BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. _ When Adam Grimm won the Federal Duck Stamp Contest at 21, he was the youngest artist ever to capture that award. The little known competition which started in 1934, is dedicated to finding an extraordinary painting of ducks to be emblazoned on the prized federal duck stamp.
Fourteen lean years later _ during which Grimm married, had four kids and moved to America's outback _ he won again.
How he managed that second coming and the gritty details of the fierce competition are the subject of a documentary, "Million Dollar Duck," premiering on Animal Planet Sept. 14.
While most of us have never heard of the duck stamp contest, and it no longer bestows $1 million on the winner, to artists like Grimm, it's the Holy Grail.
"I did this painting and said, 'I'm going to do this for the federal duck contest and see what happens.' I do one every year and most years they don't do well," he says in a busy coffee lounge here.
"I've come in fourth or fifth a number of times. But you don't get anything for that. But maybe you could sell the original. That was the course I took. If I wasn't able to sell those originals it would've been a lot harder to make ends meet ... You add it all up, I would spend several weeks photographing and then over two months painting to do an entry. That's a lot of time in a year."
When Grimm, 38, met his wife, Janet, he felt he was a loser. "Not that loser is the good word to use, but if you're not a winner what are you?" he says.
"It was kind of a great moment to win and to have her see that, to have her sitting beside me. I remember the stress we were under the years leading up to that. We were struggling; the economy wasn't good. If the economy isn't good the first thing people cut out buying is artwork. It ripples across the board. We scrimped and saved."
Grimm is so dedicated to wildlife painting that he transplanted his family from their Ohio home to the wilds of South Dakota.
"I wanted to be in the central flyway, which is a major migration corridor. People talk about how competitive is the contest really? I uprooted my whole family and moved to somewhere where we didn't know anybody. We left all of our family and friends behind. It was like a major leap of faith. I invested money in good camera equipment because I try to take all my reference photos. I bought a boat, duck decoys, calls for calling birds � all kinds of stuff you put into this all on spec."
It wasn't the first time Grimm had gambled on his future. Enrolled on a partial scholarship and acing grades at Columbus School of Art and Design, he decided he wanted to quit.
"I just wasn't happy there because I was getting such flack for what I was painting. They were very intolerant of realism. They said, 'You should be doing abstracts. Don't you want to be famous and known?' And they were naming people that I'd never heard of. And I said, 'I really want to try to win the federal duck stamp.' And they'd never heard of it. I said, 'It's the biggest prize in wildlife art.' They said, 'Who cares if you have a painting on a stamp?' I said, 'It's a pretty big deal.' And they didn't entertain the idea at all."
He told his parents of his dissatisfaction. "They said, 'The only way we could support you leaving college is if you won the federal duck stamp contest.' I thought, 'That's it. I'm stuck at this college for the next four years.' But when I won, the first thing I did I called my parents and said, 'I'm leaving the art college.'"
Grimm grew up in the outdoors with his family, always fascinated by nature and wildlife. "So ever since I could remember I would always sit and draw for maybe an hour or two every day, I just loved drawing. It was just a matter of time before those two things kind of came together and I started drawing the nature that I was inspired by," he says.
His first fan was his grandfather. When Grimm was 11 his grandfather bought a drawing from him. 'I said, 'You can have it.' He said, 'I'd like to have it, but I think you're good enough that I should pay you something for it.' I think he paid me $10 or $15 for this drawing. I was really excited. For me that was a lot of money. I remember going back home thinking, 'I wonder what else grandpa would like.'"
Unfortunately his grandfather didn't live to see Grimm win that first duck stamp award. "He had died of leukemia about a month or two before I won," he sighs. "I would've loved for him to have been there. I actually dedicated the win to him and I still believe that somehow he had a hand in that event happening. More than anything, I wish he could've been there for that moment."
'BLINDSPOT' TO CURTAIL THE VIOLENCE
NBC is relocating "Blindspot" to an earlier hour on the telly when it returns for a preview on Sept. 14. Because of the new 8 p.m. hour (when the kiddies are still up) executive producer Martin Gero explains, "We're not going to shoot anyone in the head anymore. So right off the bat, no more head shots on 'Blindspot.' ... Obviously we're toning back some of the violence. I don't think the show will be unrecognizable for people that love the show at 10 p.m. And the reality is, people watch it at all hours of the day now.
"We're a heavily time-shifted show, so we don't want (it) to totally re-invent itself just for 8 p.m. But one of the things we have found toward the end of the first season, something we're really leaning into, is the sense of fun and a little bit more lightness so the show isn't all doom and gloom. There are those moments of humor and those lighter character moments that I think did really well."
EDGY COMEDY LANDS ON AMAZON PRIME
For those who like their comedy with an ironic edge, there's the new "One Mississippi," premiering on Amazon Prime on Friday. Tig Notaro is a standup comedienne who seized the shattered pieces of her life and fabricated a sitcom out of them.
"As far as the pilot goes, I would say it was probably 85 percent real," she says, "and there were a few parts that we bridged moments together. The timeline is off from when my life actually fell apart. We crammed all of the information into the pilot so we could kind of go from there ... if it went to series. And now, having gone to series, it's more fictional. But there's still a lot of reality and real moments from my life."
She says that 'falling apart' occurred when everything happened at once. "My mother died. I had cancer. I had an intestinal disease and couldn't eat, and I went through a breakup. And I also had pneumonia. The list goes on. It was over a four-month period of time, and so the pilot captures all of that, but overlapping rather than spreading it out over the four months that it all happened."
HARRY CONNICK JR. HELMS TALK SHOW
Starting next Monday, Harry Connick Jr. will host his very own syndicated talk show, appropriately called "Harry." The singer-actor has appeared on countless chat shows himself and says he's learned a thing or two about being a guest. "One of the things that I'm not a fan of is a pre-interview," he says.
"My particular way of doing things, if I'm going to be a guest on a particular show, the producers will call a day in advance and do a pre-interview ... They ask you, 'Tell us what happened this summer. Any funny stories?' And they compile a list of things that they eventually present to the host.
"They work out stories, punch-lines or whatever. And then, there's this undercurrent of rehearsal or pre-planning that happens when you get out on the panel. Well, I tell all the publicists and anybody that's going to be on the show, 'Man, if you don't want to do a pre-interview, it's my job to know everything there is to know about you. So don't worry about that, and we're just going to have a conversation.' So the idea of going into a place and not having this pre-interview would be liberating to me. And the response I'm getting from a lot of the talent is, 'Wow! That's pretty cool.'"
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