One for the books
My son Sam (8) has informed me that I am famous! A movie I co-wrote, Antz, is now in the Guiness Book of World Records, complete with poorly-scanned, over-saturated artwork. It was, apparently, the "first film with digital water." "The first movie to use computer software to simulate the properties of water was Dreamworks’ Antz (USA, 1998)," says the text. "Prior to this, computer-generated fluid effects were drawn, frame by frame, using graphics programs. Realistic water effects require powerful, physics-based computer simulations — at the time Antz was released, the only detailed studies of fluid dynamics were being carried out by scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA, researching the flow of particles after a nuclear strike." If those Los Alamos boys had thought to put some talking ants in their studies they might have had something.
Some thoughts on Fantastic Mr. Fox
Surprise of surprises, it’s turning into a wonderful autumn at the movies. As a rule, I don’t enjoy Wes Anderson’s movies, but I thought Fantastic Mr. Fox was a hoot and a half. And it’s very purely a Wes Anderson movie: a quirky guy set in a neurotic milieu triumphs through his quirkiness, all presented with a dry, self-aware wit. Normally, that kind of thing rubs me the wrong way but this movie bowled me over. Anderson should make more movies about talking animals.
Venture Bros: Handsome Ransom
What does Hank want? Hank wants a father. Rusty is as close to a biological father as he’ll ever get, but Rusty has no interest in acting the role of father to Hank (Dean, it turns out, is a different story). Hank loves and idolizes Brock, who is now gone, replaced by the obnoxious, overbearing Sgt Hatred. Hank states outright that Hatred is not his father, and he refers to Rusty as a "honky" (which, to be fair, he is).
Time Out London loves me! Oh, wait.
Bala and Z? Or — Marx and Engels??
A well-meaning friend of mine saw today that Antz, a movie I co-wrote a long, long time ago, was recently named the 27th-best animated movie of all time by Time Out London! Yippee! That means I beat The Secret of NIMH! Take that, Porco Rosso! Better luck next time, Persepolis!
Let’s see what this prestigious arbiter of cultural taste has to say about this 27th-best animated movie of all time, a movie into which I, yay verily, poured into which my heart and soul! Hmm…
"…a drab and hamfisted Marxist allegory rammed down your throat…‘Antz’ may boast a great array of vocal talent, but it spends too much time pitching gags over the kiddies’ heads and flogging its adult credentials to ever get down to basics and actually entertain. Cartoons, of course, aren’t just for children, but ‘Antz’, in falling back on kid-friendlyby-the-numbers cartoon plotting, plunges between the stools of satire and slapstick." ALD
Ah. So, it’s not very good at all then. "Dreary Whining" is ALD’s final decree. Geez, I never felt sorry for The Secret of NIMH before, but to think that it’s somehow worse than "dreary whining," that must be quite a sad movie indeed.
"ALD"’s point, of course, is that Antz sucks in comparison to A Bug’s Life, which, well, if that’s his or her opinion, I’ve read harsher. If one hates Antz, why put it on the list at all? Or, if you feel a special need to vent spleen upon a movie that blows it, run a special side-column about animated movies you hate.
But the reason I bring your attention to this folly is the idea that Jeffrey Katzenberg, the producer of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, a man who was once described as "Satan" by a friend of mine because of his extreme capitalistic views, would make the first CGI-animated movie from Dreamworks a "hamfisted Marxist allegory." Mr. Katzenberg, let me assure the reader, can be described in many terms, but "Marxist" is not one of them. Not once in any of our story meetings was Mr. Katzenberg ever moved to utter the following: "No, no, no, no, no! Don’t you get it?! It’s a Marxist Allegory, and we’ve got to ram it down the audience’s throat!! After all, we’re a major Hollywood studio!!"
Wadpaw in Maakies!
In my ongoing attempts to dominate all media, I am proud to announce that I have succeeded in landing a gag in world-class cartoonist Tony Millionaire’s Maakies.
How, the reader may ask, does one accomplish this feat?
It probably helps if you know Tony, whom I met through a number of acquaintances, including
and Snake n Bacon creator Michael Kupperman (if you don’t know Snake n Bacon, you will — it, along with the Maakies-derived Drinky Crow Show, is set to become yet another [adult swim] show starring the voice of
).
