Interview with John Kricfalusi - Film Criticism (1992)

Interview by Wheeler Winston Dixon. 

Film Criticism Vol. XVII, No. 1, Fall 1992

Click the image to enlarge. Text version included below.

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Interview with John Kricfalusi

Wheeler Winston Dixon

    When I asked John Kricfalusi (pronounced Krisfalusi), the director/animator/co-creator of the popular Nickelodeon cartoon series Ren and Stimpy, what his job was at Spumco, the animation company he founded to produce the show, he instantly replied: "I'm the ringleader."

    While this is somewhat of an oversimplification, Kricfalusi's approach to his work is very definitely on his own terms, and he brooks very little dissent from his strongly held opinions. Throughout our conversation, Kricfalusi repeatedly praised his co-workers on the show and took pains to identify individual contributions by animators, in-betweeners, and the rest of his technical support staff. At the same time, however, he indulged in some sweeping generalities about his work and the animated cartoon in general. "Cartoon characters have no gender," he asserted, in response to my question as to Ren and Stimpy's respective sexes. I was about to mention Minnie Mouse, Olive Oyl, Betty Boop (all females), or Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig (all decidedly male), to say nothing of Ren's phantasmal heterosexual frenzy in Kricfalusi's cartoon Marooned, but thought better of it. I had the distinct feeling that if I disagreed with him, John would hang up.

    Kricfalusi uses classical music in his cartoons because "it's cheap." His favorite movies are Night of the Hunter and The Maltese Falcon; his favorite comedians The Three Stooges. Yet he is not a fan of Tex Avery, the ultraviolent 40s animator who created Droopy, Screwy Squirrel, and the Blitz Wolf. All in all Kricfalusi is not a man who is afraid to voice his opinions.

    But he is also a man of genius. Ren and Stimpy is the best animated cartoon to come along since the glory days of the 1940s. It is fresh, funny, utterly original, and completely anarchic. It appeals to children as well as adults. Working with Nickelodeon, Kricfalusi plans an ambitious schedule of twenty (20) 11-minute shorts for the coming season; at thirty six, he seems already one of the indisputable greats of the animated cartoon, right up there with Jones, Clampett, Avery and the other renowned masters of the medium.

    Kricfalusi doesn't like to analyze what he does, like most filmmakers, but for once, I disagreed with him, and pointed out that it was his personal vision and commitment to quality that made the series so successful. Reluctantly, he agreed, but remained suspicious of any attempts to figure out precisely why Ren Hoek (an insomniac chihuahua with the voice of Peter Lorre) and Stimpson J. Cat (an overweight alley cat described by Kricfalusi as simply "retarded") had clicked so resoundingly with viewers.

    Over the summer of 1992, Kricfalusi labored on twenty additional episodes of Ren and Stimpy, but ran into production problems. Kricfalusi had signed away all the rights to the Ren and Stimpy characters to Nickelodeon, and in late September of 1992, he was taken off the series and replaced by his associate Bob Camp. Whatever happens, we will certainly hear more from Kricfalusi in the future; a voice this original simply cannot be silenced.

    This interview was conducted on February 2, 1992.

WD: Do you think of a story first, and then the gags, or the gags first, and then shift them into a story?

JK: It can work a million different ways. It's just whatever inspiration we get. If we get enough ideas for it--it becomes a story. Sometimes it's a complete story idea, and sometimes it starts out with bits and pieces and grows from there.

WD: Was there ever a particular gag that you wanted to do, but the studio heads thought it was too far out for your audience?

JK: Actualy there's lots of them. Plenty of them. But mostly they're subtle gags. Last year there was a gag in "Space Madness." Remember the scene in which Ren and Stimpy are having "quality time" together on the spaceship? Nothing's happening, right? We cut to closer and closer shots of their faces to show that they have memorized everything about each other, since they've been stranded in space forever.

    I also wanted to do one shot--remember when you were a kid and you'd go outside on sunny days and you'd look around and get this film of paramecium or something in front of your eyes? Those little weird squiggly wiggly things that are always at the edge of your field of vision? You never can quite get a focus on them. You look at them and they zip away. Well, I wanted to have that effect, panning by in front of Stimpy as Ren's point of view of Stimpy...these weird little parameciums floating in front of his eyes. [laughs] Just to add to his madness, you know? But they didn't understand it at all, so we scrapped

it.

WD: So Nickelodeon looks at your storyboards and then gives the o.k?

JK: Yes, they have approval on the story and the storyboards.

WD: How many people work on these episodes? What's your core staff?

JK: Well, right now there's about thirty. It will go up to about fifty this year, because we're doing about twenty episodes.

WD: Ren and Stimpy seems like it's the result of a group process. How does the story evolve? Do you pass the script around amongst different departments and ask for input? Sound effects, for example?

JK: Well, we figure out the story in basically two steps. One, we do a story outline. We don't use scripts. Scripts are too primitive for animation. They're a thing of the past. So we come up with an outline, two or three pages, and that's the plot. The major gags are figured out at the outline stage. But, there's no script yet. We don't write in all the dialogue yet. Then we take the outline and go next to a storyboard. We fill out the story on the storyboard. Rather than have a script, we work out all the gags, all the details, and the camera directions in the storyboard. 

    Then we have a layout. The layout is where we plan the final poses of the film, and the backgrounds around them. We compose all the shots and we draw every single one--which most studios do not do, of course. Most studios take the storyboard, if you're talking about television studios, and they ship the storyboard overseas for animation.

    We don't do that. There's no way the show would be the success it is if we did that. There would be no acting. Our show is heavy on acting. What makes a lot of our gags play is the reactions of the characters. How they read the lines and how they look when they read the lines. You don't get this in any other cartoon today.

WD: So when you use overseas studios, they just do the in-betweening?

JK: Well, in some cases, yes. But there's one particular studio--Carbunkle in Vancouver--which adds a lot when they do the animation. They do just beautiful animation. They animated "Space Madness," for example.

WD: Another great episode is "Nurse Stimpy." That had so many set-ups and shots edited together, especially towards the end. Who worked on that?

JK: It wasn't the animators who were responsible for that, that's the work of the layout artists. Actually also it's the storyboard artist--Chris Reccardi. On "Nurse Stimpy," the storyboards were figured out by Chris Reccardi. That montage you referred to was created by Chris. It's really great stuff.

WD: Why do you use so much classical music?

JK: (laughs) We use whatever we can get cheap.

WD: Do you fear losing control over things when you ship stuff overseas?

JK: That's why we do the layouts here--so that we have as much control as possible. Normaly, in older cartoons, for example, classic Bugs Bunny cartoons, the director would work directly with the animator--so the layouts didn't have to have a lot of poses in them. The director would sit there working with the animator, and they would work out how the acting was going to happen. The director would do sketches, and the animator would add to it...you have a lot of control this way. But because of budget considerations today, we just can't afford to do it this way anymore.

