BETTE DAVIS ACTING TECHNIQUES

I'm a huge Bette Davis fan, and so are lots of people in the animation industry.  In view of that, it's hard to imagine why her style of acting, or anything remotely similar to it,  never gets into gig studio feature animation. Our industry churns out cartloads of perky, predictable, feminist Cal Arts heroines that nobody cares about. You'd think that in all that clutter somebody would find room for a heroine based on a different model.  Someone more like...well, like Bette. 

I thought it might be fun to examine what that style consists of.  It's a big subject, and we won't be able to cover it all in one post, but we can make a start.

Come to think of it, maybe modern actresses would have a hard time doing what Bette did, because her acting style was built around around carefully articulated speech, and not many film actors study that any more.  Bette gives almost every new syllable a different facial expression.

I also love the technique (above) called "leading with your eyes," a trick used so often by Davis that it ought to be named after her.  

Boy, she really fishes (above) for those those consonants.  She inflates her chest and cranks her head up in order to snatch them from the air.

Davis has great cheeks (above) , that look sunny when she smiles.  Sometimes she plays against type and combines happy cheeks with seedy eyes. 

Sometimes she says a whole word or two with her eyes closed.  Dark eyelashes and high, clearly defined eyelashes  on a smooth face help the effect.

Sometimes Bette scans the person she's talking to (above) with her eyes. She carefully studies the wrinkles and buttons on the other person's shirt while they talk. This is a classic scene stealer's trick.

Talking about scene stealing, here's (above) Davis stealing a scene from Mariam Hopkins.  Hopkins does a lot a lot of broad crying here, and no doubt believed she was the center of attention when the scene was shot,  but the scene really belongs to Bette.  She employs an attention-getting stare that vaudevillians called "the fish."

Once Davis stole a scene from another actress by unbuttoning her blouse in the shadows behind the woman. Davis played hardball, no doubt about it. Let me make it clear that I'm not criticizing her for this. She honed scene stealing into an effective style, and backed it up with virtuoso acting. I wouldn't have wanted her to change a thing.

Davis (above)must have spent a lot of time infront of a mirror, getting the character right.

She could make faces that were unique and unforgettable, like the one above.  Talk about a picture being worth a thousand words....

Ditto.

I REVIEW THE iPAD

A couple of days ago I visited Steve Worth and he let me play with his new, fully-loaded iPad. To say I was impressed would be an understatement.  More than ever I'm convinced that this device is a true game changer, and not just an expensive toy.  Buy one and you may never use your laptop again.

To begin with, this thing is FUN to use. Navigating with it is like working a video game controller. You use your thumbs a lot, and you end up moving the machine all over the place, at least I did.  I'll come back to this in a minute.

The negatives? Let's see.....it was a little heavier than expected, but you get used to that.  A number of important places to tap weren't marked, but you get used to that, too. The scrolling overshot a bit. I forgot to test it on a Flash film,  but I watched part of Clampett's "Tortoise Wins by a Hare," and it was gorgeous. I couldn't find a still frame mode, but the paused frames were rock steady. The resolution was superb, far superior to the one on the laptop that was in the room.

The fun aspect of the device is difficult to exaggerate.  Using it is an intense experience. You get a lot accomplished in a short amount of time, and have a ton of fun doing it. You have so much fun that it's a bit exhausting, and after a while you're ready to put it down and do things in the real world. Isn't that wonderful!? If you have a computer addiction, this might be the cure.

I wonder what changes this new medium will bring? Every new medium favors a new type of content. What will look horrible on iPad that currently looks good on desktops? My own  blog for one thing. I hate to admit it, but this blog sucks on the new machine. It looks fine on my widescreen desktop where there's plenty of room for sidebars, but it gets clobbered on the pad. Good Grief! Am I doomed to end up on the trash heap of history!?

Oh, one more thing...just a small item, nothing important.......nothing except: SKETCHBOOK PRO IS AVAILABLE AS AN APP...AND IT COSTS ONLY EIGHT FREAKING DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And (possibly) no need to own a cintiq....with a stylus the iPad may serve as a cintiq! Can you imagine that? GOOD LORD! STEVE JOBS IS A MIRACLE WORKER!


BTW: I have no experience with the Sketchbook Pro app, so I haven't personally seen the iPad function as a cintiq. This is how it was described by an article on the net, and I pass it on to you. Buyer beware!

