MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (JOHN K) PART#3

We met at noon at the local Italian restaurant. John ordered Chicken Calizonne, which was good, but didn't have a bit of chicken in it. Boy, John doesn't have much luck with restaurants! Anyway, the conversation commenced.

We got to talking about the 70s when even white people wore afros. It was the age of Superfly!

Black guys' apartments of that era were always, with almost no exception, decorated with black leather and chrome. They're not like that now, but in those days it was mandatory.

All the rooms were like that, and they were spotless. You could eat off the floor! No clutter like in my house. Nothing but furniture and walls and vast amounts of empty space.

Invariably the pictures on the walls were cloth prints, framed with chrome, The subject was always the same: naked black women with huge afros. I guess if you didn't have these you were shunned by other blacks.

We marveled at how many Superfly accessories you could buy in those days: afro salt shakers, afro lamps, clippers to give your dog an afro...you could put an afro on anything and people would buy it! To make the point John drew some accessories of his own on his napkin, starting with the afro faucet (above).

Here's (above) the afro refrigerator and the afro parakeet with white double-pronged disco belt.

Then there's the afro pubic hair drawing which, in case kids are reading, I'll reproduce tiny. Anyway, John proved his point...anything can be embellished with an afro.

Another subject we hit was the shocking lack of facial expressions and body language in men. What's going on? Men are so stiff (you know what I mean)! They're like cigar store indians!

It's a point of honor among men to look as lifeless as possible. What gives?

Girls, on the other hand, seem to get more elastic every day. Guys, we're loosing the rubber war!

Well, there was more, but that's all I have time for. Once again we sighed, knowing the world would probably disregard what was expressed here this afternoon.

I DID IT!

Well, I did it! Kali helped me out and her dad came along and did some parts. Maki engineered creatively. I have to say that I was terrible and the whole thing was incredibly anarchic and disorganized but I still had fun and am I'm glad I did it. Sometimes you just have to throw yourself into a new situation, make your mistakes and see what the lay of the land is.

One of the several things that I learned is to write for the people (including me) who are actually reading the lines. I should have known that before. Everybody's a better actor when they're playing characters that resemble their real-life selves.

UNCLE EDDIE LIVE ON RADIO TONIGHT!

Don't go out of your way for this, because it's just fooling around. Nothing rehearsed or figured out. We'll be talking about old-time radio and acting out some stuff for an hour. It's on a local (Los Angeles) college radio station, KXLU (88.9), at 7 o'clock tonight (Wednesday). You can also hear it live, online:

http://www.kxlu.com/

WHAT TO DRAW WHEN SKETCHBOOKING

These quick sketches are terrible but they're good enough to make the point that I have in mind, which is that most people draw the wrong thing when they go out sketchbooking.

If you draw people as individuals you'll end up as often as not with cliches: the middle-aged guy with a gut, the fat woman wearing tight clothes, the guy nodding off while he tries to read his newspaper, etc. That's because ordinary people people look pathetic when you draw them in isolation. They're glazed over from shopping or working. Your catching them at their worst.

Where people come alive is in conversation. That's where they become psychological and fleshed out. Take the fat woman. When she's talking she's no longer just a stereotype, she's a human being with a point to get across. She's more interesting.

Now the problem with this is that but people don't stay still when they talk. You have to draw your memory of what they looked like, which is hard, and an instant later you're diverted by the next pose. It's not a good way to turn out pretty drawings, but if you're lucky you might capture an interesting moment.

PRE-RECORD OR POST-RECORD?

I got to the wharves, strolled around for a while, then stood on the corner, smoking. From out of the shadows she reached out and took my hand.



Woman: "You look like you could use some... company."




Uncle Eddie: "You look like trouble, sister, and I don't want any trouble!"



Woman: "Listen to me. I have things to say. You're the blog guy, aren't you? I saw your picture on the internet."



Uncle Eddie: "Maybe. What's it to you?"



Woman: "Plenty! Follow me!"




Woman: "Go ahead, drink up. It's a clean glass! Look, I gotta talk about this pre-recorded/post-recorded thing. You draw the film first then put the music on at the animatic stage, right?"



Uncle Eddie: "Maybe."



Woman: "Well, that sucks! No wonder modern cartoons have no rhythm! You gotta start with a sound track that works, that's beautiful and dynamic and inspiring in its own right. "



Uncle Eddie: "Well, ya wanna see what the film's gonna look like before you put music on it."



Woman: "Stupido! Put music on it!? A funny cartoon should be PRE-RECORDED!!!! You don't draw a film first, with whatever random timing you feel like, then hand it over to the music guy to save it. The music, voices and major effects come FIRST! Do that and you won't have to worry so much about the timing! "

She slipped off her shoes and unfastened two buttons. She was open to her bra. Her dress slipped up, above her knees. I tried not to look. But I didn't succeed.

