The Night My Poem Lost an Oscar to Kobe Bryant
When My Poem 'Negative Space' Became an Oscar-Nominated Animated Short
Lights! Camera! Action!
In 2016, probably, some folks I didn’t know wrote to ask if they could use a prose poem of mine as the basis for a short, animated film. Someone in France had read “Negative Space” in Sex World, my collection of Flash Fiction, from, as usual,
. That someone sent the poem to two young filmmakers - Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter.I told them, “Sure. Keep me in the loop.” Then I forgot all about it.
A year or more later I get another e-mail saying this: “The film is doing well in festivals. A few more wins and we could get into the top five. That means Oscar time and we’d come to L.A.”
They included a copy of the film. It was stop-motion animation, a frame-by-fame painstaking process. And it looked really good. Odd and touching.
I still didn’t get too excited. I’ve been to a lot of Hollywood lunches, usually about the rights to a YA novel of mine. I know in this business, “We love this and will call you tomorrow for sure” usually means, “You’ll never hear from us again ever.”
Not this time. I heard from Ru and Max again; they were coming to L.A. because the film was up for an Oscar in the animated shorts category. They chatted about the other four nominees. “Dear Basketball” was the frontrunner already. Kobe Bryant’s film. Written and narrated by him. Music by John Williams . Yes, that John Willaims. Yes, that Kobe Bryant.
Ru and Max came L.A. They were whisked from one big studio to another and talked to the animators there, and they came to Pasadena so we could spend some time together.
They were young and enthusiastic and loved “Negative Space.” Both the poem and their movie. A few days later Bianca and I went into town for a screening of all the nominees. I got to sign some programs for fans. Kobe came late, left early.
We watched the Oscars from home with some friends. Vegas odds were all in favor of the Kobe film. But as somebody who bets on horses, I’ve seen longshots come in. When the Animated Shorts category came, I couldn’t sit still.
Then everybody in the living room groaned and that was that. Ru and Max e-mailed from the airport the next day. Ironically, Rue is an old noun that was appropriate, but we weren’t rueful in the sense of bitter. We just wished things had turned out different. But I had, in a way, gone one-on-one with Kobe Bryant!
You can watch Negative Space here, I hope you enjoy it:
Ron Koertge (April 22, 1940) is an American poet and author of young adult fiction. Koertge is currently the Poet Laureate of South Pasadena, California. Koertge's honors include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a California Arts Council grant, and inclusion in numerous anthologies. His young-adult fiction has won many awards, including Friends of American Writers Young People’s Literature Award, New York Library’s 100 Best Children’s Books, ALA Best Book, New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age, and P.E.N. awards. In 2017, he was awarded a Pushcart Prize.
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Fantastic poem and film! Of course, the ending "crushes it."