JOHN KRICFALUSI: GENIUS!

John K recently did some astonishingly creative cartoons for Cartoon Network, and I'll discuss one of them here. Actually, it's not a whole cartoon, but a half-minute promo for CN's "Adult Swim." Quick spots like this will attempt to lure adults to the late night show, while warning little kids that the cartoons are not for them.

In this cartoon a cute little Girl Scout and her friend head for the Adult Shack to watch Adult Swim Cartoons, and are stopped in their tracks by an irate Kirk Douglas-type character.

He's outraged that these little rugrats would presume to set their unworthy eyes on the ultimate adult TV show.  He chases them away then storms back into the shack, in the process executing one of the funniest walks in the history of TV animation. That's it...that's the whole story! I warned you...these spots are ultra-short!

Here we are (above) at the halfway mark with the curmudgeon ranting at the kids. This is no ordinary curmudgeon, but rather a fearsome, wild, Type "A", bull curmudgeon, the kind that in real life does a wide angle lean down into your face, allowing you to see  to see every microcapillary and boar bristle on his smoking hot skin.

The curmudgeon (above) turns to walk back to the shack. John, being John, chooses to turn him around in a way that makes it clear that he only has two dimensions.

There he goes...

To give punch to the unusual turn, John pops on a yellow background...

...and widens the shot.

The old, blue night sky background dissolves back in...

...as Kirk completes his turn.

Now commences one of the funniest walks you'll ever see on TV.

John's really into animating on his own films now.

He loves doing dialogue scenes.

A lot of people think good dialogue depends on having the right mouth charts. That's not true.

Dialogue involves the whole face, and sometimes the whole body. You have to act the dialogue, and not simply put weird mouth poses on it.

Dialogue is a great excuse to explore emotions that we try to hide from the world. To see what I mean, film a friend as he speaks, then still frame it.

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The chances are that you'll discover a whole range of mood changes in what appeared to be simple speech.

In still frames, even happy people appear to be alternately sullen, quizzical, pained, awed, surprised, bored, elated, depressed, suspicious, dominant, submissive, etc. In animation these quick mood swings can be hilarious.

Speech itself is kind of interesting, apart from the emotions it conveys. Sometimes the mouth doesn't want to say what the speaker commands it to say.

Sometimes a syllable can hide inside your character's mouth and he has to dig around for it with his lips and tongue.

When he finds it, he pushes it to the front and it explodes out,

Sometimes the whole body refuses to take orders from the mind. My own, Eddie Fitzgerald belief, (developed from years of watching John K, Scribner, Tyre, etc.) is that the body and face parts don't always work together in harmony.

The brain decides what emotion it wants to convey, and different parts of the body either conform or rebel. It's as if they had minds of their own.

Funny, blustery characters have a special problem with getting parts of their body to co-operate with each other.

You feel sorry for people like that. Even when they're trying to intimidate you, they have to devote part of their attention to putting down this inner mutiny.

Sometimes a character just can't take the weirdness of it all, and he begins to cry.

An instant later he forgets why he was sad, and puts himself to the task of preparing the next syllable.

But I digress.

Back to the film again: the curmudgeon pushes a man out of the way while he rants.

This reminds me of something McKimson was supposed to have said, that much of Warners' humor had to do with pushing people.

He arrives at the shack immediately after pushing the guy. His arm is still extended.

Now he rallies his whole body for a really big syllabic explosion.

I love how he telescopes his pushing arm (above) back into his body while he anticipates down.

BAM! This syllable gets a big accent. I wish I'd included more inbetweens, because I think the unattached tongue travels all over the mouth here.

'More fun with the eyes. No doubt this is justified by something on the soundtrack.

Watching all these inbetween expressions has been a ton of fun. I feel sorry for animators who only do extreme poses and let their assistants do the rest. Surely a really funny animator will want to do his own inbetweens.  On scenes like this an assistant is mostly for cleanup.

We continue to track along as he walks into his shack. He reminds me of a Trapdoor Spider returning to his lair to wait for another victim.

I can't help digressing again to imagine how a lesser director would have handled this final glimpse at Kirk. My guess is he'd have stopped the curmudgeon at the door, then on a new angle had him deliver a final line, and slam the door behind him. What a mistake! That would have given too much emphasis to the door. Like Marty Feldman said: "People are funny, not things."

Here's (above) an excerpt of the cartoon showing most of the poses I discussed here. Many thanks To John K who allowed me to bypass my computer problems and load these pictures remotely from his house.

I NEED ANOTHER DAY

I want to do a post about one of John K's recent cartoons for Cartoon Network, but I'll need an extra day to put it together. Check back Saturday or Sunday.

"HOW TO STOP ACTING"

That's Robert Pattinson above. I couldn't find adequate pictures to illustrate this post, so on a whim I decided to illustrate it with pictures of my daughter's favorite actor. She's a fan of the Twilight movies.

