"Artists don't need criticism. Artists need love."—Chuck Jones
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and filmmakers Peggy Stern and John Canemaker—who earned Oscars® for the animated short The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation—have collected the memories of one of Hollywood's greatest animators in a unique, half-hour film entitled Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood. This film, which combines an interview with the legendary animator with newly created animated segments, premieres on TCM Tuesday, March 24, at 5PM (PT), followed by a selection of his films (complete schedule below).
Simple and sweet, the Stern/Canemaker documentary sketches the mirthful soul of a man who has delighted children and the spirit of children within adults for decades. Commencing with childhood reminisces of orchestrating nature off a seaside boardwalk, Jones pinpoints where the concept of the Acme Company came from, how a stray cat named Johnson taught him about the individuality of cats, which informed his ability to characterize animations. Jones talks about his family—a doting mother, a disciplinarian father, and a favorite uncle who trained ants and taught him a lesson in perspective: that the road is better than the end. Jones further delineates the influence of Mark Twain on the creation of Wile E. Coyote, and how he creatively compensated his own insecurities with girls through the presumed irresistibility of Pepe Le Pew.
The Stern/Canemaker film Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood grew out of director Stern's interest in exploring the childhood experiences of artists. In 1997, Canemaker—a longtime mutual friend of Jones and Stern—brought them together for the interviews that became the basis of the film. During the interviews, Jones spontaneously began sketching his boyhood self as he related his memories. These sketches later inspired the documentary's animated sequences, which Canemaker directed.
Shortly before his death, Jones had an opportunity to see a test cut of the film, with new animation and archival imagery blended into the interview footage, and pronounced it "delightful." The Jones family subsequently provided additional material from the family archive, resulting in an intimate film full of revealing anecdotes about the events and personalities that influenced his early creative life and long career in cartoons.
The following is the complete schedule for TCM's March 24 tribute to Chuck Jones (PT):
5:00PM Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood (2009)—Premiere
5:30PM The Night Watchman (1938)
5:40PM Prest-O, Change-O (1939)
5:50PM Sniffles and the Bookworm (1939)
6:00PM Elmer's Candid Camera (1940)
6:10PM Scent-imental Over You (1947)
6:20PM Haredevil Hare (1948)
6:30PM Duck Amuck (1953)
6:40PM One Froggy Evening (1955)
6:50PM What's Opera, Doc? (1957)
7:00PM The Dot and the Line (1965)
7:15PM The Bear that Wasn't (1967)
7:30PM Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood (2009)—Encore
8:00PM The Phantom Tollbooth (1969)
9:30PM The Night Watchman (1938)—Encore
9:40PM Prest-O, Change-O (1939)—Encore
9:50PM Sniffles and the Bookworm (1939)—Encore
10:00PM Elmer's Candid Camera (1940)—Encore
10:10PM Scent-imental Over You (1947)—Encore
10:20PM Haredevil Hare (1948)—Encore
10:30PM Duck Amuck (1953)—Encore
10:40PM One Froggy Evening (1955)—Encore
10:50PM What's Opera, Doc? (1957)—Encore
11:00PM The Dot and the Line (1965)—Encore
11:15PM The Bear that Wasn't (1967)—Encore
11:30PM Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood (2009)—Encore
12:00AM The Phantom Tollbooth (1969)—Encore
Legendary animation producer, director and screenwriter Chuck Jones was the last surviving giant from the golden era of Warner Bros. animation, a period spanning roughly from 1935 to 1959. He excelled at designing and posing expressive characters. Jones has been quoted as saying that an animator is "an actor with a pencil." If so, his work revealed him as a master thespian.
The son of a sometimes abusive father, Jones dropped out of high school and enrolled in the Chouinard Art Institute (later known as the California Institute of the Arts) in Los Angeles at age 15. After a brief stint at a commercial art studio, he became a cel-washer at the Ub Iwerks Studio. He moved up the ranks, becoming a cel-painter, cel-inker and in-betweener (assistant animator) before being fired, rehired and fired again by Iwerks. He worked a variety of jobs before becoming an assistant animator with Leon Schlesinger Productions, the animation unit at Warner Brothers, around 1933. The animation team of Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising (Harman-Ising) had recently departed, and Schlesinger was building his own unit.
Jones was promoted to animator in 1934 and worked on several cartoons helmed by Friz Freleng and others before being assigned with Bob Clampett to Tex Avery's unit at Termite Terrace, the nickname for the bungalow on the Warner lot where the animators toiled. This astonishing assemblage of talent first collaborated on the epochal Gold Diggers of 1949 (1936), Avery's first cartoon for Warners. With this uneven start, an important new era in cartoon history had begun.
By 1938, Jones had graduated to the status of director. His early efforts revealed a strong debt to Walt Disney in both style and subject matter. Set in a world where cute was king, these cartoons typically featured a small, quiet character in a large, forbidding environment, such as in The Night Watchman (1938); Naughty but Mice (1939), which introduced the mouse character Sniffles; and Little Lion Hunter (1939), which introduced the character Inki.
In the early '40s, much of Jones' work was overshadowed by the work of Bob Clampett. But he explored styles and honed his skills, often working without pay on the first cartoons for UPA (United Productions of America), with his 1942 cartoon The Dover Boys becoming a major influence on what would become the UPA style.
After a crippling animators strike, of which Jones was a fervent supporter, studios began cutting back on production costs for cartoons, which resulted in less lavish animation. This cutback, however, spurred Jones to some of his greatest achievements. He began experimenting with stylized minimalist backgrounds, refining movement and paring character animation down to its essentials.
Jones had directed the second and third appearances of the prototypical Bugs Bunny in Prest-o Change-o (1939) and Elmer's Candid Camera (1940). Though Tex Avery would finally crystalize the rabbit's personality later in A Wild Hare (1940), Jones became one of the best helmers of Bugs Bunny, with such memorable installments as Hare-Raising Hare (1946), Baby Buggy Bunny (1954) and Bully for Bugs (1953).
