Thread 149692523

Y'know, when you read a lot of animation histories or critiques, you find that the animators that get the most points among the critics are the ones who seem to have invented the most stuff, broke ground or bucked the establishment. Skill at entertainment is not high on the list of praise and I think that's an injustice. (just look at what wins animation academy awards)

Continued from:
https://desuarchive.org/co/thread/144486060/#q144486060

To me, all art and entertainment should aim at communicating with humanity and speaking truth to human nature. Yes, great innovators are to be admired, but so are great pure entertainers. Entertaining at the top levels requires great talent and skill and love of the audience, and most of the audience is not made up of critics or art historians. It's made up of us people who have real lives and all experience universal emotions and situations.

Kids look for certain things in their entertainment that is different than what the adults need, and certainly different than what the critics need. The general perception of cartoons today is that it's a medium for kids, but it wasn't always that way.

Most grown up men aren't that into what cartoons are all about - fantasy, silliness and wild imagination. They certainly aren't looking for art and imaginative flights of fancy.

After all, they have to be mature and bring home the bacon, shave 4 times a day, raise smart ass kids, worry about rent, taxes, Liberals, stocks and pensions. They are slabs of meat riddled with real life stress.

So what do men find entertaining? The essentials: Fear, pain, stupidity and abuse.

These are all universally funny and that's why the 3 Stooges are the most popular comedians in history and Bob McKimson is the greatest cartoon director for the unwashed capitalist masses.

McKimson delivers the goods and I'll bet he made the most popular WB cartoons after Clampett left the place. Mckimson is the Jules White of the cartoon world.

This is top level fear.

Nothing is funnier than a good ass beating with a board...except when it's a beating that's the result of causing a burly male to experience extreme fear.

What else do regular guys need from entertainment?


WHY DONT WE HAVE DISCLAIMERS LIKE THESE?

*** These frame grabs are from a remastered cartoon. The lines have been ridiculously thinned. Note how jagged that makes them. The colors have been "modernized" by taking out all the subtleties and pumping up the primaries and secondaries. It makes the cartoon strobe when you watch it on TV and flattens everything out, but this is all you get to see because we have removed the Film-maker's version from history."

Comments:

Ross Irving said...
I love it when I see someone scared half to death, completely get pissed off and flip out, does something really stupid or starts a fistfight.

Sometimes, I can't help but feel dumb when I laugh at stuff like this.

I try to get these basic feelings in my conceptions for cartoon stories, but I feel as if I can't have a great, clever reason behind a gag like Clampett always seemed to do, it feels generic to me and then I get bored with my ideas.

How would you make basic raw ingredients like these funny?

Has anyone ever had that same dumb feeling I have sometimes?

I've always known cartoons were hard to make, but lately it feels like it's becoming exceedingly difficult!

P.S.- I hope you had an awesome, warm Christmas with your friends today, John.

Weirdo said...
"What else do regular guys need for entertainment?"

They need things that make fun of the politicians that screw them over in taxes, as well as the hippies who also want to take their money. They also need sexy girls to take their mind off of their marital problems.

John, why weren't you on the retrospective of Robert McKimson on The Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 5? You seem to really like and respect his work. Was Michael Barrier jealous of your insights?

Larry Levine said...
When I watch these restored 'candy color' saturated cartoons I don't know to wear sunglasses or lick the screen for a sugar fix!

Sigh, those old AAP prints of yesteryear, how I miss 'em.

I.D.R.C. said...
Like NICO I used to wonder about McKimson's choices in body shapes, especially when you know he knows Clampett's BUGS.

Now I think the reason McKimson's characters are all doughy palookas with fat mugs is because you can beat them real good.

It's too bad there isn't much McKimson on Laserdisc. I don't recall seeing any on TV since the 60's. It's not too easy to see his cartoons outside of those ruined DVD's. Not sure how many there are on there.

I can't stand the tampering on the Looney Tunes sets. It should not feel like pain and abuse just to watch them. Whoever is responsible should be killed. I refuse to give them money. Those DVD's suck balls.

