Rat On Top

(Despite the picture, we're not implying that Mr. Willis is a rat, even though his new flick is the top live-action feature in the marketplace. There are only so many Pixar visuals we like to put up in a given week.)

To nobody's particular surprise, Ratatouille collected $16.6 million in its Friday opening, landing at Numero Uno.

Predictably, the other two animated features that have been sailing along are now victims of Brad Bird's backwash, falling out of the top ten...

Shrek the Third occupied the 11th position on Friday, with a $311,891,000 total. Surf's Up now hangs ten in the twelfth spot, with a cume to date of $52,219,000.

The top live action flick (did we say?) is Live Free or Die Hard at #2, gripping a $25,626,000 cume after a Wendesday bow. Welcome back to the upper reaches of the chart, Bruce. It's been kind of a dry spell, big guy...

(This will be a heavy five or six days, what with July 4th falling on Wednesday.)

Update: As the AP reports:

LOS ANGELES - Disney has put a rodent on top of the box office, though not the studio's venerable mascot, Mickey Mouse.

"Ratatouille," an animated comedy about a gourmet rat that gets a chance to cook in a French restaurant, debuted as the No. 1 weekend movie with $47.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

20th Century Fox's action thriller "Live Free or Die Hard," Bruce Willis's return as unstoppable cop John McClane, opened in second-place with $33.15 million. Since opening Wednesday, the movie has grossed $48.2 million.

Sadly, predictably, Shrek 3 (#11 and $313,811,000) and Surf's Up (#12 and $53,814,000) took negative hits of 51.4% and 63.5%.

Update II: Look for some press hand-wringing about how Ratatouille underperformed its predecessors. But $47 million is just shy of many analysts' projections in a competitive weekend.

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The 'Toon Linkage of Our Lives

Yet another round of animation news from all points of the globe...

Sony Pictures Imageworks breaks ground on its brand spanking new Albuquerque studio, and New Mexico rejoices:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will speak at a groundbreaking ceremony today for a new studio for Sony Pictures Imageworks, the digital effects and animation arm of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The 100,000-square-foot facility will be located in Mesa del Sol, a master-planned community development south of the Albuquerque International Sunport. The studio is expected to initially create 100 new jobs.

Hey. They're not building it in India...

And the MSM reports on the various handicapping on the box office opening of Ratatouille (this weekend's great parlor game):

SMH Capital analyst David Miller sees the opening weekend of "Ratatouille" slightly surpassing "Cars," with a $65 million debut and an ultimate global box office take of $572 million.

"For the CGI (computer-generated image) animated films, we are not going to place as much emphasis (on the debut) as the global ultimates," Miller said. "Our research shows that families of kids will skip the opening weekend," Miller said.

Deutsche Bank analyst Doug Mitchelson forecast an opening "lower than recent Pixar films" at about $50 million, but said strong reviews could boost its domestic box office take above $200 million.

The honcho of DWA rolls out the future of CGI:

His name is Jeffrey Katzenberg, he is the CEO of DreamWorks Animation, and he has come to announce both the death and the rebirth of cinema as we know it. “I can honestly say to you with every ounce of conviction in my being: I have seen the future of movies, and this is it.”

Katzenberg is talking about 3-D. Yes, I know, it’s been knocking around since the Fifties, mostly as a camp exercise in camera kitsch in movies such as Bwana Devil or House of Wax, or later as novelty value in Jaws 3-D, or later still in 3-D IMAX versions of “regular” blockbusters such as Superman Returns.

But this time, says Katzenberg, it’s different...

Just what a weary, troubled world has been waiting for. News of a Ninja Turtles sequel...

As of two weeks ago Imagi Entertainment (the TMNT movie animation studio) informed Mirage Studios that there was a 50-50 chance of a CGI film sequel. Last week they upped the odds to 70-30 in favor of a sequel, as talks between Imagi and their distribution partners Warner Brothers and the Weinstein Group seem to be heading in a positive direction....

And while we're on the Weinsteins (who co-financed the latest turtle flick), the Hollywood Reporter offers more detail on the W. brothers' 'toon alliance with the Korean government:

The Weinstein Co., animation management powerhouse Gotham Group and the provincial Chungcheongnam-do government of South Korea have joined forces to produce and distribute animated feature films.

The Weinstein Co. and Gotham Group also have entered a multiyear, first-look deal that will give the Weinsteins access to a steady supply of animation and family entertainment talent and content.

The movies will be based on work from Gotham Group's client list of more than 350 directors, writers and illustrators including Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, the creators of "The Spiderwick Chronicles"; Doug TenNapel, who wrote and drew the graphic novel "Creature Tech"; and animation director Henry Selick ("The Nightmare Before Christmas"). Material also will come from outside sources.

The movies produced will be computer-generated, and while financial details were not disclosed, it is known that the money in place will ensure that six to 10 films in the $40 million range will be made for theatrical distribution...

FastCompany.com recounts the rise of Laika Animation from the ashes of the Will Vinton studio in Portland, Oregon. And profiles the people who made it happen -- Phil "running shoes" Knight and his son Travis:

After the advertising market plummeted following September 11, with Vinton Studios near bankruptcy, Phil dipped into his billions and saved the company. And Travis's job. Now the largest shareholder, Phil asked his son and a couple of Nike veterans to join the board of directors. Travis was relieved about Vinton, but uneasy about his new role. Not only was he now the boss's son, he was about to become his bosses' boss, whatever that meant. He feared what must be going through their heads: What the hell does this kid know?

The board met in a conference room at Vinton. There was Will Vinton himself, with his handlebar mustache, the creative genius who'd put the studio on the map in the 1980s with the California Raisins. (He'd be gone in a matter of months.) There was Phil, the new chairman of the board. And there was Travis, the youngest and quietest director, taking it all in, feet throbbing in his shoes.

"I said yes," Travis says of Phil's request to join the board. "But I didn't know what it meant."

New episodes of George of the Jungle roll out from Studio B in Vancouver, Canada...

The Man from J.U.N.G.L.E. is back. An updated version of George of the Jungle, produced by Vancouver's Studio B animation studio, makes its basic-cable debut tonight on the all-toons/all-the-time specialty channel Teletoon...

Purists have grumbled that the new version has none of the character or animation style of the original, but that's a natural reaction: the new George of the Jungle owes more to postmodern 'toons like Spongebob Squarepants than it does the golden era of Disney animation.

We'll end with a longer remembrance of animator/director Art Stevens, who passed away May 22:

Stevens started [at Disney] as in-betweener and was soon assigned to work on FANTASIA, and contributed his artistic talents to the "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor," "Pastoral Symphony," "Nutcracker Suite," and "Night on Bald Mountain" segments. He went on to in-between on BAMBI (1942), and several other features before achieving full character animator status on Peter Pan (1953). His credits also include ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS, WINNIE THE POOH AND THE BLUSTERY DAY, MARY POPPINS and the underwater sequence from the 1971 Disney feature, BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS...

Have a safe and sane July 4th weekend...

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Retirement Blues?

I've now ended my quarterly 401(k) enrollment marathon, and so my thoughts are (unsurprisingly) on retirement issues. Now that I have time to breathe, I'll put up this down trip from the Wall Street Journal:

...If you retired today with $1 million and invested that money in 10-year inflation-indexed Treasurys, you could lock in a yield of around 2.7%, which means your initial annual income would be just $27,000. By contrast, if you had bought newly issued 10-year inflation-indexed Treasurys in early 2000, you would have garnered $43,000...

I take a little issue with Jonathan Clements, author of the Wall Street Journal piece, because he spins his scenario in the gloomiest possible terms. And his terms aren't, I don't think, tethered securely to real-world results.

Like, if you put the mill into a short term treasury bond fund, you'd pull down 4.5-5%. (Over the past ten years, Vanguard's short-term treasury fund has paid 4.83%. Last year it was 4.68%.)

If you put the mill into laddered Certificates of Deposit, you'd be collecting over 5%.

If you put the mill into, say, Fidelity Asset Manager 20% (80% bonds, 20% stocks), you'd have gotten a return of around 6.5% over ten years.

And if you had put the million into Vanguard's Wellington Fund (which has a 60% stock, 40% bond mix), you would have collected almost 10% on your money over the past ten years. (Since the fund's start in 1929, the yearly earnings have averaged 8.49%.)

To sum up, if you'd deposited that million into Wellington ten years back, you'd have collected just under $100,000 (averaged) per year. The very conservative Fidelity Asset Manager would have made you 65 thousand per annum. Vanguard's short term Treasury fund -- which pays the least of any of its short-term funds, would have gotten you $46,800 each year.

Sure, a million dollars doesn't go as far as it used to, but a lot of animation veterans who've been around for twenty or thirty years probably have a net worth that's close to a mill, counting the equity in their houses. And I know any number of artists in their twenties and thirties who've managed to build up savings in their 401(k)s and are already vested in the Motion Picture Industy's Pension Plan. Those things put them in the middle of the road to finanacial independence.

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History Snapshot: The Mintz Studios

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At the Charles Mintz Studios, mid-1930s. From left to right: Music composer Joe DeNat, animator Manny Gould, Harry Love, Charles Mintz, Al Rose, Ben Harrison, animator Jack Carr.

Today Charles Mintz is remembered -- if he's remembered at all -- as the guy who swiped Oswald the Rabbit from Walt Disney. But Mr. Mintz was briefly a player in animation, from the 1920s until his death at age 44 in 1940.

This is a shot of his California studio when he was releasing through Columbia Pictures and battling the Disney powerhouse. And failing. He managed to get two shorts nominated for Academy Awards in the 1930s, and lost out to Disney both times.

Disney was most likely pleased.

(This photograph -- from Bob Foster -- appeared in the Leonard Maltin book on animation, but since I worked on it awhile before finding this out, I throw it up now as a late-night sacrificial lamb. Feel free to ignore it.)

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Around El Studios

A busy week, what with all the 401(k) meetings at all the different studios (me going "blah blah...asset classes...blah...saving for retirement...blah blah blah"). I get tired of hearing the sound of my voice.

At Film Roman-Chandler Street, King of the Hill reaches the middle of its current teevee season, with episode #9 (out of 21) starting production next week. Staff is working its way back to being a well-oiled machine after the previous well-oiled machine got dismantled for three months when Fox thought it was all done making new episodes, but then changed its mind.

At Film Roman/Starz Media near the Burbank airport, most staffers who were on the Simpson Movie have now returned to the Mother Ship known as the television series. Only a few stragglers remain on movie-related items like commercials and interstitials. But the Big Movie is o-ver. (As it would have to be, since the film comes out July 27th.)

At DreamWorks, most people I talk to think Kung Fu Panda is shaping up as a top-notch animation entry.How to Train Your Dragon has Peter Hastings at the helm and an accelerated schedule on story and production for a Fall 2009 release.

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WSJ on Ratatouille

The Wall Street Journal weighs in on the box office prospects for Pixar's Ratatouille:

Pixar has a track record of generating family-friendly hits, and the new movie has gotten positive reviews. Still, there are signs that getting the word out on the new film is more of a struggle than usual. In a move seen in Hollywood as an admission that Pixar has a challenge on its hands in a competitive summer, Disney recently held more than 800 sneak-preview screenings of the film on a Saturday night. Such tactics are usually reserved for films that studios believe need an extra boost. "It's not an easy film to sum up," says director Brad Bird. "Disney decided that the best advertisement for the film was the film itself."