Jones conceived Daffy Duck as a cowardly self-preservationist continually undone by his own greed or selfishness. Jones' trilogy of cartoons starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd—Rabbit Fire (1951), Rabbit Seasoning (1952) and Duck! Rabbit! Duck! (1953)—were masterfully subtle and imaginative examples of character animation. Jones also derived much comic mileage from placing Daffy in wildly incongruous settings, such as in The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950), Duck Dodgers in the 24½ Century and Robin Hood Daffy (1958). He rose to new heights with Duck Amuck (1953), a classic example of reflexivity in cinema, in which Daffy is presented as an animated figure tormented by a mostly off-screen animator.
Jones won the studio an Oscar with For Scent-imental Reasons (1949), which starred one of his most popular creations, the amorous French skunk, Pepe Le Pew. He also created the Road Runner and Wile E Coyote series, which represented the chase film boiled down to its essentials.
In addition to working with an impressive stable of continuing characters, Jones also excelled at "one-shot" cartoons. The most celebrated example may well be One Froggy Evening (1955), an allegory about a singing frog, later christened Michigan J. Frog, who became the symbol of Warner Brothers' WB Network in the mid-'90s.
Many fans and historians believe that Jones achieved his masterpiece with What's Opera, Doc? (1957), which condensed Wagner's 14-hour Der Ring des Nibelungun into a classic six-minute cartoon. This extraordinarily lavish spoof of opera required 106 shots. In 1992, the film was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.
After the demise of Warner Bros. animation in the early 1960s, Jones briefly went to MGM, where he produced and directed a memorable series of Tom and Jerry cartoons. He subsequently kept working through his own production company, Chuck Jones Enterprises, primarily on TV specials, the most famous of which is Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, originally broadcast on CBS in 1966.
Jones and his wife also co-wrote the screenplay for the UPA animated feature Gay Purr-ee (1962), which featured the voices of Judy Garland and Robert Goulet as French cats. And he produced, co-wrote and co-directed (with Abe Levitow) the cartoon portion of the film version of Norman Juster's book The Phantom Tollbooth (1969).
After a semi-retirement in which he lectured, led workshops, painted and received numerous awards, tributes and accolades, Jones returned to the business of directing theatrical cartoons. In 1993, he signed a deal with Warner Brothers to produce and direct new animated shorts featuring classic and new characters. At the age of 82, he produced and directed Chariots of Fur (1994), a new Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon released with the feature Richie Rich. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame the following year.
Jones was given an honorary Oscar at the 1996 ceremony for "the creation of classic cartoons and cartoon characters whose animated lives have brought joy to our real ones for more than half a century." He passed away in 2002.
My thanks to TCM publicist Sarah Schmitz for forwarding the above biographical information on Chuck Jones condensed from TCM's online database. Additional information on Chuck Jones can be obtained at his official website, Wikipedia, and the Senses of Cinema Great Directors Profile on Jones, written by Bill Schaffer.
Cross-published on Twitch.
Having recently experienced the insight that Laura Truffaut could lend to the films of her father François Truffaut when she introduced Les Quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows) as part of the Jean-Pierre Leaud retrospective mounted by the Pacific Film Archive, I was keen to catching her presentation at The Film Desk reissue of L'Enfant sauvage (The Wild Child), currently screening at Landmark's Opera Plaza Cinemas.
As Steve Indig has synopsized for Landmark Theatres: "The year is 1798, and farmers in the south of France, on the hunt for a predator, instead find a naked young boy, presumably grown up in the wild without human contact. As the latest sensation, he's paraded before fee-paying gawkers at the institute for the deaf and dumb, while Dr. Itard (played by director Truffaut himself) debates with a colleague: is the boy a purely natural human, a tabula rasa, or simply an idiot? Itard takes the boy into his own home in an attempt to educate and civilize him.
"Based on an actual case, and with its voiceover narration (an adaptation of Itard's two reports into diary form), this is Truffaut's nearest approach to documentary, with Néstor Almendros' striking b&w photography evoking the earliest days of the cinema, and a much-imitated all-Vivaldi score. As l'enfant sauvage, Jean-Pierre Cargol, a French Roma boy picked from over 2,500 hopefuls, is alternately ferocious and docile, while as Dr. Itard, Truffaut is superb. (Alfred Hitchcock wrote Truffaut asking for 'the autograph of the actor who plays the doctor, he is so wonderful,' while Steven Spielberg was so impressed by the director's compassionate performance that he cast Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.) Cast partly because he realized he'd be directing the boy within the film, Truffaut imposed on himself a 'no smiling' rule—he lapses briefly once—to attain a kind of gravity, but then this only reinforces his ruthlessly unsentimental treatment of potentially treacly material, even as the inevitable question ('Was it worth it?') arises."
Introducing the film at its first screening, Laura Truffaut stated that in 1969—10 years after her father filmed Les Quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows)—François Truffaut filmed L'Enfant sauvage (The Wild Child). Because the main character of the movie was a child, Truffaut decided to film the movie during the Summer school break, which—of course—meant that Laura Truffaut was also on school break. One year younger than Jean-Pierre Cargol, who played Victor the Wild Child, Laura was allowed to spend part of her summer on set, along with all the other various children of cast and crew members. It was a family-oriented shoot. Laura was one of the oldest children, which entitled her to certain privileges. It was a wonderful, peaceful experience for her.
Laura referenced two key collaborators who she feels contributed enormously to her father's project. The first, Jean Gruault, was a screenwriter who had worked with her father previously on Jules and Jim and went on to work with him on a couple of his period films. Gruault's task was tricky. They wanted to keep the film close to the reports written by Dr. Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, the physician who worked with Victor of Aveyron. Gruault summarized much of the original material, including scientific treatises, and philosophy books of the Enlightenment that had to do with issues of nature, culture, and the development of language, endeavoring to shape this academic information into a compelling narrative. The story—set during the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century—also marked the beginning of modern psychiatry. In fact, the character of Dr. Philippe Pinel (Jean Dasté)—Dr. Itard's colleague at the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb—was considered one of the founding fathers of psychiatry.
