Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- I’ve written about Dick Moores several times on this blog. He is one of my favorite comic strip artists. I knew him growing up with Gasoline Alley, which was about my favorite newspaper comic strip. Moores had taken over for Frank King, and the strip became something different and unique in his hands. There’s a roundness and a beautiful open quality to his character drawings. I find the style very appealing, and I also liked the stories. It took a while to learn that he’d also done a number of the Mickey Mouse comic books, which I also loved – (but not as much as those Gasoline Alley strips despite how great I think the Mickey comics are.)

Here’s the 2010 post on Gasoline Alley: Dick Moores – 1
Here’s the post on the Mickey comic books: Dick Moores – 2

Bill Peckmann sent some scans to make up a good post about Moores and his work. Here’s Bill, writing about the post:

Here’s a little triptych tribute we could give to master cartoonist Dick Moores. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, I would like to call it “The good, the bad and the ugly.”

Here’s the good: Dick Moores’ self caricature and capsule bio from R.C.Harvey’s terrific 1998 book, “A Gallery of Rouges: Cartoonists’ Self Caricatures”.

Here’s the bad: As in really bad, which in “today’s jargon” means exceptional, out of sight good!

It’s the new release of Library of American Comics’ “Gasoline Alley, by Frank King and Dick Moores, it’s the collected daily strips from 1964 to 1966. This vol. 1 is a dream come true for all Dick Moores fans. Done with the same scholarly quality as all of their long list of great books, LOAC’s “Gasoline Alley” does not disappoint in any way. Their front of the book bio of Moores, is illustrated with a lot of his, not easy to find, pre GA art!

The front cover

The back cover

The ugly: This is meant and said in only the most positive way. Here we have a 1948 Mickey Mouse children’s book that was illustrated by Dick Moores during his sixteen year tenure at Disney’s comic book and comic strip department. His style in the book might not be as “slick” as the great Disney print guys of the day, but Moores brought a wonderful, heartfelt “folk artist” quality to this book that he always gave to all of his endevours.

The front cover

The end papers

Title page

The back cover

At the memorial service for Tissa David five people gave speeches. I have some of those talks and am posting them here. I also have some photos that I’ll post with them. The photos are identified at the end of the post.

The entire evening was hosted, essentially, by Tissa David, herself. A 90 minute video shot at NYU has Tissa talking about her career and animation, in general. I’ve chosen a lot of clips from this video. Our entire program starts with Tissa talking to the audience about her love for animation. Short clips then precede every section of later film clips screened, and the very last word of the evening is also Tissa’s.

John Canemaker was the first speaker:

Sunday in the Park with Tissa.

November 6th, 2011.

I walk across Central Park at noon to Tissa’s residence on East 83rd Street, a cozy one-bedroom apartment that always smells of baked apples and spices. It’s where she has lived since coming to New York from Paris in 1956; and that’s the year she began working as assistant to master animator Grim Natwick at UPA Studios, then located on Fifth Avenue.

It is a perfect autumn day: crisp and cool, trees in full-color spectrum, bright sunlight. The New York City marathon is in full swing. Barricades, crowds cheering the runners, detours to get you where you need to go. Friendly, happy people everywhere. New York City at its gridlocked best!

Tissa is waiting patiently outside her building, age 90 and ready to go. She wears a white peaked cap, purple/pink sweater and a stylishly long, beige raincoat over wool slacks and shiny black shoes. And she holds a rubber-tipped black cane.

She attended Catholic mass this morning, as she does every day at St. Ignasius Loyola, a church around the corner on Park Avenue run by Jesuits. As is our custom, I lean down to air-kiss one cheek, then the other, saying, “in the European manner.” She smiles and mimics me: “Yes. In the European manner.”

She takes my arm as we walk very slowly toward the Metropolitan Museum of Art two blocks west of her apartment.

She expresses interest in seeing the new Met galleries for “Art of the Arab Lands.” Both sides of her family are Armenian and the rugs of the Arabs stir her, she says.

“Have ever been to Spain?” she suddenly asks.

“Barcelona,” I answer.

“Barcelona is not Spain,” she responds. “It is — Barcelona. I mean a city like Granada, such a beautiful city. The Moorish influence in the city’s architecture and art.”

Tissa has strong opinions about everything, especially art. I remember some years earlier running through a gallery at the Met containing one of Damien Hirst’s dead animals in formaldehyde, trying to keep up with Tissa as she hissed like a cobra: “Diss-gusting! Disssssss-gusting!”

Her tastes are eclectic, but she maintains a special passion for Giorgio Morandi, who once said, “Nothing is more abstract than reality.” There is something in Morandi’s quiet, reclusive, deeply thoughtful, and pared-down paintings that speak to her on both personal and professional levels.

Today, however, instead of entering the museum she prefers that we walk; or, as she pronounces it in her soft Hungarian accent, “ve vauk.” Passing windows containing the Temple of Dendur, we pause. The slightly uphill route winds Tissa and she points her cane toward a cement wall. We sit watching marathon runners dash past, cheers erupting from the young crowd around us who greet the exhausted competitors, who have run for hours through all the boroughs and down Fifth Avenue and into the park for a finish near Columbus Circle.

A runner in a Superman costume hobbles by. Tissa is enjoying everything about the moment and the day, and so am I.
We talk of mutual friends. She remarks how happy she is that Michael Sporn is working on a new film. She says how much she loves Emily Hubley’s feature, The Toe Tactic.

Emily’s father, the legendary animation designer/director John Hubley, defied sexist barriers against women animators in the 1950s and 60s by hiring Tissa to animate several prestigious commercials and shorts. Tissa loved working for him, even if, she candidly notes, he was “cheap” when it came to salaries.

After ten minutes or so, we continue down the path and sit on a bench in the sun near Greywacke Arch, as runners gallop and limp across the bridge.

Inevitably, Tissa speaks of her longtime mentor Grim Natwick. And soon comes the mantra that is well-known to all her friends: “I really learned everything I know about animation from Grim.”

She learned her lessons well. After Natwick retired, she slowly became recognized as one of the world’s great animators, and a pioneer who forged a brilliant career in a male-dominated industry. Charm, vivacity, female sensuality radiates from her superbly staging and well-timed animation, which is weaved into an admirable economical style. “You don’t do many drawings, “ she often advised novices, “but you know how to use them.”

She thinks about animation constantly. She wonders how she would animate the Met’s splashing fountains. She ponders the numbers on digital clocks, which change shape instantaneously.

“I stare at the numbers,” she says, “and think about how I would animate the change from one to the other.”

“It isn’t fully metamorphic,” I suggest, “but a decision about where the animator would ease into the new change.”

Tissa thinks about that. “I would make the inbetween drawing closer to the ‘old’ number before the change,” she decides, “so there is a snap into the new number.”

I ask Tissa if she ever wanted to marry or was in love. “Oh yes,” she answers. “I was in love many times and wanted to marry a doctor. But I was glad that he was shot by the Russians.”

Seeing my shocked expression, she quickly adds, “I mean that it was better that I never married him because I would have quickly been miserable and it would have never worked out.”

