Michael Sporn Animation

Category ArchiveUPA

Animation Artifacts &Story & Storyboards &UPA 05 Feb 2006 08:21 am

Sightings

- Congratulations to Bill Plympton for having won the Annie Award for Best Animated Short with his film, The Fan and the Flower. To see a list of the other award winners, go to Animated-News. This is a good site for hard news about animation. It’s worth visiting daily.

- Also on that site is an obituary for Al Lewis. Lewis, known to many as “Grandpa” from the Munsters, was an everyday sight in the West Village. For years, he had an Italian restaurant called, appropriately, “Grandpa’s” on Bleecker Street, about a block from my studio. He ran for Governor on the Green Party in 1998.

I first knew Lewis from “Car 54, Where Are You?” He was probably my first celebrity sighting. As a teenager, I worked in a cafeteria in the Bronx Zoo. On a quiet and rainy day, he was a customer. I not only got to talk to him when I served him, but he invited me over to his table to talk during my coffee break. If only back them I knew I was to run into him many dozens of times later in my life. Always a nice hello. I’ll miss seeing him on the street.