Tagged: Disney

JOHN OSTRANDER: Widgets

  • News
  • August 23, 2007

ostrander100-6411617karl-marx-1801863Theories are great. I love theories. Usually they’re a wonderful conflation of thought and imagination. We all have our own pet theories on things and we teach them to do tricks or rub their tummies and have fun with them. For example, my sweetie, Mary, on a regular basis comes up with new theories of how the universe was created. They’re different each time and always fun. Sometimes they stumble near quantum theory and that gets a little spooky but, all in all, I enjoy them almost as much as she does.

My problem with theories is when they become ossified into dogma. This happens not just in religion but in all walks of life, including economics and business. Communism is a good example of an economic theory gone to dogma. One of its charming hypotheses was that, once communism had spread around the globe – as Karl Marx felt it inevitably would – all government would evaporate because we would have achieved the workers’ paradise. That theory, unfortunately, is not based on any human trait I’ve ever seen. Capitalism, on the other hand, being based on human greed, is and that’s one of the reasons it has survived and communism has not.

Capitalism and business, especially in recent years, have had their own bits of theories that are endlessly repeated like mantras until they too have become dogma. They’re applied whether they fit the situation or not, sometimes out of stupidity and other times from cupidity.

One of my least favorite bits of economic dogma is “They’re all widgets.” The word “widget” was coined, I believed, by playwright George S. Kaufman for his 1924 play Beggar On Horseback in which the protagonist must choose between his work as a composer and a steady but soul draining job in a “widget” factory. Since it was never defined, a “widget” – in the economic sense – is a synonym for “product” or, when dealing with a creative artist, the term “talent” is used. What it comes down to is that it doesn’t matter what the widget is, certain business and selling rules will apply. Soap, beef, talent, cars, drugs, beer, games, comic books, movies, TV shows – they’re all widgets. One theory fits all.

Except it doesn’t always do that. In 1989, Marvel was bought by Ron Perelman’s MacAndrews and Forbes; at the time, Marvel had maybe 70% of the sales of a very healthy direct sale market. Before Perelman’s little junket was done, Marvel was in bankruptcy and the market was in tatters. Why? Because they decided they were selling widgets. They didn’t need to know anything about comics or the market; they were going to apply sound business principles and make comics respond accordingly. (I had plenty of friends on the inside keeping me abreast of the latest theory.) Nobody could tell these guys nothing. Their business model was not simply Disney but McDonald’s which not only sells hamburgers but own the bakeries that makes the buns, the cattle ranches that supply the beef and so on.

Marvel started to bring its licenses inside the company with the idea that they would supply the product. Since trading cards were so popular, they would buy the trading card companies. They bought the companies after the interest in trading cards had already crested. Perelman’s suits were consistently behind the curve. (more…)

RIC MEYERS: The Dark Labyrinth

  • News
  • August 19, 2007

ric-meyers-100-2021640Twenty-five years ago, the late, great Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, tried to beat Lord of the Rings to the cinematic punch by co-writing and co-directing a similar and derivative, yet pioneering and daring, “adult” fantasy. Four years after that, approximately twenty-one years ago, he tried to combine Star Wars, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Where the Wild Things Are, and M.C. Escher, among other things, to create a new coming of age teen tale.

This week, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is releasing handsomely packaged, two-disc, special editions of both these cult classics – The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. In each, Henson managed to find a mature theme to impart (that living beings are a combination of good and bad, not one or the other, and that teens should choose their own path and not put themselves in others’ power, be they loves or peers), but, unfortunately, communicated them in a stagy, plasticky, Las Vegas/ DisneyWorld/ Universal Studios Theme Park kind of way.

darkcrystal-5125456He seemed to have little choice, of course, since his chosen medium was the puppet, and, back in the 80s he was limited to what those puppets could achieve, no matter how hard he pushed their envelope. What these new DVDs have over his old movies is that very knowledge. Once a viewer knows how hard he tried and how much work was put into pulling the difficult concepts off, new admiration for the attempts, if not the finished products, is hard to suppress.