What about Grim?

Laughing, she says she loved him and he loved her, but it was never a romantic love. “He was my teacher. He was like my father.
“The greatest love of my life,” Tissa admits, “ was the art of animation.”

She reflects that parts of her life have been hard. I assume she’s referring to the 1944 siege of Budapest, and her daring escape from Communist Hungary, or difficulties through the years finding her way as a female artist.

But she is thinking of more recent and personal troubles. “Between 2000 and 2010,” she explains, “I lost two brothers, two sisters, nephews and a niece. The loss of so many loved ones was almost overwhelming. I’m still angry with my younger sister Margit for dying and leaving me. She killed herself with smoking,” Tissa explains with bitter sadness.
We make our way up Fifth Avenue, then turn eastward toward her apartment.

“Thank you, John. It was really great to get out and valk.”
I thank her for the opportunity to escape my cloistered work habits.

“You’re a long distance runner,” I say, “like the marathon racers.” She smiles and reminds me that I wrote that line in 1977 as the heading of her chapter in my first book The Animated Raggedy Ann & Andy. I don’t remind her that the full title was “Tissa David: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Animator.”

At her apartment house, we air-kiss “in the European manner.” My offer to help her down two steps to the front door is refused.
“I can do it,” she insists.

And she did.

This talk was followed by clips from the Hubley films:
Cockaboody
Eggs
Everybody Rides the Carousel (the Meryl Streep sequence)

Howard Beckerman followed John Canemaker

Tissa David

Tissa, after working at Paris based studios, entered New York animation in 1955 at UPA situated diagonally across from the Museum of Modern Art and John and Faith Hubley’s Storyboard, Inc. It was the right place for her.

There had been few women animators in New York in past decades but, among the men, the held opinion was that women couldn’t do the job. There was also a general attitude that the craft was dominated by Americans. To them animation was a trade for which females and foreigners need not apply. UPA, however, was a progressive studio where the staff included various minorities and nationalities. As one talented African-American artist remarked, “When you walk in here you feel comfortable and welcomed.”

Tissa was greeted by animator Grim Natwick. His European art studies long behind him, he was the choice crew member to interview the then English challenged Tissa. Natwick was direct, ___________Tissa and Grim at Christmas
“What do you think of animation?”
Tissa hesitated , then replied, “Animation is animation.” That satisfied Natwick. Tissa was given a try out on a character from the studio’s popular Piel’s Beer commercials and then hired. The brief meeting with Grim was expressly important because the film that inspired her to get into animation was Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for which Natwick had animated 80% of the lead character. Tissa became Grim’s assistant beginning an association that lasted 35 years.

In time, Tissa became an animator in her own right at local studios giving life to TV commercials. Later came requests from producers with a broader range of diverse characters. These included John and Faith Hubley, R.O. Blechman and Michael Sporn all who came to depend on her animation skills and unique intellectual qualities. Tissa entered a legacy laid down by earlier European animators, illustrators and designers whose influence profoundly effected American cartoons. Working at Disney and Fleischer Studios, their affinity to old world castles, cottages and colorful personalities added credibility, charm and warmth to animated features.

Tissa also played an outstanding role in the ASIFA-East chapter. She organized and corralled the membership lists and dues collections. This was at a time when new graphics guilds were entering the field with lists of 2000 or more, but Tissa proudly managed our 250 or so enthusiatic members.

She was a prime promoter and facilitator of the ASIFA-East Film Festival, and tabulated the voting results as well as commanding the arranging of the event’s refreshment tables. Under her discriminating gaze many of us schlepped wine bottles and tubs of cheese.

I worked with Tissa at various studios around the city and remember a gratifying moment one rainy day when she and Grim came to one of my classes. They had gotten lost in SVA’s internal maze, arriving late and dripping wet. Though tardy, they added substance to the class by answering questions and giving weight to the realities of the field. To the familiar student concern about whether the character of Snow White was traced over live-action actors, Grim, chalk in hand, sketched Snow White to clearly illustrate why her cartooned proportions didn’t allow for rotoscoping.

There’s one anecdote regarding Tissa that I’ve repeated many times, but it still warms my heart, so pardon me if you’ve heard this before. I feel it’s worth repeating since it indicates Tissa’s warmth, humor and life-energizing spirit that rose above everyday twists and turns.

Tissa often traveled to Europe to see family and to animate for small studios. She also had a country house in Southern France. In the spring of 1974, while working in Holland, she contacted Iris and I about attending the animation festival in Zagreb. Her suggestion was that we meet her in Paris a week before the event. She kept a small Volks station wagon there and proposed that we drive across Europe to Zagreb. We accepted gladly. It would be a wonderful journey with a great guide. After a night in Paris we drove south through agrarian countryside evoking the colors of Van Gogh and other post impressionist painters. We stopped in a small town so Tissa could check out her French country place and then we found a small, inexpensive hotel for the night. Tissa suggested that Iris and I take a back room and she a front room. Our lodging was simple, but when we opened the shutters to let in the good night air, we saw the shining moon behind silhouetted castle towers. We slept soundly.

The next morning at breakfast we wondered if she had slept well. “Oh it was terrible!” she replied, “Big trucks rattling past my window all night!” We traveled on through southern France and into northern Italy. One late afternoon we arrived at a local hotel and prepared for a night’s rest before entering Venice. We agreed that this time Tissa would take a back room and we a front room. We slept soundly.

In the morning came our question,” How did you sleep?” It was terrible!” she replied, “There were people playing guitars and singing all night in the courtyard!”

Tissa David will be remembered as a person of taste, humor, artistic skills and a wide understanding of people and the world in general. She observed and interpreted things in a private way. She appreciated much but was opinionated and disdainful of things that didn’t meet her standards. Tissa was a dedicated animator on all manner of productions from workaday TV announcements to celebrated award winners. Though a very private person, she was a friend and mentor to many. She was a treasure in our midst. For all of us who knew and admired her, she will be missed.

Howard’s talk was followed by a clip from Raggedy Ann and Andy
her Candy Hearts and Paper Flowers sequence.

R.O. Blechman was the next speaker. His short talk was planned but spoken off the cuff, improvised. There’s no transcript of it.

He started by quoting a poem Tissa liked by T.S.Elliott in which Tissa had substituted the word “animator” for “poet”. Bob also told the story of an article about his show Simple Gifts in which he called the 5 designers, “Artists.” Bob was surprised that Tissa had confronted him by telling him that she was an “Artist” yet there was no mention of her in the promotional article.

Bob’s talk was followed by clips from his studio:
3 commercials for:
– Perrier
– Banco
– WQXR radio
a clip from a promotional trailer for Candide, a film Bob sought to make as a feature.
a clip from The Soldier’s Tale, Blechman’s Emmy winning adaptation of Stravinsky’s work.

Candy Kugel was the next speaker.

Tissa was my role model—a pathfinder. When I entered the animation industry in the 1970’s there were no other female animators beside her and I was experiencing the same sexist attitudes as she did. And I was in awe of her ability—her fluid line and acting. And finally, I was always grateful for her introduction__________(LtoR) Blechman, Tissa, Vince Cafarelli, Candy Kugel
to international animation and ASIFA.

