Steven Soderbergh on the State of Cinema

Excerpts from Steven Soderbergh's  keynote address to the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival.  Read the whole thing here.  It's long, but worthwhile.

"The simplest way that I can describe it is that a movie is something you see, and cinema is something that’s made. It has nothing to do with the captured medium, it doesn’t have anything to do with where the screen is, if it’s in your bedroom, your iPad, it doesn’t even really have to be a movie. It could be a commercial, it could be something on YouTube. Cinema is a specificity of vision. It’s an approach in which everything matters. It’s the polar opposite of generic or arbitrary and the result is as unique as a signature or a fingerprint. It isn’t made by a committee, and it isn’t made by a company, and it isn’t made by the audience. It means that if this filmmaker didn’t do it, it either wouldn’t exist at all, or it wouldn’t exist in anything like this form.

"...The idea of cinema as I’m defining it is not on the radar in the studios. This is not a conversation anybody’s having; it’s not a word you would ever want to use in a meeting. Speaking of meetings, the meetings have gotten pretty weird. There are fewer and fewer executives who are in the business because they love movies. There are fewer and fewer executives that know movies. So it can become a very strange situation. I mean, I know how to drive a car, but I wouldn’t presume to sit in a meeting with an engineer and tell him how to build one, and that’s kind of what you feel like when you’re in these meetings. You’ve got people who don’t know movies and don’t watch movies for pleasure deciding what movie you’re going to be allowed to make. That’s one reason studio movies aren’t better than they are, and that’s one reason that cinema, as I’m defining it, is shrinking.

"...And unfortunately the most profitable movies for the studios are going to be the big movies, the home runs. They don’t look at the singles or the doubles as being worth the money or the man hours. Psychologically, it’s more comforting to spend $60 million promoting a movie that costs 100, than it does to spend $60 million for a movie that costs 10. I know what you’re thinking: If it costs 10 you’re going to be in profit sooner. Maybe not. Here’s why: OK. $10 million movie, 60 million to promote it, that’s 70, so you’ve got to gross 140 to get out. Now you’ve got $100 million movie, you’re going spend 60 to promote it. You’ve got to get 320 to get out. How many $10 million movies make 140 million dollars? Not many. How many $100 million movies make 320? A pretty good number, and there’s this sort of domino effect that happens too. Bigger home video sales, bigger TV sales, so you can see the forces that are sort of draining in one direction in the business.

"...In 2003, 455 films were released. 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677 films were released. So you’re not imagining things, there are a lot of movies that open every weekend. 549 of those were independent, 128 were studio films. So, a 100% increase in independent films, and a 28% drop in studio films, and yet, ten years ago: Studio market share 69%, last year 76%. You’ve got fewer studio movies now taking up a bigger piece of the pie and you’ve got twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie. That’s hard. That’s really hard."

A Cat in Paris

I finally caught up with this film on DVD and I'd say it's a mixed bag.  The best thing about it is the design, which seems influenced by Lorenzo Mattotti.  It's a relief to see a drawn feature that isn't imitating a too-familiar animation style.

The next best thing is the direction, which is taut.  The suspense works well and the chase scenes are exciting.

The story, however, is typical of a TV cop show.  It's literally cops and robbers stuff.  The only ambiguity is the cat burglar, whose personality is never developed well enough to explain why he's stealing in the first place or why a child's welfare is enough to cause him to change his plans.  The real villain, Costa, is pure cardboard.  He's exactly the kind of villain that animation too often falls back on: someone who is nasty with no explanation and surrounds himself with incompetent, comedy-relief henchmen.

The woman police officer is the only character who is really motivated.  Besides needing to catch criminals for her job, she has a personal stake in catching Costa, who murdered her husband.

If all the characters had been developed to the same level, the film would be more interesting.  The graphics, direction and pacing certainly make watching it a pleasant experience and Europe continues to show that drawn animation has possibilities that North America has ignored.  But the film itself doesn't live up to its design.

This is the directors' first feature.  Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol are currently working on Phantom Boy, due for release in 2015.  While the story is another cops and robbers tale, there's enough promise in A Cat in Paris that I'm looking forward to it. 

Sometimes "They" Are Other Artists

As a sort of follow-up to my last post, I'd like to point you to an excellent piece by animation veteran Steve Moore over at the FLIP blog.  It's a great look at studio politics in the present day and a warning about the rose-coloured glasses that animation artists often wear.

I'd point out, especially to students about to enter the workforce, that the large studios many students aspire to are often the most political.  They are filled with excellent artists and those artists are also highly ambitious.  It's the combination of those two qualities that got them there.  That causes the political maneuvering for choice spots, whether it's job titles or the juiciest shots, to be extreme.

Smaller studios are generally lower pressure places.  As an individual represents a greater portion of a studio's workforce, it means that individuals are treated better.  Should someone leave,  there's a larger hole in the project.  Smaller studios are also places where you can make mistakes without the spotlight being on you.  Smaller studios tend to work with smaller budgets and have smaller audiences, so the inevitable mistakes early in a career don't attract as much attention.

The "Frank and Ollie trajectory," as Moore describes it, was always a rare occurrence.  It's good to remember that as much pride as you might take from your employer's name, it's most likely a temporary association.

And just so you don't think that Moore's opinion is the exception, read what Steve Hulett of The Animation Guild has to add.

They Don't Want You

In the last several months, there have been major layoffs at visual effects, gaming and animation companies.

They don't want you.  They want your skills because they can profit from them.  But if they can get your skills from software or find somebody with your skills (or almost your skills) who will work cheaper, they'd prefer that.

When the project is finished and they're done with your skills, you're expendable.  If the projects they pick lose money, you pay by losing your job.

If they can find a government stupid enough to use taxpayers' money to subsidize them (when they are already profitable), they'll relocate.

If they need to buy skills from another company, they'll do it as cheaply as they can, even if it means they put the company out of business.

And if they see other skills that will make them more money than yours, they no longer want your skills.

Any why?  Because they have money and that makes them think they are smart.  But they're not as smart as they think.  And they know (and they're right) that money attracts skills like a magnet, so as long as they have money, they don't have to worry about finding skills.

Their money comes from the audience: you and me.  So long as we give them money, they won't change.  As long as the skills chase the money, nothing will change.  But if the skills can get their money from the audience, everything will change.

Beck's Back

There's no question that Cartoon Brew is one of the most widely read animation sites on the web.  When its authors Amid Amidi and Jerry Beck decided to split, leaving Amid in charge of Cartoon Brew, there was a question of where Jerry Beck would turn up next.

He first revamped his Cartoon Research site.  Jerry's love for animation history is well known and he has additional authors such as Jim Korkis and Fred Patten contributing to that site.

But Jerry has never been stuck in the past and now he's launched Animation Scoop, a site for news and discussion of contemporary animation.