WD: What is the budget and actual running time of the Ren and Stimpy cartoons?

JK: They are eleven minutes each. I'm not going to quote an actual figure on the budgets, but it's higher than your average Saturday morning show.

WD: Do you get pressure from any civic minded groups, or do you feel obligated by Nickelodeon to be "politically correct"?

JK: No. I feel obligated to be politically incorrect! I think that's the stupidist term I've ever heard in my life! Why is one person's view politically correct when another person's isn't? Who decides that?

WD: Do you get a lot of grief from pressure groups who write in with complaints?

JK: No, we haven't had any negative press at all. We have had tons of press. I'd say ninety-nine percent is really positive. Great. Which realy surprises me--I actually thought we would get at least a few people mad. I think that we are living in a society that has such a dearth of real entertainment--stuff that doesn't claim to be anything more than entertainment--that people appreciate something good.

WD: How long have you been developing the characters? "Ren" and "Stimpy"? Did the voices come first, and then the characters? or the drawings?

JK: The drawings came first. We were struggling to figure out voices for a long time.

WD: Is Ren's voice a Peter Lorre imitation?

JK: Yes, it's a bad impersonation of Peter Lorre (laughs).

WD: I thought so. He was described by Newsweek as a sort or "Frito Bandido" voice...

JK: No. He's not suppose to be like the "Frito Bandido."

WD: Describe the genesis of "Ren and Stimpy."

JK: (sighs) This is the question I hate more than anything.

WD: Sorry.

JK: Well, they were just doodles. They were just doodles I used to do. For no reason other than to amuse people around the studios that I worked at, while doing crap. Stuff I worked on years and years ago.

WD: So how come you decided to do the voice for Ren yourself?

JK: I did the voice for Ren because I cast a whole string of professional voice actors, and none of them could get the intensity that I wanted. They might be better actors, but they just couldn't get the soul right, so I just did it myself.

WD: What would you say is the basis of Ren and Stimpy's relationship with each other? What's the basic chemistry between them? They seem like Abbott and Costello in a way.

JK: They're just a classic comedy team. Ren is an asshole. Stimpy is retarded. (laughs)

WD: Do they have gender? It seems nonspecific.

JK: Cartoon characters don't have genders.

WD: Are you interested in a live-action/animation mix at all?

JK: Not really, not unless it's for a joke. It doesn't mix naturally. It always looks terrible.

WD: What were some of your first gigs?

JK: I worked on some of the worst cartons ever made. There was this studio--Filmation--a few years back, the worst studio ever...(laughs) They made Archie and Gilligan's Planet and some of the most horrible cartoons you ever saw. They just turned your stomach to watch them. I started there. We took some of the most classic cartoons and ruined them! We ruined Tom and Jerry and Droopy. We ruined Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle. We did updated versions with limited animation. They were so bad they're almost funny. Almost funny. Except that they're kind of sickening. I also did a lot of subcontracting, and I freelanced for all the studios: Hanna- Barbera, Filmation, DIC. I worked on so much terrible stuff. I sort of enjoyed working on The Jetsons, really The New Adventures of the Jetsons. I just liked the styling of The Jetsons. I liked the way the characters looked and the backgrounds. I enjoy the early Hanna-Barbera stuff, particularly Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw.

WD: Huckleberry Hound was kind of a rip-off of an old Tex Avery cartoon, Billy Boy. The voice was taken from Tex's Billy Boy.

JK: Yes, the voice was, definitely.

WD: When did you hook-up with Ralph Bakshi?

JK: I worked with him a couple of times in the early eighties. None of it was ever produced. He wanted to get into the shorts market. He wanted to recreate the short cartoon market, which is tough to do. I worked doing some storyboards for him for a while, writing cartoons and stuff. It never really got off the ground. I also wrote a live action movie for him. That didn't get off the ground. That was my history with him then. I was doing things for him that he couldn't sell. (laughs)

    He retired for four years. Then he came back and decided that he wanted to get into T.V. He looked me up and we developed a bunch of ideas and tried to sell them to television. They were much too weird for television. Then he sold Mighty Mouse. So we took all our weird ideas and stuffed them into the Mighty Mouse series. They didn't fit at all. They had nothing to do with Mighty Mouse. But we used them anyway.

WD: Yes, your cartoon are full of lots of weird gags, as in the Ren and Stimpy cartoon "Fire Dogs." The fireman who appears in "Fire Dogs" seems kind of Bakshiesque. Very over the top. Or the narrator who forces Stimpy to push the "History Erase" button in "Space Madness."

JK: Well, the fireman in "Fire Dogs" is Ralph Bakshi. That's really him! (laughs)

WD: Do you always push your writers to always go one step further out?

JK: I don't need to push them. They're all insane.

WD: What do you make of the Ren and Stimpy cult following on college campuses?

JK: I don't feel connected to that. It's an abstract thing that people tell me. I haven't really witnessed it.

WD: When you create a cartoon, are you writing for yourself or your audience?

JK: I always write for the audience. I'm not out to be any "auteur" or anything like that.

WD: Yes, but you are. The series is completely individual and original. You inject your personal energy in every frame.

JK: Yes, myself and the other creators--Jim Smith, Bob Camp, and Lynne Naylor all have had major input, though Lynne Naylor and I originally founded the company, developed the characters and did the original cartoon that sold the series. We did the styling and everything.

WD: Which networks turned down Ren and Stimpy?

JK: ABC, CBS, NBC, all three of them.

WD: What were their reactions?

JK: Well, I would go into the studios and pitch the stuff at them. I bring in a lot of drawings, storyboards, and act it out and scream and jump around and sweat a lot. I'd throw myself on the tables and stuff. Their reaction was just--"how do we get this guy out of the room without getting hurt?"

WD: So how did you get hooked up with Nickelodeon?

JK: Well, they were looking for small studios who were producing cartoons. They didn't want to go to Hanna-Barbera, Disney, the big studios, the same old stuff. They wanted something inspired by the animators themselves. They wanted to get the animators' vision onto the screen.

    We heard about this. I didn't believe it for a second. So I went down to meet Vanessa Coffey of Nickelodeon in her hotel room. She was here from New York. So I did the same thing I'd done for the majors. I jumped all over, screamed, sweated all over, flailed myself against the wall, and instead of phoning the police, she rushed me to New York and I had to do it again for all the executives at Nickelodeon. They went for it.

WD: You must have felt totally vindicated after working so many years on other people's junk?

JK: I didn't really believe it at first. Even when they gave us the money to produce the pilot, I still didn't quite believe it.

WD: Did you always want to be an animator when you were growing up?

JK: Except for a brief stint when I wanted to be a rock star. I guess everyone goes through that.

WD: Did you have particular directors you admired? Tex Avery?

