Are You Bosustow’s Son?
A funny thing happened as we presenters were enjoying an exotic dinner at a restaurant next to the Botanical Gardens in Rio. We had spent the morning attending to our various programs, then spent the day touring the amazing Botanical Gardens, which have sections of flora and fauna from nearly every corner of the globe, complete with structures such as huts and homes, that reflect that area. Mark Walsh, a Pixar Story Artist was conducting a daily seminar, helping animation students create and animated short, so we never met him, he never had time for the tours, since he was always occupied at the festival with his students. But, unbeknownst to us he was attending this particular dinner at the other end of a long table, with presenters and festival organizers lining each side. We were chatting quietly with our “tour guide” and “samba partner,” Tania, when a voice bellowed from the other end of the table, “Are you Steve Bosustow’s son?”. We poked our head out, looked down the long table and saw another head poked out, it was Mark Walsh.
We later had a chance to talk and he turned out to be a huge fan of UPA, as he said many were at Pixar. We were actually up in Emeryville a few years earlier interviewing a few Pixar artists, but were not allowed on the Pixar campus. Well, as we chatted with Mark, he asked if we’d be willing to show some UPA films at Pixar for some staff artists. So, a few months later we found ourselves inside the hitherto restricted Pixar campus, in that grand entrance that evokes, to us, the UPA of modern animation, breaking the new frontiers of computer generated animated films. The UPA Presentation of films and Q&A at Pixar Animation turned out to be a great success, brought us into the inner sanctum of Pixar, introduced us to a number of new contacts, and eventually led to interviews with some of the best of the best in animation. One of the people we interviewed and stayed in touch with was Jim Capobianco, who had the Hollywood Premier of his “Leonardo” short at the “Weekend of Animated Shorts” at the Egyptian Theatre, in November, 2009.
Category: Events
