You can now order my first of hopefully many animation books, Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story, directly from my publisher, BearManor Media, at this link. I don’t have much to say other than it’s great to finally purge this project after several years of working on it. And what better way to celebrate than sinking into a brand new animation book and subject! One hint: my next book involves entirely dead people, so it’s more in-tune with the regular topics covered on this blog. Okay, bye now.
1/27/12 UPDATE: I’m aware BearManor is only shipping to U.S. addresses. An Amazon link will be available in the next week or so, and non-U.S. readers can buy the book there.
I’ve just returned from my first visit to the Ottawa International Animation Festival. I left it feeling inspired, though it’s a very complicated sort of inspiration.
The worst things I have to say about the festival seem to echo the thoughts of everyone else I spoke with. First and foremost, it’s too expensive and I didn’t feel I got my money’s worth because the scheduling is so horrendous. (I tried to make up for it by drinking as much free alcohol as I could at the Cartoon Network Picnic and Mercury Filmworks party – a hassle in itself with so many animators present.) I missed out on several screenings I wanted to see because they were either playing against something else or were simply too far away to make it in time. It’s impossible to please everyone, certainly, but a little more effort could be made.
The introductory video that played at every screening is unworldly awful. It’s almost schizophrenic going to a generally artsy festival and getting blasted with an obnoxiously loud advertisement for homogenized commercial animation wherever you go.
I only went to one competition screening, Short Competition 5, bearing in mind the popular opinion of the films screened in Ottawa: dreary and depressing. A great number of them absolutely fit that bill. Several seemed to hardly have any animation at all, and OIAF actually subjected its audience to an abhorrent CGI Coca-Cola commercial as part of the competition (easily the worst 45 seconds of my weekend). Yet I must have lucked out because several of them were entertaining and even funny. Rob Shaw’s Portlandia ‘Zero Rats’ was a bit too “College Humor” for my tastes to be truly hilarious, while Grant Orchard’s A Morning Stroll made excellent use of mixed medium to illustrate changing societal views as they relate to a New Yorker cartoon. The clear winner was Don Hertzfeldt’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day, which seemed to make fun of every single bad film that preceded it, and quite possibly all of the ones I didn’t see. I was in tears laughing at it and sincerely hope it wins the Oscar.
The key to enjoying the festival thoroughly, as Greg Duffell once told me, is to skip the competition screenings and only go to the retrospectives. It is also more of a social gathering than anything else, as all conventions and festivals really are. I got to see friends like Bob Jaques, Steve Stanchfield, Mark Mayerson, Mike Kerr, and Mitch Kennedy again, and as someone who doesn’t live in an animation ‘hub’ like L.A. or N.Y.C., it’s always invigorating to talk cartoons aloud with people who actually know what I’m talking about.
On Mark’s recommendation, I went to the retrospective of Barry Purves, a British stop-motion master. If you’re unfamiliar with Purves’s work, you’re in for a treat. I’m more partial to his work for children’s television, like The Wind in the Willows, than his operas like Rigoletto and Gilbert and Sullivan, where the music almost overwhelms the brilliance of his craft. His other strictly narrative shorts, like Screenplay embedded below (warning: it’s quite explicitly graphic), are far more successful in Purves’s aim to take animation into uncharted territory. There is something curious about stop-motion. It’s been steadily more daring than traditional or CGI animation have been over the years, yet it receives almost zero critical attention. Perhaps it’s because it’s seen strictly as an unserious novelty, thanks to its most visible feature films regularly steering into farcical gothic territory. As Purves’s body of work shows, stop-motion is no different than the various stigmas against other forms of animation: it’s capable of far more than people like to believe.
I met Amid Amidi for the first time, and he was just brimming with excitement over his highly anticipated Ward Kimball biography. If you didn’t see his excellent presentation on Kimball’s life and work, you missed out on some priceless home movie footage of Kimball and Walt Disney back in the day, the live-action reference for the crows in Dumbo, and even some homoerotic gag drawings by Kimball that Amid wasn’t allowed to put in the book.
