Bill Rabkin, who I haven't seen in way too long, writes about ideas for Diagnosis Murder (on which he worked) which didn't get off the ground...including a proposed animated episode with Scooby Doo.
The eminently sensible Colleen Doran posts some tips on how to spot a fraudster. There are many out there, seekling to prey on eager writers and artists...and as the economic downturn continues to turn down, there will be many more out there offering "opportunities" that you should turn down.
Joe Conason with the radical suggestion that corporations in America should actually be paying all the taxes that the law says they're supposed to pay.
I wasn't going to link to any more articles about the AIG bonuses but David Sirota has a good summary of one of the things that bugs me about the whole situation.
This coming Tuesday, there's a kind of Chuck Jones Celebration on Turner Classic Movies. They'll be running a new documentary, Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood, created by John Canemaker and Peggy Stern. This film, which I haven't seen yet, is built around one of the last filmed interviews with Jones and it includes clips from cartoons he directed and new animation based on drawings he made during the conversation.
They'll also be running a mess of short cartoons directed by Mr. Jones and the not-often-seen feature he did in 1969, The Phantom Tollbooth. The first time I met Chuck was shortly after that film had been released and he was explaining to a small group of his admirers why it had disappeared suddenly from theaters...so suddenly, in fact, that few of us had the chance to see it then. I can't quote the whole explanation now but it was a long narrative about high-level takeovers at MGM and of one regime promising theaters a slate of "kids' movies" for matinees and how by the time the film was done, there was new management reneging on that commitment. It sounded like he was blaming "the suits" for its failure but then he added, with a Bugs Bunny twinkle of candor, "...and I guess the film I made just wasn't good enough to overcome all that."
It's not Jones at his best or even his near-best but C-grade Jones is still better than a lot of folks operating at the tops of their games...and it's also, like I said, not a film you get to see often. A DVD release is said to be on the horizon but I think they've been saying that for a while.
TCM is also, of course, showing some of the best Jones work, including (inevitably) What's Opera, Doc?, One Froggy Evening and Duck Amuck. In fact, the full schedule is here. I wouldn't count on the short cartoons starting exactly when they say they're going to start.
Yesterday, I linked to an interview with Frank Welker, the workingest voice actor in the history of mankind. It turns out that the interview was swiped from the website of the folks who actually conducted it. I have deleted that item. This link will take you to the same interview but on the proper site. And this link will take you to Part Two of it.
That's right: I was fooled by an imitation of a Frank Welker interview.
Hey, you know what today is? It's International "Talk Like William Shatner" Day. And don't worry if you don't know how to. My pal Maurice LaMarche, who invented this most holy of holidays, will teach you. (If you can't master the voice, just get yourself a bad toupee and say yes to every single job anyone ever offers you...)
March 23, 2009
