Arts & Entertainment

Farmington Hills Native Reflects on Difficult Path to Oscar Glory

After leaving Chicago in 2009 unsure of his economic or educational future, Calvin O'Neal Jr. won the 2012 Academy Award in the Best Animated Short Film Category.

Calvin O'Neal Jr. is the kind of person who wants others to understand how he feels — for better or for worse.

Raised in Farmington Hills, the 2008 Orchard Lake St. Mary's graduate has worked as a film editor for Moonbot Studios in Shreveport, LA for two years, where he gets to live out his childhood dreams of direction, production, editing, and acting, all cultivated on Orchard Lake Road, where he grew up in Farmington Hills.

When asked how he felt while watching the Academy Awards broadcast Sunday, when it was announced that Moonbot won in the Best Animated Short Film Category for The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, O'Neal Jr. said that he was literally jumping for joy.

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"It was extremely exciting, humbling, just, simply, a huge blessing. There were so many emotions going on," he said. "We recorded our reactions and the first thing to do at work the next day was to come together and put together a video reaction."

(To watch a video of the live celebration in Shreveport, visit the Moonbot Studios page on Vimeo. O'Neal Jr. is tough to miss in the video, letting go of a handful of white balloons. In addition to starring in it, he helped edited it.)

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Morris is part-Buster Keaton-esque comedy, part-poignant homage to the printed word, in which the title character is doomed to a lifetime of servitude to books that come alive after Lessmore's New Orleans abode is destroyed in Hurricane Katrina.

O'Neal Jr. said that after returning to work this week, he has taken an opportunity to reflect on his young life to this point, which he said bears some resemblance to the title character's circumstances.

After a childhood spent traveling to Twelve Oaks Mall in Novi to see the latest films, O'Neal Jr. said that he began to capitalize on his interest in film at St. Mary's, thanks to the efforts of a few English instructors — Don Ambrose, Chris Czarnecki, and Sandra Ostaszewski — who helped him "understand how to wrap my head around great literature."

O'Neal Jr. said that his interests were just taking on an educational foundation at Columbia College, where he studied film production, when difficult economic conditions forced a move from Michigan to Louisiana.

O'Neal Jr. said he was kicked out of school soon thereafter, because he wasn't able to pay for classes. He soon decided to move back in with his parents, in a new environment.

"I felt like Morris after Katrina — everything felt uncertain. I felt like none of my dreams could come true, because I had to work harder for them," he said. "I would have done anything to work in movies, and I was so surprised to find the state as like, a film haven."

O'Neal Jr. said he took advantage of a state-funded program designed to provide interns for film productions and received a full-time job with Moonbot in Oct. 2009. He worked as an assistant unit director on Morris, eventually receiving a promotion to assistant editor. 

"I guess I wasn't surprised to win the award, because I always believed in the story. I think everyone has a little Morris in them," he said. "But I have to admit that these past few years have been very interesting."

O'Neal added that he recently finished working as a lead editor on an iPad app, which is companion to the film.

To purchase The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, visit iTunes.


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