The animator came back

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TORONTO -- On the second-floor hallway of the Hotel Intercontinental during the Toronto International Film Festival, I happen to be in discussion with Winnipeg animator Cordell Barker when a more famous animator appears behind him with a retinue of publicists and/or assistants following in his wake.

We digress with a discussion of that animator's glorious but trouble-studded career following his stint as the animator for Monty Python's Flying Circus.

"Great, the whole interview will now be my opinion of Terry Gilliam," Barker says.

We get back on topic. After all, Barker, unlike Gilliam, shows no inclination to abandon the animation biz.

Cartooning has been kind to him, even now, 21 years after the lone-wolf Winnipeg animator scored an Oscar nomination for his National Film Board classic The Cat Came Back.

Barker, 53, has returned with a new film, Runaway, a zany but pointedly satiric burlesque set on a runaway train. Earlier this year, the film was awarded the Petit Rail d'Or for best short film at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Jury's Special Award at the 2009 Annecy International Animated Film Festival in June. Barker received that award before, in 2001 for his second film Strange Invaders, which also went on to score an Oscar nomination.

Is another Academy Award nomination forthcoming? And will the third time be the charm?

Or, if his film is nominated, is Barker destined to be defeated for a third time by the powerful animation giant Pixar?

"The first time was memorable, since it was (Pixar honcho) John Lasseter himself who beat me (with the film Tin Toy)," Barker says.

"And then with Strange Invaders, it was (Pixar's) For the Birds that beat me.

"At least I'm in good company," Barker says philosophically. "It's a behemoth enterprise that they can put all their resources towards.

"It's a pretty uneven playing field, but I'm not grousing," he says. "I can be at an animation festival where you're talking to a filmmaker that might be from Bolivia that put the thing together himself and had no infrastructure behind him, so in that case, I'm the Pixar. It's all relative."

On the laborious animation process:

"For me, drawing has never been an easy thing. I find it quite torturous and I'm amazed when I see animators that are content to just sit there and draw all day.

"I've never been a natural drawer. The whole process is hard. But once I get through the drawing phase and it gets into the timing, I love the timing and I love the structuring, that's where I'm comfortable."

On being discouraged during the process:

"I thought this was the worst piece of crap and it was going to be a career ender. I kid you not," Barker says. "I was so negative about this thing, going to the NFB, I would just be in a black mood.

"That happens," he shrugs. "I remember Cat Came Back was the biggest blackest cloud hanging over my head, I was thinking I will never finish this thing, and yet I realize it plays out as a happy lark."

On why Runaway doesn't look like his other animated shorts:

"I wanted it to have that more structured reserve. The Cat Came Back was lumpy and loose because that was all I could draw.

"For this one, because of the metaphor I was going after, in my mind, I was thinking about the opening to Masterpiece Theatre... that Edward Gorey thing, (with) a very reserved English gentlemen and ladies and I did a kind of spin on that but just to a point.

"I wanted everything to play very coolly. But then you can't escape your sensibilities and you end up doing little things that you didn't think you were going to do, and things got a little bit wilder than I was originally planning."

Cordell Barker will host a presentation on animation timing on Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 7 p.m. at Cinematheque. Runaway will screen Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 7 p.m. on a program of NFB new releases. Admission is free.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Preview Box:

Get Animated!

"ö Cinematheque

"ö Tuesday, Oct. 27 to Saturday, Oct. 31

Admission is free

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 25, 2009 B5