Will Vinton — the award-winning filmmaker and master of "Claymation" — died a few days ago at the age of 70. Obituaries like this one and this one will tell you the details of his amazing career better than I can. There is a great success story there about how he built a wonderful studio full of brilliant talent and ideas. There is also a very sad story of how he lost ownership and control of it.
I was fortunate to work with Will around 1989 and to visit that studio in Portland, Oregon when it was flourishing. Some folks at CBS put us together and we developed a couple of projects that, alas, never went the distance. One, oddly enough, was a prime-time special in which the Master Villain — and I am not making this up now — was a parody of Donald Trump. In 1989.
Will was a cheery, clever guy who struck me as quite unspoiled by his success. He'd fly down to L.A. for network meetings and when we went to CBS together, he would act a little stunned that he had gone from the humblest of beginnings making tiny, underfunded movies to driving through the guard gate at a big Hollywood studio. On two or three occasions when it was time for him to head back to Portland, I'd drive him to the airport and we'd stop for a bite to eat and then sit and talk at the airport (you could do that in 1989) while we waited for his flight to board. I have fond memories of those conversations.
I did not like everyone I worked with in those days but I liked Will. He was all about doing the projects right and when neither of them went forward — one for creative reasons, the other because of a business squabble — he was briefly disappointed and then he quickly stopped thinking about them and plunged wholeheartedly into several others. I tried to follow his example and the only lingering regret I had was that I was no longer working with Will…and eventually we lost touch. So sorry about that, so sorry he's gone.