Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Recommended Reading

Here's Fred Kaplan again (he's been busy), this time discussing the presidential press conference that we talked about here yesterday. Anyone who's wondering why some people don't think highly of George W. Bush — or thinks the concerns about his mental powers are just about verbal gaffes — oughta read this piece. And it isn't even that Bush is wrong about a lot of stuff. It's that he's wrong about a lot of stuff and stubbornly insistent that if he never admits it, that will somehow make him right.

The other day on Scarborough Country on MSNBC, all a Bush defender could offer was to say something like, "I trust Bush's gut." In other words, he may not know what he's doing but he has good instincts. I'm sorry...even if that were true, you don't risk the lives of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of human beings, on someone's "gut." The next time a G.O.P. strategist says something like that, I'd like to see his questioner drag out the old (but not inappropriate) surgeon comparison...

You know: You're going in for open heart surgery. Your surgeon walks in and he stumbles over his words the way Bush does all the time, erring as to where your thyroid is located, just as Bush keeps saying certain countries are adjacent to Syria when they aren't. More than half the people around think he doesn't know what he's doing, and even some who still like him admit to some gruesome mistakes. There are others with different suggestions on how your surgery should go...which other organ, for instance, he really should be removing. Still, he's determined to do it his way and he lectures you about courage and not changing one's mind just because some of the evidence seems to suggest he's making the situation worse.

Do you trust his gut and let him do it his way? Or do you ask for another surgeon?

• Posted at 5:02 PM · LINK

Graphic Depiction

Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón are two talented and important veterans of the comic book industry. Sid was an editor for years at Harvey Comics, supervising the successful line that starred Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Hot Stuff, Spooky, Sad Sack and so many others. Ernie drew thousands of pages of those comics and also branched out into adventure titles with his work for Warren, Gold Key and DC, and even into editing. In fact, he was briefly my editor at DC and so was Sid at another time and company. I mention that to make the point that these men have first-hand experience dealing with disasters.

Recently, they collaborated on a graphic novel based on The 9/11 Report and it's currently being serialized over on Slate. If you click on this link, it should take you to where you can read the first few chapters. What I've seen there is concise and serious, and the presentation of the material in that format gives it a clarity that has perhaps been missing from other venues. We'll talk more about it when they get more of it online...but you might want to start reading soon. Looks like a fine piece of work.

• Posted at 2:18 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Fred Kaplan explains why the U.N. Security Council resolution — the one that was supposed to stop the killing in and around Lebanon — is working about as well as a Dell laptop battery. That's not the greatest analogy in the world but you know what I mean.

• Posted at 2:09 PM · LINK

Set the TiVo

Director Spike Lee has made a long (four hours and fifteen minutes in length) documentary about the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. It's called When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts and it is, by an amazing coincidence, in four acts. Acts One and Two debuted last night on HBO. Acts Three and Four debut tonight. I TiVoed last night's offering and while I've only had the chance to watch about fifteen minutes of it, it seems like "must" viewing for those of us who want to understand what happened and — more important — what can be learned from the tragedy that might prevent it from being quite so bad the next time. There will be a next time.

If you missed Acts One and Two last night, you might want to hold off on Three and Four just for sequential reasons. A week from tonight, HBO will run all four parts in a row and thereafter, Mr. Lee's effort will be broadcast repeatedly — sometimes, two acts at a time; sometimes, all four. I'm sure it will be depressing and frustrating but I intend to try to clear time to watch it from start to finish. If you're skeptical, wait 'til I make it through and I'll report back on whether I think it's worth your time. Personally, I think Lee should have put the major focus on FEMA and called his project, Do the Wrong Thing.

• Posted at 11:24 AM · LINK

Another Con Report (Also, Another Fat Report)

Didn't even notice this before. Also over at Animation World Network, there's also an article about the Comic-Con International and it even quotes me. In fact, there's a photo there of me with Lou Scheimer, the gent who co-owned and operated the Filmation cartoon studio. Some of you have asked me to post a picture so you could see what my weight loss has done to me. I'll let you go look at that one if you promise not to peek at my hair, which lately seems to be doing a kind of David Ben-Gurion thing with a Larry Fine flourish.

I've lost about fourteen pounds since then. In fact, I've just posted my latest weight loss news at the bottom of this page. I don't know how many thousands of you still have money riding on these numbers but here they are.

• Posted at 10:24 AM · LINK

A Man Called Fudd

Before there was Dick Cheney, Elmer J. Fudd held the title of World's Most Famously Inept Hunter. Mr. Fudd was in that select (pre-Simpsons) group of cartoon characters who managed to become immortal without being either a super-hero or an animal. There were many reasons for this but the main one was probably Arthur Q. Bryan, who originated and performed the addictive Fudd voice. Over at Animation World Network, Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman provides a much-needed historical overview of Bryan and of Fudd...the man and the myth. Go read it and then come back here and I'll try to clarify the matter of Elmer Fudd's other voices.

