Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Nina Paley was invited to premiere her feature length hand drawn feature, Sita Sings the Blues, at the Berlinale, the 58th International Berlin Film Festival.
What an accomplishment!
And as if that weren’t enough, the film won a special notice citation from the festival.

The festival announcement
reads like this:

Berlinale 2008:

The members of the Youth Jury in the Generation 14plus include:
Roman Akbar
Zadora Enste
Hans Hirsch
Nora Kubach
Zoё Martin
Linda Moog
Lavan Vasuthevan

A special mention goes to
Sita sings the Blues by Nina Paley (USA)
Certain stories can be re-told forever, even over thousands of years. This
innovative and unique film has impressed us with its boundless creativity and
irresistible charm.

Congratulations and kudos to Nina for this extraordinary achievement. I’m really pleased and proud for her accomplishment.

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- Tom Hachtman came by the studio to show off a new book. New Yorker cartoonist, Sid Harris has edited a the book, 101 Funny Things about Global Warming.

This is a collection of cartoons by different cartoonists who have something to say about the subject. People like Ben Katchor, Lee Lorenz, Gahan Wilson, and Tom Hachtman have some hilarious entries here. Tom did two Gertrude’s Follies strips. Here’s one of them.

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- On Wednesday, I saw Sunday In The Park with George. Despite having an animator for a director, or maybe because of it, I didn’t like the show. Actually, I love the show – it’s probably my favorite theatrical piece. But I didn’t like this version of the show. It was heartless and wholly unemotional. Since all the reviews were absolutely glowing throwing the term “Art” around a lot, I feel like something of a curmudgeon. Who cares; I know what I saw and didn’t see.

I haven’t had time to sort out my thoughts, but I’ll try to give a full account of it tomorrow and let you know how the animation helped kill it. I also have an interview with the animator-turned-director I’ll post.

The show opened last night, so the reviews are printed in the papers today.
Here’s Ben Brantley‘s glowing review in the NYTimes.
Here’s Joe Dziemianowicz‘ glowing review in The NYDaily News.
Here’s Linda Winer‘s review for Newsday and the Associated Press.

- Today is President’s Day.
Banks, Post Offices, Government workers all have the day off. I, on the other hand, have a lot of meetings today, and think I would prefer being at home sleeping. The three Presidential candidates have a busy day preparing for the big vote tomorrow in Wisconsin and Hawaii. Hillary cut her trip a day shorter to return to Texas, today, so it’s assumed that Wisconsin is closer to Obama’s hands. She seems to have consistently abandoned her workers in any state where she smells a loss. John McCain is out there being angry and arrogant somewhere.

That’s the Empire State Building to the left. It’s lit red, white and blue for the holiday weekend. My apartment is on 30th Street just east of the building. It was always pleasant that in walking the street you could get a nice slice of an image of the building at night. However, lately, all the construction in the neighborhood has made it a bit difficult. (Remember those photos of cranes I posted last year? Well, the cranes are gone, and buildings have arisen.) Many of these new, overly large buildings cut off the view. You really have to look to catch the Emp State Bldg. It’s too bad. I guess that’s part of the problem with “progress.

Once upon a time we celebrated two holidays in February: Lincoln’s Birthday on Feb. 12th and Washington’s Birthday on Feb. 22nd. In 1968, the holidays were combined it into the one date. Today, kids don’t remember who’s birthday it represents, and the media seems to be celebrating all presidents. Yesterday AOL had a poll to pick the 10 top Presidents. (Can you believe George W. Bush landed at spot #10? Even Woodrow Wilson had to have been more valuable. No?) We seem to be losing all sense of history. The kids on AOL probably just couldn’t name any more Presidents than the 10 they came up with.

- If you’re a fan of Lewis Carroll, the 19th Ankara International Film Festival has something for you. They’re putting on a tribute to Carroll by running a number of films that adapt his work and document his life. I have three films in their program: The Hunting of the Snark, Jabberwocky, and Glimmers of a Life (a biography of Carroll focusing on his nonsense poems.) These three films were released as one program on vhs. The dvd features only the Snark.

