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Coming to Los Angeles
Jules Engel Film-maker
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I got on a bus and came to Los Angeles. And I met some people, I don't know, maybe I knew some. Oh yeah, I knew some people, that's right. Oh yeah, there's a funny story here. I'm in Los Angeles and I have two addresses, and I'm just out of high school. One was to a place in Hollywood, you know, where people sometimes go to for whatever need or help or something? I don't know what the hell you call those people. Anyway, they were very nice to me and they say, you know, 'We want to do a favor for you because you seem like a very nice guy. And what we're going to do, we're going to buy you a ticket, go back to Los Angeles'. Well no, no way. No way. But they're going to pay my train fare, everything, to go back to Chicago. But I said to them, 'Thank you very much'. That was the first ticket that I got from my friend. The next one was to a couple of bankers, it was downtown Los Angeles. And I had the address and whatever, you know. And so I… I went back home and, no, are you going to use the… the second address? And the second address was a banker and the banker was very nice, it was downtown Los Angeles, and he gave me $20, so that helped. But anyway, I had $20. But he did tell me about a friend of his who is an artist, and I should go and see him. And that's the worst thing you could tell me because I wasn't that keen. Anyway, I went to this address and I looked around and looked around. And finally, I met the man, he was… he was a painter, and he liked my drawings. So what happened out of that situation is that I show up at 7:00 in the morning at his studio and I draw some pictures of the desert, you know? And then he took them, and I didn't know that. But he put his name on those drawings. Yeah, uh-huh. And I still had to thank him but I did never let on that he using my drawings, he's signing them, you know? And he colors them a little bit, and he was very good at that. But meanwhile I was meeting people and so I got in touch with people. And then they say, 'Oh you should come to Disney'. And I said, 'But how?' They said, 'We'll take your drawings, we'll show it to them'. So I gave them some of my drawings of the desert and stuff like that, and next thing I know, I'm at Disney Studio.

The late Hungarian-American film-maker Jules Engel is best known for his contribution to the field of animation. His work includes the dance sequences in Walt Disney's 'Fantasia' and the creation of 'Mr Magoo'. His films and lithographs are housed in museums all over the world and have won many awards.

Listeners: Tamara Tracz Bill Moritz

Tamara Tracz is a writer and filmmaker based in London.

William Moritz received his doctorate from USC and pursues parallel careers as filmmaker and writer. His forty-four experimental and animation films have been screened at museums in Paris, Amsterdam and Tokyo, among others. He published widely on Oskar Fischinger, James Whitney, Bruce Conner, the Fleischers and 200 pages of animation history for an AbsolutVodka website. He wrote chapters for the "Oxford History of Cinema", appeared in several television documentaries, curated art exhibits and received a lifetime achievement trophy from the Netherlands Royal Academy for his work with visual music. He has served on film festival juries and received an American Film Institute filmmaking grant. His poetry and plays are also performed and published. He is a leading expert of Oskar Fischinger and recently published a biography of him. He teaches at The California Institute of the Arts.

Tags: Los Angeles, California, Disney Studio, Hollywood, Chicago, Walt Disney

Duration: 2 minutes, 52 seconds

Date story recorded: April 2003

Date story went live: 24 January 2008