The End of an Era: Remembering Ollie Johnston

Today, April 16, 2008, is truly the start of a new era in animation. On Monday evening, legendary animator Ollie Johnston died of natural causes at the age of 95. Ollie was the last living member of Walt Disney's "Nine Old Men", the team of animators hand picked by Walt as the best of the best. Together, they wrote and rewrote the rules for animation and truly developed the art form. With his death, we are now officially in a new era of animation, the last link to it's golden age having been severed. As one looks at the largely bland, uninspired state of modern animation, one can't help but be saddened and wish for a return to the heyday of such luminaries as Ollie Johnston and his best friend Frank Thomas. If you haven't seen it, take time to watch Frank and Ollie and remember. As they said in their cameo appearance in The Incredibles, "There's no school like the old school." He will be missed. Godspeed, Ollie.

In both pictures, Frank Thomas is on the left and Ollie Johnston is on the right.

For some great tributes by Ollie's friends and some of today's top animators visit Cartoon Brew.

Below is Walt Disney Pictures' official press release:

LEGENDARY DISNEY ANIMATOR OLLIE JOHNSTON,
LAST OF WALT DISNEY’S “NINE OLD MEN”, DIES AT AGE 95

PIONEERING FILMMAKER/AUTHOR BROUGHT THE ILLUSION OF LIFE
TO SUCH DISNEY CLASSICS AS SNOW WHITE, PINOCCHIO,
PETER PAN AND THE JUNGLE BOOK OVER 43-YEAR CAREER

Ollie Johnston, one of the greatest animators/directing animators in animation history and the last surviving member of Walt Disney’s elite group of animation pioneers known affectionately as the Nine Old Men, passed away from natural causes at a long term care facility in Sequim, Washington on Monday April 14th. He was 95 years old. During his stellar 43-year career at The Walt Disney Studios, he contributed inspired animation and direction to such classic films as Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Song Of The South, Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady And The Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, Sword In The Stone, Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, Robin Hood, The Rescuers, and The Fox And The Hound.

In addition to his achievements as an animator and directing animator, Johnston (in collaboration with his lifelong friend and colleague Frank Thomas) authored four landmark books: Disney Animation: The Illusion Of Life, Too Funny For Words, Bambi: The Story And The Film, and The Disney Villain. Johnston and Thomas were also the title subjects of a heartfelt 1995 feature-length documentary entitled Frank And Ollie, written and directed by Frank’s son, Theodore (Ted) Thomas. In November 2005, Johnston became the first animator to be honored with the National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony.

Behind every great animated character is a great animator and in the case of some of Disney’s best-loved creations, it was Johnston who served as the actor with the pencil. Some examples include Thumper’s riotous recitation (in Bambi) about “eating greens” or Pinocchio’s nose growing as he lies to the Blue Fairy, and the musical antics of Mowgli and Baloo as they sang The Bear Necessities in The Jungle Book. Johnston had his hand in all of these and worked on such other favorites as Brer Rabbit, Mr. Smee, the fairies in Sleeping Beauty, the centaurettes in Fantasia, Prince John and Sir Hiss (Robin Hood), Orville the albatross (The Rescuers), and more than a few of the One Hundred And One Dalmatians.

Roy E. Disney, director emeritus and consultant for The Walt Disney Company, said, “Ollie was part of an amazing generation of artists, one of the real pioneers of our art, one of the major participants in the blossoming of animation into the art form we know today. One of Ollie’s strongest beliefs was that his characters should think first, then act…and they all did. He brought warmth and wit and sly humor and a wonderful gentleness to every character he animated. He brought all those same qualities to his life, and to all of our lives who knew him. We will miss him greatly, but we were all enormously enriched by him.”

John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios and a longtime friend to Johnston, added, “Ollie had such a huge heart and it came through in all of his animation, which is why his work is some of the best ever done. Aside from being one of the greatest animators of all time, he and Frank (Thomas) were so incredibly giving and spent so much time creating the bible of animation – Disney Animation: The Illusion Of Life – which has had such a huge impact on so many animators over the years. Ollie was a great teacher and mentor to all of us. His door at the Studio was always open to young animators, and I can’t imagine what animation would be like today without him passing on all of the knowledge and principles that the ‘nine old men’ and Walt Disney developed. He taught me to always be aware of what a character is thinking, and we continue to make sure that every character we create at Pixar and Disney has a thought process and emotion that makes them come alive.”

