#Alan Dilworth

[frontmezzjunkies]

Canadian Stage Coolly Invites In a "Winter Solstice" Perfectly Timed and Delivered

#frontmezzjunkies reviews: #WinterSolsticePlay by #RolandSchimmelpfennig trans: #DavidTushingham dir: #AlanDilworth w/ #FrankCoxOConnell #KiraGuloien #CyrusLane #DiegoMatamoros #NancyPalk @necessaryangel @canadianstage @birdlandtheatre #TheaTO

The cast of Necessary Angel Theatre Company’s Winter Solstice. Photo by Dahlia Katz. The Toronto Theatre Review: Canadian Stage’s Winter Solstice By Ross It’s Christmas Eve in this twisted comedy of manners, brought to the Berkeley Street Theatre stage at the perfectly attuned time in history by Necessary Angel Theatre Company. What is at the core of Winter Solstice, audaciously written by one…

[picklepie888]

Artists/Animators to Give Appreciation to this Halloween Season!

Henry Selick- stop motion animator and director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline, and Wendell & Wild

Guillermo del Toro- film producer and director of Pan's Labyrinth, Nightmare Alley, Crimson Peak and the upcoming Netflix Pinnochio film also producer of The Book of Life

Jordan Peele- comedian and director of horror films such as Get Out, Us, Nope, and producer and writer of Wendell & Wild

Jhonen Vasquez- comic artist and animation showrunner, creator of Invader Zim and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac

John R. Dilworth- animator and short film director, creator of Courage the Cowardly Dog, Dirty Birdy, and the upcoming Howl if You Love Me

Alan Ituriel- animator and showrunner of Cartoon Network, creator of Villainous

Maxwell Atoms- animator and showrunner, creator of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Underfist, and Grim and Evil

Jan Svankmajer- stop motion director of Alice (1988), Demensions of Dialogue, Greedy Guts and others

Junji Ito- manga artist, author and illustrator of Tomie, Uzumaki, The Enigma of Amigara Fault, and many others

Dana Terrance- animator and showrunner at Disney, creator of The Owl House

Patrick McHale- writer and showrunner, creator of Over the Garden Wall

Genndy Tartakovsky- director and animator, creator of Dexter's Labrotory, Samurai Jack, Primal, and director of the Hotel Transylvania film series

[elektroblues]

"Liquid" revolves around Alan Wilder's near-death experience in 1994. He and his partner, Hepzibah Sessa, were driving in Scotland when a Tornado Bomber hit a hillside in front of them, and two airmen were killed.

"The idea of the pilot and what was going through his mind in the last 30 seconds kind of stuck with me, along with the idea of such an instantaneous event, leaving you with the feeling of the banality of life —of continuing life: the birds are singing, you can smell the fuel in the air, and everything just carried on as normal. In the end it's become the concept for the whole LP, the idea of this guy going down in a plane crash and his life flashing before him. And then as the LP unfolds, a series of memories come in the form of the stories that follow.

Each story represents a period in his life. These are tied in with the idea of liquid, and liquids which have perhaps fueled his behavior such as alcohol and the consequences that have arisen because of his alcoholism. There are various aspects to the idea of liquid: perhaps the flow of adrenaline, perhaps the ice that he's about to crash into." [X]

Liquid by Recoil. Released March 21, 2000.

Photos of Alan are by Joe Dilworth.

[ccohanlon]

