare if they had to direct a dozen or more actors in every role--and convince the audience they were seeing a single performer?

The reason usually cited for the academy’s failure to honor animated features is that the actors who make up the bulk of the membership see them as a threat to their livelihoods. It’s difficult to understand the nature of that threat, because providing voices for animated characters offers actors interesting, often challenging roles: Tom Hanks called supplying Woody’s voice in the “Toy Story” movies “the hardest work I’ve experienced as an actor.” It also offers good pay and short hours, without the hassles of makeup, costumes, early cast calls or travel to locations. And actors get residuals for their work in animated films, even though the animators don’t.

In recent years, some of the biggest names in Hollywood have done voices for animated features: Mel Gibson, Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, Sandra Bullock, Robin Williams, Ralph Fiennes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Woody Allen, Jeff Goldblum. Yet the Screen Actors Guild Award nominations omitted Joan Cusack’s scene-stealing vivacity as Jessie the Cowgirl in “Toy Story 2,” Minnie Driver’s icy elegance as the amoral Lady Eboshi in “Princess Mononoke,” Tim Allen’s hilarious turn as dueling Buzz Lightyear in “Toy Story 2” and Eli Marienthal’s remarkably natural performance in “Iron Giant”--as the voice of Hogarth, the boy who adopts the Iron Giant, Marienthal virtually carried the film.

*

No animated feature has been nominated for art direction, although every element in every frame of an animated film has to be imagined and rendered. The artists who design costumes for animated characters can’t rely on existing fabrics or accessories as live-action designers can: They have to draw them.

Even stranger is the failure of visual-effects artists to recognize animation at a time when live-action and computer-generated imagery (CGI) seem to be melding. The seamless blend of drawn and computer animation in “The Lion King” earned it a place among the Oscar finalists--a short list chosen by the visual-effects branch--but it didn’t get a nomination. Nor did the parting of the Red Sea in “The Prince of Egypt,” which eclipsed the same sequence in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 film “The Ten Commandments”--an Oscar winner for effects.

*

Academy voters were initially slow to accept CGI, giving the 1982 Oscar for special effects for “Poltergeist” rather than the ground-breaking “Tron.” CGI animators complain that traditional visual-effects artists fail to recognize that making a computer-generated effect match its surroundings in an animated film can be every bit as difficult as integrating a similar effect into a live-action feature. The wildebeests seemed to be a part of the world of “The Lion King,” just as the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park” looked as at home in the island’s jungles as the live actors. Conversely, the music box in “Anastasia” never fit into the drawn world, any more than that clunky mechanical spider fit into “Wild Wild West.”

When effects artists succeed in integrating their work into a live-action film, they get Oscars (or at least nominations); when effects artists succeed in integrating their work into an animated film, they’re ignored.

Back in the bad old days, when feature animation was restricted to a new Disney film every three or four years, there might have been some justification for separating it from mainstream filmmaking. But over the last decade, more and more studios have entered the animation market, and their films account for a disproportionate percentage of the domestic box office. At least eight features are scheduled for release this year, from Disney’s “Fantasia/2000” to the stop-motion antics of “Chicken Run” from Aardman Animations. Artistically and commercially, some of these films are likely to be as successful as their live-action counterparts--and as deserving of awards.