The post I made last weekend about Standards & Practices has drawn a couple responses worth pointing out. Writer/producer Mark Evanier adds perspective to the discussion and compares his experiences with S&P in live-action versus animation. He also points out historically that some TV producers like Bill Hanna have simply found it easier to appease S&P rather than fight against them. Of course, during the downtrodden TV animation scene of the Eighties, Hanna’s lack of vigor in defending his cartoons is somewhat understandable. As H-B was producing hundreds of forgettable hours of animation every TV season, I’m sure the least of Hanna’s worries was that the artistic vision of THE GARY COLEMAN SHOW and MONCHICHIS was being compromised by S&P notes. Then again, that indifference is (in some part) responsible for allowing S&P to thrive and become an unnecessarily difficult hurdle for today’s creator-driven animated series. Also this thread on Animation Nation continues the list of outlandish revisions that artists have been asked to make on television cartoons.

I haven’t particularly enjoyed anything by Trey Parker and Matt Stone since their short THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS, but that doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to their upcoming puppet feature TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE. This NY TIMES article details the painstakingly difficult production of the film, while revealing that the movie’s budget is $32 million dollars and the Chiodo Bros. are creating the puppets for the film. (via Scrubbles.net)

12 independent animators from the Australian state of Victoria have set up a nifty collective showcase of cool animated films at Strange Attractors. They are all quite good, but don’t miss my two favorites, ROBOT REPUBLIC and NOT MY TYPE.Thanks to Lisa Thomas for the link.

Producer Todd Polson wrote in with an update on his film, the last animated film with contributions by Maurice Noble, THE PUMPKIN OF NYEFAR:

We are finishing up the film website now… www.pumpkinlove.com There I will include all the details, images, story behind production… etc. At the moment I only have the open page… The links are not yet working. But should be up in the next week or so.I wasn’t’ sure if your readers were interested in how “Pumpkin” came to be… In 1994 Maurice began training a group of young designers at Chuck Jones film productions. A lot of us were working on our own personal short projects, several of them based on ethnic folktales. Maurice thought it would be a great idea if the group of us could develop a series of shorts inspired by stories from around the world. We called this series “Noble Tales”, and we, his trainees, became known as the “Noble Boys” (which also included a few girls).Many of us traveled around the world and developed and together designed several dozen ideas… “The Pumpkin Of Nyefar” was one short idea Maurice and I wrote while visiting Turkey. Our first morning in Istanbul we came downstairs to the dining room… and around the table were 20 belly dancers… and a lot of pumpkin dishes. All the girls of course were smitten by Mr. Nobles charm. Ha ha… I can still see him grinning from ear to ear. Afterwords we talked things over, and decided to write a story about a prince who could marry any beauty in his kingdom… but instead chooses to wait for true love. As fate would have it… The prince finds true love in the form of a pumpkin.While I was supervising a TV show in Thailand, James Wang (Wang film) invited Maurice and I to use his Thai studio to make our short. Maurice underwent surgery so that he could make the flight to Bangkok… unfortunately he died a few weeks later. I came to Thailand a few months later to work on the short myself… But my friends didn’t leave me to do the film alone…
For soon after, my pal Mark Oftedal, came to town for a visit. His short vacation, turned into a several year working holiday, He became so involved with the project, that I just made him pumpkin Co-director. Other friends from America helped out too… June Foray donated her voice to the film, Ben Jones, and Lawrence Marvit both did short stints in Bangkok to help get things going. Sue Kroyer did a lot of inspirational character design… as did Roman Laney. Jules Engel looked over a lot of the early design and color.Aaron Sorenson, Dave Marshall, Dave Thomas, and Mike Polvani all donated time to the project. It was really a great collaboration of friends, Just the way Maurice had dreamed about… doing a short film together… everything donated… just because they wanted to do it.

The film will screen in L.A. later this week for Academy qualification. I look forward to seeing it!

As a change of pace from news about the depressing animation scene, here’s a NY TIMES article with news about the depressing newspaper comics scene. (via Mark Evanier)

It’s easy to make fun of TV animation execs, but it’s even easier to make fun of the twits who work at the networks’ Broadcast Standards & Practices divisions. These low-lifes have done more to ruin TV animation and suck fun and entertainment out of cartoons as anybody else has since the Seventies. Speak to anybody who has worked in TV animation and they’re likely to have countless stories about the inane changes and arbitrary cuts that S&P people like to make. Here’s an ARTICLE that lists a bunch of imbecilic changes for an episode of THE TICK such as “It will not be acceptable for the Four-Legged Man to be seriously injured with ‘two splinted legs … a neck brace and a head bandage.’ He may be prevented from teaching his class due to some minor injury, or for another reason, such as a common cold or flu or car trouble.” More recently, Eddie Mort and Lili Chin mention a ridiculous cut requested on their show MUCHA LUCHA:

“The note we received from Standards and Practices was to replace the Spanish word, pulpo, with its English translation: octopus. Why? Because they thought pulpo sounded like (ahem) a kid-inappropriate word …”

I racked my brain and couldn’t think of any inappropriate word that even remotely sounds like pulpo. Other readers of their blog couldn’t figure it out either so Eddie finally revealed in their comments section that THIS was the offensive word S&P thought it sounded like. Perhaps they should also ban anybody from using the verb “put” on the show from now on. That’s far more likely to be confused with the word than pulpo.

But that’s nothing compared to a change that the creators of Comedy Central’s upcoming animated series DRAWN TOGETHER told audiences about at last month’s San Diego Comic Con. They said that one of the characters in their show said something along the lines of, “Wow, that’s almost as bad as the Holocaust and Slavery.” Now a sensible request from Comedy Central’s S&P might have been that such a comment was out of line and that the creators couldn’t compare a trivial event in their show to two horrible tragedies like the Holocaust and American Slavery. S&P’s note however was that the comparison to Slavery was quite fine, but the Holocaust reference had to be removed because Slavery wasn’t as bad as the Holocaust. Somebody should really compile a book of these gems.

You gotta read this e-mail exchange between Mike Barrier and John K. on Barrier’s website. Great stuff!

There’s a website (tobaccodocuments.org) dedicated to information related to the tobacco company litigation of the past several years. Oddly enough, one of the documents on the site is a radio script of the Al Pearce Show from April 11, 1941, with Leon Schlesinger as guest! Since the show had Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan as regulars, they also presented “the first radio showing of ‘The Wild Hare’”(sic). Check out image scans of the script here.
Thanks to Eric Wilson for the link.