my favourite things

sam shepard’s ‘motel chronicles’, glenn gould playing j.s. bach, books, gaff-rigged bristol pilot cutters, nautical charts, the idea of lamu island and zanzibar, ilford 35mm black & white film, expressions of love in spanish, the meaning of saudade, miles davis, john coltrane, conga drums and bongoes, the backstreets of marrakesh, naples and havana, my 20-year-old leather backpack, my leather-bound pocket atlas (a gift from a woman who worked for me), my maori bone hei matau, british ordnance survey maps, african and latina women, dark skin, long legs and firm round asses,‘oil notes’ by rick bass, joseph conrad’s ‘heart of darkness’, ‘the fly trap’ by fredrik sjöberg, bill drummond doing what he calls ‘art’ and his writings about it, malcolm mclaren talking about almost anything, german-made fountain pens, noodler’s inks, 20th century french novelists, analog moog synthesisers, joan didion’s early essays (especially ‘the white album’), the rolling stones’ original versions of ‘gimme shelter’ and ’sympathy for the devil’, ali farka touré’s modal riffs, the western isles and northwest coast of scotland in spring, the b&w photographs robert frank took in the ’50s as he drove across america, richard misrach’s ‘desert cantos’, wim wender’s ‘paris, texas’ and ‘wings of desire’ (i like his diaristic photo book, ‘once’, too), jim jarmusch’s ‘only lovers left alive’, indian ocean sailing dhows, old boat compasses, my vintage flying boat sextant, the cheap but accurate swiss wind-up watch my mother gave me when i first went to sea, that first glimpse of the mojave desert driving east from l.a. on interstate 40, and of morocco’s atlas mountains, at dawn, sailing through the straits of gibraltar from the west, the mediterranean sea, van morrison’s voice, and aretha franklin’s and julie driscoll’s, the ideas of john cage and of jean-luc godard, cornelius cardew’s ‘scratch music’, gorodish and alba in delacorta’s series of novels, ‘haunts of the black masseur’ by charles sprawson, peter beard’s collaged diaries, steve dilworth’s visceral sculpture, the smooth stones i’ve collected from beaches on three oceans, garlic, wasabi, peking duck in pancakes, ice-cold champagne (bollinger, when I can afford it, or louis roederer cristal), baden powell’s guitar-playing, samba, salvador de bahia, standing at the edge of an empty sahara, sailing a felucca up the nile, the writings of william burroughs, barry gifford and charlie smith, the history of zero, the smell of bangkok by the river at dawn, summer nights in tokyo, long periods of silence, hugging my children, playing my solid mahogany tenor ukulele (a 61st birthday gift from my wife), my fender telecaster and gibson lucille guitars, shona sculpture, an etching i have by armodio (‘l’urlatrice’), the songs of tom waits, alan ginsberg’s photos of beat writers – burroughs and paul bowles, especially – in new york and tangier, jack kerouac’s writings (even though i’ve outgrown them), ‘the outsider’ by colin wilson, bowles’ ‘the sheltering sky’, playing blackjack at caesars’, las vegas, in the early hours of a week-day morning, café tacuba’s huevos con molé in mexico city, the garden derek jarman made at prospect cottage in dungeness, jarman’s diaries, da vinci’s notebooks, don mccullin’s photographs and mary ellen mark’s when she was younger (the ones in goa), dancing alone to 60s’ soul music, the scent of frangipani, the white noise of heavy monsoonal rain, my long, old-school powell skateboard with big urethane wheels, early silver surfer comic books, 70s’ ‘avant-garde’ music scores from peters and universal edition, my all-mechanical olympus 35 sp camera and my rolleiflex tlr, cecil taylor on piano, dave holland on bass, ginger baker on drums, the movie version of joseph conrad’s ‘lord jim’, cary grant in ‘father goose’, david lean’s ‘lawrence of arabia’, donald cammell’s ‘perfomance’, snowdonia in mid-wales, taos in new mexico (and the sangre de cristo mountains), sailing close by stromboli on a calm, moonlit night, the smooth skin and skinny bodies of young japanese women, everything about italian women, palm trees, passionfruit, seedless grapes, mandarins, uncooked cherry tomatoes, the oakland raiders (even when they’re losing), swimming alone in a warm pool, the bath tubs at the ritz-carlton in singapore in the 90s, afternoon tea (pg tips) with scones, thick cream and damson jam (preferably tiptree’s), albert ayler on sax, derek bailey’s free-form solos on guitar, ‘colour: a natural history of the palette’ by victoria finlay, tom mccarthy’s ‘satin island’, william gibson’s science fiction, sylvie guillem dancing, van cliburn playing brahms’ second piano concerto, keith richards’ and john lee hooker’s grungy guitar licks, j.j. cale’s muted finger picking, the long solo voyages of bernard moitessier under sail and the writings that came from them, the voyages of david lewis and of bill tilman (aboard ‘mischief’), old tahiti ketches designed by john hanna, thomas colvin’s modern steel sailing junks, target shooting with a high-calibre handgun (like a colt python .357 magnum), watching dark frontal clouds gather ahead of a storm, the grim stillness of tornado weather in northern oklahoma, big hotel rooms, late night room service, landing in los angeles from the west late at night, yakitori at a basement place i know in hiroshima, the gharana of the tabla, welsh male voice choirs, playing scrabble, the lives of sir richard francis burton and t.e. lawrence, thom gunn’s poems, also e.e cummings’ and mira gonzalez’s, gore vidal on american politics, sex and other writers, the stone hanko engraved for me using an old form of katakana in hiroshima, hand-tooled knives, walking through rome early in the morning, rooftop terraces in trastevere, out-of-the-way trattorie in monti, vitello parmigiano, tortellini, stracciatella, and sambuca, the amalfi coast, iain sinclair writing about his walks around london, living in los angeles (when i have money), driving north from santa monica on the pacific coast highway, big sur 30 years ago,’60s american muscle cars, joyce singing ‘agua de março’ or astrud gilberto, or the version marisa monte and david byrne did for ‘red, hot and rio’, ‘sitting’ by cat stevens. ‘dumb things’ by paul kelly, the emotions singing ‘best of my love’, the idea of the congo and the mekong and of rusty tramp steamers sailing to up-river jungle ports, berlin in autumn just before the leaves fall, all the works of anselm kiefer and cy twombly, francesco clemente’s exotic watercolours, ‘the pugilist’ sculpted in iron by robert brennan, marilyn manson’s ‘we’re killing strangers’, smokey robinson’s ’tracks of my tears’, the first whiff of salt air and coconut oil at an australian surf beach, longboarding on a glassy point break at wategos in byron bay, the mexican movie ‘y tu mama tambien’, almodovar’s ‘todo sobre mi madre’ and ‘matador’, cluttered but stylish old parisian apartments, any clapboard boatshed and jetty on a quiet bay or river bank, a stone cottage above a rocky north atlantic shore (in nova scotia, maybe, or shetland), solitude.

