August 12, 2025 • 62 mins
Max Fleischer might be the most influential animator you've never heard of. While Disney and Looney Tunes dominate our cultural memory of early animation, this Polish immigrant who came to New York in 1887 was quietly revolutionizing the art form with groundbreaking techniques that still influence creators today.
Through sheer determination and technical ingenuity, Fleischer invented the rotoscope—a device that allowed animators to trace over live-action footage—creating astonishingly fluid movements decades before modern technology. His "stereoptical" animation technique combined hand-drawn characters with physical 3D miniature sets, producing a visual depth that was mind-blowing to 1930s audiences. These weren't just technical tricks; they represented a fundamental rethinking of what animation could achieve.
The characters Fleischer created became cultural icons that captured the zeitgeist of their era. Betty Boop embodied the sexually liberated flapper spirit of the Roaring Twenties before censorship forced her transformation. Popeye the Sailor Man punched his way through the Great Depression, offering a working-class hero who could solve problems with a can of spinach and a mighty right hook. Most remarkably, Fleischer created the first Superman cartoons, which many critics still consider among the character's finest appearances nearly a century later.
Yet for all his innovation, Fleischer's story is also a cautionary tale about the tension between artistic vision and commercial sustainability. His attempt to compete with Disney's Snow White by creating Gulliver's Travels stretched his studio's finances to the breaking point. Labor disputes, family conflicts, and the overwhelming costs of animation innovation eventually led to Paramount's takeover of his studio. While Disney built an empire that survives today, Fleischer's legacy lives on primarily through his technical influence and the enduring appeal of characters who remain frozen in their Depression-era aesthetic.
Discover the fascinating story of animation's unsung pioneer and how his creative vision continues to inspire today's artists, even as many of us have forgotten the man himself.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Don (00:36):
I'm back.
Is that okay?
Is that okay?
Ron (00:40):
Well, I was excited to be back.
We said big energy, Doug.
We said this is going gonna besome people's podcast moment of
the year yeah, I said don'tscrew it up, yeah, and you came
in with two words poltergeistisn't that?
They're here.
Doug (01:02):
Poltergeist was so good so good.
Don (01:05):
It's really great yeah the paper mache coming out of that
yeah, closet, it's awesome,unbelievable yeah, it really got
me as a child my nephew'sfavorite movie when he was two
really strong too.
Ron (01:17):
You must be a cool kid or guide.
Now, yeah, grown man, he's alittle bit older than two now.
Doug (01:23):
So I've got the green light to introduce my son to
Poltergeist at two.
Don (01:27):
Yeah, you bet.
Well, it was already hisfavorite at two, so he was
introduced before, so we startedat nine months and we did gloss
over whether or not this guydeveloped well.
Doug (01:36):
He's cool, yeah, how's he doing?
Don (01:38):
Yeah, he is relatively well .
What's his bank account?
Ron (01:40):
look like.
Doug (01:46):
Are well?
His bank account looks likeyeah.
Are he rolling in?
Don (01:48):
it.
Doug needs this info.
I'm more interested, is he?
Doug (01:49):
ghost hunting.
That's, that's.
Yeah, absolutely I like that.
I like that congratulations,doug.
Ron (01:53):
It's been a an eventful start of the year for you where
you've been, yes, um well, we'vebeen here slaving away on that
podcast life.
Doug (02:02):
Yeah, I, I've missed you both uh terribly, but I will say
that, um, to have a boy broughtinto this world on january 1st,
quite, quite a new year'sexperience, and a new year knew
everything really uh, for himand and for myself.
No one had a new year, quitelike you have had a new year I
think if somebody else had achild the same day, probably
(02:23):
they had a similar.
Don (02:26):
Were you in the labor room during the countdown Ten nine.
Ron (02:35):
Yeah, we're all like doctors and nurses, like
flirting with each other, askingattention.
Doug (02:36):
I will say in the labor and delivery.
There was a moment that theycame in with the 2005 headwear
and that was pretty cool.
That's great yeah To see aholiday in a hospital it's a
unique thing.
Uh, but yeah, it was cool, itwas cool, but yeah, no, the
countdown was definitely more uh, more more focused on my son,
(02:57):
and it was two, 13 that day, uh,in the afternoon, when he was
born.
So, yeah, the countdown hadpassed.
Ron (03:04):
Well, congratulations.
We're very happy for you andyour new family and, more
importantly, we're happy to haveyou back in the headphones back
in front of the mic it's goodto be here Warming us with your
voice.
Doug (03:15):
It's good.
Ron (03:15):
And your insight and your mind.
Thank you.
Doug (03:18):
Thank you Quite an introduction.
Don (03:20):
I hope I can live up to.
Ron is clearly drunk today.
Ron (03:28):
Those Canada dries aren't so dry people Canada wet.
That's his new name.
This is how I get through thepodcast.
Now it's taking its toll on me.
Doug (03:36):
Yeah, we are in season three.
This is the decline of Ron.
We've only experienced mydecline over the past two
seasons.
Ron (03:44):
First two seasons seasons.
You have to be on your bestbehavior.
Doug (03:45):
You're introducing yourself to the world now, if
they're still here, take it orleave it exactly right, this is
what I am, yeah but thenarrative arc to see me becoming
a more responsible father andthen to see you go, just like
you know down the tank.
Ron (03:59):
It's gonna be really special.
I think it's because we'relinked right.
The twain of us cannot bothlike be happy or successful at
the same time.
There's always a gulf betweenus.
Sometimes it's smaller,sometimes it's larger.
Don (04:11):
There's a convergence of the twain, there is, yes, the
balance, the balance must always.
Doug (04:18):
It's a cosmic wedding.
It really is.
That's how I describe us ingeneral.
Ron (04:24):
It is Cos it really is.
That's how I describe us ingeneral.
It is cosmically bound.
Doug (04:26):
Yes, quite so.
Well, gentlemen, I came heretoday to ask you about Saturday
morning cartoons.
Tell me about waking up on aSaturday.
What were you watching?
What were you doing?
Tell me about that experience.
Did you not watch cartoons?
Did you have the experience?
Yeah, like we don't watch thatfilth, I don't know.
Ron (04:48):
Yeah, I'm curious.
I know the Saturday cartoonsare a thing, but I don't
actually remember when thecartoons I watched were on.
My only real memory of weekendcartoons, I feel like, was the
summers and we would do likeswimming lessons and I remember
like waking up in the mornings,which I think were on like
saturdays, and then justwatching, like nick jr um, while
(05:11):
my mother had to like lotion,like four of us, and like just
cover us in sunscreen and wewere like complaining and being
oily and it was terrible, butlike we would watch, like I
don't know, blues clues or, yeah, the busy world of richard
scary a big fan yeah, a littlebear.
Um, all the old like nick juniorshows which I think were on
(05:33):
during the weekends and then wewould go to swimming lessons, um
, but yeah, cartoons were a hugepart of growing up.
I mean, like I think all of mymedia was like cartoon based.
Yeah, the wonder years was onand I was.
I didn't care about the wonderyears as a kid, or, like, um,
steve Urkel, what's his program.
I, I know like I I knew parentswere watching that kind of stuff
(05:54):
, but we were like nah, man,give us and I can drawn Um blues
clues was a hybrid where Stevewas.
You're right, he was a real manin a pretend world.
Doug (06:07):
Blue was also very real to me, so let's not get.
She was great.
Ron (06:10):
Blue was great.
Yeah, um.
Do you remember all the rumorsabout the Steve like getting
driven mad?
Doug (06:16):
Yep, absolutely yeah, and when he left the show, what they
said on uh, nick Jr Was Steve'sgoing to college.
Yeah, he was way past collegeyears.
That was really funny, and so,of course, the internet
responded and it's like he'sclinically depressed yeah, save
steve.
Ron (06:33):
Yeah, absolutely, he actually just went to make music
.
He made a pretty good music didhe really yeah, yeah, it's like
steve burns and the struggle, Ithink, is the name of his band
which is not what I wouldassociate with his, his brand
his band being called thestruggle doesn't help his case
at all, to say the least.
Doug (06:48):
That's too bad.
Um no, that's good.
And I can definitely say as aparent, I now see the value in
cartoon you do.
There's definitely been somedays where, yeah, mrs brown is
going to take some time to get.
You've been a parent for like12 minutes yes, and in those 12
minutes can he even see color,yet I think black, white and red
(07:08):
come off his eyes he's still anamphibian right he really is.
It's, it's insane.
Uh, the smiling has begun, butthose moments where, yeah, mrs
brown needs to get a little bit,a little bit done, will put on
Dragon Ball.
Oh yeah those are importantmoments of bonding with dad and
(07:29):
son, to say the least.
Okay, so Nick Jr, nick Jr, nickJr was our thing in the
mornings.
Ron (07:34):
yeah, yeah.
Doug (07:35):
Don.
What did you watch?
Don (07:37):
See, the trouble with Saturday morning cartoons is
that they exist in the morning.
Doug (07:44):
Don, what was your 2 am adult swim.
Don (07:50):
Adult swim didn't exist when I was a child.
Ron (07:53):
There must have been something that got played late
at night, right?
Don (07:56):
Flintstones on syndication.
Ron (07:59):
I was going to say like bomb shelter tutorials or
something.
Don (08:04):
Yeah, I was not an early riser on Saturdays, I liked to
sleep.
In was my uh, was my activity,but uh, but I did catch um uh, a
few things.
Doug (08:13):
So it was space ghost was one of my favorite Coast to
coast, or are we talking uh?
Ron (08:18):
like yeah, Okay.
Doug (08:19):
So before it was the ironic uh yeah, Talk show,
that's great yeah.
Don (08:25):
Um, super friends, so the justice league and the wonder
twins and all those, um, and Iactually have the strongest
memories of the PSAs that wouldexist in between the commercials
, the the little.
So, um, give us an example.
Yeah, I'm excited, I'm just abill, of course.
But no, there's another oneabout, about food.
I can't and I don't know whatthe creature was like.
(08:46):
Maybe it was like a cracker orsomething.
It was like trying to encourageyou to try new kinds of food.
Doug (08:53):
So was it food pyramid?
Like, were we still on thatgame?
No, it just was like just tryit, kids yeah, just basically it
was broccoli's not bad, yeah,yeah, that's good don't knock it
till you try it.
Put a little on your plate yourmom works hard to make you
meals.
Yeah, I can see that I like.
Don (09:14):
So yeah, it was not a big saturday morning cartoon like I.
I liked that they existed and Iwanted to watch them, but they
always were finishing up whenwhen I got up.
Doug (09:23):
So okay, fair enough.
Don (09:25):
There is something um to animation I do remember, though,
there was another show I usedto watch with my grandpa.
I don't think it was saturdaymorning, so I'm trying to think
it was always on ktla, okay, uh,channel five, and it was the.
It was a popeye.
We used to watch popeye all thetime and it was, uh, some
artist guy kids would send inlike a scribble.
You could send them a scribbleand then he would turn your
(09:47):
scribble into a popeye character.
Oh wow, in between the episodesof popeye that would launch,
yeah well, it's like popeyemania.
Ron (09:56):
The kids are like I gotta get popeye yeah, absolutely so.
Don (10:00):
Yeah, that was cool to watch how?
Doug (10:02):
um, because I'm imagining what I was drawing back in the
day and these things wereprobably looking real rough, to
say the least.
Don (10:10):
Yeah, he did a great like you'd send in these.
I didn't send one in, but hewould get these random scribbles
and, yeah, I'll see if I canfind his name.
Doug (10:18):
Okay, that's good.
Well, you set me up pretty well, because we are going to be
discussing the man, the myth,the legend.
He's not a myth, he's real.
Unlike the Driceratops,absolutely the very real Steve
and the very real Max Fleischerthat we're going to be
discussing today, who was theoriginator of the animated
(10:40):
Popeye.
Yeah, there's a lot that we'regoing to touch on, and I'm
curious what he's going to say.
His name was Tom Hatton.
Tom Hatton.
Don (10:48):
Okay, still at it.
I think he's dead.
No.
Ron (10:51):
Sorry, Tom.
Thank you, Tom.
He died in 2019.
Oh okay, not too long.
Yeah, yeah, he was old.
Doug (11:05):
He was born in 1926, 1995.
Animating up a storm, yeah.
Making kids' dreams come true,I like that.
Well, there was a boy with adream by the name of Max
Fleischer, who immigrated fromPoland in 1887 to the great
state and city of New York,because it's both a state and a
city for our listeners out there, in case we didn't know, he was
born in 1883.
Yes, we didn't know, he wasborn in 1883.
Ron (11:33):
And the reason that I wanted to talk about him today
is I noticed neither of youbrought up Mickey Mouse in your
Mickey Mouse cartoons alwayssucked, wow.
Don (11:36):
Well, they weren't on Saturday mornings, so you had to
have the Disney Channel to seea Disney cartoon back when I was
a kid.
Ron (11:42):
Yeah, that's true.
The Disney Channel was, like,always locked off.
Yeah, like I feel like, uh, oneof my grandparents had it and
the other ones didn't yeah andso, and I remember, whenever we
were at the other grandparents,it wasn't even cartoon time, it
was like umba, macumba time,what?
Doug (11:58):
do you remember um no, no and uh, I'm gonna go ahead and
put my topic away for the day,because we need to know what are
you talking about.
Ron (12:07):
It was like a Jack Hanna animal show for kids and I think
the character's name was UmbaMacumba.
He was just a guy in like SouthAfrica or somewhere and he
would just like show you clips.
Hey let's go check out the youknow.
Let's go on safari and see whatwe find today.
Doug (12:29):
And then there'd be a film crew showing you zebras and
stuff.
So while mr rogers was pullingus around in the train and going
to his world, he's out there,I'm a macomba was living, yeah
on the serengeti and uh bringingus real stuff but, anyways.
Ron (12:38):
So I always saw like the live action disney cartoons.
Okay, there was one I loved, itwas Darkwing Duck.
Oh yeah, yeah, he was cool.
I feel like they got better asI got older.
I remember Bonkers.
Bonkers was maybe not goodactually, now that I'm thinking
about it, I'm thinkingFreakazoid Was Freakazoid Disney
, maybe not.
Doug (12:56):
I think that was WB yeah.
Don (12:58):
WB you guys are.
I know those are not real words.
