The Symphony Hour Part 2

This cartoon is built on two conflicting musical styles. The first is based on broadcasts of symphony orchestras, the most notable of the time being Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC orchestra. The second style is that of Spike Jones and His City Slickers, who were popular in Los Angeles prior to the release of this film. Spike Jones has a couple of other connections to animation; he later recorded the theme from the Disney cartoon Der Fuehrer's Face, which became a #2 selling record. At one point, Tex Avery was writing gags for Jones' TV appearances.

I didn't realize it until I did the mosaic, but this is the last appearance of Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow and Clara Cluck in Disney shorts. Clara only appears during the audition segment and disappears during the actual radio broadcast. There is some confusion as to how to treat the old designs now that Mickey has been updated. At times, Horace has white in his eyes and other times a flesh colour. Clarabelle only has flesh colour in her eye region.

While the story has a straightforward structure, the supporting characters are not really in character. Goofy really doesn't do anything goofy except for smashing through closed elevator doors. Donald never utters a word during the cartoon and while he clearly gets annoyed, he never explodes. Mickey goes overboard by pulling a gun. Is there another cartoon hero (as opposed to villain) who was featured with a gun as often as Mickey? It's odd that one of the mildest of characters was so often seen with a weapon.

I know Leonard Maltin from when we both lived in N.Y. and have enormous respect for him, but I do have to admit that some of his disclaimers for Disney cartoons leave me puzzled. For this one, he makes excuses for Billy Bletcher's Italian accent for Pete. However, there's no comment on the visual gags which turn Donald into stereotype Chinese and Indian characters and nothing about Mickey pointing a gun in Donald's face. Leonard does disavow the cat's attempted suicide in Plutopia, so I guess that it's all right to threaten people with a gun so long as you don't turn it on yourself. I often wonder if these disclaimers don't create more problems than they solve, but if they're the price we pay for getting these cartoons released on DVD, I'm happy to pay it.

Pity the Children

The following press release turned up in my email this morning. For those of you not familiar with the attitudes it expresses, this is how animation and entertainment are routinely discussed within the industry. For me, this release is a summary of everything that's wrong with children's television. It's imitative, it's opportunistic and it reduces childhood to a financial transaction.

Cannes wakes up to Slumber Party
DIC Entertainment marked its 25th anniversary in Cannes last night and introduced the international market to its The Slumber Party Girls (SPG) brand, which will debut on DIC's CBS block in fall 2007. Chairman and chief executive Andy Heyward told C21 about the company's latest development project: a dinosaur-based property from Sega.

DIC Entertainment entered a critical phase just weeks ago as it began its five-year deal with CBS Network to supply content for a three-hour Saturday morning kids block called The Secret Slumber Party, with AOL's kids service KOL. In addition, DIC reaches its 25th anniversary this month and the two milestones were celebrated in style in Cannes last night at the Carlton Hotel, with speeches from Andy Heyward and consultant Robby London, with live performances from teenyboppers The Slumber Party Girls.

"When you get involved with The Slumber Party Girls you're not just buying a series," Heyward said. "We've been shooting these girls from the day they auditioned and their record comes out on the 24th of this month. There's a toy deal already in place, but I can't announce who with. We also have a publishing deal. There are videos and movies included and the 26-episode sitcom in the fall. We'll be doing a big push at the toy fair and announcing everything there."

DIC has teamed up with Christina Aguilera and Black Eyes Peas founder Ron Fair from Geffen Records to create SPG, a group who sing, dance and act and have been likened to The Spice Girls.

In addition to its classic properties such as Strawberry Shortcake, Inspector Gadget and Madeline, DIC has brought three new productions to market: Cake, Horseland and Dance Revolution, all of which are being made in batches of 26 episodes. Cake is a live-action drama centering on a 13-year-old girl who hosts a cable access show with her two best friends. Rather like a young Martha Stewart, Cake shows her audience how to make ordinary, everyday items look interesting with a little imagination. "Her motto is 'You can't buy individuality, but you can make it.' It's designed to give children confidence and help build their self-esteem," said Heyward.

