Sito Recalls

The President Emeritus sends birthday greetings.

Happy 90th birthday! Feb 20, 1925- Willis O’Brien’s silent movieThe Lost World premiered. Based on Conan-Doyles 1912 novel. The stop motion animation of dinosaurs and exploding volcanoes issued in a new era of special effects films. O'Brien later did King Kong and trained kids like Ray Harryhausen.

Dinosaurs have always enthralled the elementary school set, particularly boys.



The flick directly above was a staple around our house when I was young. Blackhawk Films (now long gone) sold an 8mm print; the Hulett household had an 8mm projector. The result? My younger brother and I sat mesmerized watching the movie over and over again. (This was long before the internet began mesmerizing people.)



The Lost World is really the granddaddy of 3D/CGI features. Everything that came after it, from King Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1948) to Jurassic Park, Avatar,, the Ray Harryhausen pictures and the latest incarnations of Planet of the Apes owe something to this movie. Because this is where live-action/3D animation hybrids got their actual, big-time, commercial start.



There was nothing much before. There was lots and lots in the nine decades that followed.

At the Network of Cartoons

Cartoon Network had a bunch of announcements about series old and new today. They were as follows ...

We Bare Bears -- Each episode follows three bear siblings' awkward attempts at assimilating into human society, whether they’re looking for food, trying to make human friends, or scheming to become internet famous.



Powerpuff Girls -- Reboot. Adventure Time's Nick Jennings exec produces.



Magic Magiswords -- A brother and sister team of “Warriors for Hire,” on hilarious adventures and crazy quests to collect magical swords.



Long Live the Royals -- The royal family celebrates the yearly Yule Hare Festival (in four rib-tickling episodes).



Steven Universe/Uncle Grandpa -- Crossover Special: “Say Uncle”.



Adventure Time -- Special Miniseries (above and beyond the Regular Show's regular shows).

In addition to the above, Uncle Grandpa has been picked up for additional episodes. (I'm told the number is 13.)



Clarence has gotten picked up for a new season.



The Amazing World of Gumball, out of CN's European branch, will continue, as will Teen Titans, Go! from sister studio Warner Bros. Animation.



Regular Show, Uncle Grandpa and Steven Universe, all in-house series, have also gotten renewals. And Mixels a joint production of Cartoon Network and Lego, is coming back for a second season.



I've been trhough the studio a couple of times over the past week. Clarence, the half-hour created by Skyler Paige, has had a lot of creative personnel changes the last six months, and continues to have changes. Whether it impacts the quality of the show remains to be seen, but CN had enough confidence in the production to give it one more green light.



And why there isn't more coordination and synergy between Warner Bros. Animation and Cartoon Network continues to be a mystery. ...

Falling Wages, Falling Marriage Rates

And now, because this is (occasionally) a labor blog:

The Death of American Unions Is Killing American Marriage



For all the mawkish, maudlin conservative hand-wringing about the state of marriage among the working class—recall Republican Mitt Romney, among others, recently claiming marriage as the solution to poverty—a post-mortem on marriage among the less materially fortunate turns up fascinating results. Poverty itself, it seems, is the chief agent of marital decline among the poor. This is especially true of falling wages among working class men, who have borne the brunt of the right-wing war on labor unions. ...



Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell pointed it out in the New York Times:



Forty years ago, about nine of 10 American men between the ages of 30 and 50 were married, and the most highly paid men were just slightly more likely to wed than those paid least. Since then, earnings for men in the top tenth of the income distribution have risen and their marriage rates have fallen slightly, from 95 percent in 1970 to 83 percent today. […] [M]en in the bottom quartile of earnings have had a wage cut of 60 percent, and a contemporaneous drop in marriage rates to about 50 percent, from 86 percent.



... [Columnist Nicholas] Kristof cites a study conducted by professors at Harvard and the University of Washington that concludes “the decline of the U.S. labor movement has added as much to men’s wage inequality as has the relative increase in pay for college graduates.” The authors continue:



[U]nions helped shape the allocation of wages not just for their members, but across the labor market. The decline of U.S. labor and the associated increase in wage inequality signaled the deterioration of the labor market as a political institution. Workers became less connected to each other in their organizational lives and less connected in their economic fortunes.



In other words, the decline of labor unions not only reduced workers’ control of their economic destinies by decoupling them from the fates of their fellow workers, but also allowed for rapid wage decreases that put lower-income laborers at a financial distance from more privileged employees within highly unionized industries and outside them. ...

In 1973, about the time I separated from active duty with the U.S. Navy, the American labor movement began its long decline. It's been declining ever since, and as it's lost power, the Republican Party has become more anti-labor. (It's not the party of Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower anymore, but the willing accomplice of the Big Dogs among us.)



And funny thing. As the percentage of unionized households has cratered, the middle class's share of national income has gone down with it:

Weird, huh? I'm sure it's just a coincidence.



The only thing weirder is how so much of the population chooses to vote against its own economic self-interest, buying into peripheral flap-doodle (Ebola! ISIS! Benghazi! Gay marriage! Kenyan Socialist!) even as it's beaten, robbed and left with little more than a worn pair of sneakers.



But in politics and labor battles (as the cliche goes), there are no permanent victories, or permanent defeats. And I wouldn't hazard a guess as to where the population will be in ten ... fifteen ... thirty years. I only hope it's not some 21st Century version of the Middle Ages.

So What About the Anthem Security Breach?

Mr. Kaplan and I have continued our tour of studios this week. A question keeps coming up: "What about Anthem?! What about the security breach? Are my bank accounts in jeopardy?



