Cartoon Brew

Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut

Most readers of the Brew are no doubt familiar with the saga of Richard Williams and his legendary unfinished film, THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER, which he worked on for over thirty years. And if you're unfamiliar with the film's production, its story is well-documented on-line in numerous articles.

During the past year, somebody on the Internet undertook the thankless task of creating a new, not-for-profit, version of the film. That somebody was filmmaker Garrett Gilchrist and his recently completed version—THIEF AND THE COBBLER: RECOBBLED CUT—incorporates footage from a variety of existing sources. It's also of a much higher quality than the famous Williams workprint that has been floating around animation circles for years. It's currently available, in seventeen parts, on YouTube, and hi-res versions are available on BitTorrent sites like Demonoid.com and Mininova.org.

I wasn't 100% clear on what the intent of this restoration was so I got in touch with Garrett and asked him some questions about this project. Our email interview is below.

Cartoon Brew: What is it specifically about the THIEF AND THE COBBLER that inspired you to invest so much of your time and money to restore this film?

Garrett Gilchrist: When I was seven years old, I read an article in COMICS SCENE magazine, and in it, Williams said he was trying to revolutionize animation, that he was trying to create the greatest animated motion picture ever made, and that he'd been working for twenty-three years on this one film called THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER. Now at the time I was sleeping on Roger Rabbit bedsheets, I had Roger Rabbit bendies, a Jessica PVC, so if the man who animated Roger Rabbit says that, you better believe I was interested. Richard just had a way of talking about this film. He made it seem uniquely magical. He exaggerated like P.T. Barnum, but you could tell he really believed in the project.

I was about fourteen when I actually saw a trailer for ARABIAN KNIGHT in the theater, and I thought it looked awful. But it stuck in my mind that this was from the animator of Roger Rabbit, long-lost memories came unstuck. Somehow this was the same masterpiece he was talking about when I was a kid. But something's gone horribly wrong here. It wasn't until I was in high school that I read the actual story of how the movie was destroyed and never finished as intended.

Now he's known as the master animator, the animator's animator. He's written THE ANIMATOR'S SURVIVAL KIT, which is now THE textbook for any animator. It's the best book ever written on animation. His Animation Masterclasses were huge events, always sold out. People who took them became teachers themselves. A lot of the great animators today learned from Richard, or they owe a lot to Richard. But people have never seen his masterpiece. You can't rent or buy or watch Richard Williams's THIEF AND THE COBBLER. It doesn't exist as it was meant to be seen. I think that's a pretty damn good reason to restore the movie!

It was rumored some years ago that Roy Disney had been trying to convince Disney to do an official restoration of the project. Do you see this as a replacement to any eventual official restoration that Disney might do, a companion piece, or something completely different?

GG: God, I really hope Disney does restore this film some day. The latest I hear is that Don Hahn is (or was) working on it with Richard. So it's in good hands. I don't think they're scared of the film anymore, as certain people were for awhile after ALADDIN. Roy Disney tried to get a restoration done for almost a decade. But it's impossible to get those two sides to come together. Richard doesn't trust Disney with this film—or trust anyone with this film after what happened!—and Disney can't quite play ball with Richard. The story I heard was that they just weren't spending the money to do it right, that they'd let Richard be involved but wouldn't pay him to have a staff. He'd have to do it alone.

I'm not trying to step on Disney's toes. I'm hoping that what I'm doing will help their cause. For one thing, my goal is to prove that there IS a market out there. I said on-line that I was doing a restoration of the THIEF AND THE COBBLER and people went nuts. It's such a legendary film among people who really know animation. They would sell a lot of copies. They could do it with much better picture quality than I ever could, and people who have seen my version would want to buy Disney's version in a second.

It looks like you're also compiling some amazing DVDs of supplementary materials like documentaries, interviews, and other Williams animation projects.

GG: Yeah. Ten DVDs so far, which is pretty remarkable. Everything about this project has been larger than life, which is appropriate since Richard is a larger-than-life figure and this is a larger-than-life film. We've collected lots of documentaries, including a whole bunch recently from 1969 and 1970! We've collected rare short films, commercials, promo pieces, lots of things you just can't find on video, all in good quality. There's also the matter of all the artwork, images, interviews, articles. I recently scanned a thousand pieces of original THIEF artwork. We've scanned about five hundred pages worth of interviews and articles.

How much involvement have original crewmembers had on this project, and who are some of the artists that are helping out?