JK: Not so much Avery. My favorite is Bob Clampett... To this day, I will swear that Bob Clampett was the greatest cartoonist who ever lived, and everyone else was just a cheap imitation of him. Avery was good, but he doesn't compare to Clampett. He just didn't have the subtlety of Clampett. He didn't have the many shades of expression that Clampett put in his work.

WD: What about Rod Scribner?

JK: He's the best animator that ever lived.

WD: Scribner and Clampett were...

JK: an unbeatable team. Absolutely.

WD: Yes, I love Daffy Duck, for example, as drawn by Scribner in Draftee Daffy. So the takes are more from Clampett than Avery?

JK: No, no, no. Forget the takes. Takes are cheap shots. Anybody can do a goddamned take. Look at Roger Rabbit. 90 minutes of takes. Makes me want to throw up! You don't have to be a genius to draw a take. It's emotion--the full range of emotions that works in Clampett's cartoons. The acting is some of the most convincing acting of any cartoons ever made. His ideas were amazing. He had new idea after new idea. For a string of about four years, he made nothing but great cartoons. You take the other guys and the best of them, Chuck Jones and Tex Avery, look at their whole history, twenty, twenty-five years worth of stuff, and they don't have as many great cartoons as Clampett did in four years.

WD: I've never been a big fan of Chuck Jones.

JK: Chuck is definitely a great director.

WD: But he's so long on story...

JK: Well they lean towards pomposity. That's for sure.

WD: Do you admire Rocky and Bullwinkle?

JK: Not in the least.

WD: Why?

JK: They're just illustrated radio--moving radio.

WD: What's the long range game-plan with Ren and Stimpy?

JK: Well, I don't have a long range game plan with Ren and Stimpy. Nickelodeon does. They want to make them as long as they are popular. They want to make millions of them and sell them

around the world. Put them in syndication. Make them American icons.

WD: It seems that they haven't been over-merchandised as of yet. Is that a conscious decision?

JK: Yeah, I think so. Nickelodeon wanted to be sure that the characters were popular first and lived on their own. Now they are. It's a big hit. Now I'm hoping that they do blitz the market with merchandising, because when I was a kid I loved having toys and comic books and all that stuff with cartoon characters that I really liked. I didn't want them forced upon me. But if you like cartoon characters, of course you want to play with false idols of them.

WD: What about the possibility of a feature film with Ren and Stimpy?

JK: They're talking with us about it. I'd love to do one. We're really cramped up by this eleven-minute format. We have so much raw emotion happening that there's never enough time to play

it out.

WD: Some would argue that the narrataive drive couldn't be sustained in a cartoon for ninety minutes, but you don't think that would be a problem?

JK: Well, that's because they think that all cartoons are like Tex Avery cartoons, where you have ninety minutes of takes. We would have to cover a whole broad range of emotions. There's many types of humor. Not all cartoon humor is just about having bugged-out eyes and tongues flying out of people's heads.

WD: Did your mother and father support your work while growing up?

JK: Not really, no. That's normal, though. All cartoonists are taught "you'll never make money drawing funny little men...get a real job."

WD: What do your parents do?

JK: They both work for the Canadian government. I was born in Canada.

WD: How old are you?

JK: Thirty-six.

WD: So you didn't make super-eight cartoons as a kid?

JK: No. I did flip-books. I'd take courses with the biggest books. Like history books. I'd fill them with drawing and make flip- books constantly.

WD: Do you have any favorite films that influence your work--live action films?

JK: I've always loved The Maltese Falcon. I like The Night of the Hunter. That's my favorite film. Kirk Douglas, I love Kirk Douglas. Kirk Douglas was one of my biggest influences. Young Man with a Horn, Champion, and especially Detective Story. He's a rat with a heart. With remorse. The great thing

about Kirk Douglas is not just his intense acting. It's the remorse after the intensity. The burst, and then the let-down. It's just incredible.

    The influence on the acting in our cartoons is obviously not from other cartoons. It's more from movies and real-life. Our characters have real-life experiences, thrown into a surreal world. Ren and Stimpy act like people. They don't act like funny animals. They look like funny animals. But they act like human beings.

WD: Do you ever plan to remake any old classic cartoons with the Ren and Stimpy characters?

JK: No, no. All these homages always pale in comparison to the originals.

WD: What other influences do you have?

JK: I love The Three Stooges. I think they, along with Monty Python, did some of the greatest comedy ever.

WD: What did you think of Disney's new version of Beauty and the Beast?

JK: I didn't even go and see it. It just looked so horrifying. I can't believe it's a hit. Why? I just think it's the greatest hype machine in the world.

WD: Well, it's a return to the past. They're trying to get back to their old style, like Snow White or Cinderella.

JK: Forget it. They can't touch the classic cartoons they once did, even stuff only ten years ago.

WD: College kids love your show because it goes for the edge. It's not just safe old rehashing of the past.

JK: But it's not just the college kids. Let me made this clear: Ren and Stimpy really is a children's show. It was made for kids. I'm not putting anything in there that I don't think a kid can watch, or should watch. It's completely a kid's show. It really surprises me that adults watch it. It has a huge adult following.

    I think it's just because we don't hold back on entertainment value; with almost everything today, whether it's a movie, a series on t.v., a novel, whatever, they hold back on the entertainment. I don't want to give them any messages or anything. I don't want to bullshit them. I don't want to show them that I'm a genius or an artist. Give them entertainment! Give them a solid half-hour of entertainment. As many ideas as you can cram into it. Old cartoons did that. Old movies did that. That's what we do.

    And the show is a combined vision. The four key people are Jim Smith, the key designer, director, and an unbelievable artist; Bob Camp, who is also a great artist and the head writer. He and I have come up with most of the stories. Lynne Naylor is no longer with us, but she developed the characters and drawing style with me. And then there's me. I'm the ringleader. (laughs)

WD: Where does the name Spumco come from, incidentally? Why do "the Danes call it quality," as you say at the end of each show?

JK: Well, it's a weird coincidence. The word "spum" is the word for quality in Danish. but it's actually named after Raymond Spum, the guy who invented animation in 1856.

WD: How many cartoons are you working on at once?

JK: You have to jump back and forth. You're working on the story for one, the storyboard for another, the layouts for one, the design for another one. Then you're directing voices for another one. They all overlap. We work on maybe six at a time.

WD: Are Ren and Stimpy coming out on video?

JK: Eventually, yes.

WD: Why are Ren and Stimpy like outsiders? They're always out of a job, for example.

JK: I don't really think about it. If I did, maybe I'd say they represent average folks. They're real people, with real problems. That's probably why people identify with them. We are not making an idealization of their characters. Ren and Stimpy are not the Care Bears. They're not these unreal characters that are nonmotivated. They have the same motivations that we have, that real people have, only they're exaggerated.

WD: If I had to sum up the appeal of Ren and Stimpy, it seems to me that you always do what the audience doesn't expect.