The complete Carroll retrospective includes:
__* Neco z Alenky, Jan Å vankmajer, Czech, 1988
__* Zvahlav aneb Saticky Slameného Huberta/Jabberwocky,
________Jan Å vankmajer, Czech, 1971
__* The Hunting of the Snark, Michael Sporn, USA, 1989
__* Lewis Carroll’s Nonsense Poems: Glimmers of a Life,
________Michael Sporn, USA, 1989
__* Jabberwocky, Michael Sporn, USA, 1989
__* Sincerely yours, a Film about Lewis Carroll, Andy Malcolm&George Pastic, Can, 2004
__* Alisa v strane chudes / Alica in Wonderland, Yefrem Pruzhansky, USSR, 1981
__* Alisa v zazerkalye / Through The Looking Glass, Yefrem Pruzhansky, USSR, 1982
__* Alice in Wonderland, Lou Bunin, UK/France, 1949

Lou Bunin’s Alice in Wonderland which will screen at the 19th Ankara Film Festival in Turkey.

The print they’ll screen of Bunin’s Alice Personally, my favorite film about Lewis Carroll is Dreamchild starring Ian Holm; it features excellent puppetry by the Henson people. Perhaps the rights to that one weren’t quite as accessible.

The festival in Ankara, Turkey should attract an interesting following. It runs from March 13-23. Ezgi Yalinalp is the Coordinator of this event.

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Talking about Wonderland, Josh Siegel of the Museum of Modern Art was kind enough to send me a copy of the video shot during my chat last November. I’m beginning to understand why George Bush wants to suppress our civil rights. He just wants to get rid of all evidence of his life in Blunderland. I’m looking into suppressing this video – how embarrassing. Funny how positive my memories were until I saw what I looked like.

_____Here I’m trying to scare Josh Siegel and John Canemaker, but it doesn’t work.

_____Finally I do everything I can to bore them into submission. I think that worked.

But then I think back to how many people came out in support to watch the films that ran all weekend long or even just to hear me talk on that final Monday. Michael and Phyllis Barrier travelled from Arkansas to NY to attend. I couldn’t begin to tell you what that meant to me. The same is true of John and Cathy Celestri who came from Ohio. Their presence, and that of all those who came was a great treat that you just miss while watching this dvd. It’s wonderful to have as a memento, but my memories are even greater. I can’t thank Josh Siegel or John Canemaker enough for those memories.

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- Speaking of one who came out, Michael Barrier has a great post on his site today. It talks about the difficulties of a real animation historian. Watching Mike or John Canemaker travel endless miles for the necessary interviews or programs, just tires me. (They’re the two I’m closest to, so I see what goes into it.) I love animation history, but I just wouldn’t have the stamina to do the hard work that no one properly credits them for doing. I raise a glass of champagne to them all in toasting their work. I can’t get enough of good, solid, dependable animation history. The same for all the others who do that tough work.

Two excellent videos are posted on Willym Rome‘s site, Willy or Wont He. They’re film pieces by Emanuele Luzzati and Giulio Gianini. Both films are difficult to find available.

The Cat Duet is a work adapted from an operatic piece that uses much of Rossini’s music even though it’s not considered an opera by the composer. The background of the opera is hazy, but the animated film is a beauty.

Brancaleone alle Crociate (Brancaleone at the Crusades) is a title sequence for the film by Mario Monicelli. It stars Vittorio Gassman and is reminiscent of other pieces by Luzzati and Gianini. I’ve made some frame grabs and am posting them below to give a small taste of the work. Go to the site, and view both videos.

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See other posts I’ve done on Luzzati and Gianini. They’re all very musical, beautifully designed and cleverly animated films.

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- Craig Yoe posted a wonderful original Mutt & Jeff comic strip on the Arflovers Blog. The strip features cartoonist, Bud Fisher, trying to draw a politically correct strip in 1919. Take a look; it’s hilarious.

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- Speaking of politically correct strips, there’s a good post about blacks in the current comic strips at The Root. It’s enlightening to read about this stuff in the 21st Century when we’re considering a black man as President. (Go Obama!) Race still matters to some people, unfortunately..

