Richard Williams Interview: Part One
Animation in its current form has a relatively short history. In the century or so since its stop-motion beginnings, the craft has been evolved by great practitioners and masters of the craft whose work is still, to this day, a beacon of inspiration to many. One man who has charted the work of the pioneers and saved their secrets from disappearing into the ether with them, is Richard Williams.
A young Richard Williams
Williams has spent his life and career in pursuit of the shrouded technicalities of animation, befriending heralded figures in the industry through a shared passion for the art form and spending years understanding the way the craft works, to truly master the subject. From eager-to-learn student to seasoned master of animation, his career highlights display the work of a creative mind able to apply themselves to anything. From memorable classic title sequences such as Casino Royal and The Return of the Pink Panther, to gorgeous advertisements that leap from style to style, capturing the raw power of Frank Frazetta or Superman one week and the Renaissance inspired, baby-wipe selling Cherubs the next.
No stranger to the short form too, Richard Williams directed the Oscar winning A Christmas Carol, The Little Island, A Lecture on Man and Love Me, Love Me, Love Me amongst many other career highlights.
It is these chameleon like abilities and understanding of movement before style that made Richard Williams perfect for Who Framed Roger Rabbit; the feature his name is most famously associated with, after he and his team brought the “Toon Town” residents to life. The footage that remains of The Thief and the Cobbler before it was snatched from his hands and ruined, make it one of the greatest “what if” scenarios in animation history. The beauty and intricate detail of the remnants of that film still astounds and bewitches us to this day.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Currently celebrating his 80th year with a series of events, taking place in Edinburgh, Bristol as part of the Encounters Festival lineup, and at the Academy in October. The Adademy will also have an exhibition of over 5 decades of work from his career. Still animating, Williams continues to pass on the secrets of the craft he has learnt from his animation forbears and friends.
Richard Williams
In part one of our interview Richard Williams discusses his artistic upbringing, the beginnings of his studio and his close friendship with acclaimed Disney animator Milt Kahl.
Here we are celebrating 80 years of Richard Williams with a series of events; first at Edinburgh, now at Encounters and later in the year in LA at the Academy. This must be one of the busiest years of your life so far!
Well, I am always drawing you see so it is interfering with the drawing, but other than that it is great! It’s an awful lot of stuff to show
Do you mind being in the spotlight?
Oh no I’m a natural Ham! It’s funny because when you’re drawing you’re in total silence and there’s nobody else there and all of a sudden you’re on a stage and it is exciting to do and unusual to see all the work on screen together, so it is quite a shock for me.
It was very entertaining for the audience, I had not seen Love me, Love me, Love me before and thought it was hilarious.
Oh good! That really was the basis of my studio, I managed to get Kenneth Williams to do the voice. He did it, and we used take one and when he sang at the end we used take two; he was perfect, just perfect. The film went out with British Lion with the Boulting brothers, and all these cheques started coming in. I thought nobody would like it because I did it as a private joke and thought people wouldn’t like what I liked – I was planning on quitting animation and going back to painting in the Mediterranean somewhere, but when all these cheques started coming in I thought “everyone likes what I like” and I ended up with enough money to start the studio.
I had never realised it was such a pivotal film.
Absolutely! It even got reviewed in Playboy and the Boulting Brothers said “We’ll take anything you’ve got” but then I got knee deep in the start of The Thief to do another short but by the time I got going British Lion were not in power anymore. Anyway I find it funny!
In your book The Animators Survival Kit, your mother gave an excellent piece of advice about not worrying about style, after you came home from College and everyone in the class was more worried about their signatures instead of learning to draw. She seems like one of the pivotal inspirations of your childhood, did you have an artistic upbringing?
Yes really, my Uncles and that were all artistic and very bright; my uncle Ken was one of Montgomery’s personal photographers and he ended up on the D-Day landings as the official Canadian war photographer. My mum was a terrific natural draftsman and very musical, she became a commercial artist. Any talent I have came from her, she gave me another piece of marvellous advice; “Don’t worry about style, just do your work and the style will come through.” And that is true, even though I have worked in so many different styles. I have never had an exhibition before and when I had one in Annecy I thought “gosh this is going to look like 20 different peoples work” when I saw it I was very surprised because it did look like one persons work, at least to me.
I was surprised to hear in Edinburgh that she had turned down a job at Disney.
Yes! When I was 5 years old she had a friend at Disney called Eric Gurney who was a brilliant story artist and animator there who did a lot of story work in the 1940s, they were very interested in her work and her coming to Disney but she had me as a little kid so didn’t go. She took me to see Snow White when I was 5 and said I was never the same again. All the other kids saw it and thought everything was real but I knew they were drawings. You can’t imagine the impression on a 5 year old that never stops drawing anyway – I thought this was amazing!
It still is all these years later.
Yes, and then the year after that it was Pinocchio and then Fantasia, then when I was 9 Bambi, and it marked me and opened up the world of imagination to me.
Bambi has a profound effect on its re-release when you were much older didn’t it?
Yes, because I snubbed my nose at it when I was making The Little Island (1958) because I thought I was ever so inventive then when I saw it again I was shattered I thought “how did they do that?” It is astonishing, and that is what has happened to me right the way through my career, whatever it is I have done I have kept being shocked at the very best work, followed by the desperate attempt to be able to equal that.
You’ve worked with Chuck Jones, Ken Harris and Milt Kahl, I read you kept trying to get Milt to admit he was the world’s greatest animator, did he ever accept that?
He did! We became friends and he was marvellously generous with me with his help! I hadn’t being in touch with him for a while and he had left Disney to become a trout fisherman. He was having a marvellous life and I got in touch, he was in San Francisco. I managed to book George Lucas’ dubbing theatre to show some bits of The Thief, and I went in with Milt and his wife. I ran what I had to Milt and his wife and the projectionist, and I guess the sound guys came running out and one of them said, “Who did that? Who did that!” and I said “That’s my work” and the guy yelled “Then you must be the world’s greatest animator” and I waited theatrically for a while, stood up and pointed down to Milt and yelled back “No! THIS is the world’s greatest animator!” and he was, so that was a terrific thank you.
Milt Kahl, “The World’s Greatest Animator”
I have been very, very lucky to work with Ken Harris and Chuck Jones. I had 14 years with Ken and 13 years with Art Babbit; we had Grim Natwick for a year and all these guys helped me. Milt loved The Christmas Carol, he wrote me a fan letter! I had written him a huge fan letter after I saw The Jungle Book and finally I got one back! (Laughs) I wrote more fan letters to him though than he answered to me.
He would always deny that he did beautiful drawings. Everyone says that he struggled but you would never know it looking at his drawings, and everybody would go through his waste basket at the end of the day and take these beautiful drawings that he had rejected. I rang him up three days before he died and had a very emotional conversation with him in which I thanked him for everything. We were going to try to work together; I said to him “listen, you’re always trying to say to me you can’t do these god damn drawings, that you’re not really a draftsmen – did someone else do them? Or did you do them?” and he said “Yeah I did them” so I said “Then will you accept, finally that you’re a beautiful draftsman?” and he said “Oh alright” (laughs). So that was quite a victory, and quite an emotional conversation. When I had finished I went in to see Mo, my wife, and said “I’ve just had a very emotional conversation with Milt, he’s never like this.” I was shaking. He died two days later.
I was so lucky, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson helped me, we had a dinner with Frank and Ollie and Joe Grant when my book had come out and Ollie said, “I wish I had a book like this; the Animators Survival Kit, when I was young” so I got him to write that down!
Read “Richard Williams Interview: Part Two” here.
(Cover picture by Amy Muir/EIFF)