JK: That's my biggest rule at the studio! Try not to repeat yourself. try not to go for the obvious.

WD: I remember in "Robin Hoek," for example. Robin climbs up the maiden's hair, and it turns out to be her nasal hair...

JK: Well, that's a joke upon a joke. The first joke was, well, "let down your golden hair," and one hair comes down, so you would think that's enough of a payoff. No, that's not enough. Let's give them something more. "We've surprised them once," I said, "let's give them another one."

WD: How many hours a day are you working? Do you drive yourself in to the ground?

JK: During the peak of our season, yes. When we're doing layouts, for example. The drawing is the most important part, the hardest part. Most cartoons today are run by writers. Everything you see on television is controlled by writers!

    If I you want to print something that's really true, print this. The drawing in animation should always take precedence. When writers control it, writers who can't make it in the field of writing that they'd really like to be in, failed novelists, failed sit-com writers, failed movie writers, whatever, they all gravitate towards the animation business and then write the most terrible stuff in the world that can't be produced, and that's why it's all so bad.

 

    But at Spumco, all our writers are artists. We know what you can and can't do. The writing is actually the easiest part. We can write a story in an afternoon, and I think our stories fare with some of the best in animation. But the hard part is to make the stories work. That takes drawing skill. Real hard sweating drawing skills that very few people have. That's what makes our cartoons work.

Top Draw-ers - Interview with Gabor Csupo, Ben Edlund, John Kricfalusi and Eric Radomski (1997)

 

Top Draw-ers

When creators of some hot shows get together, things get pretty animated.

By Mark Nollinger

In Hollywood, animators have long had the reputation of being shy, quiet folks who are content to let their drawings do the talking. But when TV Guide invited artists Gabor Csupo (Duckman, Rugrats), Ben Edlund (The Tick), John Kricfalusi (the original Ren & Stimpy Show), and Eric Radomski (Spawn and Spicy City) to put down their pencils for a chat about the new breed of animated programs for adults, just the opposite proved to be true. When it comes to the state of the art -- and the business -- these four cartoon makers have plenty to say.

TV Guide: You've all had a hand in producing animation that appeals to adults as well as kids. What's the secret to making cartoons that grown-ups will watch?

Gabor Csupo: The most important thign is the collaboration of a good artist with a good story and character development. We do a lot of work before we even lift up the pencil -- with the stories, the design [total visual look], and the concept. Design is very important, almost more important than the quality of the animation. On top of it all, the package has to be entertaining and moving emotionally.

John Kricfalusi: I just think it comes out of the personalities of the people making them. I don't try to aim at adults or kids. I just make cartoons.

Eric Radomski: I would say, if anything, we're out to please ourselves first.

TVG: But Gabor's studio, for example, produces Duckman and Rugrats. Those are clearly for different audiences.

Csupo: Yeah, Duckman is definitely for adults. But even with a show like Rugrats, we're trying to put in stuff for adults. You just want to do a great show. The most important thing is to make it entertaining and intelligent.

Ben Edlund: There's a whole group of programming that is trying to infuse intelligence through humor, drama, and respect for characters. That is what separates a show that can work for both adults and children form something that works just for children.

TVG: What have been the most influential cartoons of the last 10 years?

Kricfalusi: The Simpsons was definitely responsible for our studio getting Ren & Stimpy on the air; we never would have gotten away with the content if somebody hadn't broken through. But whenever something becomes popular, like The Simpsons, everybody tries to copy it, and it just doesn't work. The Critic bombed twice [both ABC and Fox cancelled the show, which now runs on Comedy Central]. They just tried to copy The Simpsons, but they didn't have [Simpsons creator] Matt Groening. It didn't come from the soul of someone. That's what adults latch onto.

TVG: Has the success of The Simpsons and King of the Hill created more demand for the kinds of sophisticated cartoons you guys do?

Kricfalusi: No. [Everyone laughs.]

TVG: Why not?

Kricfalusi: It just makes more opportunities for network executives to try to manufacture an imitation of what you do. How many times has MTV tried to imitate Beavis and Butt-head and not gotten a hit? They thought that the success of Beavis and Butt-head was really superficial -- "Wiggly lines?" Ok, we'll put a bunch of shows on with wiggly lines." They just don't look deeply into what's making a show a success. Beavis and Butt-head was a success because of the characters. You can relate to them.

TVG: But the networks do occasionally go out on a limb in order to differentiate themselves from their competition.

Radomski: I know that the [decision by] HBO to go into programming adult animation was inspired by the success that HBO has had with programs in that [late-night] time slot -- alternative, twisted, weird documentaries. The most bizarre stuff you'd want to see. It might not appeal to you, but it might appeal to me.

Kricfalusi: Most of the hits so far snuck by without any executives really aware of what was going on. The Simpsons started as 30-second spots on The Tracy Ullman Show. Do you think that if Matt Groening had just made the cartoon and brought it to Fox they would have said, "Yeah, let's make a show out of this that will last 10 years and make $500 million"? No way.

Csupo: The networks have been burned several times. But in my opinion, they are very unqualified to choose the right project. They're not animators. They are looking for formulas. If [executives] green-light something totally wild and risky -- which has a much bigger chance to shoot out from the crowd -- and it doesn't work, they can be fired. And they're very afraid of that situation.

Kricfalusi: But they get fired anyway! [Evryone laughs]

TVG: Well, HBO is certainly trying something novel with Spawn and Spicy City. Eric, can drawing really serve the darker, more dramatic stores you're telling in these cartoons?

Radomski: I think so. My intention is to use animation to create situations that with live action would cost a lot more and probably not look dearly as dramatic. It's something you don't get on television, and that's why I think it will do well. It just has to be honest and human.

TVG: Are there any genres in which animation can't be effective?

Kricfalusi: I don't think it's been tested much. Because people have slotted animation as a thing for little kids, it's never had the the chance to develop and mature. It probably can do anything.

TVG: Can you imagine an animated TV series that is a straight adult drama?

Edlund: It would be very difficult. King of the Hill is the first experiment in an almost straight cartoon --it's very specific and very toned down. I thought it was going to fail because it was so different from that kind of in-your-face cartoon stuff The Simpsons was doing. The fact that it's successful is the doorstep to even less classically cartoony expression in animation.

Kricfalusi: What people are used to when they're watching drama is watching the actors. Acting is very hard to draw. Most cartoons don't do it. They have stock expressions. They don't even look at live action to see how different people move differently. It's very subtle.

TVG: Do you expect this recent trend towards cartoons for adults to continue?

Csupo: I think so, because there are more outlets, including cable, the Internet, digital-satellite TV--everybody's going to be hungry for programming. Hopefully it won't be a catch-22 where satisfying the hunger of the audience is going to be more difficuly every year, and you can't produce good quality stuff because no one wants to pay for it. We'll see. What do you think, John?

