Toy Story IV!

Lovable toy-size figures. We like them a lot.

The Good Luck Trolls, with their frizzy, pastel-colored hair, are coming to the big screen via DreamWorks Animation. ...

Of course, trolls, elves and dollies don't always make it to the big screen. Disney quietly smothered King of the Elves several months ago, and four years back, some freshly minted Disney cartoon exec cancelled a project about a lawn gnome, one of the executives asking in a meeting:

"Can anybody tell me why we're making this? (effx: crickets) ... Well, we're not making this ..."

(Or as Suite 101 put it: "... [W]hen Pixar co-founders John Lasseter and Ed Catmull took over the leadership role at Disney Animation in May of 2006, they took one look at the script and promptly consigned it to the circular filing system ...")

But here's to the Good Luck Trolls. Long may they prosper.

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Profits from Baubles and Bangles

... also bright shiny beads.

If you wonder where entertainment cash flow comes from, it's not just the ticket sales, dvd sales and licensing to teevee that makes our fine entertainment conglomerates love them their animated movies. There are also minor things like this:

'Toy Story is... a merchandising behemoth. ...Disney/Pixar has moved more merchandise than any other recent movie and ... it's not a terribly close contest ...

Toys, furniture, scooters, calculators and other such stuff ... from Disney/Pixar's latest hit was packed into 724 massive cargo containers shipped to the U.S., according to Panjiva, [a company that tracks international trade] ...

Since the early days of Walt and the gang at the Disney Hyperion studio, royalties from merchandising trinkets has been a goodly part of the life blood coursing through cartoon studios' veins. And as it was in the beginning, so is it to this very day:

... "Phineas and Ferb" is getting the full Disney treatment as the company revs up its well-oiled franchise machine. Soon it will uncork a full merchandise line, with 200 Phineas and Ferb-related items — including boxer shorts, skateboards and boxes of macaroni and cheese — headed to stores ...

The point of all this? When our fine entertainment conglomerates get themselves a hit, they make sure they squeeze all possible profits from all possible venues. And Toy Story and Phineas are just a small part of the story:

"Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" accounted for 248 shipments [of merchandise], followed by "Shrek Forever After" (230, "Monsters vs. Aliens" (182) ... [and] "How to Train Your Dragon" (174) ...

It's always useful to remember that animated features don't earn their keep on box office and silver disk sales alone. There's all that other stuff that rakes in the long green, as well. Snow White is still selling dollies and lunch buckets 72 years after her original release.

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Retrofitting the 3-D

The race to expand our supply of dimensional movies continues; also increasing is the excuses for the crappier conversions.

The process of converting 2D films to 3D has hit some serious speed bumps on the road to acceptance, but it will remain a key component of filmdom's march into 3D.

That was the message emerging from a panel Thursday assembled by the Intl. 3D Society in association with the Visual Effects Society.

Without mentioning the recent brouhaha over the quality of the 3D conversion of "Clash of the Titans," moderator and 3D tech guru Lenny Lipton asked why 2D-to-3D conversion is sometimes controversial.

Some of the negative feelings may stem from the knowledge that a converted movie is "created after the fact" and people don't consider it the "real thing," said Aaron Parry, topper at Stereo D, which converted the upcoming M. Night Shyamalan kid pic "The Last Airbender.",,,

Uh, no. The negative feelings come from the conversions being no freaking good.

But regarding 3-D in general, I'll go further than that. Last night I saw a dimensional screening of Toy Story 3 with the Resident Teenager. Though we both enjoyed the movie a lot, afterwards I asked him, "how did you like the 3-D?" and he said:

"I didn't. I would have preferred the flat screen version. I thought you were the one who wanted to see it that way ..."

I'll admit it, I kind of did.

But not anymore. After having seen a half-dozen three dee epics, I'm pretty much through with the technology. Weighed against the dimmer screen, higher ticket price and awkward, plastic goggles, getting to watch moving View Master just doesn't jazz me.

I think I'l be gawking at the flat screen versions of my favorite movies from here on out.

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The Pres-Aid Art Auction

CHARLES SOLOMON (right) introduces the guest of honor, PRES ROMANILLOS.

... happened yesterday at the Animation Guild's second-floor meeting hall.

KEVIN KOCH, who coordinated the auction, helps set up along with Executive Board members BOB FOSTER and STEPHAN ZUPKAS.

