7 Lessons from David Brown - Part 1 of 4

As a long time fan of producer David Brown's films “The Player,” “Jaws” and “A Few Good Men,” I was happy to read his “Lessons From a Life in Showbiz” in Variety magazine. I've had this clipping over my drawing board for 6 years now.
Since he recently died at age 93, I feel its appropriate to pass on these pearls of wisdom. I myself have only been in showbiz 25 years, a small fraction compared to David Brown, yet I agree 100% with all of his lessons.
There are 28 lessons all together, but that's too many to digest in one blog so I've broken them up into 4 parts, thus:

7 Lessons From David Brown, part 1 of 4

1.An exec who is unwilling to put his job on the line for a project he believes in should lose his job.
2.One person's vision, right or wrong, is worth more than a consensus of 12. Trust passion.
3.Relying on other's opinions is a lazy and disastrous practice. Darryl F. Zanuck ordered readers' opinions to be removed from synopses. Barry Diller, while at Paramount, read full material – books, plays or scripts – before deciding to proceed with production.
4.Satisfying work is never a substitute for living or loving, and yet without it life is barren.
5.Applause at the dailies is no guarantee of the success of a film but a better indication than no applause.
6.Where is it written that an over-50 director with many films to his credit is not preferable to an under-30 director with only a festival award in his resume? Same for writers.
7.Casting in payment for sex is a bad idea. It's been tried by some of the greats of the business and found to lead to poor performance on the screen and in bed.

Blue Sky

I've always been a big fan of Blue Sky Studios, from their blockbuster franchise “Ice Age” films to “Robots” and “Horton Hears a Who.” Plus I have a lot of friends working up there – Karen Disher, Bob Camp, Chris Wedge, Vincent Nguyen, Carlos Saldana, and Peter de Seve.

So I always like to find out what they've been working on. A few months ago Chris Wedge, their esteemed founder and producer, invited me to come up and do a masterclass on animation. It seemed like a weird request because they do great CGI animation and rake in billions of dollars, while I do pencil on paper and rake in hundreds of dollars. But be that as it may it would be a great opportunity to see their new digs in Connecticut (they wanted to escape NY taxes) and reconnect with all my friends.

So last week I took a limo (thanks to Fox Studios) up to their beautiful rolling estate studios and did a couple of masterclasses. In between I went to lunch in Chris's '63 VW bug. “Gee,” I thought, “being a head of a multibillion dollar studio would give him a touch of luxury.” We were joined for lunch by old friend Piet Kroon (“Osmosis Jones”) and Bob Camp (“Ren and Stimpy”). Then Chris did a wonderful introduction to my second show where he related the long ago story of our visit to a festival in Majorca, Spain, where he was attacked by a fleet of jellyfish and as he writhed on to the shore in massive pain I offered to pee on him to relieve the pain.

Afterwards I got a sneak peak at the trailer for “Rio,” their new feature film. Of course, I had to sign a non disclosure agreement on entry – but since the trailer is already playing in cinemas I should be safe from lawsuits. In any case, the film looks fabulous, rich, funny and colorful. It will be released sometime early next year.

Thanks to all my friends at Blue Sky for a great day – Chris, Christian, Nick, and Peter.

Shrek Forever After

I've just returned from a preview screening of the new and supposedly last of the Shrek films, “Shrek, Forever After.” The audience, which was full of kids, thoroughly enjoyed the film. I, however, had serious problems.

Even though the story was quite charming and magical (it was similar to “Its A Wonderful Life”) I felt the artwork was quite ugly. Perhaps they wanted to keep the same style and design of the 1^st installment, so the artists used the same crude models. Or perhaps Jeffrey Katzenberg needed to save a few bucks to give a bright stockholder's report. I don't know why. But after being impressed by the superb design in “How to Train Your Dragon,” how could the same studio make such an amateurish production like this? The characters were stiff, the fabric looked plastic. The colors all wrong. In fact, Shrek was not green. And there was no squash and stretch. It was like the whole production was made in some 2^nd rate CG studio in India. Certainly the story and some of the humor worked, and the audience gave it a nice ovation at the end. But please, Jeffrey, have some good character design! Even the antagonist in the film, Rumpelstiltskin, was terribly designed, and he's the character you can really have fun with. The potential for humor design was huge and they blew it.

I must say that the 3D worked very well and the action scenes were exciting. The music bits were fun especially The Carpenters song, “Top of the World,” as Shrek goes back to being and evil ogre. One little bit of trivia: the pied piper is brought in near the end and the flute music is performed by Jeremy Steig, the son of Shrek's creator, William Steig.

