Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- On Dec 16 in Amsterdam there will be a major exhibition of the work of Oskar Fischinger, a pioneer of animation film and abstract cinema. This opening will be an exhibition featuring various items including the films, the animation drawings, process material, the documents, correspondence, clippings, color charts, sketches, diagrams, patent drawings, and some of the sketches done (but not used) for Fantasia. Also exhibited will be notated graphic scores, material from the making of An Optical Poem, unshot animation drawings, and various other materials.

John Canemaker wrote about Fishinger for the New York Times, “Decades before computer graphics, before music videos, even before Fantasia (the 1940 version), there were the abstract animated films of Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967), master of “absolute” or nonobjective filmmaking. He was cinema’s Kandinsky, an animator who, beginning in the 1920′s in Germany, created exquisite “visual music” using geometric patterns and shapes choreographed tightly to classical music and jazz.’

Oskar Fishinger in his Hollywood studio with panels from “Motion Painting”.

This coming week, Wednesday Dec. 12th, Christopher Sullivan’s independent, animated feature will make its New York premiere with a week-long run at the Film Forum.

Described in the Film Forum’s press material: “The animation took 15 years of work… The characters were hand-drawn onto layers of glass which were then moved with needles and pins. The film seamlessly combines cutout animation, pencil drawing, collage, and stop-motion animation to create the haunting atmosphere of a self-contained world… (most of whose) characters walk shakily between self-medication and a bad trip… ugly characters (who) make up the most beautiful spectacle you’ve ever seen.”

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this film for quite some time. Finally, I’ve been able to confirm arrangements to see it, and I will review it. I’m ready, given all the mediocre work I’ve seen lately.

Meet the film maker

Christopher Sullivan will be there IN PERSON! at the following screenings:
December 14 | 6:30pm
December 15 | 6:30pm

This week, upcoming, the Museum of Modern Art will present a program of older European animation, and quite a few great classics will be screened in one very powerful program that will be shown three times. Trust me, if you don’t know these shorts, they are brilliant – all of them – and there is not one you should miss. Here’s a list of the films in the program:

Animation Abroad, 1946–59

Arie Prerie (Song of the Prairie)
1948. Czechoslovakia. Directed by Jiri Trnka. 21 min.

A Litte Phantasy on a 19th Century Painting
1946. Canada. Directed by Norman McLaren. 3 min.

Fiddle-de-dee
1947. Canada. Directed by Norman McLaren. 4 min.

Charley’s March of Time
1948. Great Britain. 1948. Directed by John Halas and Joy Batchelor. 9 min.

A Phantasy
1952. Canada. Directed by Norman McLaren. 8 min.

Blinkity Blank
1955. Canada. Directed by Norman McLaren. 5 min.

Thumbelina
1955. Great Britain. Directed by Lotte Reiniger. 11 min.

Concerto for a Submachine Gun
1958. Yugoslavia. Directed by Dusan Vukotic. 13 min.

Les Astronautes
1959. France. Directed by Walerian Borowczyk with Chris Marker. 13 min.

Program 87 min.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012, 1:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Thursday, December 13, 2012, 1:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Friday, December 14, 2012, 1:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2

Nest week, and I’ll post the list next Saturday, there will be a number of Hollywood Cartoons that will be screened. Chuck Jones, Robert McKimson, Hanna & Barbera, Jack Hannah and Ward Kimball. They’re all represented.

– As of yesterday, Friday, the Pups of Liberty became available for sale to teachers as well as the public, If you go to izzit.org or Amazon.com, you’ll see the assets that are available; indeed, they both link to an educational video, entitled The Pups of Liberty.

Perhaps you’ll remember the posts I published a while back on this short film produced by Bert and Jennifer Klein. I put those several articles together into one here to best showcase the story of this video. With the help of an all-star animation team (artists including: James Lopez (Hercules, Emperor’s New Groove, Flushed Away and Princess and the Frog), Eric Goldberg (Aladdin, Fantasia 2000, and Princess and the Frog), Barry Atkinson (Prince of Egypt, American Tail and The Lion King), and Mark Henn (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Muland and Princess and the Frog) Jennifer and Bert created this Revolutionary War-based film. It offered history as entertainment and allowed audiences to learn from a very entertaining series.

Now, the Kleins are not only making the video available for sale but have a new activities website which expands on that video.

This is a smart idea as Bert and Jennifer Klein seek to develop a new market and a new way to sell a creative product. If you’d like to learn more, take a look at these few clips of the animation. Here or here or here.

The schedule continues with our watching a lot of films on the run up to the Oscar nominations. By “us” I mean the people of the Academy, those who elect to see the films on a big screen before they vote. I’m sure a lot of members take the easy way out and watch DVDs of the current movies. I won’t hear this way out. As a matter of fact, they’ve asked us to accept the films via download. We’d watch the movies – the movies we’re voting for as Oscar contenders – via download over the internet. Sort of like NETFLIX. I still want to think of them as “movies”, I want the burden of going to a theater to watch them in a public place with other differing viewers, all inconvenienced at the same time. That is part of the experience, isn’t it?

So, anyway, this week started off with Zero Dark Thirty. (I guess that’s supposed to mean 12:30 am – or half past midnight, in the dark.) On Tuesday the movie got the NYFilm Critic’s award for Best Film of the Year. I was hot to see the movie.

Turns out, to me, it was just one step above a TV movie version of the raid on Osama Bin Laden campsite to capture the guy. This film had no poetry in it and wasn’t about much other than the raid we watched. I didn’t like it. Dull. I did like Kateryn Bigelow’s last film, The Hurt Locker. But this film wasn’t that. I thought Jessica Chastain was miscast even though I am a big fan of hers. In fact there’s a Thursday luncheon where I’ll meet Ms. Bigelow and Ms. Chastain. I’m looking forward to that but have to lie if they ask what I thought of the film.

top – Dustin Hoffman, Bill Connolly
bot – Maggie Smith, Tom Courtney

On Wednesday, there was the fllm directed by Dustin Hoffman, The Quartet. This one was great. No miscasting here. Maggie Smith and Tom Courtney were brilliant. Billy Connolly couldn’t have been better, and it was easy to love Pauline Collins. She’s always great. The script by Ron Harwood from his own play was sparkling and always alive. The film was funny, warm, about people and always alive. Just great and human. Top drawer work. After the screening there was a penthouse cocktail party with a nice view, good free vodka or wine, and a chance to tell Dustin Hoffman and Billy Connolly about how good they were. Heidi told Mr. connolly how much she hliked his voice work in Brave, I just told him he was great, great, great. If I didn’t realize how stupid I sounded, I probably would have said a couple more “greats”. See this film for all the brilliant talent on display and the fun you’ll have watching it.

– Thursday night, I skipped the screening of Hyde Park to attend the lecture across town. Adam Abraham was speaking on the back of his book, When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA . The book was remarkable to me, and I was looking forward to meeting the author. At first there were very few people in attendance, but it soon filled up. I was happy to see friends, John Canemaker and Amid Amidi there.

Adam’s talk was well done and ended with the screening of five films: Gerald McBoing Boing, Magoo Express, The Tell Tale Heart, Rooty Toot Toot and a rarely seen live action promotion for Magoo’s 1001 Arabian Nights, called: A Princess for Magoo.

I enjoyed the program and was pleased to meet Adam after the talk. Amid Amidi and I walked the few blocks to the subway and went home. A nice evening.

– On Friday, I attended a luncheon for the film Argo. Ben Affleck, and several key people from the film attended and answered our questions about the movie while we ate at the Four Seasons Restaurant.

The movie is promoted as some kind of recreation of actual events, and I’m sure it is. However, the film we see on the screen works just too well as a typical action-adventure sort of film, that it’s hard to accept its believability, regardless of how much is true. The climactic scene as the hostages are flying away from the Iranian police is just too Hollywood to be a reality, and Mr. Affleck admitted as much, making a joke of the idea. As an action film it works, but I wished for it to dig a little deeper.

A quick steak lunch and a return home. There was a screening of a documentary called West of Memphis which I was scheduled to attend last night, but I just didn’t feel up to it. So I stayed home. Enough movies for one week.

– Back in 1984 when I was nominated for the Academy Award, I learned of the nomination the night before the full list of three nominees was announced. Prior to that I had no clue I was even being considered. As a matter of fact, after submitting the film, Doctor DeSoto, I had virtually forgotten that I had entered it. I’d considered it such a ridiculous long shot that I knew there was no chance of it happening.

Then I happened to run into Jerry Beck in an elevator on the day before the nominations were announced. He congratulated me on having been nominated. The blood dropped from my head, and it wasn’t the speed of the elevator. The next day, 6am – New York time, I phoned LA to find that it was true. I can remember the Academy operator reading the list of nominees to me. When she said my name, I said, “That’s me.” I made that operator’s day, she was so happy. Things were different back then. I was in a state of shock – happyShock.

That was the first year that the Academy had created the “Nominee Luncheon.” Those that were nominated were invited to a luncheon in Los Angeles. Things were pretty tight back then – financially – and I saw little possibility of my being able to afford the trip. However, just when I was deciding to say no, I’d received a call from American Airlines saying that a special deal was created between the Oscars and American to charge half rate for nominees going to LA. One just had to agree to fly West for the luncheon AND the Oscars. Since I’d already budgeted to fly to LA for the ceremony, now I could fly West twice for the same amount. I went to the luncheon and had a grand time.

I was seated at a round table at the Beverly Hills Hotel suite. I was the only animator at the table. Pat Sito was my “date” for the evemt, and I couldn’t have had a better one. Pat’s always been such a fun person, yet so smart. It was perfect. To my left was Bill Scott. He said he’d asked to be at my table. He’d seen a short I did about the library for kids’ use. Nobody knew that film, yet I thought it was a sweeet piece I’d done. I couldn’t believe it. Mr. Scott will alwayhs be beloved by me. No matter that I loved him for being the voicer of Bullwinkle J. Moose. Forget that he wrote all those great UPA films I loved. It’s just that he was the guy. I won the Oscar at that first nominees’ luncheon, and I’ll never forget it

- Beginning Dec 12th, The Film Forum will feature a two week run of the original home-grown animated feature, Consuming Spirits, Chris Sullivan’s original and complex work of art. The multi-media animated film comes at us with an original story which is set in motion when a nun is killed in a car accident.

