Harvey Kurtzman had this idea in 1954 in MAD #17, in a lampoon of the Geo. McManus strip “Bringing Up Father.”

Well, it’s gotta be an improvement on Robert Altman’s 1980 Popeye movie.

Hmmm…I konda thought that was rhe whole point of “Itchy and Scratchy” cartoons…

Talk about being a day late and a dollar short;-)

Hmm, looks uncomfortably similar to the Bringing Up Father parody in MAD #17: http://www.entrecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/bbf.gif

As I wrote on my blog, it seems to be the season for reusing ideas from early MAD comic books: http://smarterthantheaverage.tumblr.com/post/42498803/

“In cartoons, when a man gets punched in the face, his neck transforms into a spring; in Sailor Man, his nose breaks and he coughs up blood and teeth and bile,” stated Iverson.”

Hope Mr. Iverson remembers that Popeye has no teeth to begin with…

So, what’s their next project? I recommend SUPERMAN. Maybe Mr. Iverson is going to show us what really happens if people attempt to leap from a building? It would also be interesting to see what really happens when people are bitten by radioactive spiders….

What the h*ll is the point of something like this ???

This looks great! Any chance of getting it as a bonus feature on an upcoming volume of “Popeye the Sailor”?

(Just Kidding!)

This post reminds me of a very well done Child Abuse PSA I saw a while back. The whole spot has a cartoon character, but then switches to a live action kid for the last shot, which is a reveal. The intent of the piece is different, but gets at the same violent content in cartoons vs real life issue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V-zxWY3vsY

The creators seem to think it’s an original idea. It sounds interesting, despite having been done before. Somebody videotape the thing so I can download it. FOR FREE.

I tend to think that when the Age of Irony forces us to run out of original ideas that aren’t parodies of properties that have existed for decades, AND when all the actual parody ideas have been used up, the only fertile ground left is for the people who want to suck any remaining fun out of life.

I died a little when Beavis was forced to stop saying “fire”. But this project was born the same day.

Apparently, the creators are the last people on earth incapable of distinguishing between cartoons and reality.

Also worth mentioning (and a possible inspiration for “Itchy and Scratchy” as well) is Brian McConnachie and Warren Sattler’s “Kit ‘n’ Kaboodle in the 1973 National Lampoon. It was the first work I know to explicitly present all the gore and damage that would result from cartoon violence in the real world.

I want to see this so bad, too bad I live across the country from where its being shown.

Harvey Kurtzman had this idea in 1954 in MAD #17, in a lampoon of the Geo. McManus strip “Bringing Up Father.”

Hmmm…I konda thought that was rhe whole point of “Itchy and Scratchy” cartoons…

Good calls. In addition to those two examples, National Lampoon #39 had a parody of Tom & Jerry called Kit and Kaboodle, with realistic violence in place of the cartoon slapstick.

It seems like this live action parody of Popeye is pointless. Do the creators of that short think audiences are so dumb they don’t understand that the violence in cartoons isn’t real, or at least realistic? I think people know the difference between fantasy cartoon exaggeration and real life.

Other people have done something similar years and years ago, invalidating any new artistic expression, didn’t you hear?

I’m looking forward to seeing this myself. Looks interesting and it could be hilarious.

So are the live actors REALLY going to have their noses broken, spit up blood and teeth and bile? If they’re going to make a statement about real versus cartoon violence then I hope they really get “real”.

Yawn.

My feelings are that the viewers’ reactions will be hysterical laughter and maniacal tittering. I never laughed so hard as I did when I first saw Beavis slice his finger off on a table saw. The build up was incredible and the slow freak out afterward was perfect! I knew it was a friggin’ cartoon, that no one got hurt, that is precisely why it was ok to laugh at it. I wish ‘artists’ would stop thinking they were smarter then the rest of us. You are not as above the fray as you like to believe.

Apparently, Dick Stone has some “issues” with artists.