Kricfalusi: I think entertainment is all gonna merge with the Internet. That means free distribution. Anybody can get on it and produce things more cheaply. And then each of us is going to have our own show, and we'll be really happy. And the audience will be even happier!

Mark Nollinger is a Los-Angeles based free-lance writer.

Originally published in the July 12-18, 1997 issue of TV Guide.

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Reg Hartt Presents Bob Clampett and Grim Natwick

Extensive transcribed interviews, production art, and articles featuring Bob Clampett and Grim Natwick. Conducted by Reg Hartt.

Reg Hartt Presents Bob Clampett

Reg Hartt Presents Grim Natwick

The interviews featured in both packages are also uploaded with audio by Reg himself:

Special thanks to Reg Hartt for going through the laboring process of preserving and transcribing said interviews for future generations to see. Check out his website here: The Cineforum.

Danny Antonucci on Eggplant and Parmesan, "Lupo the Butcher" Sequel, and "Bob & Juan" (1993)

 

Animation Magazine - Issue #26 November 1993

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Text Version:

    Danny Antonucci on Eggplant and Parmesan

By Mike van den Bos

    Danny Antonucci catapulted into infamy riding on three-and-a-half minutes of cursing, exploding meat. The three-and-a-half minute blast is Antonucci's first animated short film, Lupo the Butcher, a savage hit on the international film festival circuit and on European television. Besides his status as a cult cartoon-maker, Antonucci is also one of Canada's top creative, commercial animation directors, a fashion plate and a gourmet chef. What follows is Antonucci's description of his recipe for Eggplant Parmesan:

     "It's been passed down from generation to generation. In Italy it's carved on my grandparent's tombstone. Let's start with a nice bottle of Barolo wine, the best goddamn wine you can get! Fuck all that Australian and Chili stuff! You need about four to six eggplants. Cut the heads off. Skin the eggplants. I think it has to dowith the fact that a lot of Italians have foreskin, so they want to get rid of that. Slice up the eggplants into 1/4-inch slices. You can either cut it round or you can do it length-ways. Put the eggplant on wax paper in a tray and you spray them with salt. This is the tricky part; you gotta put the salt in your mouth and spit it onto the eggplant. What's happening now is the salt is sucking all the water out, so the eggplant isn't soggy when you fry it. Let it sit for a half hour and then you polish off the bottle of Barolo wine.

    "While you're drinking another bottle of wine you can start making the sauce. Sauce is always important in Italian cuisine. Get some nice tomatoes, preferably plum tomatoes. You don't want to stick in whole tomatoes. Put the tomatoes in a Cuisnart and blend it. Get the sauce creamy. Put a pot on the stove. Start heating it and pour in the oil. Just cover the bottom of the sauce pan with the oil. Put in one small to medium onion and three to four cloves of garlic. Fry those up and then you want some nice hunks of beef and pork to make the sauce. It's all frying up in the hot oil. Don't burn the garlic, just sear the meat.

    "Keep drinking the Barolo wine. Once the meat has seared, pour in your tomatoes that are all nicely blended and that'll stop all the frying. Start sticking in basil, pepper, salt, parsley, I even like throwing in a bit of nutmeg sometimes. If you've got any of the wine left throw it in or just stick your fingers down you throat and regurgitate some of that wine back into the sauce. Bring the sauce to a boil, put a lid on it and then turn it down to minimum and let it simmer."

    On cooking the eggplant: "To make up your batter break four eggs. Spice them with pepper, salt, you can even put in some parsley. Beat them until they're smooth. Dip the eggplants into the egg mixture and then dip them in flour and fry it in a hot pan of oil, the size of which I'm not sure.

    "See, that's the nice thing about Italian cooking, you don't measure anything. You always cook by feel, by touch, by taste. Deep fry all the fucking eggplant. This takes a while, so you gotta sit there, have a drink of wine, light up a smoke and the ashes fall in — big fuck, everybody thinks it's pepper. After the eggplant is fried, put it on paper towels to soak up the oil. It helps because it doesn't make the Eggplant Parmesan dish too soggy; all that oil and all that sauce, it's just like a lump of shit when

you cut it out of the tray.

    "Time's gone by, you've already thrown up once in the toilet from all the wine. Now, you're ready to start assembling this thing. Grate up your mozzarella and Romano cheese. Use nice hunks of cheese. Don't buy one of those stupid cartons of pre-grate. Grate it yourself, so you know it's coming from a hunk of cheese, not from some sawmill plant in Oregon.

    "Lightly coat your baking pan with butter. If we're in Italy you use lard. Fat is very important in food. That's where the taste comes from. The more you keep cutting fat out of everything the worse it'll taste. You want to live forever?

    "We're talking an Italian meal here. just eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die. You got your eggplants on you left, you got your buttered pan in the center, the cheeses and your sauce on the right.

Remember, you're not using the meat. The meat was to give that sauce flavor. Start with a nice layer of the tomato sauce, not too heavy because you don't want to make it soggy. Lay a thin coat to cover the bottom. Put in a layer of eggplant — you want to fill the bottom up. Don't pile it too high. Just lay it flat. If you have spaces the cheese will fill that all up. Now, you want to get a nice healthy layer of the mozzarella cheese and a layer of the Romano cheese. Get another scoop of tomato sauce. Repeat it. Eggplant, Mozzarella, Romano, tomato sauce. Keep going until you run out of eggplant. If it piles high — that's okay, because when it bakes it'll come back down. again. All that cheese will melt.

    "Preheat your oven at 350°. Make sure your oven rack is in the middle position. Throw the Eggplant Parmesan in the oven and let it start cooking. Wait to see that the sauce is boiling and then it's ready to go. Usually the top won't be brown, but that's fine. Some people like to have it brown, some don't. I like it brown — the more carcinogens the better. Throw theoven onto broil. Let it brown a bit. Pull it out. It's important to let it sit for about five to 10 minutes; that's so the cheese coagulates and it doesn't fall apart when you cut into it. It's like when you shoot a guy you don't automatically start to chop him up and get rid of the body. Leave him in the trunk of the car for a while, go get a salami sandwich — let him set in the trunk for a while before you chop him up, so the blood coagulates and there isn't a big mess.

    "You get a lot of ignorant people who don't know what an eggplant is and that an eggplant is really, really good. Eggplants are the bananas of Italy. I forgot to say when you do serve it to you guests that you need to have a priest come over and bless the eggplants, and he swings one of those incense things. That stuff smells like crap, but it blesses the meal, everything's fine and then you pig out."

Mike van den Bos is a producer for International Rocketship in Vancouver, Canada.

    "That's Bob and Juan, the Siamese Coroner, a two-headed guy — one's the brains, one's the brawnwho goes around trying to find love. That's the basic premise and the cartoon speaks for itself," explains Danny Antonucci, this issue's truly outrageous Cameo Cartoonist. He says this character is definitely in the works for a short.