So where I once checked out Cartoon Brew regularly, I now have three sites to check.  As Amid and Jerry are both hosting guest contributors, the animation blogosphere is now richer than ever for news and opinion.

I wish everyone continued success.

My Neighbors, The Yamadas and Pom Poko

While I am very familiar with the Studio Ghibli films directed by Hayao Miyazaki, I have to admit that I haven't paid as much attention to Ghibli's other directors.  In the last week, I watched My Neighbors, The Yamadas and Pom Poko, both directed by Isao Takahata.  Both films, though very different, were excellent.  I wish that I'd watched them sooner.

My Neighbors, The Yamadas is basically a sitcom and based on a Japanese comic.  However, there are sitcoms and sitcoms.  Lucille Ball getting her fingers stuck in a bowling ball when Desi Arnaz is bringing home an important business contact for dinner is one kind.  The characters in I Love Lucy are well defined, but shallow.  The pleasure comes from seeing how the characters react in a given situation.  There's real craft to this kind of show, but it's not really about character.

The other kind of sitcom is one where the situations reveal more about the characters' inner workings.  Shows like M*A*S*H or Frasier are not only funny, but also dig deep to reveal their characters' humanity.  For all her talent, Lucille Ball doesn't fit into this kind of show.

On the surface, My Neighbors, The Yamadas is a series of vignettes built around a five person family: mother, father, son, daughter and grandmother.  That's not very promising material; we've seen this kind of thing hundreds of times.  However, while the character designs are far more cartoony than the typical Ghibli production, implying a shallowness to the content, the characterizations are at least as good as anything Ghibli has produced.  The film is quiet and unspectacular, but the characters are so beautifully developed that they have depth that few recent animated characters have.  What is so appealing to me is that these depths aren't revealed through overwrought drama, but through thoroughly mundane daily events.

I've always admired Bakshi's Heavy Traffic for it's combination of cartoony design and emotional depth.  My Neighbors, The Yamadas resembles Bakshi in this way and it stands in stark contrast to the current crop of cgi films that fill the screen with detail while presenting characters who are not nearly as rich.

Pom Poko is radically different film than The Yamadas in terms of design and story, but like it in having so much going on beneath the surface.  The story concerns the expansion of human suburbs destroying the forest home of the tanuki, a species that Disney has labelled racoons in their dub and subtitles, but apparently is a form of badger.  The tanuki have a rich folklore in Japan and are supposed to be shape shifters.

On the surface, this is another ecological fable, something Ghibli has dealt with on several occasions.  However, the various ways the tanuki attempt to deal with the human expansion says more about the plight of aboriginal people than it does about wildlife.  I don't know enough about the Ainu, Japan's aboriginal people, to know how this film relates to their experiences, but Pom Poko could have been written about the natives of North America.  One tanuki contingent wants to violently resist and kill the human interlopers.  There is real death in this film, unusual for a film that seems to be family-friendly.  Another contingent ends up assimilating, using their shape-shifting abilities to live as humans.  The remainder of the tanuki attempt to maintain their way of life under greatly reduced circumstances.

How unusual for a animated film to deal with issues of terrorism, assimilation and the attempt of colonised people to maintain their culture.  Name a North American animated feature that even comes close.

Pom Poko is also unusually frank by North American standards about biology.  The male tanuki are drawn with visible testicles and have no reservation about using them in their transformations as well as singing with pride about them.  Given Disney's skittishness about Song of the South, it's amazing to me that Disney released this DVD.  I can only guess it was due to a contractual obligation rather than a willingness to stand behind the content.  The film is as subversive a family entertainment as I've ever seen though I'm not aware of any flak aimed at Disney as a result.

After watching these films, I will be doing my best to see the rest of Takahata's work.  These two films have placed him high on my list of the most important animation directors.

Sheridan Industry Day Promo 2013

It's that time of year again. As Sheridan Animation's industry day approaches, here's a sneak peak at what some of this year's films look like.

Sheridan College industry Day Commercial 2013 from Elaine Chen on Vimeo.

Who Are the Next Inspirations?

Sheridan College was lucky to host Disney writer-director John Musker last week.  There's some coverage here.  In addition to talking to students about their work, Musker gave a two hour presentation about his career, where he generously included the work of animators.  The names were no surprises: Glen Keane, Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn, etc.

Musker also talked about the early days of his career, particularly his time with Eric Larson and being taught by Jack Hannah.

Listening to Musker and staring at the young students in the audience, I started wondering about the next animators who would serve as inspiration.

Animators were pretty much invisible through the greatest part of what we call the golden age.  Bill Tytla got some publicity in Time magazine at the time of Dumbo's release and many of the Disney crew were anonymously featured in the live action portions of The Reluctant Dragon, but it really wasn't until Disney moved into TV that behind-the-scenes material started to appear.  When Disney was publicizing the initial release of Lady and the Tramp, there were segments with Frank Thomas, Milt Kahl, Woolie Reitherman, etc.  Those shows, and Bob Thomas's book The Art of Animation were really the public's first view of the people who made the characters move.

The TV audience for those shows (as well as Walter Lantz's copycat segments on The Woody Woodpecker Show), was the generation that grew up to enter the animation business in the '70s and '80s.  At the same time they were entering the business, others in their generation were writing about animation history, further publicizing animators, and not only those at Disney.

In the '90s, the TV generation had risen to prominence  in animated features.  Glen Keane, Andreas Deja, Eric Goldberg, etc. were all used to publicize the films on their release and then appeared in DVD extras.  These are the people that the Sheridan students were familiar with and who were featured in John Musker's talk.

But who are the animators who have risen to prominence in animated features in the last 15 years?  I'm not talking about directors (though only Pixar has really publicized them to the point that they have independent reputations).  Since cgi has taken over feature films, are there any cgi animators whose work is known to the general public? The same question can be asked about stop motion animators.

At Sheridan, it's been clear to me for years that the students seem to gravitate more to design than to story or animation.  There are relatively few who have stories they're desperate to tell or characters they want to bring to life.  I wonder if the flood of "Art of" books is responsible for this in some way.  It's one of the few places where animation artists get credited, but the books are mostly pre-production art. 

Whatever the reason, I think that the writing of history and publicity is having an impact on students' career aspirations.  Without animators as examples, there are fewer who aspire to follow that path.  There are fewer "ignition moments," when someone sees an animator bring a character to life and is struck by the desire to do the same thing.

This may be happening at the various online animation schools where students are interacting with working animators.  That's all to the good, but it doesn't reach the same number of people who see a DVD extra or work credited in a book.

In thirty years, when the audience for John Musker's talk is firmly established in animation, will there be any star animators known outside the studios?  While there were always star animators even if the public didn't know about them, I'm convinced that the lack of publicity does impact their number.

If I'm right, then that's something that animators can do to maintain the health of the field.  Animators, publicize yourselves!  What shots have you done?  What moments have you given audiences?  The more that human faces can be attached to performances that audiences remember, the more likely that we'll get more of those performances in the future.