Over 200 art pieces were donated and sold. Over $70,000 was raised. TAG President Kevin Koch was the lead engine of the enterprise, and it was his hard work and organizational chops that pulled the auction together.

One hundred-plus collectors and animation professionals spent Sunday afternoon bidding against one another for one-of-a-kind animation art, original comic panels, and paintings and drawings from some of the biggest names in our business.

HOWARD LOWERY, the auctioneer.

.

Retired H-B director RUDY CATALDI, who contributed original drawings.

Viewings of the assembled artwork started at 1 p.m., and the auction started at 2, running until 5:40 p.m.

Among the hundreds of pieces: development sketches from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Corpse Bride," production drawings from "Ferdinand the Bull," original illustrations from Rowland Wilson, artwork from animation legend Marc Davis, as well as production maquettes, autographed one-sheets, and vintage art books.

SCOTT JOHNSTON with ERIC GOLDBERG. "Goldberg Jam," a pen-and-ink illustration of several of Eric's best-known Disney characters, brought the highest price ($3400) of any item in the auction.

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Sales Persons

Never under-estimate the power of the cartoon:

Shrek, Dora the Explorer, and other animated TV and movie stars beloved by children have been moonlighting as junk-food pitchmen in recent years. And they're good at it.

Fifty percent of children say that food from a package decorated with a cartoon celebrity such as Shrek tastes better than the same exact food from a plain package, according to a new study.

And when given a choice, the vast majority of kids pick the food from the cartoon-adorned package as a snack, the study found ...

I'm so old I can remember when it was flesh-and-blood movie stars pushing poisons that were bad for us.

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Idiot Watch

... is what we need to go on. Especially when somebody gets paid actual money for writing something like this:

... It may have taken 15 years and 11 Pixar features, but we’ve finally reached the point where adult moviegoers appreciate animated features — particularly those from Pixar — just as much as their live-action counterparts. Gone are the days when one would have been ridiculed for attending an animated movie without a child in tow. ...

Earth to John Young. Allow us to point out a few things about animation.

1) The highest grossing film of all time in the year and a half after its release (and currently #10 per Box Office Mojo*) was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. ($8 million circa 1938.) This couldn't have happened if it was just taking in child admissions.

2) The Lion King was among the highest grossing features in the year of its release. Think only the kiddies were gawking at it?

3) The Ice Age franchise has made Fox a fervent believer in animation, the last one having grossed over $886 million around the world.

You don't get these kinds of numbers slotting your films into toddlers' matinees. Yet despite all the evidence, professional pundits continue to headline dim-bulb stories with:

'Toy Story 3': Have adult moviegoers finally embranced animation?

(And yes, I'm having a churlish kind of weekend ...)

* "Snow" has probably slipped a notch in the overall standings since "Avatar" came and went ...

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Fire Alarm Fun

This is apropo of nothing, but I share it with you anyway. We've had, over the recent span of time, some difficulties with 1105 N. Hollywood Way's highly sophisticated fire alarm system.

It likes to go off morning, noon and night, for no apparent reason. Alarms wail, lights flash, and the local fire department rolls up to the door to put out the fire. Oh. And the business representative (me) gets called down to the building to interact with the firefighters.

Only problem is, there's no fire. Just a balky alarm system.

This has been going on for awhile now, every twenty-four to thirty six hours, and I am starting to get a little ... uhm ... cranky. Here's one example of my crankiness, sent to the alarm company last week:

To [The Fire Alarm Co.]:

I am writing this at the suggestion of [one of your] employees. At 10:25 at night. From an office I wish I wasn't occupying at this moment, because I would much rather be home in bed.

The reason I'm here is we have had endless problems with our nine-month-old alarm system. Over the last few weeks, it has gone off during working hours, at night, and on weekends for no discernible reason. We have had technicians out to repair it, to reboot it, to install new sensors, etc., multiple times. Nothing they have done has improved the situation a jot.

Each time the alarm goes off, I am called and the fire department is called. The firefighters inform us that if the alarms persist, we will be billed for the calls (we are probably getting billed already.) They have now been out half a dozen times. We find this to be an intolerable situation.

The warranty on this system lapsed a few days ago. Our office manager informed the company that we were not disposed to pay for a malfunctioning system that has caused us nothing but grief over the past month, and seems no closer to being fixed than it did when the problems first started. The bill we received from your company for $600 was withdrawn after our complaints; we anticipate that other charges will be withdrawn as well, and the system repaired so that it stops going off at all hours.

