Frank Tashlin’s VAN BORING (HE NEVER SAYS A WORD)
September 30th, 2008 by Scott Marks
An after work cocktail was never far from Van Boring’s (or Tashlin’s) thoughts.
An article in this morning’s edition of The Stripper’s Guide (a blog dedicated to the history of the American newspaper comic strip) caught my attention. It had been ages since I considered Frank Tashlin’s early work as a comic strip artist and the time seemed right to talk about this chapter in the career of my favorite comedic filmmaker.
Where I come from, Francis Fredrick von Taschlein (no wonder he went by the name Tish-Tash) is a cultural icon. I was with Tash in diapers, watching his Looney Tunes on my parent’s ancient black-and-white Philco. The films he made with Jerry Lewis followed me through adolescence and as a budding young cinephile, and his CinemaScope masterpieces The Girl Can’t Help It! and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? forever changed the way I look at movie comedy. As an adult, nary a day passes where I don’t view some aspect of our modern world through Tashlin-colored glasses.
Tashlin’s strip was so popular that it spawned its own doll!
Everyone knows that Frank Tashlin was a brilliant animator who later went on to apply his squash-and-stretch sensibilities to live-action features. He began his career in animation on Paul Terry’s Aesop’s Film Fables. In 1932, after a brief stint with Amadee Van Beuren, Tashlin moved to Termite Terrace where his rapid ability to crank out drawings made him one of Leon Schlesinger’s star players. What many of you may not know is that while at Warner Bros., Tash started up his own “silent” comic strip in 1934 called Van Boring (He Never Says A Word).
At first glance, the squat, bald-headed Van Boring resembles jazz band leader Paul Whiteman. In a 1971 interview, Tashlin told animation historian Michael Barrier, “We used to make cartoons (of our) bosses all the time, of Van Beuren, around the studio. We were always doing anti-Van Beuren things. We developed a character, which looked something like him. Well, I started using him in magazine cartoons, as a throwaway character, and then when I came out (to L.A.), I developed him as a pantomime comic strip.”
To the best of my knowledge, Tashlin never appeared in any of his live action features, but a fellow named “Tish-Tash” was a regular in the Van Boring strips. According to Michael Barrier, Van Boring’s lanky, stringy-haired accomplice “was a recurring character in Van Boring, especially in the continuity that made up its last few months, when Tish and Van were marooned on a desert island with two children, Nip and Tuck.”
Tashlin was fired from Warner Bros. when he refused to give Schlesinger a piece of his comic strip revenues. “He wanted a cut of it,” Tashlin remembered, “and I said go to hell. So he fired me.” At that time, Tash had his sights set on bigger fish: “The thing that I had in mind then was to have my own cartoon studio. That’s what I wanted.” After leaving Warners in 1934, Tashlin worked for Ub Iwerks’ animation studio and as a gagman for producer Hal Roach. In 1936, after Van Boring had been put to rest, Tashlin returned to Warner Bros. where he went on to direct several comedic masterpieces, most notably the existential antics of Porky Pig’s Feat.
See more Van Boring comic strips here.
Frank Tashlin’s “Porky Pig’s Feat” (1943)
Tags: Animation, Animator, Cartoon, cartoonist, Comic Strip, Frank Tashlin, frank tashlin van boring, porky pig's feat, van boring, VideoFiled Under Image Blog
Dig A Hole: DAVEY AND GOLIATH co-creator Richard Sutcliffe
May 22nd, 2008 by Scott Marks
Gee, Davey, Richard Sutcliffe died.
Along with Gumby creators Art Clokey and Ruth Clokey Goodell, Dick Sutcliffe devised the religious claymation TV show Davey and Goliath. He died May 11in Dallas of complications from a stroke. He was 90.
If it looks like a Gumby and walks like a Gumby, it must be a Gumby, right? Not necessarily. I don’t ever remember Gumby feeding his orange ass Pokey a theological dissertation before mounting him.
Davey and Goliath was a Christian-themed children’s show that creeped the hell out of me. While Gumby was a source of great entertainment, even as a kid I could smell D&G’s religious propaganda a mile away.