Ron (13:02):
We grew up on cartoons, man , we can like.
Doug, you're unlocking, like ayou know, a section of my brain
that's been closed off and likemolded.
For years I used to read thisloser.
Don (13:23):
Well, Don had to make the pictures in his head.
Doug (13:28):
We could say that when we had everything illustrated for
us.
I suppose that offers thedifference in our imagination.
Ron (13:33):
So Fleischer is, is he like one of the?
He is not Walt Disney right, ishe?
Like the other end of the.
He's not Walt Disney, he's not.
Who's the Chuck Jones guy?
Doug (13:47):
he's the looney tunes guy, right oh, uh, I don't know, I
don't know, uh, the name of the.
Ron (13:53):
Those to me are like the two, like proto animator, like
like pioneer animators.
Doug (13:57):
Right, I'm trying to remember porky pig coming
through.
Ron (14:00):
Chuck jones, yeah, chuck jones, okay, um and so you're
saying max fleischer, who is aname I've heard, but a man I
know very little about.
Don (14:07):
Sure he's the guy that makes the little yeast package
when you make rolls oh thatdoesn't make sense.
Ron (14:11):
No, that's fleischman, oh yeah, yeah, er man, yeah,
whatever you need.
They probably changed it atellis island, but um, yes, it's
highly possible.
Doug (14:21):
So he makes popeye this is yes yes, so I was introduced to
max fleischer because I wasplaying a video game game in the
late 2010s called Cuphead which, if we're not familiar with, a
very small studio made, composedthe music for and did
everything in the art stylewhere they basically had said.
(14:44):
Max Fleischer was our biggestinfluence.
It was Fleischer cartoons.
I was enamored by the gamebecause it's a very cool game.
It's a very difficult game aswell, like very difficult whole
game is based around you beingthis small animated kind of
coffee mug looking, head typewire armed guy that's going
(15:04):
through and shooting these kindof water pellets, I guess, at
all of these different bosses,and it was a really difficult
game.
But it kind of took the gamingworld by storm at the time
because it was such a creativeproject and they hand animated
everything, put it through theprocess and they said that they
took a lot of inspiration fromMax Fleischer, which sent me
(15:25):
down this rabbit hole.
So Max was one of the bigcompetitors with Disney and he
beat Disney to the punch on afew things, one of the biggest
being attaching sound tocartoons, so voice in cartoon.
He was very famous for puttingvoice to cartoon.
In his animation the characterswould be voiced.
(15:48):
He not only had Popeye in hisstock, he was the inventor of
Betty Boop, if we're familiar.
Ron (15:54):
Do you?
Doug (15:55):
have a good impression of Betty.
I'm Betty.
I was hoping for Boop, boop, beDoop.
Ron (16:05):
Did she say Boop, boop, be Doop?
I've honestly never seen aBetty Boop cartoon.
I feel like I've seen morehours of Betty Boop tattoos on
people in my life than I haveminutes of actual cartoon
footage.
Doug (16:20):
I like thinking of that in hours.
You're just staring at a man'sarm.
Ron (16:25):
Yeah, you're at jury duty and you're staring at someone's
Betty Boop tattoo on their thigh, Absolutely as as we all, and
we're getting matching tattoosright after this, uh, in honor
of Max.
Doug (16:39):
Um, but yeah, max Max was a competitor with Disney, so
where most people would thinkabout the mouse, um, especially,
um, cause this takes us back tothe 30s, where cartoons were
often shown in a reel.
Like, you would be going to themovie theater and you might
start a film actually in themiddle, because it would just be
a looping film that was playingat the time and in between this
(17:04):
there would be cartoons, therewould be newsreels, there would
be one of the coolest thingsthat I saw is it was very common
for there'd be like a popularfolk song or a popular song of
the day, and Max was alsoanimating the bouncing ball.
Ron (17:18):
That goes on top of the word.
He invented the bouncing ball.
I don't know if he was theinventor, but there are several.
Doug (17:25):
He has a character called Coco the Clown, which, if you,
if any of you, are at home andcan Google this quickly, you
probably have seen him before.
Um, he would be dancing aroundthe words, but what I found so
funny is thinking of theexperience of being in a movie
theater and just everyonesinging a song together.
That would be a very importantthing.
Um, the uh, the documentarythat I was watching on
(17:48):
Fleischer's life, apparentlylike there would be times where
they would be yelling at the theperson who was playing the
reels and saying, like play itagain, because people would just
want to sing again in a moviehall and I just it's so
different now where it's likeI've bought my AMC ticket and
I've got a seat right here, I'mgoing to quietly listen to the
(18:09):
previews, my movie is scheduledat this time and then I leave.
So quite a different culturesurrounding what would be in a
movie theater, to say the least.
It was more like a vaudevillian, very much so, and I think that
that's evident in the style ofum when you look at Betty Boop
or Popeye, for example.
Like both of them, like BettyBoop is clearly a flapper girl,
(18:29):
um and um.
That's a big difference, I thinkin his animation style is
knowing that he had immigratedfrom Poland.
So much of his cartoon work isclearly in these urban areas
that look like you knowsomewhere in Queens essentially,
where you know the doorstepsare there, everything is is very
urban, um and kind of set inthis way.
(18:53):
That's very different from thestyle of Disney, which is a
little bit more wholesome.
Obviously, yeah, betty Boop isa very.
Are you saying Betty Boop isnot wholesome?
She is.
Ron (19:03):
But Are you saying like Disney is a more sort of
imagined wholesomeness?
Sure.
Doug (19:09):
I'm trying to think of, like the early Disney.
Ron (19:11):
They're kind of rural right they're kind of countryside
there's like a, a, a cow with aloud personality, yep, chewing
something.
Don (19:19):
They're very violent, though, yeah.
Ron (19:21):
Are they?
I don't remember the violencein the early.
Yeah, they're making this one,it's all it's all.
Doug (19:32):
Face the big, oh, big pete , big pete, yeah, yeah, you're
right.
Yeah, there are definitelydisney cartoons where you see
somebody being hunted down witha knife.
Ron (19:36):
It's, it's some scary stuff .
Doug (19:38):
There was one I was watching.
You know as a contrast, that Isaw pluto, who's being put in a
uh, an electrified chair, andthere's literally a scene where
he's being electrocuted.
You can see his side of hisbody and his like rib cage
disintegrates and falls to thebottom of his body.
You could see his like heartlike trying to keep going and I
went this is some morbid stuff,to say the least.
(20:00):
Um, but no, fly sure was alittle bit more risque in that
like there were definitelyscenes of betty like uh going
behind a uh I think there waslike a pile of rubbish that she
like basically goes behind andshe's like throwing off clothes
and changing and you candefinitely see the uh one of the
other characters going hot dog.
Ron (20:20):
The dog says hot dog, I mean well, he was a hot dog.
Doug (20:24):
He's being tantalized by this woman who's changing, you
know.
So um yeah there's betty had.
She was censored uh, are youtalking about because you
couldn't see anything.
Is that what you mean?
Don (20:37):
no, I'm saying the the original.
What you're talking about the1930s.
The 1930 version of betty boopwas racier than the 1934 version
of betty when the haze codestarted to uh, be more strictly,
strictly applied.
So a lot of the sexuallysuggestive jokes like you talked
about she was very romanticallyindependent, I guess as an
(21:01):
original character, all of thathad to be ratcheted down once
the Hays Code came in.
That's tough.
She is a marker of I don't knowprogress, yes, Regression.
She is a marker of I don't knowprogress, yes, Regression.
She is a marker in film history.
Doug (21:16):
She's a marker that the times they are changing.
Bob was coming about 30 yearslater but that's all right.
Ron (21:22):
That's what that song's about Betty.
It's all about Betty baby.
Did Bob have a Betty Boop?
Doug (21:27):
tattoo.
I mean.
Think about the fact thatyou're in jury duty and you
can't stop looking at a man'sthigh.
Don (21:32):
I mean it says everything it wants to be seen, and so did
she.
And so did she.
Doug (21:38):
Hot dog but yeah, he's a big innovator in this regard.
He worked with his family.
Dave was his main partner hefamously got into so the family
owns a tailoring business.
The father of the family, thepatriarch, does really well.
At first they run intofinancial troubles but during
(22:01):
that time where they are doingwell, it affords Max several
hours to be able to illustrateand draw.
He has some talent with thisand his main focus was the
things that he was seeing intheaters in the 20s.
Um, were very archaic, like hewas looking, and they were kind
of these glitchy stop motionlooking.
(22:21):
Um, you know, like where ananimation would have somebody at
a standstill and the next framewould be their arm extended for
a handshake.
Um, he said this doesn't looklike real life, like those flip
books you make in elementaryschool?
Yes, as if you were turning thepages instead of flipping.
Ron (22:36):
That's what it's looking like, yeah.
Doug (22:38):
Good, good comparison.
Ron (22:40):
I think everyone's experimented with animation at
some point.
Right, Like you, you realizethe magic of it and like, oh, if
I just it depends on, like howlazy you are, far or like you
know how determined you are.
Don (22:50):
That's something that kids these days are going to miss out
on right.
Yeah, we used to draw them inour textbooks right, right,
right, yes, in the little corner, and then you can flip through.
Ron (22:57):
Yeah, yep now they're just going to have an.
Ai do it for them.
Probably ai make me a bettyboop yeah, ai boop you know,
that's not gonna look as good ona cab.
Doug (23:07):
I'll tell you that, yeah, that's not going to look as good
on a cab.
I'll tell you that, yeah,that's true.
So, um, yeah, he was inspired.
He, he was very inspired tomake something that was better,
and so the technique that he ismost famous for is he invents
something called a rotoscope, inwhich, um, a background can be
(23:31):
generated, so you can have amoving background or a placement
of a background that's fullypainted, and he would put a
transparent sheet over the topand would animate over the top
of this.
But what this also lends itselfto is you could put film in the
back of this, and so he wouldhave his brother move around or
dance or do different things,and so coco the clown was
(23:53):
actually him, frame by frame,with film illustrating over the
top of his brother moving aroundin a three-dimensional space,
and this is how he got a muchsmoother animation style in that
cheating.
What do you think?
Is it cheating?
It's a good question.
Don (24:09):
It's a great question yeah, walt disney's out there, you
know, drawing the mouse from byhand, frame by frame.
And then, even though thisguy's just just wanted to do
that, just drawing over pictureslike it's not animation, that's
just that.
Ron (24:25):
Just paint by numbers life inspires art that's exactly what
I was gonna say, but alsoreally wow, we're really on it
though um, but it seems like um,if this was like an important
step to get them to the placewhere they felt confident doing
more realistic or smootheranimation.
(24:46):
Right, it sounds like that'skind of what it is right
otherwise.
Otherwise it requires like alot of study, right Like and who
?
Don (24:52):
has time for that Like study.
Ron (24:54):
But I mean you're trying to make a buck in 1935, right?
So like I can kind of see Imean I don't know Like I've seen
the behind the scenes of likeanimating Beauty and the Beast
or whatever, and I wanted to bean animator as a kid actually- I
(25:17):
liked, okay, so much, and Iliked drawing until I started
watching these like behind thescenes and I was like, oh my god
, this is, yeah, just repetitive, right, doing the same lines
over and over for however manyframes, and it's like it's
really like seriously laborintensive.
Don (25:23):
So I I think I can understand in animation like any
tool that helps save or cutdown that labor right to bring
it to a a cooler end product,right but so if leonardo da
vinci had taken a photograph ofof lisa right and, and just
projected it on the wall andthen, like traced over it, would
(25:44):
we say, oh my gosh, what agreat artist no, yeah, she
wouldn't be the mona lisa,that's for sure.
Doug (25:49):
She's a copy Lisa, that's right.
Ron (25:53):
But I mean he essentially did that right with a model.
He just didn't have a camera.
So he is still doing a form oftracing, just without actually
being able to trace.
It's not like he envisioned theMona Lisa from his imagination
and created this thing.
Even he was using some form ofaid, Wouldn't we say?
The sit-in model is an aid Wellis that pretty mean he's just
(26:14):
drawing it.
Don (26:15):
I mean that's not right.
That's he's drawing from byhand what his eyes are seeing.
Ron (26:21):
That's not the same as tracing over something that no,
it's definitely not the same,but I mean it is.
Doug (26:26):
It is still a form of assistance to have the model to
begin with, I look at it in asimilar regard, as like sampling
within music, like the factthat you can take a piece of
something and then createsomething else out of it,
because Coco the Clown I meanit's not.
So.
The example I can give you isthe big breakthrough that they
(26:47):
had is they had a series calledOut of the Inkwell in which you
see david I don't remember ifit's dave or max sitting at the
table, but they dip their peninto the ink that's at the table
.
It's like him sitting andgetting ready to animate and as
he draws the pen from theinkwell, coco pops out out from
the inkwell pops, coco the clown.
(27:09):
A little song is there, okay, soI didn't know this is why I
need you guys you know, you gotall this fun stuff in the
background here, but just beforewe move on real quick.
Don (27:20):
Yeah, because it might be a topic we talk about later, but
there is a suggestion thatpainters did actually use tools
like this well before fleischer,like so vermeer, uh, who would
be dutch, but like 16th century,is that right, uh?
I don't know my touch girl thepearly ring and the milkman that
(27:41):
he used like a camera obscurato actually project the image
onto his um canvas and thenpainted over top of that image.
So yeah, it's and, and ithasn't been proven and he hasn't
.
He didn't leave behind diaries,but it's been suggested that
that's how he got the light towork the way that it does in
some of his images.
Ron (27:58):
So it so this idea is I'm I'm bringing it up to be
provocative, but but it no, butit's not new it is interesting
to talk about because I thinkthe way you react to that
question kind of helps you findout.
What do you expect or desirefrom art, right?
Doug (28:16):
Correct.
Ron (28:16):
If art's purpose is to mirror reality as closely, with
as much fidelity as possible,then you are probably going to
be less impressed by someonetracing reality right.
Doug (28:27):
Right, yeah.
Ron (28:28):
Or if its job is to be additive to that reality in some
way, then you're kind of like,oh, OK.
Doug (28:32):
Right.
Ron (28:32):
Because, like right, ideally the idea of trace making
a painting and then tracing theforms is that you're now going
to add some sort of color, valueor something perspective to it
that was not capturable in reallife.
