BE BACK THURSDAY!

A commenter wrote in to say that "Dodsworth" will be on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) this Saturday at 5 pm! Is that 5 pm Pacific Time? I think so.

The film isn't for everybody. It's not cinematic and it's all talking -- no action. It's pure melodrama. What makes it worth watching is that in the details it manages to sketch out the author's image of an ideal man, which is close to my own.

It raises interesting questions about the nature of masculinity, the purpose of life and how it should be lived, and what romance consists of. If you hated my lion post you're not going to like this film because it's all about a human lion.

ME ON A HAPPY MEAL

I've been walking around Disneyland all day and my feet are killing me! I need a subject for a quick post and this Happy Meal is it. This won't impress adults very much but if any kids are reading this they'll think I'm a demi-god for appearing on a McDonald's box.

The artist doesn't want me to use his name so don't try to pry it out of me!

SHOULD WE STRIVE FOR GOOD TASTE?

Gladys: "You know, I was thinking...don't you guys think good taste sucks? I mean, what is good taste but just the commonly agreed opinion about things? What if the common wisdom is wrong?"

Petunia: " Hmmmm. I don't know, Gladys. You have to anchor your opinions in something outside yourself. If you only have your own reason and emotions to judge things by you'll drift off into craziness and selfish behavior."

Marigold: "I think we're anchored. I mean I wouldn't run around naked on this tree limb if I thought it would fall. "

Violet: "Um, Marigold...I think Petunia meant "anchored" in a philosophical sense."

Marigold: "Oh..."

Sunflower: "Er... can I say something? It seems to me that the Greeks figured this thing out long ago. For them good taste was an aspect of virtue and virtue was something public. Good taste had something to do with making choices that were good for society. So..."
"

Mildred: "Holy Cow! Look! IT'S A MAN!!!!!!

Fred: "Grrrrr! I heard you girls babbling! None of you got it right!! Good taste is something for consumers of art to argue about! For the makers of art there's only the quest for greatness of spirit, for mastery over nature, for something worthy of the miraculous minds we were born with!!!!"

Girls: " (Gasp!) EEEEK! Run for the Hills! Let's book! Eeeeeekkk!!!!!! Eeeeekkk!!!!!!!!!"

EDWIN SMITH, PHOTOGRAPHER

Edwin Smith was an English photographer who did most of the pictures he's famous for in the 1950s. I don't think any of his photos are well-known. He's renowned instead for the consistency of his work. Almost every major picture he took was thought provoking in some way. You won't get a sense of what I'm talking about if you look at the small versions. Be sure to click to enlarge.

Seen large the wrought iron gazebo above is awe inspiring. Imagine a building that large which serves no purpose except to enclose an area and make us aware of the space inside. Our senses are so adjusted that we find space itself beautiful when it's presented to us in the right way. The builder added swirling vine shapes to remind us how profound the simplest things in nature are.


Here's (above) a back room in a country church. The irregular slate floors and white, chalky walls enclose the space perfectly. The window admits diffused light into the room. It's a great window because its design elements of mathematical, intellectual purity co-exist with the primitive, textured, irregular walls that surround it. People are like that -- intellectually sophisticated and primitive at the same time. Even the furniture speaks about this dual nature of ours. Without using words or arguments the room forces us to think about who we are and how we fit into the world.
Here (above) are Roman-type sculptures and buildings in a garden setting. It's a Utopian vision of high human ideals co-existing with nature. A book trying to make the same point would risk skepticism by the reader. Art makes the point wordlessly and it sticks. Visual art is like music. It bypasses intellectual barriers and carries its argument directly to the viewer's mind. Artists have it in their power to change the world every bit as much as novelists and philosophers.

MY HERO, BOB CLAMPETT

I just re-read John K's two excellent posts about "Kitty Kornered" and they left me so excited that I feel I have to get invoved and say something about Clampett too. The problem is that I am sooooo sleepy! As soon as I dot the last "i" I'm outta here. Forget spell check! Forget making sense!

Anyway that's the young Clampett above. That was the first of his three major "looks."

Here's (above) the second. It's the Gabe Swaar Clampett, the 50s Madison Avenue ad man Clampett. Man, I'd kill to have a pair of glasses like that!

Here's (above) the Clampett I knew, the Roy Orbinson Clampett. That's Daws Butler standing beside him.