Vimeo on Demand

Here's a potential game changer.  Video hosting site Vimeo has started an on demand service.  You can upload your videos, charge what you want, and keep 90% of the revenue after transaction costs.  That's a better deal than iTunes.  There are no restrictions as to video length or the number of episodes.  You can also sell through Vimeo or on your own site and the videos are viewable on a variety of devices.

This continues the trend of disintermediation, cutting out the middle man between creator and audience.  With alternate means of fundraising such as Kickstarter already in place (and Kickstarter also serves as a marketing tool), the pieces are in place for independents (and studios with foresight!) to start developing their own intellectual property and generating income from it.

The lessons of TV (and before that, radio) are that you want a series.  It's got to be a recognizable genre and needs a definite demographic (whether that's an age group or people who like something specific).  Then add appealing characters and start turning out episodes that appear regularly.  Price the work so that it's an impulse purchase.  On Vimeo, Don Hertzfeldt is selling his feature, It's Such a Beautiful Day, for $2.  At that price, it's cheaper than a cup of coffee and it lasts longer.

The people who can deliver on the above formula will succeed.  They'll get to keep ownership of their work and the lion's share of the revenue.  I hope we can return to a time, like the days of Vaudeville, when creators who can satisfy an audience are free to create without anyone else getting in the way.

I Shill for Wacom

Captain Canuck Web Series

Captain Canuck, a comics character who first appeared in 1975, will star in a web series produced by Toronto's Smiley Guy Studios.  You can read details here.

I'm interested in this on two counts.  The web is increasingly being used to bring properties to the audience on a smaller scale and lower cost than would be possible on TV.  This opens up possibilities for independents to get their work in front of audiences without having to deal with gate keepers.  I would hope that this would lead to more diversity in content.

The other interesting thing about this is that it will be financed through an Indigogo campaign starting on March 28.  Here again, independents are going straight to the audience, this time for production money. 

Angry Birds, the iPhone game, is moving to TV.  Instead of TV being a primary market, it's evolving into an aftermarket.  Independents, with luck and hard work, can maintain ownership of their ideas, develop an audience and then move the property to other media based on its success.  That's a situation where creators have a much better chance for controlling their work and benefiting from it financially.

I wish the Captain Canuck crew much luck on their series.

Careful! You'll Hurt Disney's Feelings!

Who knew?  The mighty multinational conglomerate that is Disney can't stand to be criticized.

You are probably already aware that Disney has refused permission to use Disney artwork in Amid Amidi's biography of Ward Kimball.  Chronicle Books, the original publisher, has decided against publishing the book as a result.  Amidi is now making other arrangements for publication. (It appears that Amazon.com has de-listed the book or I would provide a link.)

But it doesn't stop there.

Don Rosa was a writer/artist of Disney comics whose work was hugely successful, especially in Europe.  He has written material in a nine volume collection of his work about the creation of his stories.  That is, until he got to the reasons why he retired.  Disney refused to allow that piece of writing to be published.  Perhaps because it highlights the medieval treatment of people who create Disney comics and how they are taken advantage of.  Perhaps because Disney's licensees exploited Rosa's name without compensation, so that he had to copyright his own name so that Disney licensees couldn't use it without his permission.  Rosa decided that he wasn't willing to be muzzled and put his explanation for retiring on the internet.

In a recent podcast, author Sean Howe explained why his book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story contains no images from the comics.  This quote comes from 1:15:43 in the podcast.

"I was going to license about 20 images and I got approvals for captions for those images and everything was typeset, the whole thing was laid out, and then I got the contracts. A price had been agreed on, but when I actually got the paperwork, I was going to have to agree that I would say nothing critical about Marvel Comics in the entire book.  A lot of people have asked me why there are no pictures from the comic books and that's the reason.  If I had used illustrations, I would have had to take out half of the book."

Disney is so sensitive that it cannot tolerate anything that casts aspersions on its behaviour or the behaviour of its subsidiaries or licensees.  And look how absurdly ineffective they are at squelching it.  While they are busy attempting to suppress books, their behaviour is being noted all over the internet.  Amidi's book will eventually be published and I hope that Disney's refusal to grant permission to use images becomes a major talking point in the book's reviews.  Don Rosa's writing would have been limited to Europe, but is now readable by anyone in the world.  Sean Howe wrote the book he wanted to and has a tumblr where he has published more images from Marvel than he ever could have squeezed into his book.

Disney's failure doesn't address the bigger issue.  From this point forward, any book on Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars or the Muppets that includes copyrighted images is tainted.  The author, rightly or not, will be suspected of compromising the text to satisfy Disney.  The books will be damaged goods.  The use of Disney-owned images will be proof that the book contains nothing critical of Disney.  So while Disney is trying to protect itself from criticism in print, it has essentially neutered any praise it may receive as it is biased.  Meanwhile, on the internet, Disney provides ammunition for those who want to criticize it.  Good thing nobody ever looks at the internet.

John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood

The perceived failure of Andrew Stanton's John Carter dominates any talk of the film itself.  I say "perceived" because the film was the victim of studio politics and ineptitude.  It was easier to bury studio mistakes and move on than it was for Disney to take responsibility for the debacle.  And while I am not a fan of Andrew Stanton's Wall-E, Stanton is, perhaps, the biggest victim of how the release of the film was handled.

Michael D. Sellers has cataloged all the missteps in his book, John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood.  A fan of the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, he covers the writing of the original novel, A Princess of Mars, and Burroughs interactions with Hollywood, predominantly on the Tarzan films.

Animator Bob Clampett was the first one to attempt to turn the John Carter stories into film, albeit animated.  While Clampett produced samples, he was unable to find a backer for the series.  At various times, Ray Harryhausen, Disney, and Paramount were interested in the property, but while scripts were written, nothing was produced.

Andrew Stanton first became a fan of John Carter though Marvel's comics adaptations.  When the rights became available, he was working on Wall-E and asked Dick Cook, Disney Studios chief, if could direct it as his next project.  Cook secured the rights.  As Stanton moved onto the project, two questionable decisions were made: setting the budget at $250 million and not casting stars.

Shortly after the budget was set, Dick Cook was out at Disney.  It's common in Hollywood for projects to be orphaned when executives are fired.  In this case, given Stanton's importance, it was impossible to cancel the project, but Cook's replacement, Richard Ross, was not enthusiastic. 

Neither was Robert Iger, who fired Cook.  Iger's pattern is to buy established franchises like Marvel and Lucasfilm rather than spend the money to develop franchises in-house.  In fact, at the time Cook was giving John Carter a green light, Iger was negotiating to buy Marvel, which would give Disney a line-up of characters all better known to the public than John Carter.  And while John Carter was in production, Iger was negotiating with George Lucas for the purchase of the Star Wars franchise, one that would give Disney a much higher profile space adventure than John Carter. 

