One of the most anticipated movies for animation fans at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival is ClayDream – about the life and career of claymation master Will Vinton. Director Marq Evans interviewed Vinton before he passed away in 2018. Evans gives us Vinton’s highs (like the California Raisins characters and winning an Oscar) and lows (including a game-changing legal battle with Nike’s Phil Knight). This thorough, gritty doc premieres at home this Sunday June 13th at 7pmET. Evans shares all that went into making ClayDream, as well as how he’ll remember Vinton.

Jackson Murphy: Has this been in the works for several years?

Marq Evans: Yeah. The idea for the film came back in 2015. I was wrapping up my previous film and looking for other projects. I came across an article that I thought was really great. It detailed the rise and fall of Will Vinton Studios. I was familiar with Will – knew his name, the mustache, some of the characters like the California Raisins and the Domino’s Noid. Grew-up with them. I thought this feels like a movie. This sounds awesome. I found an email for Will. I reached out that day and got an email back from his assistant, who I actually found out later was his wife. (laughs) She was like, “He’ll talk to you but he’s really not interested in doing a documentary.”

Marq Evans: I was like, “Okay, we’ll see what happens.” Will and I got together for about three hours over coffee. We hit it off. Thought it went great. I was like, “I think this is gonna happen.” A couple days later he said, “Yeah… I don’t really wanna do it.” That was how it started. Six months later, we continued to talk and ultimately he agreed to do it. From then on: great access. Anything I needed, whether it was shooting interviews or spending time with him or access to his archives, it was all open.

JM: What do you think surprised you the most about Will in your conversations with him?

ME: Two things: One – he’s a very down to earth, “normal” person. He’s not this eccentric artist who’s hard to connect with. I thought he was a very normal guy. He’s from a small town in Oregon, and that just comes out. And then I didn’t know just how positive of a person he was… never gonna dwell on anything negative. It’s always positive. It’s always moving forward. And I think ultimately, as I got into the story, it might’ve been so positive to a fault. There’s things I think he maybe didn’t address because he just didn’t want anything negative to be in his life. He would rather avoid it, just think positive and move on – that maybe in hindsight he should’ve addressed. But I just enjoyed spending time with him. There were a lot of fun times out on his boat without the camera that are memories that will be with me for a long time.

JM: I agree, after watching the film, that he wanted to be as positive as possible. But he faced a lot. There were a lot of issues that went on at that studio. I didn’t know all of the major Laika backstory. It’s fascinating to unravel. This story is unbelievable. Why did you decide you wanted to keep going back to this Phil Knight & Travis Knight saga throughout ClayDream?

ME: One of the reasons why I think you may not have known [everything]… is because Laika doesn’t like to tell the story like that. They do like to tell the story of them starting the company with their first film and there wasn’t really a history before that, which is not true. So we wanted to include that. But also, it was the natural progression of the film. And also as a storyteller and filmmaker, that’s the dramatic arc of the film and Will’s [creative] life. It all led-up to that meeting – him and Phil Knight coming together as an investor. At first it was fine and then ultimately it wasn’t fine. There were a lot of issues with that. It’s a story that’s gonna surprise a lot of people because I don’t think a lot of people know that.

JM: And you go so deep into that. What you also do in making this film is that you go through Will’s catalogue of films, shorts, specials and commercials and you pick the perfect moments that tie into the emotions that we’re all feeling. How big of a challenge was that to make those so in sync.

ME: Thank you for saying that and noticing that. There was a lot of work that went into… and it was a lot of fun… choosing the right archive to go with those emotional moments. It was an easy decision to do it because otherwise you’re looking at conference room-type deposition. The story was great but there was another layer that we wanted visually to go along with it. That was really fun. We auditioned a lot of different pieces to make sure we found the ones that emotionally fit the best. That was definitely one of my favorite parts of the editing process.

JM: I bet it was! And I can’t believe Will and Bob Gardiner won an Oscar [for Best Animated Short Film, Closed Mondays] in 1974, right out of the gate [in their careers]. What were some of the moments [in Will’s life story] that made you gasp and that truly shocked you as you were uncovering everything?

ME: Bob’s story is certainly tragic and that was something, emotionally, I felt right away. To the point where we were able to interview one of Bob’s daughters, and she brought additional emotion to that story that I think was needed. We had cuts early on, and I felt like we’re not doing Bob’s story right. We need to have this human element and I think his daughter helped provide that. And Will struggled to talk about that – even up until the very end. He finally in the movie got to say closer to what he felt. Also the deposition stuff and watching all of that was really eye-opening for me: to be in that room and hear and see what actually happened vs. what people want to say happened or what kind of spin they might wanna put on it. I can see it right there in the footage and I wanted to tell the honest story. Of course we’re making editorial decisions because we’re choosing what to use and what not to use and there was 20-30 hours of this. But I think we got it right.

JM: In seeing these clips and shorts, I love the style Will had. How do you think his work still holds up 30-40 years later?