Here's (above) a publicity shot showing Clampett with Cecil looking very, very phallic behind him. Is that Beany looking like a wino on the ground? Maybe the mop is a reference to the "Rag Mopp" song that Cecil used to sing.

Bob was a hero for all cartoonists because he believed in funny cartoons. In his best cartoons he even went beyond funny, making cartoons that were uniquely cinematic and musical without sacrificing any of the humor. Look at "Coal Black", "Great Piggy Bank Robbery" "Kitty Kornered" and "Book Review". These are visceral films. They're musical even with the sound turned low. They're pure cinema. If you liked Eisenstein's "Odessa Steps" sequence you'll have no trouble appreciating Clampett.

Clampett seems to have been the only Warners director who genuinely liked music. Bob had a collection of Boogie Woogie, swing, jazz and classical and it was intended for use. You get the feeling the other directors considered music to be an afterthought. They worked with Carl Stalling (pictured above) and the Warner Brothers Orchestra... and they wasted them!!!!! Leon was even willing to foot the bill for occasional visiting musicians like Ellington's "Jump for Joy" musicians who worked on Coal Black. Only Clampett took advantage of the situation.

I know, some body's saying "What about 'What's opera Doc' ? Jones and Freleng took plenty of advantage!" No they didn't, not really. I love Jones' opera films but they were almost literal interpretations of the music they were associated with. Clampett egged Stalling on to blend musical styles in the same cartoon. Look at Coal Black where Boogie Woogie blends with Mozart. Even rhythmic dialogue voices and effects become part of the music.

But Bob went even further than that. He paced the films themselves as if they were music! You know the feeling you get when you watch Eisenstein's "Odessa steps" sequence? You feel like you're hearing music even though the film is silent. Bob could do that with funny cartoons! He had a feeling for film, something like the way Tito Puente had a feel for orchestral arrangements. It put his best work miles ahead of the competition!

Bob liked broad action and I'm always afraid that detractors will say about him, "Sure, he was good, if you like big takes and stretched bodies, but cartoons should be about more than that. You get tired of that stuff after a while." My answer is "yes, you would get tired of it and that's why there's tons of subtle action in most of Clampett's cartoons!"

But let's suppose Bob was mistaken and put in too much over-the-top stuff. For Pete's Sake, don't let your distaste for that blind you to the million other innovations in the films. Don't hate Odessa Steps just because you hate to see a baby get hurt!

As a closing shot I thought I'd put up a picture (above) of Bob with Daws Butler and Stan Freberg. Poor Bob! The shutter probably got him in one of those wincing "inbetween" poses I was talking about a couple of posts ago. It's not a flattering picture and Bob was probably crest-fallen when he saw it, but it's funny that he got caught that way. I like to think that Bob laughed when he saw it, even if he had to threaten the photographer with death a minute later.

Now beautiful, beautiful sleep....!

KISSING DOODLES

We're all in a romantic mood from reading about the vist to Uncle Eddie ("Theory Corner for Women" a couple of days ago); what could be more appropriate than some kissing drawings?

IS THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION DIFFERENT?

You bet it is! The Millennials are the first true computer generation. Gen X and Yers and a few hippies had computers but, looking back on it, their job was only to shepherd the machines along to their present position at the absolute center of the Millennial world.

Young people can easily sit all day in front of the computer with only bathroom breaks. It's not uncommon for them to spend two weeks at a time at home without going outside for any significant time. You do your homework on it, you socialize on it -- everything!

I'm convinced that anime is taking over the animation world partly because it's so accessible through file-sharing on the computer. You can buy anime, trade it, and chat about it without leaving your bedroom. The jerky, limited animation actually helps its internet appeal because it reduces the bandwidth and makes for faster downloads. American lawyers hate to see illegal copies of American classic cartoons even on tiny formats like YouTube but the Japanese product is all over the net, and in really good copies too. This is serious competition.

Pre-Millennials like hippies and Gen-X and Y people keep hoping the programs to come will be will be easier to use. I don't think that's in the cards. It's not just a case of changing technology and software. The gruesome truth is that Millennials have no reason to make the stuff simpler. Their whole appeal on the job market is based on their ability to manipulate hard-to-use programs. If those programs were made easy then half a generation would find itself in the unemployment line.