I had asked Amid earlier at the Cartoon Network Picnic why Kimball stayed at Disney’s for his whole career when he was easily the most singular visionary in the studio’s entire history, and he was asked again during his presentation. The short answer: because the footage rate at Disney’s was so low and there was so much paid downtime between projects, it wouldn’t have made sense for Kimball to work somewhere else. Had he worked at a studio with a normal footage rate like Warners, he would never have had time to devote to his music, trains, and fine art painting, and thus, we would never have had the eclectic and eccentric individual that was Ward Kimball at all. His life is a reminder of the importance of broadening your horizons and skill set, so you’re not wearing one hat all of your life.
Needless to say, I’m absolutely dying to read Amid’s book. If you buy one animation book next year that isn’t my Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story, it should be Full Steam Ahead. But you should probably buy both.
To clear up some misinformation I helped spread unintentionally years ago, Mickey Mouse’s fantastic dance in Mickey’s Birthday Party is animated by Ward Kimball. Why does the animator’s draft credit Ken Muse and Riley Thomson then, with that curious “music room” credit indicative of reused footage? Because, as Amid uncovered in his research, Kimball had animated that dance for The Reluctant Dragon and it was scrapped. For the 1942 cartoon, Muse and Thomson only changed Mickey’s outfit.
Amid’s presentation would have been my favorite part of the festival if Ralph Bakshi hadn’t been there. It was very disturbing, though also revealing, that the auditorium where Bakshi’s one-on-one talk with Morgan Miller took place was not filled to capacity. Not just a true animation legend, literally animation history was on stage, and hundreds of people could care less. But it is typical of this medium, one which regularly holds the mutilation of its history in highest esteem.
Bakshi is a polarizing figure. There’s certainly a case to be made for his self-destructive nature, while it’s still hard to build a passionate case against him when almost all of his movies were made for under a million dollars, with practically no storyboarding and zero pencil tests. Those are not the kinds of opportunities many animators in any era would be jumping at, most certainly not Richard Williams and Don Bluth (two guys hung up on a craft with ultimately nothing to say).
I saw two Bakshi films in the retrospective. The 35mm print of Fritz the Cat was absolutely gorgeous, and in spite of some of its inherent messiness and stupidity, I was struck by how accurately the film captures the white liberal art student’s mindset (which is messy and stupid) and just how beautiful and fun so much of the animation was. (You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Jim Tyer’s footage in that thing on a big screen.) Steve asked Bakshi what it was like working with Tyer, and the man’s eyes absolutely lit up at the question: “He was the greatest animator who ever lived.” I later asked Bakshi what John Gentilella animated, outside of Blue the biker-Nazi-heroin addict rabbit. He said and wrote his response as he was signing my copy of Ralph Bakshi: Unfiltered: “The car.”
Coonskin is another story, and not just because the print screened was a faded Eastman. The high level of pure incoherence that wrecked many of Bakshi’s later films isn’t there yet, but it could have easily been a much better film had it just been tweaked only slightly. For one thing, there isn’t a single compelling or relatable character in it, like Duke in Fritz or Ida in Heavy Traffic, which a film like Coonskin, just brimming with the makings of brilliant character animation, requires. (I actually first saw Bakshi when he arrived unannounced to introduce Coonskin. He left immediately after that, saying, “Nah, I don’t wanna fuckin’ see it.”)
Bakshi said he’s aware of his films’ rough edges and in some cases their badness. He seemed to almost relish critics taking him to task for it. The charge of “undisciplined” against Bakshi I’ve ready many times seems to be a bit unfounded when you apply it to any filmmaker. To fault Ralph Bakshi for a lack of discipline seems to miss the point of Ralph Bakhi – his films were always like him (unshaven and grungy) going back to the Terrytoons and Paramount shorts he directed in the 1960s. Critically and professionally irresponsible is another matter, and certainly applicable to a great many revered late twentieth century animators, Bakshi probably included. The criticism should not be entirely over the crass surfaces and execution of Bakshi’s films, but if there’s nothing beneath them. In many cases there almost certainly is, and, unfortunately, in many cases there absolutely isn’t.
Whether or not you like Bakshi’s films or the man himself, though, is irrelevant. He had an original point-of-view and he achieved what he set out to do: to make American animation outside the Disney ghetto acceptable to the public. In spite of its flaws, I still think Heavy Traffic may be the greatest animated feature ever made.
