Meet John Clark Matthews

Today we’d like to introduce you to John Clark Matthews.

Thanks for sharing your story with us John. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
In my early career, I wrote, directed and produced stop-motion children’s films that were seen on ABC, Disney Channel, PBS, HBO and different places around the world. I also composed the music for many of these films. Later, when computer MIDI systems were available, I also performed most of the music. I especially enjoyed “Mickey Mousing” the music tracks, which means the music is synced to the action like they did in old cartoons.

Why did I choose to make children’s films? We are what we think. Our thoughts define us. Trying to inspire young minds seemed a worthy cause. All of my films were based on famous children’s books that were well-loved by children, parents and teachers. And you better believe that I was always very careful to be true to the original books. Sorry to say, I learned this lesson the hard way; there’s nothing worse than hate mail from angry librarians! I also soon learned that dead authors were the best kind to deal with. The deader the better.

Bringing to life imaginary creatures and worlds is a lot of fun. During this period, my life with puppets and people in the cartoon business was very much like what Pee Wee Herman pretended in his TV series. Yes, Curious George, Frog and Toad, Ralph the Mouse, Morris the Moose (and other critters) bought my house and boat for me! They paid for all I ate and included vacations too. I love those little guys!

During this period I also won some awards including five Emmy nominations, three Ace Nominations, a George Foster Peabody Medal, a Carnegie Medal, – over 100 awards from all over the world. A funny thing: when you win a Golden Cine, the US government enters your films in all kinds of foreign film festivals. The problem is they never tell you anything about it – even if you win. For example, during a meeting, an HBO executive congratulated me on winning some award in India. I just went along with him, but I had no idea what he was talking about. I received 17 Golden Cines so this kind of thing happened a lot.

(Oh, almost forgot this: about a year later, I received a Silver Elephant statue award in the mail. I think it was kind of an Oscar thing in India. The studio I worked for at the time went through diplomatic channels to fetch this prize out of some government closet. It’s a very cool thing that now lives in a box in my barn loft with similar objects and spiders.)

There’s only one reason I mention awards: bums never get awards. I win an award, therefore I am not a bum. The more awards I win, the less of a bum I am. Anyway, whenever I did win something, it only made me feel good for a few minutes – unless there was a cash award; then the happy lasted a little longer.

Soon I got into live-action + animation productions like The Mouse and the Motorcycle series produced for ABC. Here‘s a story about bad luck becoming good luck and vice versa: The ABC Mouse series went well and they gave us a green light to go to series. This is the kind of thing a filmmaker like me prays for. Happy I am for a few minutes; Beverly Cleary, the author didn’t want the network messing with her books. She refused to give us the rights. I have to admit that she was right; after the TV people got through, there probably wouldn’t even be a mouse in the show.

Anyway, I tried to think of a substitute property. I instantly thought of Stuart Little. Now this book had a mouse, a family, a cat and a dead author. Perfect! We wrote to the heir and tried to get the rights. Well, Joel White (the heir) was not an easy customer. He made it clear that he was not interested in the movie business or “taxidermy” – referring to my furry stop-motion puppets. We wrote again trying to sweet talk him. His response was a gigantic handwritten scribble: “NO!!!!” (I still have these letters.)

Skipping ahead, the studio I was working for was dying and I needed to find an agent. An executive at Universal introduced me to one that she thought highly of. I can’t use his name, but he was a malicious actor – meaning a fake and a liar. During our first meeting he asked me what projects I was interested in doing. With little hope, I mentioned Stuart Little. He told me that property had passed over his desk the prior week. (I assume Joel White needed money or died.) This agent wasn’t familiar with Stuart Little, but I told him it was a real winner – ABC would certainly be interested. He walked over to me, I stood up. “Do you really want to do this Stuart Little?” “Yes”, I said trying not to pee in my pants. We shook hands and he walked back to his desk and called the literary agent in New York about an option.

