IS IT WORTH ARGUING WITH CRAZY PEOPLE?

No, of course it isn't, not if the person is completely crazy, but how often do you come across that? Most crazy people are half crazy or a quarter crazy, something like the way Jack Nicholson was in "As Good as it Gets." How do you treat them? Do you argue back knowing that they may not be listening?

A further complication is the fact that some half crazy people seem to know the difference in principal between right and wrong. They seem to have a moral sense that can be appealed to. Maybe no one ever does. I don't know of any books or magazines that are written exclusively for the mentally ill. On the other hand they may hear an exceptional amount of moral philosophy from people they irritate, more than the rest of us do. It's hard to generalize; there are so many kinds of crazy. Some of them are nice people, some of them are jerks.

In my opinion it's a good idea to explain why what they're doing is irritating you, even if the explanation would be painfully obvious to any normal person. It may not do any good but you never know. Like I said, there's all kinds of crazy. Maybe at the bottom of the twisted tunnel in their minds somebody's listening.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

MINNIE MOUSE'S AMAZING HOUSE

Two of my favorite spots at Disneyland are Mickey and Minnie's houses. None of the pictures here do them justice. The best parts are beautiful and surprisingly sophisticated.

The exteriors (one shown above) are amazing for their use of space. The houses seem simultaneously very big and very small. I'm not referring to spaces behind facades but to what you actually see from the street. How did they do that? And look at the garden; the balance of shapes somehow makes it look like all the elements are in motion. The effect is shocking! Are any architects paying attention to this? This is a really interesting idea.


Sadly the picture of the kitchen (above) doesn't capture the dynamic quality of the space. The scale of the objects, the scuptured negative spaces and the magnificently sheltering ceiling are exciting! The only thing that mars it for me is the even spacing of the folds in the tablecloth. I only wish I could have gotten good photos of the living rooms.


The car outside is amazing! Why aren't there real cars like that? I had to elbow some kids to sit in it but it was worth it. It's even more attractive when seen from the vantage point of the driver inside the car.

A final word about the house: don't misunderstand me. I know that wacky, wonky, skewered lines would grow tiresome if you had to live with them every day. I'm not suggesting that the real world be dismantled to make room for Roger Rabbit-type houses. What I'm saying is that the spatial proportions here are fascinating and would continue to be so even if the lines were straightened out.

NEWSPAPERS USED TO PUT COMICS ON THE FIRST PAGE!

At least the LA Times did on this Sunday in 1931 (above). It's a good-looking page, isn't it? Only an artist could have created a page like this. Newspapers need artists, not just for cartoons but to do page layouts. They just don't know it.


Compare it to a typical modern page (above). The layout and choice of pictures is uninspired and the color doesn't add anything except cost. I doubt that an artist was consulted.
Normal color photos don't look good in washed-out daily newspaper color. U.S.A. Today was the first daily paper to carry lots of color photography but they were smart. They knew the color news photos sucked so they made a big deal about making a flashy artist-driven weather page with large, solid areas of flat color. Not only that but they put the flashy weather on the back page where every commuter on the train could see it while the owner was reading the side with the bad photos.


It seems like drawings began to disappear from the first page of the Sunday Times somewhere in the mid-30s. Maybe WWII, with its need for diagrams and maps, brought them back for a while but after that they vanished almost completely. Why? I wish I knew. Anybody care to make a guess?

MAYBE WE SHOULD SNEAK BIAS INTO NEWSPAPER PHOTOGRAPHY

Don't you think that news photos would be more interesting if they contained an emotional bias? I'll use these old pictures of Betty Davis to make my point. Imagine that a local girl has just won a science fair. Would it be wrong to portray her as slutty (above) with the graphic implication that she slept with someone to get the medal? OK, OK, it would be wrong but surely there's a parallel universe where it would be right. Things are more fun that way.

Here's a woman (above) whose husband just died when she took his picture near the edge of the Grand Canyon. Was his fall accidental? The picture lets us know what the photographer thinks.


Here (above) are two contestants for a beauty contest. Maybe the photographer has a favorite. What's wrong with that? Newspapers need to be more interesting. We have to figure out a way to make bias work. Maybe we should do biased photo essays recapping the events of a case after the court decides it.

WRINKLED CLOTHES ARE FUNNY!