The sneaks may have helped. Firms that track potential moviegoers reported a jump in awareness and interest in the movie.

So, despite the fonder wishes of Jim Hill's executive correspondent at the Mouse House (whoever it is), Brad Bird's latest might perform pretty well.

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A New Feature Animation Shingle

Variety informs us that a new (or maybe reconfigured?) feature animation group is entering the fray...

A trio of toon veterans are launching Frederator Films as an indie feature film company with a mission to produce 2-D animated genre movies budgeted below $20 million.

Fred Seibert's partnered with Kevin Kolde and Eric Gardner, with all three acting as producers on the projects. Seibert's the former president of Hanna-Barbera and longtime producer via Frederator Studios, which debuted a decade ago with "Oh Yeah! Cartoons" for Cartoon Network; that show spun off "Cow & Chicken," "Powerpuff Girls" and "Dexter's Laboratory," and Frederator followed with "The Fairly OddParents," "ChalkZone" and "My Life as a Teenage Robot" for Nickelodeon.

Fred I've known a long time. (Kevin and Eric, not so much.) I'll be interested in knowing where and when they set up shop, because more animation employment is always a good thing.

..."Fred is the master at identifying voids in the marketplace and filling them with paradigm-shifting content," Gardner said. "There has been a dearth of both 2-D and genre animated feature product, which Frederator Films will be rectifying." Pics will be aimed at young males.

It sounds like a doable plan. I'm looking forward to seeing it fly.

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Art Stevens, RIP

Over at Disney's this p.m., and I found out from Burny Mattinson that longtime Disney Animation veteran Art Stevens has passed away...

Art came to Disney's in 1940, and worked at the Mouse House his entire career. A longtime assistant for John Lounsberry, Art was elevated to feature director on The Rescuers when Lounsberry died. He ended up the lead director on The Fox and the Hound and finished his career with The Black Cauldron.

I worked with Art on F and H, and thought he did a commendable job in pulling the film together. (During its making, half the animation crew departed, and there was some fierce infighting among the directors.) That the feature turned out as well as it did is much to Art's credit.

Born in 1915, Art was 92 when he died. It was good knowing you Arthur. I will always have fond memories of the time we worked together.

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JMH and Whining Execs

Got a call today from a reporter who asked me if things were as awful as Disney Animation as Jim Hill and his Media make out.

Since I'm not a regular customer over at JMH, I answered the gent's questions and then took a cyber-stroll over to Big Jim's place to see how bad the awfulness at Disney Animation actually was:

Here's the official party line for the Walt Disney Company nowadays : That everyone who works in Burbank is just thrilled that John Lasseter & Ed Catmull now exert so much control over the corporation. More importantly, that all Mouse House employees have been eager to embrace Pixar's "Quality is a great business plan" aesthetic.

Okay. Now do you want to know what's really going on? Take a gander at this excerpt from an e-mail that I received late last week from a Disney executive:

There are a lot of people here who are now actively hoping for a Pixar backlash. The transition has not been handled well, due mostly to the great care & attention that's being lavished on Pixar....

Many of us here feel that Disney's own executives (Who in some cases have decades of working experience) are needlessly being forced to take a backseat to the crew from Emeryville. Meanwhile the people from Pixar are afforded stronger creative control, get superior treatment, receive more credit and have their asses kissed regularly by Iger & associates.

The good news is that all of this may all change once "Ratatouille" 's box office receipts get counted. Though Brad Bird has made a great little movie, it won't hit the B.O. numbers that Wall Street wants and that will get a lot of attention...

Wow. Pretty bad, all right. (Jim and Sharon Morrill -- one of those Disney execs with "decades of experience" -- appear to be exchanging e-mails.)

Me, I'm just your garden-variety union thug. Certainly not the all-seeing, all-knowing JMH, with spies and tentacles everywhere. All I've got is my pair of size-twelve feet to carry me around the various halls and rooms and cubicles at Disney Animation and talk to people. So I'm at a big disadvantage, and fully understand how, next to JMH, I'm an ignorant moron.

But here's the deal. Disney Animation has endured two sets of management changes in its recent past: Eisner replaced by Iger, then Stainton replaced by Catmull/Lasseter. And let's face it: any time there's a single management change let alone two, transitions can get choppy and brutal. Status quos get upended. People who the incoming management decides are less than wonderful get tossed out. Often this is, from an objective point-of-view, unfair.

But this is Hollywood, where unfair is a way of life.

And here's also the deal. There've been a lot of layoffs at Disney Animation, and a lot of semi-forced departures of long-time executives. So naturally there is a lot of disgruntlement (I've heard much of it.)

And whattayaknow? There are a lot of folks out there wanting the people who pushed them out of the high seat to be brought down several pegs. (In the jolly 1980s, when I was slipped the axe by Disney management, one of those people was moi.)

In any studio, there are always three groups of citizens: 1) the contented and happy, 2) the "Oh, things are okay, but..." crowd, and 3) the discontented and unhappy.

No matter how wonderfully well the studio is running, you have these three groups.

And no matter how hellish and Guantanomo-like a studio is, you have these three groups.

The difference between good studio and bad is the size of each group. At the good studio, the happy crowd predominates. At the bad place, misery reigns supreme. But you always have a few employees in categories 1) through 3).

At Disney Animation right now, there are employees in production who are edgy and wondering what's going to happen. They're not "contented and happy." They haven't been thrilled with some of the recent happenings at DAS. But up on the third floor in the story department, story artists seem to be whistling while they work. The hovering execs of earlier regimes have disappeared, and the artists create their storyboards without some MBA offering his generous opinion every fifteen minutes. They like the idea of animation story people having the opinions that count. They like what's happening at Disney now.

So you can list these folks under category 1): happy and contented. And they want to see the studio to succeed. As do, truth to tell, a lot of the less happy employees on other floors. (Go figure.)

Are there people around and about hoping the new management team falls on its face? No doubt. But most of them aren't currently working for Disney Animation.

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The Unknown VIP

See this book cover? It belongs to Virgil Partch's collection of WWII cartoons, published in 1945. Water on the Brain has some of VIP's funniest drawings. But it doesn't have this:

This drawing is on the fly leaf of the copy of Brain that's been in the family for sixty-plus years. It shows Partch on the left, Ralph Hulett (the artist with a mission) in the middle, and a naked woman -- apparently a willing canvas -- on the right.

Hulett and Virgil Partch were buddies at Chouinard's, and went to Disney's at around the same time (the late '30s.) Partch left in the early 1940s to become a major print cartoonist, Hulett remained at Disney.

I don't know what Partch was getting at in drawing this 'toon for my father, but I think it had something to do with Hulett's tendency to paint during every waking moment.

Maybe there's more to it than that, but it's better if I don't travel there.

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Studios on Monday

At Warners Animation, Sander has moved on and new studio boss Lisa Judson takes the helm on July 2 after coming out from New York. The top floor of the Warner Animation building is filled with new cubicles and animation desks, primed and ready for more productions and staff (ditto for the one-story structure on the other side of the Warner Ranch parking lot.) Hopefully Ms. Judson will make that happen.

Meanwhile, work proceeds apace on Tom and Jerry, The Batman, and The Legion of Super Heroes -- all with 13 episodes each. Crew will be cycling off The Batman in the next few weeks, even as artists come aboard for Scooby Doo and the Shadow Goblins, the big dog's latest direct-to-video feature.

Over at Nick, production and series is expanding as a couple of new shows ramp up and management works to figure out where to house new staff. I tried to get a list of everything that's now in work and was told: "Wait a few weeks until everything is firmed up. Then we'll tell you."

So I guess I wait a few weeks.

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The End of Cheap Sequels

The BIG trade paper reports:

Game, set, match Pixar.

With last week's reorg of Disney animation, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull gained control over all Mouse House feature toons and won their pitched battle against DVD sequels.

Disney Toon is now a separate unit of Walt Disney Animation Studios under their aegis...

A year-plus ago, when I bopped through DisneyToon Studios on Sonora, a mucky-muck said to me with a funny smile: "Oh. We're not part of the Disney Feature chain of command anymore. We report to the main lot now. Not features."

This was soon after the Pixar acquisition. Soon after Mr. Catmull and Mr. Lasseter made their way down to Burbank for the first time. It turned out to be true. One of the rumors that swirled was that Sharon Morrill asked Robert Iger not to put DisneyToon under Disney Feature anymore.

Whether that was the way it went down, or whether the story is just one more urban myth, I have no idea. But what seems to be reality is the changes at DTS as related above.

The days of sequels are fini.

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The Inevitable "Too Many?" Question

What with Ratatouille rolling out in a week, director Brad Bird got presented with the usual inane statement:

Some critics say there's an overload of animated movies...

I'll be frank. The supposition always makes me crazy. It's a symptom, I think, of the press wanting a quick and easy theory as to why movie X doesn't perform "up to expectations." But Mr. Bird has a good answer:

It's kind of like saying, "Is there a movie overload?" There's only a movie overload if they're bad. If they're good, it's just like, "Yeehaw!" The problem with animation is too many people are making the same movie. There's nothing wrong with the medium. The medium is as big as the sky, but you have to go to different places in the sky. You can't just go to the same cloud and expect people to get excited about it, with the jabbering sidekicks and the pop references and the hit pop songs.

It's simple, really. When you create a film the population doesn't want to see, it doesn't go see it. (And mostly, they don't want to see the same damn film over and over.)

And when you do turn out something new, fresh, and entertaining? Why, the greenbacks tumble down on you like snow in a Texas blue norther.

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WGAw's Upcoming Election Contest

We'll take a moment now to note a story from the House of Labor.

The WGAw is going to be having an election for new officers in September. And I think a lot of players in the entertainment industry will be watching with interest.

WGA West president Patric Verrone will face board member Kathy Kiernan for the presidency of the guild in an election held against the backdrop of upcoming negotiations. The WGA West disclosed the candidates list on Friday -- three weeks prior to the July 16 launch of what are expected to be contentious contract talks with studios and nets.

A total of 23 candidates for 11 offices were selected by the guild's nominating committee. Ballots for the election will be counted Sept. 18, six weeks prior to the Oct. 31 expiration of the current contract.

...Verrone's background is in TV animation, working on such shows as "Futurama"; Kiernan is a CBS newswriter...

I know less than nothing about the internal political dynamics of the WGA (west or east). I've no idea how popular or unpopular Mr. Verrone is. So of course I'll make a prediction.

Mr. Verrone will be returned to office for another term.

The WGA has been prepping for contract negotiations for a year or more, and it makes no sense to me that he would lose re-election while the negotiations are going on. The WGA membership -- I think -- will vote to play the hand it dealt itself two years ago to a conclusion, which means it will re-elect the architects of the WGA's "pattern of demands" and see where the pattern takes it.

The alternative to this scenario makes no logical sense to me. But I could have my head embedded far up my large intestine.

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June Turnstiles Twirl

Evan Almighty charges out of the Friday box office gate with $11.1 million and the #1 pole position, proving again that Steve Carell made the right career move in leaving The Daily Show...

John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson (the Donald Crisp/Alan Hale Sr. of the current era) scored with 1408, which rakes in $7.5 million for the second slot in the derby.

And where are the animated features? Why, at #7 and #8, where Surf's Up has reached $48.6 million and Shrek the Third has crossed the $300 million threshold.

