Lennon animated interview: "I Met the Walrus"
Richard Moore
Watch Amazing Oscar-Nominated Short "I Met the Walrus"
by: Loren Lankford, Paste Magazine
In 1969, 14-year-old Beatles fan Jerry Levitan tracked his idol, John Lennon, from a Toronto airport to his room at the King Edward Hotel. Inside, he convinced Lennon to do an impromptu interview. Thirty-eight years later, Levitan teamed with director Josh Raskin to create and edit a five-minute short film entitled I Met the Walrus based on the interview. Amazing, right?
Using the interview as the actual dialogue for the film, the pair hired illustrators James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina to do a pen art work that plays off the interview as the background for the film. Raskin later told the EyeOpener.com, "I just wanted to literally animate the words, unfurling in the way I imagined they would appear inside the head of a baffled 14-year-old boy interviewing his idol."
The film went on to premiere at a nightclub in Toronto and has since played at several festivals, ending with a 2008 Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short. Over the summer, the film popped up on YouTube, and you can watch it in full below: