A History with Garrett Gilchrist

Edit: This post was originally published on July 21st, 2024. It was deleted about a week later out of professional courtesy. However, I feel that as it has been a month and these accusations continue to spread elsewhere, I decided it may be best to have my story available for reference. 

It was recently brought to my attention that Garrett Gilchrist, a prominent figure in animation and videogame preservation, made a rather lengthy post on Facebook about me, my work, and our past history. Unfortunately, much of what he stated was exaggerated or entirely fabricated. To clear these muddy waters, I've decided to give a full dissertation on my relationship with Gilchrist.

For those who are unfamiliar, and to have context for what follows, Garrett Gilchrist put together The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut, a fan-edit of the unfinished animated epic The Thief and the Cobbler comprised of elements he himself sought after along with various alternate cuts of the film from different releases. Garrett was also responsible for getting the animated film Raggedy Ann and Andy's Musical Adventure scanned in 4K and restored from a 35mm print. He also uploaded a digital transfer of a promotional cassette of the soundtrack for the film Rock & Rule, which he was sent by the tape's owner. He is a well respected member in various animation communities.

When I was 15 years old (I'm 20 now) I contacted Garrett because I wanted photos of the cassette tape for Rock & Rule. At the time, I was not aware Garrett did not physically own the tape, however he did not make this clear and instead decided to call me mentally ill for wanting photos of the tape. At the time, being 15, I was pretty persistent in wanting photos because I thought it was "important" for preservation reasons. Later that year and the one or two that followed, I often smeared his name to my peers in lost media communities (mainly the Lost Media Wiki) because I felt slighted by his rude behavior. I also felt his attitude overall with The Thief and the Cobbler was/is inappropriate and would often complain of this. Because of this, through his eyes, his reputation had been tarnished and he no longer felt comfortable in many of the circles I inhabited. Later on, as I grew up and realized how dumb the situation was, I spoke of Garrett less. Later that same year I attempted in restoring the music to Rock & Rule and created a soundtrack album for the film, given that it never had one officially. For further context, Garrett had previously attempted in restoring the soundtrack himself, but I was not satisfied with his attempt. My own attempt used none of his work and only used the raw cassette transfers he had uploaded online, which he had been sent from the owner.

During the pandemic, I, like many others, grew anxious. Being a teenager with hormones and a recognizable presence on the internet I had decided to use a script to delete the first few years of my message history because I was afraid my address or legal name may have been accidentally shared. Because of this, my previous comments about Garrett no longer exist, however I have been told he has screenshots of them.

At 17 years old, in 2021, I became interested in the film Raggedy Ann and Andy's Musical Adventure. The film had never been released on a format beyond VHS, and Garrett had acquired a 35mm print of the film to get scanned properly. Excited by this, and someone who at the time was wanting to get a career in film restoration, I contacted Garrett and asked if he had planned to release the film in HD (at the time, only a low quality copy of his scan had been released) so I may attempt at restoring it. He asked who I was and why I was restoring his restorations, and told me not to. I responded in confusion that the copy I had seen was definitely not restored, being riddled with dirt and damage, and asked if I had the wrong copy. He then told me that he did not want me to touch any of "his" footage. After I further asked for clarification, I was blocked. Later on I would discover that Garrett did indeed have plans to restore the film himself, but at the time I had messaged him I was not aware of this nor was it public. Since then, he has been under the impression that I have been stalking him for reasons I am not fully aware.

Direct message excerpt

Later that same year, I attempted at restoring Rock & Rule's soundtrack yet again. This version included official releases by some of the artists, an alternate copy of one song found on a dead fan site, and a few songs still sourced from the cassette Garrett had shared long ago. Again, none of the sources I used were previously modified or restored by Garrett. I spent time and effort on that project and would never bring myself to the low level of slapping my name on someone else's work.

