It is Christmas Eve and all is well! Not even the proverbial church mouse is stirring while I write this in the early hours of December 24th, 2007.

There used to be a wonderful TV tradition in England when I was younger.  At the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve (when all the gifts were wrapped and Santa was about to do his tireless and altruistic deeds for all the good little children around the world) there was always a creepy 'ghost story' film provided for all the tired and brow-beaten viewers who were up... mostly young parents still wrapping their children's Christmas presents for the day ahead.  (Exhaustedly anticipating that in a few hours the padding of tiny feet would greet them in their bedroom, accompanied by the wide-eyed look of a child who would excitedly announce, arms full of gifts... "He's been!")

Anyway, the TV 'ghost story' was often a specially-made film drama that was entirely original in content and yet made the flesh creep as you watched it.  With the British affection for Charles Dickens... and especially 'A Christmas Carol' at this particular time of the year... the midnight 'ghost story' seemed perfectly pertinent and natural.  As tired and brow-beaten as I invariably was myself at this time, I remember always looking forward immensely to its arrival... as it was pretty-much the most original drama TV show of the year in my humble opinion!

Sadly, I can't offer you a Christmas Eve 'ghost story' to match these memories but I can tell you about a strange dream I had last night! I don't normally share dreams with perfect strangers, as they are usually very boring to all but those who dream them.  However, bear with me on this one as there is an 'animation slant' to it if you can bluff it out! 

I have a tendency for not sleep long, or well, normally. Actually I do fall asleep easily but then I usually wake-up in the early hours of the morning and can't get back to sleep again.  (The brain is too active thinking about animation, and projects, and things I've forgotten to do because of the first two things!) This is apparently a tendency I had, even in my very earliest years of childhood. My mother too had a penchant for existing on only about four or five hours of sleep a night... especially in her latter years. Anyway, the same happened on this occasion. But, after a couple of hours of writing (and watching the first half of live soccer game from England on the Fox channel... 'Chelsea versus Blackburn' for those who are remotely interested) I felt strangely more tired than normal.  Consequently, I went back to bed and ultimately slept until around 11.30 am. (Extremely rare for me!) Anyway, during this sleep I had... 'the dream'!

I found myself in a small, old-fashioned animation studio.  It was a very old building with very old desks, containing small rooms that interlinked in a quite intimate way.  There were old-fashioned, square-paned, open windows all around and when I looked out I could see the street some distance below. This studio was high up. I remember trying to work at an animation desk in the corner of the room for some unknown reason.  I say 'trying' as the place was filled with the filmmaking clutter of decades... all piled up on the desks, between the desks and anywhere around the desks that there was a space to put it.  Consequently, the desk I was trying to work at had no room to put anything on, so I was clearing and tidying some space on top of it. This seemed really, really important to me in the dream, so I even proceeded to clear and tidy the room around the desk in question, making my corner in that place workable and presentable again.

My ultimate intention became to clear and tidy the whole studio eventually.  However, as I was doing so I was suddenly aware of two people working amongst the clutter... two individuals who finally became one person in the dream. (You know how dreams can seem perfectly logical when you're in them!) This was a person I ultimately ended up speaking to.  I was actually surprised to see anyone there at first as the place had clearly not been worked in for a while and the staff had long gone.  The person I spoke to was about 35-45 year's old.  He had a kind of Salvador Dali look to him... at least with his goatee beard and full, turn-up moustache.  In style he was a lot like a laid-back Marlon Brando type of figure from "On the Waterfront"... although he was much thinner in stature and his face was etched with many more lines.  He wore a pair of 'cool', dark glasses and a leather jacket.  His hair had been dark but was clearly turning iron-gray when I saw him.  Overall he had a kind of triangular look to his head... the pointing down beard at the bottom and his hair windswept back and upward at the sides, providing the other two corners of the triangle.  He told me his name was " Jack Zander".

In the dream I had already assumed he ran the studio but it was not until I eventually woke up and remembered the email obituary that animator Nancy Beiman had sent me some days before that I seriously took notice of the real death of Jack Zander!  I knew of the Zander studio from my days running Animus of course. Zander's had been a distant rival to us when we were competing for advertising work in New York. But I never, ever met him... or even saw a photograph of him before to my recollection. 

Anyway, in the dream, Jack told me that the place was 'closing down' so there was no need to tidy it up.  He said he had 'one thing left to do' then he would be leaving too.  I continued to tidy as he said that because it seemed important to me for some reason.  He watched what I was doing and then he finally looked me squarely and intensely in the eye (he had been looking down throughout the preceding events). At this point he said "I want you to come and work for the studio"! I was taken aback as I didn't really have any thoughts of working for anyone... or in the industry... again.  (Even in my dream I was very much a DigiPen teacher and independent animated filmmaker, and although I was trying to work at the desk in the corner for some reason, it wasn't in the spirit of it was 'a job' or it was 'for a studio'.)  However, at that point I thought the offer through very carefully.  In the dream it was a feeling of extensive thinking... weighing all the risks up and going through many kinds of twists and turns before reaching a final decision. (But watching events from outside, I'm sure another person would have seen my response occurring in a split-second of real... dream... time!) I looked him squarely back in the eye and said I would... but only if he paid me a 'good salary', gave me 'ten percent of the profits' I make and 'reinvest another 25 percent of future profits back into the business' to create new ideas and approaches to the studio's own home-grown projects.  He must have thought a lot too... it showed on his face. But in a seeming split-second that took forever he came back at me and said "Okay". Then he shook my hand. 

It was at that point I woke up and remembered the Nancy Beiman obituary!

I'm relating this dream now with no other motive than 'curiosity'.  Perhaps someone out there, reading this account, will have worked for Jack Zander and confirm (or deny) elements within my dream?  For me it remains 'just a dream'.  But so clear and impactful was it for me to experience that I would genuinely like to know more about Jack and its accuracy in the greater scheme of things.  I truly know very little about his life or his studio. As I say, I had merely only ever heard the name of it sporadically throughout all my years as a studio owner in the industry.  I did do a quick Google search to see if I could find a picture of Jack, to compare it with the character I had seen in the dream.  I could not find any clear or consistent pictures of him at the age I saw him.  All I found was a full-face image of him as an old man and it was not like the face of my dream figure at all... save for his now-white beard and moustache.  The cartoon caricature of Jack on his studio logo looked just like the person I saw however... only he had dark gray facial hair in my dream and not the white hair of the cartoon. So, the jury's out on this one I'm afraid... unless anyone else can throw light on the story?

By the way, I did write to Nancy Beiman about it afterwards.  She had worked for Jack at the beginning of her career but as he was already in his seventies at that time she could not confirm anything about my dream of the much younger Jack Zander.  Although Nancy did share with me a quick 'ghost story' of her own...

When she worked at Disney, long after Walt had died, she once saw a group of frightened story men standing around the photocopier on the third (story) floor of the famous "Hat" building.  She asked them what was wrong. "There's a cold wind blowing down the hall. We think that Walt is here, checking up on us" was their nervous reply. She looked up and smiled. "You're standing under an air-conditioning vent!" she added. (Thereby solving the mystery of their particular Walt ghost story once and for all!)

So finally... a hearty "MERRY CHRISTMAS" everyone.  I hope it won't be such a chilling Christmas Eve night for you as it used to be for me when I watched those spooky ghost stories on the wonderfully insightful British television from the past!

Tony.  :^{)}=-