My guess is that Millennials will replace Gen Xers on most computer-based jobs by the time the Xers reach age 40. I have no idea what Xers will do for work after that. A lot of Xers bummed around for a while after school and didn't really enter the work force seriously until age 25. If they're obsolete by 40 that's a career window of only 15 years! Aaaargh! If you're a working Xer then you better save your money! You're going to need it!

Of course Millennials won't have it easy either. Millennials were conned into taking outrageously big college loans which begin accumulating interest six months after school stops. With interest let's say a college loan of $100,000 dollars will become $200,000 over time. That's a lot of money. And the job market is shrinking. A lot of Millennials can forget buying a house or sending their kids to decent schools. And what if the generation as a whole can't pay the loans back? Yeeesh! It's scary!

Well, every generation has to face something tough. I guess this one is no exception!

BTW, the three paintings have nothing to do with the subject at hand. I just had to do something to lighten this discussion up. Maybe I should have called this post, "Welcome to Serious Corner!"

THEORY CORNER FOR WOMEN (NO MEN ALLOWED)

Imagine my excitement when the editor of Theory Corner for Women burst into my office and informed me that if I hurried I might just be able to get an interview with the world-famous cartoonist and stud muffin, Uncle Eddie, at his fabulous Theory Mansion. I didn't need to be told twice!

It was night by the time I arrived at the house. Uncle Eddie's social secretary led me to the sprawling grounds in back, to a large outdoor hot tub. A maid was lighting up bits of paper in a nearby outdoor fireplace. When it flared up, she threw in kindling wood, then placed a few logs on top. Uncle Eddie was sitting in the in water, surrounded by candles, thoughtfully looking up at the stars.

One glance at Uncle Eddie and I almost forgot that I was a working girl. When he spoke to the maid his speech was odd, a little English or maybe mixed from foreign travel. He had a solid look, with gentle, squinty eyes, and sensuous buck teeth. His hair, almost grey, seemed impossible to keep down. After introductions were made, and Uncle Eddie graciously posed for a picture (above), the interview began.

TCFW: "Do you feel like living, Uncle Eddie?"

Uncle Eddie: "I always feel like living, as you call it. death is just death -- dying off -- disinterest in everything -- decay. And I am not decaying, I hope.

TCFW: "Are you a happy man?"

Uncle Eddie: "What does happiness mean to you? I mean, how do you equate it? For me it's all love, no matter what else you call it. Some people call it power, To me it's very simple -- love, love, love..."

TCFW: "But what kind of love? Body love, spiritual love?"

Uncle Eddie: "The whole works! No matter how it begins, it must end with the whole works -- that's how I look at it."

TCFW: "A woman needs that too...'

Uncle Eddie: "A woman needs many things -- but mostly affection, constant affection."

TCFW: "You make it sound simple."

Uncle Eddie: "I think we're talking too much about it, talking about something that needs very little speech."

The outdoor fireplace was sparking. A twig sprang out and fell on the ground between us.

Uncle Eddie: "This is the way the world will end. Not with a whimper, but with fire -- a big fire."

THE HUMAN LION

It strikes me that I wrote about this subject a year or so ago but I couldn't find it in the archive. Maybe I just thought about writing about it and never got around to it. Anyway here's my thoughts on this subject and if I'm repeating myself then...then I apologize!!

The subject is...the human lion. Every girl wants to marry a guy who has the attributes of a lion. The guy may be short or poor or ugly, but if he's a lion then he's choice marriage material.



I can't define what a lion is but you know it when you see it. When I see a woman who's intelligent and noble and yet thoroughly feminine, that's close to what I mean by being lion-like. Somehow the femininity helps to bring into focus the other qualities, which either sex could possess, and overlays them with a sense of unique character and depth and appeal. When you see a feminine woman with lion-like characteristics you feel (in addition to being horny) glad to be human, in fact you feel positively proud to be human.

Of course the analogy doesn't totally hold because in the end only a guy can be a lion. Why is that? Maybe it's because a man has to struggle past more obstacles or diversions to become a lion. Maybe because the characteristics of a lion perfectly suit the male temperament. It's what all men want to be and very few are able to achieve.


My guess is that human lions are rare. Maybe one in ten or one in twenty, maybe one in a hundred. My advice to women who are lucky enough to know a lion is to push all other players aside and do everything they can to nail the guy. Lions are the kings of the jungle for a reason. No matter what negatives the guy possesses, they don't matter (provided he's not a criminal type). Lion trumps almost any flaw. Unfortunately there's not enough lions to go around. Maybe it takes a lioness to trap a lion.


