I’ve been urging Mike Barrier to post his excellent interview with Warner director/”Senior Animator” Bob McKimson for some time, and he finally did. Click here to read it.
Category Archives: people
Mark Kausler Interview
Do yourselves a favor and listen to the Animation Guild interview with the living animation legend Mark Kausler. It’s an insight into how endlessly fascinating and informative a conversation with Mark is, something I had the pleasure of experiencing last March when I visited him with Jerry Beck. (That’s him next to only part of his cartoon film collection. You can see the 35mm rewinds he bought from Don Bluth behind him too – literally everything he has is a piece of history!) Be sure to look at his blog, where he always has great cartoon art and thoughts on display.
Filed under classic animation, modern animation, people
David H. DePatie Interview
Fellow youthful animation historian Charles Brubaker has been busy at work interviewing the surviving personnel of the DePatie-Freleng studio. The first of the interviews he’s posted is with DePatie himself: part one here and part two here (part three forthcoming). Charles’s research will be a welcome addition given the lack of information available about the studio. Leonard Maltin unwisely chose to write off the whole studio by just stating in Of Mice and Magic that the cartoons got worse every year.
For the record, I love the first few years of DePatie-Freleng cartoons, the Pink Panther series specifically (theatrical animation’s last creative burst). They serve as a reminder that limited animation doesn’t have to be ugly, unfunny, and badly timed. A cartoon like Dial “P” for Pink is as sharp as any of the better Bugs Bunny shorts Freleng directed, only done for a lot less money. Even Bill Lava’s soundtrack is a great exercise in blending the two Mancini themes.
It’s a shame though that Charles didn’t ask DePatie why the Pink Panthers are usually very funny while the Daffy Ducks the studio did were sheer eye rape.
Filed under classic animation, people
Why?
Haven’t had time to screw around with a website for some time now and still really don’t. I promise to post something cool soon. I just wanted to pop out of the woodwork to say how I find it surprising that none of the animation websites I regularly read covered the announcement that Brad Bird is directing Mission: Impossible IV for Paramount. You’d think that the fact that America’s leading animated feature director is moving to live-action franchises, and that it’s confirmed, without a doubt, that Pixar will never make a movie worth watching again, would be headline news and serve as fodder for the discussion of whether or not it’s impossible for a director with real ambition to be a success in mainstream animation. Oh well.
Filed under modern animation, people