On the Plympton scale I give it 5 out of 10.

Four Pages... and a premiere...

In my opinion, these four pages of notes by Glen Keane are the most important guide for any animator interested in capturing the weight, volume and force of life in their work. I have these pages taped above my desk in order to constantly remind me, and they have been vital while animating my most recent film. I don't pretend to be abel to capture the energy that glen does, but one can only keep trying!





A minor plug: My latest short animated film "Masks" world premiere is June 18th here in New York, at 92y Tribeca. Please try to make it. I'll be posting more information about the event soon, but you can read more or buy tickets at the 92y Tribeca site.

How to Train Your Dragon

As you know I'm a big fan of Pixar films. It seems like every film they make is a gem, while Dreamworks makes visually boring, pandering derivative features like “Shrek” and “Shark Tale.” Then along comes a film like “How to Train Your Dragon.” I for some reason delayed going to the film. Probably because the reviews I read were fair to good and the title sounded like a kiddy pic.

Then the head of Blue Sky, the wonderful Chris Wedge, said I had to go see the film. So I looked in the papers and it was gone from the city. If I wanted to drive to Long Island maybe I could see it. Then I was invited to the Plastic Paper Festival in Winnipeg, Canada where it was playing at a 3D cinema for it's last week before giving way to Iron Man 2. So I raced over there to see the film. WOW!!! What a masterpiece! It had everything: great design, great 3D action sequences, wonderful story, super humor. I was enraptured from beginning to end. This is what animation should be!

I'd always felt that Jeffrey Katzenberg was the genius behind the whole Disney animation resurgence in the 80's and 90's; the wonderful “Kung Fu Panda” by Mark Osborne and John Stevenson showed that Dreamworks was making quality films. But in this new film by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois they really blew away Pixar films. I know it's probably too late to see the film in 3D in your local cinema, but if you have one close-by – please please go see “How to Train Your Dragon.”

Winsor McCay House

Ever since I was a young animation fan and I saw Gertie the Dinosaur on TV, I've been a big fan of Winsor McCay. Over the years, I'd marvel at the great imagery and draftsmanship of that turn of the century genius.
I felt a certain kinship to him for a number of reasons. 1. He began his career as a print cartoonist, like myself. 2. He made every drawing in his film by himself, like myself, and 3. He used surrealism as a source of humor. Also like myself. So when I read that one of his early homes out in Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn was close to being torn down, I rushed out there to see it myself. I was joined by 2 French animation fans, Xavier and Lucie, and took the subway out near Coney Island.
One problem was the address I received was wrong. The number in print was 1181 Voorhies Ave. And after seeing that there was no such address, we showed the picture of the house to a local resident and he pointed up the street 4 blocks to 1811 Voorhies Ave.
What a dump. Unfortunately the 3 storied mansion has long been abandoned so it now houses 8 families of hispanic descent. And as we entered the front door the spanish families hurriedly scattered to their respective apartments in fear. Apparently the famed animator's home is now a multifamily squatters shelter.
But you can imagine the glory that it once was back in the early 1900's. All the architectural details are still there and with a lot of work it can be restored to its former glory. But the neighborhood is changing. What used to be a nice, quiet, residential area is a bustling commercial zone with liquor stores and great chain drug stores.
As much as I hate to say this, it would be very difficult to turn it into a museum simply because it so far from Manhattan (about 1 hour). But if they could get a historic landmark designation that would be fantastic.
I created some sketches of the house when I visited, and also here's some photos. If you're out in the Coney Island area, definitely check it out. The address is 1811 Voorhies Ave, Sheepshead Bay.

BeFilm

Laurence Asseraf has been curating short films for a number of years. She began the Tribeca Underground Festival 6 years ago until Robert De Niro, feeling the pressure, used his lawyers to force her to change the name. Mr. De Niro is nominal head of the Tribeca Film Festival; now a juggernaut of a festival. Why they are afraid of little Laurence Asseraf is beyond me – it's the whole “Bambi meets Godzilla” scenario. So she was forced to change the name to the BeFilm Underground Festival.

I go to a lot of festivals with my short films and uniformly I'm ignored or shunted to the margin and left to beg for any kind of publicity or distribution. That's why its so refreshing to have a festival like the BeFilm Festival, which celebrates short film, both live action and animation. Her and her festival partner, Dmitri, are able to attract great audiences for little jewels of films.

I'm always pissed off when people say that its impossible to make money on short films. Its a cliché that shorts are only to get 3 picture deals in Hollywood. No way! Short films are a great art form. You can say beautiful, powerful, meaningful stories with short films. And besides that, I make most my money on my shorts. I love short film as an art form and as a money maker. So its so wonderful that there's a BeFilm Underground Festival to spotlight short films from around the world.

