Will McCormick, Reese Witherspoon, and Michael Govier at this spring's Academy Awards. Photo by Matt Petit, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“I wish we were doing this interview at Rennie’s,” says the voice on the other end of the line.
On the phone, from his home in Los Angeles, is Michael Govier, BS ’00 (theatre arts), who is simultaneously missing Eugene and trying to find a home for the Academy Award he won on April 25.
“I just love Eugene,” Govier said. “I love hiking, and everything’s green. I did a lot of hiking Spencer Butte, all those kind of fun things. The simple things, like going across that footbridge, walking to a game, those things are always so satisfying.”
Also satisfying? Winning an Oscar after bringing to life an idea that until a few years ago only existed inside Govier’s head.
“It was just so exciting,” said Govier. “I mean, I don’t even think it’s been two weeks since that moment. It still keeps sinking in, what that accomplishment is and what has happened and all that really happened—that really happened! In that moment it was just like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and then it’s like you’re walking up and everyone’s cheering for you and you hit the stage and you’re like, ‘Wow, this happened,’ and I felt so honored, felt so privileged, so grateful for all the wonderful people that helped us all get there.”
Govier attended the University of Oregon due in large part to the theatre program, and says he became “obsessed” with the Pocket Playhouse, the student-run theatre that gives Ducks the opportunity to experience every facet of putting on a show.
“As a freshman, that first or second week I was in Oregon, I jumped in and was part of a show,” he said. “You're either writing, directing, acting, or on the crew, so it was just this immersive experience that I was able to jump into immediately.”
Michael Govier (hand raised) appearing in Nicholas Nickleby at the UO in spring 2000. Photo courtesy University Theatre.
The theatre department kept him busy; he performed in Nicholas Nickleby and several Shakespeare plays, and once worked in the crew on a play directed by classmate Skye Fitzgerald, MFA ’97 (theater arts), who was nominated for an Academy Award this year for his documentary Hunger Ward.
“He’s really a very talented actor, and it’s funny because in Nicholas Nickleby he played a villain role, the teacher of Nicholas Nickleby, and then he was in Guys and Dolls where all the men are gamblers, and Michael is very funny, he’s a very good comedian,” said Janet Rose, a senior instructor in the Department of Theatre Arts who taught the lighting classes Govier took as a student.
After graduating from the UO, Govier moved to Chicago for a decade and honed his craft on stage, before heading to Los Angeles to break into the film industry. He starred in a number of short films, had a cameo in This Is Us, and played characters on Conan.
During an acting class, he struck up a friendship with classmate Will McCormick, one of the writers of Toy Story 4 who had appeared in The Sopranos, In Plain Sight, and A Wrinkle in Time. Govier told McCormick about an idea he had: shadow souls.
The shadow souls in If Anything Happens I Love You, available on Netflix.
“He was a writer, I was a writer, and we would hang out like writers do and pitch each other ideas,” said Govier. “’What are you working on? Here's what I am working on.’ I told him this concept that I had, I said I want to develop this thing that’s shadow souls. It was the baseline for the film If Anything Happens I Love You. From there we started working together and then we jumped off and built the film.”
In Govier’s mind, shadow souls are grief within oneself that they can’t connect to—a grief that manifests itself in a person’s shadow acting out what that person is thinking and feeling. It wasn’t long before Govier honed in on exactly what that grief should be caused by.
“Everyone’s constantly discussing school shootings,” said Govier. “In my time in Oregon, and my time in high school, we didn’t have active shooter drills and all these other components. So we wanted to really talk about the kind of trauma that is created.
“Sometimes the world gets a little desensitized to these kind of events, and it just kind of becomes a number. ‘Well, how many (dead)? That’s not that bad.’ We wanted to show that one is bad. I want to show a story about the loss that one family is feeling and that grief, and how that grief can transcend, and that grief I think is a point we can all relate to. It’s a touchstone. Everyone wants their kids, their families, their loved ones to come home safe. I think it’s a starting point, where we can all begin the conversation from.”
Govier and McCormick spent a year working on the script, then Maija Burnett at CalArts introduced them to Youngran Nho, who served as the film’s animation director, and animators Julia Rodrigues and Michelle Yeoh.
For the trio of CalArts graduates, it was their first job—they had all just graduated college.
“It was this cool thing to provide opportunity to up-and-coming artists,” said Govier. “No one has told them yet, ‘No, you can’t do this thing, it’s impossible.’ It was exciting to have that wonderful energy of people going, ‘Yeah, we’ll just do it, let’s just build it.’”
The animators created a world that is equal parts gorgeous and sparse, where little exists but what does exist is perfectly rendered. The minimalist look was very important to Govier—he wanted the art to be as empty as the emotions experienced by grieving people who are suffering from the loss of a loved one.
The finished product was If Anything Happens I Love You, a 12-minute look into the world of parents whose marriage is suffering under the strain of losing their only child in a school shooting. While they largely go about their lives in silence, triggered by objects around the house that remind them of their daughter, their shadow souls project onto the walls behind them and act out their emotions and feelings.
It's such a tearjerker of a film that people crying after watching it became a viral sensation on TikTok—people filmed themselves before and after watching If Anything Happens I Love You to show whether or not they shed tears. The hashtag #IfAnythingHappensILoveYou was viewed more than 31 million times in 2020.
The film was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Animated Short Film, an acknowledgement Govier called “incredible.” On the day of the Oscars, Govier went for a walk, took a nap, then put on his tuxedo and went to the Academy Awards with wife Eliza.
“We showed up, and it’s all your fellow nominees,” Govier said. “It was quite exciting to have this very intimate experience with all these wonderful artists that are around here. After I won the award I was walking by Glenn Close and she said ‘Congratulations.’ [I said] ‘Thank you so much,’ that was very sweet. Having all these people that you’ve seen your whole life that are megastars and you’re part of it was just an incredible moment.”
Within two minutes of Govier leaving the stage after category presenter Reese Witherspoon announced he had won the Oscar, he’d received 127 congratulatory texts. Another 100 poured in over the next few hours. Janet Rose went and celebrated Govier’s win at Rennie’s—where she and Govier once celebrated a classmate’s 21st birthday, in 1999. Govier jokes that he hopes he doesn't owe anyone money, because people are getting in touch with him out of the blue, while his parents made t-shirts and are using them as conversation starters to tell strangers about their son, the Oscar-winner.
While Govier doesn’t know where he will end up keeping his statue—it’s currently on a chair in his living room, after spending time on his dining room table—the morning after the ceremony he took it with him when he went to get a breakfast burrito from Tacos Villas Corona in LA.
“I've been coming to Tacos Villas Corona since I first moved to Los Angeles,” said Govier. “It’s a couple of neighborhoods from where I live, but I always go to it, and they’ve always been so supportive of me. The next morning I brought the statue in to show them because they had asked, and it was so fun to see their excitement. ‘Hey, we believed in you from the beginning, we’ve always loved you!’ It was so nice, there’s those kind of reactions from people, and they get to share in the win because they’ve been so supportive.”
- Damian Foley, UO Communications