Doug (28:46):
And maybe it's the choice of what you do decide to give
the fidelity of life.
Like for Max max it was.
Obviously I want this to be asmoother production that
imitates life.
Yeah, but then the things he'screating, like coco the clown is
such an exaggerated example ofwhat a clown would actually be,
or you know that, like betty boo, popeye the sailor, they're all
(29:06):
caricatures, right, of whatlife is.
It's like so far removed.
It's very surreal looking Imean popeye's forearms.
I think if he actually hadthose proportions.
Ron (29:16):
I'd be worried about him being able to walk correctly
through a door.
Doug (29:20):
But so there's a certain amount of that.
That it's like, yeah, what doyou exaggerate and what do you
retain?
It makes it interesting,certainly.
But that series is interestingbecause you're looking at the
live animation, um, or the, thelive film that's mixed with the
animation.
So you're seeing him running upand down the staircase being
(29:41):
chased by a bunch of Coco theclowns, um, and then going back
down Um and I, I would assumefor its time, cause this is, uh,
the series ran from 1918 to1929.
They're putting out episodes ofthis and, uh, I imagine that
was so innovative at the time tosee something like that,
because I mean, it hadn't beendone before.
Um, betty boop and, uh, popeyefollow after this and it moves
(30:06):
further away from the live filmaspects and they, they also
developed Don, we were talkingabout this a little bit
beforehand.
It was the stereo, it was notthe rotoscope, it was
Stereoptics, stereoptics and heinvented the setback camera,
yeah, so we're looking at entiresets that were developed.
There's a very cool scene ofPopeye going through an actual
(30:28):
3D developed neighborhood thatthey had built this entire set,
and then there's thistransparent layer where it looks
like he's pushing a baby in astroller and, uh, the the
animation is simply him goingaround a corner and they're you
know um, shrinking Popeye andthe carriage to make it look
like the depth perception isgoing further away, even though
(30:49):
the set itself is actuallyphysically moving.
They have, like, uh, operatorsthat are moving and they're even
still looking at it and it'svery cool Cause you can
generally YouTube.
Almost all of these are publicdomain now, but we have the
option now to look at things inlike 4k, 120 frames, 60 frames,
where it's like very clean andit's presentation.
It's not being presented in a1930s theater and they still
(31:10):
look incredible, like it's.
It's wild to kind of see whatthey made to sometimes make a
seven minute cartoon, um, so theinnovation is just off the
chart, um, and I think thatthat's that's kind of where I
want to take it today is likelooking at the necessity being
the mother of invention, or likethe innovative um
characteristics that are there,because we have this entire
(31:30):
family that's working on theseset pieces and these animation.
He's hiring tons of people towork in his studio and this
leads to some very interestingplaces, to say the least.
He, as he, continues to gainsuccess.
So, out of the inkwell.
Then we have Betty, then wehave Popeye, and what's
(31:52):
interesting is, um, they're kindof introduced in sequence, like
when Betty Boop really takesoff.
Popeye is introduced as acharacter in Betty Boop and they
do this in comics a lot.
I noticed this where it's likeyou'll have a character that's
introduced as a side characterin a comic to see what the
audience response is anddepending on how well something
sells which I'm curious and Idon't know the answer to this
(32:14):
Like how do you gauge thereaction of if, if these things
are being played in theaters?
You know, like what?
How do you decide that Popeyeis the one.
Ron (32:22):
You got a theater plant right, or you go and pull the
theater kids.
Don (32:25):
at the end you go, you listen.
Ron (32:27):
Did they like that racist caricature?
Oh, they did.
We're going to win World War IInow, boys.
Doug (32:35):
That's exactly right.
But, yeah, these things that heputs into perspective, it
really makes him a contender,even though we would probably
look at Disney and Looney Tunesfor their time as being the two
biggest production um companiesand like probably the most
remembered names.
Um, in animation, there was alot of innovation that was
(32:57):
happening with max that I thinkis worth talking about here.
Um, where fleischer, I think,started to um decline is he was
at his peak following popeye.
They're doing really well.
The two things that are oftenlooked at as his big decline is.
Disney, of course, comes outwith the fully animated feature
(33:20):
film Snow White.
He competes by saying, okay, Iwant to start chasing this, and
I think that this might be wherethings start to change.
He creates the Gulliver'sTravels film.
Ron (33:33):
Oh, yeah, have you ever seen that?
Doug (33:34):
That one's great.
Ron (33:35):
It's really good that's the one with Jack Black.
Doug (33:40):
He came back and did one last dance.
That's right, not very muchanimation in that one.
A lot of CGI though, but yeah,came up with the Gulliver's
Travels film in 1939, followingSnow White's success in 1937.
Don (33:57):
So all of the feature films in the 1930s really wanted to
focus on diminutive people.
Ron (34:02):
Yes, it's cheaper to animate Absolutely Not as much
to draw.
Don (34:06):
They're just little.
Doug (34:07):
Gulliver's Travels, the Lilliputians Is that their name?
Yeah, absolutely Coming around.
But yeah, it's interesting, itdid not have the same level of
success that Snow White did, andthe problem that they were
running into is where you'remaking a seven minute cartoon
and so the amount of labor isstill very intensive for that.
You go into full motionpictures and the business side
(34:29):
and the amount of loans thatthey took out were not managed
quite as well.
And so, as they run intofinancial troubles, um, they
actually got into uh issues withtheir animators uh going on
strike.
There was a famous um sign thatwent up that said $14 a week is
not enough to uh to feed yourfamily, uh, for the animation
(34:50):
studio.
And so they made a big shift tomove to Miami, because at that
time Miami was much cheaper,weather was nice, they were able
to afford homes and bring a lotof the animators down there,
where the wages that they werebeing paid was kind of fair to
the cost of living versus NewYork, which was very destructive
(35:11):
to the overall process.
So that was like one of the thebig um first things is just the
overextension on getting abunch of loans doing something
that's I don't know.
I mean at least 10 times theamount of work and, uh, quality
control and everything that wasin there.
At one point I think his studiohad up to 400 people that were
working over time and justlooking through quality control,
(35:34):
like, is every single framematching up to where it should
be?
And I think some of thatoverextension starts to really
wear them down.
The other thing that happenedis they took on which was at the
time the biggest payday for uma short um serial.
(35:56):
They took on Superman, um, andso the first animated Superman
that we ever get, um, is fromthe Fleischer brothers.
They got through either eight ornine episodes of the original
animations of Superman, whichthis is a very big deal because
comics were really not broughtinto the animated sphere in the
same way, and this still to thisday.
(36:17):
There are people that say it'sone of the best interpretations
of the original Superman fromaction comics, because this is
innovative in that, yeah, liketwo to three years after the
comic comes out, we're alreadyanimating.
Where're now?
And I never got to my saturdaymorning cartoon, but my, my, I
don't think this was even asaturday thing, but I was just
(36:38):
constantly looping batman, theanimated series that was like my
staple, uh, to say this.
Ron (36:43):
So art deco is forever burning in my brain.
Doug (36:46):
Like I will I will always love art deco, but yeah, the
idea of a superhero animationwas not.
Yeah, it was completely new atthe time.
Ron (36:56):
I'm surprised they didn't think it would be like a
competition with the comic right.
It would be like why would wewant them to watch it when I
want them to buy the?
Doug (37:05):
book.
Opposite effect, actually thatbecause the animations were
being played, um, people werebuying the comics.
It was introducing a whole newmarket of people that maybe, oh,
you know, comics are those kidsstuff that they buy for, you
know, like a couple of pennies.
Um, I would never get intosomething like that.
This brought a whole newaudience, um, so they were
getting paid a pretty goodamount in order to do it.
(37:27):
But when you look at theanimation, especially in the
Superman episodes, the game hasbeen stepped up significantly,
just in terms of the attentionto color, detail, shadows,
animation everything is justbeautiful.
And so they run into huge debtproblems where they've
overextended to the point thatthey're not making payments and
(37:50):
Dave and Max have a huge fallingout about what needs its name
on it.
It's interesting thedocumentary that I'm pulling a
lot of this from.
They talk about that not muchof whatever happened in the
family business was discussed,other than the big dispute
became it wasn't about money, itwas.
My name needs to be on that.
(38:11):
Your name's off of this.
I was the one who worked onthis, and that really divided
them, um, to where they weren'teven able to reconcile up until
both of them, uh, passed away.
They weren't able to reconcileum, and so this takes them out
of the sphere that they've gotthis 25 to 30 year run where
they're just constantlyinnovating, disney's trying to
(38:31):
catch up.
And then there's this moment atthe end in the in the last five
years, where they flip anddecide I want to start chasing
Disney, let's go with thefeature film, let's do this
incredibly innovative thing withSuperman.
They finally just kind of umhit hit, hit a uh a wall
financially.
Um, once that happens,paramount, paramount buys them
(38:53):
out and takes them away.
There's another group of peoplethat take over the Superman
cartoons.
World War II hits um its peak ofrecruitment, and so they become
very focused on, like you know,kind of American propaganda,
where almost all the episodesare, um, you know, superman
fighting the Japanese or Hitler,and that's really where things
(39:16):
start to fall away and fallapart.
But the thing that I find, Iguess, most interesting within
this through line is thinkingabout where is the moment
because there is a certainamount of capital within art
that you need, especially as aproduction company, which is
really what they are there'sthis moment where they're at the
(39:37):
peak of innovation.
They want to do things the waythat they see it, and to go back
to what you said, ron, likelife imitating art or art
imitating life, like where thatthrough line goes in, and then
they just get into deep when itcomes to the economics.
And now the names that reallystand out are, yeah, it would
definitely be Disney and LooneyTunes.
(39:58):
And so you know, I guess I'minterested because here I am
(40:29):
playing this video game and youknow, the late 2010s and I
stumble upon of it would bemoney, but yeah, where that
starts to run dry and creativitybecome, you can be as creative
as you want, but then thatcapital runs out and I don't
know out and I don't know.
Ron (40:46):
Yeah, it seems like the story you spelled out for us is
like a fairly common one in like, uh, you know, like hollywood,
right, like someone has acreative impetus, right, they
want to make something, theyhave a talent for it or they
develop that talent or thepeople they surround themselves
with, like are able tofacilitate that vision, and then
you know they're in competitionwith someone, right?
Maybe there's a bit of ego there, the desire to further innovate
(41:09):
and to put your name down as,like, I'm the best one in this
field, right, I feel like that'sa pretty common sort of
narrative.
And then, yeah, it's alwayslike, unclear, right, like I'm
slightly more familiar with,like Walt Disney as a person,
right, and you know, I feel likethere's been a lot of like
retrospective biographies onlike who was Walt Disney?
(41:30):
Right, like, clearly was thisanimator, but like, was he
always a sort of one step ahead,thinking about, you know, the
future of his business and thecorporation and the giant
monolith that the DisneyCorporation has since become,
and the giant monolith that theDisney Corporation has since
become, right?
Like how much of that wasplanned or desirous, you know,
and how much was like his desireto just sort of create cool art
(41:51):
.
I don't know.
I think it's one of thosetricky.
We could go all the way back toLeonardo, right.
Like I mean, that dude wasdependent on the capital of
patrons, right, to facilitatehis artworks and to push
boundaries.
Right, the great sculptors werealso, like, needed to be paid
in order to make those sorts ofinnovations, right, I think it.
(42:14):
Yeah, it's like one of thoseinteresting things because, like
, clearly, you need money to dowhat you want to do, especially
if you're doing you know,something that is like
entertainment based, right, it'snot's not a necessity, like
people don't really need it intheir lives, but they definitely
want it, they want to seek itout and they want to spend money
on it.
And it takes, like you said,it's very laborious to make
seven minutes of animation,right, and you need a team of
(42:36):
people and those people aren'tjust going to donate their time
to make one phenomenal BettyBoop cartoon.
Doug (42:44):
Get her out here, that's right.
Ron (42:45):
So then you need investment right, and then that investment
expects returns, and then theystart falling into it.
It reminds me of, like FrancisFord Coppola, right, and his big
thing was like he made a coupleof successful movies Godfather
and stuff and then like feltlike the Hollywood studio system
was constraining him orrequired so much, like you know,
(43:08):
for producers producers to fundhis projects.
they wanted so much more inputinto the project or had like it
needed to be this kind of athing so that it would make the
kind of money that they wantedto see, and he felt like he
couldn't do like more.
You know, essentially lesscommercial artsy things.
Uh, george lucas always went onabout this too, like I'm never
(43:30):
allowed to make the cool artstuff in my head because I have
to make star wars and blah, blah, blah, right.
And so then, like francis fordcoppola makes his own studio
called american zoetrope and hemakes just a couple of like
really bomb films, like and islike unable to keep that company
like solvent for a while.
Like is really struggling, Ithink in the 90s.
(43:51):
He pulls it back around withlike brom stoker's dracula, like
does pretty well or somethingwhich is one of don's favorite
films, by the way.
Don you love dracula?
Doug (44:01):
um, I read the book I'm just kidding we don and I
disagree because I love that,yeah, I love it.
He does not love it.
Don (44:12):
I struggle to stay awake yeah he hates it I went actually
went to midnight showing theday it came out to well maybe
that's why you struggle.
Doug (44:19):
Come on, man, I know you like to sleep in, but pick some
regular hours I think I'm in themiddle of both of you.
Ron (44:25):
Like I neither love it nor hate it.
There are parts of it I thinkare so cool, such a politician.
Yeah, that's right.
Doug (44:33):
And to be fair, Robert Eggers just released Nosferatu.
Nosferatu, that kind of justswept away, but anyway this is
not our film review podcast.
Ron (44:43):
I don't know.
The point is like I I feel likeyou hear this a lot from
creators right, like they wantto divorce themselves from the,
the money that allows them topursue and do what they want to
do.
Right, and very few of themmanage to actually like obtain
that independence.
Doug (44:58):
Yeah, um don has a face.
Hang on, no, go ahead.
Oh, there's no face here.
Okay, man don doesn't have aface now I'm scared um, yeah, I
I think about it because they.
So one of the things that, um, Iskipped over in the beginning
of their life is, while max isworking at a newspaper by day,
(45:24):
he's spending all of hisevenings on refining his craft.