Natas 1989..

Natas Kaupas changed my life.. I stumbled upon this clip from the 1989 santa cruz vid "streets on fire" and it brought me back to simpler times, before i got into this animation crap, a time of front side wall rides and no complies. It's difficult to explain how revolutionary his style was.. to me it was the beginning of modern street skating. "brave captain" is also an epic song by my old time fav band "firehose". enjoy.

Dirty Duck

People say that I’m the first one to personally animate every drawing in an animated feature film. I’m not an expert on the history of animation so I can’t confirm the validity of that statement. However, a number of people have mentioned a cartoon feature by Chuck Swenson called “Dirty Duck”.

Legend has it that Roger Corman wanted to do a cheaper version of “Fritz the Cat” by the great Ralph Bakshi. So he hired Chuck Swenson and the animation production company Murakami and Wolf.

I had a hell of a time trying to track down a print of the film, but I finally found an old VHS copy in one of those used DVD shops. The print was a little crude (it’s VHS) but I liked the style- very Push Pin pop.

The music was wonderful by Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (aka “Flo and Eddie”, aka “The Turtles”). The plot is very similar to “Fritz the Cat” as the hero is a dweebish Woody Allen type who meets up with the eponymous Duck to search for the meaning of life and sex. Cartoonist Bobby London came up with the original Dirty Duck back in 1970 and apparently Roger Corman just borrowed the name although the character design is quite different.

Checking the credits I noted there were a number of animators that helped Chuck with the film. In any case, it’s a wonder anyone can make an animated feature with such a small crew and low budget. I congratulate Chuck on a wonderful fun animated film. Check it out if you ever get a chance.

Improving your Staging...

Re-post from my old blog, but it's a good way to introduce a continuing discussion on staging here on scribble junkies.. I drew this layout a while back.. and it just didn't sit right with me. I was happy with the drawing, but it didn't help move the characters and the story forward. At this point in the film, the masked men have elevated themselves to predator, and have become a menacing, horrifying force that are gorging themselves on the helpless "little dudes".So I redrew the layout to express this feeling. I placed the little dudes lower in the frame, and I pushed the masked man up high.. utilizing a low camera angle.. a classic and cliche way to make a character more powerful (just look at all the low shots of Darth Vader!). A bonus to the scene now is that I can show some really frightened expressions on the little dude.The re-staging of this shot even influenced the style of drawing.. I drew the masked man in the improved version with a lot more insidiousness and evil.. whereas the previous version, the masked man comes off as cartoonish. the overall composition improved as well. I suppose this is just a reminder to push yourself at every level.. you just never know how you can improve things.

The Hong Kong Film Festival

The Hong Kong International Film Festival has been showing my films, shorts and features, for about ten years so they finally decided to hold a retrospective of my work. And they generously invited me to attend.

Knowing that China in particular and Asia in general have become large buyers of animation I decided to attend, hoping to do a lot of business and to spread the Plympton brand throughout Asia.

One of the best parts was flying for fifteen hours on Cathay Pacific because they had over 300 feature films to choose from for their individual movie screens. I was in film heaven- literally.
I was also put up in the very fancy W Hotel. The magnificent swimming pool overlooked the Hong Kong harbor from the 70th floor so it was quite a vista when every morning I did my 10 laps.

The festival was very well organized and after 34 years has build up a very large and loyal audience. I was totally shocked when I visited my first screening. It was large and packed full of screaming fans. They knew all about my films and me. I was so excited; I gave all of the attendees a personal drawing that took almost an hour.

I then did another appearance at the Hong Kong University film class and that was packed! I was in China about proper 8years ago and sold some of my DVD’s and my guess is that they’ve been pirated like crazy and so I probably have an underground following all over China.
In fact on my off day I visited the bazaar where they had countless stalls of genre DVD’s, very obscure stuff and Hollywood films. Of course they were all illegal but that’s the norm in China. So I guess I’m one of the pirated directors now.

In any case I was happy for the adulation especially in the home of one of my favorite brands of film Hong Kong cinema.

On the scale of 1-10, I give the Hong Kong International Film Festival a 9. Thanks guys for the great time.

Planet 51

I’m on my flight returning from a wonderful festival and the United plane has a wide variety of films available. I see Planet 51 is one of the selections available on the flight entertainment program.

I try to see every animated feature released- even the films made for kids. I believe one can always learn something even from badly made films. Plus, who knows maybe I could discover a lost gem like “Mind Games” from Japan.

