UNDER THE KNIFE!

Yikes! I'll be under the surgeon's knife in a couple of days so I guess it'll be midweek before I'm back to Theory Corner again. It's to fix a heart problem, maybe with a stent.  That meant major surgery in my Dad's time, but this is 2014 and the procedure might require only an overnight stay in the hospital. Thank God for fiber optics!

What they're doing requires threading a tube into the groin and up the coronary artery to the heart. Can you believe that? I swear, every medical thing nowadays has to do with the groin. Wait and see...even dentists will figure out ways to involve the groin in what they do. What is this groin fascination? And I have to be partially awake while this is going on!

Anyway, I'll be back in a few days.

THE FACE OF TYRANNY

I'll start with Cesare Borgia (above), a violent psychopath whose senseless wars of conquest helped to undermine the Italian Renaissance. Orson Welles played him in a film called "Prince of Foxes" which I highly recommend. 

His was an interesting face, no? Some contemprary painters patterend their depictions of Christ on him. 

Here's Caligula, the mad young Roman emperor. The sculptor made him look crazy, which must have been a dangerous thing to do.

How about Genghis Khan (above)? He waged brutal, senseless war just to enhance his own reputation.

Then there's the mass murderer, Stalin, shown here in the days when he was a young thug.

Here's (above) Ivan the Terrible, a man who was aptly named. He was an evil man but I cut him a little slack because at great cost he stood up to the Mongol invasion and thus bought time for Europe to achieve a new Golden Age.

Then there was Mao, apparently the greatest mass murderer of the 20th Century, stacking up a body count that exceeded even that of Hitler and Stalin. Read about what went on when he tried to enforce his "Great Leap Forward."

By the way, Hitler certainly deserves a high place in this rogues gallery but I left him out because I couldn't find a suitable picture. Every photo of him has already been seen a gazillion times.

Not so frequently seen is this recent reconstruction of the head of Robespierre, architect of the French Revolution's "Reign of Terror." I always pictured him as having a thin, angular face, but I guess I was wrong.

WHAT FASHIONABLE PEOPLE ARE WEARING NOW

Well, if you're a fashionable guy then you're probably already eyeing nerd pants like these (above). They're the latest thing. They show lots of ankle and a have high waists that wrap around the bottom of the ribcage.

Hey, it beats the old fashion look that it's replacing. I was never a fan of baggy shorts (above).

Let me digress to remark that you never see stovepipe shorts (above) on the street anymore. Stovepipes were always worn with black socks and a nose ring. 

Of course the recent guy fashion that you see on the street every day is the skin-tight neo-emo jeans. The picture above is the girl equivalent of that. It's all over the place now but the high waist-nerd look will probably replace it in a few years. Tight jeans are just too hard to put on. 

The big news in women's fashion is the replacement of high heels with ultra high heels (above). 

The newest shoes are thick and high, and are usually black. I saw women wearing shoes similar to these (above) at the mall today. 

FREUD

I've never been to a psychiatrist but if I ever try it I'll be sure the doctor is a bonafide, old-school Freudian. I want to take Freud's inward journey into the fantastic realm of the unconscious. I want to see the arid plains and pounding surf of the Romantic 19th Century mind. I want to experience the storm-swept oceans and terrifying Minotaur caves that Freud believed fed into our emotions.

 Forget all the pills and advice that psychologists dispense nowadays. They're meant to help you cope, to help you function. But who cares about function? I want adventure.

I want access to the myths Freud says my mind has created for me. If my mind tells me that I'm a kind of Odysseus facing monsters then I want to see those monsters. If my mind is constantly cranking out stories to make sense of the world, then I want to know what those stories are.

I want to develop a gut feeling about what the mysteries of life really are. I want to run through Daliesque landscapes.

Before I leave I have to tell you how this desire to know what's in my mind came about. It goes back to the time my daughter was a young teenager and was reluctant to cut my hair. One day it dawned on me that she didn't want to touch my hair because she unconsciously believed that if you touch an older person you become old yourself. Of course that's not true, but it struck me that I believed that myself when I was a kid. Maybe all kids believe it. Maybe it sticks with us even when we become adults and know better.

Lots of us have beliefs that defy common sense. I don't believe in ghosts yet I wouldn't want to spend a night in a haunted house. I can't help wondering how many of these contradictory beliefs I entertain. I assume I have all the common contradictory beliefs...the belief in good and bad luck, etc., but I'm at peace with that. What gives me pause is the thought that maybe MOST of my beliefs fall into this category.  Maybe a large number of the important decisions I make every week are influenced by the mythology I developed as a kid.

If that's true then I'd like to know what that mythology is. I'd like to know what kind of world I've constructed for myself.

LOVE SCENES

I like the way love scenes were handled in the films of the thirties and forties. Imagine how thrilling it must have been to have been a filmgoer in the days when gigantic, passionate heads loomed over audiences of silhouetted chain-smokers. Almost everybody smoked in those days, even some of the kids who sneaked in the exit doors.

Hollywood knew how to do love scenes in those days. They often started in the light...

...and then made their way into darkness. Maybe that was to assuage the Hays Office but I prefer to think that it was done to push the scene into the realm of myth and magic. 

Screen lovers of that period (above) were usually confronted with some insurmountable obstacle like a pesky, killjoy spouse previously thought dead. That elevated their love to the level of tragedy.

Sometimes the obstacle was a disease. Here (above) Garbo has only hours to live but she struggles to keep that a secret from her lover who can't understand why she seems to be so tired and mushy all the time.

Sometimes though, the couple won the lottery and ended up being deleriously happy. They looked into the future and saw nothing but a continuation of their bliss. 

I love the closeups (above) where one head studies the other. 

And how can you beat beach kissing?

Some argue that love scenes...the moment when two closeup heads come together for a crescendo kiss...are overrated. They point out that, when shown out of context, even well known love scenes seem disappointing. That's because the most interesting part of love is established in the light-hearted details or the torturous build-up spread throughout the film. For these fans the boffo climax seems unnecessary.

Maybe they're right, but I still prefer it. My Theory Corner gut tells me that you need a story that pays off...that builds to an exciting climax. Film is about hyper reality. You need a scene to hang that on, a memory the audience can take home with them.

ANIMATING ON THE IPAD MINI

I promised to put up some of the animation I've been doing on but I'm still having trouble getting it online with the original timing anf framing intact. A friend has offered to help so I guess things'll work out soon. In the meantime, here's a few frame grabs from a recent film, if you can call something as short as this a film..

The time it took to do this? Less than an hour! It's amazing how fast you can go on these little iPad apps.

The key to working fast is to forbid yourself to redraw anything. 

If a line doesn't work, just draw a better one beside it.  

At this point (above) I accomplished what I set out to do...I sat a man down on a chair. All my tiny films have limited goals like that. When the film doesn't seem to be working I just delete it and start another.  If I don't have an idea I just start drawing and hope for the best. It's like doodling with animation.

I still felt like drawing so I added a table and a newspaper.

The man grabs the paper and opens it...

...and lifts it up to read. That's it. You can do zillions of these little shorts in waiting rooms and restaurants or while watching TV.

THE TEXAS AVERY AWARD

Sorry I haven't posted for a few days, I just got busy. I do not return empty-handed, however. Here's a couple of pictures of the Texas Avery Award that John K just received at the Dallas International Film Festival. Nice, eh?

The award was the brainchild of Reel Fx and The Dallas Film Society. What do you think of it? I love it. It's nice and cartoony.

The Avery Award reminds me of my other favorite cartoon award design, The Reuben, presented every year by The National Cartoonists Society. That one was designed by ace cartoonist, Rube Goldberg.