sour grapes? I smell a rat..?

I read on Jim Hill Media and IMDB.com yesterday a report that Disney artists are demoralized by the success of Pixar and some are secretly hoping for Ratatouille to fail. This idea seems bizarre to me, because I keep in close touch with a lot of my old colleagues at Disney Animation and everyone I know are a lot happier since Catmul and Lassiter assumed command. Jim Hill is a pretty cool guy and his site is very dependable, so where could this disonant chord have come from?

To quote the article, the origin of this story was " A Disney Executive." Well, there it is. Some suit has sour grapes about the new changes at Disney, maybe one of the myriad of useless business majors cluttering the production offices that John got rid off his first weeks there. So this saboteur picked the perfect time to plant some bad buzz, just four days before the opening. It's an old Hollywood tactic against someone you want to get back at.

I have not seen Ratatouille yet, but I have talked to four separate comrades in animation who did, all of whom are pretty big names. These folks seldom agree, but without reservation all four loved it. I asked them:" Between Incredibles, Nemo and Ratat, which did you like best? Without hesitation they said:" Ratatouille!" Which surprised me. One said:" It moves forward the Art of Animation, it is the best animated film in years!" Another chimed in" Forget about the Annie and Oscar competitions, just give it all to them now!"

Now, I myself has no vested interest in it's success. I don't plan to return to the Mouse anytime soon. But I would like to know that the Art of Animation is indeed moving forward. So I know where I shall be this weekend, on line at my local multiplex.

The way Hollywood rates success nowadays is to count the opening day Friday box office, the Saturday box office, and a projection about Sunday. THAT is the number they use to declare a film a hit or flop. A film can earn a hundred million afterwards, but if that weekend it's labeled a flop, a flop it remains. So if you want Ratatouille to be successfull, take my advice and go this friday or sat.

I wish Brad Bird, the Pixar Gang and Ratatouille every success!
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POSTSCRIPT: The same IMDB reports that former Disney Animation CEO Tom Schumachers first production on Broadway, the Musical Tarzan, is flopping. It's closing July 9th after a run of only a few weeks. " I plan to lose a lot of money this summer"- quote Tom.

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Birthdays: Peter Lorre -real name Laszlo Lowenstein, Pearl Buck, Abner Doubleday, Babe Deidrickson-Zacharias, Willy Messerschmidt, Claudio Abbado, Woolie Reitherman, Gregg LeMond, Vittorio Storaro, Colonel Tom Parker, Pat Morita, Chris Isaak, Richard Lewis, Chris O’Donnell, Sean Hayes

1906- The first Grand Prix automobile race was held at Le Mans, France. The winner was Hungarian Ferenic Szisz with a top speed of 63 miles an hour! Szisz also was sporting those newfangled rubber tires on rims, which change faster than regular wood wheels.

1924 - The Ziegfeld Follies opens on Broadway.

1925- Charlie Chaplin has a lavish Hollywood premiere for his new film the Gold Rush. He had edited the film in secret in an upstairs hotel room in Salt Lake City to keep away from the public and his wife∂s bill collectors.

1926- From his London flat John Logie Baird invented television. The Boob Tube has no one single Tom Edison-like inventor, but many claimants. The Englishman joined the ranks of others who claimed to have invented TV first, including Richard Farnsworth, Vladimir Zworkin, Dr. Lee DeForrest and Deutsches Kino.

1927- The Cyclone Rollercoaster ride debuted at Coney Island Amusement Park. It was built on the site of the Switchback Railway, the first modern rollercoaster. The Cyclone is still thrilling and scaring people today.

1961- John F. Kennedy makes his "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" speech at the Berlin Wall. He electrifies and inspires all Europe despite " ein berliner" also meaning a local brand of little jelly donut. The proper way to say I am a Berliner is "Ich bin Berliner”. I guess "The Proudest boast a free man today can say is, I am a little jelly donut!" has a certain cachet for some folks. The crowd smiled but was polite. Today in tourist shops on the Unter Den Linden you can buy a plastic donut with JFK’s speech coming out from a hidden computer chip.

1964 - Beatles release "A Hard Day's Night" album.

1965-"Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man " by the Byrds hits number one on the US pop charts. Bob Dylan wrote the lyrics. William Shatners version became the most well known.

1977 - Elvis Presley does his last public performance. This one in Indianapolis.

2000- THE GENOME- Scientists announce they had cracked the human gene code and now had a rough sketch of how our DNA is assembled. Custom drugs could now e developed matching the DNA of an individual patient. It is called the biological equivalent of the landing on the moon.

2003 - Lenin said the Workers Must Control the Means of Production. Today a group of strippers bought the San Francisco bar the Lusty Lady.

