Animation &Daily post 05 Sep 2006 07:34 am
John Canemaker
- Last week Cartoon Brew posted a link to I Get Mad, a Sesame Street spot on YouTube. The spot was directed by Derek Lamb and animated by John Canemaker. I’ve been thinking about this piece all week. Actually, not just that piece but all of John’s work.
I’ve been a friend of John’s since about 1973 when we both entered the world of animation. 
We met the year John had done a couple of short films Lust and Greed, both of which won awards at the ASIFA-East festival. I gladly helped John with the cut & paste part of his next film, Street Freaks and have followed his work as a film maker, writer and Oscar Winner through these many years. I watched from the sidelines as John did quite a few Sesame Street spots, not only for Derek Lamb but for Bruce Cayard as well.
(Emily Hubley, me, my Mother, John C.
at a party in my studio 10 yrs. ago)
I’ve now got a collection of great books, magazine articles, and dvd’s that John has produced, and I have to say his is a singular talent.
I don’t think there’ve been any other animation historians who have been so wide-ranging in taste and so wide-reaching in publication. John has written tirelessly about:
some of the important figures in early silent animation – Winsor McCay and Otto Messmer come easily to mind;
some of the most commercial figures – look at the array of volumes John has done on Disney and Disney artists;
and some of the most Independent of animators – articles on everyone from Dali to Kathy Rose to Oskar Fischinger to Suzanne Pitt.
The odd part about it is that all of the writing – despite the variety – is authoritative, well researched, and easy reading. John has a casual and entertaining way of slipping the reader into a very informative article about even the most eccentric of animators. Undoubtedly, this is the reason he and his work is so beloved in animation circles.
His many lectures given around the world from MOMA to Zagreb to Telluride (where John is currently speaking and screening films) are entertaining, informative and colorful.
Yesterday, I did a bit of writing about Amid Amidi and his new book, Cartoon Modern. I discussed Amid in comparison with Michael Barrier, and I expressed my enormous respect for them both. I wanted to include John Canemaker in there, but I felt that John was a different breed of historian. Both as a writer/historian and as an Independent film maker/animator, John has trod a solitary path in animation history. His writing is certainly unique in that it is so widely varied and so sensitive to the artist’s visions and feelings. His films are unique in that you can easily spot one with the very first frame you watch; he has a style all his own that has been imitated by many of his students but never captured by them.
Expressing his own voice in his own Independent films has colored John’s writing and made it so unique, and seeing I’m So Mad again has me wanting to say as much.
on 05 Sep 2006 at 8:52 pm 1.David Nethery said …
I love John Canemaker for his work as a writer/historian on animation and as an animator/director . I have letters from both you (Michael Sporn) and John C. written in response to enthusiastic neophyte letters from me (as a teenage , wannabe animator) that provide me with much inspiration as I was taking my first steps into this wonderful world of animation.
By some miracle I found “The Animated Raggedy Ann & Andy: An Intimate Look at the Art of Animation: Its History, Techniques, and Artists” in a bookstore in Vail, Colorado in 1977 when I was visiting my relatives there . I must have read it a hundred times and memorized all the names and photographs of the people who worked on that film. (including a certain Michael Sporn.) That book was the first one that really showed me what the making of an animated film was all about, other than the somewhat glamourized Bob Thomas book on the making of Sleeping Beauty, “The Art of Walt Disney” . But Canemaker’s book had the names of the inbetweeners and the cel painters forPete’s sake ! Who could ask for anything more?) Later on I was privileged to work with people like Eric Goldberg, Dan Haskett, Tom Sito, Corny Cole (who I took layout and life drawing classes from over at the Marvel studio in Van Nuys, when Corny was working on Muppet Babies), Richard Williams, Crystal Russell(Klabunde), Carl Bell, and others. That film (and book) was a Who’s Who of animation talent of the 80′s and 90′s (and continuing on to the present day).
Never have had the opportunity to work on a film with John Canemaker or Michael Sporn , but there’s still time , eh ?
on 05 Sep 2006 at 9:00 pm 2.David Nethery said …
Oh, and I forgot to add: I have a “connection” with Derek Lamb , too . One of my teachers at Sheridan College was Kaj Pindal, who animated on several films at the NFB directed , designed , and/or produced by Derek Lamb. If I hadn’t known otherwise I would have mistaken the animation in the Sesame Street piece “I Get Mad” for Kaj Pindal’s work (which is high praise indeed) .