Based on the results we've observed to date, the system and attempted repairs are failures, and I'm sorry that we didn't go with another system because this one has caused nothing but headaches.

Yours,

Steve Hulett

Business Representative -- The Animation Guild

That e-mail was from last week. And this one was from ... last night.

[Mr. Baker], old top, old buddy.

This is Steve Hulett. Again.

In case you can't place the name, I'm the guy who (apparently) spends all his time running to the Animation Guild Building at 1105 N. Hollywood Way, Burbank, CA. I run because your alarm system keeps going off for no apparent reason. It went off again tonight, at 8:10 p.m. I was away from a phone at the time, so we only narrowly averted the fire department smashing in a window to get inside. Happily, the BFD got hold of one of the staff, so our panes of glass remain intact.

But I've pretty much had it. I think now, we need to discuss our next step. I'm going to propose to the Animation Guild's executive board that we remove your non-functioning system and your company give us a refund, and we all go our separate ways. We can hire a night watchman to watch the place, and we'll get away from the wonders of modern technology, and I will avoid having to kill myself.

Thanks for your time. It's a wonder to me that your company remains in business. But miracles sometimes happen.

Steven Hulett

Happy Father's Day.

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The Foreign Horse Race

Woody, Buzz and co. apparently have a following beyond the seas:

Pixar/Disney's "Toy Story 3," the weekend's front-ranked domestic film, also opened No. 1 on the foreign theatrical circuit, grossing $44.8 million from 4,787 screens in 25 territories -- only a quarter of the total overseas marketplace.

Monster debuts in China and Latin America helped the film register "the biggest consolidated debut for a Pixar title from this bucket of release markets, almost doubling the (comparable) high set by ' Up,' " said Disney ...

Apparently animation titles continue to have worldwide charms. And as for the ogre ...

... Fifth was DreamWorks Animation/Paramount's "Shrek Forever After" in 3D, which registered $10 million from 2,107 venues in 20 markets. The fourth installment of the 'Shrek" franchise opened No. 1 in Australia, generating $8 million over four days from 312 situations ($11.7 million including previews) with 76% coming from 3D screens.

The weekend's top five titles drew nearly $92 million, more than $20 million generated by the top five titles in 2009's comparable weekend, another indication that 2010 is ... headed for another boxoffice record overseas ....

We surmise that the usual players won't be exiting the animation business anytime soon.

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Battling Health Plans

Since we're on a health coverage information kick here, allow us to compare the health coverage of a big, non-union viz effx studio to the Motion Picture Industry Health Plan's insurance.

We'll quote the summary of the visual effects studio plan (hereinafter known as Viz Effx) in bold-face, and the MPIPHP in regular face.

Ready? Then come on everybody, here we goooo ....

VFX: Exclusive Provider Organization -- $300 deductible (single) -- $600 deductible (family)

Preferred Provider Organization -- $600 deductible (single) -- $1200 deductible (family)

MPIPHP: No deductible.

VFX: EPO Insurance co-pay: (single) $50/month; (with spouse) $186/mnth; (with family) $371/mnth.

PPO Insurance co-pay: (single) $90/mnth; (with spouse) $210/mnth; (with family) $400/mnth.

MPIPHP: PPO Insurance co-pay: Zero

VFX: Doctor office visits: $15 (preferred); 70% after deductible (non-preferred)

MPIPHP: $5 - Motion Picture Television Fund Clinic;

$40 - Blue Shield non-clinic doctor;

$15 - Kaiser Permanente and/or Health Net.

VFX: Hospital (in-patient) -- 90% after $150 per confinement co-pay (preferred); 70% after $300 per confinement deductible.

($2000 annual cap - preferred; $5000 annual cap - non-preferred.)

MPIPHP: Hospital (in-patient) 90% (Blue Shield network - $1000 annual cap); 50% (out of network).

VFX: Emergency Room visits (emergency): 90% after $100 co-pay.

Non-emergency emergency room visits: Not covered.

MPIPHP: Emergency Room visits: $100 (waived if admitted to hospital.)

The above costs are pretty self-explanatory. If you are in the Viz Effx Plan, you get slammed with insurance co-pays (this is known as "off-loading expenses onto the participants.") However, if you're lucky enough to have a looong hospital stay, the costs narrow somewhat. (But you still have higher caps under the Viz Effx Plans.)