While writing Sick Little Monkeys, I came to the conclusion that a lot of what’s perceivable as Bakshi’s flaws is largely inherent to what animation is in general: “a subsection of humanity’s most uniquely talented and dysfunctional.” By default, it’s unrepairable. As Bakshi told the audience though, it’s just amazing at what one can do single-handedly in this age of technology, and there is no excuse to be tied to any one system with so many options available.
The Ottawa Festival itself is also largely reflective of this. The conglomerate waste, pretension, and frauds are never going to go away. Yet there is much inspiration to be found in its crevices. The way for anyone with an interest or career in animation to retain the little sanity they have left is to ignore everything else and just pursue that little inspiration as positive reinforcement. The medium is beyond mending, so let’s have fun if we can. I will certainly try returning to Ottawa just for that alone.
(This site may become Thadwell’s Book Corner soon, but don’t count on it.)
It’s been over two years since the release of John Ortved’s The Simpsons: An Unauthorized, Uncensored History. I put off reading it until very recently. The consensus is that while Ortved did a solid job researching his subject, he botched the presentation.
The book takes that most undemanding route of the oral history, a format indicative of a writer with zero narrative skill. The adeptness to accumulate the facts was there, as successfully conducting some eighty interviews is no mean feat, but weaving them into something compelling was beyond Ortved.
Ortved’s own prose is fannish at best. The book credits a copyeditor, but one wonders what that job entailed given how ham-fisted the final book is. (There are also many typos and grammatical errors.) Ortved presents his own anecdotes under the delusion that someone reading a history of The Simpsons is interested in his personal viewing experiences. He is also presumptuous thinking that the reader already knows who worked on which episodes; that by merely naming episode titles, his case for what exactly was “the Simpsons‘ Golden Age” is made.
The best example of the book’s shortcomings may be the entire chapter devoted to former Simpsons writer Conan O’Brien (he was one of Ortved’s more prestigious interview subjects, quoted on the back cover). O’Brien was obviously an essential presence in the writers room. Surely his best solo writing job, Marge vs. the Monorail, is one of the few perfect half-hours of 1990s television (and far funnier than anything else he’s done, up to and including the present day). Ortved never tells us why O’Brien was significant to the series. All we learn is that the other writers found him a continuous riot and that they were all amazed to see where he’s gone.
One of the chief complaints is that Ortved is too opinionated in his book. He doesn’t think too highly of the last 15 years or so of The Simpsons, and thus received poor marks for his dismissal. Of course, anyone with eyes shares his opinion of the show’s decline. Rather, the resentment should be towards how poorly he framed his critiques. Ortved’s analysis of the Simpsons‘ peak is practically nonexistent, whereas his emphasis, prose on how “lame” the later episodes are, is barely above the average Internet forum posting.
The block quotes are ultimately what you’re going to get the book for. Now that the book is less than $11 on Amazon, you could do much worse. Certainly the price is justified for people like O’Brien or Brad Bird talking about the show in detail. It’s also a great primer for those interested in learning about the show’s chief architects. The quotes give indication of how compelling a history of The Simpsons could really be.
Journalist [and Simpsons guest voice] Tom Wolfe makes a thought provoking comment near the end of the book. “The Simpsons also managed to make a virtue out of bad draftsmanship. The characters are really terribly drawn, but they are so stylized that it doesn’t make any difference any longer.”
Truer words were never spoken about the show. Fans like to romanticize about the fist few seasons, but the show was always poorly drawn and mechanically animated. What was wonderful, though, is that it was a deliberate mechanicalness, one that helped emphasize the sharp writing and the best ensemble of voice actors in decades. It was not merely what its detractors call an ink-and-paint live-action show. While owing more to live-action than any cartoon, it was still something that couldn’t work if it was not animated. When the writing was golden, they used cartoon license to add to the scripts’ quirkiness. Surely no one could envision animator David Silverman’s scenes of Homer’s heart attack or “No TV and no beer make Homer something-something” translating nearly as well into a live-action comedy; the movement is humorously stilted, becoming a new form of stylization in the process. This effect deteriorated as the show progressed, no doubt. When the writing went to pot and the voices started phoning in, there was nothing to hide the crude formula of the draftsmanship that was always present.