Glen Keane, one of Disney’s top supervising animators and director of the upcoming feature Rapunzel, observed, “Ollie Johnston was the kind of teacher who made you believe in yourself through his genuine encouragement and patient guidance. He carried the torch of Disney animation and passed it on to another generation. May his torch continue to be passed on for generations to come.”

Andreas Deja, another of today’s most acclaimed and influential animators paid tribute to his friend and mentor in this way, “I always thought that Ollie Johnston so immersed himself into the characters he animated, that whenever you watched Bambi, Pinocchio, Smee or Rufus the cat, you saw Ollie on the screen. His kind and humorous personality came through in every scene he animated. I will never forget my many stimulating conversations with him over the years, his words of wisdom and encouragement. ‘Don’t animate drawings, animate feelings,’ he would say. What fantastic and important advice! He was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and it was an honor and joy to have known him.”

John Canemaker, Academy Award-winning animator/director, and author of the book, Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men & The Art Of Animation, noted, “”Ollie Johnston believed in the emotional power of having ‘two pencil drawings touch each other.’ His drawings had a big emotional impact on audiences, that’s for sure - when Mowgli and Baloo hug in The Jungle Book; when Pongo gives his mate Perdita a comforting lick in One Hundred And One Dalmatians; when an elderly cat rubs against an orphan girl in The Rescuers - Ollie Johnston, one of the greatest animators who ever lived, deeply touched our hearts.”

Born in Palo Alto, California on October 31, 1912, Johnston attended grammar school at the Stanford University campus where his father taught as a professor of the romance languages. His artistic abilities became increasingly evident while attending Palo Alto High School and later as an art major at Stanford University. During his senior year in college, Johnston came to Los Angeles to study under Pruett Carter at the Chouinard Art Institute. It was during this time that he was approached by Disney and, after only one week of training, joined the fledgling studio in 1935. The young artist immediately became captivated by the Disney spirit and discovered that he could uniquely express himself through this new art form.

At Disney, Johnston’s first assignment was as an in-betweener on the cartoon short Mickey’s Garden. The following year, he was promoted to apprentice animator, where he worked under Fred Moore on such cartoon shorts as Pluto’s Judgement Day and Mickey’s Rival. Johnston got his first crack at animating on a feature film with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Following that, he worked on Pinocchio and virtually every one of Disney’s animated classics that followed. One of his proudest accomplishments was on the 1942 feature Bambi, which pushed the art form to new heights in portraying animal realism. Johnston was one of four supervising animators to work on that film.

For his next feature assignment, Song of the South (1946), Johnston became a directing animator and served in that capacity on nearly every film that followed. After completing some early animation and character development on The Fox and the Hound, the veteran animator officially retired in January 1978, to devote full time to writing, lecturing and consulting. His first book, Disney Animation: The Illusion Of Life, written with Frank Thomas, was published in 1981 and ranks as the definitive tome on the Disney approach to entertainment and animation. In 1987, his second book, Too Funny For Words, was published and offered additional insights into the studio’s unique style of visual humor. A detailed visual and anecdotal account of the making of Bambi, Walt Disney’s Bambi: The Story And The Film, the third collaboration for Thomas and Johnston, was published in 1990. The Disney Villains, a fascinating inside look at the characters audiences love to hate, was written by the duo in 1993.

In addition to being one of the foremost animators in Disney history, Johnston was also considered one of the world’s leading train enthusiasts. The backyard of his home in Flintridge, California, boasted one of the finest hand-built miniature railroads. Even more impressive was the full-size antique locomotive he ran for many years at his former vacation home in Julian, near San Diego. Johnston had a final opportunity to ride his train at a special ceremony held in his honor at Disneyland in May 2005.

The pioneering animator was honored by the Studio in 1989 with a Disney Legends Award. In 2003, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences held a special tribute to him (and Frank Thomas), Frank And Ollie: Drawn Together, in Beverly Hills. Johnston and Thomas were lovingly caricatured, and even provided the voices, in two animated features directed by Brad Bird, The Iron Giant, and Disney/Pixar’s The Incredibles.

Girl.Sister.Friend.