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- And speaking about Obama if you haven’t watched the Will I Am song Yes We Can sung to Obama’s New Hampshire speech take the time to look at it. Over a billion people have watched it already. The last half is good. here
You should see it if only to appreciate the anti McCain parody
_______________-_________posted here.
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- For something a little less controversial, check out the new post on the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive. It’s a beautiful book illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren. Tenggren, of course, had a big hand in the design of Pinocchio. He was also the creator of The Poky Little Puppy._________________________

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- Yesterday, John Dilworth showed me the cover of the latest copy of ASIFA International’s magazine, Cartoons. He came across the magazine before I’d received my copy. I was surprised to see my work featured so prominently. That was a treat, I can assure you.

Thanks to the editors, Chris Robinson and John Libbey for the fine choice of cover and to Ray Kosarin for writing it in the first place.

It was even more interesting that Dilworth was the one who animated that cover scene from my film, Abel’s Island.

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-Last night I was invited to an event built around the documentary No End In Sight. I’d already seen the film, and, as a matter of fact, have already voted for it for Best Doc Feature. (It didn’t quite make sense to me that they would have featured this film at a special dinner since voting ended last week for the documentaries.)

But I don’t look a free meal in the eye, and I wanted to meet this film maker. On a Saturday night, they booked the Cinema II, one of those high end theaters on the upper East Side of Manhattan. A line stretched around the corner for the other films playing at the triplex, The Bucket List and There Will Be Blood. We skipped that and moved to the theater where we were sent in.

Names were on the reserved seats (it’s a kick to be one of those), and this was helpful in that one could see some of the others there, a crowd of lefties and celebrities: Amy Goodman (of Democracy NOW!), Eli Pariser (of MoveOn.org), Jane Fonda, Giancarlo Esposito, Carol Kane and documentary filmmaker, Barbara Kopple, among others. Candy Kugel was the only other animator in attendance.

After the film, Ariana Huffington had a short Q&A for director-writer, Charles Ferguson. Following that, there was a meal at the excellent restaurant, Plaza Athenee. Ariana continued the Q&A after the meal, and it got interesting when a couple of people there weren’t quite as supportive.

It became a somewhat intense evening. That’s probably how it should be after that film. It’s an account of all the steps taken to get us to where we are in the war in Iraq. No one seemed to speak for any of the participants in the film, but the four in charge in the White House seemed to do all the dirty work themselves. It’s a strong movie. I was pleased to have met Mr. Ferguson there.

- I had thought I’d comment on the Will Finn / Michael Barrier fracas, but it’s pointless. I think there’s been a bit of misunderstanding on Will’s part. His original thought about Chuck Jones’ later years is spot on, and I think Mike said as much. I do understand that Mike had to respond to Will’s nasty volley, and I thought his response was finely measured. It seems moot for me to comment on it further. However, the original thought about aging animators is something that interests me. Several of my key influences, here in New York, are older artists, and it’s interesting to watch how aging affects them all differently.

I would have liked to have seen how John Hubley would have changed as he got older. I’m sure his interests would have been more about the story than the drawings. That’s where he was going at the time. Faith Hubley’s solo films got richer as she got older.
Their two brilliant key animators, Tissa David and Ed Smith are still going strong. Their output is probably less than in the past, but they’ve had less to work on. Having worked closely with both in the last year, I have to say that both are just as strong.

Finally, I think of myself and how it’s affecting me as I grow older. I’m a little lazier as far as animating goes, but just as excited by the medium (or my version of it) as I was 20 years ago. Story and design have grown even more so in importance, while the world’s view of animation has gotten slicker. We’ll see what a few more years brings.

- To continue this theme, I’d like to post something I’d put up back in November of 2006. James Stevenson did a brilliant cartoon about a comic strip artist who was losing it. The piece appeared in his book, Something Marvelous Is About To Happen. It’s a great take on comic strip cartoonists and the relationship they have to their strips.
Here it is, The Last Days of Tootie and Fred.