In 1959, the United Lutheran Church contracted with Clokey Productions to produce the series. The stop-motion sermon about a suburban boy and his talking dog aired early Sunday mornings on Chicago’s Very Own WGN. The Church provided the show free of charge to any station willing to air them, so no wonder ‘GN took them up on their offer. The shows were aired without commercial interruption.
Sutcliffe launched the series to spread a religious message without losing younger viewers with overly complicated concepts, his daughter, J.T. Sutcliffe, told The Dallas Morning News. By “overly complicated concepts” I assume Ms. Sutcliffe meant character animation, narrative structure and moralist decla(y)mation.
The stories followed a dim formula that was even more rudimentary than it’s brightly lit backgrounds. Each week Davey would encounter a moral obstacle that could only be resolved through inspirational dogma that was generally delivered by a dog.
To a five-year-old Jew, these characters offered more dread than solace. Long before I grasped the concept of Valium, these brainwashed zombies appeared to be self-medicated.
Church leaders approached Sutcliffe about using television to reach young people when he was director of Lutheran radio and television ministry in New York. He chose a format that would offer sound theology while being entertaining, his daughter told the newspaper. One out of two ain’t bad.
Ironically, the voice of Davey’s father was provided by Hal Smith, better know as Otis the Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show.
Tags: Animation, Cartoon, Claymation, DAVEY AND GOLIATH, Dick Sutcliffe, Hal Smith, Obituary, Propaganda, Religion, Richard Sutcliffe, VideoFiled Under Obituaries
The Addams Family’s Uncle Fester shows you how to watch a movie
April 2nd, 2008 by Scott Marks
No single cartoon, for that matter no single frame of celluloid best captures the spirit I bring with me to the movies.
That’s me at the end of Men of Boy’s Town when Pee-Wee’s little dog Bohunk gets flattened by an eight-wheeler or when a simple “Hiya” from the old Bambino allows crippled little Denny to walk in The Babe Ruth Story. Hell, I look this way at the end of Terms of Endearment.
This New Yorker magazine cartoon attached itself to me when I was a kid doing “research” on The Addams Family TV show. A local bookseller had a compilation of Charles Addams drawings which were much darker and more complex that their cutting edge small screen counterpart. Before long I had amassed a complete collection of first editions that I still consult whenever I feel the need of convulsive laughter.
The joke is that Uncle Fester finds humor in what makes others weep. I took the interpretation one step further. In my mind, Uncle Fester had a built-in bulls–t detector that instantly sees through narrative contrivance. While the pezzanovante lap up Hollywood’s maudlin goo, Fester sits with fingers pressed to his lower lip enjoying a private chuckle. Since 1990, not a week at the movies has passed where some cloying plot gambit hasn’t caught me duplicating this panel.
Tags: Cartoon, Charles Addams, Chas Addams, Drawing, The Addams Family, The New Yorker, Uncle FesterFiled Under Image Blog
ROBOTS / Chris Wedge (2005)
January 19th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Robots (2005)
Directed by Chris Wedge
Screenplay by: Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel from a story by Jim McClain & Ron Mita
Running Time: 91 min.
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Rating: 
“We’re cartoon characters. We can do whatever we want!” – Heckle…or was it Jeckle?
Hanna & Barbara’s The Flintstones transformed The Honeymooners into primitive cartoon characters in just about every sense of the word. Since then, the majority of animated TV shows and features have transgressed into little more than dialogue-driven sitcoms. Instead of logic-defying lunacy or surrealism squashed-and-stretched, we were left with upright (and uptight) characters exchanging set-ups and punch lines. It was the anthropomorphic equivalent of reverse angles and zoom lenses.
Even less thought went into the creation of a cartoon universe. Look at the cost-cutting rock/tree/house backgrounds behind Fred and Wilma next time you see them driving. Was this what Chuck Jones meant by “limited animation” when he coined the term for his groundbreaking 1942 The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall? The cheapening was a long time coming and cost-effective cyclical drawings were destined to endlessly repeat themselves.
With the exception of their prehistoric inventions, The Flintstones really didn’t need to be animated. Watch Brian Levant’s live-action update and you will see there isn’t much Fred and Barney do that Goodman and Moranis weren’t able to recreate on the Universal backlot. Imagination took a back seat to necessity. Network and cable outlets starved for filler sparked a resurgence in televised animation. No matter how funny you may find The Simpsons, it is still animated dialogue; radio with pictures. Character movement and animation had all but ceased. By comparison, South Park makes Clutch Cargo and Gumby look like Fantasia. What point is there to movement-less moving pictures?
