"The Pirates! Band of Misfits" Talkback
EXCLUSIVE: "Motorcity" Production Footage And Deleted Scene
"After School Midnighters" trailer
The Poster for Disney's "Paperman" 
Follow @CartoonBrew on Twitter
YouTube
Vimeo
RSS
Follow Cartoon Brew on Facebook
|
|
|
Millard Kaufman writes a novel
 October 5, 2007 3:10 pm
Millard Kaufman – the Academy Award winning screenwriter, who got his start at UPA writing Fox & Crow and co-creating Mr. Magoo – has been getting some press this week regarding his first novel, Bowl Of Cherries. Kaufman, 90, was profiled in today’s Wall Street Journal and had a small interview in this week’s New York Magazine, both pieces playing up the fact that Kaufman co-created the near-sighted Magoo. |
ADVERTISEMENTS
EVENTS
RECENT BREW TV EPISODES By Sitji Chou. A man tries to understand the futility of creating human connections when they’ve been impeded by the microcosmic void between material particles.  By Nikolas Ilic. A story of a Scottish sheep farmer who shears his sheep and tosses them cliff side…  By Dylan Hayes. Lesson 1: Everyone gambles, not everyone loses. Lesson 2: The world is full of traps. Lesson 3: You cannot win if you don’t take risks.  By Jean Yi. A personal and humorous exploration of being the ‘Nice Girl’ and coming to terms with the label and all its different meanings.  By Ferg Brennan. A lonely fisherman catches an unusual fish, which he decides to keep as a pet. |
this man is such a legend – so glad you posted this .. he’s still a genius at 90 – inspiring!
Well, they say he co-created Mr Magoo, and the Wall Street Journal credits Hubley by name (that’s who I always heard was his creator)
A writer co-created a cartoon character? Don’t tell John K!
Terriff! He must’ve gotten a good laff at that insipid “lawsuit” over that unthinkable (feature) film!! The “seeing impaired” was too #$&#*(ing bizzy being “politically correct” to know that, duh, he was born ” NEAR-SIGHTED”!!
From the first page of the novel:
“Slowly, purposefully, she slipped the silky fabric from her shoulders and let it drift to the floor. As she crossed the oaken floor between them, her desire for him grew with each step . Standing in front of the fireplace, wearing only stockings and a tiara, she held a martini in each hand. Smiling seductively, she raised one to offer it to him.
“What is it? Who’s there? Show yourself, by gum!” wailed Magoo, as he grabbed his umbrella and struck out at the blurry figure before him, catching her under the chin and again in the shoulder.”
He’s got my money!
I’m glad he’s recuperated from his accident where he mistakenly walked into a cement mixer, thinking it was the entrance to a trendy nightclub.——Sorry, couldn’t resist a good Magoo Joke.
From the research I’ve been doing on the UPA documentary, it appears to me that a number of people co-created Mr. Magoo. The latest is Willis Pyle, who apparently came up with the jowls, and other visual bits of the first version of Magoo. Knowing now how the artists worked at UPA, it’s hard to imagine one person creating any character completely alone. Of course, the guiding vision would have to, at least, include Kaufman, who created the Magoo persona, the caracter structure, and typical situations, that could be carried from one film to the next, that then led to the visual creation, and vocal creation, eg, Hubley and Backus.
Are we talking about the Magoo of “Ragtime Bear” as the first definitive version of the character? Magoo’s personality and appearance changed significantly after that initial cartoon, to make him more appealing and commercial.
Interesting that he now LOOKS like Magoo. I hope we all don’t end up looking like our creations!