The other two shows are both based on concepts that exist in other spheres. Horseland is a 2D/CGI series based on the online community of the same name, while Dance Revolution is based on the eponymous video game and is intended to encourage young viewers to try out different dance styles. Both Cake and Dance Revolution are produced by the team at Brookwell McNamara (That's So Raven, Even Stevens). Other new key properties include Secret Millionaires Club, a direct-to-DVD animated series.

The shows have been airing for around three weeks on CBS's new Slumber Party block. Heyward admits it started a little slow, but the block is occupying a space previously occupied by Nick Junior, which was aimed a preschoolers, so it is a little early to pass a verdict.

In June, DIC tied up with AOL's kids service to develop online and on-air copro initiatives in conjunction with CBS's block, now called KOL's Saturday Morning Secret Slumber Party on CBS, and Heyward told C21 last night that one of the first development projects is Dinosaur Kings from Sega. "It's based on these electronic cards that you put in video games and the game comes to life with the dinosaurs on them," he said. "Of course we're looking to take the property to TV and a number of other platforms."

Meanwhile, Malcolm Bird, senior VP and general manager of AOL Kids and Teens, told C21 he and Heyward were also in discussions about taking KOL's latest original property Scary Fairies, which it is launching at market, to the CBS block. "It will probably be 26x11' episodes and we'll probably get another animation house that will partner on that side of the business," he said. "We think Fairies has the potential to be a huge global brand."

Following DIC's listing on the London stock exchange, Heyward said the company was cautiously looking at further European acquisitions in the new media space.

An Animation Salon?

There's an article in today's Toronto Star about a restaurant that runs an intellectual salon four times a year. In some ways, this is similar to conferences which have sprung up all over the place. Probably the most well-known is the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

In many ways, these things strike me as elitist and self-aggrandizing. If these people were really interested in ideas more than status, creature comforts and networking opportunities, they'd be willing to meet in a suburban high school gym and lunch on baloney sandwiches.

Within the animation field, there are conferences like Kidscreen and festivals like Ottawa that serve some of the functions. Kidscreen is very much a business conference and Ottawa very much a film festival, though it runs the Television Animation Conference as a sidebar event.

I wonder, though, if it's possible (or desirable) to run an animation salon. Perhaps it would degenerate into the same elitism and networking that plague other events ("As I was saying to Jeffrey Katzenberg before Brad Bird cut me off...") but maybe it would present an opportunity for artists to inspire and challenge each other.

Animation as a medium is constrained by the economics of film, TV, games and the internet. There's no shortage of articles and commentary on economics' effect on animation. The blogosphere is as close as we've come to an aesthetic discussion and maybe, because of the democratic nature of the net, that's the way to go. However, there's something to be said for the hothouse approach of putting a lot of people in a room and seeing if influences spread or minds get changed. Even if they don't, I still think there's some educational value there.

It may be happening in the schools. It's not happening in my classroom because I'm so focused on delivering the curriculum. Students are always declaring their likes and dislikes to each other, but are they attempting to defend their positions or just assert them?

And professionally, do these discussions lead to changes or are the economic and market constraints so tight that discussions are just a way of blowing off steam before heading back to the same old same-old?

If we're prisoners of the market, does a salon have any value? If we're prisoners of the market, maybe a salon is a way to try and get free.

The Grosses

With the help of Jerry Beck's Cartoon Research feature listing and supplementing grosses from Box Office Mojo, here's a snapshot of the last 6 years of North American animation grosses. I've left out films that were released just for Academy consideration or to gain reviews for a video release. The numbers before the titles come from Jerry's site, so you can see where I've left out films. I don't pretend that this is 100% accurate, but I think it gives a sense of the big picture.

I was surprised that the trends were not stronger. There are lots of ups and downs for the industry as a whole as well as individual companies. This doesn't take into account how much money was spent to create the films or to market them, so a big part of the puzzle is missing. We can't figure out actual profits from this.

2006 is still in progress, with Flushed Away and Happy Feet yet to come. Open Season is still in theaters and will gross more than I've listed here. 2006 will probably break $1 billion in grosses for animated features.