The first time I was introduced to Tissa was on the telephone in the summer of 1972. I was about to go to Italy for my last year of art school after spending summers interning at Perpetual Motion Pictures.

My boss, the designer Hal Silvermintz, told me that Tissa knew everyone in Europe and she could give me the names of studios so that I could visit them while there. She did, and I did – in Rome, Zagreb and Budapest. And then, since Annecy would have its festival that June, she encouraged me to go and gave me the address to write for certification.

I did go to Annecy and it opened my eyes to international animation in a way I could never have imagined before. There was no internet then, no DVDs and no video collections—the only way you could see these movies was projected in a theater. And I do remember briefly meeting Grim Natwick (who drew me a Betty Boop) and Tissa.

When I returned to New York, it was a bad time for animation so I went to Los Angeles to try my luck there. In New York I had had the good fortune to be treated well by my bosses—my main responsibility was to help the designer.
I had some rudimentary animation experience, but the real animation was done by experienced animators, and they came from a culture of secrecy.

In LA I went to Disney with my “reel” and portfolio and found a whole other set of obstacles. The front gate passes had “Mr.” printed on the guest line. This was during the feminist movement and I jokingly said to the woman behind the window—“I guess you don’t see very many women here”—she scratched off the Mr and roughly handed it back to me. I met with 3 men, including Don Duckwall. They told me I drew nicely but that women just don’t have what it takes to be an animator. Women lack timing. Maybe I should consider becoming a designer or background artist.
“But I want my drawings to ACT!” I protested. They smiled and shook their heads.

In the end, I returned to work fulltime at Perpetual. I was determined to learn how to animate well. I got to know Tissa through ASIFA and she offered to help me.

Perpetual picked up a project that had an incredibly low budget, so they gave it to me. Whatever I could manage would be enough. Vincent Cafarelli had recently started freelancing there, and although he was open to helping me, he encouraged me to seek out Tissa’s advice. They had worked together at UPA and he had great respect for her. He even told me I flipped like her.

Tissa invited me to her home and she demonstrated some things. And gave me homework. I went a few more times—I wish I could say that I was a stellar student, but I’m afraid her criticism, although completely deserved, was too biting for my fragile ego.

She was my idol—I loved her work – her beautiful line and her acting. I respected her immensely—but I think I must have been a great disappointment to her. At that time, I was the only girl working her way to become an animator in an established animation studio in NY. I imagine she was hoping for a protégé equal to her talents.

But even without the lessons we remained friends. She followed my career closely and we worked together in ASIFA.
We both understood the difficulty in working in a “man’s profession.” I was criticized by the ink and paint department for not being one of the girls—I was a guy because I used a pencil and not a brush. Outside of Perpetual there were animators and assistants who thought it wrong of me to take a man’s job. Some kiddingly said they would “break my fingers.”
I admired Tissa even more, knowing exactly what she had been through.

But we never spoke about it after our first meeting at her apartment: I gingerly asked her about how she dealt with the male animators—their practical jokes, the macho culture–were there rumors about her and Grim? She looked at me harshly and waved her hand. Who needed to complain—it was just part of the job.

I will miss Tissa—her generous spirit, her biting wit and her talent. There are too few of them out there.

Candy’s talk was followed by clips from 3 films done for Michael Sporn Animation:
Lyle Lyle Crocodile
The Red Shoes
The Story of the Dancing Frog

Arlane Nelson was the next speaker.

As Michael said, I am one of Tissa’s nieces. An interesting side note, Tissa was one of 10 children, 7 girls, 3 boys. In my generation, the next one, there were only a total of 3 girls among all the nieces and nephews.

I’d like to begin with an email one of my Hungarian cousins sent me:
“Tissa was known to love music, and we had talked a lot about our favorite performers: Horowitz, Goild, and many other artists. However one thing that is not common in elderly people, is to be open to new things, as Tissa had been. Once I saw a movie about the life of Manuel de Falla, which has a lot of music inserted, one even recorded during his short life. The recording is very interesting because when Falla wrote his masterpiece, El Amor Brujo, he wanted to reject it because the passion radiating from the piece is in total contrast with his deep catholic faith.

Manuel de Falla, just as Kodaly did, collected folk music, the music of the flamenco playing gypsies. El Amor Brujo totally gives back this surreal feeling. In the movie, in order for the illustration to be perfect, two songs, that are accompanied by a large orchestra, were sung by a young female gypsy singer with the technique typical to flamenco. The passion radiating from the recording is scary. I showed it to Tissa who said that this woman is like a storm. And she started telling me stories about being in Andalusia, listening to flamenco music, and how much she liked it.

The other memory is connected to flamenco as well. Many people think that they like this musical style, while they only meet the civilised versions. I have watched Saura’s movie, called Flamenco in which there is a part when two old gypsy men sit on a chair and sing without music. One of them has golden teeth, the other one has silver teeth. This is of course not singing according to European standards, this is rather some endless, sharp, painful, and aggressive shouting, confined among borders. As far as my experience goes, only a few can understand this deepness of art. Tissa understood it, we talked a lot about it later on, and she pointed out the complicated symbols in the text that I had missed on my own.”

Anyway, I live in the Washington metropolitan area and as such, we used to see Tissa a lot; more than any of our other relatives. She’d be down to visit us several times a year and sometimes, we came up to visit her. I’d like to share a few of my memories of who Tissa was.

Growing up, we kind of knew that Tissa was a famous person and we were very proud of this. I can remember, when my sister and I were small and Tissa came to visit, we had to wait until the morning, but we would go charging in and have her tell us the latest Letterman shorts she had done. So we’d know the stories before anyone else did.

Tissa loved cooking. Whenever she came to visit, she took over the kitchen; you entered at your own risk. Except for the dogs, who usually waited in endless vigil watching every step, every action with rapt attention for the treasures they knew would fall. One of the things I found__________Tissa cooking in her NY kitchen
inexplicable was her use of
cooking implements which would increase exponentially with availability. A dish she would make in her tiny kitchen might take 2 bowls and a pot. The same dish in our house, could take 7 bowls, 5 pots, and 3 pans. Any time you walked in to the kitchen, all burners would be going, some would even have two things on at the same time. A couple of things would be waiting on the side for a burner to free up, some other dishes would be done, there would be something at the chopping board in mid process, and usually a vegetable of some kind hanging out in a colander in the sink. Or trying to get a recipe from her was always a challenge. For example, when she was trying to explain how to make galuska to us: You started with a cup of flour and one egg. Then you added milk. Okay. So, how much? Well, as much as it takes so that if you stick a spoon straight up into the batter, it would fall over very slowly. There was another time I wanted to make Beigli for Christmas. Tissa said she would send me my aunt Dusi’s recipe because it was the best. Again, you started with 70 decagrams of flour, grated in some lemon rind and then sour cream. How much? Well, this time you had to add just enough so that the dough would behave when pinched like an old woman’s skin. Needless to say, without centuries of Hungarian cooking practices ingrained, whenever I did anything with Tissa, I ended up taking a novel’s worth of notes.

