THE FIRST TIME I SAW A CLAMPETT CARTOON

I must have written about this before, but if so I can't find it. I guess an occasional repeat is inevitable after 520 posts. If I am covering old ground I apologize. It's a fun story for me to tell and maybe something new will come to light in the re-telling.

It all started in Berkeley, California where I had plans to start an animation studio. I figured I'd begin by making commercials for local TV then, when the time was right, I'd move the studio to L.A. where I'd become the next Walt Disney. The fact that I'd never animated before never struck me as an obstacle. It was the era just before video tape recorders so I didn't have much to study. Mostly I read books and did the animation exercizes in a book I got in the mail, Heath's "Animation in 12 Hard Lessons."

I was super-serious about this and I even got rid of all the furniture in my apartment to make a bigger working space. Using the plans I found in animation books, I carpentered together animation tables and discs, cel drying racks, an editing area and a photography stand. With the money from tutoring and a post office job I bought a camera and lights, swivel chairs and enough used editing equipment to get started. It was great! Amazingly someone found out what I was doing and donated the use of a completely professional motorized animation stand so I was really in business. My girlfriend and I had to sleep on the floor because there was no room for a bed but, what the heck, you have to make sacrifices to start a career, right?

Getting animation gigs proved to be difficult. I got two short ones but they didn't pay much.

I thought I'd better put something together to show what I and my friends could do, or thought we could do. We advertised ourselves as a full animation studio even though none of us had ever even inbetweened professionally. For a first project I picked a childrens book by Bill Peet (the first two pictures above are Peet's) . I figured he was an obscure childrens book author who lived in a shack behind the railroad tracks. I figured he would jump at the chance to see his pathetically obscure little book animated by suave and sophisticated artists like myself. I wrote a letter to him but never got an answer.

It was just as well because shortly after I met an art student who recommended me to her dad who was a big shot at Hanna Barbera. Thanks to favoritism I was a shoe-in! Aaaargh! I put so much effort into getting my own studio together...it seemed a shame to leave all that ... but this was a real job at a real Hollywood animation studio -- How could I turn that down? My girlfriend and I sold the animation equipment and dashed down to L.A.

I got my first job at Filmation and I was ecstatic! I worked all day then spent hours at night sitting at the desks of the older animators, flipping their animation and trying to figure out how they did it. Some of the old guys liked me and I had real cartoonist friends for the first time. My hero was still Bill Peet, who I discovered was a famous Disney story man, and through friends I discovered the names of my favorite directors: Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng. I was in heaven! I didn't mind working on the Filmation characters and I couldn't even imagine anything better than what Friz and Chuck did.

One day a friend (he might not want me to mention his name) told me he'd be projecting "Crumpet cartoons" in the 2nd floor hallway after work. I'm being disingenuous, he clearly said "Clampett," but I can't resist rewriting history to make the word sound the way I heard it for the first time months before. My friend was a real Clampet fan but I'd never seen a Clampett cartoon and I was a little skeptical of the hype. Surely, I thought, Friz and Chuck had the top spots locked up. Clampett, whoever he was, couldn't possibly be anything but the lackey who polished their shoes.

Well, as I may have said elsewhere, the lights dimmed and when they came on I was a different man. Clampett, to put it mildly, was not a shoe shining lackey. He was the only director to use all the elements of entertainment in a single film: funny and surprising writing, hilarious cartooning and animation, great pacing and choreography, killer voices, just the right color, efx and music...I was overwhelmed!

That night I completely flip-flopped. I disavowed my entire past and I even shed my desire to have a studio. Clearly I had a lot to learn and I could only learn it in the studio system. The next day I came to work feeling like the world-destroying infant at the end of the film, "2001." With a deeply grave look on my face I willed the studio door open (OK, I'm exaggerating) and slowly and deliberately levitated (so it felt) up to the second floor where the old guys were. I confidently approached them and announced that everything they were doing was wrong. I would brook no disagreement. The new law had had been laid down.