Mark Reviews Movies: CLAYDREAM

Claydream, Oscilloscope Laboratories

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 4, 2022

Will Vinton, a pioneer of clay animation (He even trademarked the term "Claymation") and the subject of Claydream, was a bit of a mystery, even to the people who knew him well on a professional level and a personal one. That puts director Marq Evans in a bit of a bind. How does a filmmaker make a documentary about a man who kept his thoughts and feelings so close to the chest that even a few wives, kids, and business partners seem stymied to say much about him?

That's part of the early and continuing frustration of Evans' film, which keeps reaching for something within Vinton, even when the filmmakers gain access to the animator and entrepreneur at some point before his death in 2018. At that time, he is receiving treatment for cancer, and it's obvious that Vinton doesn't want to talk about that fact. Indeed, he says as much to filmmakers, noting that illness is the only subject people want to discuss when they discover someone is sick.

He'd rather talk about the work he's doing, which has moved on from animation at this point in his life and career. Evans presses just a bit more about his medical issues, though, and asks Vinton when he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, the blood cancer that would lead to his death. Without missing a beat, Vinton says that was back in 2006. It's about 2014 or so when the crew starts interviewing Vinton, and he still hasn't told some of his friends and associates. That's how private and secretive he is here and, apparently, was for all of his life.

Our understanding of that quality clicks much earlier than these late interviews, some of them recorded while Vinton is receiving blood transfusions and chemotherapy, but that's the point at which, through his own words and attitude, Vinton makes himself really known. The key components to this man are his secrecy, his closed-off nature, and the very mystery of who he was.

The only thing that mattered to him for the majority of his life was the work—of bringing clay models and paper figurines and foam puppets and even digital code to life. He would be best known for creating the singing-and-dancing California Raisins, which became a cultural phenomenon in the 1980s, and The Adventures of Mark Twain, the 1985 feature that has become a cult item for the creepy section that adapted Twain's unfinished story about a Mysterious Stranger.

Vinton was a happy workaholic, and his professional downfall, perhaps, came from that the fact that he didn't even contemplate to consider what other people might be thinking or feeling. If his thoughts and feelings are his own, of what business are those of others to him, anyway?

Evans takes the enigma of Vinton, puts it to the side until later, and proceeds to document the rise and fall of the film production studio with his name. If the work mattered most to Vinton, maybe some answers to the man can be found within it. Evans does find them, not only in how much Vinton almost certainly communicated about himself in the clay characters he created, but also in just how poorly he handled the business side of his studio. If business is an art, it's about understanding the motives and desires of other people. Vinton preferred to work with puppets, and that probably says all that needs to be said.

The structure of Evans' documentary is, of course, biographical, with Vinton, also filmed sitting in a comfortable chair in a more accommodating surrounding than a clinic, and people who knew him going through the course of his life. The primary subject puts something of a happy limit on his biography, because the only personal details he discusses here involve his childhood and going off to college with a movie camera.

It comes as a surprise to learn that he's married when he enters into a creative partnership with Bob Gardiner, resulting in some industry success with a short film called "Closed Mondays," and it's a bigger shock to later learn that he re-married at some point—and then again even later. Vinton doesn't talk about that seemingly vital part of his life, and it's up everyone else to fill in the gaps, while also openly wondering what the gaps in Vinton's telling of the story of his own life say about him on a deeper level.

The story here becomes almost exclusively about the creative process, as Vinton separates from Gardiner (leading to a one-sided grudge—not Vinton's side, obviously—that might have had some professional and ethical merit) and keeps making animated projects with new collaborators, and business practices. Vinton creates and runs a production company that just keeps growing as clay animation becomes a fad (thanks in large part to Vinton's work) and as the company adapts to new trends (Will Vinton Studios started offering computer-animation production, even though no one in the industry thought they had the equipment, and Vinton laughingly admits the company didn't when he made those offers).

Portents of doom come from the running footage of a lawsuit deposition, which somehow involves Phil Knight, the man behind the biggest shoe company in the world, and that entrepreneur's son, a wannabe rapper who decides to move into animation production. Vinton speaks here, too, and there's a quietly devastating moment when an attorney more or less asks him to say how he feels about his fate with his namesake company. We can see his mind going through what he wants to say, and for whatever reason, he simply doesn't say whatever that might be. By the time that moment arrives in Claydream, we understand that the silence defines the man.

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