I remember once having a conversation with Tissa in which she quite definitively stated that it was a shame Scotsmen wore kilts as they had some of the ugliest knees in the world. I want to say that she thought the Germans or Dutch would have been better suited. Despite his having ugly knees, tho, Tissa admitted to a fondness for Sean Connery.

Tissa was also a very generous person. We were always welcome at her place as long as you did not mind the conditions. Anyone who was ever at her apartment knows it was rather small. But we would make it work. I remember one time when I was 8 or 9, there must have been 7 of us there. I can still see myself picking my way carefully across the floor of sleeping bodies to get to the bathroom. My children especially looked forward to our New York trips: the rules of living conditions were suspended and there were so many things to engage little minds. Then when my mother was sick, Tissa packed up and moved in for as long as it was going to take helping to take care of my mother so that she could have her wish of dying at home. It was this same wish of Tissa’s, I’m glad I had some part in returning.

Another thing that was important to Tissa was her faith. She always had this quiet, laid back, do what you are going do attitude. I always thought it was part of the reason she seemed so at peace with things, even her death. No matter what else happened or changed, Tissa had this. She was very different than my mother in this way. Tissa didn’t fly off the handle, or ram things down your throat, or sweat the small stuff. She knew what was important to her and the rest didn’t bother her. Tissa also was very adamant that my sister’s memorial marker have a cross. Despite my sister’s claims to atheism, Tissa was convinced that Tamar found redemption in the end.

Before I had children, I used to go to the movies every weekend, so, Tissa and I would compare notes on films we had seen. Very often, they would be showing in New York weeks before the artsy theaters in DC picked them up, so Tissa would let me know what to add to my list. However, we often found we had different sensibilities. One such film was The Triplets of Belleville. Tissa told me I had to see it: it was wonderful not only as an animated film but also for the story of the boy and his grandmother. After I saw it, I called Tissa and told her that yes, it had been a wonderful film, but she should have warned me about the frogs. Tissa paused a moment and then said “Oh, yes, the frogs. That was a very funny scene.” I responded “No, it wasn’t funny, it was tragic and you should have prepared me.”

Tissa did not like technology, but accepted it as a necessary evil. However, she refused to take the time to understand how things worked. Many times when I came up to see her, Tissa would have some contraption that she needed me to install or set up: an answering machine, a VCR, an antenna, the HD receiver, a hand held sudoku game, etcetera. Once I was done tho, she didn’t want to know the details, just the buttons she needed to press. We tried for years to get her onto email, but she wouldn’t hear of it. There would be no computers, no cell phones, no tablets, nothing of that kind ever with Tissa.

The last time I brought my children up to see Tissa – at the end of July – you could see how happy it made her to sit and watch them play. She always enjoyed the children in her life, even after we thought we had grown up. She was kind and nurturing and a mother to us all. Whether she was teaching us, encouraging us, forming us, feeding us our favorite creamed spinach, or just loving us. She was an important fixture in all our lives and one we will make sure no one ever forgets.

Arlane’s talk was followed by a long clip from a film Tissa animated for me,
The Marzipan Pig.

My speech followed. It was the last of the evening. I gave it extemporaneously, and there is no transcript of it. I tried to be as funny as I could, and that worked. The following is the original speech I walked in with. It’s not good, bathetic and inapropriate for the final talk. My changes worked. To give an indication of the final, though, I’ve decided to leave this here.
Michael Sporn

Forty years ago, on Tuesday Oct 10, 1972, 1 had just started my second day in animation working for John and Faith Hubley. I was scheduled to work three days to help finish a commercial. Helen Komar was the only other person working on that commercial with me. She was the production coordinator. My second day there, and I was working as intensely as 1 could. 1 loved being there, I was finally doing animation and getting paid for it.

That day, 1 continued to work through my lunch break; I wanted to get it right. That’s when T heard this voice with a sharp Hungarian accent say loud enough, “Who has been doing such HORRIBLE inbetweens?” Sheepishly I looked up and had to admit that we all knew she was talking about me. Especially since I was the only one doing inbetweens. That’s how I met Tissa David.

Tissa proposed I come to take lessons from her; she would help teach me what she could about animation. This meant I spent a lot of time doing homework that Tissa would give me inbetweening over and over and over again animation drawings that were usually from a scene that Grim Natwick had animated. Back then, Tissa had a sharp way of telling you how bad you were. It didn’t take me long to find the humor in what she had to say, especially since 1 was even more of a critic of my own work than she was.

Things changed a bit over the years. Tissa grew more and more reserved with her opinions. She made an obvious attempt to moderate herself when she thought it was too harsh. However, I always tried to encourage her to fully express what she thought about my work, and I like to think she was honest with me throughout.

Somewhere along the line I stopped asking for help with animation. Slowly we became more friends rather than teacher and student. When she left the Hubley studio to work for Richard Williams on Raggedy Ann, knowing full well that I was a big fan
of Dick Williams’ work, she maneuvered a job for me on the production. Starting as an inbetweener, I worked my way up to the position of head of Assistants and Inbetweeners.

After that, I was hired by Bob Blechman to be his Asst Director working on a Christmas Special. Before we got to that we did a number of commercials together. Once Bob had difficulty finding an animator, and 11 talked loudly and enthusiastically about Tissa’s work. She soon started working with Bob in a relationship that lasted years.

When I formed my own studio, I directed a number of half hour shows. Tissa was happy to work for me in many capacities. She did storyboard, layout and sometimes animation. We helped each other often by just being there. That made a lot of the jobs more fun, and helped me feel even more proud of the work I was doing.

The last couple of years weren’t about animation, really. Yet the two of us were able to keep laughing throughout. And talking. Talking about museum shows and films that we saw. Sharing books we’d read or just sometimes talking. I was never much of a phone person so it had to be face on.


Tissa in her Living Room
Photo by Mate Hidvegi

In the end 1 learned that Tissa had developed a brain tumor. Of course, I didn’t know whether that meant she would have a long slow death or a quick one. 1 went one Saturday afternoon and laughed quite a bit with Tissa. When I brought up old names and places and events, she remembered them clearly. If she tried to remember something, she couldn’t, and the conversations would end flat. It meant I had to keep talking.

I left that afternoon and expected to return five days later. But that day I got a call from Susan Davis telling me that Tissa had died that day. She didn’t feel well in the morning, lay down for a while, and didn’t wake up.

I think her passing won’t really hit me for a while. I’ve been spending a lot of time editing this footage. Now this memorial is done, and I think the reality won’t hit home until Christmas. Every year, I’ve received a wonderful fruit cake from Tissa. In fact, I still have a couple unopened. I know that one won’t arrive this year, and I’ll miss my fruitcake this year.

This talk was followed by the last animation work Tissa did,
part of the animatic for my feature, POE.

.

