MY LUNCH WITH MIKE

Here's my own version of the Welles/Jaglom restaurant-type dialogue, with Mike as a sort of Orson Welles.  It's a fairly accurate account of what we actually talked about there, but Mike won't allow me to post his picture so I've had to represent him with pictures of Tex Avery's wolf. If you've ever been in a restaurant with Mike you  know how apt that is. The man is never less than fully aware of what the pulchritude in the room is doing. 


INT. RESTAURANT:


EDDIE: "I wish I could remember which actor said that the purpose of the acting in a scene is to make it memorable."

MIKE: "Yeah, like Eli Wallach did with Tuco in 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.' "

EDDIE: "Wow! A great example! Everything he did in that film was memorable. He went way beyond what must have been in the script."

MIKE: "That's what every actor should do. It's an actor's job to bring something to the table that only he can provide. 90% of acting is cast...Uh, Eddie, QUICK! Look at the salad bar! The girl...the girl!"

EDDIE: "Huh? That's not a girl...that's a guy."

MIKE: "No, no, no! Marone!!!! Not him! What's the matter with you? The girl behind the salad bar!"

EDDIE: "Can we get back to..."

MIKE: "Oh, yeah...sure, sure...I didn't mean to interrupt your high tone babbling with something as trivial as a drop dead gorgeous girl. Paaardon moi. So what were you jabbering about, Edward?"

EDDIE: "Acting."

MIKE: "Acting? Oh, right...okay. Well, remember what Jodi Foster said in that Esquire article...the one where they ask a famous person, 'What have you learned?' " She said she learned the most from DeNiro when they were doing the Taxi film."

EDDIE: "Really? What did he say?...er, Mike, you're not paying attention!"

MIKE; "Did you see what JUST WALKED IN? Did you SEE her? Oh, my Gaaaawd!"

EDDIE: "That's her boyfriend with her. You're gonna get a knuckle sandwich, wait and see."

MIKE: It'd be worth it, it'd be worth it!!!!

EDDIE: "...MIKE! Nearby: oyfriendbay (Pig Latin for 'boyfriend'). Ucklenay andwichsay (Pig Latin for 'knuckle sandwich') coming this way."


MIKE: "Okay, okay. Don't worry about it. Well, DeNiro took Foster out to lunch four times and every time he went over her lines with her. She didn't understand why because she already knew her lines but the fourth time she realized what was going on. He was trying to provoke her to be the character the lines were about, and not just a reader of lines.

He said it was okay to deviate from the lines if she was totally in character and remembered to bring it all back to the phrase that would justify his dialogue, which came next. Foster said she never forgot that."

EDDIE: "That's great! That must be how Woody....."

MIKE: "EDDIEEDDIEEDDIEEDDIE!!!!! Speaking of a WOODY, check out that girl behind the counter! The one with the black hair. OOH, MY GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWDDDD!!!!!!!!..........."

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MY DINNER (LUNCH) WITH ANDRE (JOHN K) #9

It was pizza for lunch and, as we all know, pizza is the food of the gods! John got there before I did and immediately started drawing background ideas for The George Liquor show. I don't know why he's always saying that he's not good at backgrounds...the drawings were great!



I talked about a party I did caricatures for the previous night. I didn't bring a camera, so I have no pictures to put up, but it's just as well because the night didn't go as well as I'd hoped. On the way to the party I got it into my head to draw the guys very, very ugly, just for fun. As it turned out I drew them so ugly that I somehow crossed the line into insult. One guy was positively grief-stricken! I felt terrible for being such a jerk. I'm amazed that I didn't get slugged!

The frame grab above is from a Popeye cartoon that Bob Jacques put up. I include it here because the ugly Bluto is where I got the notion to draw people the way I did...not in drag, but just in really extreme poses. John commiserated. Caricature can be a dirty business!



We talked some about the Maxim "Hundred Hotties" party we got to go to the night before last. I've never been to the Playboy Mansion but I imagine that this is what the parties there must have been like. Girls were everywhere! Mike should have been there...he would have thought he'd died and gone to heaven. The problem was that the music was so loud that I couldn't hear what people were saying, even when they were standing right next to me.