2001
246. RECESS: SCHOOLS'S OUT $36,706,141
247. POKEMON THE MOVIE 3 $16,622,570
248. THE TRUMPET OF THE SWAN
249. SHREK $267,783,866.
250. ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE $83,111,929.
251. FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN $32,131,830.
253. OSMOSIS JONES $13,483,306.
257. WAKING LIFE $2,845,588.
258. MONSTERS INC. $255,745,941.
260. JIMMY NEUTRON, BOY GENIUS $80,920,948.

9 features. Total Box Office: $789,352,119 Average: $87,705,791
Films grossing more than $100,000,000: 2
Additional films grossing more than $50,000,000: 4

2002
264. RETURN TO NEVERLAND $45,184,951
265. ICE AGE $175,676,099.
267. SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMMARON $73,215,310.
268. LILO & STITCH $145,771,527.
269. HEY ARNOLD: THE MOVIE $12,641,276.
270. THE POWERPUFF GIRLS $9,589,131.
271. SPIRITED AWAY $10,049,886.
272. JONAH: A VEGGIE TALES MOVIE $25,548,201.
273. POKEMON 4-EVER $1,669,596.
277. EIGHT CRAZY NIGHTS $23,443.124.
278. TREASURE PLANET $38,120,554.
280. THE WILD THORNBERRYS MOVIE $39,835,592.

12 features. Total Box Office: $600,745,247 Average: $50,062,104
Films grossing more than $100,000,000: 2
Additional films grossing more than $50,000,000: 3

2003
282. THE JUNGLE BOOK 2 $47,887,943.
283. PIGLET'S BIG MOVIE $23,073,611.
284. COWBOY BEBOP: THE MOVIE $1,000,045.
285. POKEMON HEROES $746,381.
286. FINDING NEMO $339,703,580.
287. RUGRATS GO WILD $39,399,750.
288. SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS $26,466,286.
292. BROTHER BEAR (10/24/03) $85,234,177.
294. LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION $20,950,820.
295. THE TRIPLETTES OF BELLEVILLE $6,854,976.

10 features. Total Box Office: $564,851,283 Average: $56,485,128
Films grossing more than $100,000,000: 1
Additional films grossing more than $50,000,000: 1

2004
300. TEACHER'S PET $6,426,692.
301. CLIFFORD'S REALLY BIG MOVIE $2,831,130.
302. HOME ON THE RANGE $50,008,224.
303. SHREK 2 $436,471,036.
305. YU-GI-OH! THE MOVIE: PYRAMID OF LIGHT $19,742,947.
306. GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE $856,451.
307. SHARK TALE $160,762,022.
309. THE INCREDIBLES $261,409,367.
310. THE POLAR EXPRESS $162,753,127.
312. THE SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS MOVIE $85,373,733.

10 features. Total Box Office: $1,186,634,729 Average: $118,663,473
Films grossing more than $100,000,000: 4
Additional films grossing more than $50,000,000: 2

2005
314. APPLESEED $108,050.
315. POOH'S HEFFALUMP MOVIE $18,098,433.
316. ROBOTS $128,067,343.
317. STEAMBOY $410,388.
318. MADAGASCAR $193,187,569.
319. HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE $4,711,096.
320. VALIANT $19,229,436.
321. CORPSE BRIDE $53,359,111.
322. WALLACE & GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT $56,110.897.
323. CHICKEN LITTLE $133,270,228.
324. HOODWINKED $51,386,61.

11 features. Total Box Office: $611,691,212 Average: $55,608,292
Films grossing more than $100,000,000: 3
Additional films grossing more than $50,000,000: 3

2006 to date
325. CURIOUS GEORGE $58,360,760
326. DOOGAL $7,417,319
327. ICE AGE 2: THE MELTDOWN $194,914,465
328. THE WILD $36,929,275
329. OVER THE HEDGE $155,019,340
330. CARS $243,735,463
331. A SCANNER DARKLY $5,479,019
332. MONSTER HOUSE $72,595,621
333. THE ANT BULLY $27,592,881
334. BARNYARD $71,333,605
336. EVERYONE'S HERO $13,536,479
338. OPEN SEASON $27,186,287