Even though there appears to be screen cutoff, the laserdisc cartoons are much truer to source. --And WHY isn't "true-to-source" what they are striving for? What manner of stupidity explains that?

Maybe Maltin will explain it in his new book, "Of Knobs and Novices".

Dan DeHaan said...
Speaking of thinned line work...er...i mean remastered line work. I picked up the Tex Avery Droopy collection and was quite disappointed with what they did to some of those toons. They gotta treat these babies like the sistine chapel!!! Computer, comschmooter. They looked like they were traced over by a classroom of 8 year olds....8 year olds with down syndrome in fact!

lazy yass said...
John-

I just recently stumbled onto your Blog.
I always was a huge Ren and Stimpy/Spumco fan
After reading ...well...skimming you blog pages,
I got an even more intense respect for you. Now as a human being.

I agree wit 99.99999% of the things you say.
I wouldn't write unless i had a reason to disagree.
So here it is:

I just cant understand OR believe that you think highly of Chuck Jones.
This guy single handedly destroyed more cartoons than my mind can handle.
Incoherent story lines, clunky looking feminine characters, pieces of complete shit.

When I hear that someone is a fan of this “F”ing disaster case, I get the same feeling as when someone praises Neil Young, or classic movies like ‘Citizen Kane’

Neil Youngs voice to me is like listening to someone scratch their nails down a chalk board. HORRIFIC! And Movies like Citizen Kane are absolutely unwatchable.
I have tried to watch some of these amazing classic movies, and I cant keep my eyes open.

I believe these are things people feel they NEED to say to be respected, or sound intellectual. I dont believe for one second anyone really feels it in their hearts.

Chuck Jones has been praised up and down, but so were New Kids on the Block in the 80’s. This guy is the worst of the worst. Especially when he destroyed Tom and Jerry.

If he was on acid at the time, good for him, But I wasn't, and I’m not...So I don't get it.
It isn't funny, it isn't well done, and its totally uncomfortable to watch. Complete torture!

When I was about 10, My Dad decided it was time for me to become mature and start thinking about saving for the future and to forget childish things like cartoons.

He was dumbfounded and frustrated to find me still watching them as a teenager.

Every Saturday afternoon at 5 I would bring a Salisbury Steak TV dinner downstairs and sit on my Dad's chair in front of our "Space Command" color TV set to watch the Bugs Bunny Show.

I'd get through half of the first cartoon when I would hear my Dad stomping down the stairs. "What the Hell are you watching down here? What!? CARTOONS! Aren't you a little old to be watching this crap? When are you gonna grow the F*** up?"

Then he'd kick me out of his chair. "Let me see what you think is so Goddamn funny!"

He'd lean forward and tilt his glasses on his nose so he could see the cartoons better. I had a theory that Dads had trouble making out cartoons; that adults were too serious to see fantasy figures and that they would just see colored blobs floating across their TVs and think the set was broken. But Dad would chuckle at some of the Bugs Bunny or Roadrunner stuff; he could make out the images when someone got hit or blew up. The blobs would come into focus for pain scenes

But then like clockwork, after the first cartoon was over, the middle cartoon would come on and it would start with a Foghorn Leghorn title card. All of a sudden I could see my Dad's eyes focus. Now he'd get excited. He'd sit up and twist around in his chair. "Hey, wait a minute, is that the big chicken??! I love that guy!" I think he thought Foghorn, unlike Bugs and Daffy, was not a cartoon - that he was a real guy because he could totally follow all the gags and action.

As soon as Foghorn started smacking and shoving the dog or other characters around, he would begin to laugh really loud. He also loved Foghorn's loudmouth fast talking sales pitches. He was always trying to convince Henery Hawk that he wasn't a chicken, that the dog or cat was a chicken and this killed my dad. He really thought Henery was a dumb kid, like me.

Dad would laugh so hard at this stuff that his glasses flew off his head.

I liked Foghorn a lot too, but watching my Dad lose it made me laugh even harder.

Foghorn Leghorn is one of the greatest cartoon characters in history because he's such an identifiable type. He's just like our Dads! Totally in command, thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and when he doesn't get his way through reason, he shoves and yells at you till you understand the logic of his inate beliefs.

