JITTERBUG, TAP & BOOGIE WOOGIE

I hope you weren't working on anything important when you stumbled on this site because there's no way you're going to finish what you were doing now!

The first video (above) is a jitterbug sequence from "Hellzapoppin'". Some say it's the best jitterbug ever captured on film.





Next is a tap number by the Nicholas Brothers from "Stormy Weather." The original uploader quotes Fred Astaire as saying that he's never seen a finer tap dance on film. A few years ago I recognized Fayard Nicholas in a theater and foolishly asked for his autograph. I say foolishly because Fayard was in what looked like his late 90s and it took him 15 or 20 minutes to painstakingly write his name. I felt terrible for putting him to the trouble.




Classic Boogie Woogie!





Classic Fats Waller, including the kind of mugging to the camera that inspired Clampett and Rudy Ising...or was it Harmon? I'm always confusing the two.

A word of thanks to John K who introduced me to these singers and dancers long ago and who has impeccable taste in these matters!

THE CAMPFIRE STANDARD

In addition to whatever way the dictionary defines story, a story worth its name is something worth telling and worth listening to. It's so compelling that you just have to tell your friends about it. It's so evocative that it feeds your imagination for weeks or even months after hearing it. Whenever I think about story I imagine indians sitting in rapt attention around a campfire listening to a charismatic storyteller. It seems to me that if a story isn't fit to tell at a campfire then it's just information and belongs in a file cabinet somewhere. It certainly has no place in the entertainment industry.


Imagine trying to tell modern TV animation stories around a campfire, stories like: a little boy tries to pass himself off as something he's not, gets in over his head and learns the value of being himself. A little girl snubs a poor classmate for wearing unfashionable clothes then the poor classmate does a favor for the richer girl and the two become friends. Really, who wants to hear that? Imagine trying to tell stuff like that to a bunch of story-hungry indians. They'd just stare at you. What the indians want to hear is something like: "There I was, backed up against the tree with six drooling wolves moving in for the kill..." You know that's what indians want to hear because that's what everybody wants to hear. Anything else is just wasting our time.



Now I know that cartoon comedy isn't likely to drum up the particular type of excitement generated by viscious wolves but it ought to be an equivalent excitement. Just like the wolf story it should rivet listeners to their seats and should make them want to retell the story to friends. That's the way I felt when I saw John K's shower room sequence in "Naked Beach Frenzy" and Ren's mad scene in "Space Madness." I don't think John would have any problem entertaining indians around a campfire. We need more storytellers like that.

PETER COOK

If you haven't seen Peter Cook then I'm envious. That means you'll be seeing him here for the first time. I only wish I could turn the clock back and see all this for the first time! Enjoy!

"A SEASONAL PLACE"

I'll bet I'll regret publishing these sketches. The drawing and acting sucks, the characters look different in every panel, mis-spelled words...it's a mess! The only reason I'm putting it up is because I know that if I put it in a desk drawer to rework another day, it'll never get done. Besides, if I don't post this then I'll be left without anything to put up tonight. OK, so here it is, flaws and all......"A Seasonal Place."

THE PARIS ART SCENE, CIRCA 1885

There were lots of art schools and lots of type-A art teachers. Here (above) an angry art teacher goes berserk and possibly beats the class with another student.

Paintings often had to be done on a tight schedule. Here (above) an artist puts the finishing touches on a painting as it's being delivered to the buyer.

According to Daumier one painter paints from nature while another paints from what the first painter painted.

Some painters had fancy studios...

...others painted in hovels. No heat, no bathroom. Rats.

Here (above) is Montmare which, because it was situated on a steep hill, had low rents. Lots of artists here.

Here's a Lautrec poster (above) . Is it for the Moulin Rouge? Does it say "The Queen of Joy (Life?) with Victor Jose"? What the heck is that about? Whatever the real meaning the picture, it reminds me that a number of Lautrec's other posters for that club depicted the customers rather than the stars. Sometime the posters seemed to advertize the interesting people and friendly women you'd meet there. Lautrec did a couple of paintings from the vantage point of someone walking behind adventurer-customers looking for excitement.

The Moulin Rouge Gardens. Outdoor entertainment, good food, spirits, a beautiful giant elephant...looks good to me. Why don't we have more places like this now?

KANDINSKY

Am I the only person here who likes Kandinsky? He was a Russian painter who was infuenced by fauvism but left the movement when Matisse declared that fauvism was incompatible with abstraction. How do you like this railroad painting? I think he and Gaugain (spelled right?) "owned" green!

These "Blue Rider" paintings with the colored frames (above) are terrific in my opinion. He sneaks in some white puffballs...more about that later.

This watercolor (above) looks like a tiny model for a stage set. You can see the Matisse influence but he Russianizes it somehow.

Here's (above) an early example of how Kandinsky adopted pointalism to traditional Russian style. The dabs of paint look like little puffballs. When I first saw them they reminded me of cheesepuffs and I found myself wondering where the Russians ever got the idea of painting on black vevet with junk food. After a moment's reflection I figured that was a pretty superficial observation; the picture obviously referenced balls of lint. It's a pretty picture, though. The dots of light are like stars or fireflies. It makes the whole scene seem magical.

SCRIPTS OR STORYBOARDS?

It won't come as a suprise to anyone that I'm on the storyboard side of that controversy, especially if we're talking about animated cartoon comedy. I've written in both script and storyboard formats, and the boarded stories always turn out funnier. That's because a board provides constant feedback on how the visuals are going. Some ideas just don't look funny when drawn and it's nice to be able to toss them in favor of something that draws better.

It's also because scripts are a form of book. They're a medium of their own and what feels good in the medium of print often doesn't feel good in animation. As an example, scripts tend to be dialogue-heavy, even when they're written by artists. That's because ddialogue driven scripts are leaner and easier to read. Dialogue comes in trim little columns surrounded by oceans of white space. It looks better on a page. You can read it faster. It's an amazing but true fact that dull, dialogue-heavy, talking head cartoons get made for the trivial reason that their kind of script is easier to read.

Here's an example. This is an excerpt from a first-draught script I wrote for Animaniacs. A witch's candy-covered house attracts the Animaniacs and she tries to eat them. They turn it around and harass the witch to distraction. The script reads OK whenever it depicts dialogue but watch how hard it becomes to read when it describes visual gags:
Which part would you rather read?

It's also true that stories that originate on storyboards tend to emphasize visual gags, the thing that animation is best at. When I'm drawing I naturally pay more attention to the way a character looks in clothes, the way he bends to pick things up, etc. Sometimes these details are so funny that I end up building a whole sequence around them. That feels right to me. Comedy is best when it's about little things. Scripts, on the other hand, favor the overview, the big things and the complex subplots.

Now that scripts dominate there are very few funny cartoons. Since scripts are uncongenial to visual comedy the powers that be have decided to eliminate visual comedy. This is the shocking price we've had to pay for our script addiction.