12 features. Total Box Office: $914,100,514 Average: $76,175,143
Films grossing more than $100,000,000: 3
Additional films grossing more than $50,000,000: 3

Grosses
2001: $789,352,119
2002: $600,745,247
2003: $564,851,283
2004: $1,186,634,729
2005: $611,691,212
2006: $914,100,514

Averages
2001: $87,705,791
2002: $50,062,104
2003: $56,485,128
2004: $118,663,473
2005: $55,608,292
2006: $76,175,143

Disney
2001: $119,818,070
2002: $229,077,032
2003: $156,195,731
2004: $56,434,916
2005: $180,447,854
2006: $280,664,738 (including Pixar)

Pixar
2001: $255,745,941
2002: no release
2003: $339,703,580
2004: $261,409,367
2005: no release
2006: $243,735,463

DreamWorks
2001: $267,783,866
2002: $73,215,310
2003: $26,466,286
2004: $625,233,058
2005: $249,298,466
2006: $155,019,340 (Flushed Away still to come)

Blue Sky
2001: no release
2002: $175,676,099
2003: no release
2004: no release
2005: $128,067,343
2006: $194,914,465

Nickelodeon
2001: $80,920,948
2002: $54,476,868
2003: $39,399,750
2004: $85,373,733
2005: no release
2006: $71,333,605

Happy Birthday Buster

October 4 is Buster Keaton's 111th birthday. He was one of the great comic geniuses of the 20th century and a brilliant filmmaker to boot. From 1917-1928, he appeared in shorts and features that still provoke laughter and amazement.

This photo is from 1952 and features Buster with his wife Eleanor. I chose it because I'm fascinated with Buster's life after 1928. The creative freedom that allowed him to thrive was taken away, leading to major professional and personal setbacks. Tom Dardis wrote a biography called Keaton, The Man Who Wouldn't Lie Down, and that phrase is a testimonial to Keaton's perseverence. No matter how insignificant the job, he took it and did his best at it. He never regained the creative peak of his early years, but he rebuilt his life and career and lived long enough for his best work to be rediscovered.

The Symphony Hour Part 1

More on this cartoon in future entries.

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers

I'm writing about this film not only because I thought it was one of the best I saw at the Ottawa festival, but also because I think the film is a metaphor for Mike Sporn's career and what animation needs to be.

The film is based on a book by Mordicai Gerstein, which is based on a factual event. Philippe Petit was an aerialist who managed to string a cable between the towers of the World Trade Center and walk across the gap, eluding police on the tops of both towers until he decided his experience was complete and gave himself up.

Our impression of the towers was changed forever on September 11, 2001, but the truth is that the buildings were never loved all that much by New Yorkers. Architecturally they were boring, with none of the style of the Empire State building, the Chrysler building, Rockefeller Center or the Flatiron building. Until the towers became a target, Petit's walk was perhaps the most notable thing about them. Where New Yorkers just saw two overly large rectangular boxes, Petit saw the potential for art.

The relationship between art and life is a theme that runs through several of Michael Sporn's films. It's perhaps strongest in Abel's Island, a personal favorite, where art becomes a way of dealing with loss and loneliness. In The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, it's about transforming the mundane into the extraordinary. Petit's walk not only satisfies his own artistic needs, his achievement captures the imagination of everyone on the ground.

While the film is obviously rooted in true events, it also functions on other levels. The towers are the two poles of commercialism and self-expression. Commercialism at its most extreme is the soulless pursuit of money. Self-expression at its most extreme is self-indulgence. Neither, at their extremes, satisfies an audience. The sweet spot is between the poles, though the path is precarious. Those standing at each pole attempt to validate their position by trying to capture those in the middle. The tightrope walker is assailed from all sides, but is at peace if he can maintain his balance.

Michael Sporn has been doing his balancing act for many years. He's never been considered commercial enough to rate a major budget or get a feature financed because he's interested in real, rather than superficial, emotion. He values narrative, pacing, characterization and acting too much to be embraced by the experimentalists. He manages to suspend himself between them, satisfying himself and his audience at the same time. Having known Mike for over 30 years, I know that maintaining his studio while doing meaningful work hasn't been easy. Defying gravity never is.