Some Wisdom of the Masters-

This time of year a lot of animated feature films are finishing up or going into OT to finish up. Ratatouille, Surfs Up the Simpson's Movie are all done, and more to come. A word from an Old Vet of over twenty features.

Take a rest between the pictures.

I know you don't want to lose your position, and maybe you don't want to risk the loss of income. But take it from me, it's some of the best advice I ever got. Not only are you physically tired, your mental battery is running on empty as well. The Disney guys used to say for animators on down take two weeks or more, dept. supervisors and directors should take a month off. Live action folks know this trick. They can do the 18 hour shoots and living in a trailor on location, because they plan in a few weeks off afterwards.

Great poster by R. Crumb that I thought about often when I killed myself on a project

I remember my crew on Osmosis coming off of the Iron Giant and looking absolutely fried. When I finished my last scene on Who Framed Roger Rabbitt I got the flu the next day and was on my back for a week.

So don't be a hero or martyr. Rest, detox and recharge. You family will enjoy the novelty of seeing you home, and your stuff will look much better when you return.

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Birthday: George Orwell (real name Eric Arthur Blair ), Marc Charpentier, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Cajun musician Clifton Chenier, Sidney Lumet, Walter Brennan, Willis Reed, George Abbott, Carly Simon, June Lockhart is 81, cartoonist Alex Toth, Jimmy Dyne-o-Mite Walker, George Michaels, Mike Myers the voice of Shrek

1630 – The Fork introduced to American dining by Plymouth Gov Winthrop.

1835- Antoine Baron Gros was a celebrated painter under Napoleon and a friend of David and Ingres. But politics and tastes change. In a royalist postwar France dominated by Delacroix and Gericault Baron Gros lived on forgotten and melancholy. This day the 64 year old artist drowned himself in the Seine.

1857- Writer Gustav Flaubert goes on trial for pornography in his first novel Madame Bovary. He escaped conviction and went on to his next book Salambo the Carthaginian princess who strangled herself with her own hair. Don’t try this at home girls!

1876- CUSTER'S LAST STAND called by the Sioux the Battle of the Greasy Grass- George Armstrong Custer and 300 of his 7th Cavalry are wiped out by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the combined Sioux, Cheyenne nations (approximately 1,700 warriors).
There had been defeats of the Whites like this before: Fetterman's Massacre, The Little Rosebud Battle, but nothing captures the imagination like the Little Big Horn. And for Native-Americans it marks the last coming together of the tribes and the last great victory .The Ogalala Sioux, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne all united to resist the violation of their sacred Black Hills. No U.S army commander ever expected so many different tribes could unite and field thousands of warriors at once. Custer trusted in his audacity. "Custer's Luck". The boy general –just 23 years old in the Civil War, he was always at the head of his men in costly, reckless attacks yet personally suffered nothing more severe than the flu. Now at age 36 his luck ran out.
Accounts by natives were sketchy and no one is sure just how Custer died. The last white soldier who saw him alive was a courier sent away with a message " Benteen, come up quick. Big Village. Bring packs". The trooper was an Italian immigrant named Giusepppi Martini who couldn’t speak English. The famous image of Custer standing to the last with Old Glory in hand was made up by an artist named Paxton for an Anheuser-Busch beer advertisement in 1877. One Crow Indian scout who escaped said Custer was the first casualty and that his being shot down panicked the troopers. Others say the last they saw of Custer he was crawling on all fours with blood trickling down his mouth. He was found in a pile of bodies with a bullet wound in the left side and one in the temple. The Indians didn’t even know they had killed Yellow Hair until told way later. The tribes afterwards dispersed and headed for Canada. The only 7th Cavalry survivor was Commanche, Capt. Mile’s Keough's horse. He was treated with honor by the army and fed a bucket of beer every payday for the rest of his life. Custer was hallowed with martyrdom. Ulysses Grant was quiet about the affair but privately thought it a badly botched operation. Sitting Bull was more blunt- "The soldiers were fools, they rode to their deaths." Mrs. Libby Custer lived until 1937 and met FDR. The last living eyewitness of the battle, Mrs. Kate Bighead of the Cheyenne who was taken on the battlefield by her mother at 4 years old, died in 1959.

Errol Flynn in They Died With Their Boots on. Looks good but probably not accurate.

1970- Toi Yo ta Hoooo! Richard Wagner's opera Die Walkure premiered in Munich.

