Commentary &Independent Animation 19 Dec 2011 06:07 am
The Mouse and His Child Go On
- As I wrote yesterday, the author, Russell Hoban died on Dec. 13th at the age of 86. He was a favorite author of mine. I was lucky to have met him after we completed an animated version of his book, The Marzipan Pig. Prior to that, a feature had been done of his children’s novel, The Mouse and His Child. Here’s a couple of pieces I did about that feature in the past few years.
Sanrio, a Japanese company that made all their money on Hello Kitty products, produced two animated features in the US. Metamorphosis and The Mouse and His Child. Both films failed at the box office. However, The Mouse and His Child, directed by Fred Wolf and Chuck Swenson, has some small glimmers of fine animation throughout the film.
I don’t really know who did any of the animation. Corny Cole, certainly, did the big closing animated zoom of the film. I sought out the work of one animator I liked, and it turned out to be Vincent Davis. It was the first work I saw by him, and I’m still charmed by it.
Here’s a small walk at the beginning of the film. Lots of shape shifting in the assisting, but there’s something nice about it, too. I don’t know who animated it.
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______(Click any image to enlarge.)
The Mouse and His Child has some real charm. However, it created a small problem for me.
When I’d begun work on The Marzipan Pig, I had to guarantee the brilliant writer, Russell Hoban, who authored both books – The Marzipan Pig and The Mouse and His Child – that no spoken dialogue would be created by me or Maxine Fisher, who was writing the script. Hoban was annoyed by the script for The Mouse and His Child. He felt they had butchered his story.
In fact, the film ends 3/4 of the way into the story. Elements of the last quarter of the book are rushed through the film in one last scene before the end titles. (I have to admit it’s a bit confusing.) This is a scene Corny animated. It’s all one scene; no cuts; an animated BG.
The Jack In The Box looks very different from the guy in Raggedy Ann.
You can watch this film on YouTube.
on 19 Dec 2011 at 1:48 pm 1.The Gee said …
One scene?
It seems like Cole took on some challenging scenes/involved animation in his career.
He delivered but I’m wondering does the director make decisions based on knowing he could/would do something complex.
Or, was this scene just planned out and he just drew the straw/got the assignment?
on 19 Dec 2011 at 2:40 pm 2.Michael said …
Corny Cole was intimately involved in the whole production. He did this scene which sort of encapsulates the quarter of the book they left out of the movie.
on 19 Dec 2011 at 3:21 pm 3.The Gee said …
Thanks.
Not knowing, I guessed he did more than this one scene in the production.
It is just an ambitious scene and from what I know, he did a lot of ambitious character animation.
I’m not familiar with the story or the film so any questions I have about that one particular scene would be better asked some other time. Perhaps then I’d have other questions, too.
As it goes, it is sad that Russell Haban passed but it is nice that you say good things about him and his work.
on 19 Dec 2011 at 4:50 pm 4.Mark Kausler said …
I’ll never forget the story session on THE MOUSE AND HIS CHILD that Vincent Davis and I attended over at Murakami-Wolf. (You’ll note I said “the”.)Chuck Swenson went through the boards with us, and we said effectively, “Well, that’s not bad for a beginning, when do we have our first story meeting? These boards need a lot of work.” Chuck simply said, “That was it, this is the story.” The feature went in to production with a first-draft storyboard that never was fleshed out or tweaked. I don’t blame Russell Hoban for not liking the results. It was fun working with my old friend Vincent on this film, however. He gave me a few scenes to animate (not the one pictured), and we worked out a few gags. God rest his soul.
on 19 Dec 2011 at 5:22 pm 5.Michael said …
That whole sequence where they go into the mole’s (is it a mole?) underground house is just so nicely animated. I’m guessing that was Vince Davis.
on 25 Dec 2011 at 10:33 pm 6.Floyd Norman said …
I worked with my old pal, Vince Davis on this film. It was so many years ago it’s now kind of a blur. I do recall the film having great potential, but never reaching for it. My guess being the film’s budget was very small. I did enjoy working with Vince, however. We would work again at other studios.
Across town, the other San Rio production was “burning money”" on their crappy movie.