But what other choice does he have? And the rest of us have to recognize when our pockets are being picked or when the conversation is really a monologue. The more we do and the more we act on it, the easier it will be for those on the highwire to keep their balance.

Orestes Calpini

Orestes Calpini was an animator who got his start at the Fleischer studio and continued working at Famous Studios until the late '40's. He was also a comic book artist in the '40's, working on Hillman's Punch and Judy Comics for editor Ed Cronin, himself a former Fleischer artist.

The Willard Bowsky-Orestes Calpini Popeyes are some of the most vigorous and nicely drawn of the series. Titles include Let's Get Movin' , Hold the Wire, The Paneless Window Washer, Organ Grinder's Swing, I Never Changes My Altitude, Plumbin' is a Pipe, A Date to Skate and Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba and His Forty Thieves.

The latest issue of The Comics Journal (#278) has an article on Calpini's comic book work by Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr, a leading comics historian, and reprints 35 pages of Calpini's comics in colour.

Ottawa

For those in attendence, I only saw competitions 3, 4 and 5. Three of the prize winners came from the opening competition screening, so perhaps I was just unlucky.

It's impossible to know if the selection was a true cross section of what's being done today or a reflection of the tastes of the people selecting the films, but I found the films in competition to be a major disappointment. The films were far more interested in design and concept than they were in character or acting. They had no sense of pace, most being horribly slow. Humor was in short supply and a lot of the humor was based on cruelty. There was a lot of violence directed towards animals and it wasn't cartoon violence; it was death and dismemberment.

I tried to imagine what type of person would get up in the morning and be happy to work on some of these films. I found them difficult to sit through and couldn't imagine spending weeks or months creating them.

Two of the areas where the films were strongest were the films made for children and films made for the web. The children's films were more upbeat, more entertaining and better paced than the films in the regular competition. The exceptions in the children's films were the ones made for American TV. The soundtracks were loud and unrelenting. Their pacing was terrible. It's clear that they were overwritten, but the scripts were deemed to precious to cut.

The makers of internet shorts have the advantage of knowing how often their films are viewed. I think this has resulted in a healthy respect for the audience. The films communicate clearly and humorously and don't let their designs overwhelm their content.

There are screenings known as showcases, where the films screen out of competition. I would love to know how the films are categorized, because the showcase films were generally superior. The international showcase included shorts by Disney and DreamWorks. Why were they quarantined? Were their budgets too high? Were they too entertaining? Was the jury too impressionable?

At the 2004 Ottawa festival, an animator friend of mine said that the trick to attending Ottawa was to go to all the retrospectives and showcases and avoid the competition screenings. I'd amend that to include watching the children's and web films, but my friend wasn't far wrong. Next time, I think I'll follow his advice.

Evolving Business Models and Other Stuff

I'm linking to a lot to material that Scott Kirsner points out on his Cinematech blog. CustomFlix is a branch of Amazon.com that will help you get your digital content listed on Amazon. Amazon is now offering digital downloads and CustomFlix announced that they will support that service. The good thing about this is that Amazon doesn't exclude anybody, regardless of how small they are, which means that independent film makers will be able to sell downloads there. That's about as low cost distribution as you can get. The only thing cheaper is hosting the download yourself, but you miss out on being part of Amazon's search and recommendation engines.

Over at The Beat, a comics news blog, there's a link to an interview with Todd Allen about various business models being used by comics artists on the web. Much of what's discussed is also relevant to independent animators. Comics creation costs less and takes less time than animation, so comics creators got to the web first and figured out business models. Animators should take advantage of that by learning from them.

Keith Lango has posted an article about the increasing slickness of CGI and how he thinks it's a bad thing. I'd add that animation always seems to fall into the trap of refining surfaces. It gets slicker, but not deeper. Personally, I'm hungrier for good content than I am for eye candy.

David Nethery has posted an introduction and some images of Ottawa, including many from the recent animation festival.