4, 5, & 6 photographed by Joe Kennedy
7, 8, 9, 11 & 12 photographed by Mate Hidvegi
10 photographed by Aron Hidvegi

- Baseball took a back seat this year for my absolute love of the political game that took place this year. Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Martin Bashir and Lawrence O’Donnell became household names in our little enclave in Manhattan. Yes, I was addicted to the Presidential race, and I knew I would be.

A couple of years ago, something earth shattering happened to me. My way was to immediately deflect the problem and state something unexpected. I said I wanted to see Obama reelected. The last time out – that Clinton fight to the finish which Obama won followed by the poor campaign McCain ran – nicely eased the first black President into office. I also have to admit I’ve loved Obama all four years. Yeah. there were plenty of problems where I had to grimace, but by and large he’s been one of my favorite Presidents in my lifetime. The big problem I see is that he doesn’t promote all the good things he’s gotten through the Congress, (Take a look at this site if you want to challenge me on that one) and opposition can easily take advantage of that.

The election will end this Tuesday, after the number counting. I’ll miss it.

The earth shattering problem, by the way, took care of itself, as I knew it would.
Steve Fisher took these photos.

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It’s been a long week. The events of my week probably aren’t going to be too interesting to many of you, but it’ll be cathartic for me to write, so I will.

Monday brought the threat of a hurricane. I remember thinking that “Sandy” was not the best name for a hurricane; naturally, it would turn out to be one of the nastiest in my lifetime. Once again, as they had done with “Irene” they told us to prepare by buying duct tape, batteries and water. With “Irene” it was a waste of time;with “Sandy” it was a necessity. Actually, the best buy for us was one Heidi had done for “Irene.” All of the stores had sold out of flashlights, until she found one in a local hardware store. This was a huge thing that actually worked as one or broke into three separate flashlights. This item became a lifesaver a year later during the “Sandy” debacle.

Monday night there was a robo-call from Con Edison. They threatened to possibly turn off the electricity as a precaution to preserve the system. It would enable them to start the system up all the more expeditiously when they could. The weather map they were showing on TV had the cone of the hurricane’s left turn, off the Atlantic and onto a land mass, happening south of NY near the Jersey Shore.

I’d been engrossed in my latest enthusiasm, the Presidential election. Things were close. Obama was leading in a couple of the key swing states by one or two – the lights went out. Everything. Silence.

Heidi pulled out our tri-part flashlight and we broke into three parts and moved it around the house as we lit candles. She had really prepared with books of matches and tiny tea candles. We placed enough around to keep a semblance of life alive visually in the apartment.

- Tuesday early morning brought the loudest noises. Not much rain but a lot of wind. We soon came to realize that the no-electricity also meant no heat. It wasn’t freezing outside, but overnight it felt as though it were freezing inside. For the rest of the week we had to bundle under quilts and blankets wearing layers of sweatshirts. The cats were confused and visibly cold. They went into winter mode, sleeping on their paws on beds and blankets and near any heat they could find.

I got up every morning to light the stove. It’s a gas stove but has an electric starter that lights the pilot for you. I had to get in there and light the pilot every time I wanted to get it going. I lit it and figured a way to manipulate the oven door into the open position so that heat would invade the apartment, raising the room temperature by 10°. Since I no longer had a toaster, I could also use the lit oven to toast my english muffin in the morning.

No internet. This is a problem. No Splog. I had prepared a couple, and they were ready to be posted. By calling my sister, who had power, I was able to arrange to post the next two blog posts. Anything beyond that, and I’d have to write additional material. Not easy without access to a computer. Lack of a computer was more serious for Heidi. She lived off her email conversations with the different theatrical groups she works for. They actually hire via email, and things were already sketchy for a number of her assignments in the upcoming week. But she needed to get to the email to find out. If school was cancelled for the kids in any given day, Heidi lost out on a couple of jobs and hundreds of dollars. They meted out the information slowly over the course of the week. She kept preparing for classes in case, and they were ultimately all cancelled all week long.

We went out to see what it was like on the street. Our neighborhood was dead. ALL of the stores were closed (they couldn’t even operate their cash registers without electricity.) We wouldn’t be able to do laundry until the power came back. We walked the ten blocks in a nasty cold windy rain to the first open store, a Duane Reade pharmacy. I went to the rear near the pharmacy (which was closed) and sat in one of the chairs provided for those waiting for prescriptions. Heidi shopped to see if we needed anything. Ultimately, we left watching a couple of elderly women blocking the cashier aisle as they used the electric outlet to recharge their cel phones. The very young cashiers – maybe they were 16 – didn’t care. None of the Starbucks stores we saw were open that day. We’d thought we could always go to Starbucks to recharge Heidi’s cel. (I still don’t have one. Talk about being out of it.)

Wednesday we had a game plan. I aimed for John’s apartment about 45 blocks away. Some buses were in operation for the first time. The rides were gratis, thanks to the City. However, there were fifty people waiting at every bus stop, and any bus that arrived was packed. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and we got on a bus. It took about 30 minutes to go from 30th St to 42nd St. Heidi got off to go to the office at the New Victory Theater. They told her she could pick up some material she needed and she could use their computers if she needed one. She realized it’d take forever to get to 70th St to see John and Joe, and she had to do a bit of work and still get home in time to meet me to head up to SONY to see a film that evening. 6:00 cocktail/6:30 screening of Amour.

It took another hour for me to get to John’s apartment. Slow going. I could’ve walked there quicker. We had a nice, friendly chat. I posted something for the blog that said I’d have to freeze the thing until power returned, and I went through some of my email. John & Joe were taking in some friends who were lacking all utilities and couldn’t even shower. Nice of them; as John said, “That’s what friends do.”

It took forever to get to SONY on 55th Street. The bus crawled. We ditched it at 42nd street and walked the rest of the way. 1/3 the trip by bus = 45 minutes. 2/3 of the trip on foot = 15 minutes. We sat with Josh Mostel and laughed. He pointed out that there was no difference for him on the Upper West Side. With all his windows closed, he wouldn’t have known that a disaster had struck had he not seen the TV reports. Rain was light despite the fact that waves of water sunk the lower tip of Manhattan under the Hudson. I always knew how lucky we were to be only short of electricity. Here I was at a free movie with a cocktail and no thoughts whatsoever of complaining about my “plight”.

Amour was one of the best films of the year. It was directed by the German film maker, Michael Haneke, who had been nominated last year for The White Ribbon. His style is stark and direct and purposefully staid. Amour is the better of the two films, in my opinion, and the reason is Jean-Louis Trintignant, who gives one of his best performances and certainly the best performance of the year. He is brilliant and he is the reason not only to see the film but for the film’s existence. It is amazing in its stillness. Emmanuelle Riva is also excellent as his wife, heading full into a steady downfall via Alzheimer’s disease. I want to see the movie again, certainly. I’ve thought about it the rest of the week.

Heidi and I walked home in the dark. We had a lot to talk about.