First published in Sick Lit magazine, USA, 2015.

[fredfilmsblog]

FredFilms promises...

Creators first.

I've always believed that we owe you, our fans and now at FredFilms we all take it as gospel. We owe you our best work, of course. But beyond we examine everything about ourselves constantly, to assure ourselves and you that we’re trying to stay on the right track. To that end, whatever work I’ve done –whether it be in the music business, the network television business, and certainly, cartoons– has been done with making public promises that try and assure you that we’ll deliver.

To that end, I thought it would be good to print out a new set of our limited edition postcards to make the FredFilms promises completely clear. This one’s the first.

As throughout my entire cartoon career, and now at FredFilms, it’s been my  mission to let exceptional creators do their thing. We’re not in the business of micro-managing our creative talent. Instead, we seek out and nurture creators who have a story they need to tell and give them as much room as possible to tell it.. We go to festivals, art schools, comedy clubs, and explore the dustiest corners of the internet to find folks we know we have to work with.

We believe there are new stories to be told. 

We promise.

.....

It might seem extreme, but I thought it might be interesting to list all of the creators that have worked on my productions, starting in 1995 with What A Cartoon! at Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network in 1995. If you look at any of the 140 individual links (!) you’ll see that almost all of them have had estimable careers in cartoons or animation adjacent (comics, video games, VFX and the like). Some have created hit series with me, some without (sigh!) and some have become quite famous. One way or the other, they’ve all been amazing.