Here's what the Motion Picture Industry Health Plan says:

... Anthem states it will be sending letters via US Mail to impacted participants by the end of February. The letters will contain additional information regarding Credit Monitoring services that Anthem will pay for and make available for one (1) year to those who were impacted. Please note, you will NOT be automatically enrolled in these services. Impacted participants MUST enroll for the services upon receipt of the letter.



There have been reports of fraudulent email activity offering credit monitoring services that appear to be from Anthem. Anthem will NOT use e-mail for this correspondence. Notification from Anthem will be via US Mail. ...

We've been telling members that if they're uncomfortable with waiting, if they want to be proactive with credit cards and bank accounts, then they should do that. No reason to wait if it causes you sleepless nights. In the meantime, here's what Anthem says it's doing now ...



From the Anthem website:

Anthem is working with AllClear ID, a leading and trusted identity protection provider, to offer 24 months of identity theft repair and credit monitoring services to current or former members of an affected Anthem plan dating back to 2004.



This includes customers of Anthem, Inc. companies Amerigroup, Anthem and Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield companies, Caremore, and Unicare. Additionally customers of Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies who used their Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance in one of fourteen states where Anthem, Inc. operates may be impacted and are also eligible: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin.



AllClear ID is ready and standing by to assist you if you need identity repair assistance. This service is automatically available to you with no enrollment required. If a problem arises, simply call 877-263-7995 and a dedicated investigator will do the work to recover financial losses, restore your credit, and make sure your identity is returned to its proper condition. ...

A crappy situation all around, but it can be dealt with. Just take a few minutes and read the Anthem site.

Niceness ... and Not

Sayeth Ms. Pascal:

"We all live in this weird thing called Hollywood. If we all actually were nice, it wouldn't work."

I don't know if Amy Pascal's quote is candor ... or rationalization.



What I do know is that when you're one of the troops toiling in the trenches, you'll get the fake patina of "nice," but it's only there as thin sugar-coating covering the excrement. You learn ... sometimes slowly ... that top executives talk one way among themselves (with brutal candor), and another way to everyone else.



A former TAG officer told me how he found himself in a creative meeting with one of the Top Dogs of production. A supervisor complained (mildly) about the attitude of a veteran artist on the show. The exec shrugged and said "Fire him!" There was no empathy or weighing of pros and cons, just a quick solution to the supe's off-hand complaint. But this is because with top executives

Niceness is an impediment to efficiency, and anyway, no one [up in the Golden Circle] believes it. Sometimes profanity and meanness come with the candor, but to those on the inside, it's never shocking. It's actually a dog whistle to signal membership in a common culture of wealth, fame and narcissism. ...

I joke to artists laboring in various studios: "If the suits come downstairs to tell you that everything is fine, that nobody has to worry about losing their jobs, start looking for other work, because the layoffs will start soon."



Because everybody not in the Winners Club gets covered with thick, rich manure that the executives tell the rabble is really fine, rich chocolate. Lies to underlings are considered to be a necessary part of running the business, so lies are often plentiful. A couple of years ago, the management of a large studio told staff that everybody's work week would be boosted from forty to forty-five hours, "but nobody's wages are being cut."



When asked about it, I pointed out that everybody's pay was being cut because people were working more hours for the same money as before.



And everybody got it. They were (again) being lied to.



But of course, none of this will come as a surprise to anybody who's been in the biz for ... oh ... six months. If you're one of the worker bees, misinformation is the coin of the realm. And b.s. is the chief nutrient in the studio soil.



Veteran artists and tech directors understand this ... and practice what an Army Air Corps navigator learned in a long-ago war:

"I want someone to tell me," Lieutenant Scheisskopf beseeched them all prayerfully. "If any of it is my fault, I want to be told."



"He wants someone to tell him," Clevinger said.



"He wants everyone to keep still, idiot," Yossarian answered.



"Didn't you hear him," Clevinger argued.



"I heard him," Yossarian replied. "I heard him say very loudly and very distinctly that he wants every one of us to keep our mouths shut if we know what's good for us."



"I won't punish you," Lieutenant Scheisskopf swore.



"He says he won't punish me," said Clevinger.



"He'll castrate you," said Yossarian.



-- Joseph Heller, Catch 22

Unsurprisingly, Amy Pascal is now the former head of Sony Pictures. But it was fun while it lasted.

From Live Action to Animation

... Instead of the other way around. But some oversensitive types refuse to see the value in it.

... In June we reported that the BBC was planning to reboot Teletubbies with computer-generated animation, so that it could be more relevant to the computer-generated children of today. Now, the co-creator of Teletubbies — Anne Wood — has spoken up about the new version of her colorful little baby people, and she is “fucking pissed.” ...



Wood says that the idea to remake old shows instead of creating new ones is all about trends in TV production: “People feel safer remaking hits of the past rather than investing in something new.” ... She won’t be watching the remake. “How could I watch it?” she said, “All my programs are like my children. It’s like seeing a child remade in somebody else’s image. So good luck to them.” ...

What Ms. Wood doesn't understand is that she should be honored. And grateful. Usually it's animated properties that get plundered for newer live-action versions. The fact that Teletubbies is a property going in the opposite direction means that Ms. Wood is a trend setter.



Annie should look on the bright side. At least nobody is saying the new version of TT is "gay."

Hero Follow-Up

Penn Zero, PTH, which premiered over the weekend, enjoyed solid results for its initial outing.