While the studio was willing to allocate a standard marketing budget for the film, it was not willing to spend more.  Given the risks associated with the production budget, this could be seen as prudent or foolish.  In addition, once Ross was in place, he hired a new director of marketing, MT Carney, who had no experience marketing films.  What made it worse is that she was fired before John Carter was released, so there was little continuity in the marketing campaign.

Months went by without marketing activity for the film.  The release date was moved from summer to March, which raised questions as to whether the film was strong enough to compete with summer blockbusters.  "Of Mars" was dropped from the title, leaving the very generic sounding John Carter.   The budget began to attract attention, the implication being that costs were out of control. Stanton's interviews implied that he was less comfortable with live action production than animation, which didn't help the perception that the film was over-budget.  In reality he held to the budget, including 18 days of reshoots.

For the March release, the film's main competition would be The Hunger Games.  Sellers shows how that film trounced John Carter in creating audience awareness prior to release. 

The film did not open with enough box office to suggest it would be profitable, but only 10 days into the release, Disney publicly declared the film a failure and indicated that it would write off $200 million on it.  It's unusual for a studio to abandon a film while it is still in release domestically and yet to open all around the world.  Sellers explanation is that Richard Ross made the announcement early so that it would be old news by the time Iger next had to meet with the financial press for the quarterly earnings report.  It also attached the failure to Richard Ross, who Iger was about to replace. In total, the three executives most responsible for producing and marketing the film -- Dick Cook, MT Carney and Richard Ross -- were all fired.  Stanton was sent packing back to Pixar.

Sellers is scrupulous about his statistics and quotes, but less scrupulous when it comes to his own involvement.  While he admits to being a Burroughs fan in the introduction, it isn't until the second half of the book that he reveals that he is the proprietor of www.thejohncarterfiles.com, a fan site that collected information about the film prior to its release.  He also cut a fan trailer that received a lot of praise for being better than the official trailers and he met with Disney, hoping to involve himself in the film's marketing but was rebuffed.  While there is no question about the facts surrounding John Carter, Sellers actions do raise questions about his motives for writing the book.  He is not a dispassionate reporter but a spurned fan.  Is the book reportage or revenge?

Ultimately, John Carter fell victim to three problems: a budget that made it difficult for the film to be profitable; source material that seemed old hat after influencing other science fiction projects; and a major changing of the guard and focus at Disney's film studio.

Andrew Stanton brought his first live action film in on budget, a major accomplishment considering the difficult logistics of the project, but the merits of the film couldn't overcome the aforesaid problems.  Sellers has written a textbook for all the things that can go wrong off a movie set that ultimately affect the success of a film.  John Carter isn't unique, just the latest Hollywood film to be mismanaged and cast aside.

Sick Little Monkeys

The story of the making of Ren and Stimpy is one of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.  The irresistible force was John Kricfalusi, a veteran animation artist who was disgusted with the quality of TV animation.  He was determined to push the art and humour closer to the Warner Bros. cartoons he admired, though with a decidedly personal twist.  The immovable object was the TV industry, specifically cable channel Nickelodeon.  Like all channels, it was dedicated to budget restraint, regular air dates, and bland content that wouldn't provoke attacks.  From the start, this relationship was a disaster in the making.  The surprise, though, is that it produced a hit show.

Thad Komorowski's book, Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren and Stimpy Story, exhaustively examines the behind-the-scenes goings on.  He starts with John K's career in Saturday morning cartoon factories and details his relationship with Ralph Bakshi.  Together they made The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse, a sort of precursor to Ren and Stimpy.  Even before Ren and Stimpy, Kricfalusi was butting heads with broadcasters, as his experience on the short-lived Beany and Cecil revival shows.

For those not familiar with the history of Ren and Stimpy, it was one of Nickelodon's first three original animated series and the one that attracted the most attention.  There was no question that John K's sensibility was a success with audiences.  However, right from the start, the show developed schedule problems due to a mismatch between what the artists wanted to make and what Nickelodeon was willing to air. John K. was another factor delaying production, as he wasn't willing to approve things until they met his standard.  When the delays continued during the second season, Nickelodeon fired John K. and his studio.  Nickelodon created its own in-house studio to continue production and Ren and Stimpy lasted for another three seasons without John K.

While that might have been the end of the story, John K. was reunited with his characters when another cable channel, Spike TV, revived the series for an adult audience.  Unfortunately, Kricfalusi's insistence on meeting his vision at any cost doomed the revival.  While the order was for just six episodes, only two made their air dates and the last delivered a year late.  Spike lost interest in the show and didn't bother to play three of the episodes.

John K. is a controversial figure who divides artists and fans into those who support him and those who think that he is responsible for his own misfortunes.  Komorowski walks the middle ground, showing that all parties made mistakes and refused to consider the others' point of view, but he does not excuse Kricfalusi's behavior.  Komorowski talked to many artists who worked on the show and quotes many Nickelodeon executives on the problems they faced getting episodes on air.  While I don't doubt that people involved in the production could quibble with Komorowski's version of specific events, it strikes me that the book is even-handed in apportioning credit and blame.

Fans of the show will enjoy comparing their opinion of each episode to the author's and learning of material that was cut and censored.

If you are not a fan of the show, this book is still worth reading for the light it sheds on the workings of the TV animation business.  There is always tension between artists and business people over resources and content.  People working in TV animation and those with ambitions to create shows need to understand the pressures and the pitfalls that shape the business.   Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren and Stimpy Story is a cautionary tale about walking the fine line between artistic ambition and the reality of the marketplace.

Cast Off!

After 37 days, my cast (the last of four) is off.  There's a lot of work to do to regain flexibility and strength.  However, life is a little closer to normal now.

Coming soon: Reviews of Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren and Stimpy Story by Thad Komorowski and John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood by Michael D. Sellers.

On Hiatus

As I broke my wrist yesterday, it will be a while before this blog is updated.

Gone But Not Forgotten

How do you follow up an animation hardware history?  With a look at The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies.

Hardware History

J.J. Sedelmaier has written an interesting history of animation disks for Imprint magazine.

People who entered the animation business in the recent past have  lived totally within a digital world.  But before computers, animation had its own set of very specific hardware, developed from the 1910s onward to facilitate the creation of cartoons.

There were studios with their own peg standards as well as Acme pegs (which dominated the California business) and Oxberry pegs (which dominated in New York).  There was even another standard, not mentioned in the article, that came from the U.S. Signal Corps from World War II and made it into the animation industry as war surplus.

The picture above is a Fleischer set-up.  Note the goose-neck lamp for top lighting.  Fleischer used top pegs, where Disney used bottom pegs.  There's a wire coil at the top right to hold pencils and brushes and the holder on the left for ink and paint.  The disk rotates on rubber rollers (pictured in the article).  As the Fleischers were inventors and very mechanically minded, they put a lot of effort into creating equipment that would make production efficient.