Friday's Variety had these observations about the Summer of 2007's box office performance:

Despite predictions that summer 2007 would mark the clash of the tentpoles, the season is actually turning out to be a very good one for the studios...

The top three movies at the domestic B.O. this year are "Spider-Man 3" ($333.6 million), "Shrek the Third" ($299.6 million); and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" ($277 million).

As of June 17, box office was up 7% for the year compared with 2006. And this summer is running 1% ahead of 2004, the biggest on record.

Update: And as the weekend comes to an end, Evan Almighty collects $32,112,000. Which means that the comedy feature will end its run in the $100 million to $125 million range, depending on the breaks.

The Stephen King horror fest 1408 returns $20,175,000, while the comic book heroes in Fantastic 4 also break the $20 million ceiling. Knocked Up drops a mere 24.4% to collect $10,663,000 as it closes on the $100 million marker.

The animation contingent showed some legs, with seventh-ranked Surf's Up dropping just 27.6% to collect $6,700,000, and Shrek the Third (now residing at #8) showed a 36.1% drop as it reached $307,908,000.

Next week, Ratatouille drops into the box office bouillabaisse and things will be...ah...changing.

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One More Weekend Link Fest

DreamWorks Animation invades BURBANK! DWA has been in Glendale since it moved form the Lakeside Building in fabled Universal City. Now, however, it will have a satellite space near Bob Hope Airport...

DreamWorks Animation LLC executed a lease deal for 14,786 square feet of office space at 2842 Ontario St. in Burbank, CA. The deal will have the animation giant occupy this space for the next five years.

Over the past few years, I've heard this question more than once: "Is all our animation going to India?" But apparently Indian animation honchos are asking: "Where are the Indian animators?"

“Barring one or two films, I am not happy with the quality of animated movies being made in the country,” [Indian animation director V.G.] Samanth said. “People are entering into the business just to make quick money. They produce low cost, low quality animation movies.” The Indian animation industry is predicted to reach $869 million by 2010, representing a compounded annual growth rate of 25 percent over 2006-2010, according to the Economic Times article. Currently, 300 small, medium and big animation companies employ approximately 12,000 people in India.

(I've never believed the animation biz will disappear from Los Angeles, mainly because the gravitational pull of top-flight animation talent here is so strong...)

In line with our earlier post about the shake-up at DisneyToon Studios, AP reports that sequels to the old Disney classics are coming to an end:

LOS ANGELES – In a major strategy shift, the Walt Disney Co. said it will stop making lucrative direct-to-DVD sequels of such classic animated films as “Cinderella,” a move that reflects the growing influence of former Pixar Animation executives John Lasseter and Steve Jobs, who once called the films “embarrassing.”

The change comes with a shake-up at the company's DisneyToon Studios, including the removal of longtime president Sharon Morrill, who will continue with the company in another capacity, Disney said Friday.

DisneyToon Studios will become part of Walt Disney Feature Animation and report directly to Animation President Ed Catmull and Lasseter, who assumed roles there after Disney bought Pixar Animation Studio last year for $7.4 billion in stock.

Of course, the story above doesn't point out that prior to Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, DisneyToon Studios did report to Feature animation. (Also note that the AP calls "Disney Animation Studios" by its older handle: "Walt Disney Feature Animation." But we pick nits.)

And as Pixar/Disney scored big in the licensing department with Cars, so DreamWorks aims to cash in with a lucrative deal for its forthcoming martial arts bear:

Mattel will be creating a wide range of products across multiple categories of action figures, games, plush and role play for the forthcoming DreamWorks Animation release Kung Fu Panda. Mattel is the No. 1 toy company in the world and also includes the Fisher-Price and Radica Brands in its Mattel Brands portfolio. DreamWorks Animation's latest release, "Shrek the Third," continues to score in theaters around the world, as one of the biggest hits of the summer.

Hong Kong-based Imagi, the studio that produced TMNT, has got more animated fare in its production pipeline:

Hong Kong-based Imagi Studios, the creative force behind TMNT, will be releasing two manga-based films, Gatchaman and Astro Boy, next year and in 2009 respectively.

Where comic book superheroes and videogame adaptations made the rounds in Hollywood just a few years ago, it’s old cartoon franchises that are calling the shots these days...

TMNT director Kevin Munroe told TODAY...“I’d say it’s because a lot of people who grew up on these cartoons are now getting into decision-making positions within studios.”

And they’re giving these cartoons a computer-generated spit-and-polish which will not only attract fanboys but also a new generation of movie-goers.

“We’re basically making films for eight to 18-year-olds,” commented Imagi’s co-CEO Doug Glen, noting that there are few feature-length cartoons for those in this age group.

And I'll bet you've been waiting for this important news:

American Greetings Properties (AGP), the intellectual property and outbound licensing division of American Greetings Corporation, and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC (TCFHE) have agreed to expand and build upon their current, successful partnership with a new long-term deal, it was announced today. This new agreement grants TCFHE the exclusive marketing and distribution rights in North America, to several additional franchises from AGP’s impressive roster that are being developing into animated series and specials.

Leading the way is the highly-buzzed about Sushi Pack which chronicles the adventures of five crime-fighting pieces of sushi, and the all-new Care Bears series. Both animated programs will receive significant national television exposure as they debut this fall as part of CBS’s Saturday morning programming block.

Needless to say, I'll be glued to my set this September, following every exciting move of these crime-fighting pieces of sushi. (Thank God it's pieces of sushi, and not pieces of...you know...something else.)

Finally, we link again to Will Finn's Small Room and his excellent missive from Ward K. This has been linked by lots of other animation sites in the blogosphere, and we do like to follow the crowds. (We'll also link, while we're at it, to Ward Kimball's lengthy TAG blog interview here, here and here. Oh yeah, also here and here.)

Have a most harmonious and prosperous weekend.

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Central California Coast

Another Hulett landscape. A mid-sixties painting, this one of a farm located in Steinbeck Country, in the Central California coastal range...

I mean, aren't all those white birds marauding seagulls? From in off the Pacific?

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Change At Top of Diz Toons?

Word is now circulating that the top-kick at Disney Toon Studios will be moving on:

John Lasseter, the new all-powerful Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Studios, has caused a major commotion in Burbank this week. As per a report on the website JimHillMedia.com, Lasseter on Tuesday relieved 13-year Disney Toon Studios President Sharon Morrill of her duties while making it clear that the studio will no longer be in the business of direct-to-DVD animated feature sequels and one-off's.

I don't know how much of the above is accurate. I also don't know how much commotion has actually been caused. I've been to Disney Toons, TVA and Disney Animation Studios a lot since the start of the week, and everyone working at those places seems to be soldiering on gallantly.

But I've been hearing from Disney Animation staffers for some days now that, indeed, there have been exec changes over at the animated sequels shop in Glendale. I opted to maintain a dignified silence about it, waiting for some eagle-eared citizen of the internets to burst forth with the information. Now that JMH has blown the lid off the story, I guess there's no reason to stay clammed up, is there?

We wish Ms. Morrill well in her future endeavors.

Update: The Morrill departure has now moved from the blogosphere into the entertainment press. Variety headlines its take on the Toon change: Disney Tosses Toons Topper. Morrill sacked over 'Tinkerbell' problems.

Update II: Here's yet another story with another unkind headline.

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AFI's Top 100 Films -- Part Two

The American Film Institute has updated its "One Hundred Best Films" list. A decade ago, they announced the tabulation of top films, and now the Big List is freshened with a few changes:

Older films that did not make the cut on the 1998 list broke into the top-100 this time, led by Buster Keaton's 1927 silent comedy "The General" at No. 18. Others included 1916's "Intolerance" (No. 49), 1975's "Nashville" (No. 59), 1960's "Spartacus" (No. 81), 1989's "Do the Right Thing" (No. 96) and 1995's "Toy Story" (No. 99).

Citizen Kane again takes the top spot. Animated features hold down exactly two positions: Snow White at #34 and Toy Story at #99.

Lists like the AFI's "Hot 100" are always a little silly. Trying to decide "best" or "second best" is like trying to decide which flavor of Ben and Jerry's ice cream is the most tasty. You get a hundred different palates, you'll get a hundred different answers. I happen to be crazy about How Green Was My Valley, which beat Citizen Kane for Best Picture in 1941. I'll concede that Kane is the more ground-breaking and memorable picture, but the John Ford flick Valley doesn't even show up on the AFI roster.

And only two animated features out of a hundred slots? I'd think the number would be higher than that...

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Up With the Mouse House Story Crew

This a.m. I was hanging with story artists at Disney Animation. The crew working on Princess and the Frog got their first viewing of all the story reels late last week, which now run in toto a little under an hour and a half. The group I talked to were happy with what it saw.

"It needs some trimming, but it's got a twist and it works," one artist said. Another crew member related: "I've seen it twice now, and it's growing on me. John said it was one of the best first passes he's seen..."

Shortly, Princess and the Frog (plus crew) journeys to Emeryville for yet more feedback and notes.

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Walt Lunches With the Fleischers

Click on the thumnail for a larger picture

At the Disney commissary, January 4, 1956, from left to right: Gerry Geronimi, Walt Disney, Ben Sharpsteen, Ted Sears, Max Fleischer, Dick Huemer, George Stalling, Dick Fleischer, Andy Engman, Wilfred Jackson (spelled "Jaxon" on model sheets and memos). At the separate table in the right rear: Bill Anderson and Card Walker.

I put this up because of the room. Not due to all those people around the tables (yeah, right).

My father began taking me to the Disney studio around this time. In the middle fifties Walt Disney Productions seemed a magical place, but being in the first grade, I was probably...ah...impressionable.

Where the "Team Disney" building stands today -- that multi-colored Egyptian temple with the Seven Dwarfs holding up the roof -- was a ball field for employees. There were newly-built soundstages. There were the animation buildings and the big parking lot fronting Riverside Drive and Buena Vista and the small but very busy "back lot."

And there was the commissary. The outside of the place is much the same today as it was then. 1940s Streamline Moderne. The inside? Totally different.

Now it's darker, higher tech, self-serve and pretty much like any studio commissary anywhere in town. In 1956, however, it was bright and airy, containing long serving counters behind which stood smiling, middle-aged women in starched cafeteria aprons ladling out food. Everybody ate in that large room you see in the picture, or the patio outside. No segregated, high-end dining room for the execs back then (at least, not that I remember), just people from all parts of the studio chowing down at those utilitarian commissary tables.

I met Cliff Edwards in the 1956 commissary and probably a few other people, but Edwards is the one I remember. (Jimmie Dodd -- one of the Adult Mouseketeers -- I got introduced to on a soundstage.)

Time blurs and fades memories, and mine is probably more blurred than most. But trust me. The 1956 Disney studio was light years away from the facility that stands between Alameda and Riverside Drive in 2007.

Photo courtesy Bob Foster.

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Cars? Underperformer? Not Hardly.

Last year there were lots of articles about what a weak sister at the box office the Pixar/Disney feature Cars was. You know, it under-performed earlier Pixar features. Its reviews weren't uniformly enthusiastic, and so on and so forth.

