Alison Snowden and David Fine on their Bob's Birthday Oscar win
It was third-time-lucky for the filmmakers when Bob's Birthday gifted them an Oscar statuette
A pair of Vancouver-based animators are about to learn if they will soon have a second Oscar win to claim.
Alison Snowden and David Fine's Animal Behaviour has been nominated for best animated short film. They will find out on Sunday night if they will bringing home another Academy Award.
The couple previously won an Oscar in 1995, when their film Bob's Birthday was victorious in the same category.
Back then, Snowden and Fine spoke to CBC's Midday about their award-winning project, as well as their moment in the Oscar spotlight.
A bad birthday for Bob
The 12-minute-long Bob's Birthday centres around newly-middle-aged Bob, who is down in the dumps about his 40th birthday. Things truly unravel when his wife, Margaret, tries to throw him a surprise party.
Midday's Tina Srebotnjak asked what Fine and Snowden — who were then thirty-something filmmakers based in London, England — would know about crossing "this great bridge into middle age."
They explained that their own experiences with the deception and lies around their 30th birthday celebrations provided some inspiration for the development of the film's plot.
"Even though neither one was exactly like how it worked out in the film," Snowden recounted, they discussed how they were inspired to illustrate that "the idea of lying to someone you care about to do something nice for them" could lead to things going wrong.
They also expressed having felt trepidation about Bob's actions, that perhaps "Bob might appear to be too horrible a character" — and they hoped that what he did was what anybody might do in their own home.
"And so we were pleased, or maybe shocked, saddened to find that everybody relates to it."
And if Snowden's voice sounded familiar to viewers, it was because, as Srebotnjak said, "you are in fact the voice of Margaret, right?"
"That's right," Snowden responded, sounding very much like Margaret.
'You kind of float to the stage'
Having experienced the nervousness of being nominated for Academy Awards before, for Second Class Mail and George and Rosemary, Fine described how they felt on Oscar night.
"It was just very thrilling of course, because we've been nominated before and lost, so we know what that's felt like," Fine said.
"You just get up and you kind of float to the stage ... something takes over that just makes you kind of giddy and excited."
The win came with some gifts other than the shiny statuette. At the time of Snowden and Fine's Midday interview, they were due to meet British Prime Minister John Major at his Downing Street residence later that day.
They also got recognition from the leader of the Canadian government.
"You've got a letter there, from our very own prime minister?" Srebotnjak asked.
"Mr. Chrétien," Fine said, picking up a letter with a shiny gold seal. "Very nice letter, nothing bad to say at all."
Following the couple's Oscar win, their Bob's Birthday characters lived on in their own 52-episode series called Bob and Margaret. As with the short film, Snowden voiced Margaret in the TV show.