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The "Capital of Animation"

This one, remarkably enough, is not in Emeryville, CA.

TEHRAN – The city of Borujerd in Lorestan Province, one of Iran’s western provinces, has been designated the Iranian Capital of Animation.

The city was named capital of animation in a ceremony attended by several officials invited from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and the IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting), as well as Lorestan’s Governor General and several provincial officials. ...

I'm sure there are various American companies that would be glad to place some sub-contracting work inside Borujerd's city limits, but since Iran is currently near the top of the audition list for the international series Who Wants to be the United States' Newest Enemy?, I seriously question whether that scenario will play out anytime soon.

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Motion Picture Industry Health Plan Question

A commenter inquires:

Why can't union members who are on voluntary withdrawal pay into the healthcare and pension on their own until they get reemployed at a signator studio. Unless my math is off, isn't it about half the cost to pay into health and pension than it is to get COBRA? ...

Under Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan rules, it can't be done.

And who makes the rules? The Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan trustees. These trustees come from signator studios and the unions participating in the plan ( a 50-50 split.) They -- along with the bargaining parties to the union contracts -- set the Pension and Health Plan parameters. By law, trustees are required to "act on behalf of Plan participants."

The two sides agreed long ago that the main way payments can be made to the Plan is through contributions via employment under one of the many union contracts.

(One of the rationales for this is that residuals from t.v. shows and movies flow into the Plan to support it, and the trustees don't want to open it to an unlimited number of folks who aren't working on features and television product that trigger residual payments. There are already a number of exceptions for "affiliated" employees.)

Is this fair? I don't know. It's what the bargaining parties and trustees have agreed on over the years.

But one consolation for Plan participants who aren't currently employed by a signator company is: they can remain recipients to Motion Picture Industry Health coverage for close to three years beyond their date of lay off. If they have worked for a contract studio for a year or more, they will likely receive twelve to fifteen months of additional coverage after they become unemployed. Beyond that, they can self-pay an additional eighteen months of coverage at the Plan's group rate for another eighteen months (popularly known as COBRA).

Last part of the question up above: Sadly, the questioner's math is off. The cost of self-paying pension and health contributions (if it were possible, and it's not) would be considerably more than COBRA. The person would be paying:

1) 6% of the contract minimum rate (example: 6% of $1500 minimum weekly rate= $90/week)

2) $1.57 for every hour worked.

3) Cost of health coverage.

The above is a tad more than COBRA payments (#3).

Let me leave you with a cheerful thought. TAG has, as of last Monday, brought a union organizer on board, and in the coming weeks, months and years we will be focusing on expanding the number of workplaces that participate in the Motion Picture Industry and Pension and Health Plan.

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Your End-of-Week Reading List

More links of animation as we hit the weekend.

There will be less green (apparently) for the ogre and his parent studio.

Lew Coleman, chief financial officer for DreamWorks Animation, said at an investor conference in Chicago on Thursday that the company's second-quarter earnings per share likely will be "meaningfully below" a year earlier because of the domestic box office performance of "Shrek Forever After" and lower home video sales ...

Goldman Sachs ... downgrad[ed] its rating on DreamWorks Animation's shares to "neutral" from "buy." Goldman Sachs analyst Ingrid Chung ... lowered her estimate for "Shrek" domestic box office sales to $250 million from $325 million.

$250 millon. Sounds like 4X opening weekend earnings to us ...

And speaking of box office grosses and accompanying factoids:

Half of Pixar's movies have made five times as much at the box office as they cost to produce ...

Variety summarizes the recently-wrapped Annecy festivities:

... [T]he biggest queues in Annecy's Work in Progress strand were for "The Suicide Shop," presented by French helmer Patrice Leconte.

An animated musical feature, employing 2D cutout animation, "Shop" looked like a moving children's pop-up book -- a quaint effect suited to a comedy set in a city of suicides.

Pixar drew attention for its world preem of 3D short "Day and Night," featuring two pudgy fellows, Day and Night, who argue their respective virtues. Helmed by Teddy Newton ... it went over gangbusters at a Pixar presentation ....

India's Business Standard reports on a variety of animation projects happening on the the sub-continent.