But Variety informs us how the picture has been a bonanza for Disney:

While many refuse to rank "Cars" as Pixar maven John Lasseter's finest two hours, its merchandising campaign has become a global phenomenon. A year after the motion picture release, a sojourn to a local Toys R Us will reveal collectors -- boys to men -- on the prowl for the new shipment of Mattel-made die-cast miniatures, with the movie's extensive ensemble of characters yielding an endless array of product iterations (Dinaco Blue Chick Hicks, anyone?).

Merchandising campaigns for tentpoles are supposed to peak around the time of the DVD release, then begin to taper off, but "Cars" is only getting hotter.

And we once again learn that box-office, reviews and awards are important, but what Hollywood worships -- far beyond the awards and ticket sales -- is total cash flow. And Cars has paid off big time for the Disney Co.

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The Monday Romp, Studio-Wise

It's 401(k) meeting time again, and I get to gallop from studio to studio shooting off my mouth about the joys of studying mutual fund opportunities and saving for retirement...

At Universal Cartoon Studio, they are wrapping up Season Two of Curious George, the Series and hiring staff for Curious George, the DVD Movie. (George is a monkey that keeps on giving...)

And up by the Bob Hope Airport, Film Roman/Starz Media still has a little bit of staff on The Simpsons Movie, working on last-minute repairs and retakes. They're also working on various animated spots to support the movie, so the Movie crew hasn't totally disbanded. (Although it's close. Layoffs have come in waves over the past few weeks.)

A staffer showed me a snippet of the climax -- in wide-screen color. Damn but it's funny. If the rest of the flick is on the same level -- and the tiny bits and pieces that I've seen over the past few months would indicate that it is -- come July 27, Fox-News Corporation will be able to open its own mint.

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And Time-Warner Also Goes to India

It isn't just Disney that is dipping into feature animation on the sub-continent:

Turner Entertainment Networks Asia, part of the Time Warner group has tied up with three Indian production houses - Miditech, Graphiti Multimedia and Famous Studios - to develop localised animated features in the country and to make the features, which will be released next year, foreign media reports inform.

"The Indian animation industry is in a nascent phase and it's now important we help it to take its rightful place on the international stage, I think it will be fitting that very, very soon one of the next animated superheroes comes from India." said Ian Diamond, General manager, Turner Entertainment Networks Asia.

We'll have to wait and see where all this burgeoning activity leads us. More work here? I'm not holding my breath...

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Ramping up Ratatouille

The end of this month, the latest Pixar feature hits your neighborhood multiplex. Early reviews are ecstatic, but one of the media themes out there now is: "It's about a rat in Paris with a hard-to-spell title, so it's gonna be a tough sell..."

I think the "hard sell" meme is supplanting the corporate media's usual "It was hurt by the animation glut," as witnessed by this other Variety piece:

In a summer of easy-to-market sequels, "Ratatouille" isn't based on a pre-existing franchise, its lead character isn't already known by auds, no A-list stars provide the voices of the characters (preventing the studio from pushing them out on the talkshow circuit), and there's the hard-to-pronounce name.

On top of all that, the movie's not even fast-food friendly -- mainly because the lead's a rat and scrambles around a high-end French restaurant. It's also facing some serious competition with "Transformers" and the next installment of "Harry Potter," both of which are expected to drum up family business.

I'm betting that the picture is going to do just fine amidst the stampede of giant, marauding robots (didn't Brad Bird do that one already?). And I'm betting that it plays through the end of the summer and makes Disney a potful of francs.

The Mouse House, unlike Time-Warner a few years back, knows what it has in the latest Brad Bird picture and is promoting it.

Addendum: Jenny L. at BlackWing Diaries links to this Ratatouille review by Mike Barrier that is somewhat less positive than Variety's take.

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The B.O. Among Us

Another weekend at the turnstiles. To nobody's surprise, the Super Heroes have a really big Friday start on the weekend:

#1 -- Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer -- $22,750,000

Clearly surfers of the silver variety trump those who are penguins.

#5 -- Surf's Up -- $2,875,000 (total: $28,246,000)

#7 -- Shrek the Third -- $2,650,000 (total: $290,892,000)

Update: F4 delivers a $57.4 million (and Stan Lee is having a really lucrative summer).

Ocean's 13 collects $19.1 million in its second frame and a $70 million total (and George Clooney overcomes the bad kharma from The Good German)...

And Judd Apatow continues his white hot streak with Knocked Up declining only 26% and reaching a $90.5 million cume.

In the animated sector, Surf's Up collects 49.3 million -- enduring a 47% box office decline in the process, and grossing #4,671,000 after two weekends. And Shrek the Third at #6 rakes in $9 million to come within a whisker of a domestic $300 million gross. (It's now $297.2 million.) I'm sniffing bonuses for the DreamWorks crew.

Update 2: Reuters recaps the box office weekend here.

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The Magic of the Mainstream Media

Down below, commenters point out the idiocy of a Business Week reporter. But I have another nit to pick, because BW says::

Top Pixar creative font John Lasseter has remade Disney's stumbling animated studio, replacing the director for the upcoming American Dog and jumping in to overhaul the recent Meet the Robinsons. The latter flick is approaching $100 million, a rarity these days for Disney-made animated films.

Nobody admires Mr. Lasseter's talents more than I do, and he's great for WDFA. But it would be nice if Business Week had a stronger grip on reality:

Chicken Little -- $135,386,665

Meet the Robinsons -- $96,224,551*

* Still in release. Barely.

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The Magic of "Yes"

On the right: directing tyros John Musker and Ron Clements.

Artist/Animator/Director Will Finn has an excellent new blog named Small Room. And in that Small Room he had, a few days back, an excellent post.

Will was talking about the creation of a key scene in Aladdin, and the pushing and pulling that went on getting it made. Fascinating, behind the scenes stuff. But this bit from Will about him (the animator) not liking the directorial changes that Ron Clements and John Musker (the directors) were making to the storyboards caught my eye:

I immediately started protesting when I got the layout (frame by frame printouts of the rotaing BG with stand-ins for the characters). Doesn't it say somewhere in one of Frank & Ollie's bibles that you should never be in motion while a character is changing expression? Or even worse, be on their backs instead of their faces? Here we had an integral moment when the guy's whole personality is going to change and I kept saying it wouldn't work, it was technically impossible. I wanted to stick with the simpler composition. I must have bellyached for the better part of a week about it and was going to the mat. Finally Musker looked me in the eye and said: "Just try it this way and if it doesn't work we can do it over." He said it quietly, he said it diplomatically, but something in his tone made me hear what I think he really meant:

"Quit being a diva and do it the way we told you or we'll give it to someone else."

The above is a neat little example of how artists -- or corporate employees generally -- can louse up their careers.

The boss, after long (or maybe short) thought, decides how he/she wants something done. He goes to the subordinate that he wants to execute the decision and says: "I need you to do this." It might be animating a scene. It might be writing a script. It might be repairing the muffler on a car. Doesn't matter what the task is. All the boss wants to hear is:

"Yeah! Great! I'll get right on it!"

Now, why do they want to hear this? Simple. Because somebody with more power, a higher salary and a way bigger office is on their tail to move the project along, and they have a couple hundred other decisions to make. And the last thing they want, the event their supervisory hearts least desire , is a long argument over how the task at hand should be done.

This doesn't mean, by the way, that the boss person is right. It only means that the boss person is going to hold it against the subordinate if he gets a lot of lip over the way he wants something completed.

It's not fair, it's not right, it's not equitable.

It's just the way it is.

I've got lots of anecdotal evidence to back up this theory. I was pretty argumentative at Disney (ask Ron Clements). I believed it a moral duty to fight for the "right" artistic vision. By and by I ended up unemployed. Two years later, I was the picture of happy cooperation at Filmation, and I stayed aboard the company ship until it slid beneath the waves.

A long stretch of unemployment in-between those two studios was a strong motivator in getting me to reevaluate my earlier position.

Over the years, I've seen lots of talented artists who've prided themselves on their contentiousness. There's no issue too small for them to fight over. They're usually more unemployed than their more cooperative brethren. Just last week, I was sitting with an artist in his office talking about a designer we both know. The designer argues and defends every drawing, in every situation. And he argues in a loud voice.

I don't know what's with Harry," the artist said. "When the A. D. wopuld swing by to say he needed a character's eyes redrawn so he's looking more to the left, Harry'd get defensive about it. 'They're looking left, I already drew them looking left, what's wrong with them?...' And on and on. It gets tiresome. I wasn't surprised he was the first of the crew to get laid off."

Harry's currently looking for a job.

Moral of the story: Pick your fights. Learn to say "yes" more. And smile when you do it.

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'Toon Links to Dance To

Another weekend, another lovely bunch of animation links...

Pixar has announced it's going after the seasoned citizen demographic with Up.

When I was looking for work a long while ago, I tried without success to get a writing gig on a cartoon show called Transformers. The story editor told me, "selling toys is what we're about this year..." (The year being 1986.)

My how times have changed (not):

The next few years will see everything from He-Man to G.I. Joe to possibly Monopoly show up on the bigscreen. As the film biz runs out of original ideas, nothing, it seems, is too much of a stretch.

In the last two decades, Hollywood has gone through several crazes: U.S. adaptations of French comedies, remakes of vintage pics, film versions of old TV series, and adaptations of videogames and comicbooks. Now studios and high-profile producers are buying up rights to dolls, action figures and games, hoping their lasting popularity can prop up the next studio tentpoles.

As the thinking goes, the instant recognition of popular toys can only help an opening weekend. But everyone involved is also nervous. Studios are banking millions on just a brand name, while toymakers are risking their crown jewels to work in an entirely new format, knowing that a bomb can cut into their sales.

Filmation had He-Man. Michael Bay has Transformers...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has altered the regs for animated features up for the little gold statue:

An animated feature film is now defined as a motion picture of at least 70 minutes in running time, in which movement and characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture’s running time.

Business Week Magazine weighs in on whether Disney's purchase of Pixar was a smashing idea or not:

...A lot of folks are waiting to see whether Ratatouille justifies all those Disney dollars that Chief Executive Robert Iger spent. A little background: At the time of the deal, Pixar, majority owned by Apple (AAPL) Chief Executive Steve Jobs, was nearing the end of its 14-year contract with Disney to jointly make films. Jobs and departing Disney Chief Executive Michael Eisner were sniping at one another, and Jobs was testing the waters for a move of his animation factory to Warner Bros. (TWX), Sony (SNE), or anyone not named Disney. When Iger replaced Eisner in late 2005, one of the first things he did was make nice with Jobs.

When Iger made the Pixar deal, several Wall Street analysts figured that he had overpaid. Heck, even Eisner came out of semi-exile to speak to board members, pleading with them to veto the rich deal. So now, there will likely be a ton of folks on Wall Street waiting to see whether Ratatouille is, well, a rotten tomato...

Chances are good that Ratatouille won't be a blockbuster. It's not the rollicking, show tune-laden, laugh-fest that Pixar usually makes. It is, however, a tremendously well-made, stylish film that will take your breath away in terms of technology—rat hairs look real and human movements are so authentic you won't believe they were generated by a computer.

The Hindustan Times informs us that Disney is chomping at the bit to make lots of animated films on the sub-continent:

Mark Zoradi, [President of worldwide marketing and distribution for the Walt Disney Studios], said he would like to see 20-25 percent of Disney's revenues in India to come from its film and home video business. "We don't have unrealistic expectations, but as we look long-term, India will be a very important, strategic market," he said, adding Disney would also continue to outsource some of its animation production to India in a "significant manner".