Raul Aguirre

Natasha Allegri

Robert Alvarez

Amy Anderson

Tex Avery

Ralph Bakshi

Joe  Barbera

Damien Barchowsky

Charlie Bean

Jerry Beck

D.R. Beitzel

Mike Bell

Tim Biskup

Bob Boyle

Chris “Spike” Brandt

Eric Bryan

Michelle Bryan

David Burd

Bill Burnett

Breehn Burns

Jaime Diaz

Angelo diNallo

Kyle A. Carrozza

Elyse Castro

Tony Cervone

Alison Cowles

David Cowles

Rick Delcarmen

Jeff DeGrandis

Andrew Dickman

John R. Dilworth

Davis Doi

Greg Eagles

Jerry Eisenberg

Warren Ellis

Greg Emison

John Eng

Jun Falkenstein

David Feiss

Eddie Fitzgerald

John Fountain  

Manny Galán

Dana Galin

James Giordano

Alan Goodman

Tom Gran

Mike Gray

Antoine Guilbaud

Bill Hanna

Meinert Hansen

Russ Harris

Butch Hartman

Andy Helm

Adam Henry

Bill Ho

Larry Huber  

Gabe Janisz  

George Johnson  

Don Jurwich

Kang yo-kong

Ken Kessel

Jiwook Kim

Alex Kirwan

Kevin Kolde

Grant Kolton

Erik Knutson

Dahveed Kolodny-Nagy

Diane Kredensor

Harvey Kurtzman  

Juris Lisovs

Seth MacFarlane

Steve Marmel

Miss Kelly Martin

Eugene Mattos

Craig McCracken

Jon McClenahan

John McIntyre

Harry McLaughlin

Dan Meth

Mike Milo

Zac Moncrief

Russell Mooney

Jesse Moynihan

Justin Moynihan

Adam Muto

Andre Nieves

Jeret Ochi

Joe Orrantia

Victor Ortado

Rory Panagotopulos

Paul Parducci

Van Partible

Lincoln Peirce

Jonni Phillips

Jason Plapp

Polygon Pictures

Bill Plympton

Carlos Ramos

Michael Rann

Russ Reiley

Christopher Reineman

Rob Renzetti

G. Brian Reynolds

John Reynolds

John Rice

Bill Riling

Mel Roach

Eric Robles

Mike Rosenthal

Jason Butler Rote

Jim Ryan

Fred Seibert

Seo jun-kyo

Don Shank

David Shute

Brent Sievers

Achiu So

Hamish Steele

Elizabeth Stonecypher

Jennifer Cho Suhr

Genndy Tartakovsky

Doug TenNapel

Aliki Theofilopoulos

Miles Thompson

Karl Toerge

Kate Tsang

Guy Vasilovich

Byron Vaughns

Joel Veitch

Pat Ventura

Anne Walker

Vincent Waller

Pendleton Ward

Dave Wasson

Mike Wellins

Melissa Wolfe

Martin Woolley

Jim Wyatt

Niki Yang

Carey Yost

.....

FredFilms Postcard Series 2.1

From the postcard back:

Congratulations! You are one of 75 people to receive this limited edition FredFilms postcard!

www.fredfilms.com

A FredFilms promise: Creators first.

FredFilms’ mission is to ‘put the right people in the room.’ By helping extraordinary creators we can produce innovative shows with enduring characters.

We know there a new stories to be told.

Executive producer: Fred Seibert

Series 2.1 [mailed out April 6, 2021]

[maybeilikenumbers]

How Trying to Understand is Understanding

There is a common adage in English classes regarding the tropes by which English teachers and professors analyse the meaning behind a given text, which goes something like this:

What the book says: “The the curtains were blue.” What the english teacher thinks it says: “The author means to say that the curtains are symbolic of his self-isolation and the blue coloration indicates the depressed state of mind.” What the author meant: “The curtains were blue.”

This is a frequent critique of literary and english scholars, prominent enough to be thoroughly studied, and even pondered by a number of modern philosophers－it is the relationship between artistic intent and interpretive liberty (Smith & Rabinowitz, 2005, Dilworth & McCracken, 1997). This is the central question of this piece, which will analyse a number of ways to quantify the philosophy of Tao te Ching (an excellent candidate for such a question, being hotly debated for its ambiguous authorship) and the ways in which one’s interpretation is molded by contextual lenses.