... Crest Animation Studios, a public-listed animation company in India in association with Lionsgate has completed Alpha and Omega — Asia’s first 3D stereoscopic (which enhances the illusion of depth) movie to go to Hollywood. It is set to release in over 3,000 screens worldwide later this year.

Noah Fogelson, chief operating officer, Crest Animation Productions, Burbank, California, says: “Alpha was produced by Crest in both our US and Indian facilities, with pre-production (development, story boarding, animatics, voice recording, designs) and post-production done in Los Angeles and the animation (models, rigs, animation, colour, lighting, texturing, rendering, compositing, etc) done at our Mumbai facility ..."

Everybody around here has been focused on the Tangled trailer, but forget that. There's another trailer out there to excite us.

... Now it is just in time for the next generation to learn the Smurf's language and characteristics, it is being brought to us in 3D in a featured [sic] film. The teaser trailer has been released giving us a taste of what's coming. All our favourites will return even old Gargamel their idiotic evil enemy is there. ...

John Lasseter clarifies that icky "sequel" conundrum:

Heat Vision: How did you come to do a “Toy Story 3”?

Lasseter: I’ve wanted to do a “Toy Story 3” since 1999. But there was a pretty well-known thing where our deal with Disney at that time said we have five pictures to do for Disney -- but sequels did not count. So it was one of those things where we said let’s do original movies so we can get these five done. But I always wanted to do “Toy Story 3.”

So thank goodness that four years ago Disney bought Pixar and merged the companies together. And we got control of all of our characters back. (Disney chief) Bob Iger said, “We want to do sequels, but we want to do it with you.” And we were adamant ... the reason why Pixar does a sequel is we've found a great story. That's the only reason why we'll do a sequel. Not just to make money ...

(You see? If it weren't for that "sequels don't count as one of its five required movies" clause in the contract Pixar execs signed, you would have seen this Toy Story 3 feature way sooner ...)

The L.A. Times' Richard Verrier writes about the Pres Aid art auction (pictured above) upcoming at the TAG building on Sunday:

On Sunday, more than 160 pieces of artwork donated by some of the best-known animators in the industry will be up for sale in a charity auction held at the Animation Guild building at 1105 N. Hollywood Way in Burbank.

The pieces include original drawings, sketches and paintings from such animators as Glen Keane ("Pocahontas"), Nick Park ("Wallace and Gromit"), Andreas Deja ("Aladdin") and Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Disney’s famed “Nine Old Men.” ...

Have a joyous Friday night and Sunday. (Hopefully we'll see you on Dad's Day, at the auction.)

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Father's Day Derby

Now with candy-coated Add Ons.

The Nikkster triggers the starting gate, and they're off!

... Based on early numbers coming into my sources, Pixar/Disney Toy Story 3 is the monster everybody thought it would be on 4,028 locations, including 2,463 3D screens of which 180 are IMAX). the 3D ticket price advantage will swamp previous Pixar opening weekends, including 2003 Finding Nemo's $70.2M and 2004 The Incredibles' $70.4M. ...

Through Thursday, Shrek Forever After has been bounding along in third place, running up a total of $217.5 million.

We will probably ... I'm going out on a frail limb here ... see a small decline in the ogre's performance over the coming weekend.

Add On: Toy Story 3, the feature John Lasseter has been wanting to make since 1999, rockets into the stratosphere:

... Toy Story 3 grossed an estimated $41 million Friday night ... Now Buzz Lightyear and Cowboy Woody are destined for Pixar’s record books, with the highest-opening ever for a Pixar movie. Based on the Friday numbers, Toy Story 3 could earn as much as $120 million for the three-day frame ...

Shrek Forever After is likely to take fourth place with a bit over $2 million on Friday and a weekend total that should add up to over $8 million. ...

The Mojo of Box Office has Shrek at $1,645,000 and in 7th place, with a running total just south of $220 million. We'll keep monitoring the lists to see if the ogre can crawl his way higher by Sunday.

Add On Too: Toy Story 3 rakes in $109,000,000 while the ogre drops 65% to end the weekend at $223 million.

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But Why Sequels?

Because of moolah.

... People who have seen pre-release surveys say that "Toy Story 3" is certain to have the biggest opening for a movie from Pixar Animation Studios, beating 2004's "The Incredibles," which started with $70.4 million in the U.S. and Canada.

Thanks to strong interest among all audience segments, as well as 3-D premium ticket prices, the movie could provide Pixar's first $100-million-plus opening if pre-release tracking is on target ...

