The title of this movie refers specifically to Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams, an unfairly neglected animator whose story is told in this engrossing documentary. The name was given to him ironically, given that Williams was anything but what that derogatory slang term might suggest. That said, Williams was and still is a controversial character, and his story certainly merits a telling.
Scott Leberecht’s film, which snagged a world premiere as part of the 2022 SXSW festival, details how Steve Williams was at the centre of a paradigm shift in Hollywood special effects and film-making generally. Remember the watery aliens in James Cameron’s The Abyss? The mind-blowing liquid robots of Terminator 2? And Williams was a driving force behind the creating the celebrated dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, so realistic that one pundit noted, ‘You can’t tell which ones are real, and which ones are fake.’ That film abruptly switched from physical and stop-motion effects to mainly digital, and started a wave of CGI that has elevated concept ideas and ruined films ever since.
And Williams gets it; even in an early tv interview, he talks of himself being a Frankenstein creative, who will unleash a monster on the world that can’t be controlled. As this film brings his story up to date, Williams is portrayed as a lonely and unhappy man, ruing his missed chances and choices. Few are celebrating his later projects like Spawn or family animation The Wild; it’s clear that something snapped in his career development, and that takes the form of run-ins with Industrial Light and Magic, Kathleen Kennedy and George Lucas, and powerful animator Dennis Muren.
The early days of any boom industry have the excitement of the Wild West, and about as much legal support for workers; there’s several agonising anecdotes collected here, specifically one in which Williams and his team invade Lucas’s inner sanctum at the Skywalker Ranch. It’s clear that hubris eventually got the better of Williams, and even if his effects were revolutionary, clashes of ego effectively stopped him reaching his peak creatively. Spaz is a sympathetic retelling of a classic Icarus story, a talented man crashing and burning when he leaves too many unhappy collaborators behind. It’s notable who talks and who doesn’t here; as a film, Spaz will be of huge interest to those who contribute to the carpet of names at the end of most movies these days, the effects guys, but it’s very much his own version of the story with no rebuttal. Even in the digital world, the film business is all about relationships, and if you can’t make them work, mercurial talent or not, you’re out on your ear.
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CGI has definitely taken over Hollywood. Although it was intended to save money it has probably forced budgets to rocket.
I want to watch this. I think I have watched him before on a Netflix documentary about Jurassic Park, quite the character.
He is, and I think it takes quite a guy to admit that things didn’t pan out they way he’d hoped. This doc is an interesting character study of someone who, as you say, is really quite a character. I’ll update with a link if I hear about fresh access….
Thank heavens for Wallace and Grommet.
I agree, did they have bad experiences working with special effects?
No. I was trying, obviously unsuccessfully, to make a point that without CGI, stop-motion is probably what we’d have instead. Though in Wallace & Grommets case that’s a good thing.
I get you now, sorry for being slow in the uptake!
Not a problem. I don’t mind CGI when it’s done well.
Seems like a guy who has a lot to answer for. But maybe not. Digital animation is an art, but the moment had to come with the technology to make it happen. So he was the guy doing that work at the right time (as the trailer says). Movies were all going to end up looking like this anyway. Can’t say I like the direction things went in, but probably inevitable.
Yup, if Williams hadn’t got there, someone else would, but he was certainly the right guy at the right time, and careers and even empires have been based on less. He seems pretty frustrated with the way CGI swamps films these days…
That “how CGI ate Hollywood” is a perspective I’d be interested in. Have to look for this on DVD.
I suspect there’s many stories out there to be told, and whether you take Spaz’s word for what happened ( and there’s no real rebuttal), his experience was a negative one personally. I found his story pretty interesting as a behind the scenes doc, and it does explore how CGI lost its lustre…
Good thing I get along with everybody I meet then!
Not everyone has your personable gifts…
That’s why Psychic Grandma chose me to go to Murica and live a fabulously wealthy life of fame and influence, while you were sent to some other place, to eat biscuits or gruel or something.
And yet look how the tables have turned, just like she said they would! Now I’m on top of the world and you are groveling for slices of gravel glued onto paper plates.
No one can outwit Psychic Grandma, no one!
Impala Bootstomp, Tannhauser Gates, Psychic Grandma, the cast of characters is overwhelming!
Yeah, trying to keep track of who said what, or did what when, I’m beginning to lose track.
My web of conspiracy and control is beginning to unravel I think….
Just go with the flow…