If you have called or emailed me in the past couple months and have not received a response, please accept my apologies. I have been living a hermit’s lifestyle as I work on finishing up my book on 1950s animation design. My editor at Chronicle informs me that the projected release date for the book is now April 2006. Before that day arrives though, a huge amount of work remains: writing will wrap up in May, image selection in June and book design in July. I fully expect these next few months to be as crazy and hectic as the last couple have been. Fortunately, the book is shaping up quite nicely and I’m anxious to see how it all turns out. Chronicle has been extremely accomodating throughout the whole process and they’re even giving me more pages than originally planned so the book is now 188 pages.

When you’re doing a book on the subject of design, it definitely helps to have a well-designed book. I have no worries about that aspect because Chronicle recently brought aboard an excellent designer: Peter Buchanan-Smith. Peter’s recent work includes THE WILCO BOOK and CHEAP LAFFS. He’s also the art director of PAPER MAGAZINE as well as co-founder of the incredibly cool art journal THE GANZFELD. The pieces are definitely falling into place; now hopefully, I won’t fall to pieces.

In the classic Looney Tune HIGH DIVING HARE (1949), Yosemite Sam — knocking loudly upon a door which has just been erected by Bugs Bunny — bellows, “Open the door!” Sam then takes a beat, and turns to us and says in a normal tone, “You’ll notice I didn’t say ‘Richard’.”For further background information about this gag’s dated reference, see David Hinckley’s article in today’s New York Daily News.(Thanks to B. Baker)

Saddened to hear of the passing of actor Mason Adams.He voiced Grandpa in Richard Williams’ RAGGEDY ANN & ANDY animated feature and was best known for his role as the editor Charlie Hume on the series LOU GRANT. Adams had a great voice (heard in many, many commercials) and was prolific in the golden age of radio drama. My favorite role of his was as “Atom Man” on the SUPERMAN radio show (I highly recommend the Radio Spirits CDs). It’s too bad he didn’t do more animation voice work.

Brew correspondant Steve Segal sends us a link to a San Francisco Chronicle article about Brad Bird, recently speaking at the San Francisco Film Festival. Steve was there and took some notes of his own:

He spoke rhapsodically about the communal movie going experience of days gone by, like waiting in line for the original Star Wars. He enjoys waiting in line, he understands the mindset of the people who are right now waiting in line for the final episode of Star Wars. He also related a story about seeing Spiderman 2 with his three sons opening day at midnight at one of the few single screen theatres left in the bay area. Days later his wife (a film person, “would I have anybody else”) was screaming at the projectionist of her hometown Vermont theatre because the film had a scratch through the entire film.He talked about the projection equipment called platters which allows an entire movie to be put on one reel. Wear is avoided by opening up the gate a little, which results in a slightly out of focus picture. Whereupon he went into his yokel impression, “Mr. Johnson sayed it wuz shot thet way”. He also dislikes commercials and congratulated audiences in LA who regularly boo at the commercials (not trailers, that’s part of the movie going experience, as long as they don’t give away too much of the plot). Googolplexes, as he calls them, has led to smaller screens, partly because of the well intentioned Americans with disabilities act, which stipulates that theatres with more than 300 seats must provide access for handicapped to every seat. The result being not better access, but smaller theatres. Bird reasoned you only need some of the seats to have that access not EVERY seat.He sees 3D (stereoscopic movies, not computer graphics) as a possible thwart to bootleggers, since the image is fuzzy if you don’t wear the glasses. So taking a video camera into the theatre wouldn’t work very well (I’m not sure if he’s given any thought to putting a lens from the glasses over the camera). He declared the new digital 3D projection the best 3D he’s ever seen, and even a clip from the original Star Wars, which had been converted from 2D to 3D, was “much better than you’d think”.In the Q & A he compared working on Iron Giant with being on the Titanic since Warners had already decided to close the studio, but it was as if they left the booze cabinet on the Titanic unlocked, “we could do anything we wanted, there was nobody around”. Warners was unprepared for the success and had no marketing in place. He was extremely complimentary of the three visionary geniuses at Pixar Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, and Steve Jobs. And mentioned when he decided to make Incredibles in wide screen Steve Jobs explained, very analytically, that there are many theatres where that will result in a smaller, not larger picture. He then complimented Jobs when he calmly accepted Bird’s decision to use wide screen. He pointed out that Lasseter’s Cars is also in wide screen When asked to do Edna he hesitated for a moment then said “You poosh to hard, dahling” and then mentioned interviewers who can’t believe he did the voice, or at least assume it’s somehow processed, so he must do the voice to convince them.

