Here, let me outline it
When he was 24, Fremont native and UC Santa Barbara grad Don Hertzfeldt submitted his animated short film “Rejected” for the 2000 Academy Awards. “I did it as a joke,” Hertzfeldt says, “like, ‘Let’s make them sit through this.’ ” The film is approximately nine minutes of what is now considered Hertzfeldt’s style -- stick figures in black and white, sometimes on crumpled paper, sometimes wearing funny hats, threatened in the end by their creator’s existential crisis.
Much to his surprise, the academy nominated the film in the short animation category. Hertzfeldt, who took his mom to the ceremony, didn’t win, but his status as a highly regarded cult animator was set. His work has since sold tens of thousands of copies on his website, www.bitterfilms.com.
Now 32, Hertzfeldt has a new film, “I Am So Proud of You,” a follow-up to “Everything Will Be OK,” which won the jury prize in short filmmaking at Sundance in 1997. Both follow Bill, a regular stick-figure guy navigating the dark terrains of his inner thoughts. As part of a cross-country screening tour, Hertzfeldt will show both movies at Cinefamily’s Silent Movie Theatre on Sunday.
“It’s the kind of film,” Hertzfeldt says of his new one, “that can read as tragedy one night and comedy the next, depending on the audience. I like to back off a bit and let the audience come to their own conclusions.”
The Cinefamily screenings had huge buzz before programming director Hadrian Belove got a chance to post the event online. “The passion of his following has been really impressive,” Belove said. Cinefamily added a midnight show after the first two sold out. The screening includes other Hertzfeldt classics such as “Billy’s Balloon” in a 70-minute program followed by a Q&A; with the animator.
Los Angeles is the final stop of the 16-city tour, a much-needed interaction between a fawning public, some of whom drive hours to attend, and an artist who works alone every night in a Santa Barbara studio. Hertzfeldt hand-drew, like all of his work, each frame of “I Am So Proud of You.” The project took nearly two years to complete and was shot with the same type of animation camera used for “Peanuts” TV specials.
“Short animation is the only medium of film where one person can do everything, and there’s something about that that I love. It’s a weird luxury to be able to work on your own and fix things in the 11th hour.”
That privilege might change sometime in the future for Hertzfeldt, the co-founder with Mike Judge of the touring festival the Animation Show. He’s developing a top-secret project for TV, a miniseries set 100 years ago, and is currently meeting with networks. “It’s going to be interesting to work in an episodic format and with a crew. . . . It’s going to be a good thing, I think.”
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‘An Evening With Don Hertzfeldt’
Where: Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.
When: 7 p.m., 9:30 p.m. and midnight Sunday
Price: $13
Contact: (323) 655-2150, www.cinefamily.org
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