“˜Spike and Mike’ reveal clever animation shorts
By Daily Bruin Staff
July 8, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 Pixar "For the Birds" is a feature animation film in the
"Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation" showing at Santa Monica’s
Laemmle’s 4-Plex.
By Chris Young
Daily Bruin Staff
Since its humble beginnings as a series of screenings in a
communal hippie house, “Spike and Mike’s Festival of
Animation” has brought a new perspective to a film medium
that was once considered wholesome family fare.
“Spike and Mike’s Classic Festival of
Animation” presents a 90-minute collection of 15 animated
short films from 10 countries. The films are the winners of a
yearly contest by Craig “Spike” Decker and Mike
Gribble; the festival screens in about 50 cities in the U.S. and
Canada, including Santa Monica’s Laemmle’s 4-Plex from
July 6 to 12.
“What Sundance is to independent film, “˜Spike and
Mike’ are to animation,” said writer/filmmaker Nick
Rheinwald.
Over the last decade, the content and public perception of
animation has changed.
“”˜The Simpsons’ and “˜South Park’
have made animation a lot more attractive to teenagers and young
adults,” Rheinwald said. “Before “˜The
Simpsons,’ animation was virtually all Disney. When people
see that animation no longer caters to just family viewing,
they’re more receptive to watching something like
“˜Spike and Mike.'”
 Mariko Hoshi "Hello, Dolly!" is a feature animation film
in Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation. Many famous animated TV
series got their first public viewing at the festivals, including
“South Park,” “Beavis and Butthead,”
“Powerpuff Girls” and “Rugrats.”
The offerings in “Spike and Mike” use a variety of
animation formats such as computer, cell, puppet, 3D models,
watercolor and colored pencil.
“We’ve been first on the block to find and premiere
the best talent in animation since 1977,” Decker said.
“Right now it’s the only show of its kind in the
world.”
Decker said the criteria for the festivals’ winners
include humor, accessibility to the appropriate audience and the
story itself.
“Some are sweet, charming and family oriented; others are
sick and twisted, rank and disgusting stuff,” Decker
said.
He and a small staff look at approximately 1,000 titles every
year, and Decker receives submissions year round.
“I’ll go to Sundance, or walk down the street and
people give me their work,” Decker said. “I’ve
had people walk up to me in restaurants and hand me
tapes.”
Even though the winning entries all use humor to get their
message across, the format and cost of each film varies
greatly.
One short, Don Hertzfeldt’s “Rejected,” uses
simple line drawings by a single artist, while Pixar, the company
that created “Toy Story,” utilizes complex computer
animation in “For the Birds,” an Oscar nominee for Best
Animated Short Film in 2000.
“Father and Daughter,” winner of the 2000 Academy
Award for Best Animated Short Film, is also featured in the
festival. This animated short uses hand-drawn pictures that Decker
said required “meticulous work and painstaking
dedication.”
“”˜For the Birds’ is very charming, funny and
the timing is very good. I think “Rejected” is very
clever and hilarious. There’s just so much talent and
creativity packed into those 90 minutes,” Decker said.
“We have pretty high standards,” Decker said.
“It’s hard to get really good films, it’s like
looking for gold ““ you have to sift through tons of sand to
get a few nuggets.”
Spike and Mike’s “Classic” and “Sick and
Twisted” festivals of animation had an appropriate origin for
the series’ eclectic and zany images.
Decker and Gribble lived in a communal house in Riverside,
Calif. in the 1970s.
“It was a communal animal-house type place, with parties
all the time, getting raided by the police, all kinds of good
stuff,” Decker said. “We called it “˜Mellow
Manor’ and it was a spillover of the hippie
period.”
While living at their “Mellow Manor,” the two often
held themed movie nights and along with the movies, they would show
animated film shorts.
Eventually the demand rose more for the shorts than the movies
themselves. So Decker and Gribble began to promote shorts
full-time.
The first “Spike and Mike Festival of Animation” was
in 1977, a 90-minute collection of shorts, essentially creating a
feature. The festival got bigger and bigger.
In 1990 they created “Spike and Mike’s Sick and
Twisted Festival of Animation” to showcase the films that
were too inappropriate or immoral for the regular festival but were
still the best in their genre. This year “Sick and
Twisted” screened from March through May.
From the start, “Spike and Mike” struggled to
continue each year.
“We did crazy stuff on the street, like in the
Haight-Ashbury district to promote the festival,” Decker
said. “I would wear a cowboy outfit, get 50 to 100
battery-powered toy cows with flyers on them like sandwich boards,
herd them to Union Square.”
The festivals get advertising from color brochures, small ads in
newspapers and word-of-mouth.
“We do exceptionally well with our attendance in
proportion to the advertising budget we have and in comparison to
other films in the industry,” Decker said.
The popularity of “Spike and Mike” has drawn
attention to the progression and quality of animation being
made.
“As a whole the festival is a good sampling of what
creative ideas are out there in animation,” Rheinwald said.
“It shows you a lot of good talent out there. Who knows where
these people will go ““ you might end up seeing some of this
stuff on TV, like what happened to “˜South
Park.'”
ANIMATION: “Spike and Mike’s
Classic Festival of Animation” screens at Laemmle’s
4-Plex in Santa Monica until July 12. Call (310) 394-9741 for
information.