Priscilla Frank of the Huffingtonn Post wrote: “The animation took 15 years of work… (and) seamlessly combines cutout animation,
pencil drawing, collage, and stop-motion animation to create the haunting atmosphere of a self-contained world…ugly characters (who) make up the most beautiful spectacle you’ve ever seen.”

CONSUMING SPIRITS (2012) was produced, written, & directed by Chris Sullivan with editing, and sound also by Sullivan. It’s a film to be seen. Give yourself a Christmas resent; take a chance on it.

Hopefully, I’ll see it in full this week and can write about it next Saturday.________________________________________________Chris Sullivan

- There are some other animated features well under-way in New York. I’ve seen two in-progress films and I am really excited about what’s going on.

In the past week I saw a half-hour of Elliot Cowan‘s fine film, the Boxhead and Roundhead feature. This is the feature length version of the short films he’s been doing for years. Graphically, those black and white shorts were brimming with exciting animation in vibrant black and white. The feature, of course, expands on what was done in the shorts and is graphically one of the most exciting animated films I’ve seen in ages. Elliot has about a hlaf hour done, and the film is well on its way. I can only speak high of it, but I’m reluctant to say much of anything for fear of giving away something I don’t have the right to say. If you’ve heard any chat about this movie, it’s true. This film is as good as anything I’ve recently seen. And I’ve seen it all – big budget and no budget.

Then, last night I saw a rough cut of the brilliant film Signe Baumane has been making. Rocks In My Pockets. Wow.

What else can I say. The animation is done, and about half of the film is in color, but all of it is top rate. Art is what it is. I love the 3D backgrounds and also wish Sine made more of them, but it’s telling that she has a brilliant element in her film, and she’s not exploiting it for all she could. This film is original in the way any work of art would be. I can’t wait to see more, and I’ll do anything she needs to help out.

After reading her blog for the past year or two, I’ve been a dedicated follower. Her writing is just first rate. When you put it together with the work on this film, you realize just how great a storyteller she is.

Signe is putting together the final color of the film, and has connected with a composer who will write the score for her. As expected, she’ll need money to complete the film, and naturally she’ll want to put together a Kickstarter campaign. Once she gets into that mode, the film will be well on its way to completion. Of course, I’ll be there – as will this Splog to tell you about it – giving any help Signe can use from me. I’m hot to see this movie completed. It’s good. In the meantime, read her blog, Rocks in My Pockets.

- Then this week there were some events with stars built in.

On Tuesday, there was a luncheon. Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts were going to be there representing their Belgian film, Rust and Bone. She played a double amputee, and he played a hard-beaten fist-boxer who were attracted to each other. There were other complications like a child for the guy and his sister who was taking care of the pre-teen. The film was raw and honest and had two great performances at its center. She was, if anything, better than him, and that’s saying a lot. She was just great and deserves a nomination.

At the luncheon (chicken over some sprinkled lettuce type things) I was seated with a number of PR members. They were totally entertaining, and it was a good lunch. James Toback also sat nearby. He’s a wild kind-of producer/director whose last great film was the 2008 documentary, Tyson (that was the title of the biography of Mike Tyson.) Before long Matthias Schoenaerts was sitting between me and James Toback. Toback talked about how Tyson probably would have loved his boxing in the film. I think he would have, too. We had a great conversation that must have lasted about 40 miutes. Meanwhile, Marion Cotillard came by and introduced herself to me. Boy is she beautiful. She was sharp, too, and kept a nice conversation going. The luncheon was fun.

That night Heidi and I went to see Lincoln. I’d seen it, she hadn’t, and there was an opening. No one can beat Daniel Day Lewis this year. The film is fabulous, but it needs an ending. Spielberg didn’t get that and left the film hanging. It reminds me of Elvis Presley’s first film. He get killed at the end of the film. They couldn’t leve him dead and brought him back as a double exposure in the sky singing his song, “Love Me Tender.” Lincoln brings back D.D.Lewis as the President double exposed in the sky reciting some speech as honest Abe. There were so many more creative things they could have done. No honest ending. Sall Fields does a good job, too. Though every once in a while she shows up as Sally Field.

On Wednesday, there was a luncheon for Michael Caine and Chris Nolan of the Dark Night. Somehow I was sitting next to Michael Uslan who owns the rights to Batman ____________Michael Caine and Michael Uslan
and made a fortune off the
past half dozen films he licensed. We talked a while about the animated films done by Bruce Timm et al. I love them almost as much as he does. It didn’t take long before Michael Caine was sitting next to me, actually, between me and Mr. Uslan. (When sitting down Mr. Caine leaned on my shoulder to get into the seat at the table for dessert. I may never wash that shoulder again.) Mr. Caine is a great storyteller, and it was my treat to be sitting there.

That evening I went to see Brad Pitt in Killing Me Softly. This film was something of a low-rent mob treat. Lots of killing and poor type mobsters. I was caught up in the film.

Yeah, this was a good week. Up coming this week will be a dinner with Jessica Chastain and Katherine Bigelow seeing her film, Zero Dark Thirty. Maybe i’ll get to sit next to Ms. Chastain, who has Monday off from her play, The Heiress.

This Oscar season business has turned out to be a real treat for me.

- This week also saw a theatrical debut in the family. My sweetheart, Heidi Stallings, got a job not too long ago, working for the Upper West Side YMCA. There they produce plays for kids, junior versions of some of Broadway’s greats. Heidi has, in the past, directed quite a few of these shows in many of the outer boroughs. Last year she did The Music Man, previously she’d done Into the Woods, Beauty and the Beast, and Annie. Currently, she’s also doing Fiddler on the Roof in Maspeth, Queens. They’ve all been fun, and I get to see these shortened versions of the shows. Essentially, the heart of these shows is there as done by youngsters – kids from 10-15. These have all been fun.

This past Wednesday her version of The Music Man opened with a live band under the direction of John Prestianni with choreography by Alana Marie Urda. Bonnie Hilton has been the show’s stage manager. Kara Branch did costumes, and Sara Schetterdid the stage design/sets.

The show is directed by Heidi Stallings. It’ll play though Sunday’s matinee.

Steven Macntosh is the Managing and Artistic Director of the Kids Company. It’s quite a troupe, and they put on very sophisticated shows in only a short couple of months with a large cast of kids. It’s pretty wonderful, if you ask me, and I couldn’t be prouder of Heidi if she were directing anything other.

The following films made the short list for the Oscar’s 10 selections for animation short:

Adam and Dog, Minkyu Lee, director here
Combustible, Katsuhiro Otomo, director
Dripped, Léo Verrier, director here
The Eagleman Stag, Mikey Please, director, and Benedict Please here
The Fall of the House of Usher, Raul Garcia, director here
Fresh Guacamole, PES, director here
Head over Heels, Timothy Reckart, director here
Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare, David Silverman, director here
Paperman, John Kahrs, director here
Tram, Michaela Pavlátová, director here

Congratulations to all of those who worked on the films, and my sympathies to those who didn’t make the cut. I liked many of those on the list and liked others not on the list. It’s a crap shoot, sometimes. I’ve been on both sides – those wwho made it and those who were left off. So I know how you all feel.

Cartoon Brew posted a list of 21 animated features being considered by the MPAA, the Academy, as potentially eligible for nomination. It was pleasing to see that the number has increased, yet it was annoying for another, more personal, reason. As you know I’m an Academy member and voter, and I take great pride in that. I make it my duty to see every film available to me on the big screen, projected. I don’t want to give short shrift to any movie by watching it on the DVDs that they send me. It’s a movie and should be seen as a movie, in a theater with full attention.

This year, the Academy made it harder on us. There are a lot of films to see. Yet, for the second year in a row, the Academy moved up the date of the Oscars and, consequently, the date of when we’d have to vote for the nominees. This year, it basically means that we have to vote by the end of the first week in January. We have to see all the films and vote by then. If you want to see the films on a big screen, it’s hard to do.

I’ve been a judge for a couple of film festivals. (I’m not talking about animation festivals, now.) I was sent dozens of DVDs and had two weeks to see them all and vote. That can be done. You push through a film and if, for any slight reason, you don’t like it, you shut the film and go onto the next. It’s not fair to the movie which may be purposefully gaining strength as it goes on. It’s not fair to any film, really, because that’s your mindset as you turn on the DVD player. It’s not the proper way to watch a movie. You’ll take a phone call and keep talking while the movie runs; you go to the kitchen, get some food and return, eating, while the film keeps rolling. You’re just treating the film like a TV show. Yet, that’s the only way you can get thirty films into two weeks. And you’re judging them!

On to my point. Last year was the first time those on the East Coast were given the opportunity to vote for the nominee list from the group of films that had been proven eligible for Best Animated Feature. Last year there were 18 films and the Academy in NY squeezed out two screenings of each film so we members who were voting could participate. Unfortunately, not a lot of animation members came out for the vote.

This year there are 21 films, per Cartoon Brew‘s list. That’d take a full month to squeeze those screenings in among the many other screenings at the Academy Lighthouse theater. That and, given last year’s low turnout, the decision has been made to cut the vote in New York. To be able to vote for my category, I’d have to move to LA for a month to see the films. I’m bummed about it. Not because I want to see all the mediocre Hollywood fare that’s thrown our way (Rise of the Guardians, for example, is horrible but will probably get nominated) but because there are small gems in among the big films. I think I’ll get to see The Rabbi’s Cat and From Up On Poppy Hill thanks to GKIDS arranging screenings of several of the films they’re representing. That pleases me. But I don’t know if there’s another hidden gem I’ll miss.

I suppose it’s not the Academy’s fault that circumstances aren’t going my way. I love being a member, and I do everything possible to support the best films and the Academy, but I feel left out. Of course I’ve sent a letter of complaint to the board in LA.

OneStop NewsStand is a Canadian news site that includes a weekly column, the Historicist, which is devoted to talking about people who helped shape the city of Toronto. A recent piece focuses on George Dunning and features a number of video clips of Dunning’s films. You might want to take a look at it.