I met what appeared to be some pretty creative advertising people. I'd love to tell you what they said but the music was such that I only saw their lips moving. One thing I managed to get out of it: advertising, at least the kind that's geared to young guys, is all about what's perceived to be hip. If you're thinking of making a career in advertising and you're not hip, then think again.



Somehow we drifted into a discussion of "Mandrake the Magician" and "The Phantom," two newspaper strips that had the distinction of being action strips without any action. I looked it up when I came home and sure enough, they were created by the same guy, a radio writer and announcer by the name of Falk. He didn't draw, he found somebody else to do it.




Then there was the Phantom ...I think the Phantom was the first hero to dress in tights. He was pre-Superman so he didn't have any super powers, just a gun like The Shadow used to have. John said that was perfectly respectable; even Mighty Mouse had a gun in the early days. He used to shoot cats.

My childhood recollection of The Phantom was that he started as a white slave in Arabia and somehow managed to escape from his cruel slave owners. He dedicated the rest of his life to being a nemesis to the slave trade. That's not the story that's on the net but I could swear that that's what I read. He found a cave and a horse who would live in the cave with him, and he just sat around all day on a skull throne waiting for the phone to ring with news of the next slave caravan.



While John and I were talking about the Phantom, an extremely old woman was slowly walked into the restaurant by her care-giver. I've never seen a person that old in a restaurant, especially one who was walking and not riding in a wheelchair. Could she have been there to get pizza? Anyway, bear with me, I have a reason for bringing this up.

The woman's method of walking was to slowly slide her feet across the rug. She never lifted her feet, she just slid, and her attendant held her with great difficulty around the waist. This worked OK until she came to a tiny, little, insignificant wrinkle in the rug. A normal person would have walked on it without noticing it, or have just stepped over it. Not this poor woman. When she reached the crease she had to stop, just as if she'd hit a brick wall. She tried and tried to get past but couldn't. She was like a Flatlander who could be stopped by a single line!

I'm ashamed to say that while this was going on I was just sitting dumbfounded, watching it all. I can't believe I was so dense as to watch without offering to help. Fortunately some other men leaped up and managed to smooth out the wrinkle in the rug. The woman was too frail to risk lifting her. I can't help repeating what I said before...imagine being so frail as to be stopped by a single line on a carpet!

Well, that's it...No, wait! I forgot to mention the picture above...I found it on the net when I was looking for a picture of Mandrake. It's the living room of the creator of the old newspaper strip, "Mark Trail." It's a nifty room, huh? He actually did live in the outback, just like his comic strip character!

ANOTHER "MY DINNER WITH ANDRE" (ACTUALLY JOHN K)

Today we met again at "The Bear Pit," a local sawdust-on-the-floor barbecue restaurant with Preston Blair - style paintings all around the walls. When I came in John was reading The National Enquirer, which is essential reading for cartoonists since it contains all the necessary info about what stars have cellulite. Orders were placed and the conversation commenced.

We began with a fascinating discussion of Scribner but that'll require a lot of pictures to explain, so I'll save it for last.

After Scribner we talked for a bit about how old I look in those photo essay pictures I took. Maybe anticipating an outpouring of self-pity, John kindly said I didn't look that old in real life, but really, that wasn't necessary. I explained that I'd reached an advanced philosophical level where I was beyond worldly concerns like screamingly grotesque wrinkles. People at my elevated level laugh at people who worry about things like that. "Ha!", we say, "Ha!"

Then we talked for a while about what tragic creatures men are. Poor men spend their whole lives chasing after sex and get only a fraction of what they need. John said that's why men have to go to war, because somebody has to be made to pay for our frustration at not being able to have a harem.

Talking about sex brought us around to Tex Avery, maybe the most heterosexual director of the color cartoon era. We both agreed that after Clampett, Tex was the greatest cartoon director. Jones ranks third, which is still a very high position.

