Adult Animation Festivals in The United States
In 1988, San Francisco exhibitor Expanded Cinema screened a compilation of adult-oriented animated shorts under the title "Outrageous Animation". Advertising the package as containing "the wildest cartoons ever", the screenings contained shorts produced outside the United States, as well as independently produced American shorts. Reviews of the festival were mixed. San Francisco Chronicle writer Mick LaSalle hated almost everything screened at the festival, with the exception of Bill Plympton's One of Those Days. In The San Francisco Examiner, David Armstrong gave the show a three-star review and described the films screened as having "some of the rude vitality of the great old Warner Bros. cartoons —and a good deal of the sexual explicitness denied those old favorites from a more cautious age."
In 1990, Mellow Manor Productions began screening films under the title "Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation". Founders Craig "Spike" Decker and Mike Gribble promoted their festival by handing out flyers on the streets rather than with traditional promotional techniques. In 1991, Decker and Gribble screened their first "All Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation", promising "wild and zany films that could never be shown to our 'normal audience'". The festival screened newer independent shorts, as well as older shorts such as Bambi Meets Godzilla and Thank You Mask Man. Although the festival promoted works by animators who would later gain mainstream success, such as Plympton, Mike Judge, Trey Parker, and Don Hertzfeldt, many reviewers dismissed the bulk of the programming as shock value.
In 2003, Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt created a new touring festival of animation marketed towards adults and college students. The Animation Show brought animated shorts into more North American theaters than any previous commercial festival. Though intended for adult audiences, the programming skewed more towards Academy Award nominated animated shorts and foreign films than it did explicit material.
Read more about this topic: Adult Animation, History
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