LABOUR DAY and some reasons WHY

Yes, just what was it that did happen way back there, way back then . . .

AND WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW  ——————-  RIGHT HERE ———————  IN CANADA

This blog was supposed to come out in May on MAY DAY 2009, but I delayed.  Life itself had become too frantic and busy in the Spring and Summer, but now at the end of Summer and beginning of Fall of 2009, it seems that I feel more like sending this out.

A while ago, and perhaps even now, there had been some speculation about why I left LAIKA, why I was laid off.  

On that uncomfortable day last Christmas I was told “ There is no work for you to do “.              

In the strictest sense, this was true.  The people actually responsible (for getting new movies through and out of DEVELOPMENT, so that those of us in PRODUCTION could actually *make* the next movies) had not satisfactorily completed their work and so ….. there really was no PRODUCTION work to be done …… probably for the next 12 to 18 months or so at that point in time ….. somewhere around the end of 2009 or even the middle of 2010.

This blog might help to cast some light on at least *my*  2008 layoff situation.  Although there really was  other work for me to do there, the proverbial “POWERS-THAT-BE” ( not a bunch of Powers really … only one “Decider” with some advisors really ) deigned that the work should be done by someone other than me.  This Decider did not have the character nor guts to talk with me himself, and in fact on the same day I was laid off, when I saw him emerging from the office of my boss the CEO, he turned his face down to the floor and away from me to avoid looking at me ….. though we were only about 15 feet apart in an empty hallway.   But I knew all this was coming.  I had sensed it almost a year earlier and had been very frustrated for that entire year.  The following is an excerpt from a phone call exchange with a truly objective outside party, made just after the LAYOFFS in 2008. 

After some discussion about why all of this happened, both to the 300+ production people in general, and to me in particular . . . .  I ended up saying something like :

“Well, thanks for the call . . . and I do agree with your more objective critique.”

“In fact, I know that if I had revolted against my boss and allied myself with aggressive people to go to the owner behind my boss’ back, I would have succeeded in staying at the studio and working at LAIKA.  ( I probably could have even been promoted )”

 “ I knew that well over a year ago  

  ( when my boss specifically asked me to step back a bit from the first LAIKA movie ) 

  ( when my boss specifically did not want me to help in DEVELOPMENT, told me ‘no, just let them do it’ ) 

  and when I chose not to step over my boss to the owner of the company,

  as others had done … successfully.”

  “I just don’t work like that . . . not because I can’t, but because I choose not to.” 

  “I would make that same decision again today,  

   so I am at peace with “the situation” at LAIKA.” 

  ( easier to be at peace when you are out of it )

I went on to explain to the caller  “I ran into this same LA-style corporate-aggressive-rule-the-roost climate in DISNEY years ago, and it was one of the reasons for me deciding to leave DISNEY after working on many good movies there.  But, thanks again for your call because I admire and respect your work and your integrity.”

 ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

That was the gist of the phone call conversation way back in December of last year, just after the layoffs when I was trying to make sense of what had just happened there in Portland, Oregon.

If I had acted much earlier, and had aggressively TAKEN OVER the Development-Into-Production process ( rather than politely-respectfully trying to influence it with Plain Old Common Sense ), or maybe even gone around my boss very early on in the making of the first LAIKA movie when we *all* KNEW the work was growing in scope, size, and complexity ….. maybe things would have been different ….. but after telling my boss about growing concerns every week, I was told to let it continue, and then eventually to back away from it ( and that first movie grew from 80 budgeted minutes to 100+ unanticipated expensive minutes that fortunately eventually found a large enough paying audience  . . .  so none of the practicalities ended up mattering at all . . . such is show-biz ).

Although I had attempted to influence the work needing to be done, both in the making of the first movie and in the development area of the next movies ( that really should have been ready for production after two and a half long years in Development ), my boss directly asked me to step back from both areas ….. and I respected and followed my boss’ request.   After all, my boss had given me good raises over the three years, as well as MERIT INCREASES based on my truly productive performance in the new LAIKA company. 

But, even if I had approached it all differently, it would not  have been neat and tidy.

It would have been messy.   The lack of clarity about who was actually responsible and in charge of the movie-making side of LAIKA caused many of us great difficulties.  Several left voluntarily even before the layoff.  When a post-mortem interviewing was done on the making of the first movie the pattern of feedback and answers was obvious and consistent. 

Until all of that is dealt with…. ( and perhaps it HAS all been dealt with by now ? ) …. the bad operational history will just repeat itself at LAIKA.

Further adding to my long period of frustration was the official response I received when trying to correct specific management problems …… during attempts to identify, quantify, and simplify production problems within the very first movie, I was sneeringly told at that time by the naïve and mostly invisible Leader that :

“we do not need a Police State” at LAIKA.

 

All in all, when the confusing and toxic smoke has finally cleared, ( and maybe it HAS all cleared by now )  I think we will all see that during at least that specific period of time from 2006-to-2009, we had all been just toys in a rich man’s play-box, and that the eventual moments of truth will  come to those whose fervent desire for something so different  ( “cheaper-edgier-scrappier” )  is stronger than their ability to see it what it actually takes  to create and build quality stories and movies on a continuously improving basis in a multi-picture movie studio.