A measure of narrative empathy is necessary to take into account the teachings of the Tao; it has no clear publication date, is composed of a plethora of texts found across China in different time periods, and has an author who may or may not have existed (Chan, 2018). The general philosophy of the Tao asks for the reader to accept the present for what it is, neither complaining nor trying to change it (as shown through ziran). Taoists are expected to be constituent parts of nature, however this becomes more difficult the more one reads into Tao te Ching. Laozi unfortunately did not construct a “Quick and Easy: Five Steps to Tao”, so individuals are left to do one of three things: take Laozi’s teachings at face value, guess as to his or her original meaning, or take their own interpretation.

What Laozi’s original intent may have been is a near impossible question to answer, sadly. As one reads Tao te Ching, questions begin to pile upon themselves－something evocative of a closely related and well-known zen-Buddhist tradition: Kōans. In Buddhist practice Kōans serve as riddles lacking any literal answer, meant to impose the “Great Doubt”, a state of being wherein no questions must be asked, because the answer is irrelevant to enlightenment (Li, 2018). A zen interpretation of the Tao based in Buddhism may sound akin to this: “As the text is fully cryptic, it must be acknowledged as something to be examined from a lense of acceptance. Each question asked simply leads to many more, and so there is no greater knowledge in inquisition, only in hearing.” Returning to the original example, this is where the literature student may sit, thinking, Why do we need to know what the curtains mean?; it is the least curious of the responses to the text, by nature, because it avoids distraction through questioning and takes things as they are. This is the context which upholds interpretive liberty.

Reading through Tao te Ching, one may encounter a number of ways to accomplish “naturalness”, and nearly every single one requires a shift in perspectives. Chapter twenty-five of the Tao declares:

...Great, it passes on (in constant flow). Passing on, it becomes remote. Having become remote, it returns. Therefore the Tao is great; Heaven is great; Earth is great; and the (sage) king is also great. In the universe there are four that are great, and the (sage) king is one of them. Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is. (Legge, 2009)

Which is to say that in order to “model the way of nature” one must act as the Tao is described: a part of all things, omnipresent. Of course, this is something which is not fully achievable by a human, but that is not to say that humanity lacks the ability to simulate a feeling of “oneness” with nature. Empathy abounds in the human mind, and so humans may imagine how it is to be tangled up with the world－the human imagination knows few limits and so it can find ways to model the laws of nature and the Tao. If one is a stone in a stream, experiencing the world rushing past them, then the change in perspective must be to see themself as a stone through different eyes: the eyes of a droplet of water in that same stream, a grain of sand on the riverbed, or a crawfish using the same stone for protection. Once again returning to the original example, this is a literature professor seeing as many answers as possible to one question. Many may view this as overly analytical, but this is indicative of the way in which oneness, ziran, is achieved. Where a student takes their understanding as it comes, this professor seeks to comprehend the ways in which their students’ understanding may vary, and synthesize them into a central idea, contextualized by perceived authorial intent. Thus, this perspective seeks to find out what Laozi’s purpose was.

As with any philosophical field, the questions and statutes here are without definitive answers, and so it is ultimately left to the individual to decide what the text means. While the second example takes a number of ideas and extends them to a broader picture, in essence simulating the plurality of Tao te Ching, the ultimate plurality lies in the individual, with an infinite number of interpretations for each, the true nature, size, and scope of the Tao is finally described. So neither of the perspectives given is truly superior, contrary to what the prompt asks, but rather they exist as examples of how one must come to see the Tao: various and ever pertinent.

