Lily and Jim (1997) is a 16mm animated short film by

Don Hertzfeldt Don Hertzfeldt (born August 1, 1976) is an American animator, writer, and independent filmmaker. He is a two-time Academy Award nominee who is best known for the animated films ''It's Such a Beautiful Day (film), It's Such a Beautiful Day'', the ...

. It is Hertzfeldt's third student film from

UC Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an independent teachers college, UCSB joined ...

, for which he single-handedly animated over 10,000 drawings. In the film, an awkward blind date between a hopeless couple goes from very bad to much worse. Voice actors Robert May (Jim) and Karin Anger (Lily) improvised a number of their dialogues. The films closing credits feature instrumental piano music called "Moving Thirds" by singer-songwriter Beth Waters. The movie eventually received 25 film festival awards, including Grand Prizes from the

New Orleans Film Festival The New Orleans Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the nonprofit organization New Orleans Film Society, a film society founded in 1989. The festival has been held since the society's inception. The festival takes place in mid-O ...

and the USA Film Festival. In 1998, it was shown on an episode of MTV's '' Cartoon Sushi''.

Summary

Lily and Jim meet each other on a blind date. As the story progresses, they each address the camera directly with their own opinions about the date in black-and-white cutaways. They decide to go to an undistinguished restaurant, but find it very hard to relate to each other, or even strike up a simple conversation. They appear to have little in common, and are both awkward and nervous throughout the evening. After dinner, they spend another uneasy moment under a streetlamp, before deciding to go back to Lily's apartment to share

coffee Coffee is a beverage brewed from roasted, ground coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content, but decaffeinated coffee is also commercially a ...

. Jim explains to the audience that he is extremely allergic to coffee, but decides not to tell Lily since he does not want to interrupt the date. Finding nothing to do at the apartment, and missing their chance at a kiss, Lily and Jim decide to watch television. However, the TV only shows various surreal images, so they turn it off. Finally, Jim's coffee allergy takes hold of him and the date comes to an uncomfortable end.

On DVD

In 2005, Lily and Jim was included in "Bitter Films Volume 1" DVD compilation of Hertzfeldt's 1995-2005 films. Special features created for ''Lily and Jim'' include Hertzfeldt's original production sketches and notes, as well as a 15-minute

animatic A storyboard is a graphic organizer that consists of simple illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence. The storyboarding proces ...

consisting of humorous audio outtakes and unused improvisational dialogue from the original 1996-97 session tapes. The original voice actors were also reunited after nine years to do a retrospective audio commentary.

References

External links

Bitter Films home page
Short films directed by Don Hertzfeldt 1997 animated short films 1997 films American animated short films American student films 1990s American films {{short-animation-film-stub