Chris Landreth

Chris Landreth was born in Hartford and raised in Chicago but now calls Toronto home. After high school he studied engineering at the University of Illinois and it was his engineering background that lead him to Toronto and the world of animation.

In 1994, Landreth was offered a job with the Toronto-based animation company Alias (now owned by Autodesk). Landreth was in charge of defining and testing computer graphics and software products. This meant that Landreth was essentially creating animated films in order to test the software. Over time, he took gradual steps to becoming a full-fledged animator.

Those steps turned into a leap when he made his first two animated shorts: The End and Bingo. Both films were a hit with critics. Bingo received countless awards in the US and a Genie here in Canada. The End earned an Academy Award nomination in 1996.

After making several animated shorts, Landreth met renowned Canadian animator Ryan Larkin, who, prior to his death in 2007, was homeless and battling substance abuse. Inspired to tell Larkin's story, Landreth created the animated documentary Ryan, earning him a 2005 Academy Award for best animated short.

I spoke with Landreth about Ryan, how it felt to win an Oscar and the inspiration behind his latest film The Spine.

Who or what has been your greatest inspiration?

Wow, that's a tough question, and I always get, uh, a little flummoxed on that. When I talk about myself, I talk about visual artists, like Francis Bacon for example, who is a visual artist that has always been a big inspiration. I would say as far as film goes, Terry Gilliam is definitely up there. An animator from the Czech Republic, a guy named Jan Svankmajer - he is someone who I have mentioned more than once.

Why did you feel animation was the best way to tell the story of Ryan Larkin?

Before I did Ryan, I had seen some examples of animated documentaries like Ardman [Animations] who do Wallace and Gromit. Before Wallace and Gromit they had done some animated documentaries and, um, I thought this was an amazing way to show something that would otherwise be simple, straightforward and factual documentary material. In the case of Ryan, his story is so rich with visual stuff. His story has such psychological parts to it that I thought this would be a really great subject matter to tell in an animated form, rather than just live action.

Why were you inspired to tell his story?

Meeting Ryan. I had met Ryan a few months before and he was such a... I mean his story, he was telling it, it was incredible, and he was so incredible that I wanted to tell his story. I thought his story really needed to get out there.

Ryan won best animated short at the 2005 Academy Award. What was that experience like?

It was pretty surreal. I mean, it was a lot of work, you know, having to memorize a speech for example, and, um, it was like coming out there and doing a big frightening job.

You're latest is a short called The Spine. What's the inspiration behind that?

That I had seen people in my life that I know, people who were acquaintances, who were in marriages or with people that boggles my mind how they would stay together, that there would be these unhealthy elements to these peoples unions, marriages, whatever. Over the course of my life I have seen that it's not just what you see on the surface, there is a lot going on in the past, beneath the surface that brings out why people stay in these unhealthy situations. In the case of the characters in The Spine, you see this kind of perverse, but very noble reason why they're together.

Animated films seem to get more popular every year. Has this had any effect on your career?

Yeah, I mean I would say, "What took so long?" When I was growing up, animation seemed to be only for kids, I never really understood why when you draw something or when you have moving computer generated image or clay figures, why that would be kid stuff. It had just always seemed obvious to me that you can do a lot of storytelling [with animation] that you can't do with live action film. You can go into really deep parts of the story and appeal to grownups. So yeah, I am really glad that in the last few years that more and more people have accepted that.

What were your experiences like breaking into this business. Do have any advice for others trying to do the same?

My experience working in the industry, I mean it's gotten a lot more mainstream, in particular the type of animation that I do, when I was getting into it and doing my earlier films it was much more of an R&D (research and development) thing and now it's very much part of the mainstream. My advice to people getting into the field would be don't just limit yourself to animation. The thing about animation is that you have to know a lot of other things. You need to know psychology, you need to know filmmaking in general , you need to know acting and you have to be interested in all of those things.

Can you tell me about any upcoming projects you're working on?

I gotta be real quiet about them. I'm working on what I hope will a feature film within the next four years, and I'm actually doing, um, I'm not leaving short films behind. Short filmmaking is great, you can tell a story with shorts that you can't with feature films .