- There weren’t many events I attended to make the week very memorable. Other than the Election. Actually, that was my week. I was up most of that Tuesday night listening to speeches and wrap ups and analyses from those who do so for a living. It wasa all fun, especially since my guys won, and I wanted to savor it as long as I could. Oddly, there never felt like there was much tension involved with it, except for any dirty dealings which could’ve taken place. Too many stories of hundreds of lawyers from both sides at polling stations, made me uneasy. That would be the only way Romney could have won Ohio, and I was made to feel uncomfortable about the possibility of cheating. As it turns out, it didn’t matter. If there was anything crooked, it didn’t affect the final tallies. {Look at Florida. Those corrupt people in power did everything they could to hurt the vote of the underprivileged, and the end result is that even today – two days later – the Florida vote hasn’t been tabulated. The results of all those people having to stand for 4-7 hours waiting to vote, is that the results from that state have been made meaningless to the final number.}

We’d arranged to go to a screening of Spielberg’s Lincoln. This is a film, as I’ve said before, that I wanted to see. However, when Wednesday arrived a Nor’Easter came with it. Rainy snow and heavy winds made it annoying to be outside. So I gave that up and planned to see it on Thursday evening when the Academy had their own screening. This change of plan meant Heidi couldn’t see it (she wasn’t available Thursday) so I’ll have to go again.
I’ve written a longish piece that I’ll post tomorrow, Sunday, about the movie.

Also on Thursday there was a luncheon for Anna Karenina at which the director, Joe Wright, and the star, Keira Knightley, would be in attendance. The meal was at the Waldorf Astoria, so it was a definite place to go if nothing got in the way. As it turns out, Joe Wright was fun and entertaining with stories of making the film, and Keira Knightley was quite charming. She was very tall and very thin and every bit the star. Although she was completely personable and talkative. It was a good luncheon. I look forward to seeing the film which will be screening at the Academy this coming Monday, so there I’ll be.

On Friday there was a screening at School of Visual Arts of a documentary on the making and unmaking of The Thief and the Cobbler. However, the asking price for admission was $16. Sorry, too much for me. I suspect it’s a DVD projection, and I don’t know that it’s worth that entrance fee. Maybe I’ll see it in the future. Since I was involved in the Williams feature, however tangentially, I kinda know the story. It just would have been like reviewing material for me. I can wait.

Oh yeah, there was a Nor’easter this week. It didn’t really have much affect in NYC. There was a light and wet snow that left about an inch of snow – a dusting. I didn’t even use an umbrella despite the fact that I went out in it often enough. IIt was cold and nasty and wet. What else is new for NY n the winter.

It’s been a long week. The events of my week probably aren’t going to be too interesting to many of you, but it’ll be cathartic for me to write, so I will.

Monday brought the threat of a hurricane. I remember thinking that “Sandy” was not the best name for a hurricane; naturally, it would turn out to be one of the nastiest in my lifetime. Once again, as they had done with “Irene” they told us to prepare by buying duct tape, batteries and water. With “Irene” it was a waste of time;with “Sandy” it was a necessity. Actually, the best buy for us was one Heidi had done for “Irene.” All of the stores had sold out of flashlights, until she found one in a local hardware store. This was a huge thing that actually worked as one or broke into three separate flashlights. This item became a lifesaver a year later during the “Sandy” debacle.

Monday night there was a robo-call from Con Edison. They threatened to possibly turn off the electricity as a precaution to preserve the system. It would enable them to start the system up all the more expeditiously when they could. The weather map they were showing on TV had the cone of the hurricane’s left turn, off the Atlantic and onto a land mass, happening south of NY near the Jersey Shore.

I’d been engrossed in my latest enthusiasm, the Presidential election. Things were close. Obama was leading in a couple of the key swing states by one or two – the lights went out. Everything. Silence.

Heidi pulled out our tri-part flashlight and we broke into three parts and moved it around the house as we lit candles. She had really prepared with books of matches and tiny tea candles. We placed enough around to keep a semblance of life alive visually in the apartment.

- Tuesday early morning brought the loudest noises. Not much rain but a lot of wind. We soon came to realize that the no-electricity also meant no heat. It wasn’t freezing outside, but overnight it felt as though it were freezing inside. For the rest of the week we had to bundle under quilts and blankets wearing layers of sweatshirts. The cats were confused and visibly cold. They went into winter mode, sleeping on their paws on beds and blankets and near any heat they could find.

I got up every morning to light the stove. It’s a gas stove but has an electric starter that lights the pilot for you. I had to get in there and light the pilot every time I wanted to get it going. I lit it and figured a way to manipulate the oven door into the open position so that heat would invade the apartment, raising the room temperature by 10°. Since I no longer had a toaster, I could also use the lit oven to toast my english muffin in the morning.

No internet. This is a problem. No Splog. I had prepared a couple, and they were ready to be posted. By calling my sister, who had power, I was able to arrange to post the next two blog posts. Anything beyond that, and I’d have to write additional material. Not easy without access to a computer. Lack of a computer was more serious for Heidi. She lived off her email conversations with the different theatrical groups she works for. They actually hire via email, and things were already sketchy for a number of her assignments in the upcoming week. But she needed to get to the email to find out. If school was cancelled for the kids in any given day, Heidi lost out on a couple of jobs and hundreds of dollars. They meted out the information slowly over the course of the week. She kept preparing for classes in case, and they were ultimately all cancelled all week long.

We went out to see what it was like on the street. Our neighborhood was dead. ALL of the stores were closed (they couldn’t even operate their cash registers without electricity.) We wouldn’t be able to do laundry until the power came back. We walked the ten blocks in a nasty cold windy rain to the first open store, a Duane Reade pharmacy. I went to the rear near the pharmacy (which was closed) and sat in one of the chairs provided for those waiting for prescriptions. Heidi shopped to see if we needed anything. Ultimately, we left watching a couple of elderly women blocking the cashier aisle as they used the electric outlet to recharge their cel phones. The very young cashiers – maybe they were 16 – didn’t care. None of the Starbucks stores we saw were open that day. We’d thought we could always go to Starbucks to recharge Heidi’s cel. (I still don’t have one. Talk about being out of it.)

Wednesday we had a game plan. I aimed for John’s apartment about 45 blocks away. Some buses were in operation for the first time. The rides were gratis, thanks to the City. However, there were fifty people waiting at every bus stop, and any bus that arrived was packed. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and we got on a bus. It took about 30 minutes to go from 30th St to 42nd St. Heidi got off to go to the office at the New Victory Theater. They told her she could pick up some material she needed and she could use their computers if she needed one. She realized it’d take forever to get to 70th St to see John and Joe, and she had to do a bit of work and still get home in time to meet me to head up to SONY to see a film that evening. 6:00 cocktail/6:30 screening of Amour.

It took another hour for me to get to John’s apartment. Slow going. I could’ve walked there quicker. We had a nice, friendly chat. I posted something for the blog that said I’d have to freeze the thing until power returned, and I went through some of my email. John & Joe were taking in some friends who were lacking all utilities and couldn’t even shower. Nice of them; as John said, “That’s what friends do.”

It took forever to get to SONY on 55th Street. The bus crawled. We ditched it at 42nd street and walked the rest of the way. 1/3 the trip by bus = 45 minutes. 2/3 of the trip on foot = 15 minutes. We sat with Josh Mostel and laughed. He pointed out that there was no difference for him on the Upper West Side. With all his windows closed, he wouldn’t have known that a disaster had struck had he not seen the TV reports. Rain was light despite the fact that waves of water sunk the lower tip of Manhattan under the Hudson. I always knew how lucky we were to be only short of electricity. Here I was at a free movie with a cocktail and no thoughts whatsoever of complaining about my “plight”.

Amour was one of the best films of the year. It was directed by the German film maker, Michael Haneke, who had been nominated last year for The White Ribbon. His style is stark and direct and purposefully staid. Amour is the better of the two films, in my opinion, and the reason is Jean-Louis Trintignant, who gives one of his best performances and certainly the best performance of the year. He is brilliant and he is the reason not only to see the film but for the film’s existence. It is amazing in its stillness. Emmanuelle Riva is also excellent as his wife, heading full into a steady downfall via Alzheimer’s disease. I want to see the movie again, certainly. I’ve thought about it the rest of the week.

Heidi and I walked home in the dark. We had a lot to talk about.

Thursday was more of the same. I began by sketching for an animatic I’m trying to put together to show HBO. I’m trying to sell them on an idea about chemotherapy – not Cancer, but chemotherapy. It’ll be a documentary about some people who were touched by the “cure”. I’m sure HBO won’t buy it, but I’ve got to present it. I’ve recorded some of the voice work and am offering a couple of sections via animatic so they’ll know what I want to do. I’ve decided to sketch it out with pen and pencil and not draw it on computer. Who knows if that’ll mean anything once I’m into it.

I had a few chores to do; Heidi wanted to get back to the New Victory Theater. There were a couple of films scheduled to play at the Academy theater. I’d seen the second but thought I’d go to the documentary screening first. It was something about the decline of Detroit, and sounded as though it might be interesting. I phoned Candy Kugel and talked her into going. It’d be nice to say hi. Heidi couldn’t make it. She’d be working until 7:30. The plan was for us to meet after the film and her job; then we’d go to a diner near the theater and come home from there. It’d keep us out of the black apartment until it we had to.

I left the apartment at 5:00 to walk to the screening. However, I realized that I’d left some candles burning and had to go beck to put them out. I didn’t want to return home to a burned-out apartment after the cats had knocked over a candle. As I entered the apartment the phone was ringing. It was John Fahr of the Academy to tell me that the projectionist couldn’t get in, and the screening was cancelled. Candy had gotten there very early and John had sent out an email, but Candy said I was without the internet, and she knew I was coming. So he called; nice of him. If I hadn’t returned, I’d have made it to the screening in time but would have to sit around for 90 minutes so I could meet Heidi.

Instead, I got to stay home and continue reading a great book, Alan Bennett’s Untold Stories. Then I went uptown in time to meet for dinner and walk back home. It was getting trying. Once you cross 39th Street heading downtown, all the lights are gone. Pitch blackness. I can’t take much more of this.

We got home. The candles, the flashlight, the oven to warm the place before we went to bed, feed the cats and stop them from killing each other. I sketched until 3am. Dark at night or in the day, what was the difference?

Friday was more of the same, but the lights came on at 8pm. I got to catch Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow. The polls were distinctly proObama. Here comes the weekend.