The article shows a great many disks and set-ups.  It's a walk down memory lane for many of us and a history lesson for those who grew up more likely to be manipulating a mouse than a pencil.

Where Characters Come From

If you've ever created stories -- whether written, drawn or filmed -- you are familiar with the experience of having the characters dictate where the story is going to go.  You may start out pushing the characters through your plot, but if you're doing your job right, the characters start to drive events and you, as creator, just follow them to see what's going to happen.

Author Corey Doctorow has an interesting idea about why this occurs.  If you make stories or want to make stories, it's worth reading in full.

Who's Afraid of Song of the South?

Disney historian Jim Korkis's latest book is Who's Afraid of the Song of the South? and Other Forbidden Disney Stories.  The main section of the book is an in-depth look at the production of the film that Disney has chosen to suppress.

While Korkis deals with the current controversy surrounding the film, he traces the film's origins and shows that the controversy started even before the film was released.  In the period after World War II, when the U.S. had defeated a fascist power that claimed it was racially superior, Black Americans felt strongly that it was time for the United States to abolish its own discriminatory practices.  That included the portrayal of Black people in popular culture.  Black audiences were no longer satisfied with stereotypical screen portrayals of porters, maids and lazy or frightened comedy relief.

In the post-war years, Hollywood began to tackle discrimination in live action films such as Gentleman's Agreement (1947), which dealt with discrimination against Jews, and Pinky (1949), where a Black woman passes for White before returning to her own community.  But it wouldn't be until the 1950s and the rise of Sidney Poitier before Black performers were cast in leading roles that were dramatically respectable.

Song of the South (1945) sits at the cusp between pre- and post-war racial attitudes and as Korkis shows, that's one of the things that makes the film hard to deal with.  The various screenwriters included a southerner with typical racial views as well as a left-leaning victim of the blacklist.  Black actor Clarence Muse was hired as a consultant, but left the project over the film's racial attitudes, yet Muse himself later appeared in films like Riding High (1950) and The Sun Shines Bright (1953), neither of which could be considered racially progressive.  The reviews of the time also straddle changing racial attitudes, with some wholly praising the film while others expressing reservations on its treatment of race.

Korkis covers the writers, the cast, the production of the live action, the animation, the music, the reviews and the controversy surrounding the film.  Beyond the race issue, the film is important for other reasons.  It was Disney's first foray into a feature dominated by live action.  It was photographed by Gregg Toland, cinematographer of The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and Citizen Kane (1941), and this was Toland's first film in colour.  Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten, the child stars in the film, went on to other star in other Disney films, making them the first live performers under contract to the studio.  It was also the first Disney live action film to receive an Oscar, albeit an honorary one for James Baskette, who played Uncle Remus.

Korkis also writes about how the animated characters were used in other Disney projects such as Splash Mountain and various comics and other publications.

The balance of the book is a bit of a hodge podge, lacking the strong focus of the first 100 pages.  Some of the material is related, such as the deleted Black centaurette in re-releases of Fantasia.  While the material covered is interesting, such as Disney's failed attempts to craft films based on the Oz books and John Carter of Mars before the films that were eventually released, this material could hardly be described as "forbidden."  Korkis is a thorough historian and the material is interesting, but as a book, it doesn't hang together as strongly as it might.

Be that as it may, there's a wealth of interesting Disneyana here.  Korkis's dedication to shining light into the nooks and crannies of Disney history always produces surprises for the reader and fills out the picture of Walt Disney and the company he created.   As the current Disney management would prefer to forget the existence of Song of the South, this book serves as the closest the film is likely to get to a "making of" book.

Kimball Christmas Cards

If you aren't visiting Amid Amidi's site 365 Days of Ward Kimball, you're missing out on some beautiful art. Currently, there's lots of Christmas related artwork.

During his talk on Kimball at the Ottawa International Animation Festival last September, Amidi made it a point to say that Kimball's style was evolving towards more modern graphics in the 1940s. The above cards (1945 on top and 1946 on the bottom) are great examples of the turn Kimball's style was taking. Both are, of course, well drawn. But while the 1945 card is conventional in its use of perspective and structure, the '46 card breaks away from realistic perspective and revels in flattening out shapes.  While UPA would animate this stylistic approach a couple of years later, Kimball was prepared to do so but wouldn't get the chance until Melody, Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom and the TV episodes he directed for the Disneyland series in the 1950s.

Darrell Van Citters Interviewed

This week marks the 50th anniversary of Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, the first animated TV special.  Darrell Van Citters has written the book on the making of the show and film historian Frank Thompson interviews Van Citters on his podcast The Commentary Track.

Thompson has also interviewed Cartoon Brew's Jerry Beck but those of you interested in film history in general will be interested in other Thompson podcasts, which include interviews with character actor L.Q. Jones (talking about working with John Ford, Sam Peckinpah, and Budd Boetticher), and film historians Rudy Behlmer, Kevin Brownlow, Robert S. Birchard, John Bengston, Randy Skredvedt and Joan Myers.

The Difference Between Walt Disney and Robert Iger

From Seth Godin:

"Capitalists take risks. They see an opportunity, an unmet need, and then they bring resources to bear to solve the problem and make a profit.

"Industrialists seek stability instead.

"Industrialists work to take working systems and polish them, insulate them from risk, maximize productivity and extract the maximum amount of profit. Much of society's wealth is due to the relentless march of productivity created by single-minded industrialists, particularly those that turned nascent industries (as Henry Ford did with cars) into efficient engines of profit.

"Industrialists don't mind government regulations if they write them, don't particularly like competition or creativity or change. They are maximizers of the existing status quo."

Who Owns History? Who Owns Culture? Who Owns Speech?

The Walt Disney company is responsible for delaying the publication of Full Steam Ahead!: The Life and Art of Ward Kimball by Amid Amidi.  The reason, according to the author, is that Disney is unhappy that Kimball's life doesn't conform to the company's exacting standards.  Disney has had the book since January of 2012 and has yet to approve it.  The publication of the book has been delayed a minimum of seven months, preventing those who pre-ordered the book from reading it and delaying earnings for both the author and publisher.

I have not read the book and I certainly don't know the specific text that Disney is objecting to, but I find this situation to be very troubling for the chill it casts over our ability to comment on the world we live in.

We are now in a time where entertainment corporations have run amuck.  I have recently written about Sony taking ownership of any artwork submitted by job applicants.  In Finland, the police have confiscated the laptop of a nine year old girl for downloading a single song from the Pirate Bay.  In addition, they have fined the girl 600 Euros, even though the girl's father has proved that the girl later bought the album and concert tickets for the band in question.  Several countries have instituted laws where three copyright violations can result in a user being banned from the internet altogether.