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- Lou Bunin was born in Russia near Kiev. He received his early art training at the Chicago Art Institute and followed up studying with the sculptor Bourdelle in France at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. In 1930 he returned to the US with a one man show at Chicago’s Younge Gallery. This was followed by a year in Mexico where he served as an assistant to the painter, Diego Rivera.

He started a marionette theater in Chicago with the author, Meyer Levin. they produced a version of Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.

In 1938 he collaborated with Charles Bowers on his first film with “stringless” puppets. Petroleum Pete and His Cousins (sometimes known as Pete-roleum and His Cousins). This was a 30 min. movie commissioned by the Petroleum Industry for the 1938 World’s Fair and was directed by Joseph Losey. 12 mins. of the film were animated.

Pete Roleum and His Cousins (1939)
Uploaded by Tomsutpen

During World War II, he was involved in the production of another stop-motion animated film, Bury The Axis. This film is available in dvd from Steve Stanchfield on his Cartoons For Victory. (I highly recommend this disc. A great collection of truly rare WW II films.) I found this film on YouTube and thought I’d share to celebrate this animator’s beginnings.

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– The Oscar nominees were revealed this morning.
The animated features were excellently chosen:
Persepolis
Ratatouille
Surf’s Up

I think you know which one I’d like to see win. A hint – it’s 2D.

Those nominated for animated short include:
I Met the Walrus
Madame Tutli-Putli
Meme Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)
My Love(Moya Lyubov)
Peter & the Wolf

I’m quite disappointed that Jeu didn’t make it. Georges Schwizgebel‘s film was brilliant, but the voters didn’t get it, I guess. I’m also a bit surprised the The Pearce Sisters wasn’t nominated. Instead the insipid My Love made it. One could have predicted that, but then I already wrote about this film.

Congratulations to them all, and also to Brad Bird and Jim Capobianco, Jan Pinkava for the nomination for Best Screenplay for Ratatouille. If they win, Jan Pinkava could win after being replaced by Brad Bird.

- My favorite documentary of 2006-2007 was a film called White Light/Black Rain. It offered an in-depth look at the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 literally ending the war in Japan. I’ve seen this film at least a half dozen times, and I’m moved each and every time. It’s like watching a flame – completely captivating.

There are extensive interviews with many survivors of the bombing. All of course were children when it happened, and all of their lives have been dominantly affected, if not completely ruined, by the bombing. Familes lost, mashed and mauled bodies, peeling bodies and blood, fire, heat and a desperate need for water remain vivid in their memories.

There’s a beauty in these people in the film and a poetry in their language, and I wondered if it were all Japanese that had this about them; I assume it was generational. All of these people spoke with a quiet dignity and unusally articulate turns of phrase to describe everything they saw or felt.

We met the crew of the Enola Gay, the plane that carried the bomb and dropped it on Hiroshima. They discuss their mission and the feelings they had them on completing it.

The film, interestingly, started with a camera crew asking school children in Hiroshima if they knew what had happened on August 6, 1945. It was a sorta Leno’s “Jay Walking” for Japanese children. Expectedly, none of the kids knew what that date represented even though there was a dance-performance piece, remembering the bombing, which was happening right alongside them.

I saw this show again this past Thursday. It often runs on HBO. This viewing the opening stayed with me, I wondered about young kids who seem to know so little, and I worry a bit about it.

This was brought to mind, again, when I’d read Amid Amidi’s piece on Cartoon Brew about Tex Avery and his last animated product for Hanna-Barbera, Kwicky Koala. Amid ends his piece with these lines:

So has animation learned from its past? Is our industry diverse enough today to support and utilize the wide range of talents working within it? Twenty years from now, will we be looking at the credits of Bee Movie, Open Season, and Chicken Little with a similarly sad lament? And more importantly, does anybody even know who Tex Avery is in 2008?

We certainly know the answer or the question wouldn’t have been asked.
When school children in a mall in Hiroshima, watching a dance piece about the bombing, are unable to remember that the tragedy had happened in their home town, the conscious memory of the newer generations are unable and probably uninterested in remembering an animation past.