Another brilliant contributor to the film was Spanish cinematographer Néstor Almendros, who had previously worked with Eric Rohmer. Truffaut was impressed with his work, especially his b&w cinematography. L'Enfant sauvage was their first collaboration.
I was curious how Truffaut discovered Jean-Pierre Cargol and how he worked with him to achieve such a noteworthy performance in this film? Laura responded that Truffaut's assistant Suzanne Schiffman found Cargol. She did something which could probably not be done anymore. She traveled all over France and looked at children as they were coming out of their schools. Today that would be considered stalking but at that time it was necessary because there were not that many French child actors. They also advertised in local papers and Laura Truffaut recalled that Cargol was one of three boys considered for the role out of an original pool of 2,500. She remembered her father showing her photos of the three boys under consideration; but, Cargol clearly "had" something more. She remembered him as quiet. Cargol's younger brother was also on set and he was agitated and devilish, all over the place, and funny; but, Jean-Pierre was low key, attentive, quiet, and clearly gifted.
As for whether she played with Cargol much on set, Laura qualified that several scenes—such as the ones in the forest—were filmed with a skeleton crew. The scenes were physically challenging for Cargol as he had to run around naked. Only a few people were allowed to be present for the filming of those scenes and certainly not she. Since Cargol was just about in every scene, he was always working, so she didn't have much opportunity to interact with him socially. Inbetween scenes, even if he came around, he was reserved. "He was among us," she said, "but not fully." She has photographs of all of them playing so she knows they did; but, not a whole lot.
Asked what became of Cargol, Laura believes he became a musician. He was from a gypsy family brought up in the south of France and his uncle was a well-known classical guitar player. She believes he became a classical guitar player like his uncle. As for the Wild Boy of Aveyron, Dr. Itard lost interest in him after a few years. Unfortunately, in reality the story is a bit less lovely than depicted in the film. Although the movie doesn't romanticize what it shows, as time went on Dr. Itard became frustrated that the child never learned to speak and went on to conduct research with other children. His governess Mme. Guérin (portrayed by Françoise Seigner in the film) continued to take care of Victor who learned to work as he grew up and became employed, living until about the age of 40.
As for why Truffaut had taken an interest in the story of Victor of Aveyron, Laura detailed that her father was deeply concerned with the cause of children, especially neglected children and their rights, a cause which mattered a lot to him even though he was not necessarily a political creature and was more focused on his films. But the plight of unwanted children was dear to his heart. Two elements are involved. The first would be autobiographical since Truffaut was himself fairly neglected as a child—not to the extreme of what happened to Victor of Aveyron—but enough to feel empathy. His first film Les Quatre cents coups is widely acknowledged as autobiographical and dealt with parental indifference. Truffaut believed that being indifferent towards a child was just as bad as physical abuse. He was also interested in the relationship between the doctor and the child, which was not so much about love as it was about care. Truffaut was interested in how adults invest themselves in the care of a child; something which was personally important to him and undoubtedly accounted for his wanting to play the role of Dr. Itard.
More generally, there was a book that came out in the mid-sixties in France called Wild Children, which covered several other cases of feral children, but especially the story of Victor of Aveyron. The book included the actual reports of Dr. Itard and Laura said—as soon as her father read this—he knew he wanted to make a film about it. He had also been interested in the story of Helen Keller, first the play and then the movie The Miracle Worker, whose themes he found compelling. Another aspect that meant a lot to Truffaut and which was referenced early in the movie was that everything a child does, he does for the first time. Her father conceived this in filmic language: films show you things for the first time or for the first time in a certain way.
It is clear to Laura Truffaut why her father dedicated the film to Jean-Pierre Leaud. Leaud was the original wild child in his life and career. The relationship between Leaud and her father was admittedly special and meaningful. They worked together again and again. Further, her father felt that he told more about himself in his films which were not blatantly autobiographical, films based on other sources, either adaptations of novels or—in this case—history. In that sense, he saw a connection between this story and Jean-Pierre Leaud. Truffaut's oeuvre can basically be categorized into two groups—the earlier autobiographical films with which he is most associated, such as the Antoine Doinel cycle, and later historical or period-piece films like L'Enfant sauvage and The Story of Adele H.—but, he did not prefer one style over the other; he preferred to alternate between them. Laura Truffaut stressed that her father was unique in that he only made movies he loved. His movies did not cost a whole lot of money for the most part so he was able to do moreorless what he wanted. He never had to make a movie for hire. But that also meant he had to balance his work. He couldn't make too many adaptations of historical novels because, naturally, they were more expensive.
Making L'Enfant sauvage was odd because, at first, he couldn't secure financing, primarily because the film was in black and white and featured no name stars. The only way United Artists agreed to produce and distribute the film was if it was sold and packaged with the film her father had just made: La Sirène du Mississippi (Mississippi Mermaid), which was an adaptation of an American novel Waltz Into Darkness by William Irish (Cornell Woolrich). Mississippi Mermaid starred Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo, the biggest French stars of the time, so United Artists agreed to L'Enfant sauvage on the condition that they could have and distribute Truffaut's more colorful, expensive movie. Ironically enough—though perhaps not so surprisingly—Mississippi Mermaid was a big flop and L'Enfant sauvage did very well, especially on American college campuses, making up for the financial losses of Mississippi Mermaid. But all her father's films were personal. He wanted to make them that way. As time went on, even with the historical pieces, he went more towards original screenplays. Adele H., for example, was an original screenplay. He became more interested in initiating material and movies that had one ascending line. Even if they did not have a lot of hope or moved in many directions, he tried to sustain the public's attention with one idea. Adele H. is an example of that. This approach didn't always succeed and he wasn't always happy with the result; but, it was the discipline he adopted.
In his write-up of L'Enfant sauvage for The East Bay Express, Kelly Vance underscores Truffaut's evident intention "to pay tribute to the early days of film as well as to the glories of the French Enlightenment. Cinematographer Néstor Almendros' gorgeous black-and-white images are composed in a montage D.W. Griffith would have recognized, and just to be sure we get the point, Truffaut ends more than one scene with an iris fade—in which the image fades down to a small circle, usually highlighting a significant object." Though aware that Laura Truffaut was a child during the making of the film, I was curious if she recalled any discussions Truffaut had with Almendros regarding the visual design of the film? Laura confirmed Vance's observation that her father and Almendros wanted to pay tribute to Griffith as well as to honor silent film conventions. She doesn't know where—perhaps a flea market?—but Almendros found an old-fashioned iris and figured out how to make it work. He knew he didn't want a slick modern one.