MORE HOME DECORATION FOR CARTOONISTS

Here's (above) a reprise of the living room picture I posted yesterday. I like this room but I was surprised to find that some of my friends were indifferent to it. Well, I can see why. The book shelves are made with tacky wood, the coffee table looks like it came from a thrift store, the varnish looks like it was applied with a roller, and the fireplace is confined to a tiny box. the room definitely has flaws.

The amazing thing is that it succeeds in spite of the flaws. Against the odds it feels cozy. It's like a big, friendly mutt. An artist could get ideas in a room like this. I'd love to explain why it succeeds but I can't. Why do some spaces work and others don't? Maybe a comparison with some other types of rooms would help.

Here's a Sears catalogue room (above).

Here's some sterile modern monstrosity. I won't bother criticizing these. It would be too easy. Instead I think I'll compare the room I like to other artistic rooms like the ones below. No I'm not gay, and I don't watch home make-over shows on TV. I just feel sorry for artists who are stuck with depressing environments.

Here's an artsy room (above) that has appealing shapes and colors but never comes across as a room that people live in. The furniture is uncomfortable and isolated in little islands, and there's a pervasive feeling of bad taste passing itself off as good taste. It looks like a furniture museum.

This room is better than average. It's tasteful, sort of. But a house isn't supposed to look like a furniture catalogue, and an artist is supposed to rise above simple good taste. An artist is supposed to be on the track of something profound, something really fundamental in life, and that's missing here. There's too much visual noise. I couldn't think in a room like this.

You see this kind of room sometimes, where one stark color dominates. The variety of the real world is reduced to a single, screaming statement. Architectural Digest loves rooms like this, which is why I never read that magazine.

Here (above) is a room that tries too hard to be rustic. It's a cliche. There's nothing spontaneous about it.

Here we are back at the original room again. Maybe now the naysayers can see why I like this room (above). It has "good vibes," and the right vibe is worth its weight in gold.

The furniture is plain and comfortable and the fireplace and book shelves have a nice, quietly dynamic design. If you know anybody who has a knack for making rooms with good vibes like this, beg them on bended knees to decorate your place. Pay them well for it, and take their advice, no matter how crazy it sounds. It's as important to have stimulating, cozy, sociable rooms as it is a good winter coat or a car. Bad or awkward rooms can kill your creativity.

THANKS TO JOHN & KALI FOR THE KILLER PORTRAIT!

What a surprise! I got this tonight just before we all watched a Hedy Lamar film, the one where she runs naked around the woods! John did the drawing and Kali colored it! Unbelievable! Thanks guys!!!!

I'll have to find a place in Theory Mansion to hang it. Maybe just above the fireplace.

And talking about fireplaces....

WHAT ANIMATION CAN LEARN FROM BALLET

I hesitated to put this up because a lot of people don't like ballet, probably because they've only seen it on TV. It's a medium that has to be seen live. The thump on the floorboards, the sweat, the commitment and almost super-human determination of the dancers to do impossible things; none of this translates to the screen. In almost every case the people who don't like ballet are the ones who've never seen a good one.





Anyway, there are a lot of parallels between ballet and animation. The examples I'll use here come from the collaboration between Balanchine and his star ballerina, Suzanne Farrell. Balanchine fell in love with 16yr.-old Farrell who was forty years younger. They both new it couldn't work in the long run but they were determined to translate the intensity of what they were feeling into art. It was a case of two first-rate people giving everything they had to an ephemeral medium.

Here (below) is an excerpt from Joan Acocella's "Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints." Farrell eventually became a teacher and here's what Acocella says went on in her class. Click to enlarge the page.

Holy Cow! I never heard of developpe' before and now I'm dying to try it in animation. Not an animated ballet, I mean something funny that requires a long, nuanced unravelling in a single scene! And what's this thing about gathering space to make a turn? Maybe I could use that if only I could see an example of what Farrell was talking about!




Wow! True enough! An animator has to be in the moment too, in a sense. A really good and unique performer is wasted by a director with a too specific view of how an action should be done (this doesn't apply to John).


This (above) is why I don't believe in animatics. Even the wrong choices a first-rate artist/filmmaker makes give a feeling of live performance and spontaneity to a piece. Choices, good or bad, reflect the character of a filmmaker. Getting too precious in a quest for perfection is a big mistake.


BTW, I do believe in careful editing, I just don't believe in animatics, which are a tool of the devil.




Unbelievable genius! Balanchine (above) was right! You can't change artists, all you can do is develop what they already have. Clampett was great at this. He didn't try for a homogenized unit. He pushed Scribner and others to take what they were already good at and make it even better.

Much wisdom here (above)! This is one of the many reasons why animation scripts should never, ever be written by writers. Writers don't know what individual artists in the unit are good at. Only another artist could appreciate that. A good story has to be tailor-made to fit the strengths of the artists who will work on the show.

