That's remarkable.
The first shot is the one I've been looking forward to seeing most --
There's a shot in there where the entire Golden City is shown, and it turns around 360 degrees in perspective and moves up to the minaret - it's really tiny, and you can't see what's going on in any copy of the workprint. I'm hoping it can finally be seen here.
I've gotten in touch with Alex Williams - Richard's son and a major animator himself - noted for Scar in the Lion King and Tack in The Thief. He wants to see this cut - he notes that Richard himself won't want to see it though, as Richard no longer discusses this film, for obvious personal reasons.
Okay, maybe not quite so obvious as surely very complicated and painful, but I'll be respectful of that.
I also have Roy Naisbitt's (Richard's longtime assistant) old phone number, but I'm scared to call it.
I've also gotten in touch with Andreas Wessel-Therhorn, an animator on the film who tells this story ... the sad story of Richard's obsession and the demise of the Thief. A story we've heard before, but he tells it particularly well.
Andreas Wessel-Therhorn writes:
well where to begin. thief was my very first job in animation. a friend, art director Hans Bacher, pointed me and my friend from college towards Dick williams and that he was hiring young animators. He actually hired two other german guys just before. we booked a flight to london and met with dick, which was very exciting. The production was still based at Dicks studio in Camden town in Royal college street. We showed him our college film and portfolios and he offerend us jobs as animating assistants. we moved to london a few weeks later, sharing a house with the other german artists.we were all promoted to animators 6 months later.
dick was upstairs in a room working and playing the trumpet. he was encouraging and he made us want to work hard to finish the movie. our normal workweek became 56 hours, not much time for anything else.the frustrating part was though, that we never seem to get anywhere near a finished movie. as the crew expanded, more complicated scenes were added and few storytelling scenes were animated. there was no story reel or storyboard of the movie.it was all in Dicks head and we got glimpses of what this movie could be. to say that the movie was unfairly closed down is somewhat revisionist and not quite accurate. At that time in the early 90s, when the film went into full production, it had its best shot at actually being finalized. Yet Dick, the motor behind everything that got created, was also its biggest roadblock. He loved the process of making this movie and i often wondered if deep down, he never quite wanted to finish it. it was so long in various stages of production and it became a legend before ever seeing a movie screen... one has to wonder if there was a certain fear of not living up to the hype. in an ideal world, someone would have given him unlimited resources to work on it as long as he needed. in the real world, real investors quite reasonably want to see a product they can sell. It always struck me as odd that the big warner executives seem to be so happy with the 'progress', when essentially they kept seeing more or less the same footage, never wondering how it might all tie together. when after nearly 2 years of full production there was no film, they sent in Dan Rounds to determine, how much of the script was actually finished and when they might expect a movie they could release. they also forced Dick to storyboard the entire movie, so they could get an idea how it played. This was kind of the beginning of the end. Dick really did not want to storyboard the film, as he would loose control of his vision. in one of the most amazing feats in animation i have ever seen, he almost singlehandedly storyboarded the movie in 2 weeks, and these board panels were amazing works of layout and character art. absolutely astounding. finally, there was a big screening for the entire crew at the Bafta headquarters in piccadilly. everyone was excited. Dick got up to hold a speech, thanking everyone for their hard work and promising, that we would all be very proud of this movie. well, the screening ran and it became very clear to everyone there that despite some amazing animation and design work, there was no movie that engaged anyone. what should have been a giant morale booster turned into the exact opposite. well, shortly after we came to work one morning and we were informd that by the end of the day, the production would shut down. then, after we had a very depressing lunchbreak, we were told that we had to vacate the building immediately. there was utter pandemonium. people were running around trying to take whatever artwork they had, home. the personal stuff of 2 years had to be moved. in in the middle of all this chaos, there was dick williams, animating a scene. It was heartbreaking. i, like many others, couldnt help but shed tears.
Maybe this movie will be best remembered as the movie that never was...
Though Richard Williams is, like many great artists, not the easiest person in the world and can go from mild to mad in 10 seconds flat, i have nothing but respect for this man. He gave plenty of animators their first shot in this business, sharing his knowledge freely and generously and on a project that, though it may not have lived up to its potential in the end, was driven not by merchandize or a market trend, but by the pure artistic vision of a remarkable man.and thats something i will always cherish.
Andreas