This post has taken me an inordinately long time to write.  I've been piecing it together, bit by bit, over the course of the last several weeks.  As such, it has devolved into something of a stream of consciousness ramble.  It hits all the points I intended, just not necessarily in the order which would make for the best reading.  But, hey, I figure if you're willing to subject yourself to this blog at all, then you'll have enough patience to make it through this post.

Why has this taken so long to write?  I don't really know.  Maybe it's just the intensely personal nature of the subject matter, but I can't seem to write on the topic for very long before getting stuck or distracted.  It's definitely not something I've ever talked about before, so maybe that's part of it too.  Whereas with my other posts I was merely laying out thoughts, feelings, and opinions which I was already well acquainted with, this time I'm expelling those thoughts while I'm having them.  I haven't yet completely thought through any of these opinions or lines of argument, and so have to work through them in real time, as I write, making connections and drawing conclusions as I go.  It's kind of exciting to write this way, but it's definitely more tiring, so that may be what has led to the piecework approach I've had to adopt.

Having slogged through that preamble, you must now be wondering just what it is that I had such a hard time writing about.  The title, though apt, likely didn't clear anything up for you.  It's about girls.  More specifically, I'm trying to connect a few long held desires (and no, I'm not diving into the sexual at this time)and do a little psychoanalysis on myself to figure out where they came from and why I have them.

What desires?  Well, first, a sister.  I have always wanted an older sister.  I don't know where this came from, just that the first time I remember thinking about it I was probably around 9 or 10 years old.  None of my friends at the time had older sisters, so it wasn't an emulation thing, and I doubt it was a rebelling, wishing I was different thing.  I have one female cousin who's a year older than me, but we rarely saw each other.  I didn't (don't) want a sister just a couple years older but a good five or more years older.  I've never bothered to think through how I would change my family to accommodate her, i.e. if I would become a middle child or the youngest.  The trials of the middle child are well documented.  It's a fairly widely known fact that my brother and I are not exactly what you'd call close.  If I were to be completely honest, I'd have to admit that my brother never appeared in any of my fantasies about an older sister (yes, I know fantasies again has a sexual undercurrent but, again, ignore it and treat this completely innocently).  Maybe this evolved as a way of replacing my brother.  After all, an older sister is the polar opposite of what I have - a younger brother.  I can't quite accept that as the right explanation, though.  The distance between myself and my brother didn't really start to form until I was around 14, years after the original appearance of this particular desire.  It's possible that the rift had already begun subconsciously a few years earlier, but I don't really buy that.  It's probably important to explain exactly how I saw my relationship with this older sister.  Basically, she would be my best friend.  Someone I could always hang out with, who would always be there for me, who I could talk to about anything.  She would be old enough that she would have all the answers, but young enough that I could always hang out with her, whether it was with her friends, my friends, or just the two of us.  I think the lines about having all the answers and being able to talk about is an important point.  I have always been the "fixer".  Going all the way back to elementary, probably age 7 or 8, I've always been the one who fixes everything.  From mediating arguments to fixing electronics to manipulating people and circumstances to prevent and problems before they occur to always having all the answers to everything.  I often read articles or web pages about topics I'm not at all interested in simply because someone I know is interested in it and might ask me something about it.  It's not something I explicitly mind doing, but it can be taxing.  I think that's why I imagined this sister with all the answers.  When I have a problem of my own, I often find that there is no one I can go to to help me with it.  This would solve that problem.  I would no longer be the last line of defence, there would be someone backing me up.

I think the desire for an older sister transferred and morphed into second desire I'll talk about - a close female friend.  Notice I didn't say girlfriend (though that would be nice too).  I think that I combined the relationships I saw on TV with my big sister fantasy to come up with this one.  It is very common on TV or in movies to see a boy and a girl who have been friends since they were little.  They are extremely close, having a bond that other people simply can't touch.  It's not romantic, but something unique, and it's what I've wanted.  It's completely different than a friendship between two guys.  It's not that I don't have any female friends, I do.  And I work almost exclusively with women and consider many of them to be friends as well.  I just don't have "that" kind of friend.