- On Tuesday I’d posted all of the titles to those films which had passed the requirements to be eligible to compete for the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. A few years back when I had done this, I’d received a number of letters from the Academy telling me that I was violating some rule or other. Actually, I think the violation was that I’d made a comment or three as I’m wont to do. That’s verboten and I was threatened that I might lose ©2012 MPAA
membership if I didn’t behave. The next year
the titles were released on Cartoon Brew, then the Academy officially released the titles.
Maybe I helped change a rule.

This year I released the titles with some apprehension, but I didn’t really make any comments about the films. I just named some films that stood out in my mind. I don’t necessarily like all of those films, but for some reason or other they did stand out in my memory.

A few of the film makers contacted me afterward to get my opinion or advice about their shorts. All I could do was congratulate them all for having gotten to this point. It is exciting. The prospect of a nomination is a thrill that I lived through a couple of times, and one time I was actually nominated.

I wish them all luck. Let’s hope the ones with the big budget advertising campaigns don’t affect the judgements on the that have enormous ad campaigns behind them to tell us all how good these films are. They’ve all entered the twilight zone.

- Mark Sonntag has begun another sort of campaign. Bounty Hunter Bunny is an animated film Mark is looking to make, and he’s set up an Indiegogo campaign to raise $10,000 for it. He has also set up a blog for the film; Bounty Hunter Bunny, the blog.

Mark is an accomplished animator working out of Australia. He started early, making films on super 8mm at age 14 and has been in the business forever. Everything from Ren and Stimpy to The King and I has passed through his pencil, and he also has one of the finest blogs out there. Tagtoonz is pure animation history and a must-stop for those interested in animation’s past.

It’s a cgi film that I feel confident in supporting. I’d encourage you at least to view the animatic on display; it’s really promising.
Go to: Bounty Hunter Bunny
The models look smart and the storyboard is exceptional. I like how he’s used the style to make the cg art look like rendered 2D. It’s very nice.

Good luck, Mark.

Today and tomorrow, Academy members in New York are converging to watch fifty some odd short films to make the first cut list of animated short films. Since the shorts range from five to 30 minutes, this means there are many hours of movies to watch. They’ve split it up into two days’ worth of screening. Half today and half tomorrow. By 7pm tonight my eyes should be bloodshot.

- This past week was a busy one packed to the gills. I finally had to back out of a couple of things, or I woulda gone crazy. Let’s go back to last Monday and start there:

- Last Monday there was a screening of Lincoln. That’s a film I’m curious to see. The book by Doris Kearns Goodwin is great. Steven Spielberg is not much of a draw for me. I’m not his biggest fan, though there were a couple of odd little films he did that I liked, particularly Catch Me If You Can. More recent films by him have been horrible. Tin Tin was completely bad. Spielberg seemed not to know what he was doing (if, in fact, he did control that thing.) War Horse made me want to run out and rent Black Beauty so I could see a good version of this film. It was beautifully shot but the film was completely misguided.

No Spielberg is not the reason I want to see the film. It’s the book and the script by Tony Kushner; he’s something of a genius. His play, Angels in America got better with his screenplay of the same thing. His play Homebody/Kabul is a work of brilliance, and the version I saw starred Linda Emond, who had the stage to herself for the first half hour. And I think that was the best half hour I’ve ever seen in theater and the best acting.

So Tony Kushner and Doris Kearns Goodwin are reasons I want to see Lincoln, not Spielberg. Oh, and Daniel Day Lewis looks and sounds G R E A T. Tommie Lee Jones is also getting the good reviews for the film. I want to see it. But not last Monday. Besides I wanted to see the debate and somewhat glad I did. Nice to see Romney in a flop sweat.

- On Tuesday I had the Memorial for Tissa, and there was too much to do. It seemed effortless, I’m sure, but it took a lot of planning and I have to thank my Heidi for being on my back about that. It was not as easy as one might have thought, and I still hadn’t written my speech.

Finally, the event came. I’d had great help from Paul Carrillo and Rick Broas in editing the footage. It had to look simple and effortless. I copied off a couple hundred copies of the program and had folded all of them myself. I met John Canemaker at the screening room early Tuesday, and with the help of the Academy’s John Fahr we went through a quick rundown of the program. Since I was going to moderate it, I had to figure out what was going to be said on the fly. That rehearsal really helped, and it gave the projectionist a chance to see the eight times he had to stop and restart the video. The DVD looked horribly compressed on my computer, but it looked wonderful on the big screen. (Though Raggedy Ann suffered a bit. Too bad they haven’t released that film on DVD.) The Academy has a great projection system there; the sound was amazing.

It all came off well and a bunch of us went out to an upper east side pizza joint where they gave us a table for 12 to buy some drinks. That was fun, too. I’ve posted a review with a lot of photos from the event here. I’ll post the speeches next week that were given on Tissa’s behalf.

- On Wednesday Ron Diamond presented his Show of Shows program. This is an accumulation of a lot of short films Ron has seen at Festivals and is now distributing. The program is usually good, albeit long, and the animation community shows up for it. Consequently, I generally like going to it, and I reserved a couple of spaces right away. It usually gets packed quickly. However, this year, there was heavy going all week with screenings etc., and since many of the films to be screened at Ron’s show are part of the Academy screenings this coming weekend, I had to back out of it, and I did. I must say, it was a good decision considering I’ve had some back problems lately. It ain’t easy sitting in movie seats, and that’s all I’m doing this week.

On Thursday I saw Cloud Atlas. The film was like the end credit music. It was sort of minimalist. It kept playing in cycles a bit like Phillip Glass, but not as sophisticated. The non-theme kept feeling as though it were going to burst into a strong and hummable tune, but it never did. Just circular, musical motions. That was the movie. You kept thinking it was going to burst into a strong story that you could care about, but it didn’t. It had a hundred stories with two hundred characters all played by the same people. Tom Hanks is six characters, Halle Berry plays five or six. Everybody is busy. Hugh Grant plays five characters and I think two were women. I nodded off a couple of times, but i don’t think I missed anything.

This was more of a video game than a movie. You kept going back and forth to different levels. If the characters got in a bad enough jam we’d cut away to another level. The only problem was that the viewer isn’t controlling the level shifts. No surprise that the directors did The Matrix. This is the film for those with Attention Deficit Disorder.

On Friday the Museum of Modern Art celebrated the work of Sally Cruikshank. There was a screening followed by a dinner at the Italian restaurant to the rear of the museum, Il Gattopardo.

I was there when Sally Cruikshank‘s Quasi at the Quackadero burst onto the scene in 1975, and I watched closely as her career developed. There were a number of short films featuring the characers from Quasi. She had moved to San Francisco and worked closely with Kim Deitch. He, for a while, was her boyfriend and would assist her and paint cels etc. in the making of the films. Sally was making a feature of Quasi – it was that big a success. It never quite happened, so I assume she never raised the money. There were a couple of trailers made which were shown, as films in their own right.

Quasi has a curious story and introduces characters galore, one more funny than the other. Actually, there’s no real story other than that Quasi and Anita go to a club and meet up with a world of wild. Her style has been often compared to that of the early Fleischer films like Bimbo’s Initiation or an early Van Buren short like In a Cartoon Studio. In that her
work has a odd drawing style with all the characters completely malleable, almost as though they had no bones, and an innocence in the movement, I have to agree. The Fleischer work always seemed open to the animators’ adding to the curious layouts peculiar motions. The characters often move a long way out of whatever way they’re going to get back to the completion point, and it’s all about the funny. She truly understood the Fleischer house style and did it well in her own drawing style. They’re very peculiar films.

Sally also did the high-budget job of titles for the movie, Ruthless People as well as the animated sequence for the Twilight Zone feature film directed by Joe Dante. The big budget bought a very smooth and rich style which goes like a bandit. However, my favorite of her films was Face Like a Frog. This is like her hallucinogenic style on speed. Everything is moving all the time, and there’s just so much life in it.

Because the films came in so many different formats, the projectionist must have had a hell of a time keeping the evening flowing. However, it seemed not to be a problem. The show felt like one of those many screenings we used to attend in the 70s. Lots of black in between films and a feeling that you weren’t quite sure what was going to come next.

Sally has basically left animation. After trying hard to work in Flash for a couple of years, she decided that it was too difficult for what she wanted.There were a couple of shorts in this process, and they seemed to be fighting a constraint that the earlier films didn’t have. She has turned to watercolor painting. Her films seem like they’ve gone through the Fleischer/Van Buren mode but using a filter of something more modern. A similar but very different effect comes through the work of Kim Deitch. They both obviously influenced each other and are both remarkably original in their art. I’d like to see what Sally’s watercolors look like.

I hadn’t met Sally prior to last night, so I was glad to have been invited by the Museum’s Josh Siegel. He did a great job of organizing the event. J. Hoberman, was a longtime head critic for NY’s Village Voice and was only recently downsized by that paper. It completely tore apart the Voice’s film section. Hoberman moderated the program asking questions and taking a few from the audience. He was well-informed about Sally’s career and it was obvious that he truly enjoyed the films. I’ve been a real fan of his writing and criticism, so I was pleased to have had the chance to talk with him. (He did review one of my films, the music video Caverns – scroll down when you get there. He didn’t like the film very much and felt I’d stolen a technique of split screen from another music video director. In poiint of fact, I didn’t; I just wanted to play with split screens.)

Il Gattopardo is a pleasant place; the museum usually takes us to a table in the rear. Often, if it’s a large group, there will be a very long table, and we’ll talk with those closest to us. The long tables make it difficult to chat with those some six table-lengths away. Last night, it was a small group at an over-sized round table. Sally and her husband, J. Hoberman (who moderated the event) with his wife and daughter, Josh Siegel, John Canemaker and Joe Kennedy and me. (Heidi works Friday nights and couldn’t attend.) The meal was good, the chat was pleasant, and the evening was a success.

The film program will be repeated at MoMA on Monday at 4pm for those who’d like to see it.
There’s a good interview with Sally here.

Backto the start. Today and tomorrow there will be 13 hours of cartoons to sort through. Lots of complaints, but I kind of like the whole thing. Maybe I’ll write about it for tomorrow’s splog post.

- Mark Mayerson directed me to this excellent article in The Comics Journal that speaks about Ed Sorel, the great illustrator whose art has graced many magazines including a number of issues the New Yorker. The article was written by R.O. Blechman and naturally has the wit and poetry of the great writer that Bob Blechman is. This is quite a piece, despite its brevity, and I urge you to take a look.