1908- Famed New York architect Stanford White was having dinner at Madison Square Garden (back when it was still a garden, on Madison Ave. and still square) when he was shot to death by millionaire Harry Thaw, the husband of his mistress Evelyn Nesbitt. The eccentric Thaw was obsessed by Stanford White, hiring detectives to follow the artist and report his amorous pursuits and he would only date women who had dated White first. Thaw’s defense attorney’s got him aqquitted of murder by reason of temporary insanity.
So instead of the electric chair Harry Thaw spent a few years in a mental home living on squab flambe' and champagne. He was cheered by the crowd when he was freed. The key defense witness was 22 year old Mrs. Evelyn Nesbitt-Thaw, one of the beautiful "Gibson Girls’. She gave juicy details of her kinky relationship with White, like the red velvet swing she would ride in the nude over the admiring architect’s head. After Thaw was released he divorced her. Before Evelyn died of old age in 1967 she admitted that the only man she ever really loved was Stanford White.The incident was the basis for I.L.Doctorow's novel "Ragtime".

1910- First performance of Stravinsky's ballet "Firebird" by Diagheilev and his Ballet Russe. Stravinsky later used to refer to the Ballet dancers as "A bunch of knock-kneed Lolitas".

1940- Young actor Ronald Reagan married actress Jane Wyman.

1951- After losing a power struggle between himself and Dory Schary, Louis B. Mayer announced he was stepping down as head of MGM. Mayer in his time was the most powerful man in Hollywood. He kept an all white office modeled after Mussolinis in Rome. His penchant for putting relatives in charge of the company’s departments caused the joke that MGM stood for Mayer-Ganz-Mishpochen, Yiddish for Mayer-And-His-Whole-Family.

1951 - 1st color TV broadcast-CBS' Arthur Godfrey from NYC to 4 cities

1967- The "Our World" Beatles concert, the first television event to try a worldwide satellite linkup. They sing and record "All You Need is Love" live in front of an audience of 400.

1968- Pierre Elliot Trudeau elected Prime Minister of Canada. For the next twenty five years he and his flower-child wife Margaret will be one of Canada’s most colorful leaders.

1997- Disney's animated film Hercules released.

Cartoon Brew today pointed out a great piece written in the WFMU blog about comic actor Arnold Stang.

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/06/you_wanna_make_.html

Stang is still active at age 81. In his long career he did a myriad of voices for animation. He was Top Cat for Hanna & Barbera, Shorty in the Famous Popeye Cartoons and Herman in the Herman & Katnip cartoons. I always maintained that Herman & Katnip were some of the most violent cartoons ever made, and the inspiration for the Simpson's characters Itchy & Skratchy. The blog has a link to watch one- Mice Meeting You.

I recall Arnold as the voice of the parrot in 1977's The Adventures of Raggedy Ann & Andy. And his memorable live action appearances iinclude It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Hercules in New York, where he plays a sidekick to young Arnold Schwarzenegger and his dubbed in voice.

The High School of Art & Design in 1960

Back in New York my old High School of Art & Design is having a reunion of the Class of 1973. I couldn't make it out there this time but I want to wish all my old schoolmates congratulations! Fine memories of Mr Bellin and Mr Nagle's Cartooning and Animation class.
Our rooftop playfield, and the strange lady who lived in a condo above the Woolworths across Second Ave from the school who used to expose herself to the kids during my watercolor class. I love New York!

me in cartooning class in 1972

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Birthdays: Earl Kitchener, the Sirdar of Omdurman, E.I.Dupont, Ambrose Bierce, Jack Dempsey, John Ciardi, Mick Fleetwood, Phil Harris- singer and voice of Baloo in Disney’s Jungle Book, Billy Casper, Michelle Lee, Claude Chabrol, Chief Dan George, Pete Hamill, Peter Weller, Sherry Springfield

Happy St. John the Baptist or St. Jean Baptiste’s Day.

1219- Pope Innocent III set today as the deadline for deadbeat knights who volunteered to go on Crusade to get off their ironclad butts and get going. Knights had an economic incentive to taking the Crusading vow: no one could collect a bad debt from you and you couldn't be imprisoned. So some knights would take the vow for the perks but then stall on making the dangerous trip to the Middle East where two out of three never returned.

1812- NAPOLEON INVADES RUSSIA with the largest army yet assembled.
Around 600,000. By December ,barely 30,000 came out alive. This day while inspecting the troops Napoleon’s horse stepped in a rabbit hole and threw him on his butt. This was taken as an ill omen.

1853- Joaquin Murrietta was an outlaw who ranged up and down the California midlands. Called the Terror of the Stanislaus, he and his friend Three-Fingered Jack were finally hunted down and killed in a shootout by Marshal Harry Love. This day Murietta’s head and Jack’s three-fingered hand went on display in front of the Stockton Cal jailhouse.
There is some dispute whether the man Love killed was Murietta or some one else.