One of the problems with this ban is how arbitrarily copyright violations are enforced.  All over the web, there are sites which could be construed to be violating copyright.  I say "could be" as a court could decide that material qualifies as fair use.  And the copyright holder gets to selectively decide who to prosecute and who to ignore.   In other words, if the company thinks the copyright violation is good marketing, it will turn a blind eye. 

Beyond the logistics of corporations using the law to arbitrarily punish people, there is the much larger question of who owns history, culture and speech?  When culture is manufactured for a profit, do we have the right to discuss it, criticize it and respond to it?  Can we use examples to make our case or are we limited by the legal rights of the manufacturer?

As the entertainment corporations are now multinational behemoths with whole staffs of lawyers charged with protecting intellectual property, they use the threat of legal action as a deterrent.  The Kimball book is a case in point.  In court, it could be argued that any Disney artwork used in the book is fair use.  What's one still image from the more than 100,000 frames in a feature film?  How is the publication of a still depriving Disney of income?  Disney could not suppress a book based on its text without proving libel, but it can suppress a book before the fact by denying the use of artwork and the threat of a lawsuit if a publisher decides to take a chance and publish anyway.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident.  Disney owns Marvel and denied Sean Howe, the author of Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, the use of illustrations unless they could approve the text of the book.  Howe and his publisher decided to forgo illustrations, so the history of a comic book company has no images of the artwork that made the company worth writing about.  And as I mentioned above, copyright prosecutions are arbitrary.  Howe has a tumblr where he has included images that should have been included in the book and so far, Disney hasn't complained.

How strange is it that in the western world, it is permissible to comment on governments but not on companies that make cartoons?  As corporations have increasingly lobbied governments to write laws for their own benefit, we may soon reach a point where criticizing governments is irrelevant and the corporations who should be criticized will stifle all dissent.

More Artist Exploitation

In the past, if you pitched an idea to a studio, they would ask you to sign a release form before pitching.  The form stated that the studio might already be developing a property similar to what you were about to pitch and that you acknowledged this.  The purpose of the form was to prevent the people pitching from launching lawsuits if they felt their ideas had been stolen by the studios.  In truth, at any given moment, studios have multiple properties in development and coincidences do occur.  There were also cases where the release forms allowed studios to rip off ideas without paying for them.

However, the release form made no claims to ownership of the material being pitched.  The pitcher was free to take the material anywhere else.

The world has changed for the worse.  Sony is hiring storyboard artists and visual development artists.  They are not looking for ideas here; they are looking for artists who can draw and develop ideas that Sony will provide.  It is clearly a work-for-hire arrangement.  Yet Sony, in its terms of use portion of the online application for both jobs states this:

7. Submissions
Subject to applicable law and except as otherwise expressly provided in any other agreement that you (or your employer if you are not employed by SPE) may have with SPE with respect to the resources made available on this Site (a “Base Agreement”):
• You agree that any intellectual property or materials, including but not limited to questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, discoveries, plans, notes, drawings, original or creative materials, or other information, provided by you in the form of e-mail or electronic submissions to SPE, or uploads or postings to this Site (“Submissions”), shall become the sole property of SPE to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law and will be considered "works made for hire" or "commissioned works" owned by SPE;
• To the extent that any Submission may not constitute a "work made for hire" or "commissioned work" owned by SPE under applicable law, you hereby irrevocably assign, and agree to assign, to SPE all current and future right, title and interest in any and all such Submissions; and
• SPE shall own exclusive rights, including any and all intellectual property rights, and shall be entitled to the unrestricted use of Submissions for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, without acknowledgment or additional compensation to you.
In the event applicable law operates to prevent such assignment described above, or otherwise prevents SPE from becoming the sole owner of any such Submissions, you agree to grant to SPE, and this provision shall be effective as granting to SPE, (with unfettered rights of assignment) a perpetual, worldwide, paid-in-full, nonexclusive right (including any moral rights) and license to make, use, sell, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, communicate to the public, perform and display the Submissions (in whole or in part) worldwide and or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, for the full term of any rights that may exist in any such Submissions.
By making Submissions, you represent that (i) you have full power and authority to make the assignment and license set forth above, (ii) the Submissions do not infringe the intellectual property rights of any third party, and (iii) SPE shall be free and have the right to use, assign, modify, edit, alter, adapt, distribute, dispose, promote, display, and transmit the Submissions, or reproduce them, in whole or in part, without compensation, notification, or additional consent from you or from any third party.

Essentially, the above states that Sony takes ownership of your portfolio material when you apply for the job.  If you are submitting samples of work you have done for other companies, Sony wants you to assign the rights to them. You clearly don't have the authority to do that for work you don't own, so that means that you are not legally allowed to show Sony work you've done for other companies.  Sort of defeats the purpose of a submission portfolio, doesn't it?

What's clearly disturbing though, is that any original work in your portfolio becomes their property.  This does not depend on whether they hire you or not, they get ownership because you applied.

How absurd is this?  It means that legally, you could not take your own work and use it to apply to another company later, as it would now be owned by Sony.  Furthermore, what right does Sony have to take ownership of your work without payment?  And of course, it's not enough that Sony owns it, they list all the ways that they can use and mutilate your work "without compensation, notification, additional consent from you or from any third party."

Sony's lawyers have been overzealous here.  It means that nobody should be applying for these jobs, as you can't show them your work for others and shouldn't show them your personal work.

Undoubtedly, someone will say it's just boilerplate.  Sony would never exercise these rights, they're just trying to protect themselves.  People sign what they have to in order to get work.  But it remains a legal document unless it is successfully challenged in court, and that takes time and money.

Imagine this scenario.  I may hire you, but before you apply, I say you have to sign an I.O.U. for $100,000.  I have no intention of ever collecting.  It's just a formality.  But the fact remains that by applying to work for me, you've given me the right to collect $100,000 from you.  Would you want that hanging over your head?  Would you want to hire a lawyer and go to court if I decide to collect?  Isn't it doubly absurd if I don't hire you and never pay you a nickel but still want the $100,000?

Sony needs to rewrite their terms of use. 

What's Wrong With This Picture?

That's Mark Andrews, the final director of Pixar's Brave.  He is the recipient of the Global Scottish Thistle Award, for "those who have helped to put Scotland on the world stage."  So far as I know, Andrews had nothing to do with setting the film in Scotland and Visit Scotland, the organization that gave him the award, seems to have no knowledge of Brenda Chapman, the film's original director.

Is Hasbro Next?

The Beat is reporting that Disney is in talks with Hasbro, which currently holds the toy licenses for Star Wars and the Marvel characters as well as owning Toy Story's Mr. Potato Head.  Here is a list of the other things that Hasbro owns or licenses.  While this could be as simple as a renegotiation of toy licenses, given Robert Iger's history it may be an indication that Hasbro is Disney's next purchase.

I Say, I Say...Son!

