He Met The Walrus

While this morning's Canada-heavy Oscar nominations were cause for a certain amount of national pride, buried beneath the big six top categories is a solid shout-out to our fair city, in the form of a five minute animated short called I Met The Walrus.

In 1969, when John Lennon and Yoko Ono were holed up at the King Edward doing one of their famous "bed-in" things, a 14 year old North York kid named Jerry Levitan snuck into the hotel with a tape recorder, and taped a forty-minute interview with Lennon. The product of Levitan's now-infamous bedside tête-à-tête was recently turned into a film by Toronto filmmaker Josh Raskin, and this morning it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short.

Levitan, who is now a Toronto lawyer, and popular children's entertainer, produced the film, which premiered in Toronto last March, and was also featured in the offerings of last year's TIFF. As those who saw it can attest, it is a beautifully rendered illustration of Lennon's words, and an incisive commentary on both his times and our own.

Unfortunately, until the film finds a more permanent home, fans of animated shorts and John Lennon will have to satisfy their curiousity with this 30-second trailer, or catch a plane down to Sundance, where it's currently screening.