In the decades since The Simpsons premiered, there have been many primetime animated shows. These shows’ creators included people who would like to be doing live-action exclusively but use drawings as a means of presenting unoriginality as hip (Mike Judge), those whose greatest talent is exploiting the growing ADHD in our society (Seth MacFarlane), and even some who enlarged upon The Simpsons‘ virtues and carried them out in a completely different way (Trey Parker/Matt Stone).
Prime time animation has not been very visually pleasing as a result, and that irks a lot of people. It’s undeniable that having people ingrained in live-action has worked in these shows’ favor. Controversial though it may be, live-action people are just plain smarter than animation people. If it were the other way around, maybe every major artist-driven series or studio wouldn’t fizzle out/peak after a couple of films/years, be it financially or artistically.
Ortved was charged with being one-sided because he didn’t interview Groening or mogul James L. Brooks for his book. Much of this had to do with Ortved’s emphasis on the important role TV writing legend Sam Simon played in shaping the series and assembling its writing team in the first three years of the show.
Less bothersome to some reviewers is the fact that hardly anyone still involved with the show was interviewed (voice artist Hank Azaria being the primary exception), which is typical for any still-living Hollywood product. Should someone want to write the real Pixar story before the studio dries up (monetarily), they will face the same problems of dealing with the corporation’s front office before they can secure interviews with the talent.
He quotes Groening and Brooks, albeit from a variety of sources, and was criticized that they weren’t able to answer to charges of their own egos in the present day, which seems to be a naive assumption at best. Anyone who honestly holds this against Ortved has obviously never conducted an interview with people in the entertainment business. Case in point: in preparation for my own book on The Ren & Stimpy Show, there were several notable people who refused to be interviewed, some declines more impassioned than others. More than once I was told that the accuracy of my reporting and writing is compromised because I’m a critic of John K.’s works and words. (They’re welcome to still be interviewed as of this posting.)
I’m sure Ortved was taught the same thing by his teachers in college that I was: there is no such thing as objectivity. Frequent use of “objectivity”, or “respect”, is symbolic of an individual whose aspirations for controlling what others think clouds his or her own reasoning. The best commodities of Hollywood always stem from powerful egos, and it’s only natural that people want to control how the history they lived is presented. Ortved said the big players would be fine talking to him if he would write a puff piece on the making of the Simpsons Movie. Likewise, regardless of my own attitudes and ardor, some people with R&S would have zero interest in contributing to anything more meaningful than the likes of the tame oral history (see the pattern?) that appeared in the most recent issue of Hogan’s Alley. Had Ortved actually interviewed the holdouts, they probably wouldn’t have answered the tough questions anyway.
All of which is to say that I certainly sympathize with Ortved’s plight, but I wish a better written book came out of it. There are endless hints throughout at how fascinating and wonderful a book about what was one of the most important TV shows of all time, and what was inarguably one of the few products of TV animation worth taking seriously, could be. Ortved laid the rough foundation, now it’s up to someone to utilize it. Maybe the show will actually be over by then.
In case you didn’t see Journey 2, you can watch a iPhone recording of the new CGI short, Daffy Duck’s Rhapsody online. I’ll keep my comments brief this time, since I covered a lot of the same ground in my previous Looney Tunes CGI post.
This short is at least as well animated, designed, and rigged as I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat. It also has some genuinely funny and expressive moments, along with some awfully confusing ones. (The banjo-playing, anyone?)
Because the Daffy novelty record is a staple of Looney Tunes culture in a way the Tweety & Sylvester one is not, just about everyone who ever heard and loved the song has played out an animated version of it in his or her head. I strongly suspect what the team did with this short was nowhere near as energetic as any fan’s fictitious version, exposing the limitations of CGI in a way the Tweety short didn’t.
As good as the CGI animation is, Blanc’s vocals demand this piece to be animated either highly distorted and over-posed (Clampett) or stylized with fewer drawings (Tashlin). They do a fine job of channeling Jones-type poses/reactions throughout the cartoon, which is something I thought would be impossible to achieve in CGI. So perhaps CGI hasn’t quite peaked, even if a lot of the major CGI studios certainly have.
(Speaking of vocals, it’s a little shabby only Mel Blanc gets top billing here. Yes, his voice is the star, no question, but Billy West is able to do something Blanc never could do: a near flawless approximation of Arthur Q. Bryan’s Elmer Fudd voice.)
It’s been over two years since the release of John Ortved’s 
