As soon as I read that Don Hertzfeldt was going to be in LA on the 30th to screen his new film, I immediately had a heart attack, went to the hospital, recovered, came back home and then bought tickets for the 9.30 screening. After about a month of playing Calendar Countdown, the day finally arrived and I got to see the madness first hand.
While most people usually find out about Don through his Oscar-nominated short film, Rejected, I discovered his work under more obscure conditions. While perusing through my local library a few years ago, I came across Flight: Vol. 2, a comic book compiling various short stories having to do with the theme of flight. While most of the stories ranged from mildly amusing to so-so, there was one piece in particular that caught my attention from the get-go. It was called “Dance of the Sugar Plums” or, Last Day on Earth.
The entire thing was made up of little stick-figure drawings on various Post-it Notes, all concerning various events different characters were going through leading up to an implied meteor attack. What struck me in particular was Plum‘s simple yet distinct style – despite its stick-figure, black-and-white format, there were floating squids, vanishing horizons, suicidal bugs and limbless bodies galore. It seemed almost as if the two-dimensional nature of the drawings resulted in so much more freedom for the artist, and boy was I impressed with what he did with it. To this day I still have printed-out copies of the comic on my dorm wall. Proof:
Over the years, I became more familar with his work, and when I eventually got around to seeing Everything Will Be OK it became the first short film to make it onto my all-time-favorites list. While still retaining his usual style of off-beat humor and surrealism, OK was so much deeper on all levels – beyond the comedy there was a subtle, underlying sense of tragedy and disconnection that I could find myself relating to. I watched it over and over again almost every day, and I even ripped it onto my iPod so that I could listen to it and study the sound design.
So flash forward to the night of the 30th, and I’m sitting in the front row of the Silent Film Theater in Fairfax, more pumped than a bicycle. Thoughts race through my head: What’s going to happen to Bill now? Will it live up to Everything Will Be OK? I’m in friggin’ front row! Finally, the lights dim and the film starts rolling. A beam of light shines down the right-hand side of a screen, and in it a floating stick figure slowly withers and dies as it descends. Cue title card: The Meaning of Life.
Wait, I said to myself, this is his old film! Slightly upset, I waited in bated breath for the staff to come fix the error. After about a minute or two of Meaning still up on the screen, I decided to just sit back and enjoy it for what it’s worth. While I had seen The Meaning of Life (many times) before, watching it on a big screen with an audience really made a difference. After almost 10 minutes of laughter, shock and awe the credits rolled up, and it was at that moment that two familiar notes struck up and a huge title card came up on the screen:
REJECTED
It was then that I realized how much I had underestimated the program… instead of just showing his new film followed by the Q&A, they were going to screen a series of his older films beforehand as well. In the next half-hour or so we were treated to Billy’s Balloon, Everything Will Be OK, and even the hilarious Intermission in the 3rd Dimension from The Animation Show.
Then, the screen went black for a moment, and up came up a shot of the ocean that I had not seen in any Hertzfeldt film prior. The 22 minutes of I Am So Proud of You that transpired from that point on was, simply put, one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had in my life.
Going in, I was wondering how Hertzfeldt could possibly top the first chapter with this sequel, and boy were my expectations exceeded. Compared to OK, Proud seemed to have so much more depth, feeling, hope, longing and heart – we got to find out so much more about Bill’s childhood and ancestry, the characters around Bill started to flesh out and gain form, and the way Hertzfeldt played around with time and linearity in it all was nothing short of spectacular. If Everything Will Be OK was Hertzfeldt’s Batman Begins, I Am So Proud of You was his Dark Knight.
The film ended, and after picking my jaw up off the floor I found myself sitting two feet away from the man himself. Proof:
For a man with artistic creations as crazy as talking cotton balls that bleed out of their anuses, Don is actually a really docile character in real life. He came off as very pensive and thoughtful in his replies to the audience’s questions, where he talked about everything from his early inspirations as a child, all the way up to his fascination with watching the many different ways audiences have reacted to his films. I even got to ask him a question myself, about how much of the work in Proud was autobiographical. Interestingly enough, quite a number of the ideas inside were based on dreams that he had had, with one hilarious example involving a soccer-playing seal re-told verbatim.
Afterwards we got to go out back and each talk to Don personally for about a minute or two. I chatted with him about how underappreciated the brilliant Diving Bell and the Butterfly was, and he was even nice enough to sign the deck of cards I had on me. Proof:
I then shook his hand, and left to go back to Orange County.
It’s not every day you get to meet someone you’ve been looking up to for years. As with my first encounter with Dan Buck a few years back, finding out that these great artists are just people like you and I is just a wonderful feeling. It shows that anybody has the potential for greatness if they work hard enough at it, and that very thought pushes me to aspire to do great things of my own.
-Kev
Don will be continuing his tour with I Am So Proud of You in the spring of ’09 – check back on his website for dates, and go see it if you can! It’s an experience you’ll never forget.
Thanks Kev. Was a good read. Seems like you had a good time!
Woohoo! Don linked to this page from his website. Thanks, Don – you are the MAN.
-Kev