Control Freaks

Here are two interesting articles that talk about how big media is attempting to maintain control over content and audiences. Cory Doctorow writes about High Def and how the media is forcing electronics manufacturers to bend to its will.

Jeff Jarvis gave the keynote address at the Video on the Net conference, talking about how the media landscape is changing. Here's a sample:

"We debated for decades in media whether content or distribution was king. Turns out, neither is. Conversation is the kingdom. Trust is king. You can’t own all the content. You can’t control all the distribution. It turns out that trying to do either is extremely expensive – and, in our post-scarcity media universe, ultimately futile. In the old, closed world of media, owning content or distribution gave you the advantage. It gave you control. Now it just gives you an unbearable cost structure that millions of new competitors – us – are not burdened with. So what should media’s relationship with all of us be? Are we competitors? Or are we partners? If conversation is king, then we must be partners. For the big guys are not in control of the conversation anymore. We are."

And he offers an example of how the Net trumps traditional distribution:

"When Jon Stewart went on CNN’s Crossfire to kill it, bless his heart, he got, according to the head of the network, about 150,000 viewers that day. The next day, of course, it went up on iFilm, where it has been viewed 3.8 million times. Figures double that on Bittorrent et al. So compare: 150,000 on CNN versus 10 million on the network no one owns, our internet – and to a far younger demographic, by the way.

And, of course, YouTube is serving 100 million videos a day now.

The result: The old network is dying."

Back Again

I'm back from Ottawa, still trying to digest my experience of the festival. You can find a list of the winners here, though I have to say that I found the people I spent time with far more satisfying than the films this year. There are several things I want to say about the festival, but I'll need some time to gather my thoughts before putting them down.

I'll take this opportunity to say how nice it was to see old friends like Jerry Beck, Amid Amidi, Mike Sporn, Tom Knott, Mark Langer, Emru and Tamu Townsend, and Bill Perkins. I also got the opportunity to meet people for the first time that I've known through the internet, such as Steve and Mary Stanchfield, Larry Tremblay, Ward Jenkins and David Nethery.

Steve Stanchfield is an animation renaissance man as an animation teacher, a producer-director-animator and a film collector/historian/DVD producer. It was great to meet him and I love all the DVDs he's put out.

I finally got to meet Mike Fukushima of the NFB, after hearing about him for years. I got to talk again very briefly with Evan Spiridellis of Jibjab, whose presentation on independent creators was well attended and enthusiastically received.

Of course there were lots of Toronto friends who came up for the festival as well, some of whom I'm more likely to see in Ottawa than in Toronto.

Off to Ottawa

I'm leaving for Ottawa to attend the Ottawa International Animation Festival and won't be getting back until late Sunday. As I have a full day of teaching on Monday, there won't be any new entries here until Monday night and maybe beyond. It depends on how sleep deprived I am.

If you are attending the Ottawa festival and spot me, feel free to introduce yourself. In any case, have a good weekend.

More Berny Wolf

Berny Wolf's daughter, Lauren Wolf-Purcell, was kind enough to send these photos of her father and some panel cartoons that he created. Click on any image to see an enlargement.

Berny Wolf is on the left at the drawing board and Bud Swift is wearing the Jiminy Cricket hat. Based on the calendar in the background, this picture was taken in May of 1939.

Lauren writes, "The photo in the oval type frame is from the time period he did the work for the MGM Grand Hotel in Vegas and it was used as the photo for the Lowery Gallery brochure that went along with the book, with other animators included, i.e. Ward Kimball, Ken O'Connor, Joe Grant, Frank Thomas, Thor Putnam, Don Lusk, and Ollie Johnston."

Berny Wolf on his 94th birthday.

Lauren writes, "The cartoon panels are ones that he worked on and we could not get syndicated. That is so upsetting to me as he deserved a chance and I promised him, I would try and get him published. So someday, I will find a way, even if it is using his panels in another format."

Woe Canada

Quick! Name three all-cgi theatrical features that had their visuals made predominantly in Canada. Can't do it? You live in Canada and you still can't do it?