Premiering with a Disney Channel and Disney XD simulcast, the new animated comedy series "Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero" (Friday, February 13, 9:45 p.m., ET/PT) delivered solid ratings in Total Viewers (2.9 million), Kids 2-11 (1.7 million/4.4 rating), Kids 6-11 (1.4 million/5.9 rating) and Tweens 9-14 (965,000/4.0 rating) across the two platforms.



Three additional new episodes aired on Disney XD on Saturday, February 14 (9:00 p.m., ET/PT), Sunday, February 15 (9:00 p.m., ET/PT) and Monday, February 16 (9:15 p.m., ET/PT). ...

After three decades, Disney TVA has become a well-oiled machine.



Gone are the days of hit or miss franchises, where for every Gummi Bears that hit big, there was a Wuzzles that didn't.



In the 21st Century, Television Animation game-plans for multiple seasons of every show it put on the air. Because two or three or four seasons are easier to market than a single order of shows that went nowhere.

Evening Factoid

Third highest grossing:

... Big Hero 6 has now grossed $219.3M at the domestic box office, which pushed it past Beauty and the Beast. That puts the film in third place among Disney animated films, behind The Lion King ($422.7M) and Frozen ($400.7M). ...

The Disney flick that's right behind?



Aladdin, which has a North American gross of $217,350,219. Which is 43.1% of its ultimate, worldwide total from 22-plus years ago.



Of course, adjusted for inflation, the big blue Genie and his friends are (at this point) comfortably ahead, but who wants to adjust? Especially when it interferes with bragging rights?

Lawsuit City

Not against the Big Boys this time, but a well-loved VFX and animation studio that went bankrupt just as it won an Academy Award.

... On Friday, two years after Rhythm & Hues filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the Trustee in the case brought a new complaint against the company's former officers and directors, including John Patrick Hughes, Pauline Ts’o and Keith Goldfarb. The suit presents a different take on what led R&H to go bust.



"While claiming to promote a caring and artistic corporate culture that enhanced R&H’s value, Hughes, Ts’o and Goldfarb breached their duties of loyalty, due care, and good faith by directing R&H to engage in risky transactions with entities they or their family members owned or controlled," states the complaint. ...



The suit alleges Hughes transferred millions of dollars to CCCD Diagnostics, a biotech startup company founded by his father-in-law, in return for unsecured notes that were eventually sold to him for one dollar. This biotech company is said to have had no revenues and a business "wholly unrelated to R&H's business." ...

That corporate chieftans are known to lie and plunder is not exactly world-shaking news. But for years Rhythm and Hues was held up as a shining model of employee-management relations.



When I was at a meeting of employees in the final days of Dream Quest Images, a visual effects studio that had been purchase by Disney and was being merged into Disney Feature Animation (and also becoming part of a Disney-IATSE contract), a Dream Questor stood up in the back of the hall and said

"I hope this merger will be good for us, but I'm not sure it will be. A bunch of us have worked for Rhythm and Hues, and they really know how to treat employees right, how to look out for them. I'm nervous if becoming part of Disney Feature is going to do that for people here". ...

Rhythm and Hues was held up as the gold standard for pay, working conditions and benefits in the VFX industry for a long time. To find out that things might not have been as employees thought they were is a chronic down trip.



But then, there have been lots of chronic down trips in the VFX world of late. What's one more?

At Disney TVA

This past week, Steve Kaplan and I toured part of Disney TVA/Yahoo. And what they hey is Disney TVA/Yahoo? It's part of Television Animation that is not headquartered n Glendale but located near the Burbank-Bob Hope Airport. One of the shows there is getting rolled out this weekend:

This weekend marks the official debut of Disney's latest animated comedy adventure series Penn Zero Part Time Hero - about a regular boy who inherits the not-so-regular job of dimension-hopping part-time hero. ...

The things you need to know about Disney TVA is, it long ago stopped being under Disney Feature's wing and now exists inside the protective aura of Disney Channel.



And no Disney animated series gets on cable these days until it's been focus-grouped, animaticked and tested to a fare-thee-well. The Channel hierarchy wants to be sure the show (whatever it is) will succeed with its targeted demographic.



So any new candidate will have been analyzed, massaged, and massaged again before it flies with its (hoped-for) audience. The Channel wants winners that will roll beyond a Season One order, that will last through three or four cycles and become and "evergreen" that makes money for Diz Co. over the long haul.



Testing, coupled with generous prep time, is the way Disney Channel has worked on product for a long time. Sofia the First, in work for a year, started life as a special that scored big numbers with the moppet set. The 7D, now launched on its second season, had a long gestation period with lots of testing (and producer Tom Ruegger told me how challenging ... and nerve-wracking ... that was.)



Sam Levine, Penn Zero's co-creator (along with Jared Bush) described some of the development twists and turns taken by their series:

Originally the show was one story per 22-minute episode, and it was changed to two 11-minute stories. It doubled our design load and the amount of work we had to do. But it ended up becoming double the fun. Our directors have to think about each story as a separate genre, our composer Ryan Shore has to create music for each world. First it’s a Zombie world, now it’s a Clown world, then it’s a Western. ...

Whenever you see a Diz TVA series roll off the development pipeline, it's worth knowing that the route it takes to get out to the wider world is long and involved.

Your World-Wide B.O.