    Antonucci, of Canada's International Rocketship, gained cult notoriety with his loopy three-and-a-half minute carve-up of cursing, exploding meat, Lupo the Butcher. "I was frustrated after working on children's stuff for so long," explains Antonucci. "The craziest thing on TV at that time (1985-6) was Scooby Doo."

    Lupo fans can look forward to a new film being produced in conjunction with Rocketship called Meat the Family. In it Lupo is at home with his family. It's his birthday and they're going to throw him a party. We won't give any more away; we'll just say it's sure to be a juicy tale.

    When asked what he thinks outrageous animation is, Antonucci maintains he doesn't like to use labels. "It's such a board term. You could ask a nun what she thinks is outrageous and it'd be completely different than what I might think. To me, it's just slapstick taken to another level. If it makes me laugh, it makes me laugh."  — N. Kourtney Kaye

Behind Beavis & Butthead: Mike Judge Interview - Animation Magazine (1993)

 

Animation Magazine - Issue #26 November 1993

Click each image to enlarge. Text version included below.

BONUS: MTV's In-House Animation Studio and Interview

DNA Productions: Paul Claerhout, Keith Alcorn and John A. Davis - Animation Magazine (1993)

Animation Magazine - Issue #26 November 1993

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    "The outrageous part of what we do gives us a way to vent our pent-up frustrations at always having to work within the constraints of a corporate or commercial environment where everything has to be politically correct or cute," proclaims John A. Davis, of Dallas-based DNA Productions.

    Davis, Keith Alcorn and Paul Claerhout, the key members of this animation house, first vented with Nippoless Nippleby, a fractured fable in which the title creature is ostracized for not having nipples —until society discovers the useful member he does possess. Weird Beard, a demented and gross musical

tale of a pirate hazing system, and the series Nana and Lil' Puss Puss followed.

    In its most outrageous mode, DNA is best known for Nana and Lil' Puss Puss. Drawn in stark black and white, using a splash of color only when necessary (usually to highlight snot, blood or dung) the series follows the adventures of a Granny-type and her cat. It indulges in, as Alcorn notes, "fourth grade, bathroom humor." But an element of satire is often co-mingled with the anything-goes scat humor. (In One Ration Under God, the crimes of Hitler, David Koresh, J. Edgar Hoover and Jack Kennedy are forgiven in heaven, while Nana is damned for not buying enough cat food.)

    Thanks to festival screenings, what started as an after hours, just-for-kicks release has become profitable. Still, DNA has also had its brush with censorship.

    "The Dallas Video Festival wouldn't let us show Weird Beard, because of the violence, and some of Nana and Lil' Puss Puss," Davis says. "But they showed a William S.Burroughs video in the next room where he's talking about [doing things to] his daughter and all this horrible stuff."

    That episode underlines the strange schism that exists between what is acceptable in live action versus animation. "It's funny how you can get away with things in live action that are just too offensive if it's animated," says Alcorn. "It seems like it should be just the opposite, but people seem to be so much more sensitive to animation."

    Adds Davis: "What can be sicker than watching the evening news and seeing people in Somalia dragging dead bodies through the street — spitting and defecating on them? And then people will react to an [animated] old lady exposing her breasts."

BONUS: ONE ON ONE WITH A REAL LIVE ANIMATOR!

 

Mr. Lawrence Interview - Animation Magazine (1993)

 Animation Magazine - Issue #26 November 1993

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    They call him Mister Lawrence — a moniker that began as a joke but then stuck with the 24-year-old animator.

    By day Doug Lawrence directs (and provides voices for) Nickelodeon's series Rocko's Modern Life but nights and weekends are occupied completing independent animated projects such as Looks Can Kill, about a stripper who gives new dimensions to the term heavy artillery, and A One Story House, about a house that is violently allergic to people.

    While not quite ready for prime-time, these personal projects are not designed just to shock. "I'm really concerned with doing something that hasn't been seen before, but I've seen things in animation that I would never bother doing because they're too perverse," he says, citing excessive blood and gore.

    Unlike many, Lawrence even sees some value to working within network standards. "The first thing that pops into your head is usually the easiest to do, usually the sick joke or the gross joke," he adds. "A lot of people will disagree with me, but I think if you're forced not to do certain things, you sometimes come up with better things, something a little more refined and a better gag — just funnier."

BONUS: Mr. Lawrence's "Looks Can Kill" Short

Craig McCracken Interview - Animation Magazine (1994)

 Interview by Rita Street.

Animation Magazine - Issue #31 October/November 1994

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I realized that little girls flying around as superheros beating up criminals is funnier than just some guy," says Director/Creator Craig McCracken, his large brown eyes hiding behind a mop of curly brown hair as he discusses his inspiration for The PowerPuff Girls.

    The PowerPuff Girls will make its debut on the Cartoon Network as one of 48 cartoons being produced by Hanna-Barbera and The Cartoon Network in an all out effort to bring back the great shorts of 40 years ago.

    With this landmark venture, the pressure is on to produce the best possible cartoons. But, can Hanna-Barbera really turn out the kind of quality shorts that were produced during the heyday of Warner

Bros. and Disney? 

    

    Executive Producer Buzz Potamkin certainly is determined to maintain quality. He likens the short production process to the production of commercials rather than the production of television shows.

    "When you're making commercials you never lose sight of the value of an individual frame. You only have 720 of them and you better be damn careful of them all — never lose sight of an individual frame. That's the sort of emphasis I'm trying to place on the shorts."

    

    As far as content, that's up to the artists. And the artists' mandate for the project? It's gotta be funny.

   

    The PowerPuff Girls appear to have a lot going for them in that department. Blossom, Buttercup and Bubbles are just your average kindergartners. They have to go to school and they like to draw

with crayons. They also just happen to be the superheroines of Townsville, the biggest celebs around, and the trio the mayor relies on to save the day.

    Blossom is the head PowerPuff and leads her gang with a pretty stern hand. As McCracken puts it, "She's the one who makes sure that the day is saved correctly." Buttercup is the tough one. "She doesn't want to go through all the formalities of being a superhero. She'd rather just beat up anyone who does anything wrong. She's got a real short fuse." And, Bubbles... ah Bubbles. More concerned

with crayons than flying, she secretly just wants to be a little girl.

    The crusaders' early name was the "Whoopass Girls" and Craig's first short by the same name toured the country with Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation.

    McCracken recently pitched the second episode to the powers that be at Hanna-Barbera and The

Cartoon Network. If all goes well you may see the Girls battle The Amoeba Boys sometime next year. "They're the simplest criminals in Townsville," says McCracken, "Because they're single-cell

organisms their criminal minds haven't evolved."

    Their one goal in life? To get in a fight with the best kids in town — The PowerPuff Girls!

