Tribeca 2021 Review: Marq Evans’ CLAYDREAM explores the career and creativity of animation legend Will Vinton

An animation pioneer, California Raisins creator, and coiner of the term Claymation, Will Vinton more than deserves a documentary about his life, and thankfully, it seems that there’s plenty of footage from his life and works to do it. Marq Evans’ Claydream puts it all together to create the cinematic tribute he deserves, without shying away from criticism where it’s warranted.

Some may question the choice of beginning the movie with footage from his lawsuit against Nike’s Phil Knight over control of the Will Vinton studios. It risks casting a shadow over the rest of what follows, especially to viewers who know the outcome. But it also creates a narrative tension – how does this brilliant, inspired, force of nature end up losing all that he built? Claydream suggests that the problem lay in specifically trying to be the next Walt Disney, without truly reckoning with the seemingly genial Uncle Walt’s flipside as a ruthless businessman.

As an animator, Vinton could certainly compete with Disney or anyone else. His elaborate clay-sculpted characters rival any seen before or since for detail, and the way he would transform them, melt them, and turn them into other things onscreen evinces a kind of imagination rarely seen in most studio animation…and the influence of psychedelics in his youth, to which he freely confesses. The documentary doesn’t hit on every single classic TV or movie moment his work contributed to, omitting, for instance, the Claymation scene from Moonlighting and the Nome King in Return to Oz, probably due to clearance issues. But it spends plenty of time on the advertising pop culture icons that are unmistakably his: Domino’s Pizza’s antagonist The Noid, and the California Raisins. Both of which made him so hot that Michael Jackson started calling him wanting them to work together, leaving a series of answering machine messages that we get to hear, as well as rare footage of him impersonating the Raisin characters he wanted to see.

And in a harbinger of things to come, and a sign that indeed, he was no Disney on one level where it mattered, Vinton failed to negotiate any cut of the California Raisins ancillary merchandise for himself. In another, while Vinton saw and understood the importance of CGI as a new force in animation, he missed a chance to sell his company to Pixar when they wanted it. Instead, when he fell on harder times, he believed fellow Portland success story Phil Knight, for whom Vinton Studios had made Nike commercials, would be the one to bail the company out. It must never have occurred to him that the clause in the contract which said he could be fired without cause, for any reason, would be exercised. Knight, while an innovator in the shoe world, is an excellent and cutthroat businessman, as anyone who’s seen Michael Moore’s The Big One already knows. And there was only so much money he was prepared to let Vinton lose, especially when a deal with Tim Burton for The Corpse Bride hung in the balance.

Ironically, after Vinton left, his studio became LAIKA, and following their initial hit Coraline, each subsequent film failed to make back its budget domestically. New CEO Travis Knight, son of Phil, found work outside of the studio as director of the Transformers film Bumblebee, and LAIKA recently announced a live-action project rather than their customary stop-motion. Even today, and even effectively owned by Nike, the creativity involved in stop-motion doesn’t necessarily equal cash. And aside from a handful of collectibles and limited Nike shoes, the company hasn’t been much savvier at merchandising. Vinton tried and failed to create compelling, marketable characters that he owned outright; aside from Coraline, LAIKA hasn’t even really tried.

Still, it’s not as simple as Vinton good, Knights bad, and Claydream is clear-eyed on this point. Vinton himself seems relieved by his ultimate loss of responsibility, and gives credit to LAIKA as a creative force in the industry. As easy as it might be to depict Travis as a pure beneficiary of nepotism, he’s shown as someone who really does care about animation, and worked for Vinton three years before his heritage was revealed to his coworkers. (Full disclosure: I’ve met Travis Knight on a number of occasions, and our interactions have all been extremely positive.)

With his bald head and comically oversized mustache, Vinton himself looked a bit like a living cartoon character, and a jolly fellow. The truth could be a little darker – just ask his ex-wives or anyone who remembers his bitter former partner Bob Gardiner, as this movie does. But like his animated features, he was extremely complex. And sometimes, nay, often, seeing everything that goes into the final product makes you appreciate it even more. Claydream will make most viewers want to run out and rent as much of Vinton’s work as they can find, and that’s the highest compliment it can and should get.