Time once again for a look at animation and VFX foreign box office.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)



Spongebob Squarepants -- $13,500,000 -- ($139,972,561)



Jupiter Ascending -- $15,600,000 -- ($91,451,146)



Big Hero 6 -- $9,200,000 -- ($521,085,680)



Night At The Museum 3 -- $6,700,000 -- ($334,005,972)



Paddington -- $1,000,000 -- ($219,298,308)



Penguins of Madagascar -- $4,100,000 -- ($349,159,425)



Hobbit 3 -- $3,900,000 -- ($950,161,689)



Boonie Bears Movie 2 -- $3,800,000 -- ($37,000,000)

The trade papers summarize the overseas story:

... Jupiter Ascending dropped about 54% in its 2nd frame, grossing an estimated $15.6M from 8,195 screens in 65 markets. ....



The 3rd frame for The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water logged $13.5M from 4,206 locations in 29 territories. ...



Big Hero 6 was welcomed in France, Belgium and the Netherlands this frame and has only China to go on February 28. ...Across all markets, Baymax and Hiro earned $9.2M, taking the international above the $300M mark to $301.8M. The global cume on the Disney Animation title is now $521.1M. ...



Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb awakened $6.7M on 1,985 screens in 23 markets. ... The international cume is $223.3M with February school holidays beginning to roll out across many European markets.



Fox and DreamWorks Animation’s Penguins Of Madagascar stealthily picked up $4.2M from 1,259 screens in 21 markets with excellent openings in Venezuela ($1.54M) and Taiwan ($471K). The overseas total is now $267M.

...

WGA Animation Awards

The WGA passed out awards tonight. This was the animated show that received one.

Best Animated TV Show



(WINNER) “Brick Like Me” (The Simpsons), Written by Brian Kelley; Fox



“Bob and Deliver” (Bob’s Burgers), Written by Greg Thompson; Fox



“Covercraft” (The Simpsons), Written by Matt Selman; Fox



“Pay Pal” (The Simpsons), Written by David Steinberg; Fox



“Steal This Episode” (The Simpsons), Written by J. Stewart Burns; Fox



“Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl” (Bob’s Burgers), Written by Nora Smith; Fox

Looking at the list of nominees, it came down to Bob's Burgers or The Yellow Family.

So no big surprise abot the half-hour that took the honor.



As I understand it, the WGA limits nominations to work performed under Writers Guild jurisdiction.

Biz Rep Questionnaire

TAG organizer/Peg-Board editor/utility infielder Steve Kaplan has been running profiles of Animation Guild Executive Board members in the monthly newsletter. Here's mine ...

BUSINESS REPRESENTATIVE QUESTIONNAIRE -- S. HULETT



What brought you to the industry?



I needed a job. I also wanted to write for a living. So I applied for work in the Disney Feature Animation story department. I didn’t have much professional background, but I got into their training program in the middle seventies, and wrote on a number of features over the next decade.



I was laid off from Disney in the middle eighties. I would tell you it was due to “management change.” Management would tell you it was because the new guys running the studio weren’t jazzed by my work.



After layoff, I worked for Filmation (long since defunct) and WB Animation, and also taught high school English (as many unemployed writers tend to do.)



I ran for the elected post of Animation Guild business representative in 1989, won the job, and have been doing the biz rep thing ever since. I’ll be retiring from the position at the end of 2016.



It’s understood that you’ve held this position for quite some time. How many years have you been the Guild’s Business Representative?



Twenty-five years. But if feels like thirty.



Why do you think you’ve held the position for so long?



I’ve come to work every day and focused on business. I’ve gone out to studios and talked to members on a daily basis. (Business agents who don’t do interactions with the rank and file tend to be gone sooner instead of later).



I’ve worked to be responsive to members’ needs/complaints/

frustrations. (Sadly, sometimes you can be more responsive – and effective -- than others.)



The reasons for my longevity?



A) I made sure I returned phone calls and did face time with guild members.



B) I worked to be cooperative with other elected TAG officers, also to be transparent and available to members.



C) Few other people wanted this job.



What does the Business Representative do? What inspired you to run for the position?



I ran for the position in ’89 because I had served on the guild board for six years, served as Vice-President, and thought I could make the organization more “user friendly.” I did a lot of outreach in the early years, phoning members at home and doing studio visits. The companies I dealt with in those earlier times were a lot less corporate and bureaucratic than they are now.



As to the job itself, you file grievances, supervise the guild office staff, negotiate contracts. But that’s the bare bones description of the position. A big part of business repping is being an ombudsman, helping members navigate the health and pension plans, assisting with people finding work and securing job training, and providing Dutch Uncle type advice to employees who are embroiled in disputes at work and don’t know how to handle an unhappy supervisor or ticked off co-worker.



I tell people that jobs in the animation business are three parts talent/hard work, and two parts politics/luck. If you don’t play well with others, you narrow the strike zone for achieving success. (I’ve learned this the hard way.)



Is this where you imagined you would have ended up in the industry?



No. I imagined I would be doing John Lasseter’s gig. It turns out I was delusional.



What would you like to accomplish this term as the Guild’s Business Rep?



Negotiate a good contract. Organize more studios. End my time here at a sprint.



Do you have any words for the subscribers of the Pegboard?



Never stop pursuing your dreams and ultimate goals, but recognize that you also have to make a living in the meantime. Savor and enjoy every day you’re in the business. (You’re making cartoons! One of the highest callings known to humankind!)



Finally, don’t take yourself too seriously. We’re all on a journey down a bright tunnel, and we’re all going to the same place.​

I should add that a sizable chunk of my job over the past seventeen years has been serving as point person on the Animation Guild's 401(k) Plan. It's been a valuable experience for me because I've learned many facets of the investing game. (The BIGGEST facet? Investing is simple; it's stocks-bonds-WIDE diversification. The hard part is sticking to your plan.)