A SHORT PLAY: "THE FRAME STORE"

INT. FRAME SHOP: AT THE COUNTER. A customer (BILL) talks on his cel phone while he waits for the proprietor. 


BILL (ON HIS CEL PHONE): "I'm in a frame store! You're not going to believe what happened! I found the perfect frame for that piece. It's green and looks like laminated cow skin. The only problem was the price: $300! That's more than I paid for the artwork! Anyway, the clerk orders it for me, and I put half the money down.


No, wait! There's more! I walk across the street and, lo and behold, I find another frame store that sells the exact same frame for half the price.  I couldn't believe it! Half the price! So I ran back here to the original store to get my money back, only it occurs to me that they might not want to give it to me, so I make up a story. Yeah, a story. You're going to die when you hear it! It's brilliant! It should be on a pedestal in the Museum of Excuses. Wait a minute....here comes the guy who runs the place. I gotta go!"


He pockets the phone. 


PROPRIETOR: "Hey! You just bought a frame. Don't tell me you want another one  already!"


BILL: "Well, not exactly. See, what happened is...I got a parking ticket while I was in here. It's expensive, so...I hate to say it...I won't be able to buy the frame I was going to buy. I just can't afford it now."


PROPRIETOR: "Geez, that's too bad! It was a nice frame."


BILL: "Yeah. It's turning out to be one of those days."


PROPRIETOR: "How much was it for?

BILL: "How much was what for?"

PROPRIETOR: "The parking ticket. How much was it for?"

BILL: "Oh yeah, the ticket...it was, um, er...three hundred dollars."

PROPRIETOR: "THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!??" It's not supposed to be $300 here! This is Santa Monica. Two hundred and fifty is what you get for a ticket here!"

BILL: "Oh. Well, I could be mista..."

PROPRIETOR: "Let me ask my partner. DAVE,  COME OUT HERE FOR A MINUTE!"

DAVE comes out with a big roll of plastic in his arms. He puts it down. 

DAVE: "Bubble wrap. I'm making a place for it in the back. What can I do you for?"

PROPRIETOR: "It's not for me, it's for him. This guy just got a parking ticket for 300 bucks."

DAVE: "THREE HUNDRED BUCKS!!??? It's never three hundred in Santa Monica! It's 250! Everybody knows that! Do you know what that means?"

BILL: "Wait a minute, if you're trying to imply that I'm not telling the t..."

DAVE (TO THE PROPRIETOR): "That means fifty bucks for the cop!"

PROPRIETOR: "Yep, fifty bucks! If he does 10 of those in a day, that's $500 a day."

DAVE: "$2,500 a week!"

PROPRIETOR: (on a calculator) "That's $125,000 a year! That's a felony!"

BILL: "Well, I..."

DAVE: "Man, I hate to hear stuff like this! It really eats at me, ya know? It just tears my guts out! One dirty cop ruins it for everybody! Santa Monica's a good town, and it deserves better than this. I'm gonna take this up with the city council!"

BILL: "Well, there's no use bothering the city councilmen..."

DAVE: "Whaddaya mean? I AM A CITY COUNCILMAN! Lemme see the ticket."

BILL: "The ticket?"

DAVE, PROPRIETOR (TOGETHER): "The parking ticket!"

BILL: "Well...well...er...um, the cop took it away. I just gave him a check."

PROPRIETOR: "What!!?? A check???  He took a CHECK from you???""

DAVE: "Whoa! Hold on! He's not supposed to take a check from you. He's not supposed to handle any money at all! Geeeez! This is big! The police here get federal money. That means the F.B.I.'s gonna get involved!" 

PROPRIETOR: "Congress, maybe! People are gonna get sent up for this!"

He reaches for the phone. 

BILL: "What are you doing!?" 

PROPRIETOR: "I'm gonna call the feds."

BILL (MORTIFIED):  "No, no, wait!...put the phone down...

DAVE: "This is no time to be kind, sir! This guy's gotta go down!" 

BILL: "PLEASE!!!! Just put the phone down!"

PROPRIETOR: "Huh...?"

BILL: "I um...well, I might as well just...spit it out.  I, uh.... I found a place across the street that sells the same frame for half the price. You charge $300 and they charge 150 for the same thing. I... just...wanted...to........to.... well...get-the-money-back-so-I-could-buy-it-from-them-instead.  There, I said it."

AN AWKWARD MOMENT as all three stare at the floor in silence, then....


DAVE: "I gotta put this bubble wrap away!"

DAVE EXITS.

