Larry Loc, a Winsor McCay Award committee member and one of ASIFA-Hollywood’s hardest working board members, has written a defense of their decision to award Virginia Davis a lifetime achievement award. Needless to say, I don’t agree one bit, but in the interest of presenting both sides of the story, here is a link to his COMMENTS. My gripe remains that Ms. Davis simply doesn’t fit ASIFA-Hollywood’s own criteria for the award, which is meant to honor lifetime contributions to the art of animation and for work that exhibits outstanding contributions to excellence in animation. Giving the award to a child actress who may have held some minor degree of responsibility in helping Walt Disney get his first theatrical series is not in my opinion a wise use of the honor, especially when there are artists who have spent 40-50 years in this business creating beautiful art day in and day out and who remain unrecognized.

Complain about the Annie awards all you want - Asifa-Hollywood is a great organization that does much good to promote and preserve the cause of animation.Case in point, last week I posted an urgent plea from Richard Huemer (son of animator Dick Huemer) about a hand painted mural in the former Huemer home that was about to be demolished. On Saturday Asifa Hollywood members, led by organization president Antran Manoogian, helped preserve those walls from the Huemer home. Antran was able to negotiate with the demolition company to save two bedroom walls which featured original artwork by Huemer of classic Disney characters. The artwork is now being kept at a temporary storage location. See more photos here. Thanks to Antran and all the volunteers that helped make this happen.

“There is a contingent of the digital-effects community to whom that is the holy grail - to create photographically real humans. To me that is the dumbest goal that you could possibly have. What’s wonderful about the medium of animation isn’t recreating reality. It’s distilling it.” - Brad Bird, from a terrific article about Pixar printed in THE GUARDIAN.

Whatever happened to LIL’ PIMP?You know, the internet cartoon turned $13 million dollar feature length R-rated Flash animated feature for Revolution Studios and Columbia Pictures. I’ve often wondered if it will ever see the light of day? Come January 11th, 2005 my curiosity will be satiated. Lion’s Gate Home Entertainment will release LIL’ PIMP on dvd, at last, for all to enjoy.Bernie Mac, William Shatner and Lil’ Kim provide voices for this production which has been sitting on the shelf for months. I had a few good friends who were gainfully employed by this production for over a year - It has a disasterous production history, stories of preview screenings where audiences and executives walked out en masse, and the film was put into production several times without a script in place. Sounds like a trainwreck. Personally, I look forward to seeing it. Should be fun.

ASIFA-Hollywood has announced the three recipients for this year’s Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award and they are Don Bluth, Virginia Davis and Arnold Stang. Now, Bluth, despite what I personally think of his filmmaking skills, has every right to this award. But the other two choices are extremely questionable, and in light of other potential recipients, downright irresponsible selections by ASIFA-Hollywood. The goal of the Winsor McCay Award, as stated in ASIFA-Hollywood’s own rules, is to recognize “lifetime contributions to the art of animation in producing, directing, animating, design, writing, voice acting, sound and sound effects, technical work, music, professional teaching, or for other endeavors which exhibit outstanding contributions to excellence in animation.”

Last year, I suggested an artist named Art Stevens, who was a forty-plus year veteran of Disney. I didn’t push for him again this year because as much as I’d like to see him honored, it’s not my job to make sure that happens. It’s the responsibility of the Winsor McCay Award Selection Committee (whoever the heck that comprises) to properly perform their duties and recognize the most appropriate people for the award. Which begs the question, how in the world did they ever arrive at Virginia Davis, whose contributions to this art form have been minimal to non-existent. Davis, for those who don’t know, was the four-year-old girl who portrayed the live-action Alice in Walt Disney’s early animated/live-action series “Alice in Cartoonland.” That may hold some minor historical significance for animation history buffs, but how has her work exhibited “outstanding contributions to excellence in animation?” Davis’s “animation career” lasted no longer than a couple years when she was four and five years old. Her contributions even during this time were not particularly unique; in fact, Alice was portrayed by at least two other actresses besides Davis in these early Disney shorts. The significance of the films lies in the fact that they are Walt Disney’s earliest works and show his development as an artist; nobody can seriously make a case that Virginia Davis’s contributions to those films helped animation develop as an art form. She was simply a little girl who happened to be at the right place at the right time.