When Phileppe Halsman's "Jump Book" was re-printed in the 1980s I didn't pay much attention. There's a lot of gimmick books out there and this didn't seem to be any different. Now that some time has passed I could kick myself for not buying it. All those wrinkled suits are funny!


I don't know about you but I LOVE wrinkles..as long as they're somebody else's! It's funny when you see someone who had to dress fast stuck with wearing a shirt that's wrinkled on one side or a jacket with flaps that just won't stay down. Or what about the suit jackets that work their way up as if the wearer had an invisible set of shoulder pads on? Suits have a life of their own. We wear them but we don't own them. We're just their means of locomotion.
Maybe the all time best suit wrinkles in animation were in the the kissing sequence in "Coal Black." Scribner must have had wrinkled people pose for him. Why aren't there more cartoon scenes like that? Every cartoonist should study wrinkles with the same determination that he studies old stand-bys like male breasts and nose hairs.
These are terrible sketches but I'll put them up anyway because I got a great idea while drawing them! What if cartoon characters walked around wearing wrinkled clothes? It would at least make a great sequence wouldn't it?...or maybe not. (Groan!) I need to get some sleep.

EDITING TOOLS ARE HURTING ANIMATION

In my opinion recent cartoons are too heavily edited, even when the editing is done by the cartoonist/creator himself. Now that editing is easy and can can be done on a laptop every shot in a cartoon is edited and re-edited til it's considered perfect. That may enhance the filmic quality but it diminishes the sense of preformance and risk. Some cartoons give me a case of "smoothitis."

Easy edits also tend to increase the number of cuts. We all know films that benefited from frequent cuts but I bet I can point to an equal number that were hurt by it. Fred Astaire used to cut his dance scenes as little as possible and it's easy to see why. It's the same reason that magicians on screen resist too many cuts. The audience assumes that the cuts cover up mistakes or chicannery. They think cuts make the performance easier, too easy in fact, and they paid to see somebody do something that's difficult.

On a related subject, I'll add that quirky motion sometimes adds to the appeal of a scene. Some of the jerky stop-motion on Harryhausen's best scenes (I emphasize the words "some" and "best") actually improved the fantasy. It gave the monsters an unreal, unearthly style of movement that fit the story. Cartoon animation works the same way. Nobody wants jerky animation but we want to see some near misses, some last-minute saves, some cheats that give us an idea of how difficult it is to move this stuff. We want to see a first-rate animator's struggle. Hemingway wrote that nobody can appreciate a good bullfight til they've seen a bad one. That applies to what we do. Let's stop being so slick!

RAY BRADBURY HATES ME!

It's a strange to think that sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury, the sweetest guy in the worl, a guy who likes just about everybody, can't stand me. I still don't understand exactly what I did. I'll tell you what I know and maybe you can figure it out.

A few years ago I went to hear him speak at a church auditorium near UCLA. It was a few days before Christmas and there were actually snowflakes in the air, a rarity in LA. I was feeling great, not only because of the holiday but because that very day I'd figured out what I thought was the true meaning of Clement Moore's "Night Before Christmas." I told my friends about it but they didn't seem very impressed. It occurred to me that maybe Ray Bradbury would be a more receptive audience.


  Ray's speech was wonderful and afterward he offered to sign books, including books of his that people brought from home. I didn't have a book but I got in line and patiently waited my turn. When I finally got up to him I was almost bursting at the seams. "Ray" I said. "I figured out why "The Night Before Christmas" is the most famous Christmas poem! I can tell it to you in less than a minute!!!"

To my surprise a suddenly grimacing Ray leaned into my face and said something like: "Oh, you're a big man aren't you!? You know more than the rest of us don't you!? You're Mr. Bigshot aren't you!!!??" I was shocked. I could think of nothing else to do but a Ralph Cramden lip quiver: "Humna-humna-humna-humna!" I left the line and felt his stare on my back all the way out the door into the snowflakes.

Did I get him on a bad day? Maybe, but a few weeks ago I went to hear him speak again and he refused to look at me even though I was seated in the front row, right infront of him. There was a long awkward silence when no one could think of a question to ask and even then he wouldn't acknowledge me. He just looked around either side of my (tastefully) waving hand. You'll have to take my word for it that I didn't act in a way that any one else would find off-putting. Maybe I have the wrong pheronomes. Anybody have a thought about this?