ASIFA-Hollywood: The International Animated Film Society
Friday, October 29, 2004
J. Stuart Blackton
My son Tobias came home from his high school video production class this week and told me that his teacher has shown a clip of Gertie the Dinosaur.
Toby has always been smarter than me when it comes to matters like this. Or maybe he doesn`t have my passion about early days of animation.He said that Gertie was the first animation and that might be on the test!
Did you tell him that he was wrong? Did you mention J. Stuart Blackton
or Emile Cohl? I said trying not to raise my voice and failing.
I didn`t want to contradict him in front of the class.
I hounded my poor son for most of the week and finally printed out the first 6 pages of my animation timeline for him to take in. He got his teacher aside and gave him the timeline. The teacher said that he had gotten his information from the same video from which he got the Gertie clip. I don`t doubt it.
Everybody in the U. S. conveniently forgets Emile Cohl and J. Sturat Blackton. I fear that the overlooking of Emile Cohl may have more to do with him being French. Stefan Kanfer in Serious Business dismisses Cohl in one short paragraph.
But then why is Blackton overlooked? I don`t think it has anything to do with him being born in England because most people are not aware that he was not born in the U. S. A.
I love the work of Winsor McCay, Gertie, Nemo, Steve the Mosquito, the Flying House, the Pet, but I have always been a little put out by his bold faced claim of having invented the animation process. Emile Cohl use to storm `sure McCay invented the animation process, 3 years after I did`. But then Cohl overlooked the work of Blackton.
Gertie the Dinosaur wasn`t even Mccay`s first animation. He did both Little Nemo 1911 and How a Mosquito Operates in 1912 before doing his Gertie animation for his vaudeville act. By that time Emile Cohl had created some 20 animations including the almost completely lost to fire George McManus comic strip adaptations of the Newly Weds animations that he did at Eclair Studio in Fort Lee, N.J.
If you want to count the cut out animation in J. Stuart Blackton`s Humorous Phases of a Funny Face as the first true animation then we have an animation created 5 years before McCay`s first animation and 8 years before Gertie.
Emile Cohl
Any way you look at it McCay`s title card claim of being the inventor of the animation process is untrue. But like a lot of untruths that are repeated over and over again this one has found its way into too many minds, books, and videos.
larry@agni-animation.com
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Over Protective On the Front Lines
Last year I was completely overjoyed when rare Disney wartime footage finally became available on DVD in the form of On the Front Lines, the War Years. I looked forward to being able to share Education For Death, Victory Through Air Power, and Der Feuhrer`s Face with my students.
The problem is that I couldn`t. I think that there is a slight touch of corporate paranoia going on over at the Mouse House legal department about anything that might even in the slightest be seen a maybe somehow tarnishing the Disney image.
Because somebody sure decided that it was very important to make the DVD user interface almost unusable by ramming disclaimer after disclaimer down everybody`s throats before thinking of letting us watch the treasures that we paid for.
Somebody made sure that we would all know that these films were made during a war and that they make fun of our war time enemies using rascal stereo types. Like the people that buy this DVD wouldn`t know that? I don`t think anybody is going to confuse this with a babysitter video.
Don`t get me wrong. I love Leonard Maltin and respect his writings and great contributions to animation. I just didn`t want to be forced to watch him giving corporate spin doctoring under the guise of introductions over and over and over again.
Did you know that if you dare to try to skip the intro the DVD locks up and then you get to watch the intros all over again?
I wanted to show my class Education For Death, Victory Through Air Power, and Der Feuhrer`s Face. What I got to show them was 3 introductions by Leonard Maltin, a lot of frustration and Education For Death.
Think guys, who are your audience for this product? We are not 5 year olds that are going to be traumatized out by seeing Donald Duck in a swastika cap. We are not going to stop coming to Disneyland because of our reactions to 60 year old propaganda films.
Most of us are mature adults and a fair share of us are educators trying to use your DVD`s to teach students. If you were trying to avoid bad will you sure picked the wrong way to go about it!
larry@agni-animation.com
The problem is that I couldn`t. I think that there is a slight touch of corporate paranoia going on over at the Mouse House legal department about anything that might even in the slightest be seen a maybe somehow tarnishing the Disney image.
Because somebody sure decided that it was very important to make the DVD user interface almost unusable by ramming disclaimer after disclaimer down everybody`s throats before thinking of letting us watch the treasures that we paid for.
Somebody made sure that we would all know that these films were made during a war and that they make fun of our war time enemies using rascal stereo types. Like the people that buy this DVD wouldn`t know that? I don`t think anybody is going to confuse this with a babysitter video.
Don`t get me wrong. I love Leonard Maltin and respect his writings and great contributions to animation. I just didn`t want to be forced to watch him giving corporate spin doctoring under the guise of introductions over and over and over again.
Did you know that if you dare to try to skip the intro the DVD locks up and then you get to watch the intros all over again?
I wanted to show my class Education For Death, Victory Through Air Power, and Der Feuhrer`s Face. What I got to show them was 3 introductions by Leonard Maltin, a lot of frustration and Education For Death.