There's a great movie about this: "Dodsworth" with Walter Houston and Mary Astor. The whole film is a meditation on the subject of the human lion. I wish there were more films like this.

TONY CURTIS SMOKES

I've had a pretty busy day today so forgive me for putting up a skimpy post. Here's some doodles I did while watching "The Defiant Ones" on TV a couple of days ago. Tony Curtis smokes up a storm in that film but I couldn't draw fast enough to get

most of it.

Anybody know of any films that contain good smoking scenes?

A FUN BOOK

I'm reading a few books at once as I always do. I'm still reading "Animated Man" and I just finished Mc Bride's famous (some would say infamous) book on Frank Capra. Here's one of the books I have on my bed stand: "The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Extreme Edition." Have you read any of these Worst Case books? Are they serious?

Here's (above) my favorite chapter: "How to Escape From an Angry Gorilla." The situation is that a gorilla has grabbed your arm. Maybe he's doing it to be playful, maybe not. There's no way to tell. You have no choice but to assume he's hostile. The book wisely advises the reader to be silent and act submissive. So far so good.

Then the book takes a giant step. If submission doesn't work try treating the grab as a sexual (my word) advance by the gorilla. It almost certainly wasn't sexual but the idea is to plant the thought in the gorilla's head. It's as if you're saying to the gorilla, "Hey, big boy! I like you too. No need to get rough! Let's you and I go steppin'."

You groom his arm. Maybe the gorilla is starting to get hot and bothered. Hopefully this causes the ape to walk away in confusion. Hopefully. But what if he doesn't? What if he takes it seriously and...Ugh! It's too horrible to think about!

I hasten to add that the book doesn't mention sex. That's my interpretation...and maybe it would be the gorilla's too.


Here's (above) another chapter: "How to Survive if You're Buried Alive." Aaargh! How gruesome! The book advises that you only have an hour or two at most before the air runs out. What you should do is wrap your shirt around your head like a bag with a big knot on your forehead to provide an air pocket for your face. You then kick the wooden coffin lid with your feet. The weight of the dirt above will have weakened the lid and if you're lucky you might succeed in breaking it. Your main problem will be channeling the dirt as it falls into the container and you dig your way upward.

Does that seem realistic to you?

A NOTE ABOUT STORYBOARDS

That's me (above) pitching a board at Disney's. I think the guy giving the black power salute is Bob Taylor. I can't see very well but I think the drawing I'm pointing to is a black and white doodle of Donald that I later re-did in crayon (reprise below). I love working in crayon but hardly ever get the chance. One of these days I'll do a post about how great crayons are, even the Crayolas you get in the supermarket. But I digress.

What I really want to talk about is how much influence a storyboarder should have on a film.

I'm a storyboarder myself and I like it because in some ways it's close to direction and I like to direct. In a small and limited way storyboarders are the visual kings of the projects they work on and like every other storyboarder I like to be king.

Hearing me talk like this would have amazed animators in the 30s and 40s. In the golden age of Warners, when cartoons were done right, storyboards weren't a big deal. Boards were done by writer artists and were so rough and so lacking in continuity that a casual reader would have had trouble understanding them (example below). That's why so few Warner boards of that era survived. Nobody thought they had any value. Really, the story only came together visually in the mind of the director who did a bunch of drawings for his handouts.

Later on, in the TV era, writers and executives effectively got rid of directors and a new category of artist was born, the non-writer storyboarder. This was a terrible defeat for animation.

The problem is that films with a strong script and storyboard feel often don't lend themselves to animation very well. If you look at the funniest Bill Nolan black & white Terrytoons you'll see that the highlights, the real audience-grabbing scenes, are often something the animator (or the animator-director) thought of. Cartoons lost a lot of their playfulness and innovation when animators were reduced to fleshing out other peoples' ideas and layouts.



Of course audiences like structure and and so do I. In the current factory system some of the storyboard feel is inevitable. Even so, without the animators' input into the stories cartoons will continue to be a sad thing, very much cut off from its roots. We need to bring animators and directors back under the roof of the parent studio. We storyboarders should remind ourselves that the animators are the stars (or should be) and we're just there to make them look good. Everybody else, the executives, directors, writers, storyboarders, layout people and colorists...all exist solely to make the animator actor look good on the screen.


