I don’t want to start a practice of publishing an interview every time someone from Ren & Stimpy dies, but Chris Reccardi (1964-2019) was too important a figure in the modern animation world to not be celebrated in some substantial capacity. There’s been no substantial obituary, but the outpouring of love from Reccardi’s colleagues and admirers on social media has been overwhelming (Amid Amidi collected many here). To add something, I’m sharing my 2009 interview with Chris Reccardi at this link.
Category Archives: people
Chris Reccardi Interviewed
Filed under classic animation, modern animation, people, Ren & Stimpy
More on Michael Sporn
Michael Sporn’s celebration at the Academy’s Lighthouse International screening room was last night. The large gathering of friends and admirers should have been for a screening of Poe with Michael in attendance, but as the adage goes, life isn’t fair.
It was a lovely ceremony, an appropriate mix of clips of Michael and his films (Dr. Desoto, my personal favorite, was screened in its entirety) and remembrances from Michael’s widow Heidi Stallings, his brother Jerry Rosco, and his longtime friends John Canemaker, Candy Kugel, and Ray Kosarin. Mark Mayerson, who regrettably couldn’t be there, also contributed a speech.
I didn’t see many people I know, other than John Canemaker, Howard Beckerman, Michael Barrier, J.J. Sedelmaier, and Greg Ford. But I certainly didn’t feel out of place, as Heidi enthusiastically greeted me, knowing exactly who I was. She assured me she’s keeping Michael’s Splog alive and even asked if I’d help contribute posts to it. I’d love to help in any way, although it’s odd to think of that site written by anyone other than him. Even when he was highlighting the work of other people, the Splog, like his films, are all Michael.
I had a quick drink with Mike B. and his wife Phyllis a few days before the celebration, where he reminisced about the interviews he conducted with Michael present, Otto Messmer, Johnny Gent, and Eyvind Earle among them. He also mentioned how it seems impossible to imagine Poe being finished by someone else, unlike notorious commercial projects that were overtaken after the irresponsible directors squandered millions because they don’t know how to finish a picture.
The night’s program, though, says that Poe is “currently in production.” However inconceivable it is to imagine a Michael film without Michael, the outpouring of genuine admiration last night assures a completed Poe would simply be an act of love. Probably an act of inherited stubbornness too, as John Canemaker made clear was one of Michael’s endearing qualities, when Michael struggled for years financially. I doubt Michael would want to let something like his death get in the way of finishing a film, or even continuing his Splog. Certainly anything that keeps Michael Sporn’s name and memory alive is to be desired.
Filed under classic animation, modern animation, people
Mousekeeping
Oh, yeah, hey.
I’d been meaning for some time to get around to reviewing Jim Korkis’s The Book of Mouse: A Celebration of Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse, but if you’re like me, you’ve probably already gotten it. As is always the case with Jim’s books, it’s yet another fantastic resource for Disney history that makes even the most mundane trivia readable and entertaining. (My only caveat is that Jim didn’t go into detail about the other reason Riley Thomson’s unit was called the “Drunk Mickey Unit”; namely that its star players Fred Moore, Walt Kelly, and Ken Muse were all famous for their drinking.)
It’s one of several Korkis books published by Bob McLain’s Theme Park Press, a small-time player specializing in Disney history. You won’t find these lushly illustrated like those of Chronicle or Disney Publishing, but I think you’ll overcome the lack of pretty pictures once you dig into the books. McLain is also printing new installments of Didier Ghez’s important series Walt’s People. If you haven’t read the earliest volumes (shame on you), you can pick them up from Theme Park, as it’s reprinting the entirety of the series.
I personally was anticipating Ghez’s assemblage of Homer Brightman’s memoir Life in the Mouse House: Memoir of a Disney Story Artist, and can heartily recommend a purchase of this breezy read. Brightman was a storyman at Disney’s from 1935 to 1950, where his most memorable creation was Gus-Gus the mouse in Cinderella, then a mainstay of the Walter Lantz studio.
Brightman’s name doesn’t exactly evoke most fans and historians’ interest for good reason: most of the cartoons he wrote stink. It’s difficult to discern his involvement in the Disney films given the highly collaborative nature of that studio’s storytelling (as Brightman reveals in keen detail), but it’s probably fair to assume he came up with a fair share of funny moments. While his gag sense was far better than the corn peddled by Ben Hardaway in the ’40s, the animation in the Lantz cartoons got too stiff to make much of a difference when Brightman was a writer there in the ’50s and ’60s.