And I think that that's also avery common story is had the day
job and then just put all of mynights and free time into the
thing that I really wanted to doand then eventually that became
the job, and ultimately, Ithink that's not because of the
riches and fame that are there,but it's the love of the craft.
(45:45):
And can I actually carve thisout as being the thing that I do
with my life and giving thetime, because I think that
that's where the value is a lotof, I think, as a perception.
But then I also am kind of torn, too on the conversation of art
and content.
I'm kind of torn too on theconversation of art and content
(46:09):
because it's also interesting,because when I bring up cartoons
, like if we're thinking ofclassical art, for example, like
you just brought up Leonardo daVinci, I don't think that I'm
putting Max Fleischer up therewith Leo, you know, like maybe
an animator would.
Yeah, but it's also interestingbecause I'm fairly certain, if
we're constructing full sets, ifwe're inventing technology to
best express our animation, I'msure he felt that way, I'm sure
(46:31):
that he looked at it as thispiece of art, but then there
also needs to be not only thepatrons, but then the audience
for it too.
So does it hit that point inthese theaters and I don't have
an answer for this necessarilythat people are screaming
because they're like playyeagain we don't even want to
watch the movie like play popeyeagain, because that's, that's
the thing that's capturingeverything about us um, I mean,
(46:54):
it's almost like 100 years oldand I feel like popeye is still
a household name right likebetty boot, probably a little
bit less.
Ron (47:00):
I don't know if we went and but.
Don (47:02):
But when's the last time you saw a popeye cartoon?
Ron (47:05):
right, oh like never.
Don (47:07):
I mean, you've never seen a pop no, I think I remember
seeing them.
Ron (47:10):
I don't know where I would have, but I've definitely seen
some popeye cartoons have youseen the popeye live action
movie?
Don (47:15):
I was just gonna.
Yes, I have the robin williamsone.
Ron (47:17):
Yeah, that was pretty great , yeah um but like, even if you
haven't seen it, you like, likeit still survives somehow, like
you know, like it.
It had enough impact that itfiltered into the culture.
Don (47:28):
In a strange way actually, and that's so.
And Betty Boop fits this onetoo, Although I understand I
haven't seen, but there's a newBetty Boop musical in New York
right now Um so just kind ofhaving a moment, but both of
those two characters are lockedin their time period and they
don't evolve the way some ofthese other characters do, that
You're talking like Superman.
Doug (47:49):
Right, right, right so.
Don (47:50):
Superman was the.
Was the the Patriot?
Yeah, uh, person, a wartimePatriot in world war two, and
then, through the fifties andsixties, he's the alien outsider
, and then, like we get thereboot with what was the dean
kane, one that was on tv and soanyways updated to the 1980s,
(48:11):
90s, and then we get asmallville again.
So another update to the early2000s, like it's a character
that keeps being reset in time.
We can't do that with popeye,like you can't like if we had a
popeye in 2025, that was asailor that like you know, lived
in the dogs and he's like inthe U S Navy eight canned
vegetables bigger than everpunched, punched, you know,
(48:35):
punched all of his problems awayand it just it wouldn't work
the same way that that Supermandoes when you re-update it,
because it it can fit in thatnew time period and Betty Boop
same thing like a 2025 bettyboop isn't doesn't work.
Doug (48:49):
no, yeah, and I think this is uh I'm gonna be very
cautious not to take us overhere because this is something
that I've contended that, um,comics are essentially our
american mythology, like I'vealways looked at our
mythological, you know storieswhere we don't have hercules,
although, it's funny, we doHercules Marvel, actually has
the rights to Hercules and comicbook.
(49:10):
They stole it all Exactly.
I think that they continue toevolve because it's the American
mythos that we're always ableto kind of continue to reinvent
within the concept of asuperhero and super villains.
But they're agreed.
Yeah, Like Popeye and BettyBoop, I think 1930s immediately.
(49:30):
I definitely do.
Ron (49:32):
But I I think all of those kind of older cartoon characters
kind of don't evolve Right.
It's just like how willing, howmuch money is there to force
them down our throats?
So take like, for instance,like Mickey mouse.
The reason I said likekey mousecartoons suck is because, like,
who really wants to watchmickey mouse the character?
Do anything with his like,weird like, and they have right.
Don (49:53):
There's mickey's christmas and mickey's purchases them all,
or there's mickey's playhousenow yeah, right like it, so it
does keep resetting to a newaudience.
Ron (50:05):
I feel like that's just Disney being like.
We got to be using Mickey.
He's synonymous with our brand.
We're sitting on this Mickey.
Who really wants to watchMickey?
What are Mickey's personalitytraits?
What's funny about Mickey?
Doug (50:18):
You obviously didn't like the new Mickey ride in.
Ron (50:20):
Toontown.
That's too bad.
No, I haven't set foot inToontown in years.
Wow, you're really maxfleischer guy or the same with
like the looney tunes.
Right, like I think the looneytunes work because they're like
funny.
You can continue to like makingbut they have to.
Doug (50:34):
They do evolve like space jam not successfully are you
saying space wasn't a success Imean, it was definitely a
success, but, but I mean like,critically, artistically, did we
need to see Mickey Mouse?
Ron (50:49):
you know shooting hoops, or , sorry, bugs Bunny shooting
hoops.
Doug (50:53):
I definitely needed to see our man, bill Murray, show up
on that basketball team.
Ron (50:58):
I think like if there was a Fleischer amusement park I
could go to, I feel like therewould be an updated Popeye that
came out in the last eight years.
Right, and it's you know, likeI think I think you can make it
happen if someone, if that'ssomeone's IP and they want to
churn money out of it.
You know what I?
Doug (51:17):
mean, and the reason we don't have an answer is because
of financial ruin.
You know it's like they couldnot continue to do what they
they did.
The people who you know werethe driving force and kind of
heart and soul of that weretaken out of that because of
finance.
I mean that that is a way,because it's very clear,
obviously, considering thesuccess of everything disney now
and the fact that it's gone sofar beyond walt disney, I think
(51:40):
that he did set something upthat you know from a business.
He at least had that figuredout.
Don (51:46):
And I think Mickey is different because Mickey is a
brand.
Doug (51:49):
Yeah, the way.
Ron (51:51):
Bugs.
Don (51:51):
Bunny is a character, Betty Boop's a character.
Yeah, Popeye is a character,but the but Mickey Mouse is the
brand.
Ron (51:59):
Right, yeah, so it's yeah he doesn't have to do anything
or be interesting, he doesn'tneed to represent the company,
so all the other IPs getattached to his face.
Doug (52:09):
It's true.
I think I had a VHS tape fromthe early nineties that was by
the lead singer of the cars.
It was called, like Matt RickOcasek, yeah, rick Ocasek, matt
about the mouse, and it was allof these pop stars like redoing
songs and like kind of focusingin on all these Disney type
(52:29):
things.
I watched it so many timesthough.
Don (52:31):
I still know, yeah, we'll watch it right after this.
Ron (52:34):
That's going to be the next podcast Follow up.
Is the listener Go to bad aboutthem?
Doug (52:39):
Yeah, but Rick was tearing it up, um, but you're, but
you're right.
Like that doesn't exist withoutmickey being a brand like that,
even the title mad about themouse.
It's like it doesn't even haveto be about mickey necessarily,
it just needs to be like do youunderstand the concept of brand,
which is a whole, whole rabbithole?
Don (52:58):
um, but the ride you're talking about mickey and
minnie's runaway railway is thefirst Mickey Mouse ride in
Disney parks, and it.
Doug (53:07):
Oh really, I didn't know that.
Yeah, yeah, and it is a goodride.
Don (53:10):
And it opened here in California, what, like two years
ago yeah, it's like five yearsago in in Florida.
So it's, it wasn't a, it wasn'ta thing.
See, people are clamoring forMickey.
Ron (53:22):
Yeah, and I think maybe, like also what I'm, that's why
Disney is failing now.
Yeah.
Doug (53:28):
There's no list to be on to get a pass.
Ron (53:31):
They had to buy all the other cool stuff.
They had to go buy X-Men andthey had to buy the Star Wars,
and.
But part of what I think I wassaying is like, um, part of it,
like the survivability of acharacter speaks to, like how
well made that character was tobegin with.
Right, superman is a verywell-designed character.
You can apply him.
He captures something aboutthis sort of like American
(53:53):
cultural spirit or ideology thatpeople will always find
interesting Fear of aliens, likewe talked about yeah, that's
right.
And I think like Bugs Bunny isthe same too, Like Bugs Bunny is
like a is a really great sortof like archetypal character
that you can kind of plug inanywhere.
You can put them on abasketball court, you can put
them in a normal court and likehe's going to be funny, Right.
Doug (54:15):
I really want to know what normal court is.
Don (54:19):
Because he is self-aware and ironic and and yeah, and
knows all of those placementsthat happen in the fluidity of
his context and just wants to bechaotic and ruin someone else's
day, and that's a spirit,that's the kind of character
everyone, every generation.
Ron (54:37):
That's just a personality you probably had at one point in
your life.
You also have been sardonic andmad at people.
Authority.
He's a real first punk actuallybugs bugs big time.
Yeah, I think, and so maybepopeye and betty boop aren't,
because they're also just sortof like, like you're saying, don
they're historically reflectiveof the period that created them
(55:01):
and that's all they really were, and that's well, because
that's all they ever really do,right like so.
Don (55:06):
I mean, I was making a joke before, but literally popeye
only punches his problems likethat's the, that's the gag in
every single episode and youknow, eventually the can of
spinach comes out and he's gonnatake.
Yeah, the problem gets solvedyeah, um, but that doesn't work.
When you move to the late 20thcentury, the early 21st century,
(55:27):
like those, that type ofmasculinity isn't appreciated
the same way that it was in thepast.
Ron (55:33):
So maybe Max was like he had the technical ability, he
had the technical vision, butmaybe he lacked that sort of
like storytelling core orsomething.
Yeah, but so did Disney.
I mean he just stole fairytales like a lot of times and
then changed all the endings.
Doug (55:48):
That's true, of course yeah, although there is
something also to be said aboutthe fact like, if you just say
1930s, I'm probably eventuallylike and it's like word
association, 1930s go.
I probably am going toeventually say betty boop, I
probably would.
I think it would be in there.
So there's also something aboutcapturing the zeitgeist that
that is there, um, but yeah,there's a lot.
(56:11):
I suppose there is a lot tounpack with that.
But to give.
Don (56:15):
So what?
What's max's lastingcontribution?
Just the, the, the technicalrotoscoping and stereoptics?
Or is there something else herethat we're missing?
Doug (56:30):
Obviously within the animation spectrum.
I think he's there to bestudied, of course.
But then I would think aboutcontributions of art and I go
back to this video game that Iplayed, that I'm.
I'm sitting there watchingthese hand animated panels that
are being used for my enjoymentas I'm playing a video game and
(56:51):
going this is so far beyond whatI'm used to within like a video
game context, because it feelsto me so original and different
from everything else that's out.
But what's funny about mesaying that is it's very much
inspired.
And then to go back to ouroriginal conversation about,
isn't this just copying?
You look at the eye shapes andthe patterns and the way things
are animated and it's like itcould have just been Max's, you
(57:13):
know, like kind of copy pasteideas that were like from one of
his notebooks.
But to me it becomes thisincredibly innovative thing that
shows up in this new mediumformat.
And so I think that the thething that is interesting is the
intangible kind of credit to ifthere's just something great
(57:33):
about your art, if there's thatpassion there, and then you can
very effectively communicate it.
It still kind of retains itsbeauty in a sense, and that
maybe, if Betty Boop and Popeyeare stuck.
It's stuck in this era.
There's something still to berefined out of it that shows up
in culture again all of a suddenand I think that that would be
the example is go play cuphead,and that is a reappropriate like
(57:54):
.
That is our, our modern version.
It does very much look like the30s.
The entire soundtrack is bigband jazz, so it's like it's
very much throwing you there,but then it's done in this very
refined new way that isabsolutely stunning and gorgeous
.
Um, so I think that there'ssomething to be mined out of the
fact that, even if somethinggoes away or dies, it's, you
(58:17):
know, much like fashion or thesethings that we've we've kind of
touched on before.
Here we are back again andseeing something that's pulled
from, you know, the past and isdone new again.
That's absolutely beautiful.
And then what would that havebeen had the financial success
continued?
There might be a wholedifferent landscape of of
animation and cartoon that we'relooking at today.
Um, because, yeah, disney takesa lot of that and, like the the
(58:40):
fact that he was often, eventhough he beat him to the punch
with the feature film, and SnowWhite is looked at as one of the
biggest successes.
He really yeah, there's a lotthat can be said for kind of the
unsung heroes of their eras.
Ron (58:57):
Thank you, max.
Someone had to do it,absolutely.
Someone had to becomefinancially insolvent to take
that.
Don (59:08):
I like the way.
I like what you said aboutcapturing the zeitgeist, because
that's.
You know, these aren'tcharacters that are as common.
I agree with you.
They're still in the culturalawareness, but they're not like
if I were to go talk to my Idon't know 10 year old niece or
nephew, they might not know whoBetty Boop is.
(59:31):
Yeah, they might not have.
If I showed a picture, they'dsay oh, yeah, but if I just said
the name they probably mightnot know Popeye probably, but I
don't know that they.
I don't know for sure that theywould Right, but but for me
they are.
They are memories of what wewere, yeah.
Doug (59:50):
Yeah, and that's also an incredibly important part of art
.
Don (59:53):
It's a different type of documentation, that's a feeling
you know, because we didn't talkabout some of the more
problematic issues of animationthat happened around both of
these characters and all thatcoming from from, uh, from Max,
but not not all of it.
I mean, like Disney did thesame thing like especially
during the war.
Yes, um, but uh, but it's that Idon't know, it's that it's
(01:00:14):
almost like I feel bad watchingsome of them sometimes because I
know the the, the things thatthey include that we don't
include anymore, right, right,but it's uh well, we've talked
before about my Lone Rangerlistening.
Right, it's the same thing.
It's that it's that moment inhistory where those stories were
told in such a way that is sooffensive to listen to today,
(01:00:38):
but it still captures that.
Ron (01:00:40):
What that moment was yeah, and maybe that's like a enough
to for an artist to achieveright, to have captured their
moment right.
