A few months ago I wanted to try doing pencil tests on Flash so I thought I'd do a little YouTube film of Italian insult gestures. It never came about. I had so much trouble getting the program to work that I finally walked away from it and did something else. Now I have a trial download of Digicell Flipbook, and the tiny film seems try-able again....except....
...except I just looked over my incomplete notes for the gestures and I can't remember how some of them worked, or what some of them meant.
This drawing (above) for example. What does it mean? It fell out of my notes, and I have no idea what I was thinking when I drew it. It's something I used to see in high school. Sometimes it provoked laughter, once a fight. But why? What does it mean?
And what is this (above)?
I forget what the top finger-pinch (above) means...my guess is that it says, "You mean less than dust to me!"
The boy runs to catch up. After trying everything, he pulls out his big gun...the thing that never fails...his most irresistibly charming gesture. He symbolically plucks off the girl's cheek, retrieves it and kiss it...kisses every finger of her cheek (!?)...then blows it back to her.
The poor boy! The girl is unaffected. She just walks on. The boy, outraged and broken-hearted, shakes the kiss from his hand, does a "Heck with you!" gesture, and returns to his friends, who are doubled over laughing.
As the speaker says in this video (above), Italy is fast losing it's gestural heritage. What a pity! I read that it used to be most intense in Naples, which was a noisy city where everybody hated everybody. The gestures were a way to argue between balconies when the clatter from the streets made spoken insults unworkable.
This video (above) is completely off topic. I found it when I was searching for gesture videos on youTube. It's only a minute long. See what you think.
And what is this (above)?
I forget what the top finger-pinch (above) means...my guess is that it says, "You mean less than dust to me!"
The bottom drawing (above) is one of the oldest and best insults: you simply turn your back on the other person. They're not worthy of your front.
Once the back is turned (above) the insulter has the option of intensifying the insult with a butt shake...
...maybe followed up with a tooth flick.
Some insult gestures (above) are so strong that to use them is to make an enemy for life. I have no idea what the above gestures mean, but I suspect that a mother's virtue is being questioned here.
All these little finger gestures...what do they mean? They look pretty nasty.
Whatever it is, it can't be good.
This one (above) had me puzzled, but I figured it out while posting it. It's the first of two drawings (the second one must be missing) showing a man about to do a pushing away gesture, as if to say, "Your existence is an offense to me! Go away! Just GO AWAY!"
...maybe followed up with a tooth flick.
Some insult gestures (above) are so strong that to use them is to make an enemy for life. I have no idea what the above gestures mean, but I suspect that a mother's virtue is being questioned here.
All these little finger gestures...what do they mean? They look pretty nasty.
Whatever it is, it can't be good.
This one (above) had me puzzled, but I figured it out while posting it. It's the first of two drawings (the second one must be missing) showing a man about to do a pushing away gesture, as if to say, "Your existence is an offense to me! Go away! Just GO AWAY!"
What makes this special is the extreme anticipation to the push (above). It's not just a simple prelude to a push, it's a statement of obliteration. The pusher is so disgusted by the other person that he chooses suicide if necessary to avoid having to look at such a fool for a moment more.
I wanted to end the film on a cheerful note, maybe with a quick little story demonstrating some of the most common romantic gestures. I haven't found all the doodles yet, but I remember how it started:
A boy is sitting with his friends when a beautiful girl walks by. He does a startle response (above), then pushes his friends aside, maybe upturning the table, and he runs ahead of her and introduces himself. The boy puts on a good show but, since she gets hit on 50 times a day, the girl gives him a bored look and keeps on walking.
The boy runs to catch up. After trying everything, he pulls out his big gun...the thing that never fails...his most irresistibly charming gesture. He symbolically plucks off the girl's cheek, retrieves it and kiss it...kisses every finger of her cheek (!?)...then blows it back to her.
The poor boy! The girl is unaffected. She just walks on. The boy, outraged and broken-hearted, shakes the kiss from his hand, does a "Heck with you!" gesture, and returns to his friends, who are doubled over laughing.
As the speaker says in this video (above), Italy is fast losing it's gestural heritage. What a pity! I read that it used to be most intense in Naples, which was a noisy city where everybody hated everybody. The gestures were a way to argue between balconies when the clatter from the streets made spoken insults unworkable.
This video (above) is completely off topic. I found it when I was searching for gesture videos on youTube. It's only a minute long. See what you think.
COOOL drawings!! are you using a wacom tablet? or did you get a cintiq??
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear that about flash, it can be tricky. I hear flipbook is pretty good. there is also another one called Tvpaint that is supposedly pretty good.
I hope you finish the film soon, or post some more drawings!!
hurray!
I just watched Too Bad She's Bad (1954) on TCM, which is loaded with vintage Italian gestures. Every single character speaks fluently with his or her hands, and a wide range of facial expression. Even though the film is in Italian, you won't need the subtitles to follow what they're saying.
ReplyDeleteThat is, if you can wrench your eyes off a 19 year-old Sophia Loren in a bathing suit long enough. (Now I know why she was known as the "Anatomic Bomb". Marone!! I got an eye-ache from my eyes popping out of my head. After which I got a groin-ache...)
