I met...

[Animal Boything]

One of my dad's best friends from high school is an animator... not somebody you've heard of, I'm sure, but well-respected within the industry. He does things like the Hershey's Kisses commercials, and he tends to hang out with interesting people.

I recently went to take a tour of his studio (Carl's Fine Films in San Francisco) and he started doing magic tricks for me and my brother... a hobby of his. A fellow came in to say he was ready for his meeting, and Carl goes "Hold on, I'm busy right now," and goes back to the magic tricks. Then a couple minutes later he's like "I'd better take this meeting. Oh, by the way, that's the guy who animated Gollum on Lord of the Rings." And we're all like holy shit, he kept THE GUY WHO ANIMATED GOLLUM waiting so he could finish his magic trick?

We got to talk to the dude briefly. I forget his name, but I did spot him on the RotK DVD a couple months later. He was very nice and told us we were gonna love King Kong and that it would make us cry.

Carl is also a good friend of David Fincher, so me and my brother have had a few opportunities to hear interesting second-hand things about him. For instance, the line "She should be shaved, sterilized, and destroyed" in 12 Monkeys was something Carl said (about whom, I forget) to Brad Pitt when Fincher introduced them, and I guess he liked it enough to use it as an ad-lib.