Works Cited

Chan, Alan (Winter 2018.). Laozi (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/laozi/

Dilworth, C., & McCracken, N. (1997). Ideological Cross-Currents in English Studies and English Education: A Report of a National Survey of Professors' Beliefs and Practices. English Education, 29 (1), 7-17. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxybz.lib.montana.edu/stable/40172914

Legge, Jeff (7 Jan. 2009.). The Internet Classics Archive | The Tao-te Ching by Lao-tzu. Classics.mit.edu. Retrieved from http://classics.mit.edu/Lao/taote.1.1.html

Li, Puqun (18 August 2018). Zen kōans: unsolvable enigmas designed to break your brain. Youtube.com. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p5Oi4wPVVo

Shore, Jeff (21 Aug. 2013.) Great Doubt: Getting Stuck & Breaking Through. Terebess Asia Online. Terebess.hu. Retrieved from https://terebess.hu/zen/great_doubt.pdf

Smith, M.W. & Rabinowitz, P.J. (2005). Playing a Double Game: Authorial Reading and the Ethics of Interpretation. Journal of Language and Literacy Education [On-line], 1 (1), 9- 19

[politicalemail]

Join us this weekend in Portland! from jacqueline@janetmills.com

  The Host Committee: Joan & Dan Amory | David Backer | Ralph Baldwin | Alan Brewer  Hon. Brownie Carson | Phil Coupe | Toby Dilworth | Maureen Drouin  Daniel Hildreth & Lillian Harris | Jon Hinck & Juliet Browne | Beth & Dan Kleban Cathy Lee & Bob Moyer | Adam & Diana Lee | Jonathan Lee | Kathy Lyon & Tim Glidden Margot & Roger Milliken | Jennifer Melville | Bonnie Porta & Robert Monks  Anna Roosevelt | Lucas & Yemaya St. Clair | Nancy Ross & George Viles Dick & Alice Spencer invites you to a  meet and greet reception in support of     Attorney General Janet Mills Democratic Candidate for Governor   with special guest Hon. George Mitchell   Saturday, September 8th 10:00am - 12:00pm   At the home of Joan & Dan Amory 118 Pine St, Portland   Come share your ideas with Janet in a discussion about Maine's environmental future!   Show your support for  Janet Mills for Governor and   add your name to the Host Committee.     Host Committee sponsorships start at $500.     Chair: $1,600 | Sponsor: $1,000 Patron: $750 | Host: $500 Friend: $250 | Contributor: $100   For more information or to RSVP as a guest visit: https://ift.tt/2LSOL8C   or contact Jacqueline Morris at jacqueline@janetmills.com     Authorized and Paid for by Janet Mills for Governor Janet Mills for GovernorPO Box 110Farmington, ME 04938United States If you believe you received this message in error or wish to no longer receive email from us, please unsubscribe.  

[ttcas]

Toronto Theatre Critics Awards: 2016 winners

Best Production of a Play: Butcher by Nicolas Billon, directed by Weyni Mengesha (Butcher’s Block Collective and Why Not Theatre, Theatre Centre)

Best New Canadian Play: Sunday in Sodom and Botticelli in the Fire by Jordan Tannahill, directed by Matjash Mrozewski and Estelle Shook (Canadian Stage)

Best Director of a Play: Ravi Jain, Salt Water Moon by David French (Factory Theatre)

Best Design (tie): Betroffenheit by Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young - Owen Belton & Alessandro Juliani & Meg Roe (composition and sound), Jay Gower Taylor (set), Tom Visser (lighting), Nancy Bryant (costumes), directed by Jonathon Young (Kidd Pivot and The Electric Theatre Company, Canadian Stage); and Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl - Lorenzo Savoini (set and costumes), Kimberly Purtell (lighting), Debashis Sinha (sound), directed by Alan Dilworth (Soulpepper Theatre)

Best Actor in a Play: Kawa Ada, Bombay Black by Anosh Irani, directed by Peter Hinton (Factory Theatre)

Best Actress in a Play: Laura Condlln, Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Florian Borchmeyer, directed by Richard Rose (Tarragon Theatre)

Best Supporting Actor in a Play: Danny Ghantous, Line in the Sand by Guillermo Verdecchia and Marcus Youssef, directed by Nigel Shawn Williams (Factory Theatre)

Best Supporting Actress in a Play: Anna Chatterton, Gertrude and Alice by Evalyn Parry and Anna Chatterton, directed by Karin Randoja (Independent Aunties, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre)

Best New Musical: The Chasse-Galerie by the company, composed by James Smith, directed by Tyrone Savage (Red One Theatre Collective, Storefront Theatre)