LOL at Mike F. Maybe I should check that movie out.
ReplyDeleteI wonder which one of those is the 'thumb biting' gesture referenced in "Romeo and Juliet". Do they even still use that gesture in Italy?
I think another one I know of, referenced in Dante's The Divine Commedy, was the Fig but I don't know what it looks like.
Great drawings! I'd love to see that film get made. It packing with genius!
ReplyDeleteAs for the last video, Wooooowwwww...... talk about misunderstanding.
I thought the Austin Powers clip is great, and I thought it was the most hysterical thing in the world when I was a kid, but the problem with this is that it's based soley on gags. Norm MacDonald once said that he never thought those Austin Powers movies would work because Mike Myers didn't have a comic persona. He was doing sketch characters, and characters, he said, don't work in comedy films because they're one-dimensional and would die before the 90 minute running time was up. He then conceded that it did indeed work in Austin Powers, but I find myself disagreeing as I grow older. The Three Stooges weren't built on gags, they were built on comic personas, and their reactions to the gags and to each other were what made them great.
ReplyDeleteEddie, I've been thinking about this lately. You're a funny guy. Why do you think there's so few guys out there who are equally known in animation and comedy writing circles, like Sam Simon? How come more cartoonists don't get involved in the comedy world? Shouldn't those two industries be allies?
I mean, if Jim Carrey drew, if wouldn't take away from his comedy, right?
Bob Clampett was a filmmaker, he was a cartoonist, a director, and a writer. How come today's Bob Clampetts only try to enter the industry through one end, the animation end. Woulnd't it make more sense to work at both the comedy writing end and the animation end of show business? The two intersect a lot, don't they?
Jorge: Animation executives hate cartoonists, and resent the fact that they're forced to feed off them like fleas on a cat. They'd rather give a billion dollars to a non-artist to develop a cartoon property than ten cents to a genuine cartoonist.
ReplyDeleteAlso, most cartoonists know that anything they create they automatically lose the rights to when it gets produced - not exactly the best incentive to selling your own prized creation.
Sam Simon submitted a spec script for the "Taxi" series. It was accepted and he left kiddie animation far behind. The relatively non self-promoting Tex Avery informally suggested to live action directors tons of funny ideas that were never used. Frank Tashlin directed live action comedies because he wanted to and because he kept getting fired by cartoon studios. Live action is a good fit for some and not others. Not everyone wants to work in live action if they can draw and think visually, despite a huge pay disparity and superior pension benefits.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: But there's animated comedies that are created by professional comedy writers and stand-ups, right? That's what I meant.
ReplyDeleteI mean, when I think of what cartooning is, I think of not just funny drawings but funny stories or characters. That requires writing, right?
Love them thumbs... y'know Eddie, way back some moons ago I sent you a crummy little goof mag called Fooey, an' you seemed a bit disappointed, and thought it was really quite awful, (and on the face of it, yer right), being a gentleman tho', you qualified it as being testament to a do-it-yourself kinda valiance, (even for 1963). But here's my wrankle: Your self-made goof sessions found on this blog, the bucktooth takes an' such, are they really so differe'nt than the depravity of Fooey?
ReplyDeletejust for the record..jim carrey's made his debut on american television(he's canadian like john)playing a cartoonist on a sitcom..dont remenber the name of the show(getting old!)but i do remember the how the show would alternate between the real world and the world he was animating. as for the hand gestures..italian?..really? i just thought thats how all native born new yorkers talked!
ReplyDeleteI've seen that "Got your nose" thumb gesture before, I think it was in one of Desmond Morris People Watching books. It might have also been in one of David Crystals Cambridge Dictionary's of Language.
ReplyDeleteumm, those drawings of Uncle Eddies? Weren't they all in Pencil? Its the latest technology, but a little difficult to find in wood anymore.
A thumb poking through a closed fist is a reference to another anatomical feature poking into one's buttcheeks. A raised pinky (with upward slashing motion} means "up yours!", or, in other words, "You know where you can stick this pinky!" The other ones are probably just as filthy.
ReplyDeleteHey Eddie, thought you might find this interesting. Victorian Era postmortem photography: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs//archives/14682
ReplyDeleteHAHAHAHAA, hilarious drawings Eddie! Flash isn't too hard once you get the hang of it. I dunno, maybe I've just been using it for a while.
ReplyDeleteYeah, check out David's recommendations. Those are the good ones. I can't wait to see one of your films either! You rule!
David: Thanks for the kind words, and for the program recommendation! No tablet, just a pencil. I looked up TVpaint and watched one of their editorials. It looks more complicated than Digicel flipbook.
ReplyDeleteMike: Haw! "Too Bad She's bad"...it sounds great! I'll look for it.
Jorge: This is too big a subject to handle here. I'll give it a shot in outline form, but I'll probably leave out a lot.
Animated comedies that are more than just illustrated radio should always be written on boards, and the writer should be able to draw. For short cartoons I believe in the unit system where highly competitive directors are kings and hire only the writers that suit them. Unfortunately very few modern studios are set up for this, so I'll assume that you're talking about writing for corporate studios which employ script writers.