- Tuesday night, we had a memorial service for Tissa David who passed away in August. I organized this event with a lot of help from John Canemaker and Buzzco’s Candy Kugel and Rick Broas, who did a lot of work in prepping the material for the final edit which ws done by Paul Carrillo. Patrick Harrison and John Fahr of the MP Academy helped us secure the theater for the evening. Finally, Mate Hidvegi allowed us to use a number of his great photos of Tissa and he apartment. I have to loudly thank all of them.

There were five speakers other than me. John Canemaker, Howard Beckerman, R.O. Blechman, Candy Kugel, Arlane Nelson with my closing comments. In between the speakers there was footage from many of the films Tissa animated. I’d like to offer a couple of posts of material from this service. Today, I’m including the program that was handed out to those who attended. I’ll follow with the text of some of those speakers. I’d hoped to put together a podcast of the comments, recorded. However that didn’t work out.
So I’ll simply post the text.

Some who attended include: Bill Plympton, Bill Benzon, Tony Eastman, Bridget Thorne, George Griffin, Daniel Esterman, J.J. Sedelmaier, Laura & Dave Bryson, Janet Benn, Ray Kosarin, John Schnall, Jason McDonald, Stephen MacQuignon, Rick Broas, Masako Kanayama, Ruth Mane, Steve Dovas, Matt Holt, Richard O’Connor, Liesje Kraai, Dean Lennert, Dave Wachtenheim, Robert Marianetti, and just too many others to remember. It was a great turnout.

Again, many thanks to those I asked to speak. The variety of the talk made for a great conversation. As soon as and if I get their permissions, I’ll post the transcripts of what they had to say.

- Tuesday brought an Academy event. Howard W. Koch Jr., known widely as “Hawk,” succeeded Tom Sherak as president of the Academy last August. He came to New York to meet the East Coast members, here, and to congratulate this year’s crop of new members. (Emily Hubley is one of the brand new members in New York.)

There was an excellent reception at the Stone Rose Lounge, a relatively new eatery in the Columbus Circle area. The event was pleasant with a notable number of celebrities milling about: Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Billy Dee Williams, S. Epatha Merkerson, Richard Gere and Michael Douglas. There was plenty of drink (martinis seemed to be the drink of choice) and some great hors d’oeurves. The lobster tacos (about 1/2 inch long) and the meatball sliders were both delicious.

The speeches were kept to a minimum. Howard Koch was the only speaker and he spoke for maybe five minutes. The rest was the members chatting each other up. Heidi and I got to talk with Mr. Koch in a relaxed situation for about 15 minutes. We spent plenty of time with John Canemaker & Joe Kennedy, Emily Hubley & Will Rosenthal, Biljana Labovic, and Candy Kugel with her sister, Tina Hirsch. As I said, it was a pleasant evening.

- Thursday evening I saw a screening of Burton’s Frankenweenie. See my review, below.

- On Friday ASIFA East and The School of Visual Arts Animation Department had a regrouping of the original commercial animation studio, Perpetual Motion Studios. I wrote about this in depth with some pictures from the event, at the end of this post. Scroll down.

While I was watching this event, the Yankees won the division series over the Baltimore Orioles. Buck Showalter and his Orioles put up an amazing fight. I’m exhausted having gone through the competition with this team that came out of nowhere. Onto Detroit, next.

I didn’t get the note from anyone that Cartoon Brew was changing their look. It was a surprise one day to go to the site and find something that looked wildly commercial, all headlines and no stories. Oh, wait. The stories are there, you just have to keep clicking on things. It looks incredibly commercial and blaring so early in the morning. I guess it’s good for them. It was a surprise to me, and it feels a bit overwhelming. I’m not sure I like going to the site of loud headlines. Though they do have all the information in cartoon town. What’re you going to do? You have to go with the flow, even when you’re heading downstream or so it often feels. Congratulations Cartoon Brew.

- I received this in my email folder:

I’m excited to share some big news with you. Anime legend Katsuhiro Otomo is slated to appear at the PLATFORM INT’L ANIMATION FESTIVAL at the end of this month, where they will be screening his new short film, COMBUSTIBLE, and also honoring him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. See attached for a full press release.

It would be great if you could cover this great event and also run the announcement ASAP. I’m including an image as well, and can provide a couple more if you’re interested. As space is limited at this event, please let me know if you are interested in a press pass to the event, and also if you’d like to interview Otomo 1:1 while he is here.

How could I not partake of such an interview. I immediately wrote back to say, yes., I wanted IN.

But first, I had to find out who Katsuhiro Otomo is. I looked him up on Google and found out he had directed Akira.

Now, Akira is one of those films that I’ve never been able to sit through. Lots of overworked, integrated animation takes place in a very convoluted story that is virtually impossible to follow. I didn’t make it past five minutes on the first attempt. Fifteen minutes on the next half dozen times. The film is magnificently rendered large, but totally impossible to sit through.

Look at that still, at the top of this post. Crowds of people running and milling about. No focus; no individuals. This is the chosen still to send out accompanying the film. A crowd shot. Busywork. No focus on characters, no identification with any personality. A crowd. That, to me, is Akira.

Sure, I’d like to meet the guy who made this film. It’s such busywork, that it defies itself and its own creation.

However, the Platform Animation Festival will take place in Los Angeles on Friday, October 26, 2012 to Sunday, October 28, 2012. Jerry Beck will interview Mr. Otomo on Sat, Oct. 27th at 9:30 PM. It might be worth attending. Jerry knows what he’s talking about when it comes to Manga, and Mr. Otomo will be making a rare visit to LA.

On Thursday evening, I saw Tim Burton‘s most recent puppet animated feature, Frankenweenie. This, as many of you already know, is a reworking of the live-action short Burton did in 1984. In many ways it doesn’t improve on that short. It basically tells the same story with an added number of homage sequences devoted to various horror flicks that Burton obviously loved.

The film is sweet with no strong conflicts to trouble little children. The animation feels ever-so-slightly limited, but I liked it. It often felt like there was a smile behind the movement, and that the animators were having fun on this film. Quite a few eccentric moves helped to make the gestures feel more individual. Unlike Para Norman, the film isn’t overly slick. That Leica film felt as though it might have been cg animated. You couldn’t really feel the fingerprints on the action. I do like that aspect of Frankenweenie. I always was sure it was real objects being animated, not some cgi puppet.

However, there was often a stiffness to the motion. In some of the first scenes, the lead boy walks as if his legs had no knees.

This might have been less noticeable if I had been more involved in a deeper story, but that is a big problem with the film. The story isn’t particularly engaging. It’s just sweet.

Of Burton’s three animated features this was the least of them.

It’s Such a Beautiful Day is the title of the feature which Don Hertzfeldt compiled of three shorts he produced: Everything Will Be OK (2006), I Am So Proud of You (2008) and It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012). These shorts formed a trilogy which Hertzfeldt designed to create this feature.

It opened at the IFC theater in New York and received modest reviews from the NY press.

Neil Genzlinger of the NYTimes wrote on Oct 4th: “Considering that he’s a stick figure, Bill, the main character in “It’s Such a Beautiful Day,” sure does have a complex internal life. And this animated film by Don Hertzfeldt does an amazing job of making you feel it, in all its sadness, terror and transcendence.”

The film will continue to tour around the country playing at many cities from Columbia, Mo to Tucson, Az to Chicago, Il. The planned schedule for the tour cn be found here (scroll down).

There’s an excellent interview with Hertzfeldt in The Onion‘s AV Club section which was printed last April when Hertzfeldt initially toured with the film.

- Yesterday, ASIFA East and The School of Visual Arts Animation Department had a regrouping of the original commercial animation studio, Perpetual Motion Studios.

Candy Kugel spearheaded this event working with support from JJ Sedelmaier, who started in Perpetual. Quite a few past employees of the studio came back for the celebration and made for an interesting evening. For them, it was no doubt a reu-nion, for the rest of us it was a visit to a key commercial studio in New York.

The event was prompted by the recent deaths of three of the key personnel. Vincent Cafarelli, Buzz Potamkin and Hal Silvermintz all died within six months of each other, this past year. Rather than making it a memorial for the three, they made it a celebration of the studio’s work.

Tom Warburton acted as the host for the evening. He originally was an intern starting out in Buzzco Associates, the studio that followed Perpetual. Mordicai Gerstein, Russell Calabrese, JJ Sedelmaier, and Thomas Schlamme all came in for the event and sat on a panel up on stage in front of the screen.

This panel talked about the work done at the studio and the different roles they all played,from designing to animation to making music and sound effects.

In the audience there was quite a fill of other artists and past employees from the studio. Rose Eng and Marilyn Carrington were key people in I&Pt. Background Artists Linda Daurio and Cotty Kilbanks, Animators Doug Compton and Doug Crane, Layout Artist Wayne Becker, Editor Jon Levy, Producers David Sameth and Marilyn Kraemer all reunited.

I came from a different crowd of that same period. Mine was less commercial and more theatrical a group so I didn’t know many of these people. Yet, I knew of many of them and was glad to finally meet some. I was pleased finally to meet Mordi Gerstein, having animated his children’s book The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.

I’ve seen Wayne Becker‘s drawings for years, so it was a pleasure to finally meet up with him. I’d worked frequently in my own studio with the brilliant Doug Compton, so I was glad to see him, and I knew Doug Crane from Raggedy Ann.

It’s amazing the number of people who started out at Perpetual and went on to become important directors, designers, and creators within the industry. They must have been doing something right.

As one who sat in the wings watching the planning for this event, I got to see how enormous the amount of work and the number of phone calls it took for Candy to get the event together, and Rick Broas did a lion’s share of the technical work in planning the video and graphics for the program. They did everything from a film retrospective, to announcement invitations to name labels. They’re both to be congratulated for pulling off a fantastic night’s entertainment.

The program ended with Candy’s latest film, The Last Time, which is a memorial to her close friend and working partner since 1973, Vince Cafarelli. Although it wasn’t a Perpetual product, it celebrated the end result of that studio as Perpetual merged into Buzzco with Buzz Potamkin, Candy and Vinnie continued on after Hal Silvermintz moved to open his own studio. After Buzz moved on Candy and Vinnie continued on with the studio which remains open and busy to this day. The film is sad, but it proved to be a positive ending to the evening. look for the spanking new short on the festival circuit.Go to its Facebook page to see a clip. Candy & Rick are appropriately proud of the short.

