Garrett Fredrickson

Garrett Fredrickson (born June 7th, 1942) is an American director, writer, and producer. He is best known for his style of animation direction, with the art styles being heavily influenced by Japanese anime, giving him the nickname "the American that anime built". He is also well known for being longtime friends with retired film director, writer, musician, and record producer Carl Andy. Some of his best known films include A Penguin's Memories, The Song of the Shattered Skies, The Story of Quincy, This is Ourselves, and Bob Adams: Final Fate.

Early Years (1942-1967)
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Promt and Creative Writing (1967-1976)
Fredrickson began his working life as a writer, namely for both creative writing and for writing prompts. The first thing he wrote was a biography on the late Errol Flynn called "The Swashbuckling Romantic: The Life of Errol Flyn" in 1967, and two years later in 1969, he wrote a creative writing prompt called "The Central Shall Not Grow Old", which was a book documenting several of the operations of the then recently formed Penn Central Transportation Company, thus confirming his interest in railroading. Fredrickson later stated about the latter that "given Penn Central only lasted 8 years, they really did not grow old now did they?". In 1971, he wrote for Railroad Magazine an article about the formation of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, also known as Amtrak. His writing style was more eccentric than most traditional prompts were, giving him a bit of a unique following amongst writing fans.

The Trey the Penguin era (1977-1985)
When the english dub of the French animated film Trey the Penguin was being worked on. Fred Ladd read one of Fredrickson's writing prompts and, lauding the way it was structured and written, called him to see if he could write the English dub of Trey the Penguin. Fredrickson, being fluent in French, was quite excited for this, and accepted the offer, however, being a relatively new person to film writing, he was dreadfully nervous about the whole thing, so Earl Hammer Jr. was called in to assist him. Trey was released to United States theaters on November 16th, 1977 by independent film distributor American International Pictures to positive feedback and decent box office results. Around this time, Fredrickson also became good friends with Carl Andy, and the two began a contract for Fredrickson to make cameo appearances in Andy's films, the only exception was 1982's Faith of a Rabbi, as Fredrickson didn't want to stay very long in England where the movie was being filmed; the same practice would be used by Andy when Fredrickson got into film directing.

After the release of Trey, Fredrickson wrote two more movies, those being the english dub of Space Firebird, and the 1984 film The Last Days of the Sun, the former film beginning Fredrickson's interest in anime animation.

Film Directing (1985-)
Fredrickson, following working on Space Firebird, began interest in spearheading a dub of a foriegn film, namely another Japanese anime film. He considered importing Arcadia of my Youth, but was unable to secure the rights from Toei. In 1985, while visiting Japan, he saw the anime film Penguin Memory - Shiawase Monogatari, and the film seemed to blow him away. He later recalled via Twitter "I just felt like was both very silly but at the same time, hard to not take seriously. It was a movie I knew the world had to see, and so that's when I decided I would dub A Penguin's Memories". He was assisted by renound producer Saul Zaentz, who helped to co-finance the film via The Saul Zaents Company, with the voice cast containing a few notable actors, including Don Ameche, Debbie Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, Burl Ives, and then little known Lou Diamond Philips to name a few. Three of the voice actors from the English version of Trey the Penguin, Marshall Efron, the aforementioned Carl Andy, and Len Maxwell, also lended their voices to the film; Efron voiced the movie's main villain, Bob Adams, Carl Andy made a voice cameo as a waiter, and Len Maxwell voiced a few additional characters. The dub also included some changes from the original film, such as changes in dialogue and a few other edits. This English dub was released to theaters by MGM/UA Communications Co. via United Artists on September 18th, 1987, a little over two years after the film came out in Japan. Unfortunately, the results didn't go out as well as hoped, as the film grossed only $15.6 million against a relatively small $9.9 million budget, and some of the movies themes polarized critics at the time, despite that, the film would later find a new following through television and has since been held up as a fine example of an anime film.

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Filmography
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