-R. Street

"What a Cartoon" and Genndy Tartakovsky Interview by John Kricfalusi

This is the second part of an article about "What a Cartoon" by John K and features an interview with Genndy Tartakovsky.

To read part one, click here.

A caricature of Genndy by Craig Kellman in the What a Cartoon short "Lost Control"

 Animation Magazine - Issue #37 September 1995

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In the second part of this article inspired by Hanna-Barbera's shorts' program, John K. takes a closer look at Dexter's Laboratory and speaks with the cartoon's creator, Genndy Tartakovsky.

    When I looked at the individual elements that make up the film, I found various degrees of craft.

Craig McCracken's character designs are flat, like the current fashion, yet they seem fresher than what's around. He combines Jay Ward, the Cal Arts Character Animation school style, Japanese cartoons and then something original.

    The character Dee Dee is especially appealing. She's not just cute, but cute with character. Her look suggests her personality. This is rare in cartoons. In his own film, McCracken's Power Puff Girls are extremely cute and appealing but a little colder.

    Despite the name of the cartoon, Dee Dee is really the star. She is a typical big sister who drives her little brother insane. This fact is inherent in the story, but it comes across not simply because of the plot. Her design, her expressions and even the movement itself tells us about her character.

    Genndy explains: 'I made her a ballerina, so whenever she acts, she acts in a very exaggerated way. And she always tries to strike a pose, like she's pretending she's a ballerina. So that would simplify the

process, instead of trying to find out a way of acting that's broad.'

    Some of the animation of these ballet movements is very clever. I freeze-framed her pirouettes and leaps, and discovered drawings where Dee Dee grew extra legs to help the flow of the actions. There is a kind of sweet sarcasm to her movements and expressions which makes her a very real and convincing character. This is not anything that could be written into a script. Only an artist can do this.

    Genndy believes strongly in the law of contrasts. He juxtaposed Dee Dee's movement and look with her brother Dexter. She is tall and thin. He is short and squat. She is lively and graceful. He is subdued and mechanical.

    I didn't notice when I first saw the cartoon, but as I was home dissecting it, I was surprised to see the seemingly unsophisticated color styling. The backgrounds are completely painted in primary and secondary colors. There isn't a muted or neutral color in the whole picture. Everything is orange, purple, yellow, blue and pink. Colors right out of the paint tubes. This isn't unusual for modern cartoons. Most Saturday morning cartoons, and even Disney features, are painted in primitive garish colors. The idea I think is, 'Cartoons are juvenile; therefore paint them with blunt ignorance.'

    These modern cartoons remind me of Denny's menus. You've seen those blue-purple-orange sunsets, I'm sure. Well, normally this kind of coloring distracts me from any story or action in the cartoons, but somehow in this case, it wasn't so bad. At least the artists didn't put every color in every scene. They usually limited the palette to two or three colors and did manage to compose the colors around the actions, rather than compete with them.

    The timing in the cartoon is very slick and careful. If you look at each individual action alone, you might think, 'This is good, but not untypical of a Cal Arts' graduate.' More impressive than the timing is the pacing. Pacing is a bigger concept than timing. It is the wide view of all the actions and how they relate to each other. This is a concept of timing that was totally missing from every other cartoon in the 'What A Cartoon' program (at the Academy preview). It's a tool that just isn't used anymore in cartoons... period. Do you ever wonder why the old cartoons, just sort of 'feel good'? Why they seem to flow so well? Why they seem to have rhythm? It's because they have rhythm. Classic cartoons were timed to musical tempos. Modern cartoons are timed straight ahead, action by action. Where the accents fall in relation to each other is now accidental. That's why modern cartoons feel jerky.

    In music, tempos vary; slow then fast, the rhythms weave in and out of each other and build moods in the listener. When this is well done, it sweeps you away in emotional bliss. No words can describe the feelings that good music invokes, not the way the music itself does. Have you ever got a chill listening to a piece of music? Cartoons have this power, if the cartoonist is aware of the tools and skilled in the arranging of them. Because of this rhythmic quality of cartoons, I find the cartoon to be an art much closer to music than to literature. Sure, music can tell a story, but if the music isn't enjoyable for its own sake, who will care about the story? Music doesn't need story at all to be great art. It definitely needs melody and rhythm. Harmony, syncopation, structure, movements are all variations and arrangements of the melody and rhythm. These tools pace and refine the vital elements of music.

    Cartoons substitute pictures for melody and use rhythm to regulate the flow of the pictures. Without rhythm and pacing, a cartoon doesn't deliver its maximum potential. Try singing a song out of tempo. It's so hard to do, and so alien that it seems unquestionably, instinctively wrong. Many modern cartoons, even if the art and animation is wonderful are wrong and unsettling in this way.

    It took me a few years of trial and error and bad timing/pacing, and studying cartoons to discover this missing vital element in the modern stuff. I eventually interviewed some old animators who explained how they did it. They timed to beats and bars, rather than sums of individual frames. Bill Hanna physically showed me how he did it. It was so simple, so right, that I had to ask him, 'Why don't you teach your timing directors this?' He said, 'Oh, everybody knows this.' I guess he hasn't watched any Hanna-Barbera cartoons in a few decades.

    Genndy figured this out completely on his own. How? By being paid to do it the wrong way first and seeing the unsatisfactory results. 'When I was working at The Critic, they would go in and put extra feet — two feet, an extra second, in between the slugs. And I would ask, 'What's this for?' And they'd say, 'For the laughter.' And I'd say 'Oh, okay.'

    The Critic actually made me organize my timing... indirectly. It was a really great experience because their timing is very formulaic. Just a 4-frame head bob up, 4-frame head bob down. Totally even. You go to a pose, you overshoot... that's all it is. Twelve-frame walk cycle, 8-frame run. Just put in the arcs, plot it down. It's all dialogue driven. There's no hand gestures. They just stand there and talk. Blink blink blink. Accent, accent, accent. That's probably 60 percent of the timing. I made $300 more than I made at [Two Stupid] Dogs. That's a lot. I mean, I got sick of it after a couple of weeks.

    'I had a revelation on Two Stupid Dogs. I finally figured out that it's all beats. I retimed one of the scenes that I already timed with the Dogs, to beats [in a sketchbook]. And I go, 'Oh, now it makes sense to me.' I didn't shoot it, but it made sense. It felt good when you did it on paper. And then when I did the arcs [on an exposure sheet], I went 'Oh, this looks cool, this works.' You have a nice long arc, and then a real short one, and then a long one, or whatever. Even though some people say that's real stupid, if you look at a piece of paper and you look at the different sizes of the arcs, the action, if you can see the contrast on the sheets, that means there's good contrast in the timing. And most of the sheets that I saw for Dogs, or if you pick up any Hanna-Barbera old show, not like 'old-old', but recently, they don't have that [the contrasts].'