Here are some stills I took last night:

1
The theater where the show took place.

Mordicai Gerstein and Wayne Becker chat in the lobby.

3
Mordicai Gerstein and Don Duga say hi on stage before the show.

4
Tom Warburton moderated the panel on stage.

5
(LtoR) Mordi Gerstein, Candy Kugel, Thomas Schlamme

6
(LtoR) Tom Warburton, Mordi Gerstein, Candy Kugel,
Thomas Schlamme, JJ Sedelmaier, and Russell Calabrese

7
Mordi Gerstein and Candy Kugel remain on stage during the
opening filmmontage constructed by Richard O’Connor for the show.

8
Mordi Gerstein reminisces.

9
JJ Sedelmaier listens to the conversation.

10
Sorry Candy. It’s a good closeup even though
my cursed camera caught you with eyes closed.

11
Candy and Thomas Schlamme remember.

12
Tommie Schlamme, JJ looking out and Russell Calabrese.

13
Mordi Gerstein watches some commercials
which he designed many years ago.

Predominantly, I’ve been completely absorbed by two things. Tissa David‘s memorial is just about organized. The rough cut of the film program has been assembled, and I’ll hand it off to my favorite editor, Paul Carrillo, who will add some rhythm and grace. Tissa deserves that much from me.
I need to thank Candy Kugel for offering her facility to put this together. It was a lot of work. Thanks also to Rick Broas for doing so much of the technical work that I have no facility to handle. He does and did it with a lot of patience and positive energy.

Other than that I am wholly focused on the introduction to POE, my feature film trying to find a start. I’m completely entrenched in these scenes and work them over and over trying to find the right way to give them birth. I love it and look forward to getting financing soon to really get it under way.

A lot, other than that, has had to do with scanning and planning for this Splog. Today I put together a gem of a piece. We found some incredibly rare pieces among Vinnie Cafarelli‘s archive of material. Some Fleischer and Famous leftovers were found and prove amazing. Look forward to that this coming Wednesday.

Signe Baumane has one of my favorite blogs on the internet, and I’ve been writing about it for years. She is such a unique and individual writer, and there’s a lot to be gained from reading what she has to offer. Every Tuesday she writes about her film in production, about her depression (the subject of the film), about her life and about art & animation in general. It’s always a good read.

Signe is primarily an animation artist who’s done some half dozen films and is now working on her magnum opus, a feature length animated film called Rocks In My Pockets. This week, on her blog she wrote about a trailer just completed and she posts that trailer. The film combines 3 dimensional backgrounds for many sections under the 2D animation. It has a great look and has me patiently waiting to see more and more until I can finally see the whole film. The trailer doesn’t include any of the 3D backgrounds, which I’m sorry to report. That is such a good look with constructed backdrops that have a distinct style that makes the film look very rich. I feel like she might be underselling it with only the 2D art. You can see samples of the look on some of her past posts (e.g: here and here and you can read about the set design and construction here).

Anyway, here’s her trailer:

You can read her blog about the making of the trailer here.

Signe is financing the film on a wing and a prayer. She often writes about the problems of fund-raising on the blog. She’s built a “Donate” button into her website in case you want to send her $10 or $1000 (or anything above, below or inbetween those amounts) to help out. I heartily recommend you do this if you can spare a couple of dollars. You’ll be supporting the arts and a project well worth investing in. A movie ABOUT something. Go to her website, Rocks In My Pocket here.

- This was a busy week. Something was happening almost every day, to the point where I was punking out of some of them.

Sunday there was a party at Amid Amidi‘s office space in honor of Priit Pärn visiting
from Estonia. I hadn’t met Priit in the past at any festival. Id only seen about four or five of his films, but I have to admit that I’m not that big a fan. His work is somewhat chaotic and not really “character” animation. Stylistically, he never pulls me in and the substance is a bit too dense for me to the point of impenetrable. I always give the blame for such to myself for not being able to figure out what the filmmaker is trying to say, but when it happens with every one of the filmmaker’s films, I heed the warningand usually back away. That, I’m ashamed to say, is the case with me and Mr. Pärn’s films.

It was a pleasure meeting him, though. He’s truly a sweet man, and was very affable. I hadn’t heard in years from another Estonian, Rein Raamat, and was able to ask Priit if he knew what had happened to the older man. I knew he’d retired years back, but there’s only been silence, and I was afraid he’d died. No, it turns out he’s just retired. You could sense the discomfort there was in talking about the older man. Priit Pärn felt as though he were backing away while answering my questions. I imagine that’ll be the case when someone asks what had happened to me as I go off into the sunset drooling over my favorite Disney collectible.

The party Amid threw was great. A great crowd of people kept it entertaining, to say the least. John Canemaker & Joe Kennedy, George Griffin, Debbie Solomon, Candy Kugel, Emily Hubley with husband, Will Rosenthal, Leah Shore, Richard O’Connor, Liesje Kraai, and,of course, Celia Bullwinkle. There were, naturally enough, plenty of others, but these are they who pop into my mind as I write away.

Many thanks to Amid for hosting the fine event.

On Tuesday, The Princess Bride got a grand resuscitation from the New York Film
Festival as it honored Rob Reiner’s live action fairy tale. Actually it was an Academy reconstructed print, which is why I was invited. I’m not a fan of the film and had a hard time sitting through it again, but the Q&A was everything that night. On stage was director, Rob Reiner, writer, William Goldman, actors Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Billy Crystal, Wally Shawn, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, and Carol Kane. Rob Reiner was affable but slowly trned into a ham then a pig as he started to answer questions even when others were called upon to respond. He was oblivious to the audience laughing AT him at a couple of points. Billy Crystal, on the other hand, was truly funny. He kept everything moving smoothly with a great sense of humor. Mandy Patinkin was gracious honoring André the Giant the Giant who’d died in 1993. The hot spot was Cary Elwes who had a charming sense of humor with a number of funny bits.

The afterparty was a bust. Loud, overcrowded and irritating it didn’t take long for me to leave. They sent us away with a Goody Bag that included a book of the script filled with scrap from the film lots of stills, artwork of the sets and plenty of information if you’re a fan. They also gave us a T-shirt and as well as a Blue Ray copy of the movie. (I still don’t have a player) I was pleased to give away the bag to someone who really appreciated it.

Wednesday was the height of the week – a TV night. The Yankees were playing for the championship of the AL East. If they won they got it; if the lost and Baltimore won they were just a team with a one-game playoff to go on Thursday. Yankees won, Baltimore lost.

Then the highlight of the night. The first Presidential debate aired from Colorado. Romney got the chance to look Presidential as he stood alongside the real President. The format went out the window as Romney ignored Jim Lehrer and fought him time after time after time. Obama curled up into a ball and didn’t fight for what he believed in. Romeny just kept lying and changing his opinion on everything. He’s been politicking on a tax cut for the rich these past 9 months, now he says that that’s not what he’s doing. I give up. Obama just stood there with his head down taking notes, for some reason. I got so frustrated by his performance that I was about ready to change the channel.

At least the Yankees knew how to win.

Thursday saw two films: The Paperboy starred Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, John Cusack, and Nicole Kidman. Lee Daniels directed his second film. (Precious was his first two years ago.) This film was a mess and tried so hard to be an artfilm. Trashy characters mix with each other until half of them are dead. Macy Gray was one of the only spots of dignity in it.
and
The Eye of the Storm is an Australian film starring Geoffrey Rush, Judy Davis, and Charlotte Rampling. It was directed by the pro, Fred Schepisi. This was a very well acted film. Judy Davis was near brilliant even though the script wasn’t as strong as it might have been. I really found enjoyment with the interplay of the characters and the actors who inhabited them.

I saw Bill Plympton at this screening and invited myself to his loft to say hello to his newborn baby boy. I’ll try to make it there this week.

Lots of screenings and parties and whatnot are on the schedule for the next week or so. I’m amazed with how much the Academy has been involved in the New York Film Festival this year. I’m also pleased with it.

Frankenweenie opened in NY yesterday, though I won’t get to see it until next Thursday (and will review it after I see it.) The film received some of the best reviews this year for an animated feature. Nationally, Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 85% rating.

Elizabeth Weitzman in the NYDaily News gave it four **** stars and called it a “Frankenweenie Delight.” The lst lines of the review are: “Despite the gently macabre tone, there are no gratuitous scares or elbow-nudging ironies. Just a witty, warm appreciation of cinema, science and the creativity of childhood.
___________________________________________What a rare and welcome treat.”

A.O. Scott in the NYTimes praises the film lightly but pulls back at each bit of praise. “The delights of “Frankenweenie” are abundant and real. Its opening scenes are beguiling in their strangeness, and its climax is wild and hilarious. But the movie, a Walt Disney release, also feels tame and compromised, a tissue of safe pop-culture allusions rather than an inspired, audacious engagement with older movies.”

Lou Lumenick in the NYPost gives it 3½ stars and fine praise. “‘Frankenweenie’’ is Tim Burton’s best film in years. With this expanded, beautifully realized and highly entertaining animated version of his famous 1984 live-action short about a young loner and his resurrected dog, Burton, whose films have gotten progressively more overblown and overproduced, goes back to ghoulish basics. It’s an endearingly modest and affectionate tribute to the classic 1930s monsters and their influence on daydreaming kids like Burton who grew up in suburbia four decades later.”

The Village Voice‘s Chris Packham has only high tribute to the film. “Frankenweenie Awakens the Pleasures of Reanimation” “Frankenweenie . . . is tight and brief, hitting all the marks you’d expect from an animated kid’s film, and enlivened by Burton’s visual style. The man should make more small movies like this one.”

One wonders what will happen to Adam Sandler‘s successful feature, Hotel Transylvania. (Interesting that I instinctively tought of this as Adam Sandler’s film and not Genndy Tartakovsky‘s film.) Will Frankenweenie kill this or vice versa? We’ll know by Sunday.