I always loved when Dad would come down to yell at me about being too old for cartoons, because I knew I could count on Bob McKimson and Foghorn Leghorn to make him bust a gut and prove I was right.

After the cartoon was over, he'd realize that he'd just been laughing at something really immature, be embarrased and then get even madder than when he first came downstairs to yell at me. He'd pick his glasses up off the floor and stab them back onto his head, lunge out of the seat and start back up the stairs. He'd give me one final disgusted glance" This stuff is STUPID! Grow UP!"

But he'd be back next week to laugh his arse off again at the big chicken.

It was a highlight of every week for me. Foghorn was one of the few things we agreed on. We argued about The Beatles VS Elvis but totally were in synch about our beloved big chicken. He brought out the testosterone in us and taught us family values.

Frustration, beatings and yelling are manna for Dads.

Hey, isn't this a cool way to render shadows on a character? I always loved this scene!

Comments:

HemlockMan said...
McKimson was great. The older I get, the more I feel that he was the best of the WB bunch. Yeah, that would have been blasphemy in my youth--in those days we'd argue over who was the best--Clampett or Avery. There was no one else. But even in the days when I didn't even know McKimson's name (I though of him as "the animator who drew big-mouthed-louts"), he was always there in my subconscious, trying to argue his case.

"Pay attention, boy! Listen when I talk to ya! (Kid's about as bright a burnt match stick.)"

J C Roberts said...
My Dad enjoyed a lot of cartoons, Foghorn, Road Runner, and a big fan of Jay Ward. He'd usually get sillier than us watching them, and it stuck with us through the years. I know he would have enjoyed seeing mine.

Foghorn Leghorn was a particular favorite of mine, also. The early ones are McKimson at his best. Sorry there weren't more on the disc sets.

I used to pound down those Salisbury steaks a lot, too. But now they're like ground rubber.

Pilsner Panther said...
Love those stills...! I used to think that McKimson wasn't as great as Avery or Clampett because he didn't go as far, but that opinion was based on watching his later work, like those bland TV show parodies he did in the 50's. Especially in the Leghorns and Bugs Bunnies he made early on, his extremes are really extreme!

My father didn't either love cartoons or hate them, he just seemed to be unaware of them. He'd laugh at human comedians (especially Jackie Gleason), but that was all. Like many of his WWII compadres, he spoke very little and was hard man to read.

Since I don't have a father any more and I'm not one myself, Father's Day, for me, is sort of like an Australian Bushman's relationship to Yom Kippur; That is, nonexistent. But a happy Father's Day to all you guys who managed to find a woman who could put up with you long enough to have a kid.

So do you like John's blog, dislike it or just think it's funny
Personally I think it's a fascinating glimpse into his psyche with very interesting and sometimes insightful takes on the biz
For example
>The thing I couldn't figure out about Tiny Toons, was why use the WB characters at all? And then change their names, ages and even genders. Why not just create new wacky characters? It's just asking for trouble to draw comparisons to the original Looney Tunes - which can't be topped.

>>149695536
While i don't fully support him, the blog is interesting for alot of reasons.

Trevor Thompson said...

Boy, you said it. Foghorn is a dad-like character, which is probably why the later cartoons ( crummier in animation and style though they were ) showed Foggy trying to adopt Miss Prissy's son.

Happy Father's Day from Booo Tooons!

>>149692764
>>149692747
Remind me to my dad. Except he wasn't a sociopath like John K's dad, just conservative

>>149695536
>So do you like John's blog, dislike it or just think it's funny
genuinely think half of what I know about cartooning I learned from his blog

bobblog said...
My Goodness - You hit the nail on the head. My dad used to grumble about looney tunes until he'd watch Foghorn Leghorn cartoons and laugh constantly! well when Foghorn would talk.

The thing is, like you said, it's so easy to relate to Foghorn, at the time we lived in the middle of a forest in northern Ontario and our next door neighbour was a replica of Foghorn and he had to endure his loudmouthed yapping every single day. so I guess my dad would think of him at the time.

Anyway I know i'm just repeating what you said here but I found this post to be so true to reality that I felt i had to comment.

