Cannes do
It started off as one dad's daggy film project but, as Jonathon Rodgers discovered, My Rabit Hoppy has bounced all the way to the Cannes Film Festival
Australian animator Anthony Lucas is surprised at the success of his latest award nominated film, My Rabit Hoppy. "I'm in deep shock that I'm off to the Cannes Film Festival with something I made in the backyard. I'm up for the Palme d'Or, which is very funny because this is definitely my ‘daggy' film."
With eight-year-old son Henry and daughter Peggy who is six, Lucas went through a rigorous process to fund the film. "To get the money to make it I said to my wife over dinner, ‘Julie, do you mind me making a film?' And she said, ‘Yeah, that would be OK.' That was the grant process!"
While working on his "daggy" project with the kids, Lucas was also busy compiling a collection of Australian animated shorts - a project that has been banging around inside the animator's brain for quite a while. Lucas' new collection, The Bold, the Brave and the Best, features locally animated shorts and television commercials from the last 30 years in Australia; many of them daggy. From Bruce Petty's Oscar winning film Leisure, to talking cane toads musing on death, to cartoonist Michael Leunig's explanation of democracy.
For Lucas, the idea was simple. " The point was just to prove to everyone that we make more animation than Happy Feet," he explains. "There are all these independent auteurs. I thought we should collect all this work together on DVD and celebrate all the great animators in Australia."
In 2006, Lucas was nominated for an Oscar for his animated short The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello. When questioned about the success of Australian animations, Lucas was quick to point out he was part of a long tradition. "What I explained was that we have made animation for such a long time," Lucas recalls. "I am part of a continuum of Australians that have made great animations."
Some of the films Lucas selected have had a strong influence on his own work: "One of the films is Crust (John Hughes), which is a film that set me off on the road of stop-frame animation. It was shot in a derelict house in Sydney and voiced by Paul Livingston (aka Flacco) who is a really weird Australian character".
All of the films included in the Bold, the Brave and the Best compilation have won local or international awards. Notably, the DVD features Peter Cornwell's excellent clay-mation Ward 13, a 14-minute hospital horror that draws heavily on the action sequences of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones live-action films. Along with Lucas' Jasper Morello, Ward 13 almost brought home an Oscar.
Also featured on The Bold... is Alex Stitt's famous Life. Be In It. commercials. Since it first aired in 1975, Life. Be In It. has been the face of Australian animation, and for good reason. "It's a graphic style that is so pared down," Lucas says. "It is classical and very approachable. They are heartfelt without being manipulative. The Life. Be in It. ads are quirky and they really reflect Australia."
The Bold, the Brave and the Best is available now through Madman.