GG: The guy who really kickstarted this proect was a fellow named Simon Downes, who was layout assistant to Roy Naisbitt on the film. I kind of mused out loud on a message board that I wanted to restore THIEF AND THE COBBLER. Simon contacted me saying, "Hey, I worked on this film, here's some rare stuff." He sent me the widescreen DVD version of the THIEF from Japan, which is pretty rare, a beautiful copy of a 1980 documentary about the film and some really rare camera tests he'd saved from the film. I just ran with it from there, and I've been hemorraging money on this project ever since.

Roy Naisbitt was also great. I called him up. A very nice man, and a genius at that. He was Dick's assistant and layout man for nearly three decades. He sent me some really rare stuff—documentaries from the 1960s and television commercials. I visited Alex Williams, Richard's son and a primary animator on the film (he did Tack and the opening). Andreas Wessel-Therhorn, who animated the lackeys, has been very nice. He lent me his vast collection of THIEF artwork. Tony White, Holger Leihe, Steve Evangelatos, Greg Duffell, Jerry Verschoor and Beth Hannan are others who have helpd. I've been such a fan of this beautiful film for years, and now I get to see it from the inside, and in a lot of ways touch a piece of it. It's beautiful, it's such an honor. I hope more people get in touch.

If anyone is reading this who worked on the Thief, my email is tygerbug (at) yahoo (dot) com. What we're doing is we're putting together a scrapbook. I'm collecting everyone's memories, good, bad and otherwise. If anyone has saved artwork, video or anything else, I collect it and I send it to EVERYONE, so that everyone involved in the film can share in it. I'm planning on writing a book about the THIEF and doing a documentary. It's an insane story, a story of obsession and the desire for perfection in art. I'm primarily a filmmaker; I've directed seven features and thirty shorts, which you can see at OrangeCow.org. I once spent three years on one feature so I know a few things about obsession in art.

There's already a rough 'director's cut' by Richard Williams that has been floating around the animation biz for many years. How does your version differ from the existing Williams' cut that many in the industry have seen?

GG: Yeah, that bootleg. That's the whole inspiration for this project because it's terrible, isn't it? I mean, it's beautiful to watch because it's a great film, but the quality is terrible. You can't see anything. And half the film isn't finished. My goal is to take everyone who has that crappy bootleg, and quietly replace their terrible copies with a gorgeous DVD-quality copy. This is why I've been giving it out for free so much, because I want this version of the film to spread enough so that Disney says, "Hey, we'd better get on to restoring this film."

I noticed that you're doing some really ambitious things like compositing frames from two different sources to create a widescreen effect. Can you tell us what other types of things you're doing that'll make this the definitive version of the film?

GG: We spent a few months searching for the best version of the workprint we could find. First, I edited the whole film with a poor quality workprint, and I released that as the "Recobbled Rough Cut," which a lot of people have. But better quality copies of the workprint kept turning up. I wound up re-editing the whole damn movie twice! Finally a REALLY good quality copy turned up on Emule of all places. I have no idea who originally posted it there. I'm sure it was someone who worked on the film. So I'm starting all over again. The crappy Miramax version is available on DVD in widescreen, and I'm using that, so you can see 80% of the movie in glorious widescreen. The audio is from the workprint mostly, and has been noise-reduced and restored. Anything they cut out, we take from the workprint, which has been restored by Chris Boniface.

The workprint is matched to appear in the same place as the DVD material, so it transitions seamlessly. It's all color corrected. More music has been added that wasn't there before to make it feel more like a finished film than a workprint. I've added back a few scenes Dick originally cut out, and I'm actually using a lot of the stuff Fred Calvert animated, even if it's kind of cruddy, because it tells the story better than storyboards. Some of the film is still unfinished, and you'll see storyboards, but you'll see a lot less of them than you used to. Also, there are some really important scenes that are in Fred Calvert's PRINCESS AND THE COBBLER version of the movie but not in the Miramax cut, which is much worse. These include the old witch, the entire march of the One-Eyes, a lot of the best stuff in the film. I wish I had PRINCESS AND THE COBBLER in widescreen but it was never released in widescreen. So, what I'm doing is pasting the really clear pan-and-scan image over the less clear widescreen image from the workprint. It works great, because the pan-and-scan image contains the important part, like the witch herself, and that'll be really clear.

I'm also using a lot of trickery to make it work better. I've created my own backgrounds for some pan-and-scan shots so the whole picture can be clearer. I've composited parts of shots over clearer backgrounds. In one shot, the Thief is really tiny in it, so I just composited The Thief over a really clear background from the DVD, and reanimated the FX elements around him myself. I did the same with a shot of the One-Eye War Machine: I created a background and animated it with rain. My main goal is to create something Dick would like too. I don't know if I'm capable of that, but I hope so even though my cut is not the same as his cut.

