INT. FAST FOOD RESTAURANT
MILT: "Hi Eddie! Am I late?"
EDDIE (VO): "No, no. Have a seat."
MILT: "What's the matter? Why so glum on this wonderful day Mother Earth has given us?"
EDDIE: "Glum? Do I look glum? I'm not...I'm not......"
EDDIE: "...Oh, what's the use of hiding it? I've had a bad day!"
MILT: "A bad day? Really? What happened?"
EDDIE: "Well, this morning my wife and I were standing there at the barbecue, nibbling on bits of hamburger..."
MILT: "Say no more! I see the problem. Burgers are full of cattle steroids."
EDDIE: "Weeell.... there's more. My wife leaned too close to the coals and caught fire so I reached for a bucket of water and threw it on her. Only it wasn't water. It was battery acid. She was reduced to brain, a lung and an eyeball."
MILT: "Eddie, Eddie, Eddie...how often have I told you....meat effects your senses, including your vision."
EDDIE: "That's not all! I scooped the brain and guts into a shoebox and ran for the hospital. On the way I fell into a manhole and dropped the box. The contents were immediately chewed by vicious dogs."
MILT: "That means the dogs got some of the steroids. See how that stuff spreads through the ecosystem?"
EDDIE: "Wait, wait, there's more! A tanker truck came by and its cargo of lemon juice and pepper splashed onto the still-living brain. It was horrible. The brain twisted and writhed in pain.
Me, I crawled out of the manhole but my legs were shattered. I had to crawl here over gravel and broken glass. It took hours."
MILT: "Well you can't expect to make good time if you insist on eating things like cattle steroids! I mean, geez!"
MILT: "Look, how 'bout we get a couple of salads, then you'll feel better."
EDDIE (VO): "Yeah, a salad! You're a wise man, Milt. I'm starting to feel better already!"
14 comments:
Roberto sez:
"Rebecca Sugar's new cartoon is one of the most exciting pieces of new animation I've seen in years! I will definitely be watching this series regularly and I wish I could have worked on it myself. You and Vincent Waller's kind of drawing styles would have been perfect for the show.
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/tv/steven-universe-rebecca-sugar-cartoon-network-83118.html
Lots of amazing talent made it onto the screen and it's the kind of cartoon I would have loved to see as a kid. It's not mean spirited at all, but purely fun. I can also sense a lot of individuality and style in this cartoon. It doesn't look like another flat style cartoon or fake Spumco cartoon, no offense to you Eddie.
It almost makes up not picking up Chris Reccardi's Meddlen Meadows pilot and turning that into a show."
Hah! Nothing cheers me up like brain stems writhing in lemon pepper.
Here's Rebecca Sugars thesis film:
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/brewtv/singles-15727.html
Good stuff!
Cartoon Brew has been on fire with original, interesting content lately, though the site overall has jumped the shark since Jerry Beck left. Here's a student film by a really talented cartoonist by the name of Tom Law.
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/student/this-actually-happens-a-lot-by-tom-law-83203.html
This is what I want to see more of in animation. People who have their own ideas and interpretations of the world but can actually draw really well too!
Roberto, Joshua: Thanks for the links! I got a 404 error message on Steven Universe, so I wasn't able to watch it. I did watch "Singles." It was thought-provoking but would have benefitted from more gags.
Sugar and Law are both talented people, but they have a post modern, Phillip Glass-Dan Clowes sensibility. I like to see more passion.
So, is the new animated film "Epic" worth the watch?
I hope you got my comment yesterday. I was responding to what you saying about Rebecca Sugar and Tom Law and offering my take on the direction animation should be taking. Wasn't meant to be political if you got confused over how I was using those words.
Anon: I'm a comedy guy and Epic looks like a modern executive-driven adventure. The action scenes I saw look better than ones in most other recent films in that genre, so obviously some good people worked on it.
Roberto: Sugar and Law are obviously talented, but in the two films I saw they chose to work with themes that were cold and lacking in street appeal.
I'm glad they're doing what they do, and I wish them all the luck in the world, but what the industry desperately, DESPERATELY needs right now is passion.
Anyway, you sound like you were reacting to their skill and that's fine.
Thanks for clarifying what you were trying to say, Eddie, and I completely agree with you.
The biggest problem is getting past all the roadblocks it takes just to pitch a decently drawn cartoon for TV and movies and then having to deal with executive changes and input. If I were in charge of a cartoon show, I would try to come up with something that appeal to a wide audience of people, sort of like SpongeBob did in its first few seasons, but make funny, appealing drawing and cartooning a must.
There are a lot of possibilities in adult animation that I've been exploring lately and coming up with ideas for. Sure, there have been great successes in that genre like The Simpsons but not many of those shows want to embrace all the possibilities strong, funny drawing can bring to the writing.
It makes me wish that the whole theatrical cartoon industry would come back, but the Supreme Court literally stabbed a knife into the animation industry back in the 1948 U.S. vs Paramount Pictures case.
Our best hope is that programs like Toon Boom will be developed to the point where animation can be efficiently done domestically.
As long as it continues to be outsourced, whatever passion the cartoonists try to put into the drawings will most likely get watered down, though Rough Draft has been one of the best out of these overseas studios.
Eddie,
I remember you telling me I should give comics a shot when we met in Ikea.
Several years later, I decided to take that advice. I set up a new site just for my comics stuff. It's www.bakertoons.com
Maybe I should take up comics myself or at least doing them to practice staging and coming up with original, functional poses. I already have quite a knack for studying classic comics and how they work and can basically draw from any perspective that I want. Not having a drawing tablet or Photoshop really sucks.
Just for you and many others who have helped me immensely over the years, I will continue to keep studying and practicing. There was a point this year where I was barely doing any studies at all.
Poor Milt! He's the last person on Earth who will agree to be photographed, and everyone talks about themselves instead of his great performance in this post.
Brubaker: Nice! You've got a shot at getting in the papers.
Steve: Yeah, Milt did a great job!
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