It’s little wonder that both special editions were released at the same time, since the extras for both were obviously made at the same time. Both include the original, Henson-produced “making of” documentaries released back in the 80’s, as well as two new behind-the-scenes featurettes incorporating “rediscovered” test footage and 21st century interviews with those involved – most of whom worked on both movies. Entertaining discoveries can be enjoyed on both.

For The Dark Crystal, co-directed by Henson (Kermit) and Frank Oz (Miss Piggy/Yoda), it becomes clear that Henson was the level-headed yin to Oz’s more forceful yang, and, like the team of Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder before them, never were quite as good separate as they were with each other.

The biggest kick on Labyrinth is the discovery that Star Trek the Next Generation’s doctor, Cynthia “Gates” McFadden, was the film’s dance choreographer. She expresses admiration for the project and love for Henson, as does the likes of conceptual artist Brian Froud, scriptwriter and Monty Python member Terry Jones, and producer George Lucas. (more…)

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MIKE GOLD: Get a life? Why?

  • News
  • August 13, 2007

mikegold100-4635945It would be silly if I didn’t enjoy being a comics and popular culture mini-mogel. It’s fun to have movie stars call you up; that just happened. Getting into movie screenings is swell. People give you cool stuff. I’ve been friends with Will Eisner and Dick Sprang, and Dick Giordano was at my birthday party last week. I get to work with my closest friends, with people I respect, and with folks with whom I am in awe. Coupled with my fantastic, loving family, I live out Randy Newman’s great song from 1983: My Life is Good.

Of course, Newman’s a bit sarcastic, but then again, so am I. But I prefer to think of me as edgy. Randy, on the other hand, writes songs for Disney movies. We all have our outlets.

And comics is one of mine. A big one. It’s been the thread that’s run through my entire life. I learned how to read by trying to decipher Pogo and Li’l Abner on the comics page of the Chicago Daily News. I left broadcasting in 1976 to work for DC Comics, and I’ve never looked back. It’s how I met my wife and daughter (figure that one out).

0804-23-assemblesquad-8855189So now that I’ve turned 57, I once again find myself in the middle of another “summer” comics convention season. In the past couple months we ComicMix folk have been to, oh, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Long Island, San Diego, Chicago, four or five different shows in New York City, and probably a couple I’m temporarily forgetting. I’ve still got Tarrytown NY, Baltimore MD, and Columbus Ohio to go this year, along with at least one other show in Manhattan. And one thought has been clattering against my brainpan for the last several weeks:

I’m really getting too old for all this.

Right now, I want to go see The Simpsons Movie and Sicko and the Bourne Whatever, and I want to sit down with a stack of comic books as tall as Glenn Hauman and just chill out and read ‘em.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I’m whining. There’s a difference.

I love ComicMix, I love seeing old friends at these here conventions, and I truly enjoy meeting comics fans. But, right now, I don’t think we’ve got a show scheduled for October (I refuse to check) and, damn it, I’m going to go trick-or-treating and I’m going to go to a couple hockey games with my daughter.

You see, my life IS good.

Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.

MICHAEL DAVIS: You’ll never work in this town again

  • News
  • August 10, 2007
sexist-disney-rejection01-2084722
 
What you see posted above instead of my picture is an actual Walt Disney Company rejection letter from 1938. When I found this on line I freaked the heck out. I mean look at it! It says, in affect, “Look here, bitch you can’t work here because you’re a girl!”

Before you start marching on Disney, remember this was a vastly different time in America. It’s fair to say that me writing that I dated white women would have been just cause for me to fear for my life in 1938 in some parts of America. We have sure come a long way!

Or… (Place ominous music here) have we?

There are still people in this country who think that women and other minorities are not equal.

It’s the year 2007 and the ERA has not been pasted. The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923, is still not part of the U.S. Constitution.

What is up with that?

It’s the year 2007 and there are only 35 states that say that women are equal. So how far have we come?  I know from experience that there still exists racism in this country. Statistics prove that sexism still exists. The “glass ceiling” is a frequent topic for documentaries and ‘special reports’ on news programs.

This Disney letter got me wondering if sexism and racism are real factors in the entertainment world. I have been on hundreds of TV pitches and never felt it was a factor. I, like a lot of black people have a sort of radar sense when it comes to discrimination.