Still, any firsthand memories of the medium’s Golden Age are to be highly cherished, and Brightman’s accounting (while neither as insightful as Shamus Culhane’s or acidic as Jack Kinney’s) is engaging enough that you’ll probably plow through this 100-pager in one evening. I grew a little annoyed with Brightman’s inflated self-importance, but that’s to be expected in a memoir (as if Carl Barks was as inept a storyteller as Brightman made him out to be). Brightman used pseudonyms for all of his coworkers and they are left intact as he wanted. They get in the way, but thankfully Ghez has included a key to who’s who.
Walt Disney was one of those mercurial personalities you couldn’t help observe sharply, and Brightman’s anecdotes ring true and his commentary is generally spot-on. The book has been oversold as “scathing,” as if it’s tantamount to the bile regularly exhibited in strikers’ interviews of the past or the psychopath Walt Peregoy’s taped talks of the present day. It’s revealing that despite receiving ostensibly brutal treatment, Brightman is able to write about Disney with fair admiration. The book abruptly ends when he leaves after Cinderella, with no mention of Walter Lantz (who easily valued Brightman considerably more than Disney did).
I was surprised when I brought up the subject of the filmed Brightman board pitches for “The Woody Woodpecker Show”, Didier said he had never seen them. So here is one embedded below, in which Brightman shows off part of the storyboard for Alex Lovy’s To Catch a Woodpecker. One anecdote not in the book is Walt Disney having a fit of laughter during a story session, and remarking to Brightman, “I’m not laughing at the story. I’m laughing at you.” As was often the case, he was right.
Filed under classic animation, dead guys, people
Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary
Being one of the most original and influential visionaries of all-time has nothing to do with being a decent human being. A harsh truth anyone interested in the arts has to accept straightaway. And in the entire history of cartooning, no one quite illustrates this principle like Al Capp.
The short version: Li’l Abner had no equal in the medium of comic strips in its 1.5 decade prime (arbitrarily beginning any year in the latter half of the ’30s and ending in the early ’50s) and the man rose to the status of celebrity like no other cartoonist of that era. The strip’s biting narrative and rich draftsmanship had a major impact on Walt Kelly, Harvey Kurtzman, Charles Schulz, and any print cartooning visionary to emerge after its creation. Only Kelly’s Pogo managed to match (and, arguably, surpass) Capp’s Dickensian-like skill of enhancing the mundane, creating compelling characters out of even the incidentals. Whereas Kelly’s own sympathies were always with his characters, Capp held his characters in open contempt; the joy Capp got out of his self-aware style was exposing what unlikable, disdainful creatures every single one of his creations were.
Unfortunately, that cynical bile, as it so often is with the best talents, was inseparable from the work and the actual person. Capp’s gift for storytelling expanded to his personal and professional life, and he often spun fabricated stories that would be funnier if they weren’t at the personal expense of so many other people in a less than opportune position to defend themselves. His early losses, both physically (he lost his leg in a streetcar accident when he was nine) and creatively (he never finished art school and Joe Palooka’s Ham Fisher severly mistreated him), only fueled his abusive nature rather than enlighten him.
He was abusive to his friends, business partners, collaborators,and family; a misogynist who mistreated his wife and lovers with equal disdain; and, to borrow from Mark Evanier, a serial rapist whose third-leg antics (which victimized everyone from the nameless to Grace Kelly, Edie Adams, and Goldie Hawn) were defended by no less than Richard Nixon. If there is a positive side to this grisly story, it’s that Capp undoubtedly did feel remorse and disgust for the pain he caused. Suffice to say, it’s a dark, tragic, and, at times, humorous story worth telling with utmost delicacy.
Michael Schumacher is no stranger to chronicling the life of a widely influential cartoonist, and no one has done more to champion Al Capp’s Li’l Abner than Denis Kitchen has with his excellent reprint collections. As a team, they’re more than qualified to chronicle the life of the man behind Dogpatch, and Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary more than meets the goal of being a standard biography. If you are worried that aspects of the man Capp will be whitewashed, don’t be. This is the whole bitter story.
Some of the book’s chronology jumps around a bit much for a biography (the authors talk about the latter half of the ’40s in one section, and then discuss World War II in the next), and an analysis of why exactly Li’l Abner is the comic masterwork that it is, rather than simply stating that it is, would have been welcome. But given the scope of this book, and the gripping life story they have to tell in some 260 pages, they are admirably thorough and pull no punches. This is the biography David Michaelis wishes he wrote, one that doesn’t require penning a fantasy version as his atrocity Schulz and Peanuts did.
Do not base your opinion of Al Capp on that isolated YouTube clip of his encounter with John Lennon and Yoko Ono that is constantly making its rounds in social media. Schumacher and Kitchen have presented the real Al Capp here in their pageturner: admirably creative, but there’s not much to admire otherwise. Though in all fairness, that clip does rather accurately depict why anyone today can hear a Beatles song and know exactly what it is, but remain dumbfounded if they actually encounter a Li’l Abner strip. Sad, ain’t it?
