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DON HERTZFELDT
director of EVERYTHING WILL BE OK, Animated Short
 Don Hertzfeldt is a unique
animator who creates all
his animation alone, started off
serendipitously with his animated
shorts - Ah, l'amour and Lily and
Jim - while a film student at the
University of California Santa
Barbara, and has even been nominated
for an Oscar in 2001 for his
short film Rejected. He has a very
traditional style with pen, paper,
and film; and hails as a self-taught
animator moving from 16mm to
parlaying his success into 35mm.
His latest short, EVERYTHING
WILL BE OK, follows Bill in his
series of daily, mundane life events
including going grocery shopping
and pondering the meaning of
his life. The film is part one of a
three-part story with the second to
be released in 2008. Brian Hamblin
edited the films; Bedrich Smetana
and Georges Bizet did the music,
along with original music by Hertzfeldt.
The film has won at least 30
festival awards, including the Jury
Award for Best Short Film at the
Sundance Film Festival.
I throw a little Q & A Don's way:
Paster: Did you grow up in a
family of artists, and did you
find your creative streak truly in
college and were able to keep it
going strong thereafter?
Hertzfeldt: My family wasn't
unusually artistic. I just remember
drawing and writing a lot when I
was little, and later taught myself to
animate, and getting a lot of support
and encouragement. Whatever kind
of creative streak there is, I think
it's always been there pretty much
unchanged. I feel like I get just as
excited now about starting a new film
project as I did when I'd start drawing
a new action comic or something
when I was six. Hopefully now I'm
just a bit of a better writer.
Paster: What was the balance
between your work day-job/life/and
film endeavors like while you were
fresh out of college and then now?
(If you found it easy or challenging
to make art a dominant part of your
life and in our society that emphasizes
a 9 to 5)
Hertzfeldt: I've actually been really
lucky to never have a job other than
making these films, not even flipping
burgers as a teen. My very first
student shorts in school all managed
to find distribution everywhere and
they've all snowballed over the years
to support themselves (and me). In
film school it was a balance between
classes and animating, and these
days it's sort of a balance between
laziness and animating, but I'm usually
juggling more than one project
now to keep things more interesting.
Day to day can swing wild between
very busy and very dull and the early
years got a bit lean but I have a sort
of machinery all in place now where
I can freely make the movies I want
and comfortably continue on in that
direction. I don't really take vacations
or any days off, I'm real aware
of how lucky I am to find myself in
this sort of position, so any day I'm
not actively working on something I
kind of feel like I'm wasting time.
Paster: What are your thoughts on
reflecting on your films winning so
many awards and becoming well
known, and then thinking back to
making films in college, thinking your
career would ever reach this point?
Hertzfeldt: The bigger picture hasn't
ever really been on the radar. I don't
really have that kind of foresight. It's
the sort of thing that would probably
paralyze you anyway. You really have
to tune that sort of thing out, otherwise
it's probably going to poison
everything you're doing. It's always
just been the next movie in my head,
really. Where that comes from I don't
know. If you start worrying about
whether the thing is going to attract
a mate or win awards or change the
form of cinema, you're probably not
going to be putting something honest
on the screen anymore.
Paster: What is one question
you'd wish an interviewer
would ask, but never has?
Hertzfeldt: Does this look infected
to you?
EVERYTHING WILL BE OK
screens as part of Shorts
Program Animation,
7:45 p.m. Nov. 7
@ ArcLight 13
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