Thursday was more of the same. I began by sketching for an animatic I’m trying to put together to show HBO. I’m trying to sell them on an idea about chemotherapy – not Cancer, but chemotherapy. It’ll be a documentary about some people who were touched by the “cure”. I’m sure HBO won’t buy it, but I’ve got to present it. I’ve recorded some of the voice work and am offering a couple of sections via animatic so they’ll know what I want to do. I’ve decided to sketch it out with pen and pencil and not draw it on computer. Who knows if that’ll mean anything once I’m into it.

I had a few chores to do; Heidi wanted to get back to the New Victory Theater. There were a couple of films scheduled to play at the Academy theater. I’d seen the second but thought I’d go to the documentary screening first. It was something about the decline of Detroit, and sounded as though it might be interesting. I phoned Candy Kugel and talked her into going. It’d be nice to say hi. Heidi couldn’t make it. She’d be working until 7:30. The plan was for us to meet after the film and her job; then we’d go to a diner near the theater and come home from there. It’d keep us out of the black apartment until it we had to.

I left the apartment at 5:00 to walk to the screening. However, I realized that I’d left some candles burning and had to go beck to put them out. I didn’t want to return home to a burned-out apartment after the cats had knocked over a candle. As I entered the apartment the phone was ringing. It was John Fahr of the Academy to tell me that the projectionist couldn’t get in, and the screening was cancelled. Candy had gotten there very early and John had sent out an email, but Candy said I was without the internet, and she knew I was coming. So he called; nice of him. If I hadn’t returned, I’d have made it to the screening in time but would have to sit around for 90 minutes so I could meet Heidi.

Instead, I got to stay home and continue reading a great book, Alan Bennett’s Untold Stories. Then I went uptown in time to meet for dinner and walk back home. It was getting trying. Once you cross 39th Street heading downtown, all the lights are gone. Pitch blackness. I can’t take much more of this.

We got home. The candles, the flashlight, the oven to warm the place before we went to bed, feed the cats and stop them from killing each other. I sketched until 3am. Dark at night or in the day, what was the difference?

Friday was more of the same, but the lights came on at 8pm. I got to catch Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow. The polls were distinctly proObama. Here comes the weekend.

- On Tuesday I’d posted all of the titles to those films which had passed the requirements to be eligible to compete for the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. A few years back when I had done this, I’d received a number of letters from the Academy telling me that I was violating some rule or other. Actually, I think the violation was that I’d made a comment or three as I’m wont to do. That’s verboten and I was threatened that I might lose ©2012 MPAA
membership if I didn’t behave. The next year
the titles were released on Cartoon Brew, then the Academy officially released the titles.
Maybe I helped change a rule.

This year I released the titles with some apprehension, but I didn’t really make any comments about the films. I just named some films that stood out in my mind. I don’t necessarily like all of those films, but for some reason or other they did stand out in my memory.

A few of the film makers contacted me afterward to get my opinion or advice about their shorts. All I could do was congratulate them all for having gotten to this point. It is exciting. The prospect of a nomination is a thrill that I lived through a couple of times, and one time I was actually nominated.

I wish them all luck. Let’s hope the ones with the big budget advertising campaigns don’t affect the judgements on the that have enormous ad campaigns behind them to tell us all how good these films are. They’ve all entered the twilight zone.

- Mark Sonntag has begun another sort of campaign. Bounty Hunter Bunny is an animated film Mark is looking to make, and he’s set up an Indiegogo campaign to raise $10,000 for it. He has also set up a blog for the film; Bounty Hunter Bunny, the blog.

Mark is an accomplished animator working out of Australia. He started early, making films on super 8mm at age 14 and has been in the business forever. Everything from Ren and Stimpy to The King and I has passed through his pencil, and he also has one of the finest blogs out there. Tagtoonz is pure animation history and a must-stop for those interested in animation’s past.

It’s a cgi film that I feel confident in supporting. I’d encourage you at least to view the animatic on display; it’s really promising.
Go to: Bounty Hunter Bunny
The models look smart and the storyboard is exceptional. I like how he’s used the style to make the cg art look like rendered 2D. It’s very nice.

Good luck, Mark.

I have a problem. The hurricane, Sandy I mean, left me without electricity or heat. Fortunately, I have hot water and a gas oven. However, I don’t have access to a computer or the internet. Friends have been posting material I’d prepared, and those are running downhill quickly (material prepared, I mean, not friends.) I’ve decided that I’d post this today, and it would have to hold until I get electricity back. Maybe by the weekend, please Mr. Mayor.

So I leave you with Our Mr. Sun, hoping he comes to warm us all, soon. It shouldn’t be more than a couple of days. If I get to another computer, I’ll add something more. Best, Michael

- Back in the 50′s the film director, Frank Capra, produced, directed and wrote four specials for TV which were sponsored by Bell. Our Mr. Sun (1956), Hemo the Magnificent (1957), Unchained Goddess (1958) and The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957) were devoted to explaining basic science to family home audiences. Capra was educated as an engineer, so he had a lifelong interest in science and he initiated these prorams.

Capra also had a long time interest in animation. He was responsible for securing a distribution contract for Disney with Columbia back in the early 30′s. Animation became a large part of these four programs, and Capra found different animation houses to do them. UPA, Disney, Shamus Culhane‘s studio and WB all were involved.

UPA did the artwork for Our Mr. Sun, the first of these programs. (You can watch it here.) I have a copy of the script marked up by Grim Natwick, so I know he animated on it out of the NY studio of UPA.

The shows play a bit like Ward Kimball‘s “Tomorrowland” episodes of the Disneyland television show. Perhaps these are a bit less joke oriented. The animation is just as limited and design oriented. This format has forever affected many who grew up watching them. Check out the new Pixar 2D piece, You’re The Rat, currently on YouTube (it’ll probably be removed soon.) There’s an obvious link.

Here are some frame grabs from this first show of the Bell Science Series: Our Mr. Sun.

(Cllick any image to enlarge.)

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- As I’ve shown in a couple of past posts, Millbrook Bread was a profitable series for the young animation studio, Goulding-Elliott-Graham. See posts 1 and 2.

Vince Cafarelli collected a lot of drawings from various commercials that he worked on over the years, and there’s an abundance of art from this small studio. All of it good to great. Unfortunately, very little of this art is well labelled, and a lot of the ordering of the artwork is pure conjecture to get it to fall into place. I’ve grown quite attached to some of the material from this series and its characters. The design, to me, is just very attractive. Consequently I can’t hesitate to add more to view. Here’s models and art from two more spots.

“Minny” the Baker Model 1

“Minny” the Baker Model 2

Ray Model

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The following is a list of films that were screened as competing for the Oscar in the animated shorts category. The first half of the films were shown on Saturday, the second half on a Sunday. 6 1/2 hrs each day. Only for the hard of hearts who can make it. It’s like attending an animation festival compressed into two days. They treat us in a grand way in New York. Patrick Harrison and John Fahr really have it down and are wonderfully organized.

A quick scan (and I do mean quick) and I selected some the films that were more interesting to me than others. Of course, it’s hard to remember the films by title. When you see so many films in the dark, you have a hard time even remembering the titles, never mind trying to remember the films. Some stood out more quickly than others. None of the filmmakers’ names are on any of the material handed out to us, just the title, film times and film formats.

