Fact Check:

I am saddened by the passing of Dave Hilberman, the pioneer of the new animation. He was involved with so much animation that is groundbreaking and revolutionary. He also is a hero of the animation labor movement who suffered, in a very real way, for his ideals. The working world of animators is a better place because of him.

But I really am not really going to talk that much about Dave Hilberman today. I just want to talk about what wasn`t said over the past week in regards to his career.

I have been reading the Dave Hilberman memorials from people who knew and loved this great man of animation and I have been struck by how a lot of historians today tend to simplify into sound bites. Even the top notch ones that I respect. They have all seemed to have bought into the media short hand. It is like they know know that they have to dumb it down for the masses. Here is a quote from Tom Sito, one of the best of the best:

Dave Hilberman was an important animator-layout artist at Walt Disney Studios in the 1930s. He spent time in Leningrad in 1930 with the Futurist Theater there and met Maxim Gorky, Mayakovsky and Vertov. He was a leader of artists in the Walt Disney Studio Strike of 1941, and for that earned the lasting animus of Walt Disney. When Walt testified to HUAC in 1947, he personally named Dave as a communist. Dave was one of the aentral founders of UPA and the UPA style. (italics mine)

And here is a quote from Amid Amidi:

ASIFA-San Francisco president Karl Cohen forwarded a note to let us know that UPA co-founder and one of the last of the truly great animation legends, David Hilberman, passed away on July 5. (italics mine)

I know I am being picky and that is what Tom will tell me at the ASIFA board meeting tonight. Hell, I respect Tom and Amid and their work and they are not, by any means, the only ones taking shortcuts with animation history.

I have been out to the Guild site, I have done a Google search and I have even gone over to IMDB and checked the company names. They don`t even list Industrial Films and Poster Service or give them credit for the films they created under that company name.

See here is the thing, Dave Hilberman and his partner Zack Schwartz never really worked at a company named UPA nor did they own the company named United Productions of America.

Yes they founded the studio that became UPA but its name was only changed to United Productions of America after Zack and Dave sold Industrial Films and Poster Service to Steve Bosustow and John Hubley. Long, and very interesting story that no one is going to look into because no one talked about it.

And that is what I am bitching about here, the sound bites taking the place of the story, taking the easy way, dumbing everything down for the widest audience. Even the best historians know instinctively that they have to back off on the whole story to get anybody to listen, which just plays into the whole vicious cycle and trains another generation to not look deeper.

David Hilberman is a very important figure in animation history. Can`t we tell a little bit more about his life? Put some clues in the story so maybe someone will want to look deeper? Must we put everything into neat little packages with easy but incorrect labels?

I know it is easier to say Dave Hilberman co-founded UPA than to say he co-founded the company that became UPA. Maybe it is because I am a teacher, but can`t we let people know about a little bit about the complexities? Then maybe they will want to look a little deeper. Why must it always be lowest common denominator?

Maybe if the best didn`t feel that they had to dumb stuff down we wouldn`t have another generation of A.D.D. students that can`t follow my lectures? We will never know unless we try.