This is about the so-called "catalytic personality." In entertainment this would describe people who are lucky in the sense that great things just seem to happen when they're around. Everybody just seems to do their best work when this kind of person's near, even if they're not working on the same project. Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Live, is reputed to have had that quality. Very often the catalyst gets overlooked on the screen credits, yet the project would have been much poorer without him.
Clampett (director of all the cartoons on this page, save the stiff Daffy cartoon above) strikes me as someone who was a catalytic personality. Did he create Bugs Bunny? I'm not aware that any single person did, Bugs appears to have had several fathers (especially Tex), but it's impossible to imagine Bugs arising without Bob's influence, at least indirectly. Things happened around Bob. Look at the vibrancy of the other pictures on this page. What does that tell you about someone like Bob?
But this isn't a piece about Clampett, it's about catalytic personalities in general. It's sad to realize that catalytic personalities are so often overlooked and under-rated. There's no screen credit that reads: "The person who goaded, provoked, planted seeds, and gave away gags to friends that he would like to have kept for himself." That credit doesn't exist.
In animation a catalytic personality does more than contribute gags. His gags lead to something. They suggest a vision and and an over-all structure. You ask this kind of person for a gag, expecting to get something like, "How about if he steps on a rake?", and you instead get a gag that suggests a unique character doing something that only that character would do. You get an action that suggests a new way of pacing the scene, maybe the whole cartoon. The gag forces you to re-evaluate your whole way of looking at what you're doing. Catalytic personalities like to wrap up their gags in something larger and more useful.
One of the reasons catalytics can be so helpful is that they're constantly running story ideas and character types through their minds. These people don't offer gags, they offer pre-thought out worlds. The gag is often something deep that's been simmering in the pot for years. It may be a fragment of a structure they'd been painstakingly building for their own use. The risk they run is that you'll run away with the larger idea the gag implies, and then they won't be able to use it themselves. These are generous people who take big risks for no credit.
The person I know who best fits this description is John Kricfalusi. Things mysteriously happen around John. People get lucky around him. Ideas somehow improve. The man has contributed millions of dollars worth of ideas to projects all around town, but is probably officially credited mostly in the cartoons he's made himself.
I wonder what other people this would apply to. The big names are obvious but I'm thinking of less well-known names like Bill (Bob?)Nolan who worked on the early Lantz Oswalds.
I got one response to the post about "Julius Caesar"...one! What's wrong with you guys!? I thought Theory corner readers were more together than that. Is Shakespeare not good enough? Not worth listening to? Would you care to tell me who's more worth listening to? Is there a better writer that I don't know about!?
This is about the so-called "catalytic personality." In entertainment this would describe people who are lucky in the sense that great things just seem to happen when they're around. Everybody just seems to do their best work when this kind of person's near, even if they're not working on the same project. Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Live, is reputed to have had that quality. Very often the catalyst gets overlooked on the screen credits, yet the project would have been much poorer without him.
Clampett (director of all the cartoons on this page, save the stiff Daffy cartoon above) strikes me as someone who was a catalytic personality. Did he create Bugs Bunny? I'm not aware that any single person did, Bugs appears to have had several fathers (especially Tex), but it's impossible to imagine Bugs arising without Bob's influence, at least indirectly. Things happened around Bob. Look at the vibrancy of the other pictures on this page. What does that tell you about someone like Bob?
But this isn't a piece about Clampett, it's about catalytic personalities in general. It's sad to realize that catalytic personalities are so often overlooked and under-rated. There's no screen credit that reads: "The person who goaded, provoked, planted seeds, and gave away gags to friends that he would like to have kept for himself." That credit doesn't exist.
In animation a catalytic personality does more than contribute gags. His gags lead to something. They suggest a vision and and an over-all structure. You ask this kind of person for a gag, expecting to get something like, "How about if he steps on a rake?", and you instead get a gag that suggests a unique character doing something that only that character would do. You get an action that suggests a new way of pacing the scene, maybe the whole cartoon. The gag forces you to re-evaluate your whole way of looking at what you're doing. Catalytic personalities like to wrap up their gags in something larger and more useful.
One of the reasons catalytics can be so helpful is that they're constantly running story ideas and character types through their minds. These people don't offer gags, they offer pre-thought out worlds. The gag is often something deep that's been simmering in the pot for years. It may be a fragment of a structure they'd been painstakingly building for their own use. The risk they run is that you'll run away with the larger idea the gag implies, and then they won't be able to use it themselves. These are generous people who take big risks for no credit. 
The person I know who best fits this description is John Kricfalusi. Things mysteriously happen around John. People get lucky around him. Ideas somehow improve. The man has contributed millions of dollars worth of ideas to projects all around town, but is probably officially credited mostly in the cartoons he's made himself. 
I wonder what other people this would apply to. The big names are obvious but I'm thinking of less well-known names like Bill (Bob?)Nolan who worked on the early Lantz Oswalds.