I was nodding acquaintances foryears with Tony before I discovered his “for kids” comic book Sock Monkey. At the time I was riding high off my kids’ movie success Antz and all anyone in Hollywood wanted to know from me was what kind of kids’ movie I wanted to write next. If you’re unfamiliar with it, I advise you to get thee hence to your nearest Sock Monkey collection — the stories are sweet, tender, funny, weird, scary and painfully well-rendered. I immediately saw the commercial potential of a Sock Monkey movie, saw it as a kind of 19th-century Toy Story, contacted Tony and put together a full treatment. Tony and I and an enthusiastic young Canadian director toured all the studios and gave the pitch our best efforts, but Hollywood somehow did not “get” Sock Monkey and we all went our separate ways.
Since then, every now and then I will get an email from Tony saying something like “Quick! My strip is due in six hours and I need an idea!” Not a natural gag writer, I will respond to these emails with some meticulously worked-out concept that sounds great to me but is completely wrong for Maakies. The other day I woke up to find another one of these emails in the inbox and this time took a different tack: I simply thought of the most horrible, saddest, most pathetic examples of bodily harm that could befall a creature, and then tried to think of a gag to work around it. Prolapsed intestines, self-inflicted gunshot wounds, vehicular manslaughter, crablice — and the idea above.
DVD note
Renaissance, last fall’s completely-unseen tour-de-force animation triumph, was released today on DVD. I don’t know how it will look on your TV set, but it blew my mind in the theater.
(Here is what I had to say about it last fall.)
(And here is the official site, where you can see some of this imagery in action.
Attention people
Tony Millionaire is a friend of mine. A few years ago I tried very hard to get a movie made of his rather astounding Sock Monkey comic.
Now, in the world of showbiz coincidences that is Los Angeles, this fella Eric Kaplan, who just happens to have a child at the the exact same school as my own son (thus proving that Tony Millionaire controls the universe, to borrow the title of another Eric Kaplan show), has created (with Mr. Millionaire) The Drinky Crow Show, for everyone’s pals at [adult swim].
This show is destined to be a paradigm-shifting event especially if you make it so. It’s easy — you go to [adult swim]’s website, watch the Drinky Crow Show pilot, take a moment to absorb the sheer strange, horrible beauty of it, then rate it on the little rating-button thing.
One thing I will guarantee: You have never seen anything like it.
Literary Oddities: Tumbleweed Trouble
As a Hollywood screenwriter, I am exposed to bad storytelling on a daily basis. One tributary of the river of bad storytelling is misguided adaptations of pop-culture icons. “What if Superman were a gypsy farmer?” “What if Mickey Mouse was a molecular physicist?” “What if you re-imagined the Green Lantern Corps as the team from Reservoir Dogs?” (Hey, that one’s not bad — hang on, I need to make a phone call.)
In the sweepstakes of inept pop-culture adaptations, I have, I believe, a winner. This is, I believe, as bad as it gets. This is not fanfic, this is not slash Smurfs, this is not Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. This is The Road Runner: Tumbleweed Trouble by Jack Woolgar (although apparently not this Jack Woolgar.) This is a real book, sanctioned (but apparently not read) by the creators (or at least the owners) of the Road Runner (that is, Warner Bros Inc.) and associated characters, published by a real publisher, Whitman Books (a complete list of other Whitman “Tell-A-Tale” books can be found here).
What makes this book so bad? How does it rise above (or, rather, sink below) the ranks of all other bad pop-culture crap?
Let’s take a look inside, shall we?
brace yourself
Happy Almost Valentine’s Day
For your romantic inspiration, some tender moments from Justice League.
This is, of course, the real reason why I watch the shows of the DC Animated Universe — it’s all the hot, hot man/woman, woman/alien, man/mythological figure, man/scientific experiment, man/winged alien, woman/alien, psychopath/psychopath, woman/scientific experiment, alien/robot, martian/martian, man/psychopath, mythological figure/martian, alien/winged alien, woman/mythological figure love going on.
As my son Sam (5) exclaimed after one episode of Justice League: “Everybody on this show is in love! I thought this show was supposed to be serious!”