Theatrical animation hasn’t fared much better. Disney was still on top, but the period between The Jungle Book, Walt’s final project, and The Little Mermaid reveal a marked loss in quality. Of the eight features released between 1970 and 1989 only The Black Cauldron came close to upholding the studio’s legacy. The cartoon powerhouse, forever capable of easily overcoming all competitors, was about to encounter a few spitballs.
Continue reading ROBOTS / Chris Wedge (2005)
Tags: Animation, Cartoon, Film Review, Robin Williams, ROBOTSComing Soon: Jerry Lewis’ “The Nutty Professor: The Cartoon”
September 5th, 2007 by Scott Marks
While researching the name of one of Kelp’s class on imdb.com, I noticed a 2007 entry for an animated version of The Nutty Professor.
Oh, Yeah!
According to their plot summary, “The grandson of professor Julius Kelp, who created a potion to transform his personality, gets his hands on his grandfather’s secret elixir and unleashes his destructive alter ego.”
If you think about it, The Nutty Professor could be the first pro-drug film. After ingesting “the formula,” Julie endures a hallucinogenic nightmare only to emerge as an acid-flashback version of his alter ego complete with shocking pink shirt and electric blue Sy Devore duds. Even without the acid, the rich Technicolor hues give the sensation of watching trails drift and fade as each character moves across the screen.
One of Kelp’s entries into his diary sings the praises of illegal drugs. In spite of the obnoxious Buddy Love, Stella still manages to secure a couple of bottles of the stuff before the final fade. Admittedly, Stella is in it more for the sexual animal the formula brings out in Julius. I’m certain that all of this will be dealt with in the cartoon remake.
This is not Jerry’s first venture into the land of squash-and-stretch. In 1970, Filmation did 18 episodes of a Saturday morning series for ABC called Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down. It followed the premise of so many successful Jerry Lewis movies: The Idiot works at an employment agency and each week he’s assigned an impossible job that he invariably screws up.
No release date has been set for the DVD which Jerry produced and loaned his voice to.
Tags: Cartoon, Jerry Lewis, Nutty ProfessorFiled Under Rants
FIDDLESTICKS / Ub Iwerks (1930)
February 2nd, 2005 by Scott Marks
Fiddlesticks (1930)
Directed by: Ub Iwerks
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Genres: Cartoon
After breaking with Disney, Ub Iwerks opened his own studio and introduced the world to his first solo cartoon creation, Flip the Frog.
Flip would go on to appear in 38 cartoons, over half the output of Iwerks’ studio. From the opening pan left we are introduced to a horizontal universe with nothing to offer in the way of depth construction. Our hero begins by hopping lily pads, a realistic trait that is quickly eliminated as Flip spends the rest of the short walking (and dancing) upright. A couple of buttons and a red bow-tie further undermine Flip’s resemblance to a real frog.
Without a plot to speak of, this Paleozoic venture into sound and color had only its star to rely on. Flip’s sole raison d’etre in this short is to entertain two audiences: the one in the theater and an animated woodland gathering of insects, skunks and rodents.
Credit Iwerks with completely avoiding repetition; Flip may cavort a bit too long, but he never makes the same move twice. At the piano, Flip is accompanied on the violin by a Mickey look-alike and frequently interrupted by the spit from a tobacco-chewing robin. This is about as funny as the short gets, but as with the pioneer efforts of the Lumieres, Iwerks was more interested in movement (and characterization) than narrative storytelling. Besides, there are few things more charming at this point in cartoon history than the joyful dance that Flip, the mouse, the piano and its stool put on.
Flip and his piano carry on a rather perverse relationship. During a sad interlude, Flip offers a handkerchief to blow its keys in. The compassion goes one step further as the frog begins to queer off on the piano’s leg. This causes the baby grand to give Flip a well-placed boot, only to have the frog finish by punching out a crescendo and ultimately kicking its teeth out.
Long on seamless execution but lacking in character personality and development; a Disney cartoon void of Uncle Walt’s flair for personification and storytelling.
Rating:
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