Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts. Part 13.
Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12.
Within months of arriving at Hanna-Barbera I had greenlit two series in the traditional way. But all I could think about was the idea of doing shorts the way I had pitched to Nickelodeon in the late 80s.
Impressed by the passion of the Trembley brothers (creators of SWAT Kats) I put the series into production under the direction of young Hanna-Barbera veteran Davis Doi, who made the show using the mainstream production techniques of the 80s. The creative team worked very hard, and we had a lot of hope for the show but by distributing it through syndication, which had become the weakest way to find a kids’ audience, ultimately the series failed. (Though there are currently 102,000[!] mentions on the internet.)
In the long run the pick-up of 2 Stupid Dogs affected me, Hanna-Barbera, and in fact, the entire cartoon industry, a lot more. Donovan Cook was a recently graduated CalArts animation whipper snapper who came in the office with half a storyboard. It had a great title, it was pretty funny, and it had a graphic style influenced by classic UPA and Hanna-Barbera that I loved (I was such a newbie to the business that I was completely unaware the style had become the mainstream of CalArts graduates who were more interested in cartoons than feature animation.) Donovan’s energy was infectious, and like an idiot I said “go!” on a 13 episode series that had no distribution commitment, half a storyboard, and a creator who’d barely done anything ever before. (The 2 Stupid Dogs story is interesting in and of itself to those who care, but that’ll be for another time.) We assigned another industry old hand, Larry Huber, to partner with Donovan, which turned out to be one of the smarted moves I’ve made in my career.
Little did I know that the most revolutionary thing I’d done in my animation career to that point was not in green lighting these two series, but in allowing the Trembley brothers and Donovan to actually make the series they wanted to make, rather than what our studio system had in store for them.
Simultaneously with these new productions the studio was finishing off shows sold by the previous administration, and my new partner Jed Simmons was trying like hell to turn around the business battleship that was stuck in the bathtub. If we didn’t turn around the downward trend of the financial graph, there was no way Ted Turner and Scott Sassa were going to let us do anything more, no matter how great it was.
And in the meantime, I was talking shorts to anyone who would sit long enough to listen. Some who listened were studio crew who sat because I was the boss, but thought I was a raving lunatic (from their perspective shorts had died 30 years before). Competitors and network executives politely nodded their heads and told me it sounded great (great for them that is; the faster I started this stupid idea, the faster I’d be shipped out of Hollywood). A lot of young folk were cautiously excited because they’d gotten into the business to make cartoons, even though the industry had actually abandoned cartoons years ago.
(More next time.)
Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12.