Regarding acting, I thought I'd talk about Harold Guskin. He wrote a book a lot of actors read called "How to Stop Acting." Guskin's famous students include Holly Berry and Kevin Klein. He seems to be good with actors who have to play roles they may not be suited for, but which were too good to turn down. That's a common occurrence, and I imagine Guskin has no trouble filling a class.

Guskin believes that traditional methods put too much stress on perfection and deep understanding.  That makes it hard for an actor to be natural and believable, and nearly impossible for him to have fun.  He says actors ought to do exploratory readings rather than thought out roles, even when they're on stage in front of an audience.

His advice for an audition:

Ignore the casting description. It'll limit you to handling the role in the same boring way that everybody else handles it. Surprise the director if it feels right. If you do what feels right you'll deliver your best performance.

Don't memorize. If it feels right, and you understand what the writer is trying to get across, you should improvise a bit to make the emotion your own.

Spend more time worrying about other characters' lines than your own. Get a feeling for the word music you're both creating. Listen to what the other guy says, and don't sneak a peek at your script while he's speaking.

Dress to feel the part, not look the part. Never audition in costume.

Come with your own agenda. Come with ideas and choices that interest you, but be prepared to be influenced by ideas that are thrown at you in the room.

Attack your fear the moment you become aware of it. If you're afraid your voice won't carry, then shout. Afraid of being quiet? Whisper the line. Afraid of moving? Make a bold move. Afraid of standing still? Stand dead still like a rock.  After you attack take a breath then go somewhere else...anywhere else...so you're not stuck in the same place. The best way to deal with fear is to attack it!

Finally, take control of the audition. If a chair's not where you want it to be, then move it. If people don't understand why you're moving it, that's a good thing. Make the auditioners try to figure out what you're doing, because if they don't have to do that, you won't get the part.

Fascinating, huh? What's my take on this?  I like the kind of acting that's focused on voice training, the kind of thing Cicely Berry writes about. Even so, I have to admit that there's some good practical advice here.

BTW: here's what the author looks like (above).

CARTOONS FROM A HUNDRED YEARS AGO!

From approximately 100 years ago, it's George Herriman again! I just can't get enough of this guy. I confess that I've only read a couple of the captions.  The drawings are so funny that the captions hardly matter.

Sometimes (above) he told stories. When he did he was surprisingly wordy.

Most of the time though, he just drew impressions on a theme, the way he does above. His editors kept him on a very loose leash. Today only certain writers have that kind of freedom. 

You can see (above) that Herriman could easily have made it as an illustrator if newspaper comics hadn't panned out. The guy was a killer draughtsman. 

Not everyone here likes Herriman so I thought I'd throw in some cartoons by other artists working in his time. How do you like this one (above)? Geez, there sure was a lot of ethnic humor in those days. 

Here's (above) an interesting one. The staging is a bit unorthodox, and it's very sedate. In view of that, you wonder where the strip gets its high energy level. I've seen other strips by this artist, and every one was as quietly dynamic and demented as this one. How did he manage to pull it off?

Here's (above) an ad from...er, the thirties I think. It's great that advertisers chose to use cartoons like this one to sell their wares. The public associated cartoons with entertainment by and for the common man, and advertisers naturally wanted to get in on that.

This is Allan Holtz, the benefactor of humanity, whose blog, "Stripper's Guide" (link on the right sidebar) is where I got these cartoons. 

A COOL APARTMENT

Kali turned me on to this film: "Science of Sleep." It's from 2006, I think. It's a terrific love story about two Parisian (sort of) artists who meet each other because they have apartments in the same building.

Anyway, the reason I'm posting about it is because some of the set designs are terrific. If you have a small apartment you could learn a lot about decorating it from this film. The girl in the story is a fabric artist so there's lots of niches for colorful yarn, and lots of interesting little sculptures and paintings.  It's a fun place for two young people to meet and hang out.  Click to enlarge.

  

That's a loft ladder on the left, which doubles as a book case. In the story the girl is building a loft bed, but in this picture it's not completed yet, so she sleeps on the floor. I could swear I saw that bed at IKEA a few years ago. 

Come to think of it, a lot of furniture in this room is IKEA derived. Those niches and shelves above the desk are definitely from there... 

...as are the end tables. The dark brown wall hanging might be fabric, but it also looks like a type of course art paper that you can buy in art stores. 

I like rooms like this one that invite you to sit on the floor. The rugs buckle easy, so I'm guessing they're from IKEA, too.

The film neglects this wall (above), maybe because the designer didn't know what to do with it. 

That's (above) the loft bed fully built and ready for use. This picture is from a dream sequence, so it's in a cave. 

