ADVICE FROM MILT

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!"

MILT TALKS ABOUT 3D TV

INT. BURGER RESTAURANT: 

MILT: "Okay, I gotta clear the table so I can tell you about the big thing that's coming up...."

EDDIE (VO): "Big thing?

MILT: "Yeah! My family and I are soon to become owners of...are you ready for this?...a (Ahem!)...55' Samsung 3D TV!  There's a clearance sale on and I can get it for a thousand bucks. That's a set that normally sells for three grand or more." 

EDDIE (VO): "A 3D TV!!??? Woooow! That's great!!!!! Invite me over! But how come it's so cheap? Samsung's a big brand."

MILT: "Ahhh, good question! The answer is that Samsung is debuting a new set called the 'Smart TV' that doesn't use a remote. It responds to hand commands.  You change the settings from your chair just by wiggling your hands."

EDDIE (VO): "Yikes! That's great...but it's not worth an extra two thousand bucks."

MILT: "Exactly! When I first heard about the Smart TV I thought, 'Oh, no! Another excuse to charge an arm and a leg for a TV!' Then I thought, 'Wait a minute! What are they gonna do with the old sets?' A friend called and told me about the sale and that clinched it. "

MILT: "Eddie, have you ever seen 3D on TV?"

EDDIE (VO): "Yeah, a while back in Best Buy, but the glasses were kinda clunky."

MILT: "Not any more. These glasses are low profile. Wearing them is like wearing Ray Bans...well, er...sort of. Anyway, they're only a small distraction. You just have to hold them close up to the set to activate them. The glasses are free, and so is the Blue Ray player. The store throws them in for the price of the set!"

MILT: "3D is amazing!!!!! I saw it over a friend's house. We watched excerpts from the 3D disks of 'Tangled' and 'Polar Express.' You wouldn't believe it. They looked great! Well...as great as those kind of films can look."

EDDIE (VO): "You don't hear so much about 3D TV these days. Maybe the sets didn't sell as well as expected."

MILT: "Yeah, it's hard to know if the industry will continue to support it. I think it will, but who knows? Maybe the prices are too high. I bet they'd sell a lot more TVs if the price was lower. Anyway, I'm happy because the price is a steal even without the 3D.

Oh, and I forgot to say that the set I want to get is made in Korea. My friend says you have to avoid stores like Frye's because their sets are likely made in China where the standards are lower." 

EDDIE (VO): "Hey Milt, do you mind if I put this on Theory Corner? Maybe somebody else'll save a buck on a set, just like you will."

MILT: "Sure, go ahead! If enough people buy 3D TVs, then it'll become standard!"

   

WHY DID CRITICS UNDERRATE CLAMPETT?

INT. FAST FOOD RESTAURANT:

MILT: "Hey, Eddie...you want to hear my latest thoughts on Clampett?"

EDDIE (VO): "More Clampett theories!!! Go ahead. I'm all ears!"

 MILT: "Well, Clampett gets a lot of attention these days and it's easy to forget that at one time he was denied the press that other 40s Warner directors got. Have you ever wondered how that came about?

EDDIE (VO): "Yeah, all the time. At one time Chuck and Friz got a lot of the credit, even though Bob was obviously the better filmmaker. Chuck outlived Bob and was pretty articulate about why he did what he did. I guess it pays to be eloquent."

MILT: "Well maybe, but I think it went deeper than that."

MILT: "The main reason was that Chuck and Friz relied on rules and formulas that were already described in books and magazine articles by the mid 30s. They were ready made for historians and critics to reference. Bob was more visceral and innovative. There were no ready-made words to describe what he was getting at."

EDDIE (VO): "Wow! True enough! In a Jones cartoon the bad guy always deserved what he got and Bugs administered the punishment. That's fine, but it got repetitive. After a while you found yourself yearning for a Clampett cartoon where Bugs just bothered the heck out of a poor, innocent patsy like Elmer. It just felt right." 

MILT: "Exactly. Bugs was shaking people out of their complacency. That's just classic comedy."

EDDIE (VO): "Haw! Try to explain that to Chuck and Friz, or to a critic who's obsessed with formulas."

MILT: "I sum it up this way: rules are fine in their place, but let's face it......"

MILT: "Rules are for beginners!"

************

P.S. In summing up Milt's ideas I sometimes resorted to a fictional paraphrase. If I goofed up, I hope he'll correct me in the comments section.

P.P.S. When I told a friend that I'd be doing a photo story about Milt he asked if I was going to add a wig and mustache. I indignantly replied that Milt is a good friend and that I would never stoop to such a cheap trick. 

THEORYBOY INTERVIEWS MILT GRAY

Well, slightly exaggerating.  Above, the heroine of Milt Gray's new web comic, "Ms. Viagri Ampleten."

Sepia sketches by John Kricfalusi

Greetings Theory Cornerites! Uncle Eddie here.  That's me above, second from the left. You know, we've interviewed many celebrities on this site: Sammy, Dean, Frank, and even Bob Clampett, but none has been as tall as our present subject, Simpsons timing director, animator, Clampett fan and web cartoonist, the 6' 6" "Tower of Power," MILT GRAY. "Hi MILT!"

MILT : "Hi, Uncle Eddie! Wanna see my latest drawing of Viagri Ampleten?"

UNCLE EDDIE: "Sure! Wow! She certainly is...(gulp!)...ample. So this is your new web comic character! She's a spy, right?"

MILT: "Well, not exactly. She's a free agent. Sometimes she works for the government, and sometimes for private people. She takes on the really dangerous assignments that no one else wants to touch." 

UNCLE EDDIE: "How does she decide what jobs to take?"

MILT: "Good question. Well, she's more likely to take a job that gives her scope to follow her hobby, which is sex. She's on a crusade to liberate people from their sex hangups."

UNCLE EDDIE: "Uh oh! There goes your 'G' rating."

MILT: "'Not worried. I'm after whatever rating makes sense for the stories I'm telling.  I figure the readers will tell me how graphic I should go."

UNCLE EDDIE: "How did you figure out the format?  There can't be many web comics that scan the way yours does."

MILT: "Yeah, it works great, doesn't it? It came about because the project started as an animated cartoon, and the panels were meant to be layouts. That's why they're all the same size. When I decided to do a web comic instead, it seemed like a natural outgrowth of that to put them in a column and let the reader scroll down. I guess I was lucky, because everybody seems to like it that way."

UNCLE EDDIE: "How did you color it?"

MILT: "Well, I xeroxed the original drawings down to a size my scanner could take, then I just fed them in.  The color was done on Photoshop by my color stylist, Cynthia Macintosh. 

UNCLE EDDIE: "I'll put a few of the panels up (that's them above, cropped badly by me, and in a different format than the one Milt uses. I was just too sleepy to do it right).  Boy, you can tell that an animator drew them."

MILT: "Thanks. There's a lot that's different about this comic. I hope it influences things. The web is a great vehicle for comics, and it'll get even better if we continue to experiment."


Milts web comic:  http://www.viagriampleten.com