So $100 mill is the prediction. In a few days we'll know if the forecast is on the money.

But anybody who wonders why big companies make second, third and fourth installments of movies filled with well-loved (and lucrative) characters, isn't living in the 21st century.

They're living at a small animation studio on Hyperion Avenue, circa 1938, listening to a filmmaker who didn't like sequels.

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Mind Games (Part Deux)

(... Or maybe three our four. I start to forget ...)

The morning's digital mail bag delivered this:

Hi Steve,

Has it always been like this in animation studios? I found this blog entry disturbing, because it's a lot like where I work now!

"A sick system has 4 basic rules:

Rule 1: Keep them too busy to think.

Rule 2: Keep them tired.

Rule 3: Keep them emotionally involved.

Rule 4: Reward intermittently."

(This blogger gets into more details here. And an addendum here.)

If it's like this in every studio, I may have to redirect my career path. I've only been in the industry for 7 years and I'm amazed that there are artists who've been putting up with this shit for 10, 20, 30 years???

(I sent him -- or her, since I couldn't tell the gender -- an answer along these lines:)

It depends on the studio. Some studios aren't too bad, some shows aren't too bad. Other studios (and departments) specialize in mind-fucking you.

It's a version of the Stockholm Syndrome, really. I had an animator tell me about a small, non-union animation sub-contractor in Arizona -- a remnant of the Fox-Bluth studio in Phoenix (remember those halcyon days?) that ran out of money for a job and bullied everybody into staying, to continue working for NO PAY.

They had meetings where they harangued people: "We'll get money soon! We're a family! You've got to stay and work or you're NOT LOYAL!"

And people stayed. (You'll find another version of this type of sad tale here.)

It's easy to laugh at these situations, but I know when I was young, I was an idiot too. There was a manager at Disney whose mantra was: "You know how LUCKY you are to be working here? You know how many people want your job?" (It's a ploy cavemen probably used when going out on the hunt.)

It's easy to get intimidated. It's easy to be unsure of yourself. It's easy to get suckered in to group think.

Despite all that, an animation career can be good if:

1) You have talent and work ethic.

2) You know your worth as an artist.

3) You know how to play the game (keeping your mouth closed and listening is always a fine tactic.)

4) In the end, you'll have better self-esteem and mental health if you know your own limits on all the manipulative horse shit and

5) You are willing to hook up and bail out if too many lines are crossed. (Because if you don't have that willingness, the mind-fucking will never stop.)

In the end, you'll enjoy yourself more in the cartoon business if you have a "I can take it or leave it" attitude. Then you won't be so cowed when some middle-management twit calls you into his office to give you a lecture about being a "team player."

There are other things in life besides abuse and manipulation.

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Cash Accumulation

A couple of weeks ago*, one of TAG's board members was chatting with a 25-year animation veteran who was grousing about not being as fully employed as he wanted to be. And worried that he was eating through some of his emergency funds. The board member asked him: "How much do you have in your Individual Account Plan?"

The veteran answered the board member promptly. He said:

"What's the Individual Account Plan?" ...

* I believe I've told this tale before, but what's life without redundancy?

Whereupon the board member told him (while being quietly amazed that the gentleman -- after more than a quarter century of union work -- had no idea what he was talking about.)

The artist had a vague memory of the Motion Picture Industry Plan recently mailing him some sheet or other, and the suggestion was made that he dig the sheet out and look at it.

A little time went by, and the vet phoned the board member in amazement: "The sheet says I've got $130,000. In some account."

I bring this up now because you can see one of these fabled sheets here showing an Individual Account Plan, and also read the accompanying story about how it's good to work at places that pay money into these types of plans:

... I was laid off at a visual effects facility after almost 3 years of service. I wasn’t eligible for any benefits until after my first year of work. After luckily keeping my job for a year I got a 401k retirement account where the employer would contribute matching funds (free money) up to 5% of my salary into the account. Most facilities these days don’t even offer a match. The only problem is that you aren’t fully vested in those matched funds unless you have worked there for 4 years. So when I was laid off I basically lost 75% of the thousands of dollars my employer put into my 401k. ...

Fast forward to another facility this time that was under an Animation Guild contract. I voluntarily leave after 2 years for reasons unrelated to the guild. The guild provides every employee with three retirement plans:

The Individual Account Plan

Nothing comes out of your pocket for this account, it is fully funded by the employer and residuals from films produced by the big 6 studios. After 2 years I have almost $14,000 in the account ....

