Under the Radar: Charles Fleischer

 

Born on this day in 1950, Charles Fleischer has been a stand-up comedian for going on half a century. Though the work has been steady, with many, many movie and television appearances, to date Fleischer has not become a household name. His own name, anyway. A character he lent his voice to...

...was on quite a few lips in the summer of '88.

Fleischer discusses that role as well the rest of his career in this 2015 interview:

 

We'll get a look at Fleischer's scientific side in a bit, but first let's take in a movie:

Directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg, 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit takes place in an alternative 1947 in which the animated characters of the era live in Toontown, a cartoon neighborhood in an otherwise live-action Los Angeles, and commute to Hollywood, where they're employed on shorts and feature films not inked on celluloid but shot on sets just the same as movies with flesh-and-blood actors. If by that description alone it sounds like an extradimensions-intensive science-fiction drama, The Twilight Zone by way of CalArts, let me assure you that it's nothing more, and almost defiantly nothing less, than a symphony of silliness, a multiverse as merry as a melody and as light as Dumbo's feather, the high-concept plot gleefully undermined throughout the flick by the toonful loons punny dialogue (such as when Jessica Rabbit says, "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way.") Watch:

God knows what negotiations took place between two legendary animation studios to make it happen, but for me personally one of the joys of Who Framed Roger Rabbit is watching Walt Disney and Warner Brothers cartoon characters cross paths, along with a few outliers like Woody Woodpecker (Walter Lantz) and Betty Boop (Max Fleischer, no relation to Charles.) SPOILER ALERT: The following clip comes at the very end of the movie (though it's not like you're watching Agatha Christie):

Yes, Tinkerbell upstages Porky, but what do you expect? It's a Disney production.

 

Finally, Fleischer in the flesh doing what he does best. On the YouTube site I snagged this from, someone in the comment section accuses Fleischer of "trying to sound like Robin Williams". Since the two men started doing stand-up at roughly the same time, and Fleischer's first TV appearance (in 1974, though this clip is from about 1980) predates Williams by three years, it just may have been the other way around. Watch:

He's even more animated when he's not animated!

Graphic Grandeur (The Usual Gang of Influencers Edition)

 

1929-2022

Illustrator Paul Coker Jr's remarkable career rests on three mighty pillars. In the mid-1950s he got hired on at Hallmark Cards and very soon became one of that company's top artists. His scratchy style set a tone for humorous cards that is still widely copied nearly 65 years later. If that wasn't enough, he started contributing to Mad beginning in 1960, and quickly became one of that magazine's mainstay artists. And if that wasn't enough, in the mid-1960s Rankin/Bass Productions asked Coker to design the characters for a stop-motion TV Christmas special titled Santa Claus is Coming to Town. The next year he designed the characters for the more traditionally animated Rankin/Bass TV Christmas special Frosty the Snowman, and just about everything else from that company in the decades since. Though it's his Mad work that I most cherish, the Rankin/Bass productions probably got Coker his widest audience (with the Hallmark cards a close second) and that's also what got him the following 2015 radio interview. Actually, it's kind of a behind-the-scenes radio interview that's a little like an old Bob Newhart routine where you hear only the second half of a phone conversation. But as with Newhart, that's enough:  

 

Seems like a nice guy. Now those three pillars I mentioned:

Only 122 shopping days until Christmas.

 

 

 

 

 

Springfield Pride

I know this is a few days past the Pride Month deadline, but it can't be helped. I found out today is actress Yeardley Smith's 55th birthday, began rooting around as I usually do to see if I could make a blog post out of it, and came across this picture of her at a Human Rights Campaign gala. If you don't know what the HRC is, it's a major LGBTQ advocacy group, though Smith herself is not an L or a G or a B or a T or a Q but instead a straight ally, which is always heartening. Outside of all that, who exactly is Yeardley Smith? Is she, like, a celebrity? Well, you may not recognize her name or her face, but you should be very familiar with her if you've been watching the Fox network on Sunday nights for the last three decades, for it's Smith who brings this character to life:

She was always the smart one in that family.