Members now hold a total of $230 million in assets in the TAG 401(k); this is on top of the money they hold in the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan. The guild's added benefit has really become an integral part of members' pension benefits

American Box Office

SpongeBob falls from #1 as the racy movie takes over.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE



1). Fifty Shades of Grey (UNI), 3,646 theaters / $31M Fri.* / 3-Day: $83M/4-Day: $91M/ Wk 1



2). Kingsman: The Secret Service (FOX), 3,204 theaters / $10.5M Fri.* / 3-Day: $35M/ 4-Day: $39.4M/ Wk 1



3). The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (PAR), 3,654 theaters (+13) / $6.6M Fri. (-56%)/ 3-Day: $26.6M (-52%)/4-Day: $36.1M/Total Cume: $99.2M/ Wk 2



4). American Sniper (WB), 3,436 theaters (-449)/ $3.79M Fri. (-39%) /3-Day: $16.4M (-29%)/4-Day: $19.2M/Total cume: $307M/ Wk 8



5). Jupiter Ascending* (WB), 3,181 theaters (0) / $2M Fri. (-68%) / 3-Day: $7.1M (-61%)/ 4-Day: $9.1M/Total Cume: $31.7M/ Wk 2



6). Paddington (TWC), 2,244 theaters (-644) / $869 Fri. (-22%) / 3-Day: $3.9M (-25%) / 4-Day: $5M/Total cume: $63.2M /Wk 5



7/8). Seventh Son (UNI), 2,874 theaters (-1) / $915K Fri. (-60%)/ 3-Day: $3.3M (-54%)/4-Day: $3.8M/Total Cume: $13.1M/ Wk 2



The Imitation Game (TWC), 1,551 theaters (-412) / $790K Fri. (-38%) / 3-Day: $3.3M (-29%)/4-Day: $3.9M/Total cume: $80M / Wk 12



9). The Wedding Ringer (Sony), 1,456 theaters (-682)/ $617K Fri. (-53%) / 3-Day: $2.3M (-50%)/4-Day: $3.1M/ Total cume: $59.2M /Wk 5



10). Black or White (REL), 1,591 theaters (-232) / $602K Fri. (-53%)/ 3-Day: $2.3M (-49%) / 4-Day: $2.69M/Total cume: $17.4M/Wk 3

The SpongeBob Movie: SOW will hit $100 million early next week. The Sponge and Paddington the bear will both be money spinners because they weren't exorbitnatly expensive to produce.

Gary Owens, RIP

From the AP:

Gary Owens, the droll, mellifluous-voiced announcer on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” and a familiar part of radio, TV and movies for more than six decades, has died. He was 80.



The veteran voiceover star died Thursday at his Los Angeles-area home, his son, producer Scott Owens, said Friday. Gary Owens had struggled with complications from diabetes, which he had since childhood. ...



Owens hosted thousands of radio programs in his long career, appeared in more than a dozen movies and on scores of TV shows, including Lucille Ball and Bob Hope specials. He also voiced hundreds of animated characters, was part of dozens of comedy albums and wrote books.



On “Laugh-In,” the 1968-73 sketch show starring Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, Owens was shown on camera in a parody of an old-school announcer. ...

In the sixties and seventies, Gary Owens was omnipresent.



He was on radio every day, doing comedy riffs. He was doing cartoon characters. He was performing on Laugh-In on a weekly basis.



The man was everywhere, and it was difficult, if you turned on a radio or TV, to avoid him. During my high school years, I listened to him holding forth on station KMPC as often as possible. I thought he was hysterical.



As for the cartoon part of his career, Mark Evanier tells us:

... He was Space Ghost and the Blue Falcon and Roger Ramjet and Powered Toast Man and the announcer on Garfield and Friends and so many more. He did an amazing number of cartoons when you consider that the guy really only had one voice. When it's a voice that good, all you need is one. ...

Mark's right. Gary's voice was amazing. And he traveled a long way on it.



And there is this tribute from Ken Levine.

Tom Sito's February History

Once again, it's time for Professor/President Emeritus Sito's movie factoids.

Feb 1, 1893- In New Jersey, Thomas Edison and his engineer W. K. Dickson build the FIRST MOTION PICTURE STUDIO.



It was covered with black tar paper and nicknamed "The Black Mariah", because that was the nickname of police wagons that it resembled. It's debatable how much of the inventing effort was more Dickson than Edison. Edison was only marginally interested in the movies. Dickson worked himself into the hospital to make the studio work; resenting Edison’s apathy, he started experimenting on his own. When Edison found out he fired him.



Feb 2, 1922 - Twenty-one-year old Walt Disney starts Newman's Laff-O-Grams in Kansas City.



Feb 5, 1919 - Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and D.W. Griffith form the United Artists Studio.



Feb. 5, 1937 - Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times premieres. Chaplin was inspired to lampoon modern technological madness when he was invited to view the auto assembly production lines in Detroit and saw men moving like machines.



Feb 5, 1953 - Walt Disney’s Peter Pan premieres.



Feb 7,1964 - THE BRITISH ROCK INVASION BEGAN. Thousands of screaming fans welcome THE BEATLES to New York for their first U.S. Tour. The last music out of England to be taken seriously by Americans was the Lambeth Walk; now the UK announced itself as a powerhouse of rock & roll. The crowds of teenagers were so excited they mobbed a Rolls Royce in front of the Warwick Hotel where the Beatles were staying, just because they figured a Rolls Royce would be something they drove in. They had actually arrived in a taxicab.



