What made you get involved in film?

When I was at a college I was very much involved and interested in literature and I discovered that I am a good writer and I would want to write but not only books but also scripts. I was very fortunate cos I got an opportunity to work in a radio. And I got a chance to make a series about film and culture history. It had 8 parts and won quite a lot of awards and it led to other opportunities which were offered to me after that and I got involved in theatre. People came to see my shows and I got a chance to make them for TV and I got into writing leading soap operas such as EastEnders. So one part led to another and I got established in film industry and mainly in animation, which I love. To me, animation is like umbrella for all the arts together. You have performance, painting, sculpture, acting and animation all together.I started to teach about animation, I had other skills from other areas and they came together very handy in animation By total accident, on university there was no interest in animation, no one was writing anything about it and I suddenly found myself in the middle of some kind of a movement, which had animation included. Film books never taught about animation, film studies never really looked at animation so by accident I started writing books which became a front end for anybody involved in animation.

So now I was having two careers-one, teaching and writing about animation at the university and second, being in film industry doing theatre shows and films. Then I got a chance to works on Simpsons and other famous series. So I was involved in one thing, did well and got asked to do something else. I made a seminar in America for people involved in animation, they write every day. They were honest with me and said ”We came here to see how it works, if it´s rubbish, we have a day off, if we realize we write better than you, we would feel better and at the end of the day we can have a drink at the bar ”But we all had a great day, they came to me and asked if I would work for them for few days here and few days there. So I got experience and saw firsthand people who write in animation for big studios. Then I was asked back and I found that they have my books in their offices and use them. So as you see, by complete accident I got into many businesses.

Once I saw “ Invention of Destruction” on British television and I loved that. I read a lot of Jules Verne and at that time I was about to make a series of sci-fi for radio. So I started searching more infos about Karel Zeman, but there wasn´t much about him. We talk about pre-internet era, right. But I gathered some and watched more and more of his films and in fact started to write about animation. I spoke about Karel Zeman being my favorite animator at some conference somewhere. Little time after that, Zeman´s daughter Ludmila contacted me. She heard that I am in touch with John Hals´ daughter recovering his batchelor´s studio in the UK. At that time families of George Meliés or Arthur Melbourne-Cooper tried to reclaim their father´s achievement. You know, Meliés wasn´t acknowledged very much at his time, that were historians who said” Look, what a genius he was”. So Ludmila invited me to Teplice to the conference of Karel Zeman´s work. I made some speech and met some people who worked on Zeman´s films and it was fantastic. So I got some reputation at least in Czech Republic and I got invited again. Much later, Ondřej Berenek from Zeman´s museum in Prague got in touch with me, cos he knew I was doing a conference in UK about British animators. So he came to me and said, they are gonna make a film about Zeman and would I help?! Fortunately, we had Tim Burton in one of our films and we tried to get him for Zeman´s film. Sadly he was in Hollywood which was a shame cos he loves Zeman´s films. So we got Terry Gilliam for the film, he also loves Zeman and I and Ondrej got very close. I have done lots of different projects at a different time, but it can be said that all that happened in my career was a chain of happy accidents.

So how do you see Karel Zeman in context with world cinematography?

When I made a speech about him, I said Karel Zeman was the man between two Georges-George Meliés and George Lucas. Karel took all Meliés craft and mix it with Lucas´s digital language. His films were brilliantly analog versions of everything long before it was all digital. Light, mixing live action, puppetry, 2D effects and 3 D effects- he brought it all together in analog form. Watching Baron Munchausen on Saturday here in Zlín showed beautiful restoration, renovation or red color but great thing was, it looks like a very modern film. There was one thing that struck me this time. One of the Gods in animation in 60´s was Ray Harryhausen, he was brilliant animator and if you think that in 1963 he showed the sword fight in his film “Jason and the Argonauts”, it is totally a master piece of animation. But if you look at the sword fight in Zeman´s Baron Munchhausen, it is much more experimental, avant-garde and it´s much more modern idea.  When you see Zeman´s films today, you still ask yourself a question “ How the hell did he do that?”

Do you think Zeman jump the time with his methods?

Yes, without doubt. He had a great joy to craft the film. He didn´t have digital technology so he had all images in his head and he had to solve it to get it live, NOW. That is genius. His film “ Invention of Destruction” was showed in New York in 76 cinemas at one go. Fantastic. At that time America got fascinated with its own independent scene. It moved away from big screen of Hollyood. They started to watch early Di Palma, Scorsese or Spielberg and they reached some independent spirit so they looked to Europe. They went back to Europe. When they did it for the first time, they came for art cinema like Bergman or Fellini and they found some popular cinema there and it was Zeman. New York was always left wing and they found what a great artist Zeman is.