- There will be an extensive program of Hubley films screened at The Museum of Arts and Design on Friday, Oct. 19th. The films to be screened are a large mix of those done by John, Faith and Emily Hubley. They include:

Adventures of an Asterisk
1957, Dir. John & Faith Hubley
The Hat
1964, Dir. John & Faith Hubley
Eggs
1971, Dir. John & Faith Hubley
Cockaboody
1973, Dir. John & Faith Hubley
The Tender Game
1958, Dir. John & Faith Hubley
Time of the Angels
1989, Faith Hubley
Her Grandmother’s Gift
1995, Dir. Emily Hubley
Witch Madness
2000, dir. Faith Hubley
Pigeon Within
2000, dir. Emily Hubley
Northern Ice Golden Sun
2001, Dir. Faith Hubley
Set Set Spike
2002, Dir. Emily Hubley
And/or
2012, Dir. Emily Hubley

details:
The Museum of Arts and Design
2 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10019 on
Friday, October 19, 2012 – 7:00 pm
$10 general / $5 members and students

- Bill Benzon continues with some of the most intellectual theses and conversations on his blog, the New Savannah. Recently, I directed you to a lengthy piece about Dumbo which Mr.Benzon had reworked into a PDF which was available for the clicking.

Lately, he has written about many big concept ideas such as the lack of cartoon animals as a stand-in for humans in modern animation. Where’d the Animals Go? discusses this subject in earnest. From South Park to UP to the Simpsons to Brave, humans dominate. Animals are animals, as in How to Train Your Dragon.

He’s written about Cuteness (the Infant Schema). An analysis of Tweety and other big-headed, big eyed, sweet characters.

He’s written about Ratatouille and the discussion of man, vermin and food. This has stretched on to three nice-sized posts. In fact this is the heart of this film, and it’s quite adroit of Bill Benzon to go directly to that place to discuss the subject. This, it seems to me, is what he often does.

It’s also what makes his blog a regular read for me. (I also love many of the photos he posts along the way.) This is a site unlike any other. Intelligent conversation about cartoons. No, it’s not about how many lines Bugs Bunny ahs on the back of his gloves from cartoon to cartoon, but it talks about the abstract. Considering that all cartoons and cartoon characters are abstractions, it’s interesting that there are no others like this blog.

I’ve had a rare few of my films given the intellectual approach in reviews. A scholar of Hans Christian Andersen‘s tales delved deeply into a number of my updated Andersen tales and he gave them a quite positive review in his two books on the subject. These were done without my knowledge; I learned of them only when a reviewer’s copy arrived in the mail compliments of the author. I have to say these are the reviews I most treasure. The analysis of the thoughts that went into the films. Someday, perhaps, Bill Benzon may take some interest in my work. (hint, hint)

- On Tuesday, October 23rd a memorial service for Tissa David will be held at the Lighthouse Academy Theater at 111 East 59th Street. It will begin punctually at 7pm. Seats will be available on a first-come first-served basis. To continue celebration of Tissa’s work, here’s an article that appeared in Cartoonist Profiles Magazine, No.33, March 1977. No writer’s name is credited.

We thank Mike Hutner. of Twentieth Century-Fox, for the production notes about this new full-length animated film, RAGGEDY ANN & ANDY, which is having its world-premiere in New York on March 20th.

Raggedy Ann is a caricature of a rag doll, with stringy red hair, button eyes and a painted triangular nose.

Harold Geneen is the Chairman of the Board of the ITT Corporation, an industrial empire which includes hotel chains, construction companies, the Bobbs-Mcrrill book publishing house and a car rental lirm which tries harder.

It was hardly destined that they would be linked in one of the year’s most ambitious entertainment ventures. But the proof is on 35mm Panavision film, in the form of “Raggedy Ann and Andy,” the feature-length animated musical from 20th Century Fox.

The genesis of the full-length am mated musical—one of the few such projects attempted during the past few decades without the Disney insignia—is a story which has its own touches of fantasy. In addition to ITT’s Board Chairman, the principals include:
• A team of Broadway theatre-owners and producers, who never before made a movie, lei alone an animated feature.
• An Emmy-winning composer, one of whose songs was a hit for both “Kermit the Frog” and Frank Sinatra.
• An Academy Award winning director who thought he was out of the picture until he look part in an all-night jam session at his Soho studio.
• Several legendary cartoonists, including the originator of “Betty Boop” and the man who gave Disney—and the rest of America—the beloved “Goofy.”

How they came to join forces really begins in Silvermine, Conn, in the early 1900′s. when newspaper cartoonist John Gruelle took a few minutes away from his drawing board to help his daughter fix a discarded rag doll. The toy was named “Raggedy Ann” by combining characters from two poems by James Whitcomb Riley — The Rag Man and Orphan Annie.

When Marcella Gruelle became desperately ill, her father sat by her bedside, making up stories about the doll’s adventures after everyone in the house was asleep. Marcella died on March 21st, 1916. after which her father determined to share with the world the stories he had not had time to tell her.

By the early 1970′s. Raggedy Ann was part of American folklore, a character whose exploits had sold some 80 million books and hundreds of millions of toys and games. That was when Lester Osterman. a former stockbroker who brought Sammy Davis Jr. to Broadway in “Mr. Wonderful.” and Richard Horner an ex-actor who had appeared in the Oberammergau “Passion Play” became involved. The producers of such Broadway successes as “Butley” and “Hadrian the Seventh,” they had just completed a live-action television special for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, based on the children’s classic. “The Littlest Angel.” Now they were searching for a similar property . . . for the same showcase.

A casual lunch with a merchandiser of children’s toys proved crucial. “Would you believe that after all these years. ‘Raggedy Ann’ is -.till one of the biggest sellers?” inquired the friend rhetorically. Within a few days. Osterman and Horner were on the doorstep of the Bobbs-Merrill Company, which publishes the “Raggedy Ann” stories, requesting development rights to the character.

An equally informal meeting with Joe Raposo. Emmy-winning composer-conductor of “Sesame Street,” brought music to the project. Horner and Osterman found themselves seated with Raposo at a Friars’ Roast for Johnny Carson. Somewhere between the broiled chicken and dessert, Raposo agreed lo score the “Raggedy Ann” tales.

Animators Tissa David and Art Babbitt with director Dick Williams.

Next to join the troupe were writers Max Wilk and Pat Thackeray. True to Gruelle’s imagination, they created a fantasy world in which toys spring joyously to life. When Raggedy Ann discovers that the pixieish French doll, Babette, has been kidnapped by a pirate known as Captain Contagious, they set out to free her. That takes them into the “deep dark woods”, inhabited by such personalities as the “Looney King,” “the camel with the wrinkled knees” (one of Gruelle’s personal favorites) and the “Greedy,” a kind of confectionery version of the La Brea Tarpits. “We thought we were writing a live television special,” recalls Ms. Thackeray. “So much so that we began casting Raggedy Ann in our minds, alternating between personalities like Liza Minnelli and Goldie Hawn.”

But Raposo was having second thoughts. “It won’t work,” he finally admiitted. “Put a red fright wig and a painted mouth on an actress— any actress—and do you know what you’ll have? A circus clown.”

The obvious alternative was a full-length animated musical cartoon. Which is like saying the obvious alternative to your reliable family car is to go out and buy a Rolls Royce. There is a reason, as director Richard Williams would later point out, why animated features are almost exclusively the province of the Disney organization. “And even Disney turns out several live comedies and nature films for every animated movie.” Williams notes.

To create 90 minutes or more of full animation (as opposed to the jittery short-cuts of television cartooning) requires more than one million preliminary and final drawings. From inception to “answer print” lakes three years or more. “And the cost,” adds Williams, “is tremendous.”

“Since the Hallmark people had discussed a live musical, they were perfectly justified in walking away from a more costly animated feature,” says Horner. The producers now had a cartoon without a cartoonist, a television special without a sponsor, and a project without investors. But it was no time to think small. Why settle for a television special? Why not make “Raggedy Ann and Andy” as a movie?

It was back to Bobbs-Merrill with the suggestion that Osierman-Horner and the publishing house become partners in the proposed film. That, the publishing executives said, was up to their parent company, ITT. A meeting was arranged with Board Chairman Geneen. which developed into a corporate backers audition.
Pat Thackeray later described the “incredible afternoon” to author and critic John Canemaker, whose book, “The Animated ‘Raggedy Ann and Andy’-The Story Behind Ihe Movie,” will be published at the same time as the 20th Century Fox release.

“Geneen came into the room, asking questions, his mind like a laser,” she said. “He remembered a stage version of ‘Raggedy Ann’ he’d enjoyed as a youngster, in the I920′s. We made our presentation. Then, as we were going down in the elevator, a guard told me, ‘I don’t know who you are but you’ve got it made.’
“I asked why.

“The guard said, ‘Because the old man stuck his head out of the door and asked what I thought of the music coming from his office. I said it sounded pretty good to me. That wasn’t just good, Harry,’ he said, ‘that was terrific.’”

With financial backing assured, the next problem was simple. Who would draw the million-plus pictures which would make up the finished movie? And who would piece them all together with wit and style?

Firsl choice was Richard Williams, the Canadian-born, London based head of his own animation studio who had won an Academy Award for “A Christmas Carol” and a host of admirers for the “Return of the Pink Panther.” Despite a commitment to his own project, “The Thief and the Cobbler” Williams listened to Raposo’s score, and said yes.

“But my business manager said ‘no,’” Williams recalled. “Or to put it more accurately. he priced my services so high, there was no way the picture could have come in on budget.” What happened to the business manager? “He’s not with me anymore,” Williams replied with British sang-froid.

Tissa David’s rag doll

Osterman and Horner began negotiations with a New York cartoon “factory” which specialized in limited animation for television. Within a short period (according to Canemaker), the newcomers had virtually thrown away the Wilk-Thackeray script, replacing Gruelle’s characters with a “Love Fairy” and a “Cookie Giant.” Outraged. Raposo walked out of a story conference (“before 1 threw up from all that treacle,” he recalls) and caught a plane to London to make a last-ditch attempt at hiring Williams.

Discovering a shared taste in jazz, the two men opened a bottle of Scotch and during an impromptu jam session, past misunderstandings vanished in a vapor of 12-year-old malt and good will. The animated movie finally had an animator.

It was Williams who formulated the approach to the picture. “Disney’s contribution to animation is colossal,” he said. “The technique of bringing a cartoon character to life would slill be in the dark ages without Disnev. But to copy the ‘look’ of his films would have been disastrous.

“Instead, 1 said, ‘let’s be as rich and lush as Disney in a totally different style … in the style of Johnny Gruelle.’”

