More Advice from the Old Masters-



Remember, Your Scenes are Forever.- Eric Larson 1908-1988

What Eric meant was that animation has a staying power beyond live action. Today past classics like Born Free or MASH are just pleasant memories for Boomers, while everyone still watches Dumbo or Bugs Bunny. So make sure you make animation not just to hit your deadline or make your director happy, make sure you are happy with it as well.

It was said the Disney Archive tried to discourage animator Frank Thomas whenever he visited. Because every time he came upon some of his old animation drawings, he'd inevitably whip out his pencil and try to correct something.

Many is the time I'm channel surfing and I'll go by some film I worked on. I still spot scenes I'd love to call back and correct.

So before you send on your work to be finished, make sure you are satisfied you did the best you could do. It'll be worth it for you.

---------------------------------------------------
Birthdays: Egon Scheile, John Roebling the architect of the Brooklyn Bridge, Uta Hagen, Chick Corea, Sir Anthony Eden, Jim Nabors, Vic Damone, David Rockefeller is 90, Irwin Allen, Marv Albert, Arthur Fellig-better known as Weegee, Sherry Stringfield, Former President George Herbert Walker Bush or George Ist is 82, if Anne Frank had survived the Holocaust she would be 77 today

1936- Cooperstown's Baseball Hall of Fame dedicated on the supposed 100th anniversary of Abner Doubleday inventing baseball. We now know that date to be fiction but it was a good party anyway. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner and Walter Johnson were the first inductees. Doubleday was a Civil War general and the composer of the bugle call "Taps", first called General Doubleday’s Lullaby.

1949- The first LA parking ticket.

1962- In Modesto California a teenage film student was almost killed in a car accident. His name was Goerge Lucas.

1963- Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers was shot and killed by a high powered rifle in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. His killer Bryan del la Beckwith was not convicted until 1994.

1963- Twentieth Century Fox released the Elizabeth Taylor -Richard Burton epic CLEOPATRA. Costing $44 million,- 285 million in modern money, four times more than the average film – the next most expensive Ben Hur cost $15 million , it remains in comparable dollars the costliest flop in film history. The cast was put up at the swankiest hotels in Rome for months of shooting and La Taylor had to have her chili from Chasens restaurant in Beverly Hills flown in. Director Joe Mankewicz said "Cleopatra was the toughest three pictures I ever made!" Fox had to cut 2,000 jobs and almost went bankrupt. The area of LA known as Century City with its huge shopping mall used to be Fox ‘s backlot before Cleopatra. When Liz Taylor saw the finished film she threw up.

On the plus side Andy Warhol said Cleopatra was the most influential movie of the 1960s because suddenly every woman had to have heavy black eyeliner, light lipstick and Egyptian style straight bobbed hair.

1994- Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, pizza delivery guy Ron Brown, were savagely murdered with a knife. Nicole’s throat was cut so deeply her head was almost decapitated. Brown was there returning Mrs. Simpson’s glasses from her dinner at the Brentwood restaurant Mezzaluna. The only suspect seems to remain her estranged husband O.J. Simpson, actor, Football of Fame member and Heisman Trophy winner. O.J. Simpson was acquitted in his murder trial but convicted in a wrongful death suit brought by Nicole’s family. Another suspect has never been found.