Feb 8, 1914 - THE FIRST TRUE CHARACTER ANIMATION - Windsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur" premieres as part of a vaudeville act. Up to then most U.S. animations were attempts to bring popular newspaper comic characters to life, but Gertie was a new character never before seen. Some critics had wondered if animated characters weren’t some kind of man in a special suit, so McCay drew a dinosaur, a character that couldn’t possibly be impersonated by a living thing. The brilliant draftsmanship and timing of this film would inspire the generation of Animation artists of the Golden Age of the 1930's-40s.



Feb 8, 2001 - Walt Disney’s California Adventure theme park opens.



Feb 9, 1914 - “Mabel’s Strange Predicament” The Max Sennett Keystone short where Charlie Chaplin first donned his baggy pants, little mustache and derby to create The Tramp, one of the most beloved characters in cinema history.



Feb 10, 1940 - MGM's "Puss gets the Boot" the first Tom and Jerry cartoon and the first collaboration of the team of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.



Feb 11, 1976- Chuck Jones’s TV special "Mowgli’s Brothers."



Feb 13 , 1886- Artist Thomas Eakins resigns his professorship at the Philadelphia Academy of Art in disgust when he's attacked for having male nudes in his art class with women as students.



Feb 13, 1937- Hal Foster's comic hero Prince Valiant first appears. ...

And the rest of the month:

Feb 13, 1939- Producer David O. Selznick replaced directors on Gone With the Wind. George Cukor was out, Victor Fleming was in ... after completing all but the opening sequence of The Wizard of Oz. Vivien Leigh liked Cukor, who was known for directing women, but Clark Gable convinced the producers that they needed an action director. [He convinced them because he was Clark Gable, the nation's top star, and thus had leverage. -- Hulett]



About 15 minutes of George Cukor’s work remains in the picture. Victor Fleming loved Clark, but didn't get along with Vivien Leigh and came to hate the controlling Selznick. David O. brought in Sam Wood to direct second unit when Fleming fell behind. At the end Victor Fleming had one more tantrum when Selznick proposed giving Wood and Cukor co- screen credit..



Yet despite it all, Gone with the Wind became a box office phenomenon. Years later Clark Gable came up to Selznick at a party and said: "Maybe I'm wrong about disliking you David, 'Gone With the Wind' keeps getting re-released and keeps me a star." Selznick once said:” My biggest fear is that all I shall ever be remembered for is producing Gone With the Wind.”





Feb 14, 1967- the birthday of Laura Croft.



Feb 14, 1931 - Tod Browning's film of the play Dracula, starring Hungarian actors' union organizer and recreational morphine addict Bela Lugosi, premiered.



Feb 16, 1987 - "Family Dog" episode on Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories TV show. The first direction by Brad Bird.



Feb 17, 1912 - THE NEW YORK ARMORY SHOW - Mabel Dodge and Gertrude Stein introduce Post expressionist modern art to the U.S. public. The first U.S. showings of Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp and the Italian futurists. The show was denounced as a "chamber of horrors" and Matisse was burned in effigy in Chicago. Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase" was described by an art critic as "an explosion in a shingle factory". Duchamp was highly gratified, I believe.



Feb 19, 1960 - Bill Keane's "Family Circus" cartoon strip debuts. Bill Keane is the father of animator Glen Keane and the young son Billy in the strip is modeled on him.



Feb 20, 1925 - Willis O’Brien’s silent movie The Lost World premieres. The stop motion animation of dinosaurs and exploding volcanoes issued in a new era of special effects films.



Feb 22, 2009 - Slumdog Millionaire wins best picture and best cinematography at the 81st Academy Awards. The first movie shot completely digital, with no film used, to be so honored.



Feb 23, 1935- Walt Disney’s Mickey & Donald cartoon "The Band Concert" is released. This was the first color Mickey Mouse cartoon.



Feb 25, 1932 - TOONTOWN SCANDALS. Former Australian prizefighter Pat Sullivan was the producer of the Felix the Cat cartoons, the first true animation star. Although animator Otto Mesmer actually created him, Sullivan's name is the only one on the titles. Felix was one of the top film stars of the 1920s. Lindbergh supposedly had a Felix doll with him in the Spirit of St. Louis and his body shape was the prototype of Mickey Mouse and dozens of other characters. While Mesmer quietly drew pictures, Sullivan lived the fast life of a roaring twenties celebrity. 

Mrs. Marjorie Sullivan had been having an affair with her chauffeur. After a nasty scene when husband confronted wife and the chauffeur fled, Mrs. Sullivan mysteriously fell out of her window to her death. The scandal was front page news and Sullivan never got over it. He drank himself to death, which during Prohibition wasn’t an easy thing to do. Sullivan's death and his failure to get Felix into sound cartoons doomed his studio. Otto Mesmer went on to animate the first Broadway light signs but did not receive any recognition for his contributions to animation until he was re-introduced to the public at a Bob Clampett night at the Museum of Modern Art in 1975.



Feb 26, 1991- At a meeting in Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee introduces the first Web Browser.



Feb 27, 1991 - The Mitchell Brothers were tops in the pornography business, producing blockbusters like Behind the Green Door and running the O’ Farrell Theater in San Francisco. This day after doing a lot of drugs, Jim Mitchell shot his brother Arnie to death with a rifle. The Mitchell Brothers Court case marked the first use of 3D computer animation as a scenario tool.