Since this whole thing is obviously a non-profit fan-driven project, how will the average reader of Cartoon Brew be able to get their hands on this material?

GG: The final "Recobbled Cut" is available for free via torrent at Demonoid.com and Mininova.org. There's already an old torrent there somewhere which has a terrible version of the workprint and some good specials on it, but the real "Recobbled Cut" will almost certainly end up there. I don't know about the ten-plus special feature discs, but we'll see. They'll certainly be spreading around. I'll make sure of that.

For more info about anything related to this project, contact Garrett at tygerbug (at) yahoo (dot) com.

TWO NEW BOOKS

Two great new books, mentioned prevously on this site, have finally been published and both are a lot better than I imagined - and highly recommended.

Mouse Tracks: The Story of Walt Disney Records, by Tim Hollis and Greg Ehrbar, fills in a missing piece of the Disney legacy. In the 1950s, the Disney company exploded - with TV production, Disneyland, Buena Vista Film distribution, and a music company, which begat Disneyland Records.This book chronicles the story of how Roy and Walt entered the recording and music publishing business. It's a fascinating story - and a great tribute to the voices behind the mike and the talents behind the scenes. Paul Frees, Thurl Ravenscroft, Cliff Edwards, Sterling Holloway, Dal McKennon, Alan Young, Hal Smith, Billy Bletcher, The Sherman Brothers, Jimmy Dodd and Annette are all part of the story. It's a great read and if you're a fan of Disneyana, this is a must-have.

I'm not a big fan of "How to" books, but David Levy's Your Career In Animation: How To Survive and Thrive is absolutely teriffic. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Levy has apparently spent his own successful career taking lots of notes - and his advice, from networking to getting a job, from pitching your own show to starting your own company, is absolutely spot on. I've lived through it all myself and his observations on navigating through the industry are completely accurate. I found myself nodding and agreeing with most everything Levy suggests. I don't think there is a wasted page in this book - even the photos, illustrations and captions have relevance. Every section is loaded with do's, don'ts and practical advice based on true experience. This isn't a dry read either, Levy is an excellent writer, who uses humor, and ample anecdotes from his own career, to get his message accross. David, thank you for writing this book. It's the one I'll recommend to everyone who asks me how to break into the biz, and to anyone who doesn't understand the effort required to make animated cartoons.

Lou Bunin and Jiri Trnka Articles

Animation director Mike Sporn is always posting inspiring items on his Splog, among them, these two rare magazine articles about stop motion masters Lou Bunin and Jiri Trnka. Makes for some good weekend reading.

2D Back at Disney?

Rhett Wickham at LaughingPlace.com has a positive report about what's happening at Disney Feature Animation and how John Lasseter is encouraging, but not forcing, the return of hand-drawn animated films. It sounds like Disney is again becoming a studio worthy of its name, and that's great to hear.

FREE CARTOONS

Today only, Classic Media is offering up a bunch of cartoons for free viewing on Google Video. Episodes of Roger Ramjet, Jay Ward's Rocky and Bullwinkle, Oriolo's Felix The Cat, The Mighty Hercules, and some awful DePatie Freleng Magoo cartoons. The Ramjet cartoons are always worth watching. If you don't know the series, we highly recommend checking these out.

For some really great classic cartoon downloads - always free - don't forget ReFrederator.com

LA TIMES ON ASIFA ARCHIVE

Nice bit of publicity in today's L.A. Times: a full page article for the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. Pictured in the piece (and above) is archive director Steve Worth, middle, with animators Katie Rice and David Gemmill.

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is the only dedicated archive, museum, and library for the benefit of the animation community, students and general public. In case you came in late, ASIFA is amassing a virtual archive of significant animation production material and inspirational art, as well as archiving the organization's existing (and growing) physical collection - all of it to be made available for personal inspection or online reference. Visiting the archive and reading the blog is always a treat. Donating to the cause is always welcome.

JITTERBUG FOLLIES (1939)

My name is Amid and I'm a YouTube addict. I can't help it. There's so much great animation being posted on that site and I've just got to link to it. Today's link is to a must-see 1939 MGM cartoon called JITTERBUG FOLLIES. There was an interesting, short-lived period at MGM in 1938 when comic legend Milt Gross took over the animation studio, and promptly managed to produce two shorts starring his characters, Count Screwloose and J.R. the Wonderdog.

Below is excerpt from Leonard Maltin's OF MICE AND MAGIC discussing the production of these shorts:

Some of the animators balked at trying to animate Gross's intricate, highly individual drawings, and Bill Littlejohn recalls, "I got tired of hearing this, so one night I just stayed overnight and animated about twenty feet of the dog, J.R.—just slashed it out. Milt [Gross] grabbed it, had it shot, and it was then proved that the things could animate."

