Monday, September 18, 2006

Today's Video Link

Take two minutes and sixteen seconds and watch this trailer for the movie, Blazing Saddles. See if you notice something I noticed...and try not to peek at the paragraph below the video box where I'll explain what I realized...

Okay, done? Good. Now then, did you notice what I noticed?

Right: The trailer isn't funny. I thought the movie was pretty funny but the trailer is amazingly unfunny. I've seen trailers that by excerpting everything that was remotely amusing in a 90 minute movie made you think the whole film was like that. Remember that movie, Partners, with Ryan O'Neal and John Hurt? Screamingly funny trailer, not-so-funny movie. How about Pure Luck with Martin Short and Danny Glover? People howled at the preview of that one, little suspecting that those two minutes were all there was to laugh at in the full movie.

But you rarely see it work the other way around. It's almost like the person assigned to edit and assemble this Blazing Saddles trailer was determined to cut out punch lines and make sure that jokes didn't have payoffs. There were plenty of mirth-filled clips they could have taken out of the film, starting with most of the stuff with the Mongo character played by Alex Karras...but Mr. Mongo is nowhere to be seen in these Coming Attractions, not even when he punches the horse. Nor do you see the campfire scene or the scene where Cleavon Little takes himself hostage or any other material that made the film memorable to those who loved it.

The essence of the movie is that you have this black sheriff who's in charge of a town where the people are afraid of a black man. That's a funny premise but they didn't even establish that in the trailer. In fact, none of the townspeople, all of whom were quite funny, are really in the trailer.

In the scene in Harvey Korman's office with Slim Pickens, there's a funny gag where Korman is fondling a statue. They cut most of it out — enough so you have no idea what he's doing — but they left in a shot of Slim reacting in disgust to it.

Then they tried to create a joke by cutting from Korman saying "See 'snatch'" to a shot of Madeline Kahn. I can almost hear the editor saying, "Naw, I don't want to put in one of those crude funny moments...I'll invent a crude one that isn't funny."

After that, there's the bit where Ms. Kahn looks at a cowboy with his hat on his lap and says — in the movie — "Is that a ten-gallon hat or are you just enjoying the show?" If you cut out the second part of the line, as they did in the trailer, you nullify most of the joke. Nice going, Tex.

Then we see Mel Brooks in his governor character (although there's no inkling of who he is) in the scene where he's sitting next to the lady with the enormous melons. In the film, he turns to her chest and says, "Hello, boys!" It's a big laugh so naturally, they had to cut the shot before his line. They'd already gotten what they wanted. They showed us that the movie contains about twenty seconds of huge breasts.

The editor cuts from the breasts to a shot of the fake town...which makes no sense at all if you haven't seen the movie. And from there it's onward to further incoherence but — God forbid — no humor.

Would you have any idea what this movie was about from the trailer? Would you think it was funny? Very odd. Oh, well. Nice narration job there by Marvin Miller, by the way. When is someone going to put his old TV show, The Millionaire, out on DVD or up on cable?

• Posted at 11:43 AM · LINK

Kirby: Ahead of the Times

Over on the New York Times website, George Gene Gustines has assembled what they call a "slide show" to discuss Jack Kirby's artwork on a particularly fine issue of Fantastic Four.

I have two quibbles, one being that they've opted to reproduce from one of the deluxe reprints of the story, not from the original. Remember what I said a few messages back about how short-sighted movie studio execs often allowed the treasures in their library to rot rather than spend money on preservation? Well, Marvel Comics did that. In fact, they were doing it long after they were making beaucoup bucks on reprints. There were years there where some in the office — those who cared, which was not everyone — were tearing out follicles by the fistful over this. They simply did not have good stats or negatives or reproduction copies of 10-year-old issues of their books they wished to reprint at that moment so they had to print them off bad stats with faded linework. Incredibly, at the same time, no one wanted to spend the money to make extra negatives or stats to ensure that the current issues could later be properly reprinted in ten years or whenever.

With very few exceptions — most of them due to a handful of caring staffers who went way beyond the norm to do so — Marvel's reprints have lost serious linework and detail from the artistry of some very talented illustrators. This is another one of those matters about which there should be more outrage. (There are also some examples for which DC Comics should be whomped upside the head but not as many.)

So that's one of my quibbles. The other is that nowhere is the name Joe Sinnott mentioned. Joe inked the material that's being presented and with his fine linework made a major contribution to The Art of Jack Kirby.

