You Can Watch Two Classic Films by the Late Portland Animator Will Vinton at Hollywood Theatre This Weekend

The Oregon-born artist and clay animation pioneer died last week after a 12-year-long battle with multiple myeloma.

David Loitz.

Hollywood Theatre is honoring the late Oregon animator Will Vinton with a screening of some of his most well-known work.

The McMinnville-born artist, who helped popularize clay animation in the 1970s and '80s, died Oct. 4 after battling multiple myeloma for more than a decade. He was 70 years old.

Related: Legendary Portland Animator Will Vinton Has Died.

Vinton began creating films in Portland in the 1970s and founded Will Vinton Studios, which went on to produce several Emmy-winning projects and pop culture phenomena for ads like the California Raisins and Domino's Pizza's Noid mascot. His 1974 short, Closed Mondays, was the first Portland-made film to take home an Oscar. Vinton would go on to earn three more nominations.

You can catch the eight-minute long Academy Award-winning film, where museum exhibits come alive at night in the mind of a drunken patron, at the Hollywood on Oct. 14, along with The Adventures of Mark Twain, Vinton's first full-length clay animation feature, from 1985. It chronicles the titular writer's voyage in an airship with a couple of well-known stowaways: Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher and Huckleberry Finn.

All the proceeds from the evening's showings will go to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Tickets are $10. There will also be a celebration of Vinton's life at No Vacancy Lounge on Sunday, Oct. 21.

Andi Prewitt

Andi Prewitt is WW's arts and culture editor. She writes about Oregon’s trifecta of fun: craft beer, food and the outdoors. A native Oregonian, Andi’s claim to fame was being named Princess of Newberg. It’s all been downhill from there.

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