We live in the present.

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- Jerry Beck has a new toybox of a book called The Hanna Barbera Treasury. I haven’t read the book, but I have picked it up and looked at it. It’s a pop-up, pull-out, unfold and play-with-something-on-every-page kinda book. It’s unfortunate, because I think Jerry probably has a lot to say about this company and their history, but the book is designed to be a fun cartoon book. It’s designed to sell to consumers and not to tell anything truly informative about H&B.

However, because of the review Mike Barrier posted last week and a couple of follow up letters the subject of Hanna Barbera’s value has been raised. Since the review was posted and the letters and comments on other blogs appeared, I’ve thought a lot about the subject.

Let me tell you my history here. I remember when Ruff and Reddy first appeared. I was a kid watching the Howdy Doody Show. They’d gathered their “peanut gallery” at the end of their program to announce that a great new cartoon was going to premiere next Saturday at 10:30 AM, following their program, and they showed a short clip.

The next weekend, I was ready for Ruff and Reddy. Howdy and Buffalo Bob reminded us to watch it. The excitement built to a high.

I watched. I don’t remember much about it; the show didn’t make an impression. I remember a lot of the Howdy Doody shows; not much about Ruff and Reddy. I remember liking the opening credits with the two characters in frames. I remember it was, of course, in B&W as all TV was back then. That’s about it. A lot of long shots cut to close ups. I remember that. I was 10. Disney’s Sleeping Beauty was still two years away.

A couple of years later Huckleberry Hound premiered in syndicated form on local channel 11. It was ok; I liked the design style. However, I recognized that there wasn’t a lot happening and that the backgrounds didn’t have a lot on them. I did like the sponge painting technique; I’d never seen anything like it.

There were a lot of news stories about adults watching Huckleberry Hound (with its other featured cartoons – Yogi Bear and Snagglepuss.) I was maybe 12, but I got the reference to Yogi Berra, and I got the parody of Bert Lahr’s voice. He was the Cowardly Lion; how could I miss it? This show was also in B&W, though color TV was just starting to enter our world.

Yeah, I watched the show daily. I watched more after Yogi Bear got his own show, and I enjoyed the Quick Draw McGraw segments. But there were all those wild west backgrounds with only tiny buttes on the straight lined horizons. Maybe a cactus appeared on the bicycle pans, and I got to recognize what a bicycle pan was (without knowing the term). Essentially I was picking up some animation cheats without doing more than watching.

The Flintstones got a lot of attention when they first appeared on ABC. After all, this was the first animated sitcom. It looked a lot like The Honeymooners, but I liked that. It also reminded me of the Fleischer shorts I’d seen about the cavemen living in a somewhat modern world. There was also that Tex Avery cartoon that was similar; I’d seen it on TV by then. I enjoyed those early Flintstones. It was entertaining when they had their baby, Pebbles. Somehow, though, the show lost it for me about that time. I didn’t watch after Bam Bam entered. By then the great inking was not looking so great. I don’t think I saw The Flintstones in color until the 1970′s.

I watched The Jetsons for a small time; I liked TopCat for the first season (all those voices culled from the Phil Silvers “Bilko” show.)

I opted out once Jonny (ugh) Quest entered, and I never went back to H&B.

Looking back on it all, I see how limited the animation was, but I knew that back then and imitated it in my own 12 year old’s animation. I tried doing the limited animation as H&B developed it, but I’d also tried it as Ward Kimball did it in Toot Whistle Plunk & Boom and those other Disney Tomorrowland shows he did. Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol was also a much bigger influence than H&B.

The backgrounds were interesting, but I was much more interested in the design style I’d seen in 101 Dalmatians or Sleeping Beauty. I’d bought some B&W lobby cards from Sword In The Stone, and I tried my hand at imitating the backgrounds – in colors I’d choose. These were much more enjoyable than anything I’d seen in H&B cartoons.

So, where am I going with all this? Looking back now on all that limited animation history, I have to say that I learned the tricks – probably many of them before I learned the right way to do it. I also got to realize that H&B truly flattened out the animation in ways that UPA and Kimball’s limited animation didn’t do.