No, I am not the sort of person (but I do know black people like this) who blame everything on being black. Have you heard any of these? They did not hire me because I’m Black. They won’t rent to me because I’m Black. They think I’m darker than them because I’m Black.

Now replace “black” with “woman” and tell me have you heard these? They did not hire me because I’m a woman. They won’t promote me because I’m a woman. They think I’m female because I’m a woman.

I used to think that some deals of mine were killed because I was black. I realized that it was not because I was black, it was because some people in positions of power did not like me.

 

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JOHN OSTRANDER: America, George Bush and … Marvel Comics?

  • News
  • August 9, 2007

eagleflag-1890653I received an urgent, earnest e-mail asking me to sign a petition expressing my indignation at how the Democrats went belly-up once more to the White House bullying tactics and passed the Security Bill which limits our freedoms just so they won’t appear weak on security in the next election.

Sorry, gang, but the indignation ain’t in me this round.

It’s not that I don’t feel that the legislation isn’t an assault on our liberties or that is unnecessary and useless; I do. I just don’t think the Dems can be shamed into changing their vote at this point. Despite their pre-election rhetoric before the elections in ’06, they haven’t voted to end the war in Iraq or cut off the funding for it because they are more concerned about maintaining and widening their control in Congress and gaining the White House as well. That, more than anything else, is their real objective.

Power.

Same as anyone else in politics.

It’s turned into the political Catch-22. To do anything, you must gain power. To continue to have the ability to do anything, you must maintain power. Actually do anything and you risk losing power. So instead we get smoke, mirrors, theatrics, and power plays. That’s on both sides of the aisle.

The Bush Administration has, at least, understood the concept of using the power accrued; they’ve just made a terrible hash of it. Can we all agree that the WMDS were always an excuse, that 9/11 had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein, and that the Bushies knew it, know it, and didn’t and don’t care? The real basic premise of the Bush Neo-Cons was to get rid of a murderous dictator that even the other Arabs didn’t much care for and, in his place, create a functioning democracy that, by its success and example, would begin to change the face of the Mideast. 9/11 simply offered a justification. All in all, it was a seemingly laudable goal but it was attempted by a crew that didn’t know the language, didn’t know the culture or the people, and couldn’t be bothered to learn. There was no contingency planning. It was a perfect storm of arrogance and ignorance.

I’ve seen that kind of mixture before, on a much lesser scale, when Ron Perelman bought Marvel in 1989. With him came business types who were going to apply sound business theory to Marvel. Comic books were just another set of widgets and they would apply their Universal Business theories to make Marvel a combination of Disney and McDonald’s. (I’m not exaggerating or making this up; that’s what I was told by a Marvel insider at the time.) They took a company that had maybe 70% or more of a strong market and then bankrupted the company while nearly destroying the market. Again, a combination of arrogance and ignorance. Perelman and his people knew everything; they didn’t ask for the advice of people in the industry. They already knew better. Except they didn’t. They made choices that made everyone in the industry who did know something about how it was run start scratching their heads.

(more…)

UPA: Inventing the Future

  • News
  • August 3, 2007
“…To anyone dismayed by the artlessness of television’s ‘limited animation,’ it is difficult to realize that the trend began on the highest note of artistic endeavor.”

Leonard Maltin, in Of Mice and Magic

 

three-horned-flink-4681615Nothing pleases writers and readers trying to understand the arts like a clean break.  Styles and periods have a messy way of melting into each other at each end as artists and audiences push and pull, sometimes for decades, before the old is no longer visible, and the new is just what is.  Animation readers and writers are glad they have UPA.  While Disney’s “trusted” artists were away trying to draw every leaf in the Amazon, the radicals back home were working up a way to suggest that jungle with a line and two areas of different color, maybe not even green.  “Illusion of Life” was a great style for a walk through a landscape. To race to the moon a method as different from walking as rocket science was needed.

 

As impressionism came along when the machine age was changing the rules.  The vision we now call UPA in honor of the studio most identified with its art and politics came along, conveniently, and inevitably as the Second World War.  Walt may have thought it was the Army contracts or the tentacles of the Comintern that were the main changes he was witnessing in his line of business.  If you look at what ended up on the screen, the big change was in the way people began to draw.  Gone was the realism left over from the nineteenth century.  Finally the air of the modernists was let in.

