Rejected
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Rejected is a 2000 animated short comedy film by animator Don Hertzfeldt that was nominated for a 2001 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. It received 27 awards from film festivals around the world and in 2004 was ranked by the Internet Movie Database as the 3rd most popular short film of all time. It has achieved a very strong cult following, otherwise unprecedented in the world of animated short films: fans often wear costumes and chant along with the film, not unlike the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and occasionally have tattoos made of their favorite characters. The film is also recognized on a mural in front of Mead Hall at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA.
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[edit] Synopsis
The film purports to tell the story of the progressive breakdown of its animator, Don Hertzfeldt. The frame narrative is told in short text passages printed on the screen, musically accompanied by the first movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony - starting with Hertzfeldt being commissioned by the "Family Learning Channel" (a fictional cable network) to produce animated commercial bumpers and commercial spots. All of the spots he produced, as the text informs the viewer, were reviewed by the client and promptly rejected. As the viewer watches the spots themselves, it becomes quickly apparent why: the antics of the characters range from mere head-scratching non-sequiturs to exaggerated sequences of grotesque violence and mutilation—contrasted not only with the cartoony style of the animation, but with the cheery muzak that accompanies each spot's reminder that "You're watching the Family Learning Channel!"
Spots Hertzfeldt created for the Family Learning Channel included:
- A man in front of a bowl of cereal holding a giant spoon, repeatedly saying "My spoon is too big!" An anthropomorphic banana walks into the scene and announces "I am a banana!".
- Two stick men talking to each other, in a manner making their dialouge appear to be dubbed from another language. One stick man asks, "Tuesday's coming. Did you bring your coat?" The other stick man responds, "I live in a giant bucket." A grotesque creature then grows out of the first stick man's head and mumbles something, to which the second stick man replies with a bleeped out obscenity. The two stick men then see a creature with pig head and tentacles flying across the sky.
- A group of stick figures holding a party where only people wearing funny hats are allowed. One stick figure partygoer arrives wearing a regular top hat. After the Family Learning Channel logo is seen, we see the funny hat partygoers bludgeoning him to death.
- A voice announces "You're watching the Family Learning Channel! And now, angry ticks fire out of my nipples!" A stick man wearing bunny ears approaches a group of children, and the prompty fired ticks chase the children away.
- Two stick men with out-of-synch dialogue are again talking, the first asking "Do you want to go to a movie?" The second responds that "I'm feeling fat, and sassy." The two men both begin screaming in an over-the-top Japanese anime style. The first man's left eye then explodes, pouring a continuous fountain of blood from the socket onto the second stick man, both of them continuing to scream.
The text screens then inform us that Hertzfeldt received another commission, from the (fictional) "Johnson & Mills Corporation", to produce animated commercials for their products, and like the previous spots, these were all reviewed and immediately rejected. The reasons why are even clearer in these spots; the bizarre illogic, the tastelessness, and the themes of mutilation and violence are even more pronounced, culminating in a sequence where a fluffy character, after exhorting his fellow cheering puffballs "Every-body... dance!!", notices that his anus is bleeding, announces this fact repeatedly, growing louder and shriller, and by the end of the sequence is literally drowning in his own blood.
The text screens return and begin the build-up to the final sequences of the film; we are told that Hertzfeldt began to break down, started to create commercials using only his left hand, and either from the repeated rejection or from the loss of individuality in the corporate world finally saw his downfall. Shortly we see the characters who have appeared in Hertzfeldt's spots and commercials panicking as their world, the paper world of the animator's page, suffers an apocalypse: the puffball figures run in terror as the "Family Learning Channel" logo crashes down from the sky and the crushing letters rain down on them; howling winds sweep a talking banana through a hole in the page into the void; the pages ripple and crumble, mutilating a number of characters; the page dents outward towards the camera as stick figures pound on the fourth wall trying to get out. The camera finally freezes on a trapped figure as the page crumples around him, screaming as his world comes to an end.
The film was a popular target for internet bootlegs, much to Hertzfeldt's dismay. In 2001 a DVD "single" was created to fix that problem. The short is also featured on the DVD, "Bitter Films Volume 1", a compilation of Don Hertzfeldt's short films from 1995-2005 that is available exclusively at the Bitter Films website, http://www.bitterfilms.com
[edit] Inspiration
Although Hertzfeldt did not actually do any commercial work, he received a lot of offers to do commercials after his short Billy's Balloon garnered international attention and acclaim. In public appearances, he usually tells the story that he wished he could just make a cheap, nonsensical animation to hand to the people intending to hire him, and run away with the money. Eventually this became the germ for Rejected's theme of a collection of cartoons so bad they were rejected by advertising agencies, leading to their creator's breakdown and, presumably, his demise.
Hertzfeldt has never accepted "real" commercial work and has stated numerous times on his website and in public appearances that he never will.
[edit] Trivia
- Rejected world-premiered at the San Diego Comic Convention in 2000. Don Hertzfeldt totalled his car on the way home from the appearance.
- The alternate dimension scenes from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Broodwich" were an acknowledged homage to Rejected and Hertzfeldt, who was an early strong influence on the Aqua Teen writers.
- The movie was scheduled to air on Adult Swim in 2001 but was delayed for unknown reasons - it was rescheduled to air in November 2002 "uncut and commercial free", and was heavily promoted on the network that week. However, the short was pulled from the schedule at the last minute, for unknown reasons. Rumors about the reasons behind this highly unusual action have included: the film's brief use of the phrase, "Sweet Jesus" ("Jesus" being a word allegedly not allowed on a Turner Network); and an anonymous high-ranking network executive simply not finding the short to be funny. Rejected has since aired without incident on the Cartoon Network in other countries as well as on other international television networks, but has never been broadcast on American television.
- Between numerous film festival appearances, Rejected toured North American theaters in 2000, 2001, and 2002 with Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, in 2001 and 2002 again with a retrospective touring program of Don's and animator Bill Plympton's films called "The Don and Bill Show", and again in 2003 and 2004 with Hertzfeldt's own the Animation Show tour.
- The song that the Fuzzballs were dancing to is called "Nu är det jul igen", a Swedish Christmas song.
- Rejected most recently returned to theaters in 2006 as part of the Sundance Institute's 25th anniversary "Art House Project", a special screening series of Sundance films for local audiences nationwide. Rejected was one of 5 shorts and 25 features from Sundance's history selected as "essential" and representative of the spirit of the Sundance Film Festival.