For a short time H&B and Ruby Spears farmed animation to New York animators. I picked up a lot of work and was able to animate and assist about 200 feet a week. They liked my stuff, and I made a lot of money in a short amount of time. Weeks later my shows would be on TV, and I couldn’t identify ANY of the scenes I did. It was all so forgettable. It was about making quick money, and I hated it. I quit and started my own company.

I had to unlearn the H&B method to get it out of my system, and I think that the world of animation also had to unlearn it. Unfortunately, I don’t think it ever came undone. All those bad habits that were designed by brilliant guys working for Hanna Barbera are too strong.
_Then, John Kricfalusi with Ren & Stimpy introduced newer ways of cheating – ways that worked for that show. Everyone who graduated from Cal Arts started imitating that.
_Now with the influence of Flash, tv animation is doomed to move east or west, bob up and down, and rarely toward or away from the screen. There is no such thing as perspective. Big actions happen off screen or pop from one pose to another (some justify this as an imitation of Tex Avery’s work – it’s not.) If a car crashes, do it off screen. Just shake the background with the audio crash. There are a hundred much more subtle cheats I could point out. You see them everywhere: in anything on tv, in Persepolis, in The Triplettes of Belleville, in newer Disney features. Everywhere.

Today, there’s a lot of sloppy cheating and very little animation to see. It all did really start with Hanna Barbera when they modernized animation to become a big assembly line. Michael Barrier is right in his review. I’m not a fan of Hanna and Barbera’s work – not even on the Tom and Jerry cartoons. (As a matter of fact, I suspect they helped Rudy Ising get the boot from MGM after taking his characters from that first T&J cartoon, Puss Gets The Boot.) But I’m not talking about their MGM work, here. I’m just interested in the factory they built on Cahuenga Blvd and the bad habits they offered the future.

In a way it’s brought us back to the days of silent animation. Col. Heeza Liar probably used more drawings than your average Huck Hound cartoon. I’m not sure the stories were any better either.

Is it time to invent Mickey Mouse again?

- Has anyone else noted that the world has gotten meaner?

Remember the comic strip Pete the Tramp by C.D. Russell? no, it’s probably before your time. Pete was a tramp who stole pies from windows and got in trouble with the law. He was the typical hobo in comic strip form, and the strip started during the depression and lasted through 1963. I read it in color in Saturday’s NY Journal American.

Pete usually slept on park benches under newspapers and got his feet slapped by the cop. I noticed park benches this week and wanted to call attention to the way our society has handled tramps, hoboes, homeless people. In New York, they’ve made them uncomfortable.

This is the park bench I noticed.

It’s a bench in Madison Square Park, and I noticed it because it’s become a relic of the past. A person could actually sleep on it.

This is the newer model. The only way you could sleep on it is if you only had a torso. They’ve put dividers there, so it makes it handy to sit and not touch the person next to you, but you couldn’t really lie down on it.

See. There are lots of these now. Madison Square Park is made of mostly these benches, but there are still a couple of the old kind.

The new little park down on Bleecker and 6th Avenue only has this type of bench.
No vagrants wanted here.

Even the old, tiny private park on Bleecker has these newer benches. (I did see someone sleeping on them, but I couldn’t get close enough to photograph the way he mangled his body to get some sleep.)

A building up on 28th and Madison made sure no one could sleep on their public seating area.

Subway benches have also become completely inhospitable.

This type bench has very tight dividers. Wearing winter garb, one hardly fits into the space. However, these benches aren’t quite so bad in that the dividers aren’t mercilessly high.

Look at these uncomfortable things at West 4th Street. (Plenty of homeless used to be downtown.)

You could hurt your back trying to sleep here. Though, I have seen some people stretched out over these partitions. That’s how desperate it gets in the winter cold.

It’s not too much better on the subway. The seats are lumpy – shaped for the bum (I don’t mean vagrant-like bum) in bright colors. It’s a tight squeeze.

The few longer seats are “Priority seating.” This means bums have to get up for older people. I’m not sure what it means if the bum is an older person.

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