Quimby was shocked at the finished product, however. "He didn't want to release them," says Littlejohn, "because he said they were 'below the dignity of films that MGM would want to have.' And they were so funny. I've never seen a bunch of animators laugh so hard. It was like Mel Brooks's kind of humor. The vitality of [Gross's] comic strips was right in the picture."

Watch JITTERBUG FOLLIES below, thanks to the Classic Cartoons blog. On a sidenote, fellow Brewmaster Jerry Beck tells me that Mel Blanc does many of the voices in this short:

DISNEY'S LITTLE MATCHGIRL

Several days ago Amid posted some harsh reactions to Disney's new 2-D short, The Little Matchgirl, screened at Annecy. I saw the film a few months ago at the studio and I don't know what all the fuss is about. The Little Matchgirl is a sweet film, filled with beautiful elaborate images and teriffic traditional animation. The fact that it was finished at all under the old management is a minor miracle. Thankfully this won't be the last 2-D film the studio ever makes - and it's certainly no disgrace to the great Disney brand name. Bill Desowitz wrote a good behind the scenes article (with clips from the film) over at VFX World. Ron Barbagallo has an extensive interview with director Roger Allers here. It may not be as artsy as Destino or as dazzling as Lorenzo, but I have to give the studio some big points for making the effort to keep the hand drawn art alive.

Cartoon Modern Update

A couple brief notes on my soon-to-be-released book CARTOON MODERN. If you're a member of the media and would like to receive a complimentary review copy of the book, please let me know ASAP and I'll put you on the list. Just drop me a line at amid [at] animationblast [dot] com with your details. This offer is only valid to legit media, and it has to be sent to a news media address.

If you're not media and want to be the absolute first to get your style-hungry hands on a copy of the book, I've just confirmed a signing at the San Diego Comic-Con on Friday, July 21st, from 3-4pm at the Chronicle Books booth (#1019). Chronicle doesn't think the book will be in their warehouses at the time so they're shipping a very limited number of copies from China especially for the Con. Also, Canadian folk will be able to find the book (and me) at the Ottawa Animation Festival (Sept. 20-24). More details to come about that signing.

Disney Storybook Show at Gallery 1988

Gallery 1988 on Melrose Ave. has an interesting show currently on display called "The Storybook Series: Winnie the Pooh." Here's the concept for the show: a bunch of preschoolers from the Hollywood Schoolhouse were read a Winnie the Pooh storybook and then asked to draw their favorite scenes from the story (without any visual reference, not that it would have made a difference). Then, the preschoolers' drawings were handed off to a bunch of contemporary LA artists who reinterpreted the children's drawings as paintings and mixed media works of art. The pieces are being sold as a set, with a portion of the proceeds going back to the preschool. All the pieces from the show can be seen at the Gallery 1988 website.

CARS Box Office Vs. Earlier Pixar Films

A lot of folks are keeping close tabs on the box office gross of Pixar's CARS. If you're one of those people, then you'll probably dig Box Office Mojo's day-by-day comparison of the CARS gross to earlier Pixar efforts like THE INCREDIBLES, FINDING NEMO and MONSTERS, INC. Check out the grosses HERE.

KEN HULTGREN BOOK

For those of you who have gotten your fill of the original Preston Blair Animation book, Clay Croker has posted pages from an even rarer 1946 book by animator/comic book artist Ken Hultgren on his Argle Bargle blog. Hultgren was a Disney animator of the 30s, 40s and 50s who is probably better known these days for his volumes of comic art on dozens of miscelleaneous books like HA-HA, GIGGLE, and COO-COO COMICS, as well as on numerous Disney comic books.

A note to the ladies out there

Just thought you'd like to know...

Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men....To qualify for the only work open to women one must be well grounded in the use of pen and ink and also of water color. The work to be done consists of tracing the characters on clear celluloid sheets with India ink and filling in the tracings on the reverse side with paint according to directions.

This is an excerpt from a letter that Walt Disney Productions sent out to prospective female animators in 1939. Read the entire letter at the Animation Guild blog. This letter is also included in Tom Sito's upcoming book DRAWING THE LINE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE ANIMATION UNIONS FROM BOSKO TO BART SIMPSON.

More Great Animation on YouTube

Here's a couple more rare animated shorts that were recently added to YouTube. The first, FLYING MAN (1962), was helmed by YELLOW SUBMARINE director George Dunning and caused quite a stir when it was first released in the early-60s. I'd always read that the film used a paint-on-glass technique, but I just reread a John Canemaker article about Dunning, in which Canemaker says that the characters were painted onto cels, which probably means that the animation wasn't created under-camera. Regardless of how it was created, the freedom of the movement and looseness of the brushstroke style are both inspiring.

