Vermont Animator Takes Home Oscar

As film-lovers and celebrity-followers alike settled in for the three-and-a-half hour Academy Awards ceremony last Sunday evening, big name actors and directors were on everyone’s minds — from Quentin Tarantino to Daniel Day-Lewis to the lovable Jennifer Lawrence. However, by the end of the night, everyone who stayed tuned-in long enough had heard of John Kahrs, the director who won an Academy Award for Disney’s short film “Paperman” and whom the Addison County Independent calls “Addison County’s Academy Award Connection.”

While he grew up in the Hudson River Valley in upstate New York, Kahrs spent his summers in Vermont; his parents, Helen and Ed Kahrs however, currently live in West Addison, so why not claim him for a “local boy makes it big” for Addison County this awards season?

Although Kahrs kept his acceptance speech brief, thanking the Academy, his team at Disney, his producer and his wife and kids, a backstage interview with Kahrs by reporter James Molnar allowed the director to speak at greater length about the breathtaking Disney animated short.  The seven-minute film tells the story of a chance connection between strangers, a young man and woman commuting to work. Separated from the woman after the fated encounter, the young man spends the rest of the short trying desperately to catch her attention via paper airplanes, resulting in a somewhat predictable, but thoroughly satisfying Disney ending.

“My inspiration for ‘Paperman’ is basically as a commuter, and it’s kind of chance connections you make with strangers and wonder who they are,” said Kahrs. “I just had this idea of an urban fairytale about people who were perfect for each other but lost their connection.”

“Paperman” is notable not only for its beautiful and simple storyline, but also for its innovative combination of old-school 2D animation and new CG technology.

“We took the kind of old 2D animation and the newer CG animation and put them together in a way that I think hasn’t been seen before,” said Kahrs. “But I think you know, what we did is take the drawn line and the expressiveness and the hand of the artist and bring it into the 21st century.”

The return to traditional time-honored 2D animation (with a 21st century update) is complimented by the 1940’s setting, the black-and-white color scheme (with a significant splash of red lipstick), and an homage to the silent film with the short’s wordless script.

“For me the idea of it having no words in it makes it extremely portable, that you can show it all around the world and it communicates,” said Kahrs. “I think the best films to me are the ones that you can understand where the sound is turned off.”

In his backstage interview Kahrs also took a moment to recognize his parents whom he had forgotten to thank in his acceptance speech.

“I forgot to thank my parents. What can I say? So mom and dad, thank you … I’ve been trying to call them but they have a busy signal. When is the last time someone got a busy signal? They live way out in Vermont and there’s more cows than people up there.”