    In Dexter's Laboratory, Genndy used beats and contrasted actions and sequences, or pacing, to help put over the feelings he wanted the audience to experience. He alternated slow scenes with fast scenes, dialogue scenes with action scenes and gave each sequence its own tempo. On top of that, the rhythmic wave of the whole picture gradually rises to a climax. This is pretty sophisticated for someone's first film.

    I asked Genndy what he thought was more important, story or pacing. 'I think they're one and the same. The way the story flows along is the way the music flows along which is the pacing. When you have a chase, it's a fast thing, so you write it fast. I mean, you can't physically write it fast, but that's why you don't write it. You [story]board it fast, thinking in real time. You just do scribbles that work. Then I think the question is, Do you want to have one or two things that are really good, or do you want to have a really good overall feel to it?'

    Genndy uses his storyboards to work out the flow and pacing and to find rough spots in the story. 'When I first started doing storyboards on Dogs, I would do a sequence and I would act it out, play it out. When I came to an uncomfortable moment, an uncomfortable scene or sequence, I would feel there's something wrong, and I mentally made a note, that I knew there was something wrong with it, but I wouldn't fix it, I would just let it go, and I don't know why I did that. You're flowing along, you're acting it out, and then you have to do something unnatural, when you're acting you feel it. You really, really feel it. There's something not working there. So, now I've got to rework it.'

    I asked him if he could do this from a script. 'Not from a script. From a storyboard. I think it's got to be visually represented so you know where the cuts are, where the angles are, where the camera direction is, how it's flowing. From a script, you're reading a line, you're reading a set-up, and what you're thinking might be something different than what someone else thinks.'

    How does one keep track of these story glitches? 

    'Well, I put a post-it on the board, and I may pitch it to some friends, but sometimes they don't really understand what I'm saying. It works mechanically, it works as part of the story, but it just doesn't work no matter how good the gag is.

    'People say 'Oh, that will work in animation.' But it's got to work in the board, before anything goes to animation. You can pitch the whole thing and if you go through the whole thing without stopping, without feeling a problem, you've got a good cartoon.'

    The experience of Dexter's Laboratory taught Genndy to use simple methodical tools to structure his stories before going to the storyboard stage. 'On the first one, there's really no explanation how it [the story] came. But on the second one, I had all these vignettes that I wanted to do, that the characters fit really well into. I had to connect them with a story, so I figured out a way of connecting them, and then I just started doing thumbnails. When you're doing the thumbnails, things just start happening, it just starts working. It's like a machine, you know? It's like, okay, this works, this is cool.

    'But before I even start the storyboard, I have, not an objective list, but it's more of a motivation list for the overall picture, and I go: 'Set-up, Motivation, Reaction, Conflict, Conclusion... 

    'What's the set-up?' And I write: Set-up: Dexter makes chocolate chip cookies that Dee wants. Conflict: Dee Dee grabs cookie, Dexter doesn't want her to eat it. Result: Dee Dee eats the cookie, she grows to be 100 feet tall. Conflict: Dee Dee goes to city and messes with it. Resolution: Dexter is happy that Dee Dee left the house so he can be alone. That's the first two minutes of the cartoon. That was an outline. And when I'm doing the storyboard, then I add all the gags, the acting, the lines of dialogue, and it works.'

    I could go on about each other creative element in Dexter's Laboratory, Paul Rudish's dramatic layouts, the little animation touches that only an artist who has creative control over his story could do, the music and sound effects, but I would be delaying the point I want to make.

    The great thing about this cartoon is not that each individual element is clever, pretty, well-written, it's that each creative element is used to tell the story. Nothing is arbitrary. We've all seen cartoons where we can say, 'Aren't these cute characters,' or 'That was a funny gag,' or 'Isn't the color nice?' or 'Look at the cool backgrounds.' This cartoon has a story that inherently invites the artists to create fun things to look at. But all the visuals, all the cinematic touches are placed in a firm framework and completely organized and controlled by a methodically-thinking mind.

    Genndy is not only an artist. He is a scientist. He isolates and defines problems, then systematically finds solutions and composes or choreographs his creative elements to achieve their maximum effect. He doesn't just take a bunch of ideas and throw them in the air, and where they fall, that's where they stay. Now all this may sound like high-falutin' double-talk, but to my mind, this combination of creativity and mechanical problem-solving ability is neither completely new nor too much to expect. It's what directors do. Tex Avery did it. Chuck Jones. Clampett. Hanna and Barbera. All these guys were more than just artists with wacky ideas. They had the ability to get their ideas across. Good live-action directors are problem solvers. Choreographers, symphony orchestra conductors. Different mediums. Similar minds.

    Betty Cohen states The Cartoon Network's and Hanna Barbera's basic philosophical and business goal, 'Using the short form as a means of creative exploration, an amazing array of both veteran and new directors will bring to life their very personal, very original vision. Real characters will be creating real, memorable characters.'

    Genndy Tartakovsky is evidence that this is possible when someone who has a vision is given the opportunity to try. Unfortunately, not all artists do have this potential. While some of the other cartoonists in the program show much promise, notably Pat Ventura, Dave Feiss and Eddie Fitzgerald, it seems that there may be some problem with the program's selection process.

    Some of the artists who premiered their shorts at the Academy didn't seem to take advantage of the once in a lifetime opportunity they've been awarded. In a program that declares itself a 'return to the Golden Age of Cartoons,' I was amazed to see many cartoons that looked like they were right out of the worst period of animation history: 1970s' Saturday Morning Cartoons.

    It was bizarre to see Ruby Spears' style characters doing Tex Avery takes. And these weren't just from the older directors. Guys in their twenties and thirties are making Saturday Morning cartoon-style shorts at higher budgets. It doesn't look like one mind is choosing the directors who will make the roster, which is too bad for the program.

    I hope the actual, promising directors get the chance to do a few shorts each. I hope they are allowed the luxury to make their mistakes and learn from them as Tex Avery and Walt Disney did. I hope that the directors are able to find artists to support them and not compete with them. Every artist in the animation business needs this program to succeed. If it works, there will be more cartoonist created cartoons. If it fails, we could all find ourselves back in the dark ages of animation, slaves to ignorant lords who have no love for the art, no respect for the talent they need so desperately to feed off of.

    In a day when huge corporations are in a gluttonous manner, battling over who gets to own the top artists; who gets to monopolize the control over our industry by anesthetizing our brains and creative drive with big bucks so we'll neglect to notice that we have no say in the content and future of our art; under the massive approaching black storm cloud of self-destruction, Fred and Betty's program is a small ray of hope. Is it possible to regain some pride and self respect in who we are and what we can do for the audience?

John K. is the president of Spumco. He is currently developing The Goddam George Liquor Program (working title).

The viewpoints expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the editor, staff or owner of Animation Magazine.