When I was 16, I had the idea to try editing my own version of The Thief and the Cobbler, a project I didn't actually start on until I was 18. The project would be created using elements that Garrett had shared in the past along with various cuts of the film. Part of the reason I even came up with the idea, admittedly, was out of spite. But as I grew older that reason became a footnote and the actual reason was I was not particularly happy with how the Recobbled Cut portrayed the film, and given that nobody else had attempted in making their own version, I thought I should try it myself. The main reason for that was so I could have my own version of the movie to watch myself, and if anyone liked it, that's just a positive side effect. It was a great editing practice and I documented that journey in another post on this same blog. The biggest rule in that project was to not use any of Garrett's work. Not only was this not to step on his toes, but it's also a professional courtesy for restoration of this kind. Every shot in that version was placed by hand from raw elements sourced from Garrett's public raw scans and official versions of the film available from many places. None of what is in that project was modified from its original source by anyone other than me and my team. It was a long, laborious task that I never completed because I shelved it a year later. I still have a deep respect for Garrett's work in persevering and completing the four, soon to be five, versions of the Recobbled Cut

Later on, he joined the Lost Media Wiki server and made a rather large confrontation about my behavior when I was younger. Later that same day we spoke privately about our past altercations. It seemed he had assigned much of his previous abuse from other people to me. After I let him speak, I told him that much of what he was talking about I never did, but what I had done years in the past I regretted and I apologized for. He himself apologized for his own past rude behavior. Unfortunately, by this point, I had muted his messages because I was in the middle of my vacation and during this conversation he sent many messages accusing me of harassment that I didn't want to deal with at the time. Because of this, I never saw his own apology and opening for a truce. Later I had almost forgotten about the entire situation and hardly thought about him. However, a year later I noticed his message and responded with an agreement, he never got back to me. I'm not sure if this meant he thought I was ignoring him, but since then he seems to have changed his mind and that truce is no longer in place. I tried messaging him a few times afterwards to ask if he'd be open in talking about the Thief because of my own research and I thought it might be something he might want to talk about. I did not hear from him.

Direct message excerpt

Over a year later, in 2023, at 19, I began work on my book Drawing For Nothing, a free art book dedicated to animated movies that were never finished or were poorly received. For the chapter covering Rock & Rule, I thought it would be cool to have a proper photo of the cassette tape included because it's the only semi-official release of its soundtrack, an important piece of the film's history. At this point, I forgot how I was told this, I learned that Garrett did not own the tape and only had released the digital transfer after being sent it from the actual owner. So I emailed Garrett to ask if he could point me in the right direction to contact the owner. In response, he sent me a very long, insulting email in response.

My email

His response

I was very surprised by this response and didn't really know how to handle it. I felt it was needlessly violent and aggressive and came to my mother for help. She responded to him for me, stating that I would not contact him again but due to his allegations, the email has been recorded in her legal archives.

From there, I indeed did not attempt in contacting Garrett again because it was quite obvious he had no intention of making things right. Over time my career grew, I was interviewed by the Library of Congress for my book The Lost Media and Research Handbook as well as Cartoon Brew and the New York Times for Drawing For Nothing. Because of my new found passion in historical journalism, I joined the Facebook group Cartoon Research and made a post about Drawing For Nothing there. Garrett, who is part of the group, saw this as me stalking him and trying to leech from his fame, making baseless claims that I have stolen his own work and I have made The Thief and the Cobbler the face of everything I do, going as far as to claim I impersonated my own mother. My mother, of course, went to clarify this given that he had brought her into it. Moderators were involved and the comment was deleted. When my mother attempted in contacting him to clarify things, she was blocked without a response. Later that same day (four days ago from this writing), Garrett made a rather lengthy post on Facebook regarding me, my work, and our history.

I have not been stalking Garrett Gilchrist. The last time it could be argued that I harassed him is when I was in my mid-teens. Since then, I apologized multiple times when we attempted to make a truce that needlessly went nowhere. I never contacted him under "many aliases," whenever I contacted him under my pseudonym Ziggy Cashmere I fully expected him to know who I was, because he knew I was the same person when we spoke over Discord. It is possible he did not make the connection when I contacted him regarding Raggedy Ann, and if that is the case that is a mistake on my part. Ziggy Cashmere is the only alias I use to contact people and it is only used because it is what many people knew me as when I was younger. Since then, it is very easy to find my legal name with my alias, given that it has been published in multiple articles. As explained earlier, I did not impersonate my own mother. Every allegation I spoke about him in my mid-teens I did not make up and was either based off my own experiences or others. The only project one could argue I was going to "reclaim" is The Thief and the Cobbler, which as I specified was meant to be an entirely separate project.

Jealousy was never a problem, it was pride. I realize I made mistakes in the past, but I feel they were rather small and were done by a teenager who I hardly recognize anymore. This being started when I was 15 and he was 35, I can't help but feel this entire situation is rather silly. But given that my reputation is on the line, I feel I had to clarify that I am not the "imbecile" he claims I am.

