Movies: Little Movies Go Big Time

If a Hungarian animator with a 5-min. movie about a cuckoo clock ascends to the stage on Oscar night, you may be tempted to take that post–Jennifer Hudson, pre–Helen Mirren bathroom break. But if you do, you will miss something besides an ecstatic shout-out to Budapest–you’ll miss seeing a real Hollywood comeback story, the return of the short film. Thanks to downloadable video and an embrace of the form by some Hollywood heavyweights, something very old-fashioned is happening: people are watching short movies. On cell phones, computers, TVs and–this is really retro–in theaters, new audiences are discovering or rediscovering the satisfaction of the cinematic quickie. Shorts, for decades Hollywood’s farm team for animators and directors, are returning to the major leagues of entertainment.

For the last, oh, 40 Oscar nights before 2006, almost no one outside film-snob circles had the opportunity to see even one of the nominated short films. This month collections of the nominated live-action and animated short films are playing in more than 35 cities. On the live-action bill are brief, engaging yarns like West Bank Story, a musical about competing falafel stands in the Middle East, and The Saviour, a drama about a door-to-door Mormon evangelist in love with a married woman. On the animated bill are little gems like Lifted, a Pixar picture about an alien learning the basics of abduction, and Maestro, in which the aforementioned Hungarian animator goes behind the scenes of a cuckoo clock in 3-D. “It’s satisfying to see something that’s funny or dark and really short,” says Gary Rydstrom, director of Lifted. “Those are both tones that are hard to sustain over a long period of time.”

This is the second year the Oscar-nominated shorts have been released theatrically; on opening weekend, they were the top grossers at 80% of the theaters in which they played last year. But thanks to YouTube, iTunes and AtomFilms, you don’t have to go out to see them. At less than 20 minutes, they’re eminently downloadable–and who can resist an Oscar-nominated movie for $1.99?

In a good short film, not a minute is wasted. Thanks to tight writing, shorts are often wittier than features. And because they don’t have to make back a massive amount of money for investors, they’re often grittier. It’s hard to imagine this year’s darkly original Sundance Jury Award winner, Everything Will Be OK, in which cult animator Don Hertzfeldt’s signature stick-figure character, Bill, faces an existential crisis, coming out of the studios that deliver a new twist on celebrity-voiced animals every three months.

Originally, of course, every movie was a short. The first narrative film, The Great Train Robbery, made in 1903, was a 10-min. Western. But advances in technology and changes in viewing habits meant that by the ’60s, shorts had become the currency of film schools and festivals, and by 2005 they had lost so much pop-culture clout that short-subject Oscar winners had to accept their awards in their seats, with their backs to much of the audience. “Next year they’re gonna give out Oscars in the parking lot,” joked host Chris Rock.

Two years later, short films have managed to stay inside the Kodak Theater, and even win over some front-row types. Some 30 abbreviated offerings by such Palme d’Or winners as Gus Van Sant, Lars von Trier and Wong Kar Wai will premiere at Cannes this year. Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have ordered up several minimovies to play between their gory double-feature Grindhouse, due in April. And Steven Spielberg is executive-producing On the Lot, a Fox show in which aspiring filmmakers will produce a short film from a particular genre each week to compete for a development deal at Dreamworks.

“It’s every filmmaker’s dream, really,” says Hertzfeldt, whose 17-min. movie is playing at the Animation Show, a festival touring the U.S. “Produce your own stories, work largely alone and answer to nobody.” Ari Sandel, who’s nominated for West Bank Story, his film-school master’s thesis, puts its appeal another way: “Look, if it’s bad, it’s over in 10 minutes.”