#Watch the thief and the cobbler movie#
#Watch the thief and the cobbler professional#
#Watch the thief and the cobbler free#

He was doing freelance work at the time for Bob Godfrey, who let him use his equipment at night for his own projects. Money came later, in 1962, when WilliamsвЂ™ вЂњ Love Me, Love Me, Love MeвЂќ was a surprise hit. Released in 1958, The Little Island won Williams a BAFTA and a tour of the European festival circuit, but it didnвЂ™t make him any money. Like much of WilliamsвЂ™ animated work, this has been restored and archived online by Garrett Gilchrist-whose own interest in WilliamsвЂ™ work has now spanned nearly a decade. Using money he made from freelance art and animation work, Williams produced the short вЂњ The Little Island,вЂќ his first serious work of animation.

By the mid-1950s, he was in London, with an idea he thought would work best as an animated film. Whatever his reasons, Williams gave up on animation and moved to Ibiza, where he made his living as a painter for a few years. After all, he was Walt Disney.ДЄlthough Williams has spent the greater part of his life selling financiers, studios, and other animators on his magnum opus, he never seems to have been entirely comfortable dealing with marketplace demands. He was doing his job, but I wondered why he had to do that. The salesmanship appalled me because I was completely idealistic.

#Watch the thief and the cobbler professional#

He was doing a professional number on the reporter, describing how it would pull on your heartstrings when you thought Lady had savaged the baby, but she hadn't. I went back the next year and overheard Disney himself talking to a reporter about his animated film about a spaniel, Lady And The Tramp. It happened on his second visit to Los Angeles: ThereвЂ™s a third reason, which he only seems to have mentioned once, in a 1973 interview with Seventeen (bylined вЂњSophia Vinogradov, 15, Ann Arbor MichiganвЂќ). The second reason, also frequently mentioned, was being reduced to tears by a Rembrandt exhibit in Toronto, and deciding he needed to do more serious art. This underwhelming visit was one of three reasons heвЂ™s given for temporarily abandoning animation as a young adult. HeвЂ™s often told the story of asking a veteran animator for tips, and being very disappointed to hear that before he worried about animation, he needed to learn to draw. His mother-who had turned down a job as an animator herself-arranged for him to meet Walt Disney and tour his studio on a trip to Los Angeles in his teens. By his teens, he was creating remarkably sophisticated flipbook animations of birds. She was an illustrator, and had already instilled him with an interest in drawing the idea of drawings that moved was irresistible to him. For nearly 30 years, his obsession with creating the greatest animated film of all time kept him at the center of a maelstrom.Д«orn in Toronto in 1933, Williams began to be fascinated with the medium at age 5, when his mother took him to see Snow White.

#Watch the thief and the cobbler movie#

Behind this legendary lost film was Williams, a key figure in British animation best known for his groundbreaking work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, this weekвЂ™s Movie Of The Week. ItвЂ™s been the subject of a remarkable documentary by Kevin Schreck, Persistence Of Vision-and an even more remarkable fan restoration project by Garret Gilchrist. In the years since, itвЂ™s become legendary. By the time a butchered version of the film finally limped into theaters, it was famous mostly as a financial and artistic debacle. As it went through iteration after iteration over its three decades of development (by my count, it had 10 different working titles over the years, some repeated), it served as a palimpsest and training ground for a new generation of animators. It was the last great hand-drawn animated film, and the final film of many of the greatest animators of the golden age: men whose careers stretched back to Fantasia and Betty Boop.

The Thief And The Cobbler should have been the capstone achievement of one of Great BritainвЂ™s finest animators. At the place where these three kinds of stories intersect is Richard Williams and his monumental unfinished masterpiece, The Thief And The Cobbler. Now a third kind of story: the leader of the mad, obsessive, doomed enterprise, dragging a crew down with him: Ahab and Aguirre, Don Quixote and Lord Cardigan. This is Terry GilliamвЂ™s, and Erich Von StroheimвЂ™s, and Orson WellesвЂ™, over and over again. HereвЂ™s another story, just as popular: the great artistвЂ™s work, taken away and vandalized by the vulgarians of the marketplace. This is Henry DargerвЂ™s story, and Vivian MaierвЂ™s, and James HamptonвЂ™s.

#Watch the thief and the cobbler free#

ItвЂ™s the one where the hero works long hours at a tedious job to pay the bills, but every penny, every free minute, every lunch break and day off and late night, is spent dreaming and working and building a secret masterpiece.