 

Addition: I have not spoke ill of Garrett in a very long time, have never stolen his work or stalked him, I'm not entirely sure what he wants from me. Since this post was made Garrett had decided to make a meme spoofing the cover of my book Drawing for Nothing with a variety of accusations, including quoting my own mother's email. 

This was shared in multiple Discord servers, some of which I am in, as well as posted on his own Twitter account (with comments disabled.) After my mother sent another email threatening legal action, he continued to taunt her on Twitter.

 

Due to personal matters as well as having real life responsibilities, we never pursued legal action. In the end, I just wish for me, my work, and my team to be left alone. I am confused as to what exactly he is wanting, and given that he has blocked me on every platform imaginable, that isn't really something he can tell me. I no longer ask for a truce or an understanding, all I ask for is decency and not claiming my hard work was stolen from someone else or their image.

The Thief and the Cobbler: A Practice in Editing

My desk while editing The Thief: Polished, 2022

A little over two years ago I started a project titled "The Thief and the Cobbler: Polished" which was meant to be my own reconstruction of the film The Thief and the Cobbler explicitly using finished animation and storyboards. Not only was this an extreme exercise in video editing, which at the time was something I wanted to do a career, but it was also something I felt had promise and had never been done before. The only person to really step up and take the film by the reigns and recut it himself was Garrett Gilchrist, creator of the Recobbled Cut. Ever since his attempts, Recobbled Cut Mark 4 has been considered the definitive version of the troubled feature. While the Recobbled Cut is an incredible feat of editing, preservation, and perseverance, I always had the feeling that another approach could be put towards Thief.

The Thief was never finished, at least not to Richard Williams' expectations in what he wanted. Though, I don't think he ever truly knew what he wanted. I think I know what he wanted spiritually, to create his magnum opus, his love letter to animation, but I don't think he ever truly figured out what was best for the movie itself. Due to his constant need for perfection and his lack of organization, the film was taken away from him and "completed" in a way even he knew was wrong. Because of this, no cut of the film will be accurate. There will always be something missing, a creative decision made by the editor instead of Williams, something not polished to how he wanted. Through the various cuts of the film that we were given in the 90s as it passed several hands and the little bits and scraps Gilchrist managed to scrounge up from trashcan finds and eBay listings, we have the pieces to a jigsaw puzzle that can be put together in any decent way and be considered "complete" because there is no picture on the box for what it's supposed to be.

So while watching Recobbled Cut 4 for the fifth or so time, I decided I wanted to try my own hand. I went through and downloaded all of Gilchrist's old "Thief Scrapbooks" giant zip files filled with newspaper clippings, concept art, and clips he had accumulated from Williams' work, as well as other uploads he had put up over the years. Without Gilchrist's multi-year obsession for this film we wouldn't have half of what's currently available. It was impossible to do it properly without his collection. With that in hand along with whatever else I could find online, I created my own little collection of Thief material. One could, theoretically, put it all together in all sorts of ways to create their own version of the film.

I created a Discord server specifically for the project and invited people that, at the time, I had been talking to at some extent about the project and were passionate about the film like I was. In retrospect, in all honesty, most of them weren't very helpful besides bounce a few ideas around. However, Notelu, someone who I have known for many years, was helpful in upscaling the low quality footage we had on hand and did it subtly. Key word is subtly. Later on I had decided to invite a particular person to the project to help out with upscale and restoration, though that later proved to be a mistake. Their methods were far more abrasive, with every upscaled shot removing key details. Though the straw that broke the camel's back was when they wanted to use Gilchrist's restorations instead of doing it all by hand. When I told them stealing other people's restorations is precisely not what we wanted to do, but after that they decided to leave. Perhaps it was for the best.

A comparison between the original and restoration of spire turn around shot.

From the beginning it was a challenge. Though, thankfully, Notelu had sent me a link to some software named Phoenix Finish. It was the only film restoration software I managed to find for free that I could actually understand. Using Phoenix, I managed to remove the dirt and scratches from the beginning crystal ball animations. In the above comparison, I also attempted in creating what I call a contrast map, though I'm sure it's a technique that already has a name and has already been used by many others. I took the original animation, converted it to greyscale, and leveled the contrast for deep shadows, placing it on top and blending it with the original. This meant I could restore a shot using only what I was provided, without blending it with other sources such as pencil tests for better visibility. This technique, in my opinion, leads the viewer to understand it as simply a damaged film rather than an obvious restoration. I also made changes to the beginning crystal ball shots themselves, many unfinished and because of that, removed. This meant I had to shorten the beginning dialogue and speed up the ball's rise. This worked to my benefit, no longer do you have to wait 5 minutes for the movie to start. Originally, that 5 minutes wouldn't have been a problem, because the credits were meant to appear above the ball as it came towards the viewer. However, I felt that no one is qualified to mimic Williams' golden typography he had intended, and decided not to include them. This was a sacrifice I made for better viewing, not for accuracy. Such as many changes I made. The Recobbled Cut already covered most bases for accuracy.