PROPRIETOR: "Aw, that wasn't nice."

BILL: "Look, I'm really sorry. Tell you what. I'll still take the frame from you. I gave you half before, and I'll pay you the rest now. You don't have to wait til the order comes in. It's the least I can do. "


PROPRIETOR: "Alright. I'll write up a receipt......here." 


BILL: "Wait a minute! This for $400. That's a hundred dollars extra. It says here that you're giving me gold wire and platinum nails. I didn't ask for that!"


PROPRIETOR (LOOKS BILL IN THE EYE): "Sure you did."

DAVE (AFTER A BEAT, RESIGNED): "(sigh!) Sure I did."


BILL, broken, slowly folds the receipt and puts it in his wallet. Just as he does,  a nervous woman enters.


WOMAN (TO PROPRIETOR): "Um, I was in here a little while ago and ordered a frame. I hate to ask for this, but I need my down payment back. The doctor just said that my poor mother is sick. She's...um...throwing up constantly. We'll need the money for medicine."


PROPRIETOR: "Gee, that's a shame. What kind of sickness does she have?"


WOMAN: "What kind? Er...well, um...rheumatism."


PROPRIETOR: "Rheumatism!!!?? Nobody throws up over rheumatism! Who is this doctor? Who did he tell you he was? Maybe he's a not a real doctor! Geez, I hate to see people get cheated! Let me ask my partner about this. DAVE, CAN YOU COME OUT HERE FOR A MINUTE!!???"


FADE OUT.


THE END


The play is copyright 2010 by Eddie Fitzgerald. Anyone can use it for non-commercial purposes without asking, as long as the authorship is attached.

MORE ABOUT WALLY WOOD

Remember this picture (above)? I put it up a week ago to illustrate the point that Wally Wood certainly loved his Ikea furniture. I kinda like it too. Thanks to Ikea, anybody can have a 50s bachelor pad at a reasonable price. 

Anyway, I thought the picture above deserved a second look. It reminds me that the young and struggling Wood was probably pretty dependant on his magazine reference. Before he worked on Mad, Wood shared an office with realistic artists Frazetta and Williamson, and was under a lot of pressure to improve his realistic drawing quickly. 

For interior backgrounds Wood seemed to prefer reference that that emphasized perspective and the blocky nature of furniture. My guess is that he chose these because he was insecure about his use of perspective and found the clarity and simplicity of these mathematical pictures to be helpful. 


I like to think that somewhere along the line it dawned on him that the simple perspectives he was using were funny. Maybe he began to laugh at his own pictures. Maybe after a point he decided that competing with Williamson and Frazetta for realism was pointless, and he broke out into pure style. 

You could argue that his handling of human characters evolved the same way. At first Wood relied heavily on magazine reference. The girl above strikes a fashion magazine pose when she points her gun.  Look at her legs and feet. That's an odd way to stand when you're supposed to be in the throws of murderous passion. 

Eventually Wood would transcend this too obvious use of reference, but a lot of people believe he did uniquely interesting work in this period, when he had a foot in both worlds, and was making a transition to something more stylized.  The reference anchored him, made his work more complex. The space patrol girl is funny in her model pose, but she's also dignified, confident, and iconic. Her contradictions make her a puzzle that we enjoy trying to solve. And it all takes place in a bizarre bachelor pad full of obsessively blocky shapes. 

A

Could this (above) have been the magazine ad that Wood referenced?   The legs are the same, so is the hair style...sort of.  The model's also off balance, just like the space girl in Wood's picture. 


Anyway, this is what I'm arguing here: that first out of necessity, then by choice, Wood thrust Pepsi Generation models into outer space to encounter hideous monsters.

WARD & BETTY KIMBALL

I was about to post something else when I discovered these pictures of the young Ward Kimball and his wife Betty on  Cartoon Brew.  I immediately put my own post aside, so I could put these up instead.  They're just too good to get anything less than the widest possible attention. 

As I said, the picture above is of animator Ward Kimball and his wife Betty.  Betty recently died at age 97. I don't know if I've ever seen a photo which so perfectly conveys young love.  The two seem so right for each other, so serene in each other's company.  If Eisenstadt or some other famous photographer had taken it, it would find its way onto the walls of a major museum.  Since it's a personal, family photo I don't know what its fate will be. 

Above, a beautiful sketch, which also conveys the feeling the  two had for each other.  What a powerful medium pencil and paper is when it's in the right hands!