Jones was all about telling linear stories in a humorous, well-executed and professional manner. Clampett was a creature of the big band and jitterbug era, and also of the golden age of radio and live-action film comedy. He swam in media. He had street smarts, charisma and almost unfailing intuition. In John's words, he made cartoons an "experience."

Somehow (?) this digressed into a discussion of Tim Russert (spelled right?), the TV news commentator. Russert used to be a rock & roll promoter and he still looks like someone who could tell a good dirty joke. You have to admire the guy for his ability to re-invent himself as a news commentator. Here's (above) a napkin drawing John did of him. I like the Thurber arms and serious expression.

Here's (above) what we talked about most of the time. John's been telling me that the new Warner set contains a break-through print of Clampett's "Eatin' on the Cuff." He said the amazing clarity of the print allows us to see never-before-seen (by this generation) nuances in the cartooning and animation, and that this necessitates a re-evaluation of the film as one of Clampett's best. He makes the case in a wonderful post that's on his site now:

http://www.johnkstuff.blogspot.com/

I'd already read the blog and I had to admit that John was right. Take a look at these Scribner drawings. The happy energy, the love of cartooning, the inventive poses, the beautiful proportions and attention to detail are awe-inspiring! I love the wrinkled sleeves...who said you can't animate wrinkled clothing? The black and white values are handled so well that you don't even miss the color.

Notice that the girl looks feminine and funny at the same time. Scribner was able to do both! After seeing this it's going to be hard to go back to seeing cartoon girls that are only one or the other.

Here the Veronica Lake spider shows off her glorious schnoz. Note the big hands and big eyes. My favorite cartoon characters usually have big hands and eyes. That's what you make expressions with. In my world only secondary characters have small hands and small eyes.

Here's (above) a wonderful example of Scribner cartooning. It's just a back shot, yet it leaves me breathless! The hair and large lower body are hilarious and the size and orientation of the legs are inspired!


You can say that real girls don't look like that, but are you sure? I see girls (above) who are a bit like that all the time.

Anyway, I digress. We talked endlessly about Scribner and spent some time trying to figure out why Clampett, who was very prolific in his black and white period, turned out fewer cartoons a year in his color period. Maybe he was busy developing his own projects on the side, maybe good work requires more time. We could only guess.

Anyway, the conversation eventually ran out of gas and we found ourselves out in the blinding sunlight of the parking lot, ready to face another day!

MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (JOHN K) PART#3

We met at noon at the local Italian restaurant. John ordered Chicken Calizonne, which was good, but didn't have a bit of chicken in it. Boy, John doesn't have much luck with restaurants! Anyway, the conversation commenced.

We got to talking about the 70s when even white people wore afros. It was the age of Superfly!

Black guys' apartments of that era were always, with almost no exception, decorated with black leather and chrome. They're not like that now, but in those days it was mandatory.

All the rooms were like that, and they were spotless. You could eat off the floor! No clutter like in my house. Nothing but furniture and walls and vast amounts of empty space.

Invariably the pictures on the walls were cloth prints, framed with chrome, The subject was always the same: naked black women with huge afros. I guess if you didn't have these you were shunned by other blacks.

We marveled at how many Superfly accessories you could buy in those days: afro salt shakers, afro lamps, clippers to give your dog an afro...you could put an afro on anything and people would buy it! To make the point John drew some accessories of his own on his napkin, starting with the afro faucet (above).

Here's (above) the afro refrigerator and the afro parakeet with white double-pronged disco belt.

Then there's the afro pubic hair drawing which, in case kids are reading, I'll reproduce tiny. Anyway, John proved his point...anything can be embellished with an afro.

Another subject we hit was the shocking lack of facial expressions and body language in men. What's going on? Men are so stiff (you know what I mean)! They're like cigar store indians!

It's a point of honor among men to look as lifeless as possible. What gives?

Girls, on the other hand, seem to get more elastic every day. Guys, we're loosing the rubber war!

Well, there was more, but that's all I have time for. Once again we sighed, knowing the world would probably disregard what was expressed here this afternoon.