He completely missed the point of the articulate and perfectly reasonable reservations raised in this thread, and used the opportunity to air out the chip on his shoulder instead.

I repeat: Yawn.

It’s a concept older than Superman himself - according to the first issue of Comic Book Comics ( http://www.eviltwincomics.com/cbc.html ) Jerry Seigel had a similar idea with reagrd to the violence in Popeye cartoons, wondering what a man with super-strength would be like in a more realistic setting.

It sounds kind of…pretentious.

Bakshi did it in “Fritz the Cat”, 36 years ago, in the sequence where the bartender turns violent with a broken beer bottle and moments later, with the onscreen death of the sympathetic Duke. Audiences were astonished how a crude cartoon swiftly made the leap to dramatic film. Those who condemn “Fritz” fail to grasp that it was, in many respects, groundbreaking. Is it surprising that these filmmakers doing a live action, realistic take on “Popeye” want respect for being original? No. Every generation seeks to remake the past in its own image.

Umm….Why make funny things angry and scary? Doesn’t anyone want to laugh anymore? Is laughter forbidden now? Why can’t they let cartoons be cartoons? Is it forbidden to make funny and happy things that poke fun of human nature?

Sorry I’ve been hiding under a rock lately. So I’m clueless….

Good to see Fidel Castro has a new job.
The perfect part for him, I think.
Bluto has always been a bit of a dictator.

I wonder why the filmmakers decided to use cartoons as their target? If they wanted to contrast unrealistic slapstick with realistically performed violence, they could’ve chosen any live action comedy short from the 30’s. They could parody the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy. Imagine the amount of blood when that saw scrapes against Curly’s head, for example.

Wouldn’t the results be the same, using the Three Stooges, once “divorced from their harmless context and performed naturalistically,” as with the Popeye example?

What a stupid, ugly, pointless idea.

I suppose next they’re going to redo a Three Stooges short to “teach” us all what REALLY happens when you poke someone’s eyes out and run a large saw across their bare scalp?

Or maybe they can show us a follow-up to Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown - Charlie in traction with a broken back, Charlie in rehab, painfully learning to walk again, Charlie becoming a crippled, bitter old man whose hatred of women leads him to unspeakable acts…..

Ugh. At least some of us know the difference between fantasy and reality.

“In cartoons, when a man gets punched in the face, his neck transforms into a spring; in Sailor Man, his nose breaks and he coughs up blood and teeth and bile.”
I’m not one to critique something based on its press release rather than the artwork itself, but the latter of those is exactly what happens in Porco Rosso.

“I wonder why the filmmakers decided to use cartoons as their target? If they wanted to contrast unrealistic slapstick with realistically performed violence, they could’ve chosen any live action comedy short from the 30’s. They could parody the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy. Imagine the amount of blood when that saw scrapes against Curly’s head, for example.

Wouldn’t the results be the same, using the Three Stooges, once “divorced from their harmless context and performed naturalistically,” as with the Popeye example?”

A few years ago one of the featured productions at the NY Fringe Festival was PUNCH! a staging of a 19th century Punch-and-Judy puppet-show scrip using actors, rather than puppets. If you’re familiar with “traditional” P&J shows, they involve “comic” wife-beating (Punch smacking Judy with slap-stick), child-abuse (throwing baby from window), Punch “killing” policemen, etc. The point was supposed to be to highlight how certain kinds of “comic violence” are acceptable with non-human surrogates (in this case, puppets) but when performed by “real” humans are not so amusing. I don’t recall the producers announcing some kind of moral point, but that they were just exploring the nature of comedy, and why and how we laugh at some things and not others.

FYI folks: its a theatre piece NOT a video and its horrifying and hilarious at the same time. Like: the fact that Olive Oyl doesnt really understand what popeye is saying most of the time, or that P & B really like beating each other up more than anything…and the magic restorative powers of spinach…

Too bad y’all can’t see it, you may possibly enjoy it…