Well, ABC was interested and we instantly had a series pilot in the works. But nothing’s easy. In a few weeks, I found out that this agent had walked away from ABC with the property – he discovered what he had. My connection was now severed. Ouch!

Skip ahead a few years. I’m now working for Sony Pictures Imageworks. I get a call from a CEO telling me what our next picture would be: Stuart Little. I learn that Amy Pascal (The Queen of Sony Pictures) gave it the green light because she remembered the Mouse and Motorcycle shows on ABC and it all made sense. So here my previous work helps make that rat agent wealthy. Live and burn!

But this story does not end here. While at Sony Pictures, I was involved with property development and various technical projects. I became very interested in motion capture and did a couple of development projects with it. These went well and I was given an HBO project with Stuart Little. The studio wanted to see what this motion capture could do. It came out pretty good.

Originally, The Polar Express was going to be live action. After seeing my motion capture with Stuart Little and other tests, the studio decided to set up a motion capture test for Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis. During a meeting with Zemeckis’ production people, I used the term “performance capture” instead of motion capture. I remember the look in their eyes; that term elevated the technique from video games to professional acting.

To say that Hanks and Zemeckis were enthusiastic about performance capture is an understatement. Hanks ended up doing the parts of the Hero Boy (Chris), Hero Boy’s father, Conductor, Hobo, Scrooge puppet, Santa Claus. He had some fun. Zemeckis had a CGI model made of his wife as a child and she did the performance capture for the movie as Chris’s sister.

I was a lead animator on The Polar Express. I also designed the facial animation interface and supervised a lot of the face morphing model construction. I also did research in eye movement and taught some classes to the animators on this subject. During the Hot Chocolate scene, I conceived of a Z – Depth Rendering system that allowed us to see all of the characters rendered together during production. This program proved to be extremely useful.

Has it been a smooth road?
The road was never smooth; most of the time there wasn’t even a road.

After the small film company I worked for died, I was forced to start my own business. This was an ugly ride. Companies like Disney and ABC don’t pay right away. It’s was always at least six weeks before I’d get a check and then the bank would hold it for a week or so. (I never understood why BofA would hold a genuine Disney check with Mickey Mouse on it.) To this day, every time I see a FedEx truck I have a Pavlovian response: Is that my check?! Do I need to rob a bank to pay our employees?! Do I need to find a bridge to jump off?!

Keeping the studio busy made it necessary for me to be constantly hunting, prowling and sniffing for work. And then I would strike it rich and we would have too much work and not enough time – and never enough money! Yes, my little animation studio was Never, Never Land – Never enough time, Never enough money.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
Currently, I’m creating artwork using traditional and CGI techniques. You can see my latest work at: JCM51.com/artwork.

I’m also composing music of various types. Currently, I’m very interested trying to create music described in Near Death Experiences.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
There isn’t a final moment when you jump up and exclaim: “I’m a success!” and go take a long nap. And it’s not fatal when you fall flat on your face. For me it’s about constantly working hard and trying to be smart. Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose. If you’re in a mostly win period, I suppose you could consider yourself a success – at least for a few minutes.

Two things for sure: the only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. And Luck is weird!

In the film business, you have to be ready for criticism – sometimes in-your-face, outright insults. You work two years + on a film and some do-nothing slams your hard work, and it hurts. I always try to temper the praise and the negative comments. I don’t get excited about good reviews and I don’t get excited about bad reviews. But still, some nasty remark can haunt me for years.

There should be classes in college to toughen filmmakers up – Abuse 101: the professor and everyone else in the class takes turns insulting and ridiculing each other until it means nothing. Maybe they’d have “guest insulters” to come and lay it on thick. I see myself there like Odysseus tied to the mast, impervious to the shrieking harpies. “Go on, make my day, criticize my film!” I’d lie.

Contact Info:

• Website: JCM51.com (recent artwork) JohnClarkMatthews.com (my older films)
• Phone: (909) 336-5905
• Email: JohnClarkMatthews@gmail.com

Image Credit:
Photo by Nigel Matthews (my son) and various employees and my wife.

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