The Defined Benefit Plan

Again, no money out of my pocket for this one however this one is a little harder to get but it’s icing on the cake. You need to have 5 qualified [pension] years ..

The 401k Plan

This is one you chose to pay into. Money is taken out of each paycheck you get and put into this retirement account and you essentially get to defer paying taxes on this ...

And so on.

Now I understand there are folks out there who will say: "I don't have a freaking job, Hulett! So why are you throwing this stuff in my face?!" And that's fair enough, but I put it out there because life is full of choices, and though you might be flat on your back now, you are most likely not going to be in that horizontal position forever.

At some point or other, you'll find yourself employed.

At some point or other, you could find yourself a valued part of the motion picture industry, skilled in what you do, and able to pick and choose from various job offers that waft your way.

And when that time comes, you'll have the opportunity to pick from column A ... or B ... or C, and depending on the choices you make you could end up well off, better off, or scrambling to make ends meet at age sixty-five when your array of options is narrower and your central goal in life is not to scramble after the next gig, but to be sleeping on a beach in Bermuda.

Only you can't because you made some bad career decisions in your mid-thirties and you don't have a cushion of cash that will allow that wonderful thing to happen. (And I know I bring these items up a lot, but in my experience it's wise to bring them up over and over, because people quite often have short attention spans, and they are valuable enough to repeat.)

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Sequelitis

Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in "Don Q, Son of Zorro."

The L.A. Times's Claudia Eller examines the course correction of Pixar Animation:

Pixar, with 'Toy Story 3,' shows increasing reliance on sequels

Three of four coming films at the pioneering animation studio, long known for its originality, are sequels. The trend is a reflection of the commercial considerations driving Disney studios, which bought Pixar in 2006 ...

[C]ommerce, and plenty of it, is the guiding rule of Disney under the stewardship of Chief Executive Robert Iger. He is fashioning Disney, once principally concerned with family entertainment, into a consumer giant built around "brands" and "franchises ..."

Why anybody would be surprised that sequelitis is Pixar's new mantra (disease?) is a mystery to me.

As long as Hollywood has been around, the place has replicated (or tried to replicate) the hits that have gone before. Chaplin made a hell of a lot of films, one after the other, of this twitchy little man with baggy pants, derby hat, bristle-brush mustache and bamboo cane. The Pawn Broker, The Kid, The Gold Rush, The Circus, there were dozens and dozens of them, each remarkably similar to one another.

And Harold Lloyd made two features a year centered around an eager go-getter who wore tortoise shell glasses and got into hair-raising scrapes on the sides of tall buildings or the tops of runaway trolleys, over and over again. Douglas Fairbanks made a long series of swashbucklers riding a horse, swinging a sword and fighting e-vil.

Most of these were not, strictly speaking, sequels. But let's be honest. They had the spirit of sequels, since they all sought to replicate the tried, true and familiar. The fact that the characters' names were different from picture to picture doesn't undercut the idea that Tinsel Town in its infancy and Tinsel Town in late geezerdom chases box office grosses with movies it believes will generate maximum sums of cash: vehicles with well-worn, sure-fire (they hope) formulas, already audience tested.

Pixar, once small, daring, and bankrolled by Steve Jobs, disdained sequels. but that was a long time ago in a land far away. It has now become part of the mainstream Hollywood dream machine, and marches to the drumbeat that started with Charlie, Harold and Doug (with his sequel to Zorro) a century ago.

Are we shocked that the studio in Emeryville has fallen prey to the old siren song?

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Don't forget the Pres-Aid live auction - THIS SUNDAY, June 20

This coming Sunday, the live Pres-Aid charity auction will be held in our auditorium in Burbank. Registration will start at 1 pm and bidding is scheduled to start at 2 pm. The address:

Animation Guild 1105 N. Hollywood Way Burbank, CA 91505

Approximately 150 pieces of animation, cartoon and illustration art will be auctioned to benefit animator PRES ROMANILLOS and his wife Jeannine in his fight against leukemia. Included are works from Disney, DreamWorks, Don Bluth, Futurama, The Simpsons, Frédéric Back, Secret Of Kells, Tex Avery, Eric Goldberg, Drew Struzan, Al Hirschfeld and many others.