I thought I'd focus on a few interesting details. How do you like the iron work (above) on the window? You can buy iron things like that that cheaper than you might think. I drew a version of it on acetate for one of my my kid's windows,  but it got mangled before I could put it up. 

There's the carpets (above) again. IKEA has great deals on stuff like this. 

Cotton clouds on the ceiling! Neat, huh!? I like the shadows the clouds throw.

Last but not least, a white on black, Matisse-style wall hanging. 

WHY DOES RESTAURANT FOOD TASTE BETTER?

I cook at home fairly often nowadays, but I have to admit that my food is only occasionally as good as the restaurant variety. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I use fancy cookbooks, and I try to follow the directions. Not only that, but I use fresh, or fairly fresh ingredients. Even so, the restaurants beat me almost every time. Why?

So far as I can tell the difference is that restaurants use lard, butter, sugar and MSG, even when they say they don't. I could be wrong about that, but really...if it's not that, then what could it be? Sure, restaurants have professional cooks...but, doggone it...I have the books, and the books are written by professionals! What gives?

I decided to research the question by taking one of the recipes I make and going on the net with the question: "How come my Cashew Chicken doesn't taste as good as what I get in Chinese Restaurants?" Half the responses were insults like, "Because they're professionals, stupid!" but some of the answers were pretty interesting. They did a lot to explain why you can't learn everything from a cookbook.

First off, Chinese restaurants use different kinds of soy sauce for different dishes. There's a zillion kinds. Just because you have Kikkoman at the table doesn't mean that's what they're cooking with in the back.

Secondly, they use a lot of heat when they stir fry, more heat then most people like to use at home. Not only that, but they use peanut oil, which you probably don't use for health reasons.

Third, they use Chinese vegetables rather than Western substitutions. That includes the type of mushrooms that are appropriate for the dish they're making. They also use shallots instead of onions.

Fourth, they use "Chicken powder." Can you imagine that...CHICKEN POWDER!!! I had no idea there was such a thing. Restaurants use real chicken too, but they supplement it with chicken stock in powdered form. It's not the same as bouillon. You can get it at Chinese markets.

I wonder if the best Chinese restaurants use homemade stock? Stock is one of the secrets of classic French cooking. There's all kinds of stock...even mushroom stock!


Fifth: they steam vegetables using "court" bullion instead of plain water. It consists of water, spices like pepper and garlic, and an acidic ingredient like lemon juice, vinegar or wine.

Lastly, they use ingredients not mentioned in cookbooks, like fresh ginger juice, brown sugar, honey, fat or lard, MSG, and lots of salt.

The reason you don't see some of these ingredients in cookbooks is that modern readers won't buy books with recipes that contain things like lard and MSG. Our era regards food as medicine. Taste isn't primary. The poor restaurateurs are forced to give lip service to that, but to stay in business they have no choice but to add these ingredients on the sly, because the food simply doesn't taste as good without them.

Well, that's what the people on the internet are saying, at any rate. I haven't tried some of these ingredients yet, so I'm in no position to judge.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF ACTING?

The illustrations for this piece are all of playwrights, but what I really want to talk about here is actors and acting. I want to ask, what is the purpose of acting? How does an actor know when he's doing it right? I've been spot reading in acting books lately and the consensus of opinion in these books seems to be that dramatic acting is all about creating  believable and appealing characters...but is it? I'm no expert on the subject, but somehow that seems inadequate.

Believable and appealing are important building blocks, but surely that's all they are...building blocks. We need to ask, what's an actor supposed to build with them?

In my humble opinion, what the actor needs to build is... a work of art. It's not enough to hold a mirror up to reality. The actor's job is to create something entertaining and profound that's better than reality. When he does his job right he stylizes his voice and movement to create a thing of awe-inspiring beauty and force. Through sound and motion, through his personal philosophy and a sense of vocal and visual music...he creates a force of nature. He blows the mind of his audience.

To make my second point I'll have to lapse into mysticism. I'm sticking my neck out here, and I may regard this as utter nonsense when I wake up tomorrow, but it seems to me that some of the best live action dramatic actors deliberately take a story and use it as a springboard to explore the mysterious universe that underpins our own. Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani did that in "The Fugitive Kind." What they were expressing in that film seems true, but it's very difficult to put into words.

It seems to me that the world is full of strange rules, patterns, tensions and assumptions that none of us can articulate, but which we all know exist. Some actors thrive in that world. They deliberately go for nuanced motivations that defy description. My mystical way of saying it is that they step sideways into the true architecture of reality.

I don't believe that it's necessary for most good actors to do what I just described, but aren't you glad that some do? Tennessee Williams' plays demand that kind of actor.

That's pretty vague, isn't it? Aaaargh! Maybe I'll return to this subject when I've had a chance to think about it a little more.

BTW: The caricatures shown here are all by David Levine. They are in descending order: Chekhov, Odets, Ibsen, and Tennessee Williams.