While many gaps in animation history have been filled in the last 40 years, gaps remain.  That's why any new book that fills in some blanks is to be celebrated.  While Warner Bros. cartoons and certain of the directors have been covered relatively well, Bob McKimson has been present only intermittently in writings about the studio.  Part of the reason is that he died just as animation history was moving into high gear and partially because he never attracted the critical or fan attention that directors like Chuck Jones did.

This book (with excerpts available at the link), written by McKimson's son, Robert Jr, also covers McKimson's brothers Tom and Chuck, both of whom also contributed to Warner Bros. cartoons in the areas of character design and animation respectively.

While the book covers their entire careers, it doesn't go into as much depth as I would have liked.  Given that the author was a relative, I wish there had been more about the brothers as people.  I didn't get a good picture of their personalities or their relationship.

As well, the book isn't specific enough about some of the work.  Chuck McKimson animated for Bob for several years in the post-war period, but no scenes are identified as his work and there is no discussion about how his animation differed, if at all, from his brother's.  While the author is right to point out that Bob McKimson was the only Warner Bros. director who continued to animate on his cartoons, with the exception of The Hole Idea (animated entirely by the director due to the studio shutting down temporarily), there are no animation scenes identified from his years as a director.

There's also no discussion of the evolution of the McKimson brothers' art over time.  It's clear from the illustrations that their styles changed over the years, and not always for the better.  By the 1950's, there's a tightness to some of Bob McKimson's drawings that compare unfavourably to his work during the 1940s.  In the '50s, he had a tendency to draw arms and legs on characters like Bugs Bunny with parallel lines, causing the character to flatten out considerably.  The liveliness and energy that he gave to Bugs in earlier years seems to have dissipated.

The best parts of the book are the illustrations, which cover a range of fields: animation, comics, colouring books and publicity artwork.  The McKimson brothers had a definite influence on the look of Warner Bros. cartoons, especially in the years before the end of World War II.  Bob and Tom were major contributors to the Bob Clampett unit and Bob McKimson was arguably the main artistic influence on the look of Bugs Bunny, first for Tex Avery and later for Clampett.  As a director, Bob McKimson is probably best known for Foghorn Leghorn and the Tasmanian Devil, who appeared in his cartoons exclusively.

The McKimson brothers are certainly worthy of a book and this one is a start.  As it is the best currently available, it is worth having, but there's a lot more to be said about the brothers and I hope that this isn't the last we'll read of them.

Disney Buys Lucas

You can read the details everywhere, so I won't bother with them here.

I have no doubt that Wall Street and investors will see this as a good move, as all they are concerned about is money.  However, I'm concerned with artists and Disney's trend is not artist friendly.

Why not?  Well, if you happen to be somebody working in computer animation in the San Francisco bay area, there is now one less employer in the market.  Pixar and ILM have been charged with collusion, cooperating to make sure that they didn't hire employees from each other.  Now they're the same company and they can do what they like with hiring policies and pay scales.  As neither studio is union, there is no floor to pay or benefits.

The problem goes beyond that, though.  While Disney and Pixar continue to turn out some original films, Pixar has already been strong-armed into making sequels because Disney needs to pay off the purchase price.  There will be many, many more Star Wars and Marvel films to pay off those purchases as well.

That takes money and oxygen away from original projects that potentially could become as big as Star Wars or the Marvel Universe.  The company is clearly committed to milking existing intellectual property and acquiring more of it than creating new intellectual property.  And so much of what Disney is buying is from the last century. 

Robert Iger is clearly looking backwards more than forwards.

But don't forget that the Muppets started out as a small troop of puppeteers on local television, Marvel started out as a handful of creators working out of their homes, and George Lucas got turned down by everyone until Alan Ladd, Jr. took a chance (but didn't realize the value of sequel or merchandising rights or he would have kept them).  What Robert Iger doesn't see is that great creations don't come from large companies, they come from people committed to their own ideas who work out of basements, garages, warehouses and other out of the way places.  Sort of the way Walt Disney started.  Remember him?

Which means that while Iger is busy grinding out Muppets, Marvels and Star Wars, the great creations of the 21st century will be happening elsewhere.  Seek them out.

Is That You, Popeye?

The above was created by artist Lee Romao.  You can buy a 7 by 10 inch print of this for $15, as well as well as getting the image on canvas, stationary, or iPhone or iPad skins.  Aren't you glad that Genndy Tartakovsky is making the next Popeye feature and not Spielberg or Zemeckis?

(link via Boing Boing)

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story

Sean Howe's book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story could just as easily have been subtitled The Never Ending Story.  It's never ending as Marvel's fictional characters die, are brought back, change their powers, get replaced, get cloned, make deals with the devil, but still go on and on.  It's also never ending because the creators behind these characters leave in disgust, get fired, sue the company and sometimes die on the job.

This book is a warts-and-all telling of the people and business behind the creation of the Marvel universe, known for characters such as Spider-man, the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk and the X-Men.  While it is only tangentially related to animation, it shares the problems of work-for-hire and the callous way that corporations treat the very people who create the wealth.

For those who haven't followed the comics or the company, this book may be a maddening read, as the cast of fictional and real characters runs into the hundreds.  The size of the cast prevents Howe from going into depth on more than a few people, mainly the owners, editors and to a lesser extent, writers.  The artists, as usual, get short shrift.  Anyone interested in learning more about artists John Buscema, Gene Colan and similar mainstays of the company will be disappointed.  The artists are mostly bystanders while the dance of power and money goes on above their heads.

Martin Goodman was a publisher of pulp magazines, a now extinct breed of publications that focused on genre fiction with detectives, cowboys, aviators and similar action-oriented characters.  They were named pulps for the cheap wood pulp paper they were printed on.  After the success of Superman in Action Comics in the late 1930s, Goodman was convinced to add comic books to his list of publications.  Within the first few years, he published The Human Torch (created by Carl Burgos), The Sub-Mariner (created by Bill Everett) and Captain America (created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby).  He hired his wife's cousin, 17 year old Stanley Leiber to work in the comics division and in 1941 when editor Joe Simon left (with Kirby) after Goodman screwed them out of Captain America royalties, Leiber writing under the pseudonym Stan Lee inherited the post of comics editor.

With the exception of his stint in the military during World War II, Lee continued running the division and created nothing of value until 1961.  At that point, partnered with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, newly successful characters appeared for about a decade.  However, both Ditko and Kirby walked away from Lee and Marvel, angry over their lack of control and compensation.  Once that happened, Lee spent the next 40 years promoting Marvel and himself but failed to create anything similarly successful.  His greatest accomplishment was keeping himself front and center as the ownership changed repeatedly, garnering millions for himself while not lifting a finger as President and Publisher of Marvel to compensate the artists beyond paying them by the page.  He even colluded with his competitor, DC Comics, to make sure that freelancers couldn't play the two companies off each other for higher pay.