The films I'm thinking of are Pinocchio 3000, The Wild and Everyone's Hero. If you couldn't name them, one reason might be because all three films were flops. Pinocchio 3000 barely got released in Canada. The Wild and Everyone's Hero got wide releases, but neither set the world on fire. Everyone's Hero is still in theaters, but with an opening weekend gross of $6.2 million, it's a safe bet that this film won't be breaking any box office records.

It would take a book to detail Canada's relationship to the U.S. entertainment industry. Canada has content quotas in place in television to prevent U.S. imports from swamping local productions. There are no quotas in place for movies, so in English-speaking Canada, Canadian films get about 3% of screen time. Imagine how odd it would be to have 97% of the movies available to you come from a foreign country. That's Canada.

Canada's track record in animated features is not good. Nelvana has turned out many, but except for Rock and Rule they basically took TV properties and goosed the budgets a little. The theatrical runs were short and the films main audience was on video.

The three films mentioned above were attempts to compete head to head in the feature business, but they all suffer from the view of Canada as a low wage country. Pinocchio 3000 was a Canada-France co-production (Spain was involved in some way as well), but the script came from France. The Wild and Everyone's Hero both had their scripts come from the U.S. Canada's role was to be less-expensive Americans, taking care of the visuals.

The failure of these films is not doing Canada any good. Producers are less likely to bring feature projects to Canada when there's no history of box office success. The problem is that Canada pays for everybody else's sins. If you look at any high end feature studio, you'll find Canadians. They're at Pixar, DreamWorks, Disney, ILM, Sony, and Blue Sky, so the problem is not the quality of Canadian talent. The problem is studio management that won't let the talent in Canada do the job. Canadian studios are shackled to poor scripts and inefficient producers who ride herd on talent that knows it's making bad films.

There's no easy solution. The Canadian film industry is a low budget and low profile affair. It's tough to sit in on a high stakes poker game when you've only got enough chips for one hand. If you don't win the pot, you're out of the game. And if you're an inexperienced player, it's hard to learn the ropes in just one hand.

The deck is currently stacked against home grown Canadian animated features. While there are many low budget live features made for under $10 million, that budget level is a tough one for an animated feature that has to compete with Pixar. Sylvain Chomet avoided that and made a personal animated feature with The Triplets of Belleville, but he's decamped to Scotland.

It may be that Canada may never be a successful player in the animated feature field. There are no artist/entrepreneurs who can get projects off the ground (Canadian animation is hardly creator-friendly) and most Canadian producers are understandably scared of big investments. That leaves us at the mercy of people from other places with money. I just wish that they were smarter.

Lost Income or Lost Opportunity?

Scott Kirsner has an open letter to media companies about turning copyright violations into income streams.

Right now copyright is the right to control making copies. In a digital world, this right is impossible to enforce. Copyright has to morph into the right to make money from anybody who copies your work. Artists and corporations have to give up control (which they've already lost, though they won't admit it) in exchange for income (which they're currently losing because they're not willing to adapt).

Kirsner's solutions are not necessarily the ones that will be implemented, but something's got to give.

The Road is Still Rocky

This is a follow-up to a 25 year old article that I posted here.

Some of the conditions from 25 years ago have changed. There's now a lot more coverage of animation in print than there was. Whatever your opinion of Animation Magazine, it has survived far longer than any fan effort. There's also Kidscreen, not devoted strictly to animation but giving it lots of coverage. The problem with both these magazines is that they're trade publications and trades make their money from advertising. What generally happens is that companies that take out ads get coverage. What the advertisers want to read about is what makes them money. That's product, not artists.

Of course, the web has proven a bonanza for animation news, criticism and history. It serves the animation community in ways that fanzines never could. It's far more immediate and democratic than print publishing could ever be.

Another thing that's changed is revivals. We all grew up loving something in animation and there was the urge to try and recreate what we loved the way Jim Steranko could do his version of Captain America. In the last 25 years, we've seen revivals of many Disney, Warner, Lantz, Famous and Fleischer characters. The results have been mixed, however. It's rare that a revival manages to capture the feel of the original. Attempts to update the original often lose whatever made it appealing in the first place. Personally, I've lost interest in revivals and generally think that they're a waste of time.