Saturday is Scrappy-Day in Hollywood, as Asifa-Hollywood presents a screening of brand new 35mm restoration prints of neglected 1930s cartoon icon Scrappy.The fun begins at 1pm when a an exhibit of rare Scrappy merchandise is put on display. This will be followed by a distinguished panel of Scrappy experts (including Jerry Beck, Harry McCracken (of Scrappyland.com), and Dr. Richard Huemer Jr.) who will ruminate on the merits of the greatest 1930s cartoon character that almost everybody has forgotten–the Mintz Studio’s Scrappy. A special performance by the Scrappy Puppet Theatre Players will then enact, live, a classic scene from a Scrappy cartoon!At 3pm: a rare screening of newly restored 35mm prints of classic Scrappy cartoons from the 1930s. Prints include the rarely seen promotional film for Scrappy’s Puppet Theatre as well as two cartoons unseen in over 70 years: The Beer Parade and Fare-Play (these two were banned from the syndicated Samba TV package - and contain unique original titles!). Prints courtesy of Columbia Pictures. Don’t miss this once in a lifetime (we guarantee that!) event!Saturday April 30th • 1:00pm till 5:30pm • Cartoons start at 3pm
The American Film Institute
TED ASHLEY/WARNER BROS. SCREENING ROOM
2021 N. Western Ave.
Hollywood, CAAsifa members FREE ADMISSION ($10. General public)

How pathetic are the execs at Warner Bros. Animation? They’ve junked the original LOONATICS designs and made new ones because an 11-year-old started a petition saying he didn’t like the characters. A thought comes to mind:

a.) If you truly believe in the quality and value of your product, you don’t change it every time somebody in the public raises an objection (the creative process in animation should not be a collaborative effort between studios and the entire American population), and,b.) if your product is so bad that an 11-year-old’s advice makes it better, then you should get out of the fucking animation business.

This story will not go away simply because the dopes who run Warner Bros. are insistent in publicly exposing their utter ignorance about the animation process every step of the way. Thank you Warners for this very valuable lesson in all that is wrong with the animation industry today.

SHEEP IN THE BIG CITY creator and super-successful children’s book author/illustrator Mo Willems writes to express his admiration for François:

Just have to chime in that André François, with his droll satire, sketchy line, and wordless gags, is my hero as well. Tattooed Sailor and Half-Naked Knight are the most dog eared cartoon books in my collection. Add Anatol Kovarsky and Ronald Searle to the mix and you’ve got the perfect gag illustrators.

Another major cartoonist of the 20th century has passed away. Romanian-born André François, whose drawing style was imitated almost as frequently as Ronald Searle and Saul Steinberg during the 1950s and 60s, died a couple weeks ago at the age of 89. NY TIMES obit HERE. Ever since François arrived on the scene, he had a long line of admirers in the animation industry. Animation director/designer Len Glasser (who designed Ernie Pintoff’s THE INTERVIEW and THE OLD MAN AND THE FLOWER) told me that his two biggest influences in art school were François and Steinberg. Designer Dolores Cannata worked with François on some television spots at Elektra Films (NY) in the early-’60s, and Chris Jenkyns created some spots with him in Los Angeles, though I don’t remember for which studio (perhaps at Jenkyns, Shean & Elliot). His work was also adapted to animation by a number of French commercial studios. Fans in the modern animation world include Oscar Grillo and Yuri Norstein.