Also worth checking out: John Lasseter's 1979 student film from CalArts—LADY AND THE LAMP. This would be a pretty cool extra for the dvd release of CARS.

(Thanks, Wilbert Plijnaar and Chris Sobieniak)

JIM FLORA INSPIRATION

Art by Jim Flora is being posted by guest blogger Irwin Chusid this week on Leif Peng's Today's Inspiration blog. Chusid, author/editor (with Barbara Economon) of The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora is showcasing rarely seen 1950s commercial art by Flora (1914-1998). Flora's only connection to animation was as an inspiration to animators, especially Gene Dietch - who returned the favor by adapting Flora's childrens book, The Fabulous Fireworks Family as a Terrytoon (released in 1959). More Flora can be viewed at JimFlora.com and at JimFloraArt.com.

Eddie Fitzgerald's First Animation Job

Cartoonist Eddie Fitzgerald tells a hilarious story on his blog about his first animation job in 1979 at Filmation and his experiences with animation veteran Paul Fennell. The photo above (which I published in ANIMATION BLAST #8) shows Eddie's bully, Paul Fennell, back in 1941, when Fennell owned the commercial studio Cartoon Films Ltd. Personally, I think Eddie could have taken him.

RIK MAKI AT VAN EATON GALLERIES

Rik Maki began his career as a baseball pitcher in the minor leagues for seven years before trading in his wooden bat for a wooden pencil. He became a freelance cartoonist and advertising illustrator, and worked for the National Film Board of Canada, before coming to America 1978. He's spent the past 18 years designing characters for Disney and Pixar, for such films as THE LION KING, FINDING NEMO, A BUGS LIFE, HERCULES, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, TREASURE PLANET and DINOSAUR. This week Maki will mount an exhibition of his original sketches at Van Eaton Galleries. The opening reception is Wednesday, June 21st, from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. and he'll be there, sketching all night long at his animation desk. Admission is free and everyone is welcome. The Van Eaton Galleries are at 13613 Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks, California. The art show runs through July 8th. For more information, visit Van Eaton's website or call them at (818) 788-2357.

Hans Bacher's Book and LITTLE MATCHGIRL

Hans Bacher (art director of MULAN) has posted on his blog some tantalizing page spreads from his forthcoming instructional book, DREAMWORLDS, which is a how-to book about animation production design. No details yet on how to purchase it, but the book should be out this winter and it looks to be a must-have.

Also worth noting, in the comments section of his blog, Bacher makes a brief comment about his work on the new Disney short THE LITTLE MATCHGIRL short, saying, "I am very unhappy about that short. it's a disaster..." That opinion seems to be largely in line with the thoughts of the audience who saw the film at the Annecy animation festival a couple weeks ago. I could not find many people at the festival who had anything positive to say about the film.

MATCHGIRL also managed to generate some controversy at Annecy. The buzz from insiders was that Disney had already submitted MATCHGIRL to Annecy in 2005. It was rejected by the pre-selection committee last year, and it was "resubmitted" again this year, which is, of course, a big no-no in the festival world. If the audience reaction was anything to go by, Annecy organizers should have accepted the decision of the '05 pre-selection committee and not pushed the film into official competition.

Monday Morning Inspiration: MUNRO and ERSATZ

Animation fan Kenny Bullard has recently been posting some terrific, difficult-to-find independent animation on YouTube, including Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner's CLOSED MONDAYS (1974), Borge Ring's ANNA AND BELLA (1984), Osamu Tezuka's JUMPING (1984), Bill Kroyer's TECHNOLOGICAL THREAT (1988), and Henry Selick's SLOW BOB IN THE LOWER DIMENSIONS (1990).

Best of all, Kenny has posted two rare Oscar winners from 1960 and 1961: Gene Deitch's adaptation of Jules Feiffer's illustrated story MUNRO, and Dušan Vukotić's ERSATZ, which was the first foreign film to win the animated short Oscar. If this isn't an excellent use of YouTube, then I don't know what is.

MUNRO (1960)

ERSATZ (1961)

Mediocrity in TV Animation

Story artist Jenny Lerew has posted a perceptive rant about mediocrity in TV animation. Of course, she's right, but unfortunately I don't think many decision-makers in the TV animation biz are listening. In her piece, Jenny discusses Brad Bird's superb FAMILY DOG special from the '80s, which is happily now available in its entirety on YouTube. Check it out below.