The New York trip continues at breakneck pace. In fact, there’s so much left to do that I’ve extended my stay in NY for another week. Here are a few of the highlights from the past few days. Had lunch with John Canemaker and got a tour of the NYU animation facilities, which is a nicer set-up than many studios I’ve seen in LA. Hooked up with Dan Nadel and Peter Buchanan-Smith who run the design firm PictureBox, Inc. I’m hoping they’ll handle the design for my Fifties animation design book, but that still remains to be seen. Attended the “Roast of Bill Plympton” at Caroline’s Comedy Club. It was an entertaining affair with his friends insulting him live on-stage interspersed with clips from his films. Roasters included Signe Baumane, Martha Plimpton and Dan Piraro. The highlight of the evening was John Dilworth’s hilarious play-by-play commentary of Plympton’s Oscar-nominated short YOUR FACE. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch that film again without Dilworth’s interpretation in mind. On top of all this, I’ve been interviewing many terrific folks from the Fifties animation scene, including so far Dolores and George Cannata (sister and brother designers/directors; their father was legendary Felix animator George Cannata Sr.), Larry Pomerance and Ed Smith. Tomorrow, a trip to upstate New York to meet director/designer Ray Favata. Among other things, he was the director of DEPTH STUDY, the great 1957 Terrytoons industrial film for CBS Television. More to report later.

Manohla Dargis, in reviewing THE POLAR EXPRESS in today’s NY TIMES, makes a few good points worth posting here:

“The Polar Express” is a grave and disappointing failure, as much of imagination as of technology. The largest intractable problem with “The Polar Express” is that the motion-capture technology used to create the human figures has resulted in a film filled with creepily unlifelike beings….With their denatured physiognomy, the human characters in “Polar Express” don’t just look less alive than Gollum; they look less alive than the cartoon family in Brad Bird’s “Incredibles.” It’s baffling that Mr. Zemeckis, who can make the screen churn with life, didn’t see how dead these animated characters look. It’s particularly puzzling since the director’s finest work has been actor-driven movies like “Back to the Future, Part II,” rather than special-effects-laden duds like “Death Becomes Her.”Animation is engaged in a debate that pits traditional and computer-assisted animation against computer-generated animation. The idea that anyone loves “Finding Nemo” because it was made wholly on a computer is absurd, but behind this debate lies a larger dispute not only about animation, but film’s relationship to the world as well. On one side of the divide are Pixar visionaries like Mr. Bird and the “Finding Nemo” co-director Andrew Stanton, who either know they can’t recreate real life or are uninterested in such mimicry, and so just do what animators have always done: they imaginatively interpret the world. On the other side of the divide are filmmakers like George Lucas who seem intent on dispensing with messy annoyances like human actors even while they meticulously create a vacuum-sealed simulacrum of the world. But there’s something depressing and perhaps instructive about how in the attempt to create a new, never-before-seen tale about the wonderment of imagination these filmmakers have collectively lost sight of their own.

The film gets an equally lukewarm reception at the L.A. Times

The latest issue of Animation Magazine has a blurb on the new Gerald McBoing Boing show being developed for Cartoon Network (U.S.) and Teletoon (Canada) by Cookie Jar (formerly Cinar). If the models (at right) aren’t scary enough, Cookie Jar exec Toper Taylor is quoted, calling Gerald “the animated Harold Lloyd of the 1950s”.I have nothing against reviving classic cartoon characters (in fact I’m all for it), I’ve got nothing against a little contemporary updating… but, hey, I’ve got a baaad feeling about this one.
We’ll wait and see.

Son of a b—-!
A sequel to THE MASK. Here’s the trailer.

In June 1968, in the middle of Warner Bros. release slate of new Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies (those last-ditch entries, containing Cool Cat, Merlin the Magic Mouse and the worst of the Speedy & Daffy collaborations), the studio distributed an independent animated film called THE DOOR. The studio - and subsequent animation historians - mistakenly had it listed as Merrie Melodies cartoon. What THE DOOR actually was, however, was an artistic, thought provoking anti-war piece, much a part of the era it was produced in (though it’s message is still relevent today). Animator Ken Mundie made it with funding from the Campbell-Silver Cosby Corporation, a production company co-owned by Bill Cosby (who had a recording relationship with Warner Bros. Records - which no doubt led to the film getting a Warner theatrical release). Mundie also directed Cosby’s first, lost, animation Holy Grail, The Fat Albert Special at this time.Brew reader Chris Sobieniak alerts us to this website that allows you to see Mundie’s THE DOOR (in glorious Quicktime) - as well as several of his clever main titles (among them THE WILD WILD WEST, THE GREAT RACE, THE ART OF LOVE) and Mundie’s other personal films. Note: the website link apparently only works on certain mac browsers, others requiring a password. I’ll try to update this link when I can.

The site of the Fleischer Studio during it’s heyday of the 1930s is about to come down. An apartment building will probably take its place.The New York Times reports today that the building at 1600 Broadway, built in 1902 as a showroom for Studebaker Brothers vehicles, facing 48th Street and Seventh Avenue, and served over the years as the backdrop for countless postcards and snapshots of the Great White Way, is being demolished.