I know the airplanes are not the desired screening room for animated films, the picture is small; there are kids screaming and many other annoying distractions like pilot’s announcements and such. But I’m an intrepid cartoon fan.

The film “Planet 51” has a very clever concept of what if we saw an alien invasion from an alien planet point of view and humans were the aliens.

The design is quite good and handsome. They took America in the 50’s as their style format, which is appropriate since in those time there was a preponderance of Martian attack movies and everyone was afraid of invasion from the commies and other aliens.

The problem with the film is the story. The gags just don’t work. They’re very clichéd and tame. They didn't really try anything fresh. One reason might be that it’s a Spanish production and even though it’s made in English I don’t believe the it translated very well.

However, I do recommend the film for its wonderful set design and coloring.

I give it a 6 out of 10 on the Plympton scale.

Monstra Animation Festival

I’m on an airplane with a very obnoxious kid sitting behind me screaming and kicking my seat back, so it’s comforting to pitch about my wonderful 2 and half days in sunny Portugal.

I was supposed to be there for 4 days but a hurricane hit JFK on the night of my departure and all of the flights were cancelled. Then the next night the entire flight crew was in a bus crush so we left many hours late and I missed my connecting flight. However, all the hassles were worth it.

The Monstra animation fest is a terrific event, set in a wonderful 50s cinema (Sao Gorge) in downtown Lisbao where I was met by the director Fernando Garelito. He was able to invite a very select group of filmmakers to Lisbon: Ratsk Ciric, Olga and Priit Parn, Vladimir Leshir, and animator turned live action director Micheala Paulatova.

My Master Class was a big success as were my screenings, for some reason I’m very popular in Portugal. They had all my DVD’s Portuguese for sale- plus some local work that I did the later for.

But for the best was the city itself, Portugal was neutral during WWII so many of its most beautiful building are gloriously intact. It seems that the architects were high on Baroque and Rococo architecture. It’s almost like an acid trip discovering some amazing decoration building down narrow dark sides streets. The last day was my favorite I got a ride to the show and wandered through ancient village, swum in the mild ocean and had fresh fish at one of the many seaside restaurants.

Then that night Gavelito took us out to a fado music club. Wow, what emotion and sadness, it’s like Portuguese country western music. If Tammy Lynette were from Lisbon she’d be a fado musician. So now Portugal is one of my favorite destinations and I give the Monstra Festival a 9 (out of 10)

“Battle of The Sexes, Animated”

As you probably know Signe and I are famous for doing animation shows together. Well now we’ve joined forces again for our piece d’resistance.

It’s “The Battle of The Sexes, Animated!” sponsored by the Woodstock film festival and IFC. We’re putting together 5 of our all time sexiest films to show at the IFC on April 12 and having a cartoon smackdown!

“Chirpy” by John Goras one of the sickest animated films ever made and believe me I’ve seen a lot of sick films.

“Roof Sex” by PES, a classic stop motion look at furniture love.

“Cosmic Honeymoon,” a twisted short dealing with perverted space aliens by Ondrej Rudavsky.

And my classic “How to Make Love to a Woman,” an X rated version of “How to Kiss.”

And the kicker is the audience gets to decide who makes the sexiest cartoons, chicks or dudes.

So come on men, lets show the babes that guys really know how to make cartoon raunch. Come on down to IFC at 4^th Street and 6^th Ave on April 12- 9:00 PM and clap your asses off. Who knows you may even get laid.

MOCCA arts festival

Mocca, the “Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art” has for the last few years held and an arts festival. I’ve been going for approximately 10 years and I’ve always had a ball.

It used to be in early June but last year it was so hot that one of the exhibitors passed out on the street from heat stroke. So this year they’ve moved it to April 10-11 and instead of the Puck building, it’s now at the 69^th Regiment Armory at 25^rd St. and Lexington. This is the place I used to spend every Tuesday night marching and drilling for 4 years when I was in the National Guard – to escape going the Vietnam, so I have a lot of bad memories there.

But this year I’ll have a booth and hopefully I’ll be able to cleanse away all those evil spirits.

In any case rush on down there and bring your friends! It’s one of the hot events of the year. All the best alternative comics and animators are there. Last time I went I got to hang out with Artie Spiegelman, Lynda Barry and Charles Burns.

This year they have Kyle Baker, Jamie Hernandez, Gahan Wilson, Bill Plympton and the great Frank Miller!

You can pick up signed copies of the coolest books in the world.

And be sure to stop by my table and see all my new cool stuff and get a free cartoon.