Best Production of a Musical: Kinky Boots by Harvey Fierstein and Cyndi Lauper, directed by Jerry Mitchell (Mirvish Productions)

Best Director of a Musical: Tyrone Savage, The Chasse-Galerie

Best Actor in a Musical: Alan Mingo Jr., Kinky Boots

Best Actress in a Musical: Carly Heffernan, One Night Only by Alan Kliffer and the company, directed by Melody Johnson (Kliffer Entertainment and Golden Ages Productions, Factory Theatre)

Best Supporting Actor in a Musical: Justin Bott, The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Harold Arlen, and E.Y. Harburg, directed by Joey Tremblay (Young People’s Theatre)

Best Supporting Actress in a Musical: AJ Bridel, Kinky Boots

Special Citation: Videofag (William Ellis and Jordan Tannahill)

[shorterdispositio]

Eurydice (Sarah Ruhl; dir. Alan Dilworth), Soulpepper, Toronto, June 2015

Eurydice (Sarah Ruhl; dir. Alan Dilworth), Soulpepper, Toronto, June 2015

Things that don’t happen as often as I would like: seeing shows in Toronto that assure me that theatre remains a vital art form here; seeing shows that only make sense as theatre, and couldn’t be a film or a novel; seeing shows that make me feel, immediately, that I want to see them again, right away, at least once more.

Alan Dilworth’s staging of Eurydicemade all those things happen, and then…

[elektroblues]

Alan Wilder by Joe Dilworth, Liquid era

[fredfilmsblog]

Best of Original Cartoons: What A Cartoon!  Part 1 [1995-1997]

“...[At] Hanna-Barbera Productions, a new kind of revolution began to brew: a return to old forms reworked by fresh, new voices.“  –John Maher, Vulture

  “‘Take Back Our Cartoons’ How What a Cartoon! tapped animation’s past to push the form into a new ’90s golden age.“  

It didn’t occur to me that my casual reading habits could have a giant impact on my “career” (such as it has been), but reading Leonard Maltin’s and Jerry Beck’s survey of classic cartoons jumped started my thinking that served me better than well when I stumbled in the cartoon business in the early 90s.

John Maher is the co-founder (with Eric Vilas-Boas) of the late, lamented The Dot + Line, the smart look at cartoons. Lucky me, he’s taken a deep dive into my very first foray into original cartoons, the shorts incubator “What A Cartoon!” for Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network. Great interviews with Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Hotel Transylvania), David Feiss (Cow and Chicken, I Am Weasel) Craig McCraken (The Powerpuff Girls, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Wonder Over Yonder), Van Partible (Johnny Bravo) , moi.

“That a program rooted in the history of the art form was so instrumental in pushing it forward only shows how important it was for studios to take chances on creators — to let them, as Partible puts it, ‘take back our cartoons.’ And that’s exactly what they did.

This article is the nicest yet written yet about the start of my half dozen “shorts shows” done over the past several years, and lays out beautifully what I hoped to accomplish with a program that launched those stellar talents, not to mention Seth MacFarlane (Larry & Steve, Family Guy), Pat Ventura (Yucky Duck, Jamal the Funny Frog) and John R. Dilworth (Courage the Cowardly Dog).

Of course, John could only touch on the high points and the visible folks, the creators (Vulture isn’t a geek pub, it’s for a mainstream reader). So let me just mention a few of the people who really made a difference to the show and made it sing.

Buzz Potamkin ran production for me at Hannna-Barbera. His background was animated commercials and then was founder of Southern Star’s LA division where he produced The Bernenstain Bears and Teen Wolf. As the founder of Perpetual Motion Pictures and Buzzco in New York he had produced the famous “Moonman” animation for Alan Goodman and me at MTV. I had bent his ear for years about the cartoon business –long before I’d ever imagined actually being in it– and he became the first champion and Executive Producer of What A Cartoon! in the studio. Not for nothing, he convinced Ralph Bakshi and a number of other out-of-LA filmmakers to become part of the program.

