Spike and Mike’s Influential Fest

They might not be household words to the public, but for a quarter of a century the names Spike and Mike, the trademarked monikers of Craig “Spike” Decker and the late Mike Gribble, have promised the kind of animation that can’t be found on TV (even cable) or at the local Blockbuster--at least not yet--and certainly not in most movie theaters.

In an industry ruled by tentacled conglomerates, Spike and Mike are the ultimate indie, still selling door to door. And while other touring animation festivals have come and gone, Spike and Mike’s Classic Festival of Animation--the 25th anniversary edition of which opens today in L.A. and Pasadena--and Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, now in its 12th year, have established the pair as the Ben and Jerry of animation.

“They have definitely got a niche that they can lay full claim to, and they’ve got a very dedicated following,” says Chris Wedge, director of “Ice Age.” His Oscar-winning 1999 short “Bunny” is included in this year’s “Best of the Fest” anniversary program, a feature-length collection of 16 shorts--many of them Oscar winners or nominees--from seven countries. The shorts were featured at previous festivals.

Nearly every hit-breeding animator in the business was either launched or given early exposure through Spike and Mike. Tim Burton, John Lasseter, Will Vinton, “Monsters, Inc.” directors Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter and “Chicken Run” directors Nick Park and Peter Lord all had their early work exhibited in one festival or another, as did edgier artists like Bill Plympton, Marv Newland, Danny Antonucci and Don Hertzfeldt. “Beavis & Butt-head,” “South Park,” “Wallace and Gromit,” “Bob and Margaret” and seminal versions of “Rugrats” and “The Powerpuff Girls” all made their theatrical debuts through Spike and Mike.

“It was definitely a big deal to me at the time because I had seen the festival when I was in college,” says Mike Judge, creator of “Beavis & Butt-head” and TV’s “King of the Hill,” who got in after sending the duo blind submissions of his first cartoons.

These days, Decker is inundated with tapes from students and other hopefuls. Other things, however, have not changed. Only six prints are struck of each festival, as opposed to the 3,000 or more for a wide studio release, and Decker tours them a city at a time for about nine months. Decker boasts that a recent showing at a Santa Cruz nine-plex earned more at the theater than any film that week except for “The Scorpion King.”

“When you put those numbers up, it’s like a football team with two guys,” he says.

Actually, it’s only one guy now. Mike Gribble died of cancer in 1994. But everyone connected with the festival still refers to them as a working team. “Like Laurel and Hardy, you can’t replace that,” Decker says.

Having met in the early 1970s, Spike and Mike joined forces to promote a Riverside band and later organized screenings of 1930s cartoons. The popularity of those screenings encouraged them to seek out and exhibit new animation--what there was of it.

“Those were desperate days [for the animation industry] when nothing was happening in Hollywood,” says animation historian Jerry Beck, who is writing a book about Spike and Mike for Abrams. “The best animation you could see was in these festivals.”

The two scoured schools, film societies and international festivals for any kind of short animation in any technique: cel, clay, stop-motion and more recently digital. With a $1,000 loan from a friend, they launched their first Spike and Mike screening in 1977 at Riverside City College. The pattern evolved by which Mike would travel to festivals all over the world, while Spike handled the business deals. Within a few years, they were not only exhibiting animated shorts from around the world but were also providing financing to complete a film or to transfer it from 8-millimeter or 16-millimeter to 35-millimeter film.

Decker says the first years were spent getting audiences to accept animated shorts as examples of a versatile film medium, not simply funny cartoons in the Bugs Bunny mode. But to fans, a Spike and Mike show was always more about its shorts. “It’s like a rock concert for animated films,” Beck says.

Appearances by filmmakers are common. “When you go for a weekend to be at a Spike and Mike festival, it’s just crazy,” says John Lasseter, whose 1989 Oscar winner “Tin Toy” is also in the “Best of the Fest.”

Behind the craziness, however, is a purpose. Spike and Mike “is really the only chance for audiences to see the great art form of the animated short film,” Lasseter says. “They’ve been giving out an Academy Award for best animated short film for decades, but there’s absolutely no chance for audiences to see these films. That alone makes what they do so great for audiences and for the filmmakers.”

A two-week sellout run in one city might bring in close to $100,000, but that is a far cry from the big studio or network paydays that many of the festival’s grads have come to enjoy. Because of that, Decker these days is willing to think about sponsorship.

“I’m at the point in my life where I am willing to sit down and discuss that with the powers and the players that could help us, because it bugs me when people say, ‘How come this isn’t in Atlanta? How come you couldn’t play this in London?’” says Decker, whose festivals have rarely strayed beyond the West Coast.

“With the right sponsor, somebody that really respects what we do and gives us the freedom, it would be interesting to take this thing to broader levels and much more cities throughout the world.”

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Spike and Mike’s “Best of the Fest” runs today through Thursday at the Laemmle Fairfax 3 in Los Angeles and the Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. For information about the festival, call Spike and Mike at (858) 459-8707.