This cartoon short is The Interview (1961). The animated interviewee is Shorty Petterstein, a beatnik character/alter ego created by “sound artist” Henry Jacobs. Jacobs is an interesting and still rather obscure character who palled around with Lenny Bruce and Alan Watts, hosted one the world’s first “world music” radio programs, and experimented with audio collages and tape manipulation way back when such things were a time-consuming pain in the butt!
WFMU has posted MP3s of all the tracks from The Wide Weird World of Shorty Pettersteinhere.
Henry Jacobs has a website where you can purchase an autographed “Best Of” DVD. Listen to Henry’s 2005 interview for NPR here.
Ernest Pintoff directed The Interview; he’s best known in animation circles for his work at UPA, Flebus at Terrytoons, and his direction of Oscar winner The Critic —with voiceover by Mel Brooks. Len Glasser did the designs—he worked on Tom Terrific at Terrytoons.
Henry Jacobs also contributed to an early 70s oddball animated program called The Fine Art of Goofing Off, which used diverse animation techniques to illustrate meandering free association about the philosophy of pointlessness. 60’s counterculture figures including Alan Watts, Victor Moscoso, and comedy troupe The Committee also contributed to this artifact of Public Television’s early and experimental years.
After the jump, some excerpts from The Fine Art of Goofing Off: [Read more…]
The Daily Mail is running a story about the top ten “tear jerker” films of all time. I thought it was interesting that three of the top ten films listed were animated, with two in the top three, and an animated film took the top spot.
When supervillain Tan-Gu invites the world’s most notorious bad guys to his island fortress to compete in an Olympic-style tournament of evil, the fate of the free world hangs in the balance. For the Anti-Evil Task Force there’s only one man who can stop Tan-Gu and save mankind: Kung Fu Magoo!
This feature length film stars the beloved Mr. Magoo and his 12 year-old nephew Justin as they dodge giant robotic spiders, ninjas on jet skis, and Tan-Gu’s mutant “Beasteens” (half animal, half teenage girl!) — and that’s before the Evil-lympics even begin! With competitions like the 100-meter Destructive Rampage, Laser Cage Wrestling, and the Evil Egg and Spoon Race, Justin must work double-time to help his uncle stay in the competition and avoid danger at every turn.
I haven’t seen the film, but I can’t imagine Mr Magoo doing Kung Fu. It sounds like someone put Mr Magoo, Kung Fu Panda, X Men, and “Scooby’s All Star Laff-A-Lympics” in a blender.
Long before he wished that he had Jessie’s girl, Rick Springfield was the star of his own cartoon, called “Mission:Magic”. The show was produced by Filmation, and was supposed to cement Rick’s place as a teen idol.
The cartoon was a strange premise: a teacher uses a cat sculpture and a magic chalkboard to transport her and her students to another dimension, where they meet Rick Springfield travel through time and space, solving mysteries along the way.
The show aired in the US from 1973 through 1975, even though there were only 16 episodes created.
For no other reason than folks love leaving comments on the Frederator blogs for Thurop Van Orman’s non-Frederator Flapjack show over on Cartoon Network…
I just wanted to pass along this exclusive interview w/ Neil Gaiman a friend of mine did for LA Weekly!
Turns out he has a cool book (out, and or coming soon?) called The Graveyard Book, which is sort of like a “re-imagined version Rudyard Kipling’sThe Jungle Book, which tells the story of Nobody “Bod” Owens, who wanders into a graveyard following the murder of his family and is raised by a community of ghosts that teaches him the way of the dead.”
“Fred4Change” by Jeaux Janovsky, from Channel Frederator, Episode #147
Everyone who watches Channel Frederator regularly is familiar some of Jeaux Janovsky’s great art. Now, New Yorkers will get a chance to see some of his art next week. Meet Jeaux in person(!) as part of the ART+ACTION=OBAMA 08 show at Toy Tokyo in the East Village, Thursday, October 17, 7-11pm. Be there and be square.
Floyd Bishop posted the other day about Dustin McLean’s recent parody of one of the most famous animated video of all time: A-Ha’s “Take On Me”. Who can forget its sketchy rotoscope stylings and corny comic book love story?
(You can go to Dustfilms to find out more about the parody creator, btw.)
This made me curious about the folks who worked on the animated portion of the original video. I found some additional info:
The animation was done by married couple Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger. Patterson studied experimental animation with Jules Engel at Cal Arts and worked for many years at Rhythm and Hues. You can see his award-winning student film Commuter (1981) here–this is where he developed the techniques he put to good use in “Take On Me” (1985).
Patterson and Reckinger were also responsible for the animated portion of Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract” video, which was inspired by the Gene Kelly/Jerry the Mouse dance sequence from the film Anchors Aweigh.
Then I was delighted to find a side-by-side comparison of the man/mouse number from Anchors Aweigh with a recent parody from Family Guy where Jerry is replace by Stewie! (Watch it at the top of this post.)