Feb 28, 1953-Chuck Jones’s short cartoon “Duck-Amuck” debuts - called by Steven Speilberg the Citizen Kane of Animation.



February Birthdays: George Pal, Nathan Lane, Thurl Ravenscroft, H.R. Giger, Marty Sklar, Frank Frazetta, Seth Green, Matt Groening, Faith Hubley, Gahan Wilson, Paul Terry, Simon Pegg, Joe Oriolo, Edward Gorey, Tex Avery, Mister Magoo.

Health Factoid

What the hell?

Wired found shockingly low vaccination rates at a number of corporate-sponsored daycare facilities in Silicon Valley. And kid-centric Pixar, now part of Disney, was one of the worst offenders: Only 43% of children at a Pixar-affiliated daycare center were up to date on their shots, according to California state records. Pixar was not immediately available for comment.



The current US measles outbreak has largely affected children of educated and affluent parents. Marin County (median household income $90,893) has the highest vaccine opt-out rate in the state, with only 84% of students entering kindergarten fully immunized. ...

Same opt-outs occur in southern Orange County ... another wealthy section of the state. I guess it's a free country, but you don't want to get this disease f you can avoid it. I had the measles at age six. No vaccines in those days. If you were in elementary school with other little carriers, you generally got slammed.



It was a week of fever, hallucination and night sweats. I was in the bathroom during Day 2 of the disease and saw big black caterpillars crawling across the tile sink. Total hallucination. There were no big, black caterpillars.



I (and the rest of the family) would have been thrilled to have a vaccination if it meant avoiding those things listed above. But vaccinations didn't exist then.

Disney Hand Off

The Times says it's going swimmingly.

...At companies in less ego-driven industries than media and entertainment, the orderly naming of a longtime insider (Mr. Staggs has been with Disney for 25 years) as chief executive-in-waiting might not warrant headlines. But at Disney, Mr. Iger’s predecessor, Michael Eisner, elevated and discarded some prominent candidates to succeed him — Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Ovitz, in particular — in a multiyear drama that eventually led to a shareholder revolt and Mr. Eisner’s ouster. ...



For many chief executives, the ability to exit gracefully while anointing a strong successor is one of the most important but least appreciated qualities of leadership, according to David Larcker, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and an expert in corporate governance. “It’s very difficult,” he said. “Look at Ovitz at Disney. That was a monumental disaster. And the transition from Eisner was awkward, to put it mildly. You have to admire Iger, who recognized that he’s done what he came to do and it’s time for new blood. From the outside, this appears to be going very smoothly. Disney has successfully avoided any public spectacle.” ...

After the slow-motion multi-car pileup of the final Eisney years, I wouldn't have believed that Robert Iger could have run Diz Co. so smoothly and with so little drama.



But by golly he has. He's increased the size of the Mouse, goosed profits, and turned the conglomerate into the Berkshire-Hathaway of entertainment behemoths. Disney purists gripe about how "it ain't Disney anymore," bu Ward Kimball told the assembled multitudes that Walt Disney Productions was over as "Walt Disney" when the founder breathed his last.



Time passes, things change.

British Tech Centers

The fastest growing areas are not (surprisingly?) in London.

... Tech Nation, the most comprehensive analysis of the UK’s digital industries ever conducted, reveals that the fastest growing tech clusters in the country today are each hundreds of miles away from the capital city.



Step forward Bournemouth, on the South coast of England, where the number of companies in the local technology cluster has grown 212 per cent over the past year; and welcome Liverpool, in the North-West, where the equivalent growth rate is 119 per cent. London, by contrast, managed only 92 per cent growth last year – hardly shabby, but well behind its provincial rivals.



In the relatively small area of Bournemouth and Poole, more than 7,000 people are now employed by digital businesses, with advertising, e-commerce and games developers all important players in the sector. It helps that Bournemouth University is home to the National Centre for Computing Animation, which provides a steady stream of talented graduates. ...

Of course, percentage increases can be deceiving. London starts from a larger base, so would have to add more jobs and companies to grow at the rate of Bournemouth and Liverpool.



But Britain is, without doubt, enjoying a tech surge. Never underestimate the propulsive power of an expanding digital universe ... or free money.

Lawsuit Pushback

You remember the recent lawsuit by David Wentworth, Robert Nitsch Jr. and Georgia Cano? The one where Wentworth, Nitsch, and Cano claim a conspiracy for wage suppression? The studios made a motion to have the suit tossed out, and now the originators of the suit are pushing back:

... “Plaintiffs have presented a detailed Complaint which, taken as a whole, demonstrates not only the existence of a conspiracy to suppress compensation to employees in the animation and visual effects industry, but also many overt acts by Defendants to implement this conspiracy,” says the February 9 opposition from the trio (read it here). “Plaintiffs further allege the steps that Defendants have taken to ensure this conspiracy was discovered no earlier than 2013, meaning that this suit was filed well within the appropriate statute of limitations period.” ...

So they're claiming to be inside the statutory limits, and arguing for their day in court.



Will Judge Lucy H. Koh give it to them? We'll find out soon enough.

Congratulation Professor Sito

So a past President (three terms) of the Animation Guild is now a tenured professor at USC. This, after a five decade career in animation as animator, board artist, and director ... .



PLUS a second career writing weighty tomes on animation.



Tom is not only a prof at USC, he's also the chair of the university's animation department.

The Gender Thing. Again.

Kind of a recurring theme.