We were kind of saying earlierlike oh, these characters aren't
as cool as superman or blah,blah, blah.
It's like maybe that's like anextra super rare achievement to
create something so iconic, youknow, for so many decades.
(01:01:00):
But yeah, it's enough just tohave been like a, a, a good
reporter, um, of whatever thecore of your, your time or
moment was right good and badyeah.
Doug (01:01:13):
So, ron, has this inspired you to get back into it?
Will we see your papa?
Ron (01:01:16):
hell, no, it sounds like all the good stuff's been done,
all of the stories have beentold.
It's all Minecraft movies fromhere on out.
That's right.
Doug (01:01:30):
Light your fireworks in the theater people.
Don (01:01:32):
That's right.
Doug (01:01:33):
Exactly Beautiful.
Well, thank you guys.
Ron (01:01:37):
Thank you, doug, yeah, very fun stuff.
Don (01:01:40):
For sure, thanks Doug, thank you.
I'm back.
Is that okay?
Is that okay?
Ron (00:40):
Well, I was excited to be back.
We said big energy, Doug.
We said this is going gonna besome people's podcast moment of
the year yeah, I said don'tscrew it up, yeah, and you came
in with two words poltergeistisn't that?
They're here.
Doug (01:02):
Poltergeist was so good so good.
Don (01:05):
It's really great yeah the paper mache coming out of that
yeah, closet, it's awesome,unbelievable yeah, it really got
me as a child my nephew'sfavorite movie when he was two
really strong too.
Ron (01:17):
You must be a cool kid or guide.
Now, yeah, grown man, he's alittle bit older than two now.
Doug (01:23):
So I've got the green light to introduce my son to
Poltergeist at two.
Don (01:27):
Yeah, you bet.
Well, it was already hisfavorite at two, so he was
introduced before, so we startedat nine months and we did gloss
over whether or not this guydeveloped well.
Doug (01:36):
He's cool, yeah, how's he doing?
Don (01:38):
Yeah, he is relatively well .
What's his bank account?
Ron (01:40):
look like.
Doug (01:46):
Are well?
His bank account looks likeyeah.
Are he rolling in?
Don (01:48):
it.
Doug needs this info.
I'm more interested, is he?
Doug (01:49):
ghost hunting.
That's, that's.
Yeah, absolutely I like that.
I like that congratulations,doug.
Ron (01:53):
It's been a an eventful start of the year for you where
you've been, yes, um well, we'vebeen here slaving away on that
podcast life.
Doug (02:02):
Yeah, I, I've missed you both uh terribly, but I will say
that, um, to have a boy broughtinto this world on january 1st,
quite, quite a new year'sexperience, and a new year knew
everything really uh, for himand and for myself.
No one had a new year, quitelike you have had a new year I
think if somebody else had achild the same day, probably
(02:23):
they had a similar.
Don (02:26):
Were you in the labor room during the countdown Ten nine.
Ron (02:35):
Yeah, we're all like doctors and nurses, like
flirting with each other, askingattention.
Doug (02:36):
I will say in the labor and delivery.
There was a moment that theycame in with the 2005 headwear
and that was pretty cool.
That's great yeah To see aholiday in a hospital it's a
unique thing.
Uh, but yeah, it was cool, itwas cool, but yeah, no, the
countdown was definitely more uh, more more focused on my son,
(02:57):
and it was two, 13 that day, uh,in the afternoon, when he was
born.
So, yeah, the countdown hadpassed.
Ron (03:04):
Well, congratulations.
We're very happy for you andyour new family and, more
importantly, we're happy to haveyou back in the headphones back
in front of the mic it's goodto be here Warming us with your
voice.
Doug (03:15):
It's good.
Ron (03:15):
And your insight and your mind.
Thank you.
Doug (03:18):
Thank you Quite an introduction.
Don (03:20):
I hope I can live up to.
Ron is clearly drunk today.
Ron (03:28):
Those Canada dries aren't so dry people Canada wet.
That's his new name.
This is how I get through thepodcast.
Now it's taking its toll on me.
Doug (03:36):
Yeah, we are in season three.
This is the decline of Ron.
We've only experienced mydecline over the past two
seasons.
Ron (03:44):
First two seasons seasons.
You have to be on your bestbehavior.
Doug (03:45):
You're introducing yourself to the world now, if
they're still here, take it orleave it exactly right, this is
what I am, yeah but thenarrative arc to see me becoming
a more responsible father andthen to see you go, just like
you know down the tank.
Ron (03:59):
It's gonna be really special.
I think it's because we'relinked right.
The twain of us cannot bothlike be happy or successful at
the same time.
There's always a gulf betweenus.
Sometimes it's smaller,sometimes it's larger.
Don (04:11):
There's a convergence of the twain, there is, yes, the
balance, the balance must always.
Doug (04:18):
It's a cosmic wedding.
It really is.
That's how I describe us ingeneral.
Ron (04:24):
It is Cos it really is.
That's how I describe us ingeneral.
It is cosmically bound.
Doug (04:26):
Yes, quite so.
Well, gentlemen, I came heretoday to ask you about Saturday
morning cartoons.
Tell me about waking up on aSaturday.
What were you watching?
What were you doing?
Tell me about that experience.
Did you not watch cartoons?
Did you have the experience?
Yeah, like we don't watch thatfilth, I don't know.
Ron (04:48):
Yeah, I'm curious.
I know the Saturday cartoonsare a thing, but I don't
actually remember when thecartoons I watched were on.
My only real memory of weekendcartoons, I feel like, was the
summers and we would do likeswimming lessons and I remember
like waking up in the mornings,which I think were on like
saturdays, and then justwatching, like nick jr um, while
(05:11):
my mother had to like lotion,like four of us, and like just
cover us in sunscreen and wewere like complaining and being
oily and it was terrible, butlike we would watch, like I
don't know, blues clues or, yeah, the busy world of richard
scary a big fan yeah, a littlebear.
Um, all the old like nick juniorshows which I think were on
(05:33):
during the weekends and then wewould go to swimming lessons, um
, but yeah, cartoons were a hugepart of growing up.
I mean, like I think all of mymedia was like cartoon based.
Yeah, the wonder years was onand I was.
I didn't care about the wonderyears as a kid, or, like, um,
steve Urkel, what's his program.
I, I know like I I knew parentswere watching that kind of stuff
(05:54):
, but we were like nah, man,give us and I can drawn Um blues
clues was a hybrid where Stevewas.
You're right, he was a real manin a pretend world.
Doug (06:07):
Blue was also very real to me, so let's not get.
She was great.
Ron (06:10):
Blue was great.
Yeah, um.
Do you remember all the rumorsabout the Steve like getting
driven mad?
Doug (06:16):
Yep, absolutely yeah, and when he left the show, what they
said on uh, nick Jr Was Steve'sgoing to college.
Yeah, he was way past collegeyears.
That was really funny, and so,of course, the internet
responded and it's like he'sclinically depressed yeah, save
steve.
Ron (06:33):
Yeah, absolutely, he actually just went to make music
.
He made a pretty good music didhe really yeah, yeah, it's like
steve burns and the struggle, Ithink, is the name of his band
which is not what I wouldassociate with his, his brand
his band being called thestruggle doesn't help his case
at all, to say the least.
Doug (06:48):
That's too bad.
Um no, that's good.
And I can definitely say as aparent, I now see the value in
cartoon you do.
There's definitely been somedays where, yeah, mrs brown is
going to take some time to get.
You've been a parent for like12 minutes yes, and in those 12
minutes can he even see color,yet I think black, white and red
(07:08):
come off his eyes he's still anamphibian right he really is.
It's, it's insane.
Uh, the smiling has begun, butthose moments where, yeah, mrs
brown needs to get a little bit,a little bit done, will put on
Dragon Ball.
Oh yeah those are importantmoments of bonding with dad and
(07:29):
son, to say the least.
Okay, so Nick Jr, nick Jr, nickJr was our thing in the
mornings.
Ron (07:34):
yeah, yeah.
Doug (07:35):
Don.
What did you watch?
Don (07:37):
See, the trouble with Saturday morning cartoons is
that they exist in the morning.
Doug (07:44):
Don, what was your 2 am adult swim.
Don (07:50):
Adult swim didn't exist when I was a child.
Ron (07:53):
There must have been something that got played late
at night, right?
Don (07:56):
Flintstones on syndication.
Ron (07:59):
I was going to say like bomb shelter tutorials or
something.
Don (08:04):
Yeah, I was not an early riser on Saturdays, I liked to
sleep.
In was my uh, was my activity,but uh, but I did catch um uh, a
few things.
Doug (08:13):
So it was space ghost was one of my favorite Coast to
coast, or are we talking uh?
Ron (08:18):
like yeah, Okay.
Doug (08:19):
So before it was the ironic uh yeah, Talk show,
that's great yeah.
Don (08:25):
Um, super friends, so the justice league and the wonder
twins and all those, um, and Iactually have the strongest
memories of the PSAs that wouldexist in between the commercials
, the the little.
So, um, give us an example.
Yeah, I'm excited, I'm just abill, of course.
But no, there's another oneabout, about food.
I can't and I don't know whatthe creature was like.
(08:46):
Maybe it was like a cracker orsomething.
It was like trying to encourageyou to try new kinds of food.
Doug (08:53):
So was it food pyramid?
Like, were we still on thatgame?
No, it just was like just tryit, kids yeah, just basically it
was broccoli's not bad, yeah,yeah, that's good don't knock it
till you try it.
Put a little on your plate yourmom works hard to make you
meals.
Yeah, I can see that I like.
Don (09:14):
So yeah, it was not a big saturday morning cartoon like I.
I liked that they existed and Iwanted to watch them, but they
always were finishing up whenwhen I got up.
Doug (09:23):
So okay, fair enough.
Don (09:25):
There is something um to animation I do remember, though,
there was another show I usedto watch with my grandpa.
I don't think it was saturdaymorning, so I'm trying to think
it was always on ktla, okay, uh,channel five, and it was the.
It was a popeye.
We used to watch popeye all thetime and it was, uh, some
artist guy kids would send inlike a scribble.
You could send them a scribbleand then he would turn your
(09:47):
scribble into a popeye character.
Oh wow, in between the episodesof popeye that would launch,
yeah well, it's like popeyemania.
Ron (09:56):
The kids are like I gotta get popeye yeah, absolutely so.
Don (10:00):
Yeah, that was cool to watch how?
Doug (10:02):
um, because I'm imagining what I was drawing back in the
day and these things wereprobably looking real rough, to
say the least.
Don (10:10):
Yeah, he did a great like you'd send in these.
I didn't send one in, but hewould get these random scribbles
and, yeah, I'll see if I canfind his name.
Doug (10:18):
Okay, that's good.
Well, you set me up pretty well, because we are going to be
discussing the man, the myth,the legend.
He's not a myth, he's real.
Unlike the Driceratops,absolutely the very real Steve
and the very real Max Fleischerthat we're going to be
discussing today, who was theoriginator of the animated
(10:40):
Popeye.
Yeah, there's a lot that we'regoing to touch on, and I'm
curious what he's going to say.
His name was Tom Hatton.
Tom Hatton.
Don (10:48):
Okay, still at it.
I think he's dead.
No.
Ron (10:51):
Sorry, Tom.
Thank you, Tom.
He died in 2019.
Oh okay, not too long.
Yeah, yeah, he was old.
Doug (11:05):
He was born in 1926, 1995.
Animating up a storm, yeah.
Making kids' dreams come true,I like that.
Well, there was a boy with adream by the name of Max
Fleischer, who immigrated fromPoland in 1887 to the great
state and city of New York,because it's both a state and a
city for our listeners out there, in case we didn't know, he was
born in 1883.
Yes, we didn't know, he wasborn in 1883.
Ron (11:33):
And the reason that I wanted to talk about him today
is I noticed neither of youbrought up Mickey Mouse in your
Mickey Mouse cartoons alwayssucked, wow.
Don (11:36):
Well, they weren't on Saturday mornings, so you had to
have the Disney Channel to seea Disney cartoon back when I was
a kid.
Ron (11:42):
Yeah, that's true.
The Disney Channel was, like,always locked off.
Yeah, like I feel like, uh, oneof my grandparents had it and
the other ones didn't yeah andso, and I remember, whenever we
were at the other grandparents,it wasn't even cartoon time, it
was like umba, macumba time,what?
Doug (11:58):
do you remember um no, no and uh, I'm gonna go ahead and
put my topic away for the day,because we need to know what are
you talking about.
Ron (12:07):
It was like a Jack Hanna animal show for kids and I think
the character's name was UmbaMacumba.
He was just a guy in like SouthAfrica or somewhere and he
would just like show you clips.
Hey let's go check out the youknow.
Let's go on safari and see whatwe find today.
Doug (12:29):
And then there'd be a film crew showing you zebras and
stuff.
So while mr rogers was pullingus around in the train and going
to his world, he's out there,I'm a macomba was living, yeah
on the serengeti and uh bringingus real stuff but, anyways.
Ron (12:38):
So I always saw like the live action disney cartoons.
Okay, there was one I loved, itwas Darkwing Duck.
Oh yeah, yeah, he was cool.
I feel like they got better asI got older.
I remember Bonkers.
Bonkers was maybe not goodactually, now that I'm thinking
about it, I'm thinkingFreakazoid Was Freakazoid Disney
, maybe not.
Doug (12:56):
I think that was WB yeah.
Don (12:58):
WB you guys are.
I know those are not real words.
Ron (13:02):
We grew up on cartoons, man , we can like.
Doug, you're unlocking, like ayou know, a section of my brain
that's been closed off and likemolded.
For years I used to read thisloser.
Don (13:23):
Well, Don had to make the pictures in his head.
Doug (13:28):
We could say that when we had everything illustrated for
us.
I suppose that offers thedifference in our imagination.
Ron (13:33):
So Fleischer is, is he like one of the?
He is not Walt Disney right, ishe?
Like the other end of the.
He's not Walt Disney, he's not.
Who's the Chuck Jones guy?
Doug (13:47):
he's the looney tunes guy, right oh, uh, I don't know, I
don't know, uh, the name of the.
Ron (13:53):
Those to me are like the two, like proto animator, like
like pioneer animators.
Doug (13:57):
Right, I'm trying to remember porky pig coming
through.