Also in his article for the East Bay Express, Vance suggested that Truffaut's working relationship with Jean-Pierre Cargol was an instance where "art imitates life" in the sense that "we get the impression Truffaut spelled out each and every gesture in the same sort of detail that Itard imposed on Victor." Laura Truffaut confirmed that her father's directorical style was indeed precise and that he probably showed Jean-Pierre exactly how he wanted him to perform, but this was mixed with Cargol's improvisations inspired by genuine talent. She recalls that her father showed Cargol some movies before they started filming—Chaplin perhaps?—to provide Cargol hints of what he was after. But, generally speaking, there was not a lot of improvisation in her father's movies. Though dialogue was written progressively and not as the film started, he nonetheless had a clear screenplay and knew exactly where he wanted the film to go.
Michel Ocelot's Azur & Asmar arrives in San Francisco adorned and bejeweled with superlatives. "The year's most beautiful animated film!," writes Andrew O'Hehir at Salon, "Impossibly gorgeous ... the sheer storybook rapture swept me away!" "So gloriously bright," writes Leslie Felperin at Variety, "audiences with sensitive eyes may need shades." And at Film Journey, Doug Cummings writes: "Sets a new bar for digital animation! Closer to a handsome storybook than a mainstream CGI film, lending the narrative a significant degree of visual enchantment." Rather than rack the thesaurus for additional adjectives—"bewitching ensorcellments" comes to mind—I focus on Ocelot's presentation at the film's first screening at Landmark's Opera Plaza. As a disgruntled aside, the beauty of this film deserved a much larger screen than the woefully inadequate Opera Plaza. The film, properly projected, should be—as Ocelot put it—"like diamonds getting into your eyes." I'm hoping its placement at the Opera Plaza doesn't keep audiences away.
As Ocelot officially synopsizes: "Azur and Asmar is the story of two boys raised as brothers. Blonde, blue-eyed, white skinned Azur and black-haired, brown-eyed, dark-skinned Asmar are lovingly cared for by Asmar's gentle mother, who tells them magical stories of her faraway homeland and of a beautiful, imprisoned Fairy Djinn waiting to be set free. Time passes, and one day Azur's father, the master of the house, provokes a brutal separation. Azur is sent away to study, while Asmar and his mother are driven out, homeless and penniless.
"Years later, as a young adult, Azur remains haunted by memories of the sunny land of his nanny, and sets sail south across the high seas to find the country of his dreams. Arriving as an immigrant in a strange land, Azur is rejected by everyone he meets on account of his 'unlucky' blue eyes, until finally he resolves never to open those eyes again. The once-beautiful child clad in gold is reduced to a blind beggar. Yet, blind though he is, little by little and step by step, he discovers a beautiful and mysterious country. Meanwhile, back in her homeland, Azur's nanny has become a wealthy merchant and Asmar has grown into a dashing horseman. Reunited but now as adversaries, the two brothers set off on a dangerous quest to find and free the Fairy of the Djinns."
* * *
Michael Guillén: Michel, could you please talk about the techniques used to achieve such stunning animation?
Michel Ocelot: Although it doesn't quite show, all the characters are CGI 3D and the backgrounds are 2D; but, I was the boss, not the computer. I decided what I wanted. A lot of computer films tell a lot about what the computer can do instead of telling the story but here I was thinking about the story with the image of the fairy tale, nothing realistic, where we all play together at make believe. I'm not trying to have all the trees look real—if you say it's flat, that's fine with me—but, little by little, you play with my imagery and you believe what I say is true. The image is invented but the sentiment is genuine.
Guillén: What inspired this story?
Ocelot: This story is in the here and now. Although a fairy tale, it is about the conflict between two countries, two cultures. Now there is a Western bloc and a Muslim bloc, rich people and poor people, and I wanted to talk about that. Little by little, the story came to me. At the beginning I didn't think about North Africa, but—as a Frenchman—I thought it would be a good idea to talk about what I knew. So the first country for me is France—though here, now, the translation into English is fine with me—and the other country is North Africa because most of the immigrants in France are from North Africa. I decided that the country on the other side of the sea would be North Africa because it rings true for me.
That allowed me something else. Azur & Asmar is a fable and you can use a fable for anything else. While we were making the film, there was some violence in certain segments of Paris. I had no idea anything was happening. I was rollerskating to work, crossing Paris, enjoying the beauty and the peace of the city. When I got to where I was working on the film, where a lot of people were thinking of making something beautiful and good, and where we were all friends, I received phone calls from Japan, Great Britain and the United States asking me if I was okay? If Paris was burning? I didn't understand the question. They explained what they had heard on the news. As more people phoned to ask if Paris was burning—by now I knew what was happening—I told them, "You watch too much CNN." If one of the reporters from CNN had been following me, they would have seen the opposite of what they were showing on TV: a totally peaceful city where people of diverse origins were working together, never thinking of fighting, wanting instead to create something beautiful like Azur & Asmar. That is why in the closing credits I mention that the film is made in Paris with friends from different origins. I asked people on the crew where their parents were from—not their grandparents but their parents—and I wrote these countries down and the list represented the whole planet.
As I was saying, Azur & Asmar is a fable and can be used in any time in any country; but, because I was thinking of North Africa, I added something historical, the Muslim civilization from the Middle Ages when it was brilliant and open. That's a historical "extra" to the fable. It's important to remember that Muslim culture at a certain point was much more interesting and open than Western civilization.
Guillén: Why did you elect not to translate the Arabic spoken in the film, either through dubbing or subtitles?
Ocelot: Arabic was important because I was talking about this civilization. The Muslim civilization put many civilizations together through this language. For example, in Japan they respected my rule: you dub the French, you don't touch the Arabic, you don't subtitle it, that's the clockwork.