Ward did this sketch (above) of Betty sleeping. Very nice! I wish I could have met her when she was alive!  I'm glad the two had each other.

Thanks to Amid for putting up the pictures I swiped.  You can see the whole set at Cartoon Brew, July 4th entry:

http://www.cartoonbrew.com

IT'S JULY FOURTH!!!!!

This (above) is a short video I made a couple of years ago to express what I felt about the Fourth of July. I considered  remaking it, but after watching it again I concluded that I'm not likely to improve on it,  so here it is, in all its 2008 glory.



While I'm at it, I'll throw in this nifty opening title from HBO's John Adams series.



Last, but not least, here's (above) a brief excerpt from that series where John Adams publicly commits to the ideal of liberty. I always get misty-eyed over stuff like this.

Have a good Fourth everybody!

RECENT ASTRONOMICAL PICTURES

More terrific photos from the Cassini orbiter! I still can't believe that it's possible to see the surface of a moon circling far away Saturn. Here's (above) a giant crater on Mimas. Be sure to click to enlarge all of the photos in this post.
 

Above, another moon of Saturn,  a small one called Phoebe. Maybe it's a captured comet.
 

No doubt everybody here is familiar with the Horsehead Nebula. I thought you'd like to see it in context, framed by a ring of gas.  The horsehead is the backlit, little chess piece in the upper middle of the picture.

This (above) is M66, one of the closest galaxies. It's a lot more impressive when seen large.

This is a detail of the edge of a another nearby galaxy.  Enlargement is a must.

Above, the Rosette Nebula.

Above, the stunningly beautiful Great Nebula in Orion.

The Itokawa Asteroid...and it has no craters! What gives!? It must have been recently formed. And what are all those pimple boulders doing there?

WHERE DID THE 60S COME FROM?

"What led to the 60's?" you ask. Good question. Well, there's Vietnam, the pill, drugs, civil rights...you name it. These are the standard explanations, and they're all important, but we all know there's gotta be more than that. You don't go from Ozzie and Harriet to bare-breasted at Woodstock in just a few years unless you have a lot of history pushing at your back.

What that history is, I don't know. I thought I might free-associate a little here, just to see what other explanations I could come up with. I've tried this before and what I came up with was woefully inadequate, but maybe I'll do better this time. Here goes.......

Well, there was TV. In the 50s and early 60s adults hadn't become addicted to it yet, but kids watched a ton of it.  Most of the dramas were clear-cut, good guy vs. bad guy stuff. The situation comedies and H&B cartoons were mind-numbingly stupid. My guess is that TV kids of this era...the future hippies... grew up idealistic under the influence of the dramas, but filled with a revulsion for ordinary life the way it was portrayed on the sitcoms. 

  

Then there was the fact that lots of late 50s kids had allowances, something only rich kids had in the 19th Century. With money to spend they developed a youth culture built around the things they liked to buy, like records. 

Talking about the 19th century, let me digress for a minute to take note of the Romanticism of that era, with its emphasis on the mysterious workings of the inner mind. That idea spilled over into the 20th Century, carried there by people like Freud and Ibsen and the Surrealists.  Marxism was carried over too, only it was modified by the romantics who absorbed it and gave it a different flavor.

One result of the Marxist-Romantic synthesis was fascism.  For decades central Europeans lived under fascist or communist governments which which portrayed America in the worst light possible.  Amazingly, a lot of pre-hippies picked up on this view of ourselves and believed it. 

That's the young Paul Newman (above) at the Actors' Studio in New York.  Ibsen's theories, which emphasized character conflict and the need to bring the mysterious inner  life to the surface, ruled at that studio. 

Stories favored by this school were always about sensitive people who were damaged or made insane by the irrational demands of normal society. That seems like an odd theme to dwell on exclusively, but actors liked these stories because they were full of emotional fireworks, and seemed kind of edgy because normal society was always the villain.  


If you lived at that time, and were destined to be a hippie, you saw and read a LOT of stories where normal people were the bad guys. 

One of the most influential people of the early 60s was Alvin Toffler, who's almost forgotten now.  He wrote futurist books which predicted a right-around-the-corner society where machines made possible a twenty hour work week and an overabundance of cheap food and material possessions. Our only problem would be what to do with the spare time. 

Toffler's important because an awful, awful lot of people...including future hippies... believed what he said, and concluded that...Damn!...if unlimited wealth was right around the corner, then we should loose the work ethic, have a party, and redistribute everything. With so much to go around, it would be positively stingy to do anything else.