 

Walt loved the older styles and pursued them as far as possible.  Producers who tried to compete head to head in Illusion of Life all went bankrupt.  His visual statement was so coherent and powerful that his is the only name of the movie pioneers still in common usage, and standing for both a style and a personality.  Illusion of Life and Walt’s dedication to it can’t be denied or explained away.

 

When people talk about UPA today, as they did at a San Diego Comic-Con panel last week, it is impossible not to mention Walt Disney early and often.  You can’t talk about up without down.  Walt Disney, more than he ever imagined or intended, stands today for the visual establishment, going back to the French Academy and their yearly, binary selection for the salon.  Those chosen had it made, those excluded might as well go back to painting signs.  For some time in animation it was: do it Disney’s way, fail, watch your business dwindle away to nothing.

 

At the core of UPA were artists who had made the cut at Disney but would push the envelope artistically and politically in ways that ended with their exile from his studio.  For some there was a disconnect between the glorious product and the rigid production protocols, which fit Disney’s personality perfectly but ran counter to many other people’s ideas of logic or fairness.  Some people had more to say than could be said in a studio with someone else’s name on it.  Some people were just ready to move on.

 

Leonard Maltin nails it:  “If there hadn’t been a UPA, someone would have had to invent it.” (more…)

The Two Rays

  • News
  • August 1, 2007

ray-bradbury-5271820Sometimes you write the article, sometimes the article writes you.

 

You’ve seen it a million times.  The head table, on a dais, faces the audience.  The honored guests take the stage to applause.  The microphones are adjusted, name cards arranged, the host begins the program.

 

But when the greatest living science fiction writer is the guest, the gods are aware and send us a message, lest we begin to imagine that we are in charge of the agenda.

 

Ray Bradbury is in a wheelchair these days.  The Comic-Con arranged for a nifty, new-looking wheelchair elevator to be at the end of the stage.  Ray’s people wheeled him across the front of the stage to a round of applause.  They wheeled him into the elevator, a glass box (waist high, if you’re standing, if you’re sitting, it’s up to your neck) on a lifting platform, glittering, unmarked by fingerprint or key scratch or any marks of human inhabitation.  It was also innocent of any rehearsal, the hallmark of every smooth use of any stagecraft more complicated than a hat.

 

If it was President Roosevelt, two guys would’ve lifted him and his chair the two or three feet from floor to the stage.  It might have taken an extra guy, Comic-Con folks not usually bringing Secret Service beef to the table.  But we have modern technology—no sweat, no strain.

 

In 2007, still without our silver jumpsuits, faced with an untried, miniature elevator, Ray sat there a prisoner, his unfailing good nature in no danger from this silly snag, for ten minutes.  They fiddled with the lock, they looked concerned, they did their impression of Wile E. Coyote in the moments between realizing the scheme has misfired and feeling the faint breeze that announces the arriving boulder.  They moved the platform up an inch, they moved it down three inches.  They did these things for ten minutes with no help sought or offered from any authority.  Finally, they blundered upon the right sequence of actions and the gleaming glass and steel doorway opened and Ray Bradbury was freed from The Crystal Prison of the Festival of Fans.

(more…)

TV REVIEW: Jekyll

bbcjekyll-9178210What if the story of Jekyll and Hyde were based on a real person, a true case? And what if there were someone alive in the present day that had the same horrible curse?

This is the premise of the new BBC mini-series Jekyll, premiering this Saturday at 8 PM on BBC America. The series was envisioned by producer Jeffrey Taylor and Steven Moffat, creator of the British comedy Coupling and writer of several episodes of the new Doctor Who series (such as “[[[The Girl In The Fireplace]]]” and “[[[The Empty Child]]]”). Steven Moffat handles the writing for all episodes.

The six episode mini-series features Doctor Tom Jackman, a man who doesn’t know who his parents were, having been found as an abandoned baby in a railway station. For the past several months, Dr. Jackman has been having black-outs during which another force is inexplicably inhabiting his body. Along with this darker personality that seems to lack any morals, there is a physical change. Jackman’s alter ego is actually younger, thinner, two inches taller, and has borderline superhuman strength and speed. Jackman soon finds out that the famous story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was based on a real person who lived and died in the 19th century. Now Jackman struggles to keep his life in control and his family safe, a family he prays that his own “Mr. Hyde” will never find out about lest he decide to attack them.

