A saga of obsession in ‘Persistence’
The misfortune of one filmmaker can be an opportunity for another. Richard Williams failed to finish “The Thief and the Cobbler,” a meticulously hand-animated saga based on Persian folklore, and Kevin Schreck succeeds at chronicling the three-decade debacle in his “Persistence of Vision.” If he fails to find a lesson, he lets us sample virtuoso sequences turned out by Williams and his overworked London employees.
The 80-year-old animator did not talk on camera to the 24-year-old documentarymaker. Four segments made for British TV in 1966, 1970, 1972 and 1982 furnish the only footage of Williams. Schreck shot interviews with former employees.
In 1964, Williams began his project. In 1992, the completion bond company for Warner Bros. took possession of the incomplete film’s elements. Versions were later released with cuts, new scenes, different music and added dialogue. All without input from Williams. (A 1995 release retitled the feature “Arabian Knight.”)
“I’ve mastered this medium at last and I’m going to do a masterpiece, I hope — if I can ever finish,” Williams says in an old interview. He allows this was “a mammoth ego trip.”
Colleagues call him “obsessive,” “perfectionist” and “almost fanatical.” “He’s an absolute genius,” insists director Robert Zemeckis in a DVD extra for “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” (1988). For his contribution to that Hollywood hybrid of real actors and cartoon characters, Williams won a special achievement Oscar as its director of animation.
Schreck cannot imagine how Williams might have completed his epic. Assignments for animated TV commercials and credit