1876- CUSTER APPROACHES THE LITTLE BIG HORN- General Custer's scouts reported a large Indian camp at the Little Big Horn River. Custer decides to attack tomorrow without waiting for the other armies to catch up. Through his interpreter Mitch Boyer he tells his Indian scouts that after he has destroyed the Sioux he will go back east and become the Great White Father. The Republican presidential nominating convention was next month. The Crow and Mandan scouts were troubled by the signs and began their death-songs. Embedded N.Y. Herald reporter Mark Kellogg made a final entry in his diary: "I go to ride with Custer and will be there at the death...” In the dawn's light a survivor from Renos command overheard Custer's chief Mandan scout Bloody Knife tell Custer: " You and I are going Home today -but by a different path."

1901- The first exhibit in a Paris salon on the Rue Lafitte of a dark-eyed ,young, Spanish artist named Pablo Picasso.

1945- Meet the Press debuted on radio. Two years later it moved to television and it remains t.v.’s longest running program.

1947- THE FIRST MODERN UFO SIGHTING. A commercial airline pilot flying out of Seattle notices 6 silver disc shaped objects hovering over Mt. Reynier near Seattle. They then shot off at terrific speed. They are never identified nor explained. The pilot, Kenneth Arnold had impeccable credentials as an ex-combat Marine pilot and chamber of commerce member. The government response was to hit him with an IRS audit. The "flying-saucer" craze, with allegorical overtones to postwar atomic paranoia, sweeps the American imagination throughout the 1950’s.

1949 - "Hopalong Cassidy" becomes the 1st network western on television-NBC.

1950- THE KOREAN WAR BEGAN- June 25th in some records because of the International Date Line- 30 North Korea divisions armed with heavy Soviet tanks and artillery crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. The attack was a complete surprise and most South Korean officers were at a party dedicating a new Officer’s Club. The US had deliberately kept the Korean Army lightly armed to diffuse Cold War tension. Mao and Stalin were equally surprised by North Korean Kim Il Sung’s attack. The previous January Secretary of State Dulles had said during a conference that the US "was not interested in the Korean Peninsula." But when President Harry Truman was informed of the invasion he responded in typical Truman fashion:" We gotta stop those Sons of Bitches!" At this time there were only 500 US troops in Korea called KMAG, for Korean Military Advisory Group, which one Yank this day changed to Kiss My Ass Goodbye! This is considered the first war fought by the United Nations, since Truman pushed through a resolution sending troops under the UN banner. The Russians were boycotting the Security Council over its refusal to seat Red China so they were unable to veto the move.

1963 - 1st demonstration of a home video recorder, at BBC Studios, London

1970 – The movie "Catch 22" opens in movie theaters.

1997 - Brian Keith, actor (Family Affair, Dirty Dingus McGee), shot himself at 75. He was suffering from incurable cancer and tired of fighting the disease.

2004- On the Senate floor, the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, told the Democratic Senate leader, Patrick Leahy, to “Go F**k Himself!” Republican Majority Leader, Senator Tom Delay, said the Vice President “was having a hard day”. At the same time Bush Administration was getting the FCC to stiffen penalties on DJ’s like Howard Stern for his use of naughty language.

Birthdays: Roman Emperor Augustus, Josephine DeBeauharnais-Bonaparte, Bob Fosse, Justice Clarence Thomas, James Levine, Dan Ogilvy of Ogilvy & Mayers, Joss Whedon, Dr Alfred Kinsey, The Duke of Windsor formerly King Edward VIII, Wilma Rudolph, Selma Blair, Frances MacDormand

1868- Christopher Latham Scholes patents the typewriter. In 1873 he sold his patent to the Remington Company. In 1874 Mark Twain secretly admitted to a friend that he enjoyed writing on the newfangled technology.

1940- HITLER THE TOURIST. After the defeat of France, Adolph Hitler takes his one vacation out of Germany. A plane flies him to Paris in the early morning and he is driven around to see the sites. While his Mercedes is waiting at a traffic light a newsboy, not realizing who he was, stuck a morning newspaper under his nose yelling "le Matin! Le Matin!” Hitler was back in Berlin that evening.

http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/cgi-bin/seigmiaow.pl

1972- Title Nine passed by the US Government. It called for women’s collegiate sports to be funded equally as the men’s sports.

1976- Toronto’s CN Tower opened. Called the world’s tallest free-standing structure.

1979- The Knack released the single My Sharona.

1989- Tim Burton’s film " Batman" opened.

1992- Head of the New York Mafia John Gotti was sentenced to life in prison for murder and racketeering. It had been so hard to pin anything on Gotti that he was nicknamed the Teflon Don. Finally, crusading prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani secured the testimony of the Dons top henchman Sammy ‘the Bull’ Gravano. For turning informant, Sammy dodged any penalties despite admitting killing 32 people, including killing and cutting up his own brother in law, whose pieces he buried in his backyard. Gravano wrote a best selling memoir. John Gotti died in prison in 2002.