Out of all of this, over the last three years or so I learned that Portland and Oregon are truly beautiful and wonderful places full of genuinely friendly people.   But along with that I also had to learn that both are ruled thoroughly by the King of Oregon and those he sanctions.   I had seen this kind of COMPANY TOWN fear and disdain before.  When I grew up years ago in old Detroit no one could say anything against the now infamous BIG THREE automakers ( mostly because everyone and their sister and cousin worked for them in Detroit . . . and now we all know how that attitude caused things to turn out for the entire Midwest of the United States ).    Much of what I read & heard in Portland after the 2008 LAIKA layoffs seemed to ignore the way over 300 people had been managed right out of the company as they were let go late in 2008 ………. any talk or coverage of the events seemed to distort the situation into something else too?

 

 This older book

about Portland of the past

described a nature of the city

that I seemed to see signs of again later                     in the more current Portland media ?

And to be very honest, on top of everything else I have just described I guess I have always  had problems with authority when it refused to make sense, or acted in a juvenile and irresponsible manner that negatively affected the organization, the people in that organization, and the real work to be done ……. and in this particular case, when it also remained cold and silent to its own people……    

. . . out of ignorance, fear, or disdain.

But TIME really does take care of all these things, and as I said, I am glad to be out of that situation.

SO – THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED THEN,

AND HERE’S WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW, RIGHT HERE……

Now, after all this time, I am back in Toronto-Ontario-Canada again.

In many ways it feels very similar to my more frugal existence back when I was an art student in Detroit in the 1960’s.  While I miss some of the extravagances of spending that we had enjoyed in recent years ( at least those years after  I rebuilt from the devastation of a destructive surprise divorce in ’03 ), there is a degree of comfortable simplicity and almost a quiet neutrality of being that comes with making and spending less.

The change, the chaos and upheaval that is going on now  in the world most probably outweighs any of the turmoil I had experienced before, even back in my “student” days in the 1960’s.  It was/is inevitable that confusion and difficulty would be on the rise as the technological ( and economic ? ) curve of change accelerates and steepens.

Sitting in Canada now, instead of the United States of America, does give me a more clear view of what seems to be all around us, all of us.  At this point in time it feels like the same END-OF-EMPIRE that I saw happen to England in the 1950’s-1960’s when I was sitting in the United States.  That did not alter the problems England faced, but it certainly changed the way Life was lived, and the way the rest of the world regarded England.

I am glad and happy to back in Canada.  Canada has its own unique set of problems and challenges but even now, forty years later, the friendly and civilized Canada that I first met back in 1969 still presents itself and lives in an honourable and positive way in this world.  In short, we are happy to be back in Canada.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

But another big change because of all of this has been me leaving the arena of MAKING MOVIES. ( i refuse to call them “films” any more )

- movies movies movies . . . I am done with them, the MAKING of them I mean.

I will still go to movies in theatres . . . for the communal experience, and for 3d stereo

… at least until 3d stereo come to my 68″ big home screen in our living room.

- but the making of them, especially the making of animated movies requires an attitude of

acceptance about loyal artistic samurai becoming roaming nonaffiliated ronin, armoured against

the violence and collateral damage of THE MARKET PLACE & PLANNING APATHY & INCOMPETENCE.

( to this day we remember still that masterless samurai called ronin caused troubles for themselves during the early Edo Period in Japan. )

No, for me treading forward with the wisps of semi-retirement swirling about my strong but aging veined ankles, … for me … if i must  put effort in again, it will be to LEARN that which i have avoided . . . some REALTIME INTERACTIVE.

Not about the LOOK and STORY so much as about the culture and psychology of making new things for others to create or indulge themselves in some addictive participatory creativity of their own.

( as I get deeper in doing this I remember back to childhood when branches and sticks from the forest, or even manufactured green plastic soldiers only about 2.5 inches tall, how they all lost their stiff lifelessness and became real living things in my young and playful hands, and how long I could STAY in that world . . . enjoying myself with my own fiction )

- yes, if I have to do it again in any way I want to learn ( RElearn? ) about things like this.

But I will always like movies.

Movies were my Educator growing up.  Movies led me to Music, and Art, and Literature.

In my last days in Portland Oregon movies led me back to Fiction Literature from the 1930’s.  As I read and read ( while trying to sort out what had happened, and what had been lost, and what was next ), I came across this text from Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 San Francisco story of  THE MALTESE FALCON :

      “He returned and sat, elbows on knees, cheeks in hands, looking at the floor.  Red rage came suddenly into his face and he began to talk in a harsh guttural voice.  Holding his maddened face in his hands, glaring at the floor, he cursed Bundy for five minutes without a break, cursed him obscenely, blasphemously, repetitiously, in a harsh and guttural voice. 

Then he took his face out of his hands,

looked at the girl, grinned sheepishly,

and said :

“Childish, huh? I know, but, by God, I do hate being hit

without hitting back.  It’s a cheap price to pay for winning.

 Though I will remember it.”

More bloggish writings to come on 1830’s British warehouse architecture

and living in Toronto The Good,

but for now, ( the end ).