My friends Phil "Captain 3D" and Deepa invited me to see an animators' screening of "Kung Fu Panda" earlier this evening. Both Phil & Deepa are employees at Dreamworks Animation – the folks that brought you Shrek. Phil is the "global director of stereoscopic digital photography" or some other equally long title for "the guy that makes 3D animated films fly out of the screen at your face." Deepa works in the texture department and is currently making computer generated buildings look like they're made out of real concrete, steel, and glass. Most of Phil & Deepa's friends work within the animation industry, and were already invited to the screening, so they brought me along as their plus one.
The screening was held at Grauman's Chinese theater – the space was done up in deep reds with gold accents, a significant improvement over the slightly dingy digs I first experienced when I saw "Judge Dredd" in the theater 13 years ago. "Kung Fu Panda" is Dreamworks' latest foray into the world of animated animals, and the martial arts theme made it seem right at home in Grauman's. I have to say that "Panda" is probably my favorite of the Dreamworks Animation films. The action sequences kept me engaged the whole time, and the jokes were funny without resorting to a panacea of pop culture references.
After the film ended, the thousands of animators that filled the theater took to the streets – inciting one taxi driver to let out a genuine NYC-style honk at the pedestrians crossing illegally. We all poured into the Roosevelt Hotel and made a B-line to the bar to make the most of our Dreamworks-sponsored bottomless cups. On the way to the bar, Phil went over to talk to a gentleman who was introduced as Jeffrey while I ate a complimentary cupcake. As Phil and I waited in line for the buffet, I asked him who Jeffrey was – turns out he was Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of Dreamworks animation.
While Phil was away on his colleague-chit-chat adventures I spent most of the evening hanging out with Deepa. I started talking about my plans to take a trip around the world with Gabriel to make a feature film and Deepa asked if I was going to visit India. "If you do, you should stay with my family. My mother is very friendly!" So it seems I might actually know someone in India outside of the wonderful guy who helped me troubleshoot my DSL connection a few months back.
News Flash: American Sign Language is the new Spanish! This is to say, if you are going to speak a second language in California, it seems that ASL is the one to know. Deepa is deaf and normally has to read lips and use contextual cues to figure out what it is everyone is talking about. However tonight one person in almost every group we met spoke ASL to a greater or lesser degree. A lighting director's wife taught ASL to underprivileged kids, one of Deepa's supervisors took ASL classes to better communicate with Deepa, another woman's father lost his hearing in Vietnam, and still another was learning ASL to speak with her neighbor's daughter. It's an absolutely gorgeous language - I was surprised by how much and how little I understood by "reading hands" and using context clues.
Later in the evening, Phil was talking with another person that seemed to be a friend. I introduced myself as Donovan and asked "I'm sorry. And you were?" to which the man replied "Conrad". "Good to meet you." Conrad it seems is the director of Dreamworks' next film "Monsters vs. Aliens". Oh, and he directed "Shrek II" one of the highest grossing films of all time.
Having met both the head of a major film studio and the director of Shrek II without knowing who they were in the moment, I started to wonder… Is it better to not know so that I can have a genuine experience, or is it better to know so that I don't ask questions like "So what's your role with the production?" "I'm the director. Without me you wouldn't be eating the free food tonight you dip shit!"*?
*This is an entirely hypothetical dialog that I might have with a director like David O. Russell.
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