>>149695536
>why use the WB characters at all? And then change their names, ages and even genders. Why not just create new wacky characters?

Niki said...
I still remember watching Foghorn with my dad, and he'd go temporarily insane and start repeating line while laughing like Jack Nicholson's Joker. He actually quotes both Jack and Foghorn a lot, and I mean a LOT

lastangelman said...
Dad loved the Warner Brothers and Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons but didn't watch them very often because it was MOM who cast the disapproving eye over all the Men in the house watching silly cartoons (OTOH, she thought the Peanuts specials were okay to watch, 100% testosterone free)!

thomas said...
On Saturday afternoons, my Dad would take me with him to the local bar. I was 8 or 9 years old.There were regulars there, gents older than my Dad, sitting at the end of the bar, where the tv was. One time, I saw them laughing out loud at Bugs Bunny cartoon. It kind of threw me, that adults were laughing like that, at a cartoon...but it always stuck in my mind.

Much later, it became apparent to me that these gentlemen were old enough to have seen WB cartoons as theatrical releases.

Pilsner Panther said...
Hoo boy... "Peanuts" cartoons! Since Charles Schulz is virtually an American saint, I'd better not say anything critical.

But those were the only animated TV shows that my mother would even tolerate, either, besides Walt Disney's.

In the afternoons when she wasn't around, the two local non-network stations were showing the Fleischer Popeyes and even, for a while, the MGM Averys. I still remember the host of the afternoon cartoon show cracking up after Tex's "Counterfeit Cat" was broadcast. He was laughing so hard that he could barely continue with the show.

Everyone in the studio (off-camera) was laughing, too. Probably laughing just as much at the totally insane cartoon as the fact that they'd gotten away with putting it on the air. Once...

And all these fathers went right home after work and corrupted their own kids! For shame!!!

The stations and that host will remain nameless. Out of respect.

David Germain said...
My dad did nothing to discourage me from watching cartoons. As I recall, he was somewhat of an entertainment buff himself. Well he did manage a movie theatre for a time in the 1970's.

Although, I do remember a jackass in elementary school (who had been left back 2 whole grades) who thought that anything animated was automatically uncool. He wouldn't have looked twice at Foghorn Leghorn I don't think. One glimpse of him being a drawing would be enough for him to turn his head.

There are way too many people in the world like him (heck, one is one too many).

>>149695674
I’ll assume he’s talking hard mode and saying that Buster, Plucky etc. are the same characters as the Looney Tunes despite clearly being separate entities. They made one new wacky character and she was based enough to balance everything out.

>>149695875
They were all intended to be "kid versions of Looney Tunes IPs". At its' very core TTA is derivative of the WB cartoons, down to having a kid version of the fucking Wackyland Dodo.
This is why Animaniacs is better than TTA in every way — it's inspired by the classics, but brings enough new to the table to stand on its' own
It's also funnier than TTA so that helps too
Right the obligatory John excerpt
>Tom Ruegger told me he loved Mighty Mouse and had already imitated it in "A Pup Named Scooby Doo" for Hanna Barbera. Being once an artist himself and having some sympathy for us, he said he believed in the same things as I did, and he set up the studio for WB and Spielberg. Steven himself is a big cartoon fan and wanted cartoons done the way they used to be done at WB's original studio, not some crappy Saturday morning thing that was just like everything else.
>Tom started with my adapted-to-TV unit system and doing layouts in-house (which everyone else was doing overseas) and having artists write the cartoons. I think they still used scripts like we were forced to on Mighty Mouse and that may have been the parasitic worm that eventually devoured the system.
>This was all happening at the same time Spumco was starting production on Ren and Stimpy, and once we got into heavy production I began stealing many of my artists back from Tiny Toons and installing a more advanced artist/unit system. There was a lot of overlap between the 2 studios.
He says at the end "Eddie, you can correct me if I get anything wrong. Or Tom or anyone else that worked on that first season in paradise." but I dunno if that's referring to Tom Minton or Tom Ruegger. Probably the former but who knows Blogspot wiped all the comments on his blog for some reason