Guillén: What do you mean by "the clockwork"?
Ocelot: The way the film works is that you have to know there are several languages in the world and—in reality—there are no subtitles. I think the film is better that way. If you buy the French DVD and—if you look for it—you can find subtitles for the Arabic so you can know what they say; but, it's not the default option. If you just play the film, it has no subtitles. That's the way I want people to see Azur & Asmar. After they've seen it, they can go back and watch it again with the subtitles if they like. My concern now is that I'm afraid the American distributor of the DVD has ruined my film by putting subtitles over the Arabic in both English and French. Tomorrow I am flying to New York to try to stop them. I told them by contract that it's forbidden to dub or subtitle for general viewing. I don't mind if it's an option in the DVD extras. The U.S. launch of the DVD was supposed to be tomorrow; but—if there are subtitles you cannot take off—I will try to stop it.
Guillén: What influenced the look of the film?
Ocelot: I love Persian miniatures very much. They're refined and pretty and are not afraid of being beautiful and understandable. The faces are nice. The costumes are intricate and well-made. I combined those with real things because I was celebrating a civilization that is still beautiful, with gardens and decorative art. I'm encouraging you to go and see the real thing.
Guillén: The African influence on your films is quite striking.
Ocelot: Well, when I was a kid I was Black. [Chuckles.] I was going to school in New Guinea. In the beginning me and my brother were the first two white children in our school. So my primary schooling was in Africa. I have only good recollections from this time. It was a time of total peace and harmony with only good people around me. No violence. At least five religions living well together. And beautiful people who did not hide their bodies, which I tried to show in Kirikou et la sorcière (1998). Don't be ashamed; it's right. But it was almost impossible to sell to the United States because of the way the women were dressed and the way the hero wasn't dressed at all.
Guillén: Do you have a sense of how your films are received by children?
Ocelot: Children love my films. I feel this film is for everybody beginning from the age of seven, the age of reason, because it is a serious story. Some people told me they felt the film would work for five-year-olds but I thought they were lying until I saw some five-year-olds watching Azur & Asmar more intensely than the grown-ups. A lot of parents have told me that children can start appreciating films at 1½ years of age; but, I think that's a little early. My trick is that I'm not creating my films for children. I make them for human beings just like me. I'm only making films which excite me and interest me today. But I know that in the house there will be kids so I'm trying not to harm them but I tell them all. For kids it's all right if you don't understand; but even when you don't understand, a kid can tell if someone is making fun of them or taking them seriously. They might not understand my films but they see that I'm taking them seriously. The film registers and will help them later. They will understand later. The job of kids is to learn.
Guillén: When Princess Chamsous Sabah sneaks out of the palace to survey her city, she notes the various houses of worship, including a Christian church with—what was to me—a familiar Byzantine representation of Christ. This was a lovely historical decoupage.
Ocelot: In that scene I am telling the history of North Africa backwards. Before the Muslims invaded North Africa, it was a Christian country under Byzantine rule and that's why I show Christ. Before then it was Greco-Roman and I show an arena with the huge sculptured head of Jupiter. Before Greco-Roman, there were Cathaginian and Phoenician images. In those ruins there's another big head of Baal. And before that there were cave paintings.
Guillén: What is next for you?
Ocelot: Azur & Asmar was a relatively heavy work. It was expensive, involving a lot of people, a lot of hardware, software, and it took a long time. I want to come back to short films because animation works very well in short films. Animation is like jewelry making; it's not making big trucks. I have many different stories to tell and—though some are expecting me to make another feature film—I'm going back to short films and television. It's not that I like television that much but television is important because it reaches people and children in their homes. Some people don't go to the movies. I'm going to try to make 10 little masterpieces with the very simple technique of black silhouette, shadow puppet theatre. That's what I'm doing. I'm trying to combine the simplicity of cut-out—which I was used to doing when I had no money—with the convenient aspects of digital animation. I very much enjoy making feature films—I should have started earlier—but, I'm enjoying going back to short stories.
Azur & Asmar is showing at Landmark's Opera Plaza Cinemas, 601 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco (415) 267-4893. Tickets are $10.50 for general admission and $7:50 for seniors and children. Showtimes (valid through March 12): Fri-Thu at 1:50, 4:15, 7:00, 9:30. Advance tickets can be purchased online at: http://www.landmarktheatres.com/tickets and at the theatre box office.
Cross-published on Twitch.
In the office of Jeff Adachi, San Francisco's Public Defender, there's a wooden African sculpture bristling with nails. Adachi explains that each nail driven into the sculpture represents an obstacle overcome or a conflict resolved; a guiding sentiment to inform daily work. Adachi and I first met when he premiered his first documentary The Slanted Screen: Asian Men In Film and Television at the 2006 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF). I wrote up the film, recounted personal resonances, and interviewed Adachi for a new online project of mine that I had decided to call The Evening Class. Three years later and here we are—gratefully!—once again. My thanks to Jeff for inviting me to his office to discuss his latest film You Don't Know Jack: The Jack Soo Story, premiering at SFIAAFF's 27th edition.
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Michael Guillén: Jeff, I want to first express how delighted I am that The Slanted Screen was not a one-hit wonder. [Adachi laughs.] You've continued on to make more films for us. Thank you! In your capacity as San Francisco's Public Defender, as an elected official, are there term limits?
Adachi: [Laughs.] Actually, no, not for Department Heads. An elected Department Head is seen as a non-political position and there are no term limits. I'll be here for a while. It's my second term. I've been in the office for 22 years but Public Defender for 7.
Guillén: I ask because I was curious if you were paving the way towards a new career?
Adachi: No, no, not at all. Let me tell you, I do enjoy filmmaking. When you have a subject that you're passionate about, obsessed with, it becomes very easy to become involved in filmmaking. It's actually a lot like trial work in a way because you are discovering your subject, in this case Jack Soo.
I came across Jack's story when I was making The Slanted Screen. I remembered him from Barney Miller where he played the cop with the really dry wit sense of humor. But the thing I remembered about him was how he changed his name. I knew that he was Japanese and had turned his name into a Chinese surname, Jack Soo. I always wondered why he did that? Why would you change your name? A lot of people do change their name in show biz, but he changed his name from a Japanese name to a Chinese name.