Back so soon? Okay, fine. After Bryan died in 1959, Mel Blanc became the main voice of Elmer Fudd. Dr. Toon cites the oft-repeated story that Mel had to be convinced to take on the role because Mel didn't like doing impressions of others. I don't think that last part is quite true. Mel did lots of impressions throughout his cartoon career, including Lou Costello in A Tale of Two Kitties and radio actor Kenny Delmar in every single Foghorn Leghorn cartoon. In fact, well before Bryan's death, Mel did a few Elmer lines in the 1950 Daffy Duck extravaganza, The Scarlet Pumpernickel. He also occasionally picked up a line in a cartoon where Fudd was otherwise voiced by Bryan. (Best example: In What's Opera, Doc?, when Elmer yells "SMOG!," that's Mel. Tapes were recently found of Bryan recording the same line so apparently director Chuck Jones wasn't happy with how Bryan did it and had Blanc redo it at a later session.) Bryan was commuting a lot to New York during the fifties, appearing on TV shows that emanated from the East Coast, so he was not always available.

That was presumably why Bryan did not do Elmer's voice in the 1958 Pre-Hysterical Hare. The role was played by comedian-impressionist Dave Barry, and you can read about Mr. Barry here. As you'll see there, Barry told me he also did Elmer in a couple of kids' records. Elmer is in a couple of the WB records produced for Capitol in the fifties but they all seem to be Bryan. In one though — "The Bugs Bunny Easter Song" — Bryan does Fudd's voice and Bugs Bunny is voiced by Barry.

As Goodman notes, Bryan's last performance as the Mighty Elmer was in the 1960 Person to Bunny. There was apparently some talk among the creative folks of just abandoning the character after that but Warner Brothers quickly vetoed that notion. For obvious reasons, they didn't care for the precedent of losing a valuable merchandisable property just because someone had died. What would happen when Mel went?

They not only insisted Fudd continue but that he be uncharacteristically featured in some cartoons. So Elmer lived to appear next on The Bugs Bunny Show, which was produced in 1960 for ABC Television, and in some Kool-Aid commercials that ran initially in that program. In these, he was occasionally voiced by Blanc but mainly by Hal Smith, who's best known today for his role as Otis the Town Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show. Smith also played Elmer in the two theatrical cartoons in which Elmer was starred. These were the 1960 Doggone People and the 1961 What's My Lion? (Blanc's in both and the latter also features Herb Vigran, who I mentioned in the previous item here.) and then Mel seems to have had the role to himself until his death in '89.

Some history books say Daws Butler did Elmer's voice after Bryan died...and Daws also said so, too. To date though, no one seems to have figured out where this performance might have appeared. Daws was an honest guy with a good memory so the logical conclusion is that he recorded a soundtrack for something, perhaps for Pre-Hysterical Hare, and it was discarded.

And that's pretty much all I have to add about Elmer Fudd...especially since I just noticed it's 2:30 in the A.M., which is no time for an allegedly grown man to be posting Fudd history on the Internet. Sweet dweams, my fwiends.

• Posted at 2:32 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Everyone has seen this commercial in which The Flintstones sell Winston cigarettes, thereby answering the question of what made cavemen extinct. Obviously, it was lung cancer or some form of respiratory disease. (It may also have had something to do with overeating. Before I had my surgery, my dietician warned me that you should never order a plate of ribs large enough to tip over your car. Wise advice, indeed.)

Not everyone has seen the other commercials the Flintstones did for Winston so let's rectify that. Here's one. Alan Reed does the voice of Fred while the sales guy is performed by character actor Herb Vigran, who occasionally dabbled in cartoon voicing. Most of you will remember Mr. Vigran for his appearances on the George Reeves Superman series and/or from his membership in the Jack Webb stock company on Dragnet. Here we go...

• Posted at 12:29 AM · LINK

Tobacco in Toontown

As noted here — and sent to me by many of you, thanks — the British arm of Turner Broadcasting (i.e., Time-Warner) is excising scenes that "glamourize smoking" from vintage shorts. This, they say, is in response to one complaint about scenes in two cartoons.

Let me type that again and boldface two words: This, they say, is in response to one complaint about scenes in two cartoons.

But of course, that can't be true. You don't start chopping up your old cartoons in response to one complaint about two scenes. You do it because someone high in the company says to someone else high in the company, "You know, one of these days, we may have a problem with this." For some reason, when they make these decisions, they like to make it sound like they had no choice in the matter; that they gave in to public pressure, even when that pressure was close to non-existent. It's an excuse to take an action that is probably more economic than idealistic...and to make it sound like an act of social responsibility.

Which brings us to one of the little lies of the animation business. For years, studio heads have wailed about imposed censorship and insisted that their films could be better if only those danged Standards and Practices people would butt out and the pressure groups would back off. In many cases, that's absolutely true.

But it's also true that to protect the future marketability of their wares, some producers are way too willing, even eager to launder their shows and cut out anything that might be controversial. I wish they'd get a little more courageous...or at least consider that it would also be a demonstration of integrity to preserve works of art in their original form. If I were the guy in charge and the issue of cartoon characters smoking came to my attention, I think I'd try to find a more creative solution. And I'd start by waiting until it actually was a problem before I started fixing it at all.

In honor of this silly move, we dedicate today's video link...and probably tomorrow's, as well.

• Posted at 12:23 AM · LINK