"We had done very well exporting our movies, but then we looked at India and realised the infrastructure was about to explode: theatres were getting better, tax laws were improving."

Disney is also keen to make more films in China despite restrictive regulations, said Zoradi, a 27-year Disney veteran.

When I was but a tot, I used to sit transfixed in front of the old black-and-white Philco watching ancient cartoons. They were all black-and-white, the gags were plentiful and often bizarre, and The Little King was one of the 'toons I watched. ASIFA archives has a fine specimen from 1931 ready for your viewing pleasure:

The early sound cartoons that came out of New York have an indescribable quality that is sorely missing from animation today. The best way I can describe it is "fun factor". New York cartoons are gritty, unpredictable and outrageous with jazzy music forming the foundation for the action. There are no pretentions to be anything other than seven minutes of cartoony joy. This cartoon is no exception...

Reuters reports this exciting news flash: Animation is catching on with adults! Going mainstream! Who would have thought it?

"We used to hear that animation for adults wouldn't work, but now all our competitors are doing the same," said Mike Lazzo, senior vice president of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, the evening line-up of animated shows aimed at 18 to 34-year-olds, like Robot Chicken and Aqua Teen Hunger Force....

..."Hollywood loves success and can't wait to pile on success. When Pixar started with Toy Story, everyone began to put an animated feature in production, if not three."

The word is that Sony's kind of...ah...somber about the opening numbers for Surf's Up. Variety prognosticates about Disney's expectations for the next animated feature on the box office horizon:

Industryites predicted that last summer's "Cars" would play to only young males or NASCAR fans, but the pic attracted a sizable female crowd, as well, after Disney marketed the film as a family-friendly comedy. "The Incredibles," in 2004, also could have solely courted superhero genre fans, but it played more broadly.

Their box office performance only proves just how much of a brand the Pixar moniker and its hopping lamp logo have become among auds. Disney is relying on that kind of name recognition to sell tix to "Ratatouille" later this month.

So far, "Ratatouille" isn't tracking as strongly as Disney would like among most moviegoers. The numbers are lukewarm. It's appealing more to females under 35...

Have a useful and joyous weekend.

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New Blood at Warner Bros. Animation

Warner Bros. Animation has a new top kick:

Warner Bros. Television Group has tapped former AOL marketing exec Lisa Judson to top its toon unit.

Judson succeeds Sander Schwartz as prexy of Warner Bros. Animation. Schwartz ankled last month...

Judson's duties in the toon division include overseeing its expansion in the fast-growing area of original production for new media and broadband platforms. She will supervise traditional TV kidvid production for Kids' WB!, Cartoon Network and other outlets, as well as the development of direct-to-video titles with the Warner Premiere homevid division.

Maybe new blood is a good thing for WBA. The studio has been something less than a busy hive of cartoon activity the last couple of years.

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401(k) Rules of the Blessed Morningstar

Now I throw in another "saving for your future" sermonette.

Morningstar.com put out this article on 401(k) plans and what to do with them. It's pretty basic, but most people need basic, since "complicated" triggers headaches, double vision and nausea. Here's Morningstar's four 401(k) tenets (each expressed in the negative):

Mistake One: Not Investing at All

Mistake Two: Investing Without a Plan

Mistake Three: Letting Your 401(k) Run on Autopilot

Mistake Four: Borrowing from Your 401(k)

Morningstar has somewhat different takes on 401(k) investing that I do, but not that different. My basic advice about where to put 401(k) money is:

Diversify across different asset classes (percentages of your money to a) domestic large stocks, b) domestic small stocks, c) international stocks, and d) bonds.)

Set your percentages (say, 25% in each of the above) then rebalance back to those percentages once a year, because some assets will grow faster than others.

And yes, this is a simple model, but simple is a good way to go when you have neither the patience nor interest to study investing in detail and depth...and therefore shy away from investing in anything at all.

The chart above shows the best asset allocations you can make. But "the best" is always a (somewhat) moving target.

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"Got Any Good Art Riley Stories?"

Actually, yes. I have a dandy Art Riley story, one told to me by Disney story dynamo Vance Gerry, and which I re-told at the Animation Guild's memorial for Art and other deceased members a few years back.

But before I recount it here, allow me to answer the question: "Who is Art Riley?"

Mr. Riley was one of the tyro Disney background artists who was at the studio for decades and decades. He painted backgrounds for Snow White, Jungle Book, and every animated feature in between.

Art lived frugally, lived with his mother, drove the same old Cadillac for years and years. And Vance told me the following story:

One day Art was asked to drive a studio colleague to work and back, and Art was happy to oblige. On the way home, the guy asked him to stop at a supermarket so he could pick up some milk and egg. Again Art was happy to oblige.

He walked with the man into the store. Once inside, Art stared in wonder at the long rows of shelves and refrigerated cabinets, at the fluorescent lights and polished tile floors.

"This is amazing," Art said. "What do they call this place?"

Mr. Riley, you see, led kind of an eccentric, sheltered life. He had never been in a supermarket before.

Art left the studio in the mid-sixties, and moved to the central California coast. He'd invested in blue-chip stocks for years, had Disney stock options, and lived in comfortable retirement until his death in December, 1998. He was 87.

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At WDFA Story Department

...where House of Mouse story development seems to be going swimmingly. Bolt (the cgi animated feature formerly known as American Dog), is heading for its second pass after a successful first pass with the Disney/Pixar brain trusts...

And The Princess and the Frog story crew is pressing pedal to the metaphorical metal as the first screening of the whole feature, bow to stern, sails closer and closer (like next week?) I heard references made to "fried brains" and some long hours at wacom tablets... among other work-related things.

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Studio Walkaround

At Universal Cartoon Studios and Starz Media/Film Roman, some projects are winding down.

At Universal, Land Before Time -- the series has completed its first round of shows; crew leads are waiting to see if Cartoon Network will order a second season.

Universal's Curious George episodics appear to be clicking along nicely in their second season on PBS...

Up the road at Film Roman/Starz Media, there is still a crew working on The Simpsons Movie, only it's smaller now (would have to be smaller, the picture's out July 27). Layout department is gone, cleanup and animation are still working, compositing still has a little while to go. "The writers kept changing and refining, we kept turning out new drawings," one artist told me. Another said: "I did more overtime in the last five weeks than I did at any other point on the picture. The writers kept throwing changes at us." Happily, his overtime is now done. Unhappily, he's facing lay off after eight hectic months of employment.

He said he's still catching up on his sleep.

Elsewhere in the studio, Slacker Cats is finishing up production boards and moving into production. And El Superbeasto (I'm informed) is moving ahead after a period of slumber.

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The Global Diz

(Disney animation comes to Mumbai, India...)

Today's business sections are filled with stories about Disney partnering with a big Indian producer, making a kind of Oliver and Company, Bombay-style?

...

The Walt Disney Co. is teaming up with India's Yash Raj Films to make a series of animated feature films with voices of Bollywood stars, the companies said Tuesday.

Burbank, Calif.-based Disney will be co-producing an animated feature in India for the first time. Yash Raj Films is one of India's top production companies.

The two companies plan to co-produce one animated film in a year. The films will carry the Disney brand.

"This alliance begins with animation. It could lead to other collaborations," said Mark Zoradi, Walt Disney's marketing president.

"What we are getting is an understanding of Indian comedy, culture and music," Zoradi told reporters.

The first film _ "Roadside Romeo" _ is about a rich dog that moves from soft beds to make his home in garbage bins after being abandoned on a Mumbai street, said Sanjeev Kohli, chief executive of Yash Raj Films.

Nice to see that Disney is broadening its animation sphere, making animated films in India for the Indian market. Much better than outsourcing jobs from the States. That is what's going on here, right?

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A Moment with Lou Scheimer

The solo studios -- DePatie-Freleng, Hanna-Barbera, and Filmation among others -- are pretty much over. There's DreamWorks and Jeffrey Katzenberg, but that's about it. Almost everything else today is but a gear in larger conglomerate machinery. And everyone is an employee, one way or another.

Lou Scheimer was a co-founder of Filmation in 1962, and kept the doors open for 26 years before L'Oreal bought the place and instantly shut it down. He remembers the day that it happened -- along with a lot of other things -- in a wide-ranging interview with The Trades:

...It [was] the ugliest day of my life. I had to tell hundreds of people that they were out of work. I had spent twenty-five years trying to keep all the work in this country and training animators. And I'm proud of those moments. And I'm really proud of all the people who worked there too, because they were great people, and they're all doing very well nowadays...

It was certainly a memorable day in my life, since I'd been there since the previous summer and was hoping (don't we always?) for a longer run. But Lou called us into the third-floor theater and gave us the bad news. He was emotional. We were emotional. And shortly thereafter, we were carrying our belongings out to our cars in cardboard boxes.

Which, come to think of it, is often the fate of employees who work in a "project-to-project" business. And project-to-project is what the animation industry is in 2007.

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Square Dance at Wartime Warners?

Click on the thumbnail for a full-sized photo

Late on a Sunday night, I got me a vintage photo (courtesy of Bob Foster.) Warner Bros. Cartoons, early in the 1940s. It looks like either some western style party going on, or maybe the gang was doing a tribute to Republic Pictures.

From left to right: Phil DeGard, five unknowns, producer John Burton Sr., unknown, director Friz Freleng, animator Bob Matz, animator Phil Monroe, Mrs. Eddie Seltzer, Ken Harris, unknown, Manny Perez, sound effects tyro Treg Brown, Chuck Jones, Tom McKimson, Bob McKimson, layout artist Bob Gribboek, two unknowns, cameraman Ray Bloss, unknown, and Harry Love.

This looks to me like a soundstage, no doubt in Burbank, no doubt for a special social function. If anybody knows the exact date...and the occasion, do put your knowledge up in the comment section.

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Disney Toony Animation

To continue the ongoing story of the week's studio walk-throughs:

What's termed "Disney Sonora" is a large building sitting near what was once Glendale's Grand Central Airport (seen above in its glory days) and is now a large industrial park owned by Disney and -- off by the cement channel known as the L.A. River -- DreamWorks Animation.

The "Sonora Building" is two stories, housing Disney Television Animation downstairs and Disney Toons Studios upstairs. Disney Television Animation produces half-hour series and reports to the Disney Channel hierarchy (it once was under Disney Feature Animation); Disney Toons Studios reports to the main studio lot in Burbank. In the last few months, John Lasseter has become involved in Diz Toons product.

Both first and second floors have been refurbished over the last couple of years. Downstairs, the DTVA crews work in traditional-looking gray cubicles with walls six and a half feet high. A year and a half ago, the downstairs was jack-hammered into its present splendor, with complaints of dust and noise from the Toon residents on the second floor.

A few months back, the upstairs got a make-over with new carpeting, new cubicles, and a large, spanking fresh open area with fifties-retro hanging lights similar to Disney Features, and new cubicles with deviders that look like starched white linen.

Most of the staff hates the new cubicles. "Too small"..."not enough work space"..."low dividers with people looking in at me all the time"...

On the bright side, when you're just walking through and around the new cubes as I do, the overall set-up looks kind of snazzy, like Civil War tents. It just doesn't have much practicality attached to the snazziness.

