Don Hertzfeldt was born on August 1,1976 and is an American animator, writer, and independent filmmaker.
42 Facts About Don Hertzfeldt
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Don Hertzfeldt is a two-time Academy Award nominee who is best known for the animated films It's Such a Beautiful Day, the World of Tomorrow series, and Rejected.
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Don Hertzfeldt is the only filmmaker to have won the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize for Short Film twice.
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Don Hertzfeldt spent many years in Santa Barbara, California after attending college there.
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Don Hertzfeldt was born on August 1,1976, in Fremont, California, the son of an airline pilot and a county library clerk.
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Don Hertzfeldt has never held a job other than creating his animated films.
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Don Hertzfeldt's influences include Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Edward Gorey, Monty Python, Stan Brakhage, silent films, and the animated shorts he saw at numerous animation festivals at a young age, including the early works of Aardman Animation and Bill Plympton.
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In 2022, for the BFI Sight and Sound "Greatest Films of All Time" poll, Don Hertzfeldt listed the following ten films as important titles that had "knocked me over the head at some point in life and continue to do so": The Act of Killing, Citizen Kane, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Gates of Heaven, The Godfather, Goodfellas, Harold and Maude, Monty Python's Life of Brian, The Pianist, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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Don Hertzfeldt's animation was first created traditionally, with pen and paper, before transitioning to digital animation for his World of Tomorrow short film series.
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From 1999 to 2011, Don Hertzfeldt photographed his films on a 35mm Richardson animation camera stand, believed to be the same camera that photographed many of the Peanuts cartoons in the 1960s and 1970s.
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In 2015, Don Hertzfeldt released his first digitally animated short film, World of Tomorrow, which was created at the same time as another digital piece, an animated guest appearance on The Simpsons.
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On occasion, Don Hertzfeldt has scored portions of his films himself, with a guitar or keyboard.
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Don Hertzfeldt described his relaxed writing process in a 2015 Reddit "AMA" session:.
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Don Hertzfeldt made four 16mm animated student films while studying film at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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In 2003, Don Hertzfeldt created The Animation Show with Beavis and Butt-head creator Mike Judge.
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Animated still photographs are incorporated inside certain windows, as well as a handful of the colorful special effects and experimental film techniques that Don Hertzfeldt first utilized in The Meaning of Life.
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Don Hertzfeldt traveled with It's Such a Beautiful Day in 2011 and 2012 on another North American theatrical tour to 30 cities.
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In October 2009, Hertzfeldt premiered Wisdom Teeth, an unannounced, new five-minute cartoon at the "Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" screening at the Ottawa Animation Festival.
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In 2012, Don Hertzfeldt edited together the three chapters of his short film trilogy to create a seamless new feature film of the story.
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In 2014, Don Hertzfeldt wrote, animated, and directed a surreal and futuristic two-minute "couch gag" for the premiere episode of the 26th season of The Simpsons.
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Don Hertzfeldt traveled with the film to theaters on a "winter mini-tour" in December 2017.
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The screenings opened with a surprise new two-minute cartoon, in which an animated Don Hertzfeldt introduces the program from the caverns of an alien planet.
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In December 2013, Don Hertzfeldt released a graphic novel, The End of the World, through independent publisher Antibookclub.
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In 2013, Don Hertzfeldt created a 30-second piece called "Day Sleeper" on an iPad for the National Film Board of Canada.
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Don Hertzfeldt created the animated logo for Jennifer Lawrence's production company, Excellent Cadaver.
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Don Hertzfeldt's work has been credited with being a prominent influence on surrealism and absurdism in animation in the 2000s, including shaping Adult Swim's brand of animated comedy.
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Don Hertzfeldt has been noted as an influence among many webcomics, including Hyperbole and a Half, xkcd, and Cyanide and Happiness.
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Don Hertzfeldt has had more films play in competition at the Sundance Film Festival than any other filmmaker, with eight: Rejected, The Meaning of Life, Everything Will Be OK, I Am So Proud of You, Wisdom Teeth, It's Such a Beautiful Day, World of Tomorrow, and World of Tomorrow Episode Two.
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Don Hertzfeldt returned to the Sundance Film Festival in 2013 to serve on the Short Film Jury.
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In 1999, at the age of 22, Don Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Billy's Balloon, where he was the youngest director in competition.
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In 2000, at the age of 23, Don Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for his fifth short film, Rejected.
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Don Hertzfeldt lost to Michael Dudok de Wit for Father and Daughter.
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In 2002, Don Hertzfeldt joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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In 2007, Don Hertzfeldt accepted an invitation from the George Eastman House's motion picture archives to indefinitely store and preserve the original film elements and camera negatives to his collected work.
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In 2015, Don Hertzfeldt won the Grand Jury Award for Short Film a second time at the Sundance Film Festival, for World of Tomorrow.
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Don Hertzfeldt has been nominated for four Annie Awards for Best Animated Short Film.
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Don Hertzfeldt lost for Rejected in 2001 and Everything Will Be OK in 2007 and won for World of Tomorrow in 2016.
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Don Hertzfeldt owns the rights to all of his work and has self-distributed his films under the moniker "Bitter Films" since the 1990s.
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In 2015, Don Hertzfeldt ran a Kickstarter campaign to help finance future productions, with the Blu-ray debut of It's Such a Beautiful Day and World of Tomorrow as the central pledge reward.
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Don Hertzfeldt has been offered numerous lucrative advertising deals, including ad campaigns for Cingular Wireless and United Airlines, which he has declined.
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Don Hertzfeldt has made various comments over the years about his dislike of corporate America and says he will never be involved with the advertising world.
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One of the latest ad campaigns to use an art style similar to Don Hertzfeldt's is Krystal fast food restaurant to promote their Blitz Energy Drink.