Even there I believe that directors should hire their own writers. No two directors are alike: they have different abilities and limitations and will require scripts that play to those differences. Strong directors (and who would want any other kind) need scripts that fit their styles, and the unique talents of the individual artists in their crew. I don't like the idea of the one-size-fits-all script.
Most of my writing has been for story editors and producers, and I was so happy to get the job that i didn't attempt to lecture anybody about how I thought they should set things up. Writers like to be independent of directors because they get more freedom to write what they want that way. I have to be honest and admit that I like that freedom too, though I'll probably burn in Hell for it. Boy, this system corrupts everybody.
To compensate for my self-indulgence I tried to invite artists in at every stage. When I wrote for Tiny Toons I used to go out to the cubicles and beg ideas from artists all the time. No formal gag meeting, we'd just kick ideas around right there, on the floor. I don't think I ever had an idea that was so good that it couldn't be improved by talking to artists about it.
Anon, Jorge: Sam Simon was a good animation writer, no doubt about it. I miss him.
About working in both live action and animation...sure, if you could do it. Animation is more suited for comedy because it better lends itself to exaggeration.
Anon: Thanks a million for the interesting URLs! Do you want me to print them here?
ReplyDeleteWow! Thanks for the detailed response, Eddie! I'm gonna save those paragraphs into my computer!
ReplyDeleteEddie, re. pencil tests: I've had luck with a stop-motion program, which work with a digital camera (still camera) and quite easily flip your pencils, old school, as they say, once you upload the shots of your drawings.
ReplyDeleteAnd my previous query stands! A comparative study of Fooey pages and Theory Corner histrionics is in order.
You can draw really expressive hands. It's tough to do. Any advice on how to increase my hand drawing skills. I've studied some of Jack Davis work from the early MADs. His hand drawing skills are superb.
ReplyDeleteK. Nacht:Many, many thanks for sending me that issue of Fooey. I admit to being a bit disappointed, but after I got over that I found it very interesting for the light it shed on publishing in that era.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that two guys, a writer and an artist/ photographer put together the whole magazine in two or three weeks to take advantage of a distribution opportunity. My guess is that the distributer owed money to someone and offered to settle up by distributing one trial issue of a magazine, if they could get it together in time. Maybe the distributer paid for the printing.
There were a lot of one-shot magazines in that era, as there were in our recent past, from about 2002 to 2007. I wish I knew more about how this came about.
You're right that I'm the kind of person who would have rushed to take advantage of the situation the Fooey guys had. It was one of my dreams when I was a kid to have a magazine of my own. Can't do it now, though. Magazines are on the way out.
Fried: So THAT'S what the finger gesture means! Thanks for explaining that!
Adam: I like to think that the hands are the human being and the torso, head, etc. are just the dead weight the hands are forced to carry around.
ReplyDeleteDarbyshire: Thanks a million for the fascinating link! I was so taken with it that I did a post on the subject!
ReplyDeleteThanks Eddie, didn't mean to twist yer ear, and your thanks are too kind. The publication trappings of Fooey are indeed interesting, and it is also indeed shoddy work. From the standpoint of PHYSIOGNOMY alone I thought of you, as your photo sessions seem to hark to this also all but vanished form of tomfoolery. Your stories are of greater quality than Fooey of course, it was merely in a broad sense I made the comparison. Perhaps I'm only slightly chagrined for bringing Fooey to your attention. But I'll lay it to rest. And like the baseless fabric of this vision...
ReplyDeleteA classic explanation for seemingly rushed one shot magazines, which may indeed still be the main explanation, was because a physical magazine would be necessary during the application for a fourth class mailing permit, as well as applying for a trademark, eg ashcan editions of comic books.
ReplyDeleteHi all at uncleeddiestheorycorner.blogspot.com. What you thinking about chicken recipes? rnexample: rnApple brandy chicken, made with chicken breast halves, apple brandy, cream, onions, and butter, along with mushrooms. rn 4 chicken breast halves rn rn salt and pepper rn 8 ounces sliced mushrooms rn 2 teaspoons olive oil rn 2 teaspoons butter rn 1/3 cup apple brandy, such as Apple Jack or Calvados rn 4 green onions, chopped rn 1/2 cup whipping cream or heavy cream rn 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves or 1/4 teaspoon dried leaf thyme rn rnPreparation: rnFlatten chicken; place chicken breast halves between pieces of plastic wrap and gently pound until thinned out and uniform in size. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. In a large heavy skillet, heat olive oil and butter over medium heat. Add chicken breasts. Cook for about 5 minutes, until browned, then turn. Add mushrooms and cook for about 5 minutes longer. Add green onions and apple brandy and cook for another minute, until chicken is cooked through and mushrooms are tender. Add cream and thyme; simmer until thickened. Taste and add salt and pepper if needed. rnHave you else any ideas? [url=http://freerecipesforchicken.info/]recipes for chicken[/url]
ReplyDelete