RICHARD RUSHFIELD: THE KUDOS CRASHER

Future sense

The Visual Effects Awards may sound like a geekfest. But they also give a glimpse of the Hollywood to come.

Richard Rushfield

The Kudos Crasher

February 17, 2006

The Visual Effects Society Awards may be the nerdiest face of the season, but it's also the freshest.

The four-year-old show celebrates the 1,600 Society members who work as effects wizards and animators on everything from feature films to video games to theme park rides to commercials.

That means the VES honors represents an exploding sector of the industry, one that threatens to crush all others beneath its computer-graphical weight. In fact, it's not farfetched to think that 10 years from now we may well be mulling over the Globes and Oscars as good predictors of the VES Awards.

And so, black tie securely fastened, I drive to the Hollywood Palladium to witness the shape of awards shows to come.

Toying with tuxes The difference between this show and others this season is clear, right in the Palladium driveway. Normally one must push through a herd of black stretch limos to get to the door of an awards show. But setting the tone in front tonight are not one but two white stretch Hummer limousines.

Inside, it is quickly clear this is an actual dinner for the membership, not a made-for-TV event that members are invited to attend. At most shows, the entranceway is dominated by the red carpet/photo op space where a handful of celebs loom while the mere membership is sent scurrying around the side, like hired help forced to enter through the kitchen door.

In the VES foyer, across from a giant "Monsters Inc." statue, three photographers shoot some unidentifiable men in tuxes. Otherwise media hype is MIA.

During cocktail hour, the chummy bonhomie of a trade association prevails. The crowd, about 75% male, is not entirely the geekfest I had expected, although a smattering of wizard-like men in long beards and braided hair dot the room.

Many of the young men in tuxes look like they should be carded before being served drinks. But one can nod approvingly at the flourishes this group adds to their tuxes. Rather than modish, hipster variations, this group tampers in genuinely quirky ways. Bright maroon vests, kilts and plaid ties give the room a genuinely wacky air.

Hello Mr. Cheech At the dinner, I am stunned on third glance to realize the quiet, unassuming man seated to my left is in fact Richard "Cheech" Marin, formerly of "Cheech and Chong" fame.

A million miles from the pot jokes of his youth, conversation with Cheech turns out to be the most cultured chitchat one is likely to find at a Hollywood awards banquet.

He speaks in a modest but genuinely enthusiastic manner of his current beautrix, a Russian concert pianist, about the demands of classical music, about his collection of Chicano art, which is currently touring North America, and of the novel he is writing and his difficulty in finding a narrative voice.

Marin, who has made a second (or third) career of performing voice-over roles for animated films, (a man reminds him they worked together on "Fern Gully") puts his presence here in the context of his cultural interests. "I hang out with some artists," he says. "A lot of these animators are my buddies."

Having jumped on the nouveau animation bandwagon at its dawn with the "Lion King," Marin notes the change he's seen among his friends in the business over the past few years. "I saw the visual effects guys come into their rock star mode. All of a sudden, I'd see these animators show up in motorcycle jackets and these crazy clothes. I'd say, all right dude, looks good — but you're still not going to get laid."

On with the speechmaking The largely star-free ceremony feels much more like an actual get-together than the rest of the season's canned, made-for-TV spectaculars.

There is no host serving up helpings of shtick. The awards are largely handed out by titans of the business rather than stars. "And now a man who needs no introduction" the announcer intones. "Mr. Craig Baron." (The effects chief, I am told, of "The Ring" and "Mission Impossible 2").

At some points the presenters seem to have trouble explaining arcane categories such as "outstanding compositing" and "outstanding pre-rendered visuals." Presenter-actor Craig T. Nelson ("Mr. Incredible") gets huge laughs with his deadpan reading of the technical specs on a category.

The speeches are endearingly unrehearsed, stumbling and liberally dotted with geek jargon. The speeches do add up though, and when you are rewarding every branch of your trade, well, that can be a lot of branches. "The first five hours of this show just fly by," Cheech Marin jokes when he presents.

Still, after a season of canned, over-rehearsed, would-be spectacles, the site of a show about and for its members is a gust of fair winds.

The invisible men A recurring theme throughout the night is that if effects artists do their jobs right, no one should notice it's an effect. In the lobby, I chat with Van Ling, an effects supervisor for DVDs, who points proudly to the work of effects artists who created Ziyi Zhang's blue eyes in "Memoirs of a Geisha and Ralph Fiennes' reptilian nose in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (both of which were nominated for VES awards).

Throughout the night, references to making effects so seamless the audience doesn't notice draw loud applause. This is quite a contrast to the other awards I've attended this year, where the ceremonies often feel like sour-grape gatherings as members try to make ungrateful audiences and executives see how important we (pick one: producers, writers, etc.) really are.

This show upholds an air of celebration of the craft. Some credit for this must go to the clip reels. Face it, footage of King Kong fighting dinosaurs makes for much more exhilarating viewing than, say, soliloquies on racial relations from "Crash."

The god I have witnessed it seems hundreds of tribute speeches in honorary awards. I've seen Norman Lear, Anthony Hopkins and Grant Heslov lauded as living saints. But nothing can approach the riot of garlands laid at the feet of the VES honorary honoree, Pixar chief and incoming Disney Animation czar John Lasseter.

In speech after speech, filmed tribute after filmed tribute (including one from Yoda who burbles, "Apologies I send that present at your award I could not be.") the boyish wizard behind "Toy Story," "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" is credited with nothing less than creating modern animation by unleashing the power of computer animation.

In his speech, Lasseter tells of his eureka moment when, as a young, frustrated Disney animator, he was present at the first viewing of the light-cycle sequence in "Tron" and realized, "This is what Walt was waiting for."

His biggest applause, however, comes when he reminds the crowd that effects alone are not what make a film special: "What interests people is not the fact that it was made with computers. It is the energy and the characters that captures an audience."

I leave thinking it is a rarely confident group of Hollywood workers indeed who can applaud the notion that the product is bigger than themselves.