It's fitting that Disney now owns Marvel as the companies have similarities in their histories.  The business people who have taken over both companies after their founders have earned far more than the creative people who built the company in the first place.  Eric Ellenbogan, a Marvel executive who lasted just seven months, walked away with a $2.5 million severance package, more money than Jack Kirby made from Marvel in his entire career.  That's hardly different than the $140 million in severance that Michael Ovitz walked away from Disney with, more money than all nine old men made over 40 years.  John Lasseter is rapidly becoming another Stan Lee, agreeing to corporate moves he formerly disdained (like sequels) and becoming a kibitzer of other people's work rather than remaining a creator himself.  For both companies, the '90s were an anomaly where artists actually shared in the money their work generated.  Marvel went bankrupt and Disney abandoned drawn animation and the artists who created it.  In both cases, the good times didn't last.

The book contains just two illustrations: an ad for the first issue of Marvel Comics and a photograph of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1965.  Undoubtedly, the publisher didn't want to deal with Disney's well-known reluctance to grant the rights to images it owns (see the delay in Amid Amidi's biography of Ward Kimball).  However, Howe has a tumblr blog which includes many illustrations and documents that should have appeared.  Somehow print attracts the copyright cops while the web escapes unscathed, more proof that the copyright laws are dysfunctional in the digital age.

Anyone who aspires to work for a leading comics or animation company and thinks they'll be entering a magic kingdom where creativity reigns supreme and the fun never stops should read this book.  Large media corporations share many of Marvel's problems. Artists are routinely taken advantage of, and the more artists realize this on the way in, the less likely they are to be disappointed.

The Rabbi's Cat

LCHDR by azmovies
This film screened in Toronto, presented by the Toronto Jewish Film Festival and The Beguiling.

The film is based on a series of comics by Joann Sfar.  Set in Algiers, where Sfar's own family once resided, it has a large cast of distinctive characters.  The widowed Rabbi has a daughter with her own circle of friends.  A cousin who travels with a lion pays a visit.  The rabbi is friends with a Muslim cleric with the same last name.  A Russian artist, a White Russian, an African waitress, the rabbi's mentor and his student are other well-developed supporting characters.

While not revealing too much of the plot, several of the characters go on a meandering road trip searching for a utopia that turns out to be a false one.  The irony is that the searchers are an ad hoc society closer to utopia than the place they are seeking, in that they are of varying religions, nationalities, races and species and get along, using words and art as their means of communication, not weapons.

The design work in the film is stronger than the animation.  There are several backgrounds that are frame-worthy.  The characters are rich and a pleasure to spend time with as they discuss life, philosophy and more mundane subjects.  However, the film lacks structure and narrative drive, as do Sfar's original comics.  The film evokes directors like Renoir and McCarey in its focus on people living and its rejection of melodrama.

I have to say that France is producing some of the more interesting animated features I've seen in the last several years.  When I attended a presentation by Gobelins, they mentioned that France releases about ten animated features a year.  While I'm sure that some of them are aimed squarely at children, it also includes films like Persepolis, Le Tableau and The Rabbi's Cat, which can be enjoyed by children, but speak to more adult concerns.  The last two are being distributed by GKIDS and will be screened in November in Los Angeles in order to be submitted for the Oscars.

Funny Feet: The Art of Eccentric Dance

I've always loved dance animation.  Whether it is Mickey in Thru the Mirror or Donald in Mr. Duck Steps Out or the dancing in Rooty Toot Toot, when expressive movement joins with music, you get an energy that leaves ordinary animation in the dust.  Dick Lundy, Les Clark, Ken Harris, Preston Blair, Ward Kimball, and Pat Matthews are just some of the animators with a genuine flair for dance.

Animated dance built on what was happening in live action films, and that was built on what had been done in Vaudeville and the English music hall.  Chaplin, Keaton, Stan Laurel, Groucho Marx, and James Cagney all used dance in their stage performances.  Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Ray Bolger, Buddy Ebsen, and the Nicholas Brothers were all influenced by the same tradition.

Betsy Baytos has worked as an animator and dancer and is making a documentary called Funny Feet: The Art of Eccentric Dance.  Her promo is below:

She's using Kickstarter to fund a trip to England to research music hall performers who fall into the eccentric dance category.

In addition to interviewing performers for the last 20 years, she has also interviewed artists Chuck Jones, Frank Thomas & Ollie Johnston, Ward Kimball, Myron Waldman (Betty Boop/Popeye) , Joe Barbera, Joe Grant and Al Hirschfeld (NY Times caricaturist).

Here's a clip from a Buster Keaton two reeler for Columbia.  Keaton and Columbia were not a good fit.  The studio was much more at home with the lowbrow knockabout of The Three Stooges than it was with Keaton's deadpan irony.  Elsie James, the woman in this clip, is a pretty crude performer with a tendency to mug.  However, I'm including this clip because after the three minute mark, there's about 20 seconds of sublime dance by Keaton, where he transcends Columbia's limited view of comedy.


I'm excited about the subject matter of Baytos's documentary and looking forward to seeing it.  Read more about it on her Kickstarter page.

Animation on TCM Reminder

If you receive Turner Classic Movies, remember that this Sunday, October 21, they will be screening an evening of animation co-hosted by Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew.  Films include the two Fleischer features Gulliver's Travels and Mr. Bug Goes to Town; a selection of UPA Jolly Frolic cartoons; a selection of silent animation provided by historian Tom Stathes; and The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which is the oldest surviving animated feature as well as the first animated feature directed by a woman, Lotte Reineger.  You can find the complete schedule here and Beck has posted artwork associated with Gulliver and Mr. Bug on his site.

If you are interested in hearing about how Beck connected up with TCM and learning more about the early days of film collecting, you can hear him on a podcast called The Commentary Track.

More Loomis

Andrew Loomis' 1947 instruction book Creative Illustration has been reprinted.  One in a series of instruction books by Loomis, a Chicago-based commercial illustrator of the 20th century, this book might be described as his magnum opus.  It's the first of his books to deal with colour and composition.

Sections include line, tone, colour, and creating ideas.  It is by far the thickest of Loomis's books and before this reprinting, copies sold for over $100.

Titan Books will reprint Fun With a Pencil next April, Loomis's most basic how to draw book.  All that will remain, should Titan continue, will be Three Dimensional Drawing, an expanded version of Successful Drawing which they have already reprinted, and The Eye of the Painter and the Elements of Beauty, a book published after Loomis's death.  Used copies of that start at $141.

Manolito's Dream

 I wrote about Txesco Montalt's work before, and here is a short that he created with Mayte Sanchez Solis.  Both of them worked on Pocoyo, one of the few pre-school shows I can watch without falling asleep.  Like Txesco's earlier work, it synchs beautifully to the soundtrack and while done in Flash, has lots of subtle shape-changing that gives it wonderful flexibility.

I'm also in love with the simplicity of the design.

The two are partnered in a company called Alla Kinda, and even their logo

exudes charm.  Their site is worth checking out.