Larry Huber (Supervising Producer) was at the studio producing 2 Stupid Dogs, the home of a lot of future WAC! creators. He also was the only veteran (he had pretty much every creative and production job in the business since he graduated from CalArts in the 60s) who didn’t think I was nuts and enthusiastically volunteered to help work with all the young blood I brought to the company. Larry has worked on almost every one of the 250 shorts I’ve produced over the past decades.

Scott Sassa was my boss at Turner, the guy who took the long shot of convincing me to come into the cartoon business. “What do you have to lose? They haven’t had a hit since The Smurfs [in 1981], so if you do anything good everyone will think you’re a genius!” I’m not all that sure he loved WAC! at first, but he trusted me.

Jed Simmons was my shotgun-wedding husband at Hanna-Barbera, and over time we evolved into an organic partnership. He’d been a business development executive at Turner Broadcasting, and Scott Sassa assigned him to me as studio COO to award him an operating position and to make sure I didn’t screw up the whole thing too badly. He wasn’t exactly sure of what I was up to either, but he became my biggest defender and protector. Jed and I went on to be co-founders of Next New Networks more than 10 years later. 

Of course! The creators’ work speaks for itself, as you’ll see in the compilation below. You’ll recognize the shorts that begat series, but there are a lot of other gems that didn’t spin off that are worth your attention too.

[fredfilmsblog]

Best of Original Cartoons: Random! Cartoons [2008-2009]

What started life as the fourth season of Oh Yeah! Cartoons, for niggly business reasons eventually became my third cartoon incubator, Random! Cartoons (39 shorts in a playlist embedded below). I’m happy that it’s most famous as being the start of Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time and Bravest Warriors, and Eric Robles’ Fanboy & Chum Chum, but Random! was a turning point in our industry for completely different reasons.

When I got into cartoons one of my missions was to bring under represented creators into the industry. I’ve miserably failed with Black Americans , been sort of OK with Latinos, and a lot better with women. With What A Cartoon! I begged folks from those groups to pitch and it was a pretty miserable failure. Oh Yeah! Cartoons improved a tiny bit. But at Random! and then at Too Cool! Cartoons and GO! Cartoons a real stride was started. 

Of course, our crews on various series started having a more female proportion of talent in the shows, but with Random! Cartoons a swirl of our youngest pitches began, and no surprise, the new generation also brought in a lot of women creators, maybe a few dozen pitches. 

Eventually, out of 39 short cartoons we produced, eight were women creators. It might not seem like a lot, 81 original shorts I made from 1998 through 2002 had two women creators, so the proportion of the total jumped dramatically.

And while none of the Random! shorts became series, all of the women –Jun Falkenstein, Dana Galin, Diane Kredensor, Aliki Theofilopoulos, Anne Walker, Melissa Wolfe (yes, an executive[first at Frederator now at Amazon] and a creator), and Niki Yang– became forces in the industry, many with series of their own (and Too Cool! creators broke out big!).

A few notes:

Random! Cartoons was the first show that I produced after I relocated back to New York City. Eric Homan and Kevin Kolde had joined Frederator Studios and ran development and production and put together teams of creators that I would have missed entirely. Those two guys are amazing.

For business reasons –these shorts shows historically have really low ratings and Nickelodeon was rightfully nervous– even though all the shorts were produced in 2005 and 2006, the series was held until 2008 and then ran on Nicktoons.

Eric Robles’ Fanboy & Chum Chum brought a real cartoony squash & stretch to television for the first time. 

I was happy that four cartoons were by New York creators –Dana Galin’s and Diane Kredesnor’s Call Me Bessie, Manny Galan’s & Alan Goodman’s Bronk & Bongo, John Dilworth’s Garlic Boy and Bill Plympton’s Gary Guitar– a vanishing breed.

Most known for his animation historian chops, Jerry Beck was the creator of Random!’s Hornswiggle.

I have commented else where that I was the idiot who almost turned down Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time. Eric and Kevin pointed out my giant mistake and made sure I sat tight enough to get the series going, and then Bravest Warriors. Thank you gentlemen!