Another trophy for Kobe?
Lakers legend’s animated short has a chance to win Academy Award
From the footlights of Los Angeles, veterans in two fields joined forces to achieve an Academy Award milestone.
Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers great, is the first former NBA player to receive an Oscar nomination, which he got for producing Dear Basketball, recognized in the animated short category. Bryant teamed with director and supervising producer Glen Keane to create the lyrical and visually liquid six-minute animated film, which is based on Bryant’s retirement poem in which the point guard traces his lifetime love of the sport. Bryant, who also narrates, retired after the 2015-16 season.
“This is beyond the realm of imagination,” Bryant tweeted this week, as he thanked Keane and composer John Williams for “taking my poem to this level.”
Keane is a recognized “Disney Legend” for a career that has included such animated hits as Tangled, Tarzan, Pocahontas and Beauty and the Beast. The team behind Dear Basketball, which officially premièred at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, included son Max Keane, who worked on production design and storyboarding, and producer Gennie Rim.
“I’m extraordinarily grateful that I get to do what I love — animate — for a living,” Keane tells The Washington Post. “Every film I’ve worked on over the last 40 years has touched me in its own unique way, but this project and its message holds a special place in my heart.”The other nominees in the animated short category are Garden Party, Lou, Negative Space and Revolting Rhymes.