The Animators(23)

A high-pitched shriek of gas comes from my midsection. The mic picks it up. Glynnis glances at me. Then back to Mel.

“This must be an incredibly tough time for you, Mel,” she says.

“Yeah, well,” Mel says, “it’s, you know, never easy to lose someone. Even if you hadn’t been in touch. Which my mom and I weren’t, not really.” She pauses. Where is this coming from? “Still a weird place to be in.”

“For those of you who don’t know,” Glynnis starts, and then recounts the entirety of the whole grisly Kelly Kay fiasco—the prison scuffle, the wound. I sneak a look at Mel. Her face is neutral. I see the pink lining of her left eye jump slightly.

“Had you discussed the movie with your mother?” Glynnis asks gently.

“No,” Mel says. “She didn’t even know about it. Like I said, we hadn’t talked in a while.”

“Some have suggested, how would one phrase this, a complicated relationship between the depiction of Kelly Kay in this film and the events surrounding her death. What’s your reaction to this?”

I grit my teeth. Mel crosses and uncrosses her legs, sniffs deeply. “What, that guy from Salon who wrote that story? That what we’re really talking about here?”

“Well, if you want to address that—”

“I have no problem addressing that. It was a ridiculous argument. It was bullshit.”

I reach out to touch Mel’s arm.

Glynnis throws her hand out toward me. “Let her finish,” she says.

I shrink back.

The Salon story was on the ramifications of what the author coined “reality fiction”—stories based on real life, real people, actual events—and how these works affected those on whom the characters were based. Discussed were a writer with a recent novel detailing a breakup with an ex-girlfriend who, in turn, claimed her business suffered as a result of the book, and a woman who’d written a television show about her spectacularly ruinous marriage who did not deny that her handsome divorce settlement may have been inflated as a result of the publicity. Nashville Combat was the article’s centerpiece: a film so personal, and so troubling, that it may have precipitated the death of its inspiration, provoking a fellow inmate to beat her, either due to celebrity or infamy.

It was a reach, by any definition. But it was also a huge blow. An incredibly damning story in a respected publication with high page views. We all told Mel to not let it bother her; Donnie suggested an Internet ban. “Fuck it,” Mel said, flapping her hand. “It’s so much chatter. Doesn’t matter.” But it bothered her, I could tell.

I scroll to the quote on my iPhone and toss it into Mel’s lap, then give Glynnis the evil eye: See? I can be useful.

Mel picks up the phone. “If this movie is remembered at all in fifty years, it will be recalled as a snuff piece…less a work of art than a shock treatment, lacking in nuance or complexity. Okay,” Mel says, “look. Without getting too precious about it, art is what it is. And to use a work as a scapegoat for the crazy things people do is real, real shortsighted. So the next time he stages a goddamn puppet show with the ladies he rows crew with, let him slice the hell out of whatever he writes and retain whatever sense of superiority he can get out of it. Just because the movie made him uncomfortable does not give him the right to create some ridiculous causality between two events. I can’t help it if shitheel here walked in expecting Toy Story.”

Glynnis smiles.

Yeah. It’s real interesting when Mel flies off the handle, isn’t it, I think. “But there were other reviews,” I cut in, leaning forward to make Glynnis look me in the eye. “People who appreciated the movie’s honesty, its undiluted quality.” Rein her in, I will Glynnis. Control this interview, you patronizing twat. I know the landscape of Mel’s impulses and she is not on level ground right now. If something rubs her the wrong way, she will blow. And when it happens, it’s fast. It’s a T-bone at an intersection.

Mel recrosses her legs. Her left foot jounces up up up up up.

Glynnis changes the subject. “Let’s talk a little bit about your technical approach. Some have said that your decision to not use advanced CGI is—what’s the word here—contrarian?”

“We actually use CGI,” I correct her. “It would be hard to be a two-man operation without it. We use it in conjunction with traditional cel-by-cel tactics. And we do it because we believe in the technique, and we like the results. Period.”

Mel cuts in. “Lemme tell you something,” she says, and her voice is high and fast, still amped from the Salon story. “The time those guys who call us contrarian spend yapping is time we spend busting ass old-school. It’s like, Well, suckle my nuts, look at Johnny Seven-Figures using Maya to make a twenty-million-dollar movie. You know what? Fuck that. Johnny Seven-Figures is copping out of what makes him a cartoonist. He is compromising. If you get your meat from a bad cow, you’re gonna get a bad burger, you know what I’m saying? We are slaving away over the drafting board eating that burger medium rare because we know our butcher, Glynnis. And I don’t care if that cow rolled around in a kiddie pool of its own poo-poo, it’s a risk we’re gonna take. I will eat it because we do this honest or not at all.”

Mel leans back in her seat, takes a breath.

Glynnis is frozen in her chair. “Well put,” she manages.