BTW, this post was inspired by Mark Mayerson's almost current blog about storyboards:

http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com/


The storyboard at the bottom is from Ward Kimball's "Mars and Beyond." I don't know if it helps to make my point, I just put it in because I like it.

CLAMPETT AND THE ART OF THE INBETWEEN

GREETINGS CARTOON FANS!

Thanks to friends John & Kali I'm able to post a real discussion of animation with lots of examples and not just a couple of stolen frame grabs. I even have a link to a film clip at the bottom! I feel so adult!

OK, enough gushing! Let's get down to it!

This is Porky on the doorstep from Clampett's "Kitty Cornered." This was the first Clampett I ever saw and when it came on my jaw practically dropped to the floor!
I was used to pose to pose animation where the inbetweens were just technical necessities. I didn't question that, I just assumed that animation involved a certain amount of tedium and there was no way of getting around it. Now here, in front of me, was a whole different way of animating! Here the animator (Rod Scribner) did his own inbetweens. I was shocked! It not only worked but it was fall-off-the-seat funny!


Most of the poses on this post are inbetweens. I had to leave out a lot to conserve bandwidth, but you can see that Scribner is cartooning like crazy, throwing in every funny idea that could fit. The pose above with raised arms reminds me of the old Keystone Cops poses that you used to see in newspaper comics. I love how Porky's fat little body compresses here. Look how delightfully seedy his eyes are!


This (above) is the kind of toothy, squinty expression you only get in inbetweens. Inbetweens should look like inbetweens. They should show all the transitory little emotions between the major emotions. Even a sad person will have a happy inbetween or two and visa versa.


Here (above) Porky struggles to get the word out. Even if he didn't stutter he'd have to struggle. We humans communicate with grunts and whistles from our lips and voice box and getting it all out past the mushy part of our muzzle requires an effort!
"OH BOB! YOU WERE SO GREAT! HOW DID YOU AND SCRIBNER THINK OF STUFF LIKE THAT!!!???" Oh...uh... pardon. I lost it for a moment.



So here's the pig again! He pushes out toward camera with his mean little baby face...


Then he antics back, looking very much like a human all of a sudden (as all animals should periodically), then...

BAM! A really explosive thrust outward (above) with big, dilated eyes and killer arm positions! Those arms work great with the bowed legs. Scribner was a great cartoonist as well as a great animator! What a dynamite combination!

Oops! He withdraws into a little compressed ball of peevish anger. Somehow we become aware of the nightshirt again.

His muzzle (above) prepares for another outburst. The cheek muscles pucker and stretch in preparation for forcing the words out.


A big antic (above) allows us to see how large the cranium is. The arms fly up as if to do another Keystone Cops pose but instead...


...instead he grabs the air like a baby and diddles it! And wow, look at the far away stare in Porky's eyes!

Is the anger dissipating? Sort of! Here's (above) another classic inbetween face showing the tired, squinting eyes again. Emotion is very tiring for us and we have to go into near sleep between emotions sometimes, even when we're excited and in the middle of broad action.

The world of inbetweens is a strange, surreal world where characters' real emotions hold sway. It's the world that would exist if all of us were prevented from taking stock poses to impress other people. It's the world of the ego rather than the super-ego. It's a place where people flash angry, infantile, ridiculing, lecherous, acquisitive, stupid poses at each other. In a funny studio the inbetweener would be a respected professional possessing great and mysterious secrets about the human condition.

Back to the cartoon: Porky snaps out of his reverie into this hilarious Joe Besser fists-up-to-the-cheeks pose. I like hands that hug the face. After all, the face is the master, the controller. What could be more natural than to have its minions nearby?

Gee, I must sound crazy talking this way. Anyway, it's a tribute to Bob Clampett that his cartoons stimulate discussion like this. I'm a huge fan of Jones and Avery but their animation is pretty straight-forward and not as nuanced as what Clampett and Scribner did.

Here's (below) the Porky on the step animation!
CLICK ON THIS TO SEE THE FIRST EVER OFFICIAL CARTOON CLIP!!!




OK, that's enough for one day! Return to your work-a-day world secure in the knowledge that you're a new man (yes, even if you were a woman before)! You've been up to the mountain! You've been refreshed at the fountain of Clampett!