But the artists soldier on. The Tinkerbell and Fairies crews have now moved over from the Frank Wells Building on the Burbank lot, and are settling in. The fresh pass on Tinkerbell is now up on reels, and Lasseter is alegedly happy with the new story arc. The sequels beyond it are beginning to take on form and substance.

Enjoy the balance of the weekend.

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The Box Office Among Us

The two animated candidates now occupy the middle of the Top Ten list.

Surf's Up came in at #4 on Friday, with a $5.1 million take.

Our old friend Shrek landed at #5, with a haul of $4,300,000. S3 has now collected a $270.4 million domestic gross.

The top two slots are filled by 1) George Clooney and Associates ($11.6 million) and (#2) Knocked Up ($6.2 million).

Update: To nobody's surprise, Ocean's 13 cops the top spot, snaring $37 million in its opening weekend (with the Koch calculator (c) predicting a final take of between $100 million and $140 million -- give or take -- for O13's final domestic tally.)

Johnny Depp and his merry band of cutthroats bring home $21.3 million for a total of $253.6 million (and Pirates is now in #2.)

The baby comedy KU declines less (34.8%) than anything else in the Top Ten, collecting $20 million and a #3 berth for a $66.2 million total after two weekends.

As for the animated entries, Surf's Up collected $18 million in its opening frame, which is no doubt a bit of a disappointment for Sony Pictures Animation, but still good enough for a fourth place finish in a competitive field. SPA's sophomore effort will probably finish south of Open Season. Our guess: it winds up in the $58-$80 million range.

Lastly, Shrek the Third collected $15.8 million for a $281.9 million total and 43.8% decline in its fourth week of release.

Update 2: Variety notes that this summer weekend was a little weaker than year-ago numbers. Ocean's 13 opened slightly smaller than its two predecessors, and Surf's Up probably got bashed by the Big Mean Ogre.

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Two Tales of Leverage

The post down below led me to muse on these stories about labor contracts, work, and leverage.

Tale the first: Clark Gable was a movie star for twenty-eight years. For most of that time, he had it written into his contracts that he worked until 5 p.m. and no later. Comedian Don Rickles relates the following story about the WWII drama Run Silent, Run Deep, on which Rickles was a supporting player and Gable (along with Burt Lancaster) was the star. It goes like this:

...Burt Lancaster, a serious man, says to me, "This is a serious movie, Don. You really need to know about submarines. It will help you in your character development if you know the intricate workings of the submarine."

Burt says all this as if we're about to be ordered to our battle stations.

Meanwhile, Gable is one of the most relaxed movie stars in the history of the business.

"Look," he tells me. "I'm a five o'clock guy."

"What does that mean, Mr. Gable?" I ask.

"It means, kid, that my day ends at five. Regardless. Five is scotch-and-soda time. And then I'm on my way home."

Every day at five, Gable sticks to his guns. Five o'clock comes and he's in the trailer. He enters as a Navy commander and exits as a Brooks Brothers model. Driving off the lot in his Bentley convertible, he waves goodbye as he passes through the security gates.

Because he's a producer of the picture, Lancaster is far more intense and worries about overages.

...Most of the action isn't done on location but in the studio. One scene involves a series of explosions followed by a deluge of water. The mechanics are tricky and the technical guys work on it all day. They can't quite get it right. Finally, at about five to five, it all comes together -- the bombastic explosions and a deluge of water.

Gable and I are in the battle scene, the climax of the film. [Director] Robert Wise signals action and all hell breaks loose. The special effects are spectacular.

In the midst of this drama, Gable says, "Sorry, boys, Mr. Five O'clock is done for the day."

And then, with the grace of a European prince, Gable struts to his trailer.

Lancaster chases after him.

Clark," says Burt, "we finally got this thing to work. It'll cost a fortune if we dismantle it. We gotta film it now."

Ever the gentleman, Gable looks at Lancaster sympathetically. "Relax, Burt," he says. "I'll dive with the submarine tomorrow."

-- Don Rickles' Book; Don Rickles with David Ritz; pp. 76-78.

Okay. So you can look at the above and think: That damn movie star. Only cared about himself. Not a team player..."

Or you can say to yourself: "Good for him. He had a contract, and he followed it."

But either way, your basic reaction probably is: "It's Clark effing Gable. He can do what he damn well wants."

Now consider this second story: During the long string of Disney feature hits, from the late 1980s to the turn of the century, the animation checking department at WDFA took every break and every lunch that they were entitled to. At precisely the same time each day, they got up and walked out.

They didn't work past five unless they were getting overtime.

People in another department in the feature building (who will go unnamed, along with the department) didn't do these things. They worked through breaks. And many lunches. And sometimes worked after five whether they were authorized for overtime or not.

Yet despite all their extra effort, they were laid off at exactly the same time as the animation checkers. That is, when the studio stopped making hand-drawn films (for the first time).

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The Links of June

Who says show biz is only for the young. Octagenerian Stan Lee, still trucking right along, signs a new deal with the Mouse House:

Walt Disney Studios has signed a multiyear, first-look deal with legendary comics creator Stan Lee and his production company, POW! Entertainment.

Specifics were not disclosed, but Lee and his production company will develop and produce all forms of entertainment for various platforms.

"The big thing is we're trying to do projects that are high concept, stories that will lend themselves to franchises," said Lee, whose POW! stands for Purveyors of Wonder.

Lee is the co-creator of many of the most popular Marvel Comics superheroes that have gone on to starring roles in today's tentpole movie marketplace, from Spider-Man to the Fantastic Four to the Hulk.

Ah. So that's why Stan is still a hot commodity. He makes the studios big mon-eee.

And since Sony Pictures is flogging surfing penguins this week, we'll link to the second Surf's Up article in as many days:

[Surf's Up] has taken five years to make, because the two most difficult things for computers to re-create are water and feathers. "Surf's Up" has a lot of both. It's also lucky enough to have a new, young star doing the lead voice.

Shia LaBeouf has a surprise hit, "Disturbia," still selling tickets. He also is in the eagerly awaited "Transformers," due to land July 3, and has been signed for the next Indiana Jones flick. Here, he supplies the voice of Cody Maverick, an undersized Rockhopper penguin who travels from Shiverpool, Antarctica, to Pen Gu Island to compete in the 10th annual Biz Z Memorial Surf-Off.

Sony, not taking any chances, has launched one of the most extensive marketing campaigns in recent moviedom, even out-webbing Spider-Man. Everyone and everything from Old Navy to McDonald's Happy Meals and Baskin-Robbins' Splish Splash sherbet is hawking the flick.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian summarizes a cartoon festival that purports to be the UN-Disney celebration of animation:

...For more than 25 years, Portland, Ore., film archivist, historian, professor, and writer Dennis Nyback has been searching for rare films in the catalog The Big Reel as well as in thrift stores and flea markets. "F@ck Mickey Mouse" is the title of a 16mm film program Nyback has assembled to showcase, as he puts it, "rare cartoon precursors that beat Disney to the punch, imitators that ripped him off, and parodies that made vicious fun of some of Disney's greatest animation shorts."

Forbes Magazine gives an overview of the burgeoning visual effects industry, and how viz effx permeate films of every genre:

Even films that don't seem effects-driven, like romantic comedies and period dramas, rely on as many as 400 effects shots, most of which are "invisible effects" that might be introduced to a commonplace scene, such as the addition of weather effects and backdrops. In Time Warner's (nyse: TWX - news - people ) Blood Diamond, the visual effects team placed actors in dozens of off-limits locations, such as Sierra Leone, enhanced spilled blood, altered out-of-focus shots and made parked vehicles drive.

"There isn't a film without this type of effects," says Okun. "Visual effects have matured to the point where they are no longer a special event. We're just one more tool every director uses."

And some films are now purely digital, such as the animated features that come from Disney's (nyse: DIS - news - people ) Pixar and DreamWorks Animation, which made Shrek the Third. The company used two "render farms"--giant rooms filled with nothing but racks of servers with heavy-duty processors--to complete the film.

And we'll throw in reviews of two dvd animation releases -- one new and one old -- in case you want to know about some of Disney's old Silly Symphony shorts or Starz Media/Anchor Bay's new Hell Boy release...

Fastcompany.com has an interesting take on why and how Disney has become even more of a power-house over the last two years. Title of the piece? "The Apple-ization of Disney"...

A very big, very established company. The Walt Disney Co. has more than 133,000 employees around the world and 84 years of tradition. It has rules. But with digital technology changing the way the once-untouchable media giants create, distribute, and profit from their content, Disney needs people to break some rules and blaze new paths into the future...

Since Bob Iger replaced the brainy but embattled Michael Eisner as CEO in October 2005, Disney has managed to keep the theatrics on TV and movie screens and out of the boardroom and the headlines. The crushing financials, the no-confidence board vote that booted Eisner off the throne, the threat of a shareholder suit--they seem like ancient history now that the company is "firing on all cylinders," as David Miller, an analyst with Sanders Morris Harris, puts it.

The stock price has climbed more than 50% since Iger took over. Analysts are quick to split the credit: Eisner invested wisely; Iger has a more effective management style. Last year, Disney generated a record $34 billion in revenue (up 7% from the previous year) from an impressive string of hits including Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (the year's top-grossing film and DVD); Cars (the year's top-grossing animated film); three of the top-10 prime-time shows; and Disney Channel's High School Musical, which produced the best-selling album and a lucrative franchise.

One key to the turnaround is Pixar Animation Studios, acquired a year ago in a $7.4 billion stock swap. The deal made Pixar founder and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs a Disney board member (and the largest individual stockholder, with 138 million shares). No question, Pixar is resuscitating Disney's animation group. But a change with broader implications is also taking place: a monumental mind shift to embrace digital technology and rethink the business. Which, come to think of it, sounds an awful lot like Apple....

Lots of evil stepmothers in the kingdom of animation, but who's your cartoon daddy? Independent News of the United Kingdom answers the question with two words: Peter Griffin of Family Guy.

...The unashamed similarities between Family Guy and The Simpsons are mocked in an episode of the latter where Peter Griffin appears in a large crowd of Homer clones; Entertainment Weekly has panned the show. But Fox keeps coming back to it because of incredible DVD sales: the first series sold 1.6 million copies, the second a further million. Cartoon Network's reruns have also been hugely popular.

Family Guy thrives on twisted, blacker-than-black humour. Some AIDS groups weren't happy when Peter Griffin sang to a man lying in a hospital bed: "You got the AIDS/You may have caught it when you stuck that filthy needle in here/Or maybe all that unprotected sex which we hear."

It also pokes fun at religion: in an upcoming episode Jesus will rise again, become a celebrity and turn out to be a "colossal douchebag," says MacFarlane. "I'm sure it's going to piss a whole bunch of Bible-thumpers off. It's mind-boggling to me that every aspect of our society can be lampooned except religion. But Fox, to their credit, allowed us to go ahead with it."...

Lastly, I link to this article by Floyd Norman about Pete Young, a Disney story artist who died far, far too young, and who I still think about a lot, even all this time after his passing.

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The Evans Ranch in the Antelope Valley

Josh Meador and Ralph Hulett did a lot of traversing of the Antelope Valley -- you know, that stretch of desrt running up the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada -- and this is an oil painting of a ranch they liked...

This study comes from the 1960s.

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Hanging Ten (and Hoping for a Big Opening)

In the tumbling wake of Shrek the Third, and ahead of the Pixar saga about a rat in love with French cooking, comes the tube-riding penguins of Surf's Up, Sony Pictures Animation's second animated feature.