The separation between mainstream animation and independent animation is still there. If anything, mainstream animation is more commercial than it's ever been. The costs are so high that producers are afraid to take chances, so we get rehashes of anything that's made money.

The comics field developed the graphic novel as an alternative to super-hero comics and the importation of manga has blown the comics business wide open. What used to be the mainstream is now just one stream of many. I wish that something similar would happen in the animation business and I have (remote?) hopes that the web may provide a viable market for animated alternatives.

And that brings me to my main complaint of the last 25 years. Animation as an industry is not particularly creator-friendly. There was a time in the '90's when it looked like creator driven animation was making gains in features and TV, but the successful creators of that time period are not dominating the business now and neither is anybody else. Pixar's directors have inherited the position held by Disney's directors in the '90's, but it seems to me that directors at other studios (with the possible exception of Blue Sky) are not dominating their films in the same way. In TV, there are generally fewer hits (a consequence of the long tail) and there are no TV animation creators who have a major buzz.

I've been close enough to the TV industry to see that it's a closed system run by producers and broadcasters. Many people jump from one side to the other repeatedly. The audience is only visible as a rating and creators are simply raw material to be mined until the vein taps out.

The generation that entered the business in the '70's and '80's is closing in on the end of its professional road. They've had major accomplishments. Full animation came back. Animated features became profitable and multiplied. Some TV series helped shape the culture. But the generation failed to establish a beach head for artists. Where are animation's versions of Martin Scorcese, Spike Lee, John Sayles, etc? Where are writers who are the equivalent of Robert Towne, Charlie Kaufman or Paul Haggis? Where is the American/Canadian/European Miyazaki? Good personal animated films have been made, but they haven't changed the field like graphic novels have changed comics or independent films have changed live action. That's a tragedy.

I'm not blaming the artists. I know first-hand that the structure of the animation business is unyielding. I merely point out that while many things have changed in the last 25 years, the most important things have not.

Jack Kinney, Tex Avery and Joe Barbera

Børge Ring, creator of Anna and Bella, was good enough to send me this anecdote, the story of a missed opportunity:

Disney's Goofy director Jack Kinney was my penpal for years and once told me that Joe Barbera had contacted him and Tex Avery to come out of retirement and work as a team for him. Jack wrote, "I like to start a cartoon calmly, pick up in the middle and have the last 30 feet frantic. When I told Joe this he said, 'I want you to start out frantic and go on from there.'

So Tex and I said, 'No thank you.'"

Clash of the Titans

According to this article, Universal Music Group is contemplating suing MySpace and YouTube for copyright violation. Frankly, I hope it happens. I'd like nothing better than to see the media conglomerates bleed each other dry in court. That's the only way they'll realize the need to amend the copyright law so that it makes sense in the digital age.

Berny Wolf

Animator Berny Wolf passed away recently at the age of 95. Information and tributes to him are now popping up in various places. Unfortunately, I have nothing to add but I do want to point out where you can read the information.

Over at Cartoon Brew, Mark Kausler has contributed a biography of Wolf. Mark Evanier has contributed some personal memories of Wolf from the TV animation era. Mark's entry includes a link to the Fleischer Betty Boop cartoon The Old Man of the Mountain. On the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, Stephen Worth has written about Wolf, posted some model sheets that Wolf worked on at the Iwerks studio and put up a quicktime of the Betty Boop cartoon Minnie the Moocher, where Wolf was responsible for rotoscoping Cab Calloway and turning him into a walrus.

Alberto Becattini's listing for Wolf claims that Wolf was a puppeteer on the Howdy Doody television series. Nobody else is mentioning this, but Wolf's career was so varied that it's very possible.

Ray Pointer's DVD compilation of Fleischer Out of the Inkwell cartoons includes some interview footage with Wolf.

There's some more personal reminiscences of Wolf on this thread at Animation Nation.

UPDATE: John Cawley has written some memories of Berny Wolf during Wolf's time at Film Roman. See John's entry for September 15.