Ron (14:00):
Chuck jones, yeah, chuck jones, okay, um and so you're
saying max fleischer, who is aname I've heard, but a man I
know very little about.
Don (14:07):
Sure he's the guy that makes the little yeast package
when you make rolls oh thatdoesn't make sense.
Ron (14:11):
No, that's fleischman, oh yeah, yeah, er man, yeah,
whatever you need.
They probably changed it atellis island, but um, yes, it's
highly possible.
Doug (14:21):
So he makes popeye this is yes yes, so I was introduced to
max fleischer because I wasplaying a video game game in the
late 2010s called Cuphead which, if we're not familiar with, a
very small studio made, composedthe music for and did
everything in the art stylewhere they basically had said.
(14:44):
Max Fleischer was our biggestinfluence.
It was Fleischer cartoons.
I was enamored by the gamebecause it's a very cool game.
It's a very difficult game aswell, like very difficult whole
game is based around you beingthis small animated kind of
coffee mug looking, head typewire armed guy that's going
(15:04):
through and shooting these kindof water pellets, I guess, at
all of these different bosses,and it was a really difficult
game.
But it kind of took the gamingworld by storm at the time
because it was such a creativeproject and they hand animated
everything, put it through theprocess and they said that they
took a lot of inspiration fromMax Fleischer, which sent me
(15:25):
down this rabbit hole.
So Max was one of the bigcompetitors with Disney and he
beat Disney to the punch on afew things, one of the biggest
being attaching sound tocartoons, so voice in cartoon.
He was very famous for puttingvoice to cartoon.
In his animation the characterswould be voiced.
(15:48):
He not only had Popeye in hisstock, he was the inventor of
Betty Boop, if we're familiar.
Ron (15:54):
Do you?
Doug (15:55):
have a good impression of Betty.
I'm Betty.
I was hoping for Boop, boop, beDoop.
Ron (16:05):
Did she say Boop, boop, be Doop?
I've honestly never seen aBetty Boop cartoon.
I feel like I've seen morehours of Betty Boop tattoos on
people in my life than I haveminutes of actual cartoon
footage.
Doug (16:20):
I like thinking of that in hours.
You're just staring at a man'sarm.
Ron (16:25):
Yeah, you're at jury duty and you're staring at someone's
Betty Boop tattoo on their thigh, Absolutely as as we all, and
we're getting matching tattoosright after this, uh, in honor
of Max.
Doug (16:39):
Um, but yeah, max Max was a competitor with Disney, so
where most people would thinkabout the mouse, um, especially,
um, cause this takes us back tothe 30s, where cartoons were
often shown in a reel.
Like, you would be going to themovie theater and you might
start a film actually in themiddle, because it would just be
a looping film that was playingat the time and in between this
(17:04):
there would be cartoons, therewould be newsreels, there would
be one of the coolest thingsthat I saw is it was very common
for there'd be like a popularfolk song or a popular song of
the day, and Max was alsoanimating the bouncing ball.
Ron (17:18):
That goes on top of the word.
He invented the bouncing ball.
I don't know if he was theinventor, but there are several.
Doug (17:25):
He has a character called Coco the Clown, which, if you,
if any of you, are at home andcan Google this quickly, you
probably have seen him before.
Um, he would be dancing aroundthe words, but what I found so
funny is thinking of theexperience of being in a movie
theater and just everyonesinging a song together.
That would be a very importantthing.
Um, the uh, the documentarythat I was watching on
(17:48):
Fleischer's life, apparentlylike there would be times where
they would be yelling at the theperson who was playing the
reels and saying, like play itagain, because people would just
want to sing again in a moviehall and I just it's so
different now where it's likeI've bought my AMC ticket and
I've got a seat right here, I'mgoing to quietly listen to the
(18:09):
previews, my movie is scheduledat this time and then I leave.
So quite a different culturesurrounding what would be in a
movie theater, to say the least.
It was more like a vaudevillian, very much so, and I think that
that's evident in the style ofum when you look at Betty Boop
or Popeye, for example.
Like both of them, like BettyBoop is clearly a flapper girl,
(18:29):
um and um.
That's a big difference, I thinkin his animation style is
knowing that he had immigratedfrom Poland.
So much of his cartoon work isclearly in these urban areas
that look like you knowsomewhere in Queens essentially,
where you know the doorstepsare there, everything is is very
urban, um and kind of set inthis way.
(18:53):
That's very different from thestyle of Disney, which is a
little bit more wholesome.
Obviously, yeah, betty Boop isa very.
Are you saying Betty Boop isnot wholesome?
She is.
Ron (19:03):
But Are you saying like Disney is a more sort of
imagined wholesomeness?
Sure.
Doug (19:09):
I'm trying to think of, like the early Disney.
Ron (19:11):
They're kind of rural right they're kind of countryside
there's like a, a, a cow with aloud personality, yep, chewing
something.
Don (19:19):
They're very violent, though, yeah.
Ron (19:21):
Are they?
I don't remember the violencein the early.
Yeah, they're making this one,it's all it's all.
Doug (19:32):
Face the big, oh, big pete , big pete, yeah, yeah, you're
right.
Yeah, there are definitelydisney cartoons where you see
somebody being hunted down witha knife.
Ron (19:36):
It's, it's some scary stuff .
Doug (19:38):
There was one I was watching.
You know as a contrast, that Isaw pluto, who's being put in a
uh, an electrified chair, andthere's literally a scene where
he's being electrocuted.
You can see his side of hisbody and his like rib cage
disintegrates and falls to thebottom of his body.
You could see his like heartlike trying to keep going and I
went this is some morbid stuff,to say the least.
(20:00):
Um, but no, fly sure was alittle bit more risque in that
like there were definitelyscenes of betty like uh going
behind a uh I think there waslike a pile of rubbish that she
like basically goes behind andshe's like throwing off clothes
and changing and you candefinitely see the uh one of the
other characters going hot dog.
Ron (20:20):
The dog says hot dog, I mean well, he was a hot dog.
Doug (20:24):
He's being tantalized by this woman who's changing, you
know.
So um yeah there's betty had.
She was censored uh, are youtalking about because you
couldn't see anything.
Is that what you mean?
Don (20:37):
no, I'm saying the the original.
What you're talking about the1930s.
The 1930 version of betty boopwas racier than the 1934 version
of betty when the haze codestarted to uh, be more strictly,
strictly applied.
So a lot of the sexuallysuggestive jokes like you talked
about she was very romanticallyindependent, I guess as an
(21:01):
original character, all of thathad to be ratcheted down once
the Hays Code came in.
That's tough.
She is a marker of I don't knowprogress, yes, Regression.
She is a marker of I don't knowprogress, yes, Regression.
She is a marker in film history.
Doug (21:16):
She's a marker that the times they are changing.
Bob was coming about 30 yearslater but that's all right.
Ron (21:22):
That's what that song's about Betty.
It's all about Betty baby.
Did Bob have a Betty Boop?
Doug (21:27):
tattoo.
I mean.
Think about the fact thatyou're in jury duty and you
can't stop looking at a man'sthigh.
Don (21:32):
I mean it says everything it wants to be seen, and so did
she.
And so did she.
Doug (21:38):
Hot dog but yeah, he's a big innovator in this regard.
He worked with his family.
Dave was his main partner hefamously got into so the family
owns a tailoring business.
The father of the family, thepatriarch, does really well.
At first they run intofinancial troubles but during
(22:01):
that time where they are doingwell, it affords Max several
hours to be able to illustrateand draw.
He has some talent with thisand his main focus was the
things that he was seeing intheaters in the 20s.
Um, were very archaic, like hewas looking, and they were kind
of these glitchy stop motionlooking.
(22:21):
Um, you know, like where ananimation would have somebody at
a standstill and the next framewould be their arm extended for
a handshake.
Um, he said this doesn't looklike real life, like those flip
books you make in elementaryschool?
Yes, as if you were turning thepages instead of flipping.
Ron (22:36):
That's what it's looking like, yeah.
Doug (22:38):
Good, good comparison.
Ron (22:40):
I think everyone's experimented with animation at
some point.
Right, Like you, you realizethe magic of it and like, oh, if
I just it depends on, like howlazy you are, far or like you
know how determined you are.
Don (22:50):
That's something that kids these days are going to miss out
on right.
Yeah, we used to draw them inour textbooks right, right,
right, yes, in the little corner, and then you can flip through.
Ron (22:57):
Yeah, yep now they're just going to have an.
Ai do it for them.
Probably ai make me a bettyboop yeah, ai boop you know,
that's not gonna look as good ona cab.
Doug (23:07):
I'll tell you that, yeah, that's not going to look as good
on a cab.
I'll tell you that, yeah,that's true.
So, um, yeah, he was inspired.
He, he was very inspired tomake something that was better,
and so the technique that he ismost famous for is he invents
something called a rotoscope, inwhich, um, a background can be
(23:31):
generated, so you can have amoving background or a placement
of a background that's fullypainted, and he would put a
transparent sheet over the topand would animate over the top
of this.
But what this also lends itselfto is you could put film in the
back of this, and so he wouldhave his brother move around or
dance or do different things,and so coco the clown was
(23:53):
actually him, frame by frame,with film illustrating over the
top of his brother moving aroundin a three-dimensional space,
and this is how he got a muchsmoother animation style in that
cheating.
What do you think?
Is it cheating?
It's a good question.
Don (24:09):
It's a great question yeah, walt disney's out there, you
know, drawing the mouse from byhand, frame by frame.
And then, even though thisguy's just just wanted to do
that, just drawing over pictureslike it's not animation, that's
just that.
Ron (24:25):
Just paint by numbers life inspires art that's exactly what
I was gonna say, but alsoreally wow, we're really on it
though um, but it seems like um,if this was like an important
step to get them to the placewhere they felt confident doing
more realistic or smootheranimation.
(24:46):
Right, it sounds like that'skind of what it is right
otherwise.
Otherwise it requires like alot of study, right Like and who
?
Don (24:52):
has time for that Like study.
Ron (24:54):
But I mean you're trying to make a buck in 1935, right?
So like I can kind of see Imean I don't know Like I've seen
the behind the scenes of likeanimating Beauty and the Beast
or whatever, and I wanted to bean animator as a kid actually- I
(25:17):
liked, okay, so much, and Iliked drawing until I started
watching these like behind thescenes and I was like, oh my god
, this is, yeah, just repetitive, right, doing the same lines
over and over for however manyframes, and it's like it's
really like seriously laborintensive.
Don (25:23):
So I I think I can understand in animation like any
tool that helps save or cutdown that labor right to bring
it to a a cooler end product,right but so if leonardo da
vinci had taken a photograph ofof lisa right and, and just
projected it on the wall andthen, like traced over it, would
(25:44):
we say, oh my gosh, what agreat artist no, yeah, she
wouldn't be the mona lisa,that's for sure.
Doug (25:49):
She's a copy Lisa, that's right.
Ron (25:53):
But I mean he essentially did that right with a model.
He just didn't have a camera.
So he is still doing a form oftracing, just without actually
being able to trace.
It's not like he envisioned theMona Lisa from his imagination
and created this thing.
Even he was using some form ofaid, Wouldn't we say?
The sit-in model is an aid Wellis that pretty mean he's just
(26:14):
drawing it.
Don (26:15):
I mean that's not right.
That's he's drawing from byhand what his eyes are seeing.
Ron (26:21):
That's not the same as tracing over something that no,
it's definitely not the same,but I mean it is.
Doug (26:26):
It is still a form of assistance to have the model to
begin with, I look at it in asimilar regard, as like sampling
within music, like the factthat you can take a piece of
something and then createsomething else out of it,
because Coco the Clown I meanit's not.
So.
The example I can give you isthe big breakthrough that they
(26:47):
had is they had a series calledOut of the Inkwell in which you
see david I don't remember ifit's dave or max sitting at the
table, but they dip their peninto the ink that's at the table
.
It's like him sitting andgetting ready to animate and as
he draws the pen from theinkwell, coco pops out out from
the inkwell pops, coco the clown.
(27:09):
A little song is there, okay, soI didn't know this is why I
need you guys you know, you gotall this fun stuff in the
background here, but just beforewe move on real quick.
Don (27:20):
Yeah, because it might be a topic we talk about later, but
there is a suggestion thatpainters did actually use tools
like this well before fleischer,like so vermeer, uh, who would
be dutch, but like 16th century,is that right, uh?
I don't know my touch girl thepearly ring and the milkman that
(27:41):
he used like a camera obscurato actually project the image
onto his um canvas and thenpainted over top of that image.
So yeah, it's and, and ithasn't been proven and he hasn't
.
He didn't leave behind diaries,but it's been suggested that
that's how he got the light towork the way that it does in
some of his images.
Ron (27:58):
So it so this idea is I'm I'm bringing it up to be
provocative, but but it no, butit's not new it is interesting
to talk about because I thinkthe way you react to that
question kind of helps you findout.
What do you expect or desirefrom art, right?
Doug (28:16):
Correct.
Ron (28:16):
If art's purpose is to mirror reality as closely, with
as much fidelity as possible,then you are probably going to
be less impressed by someonetracing reality right.
Doug (28:27):
Right, yeah.
Ron (28:28):
Or if its job is to be additive to that reality in some
way, then you're kind of like,oh, OK.
Doug (28:32):
Right.
Ron (28:32):
Because, like right, ideally the idea of trace making
a painting and then tracing theforms is that you're now going
to add some sort of color, valueor something perspective to it
that was not capturable in reallife.
Doug (28:46):
And maybe it's the choice of what you do decide to give
the fidelity of life.
Like for Max max it was.
Obviously I want this to be asmoother production that
imitates life.
Yeah, but then the things he'screating, like coco the clown is
such an exaggerated example ofwhat a clown would actually be,
or you know that, like betty boo, popeye the sailor, they're all
(29:06):
caricatures, right, of whatlife is.
It's like so far removed.
It's very surreal looking Imean popeye's forearms.
I think if he actually hadthose proportions.
Ron (29:16):
I'd be worried about him being able to walk correctly
through a door.
Doug (29:20):
But so there's a certain amount of that.
That it's like, yeah, what doyou exaggerate and what do you
retain?
It makes it interesting,certainly.
But that series is interestingbecause you're looking at the
live animation, um, or the, thelive film that's mixed with the
animation.