1. Dell’ Ammazzare Il Maiale – 6mins
2. Here and the Great Elsewhere 14mins
3. Amazonia 5mins
4. Being Bradford Dillman 10 mins
5. Belly 7 mins
6. Body Memory (Keha Ma’I LI) 10 mins
7. Cadaver 7 mins
8. Combustible 13 mins
9. Dripped 8 mins
10. The Eagleman Stag
___9 mins
11. The Fall of the House
___of Usher 17 mins
12. Fear of Flying 9 mins
13. Fresh Guacamole
___2 mins
14. The Game 5 mins
15. The Gruffalo’s Child 26 mins_________________Combustible by Katsuhiro Otomo
16. Head Over Heels 10 mins
17. House of Monsters 7 mins
18. I Hate You Red Light 8 mins
19. I Saw Mice Burying a Cat 6 mins
20. Junkyard 18 mins
21. Kubla Khan 4 mins
22. La Detente 9 mins
23. Lost and Found 4 mins
24. The Making of Longbird 15 mins
25. The Missing Key 30 mins
26. Oh Willy… 17 mins
27. Pepe & Lucas 7 mins
28. The Pub 8 mins
29. Reflexion 4 mins
30. Slow Derek 8 mins
31. The Story of Pines
___16 mins
32. Tram 7 mins
33. The Wind Girl (La Nina de Viento) 14 mins
34. Wolf Dog Tales
___7 mins
35. Zeinek Gehiago Iraun
___12 mins ___________________Oh Willy by Emma De Swaef & Marc James Roels
36. 7596 Frames 5 mins
37. The Hybrid U-nion 5 mins
38. The Maker 6 mins
39. Paperman 7 mins
40. Adam and Dog
___16 mins
41. Chase 13 mins
42. Kara 7 mins
43. Pasteurized 8 mins
44. Sammy 10 mins
45. Shift 5 mins
46. The Tale of a String
___ 8 mins
47. Wiggle Room 8 mins
48. It’s Such a Beautiful
___Day 23 mins
49. Overcast 9 mins _______________________Adam and Dog by Minkyu Lee
50. Traces 7 mins
51. Bydlo 9 mins
52. Kali the Little Vampire 9 mins
53. The Last Bus (Posledny Autobus) 15 mins
55. Edmond Was a Donkey 15 mins
56. Daffy’s Rhapsody 4 mins
57. Maggie Simpson in “The Longest Daycare” 5 mins

I don’t really have much information about the films or the film makers. However if you go to google and type in the title something should come up which will give you a lot of back information about the films and their creators. Worth the effort. For example type in “Oh Willy” and you get a whole series of photos and information about the puppet shoot etc.

On his blog, New Savannah, Bill Benzon has written an excellent piece entitled What I Learned from Tissa David. The piece speaks about an animator’s style and how seeing a compressed number of films with the voice of the animator so obviously front and center helps allow us to recognize that voice. This, I have to say, is made easier by someone like Tissa who speaks so articulately through the visual emotions her characters display on screen.

Tissa gave every director a gift: deep and rich characters that spoke through their body language even more clearly than they could through verbalizing. Perhaps because Tissa had a bit of a problem with her speech (once a Hungarian, always a Hungarian) she was able to give her characters more communicative skills with their movements than they had with their language. This was something of a treat for me. In the final project she was doing for me, Tissa was working with highly articulate characters in POE, and adding the body language was giving the characters an amazing richness that is hard to express. Edgar Allan Poe was developing as an introverted character who lashed out and railed wen he spoke. All those words were spoken through a violent frustration that the character would have preferred not to vocalize. He always had to go in before he could lash out.

- Tsunami’s in Hawaii and Northern california, Hurricanes in New York and the Northeast. Floods everywhere. I see only one responsible thing to post at this point. Mitt denies the science of globl warming. Obama doesn’t fein stupidity but hasn’t done anything abot it. Not that his moronic Congress would allow him to take even a baby step.

In 2009 a book came out containing the appropriate chapter and artwork and response to our current dilemma.

Robert Crumb‘s Complete Book of Genesis.

His fantastic illustrations pull you into the book, and his condensation of the stories of the Old Testament couldn’t be better. If you don’t know about this Crumb book (and it’s hard to imagine that you don’t) you should get to a library or Amazon and buy a copy. It’s a grand work of Art, in my opinion.

Noah’s Ark, illustrated here in fewer than seven pages, gives a good sampling of what Mr. Crumb is doing with the work and deals with our modern problems.

The Front Dustcover of the book

The Back Dustcover

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The back cover of the book itself

Bill Peckmann surprised me with a bit of trivia. It really has nothing to do with trivia but will call home to many New York born Baby Boomers. Here’s Bill:

As a kid, the word “rotogravure” from the lyrics of the song “Easter Parade” always stuck in my head because I never knew what it meant. Only years later did I learn it was a printing process, but I believe in those days of “Easter Parade” it was the nickname for the color supplements of the Sunday newspapers that flooded the newsstands at the time. In those days of black and white newspapers and black and white TV, color Sunday comics and supplements were big doings! Especially as a young TV addict, if that Sunday magazine had color photos of your favorite TV (black and white) characters!

Here are the first few pages of the Daily News’ 1952 Sunday supplement. It’s about time I got it to the scanner, it’s crumbling in my hands as I put it on the platinum! Only 60 years after the fact!

Time to step into the Time Machine…

The cover

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Photos are in the order as they appear in the newspaper.
The only thing missing are the numerous ads.

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Today and tomorrow, Academy members in New York are converging to watch fifty some odd short films to make the first cut list of animated short films. Since the shorts range from five to 30 minutes, this means there are many hours of movies to watch. They’ve split it up into two days’ worth of screening. Half today and half tomorrow. By 7pm tonight my eyes should be bloodshot.

- This past week was a busy one packed to the gills. I finally had to back out of a couple of things, or I woulda gone crazy. Let’s go back to last Monday and start there:

- Last Monday there was a screening of Lincoln. That’s a film I’m curious to see. The book by Doris Kearns Goodwin is great. Steven Spielberg is not much of a draw for me. I’m not his biggest fan, though there were a couple of odd little films he did that I liked, particularly Catch Me If You Can. More recent films by him have been horrible. Tin Tin was completely bad. Spielberg seemed not to know what he was doing (if, in fact, he did control that thing.) War Horse made me want to run out and rent Black Beauty so I could see a good version of this film. It was beautifully shot but the film was completely misguided.

No Spielberg is not the reason I want to see the film. It’s the book and the script by Tony Kushner; he’s something of a genius. His play, Angels in America got better with his screenplay of the same thing. His play Homebody/Kabul is a work of brilliance, and the version I saw starred Linda Emond, who had the stage to herself for the first half hour. And I think that was the best half hour I’ve ever seen in theater and the best acting.

So Tony Kushner and Doris Kearns Goodwin are reasons I want to see Lincoln, not Spielberg. Oh, and Daniel Day Lewis looks and sounds G R E A T. Tommie Lee Jones is also getting the good reviews for the film. I want to see it. But not last Monday. Besides I wanted to see the debate and somewhat glad I did. Nice to see Romney in a flop sweat.

