Cow Fiasco

If you have been reading my scribble blog you all know that 'The Cow Who Wanted to be a Hamburger' was not nominated for an Oscar this year. Boo hoo hoo!

It was strange because a lot of people who belong to the Academy thought it was my best and had a very good chance. So when my name did not pop up as being selected I wondered why. My attention was focused on the New York Academy screening. When 'The Cow' print was shown I had to exit the cinema (stupid rule) and my friends yelled at me to return to the theater to witness a scratched and grumbled sound print. I freaked, naturally, but what could I do. The print obviously was a bad worn out print. But I was confident that most of the NY animation Academy members had previously seen the film and knew of its power and wit. But there were also many live action short members there and perhaps they'd never seen it before and felt it was a badly made film. However I feel comfortable because the reaction in LA and San Francisco was so strong. How could I lose?

Beware of hubris. So I lost the nomination and hence an opportunity to use The Oscar nomination to promote 'Idiots and Angels" and my new epic Rizzoli book 'Independently Animated: Bill Plympton'. In any case I missed a golden opportunity and I've just received that 'damaged print' and out of curiosity I looked at the scratched frames and they were pristine. It looked like a brand new print, so I began to think - What the hell happened in there?

My guess is that the projectionist was so used to using Dolby heads for the films that he couldn't imagine that mine was simple stereo and somehow Dolby totally screwed up the projection. I know it sounds like a small mistake but I should have demanded to talk to the projectionist then and there and examined the projection procedure. I could have saved the screening and possibly secured my third nomination.

"For want of a nail the shoe was lost..."