... The lack of gender parity seen in both film and tech fields overall is also evident in VFX (VFX: visual effects. Green screen, animation, drawing tigers into the middle of the ocean, stuff like that), where the struggles of many women go unnoticed. Companies like Google and Facebook are making a lot of (good) noise about this gender inequality. They’re trying to even it out. So why are VFX women so easily overlooked? Simple. Nobody thinks about it. ...



Then you have “Porn Fridays.” Sonya Teich and Raqi Syed, VFX artists writing for TechCrunch, explain:



Those who have not worked in visual effects may find themselves appalled by a casual anti-corporate culture in which company-wide mailing lists devoted to ‘Porn Fridays,’ conferences featuring “booth babes” in skin-tight motion-capture suits and crass gynecology jokes. ...

Yesterday a young, female CG surfacer, freshly minted from a Southern California college, came into the office asking about tips for finding steady work. She's been freelancing, picking up odd jobs, living hand to mouth, but she can't seem to find that steady gig that can catapult a twenty-somethings into a meaningful career orbit.



Steve Kaplan and I gave her tips on the job market, how to improve her on-line presence, what studios to approach and how. (Mr. Kaplan did most of the talking; he's the tech expert, I'm just the ex-cartoon writer who still remembers Selectric typewriters.)



We both told her it's a tough market out there, but that it should improve a bit when state tax breaks kick in for visual effects in a few months. She's still got that other hurdle to leap over: she's a woman in her mid-twenties.

Job Gains

As DreamWorks Animation lays off staff (and it's been going on for some time), other entertainment-related jobs in Los Angeles/California increase.

Digital jobs help drive Hollywood employment to highest level in decade



Jim Deutch took a job as creative director for branded entertainment at AwesomenessTV, the YouTube teen network, after his latest show, “Fashion Star,” ended its second season on NBC.



... Some 8,000 new jobs were added to the motion picture and sound recording sector in Los Angeles County last year, according to state jobs data. The 6.5% growth from the previous year was three times higher than all private-sector jobs in the county.



There have been signs that the California economy has been on the mend for some time. But the dramatic recovery of the entertainment sector is particularly crucial to L.A. because it pumps billions of dollars into the region's economy. ...



These new digital venues are rapidly reshaping how entertainment is delivered to consumers and provide new jobs that didn't exist when the recession began in 2007. ... The local entertainment industry had an average annual employment of 130,900 jobs in 2014, not counting freelance workers. It marks the second consecutive year of growth in the sector. ...



L.A.'s entertainment economy has managed to grow even as California loses business to rivals around the world. ...

If you look past the recent DWA unhappiness, animation's other studos continue to hire staff for newer shows (and, to be balanced here, lay off artists as shows end.) The guild has continued to process new hires at other L.A. studios, but it's easy to overlook that when DreamWorks is cratering.



The larger entertainment workforce continues on the upswing. There are niche vfx studios creating just-on-time effects for several different TV shows. There is a variety of reality programming being produced. L.A. sees scads of low-budget features made in the area, though their crews are smaller and the pay is lower than with the big-budget theatricals that now shoot in London, Vancouver, Atlanta, New York City and other places with free government money.



As noted in the article above, once California's free money starts getting distributed this summer (courtesy of AB 1839), the state should see more high-end productions landing back in the Southland, as well as more visual effects work.

The Animation Guild's Redesigned Website

For those who haven't visited the Guild's website in a while, we think you're in for a treat. The freshly redesigned website was installed on our web address over the weekend. The committee of Executive Board members who steered the direction of the new design is excited to finally see it "Go Live". The new site is full of improvements we hope you enjoy and find useful.



Early last year, the Guild engaged OPM Design Group with our wishlist of desired features. OPM worked diligently to implement our requests while keeping us appraised of contemporary design practices and the latest technology. The site now features a responsive design scheme that ensures the same visitation experience throughout your web viewing devices. This contemporary design functionality allows parts of the website to shift and scale to accommodate viewing screens.



We've utilized some new functionality available to better integrate the activity calendar, the page for Gallery 839, the Oral History interviews and The Pegboard pages. The Guild's blog can now live on the website and could be moving there in the near future.



We've also included some brand new features per member and studio requests. The site now has a Member Profile section where members can include samples of their work, links to their online contact points and presences (email addresses, blogs, social media accounts) and where employers can search members by name, job category and availability. There is now a Discussion Forum where Guild members and members of the communities of animation and labor can discuss current events. Finally, there is an online store that will feature merchandise emblazoned with the Guild's logo that can be sold and delivered to you. (we're still finalizing that part, hopefully available soon)



Go visit it now! Tell us what you think.

Amy Goes to Marveland

Now we know where Ms. Pascal is going.

Sony Pictures Entertainment and Marvel Studios are joining forces on the next iteration of Spider-Man. Kevin Feige, who has steered a ton of hit franchise launches for Marvel, boards the project as producer. He will produce the next films with Amy Pascal, who just left the executive suites at Sony for a big production deal.



Under the deal, the new Spider-Man will first appear in a Marvel film from Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, and then Sony Pictures will thereafter release the next installment of its $4 billion Spider-Man franchise, on July 28, 2017. ... Sony keeps its top franchise but this opens the door to Marvel Comics’ biggest superhero being able to cross pollinate in the Marvel universe. ...

So her "production deal" is going to be really and truly big.



And since the Spiderman features ave a boatload of animation in them, Ms. Pascal will be returning to part of her roots, back when she worked as an exec in Ted Turner's short-lived animated feature division in Glendale. So maybe the next title of the super hero franchise will be:



Spideys Don't Dance.