Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

More rambling:

The illustration to the left is by Jiri Trnka.

- Speaking of Dumbo, this is by far my favorite of the Disney dvd releases. Aside from the fact that it’s probably my favorite of the Disney features, John Canemaker does a solo addition of a commentary through the entire film.

It reminds me a bit of the pieces the NY Times used to do. They would have a celebrity watch an older film of their choice, and the writer and star would talk through the film. We’d get to read what the writer quoted from the viewing. Here we actually are watching the film with Canemaker and get to enjoy all his knowledge of this film at the same time. It’s informative, casual and enjoyable.

Would that the Disney studio would do more of the same. Oh, wait. No. They don’t give us commentary tracks anymore, at least not on their “Treasure” series, but they do add more games and puzzles for the children.

- I’m still traveling through the most recent WB collection – vol. III. I like about half of the films on this collection. My preference is for the earlier films. I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the m a n y black and white shorts that were made. All those great Porky films – as long as they don’t force the colorized ones on us – with costar Gabby. I love them and would certainly buy up any dvd’s.

I’ve gone through all of the commentary tracks and have enjoyed some of them. The Michael Barrier commentaries are a treasure of information; it’s almost like he can’t get it all in (and I’m sure he can’t) before the film ends. His audio highlights from some past interviews, add an original touch to the experience. Likewise Milt Gray. His is a new voice that I’d like to hear more from: lots to say and articulates it well. I’ve also gotten to enjoy the amiable style of Greg Ford‘s comments. He gives us a hell of a lot of information while at the same time absolutely loving every second of every short he views with us.

The stills above come from the Jiri Trnka film, The Archangel Gabriel and Ms Goose. It’s a remarkably beautiful film in which puppets play out a story from Boccaccio’s Decameron. The film takes place in Venice (are there any other animated films set in Venice?)

- Cartoon Brew Amid Amidi has a scathing and absolutely astute response to Cory Edwards’ whining on Animation Nation that his film, Hoodwinked, has been disrespected by animators. I wonder when Edwards or his brother, Todd Edwards, will complain about the treatment the critics have given his film. Go Amid, go.

It was a pleasant evening at the ASIFA-East gathering at Gonzalez & Gonzalez. In New York, because everything everywhere is so crowded and so many people are infringing on one’s space, I tend to put up the barricades and lock myself into my world. The people who work with me are those with whom I keep in contact and from whom I get my social news. It’s not a good thing, really, and it’s fortunate when an event like this pulls me out and gives me the chance to say hello to a lot of friends. I suspect this is the same for a lot of others in town.

Friends I was able to reconnect with included: Howard Beckerman, Candy Kugel, Dave Levy, Bill Plympton, John Dilworth, Jason McDonald, Signe Bauman and Lew Accenbach. The busyness in town seems to have shifted to Little Airplane Prods to Cartoon Pizza. As I said, it was nice to catch up.

Once Emerged From The Grey of Night by Paul Klee

Monday: Yesterday was the birthday anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr. Today we commemorate it.

I like coming into my studio when no one else is here. It’s quiet and comfortable. Usually, also, the phone isn’t ringing so I can feel as if I’m getting a jump on my week’s work.

There’s an interesting and unusual photo of Walt Disney up at Jenny Lerew’s Blackwing Diaries. It’s not every day that you see the darker side of Disney in publicly released photos. Worth a look. (Note: I’ve corrected a malfunctioning link here. Sorry.)

Hoodwinked seems to be coming in near the top of the box office charts, having grossed more than $12 million in its first three days. So much for Michael Barrier‘s Jan. 9th posting which suggests producers might want to put their people all under one roof to make better films. The cgi folks have caught up to the 2D division of animation. It’s getting hard not to be cynical.

Just catching up with some NYTimes reading, I found Eldon Dedini‘s obit in Saturday’s paper. Odd that I was just looking at a couple of his early Playboy drawings yesterday in an old cartoonist’s collection I have. I have to admit, I was always more a Rowland Wilson fan. but you had to love Dedini’s juicy, fluid line. It always interested me that his work for the New Yorker seemed to have a completely different feel from those published in Playboy.
Mr. Dedini had recently had an exhibition of his work at the Sasoontsi Gallery in Salinas, Calif. to celebrate his forthcoming book, An Orgy of Playboy’s Dedini.

Book cover, “The Dedini Gallery”
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, pub., NY 1961

Turner Classic Movies continues to support quality in animation by showing some beautifully restored MGM cartoons on a program they call, Cartoon Alley. It airs, primarily, on Saturday mornings. For January, they have the following cartoons scheduled:

Cartoon Alley #1
07 Saturday 11:30 AM & 12 Thursday 5:30 AM
Features three Clark Gable caricatures: CooCoo Nut Grove (1936), Malibu Beach Party (1940), Hollywood Steps Out (1941).

Cartoon Alley #5 14 Saturday 11:30 AM
Features three Tex Avery Cartoons: Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), Batty Baseball (1944) and Swingshift Cinderella (1945).

Cartoon Alley #6 21 Saturday 11:30 AM
Features three early color shorts from Warner Bros: Honeymoon Hotel (1934), Beauty and the Beast (1934), I Haven’t Got a Hat (1935).

Cartoon Alley #7 28 Saturday 11:30 AM
Features three MGM shorts from The Captain and the Kids series: Cleaning House (1938), Petunia National Park (1939), Mama’s New Hat (1939).

Varied Notes:
I was enthralled with the program of Emily Hubley’s work at MOMA last night. She has a unique voice in animation, and she takes it and runs with it as few animators are doing. Her presentation was designed to focus on collaborations but seemed to highlight music in animation. How thrilling to hear one piece to the music of Yo Lo Tengo, and the see the same piece reworked to music composed by Sue Garner and performed live against the film. The energy of the live music changed the film completely; it became more haunting and poignant – a very different film utilising the same imagery. Don Christensen has composed the music for a number of Emily’s films, and he adds enormous effect to all he’s done. It was a great show.