With Zeman´s films which stood test of the time it´s like with magician. He puts on a great show, you love it and at the end you want to know “ How the hell did he do that?” If you come to current cinema, all become so highly sophisticated that you don´t think about that. You can watch Captain America, but you don´t care how it was made. We take it for granted, you know things like big explosions, all sorts of effects. We don´t questions it, we just take it as a story. But Zeman even now makes people ask” How did he do that?”. People like story but also the craft of work, how he did this and that.

Can you believe that he did that almost at his knees with minimum money and now they invest tens of millions of dollars to do trick that should make people sit and watch them with open mouth?

Current animation of films is not really about the craft. They are about cooperative people taking salaries. I know many good guys working in big animation studios in America. They are like working in factories, they do great job but get average pay. The big money goes to big guys at the top. Big money are spent on adverts and promotions but the real craft is not seen anymore.

In 60´s, animation characters like Mole from Zdeněk Miler were loveable, cute. Now they are more sarcastic, violent, destructive. Do you think it´s natural evolution of it as it goes along with kids?

It´s very complicated and complex question. Walt Disney in 20-30´s made silly symphonies. They became great experiments, since 1934 they became color and they started to get sound synchronized. Disney made all the art of animation. They are very lyrical and very gentle. Then came Warner Bros and thought” What are we gonna do, let bring some crazy stuff in”. Cartoons got faster, more action, more violent, music was urban or even jazz, both symphonic. Then came MGM with Tom and Jerry and made chase cartoons, which goes violent and smash thing up. In 60´s came Hanna and Barbara cartoons and they are more talkie, script is better, the animation is less important. Current animation is pushed to the limit it´s fast, energy is in it and it is more about space and dynamics that with brutality and violence.

You make many workshops around the world. How does it work, you are asked to talk or about this and that?

All in different way. My books were very important. When they were published I told publishers” I don´t want any fee, I want books to be translated into as many languages as possible”. So around the world they got my books in their language. Also my TV programmes got around the world so when they phone me, they often want a talk about this or that, about book or a programme. You know I wrote about Animation and sports or animation and animals, so out of blue I got contacts with various sport and animal groups.

So shall we say that you are an independent artist?

Yes, in some way. I always worked on several project at the same time. I guess I would need more than one life to do all that.

Is it truth that you are a director of Association of British Animation Collection? What is its aim?

You know we didn´t have any British animation archive, no one was saving any of that work so it was real struggle and we started to collect any kind of British animated material for posterity. So we got involved many subjects such as British Museum or British National Archive to help us in many ways. We take every pre-production, material which we store. We would like to create some kind of British Animation Museum but so far we are in the middle of it and I am sorry to say that so much was lost in the past.

Do you intend to write a book about Karel Zeman and his impact?

No theory without practice, no practice without theory and no progress without history. The bottom line is I always used Karel Zeman as an example of filmmaker who was ahead of his time. He had firm understanding of history and literature. He knew about Cyrano de Bergerac, about Jules Verne, he knew about sci-fi and about Romantism and he obviously knew about Meliés, so he knew about history and used it in his films to look modern. He was Czech avant-garde.

What they made in Zlín studios was exceptional. Do you think if Zeman had a chance to live and work in America, he would have been as successful as he was?

Tough question to answer, cos Americans´ working methods are so different. Money guys are always there, so you are never left just to work and I think it would affect him. He would struggle with the pressure and deadlines. I think he needed his own pace and his own time and he was a nice man but Hollywood is very tough.

Do you think that guys like Spielberg and Lucas were kinda influenced by him?

Definitely, they both liked him and respected him. They with Scorsese and Di Palma were the first of what is known as “Movie brats”, cos they were first guys educated at film schools. At school they didn´t teach and talk only about American history and animation, they talked also about European history. They all saw Zeman´s films, they all known him and liked him, acknowledged him and were inspired by him. You know in animation community they knew about Švankmajer or Jiří Trnka, because they are more traditional. There is not a celebrity culture on animation festivals, you can sit next to a guy who may be number one in his country. It is much more genuine and friendly than at big feature film festivals. Community is very close and they help each other. Downsize of it is how to get the message outside to the world.

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