I started to find a few articles here and there on him. In fact, at one point I got a bunch of articles on him off EBay, somebody had a file of articles on Jack Soo and these were articles from the '60s and '70s. Even in '64-'65, Jack was making headlines. In TV Guide Magazine they said something like, "Jack Soo is no Uncle Tom." Here was this guy in the mid-sixties, right at the cusp of the Civil Rights Movement, talking about negative stereotyping and that he refused to plays roles that he thought were subservient. It struck me as, "Wow. This is a guy who was ahead of his time." Then, as I started learning more about his life story, I just became fascinated with what motivated him? What kept him going? Here was somebody who had every reason not to even try to do what he did, which was to be an entertainer.
He was born in 1917. He started performing at his church. He grew up in Oakland, California, although he was born on a ship halfway back to Japan. His parents lived here and they decided that he was the oldest boy, they wanted to have him born in Japan, so his mother and father were on the steamer back to Japan and that's when he was born. That would have implications later in his life. He was considered an enemy alien during the war. But then he started performing in plays, these were mainstream plays that he got small roles in, when he was 18-19. He was a student at Berkeley, an English major, and would perform in nightclubs in the evening. He was performing at Andy Wong's Sky Room, which was a nightclub that actually existed in Chinatown prior to the Forbidden City. They later became competitors, but Andy Wong's Sky Room was the place to go and Jack performed there before the war. Of course, when the war happened and he was interned, he began performing and entertaining in the camps, which—again, when you think about it—here they are, taken from their homes, locked in these desolate places with nothing to do, boring, and Jack Soo—then Goro Suzuki—put together these extravagant shows. By extravagant I don't mean like Broadway; though, actually people do describe them as being almost like Broadway productions. Of course they didn't have the props and everything because they were in jail. What people said about Goro Suzuki was that he just didn't want their spirit to be broken.
Guillén: One thing that impressed me while watching your documentary about Jack Soo is that there is no trace of bitterness in him. He understood and commanded the tasks at hand. Not only did he rally and inspire the internees so they wouldn't lose spirit, but he went outside of the camps to help the U.S. Government with intelligence! Jack Soo had clear focus of what he could contribute wherever he was.
Adachi: No, he wasn't bitter about it. At least from talking to people who knew him, he would never even talk about the camp experience unless he was talking to somebody who he knew would understand. In fact, he never even told his daughter about the camps. She found out about it after he passed away. He was the kind of person who rolled with the punches and at the same time he never forgot. In almost every interview that he's done with the mainstream press that I've read, he would mention the fact that he would not play ethnic stereotypes. But he would never talk about it with friends or other people, which is also interesting because most people—if they're one with the press—they probably wear it on their sleeve. But he wasn't one of those people. He never would complain. He never would be bitter about the roles. But when he had the chance to speak out about it, he did.
In the documentary we only went through Barney Miller and Valentine's Day, some of the highlights of his career, but he was in The Green Beret with John Wayne, and was in a lot of the television series at that time: Ironside, Odd Couple, The Jimmy Stewart Show. So he was one of the few guys that was around at that time, basically him and Pat Morita and they were both comics. Jack was different because his brand of comedy was unique. If you think about deadpan humor, you might think about Joey Bishop—who, ironically, was Jack Soo's comedy partner for many years—but, Jack's gift was to be able to play the gag or the joke out or the lines out without ever letting on to anyone that he was in on it. That was the beauty of it. He was able to execute a line and it seemed effortless.
Guillén: Returning back to Jack's San Francisco Club days if we may for a moment, I'm curious: wasn't Forbidden City a venue for Chinese performers? And yet, wasn't Jack an emcee there? So clearly Forbidden City was more a pan-Asian venue?
Adachi: Yeah. Y'know, at the time, there wasn't an equivalent club in Japantown and so—not only Jack but other Japanese American performers like Dorothy Toy (whose real name was Dorothy Takahashi)—performed at the Forbidden City and in other clubs around the United States. Jack learned to hone his comedy and his singing—he was a singer—and I have some old records of him when he was younger and he had an incredible voice. By the time he cut "For Once In My Life", which was in 1965, he was already 45-46 years old.
Guillén: That is a tremendous bit of cultural archaeology, by the way, Jeff. It gave me goosebumps when your documentary detailed that Motown originally recorded "For Once In My Life" with Jack Soo, only later choosing to release Stevie Wonder's upbeat version.
Adachi: I had heard this rumor, someone said he had cut an album for Motown. I found one entry on the Internet and then I tracked down Al Abrams and he remembered Jack and remembered the song but didn't know what happened to it. He put me in contact with this guy in New York who handled all the archives from that time and he was able to find an original single Jack had cut with "For Once In My Life" and another song "Duo." We'll be adding "Duo" to the final cut. It had Jack singing with simple piano accompaniment. Later, I found the orchestra version that a friend of his had on an old 33 & a third; that's why it's all scratchy.
Guillén: But it was great to listen to! I loved that. It was a wonderful touch to the documentary. Going back yet again to the fact that Jack Soo was a Japanese performer in a Chinese nightclub, speaks to second generation ethnic disguise as a means to get ahead in American entertainment. Can you speak to that?
Adachi: Sure. Everybody knew he was Japanese when he was performing in the Chinese night club. At the time the Chinese and the Japanese, at least the first generation, didn't get along; but, Jack got along with everybody. Particularly when he went to Broadway and was chosen to perform in Flower Drum Song, it was a real boost to the other performers at the Forbidden City because here was one of their own who had come up through the Chinese night club circuit. By that time Jack had gone on and he had been performing in Cleveland and Akron and Youngstown, Chicago, all over the MidWest and then the East. He did the whole night club circuit as we talked about in the film. But think about that. Here was a guy who had just been released from camp in 1942 and he goes out there and he starts performing right away under the name of Jack Soo but in a place like Cleveland or Akron. I mean, it's mindboggling to think about that.
