DOOR and me

I didn't think about the future in art school. After graduation, I figured I could work in television, and that notion was about as far as I ever planned it. I ate and breathed animation and loved it more the more I studied it, and a job in tv would, nominally, have been a job in my field, but as my senior year approached I began to realize how little connection there was between what I really loved so much about animation and what was actually happening in entertainment. I never had any real interest in working for "Daria" or "Sheep in the City" or "TV Funhouse." All I wanted to do was make my own work, and to get inspired by the kind of art my professors were steering me to- Red Grooms, Robert Breer, Ub Iwerks. I wanted to figure out how they had made careers, or at least lifestyles, out of what they did, and emulate them. Instead of figuring this out, I spent the rest of college on Door. All I wanted to do was finish this film. After that, who cared. It was much easier to just put my head down and draw all night. 

Not that this project was purely a means of escape. I genuinely cared about it, and I remember walking along Waverly after too little food or sleep when I realized I was just on the brink of finishing it, and the rush of excitement made me break into a run. And I remember the horrible vacuum that opened up when I did actually finish it, and the months I spent grasping for jobs and direction.

As for the product, the film itself- I try not to think about it too much. I watch it and sometimes I think it's great and sometimes I cringe. And at one time, I think my opinion of it was completely controlled by the people I watched it with and how they reacted. One festival audience was nearly silent during it and I could hardly stand it. Another time, I went back to my old elementary school and showed it to a large group of 12-year-olds who enthusiastically analyzed it with me, and that was outstanding. Then there was the festival where the woman sitting behind me said, "You know, I liked the door...", and the guy next to her exhaled and groaned, "No...", and my own feelings about it went up and down with these comments like a cork on the waves.

In a way, I hate it, because it's so deeply flawed, yet it's the closest I've ever come to expressing myself in a piece of art that I actually finished. It torments me with questions. Can I make another film I care about like this? Do I have to live in it and deny the rest of the world, or can I reconcile it with everything that is important to me right now? Do I even need to struggle with this whole process to be happy anymore, or is that who I used to be? Who am I, anyway?

And so on.