Attending a lot of animation events in NYC, one sees a varied mix of animation peoople at different events. Those who go to Emily’s films, generally aren’t the people who’d go to a Warners show, and Bill Plympton brings out a very different mix. It’s an entertainment in itself, watching the varied faces. Eventually, I’ll have to get a camera to add some photos. How pleasant to be ushered into the crowded MOMA lobby by Will Rosenthal and son, Max. Janet Benn and Thelma Schenkel were also among the early arrivals. Inside, I saw John Canemaker, Biljana Labovic and Candy Kugel. At the gathering, afterward, were Jeff Scher, Jeremiah Dickey and MOMA coordinator, Charles Silver.

A Christmas Card posting I missed turned out to be one of the most interesting for me. On Jen Lerew’s Blog, Blackwing Diaries, she posted two cards from the 50′s Disney: a 1955 Christmas card featuring the Mickey Mouse club and another from 1956 showing Mickey welcoming us into the magic of Disneyland.
Back in the mid-Fifties, I sent a fan letter to Joshua Meador. I had to have been 10 years old. What came back was a postcard, a largish postcard of Disney standing with an airbrushed Mickey on his Disneyland TV desk. It wasn’t the airbrush they do today trying to make everything look like real dolls, but it was an airbrush that just added highlights. I quickly learned that I could get more and different cards by sending more letters, and I did. I kept them for years, but somehow lost them in a move.
My favorite postcard was one with about fifty drawn picture frames. Within each was another Disney character. All of the images were tiny, but somehow Brer Fox stands out in my memory. He was coming out of his frame. I’d love to see that card again. Anyway, I did receive that very same Christmas card welcoming me into Disneyland, and I have to thank Jen for posting that card and bringing back some pleasant memories.

By the way, speaking of Blackwing Diaries, maybe if we all joined together we could get Eberhard Faber . . . er . . . Faber-Castell to produce Blackwing Pencils again. It’s amazing to learn that people other than animators swore by these pencils – including a lot of celebrities. The pencils sell for $250 a box on ebay.

A new addition to our main site is a listing of upcoming screenings. Since a lot of our films are in constant rotation on HBO & HBO Family, we’ll be updating this listing on a monthly basis. Any upcoming screenings of our shorts theatrically, or otherwise, will also be included on this page.

For those of you who get up early and are searcing for Sporn animated films this is the upcoming schedule for the rest of DEC. on HBO Family:

MIKE MULLIGAN & HIS STEAMSHOVEL
Sat 12/24 06:00 AM HBO FAMILY – EAST / 09:00 AM – WEST

THE MARZIPAN PIG
Sat 12/31 06:00 AM HBO FAMILY – EAST / 09:00 AM – WEST

The last transit strike in NYC happened almost 26 years ago. I had just formed my own company and was in the process of making the first film for my first client, The Learning Corporation of America. Byron Blackbear and The Scientific Method was in production in two Boroughs of New York. I was animating and filming it out of my apartment in Queens, and the Ink & Paint was being done out of the apartment of Steven Parton, who was supervising a staff of two: Bridget Thorne and Patty Hoyt. I made daily trips to Manhattan to deliver art I’d animated the day before and pick up the cels that had been colored. Back home, I animated or did backgrounds for the remainder of the day; I shot the film at night. Of course once the transit strike hit, everything went topsy-turvy. Steve was located on 42nd Street, so Patty and Bridget had long walks from up and downtown.
I had a car back then; with a strike on, I would drive in very late at night – to avoid other traffic – to make the exchange with Steve or get my film to the lab. I remember that I wasn’t particularly annoyed about that strike; as a matter of fact, I saw it as a fun adventure. This was particularly true in light of my first film in production that was initiating my own company.
Somehow the current strike sparked that memory that had remained hidden for so long and probably would have stayed hidden otherwise. I wonder if I’ll remember anything about this strike. Walking two miles to and from work isn’t the fun-adventure I’d had back in 1980, but it isn’t terrible. I can use the exercise. The work in my studio isn’t getting all the attention it should. People have to travel long distances to get here or are working home if they can. I suppose with Christmas around the corner work might have slowed a bit anyway. Maybe the real problem I’m having is that the party mood doesn’t seem to be as buoyant as it might, or maybe I’m just getting old.

Greg Ford has put together another series of programs celebrating the Cartoon Musical. This will take place at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center from Dec. 28th through Jan. 4th. Several features and lots of shorts are being screened. Betty, Popeye, Woody and Bugs will be joined by feature presentations of Hoppity Goes To Town, Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, and South Park Bigger Longer and Uncut. These prints are hard to come by, and somehow Greg always gets stunning, new 35mm prints. Make plans soon; these shows sell out.

An early morning note: The subway strike that started today in NYC makes me think about one of my favorite films, Redball Express by Steve Segal. This is a 3 minute short that was animated on film in 1976. Steve is an animator who left Virginia for California to work on various projects including animation on The Brave Little Toaster. He moved on to PIXAR where he worked on a number of films including Toy Story.
For some reason this early short of his has affected me with probably something that Norman McClaren’s drawn-on-film shorts brought to earlier audiences. It’s so alive and pleasant and well made; to me it seems to synthesize the very notion of animation. I bought a print from Steve way back when and still infrequently run it. I’ve never really thought of replacing it with a dvd version – if one exists; somehow it belongs on the 16mm film that I have. I thought of Steve and this film recently because he contacted me (via Karl Cohen). We hadn’t spoken (albeit through email) in over 20 years, and I was pleased to have heard from him. I guess the internet is the new Red Ball Express.