Monday, April 9, 1034
Daily Nebraskan
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11 y Eric Peterson
A small but crucial fact about filmmaker Robert
Brecr's work is that he does most of it not on 3 by
5-inch white cards, a3 reported in American Film,
the Daily Nebraskan and other sources, but on the
larger format of 4 by 6 cards. Amateur animators
have come to Brcer "bloodshot...and hunchbacked,"
he rH, perhaps exaggerating for effect, because
they tried squeezing their work on cards too small.
Brecr, one of the most prominent American
avant-garde animators, was in Lincoln Thursday
and Friday as part of a Sheldon Film Theatre film
Video Showcase of his'short Films.
Breer first began working creatively as a painter
and sculptor. He went to live in Paris in 1949 and
returned to the U.S. in 1938, and his love for France
shows in his first extant film, Recreation.
"Americans went to Paris...to get away from a
repressive society," Breer explained. "It was for sex
and free living...to get away from family, to get away
from the Puritan ethics and all that. And art was in a
dynamic state."
Breer became involved with an avant:garde move
ment in painting there called nco-plasticism, con
cerned with a geometric abstraction influenced by
Mondrian, Breer said. Mostly they were Commu
nists, he added, with "a ferocious identification with
the avant-garde."
What got Breer interested in film was the juxta
position of images possible. "A thing that struck me
about film as opposed to painting was that you don't
see everything simultaneously. You could move
from hot to cold (in film) without the hot and cold
cancelling each other. There weren't any rules yet
..because film was so new. That was what was thril
ling about it."
Breer said he came to see his films as tableaux
vivants moving paintings which were more like
a series of still pictures for him than a portrayal of
movement., The realistic or representational ele
ments which pop up and then vanish from more
abstract work served several functions in these
moving paintings.
"Whether they constitute starting points or take
offs or diversions of digressions all of those things
are true," Breer said. "I found that this bombard
ment of images made for a thing that nobody had
ever seen before, including me." The punctuated or
percussive image in Recreation and many short
films since is the price, he said, of putting the forms
he wants next to each other.
11
dency toward self-congratulation among animated
filmmakers if they've got anything up there to wiggle
on the screen at all."
Brecr's lack of pretention was refreshing. "I never
even considered myself an animator until other
people started calling me that I taught myself to
make dogs walk and things like that."
Breer teaches at Cooper Union College in New
York state. I Ie said he is now working on a film about
words. "I want the words on the screen quite a bit
convulsing themselves on the screen...trying to
isolate the form of the word you read as opposed to
the sound that goes off in your head as you read it."
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Breer said working conditions for independente-Vuratcd v
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animators are not encouraging at present. "It's diffi
cult. I think everybody is struggling trying for
small grants or working for television. It's a kind of
backyard or cottage industry I guess, sort of a cross
between an art and a craft."
The work still proves worth it for Breer. "It's a very
enticing art form. I worry that the level of animation
as an art form isn't as high as it should be. One
reason is, of course, economics; another is the ten-
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After deciding on a name, the group played small
concerts in clubs throughout the South. The band
members quickly agreed they didn't miss those days
much.
"We always wanted to be professionals. It's harder
to be a professional when you're in a bar and people
are coming there to get a drink and meet someone,
rather than to just listen to the music," Gentry said.
feel closer with the audience. "We like to get the
audience closer to us now," Gentry said. "If we had
our way, the audience would be right up there with
us on stago all the time."
. The band's first single was entitled "I Wanna Be
With You Tonight." Unfortunately, shortly after
recording the song, the label went bankrupt.
,9
The group re-surfaced again in 1930 on MDJ label.
On the strength of two regional hits on that tiny
label "I Wanna Come Over" and "My Home's In
Alabama," RCA signed them to a contract in 1980.
The national hits came quickly after than. Their
first album, lly Home's In Alabama, contained
three singles which soared to the top of the country
charts.
Each song theJband records has the "Alabama
feel" to it, yet they don't write much of their material.
Gentry explained what they look for in other writers'
songs.
"A song has to touch me in a way that other songs
don't," he said. "They have to make me cry or hurt or
really believe. It has to be something that really ties
together as far as the lyrics go and has the right feel
as far as the music goes."
Despite the success with recorded music, Alabama
still considers itself primarily a live band. "Live
concerts is what it's all about," Owen said. "It's a
whole different world. Studios are creativity. The
stage is for entertaining. You like to play perfect on
stage, buy you're there to entertain and to make
people forget about 9 to 5 and the various problems
thevhave.
"The studio is to create something . . . for radio
really," Owen said. .
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