the path to cartoons

[egypturnash]

I was talking with Vincent and the subject strayed to the terrible cartoons I grew up with. I am rather embarassed to admit that there were seasons I would actually watch something else instead of the 'Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour'. Kids, geez.

When I look back at the absolute garbage that was out there, I'm frankly amazed I ever wanted to be in animation. Baggy Pants and the Nit Wits. Scooby-Doo - the version with Scrappy-Doo. Fred And Barney Meet the Schmoo. The Smurfs. Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels. Fat Albert. Animation was in the shitter in the seventies and early eighties. Okay, there was 'Mighty Mouse', but that was just about the one exception.

The most abused book in my collection is Leonard Maltin's history of animation, 'Of Mice and Magic'. It covers the medium from the very first steps, up to the time it was written (1974 or thereabouts, I believe). Most of my books were read with care. This one, however, has been read so many times that the paperback binding is shot, and it's held together with tape. Though it took me years to decide to try and get into animation, that book let me know that there was a lot of potential in cartoons, far more than the shit I was being fed by Saturday morning. I devoured everything I could find on animation history and methods anyway, but that book was just amazing to me.

Vince noted that Maltin lives in LA, and sits outside his house giving out candy every Halloween: maybe I should take my copy of the book and a pen and give him a Halloween treat, next year.

(Side note: It's possible my path crossed with Vincent's back in New Orleans - he was a charicaturist in Jackson Square for a while in the early eighties. A small chance, but a definite one, as there are a few street-corner charicaturist drawings of me somewhere in my mother's house...)

Comments

[synnabar.livejournal.com]

"Scooby-Doo - the version with Scrappy-Doo. Fred And Barney Meet the Schmoo."

*wails* NooooOOOooooooooOOOOOoooOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!

And what about the Pac-Man cartoon(s)? And Rubik, The Amazing Cube? And the cartoons with Laverne & Shirley, and The Fonz, and Popeye and Olive Oyl in the army????

I could go on, but my stomach's starting to twist...

[paka.livejournal.com]

What really amazes me, is the quality of the people who drifted through Hanna-Barbara and other places making all those not so good cartoons. Glen Keane worked on Fat Albert, for instance.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I've also got copies of "Of Mice and Magic," as well as several other other animation histories. A revised edition came out a while back and covers material through 1987, just before "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" came out and revitalized the industry. Maltin's book is good, better than Charles Solomon's book on the subject, but the real writer of it is his research assistant, Jerry Beck. Jerry now runs a website called Cartoon Research, and it's one of the better animation places on the Net. If you want to meet him, go to an ASIFA-Hollywood meeting in Burbank, where he runs their website along with his own.

Meanwhile, my own memories of Saturday morning and syndication are possibly even worse than yours. Ever hear of "Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse," or "Cool McCool?" Those are the tales that were my weekday nightmares. Compared to those, the average HB series looked quite impressive...

[hatch.livejournal.com]

Terrible cartoons? I got two words for you:

Yogi's Ark.

'Nuff said.

[http://users.livejournal.com/niall_/]

I had ugly badly-animated cartoons in two languages, including far more anime than the US ever showed - especially the kids' stuff, replete with ugly violence - yet enough to give me a tiny window in the possibilities. What really expanded my mind, though, were glimpses of alternative, short-film animation I kept seeing here and there, and a course in filmmaking in college included a little of it. (I experimented with 1985-era in-camera pixillation, and the results were nearly viable...)

Then the new National Gallery in town opened, and they had a retrospective of Norman McLaren films. On the big screen. Three days later, they had a smaller-screen retrospective of Independent Animation by the maker of Primiti Too Taa (my first viewing of Bambi vs Godzilla which was famous even then). And the kicker, the Ottawa International Animation Festival. This is after overdosing in the summer of 1986 with cartoons from 6:00 to noon. Including Strawberry Shortcake. I'll glad give talks how cartoons rot the brain - it did mine... and how animation can challenge the brain. When done correctly.

(The only cartoon mentioned above I never heard of is the Baggy Pants one. No, I do not want to know.)

I'm not in Animation, though I tried... I don't have the determination, the talent, and more importantly, the ideas. I'll respect those who will work hard to get their ideas out where they can challenge status quo, as art should