RE Log Fall 2019

8 Ransom Everglades LOG FALL 2019 “The thing with speeches is you have about 10 seconds to land any point,” Lord explained weeks later from his parents’ home in Coconut Grove. “I was the person who said it, but everyone up there felt very strongly that was the reason the movie resonated.” Winning an Academy Award for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse represented the culmination – to date – of a filmmaking career built on aesthetically thrilling, unapologetically off-kilter productions whose frivolity is balanced by serious messages about humanity, usually delivered through regular people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Lord’s movie portfolio, which includes Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The Lego Movie , represents an extension of his own personality and beliefs about the world. His works also clearly lay out his artistic vision, which was always inspired more by MAD Magazine than Mozart. “None of our work,” he said, “is mature.” All of it, however, has something to say. The spark Lord’s career success has been a consequence of what his sister described as “explosive creativity” along with incredibly good timing, powerful relationships, and the privilege of growing up in a fun-loving family that valued artistic expression of all kinds and never took itself too seriously. “In this family, we think that art and music are as important to human existence as breathing,” Lord said. The Lord homestead on a leafy street in Coconut Grove springs to life whenever the Lords – Phil; his mother, Carmen Lord; father, Wally Lord; and sister, Annie Lord ’97 – gather. Annie lives with her husband Nick Borja and sons Alex and William in the house next door, so it’s just a walk across the yard to welcome her brother when he flies in from Los Angeles. During a recent visit, everyone seemed to talk at once, while somehow listening earnestly to everyone else. The fever-pitch banter was dotted with wisecracks and completely bereft of awkward pauses. When Phil and Annie were children, the atmosphere at home proved creatively fertile and intellectually stimulating. It helped inspire Phil’s all- in-good-fun humor, which has always veered toward absurdity but never meanness. “We were always joking, saying things that were out of place at the dinner table,” said Lord’s father, who was founder and artistic director of the Fusion Dance Company, a significant part of Miami’s dance scene in the 1970s and ’80s. “We were always stretching the boundaries. I used to tell him, ‘Dare to be stupid.’” Phil took his father up on that advice – many times. And, he notes, he still does. As a middle schooler at Ransom Everglades, Phil made an early film: The Happy Little Tugboat. He fashioned a tugboat out of paper, set it afloat in the backyard swimming pool and filmed it with a VHS camcorder. The movie cut abruptly to a sketch of lightning on a Samples of Phil Lord’s childhood artwork