Toffler's book sold big in cheap paperbacks, which was the only kind of book most young people could afford to buy.  The innovative publishers who pioneered the paperback revolution were mostly left-inclined, so the books that young people read were usually limited to that point of view (Salinger isn't overtly left in this book, I just liked the picture).

Hmmmm.....anything else? No, I guess that's it. 

In spite of all I just said I don't think Romanticism, left-leaning records, paperbacks and movies, or any of the standard explanations really add up to what we saw in the 60s.  I told you I didn't understand where the 60s came from, and I don't.

Maybe there was something else, something more off the wall.  Maybe miniskirts (above) were to blame. I mean, they make a powerful visual argument for the rightness of something or other.

Maybe after the miniskirt there was no turning back. No matter how destructive the new sensibility might turn out to be, a return to the society that covered up legs was unthinkable.

No wonder the hippie philosophy spread so fast. Imagine that you were a  file clerk in an insurance company in 1964, and had an abusive boss. There he is behind you telling you what a good-for-nothing you are, and your eyes happen to wander over to the poster above, which is on the wall.  How inviting it would be to drop everything and follow the girl with the guitar!

MORE OBSERVATIONS ABOUT WOMEN (RE-WRITTEN)

WARNING: Nothing obscene here, but this post is not office or school safe.

In the era of the dinosaurs (above), most young women ran around naked. That's okay. I'm sure nobody complained. In those days, even middle-aged women were probably pretty slim and athletic.

Not so for modern city women (above). They tend to put on weight pretty early in life. So do modern men, but this post isn't about them.

  

Most modern women will eventually develop a pear shape, like Rembrandt's wife in the drawing above.

Instead of developing a gut like middle-aged men do, they develop a thickening of the entire middle of the body.  Oddly, the upper torso remains relatively thin, at least for a while.


Why is this so interesting? Because this shape puts enormous emphasis on the the genital region...it makes it the unmistakable center of interest. The whole body becomes a wide, diamond-shaped target with a huge patch of pubic hair in the center. When you consider that women reach their sexual peak at the same age they take this shape, then the only conclusion to draw is that nature desperately wants to advertise women's sexuality at this age. Why? I don't know. 

After a bit the upper torso expands as well, creating a sort of vertical barbell shape. This (above) is a pretty extreme example, but you know what I mean. The genital region is no longer the center of interest, though sex characteristics are still obvious until old age sets in.

I forgot to say that after the hips and thighs begin to expand, the abdomen begins to stretch out (above). Within reason that's sexy, at least I think so.  Boy, nature desperately wants women to stay sexy, even in the 30 - 45 year old range. Maybe older. Nothing subtle here. When the blush of youth wears off, nature rolls up its sleeves and resorts to the hard sell, hawking a woman's sex potential with a bullhorn and billboards. Interesting, huh?  


Aren't you glad you read Theory Corner? What other art site is so doggoned scientific? 




BTW: I'm aware that dinosaurs and humans never existed at the same time.

THE LAST "MAN" CARTOONIST

Like everybody else I get compliments occasionally, and like everybody else I take them with a grain of salt...at least I usually do.  For some reason, every once in a while,  a compliment gets past my guard and I regard it as a cosmic truth, a titanic affirmation that something about me is worthy of sitting in a jeweled box at the top of a golden tower studded with elephant tusks.  I have just received such a compliment. and I will now, with shameless immodesty, share it with you...... 

A couple of days ago John K remarked in a blog post on Jimmy Hatlo, that I was the last "man" cartoonist he could think of. That's "man," not "manly," which is probably a superior rank, but I'll take the compliment anyway. Imagine that. The last one. After me a whole species dies. Think of it.

Yes, according to John I'm The Last of the Mohicans (above).  I think the "man" reference has something to do with my life experience being in what I draw. Geez. He's obviously being much too generous, and everyone reading this will have a long list of much more qualified candidates, but I refuse to let truth get in the way.  I expect everybody who visits here to wipe their feet first, and wear a surgical mask lest germs reach the precious throat of this last of his species. 

I'm toying with the idea of doing a Sunday Comics page. Maybe something every other Sunday. I don't have any ideas, and I'm not sure that I know how to color and ink in Photoshop, so I might have to use crayons. Let me think about it. Whatever it is will probably look horrible, but I feel a responsibility to at least make an effort...I mean, being the last man cartoonist and all.