Arnold Stang, though hardly as poor a choice as Davis, is also a questionable award recipient. Yes, he was the voice of Top Cat and Herman (in Paramount’s Herman & Katnip theatricals), but his contributions as a whole to the development of animation are hardly on the scale of other voice actors like Daws Butler, Mel Blanc or June Foray. Stang deserves some sort of recognition for having worked in so many different fields (animation, radio, TV, film), but his involvement with animation is relatively minor, at least when compared to other possible contenders like Art Stevens. Since ASIFA-Hollywood obviously has no intention of recognizing deserving talents like Stevens, let’s examine his career here on Cartoon Brew.

Stevens started at Disney in 1940 and retired in the early-’80s. That’s over forty years of uninterrupted service to the animation industry. In the Forties, he became one of John Lounsbery’s top animation assistants, before becoming a full-fledged animator on PETER PAN where he animated sequences with “The Lost Boys.” Immediately following this, Ward Kimball hand-picked him to join his unit. Stevens, along with Julius Svendsen, became Ward’s most trusted animators for the next twenty years. Stevens animated on MELODY and the Oscar-winning TOOT WHISTLE PLUNK & BOOM. He was responsible for animating the “strings” section as well as other sequences in the latter film. When Ward began producing the space specials, Stevens and Svendsen handled nearly all of the ‘cartoony’ animated sequences in those films. The underwater sequence in BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS and most of the character animation in the Oscar-winning IT’S TOUGH TO BE A BIRD, were also the handiwork of Stevens. His other animation credits include 101 DALMATIANS, WINNIE THE POOH AND THE BLUSTERY DAY and ROBIN HOOD. Stevens moved into the directorial post on THE RESCUERS (following Lounsbery’s mid-production death) and also served as director/producer on FOX AND THE HOUND before retiring from the studio. There’s dozens of other projects in between these, but perhaps Stevens’s most important contribution to animation was the style of animation that he and Svendsen developed in Kimball’s unit. Both of them were geniuses at figuring out how to selectively move body parts and creating hilarious animation cycles that took full advantage of the heavily stylized characters in Kimball’s films. To this day it remains some of the most perfectly realized and elegant examples of stylized (or ‘limited’) animation ever produced.

If Stevens doesn’t catch your fancy, I could name numerous other artists who have contributed heavily to the development of animation and who are still alive, awaiting recognition: Ed Friedman, Bob McIntosh, Paul Sommer, Bob Godfrey, Brad Case and Fred Crippen just to name a few. But hey man, it’s ASIFA-Hollywood’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and if bestowing it upon somebody whose only animated accomplishment is prancing around on camera when she was four-years-old is what ASIFA-Hollywood thinks is appropriate, then so be it. I guess next year, we can look forward to the organization honoring the Mexican actress who appeared with animated Droopy in the closing scene of Tex Avery’s SENOR DROOPY. After all, it’d hardly be appropriate if they honored somebody who actually worked in animation.

By now you know the drill: Each day I will ask one simple question. The first two people with correct answers (or what I think is the correct answer) to hit my email-box win. Today I have two prizes. The first place winner gets to choose his or her prize from the two.Today’s prizes are: THE TOM & JERRY SPOTLIGHT COLLECTION and the 99¢ Store Van Bueren TOM & JERRY collection. Today’s question (again courtesy of “Uncle Wayne”) is:

What do Speedy Alka-Seltzer and Ralph Phillips have in common?

The Contest is now OVER. Winners today were Jon Reeves and Bill Field. The Answer is: voice actor Dick Beals.

Michael Barrier has updated his website and shares his thoughts on THE INCREDIBLES.Meanwhile Leonard Maltin also weighs in on Brad Bird and Frank Thomas and reviews the latest Pixar masterpiece here.

Going on sale January 18th 2005 is Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars:

“Tom and Jerry mistakenly stow away on the first manned mission to Mars and discover we are NOT alone…Martians do exist! The furry duo must join forces with a young Martian girl to battle asteroid fields, the Martian invasion of Earth, and a gigantic alien robot bent on destroying anything and anyone in its path.”

Tom Minton produced it. Bill Kopp wrote and directed it. I hope Warner Bros. sends me a free copy.