If you want to see the artwork that's going to be up for sale, Gallery 839 will be open at the following times between now and the auction:

• Friday, June 18: 11 am to 2 pm
• Saturday, June 19: noon to 4 pm
• Sunday, June 20: noon to 2 pm

Don't miss this chance to pick up some great artwork and help a fellow artist in need. For more details, views of all the artwork, and updates on Pres's condition, go to the website at www.pres-aid.com.

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Mid June Studio Roundabout

Bento Box, a newer studio in sun-dappled Burbank, has a good hunk of board artists now working on Bob's Burgers (slated for Fox Television some months from now) with a couple of pilots in development.

The crew, one and all, think it's a funny show. Crews, of course, can be wrong about the quality of the product on which they're working, but usually when I hear divided sentiments I know something is up. In this case, there is a unanimity of sentiment that it's entertaining.

So ... we'll see. But most agree that the studio is a pleasant place to work. As one old hand told me:

"One of the guys stayed into the early morning to hit a deadline; management held a meeting and said: 'Don't do that. If you need some extra help, we'll get some help.'

I've worked a lot of places, and you don't hear that too often, if at all ..."

Bento Box has already worked on DreamWorks Animation's Neighbors From Hell, launched this month on TBS. A sampling of Neighbors' reviews:

"...In a TV trope as old as "The Addams Family" and "The Munsters," minimally updated by animation, much crudity and current pop culture references, TBS' new series "Neighbors From Hell" seeks to lampoon human depravity by contrasting it with the more reasonable behavior of supernatural beings ... The hell this time around may be full of requisite flames, but the preferred method of torture is lame irony ... [I]t's that kind of show, brimstone and treacle, which is difficult to make into a winning combination even by a talking dog."

"... [T]he bulk of the material is stubbornly humdrum, given its satirical potential. “Neighbors From Hell’’ is little more than another a fish-out-of-water comedy, with the Hellmans filling the role of the Munsters, the Addams Family, or the Beverly Hillbillies. ..."

"... The semi-obscure reference to the demon from The Exorcist is a wink at genre fans. There were a few other smart jokes, including the sign above Satan’s door: “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enters My Office.” Cute.

We’ll see how long I feel inclined to keep up with a show that didn’t once make me laugh out loud—I’m less forgiving of subpar sitcoms than I am of dramas. But perhaps Neighbors From Hell can become something to tide me over ..."

(So you know, I want every animated project out there to succeed and prosper, because it enhances the lives of every artist working in the animation industry. So all the best to Neighbors From Hell.)

Meanwhile at DreamWorks Animation, I finally registered that almost all the artists are (now) in the larger and more opulent Lakeside building, while administrators and production support people now occupy the reconfigured spaces in the other Italianate structures sprinkled across the Glendale campus.

(I did run across a few story artists, story coordinators and a director type person in a building on the other side of Lake Katzenberg*, but I'm certain this is an anomaly.)

* My name for the large koi pond from which snowy egrets like to dine.

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Robert Iger's Roadmap

Disney Honcho Bob Iger has been shedding light on the Mouse's moves:

The biggest challenge in running a company as big and varied as Disney is "to maintain the balance between heritage and innovation." ...

... "When I came into the job, I weighed the options. I felt that losing the relationship with Pixar when their contract expired would be a shame. And so we brought into the company a culture of innovation, of never accepting mediocrity."

... "I was trying to establish a direction for Disney. Also, $7.3 billion was "just around," Iger quipped, then correcting himself, "actually $1 billion (was) in cash."

What I've never gotten in the Hollywood culture is studio management's slavish reliance on a few entities' successes. They'll pay billions for a successful track record from outside, but won't risk a fraction of that on talented nobodies that already live within their golden walls.

In the past half-century, few executives have trusted their own judgement and gut instincts and rolled the dice on unproven Spielbergs or Camerons. Ninety-eight percent of the time, they want the creators who have been validated elsewhere, no matter what the cost.

But who am I kidding? Of course I understand why this happens. Even high-level suits can lose their high-grade executive jobs and big salaries if they engage some obscure director or screenwriter who then crashes and burns with a high-profile project. But when an expensive talent with a long track record flames out, that's different. The exec is immunized. He went with the safe, obvious choice, so how can anyone blame him for the resulting failure?

It even happens -- maybe especially happens -- with highly-placed CEOs like Robert Iger.

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