(more…)

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DVD Review: Fleisher’s Popeye

 

jerry-beck1-1924481Note:  All you need to know is that Popeye is back, on DVD, this Tuesday, July 31.  If you’re not getting up to go place your order I guess you can continue reading if you want, but that’s all you really need to know.  Otherwise, know that —

The modest and self-effacing Jerry Beck has once again returned from animation’s mountaintop with the real deal in the form of [[[Popeye The Sailor, 1933-1938]]]. Sixty cartoons on four discs, plus plenty bonus features, commentary, the works.  To the purist, and why be in pop culture if not to root out the impure, these are the only Popeye cartoons worth the name.

Not since their theatrical release, all those decades ago, have people been able to see these works as they were intended to be seen.  This of course assumes you are going to show them in a jammed movie palace on Saturday night filled with everyone in your town from eight to eighty who’ve just seen a newsreel starring Mussolini.

I don’t have to tell you that every studio but Disney thought their cartoons were an embarrassing necessity of the business, like Port-o-Sans at Woodstock. Once the studios didn’t need to program short subjects along with their features they dropped them thisquick.

They lived on in fragile prints, before the age of videotape, picking up scratches and noise each time they were put through your local television station’s film chain.  When Hanna-Barbera’s half hour shows became widely available in their second run the broadcasters decided to save themselves a few minutes trouble and ditch the short cartoons for the new, half-hour, self contained shows.

It is some testimony to their naïve sense of duty to their customers that most TV stations had one of their employees put on a yachting hat or an engineer’s cap and pretend to be Sailor Sam or Casey Jones for an hour or so to keep the cartoons from bumping into the commercials.  The half hour TV era cartoon shows let the stations save the money on the host segments (the host was the least of it; they had to light a set and staff the studio: a couple of cameramen, a floor director, a director and an engineer).

But what we tuned in for were the cartoons.  And we could tell the old Hollywood cartoons were the gold standard.  First of all, they were obscure.  We didn’t get all the jokes, didn’t understand all the references, just like when we observed the grown-ups.  There were jokes we got the first time, and we came back because we could instinctively tell from the timing that there were more laughs to be had, and even more precious, insights into the adult world not to be had in any other way.

Olive, for example, at one point sang that she would only consider a “clean shaven man,” a new idea to second grade boys.  Bluto’s beard and Popeye’s stubble were random phenomena to us, like rabbits having long ears.  We weren’t aware of the idle pleasures of beard husbandry or the agony of a daily shave.  But the knowledge of Olive’s preference (and the goddam song) stay with you a lifetime.

Warners and Columbia were glad to get a few bucks for the rights to their now useless films from television distributors in the late 1940s.  The ubiquitous a.a.p. company marketed hundreds of cartoons to greedy television stations.  These cartoons, made by adults for a general audience, were now thought to be perfect children’s programming.  Of course they weren’t.  Children loved them, but so did everyone else.  Adults didn’t watch them because they were working or grabbing breakfast when the cartoons were on.  And the children of the ‘50s dined on a rich diet of adult cartoons, adult comedy shorts and re-runs of even earlier television programs, such as the history of vaudeville and burlesque sketch comedy contained in the Abbot and Costello.

The SDCC panel on the subject featured a couple of guys in the Popeye business today, a darling young couple, in the animation biz, who were, in a stretch of the term, brought together by the one-eyed sailor.  There was Jerry Beck to assure us the restoration was every bit as surreal and scarily sharp as the job done on the Looney Tunes sets.  And there was Tom Hatten.

If you haven’t gotten the idea yet, I love the now almost entirely gone, once ubiquitous children’s television hosts.  Sometimes incredibly gifted, gravitating to the major markets, sometimes Krusty on a Krutch, stuck inside of Springfield.

tom-hatten1-6886215Tom Hatten was Popeye’s man in Los Angeles and so, even though I’d never before laid eyes on the man, I can vouch for his talent and love for his craft.  Part of the job was doing personal appearances around town.  If it was anything like the one’s I went to in Cleveland, Ohio (Jungle Larry) and on Long Island (Soupy Sales) they were probably mob scenes.  Though not an animator, he had to draw sketches of the Popeye characters by the countless dozens.

