My week in Hollywood.
I’ve been traveling across the country for the 15 years I’ve been in the cartoon business, spending a week on the other coast once a month. Invariably the question comes up about what do I do over there, anyhow? So here’s this last week in a nutshell (a day or two at a time; there’s always a lot going on), leaving out the phone calls, emails, and general tinkering around. Whenever I remembered I took a picture.
Monday, September 17:
JetBlue JFK to Burbank, landing about 2:30 PT. After all the airport and rental car fumfering, I head over to Frederator Studios Hollywood HQ at Nickelodeon Studios in Burbank, about 15
minutes away. (We’ve also got space over at Film Roman/Starz,
right across the street from the airport, but I won’t be getting over there this trip.)
I call Will Baron and Austin Buchanan, two graphic designers in Florida who have a cartoon idea, but no one to call. They’re fans of some of our work through the
years and feel we might be able to help. Not sure that I helped, but maybe some of the guidance might keep them from having a head on collision.
5pm, over to the Graciela Hotel, my Burbank home away from home to check in and have drinks (I only drink tea) with Brian Miller, head of production at Cartoon Network and a former colleague from Hanna-Barbera Cartoons and Nickelodeon. We get together a few times a year and it’s always a joy. Brian’s smart and funny, but not smart enough to come work for Frederator.
Dinner was late, around 9 (midnight in my body’s time) and I got together with an old colleague from Turner Broadcasting to catch up on goings on in cable TV.
Tuesday:
Up way early, as usual on the first day of a West Coast trip, call home and catch up on some mail before breakfast with Aaron Simpson, sole proprietor of Cold
Hard Flash, one of the best
and most popular animation blogs, and a cartoon producer with JibJab and Warner Bros. For a couple of years now we’ve been racking our brains trying to figure out ways to work together,
and today’s meal was no exception. I know we’ll find something.
It’s back to Nickelodeon. I try and poke my head in with some of our colleagues and have a great conversation with Random! Cartoons’ Nick exec Claudia Spinelli, who, unfortunately, I’m not working with at the moment. Butch Hartman, Mark
Taylor, Alison Dexter, Eric Coleman are nowhere to be found. But there are a lot of friendly faces from the last ten years to chat with along the way.
Paul Parducci is a writer/director/actor I with back in New York and he comes by every once in a while to fill me in on his web exploits and get a little advice. Right now he’s acting a lot while going to film school, writing his beloved horror movies, and setting himself up to direct some of his scripts.
The 2007 Channel Frederator Awards were graced by the presence of John
Lasseter’s win as Cartoonist of the Year, which wouldn’t
have been possible without The Walt Disney Company’s very kind Howard Green (thanks Rita Street for the intro). It took me eight months to get over to Disney in person to say “Thank you” and wouldn’t you know that Howard would buy me lunch.
When I got back to my office, in quick succession there was a phone call with Random! (and What A Cartoon!) creator G. Brian Reynolds, the weekly development meeting with Eric Homan and Kevin Kolde, and a feature development meeting with writer/director Doug TenNapel,
who’s writing two pictures to produce with Frederator Films.
Whew! And then we had our last Random! Cartoons shorts screening.
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