The flick opens tomorrow, reviews are flowing in, and the tub-thumping proceeds full blast:

"Sony early on had a surfing penguin movie that wasn't working," [said SU producer Chris Jenkins.] "It went on the shelf. I thought there was something kind of cool about it and came back with the documentary angle. Reality-angle. Surfers seem to spend a lot of time doing documentaries on themselves we should do it, embrace it and do a full-length narrative like Spinal Tap."

The surfing documentary angle has beguiled a number of critics who -- overall -- give it higher marks than the green ogre's third outing. Come this weekend, we'll get to see how it opens...and if the Mainstream Media returns to its "Animation Glut!" theme song.

As always, keep in mind Dr. Koch's Box office gross metrics: However the picture opens in its first three days, it's going to rake in three to four times that amount by the end of its domestic run. (Overseas revenues are something else again.)

As always, I'm praying for a smash-boffo weekend.

Update: I had Mr. Jenkins title wrong -- producer, not director. Thanks to the commenter for the catch.

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At Warners and Disney

The weekly biz rep studio tour continues.

Warner Bros. Animation has now moved in to its new digs at the Warner Ranch (orginally the Columbia Ranch) north of the 101 between Pass Avenue and Hollywood Way. The studio is now housed on one part of the lot in connected trailers and -- a hundred-plus yards away -- in a three-story building.

I walked through all the different nooks and crannies this morning, and while the new spaces aren't as palatial as the old, they're functional and pleasant. Lower ceilings, but most people seemed okay with that.

Now what Warners needs is more production. Justice League the three other productions will soon be wrapping up.

I also cruised by Disney Feature Animation to find that everyone was at an "employee meeting" over at Burbank's fabled Pickwick Center. (For those who don't know, Pickwick is a recreational facility on Riverside Drive, containing bowling alleys, ice skating rink, and several large ballrooms. Plus a big park in the center -- seen below -- where the confab was held.)

The meeting was one of a series that the new Disney Feature Animation team has held, one more update on changes at WDFA. Glen Keane is happy with the new direction of Rapunzel and credited the new regime with helping to make the picture better; the new animation building -- slated to be built in Glendale -- is still a work in progress, and execs want artists' input. Management intends to make WDFA more transparent and various departments more communicative with each other as time goes on; technology from Pixar is being used on upcoming WDFA product.

One employee said to me that he thought story development was way better than when he first came to the studio (he's been there a few years.) I said that, judging from the morale of story crews up on the third floor, I think that's true. The artists don't feel as constricted and hemmed in by executives with their reams of notes the way they did several years back. Now its peers reviewing peers. Most people in the story department seem to like that a whole lot better.

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Creators Want More

...as they should. If you don't think you deserve more money, you're either already a bajillionaire or have low self-esteem.

Variety editor Peter Bart held forth on writers' demands in upcoming contract talks in the Big Trade Paper a few days back:

As a member of the Writers Guild, I received my ominous-looking green "ballot" the other day requesting a "yes" or "no" vote for its "pattern of demands." The Guild is girding for approaching negotiations with the studios and it clearly wants its members to rally around the flag.

Talk to random writers around town, and you come away with the sense that Hollywood scribes have indeed decided what it is they want the most.

They want more.

More money, more control, more of the back-end pie.

Memo to Mr. Bart: that's what every creator wants. More moolah, more creative independence, more and bigger residuals (which I guess comes under the "more moolah" file tab.)

Just last week an animation director said to me: "I just directed a DVD that's making the company big bucks. But I'm not getting any extra money into my pocket."

He didn't say that it wasn't fair. He just said he believed he deserved more. And I agree with him. I think that creators should get a bigger piece of the action. I also don't think companies should be able to own copyrights. Or patents. The actual human creators of that intellectual property should have the sole right of ownership.

Sadly, the United States congress decided otherwise a century ago, and here we are. Until the congress and President reverse their century-old decision, we're stuck. (And I'm not holding my breath for change anytime soon).

If entertainment workers expect more money for the fruits of their labor, they're going to have to acquire more leverage. Peter Bart notes that WGA President Patrick Verrone understands this need for more power and control:

One of Verrone's rallying cries is to gain appropriate participation for writers creating work for the Web, mobile phones and other digital platforms of the future.

And because the future is already upon us, Verrone isn't fretting about whether his fellow scribes are getting a big enough bite of the gross. He's worried whether they'll get paid at all for the use and re-use of their material on emerging platforms.

You've got to 'get real' before you can 'get rich,' Verrone seems to be saying, which surely is the subtext of that ominous-looking green card carrying the "pattern of demands."

You've got that right, Mr. Bart. Everybody in the biz has to "get real." They also have to devise new and effective ways to get more.

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Production Board Schedules

We've been working to pin down the actual time board artists have to spend on a production board. Obviously, artists who have long production experience and lots of artistic chops will be faster than a beginner still learning the craft.

What follows is a work breakdown from a twenty-year story and production board veteran...

11 Minute TV animation (1/2 - 22 minute show)

Necessary time needed to do 11 minute board: 6 weeks – 5 day work week / 8 hr day

16 – 20 script pages = 11 minute script (note: scripts over 17 pages are usually longer than 11 minutes and are over-written).

170 – 250 3-panel brd. pgs. / 11 minute script, or

250 – 325 2-panel brd. pgs. / 11 minute script

500 – 600 drawings / 11 minute script

8 – 15 3-panel brd. pgs. / 1 script page, or

12 – 30 2-panel brd. pgs. / 1 script page

24 – 45 drawings /1 script page

6 week deadline – 11 minute script

240 paid hours for 180 board hours (40 work week / 30 hours story board work)

• With an average of 40 min. for roughing and 20 min for clean up a 180 page story board should take 180 hours of board time and needs 6 working weeks to complete.

• Note in a typical work day there are approximately 4 –5 bathroom breaks (40 min. – 1 hr./day) along with 2 required 10 minute breaks (20 min), and at least 1 – 2 hours of some kind of meeting discussion time with the director, line producer, or production crew, and other duties (filling out time cards, page numbering, cleaning office, organization, & etc) so that actual time given to board work does not equal a full 8 hours but more like 5 – 6 hrs. / day and 25-30 actual boarding hours per work week.

In a 6 week schedule if a board artist is working on a 3 panel board page on a 4 week rough / 2-week clean up schedule:

42 - 62 rough 3pnl brd. pgs./ week (4 weeks)

85 – 125 clean up 3pnl brd. pgs./ week (2 weeks)

8 – 12 rough brd. pgs./day (4 weeks)

17 – 25 cleaned up brd. pgs./day (2 weeks)

1.3 – 2 rough brd. pgs. / hr. (4 weeks)

3 – 4 cleaned up brd. pgs. / hr. (2 weeks)

5 week deadline – 11 minute script

200 paid hours for 150 board hours (40 work week / 30 hours story board work)

• Note in a typical workday there are approximately 4 –5 bathroom breaks (40 min. – 1 hr./day) along with 2 required 10 minute breaks (20 min), and at least 1 – 2 hours of some kind of meeting discussion time with the director, line producer, or production crew, and other duties (filling out time cards, page numbering, cleaning office, organization, & etc) so that actual time given to board work does not equal a full 8 hours but more like 5 – 6 hrs. / day and 25-30 actual boarding hours per work week.

In a 5-week schedule, if a board artist is working on a 3 panel board on a 3 week rough / 2 week clean up schedule:

56 - 83 rough 3pnl brd. pgs./ week (3 weeks)

85 - 125 clean up 3pnl brd. pgs./ week (2 weeks)

9 – 14 rough brd. pgs./day

17 – 25 cleaned up brd. pgs./day (2 weeks)

1.5 – 2.3 rough brd. pgs. / hr.

3 – 4 cleaned up brd. pgs. / hr. (2 weeks)

You get twenty artists in a room, and you'll get twenty different opinions about how long a given task will take, how many hours it will take to make it high-quality, how many hours to make it adequate, etc. What the above breakdown strives to do is pitch the ball down the middle and present an average.

The above won't mean much to non-pros. It might even make their eyes glaze over. But what do the artists out there think?

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Studio Rounds

It's the usual week with the usual march through signator studios.

The way it usually goes: I show up at somebody's cubicle. They look up and give me a reflexive grin.

"Oh hi. What's happening at the other studios?"

I tell them to the best of my knowledge. Then: "How are things going around here?"

"Everything's fine." And a second smile.

I move on. But half way through the walk-through, somebody looks up and doesn't smile...

...and I get the issue that is usually rattling around the studio. Of late, it's too-short production board schedules and the unpaid overtime artists work to make the deadline.

This isn't the reality for every show at every studio. Some schedules, believe it or not, do reflect workplace reality. But others don't.

And the places where it doesn't? They were major topics at the May General Membership meeting.

Earlier this week, a production boarder did a breakdown of how, with the shortened schedule, any competent board artist was going to have thirty extra hours of work if she (or he) expected to deliver an eleven-minute board on time. Another told me that the only normal work-weeks he has are the ones where he's roughing out panels. When he gets to cleaning them up, he's "working insane hours."

TAG will meet with studios to address this issue.

Do any good? I'm hopeful. As of this afternoon, I got word from a well-known 'toon factory that after receiving TAG's letter about writers' outlines being mislabeled as "premises", it will retroactively pay short-changed writers for work performed.

Squeaking wheels, and all that.

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No Respect?

A few years ago, John Kimball (son of Ward) asked me to write a letter to the Television Academy defining what an animation director does, exactly. The reason John wanted the letter, he told me, was that writers of a prime-time animated show (which will go unnamed here) were attempting to get themselves nominated for Emmys as directors.

John K., a longtime animator and animation director himself, was a potentate in the television academy animation branch and took exception to this, hence his request for a letter from TAG outlining directorial duties. A few weeks later, John told me: "Some people weren't too thrilled with what you wrote. In fact, they were pissed." The story of my life.

That lengthy preamble leads me to the subject at hand: a new article in The Hollywood Reporter entitled Cel Division (which unfortunately hides behind a subcription wall). It seems that animation in general -- not just animation directors -- can't get much respect from the t.v. academy:

...In theory, there shouldn't be...much hand-wringing over an Emmy category, but the four [categories] that represent animation at the Primetime Emmys have been causing consternation almost since they were created in 1989. While most Primetime Emmy categories are fairly straightforward, largely separated by genre with subcategories for length, the animation categories cast a wide net over an entire style of visual presentation. That means adult cartoons go up against kids' fare, and dramatic animation can butt heads with comedic forms.

The animation categories also follow different submission and judging rules than the live-action ones; nominations are determined by votes from the Television Academy's animation branch only, and animated episodes are nominated for a single episode...

Funny thing. Like animated features, animated half-hours have almost always been shut out of categories where they competed with live-action shows...

Not since 1961, when "The Flintstones" was nominated in the outstanding program achievement in the field of humor category, has an animated series landed an Emmy nomination berth in a nonanimation category; none has ever won.

According to Television Academy senior vp John Leverence, submitting "Simpsons" as a comedy was an experiment -- initiated by producers at Gracie Films -- that failed.

"It was one of those situations where a very writer-driven production company was interested in seeing if what they considered to be essentially a three-camera sitcom could go in with their peers in the sitcom world," he recalls. "There was not an enthusiastic response from the live-action world of voters to "The Simpsons" coming over, so they went back to animation, where they have continued on to great success."