The final title composite

I used a similar technique with the film title itself. Given it was renamed multiple times in the past, the best copy that can be found of the original animated title is on the 2009 DVD. I took that, greyscaled, leveled, stabilized, removed dot crawl, and placed on top of a still image of the logotype from a poster. It's probably the best rendition of the animated title card anywhere currently and probably the thing I'm most proud of out of the whole project.

The original workprint vs what was intended

Later on as I reviewed the workprint for the film I noticed that there were grease pencil markings at a few splices. Not every splice, just a handful. When mentioning this to Notelu she told me that they were left there by the editor, likely Williams himself, as a note for transitions. At the time I was very uneducated on 35mm film and how it functioned, and even now I find difficulty finding documentation on editor's marks on films. Even before I writing this I reviewed books on film editing from the time and none of them make note of specific marks that determine what kind of transition was intended. Nonetheless, it seems fairly obvious what they had in mind when reviewing the workprint.

Soon I'd notice more marks throughout the workprint. Lines crossing between each other between two scenes were dissolves, singular lines were fade ins/outs (or sometimes crossing lines- likely remnants from a past dissolve from an earlier workprint.) The scene with King Nod's dream of the soldier coming to warn him of One Eye made far more sense in how it was supposed to be constructed. The individual shots of the soldier and the growing eye were meant to dissolve into each other. Ironically, the lines that gave these instructions also obstructed the image, and I wasn't able to construct what was intended with what I had, given that the workprint was the only version of the film to include those shots.

As I was editing the film I would discover that many of the sequences that were never finished didn't really need to be included. While this, to many, may seem sacrilegious, I felt that it was worthy to try. Yum Yum never searches for Tack in the prison and only sees him again when he appears behind the curtain, that was the biggest change made. A few scenes were reordered as well. Another big change, and discovery, is when King Nod rejects Zig Zag's ransom to wed Yum Yum. This scene was never animated under Williams. When it was animated under Calvert, the lines were entirely rewritten. However, laying Zig Zag's animation on top of the audio from the workprint revealed that they had animated his reaction with that audio for reference. It is far from perfect and I prefer the original boards, however I included Calvert's animation anyway because of the goal of the project itself (not to use any unfinished animation) as well as how interesting the coincidence was in the first place.

Later on I discovered that Gilchrist's scans of the film elements that remain of the war machine sequence were very poor. Gilchrist himself agrees with this, and has been wanting to get it rescanned for quite some time. The problem is over-exposure, everything red is too red and because of that many details in the machine have been blown out and lost. Incredibly, I managed to find someone who had an older scan of these film elements that were done for a previous mark of the recobbled cut. While they were of lower quality, the white balance was far more accurate and easier to look at.

Unfortunately, by the time I made it to this point in the film, I was beginning to get tired of the project. Most of what I wanted to discover and learn I had done. There was little to keep me motivated to keep working, knowing that there will never be a "perfect" version of this movie to watch. I realized, most of the reason I was doing this in the first place was just to have a version of the film that I preferred to watch and enjoy without jarring changes in quality. I edited it like a producer instead of a historian. As my motivation dwindled, I decided to cancel the project. I had finished editing it, mostly, but I had hardly done any restoration, which was something I was really wanting to do in the beginning. (It didn't help that I got a new computer half way through that for some reason does not work with Phoenix Finish.) Because of this, the war machine scene I just put in from the workprint. I did not have the energy anymore to edit the entire thing together from the film scans.

A little less than two years later, for reasons I don't even remember now even though it was quite recent, I decided to release what I had done. I opened the old premiere file, tied up a few loose ends in editing and shipped it out on YouTube. I think I may be the only other person to "complete" a ground-up edit from The Thief and the Cobbler. Nearly every shot I placed by hand from various sources. I found a new respect for the Recobbled Cut, fan edits, and editors in general.

Every now and then I think about revisiting it, by finishing it how I intended. But I don't think it's time. So, for the time being, here is the "it's good enough" version. Complete without credits! Like how it was intended to end. (Much to nearly every animator's dismay...)