So you're seeing him running upand down the staircase being
(29:41):
chased by a bunch of Coco theclowns, um, and then going back
down Um and I, I would assumefor its time, cause this is, uh,
the series ran from 1918 to1929.
They're putting out episodes ofthis and, uh, I imagine that
was so innovative at the time tosee something like that,
because I mean, it hadn't beendone before.
Um, betty boop and, uh, popeyefollow after this and it moves
(30:06):
further away from the live filmaspects and they, they also
developed Don, we were talkingabout this a little bit
beforehand.
It was the stereo, it was notthe rotoscope, it was
Stereoptics, stereoptics and heinvented the setback camera,
yeah, so we're looking at entiresets that were developed.
There's a very cool scene ofPopeye going through an actual
(30:28):
3D developed neighborhood thatthey had built this entire set,
and then there's thistransparent layer where it looks
like he's pushing a baby in astroller and, uh, the the
animation is simply him goingaround a corner and they're you
know um, shrinking Popeye andthe carriage to make it look
like the depth perception isgoing further away, even though
(30:49):
the set itself is actuallyphysically moving.
They have, like, uh, operatorsthat are moving and they're even
still looking at it and it'svery cool Cause you can
generally YouTube.
Almost all of these are publicdomain now, but we have the
option now to look at things inlike 4k, 120 frames, 60 frames,
where it's like very clean andit's presentation.
It's not being presented in a1930s theater and they still
(31:10):
look incredible, like it's.
It's wild to kind of see whatthey made to sometimes make a
seven minute cartoon, um, so theinnovation is just off the
chart, um, and I think thatthat's that's kind of where I
want to take it today is likelooking at the necessity being
the mother of invention, or likethe innovative um
characteristics that are there,because we have this entire
(31:30):
family that's working on theseset pieces and these animation.
He's hiring tons of people towork in his studio and this
leads to some very interestingplaces, to say the least.
He, as he, continues to gainsuccess.
So, out of the inkwell.
Then we have Betty, then wehave Popeye, and what's
(31:52):
interesting is, um, they're kindof introduced in sequence, like
when Betty Boop really takesoff.
Popeye is introduced as acharacter in Betty Boop and they
do this in comics a lot.
I noticed this where it's likeyou'll have a character that's
introduced as a side characterin a comic to see what the
audience response is anddepending on how well something
sells which I'm curious and Idon't know the answer to this
(32:14):
Like how do you gauge thereaction of if, if these things
are being played in theaters?
You know, like what?
How do you decide that Popeyeis the one.
Ron (32:22):
You got a theater plant right, or you go and pull the
theater kids.
Don (32:25):
at the end you go, you listen.
Ron (32:27):
Did they like that racist caricature?
Oh, they did.
We're going to win World War IInow, boys.
Doug (32:35):
That's exactly right.
But, yeah, these things that heputs into perspective, it
really makes him a contender,even though we would probably
look at Disney and Looney Tunesfor their time as being the two
biggest production um companiesand like probably the most
remembered names.
Um, in animation, there was alot of innovation that was
(32:57):
happening with max that I thinkis worth talking about here.
Um, where fleischer, I think,started to um decline is he was
at his peak following popeye.
They're doing really well.
The two things that are oftenlooked at as his big decline is.
Disney, of course, comes outwith the fully animated feature
(33:20):
film Snow White.
He competes by saying, okay, Iwant to start chasing this, and
I think that this might be wherethings start to change.
He creates the Gulliver'sTravels film.
Ron (33:33):
Oh, yeah, have you ever seen that?
Doug (33:34):
That one's great.
Ron (33:35):
It's really good that's the one with Jack Black.
Doug (33:40):
He came back and did one last dance.
That's right, not very muchanimation in that one.
A lot of CGI though, but yeah,came up with the Gulliver's
Travels film in 1939, followingSnow White's success in 1937.
Don (33:57):
So all of the feature films in the 1930s really wanted to
focus on diminutive people.
Ron (34:02):
Yes, it's cheaper to animate Absolutely Not as much
to draw.
Don (34:06):
They're just little.
Doug (34:07):
Gulliver's Travels, the Lilliputians Is that their name?
Yeah, absolutely Coming around.
But yeah, it's interesting, itdid not have the same level of
success that Snow White did, andthe problem that they were
running into is where you'remaking a seven minute cartoon
and so the amount of labor isstill very intensive for that.
You go into full motionpictures and the business side
(34:29):
and the amount of loans thatthey took out were not managed
quite as well.
And so, as they run intofinancial troubles, um, they
actually got into uh issues withtheir animators uh going on
strike.
There was a famous um sign thatwent up that said $14 a week is
not enough to uh to feed yourfamily, uh, for the animation
(34:50):
studio.
And so they made a big shift tomove to Miami, because at that
time Miami was much cheaper,weather was nice, they were able
to afford homes and bring a lotof the animators down there,
where the wages that they werebeing paid was kind of fair to
the cost of living versus NewYork, which was very destructive
(35:11):
to the overall process.
So that was like one of the thebig um first things is just the
overextension on getting abunch of loans doing something
that's I don't know.
I mean at least 10 times theamount of work and, uh, quality
control and everything that wasin there.
At one point I think his studiohad up to 400 people that were
working over time and justlooking through quality control,
(35:34):
like, is every single framematching up to where it should
be?
And I think some of thatoverextension starts to really
wear them down.
The other thing that happenedis they took on which was at the
time the biggest payday for uma short um serial.
(35:56):
They took on Superman, um, andso the first animated Superman
that we ever get, um, is fromthe Fleischer brothers.
They got through either eight ornine episodes of the original
animations of Superman, whichthis is a very big deal because
comics were really not broughtinto the animated sphere in the
same way, and this still to thisday.
(36:17):
There are people that say it'sone of the best interpretations
of the original Superman fromaction comics, because this is
innovative in that, yeah, liketwo to three years after the
comic comes out, we're alreadyanimating.
Where're now?
And I never got to my saturdaymorning cartoon, but my, my, I
don't think this was even asaturday thing, but I was just
(36:38):
constantly looping batman, theanimated series that was like my
staple, uh, to say this.
Ron (36:43):
So art deco is forever burning in my brain.
Doug (36:46):
Like I will I will always love art deco, but yeah, the
idea of a superhero animationwas not.
Yeah, it was completely new atthe time.
Ron (36:56):
I'm surprised they didn't think it would be like a
competition with the comic right.
It would be like why would wewant them to watch it when I
want them to buy the?
Doug (37:05):
book.
Opposite effect, actually thatbecause the animations were
being played, um, people werebuying the comics.
It was introducing a whole newmarket of people that maybe, oh,
you know, comics are those kidsstuff that they buy for, you
know, like a couple of pennies.
Um, I would never get intosomething like that.
This brought a whole newaudience, um, so they were
getting paid a pretty goodamount in order to do it.
(37:27):
But when you look at theanimation, especially in the
Superman episodes, the game hasbeen stepped up significantly,
just in terms of the attentionto color, detail, shadows,
animation everything is justbeautiful.
And so they run into huge debtproblems where they've
overextended to the point thatthey're not making payments and
(37:50):
Dave and Max have a huge fallingout about what needs its name
on it.
It's interesting thedocumentary that I'm pulling a
lot of this from.
They talk about that not muchof whatever happened in the
family business was discussed,other than the big dispute
became it wasn't about money, itwas.
My name needs to be on that.
(38:11):
Your name's off of this.
I was the one who worked onthis, and that really divided
them, um, to where they weren'teven able to reconcile up until
both of them, uh, passed away.
They weren't able to reconcileum, and so this takes them out
of the sphere that they've gotthis 25 to 30 year run where
they're just constantlyinnovating, disney's trying to
(38:31):
catch up.
And then there's this moment atthe end in the in the last five
years, where they flip anddecide I want to start chasing
Disney, let's go with thefeature film, let's do this
incredibly innovative thing withSuperman.
They finally just kind of umhit hit, hit a uh a wall
financially.
Um, once that happens,paramount, paramount buys them
(38:53):
out and takes them away.
There's another group of peoplethat take over the Superman
cartoons.
World War II hits um its peak ofrecruitment, and so they become
very focused on, like you know,kind of American propaganda,
where almost all the episodesare, um, you know, superman
fighting the Japanese or Hitler,and that's really where things
(39:16):
start to fall away and fallapart.
But the thing that I find, Iguess, most interesting within
this through line is thinkingabout where is the moment
because there is a certainamount of capital within art
that you need, especially as aproduction company, which is
really what they are there'sthis moment where they're at the
(39:37):
peak of innovation.
They want to do things the waythat they see it, and to go back
to what you said, ron, likelife imitating art or art
imitating life, like where thatthrough line goes in, and then
they just get into deep when itcomes to the economics.
And now the names that reallystand out are, yeah, it would
definitely be Disney and LooneyTunes.
(39:58):
And so you know, I guess I'minterested because here I am
(40:29):
playing this video game and youknow, the late 2010s and I
stumble upon of it would bemoney, but yeah, where that
starts to run dry and creativitybecome, you can be as creative
as you want, but then thatcapital runs out and I don't
know out and I don't know.
Ron (40:46):
Yeah, it seems like the story you spelled out for us is
like a fairly common one in like, uh, you know, like hollywood,
right, like someone has acreative impetus, right, they
want to make something, theyhave a talent for it or they
develop that talent or thepeople they surround themselves
with, like are able tofacilitate that vision, and then
you know they're in competitionwith someone, right?
Maybe there's a bit of ego there, the desire to further innovate
(41:09):
and to put your name down as,like, I'm the best one in this
field, right, I feel like that'sa pretty common sort of
narrative.
And then, yeah, it's alwayslike, unclear, right, like I'm
slightly more familiar with,like Walt Disney as a person,
right, and you know, I feel likethere's been a lot of like
retrospective biographies onlike who was Walt Disney?
(41:30):
Right, like, clearly was thisanimator, but like, was he
always a sort of one step ahead,thinking about, you know, the
future of his business and thecorporation and the giant
monolith that the DisneyCorporation has since become,
and the giant monolith that theDisney Corporation has since
become, right?
Like how much of that wasplanned or desirous, you know,
and how much was like his desireto just sort of create cool art
(41:51):
.
I don't know.
I think it's one of thosetricky.
We could go all the way back toLeonardo, right.
Like I mean, that dude wasdependent on the capital of
patrons, right, to facilitatehis artworks and to push
boundaries.
Right, the great sculptors werealso, like, needed to be paid
in order to make those sorts ofinnovations, right, I think it.
(42:14):
Yeah, it's like one of thoseinteresting things because, like
, clearly, you need money to dowhat you want to do, especially
if you're doing you know,something that is like
entertainment based, right, it'snot's not a necessity, like
people don't really need it intheir lives, but they definitely
want it, they want to seek itout and they want to spend money
on it.
And it takes, like you said,it's very laborious to make
seven minutes of animation,right, and you need a team of
(42:36):
people and those people aren'tjust going to donate their time
to make one phenomenal BettyBoop cartoon.
Doug (42:44):
Get her out here, that's right.
Ron (42:45):
So then you need investment right, and then that investment
expects returns, and then theystart falling into it.
It reminds me of, like FrancisFord Coppola, right, and his big
thing was like he made a coupleof successful movies Godfather
and stuff and then like feltlike the Hollywood studio system
was constraining him orrequired so much, like you know,
(43:08):
for producers producers to fundhis projects.
they wanted so much more inputinto the project or had like it
needed to be this kind of athing so that it would make the
kind of money that they wantedto see, and he felt like he
couldn't do like more.
You know, essentially lesscommercial artsy things.
Uh, george lucas always went onabout this too, like I'm never
(43:30):
allowed to make the cool artstuff in my head because I have
to make star wars and blah, blah, blah, right.
And so then, like francis fordcoppola makes his own studio
called american zoetrope and hemakes just a couple of like
really bomb films, like and islike unable to keep that company
like solvent for a while.
Like is really struggling, Ithink in the 90s.
(43:51):
He pulls it back around withlike brom stoker's dracula, like
does pretty well or somethingwhich is one of don's favorite
films, by the way.
Don you love dracula?
Doug (44:01):
um, I read the book I'm just kidding we don and I
disagree because I love that,yeah, I love it.
He does not love it.
Don (44:12):
I struggle to stay awake yeah he hates it I went actually
went to midnight showing theday it came out to well maybe
that's why you struggle.
Doug (44:19):
Come on, man, I know you like to sleep in, but pick some
regular hours I think I'm in themiddle of both of you.
Ron (44:25):
Like I neither love it nor hate it.
There are parts of it I thinkare so cool, such a politician.
Yeah, that's right.
Doug (44:33):
And to be fair, Robert Eggers just released Nosferatu.
Nosferatu, that kind of justswept away, but anyway this is
not our film review podcast.
Ron (44:43):
I don't know.
The point is like I I feel likeyou hear this a lot from
creators right, like they wantto divorce themselves from the,
the money that allows them topursue and do what they want to
do.
Right, and very few of themmanage to actually like obtain
that independence.
Doug (44:58):
Yeah, um don has a face.
Hang on, no, go ahead.
Oh, there's no face here.
Okay, man don doesn't have aface now I'm scared um, yeah, I
I think about it because they.
So one of the things that, um, Iskipped over in the beginning
of their life is, while max isworking at a newspaper by day,
(45:24):
he's spending all of hisevenings on refining his craft.
And I think that that's also avery common story is had the day
job and then just put all of mynights and free time into the
thing that I really wanted to doand then eventually that became
the job, and ultimately, Ithink that's not because of the
riches and fame that are there,but it's the love of the craft.
(45:45):
And can I actually carve thisout as being the thing that I do
with my life and giving thetime, because I think that
that's where the value is a lotof, I think, as a perception.
But then I also am kind of torn, too on the conversation of art
and content.
I'm kind of torn too on theconversation of art and content
(46:09):
because it's also interesting,because when I bring up cartoons
, like if we're thinking ofclassical art, for example, like
you just brought up Leonardo daVinci, I don't think that I'm
putting Max Fleischer up therewith Leo, you know, like maybe
an animator would.
Yeah, but it's also interestingbecause I'm fairly certain, if
we're constructing full sets, ifwe're inventing technology to
best express our animation, I'msure he felt that way, I'm sure
(46:31):
that he looked at it as thispiece of art, but then there
also needs to be not only thepatrons, but then the audience
for it too.