- On Tuesday I had the Memorial for Tissa, and there was too much to do. It seemed effortless, I’m sure, but it took a lot of planning and I have to thank my Heidi for being on my back about that. It was not as easy as one might have thought, and I still hadn’t written my speech.

Finally, the event came. I’d had great help from Paul Carrillo and Rick Broas in editing the footage. It had to look simple and effortless. I copied off a couple hundred copies of the program and had folded all of them myself. I met John Canemaker at the screening room early Tuesday, and with the help of the Academy’s John Fahr we went through a quick rundown of the program. Since I was going to moderate it, I had to figure out what was going to be said on the fly. That rehearsal really helped, and it gave the projectionist a chance to see the eight times he had to stop and restart the video. The DVD looked horribly compressed on my computer, but it looked wonderful on the big screen. (Though Raggedy Ann suffered a bit. Too bad they haven’t released that film on DVD.) The Academy has a great projection system there; the sound was amazing.

It all came off well and a bunch of us went out to an upper east side pizza joint where they gave us a table for 12 to buy some drinks. That was fun, too. I’ve posted a review with a lot of photos from the event here. I’ll post the speeches next week that were given on Tissa’s behalf.

- On Wednesday Ron Diamond presented his Show of Shows program. This is an accumulation of a lot of short films Ron has seen at Festivals and is now distributing. The program is usually good, albeit long, and the animation community shows up for it. Consequently, I generally like going to it, and I reserved a couple of spaces right away. It usually gets packed quickly. However, this year, there was heavy going all week with screenings etc., and since many of the films to be screened at Ron’s show are part of the Academy screenings this coming weekend, I had to back out of it, and I did. I must say, it was a good decision considering I’ve had some back problems lately. It ain’t easy sitting in movie seats, and that’s all I’m doing this week.

On Thursday I saw Cloud Atlas. The film was like the end credit music. It was sort of minimalist. It kept playing in cycles a bit like Phillip Glass, but not as sophisticated. The non-theme kept feeling as though it were going to burst into a strong and hummable tune, but it never did. Just circular, musical motions. That was the movie. You kept thinking it was going to burst into a strong story that you could care about, but it didn’t. It had a hundred stories with two hundred characters all played by the same people. Tom Hanks is six characters, Halle Berry plays five or six. Everybody is busy. Hugh Grant plays five characters and I think two were women. I nodded off a couple of times, but i don’t think I missed anything.

This was more of a video game than a movie. You kept going back and forth to different levels. If the characters got in a bad enough jam we’d cut away to another level. The only problem was that the viewer isn’t controlling the level shifts. No surprise that the directors did The Matrix. This is the film for those with Attention Deficit Disorder.

On Friday the Museum of Modern Art celebrated the work of Sally Cruikshank. There was a screening followed by a dinner at the Italian restaurant to the rear of the museum, Il Gattopardo.

I was there when Sally Cruikshank‘s Quasi at the Quackadero burst onto the scene in 1975, and I watched closely as her career developed. There were a number of short films featuring the characers from Quasi. She had moved to San Francisco and worked closely with Kim Deitch. He, for a while, was her boyfriend and would assist her and paint cels etc. in the making of the films. Sally was making a feature of Quasi – it was that big a success. It never quite happened, so I assume she never raised the money. There were a couple of trailers made which were shown, as films in their own right.

Quasi has a curious story and introduces characters galore, one more funny than the other. Actually, there’s no real story other than that Quasi and Anita go to a club and meet up with a world of wild. Her style has been often compared to that of the early Fleischer films like Bimbo’s Initiation or an early Van Buren short like In a Cartoon Studio. In that her
work has a odd drawing style with all the characters completely malleable, almost as though they had no bones, and an innocence in the movement, I have to agree. The Fleischer work always seemed open to the animators’ adding to the curious layouts peculiar motions. The characters often move a long way out of whatever way they’re going to get back to the completion point, and it’s all about the funny. She truly understood the Fleischer house style and did it well in her own drawing style. They’re very peculiar films.

Sally also did the high-budget job of titles for the movie, Ruthless People as well as the animated sequence for the Twilight Zone feature film directed by Joe Dante. The big budget bought a very smooth and rich style which goes like a bandit. However, my favorite of her films was Face Like a Frog. This is like her hallucinogenic style on speed. Everything is moving all the time, and there’s just so much life in it.

Because the films came in so many different formats, the projectionist must have had a hell of a time keeping the evening flowing. However, it seemed not to be a problem. The show felt like one of those many screenings we used to attend in the 70s. Lots of black in between films and a feeling that you weren’t quite sure what was going to come next.

Sally has basically left animation. After trying hard to work in Flash for a couple of years, she decided that it was too difficult for what she wanted.There were a couple of shorts in this process, and they seemed to be fighting a constraint that the earlier films didn’t have. She has turned to watercolor painting. Her films seem like they’ve gone through the Fleischer/Van Buren mode but using a filter of something more modern. A similar but very different effect comes through the work of Kim Deitch. They both obviously influenced each other and are both remarkably original in their art. I’d like to see what Sally’s watercolors look like.

I hadn’t met Sally prior to last night, so I was glad to have been invited by the Museum’s Josh Siegel. He did a great job of organizing the event. J. Hoberman, was a longtime head critic for NY’s Village Voice and was only recently downsized by that paper. It completely tore apart the Voice’s film section. Hoberman moderated the program asking questions and taking a few from the audience. He was well-informed about Sally’s career and it was obvious that he truly enjoyed the films. I’ve been a real fan of his writing and criticism, so I was pleased to have had the chance to talk with him. (He did review one of my films, the music video Caverns – scroll down when you get there. He didn’t like the film very much and felt I’d stolen a technique of split screen from another music video director. In poiint of fact, I didn’t; I just wanted to play with split screens.)

Il Gattopardo is a pleasant place; the museum usually takes us to a table in the rear. Often, if it’s a large group, there will be a very long table, and we’ll talk with those closest to us. The long tables make it difficult to chat with those some six table-lengths away. Last night, it was a small group at an over-sized round table. Sally and her husband, J. Hoberman (who moderated the event) with his wife and daughter, Josh Siegel, John Canemaker and Joe Kennedy and me. (Heidi works Friday nights and couldn’t attend.) The meal was good, the chat was pleasant, and the evening was a success.

The film program will be repeated at MoMA on Monday at 4pm for those who’d like to see it.
There’s a good interview with Sally here.

Backto the start. Today and tomorrow there will be 13 hours of cartoons to sort through. Lots of complaints, but I kind of like the whole thing. Maybe I’ll write about it for tomorrow’s splog post.

- Mark Mayerson directed me to this excellent article in The Comics Journal that speaks about Ed Sorel, the great illustrator whose art has graced many magazines including a number of issues the New Yorker. The article was written by R.O. Blechman and naturally has the wit and poetry of the great writer that Bob Blechman is. This is quite a piece, despite its brevity, and I urge you to take a look.