Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby's latest film, Wild Life, adapts Aesop's fable about the grasshopper and the ants. It shows the inevitable arc of a young aristocrat who settles in turn-of-the-20th Century Alberta, a place he is completely unsuited for.
Amanda and Wendy discussed the film with Suite 101, shortly before it won the Canadian Film Institute's Best Canadian Animation award at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
S101: Tell me about Wild Life.
Amanda Forbis: “Our film is part faux-documentary, part -
Wendy Tilby: “Meditation.”
Amanda: “- Part Canadian western.”
S101: Where did the idea come from?
Amanda: “About 20 years ago, someone told me about Remittance Men, these guys who came from England in the early 20th Century and flooded Western Canada. All young guys, from aristocratic or upper-class families who tootled around, drank too much and lived high.”
Wendy: “They were given an allowance from Daddy at home.”
Amanda: “They were not practically-minded at all. They knew Latin, could recite poetry from memory but they had no idea about farming, especially Canadian farming.
“You never hear about them, but they spent money in the West. Stephen Avenue Mall in Calgary was called the street the Remittance Men built because they had money. Because of this mania for newness, we have this tendency to forget everything. We have this lore about how we were all winners and cowboys, so this story was intriguing.
“The concept moved into the notion of adaptation, or the lack thereof. What happens when somebody is removed from their usual environment? I think a lot of us would not adapt to certain things, so we try not to make him unlikeable but he’s just in the wrong environment.”
Wendy: “It’s the clash between civilization and wilderness. All the fine breeding and education in the world is not going to help you in all situations. It’s about that kind of hubris.”
Amanda: “What is our education for? What does it do for us? Both our grandfathers came out from England and neither of them did particularly well –“
S101: Were they both Remittance Men?
Amanda: “No, they were too young for that.”
Wendy: “They weren’t sent, but they did come with the promise of adventure, the golden opportunity in Canada. They both came out here and it was much harsher than they expected. My grandparents raised a big family on the Prairie in the midst of the Great Depression. Terrible story.”
S101: Were there a specific character you had in mind?
Amanda: “He’s a composite.”
Wendy: “A symbolic character.”
Amanda: “He's modeled on several characters. One story was too comedic for our purposes: a guy in the Okanagan invited his buddies over for Christmas dinner. His guests rowed across a lake with the booze, and drank it on the way. He was so mad that he stormed outside and never came back. They found him the next morning, frozen to death, sitting underneath a tree with his pipe clenched in his mouth. (laughs) That was one story.”
S101: What influenced the look of the film?
Wendy: “The visuals were the hardest part. We started this just after we finished our previous film When the Day Breaks, which was very painterly. We were getting computer-literate and we thought, ‘This one’s going to be faster. We’re not getting bogged down in paint and texture.’ We explored hybrid techniques, thinking we could take fabulous shortcuts but the look didn’t gel. Because the landscape was such a strong character, it needed to be featured prominently. When we did bare line drawings, it didn’t have the depth we wanted.
“After quite a bit of trial and error, we painted the whole thing in heavy watercolour. We animated in the computer, printed everything out and painted it, then scanned it back in. It was a very long process.”
S101: Did you always want to give your character the ending you gave him?
Amanda: “He had to sink because that was really the point of the story.”
S101: Why?
Amanda: “We saw those empty, dead houses on the Prairies, these symbols of failure, and I find them poetic. The Prairies are such a harsh environment, and this film paid tribute to those lost souls out there.
“If he’d pulled through, that would suggest adaptation and this film is about failure to adapt. I don’t think you’re ever in doubt as to whether he’ll pull out in the end.”
S101: Right from the start, I felt this inevitable arc and I wondered if you were going to surprise us-
Amanda: “There were many people who thrived and became incredible citizens, but we wanted to retell Aesop’s fable about the grasshopper who plays while the ants put food away for the winter. He just does not get it.”
Wendy: “We didn’t want it to be a tragic tale, which is why you’re not taken up close and personal with the character. We want you to feel for him but we had the parallel with the comet imagery: it’s bright and colourful and poof, it’s gone. That’s how we saw him: a brief colourful flash on this bland landscape. The comet lifted his death into a quasi-religious experience. To make the film less of a bummer!” (laughs)
Amanda: “It’s not a completely lost life: there is this extraordinary moment of grace and that’s all. None of us really live significant lives, he’s just another guy.”
(In Part #2 of this interview, Amanda and Wendy shared more about Wild Life, and Animation Boy™ gets evil.)
Dominic von Riedemann - Dominic is the Animated Film Feature Writer, and winner of 11 Suite 101 Editors' Choice Awards.
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