A remarkable team of animators was assembled in New York and Hollywood lo carry out that mission. Included were several men and women who can legitimately be termed ‘living legends’ in the field of motion picture cartooning.

There was Grim Natwick, a spry octogenarian, who had designed the first of the “Betty Boop” pictures for producer Max Fleischer in the thirties and animated the majority of Snow White’s scenes for Disney. Another Disney veteran was Art Babbitt, the co-creator of “Goofy” and the dancing mushrooms in “Fantasia,” whose verbal donnybrooks with Disney during the I940′s had been peppery Hollywood gossip.

85 year old animator Grim Natwick
with young animator Crystal Russell

To draw the “Greedy,” a ‘monster’ made of whipped cream, cherry banana taffy, chocolate fudge and other sugary delights. Emory Hawkins—a veteran of Disney as well as the MOM and Warner Brothers cartoon studios -was summoned from his New Mexico ranch. “Raggedy Ann” herself was drawn by Tissa David, a Transylvanian-born artist who had worked with Natwick at UPA Productions during the heyday of “Mr. Magoo” and “Gerald McBoing Boing.”

From Canada came Gerald Potterton, head of his own animation studio. whose credits include the Peabody Award winning “Pinter People” and key sequences in the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine.” The design of the vital storyboards and layouts which gave the picture its graphics stamp was up to Cornelius “Corny” Cole, both an animator and a renowned painter.

The musical routines for the “Twin Penny Dolls,” whose movements are perfectly synchronized with each other, were drawn by Gerry Chiniquy. who looks like Gene Kelly and specializes in “dance animation.” During a ten year period at the Warner Brothers Studios, whenever Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck were called on to trip the light fantastic, Chiniquy got the nod.

Soon, the sketches began mounting—at the unit’s bustling New York headquarters (which are wag dubbed “Raggedy Ann East”), a California studio and director Williams’ home base in London. Williams’ job was clearly defined.

“I was in charge of catching airplanes,” he laughed. Spending ten days to two weeks in each city, Williams would check the work of dozens of illustrators, pencil in his own suggestions, hold story conferences, review preliminary sound-track recordings, analyze the “Leica Reel” (a rough compilation of the motion picture in progress, pieced together as new drawings and backgrounds were added “like a jigsaw puzzle”), then rush to the airport.

“I became one of the world’s great authorities on jet lag,” he added.

Choosing the voices of Captain Contagious, Suzy Pincushion, the zany “Gazooks” and other denizens of Raggedy Ann’s fantasy world became a crucial problem. Tradition says the voices for a feature-length cartoon should be box-office names whose unseen presence will enhance the picture’s publicity and promotion. Raposo and Williams chose to defy tradition, backed by co-producer Horner. “We were treating the picture as a big, lavish Broadway musical—in the form of an animated cartoon—so we looked to Broadwav for vocally gifted actors,” said Raposo. Casting sessions were held in a New York studio, where hundreds of performers went through their paces.

“I knew the long hours were getting to me when 1 walked through the hall, outside the studio, and saw a man reading our script, who really looked like a camel,” said Williams. Ironically, the actor was dour-faced Fred Stuthman, who eventually did provide the voice for the “Camel With the Wrinkled Knees.”

Another actor’s reaction set the whimsical tone of the casting sessions.

“You want me to play what?” said Joe Silver, veteran of such movies as “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz”, in utter disbelief.

“An enormous pit of taffy, filled with gum-drops and maraschino cherries and covered with chocolate sauce,” answered casting director Howard Feuer.

“Is this a gag?” asked Silver. He was quickly persuaded it was not and even more quicklv rose to the chocolate covered challenge.

Emory Hawkins Taffy Pit

Virtually all of the “Raggedy Ann and Andy” voices are better known to their peers than to the general public. Included are Didi Conn of the television series, “The Practice.” whose voice has been likened to that of a “sexy frog” as Raggedy Ann: Mark Baker, co-star of Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” as Andy: Allan Sues from “Laugh-In.” Arnold Stang, Mason Adams and George S. Irving. The “sockworm” is vocally portrayed by a man with more impressive credentials in another phase of show business—Sheldon Harnick, lyricist of “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Only one performer is seen on film, during an introductory sequence about Marcella Gruelle. Casting the role, director Williams, recalls, was a thorny problem. “I needed a little girl on whom 1 could impose a 12 hour work day, to stay within schedule.” Rather than face some other lot’s outraged parents, he elected his own six-year-old daughter, Claire. “My presence made it a kind of game for her.” he adds.

Meanwhile, the pressure at Raggedy Ann East. Raggedy Ann West and the London base was mounting. Williams and his associates had promised a finished movie to Bobbs-Merrill in time for the film to be launched nationally by Easter, 1977. The million-plus drawings had been completed, and now the inkers, opaquers, “in betweeners,” and other technical craftsmen, vital to an animated movie, were working double and triple shifts, to meet the deadline.

The only rule, Williams paradoxically demanded as he fired memos to the tripartite staff (“usually dictated somewhere over Kansas,”) was that there must be no compromise in quality. Typical of the fine detail necessary to achieve “full animation” was an incident which occurred in the office of veteran supervisor Marlene Robinson. An “inbetweener”-responsible for linking the animators’ drawings, frame by frame—was frustrated. Several strands of Raggedy Ann’s hair refused to move in rhythm with the rest of the character.

The next hour was devoted to re-drawing the wisps of hair, over and over, until there was perfect synchronization.

“It seems like such a little thing,” Ms. Robinson said afterward. “But blown up to Panavision size, anything which distracts the eye of the moviegoer—shapes that vary, colors that fade, even a recalcitrant strand of hair, is enough to destroy the ‘illusion.’”

Babbitt’s “Camel with the wrinkled knees”

In another room, Cosmo Pepe, working with complex equipment designed by cameraman Al Rezek, was transferring the drawings onto sheets of transparent celluloid—by shooting 13.000 volts of electricity through them-prior to putting them through a Xerox enlarger. “We developed a special toner, for the enlargements, to Dick Williams’ specifications,” Pepe revealed. “The toning is vitally important: it affects the way the characters stand out on the big screen. The formula for this toner is as closely guarded as a three star chefs award winning recipe.”

By the lime “Raggedy Ann and Andy” was completed, and ready for release by 20lh Century Fox more than five years had passed from the date on which Osterman and Horner first solicited the rights from Bobbs-Merrill. More than two years had been spent in production.

Richard Williams summed up the feelings of everyone involved by quoting Johnny Gruelle. “It does pay to do more work than you are paid for, after all,” Gruelle once told an interviewer. “Someone, somewhere, sometime will see it and appreciate it.”

– Let’s talk a little about Eyvind Earle. This is the artist who rose to fame when he was selected by Walt Disney to set the style for the long-in-production feature, Sleeping Beauty. The animators disliked his art direction and openly protested it. Walt remained true in his stance and supported Earle to the end; though it could be said that Walt was more involved in Disneyland’s construction and gave too little attention to the in-fighting at the animation studio.

I remember Frank Thomas, specifically, stating that he had done everything possible to supercede Earle’s style after he, Thomas, had animated the Merryweather scene as she creates Aurora’s dress and cake in honor of her birthday. He felt that the black bodice that Earle had designed took all the lightness out of his character’s delicate dance.

(Click on any image to enlarge.)_________________________________

L to R: Al Dempster, Dick Anthony, Ralph Hulett and Eyvind Earle

Thomas publicly attacked Earle at the Lincoln Center celebration of Disney animation back in 1973. I’d already read something similar, and heard it privately. None of the others on stage at Lincoln Center – Woolie Reitherman, Ken Anderson or Ollie Johnston – countered in support of Earle.

Sleeping Beauty was such a drastic change in look from the other Disney features, that I think it took deep hold in the minds of a lot of Baby Boomers growing up around this feature. Earle became a strong target of interest, and I think his reputation has grown annually.

I have to admit it was odd seeing the backgrounds of Pocohontas trying to emulate Earle’s Sleeping Beauty style, but in some ways it seemed fitting. The studio had been ripping off the films of the past for so long that it was only appropriate that they’d focus on someone who was such a dynamic force.

For a short period after he was released by Disney, in the post-Sleeping Beauty layoffs, he worked with John Sutherland Productions where he designed the short, Rhapsody of Steel. Then he formed his own studio, Eyvind Earle Productions, Inc. He did an animated trailer for the film, West Side Story, under the supervision of Saul Bass. He did an animated title for the Kraft Suspense Theater, and he did a Christmas Special for Tennessee Ernie Ford.

Ultimately, Earle made a success of his own art after leaving animation. He’s been represented by a number of very large galleries and has sold a lot of popular art in a style all his own. Here are a couple of examples found on line:

I’m not always a big fan of the color schemes in his graphics, though he always makes them work, but I have to give credit to Earle for his originality and the dynamic approach in his art.

His autobiography, Horizon Bound on a Bicycle, is a must for all real fans.

This is his animation resume:

1951 Started with the Walt Disney Studios as background painter on: FOR WHOM THE
__ BULLS TOIL, MELODY, and the Academy Award winner for “Best Short of the Year”
__TOOT, WHISTLE, PLUNK and BOOM which also received a Cannes Film Festival Award.
__Production Designer, Color Stylist and Background Painter for the DIsney animated __classic SLEEPING BEAUTY, as well as, PIGS IS PIGS, GRAND CANYONSCOPE,
__PAUL BUNYAN, LADY AND THE TRAMP, LONDON BRIDGE, and WORKING FOR PEANUTS.
__He designed 5 murals for Disneyland.
1958 Joined John Sutherland Motion Picture Company in Los Angeles.
1960-1966 Created 24 sheet poster for Hamm’s Beer.
__Started motion picture animation company, Eyvind Earle Productions, Inc.
__Created animated commercials for Chevrolet Motors, Chrysler Corporation, Marlboro
__igarettes, Motorola Television and the Kellogg Cereal Company.
__Created animated trailer for WEST SIDE STORY for United Artists.
1961 Created animated television special THE STORY OF CHRISTMAS starring
__Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Roger Wagner Choral.
1962 Created animated television special THE EASTER SPECIAL.
__Created title for the KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATER.
__Created the logo trademark trailer for Universal Pictures.
__Produced and created the theatrical short DEATH AND SUNRISE

You’ll find a lot of merchandise including all the books listed here, on the Eyvind Earle website.