Think guys, who are your audience for this product? We are not 5 year olds that are going to be traumatized out by seeing Donald Duck in a swastika cap. We are not going to stop coming to Disneyland because of our reactions to 60 year old propaganda films.
Most of us are mature adults and a fair share of us are educators trying to use your DVD`s to teach students. If you were trying to avoid bad will you sure picked the wrong way to go about it!
larry@agni-animation.com
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Soup Time
Mark Evanier http://www.newsfromme.com/ has this thing on his blog where he puts up a picture of a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup when he is too busy to update his blog. I like that. I also like that fact that he has a link to Pogo Possum Political Postings. http://www.pogopossum.com/ Something much needed in this political day and rage.
If it wasn`t for the Disney strike Walt Kelly might have worked his whole career in animation and we never would have met the enemy that is us.
larry@agni-animation.com
If it wasn`t for the Disney strike Walt Kelly might have worked his whole career in animation and we never would have met the enemy that is us.
larry@agni-animation.com
Sunday, October 24, 2004
Classroom Truth vs. Corporate Truth
I spent all last Friday morning ripping down the idols of innocent children that have put their trust in me. Stated in other words, I was teaching the history of animation to college kids.
There is a certain sadistic pulling-the-wings-off-flies aspect to teaching the History of Animation. Muybridge, W.K.L. Dickson, William Friese-Greene, and Thomas Armat vs. Edison as inventor of the movie process. J. Stuart Blackton and Emile Cohl vs. Winsor McCay as the inventor of the animation process. J. R. Bray and Earl Hurd, Otto Messmer and Pat Sullivan, Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney, Bugs Hardaway and Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker.
The Students love the old cartoons and the dirt and scandal but something is crushed in them when they find that their heroes took the credit from other people.
That is because there is TRUTH and then there is CORPORATE TRUTH and the latter is in the books and the former, hopeful, is in the classroom.
I remember how hurt I was when a teacher told me just how Stan Lee `wrote` all those Marvel Silver Age comics.
It still hurts. Stan the Man was one of my heroes and one of the reasons I went to the Kubert School in the first place.
The dirty little secret is that even the historians have to compromise with the CORPORATE TRUTH in order to get access to the corporate controlled assets that they need to complete their works.
Now the corporations are just doing their duty and protecting their assets. They don`t want to show their star being a raciest, its bad for business. And they sure don`t want to admit that the founder of the company took credit for someone else`s work. Bad will, turns into poor sales.
That means that the only place for truth is the classroom and sometimes it is hard to be the one that has to get them ready for the buzz saw that is the business but then it is my duty, my job. Sounds just like the Adolf Eichmann defense to me. Why not just admit that I enjoy breaking their little hearts.
When my daughter was nine years old she almost got kicked out of California Adventure for bringing up Ub Iwerks in the `One Man`s Dream` part of the adventure. My kids have known the truth as best I could tell it from day one. They have been proofed against evil collage teachers like their dad.
larry@agni-animation.com
There is a certain sadistic pulling-the-wings-off-flies aspect to teaching the History of Animation. Muybridge, W.K.L. Dickson, William Friese-Greene, and Thomas Armat vs. Edison as inventor of the movie process. J. Stuart Blackton and Emile Cohl vs. Winsor McCay as the inventor of the animation process. J. R. Bray and Earl Hurd, Otto Messmer and Pat Sullivan, Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney, Bugs Hardaway and Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker.
The Students love the old cartoons and the dirt and scandal but something is crushed in them when they find that their heroes took the credit from other people.
That is because there is TRUTH and then there is CORPORATE TRUTH and the latter is in the books and the former, hopeful, is in the classroom.
I remember how hurt I was when a teacher told me just how Stan Lee `wrote` all those Marvel Silver Age comics.
I would drop off my pages and Stan would say something like next
month I want the Puppet Master to fight the Thing and Torch. Then I
would go home and write the story, do the layouts, pencil it. Ink everything but
the words in the word balloons and bring it back in. Then Stan would stand over
a letterer and tell him how to re-word my dialog in the balloons. That was how
he wrote all those comics. That and the fact that his uncle owned the company at
the time.
It still hurts. Stan the Man was one of my heroes and one of the reasons I went to the Kubert School in the first place.
The dirty little secret is that even the historians have to compromise with the CORPORATE TRUTH in order to get access to the corporate controlled assets that they need to complete their works.
Now the corporations are just doing their duty and protecting their assets. They don`t want to show their star being a raciest, its bad for business. And they sure don`t want to admit that the founder of the company took credit for someone else`s work. Bad will, turns into poor sales.
That means that the only place for truth is the classroom and sometimes it is hard to be the one that has to get them ready for the buzz saw that is the business but then it is my duty, my job. Sounds just like the Adolf Eichmann defense to me. Why not just admit that I enjoy breaking their little hearts.
When my daughter was nine years old she almost got kicked out of California Adventure for bringing up Ub Iwerks in the `One Man`s Dream` part of the adventure. My kids have known the truth as best I could tell it from day one. They have been proofed against evil collage teachers like their dad.
larry@agni-animation.com