Guillén: Just to be clear, he was already using the name of Jack Soo when he was performing at the Forbidden City?
Adachi: No. What happened was he was performing at the Sky Room and then he was interned and then he began to perform in the night club circuit and all that. Then—as alluded to in the film—when he found out that they were casting for Flower Drum Song, he didn't think that he would audition well so—instead of going to New York and auditioning for the show—he booked himself at the Forbidden City on the idea that talent scouts would eventually go there. And they did. That's how he was discovered by Gene Kelly, the dancer-director of Flower Drum Song.
Guillén: Was it Gene who changed his name to Jack Soo?
Adachi: No. He changed his name when he got out of the camps. We actually found an original letter that basically said the story behind this is that the owner of a night club called Chin's—where Jack was working at the time as a manager—let Jack go on one night when the emcee got sick; but, the owner of the night club was worried that if Jack went by his Japanese name, it would turn the customers off and there might be trouble. The story goes that's why he changed his name. As one of the women says in the film, he went out of the camps as Jack Soo. But there are all sorts of stories about this. C.Y. Lee says that they changed his name at the Forbidden City night club in the fifties. Other people say he did it for other reasons. But finally I got to the truth that he changed it after he got out of the camps and was living and working in Cleveland.
Guillén: Can you speak a bit about your research methodology? How did you go about securing your talking heads? How did you know who to approach?
Adachi: Well, y'know, I'll tell ya, I really had doubts that I could make this movie at various points because, first, he had died 30 years ago on January 11, 1979, which would make him 91 today, and so I didn't even know if I could find people who knew him or knew of him. I wrote a letter to his daughter. I didn't hear back from her for a long time. She contacted me through a third party and eventually we spoke. I told her I wanted to do this film. I think she was probably suspicious at first—she didn't know why someone was approaching her after all this time—but, then she agreed. She said okay. She said, "I want to see it when it's done, but you can do it." I obviously interviewed her for the film. Slowly I came into contact with various people, through her in some cases, and it was interesting because it was almost as if the story began to unveil itself. I didn't know the story. A lot of times you know the story before you make the film and you have a certain angle you want to explore or prove; but, for Jack's film, I really didn't know where it was going to lead. I didn't know about his childhood other than what I had been able to piece together. I'm sure that there's even more to his life than we were able to capture in this film. At various points in his life he had experiences that would or could destroy somebody; but, he always kept his spirit, kept going forward, and refused to give up. He loved to perform and put up with a lot of rough times. He once said, "I've performed in every toilet", meaning every down-and-out night club in the United States. He had a full career as a night club comic and performer in the forties and the late fifties. He had 20 years behind him before he got "discovered" for Flower Drum Song.
Guillén: In your research did you find any filmed footage of Jack?
Adachi: I did. He was on The Dinah Show and a couple of other shows; but, he didn't reveal a lot about himself. By that time we had already started this film as a discovery but I'm thinking maybe I'll include clips from those in a DVD edition. We're actually adding a small piece to the film, taking the second song from the back side of "For Once In My Life" and creating a montage of other films that he did.
Guillén: Has there been a biography written on Jack Soo?
Adachi: No.
Guillén: So your film is the first biography? Why did you choose the medium of film rather than writing about him?
Adachi: While it was more challenging to do it as a film—because, obviously, we didn't have footage of him performing in the camps or as a young man in the clubs—we did have some powerful photographs. The version you saw was a rough cut but the version that's going to be shown at the film festival has edited movement of the photographs, additional music and sound, and—because we didn't have a lot of footage of him when he was young—one thing that we're going to be doing, which is somewhat unusual, is that we're going to be creating sounds that represent the night club so that people can experience it while watching the film. When the guy's talking about a baseball game, you'll hear a baseball game. When he talks about meeting his wife in a club, we'll use little pieces of music that we have of Jack's music at that time from old 78 records we located.
Guillén: This might seem evident, but what are your hopes in bringing Jack Soo's story forward?
Adachi: I hope his story has relevance for today's generation because he was not only a pioneer but somebody who had the confidence at that time to do the work that he was doing. That's something—I won't say it was unusual—but it was certainly unique for that time. He co-starred in a film with Dean Martin. He used to get called on the stage in Vegas to perform with Sammy Davis, Jr.
Guillén: I was amused to consider he was an honorary member of the Rat Pack.
Adachi: They definitely knew him. Jack was somebody who carried himself with that level of ability and confidence. That's why when you see his work in Barney Miller, it's very subtle. Even in Valentine's Day. The first time I watched these I thought, "These are dumb '60s shows" but the more I watched them—the more I watched his facial reactions—after two or three times I thought, "Whoa. Wait a minute." This guy really worked for the effect he achieved in even small scenes of Barney Miller. Not everyone could pull that off. It took a tremendous amount of—not only acting ability—but confidence to be able to pull those scenes off without looking silly or being a buffoon.
Guillén: I admire his balance. Cognizant of and not meaning to demean his Japanese descent, one of the things that impresses me most about Jack Soo is what I would qualify as his truly American sense of comic hipness. As an Asian American performer he did that before anyone else and precisely with the flair of confidence you're describing.
Adachi: He refused to do roles that required an accent. I think there's only one that I've seen where he sort of has an accent. What I was told was that—because he was an English major—he was particular about English. He would correct people when they would say something grammatically incorrect, just as a way of joking with people. As Hal Kanter says from Valentine's Day, Jack refused to play subservient roles. He said, "No. I'm not going to do that. That's not who I am." At one point he said, "Yeah, sure, the Japanese gardener, sure there's this there's that, but we don't need to only portray ourselves in that way." He was adamant about being a person who was seen as an American. Even now you see so many actors—and we talked about this in The Slanted Screen—who are Asian Americans portraying foreign-born. You still see very few of them playing American-born characters. And here's Jack in 1964—or even 1961 in Flower Drum Song—playing an all Asian American character.
Guillén: Now that You Don't Know Jack: The Jack Soo Story is edging towards completion and its festival premiere, has Jack's daughter seen the film and does she approve?