So does it hit that point inthese theaters and I don't have
an answer for this necessarilythat people are screaming
because they're like playyeagain we don't even want to
watch the movie like play popeyeagain, because that's, that's
the thing that's capturingeverything about us um, I mean,
(46:54):
it's almost like 100 years oldand I feel like popeye is still
a household name right likebetty boot, probably a little
bit less.
Ron (47:00):
I don't know if we went and but.
Don (47:02):
But when's the last time you saw a popeye cartoon?
Ron (47:05):
right, oh like never.
Don (47:07):
I mean, you've never seen a pop no, I think I remember
seeing them.
Ron (47:10):
I don't know where I would have, but I've definitely seen
some popeye cartoons have youseen the popeye live action
movie?
Don (47:15):
I was just gonna.
Yes, I have the robin williamsone.
Ron (47:17):
Yeah, that was pretty great , yeah um but like, even if you
haven't seen it, you like, likeit still survives somehow, like
you know, like it.
It had enough impact that itfiltered into the culture.
Don (47:28):
In a strange way actually, and that's so.
And Betty Boop fits this onetoo, Although I understand I
haven't seen, but there's a newBetty Boop musical in New York
right now Um so just kind ofhaving a moment, but both of
those two characters are lockedin their time period and they
don't evolve the way some ofthese other characters do, that
You're talking like Superman.
Doug (47:49):
Right, right, right so.
Don (47:50):
Superman was the.
Was the the Patriot?
Yeah, uh, person, a wartimePatriot in world war two, and
then, through the fifties andsixties, he's the alien outsider
, and then, like we get thereboot with what was the dean
kane, one that was on tv and soanyways updated to the 1980s,
(48:11):
90s, and then we get asmallville again.
So another update to the early2000s, like it's a character
that keeps being reset in time.
We can't do that with popeye,like you can't like if we had a
popeye in 2025, that was asailor that like you know, lived
in the dogs and he's like inthe U S Navy eight canned
vegetables bigger than everpunched, punched, you know,
(48:35):
punched all of his problems awayand it just it wouldn't work
the same way that that Supermandoes when you re-update it,
because it it can fit in thatnew time period and Betty Boop
same thing like a 2025 bettyboop isn't doesn't work.
Doug (48:49):
no, yeah, and I think this is uh I'm gonna be very
cautious not to take us overhere because this is something
that I've contended that, um,comics are essentially our
american mythology, like I'vealways looked at our
mythological, you know storieswhere we don't have hercules,
although, it's funny, we doHercules Marvel, actually has
the rights to Hercules and comicbook.
(49:10):
They stole it all Exactly.
I think that they continue toevolve because it's the American
mythos that we're always ableto kind of continue to reinvent
within the concept of asuperhero and super villains.
But they're agreed.
Yeah, Like Popeye and BettyBoop, I think 1930s immediately.
(49:30):
I definitely do.
Ron (49:32):
But I I think all of those kind of older cartoon characters
kind of don't evolve Right.
It's just like how willing, howmuch money is there to force
them down our throats?
So take like, for instance,like Mickey mouse.
The reason I said likekey mousecartoons suck is because, like,
who really wants to watchmickey mouse the character?
Do anything with his like,weird like, and they have right.
Don (49:53):
There's mickey's christmas and mickey's purchases them all,
or there's mickey's playhousenow yeah, right like it, so it
does keep resetting to a newaudience.
Ron (50:05):
I feel like that's just Disney being like.
We got to be using Mickey.
He's synonymous with our brand.
We're sitting on this Mickey.
Who really wants to watchMickey?
What are Mickey's personalitytraits?
What's funny about Mickey?
Doug (50:18):
You obviously didn't like the new Mickey ride in.
Ron (50:20):
Toontown.
That's too bad.
No, I haven't set foot inToontown in years.
Wow, you're really maxfleischer guy or the same with
like the looney tunes.
Right, like I think the looneytunes work because they're like
funny.
You can continue to like makingbut they have to.
Doug (50:34):
They do evolve like space jam not successfully are you
saying space wasn't a success Imean, it was definitely a
success, but, but I mean like,critically, artistically, did we
need to see Mickey Mouse?
Ron (50:49):
you know shooting hoops, or , sorry, bugs Bunny shooting
hoops.
Doug (50:53):
I definitely needed to see our man, bill Murray, show up
on that basketball team.
Ron (50:58):
I think like if there was a Fleischer amusement park I
could go to, I feel like therewould be an updated Popeye that
came out in the last eight years.
Right, and it's you know, likeI think I think you can make it
happen if someone, if that'ssomeone's IP and they want to
churn money out of it.
You know what I?
Doug (51:17):
mean, and the reason we don't have an answer is because
of financial ruin.
You know it's like they couldnot continue to do what they
they did.
The people who you know werethe driving force and kind of
heart and soul of that weretaken out of that because of
finance.
I mean that that is a way,because it's very clear,
obviously, considering thesuccess of everything disney now
and the fact that it's gone sofar beyond walt disney, I think
(51:40):
that he did set something upthat you know from a business.
He at least had that figuredout.
Don (51:46):
And I think Mickey is different because Mickey is a
brand.
Doug (51:49):
Yeah, the way.
Ron (51:51):
Bugs.
Don (51:51):
Bunny is a character, Betty Boop's a character.
Yeah, Popeye is a character,but the but Mickey Mouse is the
brand.
Ron (51:59):
Right, yeah, so it's yeah he doesn't have to do anything
or be interesting, he doesn'tneed to represent the company,
so all the other IPs getattached to his face.
Doug (52:09):
It's true.
I think I had a VHS tape fromthe early nineties that was by
the lead singer of the cars.
It was called, like Matt RickOcasek, yeah, rick Ocasek, matt
about the mouse, and it was allof these pop stars like redoing
songs and like kind of focusingin on all these Disney type
(52:29):
things.
I watched it so many timesthough.
Don (52:31):
I still know, yeah, we'll watch it right after this.
Ron (52:34):
That's going to be the next podcast Follow up.
Is the listener Go to bad aboutthem?
Doug (52:39):
Yeah, but Rick was tearing it up, um, but you're, but
you're right.
Like that doesn't exist withoutmickey being a brand like that,
even the title mad about themouse.
It's like it doesn't even haveto be about mickey necessarily,
it just needs to be like do youunderstand the concept of brand,
which is a whole, whole rabbithole?
Don (52:58):
um, but the ride you're talking about mickey and
minnie's runaway railway is thefirst Mickey Mouse ride in
Disney parks, and it.
Doug (53:07):
Oh really, I didn't know that.
Yeah, yeah, and it is a goodride.
Don (53:10):
And it opened here in California, what, like two years
ago yeah, it's like five yearsago in in Florida.
So it's, it wasn't a, it wasn'ta thing.
See, people are clamoring forMickey.
Ron (53:22):
Yeah, and I think maybe, like also what I'm, that's why
Disney is failing now.
Yeah.
Doug (53:28):
There's no list to be on to get a pass.
Ron (53:31):
They had to buy all the other cool stuff.
They had to go buy X-Men andthey had to buy the Star Wars,
and.
But part of what I think I wassaying is like, um, part of it,
like the survivability of acharacter speaks to, like how
well made that character was tobegin with.
Right, superman is a verywell-designed character.
You can apply him.
He captures something aboutthis sort of like American
(53:53):
cultural spirit or ideology thatpeople will always find
interesting Fear of aliens, likewe talked about yeah, that's
right.
And I think like Bugs Bunny isthe same too, Like Bugs Bunny is
like a is a really great sortof like archetypal character
that you can kind of plug inanywhere.
You can put them on abasketball court, you can put
them in a normal court and likehe's going to be funny, Right.
Doug (54:15):
I really want to know what normal court is.
Don (54:19):
Because he is self-aware and ironic and and yeah, and
knows all of those placementsthat happen in the fluidity of
his context and just wants to bechaotic and ruin someone else's
day, and that's a spirit,that's the kind of character
everyone, every generation.
Ron (54:37):
That's just a personality you probably had at one point in
your life.
You also have been sardonic andmad at people.
Authority.
He's a real first punk actuallybugs bugs big time.
Yeah, I think, and so maybepopeye and betty boop aren't,
because they're also just sortof like, like you're saying, don
they're historically reflectiveof the period that created them
(55:01):
and that's all they really were, and that's well, because
that's all they ever really do,right like so.
Don (55:06):
I mean, I was making a joke before, but literally popeye
only punches his problems likethat's the, that's the gag in
every single episode and youknow, eventually the can of
spinach comes out and he's gonnatake.
Yeah, the problem gets solvedyeah, um, but that doesn't work.
When you move to the late 20thcentury, the early 21st century,
(55:27):
like those, that type ofmasculinity isn't appreciated
the same way that it was in thepast.
Ron (55:33):
So maybe Max was like he had the technical ability, he
had the technical vision, butmaybe he lacked that sort of
like storytelling core orsomething.
Yeah, but so did Disney.
I mean he just stole fairytales like a lot of times and
then changed all the endings.
Doug (55:48):
That's true, of course yeah, although there is
something also to be said aboutthe fact like, if you just say
1930s, I'm probably eventuallylike and it's like word
association, 1930s go.
I probably am going toeventually say betty boop, I
probably would.
I think it would be in there.
So there's also something aboutcapturing the zeitgeist that
that is there, um, but yeah,there's a lot.
(56:11):
I suppose there is a lot tounpack with that.
But to give.
Don (56:15):
So what?
What's max's lastingcontribution?
Just the, the, the technicalrotoscoping and stereoptics?
Or is there something else herethat we're missing?
Doug (56:30):
Obviously within the animation spectrum.
I think he's there to bestudied, of course.
But then I would think aboutcontributions of art and I go
back to this video game that Iplayed, that I'm.
I'm sitting there watchingthese hand animated panels that
are being used for my enjoymentas I'm playing a video game and
(56:51):
going this is so far beyond whatI'm used to within like a video
game context, because it feelsto me so original and different
from everything else that's out.
But what's funny about mesaying that is it's very much
inspired.
And then to go back to ouroriginal conversation about,
isn't this just copying?
You look at the eye shapes andthe patterns and the way things
are animated and it's like itcould have just been Max's, you
(57:13):
know, like kind of copy pasteideas that were like from one of
his notebooks.
But to me it becomes thisincredibly innovative thing that
shows up in this new mediumformat.
And so I think that the thething that is interesting is the
intangible kind of credit to ifthere's just something great
(57:33):
about your art, if there's thatpassion there, and then you can
very effectively communicate it.
It still kind of retains itsbeauty in a sense, and that
maybe, if Betty Boop and Popeyeare stuck.
It's stuck in this era.
There's something still to berefined out of it that shows up
in culture again all of a suddenand I think that that would be
the example is go play cuphead,and that is a reappropriate like
(57:54):
.
That is our, our modern version.
It does very much look like the30s.
The entire soundtrack is bigband jazz, so it's like it's
very much throwing you there,but then it's done in this very
refined new way that isabsolutely stunning and gorgeous
.
Um, so I think that there'ssomething to be mined out of the
fact that, even if somethinggoes away or dies, it's, you
(58:17):
know, much like fashion or thesethings that we've we've kind of
touched on before.
Here we are back again andseeing something that's pulled
from, you know, the past and isdone new again.
That's absolutely beautiful.
And then what would that havebeen had the financial success
continued?
There might be a wholedifferent landscape of of
animation and cartoon that we'relooking at today.
Um, because, yeah, disney takesa lot of that and, like the the
(58:40):
fact that he was often, eventhough he beat him to the punch
with the feature film, and SnowWhite is looked at as one of the
biggest successes.
He really yeah, there's a lotthat can be said for kind of the
unsung heroes of their eras.
Ron (58:57):
Thank you, max.
Someone had to do it,absolutely.
Someone had to becomefinancially insolvent to take
that.
Don (59:08):
I like the way.
I like what you said aboutcapturing the zeitgeist, because
that's.
You know, these aren'tcharacters that are as common.
I agree with you.
They're still in the culturalawareness, but they're not like
if I were to go talk to my Idon't know 10 year old niece or
nephew, they might not know whoBetty Boop is.
(59:31):
Yeah, they might not have.
If I showed a picture, they'dsay oh, yeah, but if I just said
the name they probably mightnot know Popeye probably, but I
don't know that they.
I don't know for sure that theywould Right, but but for me
they are.
They are memories of what wewere, yeah.
Doug (59:50):
Yeah, and that's also an incredibly important part of art
.
Don (59:53):
It's a different type of documentation, that's a feeling
you know, because we didn't talkabout some of the more
problematic issues of animationthat happened around both of
these characters and all thatcoming from from, uh, from Max,
but not not all of it.
I mean, like Disney did thesame thing like especially
during the war.
Yes, um, but uh, but it's that Idon't know, it's that it's
(01:00:14):
almost like I feel bad watchingsome of them sometimes because I
know the the, the things thatthey include that we don't
include anymore, right, right,but it's uh well, we've talked
before about my Lone Rangerlistening.
Right, it's the same thing.
It's that it's that moment inhistory where those stories were
told in such a way that is sooffensive to listen to today,
(01:00:38):
but it still captures that.
Ron (01:00:40):
What that moment was yeah, and maybe that's like a enough
to for an artist to achieveright, to have captured their
moment right.
We were kind of saying earlierlike oh, these characters aren't
as cool as superman or blah,blah, blah.
It's like maybe that's like anextra super rare achievement to
create something so iconic, youknow, for so many decades.
(01:01:00):
But yeah, it's enough just tohave been like a, a, a good
reporter, um, of whatever thecore of your, your time or
moment was right good and badyeah.
Doug (01:01:13):
So, ron, has this inspired you to get back into it?
Will we see your papa?
Ron (01:01:16):
hell, no, it sounds like all the good stuff's been done,
all of the stories have beentold.
It's all Minecraft movies fromhere on out.
That's right.
Doug (01:01:30):
Light your fireworks in the theater people.
Don (01:01:32):
That's right.
Doug (01:01:33):
Exactly Beautiful.
Well, thank you guys.
Ron (01:01:37):
Thank you, doug, yeah, very fun stuff.
Don (01:01:40):
For sure, thanks Doug, thank you.
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