MILT: "Hey, Eddie...you want to hear my latest thoughts on Clampett?"
EDDIE (VO): "More Clampett theories!!! Go ahead. I'm all ears!"
MILT: "Well, Clampett gets a lot of attention these days and it's easy to forget that at one time he was denied the press that other 40s Warner directors got. Have you ever wondered how that came about?
EDDIE (VO): "Yeah, all the time. At one time Chuck and Friz got a lot of the credit, even though Bob was obviously the better filmmaker. Chuck outlived Bob and was pretty articulate about why he did what he did. I guess it pays to be eloquent."
MILT: "Well maybe, but I think it went deeper than that."
MILT: "The main reason was that Chuck and Friz relied on rules and formulas that were already described in books and magazine articles by the mid 30s. They were ready made for historians and critics to reference. Bob was more visceral and innovative. There were no ready-made words to describe what he was getting at."
EDDIE (VO): "Wow! True enough! In a Jones cartoon the bad guy always deserved what he got and Bugs administered the punishment. That's fine, but it got repetitive. After a while you found yourself yearning for a Clampett cartoon where Bugs just bothered the heck out of a poor, innocent patsy like Elmer. It just felt right."
MILT: "Exactly. Bugs was shaking people out of their complacency. That's just classic comedy."
EDDIE (VO): "Haw! Try to explain that to Chuck and Friz, or to a critic who's obsessed with formulas."
MILT: "I sum it up this way: rules are fine in their place, but let's face it......"
MILT: "Rules are for beginners!"
MILT: "I sum it up this way: rules are fine in their place, but let's face it......"
************
P.S. In summing up Milt's ideas I sometimes resorted to a fictional paraphrase. If I goofed up, I hope he'll correct me in the comments section.
A fascinating topic, As much as I love Jones, setting up Bugs reason to heckle someone can eat up time when the audience really wants to get to the heckling. So what if he doesn't have a good reason to mess with Red Hot Ryder?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Is this the famous Milt Gray who wrote all those great Clampett articles?
This photo story is absolute art! You and Milt Gray should write a whole book on Clampett.
ReplyDeleteI think over the years, people have associated Bob way too much with John K. and how his cartoons are highly influenced by Clampett's, which could also explain why Clampett is still underrated throughout much of the animation world. The people who love the Clampett cartoons don't want to be painted as John's sycophants, and I'm sure you must have gotten some criticism about it yourself. I don't understand why people have to argue over these directors when all the cartoons they made, whether it was Clampett, Jones, Freleng, Avery, and Tashlin, are better than any cartoon being produced now, especially on a technical and creative level.
An excellent piece. I think Milt's theory is probably right, but I also think that a lot of people didn't like Bob Clampett, the person. He was a bit on the goofy side. Usually those people are ignored by the ones who want to be seen as smarter and more brilliant. It's their sycophants who rub out the wacky guy.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, who's the guy in the mustache at the end of your post?
Another underrated director is Frank Tashlin. I consider his cartoons to be one of the best from the era. He's not TOO obscure, but I think his live-action films are better known than his animation work.
ReplyDeleteAnd this may interest you. Mark Kausler posted some early newspaper comics Clampett drew when he was 12.
http://itsthecat.com/blog/?p=3367
I think Clampett is best compared with other mavericks who shook up the studio system in the early 40s (Orson Welles and Preston Sturges particularly come to mind). All three of these figures seem to have simultaneously loved their medium but at the same time to have been bored with the standard techniques of filmmaking (which weren't even that old, but they cranked out a lot of movies in the 20s and 30s!). Jones reminds me more of Billy Wilder, who needed to disparage his own medium in order to rise above 'mere entertainment'. This is not to say that Wilder and Jones weren't enormous talents too, but they needed a crutch in order to create. Clampett, Sturges and Welles didn't. Interestingly, the latter three all enjoyed a brief period of incandescent brilliance, followed by years of hit-and-miss, while Jones and Wilder aged into survivors who could tailor history as they saw fit.
ReplyDeleteBrubaker: I saw those! Very interesting!
ReplyDeleteMichael, Joshua: The man in the mustache is Milt Gray. Milt's an animator and an animation historian. For years he was a timing director on The Simpsons, and he helped out on Mike Barrier's book, "Hollywood Animation."
Stephen: Interesting!
Roberto: I don't know how to answer that in just a few words.