I had to ask Hatten if he was aware of [[[The Simpson’s]]] Krusty the Clown, and whether he found him funny.  To my surprise, and sort of admiration, he said he found the limited, stylized animation so off-putting he can’t watch it.  He also singled out [[[Bullwinkle]]] for inclusion in that category.  So he didn’t know or wouldn’t say if he found insight or insult in their rendering of his professional fellows.

They played one of the documentary features, on the several people who’ve been the voice of Popeye, including, what I would call a surprise, even for San Diego, that Mae Questel, the voice of Olive Oyl, did a stint as Popeye, too, and was maybe second to the great Jack Mercer.  Mercer brought the character to life with his inspired ad lib comments, rising to brilliance when he would contribute scat fills between the phrases when Popeye would sing a song.

The set is peerless entertainment, higher education and made by my good friend Jerry Beck, whose web site, Cartoonbrew.com is a must visit for all cartoon freaks everywhere.  But don’t worry about some buddy-buddy thing going on here.  If you like Popeye, if you miss those great black and white cartoons (and the couple of color shorts they did) this is for you.  I’ll be the guy ahead of you in line Tuesday morning.  Just don’t blow me down.

Popeye the Sailor: 1933-1938, Vol. 1; Warner Home Video.

RIC MEYERS: Kung Fu Popeye

  • News
  • July 22, 2007

popeye-8114692I suppose I could have titled this pre-San Diego Comic Con installment “Popeye Hustle,” but I think that would’ve given the improper connotation. The new four-DVD boxed set from Warner – Popeye the Sailor 1933-1938 – (available July 31st) is anything but a hustle. And, in fact, the present column title is all the more apt because there’s some of the best kung-fu I’ve seen recently within these first sixty Popeye cartoons.

   

“Kung Fu” actually means “hard work,” not “martial arts,” but there’s a lot of both on display here – from the labor the Max (and Dave) Fleischer Studios lavished on these cartoons to the more than ample martial arts expended by the Sailor Man and all his antagonists (especially Bluto) in every minute of these more than three hundred and sixty animated minutes.

   

I say “more than,” because, in addition to the dozens of remastered black & white original cartoons, the set also includes two of the justifiably famous “two-reel” color mini-movies: Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad (sic) the Sailor, and Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves. If the Fleischer Studios had only made a feature length Popeye (as well as a feature version of their beautifully made Superman cartoons), they might have remained as eminent as the Disney Studio.

But this handsome, reverent, and exhilarating set will hopefully go a long way to returning them to their rightful pantheon, despite the hundreds of inferior Popeye cartoons made by other studios since 1941. These almost pristine (the remastering process retains the rough edges of the cartoons as they were originally released) nuggets of aggressive mayhem are a welcome blast of fresh air in the fog of politically correct nonsense, which elicits waves of nostalgic pleasure with each spinach swallow and successive bout of frenzied fisticuffs.

Popeye’s legendary theme song, and oft-repeated quotes of “I yam what I yam,” and “that’s all I can stand, I can’t stand no mores,” clearly marks him as an inspiration for Bugs Bunny’s later feistiness (not to mention “this calls for a little stragedy,” and “don’t go up dere, it’s dark”) — and the set’s extras make that ultra clear. To say that there’s a wealth of featurettes and pleasant surprises is putting it mildly. Each disc has at least two engrossing docs detailing Popeye’s (and animation’s) extraordinary history, voices, music, and characters, as well as audio commentaries and mini-docs that they call “Popumentaries.”

The icing on the cake are a whole bunch of other Fleischer Studio cartoons “From the Vaults” – that is, the era before the 1930s, when cartoons were just starting and fascination, if not delight, could be found in inventive silence. At first these ancient animations seem too crude to be bothered with, but watching the just-drawn likes of Koko the Clown dealing with an animated “live-action” fly soon leads to many minutes of amazed viewing. (more…)

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