PUNISHMENT!

Soooo...you guys didn't like the Yiddish Theater post! Gee, that's too bad. I thought entertainment people would be interested in reading about where modern entertainment comes from. I guess I was mistaken.

And you didn't like the vaudeville posters I put up! You didn't even like this one (above)!Amazing! I guess you prefer the wonderful technique in modern posters.

Maybe the vaudeville posters would have meant more if people knew something about the characters they were about. The McFadden's Flats poster I put up referred to the section of town that the Yellow Kid's Hogan's Alley was located in. If you're not familiar with Hogan's Alley click to enlarge the newspaper page above.

The Happy Hooligan poster I put up referred to the character in this comic strip (above, click to enlarge).

And you didn't like the story analysis! Really? Nothing special, huh? You know, it didn't come from a book. It took me hours of thinking to figure that one out. I'd hoped it would be useful to readers who might want to write something funny someday. But...I was mistaken.

Grrrr! What a bunch of meatheads! Why do I waste my time doing stuff for people who don't appreciate it?

I'm taking off for a couple of days to brood! I'll be back (maybe) Saturday, Sept. 8th!

THE AMERICAN YIDDISH THEATER

A lot of people don't know it but there were two vaudevilles in America in the early 20th century. One was the vaudeville everybody knows about, exemplified in the posters above and below, and which may have (I'm guessing) arisen from the old minstrel shows in the 19th century. The other was the now almost forgotten Yiddish Theater which came over on the boat with east European Jewish immigrants .





The two vaudevilles co-existed for a while and each had their separate audiences, but eventually the native vaudeville won out. It could pay more and had a bigger talent pool to draw from. Yiddish Theater people used to ridicule the vaudevillians, who they considered low class and vulgar, but even the Yiddish Theater eventually turned to sex gags and Yiddish performers were more and more moonlighting in regularvaudeville.

What I've said about the Yiddish Theater probably sounds sad but it was immensely influential in American comedy and drama. My guess is that part of that influence comes from East European Jewish culture. That culture is innately funny. Anglo culture isn't.

Let's say you're an anglo writer and you want to write a story about a gentile boy who's attracted to a gentile girl, and wants to ask her out. If you're like me you're asking yourself, "Hmmm, what obstacle is there? Is the boy shy? Is there another boy the girl likes better?" You have a lot of thinking to do before you arrive at a plot.

Now let's say you're a Jewish writer writing about a Jewish boy who wants to ask a Jewish girl out. East European culture requires a mediator or a go-between for things like this, usually a friend. The friend has to overcome the guy's reluctance to act and talk him into asking the girl out. The girl has a friend who has to talk her into accepting. Everything has to be argued about.

But that's not all. The girl's mother, who's a real character, thinks the boy is a loser. The boy's mother thinks the girl is a gold-digger. Maybe the two mediating friends are starting to fall for each other. And what happens if the two sets of parents meet each other? See what I mean? You haven't even thought about the plot yet and your story is half written. It's easy to write for Jewish characters. Their culture is interesting all by itself, even without a plot!

Everybody benefited from the War of the Vaudevilles. Gentiles learned how to write better comedy and Jews learned how to write James Bond films.

NEAPOLITAN HAND GESTURES

I was thinking about trying an animation program that a friend turned me on to, and I needed an idea for something to animate. After thinking about it for a while I settled on hand insults. you gotta' admit they're funny.

Suprisingly there's not a whole lot written on this subject. The best book was written by a neapolitan priest named deJorio in 1832. He didn't work with a very good artist and he declined to write about anything he thought was dirty, which probably leaves out a lot. Most frustrating of all, he left out explanations of things that he thought were so common as not to need description, and now those expressions are gone forever.

I'm dying to go to Naples and see what's left of the hand and body insult. Dejorio says they developed because people there had to communicate between balconies over the noise of the streets.

I wonder how slapping games developed? Dejorio said Neapolitans were always slapping each other on any excuse. Even educated aristocrats would play slapping games where a designated slapper would stand behind the slapee and give him a good whack on the back of the head. It had to be hard enough to make the guy mad. The guy would turn around and the grinning slapper would present both hands. The slap receiver would have to guess which hand he was slapped with. A wrong guess meant more slaps. If he guessed right he got to trade places with the slapper. I'll bet there were a lot of fights.

Everybody's favorite hand symbol is that of the evil eye. It has to do with imitating the horns of the devil. Neapolitans were obsessed with horn references. The gesture on the right (above)could mean evil eye but it could also mean a host of other horn-related things. Here's a partial list (below):


Nifty stuff, huh? I think we should bring back hand insults, though I could do without the slapping games.

GONE FOR THE HOLIDAY! BE BACK TUESDAY, SEPT. 4TH!

I was going to go to the beach but I think I'll work instead! 'Hope you have a great holiday!


(Thanks to Rogelio for the Price picture!)