Columbia Pictures may be said to have been born there, since it was in an office at 1600 Broadway that Harry Cohn, Joseph Brandt and Jack Cohn formed the C.B.C. Film Sales Company in 1920. Four years later, tired of the nickname “Corned Beef and Cabbage,” they renamed the company Columbia. The building also housed the National Screen Service Corporation, suppliers of movie posters and other promotional materials.

Max Fleischer moved his animation studio there December 1st, 1923. For 15 years the studio produced it’s cartoon masterpieces - Koko The Clown, Bouncing Ball “Screen Songs”, Talkartoons, Betty Boop, Grampy, Bimbo, Color Classics and of course, Popeye - in this building. 1600 Broadway is directly across the the street from 729 Seventh Avenue which, in the 1930s, was the home of rival Van Beuren Cartoon Studios. According to the Times:

Sherwood Equities, the owner of the property and the developer of the Renaissance hotel, has applied to the city’s Buildings Department to construct a 25-story, 136-unit apartment tower at 1600 Broadway. Jeffrey Katz, the chief executive of Sherwood, said that he had seriously explored renovating the 102-year-old structure but that doing so would not be feasible. “It’s drastically out of place at this time,” Mr. Katz said. Sherwood purchased the building in 1986 from the Robbins family, which controlled National Screen Service. “We took it over it at a low point, when Times Square was the old Times Square,” Mr. Katz said. “When we bought it, we knew we wouldn’t develop it for a long time.” But that time has come.

In recent years the building, ironically, housed a Popeye’s Fried Chicken outlet at it’s ground floor storefront. Meanwhile in Miami, the Fleischer’s Florida studio building is still intact.(Thanks to Anne D. Bernstein for the link)

Winnie the Pooh meet Daffy the Commando!Agence Française de Presse posted this photo with the caption:

Cartoon characters Winnie the Pooh and Daffy Duck hang on the barrel of a machinegun fixed to a US Humvee belonging to the 1st Cavalry Regiment positioned on the outskirts of Fallujah.

I’m tempted to make a crack about the line from RABBIT FIRE (1951): “Hey, laughing boy, no more bullets?” - but this is no laughing matter.

This past week I’ve been hanging around New York City on a business trip of sorts, though admittedly, business in my case is fairly enjoyable. I’m here to conduct research, interview artists and collect artwork for my upcoming Chronicle book about Fifties animation design. I won’t go into too many details now, since the book won’t be out until sometime in 2006, but it’s been very exciting to see the book come together these past few months and I’m really pleased with all the incredibly rare and beautiful artwork that’s going to be in this book.

Amazingly, I’d never managed to make it out to NYC before so I’ve been spending a few days checking out the city (mostly Manhattan and Brooklyn so far). I’ve read and seen so much about the place over the years that the city felt instantly familiar, an experience I’ve rarely had while traveling. I arrived in Brooklyn on election night and had dinner with the talented artist couple Celia Bullwinkel and Jim Campbell. We commiserated over the election results; fortunately, the food was terrific at the restaurant Lafayette which made Bush’s victory ever so slightly easier to digest. Also last week, I managed to hook up with the amazing Peter de Sève to work on a piece that’ll appear in a forthcoming issue of GRAPHIS. The issue will be out sometime in the first half of next year and will focus on both his illustration and animation work (including designs that didn’t make it into THE ART OF ROBOTS).

A hearty thanks to the prolific animation director Mike Sporn. Because of his generosity, I’m staying in the trendy Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg (for LA folks, think something like Silver Lake or Echo Park). He actually lives elsewhere, but his extra pad is packed with all sorts of cool animation books, including more volumes on Russian animation than I ever knew existed and Abe Levitow animation notes: a most excellent place to retire to in the evenings. Sunday afternoon I visited with Billyburg local Mark Newgarden and had a marathon session of viewing cool artwork and films at his studio. He’s been helping me with the Fifties book almost from the moment I thought of it, but until now we’d only communicated through email, so it was great to finally meet him. Be sure to check out his new book, the highly entertaining CHEAP LAFFS: THE ART OF THE NOVELTY ITEM. Mark also tells me that Fantagraphics will be releasing a book of his own art in 2005. Something to look forward to.

Oh, and one final note from NYC. Walking down Broadway this past weekend, I saw one of those stands that sell bootlegs of current movies. Front and center were copies of THE INCREDIBLES. The dealer, who identified himself as Big Tony, gave me the pitch. He explained that his bootlegs were transferred directly from the masters. In other words, if I’m thinking of an illegal movie purchase, he’s the guy I’d want to buy from. And he added, “I’m willing to go to jail to give my customers the best movies.” Even if he did conclude that last sentence by shouting, “Big Tony In Da House,” it was still a nice sentiment. I won’t say whether I personally purchased a copy or not, but the good news for Disney is that in the couple minutes I was standing there, INCREDIBLES was one of Big Tony’s best-selling titles.