ME: I think it holds up because of the handmade-ness of it. The DIY side of it. Anybody can watch this work – and it doesn’t look so outdated to me – but in the way it looks outdated, you still have this emotional connection to it because you can see that it was handmade. And he pioneered so many things. He provided the roadmap for what you’re seeing today. There are a lot of people who have continued on doing stop-motion who are doing it – even on a higher level. He paved the way for that.

JM: You show the audio recordings of Michael Jackson’s phone messages. How did you get those?

ME: Those were from Will. He saved those. He kind of always wanted to animate those someday. That was a dream he had that he never got to do. And we even toyed around with it too and ultimately decided it played best just hearing them. The relationship with Will and Michael in that storyline represents Will at his peak. Will Vinton and his work was so successful at that point that you’ve got the biggest star in the world following him… harassing him… leaving voicemail after voicemail… trying to get his attention to make this into a commercial. That’s gotta represent some sort of peak.

JM: Yeah. I also did not know about Will designing the M&Ms characters.

ME: They still look like that today!

JM: The M&Ms are everywhere. He created their names, their backstories, their colors.

ME: I do remember that he did the M&Ms, so I knew that going in. But it was really cool… I didn’t realize that computer animation and Toy Story hadn’t been created yet. Computer animation was brand new when they were creating these [M&Ms]. The way you see them today is pretty much exactly the same as how they were created in storyboards and sketches [shown] in the film. That’s exactly how they pitched them and won that contract. It’s really cool to see how it started and it’s still the same.

JM: Have you seen the Noid on the new Domino’s commercials?

ME: Yeah. It’s cool having him back. I love that. I think he’s such a great character. I don’t think it’s the same being in CGI. But it is cool having him back.

JM: I visited Starburns Industries a couple years ago. How were they directly involved in this?

ME: They’re great partners. I had been doing this for a couple years and then XYZ Films showed interest and they came on and were great partners. Not long after that, I met Starburns. Originally we planned to do more original claymation. That was the original conversation with them and then we ultimately scrapped that for a few different reasons. But we still do some original animation. They produced that and were great partners along the way with feedback on cuts and being producing partners. I couldn’t have asked for better co-producers.

JM: Learning about the amusement park [idea, Claymation Station] was really interesting too, and how much Will wanted to mirror Walt Disney. Do you think that if all had gone well – if Wilshire Pig had been a phenomenon – do you think the amusement park would’ve worked?

ME: I don’t know. What an ambitious thing! But nobody thought Disneyland was gonna work. Everybody thought at the time that was gonna be the demise of Walt Disney. It’s hard to say. But including that in the film was to represent that Will was going down this path of being the next Walt Disney. That was there – to the point where he kind of could’ve been with this Pixar acquisition that could’ve happened around the Toy Story time. It would’ve been cool. I don’t know if it would’ve been successful or not, but it certainly would’ve been to see talking garbage cans in lands.

JM: How does it make you feel that you’re part of this comeback of the Tribeca Film Festival?

ME: It’s huge. It’s one of the best film festivals there is and was one early on we thought, “If we could premiere at a festival like Tribeca, that’s a goal for the film.” Couldn’t be happier with that. It’s cool being part of the At Home because anyone in the U.S. can watch it. Hope we get a good turnout. We’ll see. We’re just starting to make plans of what the actual wide release of the film will be. It’ll be exciting to see what happens.

JM: Yeah, I was gonna ask you that.

ME: We don’t have a distributor yet. Tribeca will be the premiere to see. We’re starting to talk to buyers and we’ll see where it ends up landing.

JM: Great. I think many studios will be interested in this… especially since you were able to talk to Will not long before he passed away. When he passed away [in October 2018] and you were in the middle of this, did you feel like you needed to change course in any way?

ME: No. Definitely thought about that, though. Does this change things for the movie? I took a couple days to just be sad and then thought, “Okay, what does this mean for the movie?” The movie’s a separate thing than real-life. Ultimately it didn’t change much. We decided, “Is that in the film?” And I think it was pretty clear early on, “Yeah.” It’s the whole story of Will. I didn’t necessarily see his death coming, but I did realize towards that that he was not doing as well. We were gonna get together one time and I didn’t hear from him for a week. That was not normal. Finally he responded and said, “Hey – apologies. A couple alligators in my health”… or something like that. I thought, “That’s something for him to say. He usually would just charge through.”

And then the last time I saw him, we shot together when he was getting treatment for cancer. I remember him walking away and I was thinking, “He’s not doing as well as he wants me to think he is.” He’s so positive. It was probably a month or two later I had a missed call from his son, and I knew as soon as I saw that, I knew what that was. He had passed. It was an emotional several days and then, “Okay, I gotta get back to it.” So… it was a big thing I had to add to the end of the film, so I just tried to figure out how to incorporate that the best way. Also knowing that fans of his might know but the general audience – if we can reach a large audience – probably won’t even know now. I’m hearing that already – that people didn’t realize that he passed away.