Just to confuse things, though, I have to make another point, again drawing from the world of television.  Whenever there is a situation where the guy wants the hot girl he can't have but the guy's girl friend (note the space) wants him, I always root for the friend.  Chloe versus Lana on Smallville, Elliot versus anyone on Scrubs, Lily on Radio Free Roscoe.  Unfortunately for me, however, the producers rarely decide to put the guy with the friend, giving him, instead, the hot girl.  In the rare cases where he does go out with the friend, they typically decide it won't work and they should remain just friends.  This bias towards the friends hooking up seems to fly in the face of my previous contention that I do not see the female friend is a sexual way.  But I argue that that is still the case.  I think that this may be more a case of me rooting for the underdog, the overlooked but loyal friend, to whom I can easily relate.  Maybe I'm just looking to TV to show me that it can turn out well for the friend, so I can get some hope for myself.  Then again, I have had to qualify quite a few statements in this post to attempt to remove their sexual connotations, so maybe subconsciously it really is all about the sex.  Kinda presents that first desire for an older sister in a new and disturbing light.  But I really don't think that's the case.

Well, I think that's finally it.  I don't think I have any more to add at this point.  I'm not sure I completely figured out everything I wrote about, but at least it's a start.  If you made it all the way to this point without skipping over any parts, I congratulate you.  I'm sure it wasn't easy, hopefully it made some sense.  If you did read it all, though I don't usually do this, I ask that you please leave a comment of some sort with your thoughts or reactions to what I've written.  I poured a fair amount of myself into this, and I want to know what others think.  Thanks.

Sleep well,

DTE

As The Silhouettes said, "Get a Job"!

Well, it's finally that time.  I attended my final university class on Friday.  I knew it would be a waste of time, but I went anyway.  Mostly, I did it as a symbolic gesture, you know, since I'm so big on symbolism.  At least when it suits my purposes.  I managed to wear the exact same t-shirt that I wore to my first day of orientation six years ago - yes, I still have it, and still wear it fairly regularly.  After the class, as I was walking to the LRT, I ran into the professor who taught me my very first university class, economics.  I didn't say anything, again just enjoying the symbolism.  Finally, when I got into my car, the first song that played on the radio was Green Day's "Welcome to Paradise", one last sign that it was all finished, at last.

With the end of school comes the need for a job.  Much as I would love to spend the rest of my days lounging around, travelling, and doing whatever happens to pique my interest at any given moment, it's kind of hard to find someone who will pay you to do so.  For the past several months I've been going through the process of applying and interviewing with a series of companies, trying to find the right one to work for.  This search culminated in offers from two companies.  Most aspects of these offers were the same - benefits, money, etc.  The one key difference was location

One company would keep me here in my home city of Edmonton.  The other would be moving me around the world every three months for the first year, after which a permanent (or semi-permanent) location would be chosen for me, with my input.  For some people, this would be an easy choice.  They may not want to leave their home town, and would therefore take the first offer.  Others may jump at the opportunity to travel and immediately take the second offer.  I fell somewhere in the middle.

When I first applied with the second company, it was primarily because of the travel.  Having someone else pay to send me around the world sounded great.  I think, though, that in my head I was envisioning working around the world, but still being able to come home to Edmonton every evening or weekend, which is obviously not possible.  However, I've always kind of planned to leave Edmonton to work somewhere else, so that leaving had to occur at some time, I just wasn't sure if I wanted it to be just yet.

The first offer was definitely safer.  I don't mean safer in the sense that I fear for my life at the second job, but safer in that it didn't require me to step outside my comfort zone.  I would be in a city I knew, with people I knew who could help me out.  The second job, on the other hand, would throw me into unfamiliar locations with new people and new circumstances.  Just going to the second round of interviews for the second job was challenging enough for me.  I'm not, by nature, a very outgoing person.  I prefer to sit back and observe until I feel I really understand how everyone in a given group works and then go in a be social.  I don't do well with the whole "mingling" thing.  And yet that's what I had to do for two days at the interview in Houston; mingle, make small talk, be social with complete strangers, trying to be interesting and look interested.  When I finished, I was exhausted, but fairly pleased with the results.  If I took the second job, it would be Houston all over again, but on a continuing basis.  I wasn't sure if I wanted that or could handle it.

But, I had to choose.  And so I did.  In the end, I settled on the second offer.  It just felt right.  Even though it seemed vastly more difficult and less "safe", I think it's where I'm supposed to go.  It will give me the opportunity to travel but, more importantly, to push myself, to force myself to grow.  All the safety nets will be removed.  Now I just have to make sure I don't fall.

Sleep well,

DTE