MORE "SUNDAY FUNNIES WERE BETTER A HUNDRED YEARS AGO!"

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TWO GREAT AMERICAN DRAMAS!

It strikes me that I wrote about these films before but if I did I can't find the post in the archive so I'll take another stab at it. In my opinion these are among the best dramas of the last half century. Glengarry is the best play about the dark side of making a living; Marty is the best play about finding someone to love.

Notice that I didn't say Marty was the best romance. Marty isn't a romance, rather it's about needing people and survival in the relationship jungle. I like it because it's about a subject that's really important. It's amazing how many dramas are about unimportant things. Animated films are often about learning to be yourself, which surely rates at the bottom of any objective list of important themes.

 
Glenngary is about how serious work is and how easily work can be taken away from you. You have to work to live yet work is not a right but more like a kindness that an employer bestows on you and can withdraw at any time. I don't mean to attach any political interpretation to this, I'm definitely not a Marxist, I simply note that it's surprising that something as vital as a job is apt to be so fraught with insecurity.

In modern society we're no longer independent hunters or farmers but rather supplicants with our tin cups out, hoping that someone with a job to offer will look kindly on us. It seems odd because philosophy and religion describe each individual as immeasurably important yet in another way we don't seem to be important at all. It's a puzzling icongruity which David Mammet presents without comment.

THE AMAZING GLEN KEANE

On the comments page Anonymous is always asking me what I think about Glen Keane. I don't have much to say about the man that's original. Like everybody else I think He's a wonderful draughtsman and animator and I'd kill to take a class with him. I just regret that Disney chose to do so many feature films about realistic human beings that required Glen's level of talent to pull off. It must be hard to make fun and imaginative films when so much attention has to be devoted to the technically grueling task of moving anatomically correct figures around the screen. Glen sometimes lectures to art schools and a friend told me that his latest lectures are full of references to a book called "Blink." I'm listening to a library copy of that book in the car now. According to the book we should trust our first impression of things. Our brains are very good at sizing up people and situations and finding a single criterian for judging them accurately. Glen applies this to drawing. On the first glance a person might strike you as boxy or wolf-like and that's the way you should sketch them, no matter how much other analysis you do. John K used to say that. It sounds right to me.

MIKE'S OBJECTIVE METHOD OF FILM CRITICISM

Mike is by far the most objective film critic that I know of. He has a great method and you don't have to be Mike to use it. Any reviewer using it will get the identical result regardless of educational or ethnic background, regardless of religious or ideological bias. Mike's method is scientific. Even a man from Mars would have no trouble using it. OK, here it is in the man's own words...

"First you add up all the female nude scenes (Hurray!). When you've done that you add up all the male nude scenes (Yuck!). Subtract the number of male nude scenes (Yuck!)from the number of female nude scenes (Hurray!) and voila, you have the numerical value of the fim! The higher the number the better! That's all there is to it!"

I feel so lucky to know Mike.

THE FIRST MODERN BATHROOM SYMBOLS

Believe it or not, I'm old enough to remember the first time male and female stick figures were used to designate restrooms. Previous to that the restrooms were labeled with words like "Ladies" and "Gentlemen" or "Seniors" and Senioritas."

I remember the very night I first saw the new symbols. They were on the lavatory doors of a Marie Calander's-type family restaurant that my friend's dad took us to. A bunch of frustrated patrons were gathered outside the restroom doors trying to puzzle out what the signs meant. The consensus was that the bell-shaped, flared stick figure might be a be a girl with a dress but what was the other figure? One lady thought it was a woman wearing a pant suit. Maybe both the bathrooms were for women, one for traditional dress wearers and one for pants-wearing new-agers. Somebody guessed that the the mens' rooms were somewhere on the other side of the building.

Every once in a while a frustrated citizen would knock on the door and if there was no answer he'd cautiously open the door and let himself inside. Everybody waited with baited breath to hear what he was seeing. When he came back with the answer the relieved crowd streamed into the appropriate rooms then ten minutes later a new crowd would form and the whole cycle would start up again.

What everyone in the crowd would have agreed on was that the new symbols were bold and futuristic. We all felt like we were entering restrooms on the starship "Enterprise." I wondered if it meant we'd all be wearing capes and gauntlet gloves and be carrying ray guns soon. It was heady stuff. A real glimpse into the future.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

I take Thanksgiving very seriously. Americans have a lot to be thankful for. I think about Valley Forge and about Washington nobley returning control of the Continental Army back to Congress after the War of Independence, of the Marines who died on Iwo Jima, of the fact that even the President of the United States couldn't enter my house if I didn't allow him. I think about how what we think of as the Jazz Age and the age of pulp magazines and Clampett cartoons coincided with millions being hauled off to slave labor camps in Siberia. I'm truly grateful for all that America's done for me and I'm delighted that a holiday exists to celebrate that. Now for some serious eating!

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!!!!!!!

SUNDAY COMICS PAGES FROM 1895!

This comics page from Pulitzer's "World" is almost 110 years old! Click to enlarge. That means the Sunday comics page (at least the title page) was better a century ago than it is now! I don't know about you but that hurts my pride. Where are our artists? We should compete with these old guys!The subject matter of these pages is interesting. One is about fires in high rises and the is other about train wrecks. These were serious problems in those days and I'm suprised to hear them treated with such levity here. I'll write more about this paper soon. Thanks to Jenny for recommending the book I got these pictures from: "The World on Sunday" by Baker & Brentano.