Houston-set short film enjoys improbable journey to the Oscars
There’s a Houston-related film up for an Oscar this year — but you may not have heard of it until its title sparked titters when nominations were announced last month.
Competing for the Oscar in the animated short film category is the controversially named “My Year of Dicks,” an odyssey through 1991 Houston as seen through the eyes of a 15-year-old teenager angst-ridden over her latest crush. The 25-minute film from Icelandic director Sara Gunnarsdóttir was produced and adapted by author Pamela Ribon from a chapter in her 2013 memoir about coming of age in H-town, “Notes to Boys: And Other Things I Shouldn’t Say in Public.”
The title had actor Riz Ahmed chuckling when he announced the nominations and, as the Associated Press noted, “There is, to be sure, no Oscar nominee this year quite like “My Year of Dicks” — and not just because of a title that, as Ribon notes, ‘is tough on a spam filter.’”
“I never thought it would be something I would adapt,” Ribon says in a phone interview.
She had previously written a comic book on roller derby, “SLAM!,” as well as a novel set in the world of that sport, “Going in Circles.”
“I played roller derby as an adult for 10 years,” says Ribon, who was with the Los Angeles Derby Dolls. Additional credits include writing for sitcoms and animated Disney films.
In “My Year,” Ribon introduces each of the film’s five succinct chapters with home video snippets of herself recorded when she was 15.
“For scripts like ‘Moana’ and ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet,’ I could hide my voice inside other characters, but for ‘Year,’ the voice was mine alone,” she says.
Director Gunnarsdóttir, via Zoom, says she recognized that the home video tapes of Ribon were “very sincere, growing up is a universal experience.”
The film, which was originally produced as an episodic TV series for FX, competes for an Oscar one year to the day that the first chapter had its premiere at the 2022 South by Southwest.
In fact, it was FX that put Gunnarsdóttir on the list given to Ribon of directors they recommended she work with to adapt her memoirs. “Because of the different genres of animation, I wanted someone who could handle that flexibility,” says Ribon, noting that she was knocked out the director’s reel. “I knew she could handle the delicacy as well as the epiphanies.”
Once they communicated, they had so many similar stories about first crushes. “It came together very easily,” says Ribon.
Each of the chapters has a different feel. One is fanciful, while another incorporates anime. The ending of the first chapter has our heroine skateboarding into the Houston skyline.
“I think my way to becoming an animation professional was very much through fine art,” says Gunnarsdóttir, who has a bachelor’s in fine art from the Icelandic Academy of the Arts and a masters degree in experimental animation from California Institute of the Arts. “I’ve never taken a traditional course in animation but instead found my own way to approach it. There’s a lot of cut and paste happening underneath otherwise smooth animation.”
The second chapter has Pam attending a theater playing “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” in the suburbs, although a reference photo of the marquee uses the iconic River Oaks Theatre.
Likewise, the third chapter’s setting of AstroWorld, which closed in 2005, utilizes anime animation mixed with Ribon’s memoirs. “A trip to downtown was an event,” says Ribon. “You call it I-10, we called it ‘The Ten.’ We would plan ahead to drive to places like Dream Merchant to buy Docs (Doc Martens shoes).”
But all the cool Houston shoutouts weren’t enough for FX to pick up the series. So the filmmakers began the serious quest for recognition as a film short through an Oscar nomination. One criteria for nabbing a nomination is to win an award at an Academy sanctioned film festival.
In addition to winning top awards at over half a dozen film festivals, the producers also rented a theater in Los Angeles for a one-week engagement. It is now available to view on Vimeo and is being screened nationally as part of the 2023 Oscar Nominated Shorts program opening in theaters this weekend.
Both writer and director were elated when they heard they got an Oscar nomination.
Ribon recalls how “I watched the noms with my family. We all got up early and Zoomed in/ phoned in, however we could connect for that moment. It was fun before the announcements even began and just got better and better.”
“I was anxious to hear the news, and then I guess I screamed, and then I called my mom,” says Gunnarsdóttir.
The director also says this entire project has given her a new goal in life.
“I’ve actually never been to Houston,” she says, “but now I feel like I should go as soon as possible.”