Adachi: She saw the rough cut and loved it. Certainly I would have loved to have made this film 30 years ago to interview Jack directly. Even 20 years ago there were plenty of people like Tony Franciosa and Danny Arnold who were still alive who would have been great to interview. But somehow it feels right that we're making the film at this time.
Guillén: That's what I would say. I can understand why you're saying that because any documentarian would prefer access to primary sources; but, the fact that you have endeavored such cultural recovery is in and of itself inspiring, let alone that the story you have brought forth is inspiring.
Adachi: There were plenty of times when I thought, "Man, I don't have a film here. I'm wasting everyone's time." And then at certain points someone would say something or they'd lead me to someone else, and I'd think, "Hey, this story can be told."
Guillén: You should take pride in knowing you will reacquaint many people with Jack Soo.
Adachi: I'm especially interested to see how the film affects young people who have no point of reference of knowing Jack Soo and whether they'll be any interest. I do believe that Jack's story holds contemporary value. But we'll see. That's why we named the film, You Don't Know Jack. I hope people see the film and I hope that people can take different things from his experience. I certainly did.
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Of related interest is Harley Spiller's article "Late Night in the Lion's Den: Chinese Restaurant-Nightclubs in 1940s San Francisco" written for Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture and available in PDF format.
Cross-published on Twitch.
"Artists don't need criticism. Artists need love."—Chuck Jones
Simple and sweet, the Stern/Canemaker documentary sketches the mirthful soul of a man who has delighted children and the spirit of children within adults for decades. Commencing with childhood reminisces of orchestrating nature off a seaside boardwalk, Jones pinpoints where the concept of the Acme Company came from, how a stray cat named Johnson taught him about the individuality of cats, which informed his ability to characterize animations. Jones talks about his family—a doting mother, a disciplinarian father, and a favorite uncle who trained ants and taught him a lesson in perspective: that the road is better than the end. Jones further delineates the influence of Mark Twain on the creation of Wile E. Coyote, and how he creatively compensated his own insecurities with girls through the presumed irresistibility of Pepe Le Pew.
The Stern/Canemaker film Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood grew out of director Stern's interest in exploring the childhood experiences of artists. In 1997, Canemaker—a longtime mutual friend of Jones and Stern—brought them together for the interviews that became the basis of the film. During the interviews, Jones spontaneously began sketching his boyhood self as he related his memories. These sketches later inspired the documentary's animated sequences, which Canemaker directed.
Shortly before his death, Jones had an opportunity to see a test cut of the film, with new animation and archival imagery blended into the interview footage, and pronounced it "delightful." The Jones family subsequently provided additional material from the family archive, resulting in an intimate film full of revealing anecdotes about the events and personalities that influenced his early creative life and long career in cartoons.
Legendary animation producer, director and screenwriter Chuck Jones was the last surviving giant from the golden era of Warner Bros. animation, a period spanning roughly from 1935 to 1959. He excelled at designing and posing expressive characters. Jones has been quoted as saying that an animator is "an actor with a pencil." If so, his work revealed him as a master thespian.
Jones was promoted to animator in 1934 and worked on several cartoons helmed by Friz Freleng and others before being assigned with Bob Clampett to Tex Avery's unit at Termite Terrace, the nickname for the bungalow on the Warner lot where the animators toiled. This astonishing assemblage of talent first collaborated on the epochal Gold Diggers of 1949 (1936), Avery's first cartoon for Warners. With this uneven start, an important new era in cartoon history had begun.
In the early '40s, much of Jones' work was overshadowed by the work of Bob Clampett. But he explored styles and honed his skills, often working without pay on the first cartoons for UPA (United Productions of America), with his 1942 cartoon The Dover Boys becoming a major influence on what would become the UPA style.
Jones had directed the second and third appearances of the prototypical Bugs Bunny in Prest-o Change-o (1939) and Elmer's Candid Camera (1940). Though Tex Avery would finally crystalize the rabbit's personality later in A Wild Hare (1940), Jones became one of the best helmers of Bugs Bunny, with such memorable installments as Hare-Raising Hare (1946), Baby Buggy Bunny (1954) and Bully for Bugs (1953).
Jones conceived Daffy Duck as a cowardly self-preservationist continually undone by his own greed or selfishness. Jones' trilogy of cartoons starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd—Rabbit Fire (1951), Rabbit Seasoning (1952) and Duck! Rabbit! Duck! (1953)—were masterfully subtle and imaginative examples of character animation. Jones also derived much comic mileage from placing Daffy in wildly incongruous settings, such as in The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950), Duck Dodgers in the 24½ Century and Robin Hood Daffy (1958). He rose to new heights with Duck Amuck (1953), a classic example of reflexivity in cinema, in which Daffy is presented as an animated figure tormented by a mostly off-screen animator.
In addition to working with an impressive stable of continuing characters, Jones also excelled at "one-shot" cartoons. The most celebrated example may well be One Froggy Evening (1955), an allegory about a singing frog, later christened Michigan J. Frog, who became the symbol of Warner Brothers' WB Network in the mid-'90s.
Many fans and historians believe that Jones achieved his masterpiece with What's Opera, Doc? (1957), which condensed Wagner's 14-hour Der Ring des Nibelungun into a classic six-minute cartoon. This extraordinarily lavish spoof of opera required 106 shots. In 1992, the film was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.
After the demise of Warner Bros. animation in the early 1960s, Jones briefly went to MGM, where he produced and directed a memorable series of Tom and Jerry cartoons. He subsequently kept working through his own production company, Chuck Jones Enterprises, primarily on TV specials, the most famous of which is Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, originally broadcast on CBS in 1966.
Jones and his wife also co-wrote the screenplay for the UPA animated feature Gay Purr-ee (1962), which featured the voices of Judy Garland and Robert Goulet as French cats. And he produced, co-wrote and co-directed (with Abe Levitow) the cartoon portion of the film version of Norman Juster's book The Phantom Tollbooth (1969).
Jones was given an honorary Oscar at the 1996 ceremony for "the creation of classic cartoons and cartoon characters whose animated lives have brought joy to our real ones for more than half a century." He passed away in 2002.
