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Chuck Jones (1912-2002) sketches himself as a boy “conducting the ocean” in a new documentary short directed by Peggy Stern, Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood. This and other Jones drawings come to life in animated segments directed by John Canemaker. Stern and Canemaker captured one of Jones’ last filmed interviews a few years before his death and created a unique film around it. According to the press release:

In never-before-seen footage, the great cartoon director speaks candidly about his family’s experiences in 1920s Los Angeles, recalling events and personalities from his early life that shaped his creative spirit. The 26-minute documentary blends new animation – based on Jones’s spontaneous drawings made during the interview – with vintage Jones family photographs and clips from his classic Warner Bros. cartoons, to reveal Chuck Jones in a new light.

Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood will screen theatrically for Oscar qualification in Los Angeles Friday through Thursday, August 22-28. at 12:00 pm (noon) at the Laemmle Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood. The film is also scheduled be shown on TCM in October. Update: John Canemaker informs me that TCM will not air the film this year. This L.A. screening will be the only public performance for the time being.

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The Amazing Mr. Bickford

August 15, 2008 12:15 am

Clay puppets, miniature sets, cutouts, replacement animation, aluminum foil, “strato-cut” slices, molten wax, and other techniques…

The Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles is running two nights of rare goodies created by eccentric animator Bruce Bickford. First up, on August 24th, a rare showing (with permission from Gail Zappa) of The Amazing Mr. Bickford, which has never shown theatrically. Bickford will be in attendance for a Q&A after the 7:30pm screening. From the theatrer’s press release:

Bruce Bickford’s art–a hallucinatory stop-motion amalgamation of Peter Pan, Ray Harryhausen, and The Wild Bunch–is nothing short of amazing. Frank Zappa first used the incredible talents of self-taught claymation wizard Bickford as visual companions to his music in the film Baby Snakes, and continued this collaboration in The Amazing Mr. Bickford.

On Tuesday August 26th at 8pm the same theatre will screen “Cas’l and Other Unreleased Bruce Bickford Films”, showcasing some of Bruce’s early Super-8 experiments as a teenager, as well as his unfinished 45-minute opus Cas’l, featuring a live score by The Gaslamp Killer. Also, Bickford will be there to perform one of his “blues raps”. For more information visit CineFamily.org.

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Rediscovering Irv Spector

August 13, 2008 11:21 am

Director Michael Sporn has recently been in touch with the son of animation legend Irv Spector. Spector worked as an animator, designer and storyman from the 1930s onwards. He asked the son Paul Spector to share photos, artwork and information related to his father, and Paul has responded with an amazing blog entry about his dad that includes lots of beautiful gag drawings by Sam Cobean. There’s other bits and pieces about Spector online such as this beautiful cartoony one-page comic and photos from his time at the Charles Mintz Studios.(On a sidenote, one of Spector’s commercial designs is printed in my book Cartoon Modern on page 29.)

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B&F meet Freleng and Clampett

August 9, 2008 12:00 pm

Once again, I’ve dug out a few embarrassing photos of myself which I thought I’d post online for posterity. In 1982, Will Friedwald and myself took a trip to L.A. to visit a few friends – including our Warner Bros. cartoon heroes Bob Clampett and Friz Freleng.

Clampett was already a friend to us from previous trips and long distance phone calls, and he was delighted to pose with us and our newly printed Looney Tunes guide (the original Scarecrow Press edition). I think he’s reading a direct quote from Bosko’s Picture Show as the camera snapped. This photo is dated 8/25/82.

Freleng was at his office at Warner Bros. in Burbank two days later (8/27/82) when we met him. I recall him showing us storyboards from Daffy Duck’s Fantastic Island, which was well into production, during our tour of the studio. Note the Pvt. Snafu statue on his desk – It had been on his shelf and we asked to have it included in the photo. Freleng was great to us and I got to know him well in later years — and he was certainly nothing like the hot tempered Yosemite Sam he was known to have inspired. (Click on photos below for a larger image).

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Gary Mooney 1930-2008

August 7, 2008 12:05 am

Bob Kurtz reports that veteran animator Gary Mooney passed away on Tuesday August 5th at age 78. The cause was cancer. Kurtz called Mooney, who animated many commercials and movie titles for the producer, “The best draftsman I ever worked with”. Mooney’s work can be seen in films ranging from Disney’s Lady and The Tramp and Sleeping Beauty to John Hubley’s The Hole and The Hat. He also animated on Jay Ward’s George of the Jungle, Total Television’s Underdog and the Taarna sequence in Heavy Metal. Mooney is caricatured above by John Sparey (Mooney is fourth from the left – from left to right, Bill Mahood, Osvaldo Franca, John Sparey, Gary Mooney, Bob Carr, Dick Hoffman and Wes Herschensohn – see the complete image on the TAG blog)

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Eric Goldberg Speaks

August 5, 2008 12:56 pm

The cuddliest man in animation, Eric Goldberg, is interviewed on the latest edition of the Animation Podcast. The chat is an hour long, and it’s only part one of the discussion. Haven’t listened to it yet, but surely a lot of wisdom is being dispensed. On a related note, Goldberg will be signing his new book Character Animation Crash Course! tomorrow night in LA. It can also be ordered on Amazon.

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Bob Godfrey Documentary

August 3, 2008 3:34 am

A short but delightful BBC special (in two parts) about British animation legend Bob Godfrey. It’s from the early-1970s.

The film contains the following bit of wisdom from Godfrey: “There’s no point in doing something in animation that could be done very much quicker or much easier in live-action. Animation should deal with surreal things, with fantastic things, impossible things, because there are no limitations in animation. The only limitations there are are within the animators themselves. There’s nothing you can’t do. This is the terrifying thing about it, this is the exciting thing about it. You name it, it can be done in animation.”

For a taste of his work, here is a delightful episode of the 1970s children’s series Roobarb, directed and animated by Godfrey.

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