I'm going out on a limb here and predicting that The Simpsons Movie, even if it grosses $300 million domestic, will not be getting into the Academy Awards by way of a "Best Picture" nomination. Oscar let down his guard for Beauty and the Beast. It won't happen twice.

...Once resigned to staying in their own neighborhood of animation categories, shows often find they have other stumbling blocks to deal with. [Craig] McCracken's Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends ...is a children's show with limited adult appeal. The Daytime Emmys do have a children's animation category, but Foster's, like many shows on Comedy Central, doesn't run in the right day-part to qualify.

"It's frustrating for people on my end of animation," says McCracken, whose show lost last year to "Simpsons." "The people judging are adults, so they're going to honestly respond to things that communicate to them naturally, which is more adult humor."...

And so it goes. The Simpsons can't break into the coveted sitcom category because it's a 'toon, and Foster's can't nab a top-tier animation Emmy because it gets smothered every year by The Yellow Family.

Like I say. The entertainment biz, whether you're talking live-action or animation, is a pretty stone-hearted creature.

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Making Less Than Dear Old Dad Did...

Time to switch gears for a sec.

I came across this CNN story about how guys in their thirties are doing compared to their fathers, and it triggered some hard memories.

American men in their 30s are earning less than their father's generation did, challenging a long-held belief that each generation will be better off than the one that preceded it, according to a new study published Friday...

Relying on Census Bureau figures, the study's authors found that after adjusting for inflation, men in their 30s in 2004 had a median income of about $35,000 per year, for a 12 percent drop compared with $40,000 per year for men in the same age group in 1974.

That stood in stark contrast to men in their 30s in 1994, who earned 5 percent more than their fathers did.

Similarly, American families, which experienced a 32 percent increase in income levels between 1964 and 1994, saw household income growth slow to 9 percent between 1974 and 2004, according to the report.

"There is clearly some story here that [U.S.] productivity gains are not trickling down to the median family," said John Morton, a co-author of the study and the managing director of economic policy initiatives at the Pew Charitable Trusts.

This took me back to the early sixties, when I was in junior high school.

Dad was making about twelve to fourteen grand a year at Disney. When you tacked on the royalties from his Christmas cards, the art shows, the royalties from the little indie films he did, he was up around twenty five to thirty grand per year. Thirty-five grand in a really good year.

This put us in the top quadrant of middle-classdom. Mom was stay-at-home. The family spent a big chunk of each summer at the beach. I'm told by my surviving parent that family income fluctuated wildly year to year, but I never noticed any difference in our living standards from the vantage point of the eighth grade.

Twenty-five to thirty-five thousand a year.

You make that kind of money now, you live in a studio apartment and drive a third-hand car. You clip coupons. Eat in a lot, with an occasional splurge at Burger King or Sizzler.

And if you're going to work in Toonland, expect big years and small years. Expect layoffs. As part of an extended family that's been in the animated sector of show biz for seventy years, I can tell you that it's a cruel business. Just when you think you've got stability and a rising standard of living, it can all get yanked away in the wink of an eye. All it takes is a couple of under-performing movies or a cancelled t.v. series.

The cold reality of the business, coupled with the income study that's just been released, is enough to give anyone pause.

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Your Weekend B.O.

Which should be fine if you use Mitchum.

But as for box office, why it's clicking right along...

Pirates of the Caribbean retained its top position with $13.5 million on Friday (with a total of $186 million to date).

The live-action preggo comedy Knocked Up took in $9.8 million for the second slot...

And Shrek the Third galloped off with $7.4 million and a $235 million cume for third place...

Sunday Update:

To no one's surprise, Pirates of the Caribbean: At Wits End took the top spot in the weekend box-office estimates with $43 million, despite a 62% drop. Knocked Up squeaked out a second place with $29 million, and Shrek the Third was, well, third, with $26.7 million.

Of note, in about a week the latest Shrek will become the number three CG-animated film of all time, giving the Shrek franchise three of the top four spots on that list. It's safe to say the big green ogre and his cohorts have put more than a few butts into theater seats.

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Districting for Two

And how did Kevin Koch and I start our first June weekend? Why, by attending the IATSE District Two convention in foggy San Diego...

District Two is a gathering of I.A. locals from Hawaii, California, Nevada and Arizona, meeting to advance labor's agenda (you know, things like better health care, better wages, boring things like that.)

This year the festivities got started early in the morning and lasted well into the afternoon. The high point of the morning session was IA President Tom Short outlining some of the accomplishments and challenges that entertainment unions face in the immediate and not-so-immediate future:

* There's been an 83% injcrease in the Defined Benefit Pension Plan that covers 45,000 IATSE entertainment employees over the last twelve years.

* Basic cable is growing in viewership while broadcast networks are shrinking, and licensing fees -- which fuel the product that nourishes the t.v. industry (and labor unions that have contracts with that industry) -- are flat. This will present a problem for the teevee biz and unions that don't adapt to the changing market place.

* Because of the tensions between SAG/WGA and the movie and television producers (the AMPTP) there is already a defacto strike developing industry-wide. Short said that the IATSE isn't going to go "over the abyss" because of a couple of "irresponsible" guilds. (This is a theme he has hit on a lot of the last eighteen months...)

* Around the world: the issue of piracy is a large one. Piracy -- bootleg DVDs and illegal downloads -- cost the movie and t.v. industry $6 billion a year, $100 million of which would go into the IATSE's pension and health plans if those billions were collected. So this is an issue that affects workers, their jobs, and their pensions. Short said that he'll be going to Europe later this summer with Directors Guild officials to testify about piracy before various European governmens. He said it was important for "union members to put congress's feet to the fire on this issue."

* President Short intends to work with organizers in Eastern Europe to raise wages and generally raise the bar to "level the playing field" for entertainment workers back in the States.

* California needs a wage-tax incentives for the making of motion pictures to compete with other states that have them: "Connecticut has 17 features shooting inside its border because of tax incentives."

* Odds are (the Prez thinks) that the Democrats will pick up congressional seats in '08, as well as win the White House, although he won't venture a guess about who might win the nomination.

The rest of the convention has been organizing workshops, communication workshops, safety workshops, and the usual array of organized labor's various other issues.

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Hot Links of Animation

Another end-of-week links carnival (moved up slightly since I have to work this weekend for the Mother International...)

Looking for depraved cartoons? Then we've got just the animation festival for you...

EDMONTON - Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation Festival has been the midwife (or abortionist, depending on your taste) of such transgressively unique cartoons series as Beavis & Butthead. Craig (Spike) Decker and Mike Gribble theatrically premiered Spirit of Christmas, the original uncensored South Park short by Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The latest compilation of generally sick and twisted animated shorts, as you might expect, is laden with witless, male adolescent sexual and violent fantasies, and a few very clever ideas, painstakingly crafted into funny visual jokes.

Inevitably, breasts are more elastic in these sorts of films than they are in real life, and misogyny of all sorts abounds. Gay sex seems to be a popular theme, especially if it comes as a surprise. Some of the ideas, like John Goras's (great name) grossly ridiculous story of an encounter between a stoned song bird and a randy stallion don't even qualify as taboo-busting.

As Shrek the Third cleans up at early summer's box office, Sony tub thumps for its animated feature Surf's Up, soon to play at an AMC near you. Sony Pictures recently hosted a press junket for the voice cast away from L.A.:

...Given the throngs of surfers on the waves, it was clear Hawaii is the perfect location to chat with the [Surf's Up] cast...

After roaming around Waikiki...it was off to the Kahala Resort to speak with Surf's Upstars Shia LeaBeouf, John Heder, Jeff Bridges and Mario Cantone...

New Star Wars animated product is slated to hit world teevee screens in a couple of years. A recent L.A. preview of a short clip of one of the shows met with an enthusiastic response:

HOLLYWOOD – The Jedi are coming to television – and, judging by the thunderous ovation Sunday that greeted a sneak peak of the animated CGI show, the Force remains strong with them.

Even though the show’s scheduled debut remains two years away, fans at a global celebration of “Star Wars” in Los Angeles cheered, hooted, clapped and even shouted “I love you!” after a trailer for “The Clone Wars,” which is the maiden effort of Lucasfilm Animation, the newest addition to the storytelling galaxy of George Lucas.

The two minutes of footage showed intense battle scenes and considerable action by Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, C3-PO, Mace Windu and the other familiar players in the “Star Wars” saga.

At last Our President gets his own animated comedy. And high time, too.

Li'l Bush, a new animated television series currently scheduled to premiere on Comedy Central in mid-June, offers to put the President on the center stage… a cute, little, center stage. The misadventures of Lil' George Bush, whose effort include putting the "dubya" back in Comedy "dubya" central, will range from anything and everything to dealing with nuclear warfare to taking a field trip overseas.

Variety has a long interview piece with the irrepressible Harvey Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein holds forth on any number of subjects regarding live action and animated movies. But we were interested in this item about the dead-on-arrival American release of Arthur and the Invisibles:

Luc Besson claimed at Suicidegirls.com last week that the Weinsteins butchered the release of the animated family film "Arthur and the Invisibles": "Its American distributor was the worst I have worked with in my entire life, in any country, because they changed so much of the film and tried to pretend the film was American."

Harvey responded in the New York Daily News by calling Besson a "has-been" and offering him $1 million if he could prove that he made the film for the $85 million he originally claimed.

That's one way to win friends and influence people.

Voice actor Patton Oswalt recalls his first interview for a job on Ratatouille with director Brad Bird:

"When we first met, we were talking about ... these different characters, and who am I going to be playing?" Oswalt said in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco last March. "And then I revealed that I'm a big, big foodie. And ... because he had done all this research by going to ... Paris, they had visited all these great restaurants, I was like, 'Oh, my God. Did you go here, here and here?' I was naming off all these [places], because I follow chefs the way people follow rock stars. Like, especially celebrity chefs. He was like, 'Oh, my God. I didn't know any of [them].' ... I knew more about the food world than he did in a way, after all his research. So I think that really helped ... connect the dots for him. Like, 'Oh, this should be the rat.'"

Lastly, a long interview with Shrek the Third director Chris Miller, wherein Mr. Miller expounds on becoming a director in the franchise, also working out story problems:

"...we were coming up with great scenes, great situations but about a year into it, roughly, we realized the Arthur story wasn’t working out at all. We were actually telling the Arthur story and Shrek was becoming a supporting character and not integral to the movie at all. He was becoming a guy behind the scenes.."

Have a peaceful and useful weekend...

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A Josh Meador Landscape

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Speaking of Josh Meador, here's a Meador landscape from the collection of animation vet John Emerson. (TAG board member Carla Fallberg sent the above image our way...)

Mr. Emerson, recently retired from a long career at Disney, comments:

"Josh did this 5 1/2 by 7 1/2 painting in his home studio while I watched him. It was a demonstration of picking up bits of color from the palette with the knife and not over mixing before painting. This keeps the colors from becoming muddy. He did all this in about 5 minutes. I’m still amazed."

John says that he first watched Meador paint when he was at a family camping trip at El Capitan beach above Santa Barbara. John was then I was 11 or 12.

Josh Meador was an amazing talent, in a lot of different directions. It's easy to see why he headed up Disney's effects department for so many years.

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