Other than for those points, it's a great little tribute. Always so good to see classy venues catch up with Kirby.

• Posted at 10:10 AM · LINK

Animation, South of the Border

Earlier today in a piece about cartoons, I made reference to "runaway productions done in Mexico for twenty pesos." This brought a call from an old friend of mine, cartoonist Roman Arambula, who was a little upset about it. He took it as a slam at Gamma Productions, which was the most prominent studio in Mexico that did work for U.S. television...and I guess he took it personally since he worked there for several years before relocating to Los Angeles. Gamma most famously did work for two studios in the U.S. — the West Coast operation of Jay Ward (Rocky and Bullwinkle, Hoppity Hooper, etc.) and the East Coast firm, Total Television (King Leonardo, Tennessee Tuxedo, Underdog, et al).

Roman feels that historians have misrepresented Gamma as a studio filled with untrained talent pulled in off the street. That may have been true to some extent when it started but by around '60, which I think is also around when Roman went to work there, it was becoming pretty professional. Everyone can decide for themselves how good the animation was but I meant no offense to Roman or anyone who worked at Gamma. My point was that the rules changed when cartoon production segued from theatrical animation done on one kind of budget to TV animation done on another.

And there's probably an interesting history of Gamma to be written if someone will only interview Roman and the others who are still around who worked there. Is any good animation historian up for the challenge?

While I'm at it: I recently read How Underdog Was Born, a "how we did it" book by the creators of that show, Buck Biggers and Chet Stover. It's an interesting overview of Total Television and a unique look at what one had to do to sell a cartoon show in the sixties. According to Biggers and Stovers, their entry into the cartoon business came about as follows: General Mills was funding the Jay Ward Rocky and His Friends show on ABC and had Gamma Productions in Mexico doing the animation. Jay was always fighting with General Mills and/or the network about jokes that the latter entities thought would sail over the heads of the target audience, i.e., kids.

This had led to delays in scripts and storyboards being sent to Gamma, meaning that sometimes the artists there were sitting around...on the payroll but with nothing to do. That's just about the worst thing that can happen at a cartoon studio. When I worked at Hanna-Barbera, Bill Hanna would do anything, up to and including waterboarding the layout artists, not to have that happen. In the case of General Mills, they told Biggers and Stovers they wanted to have another operation producing cartoons so that Gamma would have always something to work on. (The book doesn't say this outright but the implication is that they also wanted to have another cartoon producer on their team in case Ward had to be dumped or if he demanded more money or anything of the sort.)

Biggers and Stovers went to work and came up with a show called King Leonardo and His Short Subjects, which was the first thing either man had done in animation and the first Total Television series. It's interesting how they went about it, studying the (then-short) list of cartoon shows that were on television because, for example, they felt their lead character had to be an animal that had not appeared on any other cartoon show. They "cast" the show by deciding on famous voices that would be replicated. Leonardo, for example, would be an imitation of actor Eugene Pallette and his loyal aide, Odie Cologne, would sound like Ronald Coleman. Later, when it came time to hire actors, they looked for actors who could do the designated impressions.

At the last minute, just before the final presentation to General Mills, they discovered the company was expecting to see artwork. They didn't have artwork, nor did they have an experienced cartoonist available to do artwork...so Stovers, who drew but had never done that kind of thing before, designed the characters. Somehow, it all worked out and King Leonardo became a pretty big hit...with more shows to follow.

Another point of interest: At one point, Jay Ward and Total were both developing new shows at the same time. The one Total came up with was Underdog...and you may remember that in that show's opening, there's a line where onlookers go...

"It's a bird!"
"No, it's a plane!"
"No, it's a frog!"

And then Underdog soars past and in the lilting voice of Wally Cox, he says, "Not plane nor bird nor even frog...it's just little ol' me — Underdog!"

Well, if we believe this book, that was an inside joke because Biggers and Stovers had been told that they could develop any kind of show they wanted...except a show about a frog. This was because Ward was developing a show about a frog. His would also sell and it would be called Hoppity Hooper.

The book's narrative takes some odd detours but if you're at all familiar with their shows, it's quite interesting. You can order a copy here. If you'll notice, Amazon has one of their great "package deals" where they take two related items — in this case, the book and an Underdog DVD — and sell them for exactly the same price you'd pay if you bought them separately. Wonder how many people don't stop and do the math so they think they're getting a bargain.

• Posted at 12:53 AM · LINK