Vital Viewing (Beauty is Only Skin, Ink, Pixels, and Lime-Colored Cosmetics Deep Edition)

Actress and singer Idina Menzel was born on this day in 1971. Obviously, though an attractive woman, she doesn't look anything like Queen Elsa of Arendelle. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, as standards of beauty in the real world are quite different than that of the world of animation. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not making some feminist argument that Disney cartoons create an impossible standard for real life females to live up to. Quite the opposite. I think real life creates an impossible standard for a Disney cartoon female to live up to! Think about it. In the real world that we all live in, a female with eyes as large as Elsa's in proportion to the rest of her face would not be asked out on a date but instead send a flesh-and-blood human, straight or gay, male or female, running and screaming in the opposite direction.

This is Idina as she looked in the 2007 Disney movie Enchanted. But she doesn't remain that way. It's all very complicated, but by the end of the film, she's a...

  ...cartoon. As you can see, her eyes have expanded in size, though they're still not as ridiculously large as Elsa's. It really doesn't work that way in Enchanted, but if she could retain the above look in a real world setting, it might be biologically plausible, though she'd save money on eye liner. 

Here from the same film is Susan Sarandon, cast by Disney (and, lately, in the minds of many Hillary Clinton supporters) as an evil queen:

 Again, from the same film, Susan Sarandon:

I'm not sure there's that much of a difference.

But then she's always kind of had cartoon eyes.

 Of course, there's Bette Davis.

But even her eyes were no match for a Looney Toons counterpart.

 Anyway, it's Idina's birthday, so let's get back to her. Whether she resembled Queen Elsa or not, she voiced her in Disney's 2013 computer animated flick Frozen. In the following interview, she tell us what that all involved:

In the following scene from Frozen, Idina sings her version of Foreigner's "Cold as Ice". No, no, just kidding. It's actually called "Let It Go" which may very well be what Lou Gramm is trying to convince...Well, let's not go there. Just watch and listen:

 Maybe it has nothing to do with the computer animation. Could it be that cold weather causes the face to shrink but the eyeballs to expand?

Prior to Frozen, Idina was perhaps best know for originating the role of Elphaba in the 2003 Broadway musical Wicked (and no, David Letterman wasn't in the cast, but it sure would have been cool if he was):

  Even with green skin, Idina makes a very fetching witch.

 Now, this woman, playing a 1939 version of supposedly the same character, is not fetching at all! But the situation is far from hopeless. If she can use her magical powers to conjure up a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, she might want to get a nose job, have that wart removed, and do something about that pointy chin. Afterwards, maybe see a dentist about the overbite, get the eyebrows plucked, put on some lipstick and eye shadow, ditch that dreary black ensemble and slip into something a little more flattering to the figure. Do all that, and she could end up looking just like an...

...Orion slave girl.

One drawback, though. There's more money to be made in casting evil spells.

There's money to be made in repeating yourself as long as what you're repeating strikes a chord with certain segments of the population. If you listen carefully to the lyrics of "Letting Go" and "Defying Gravity", you might notice that both songs express the same basic idea: the liberation one feels when  (according to the AP style book I'm allowed to use the following word in the singular sense) they finally defy orders and stop waging war on their own authentic self (something to keep in mind if you happen to watch a parade in the next few weeks.) Someone with a YouTube account certainly noticed the similarities and came up with this ingenious amalgamation:

Be she witch, cartoon character, or even flesh-and-blood human, Idina Menzel's own authentic self beautifully comes through loud and clear.

In Memoriam: Tom Petty 1950-2017

“Music is probably the one real magic I have encountered in my life. There’s not some trick involved with it. It’s pure and it’s real. It moves, it heals, it communicates and does all these incredible things.”

Petty grew up in Gainesville, in Northern Florida

"That's what kicked off my love of music. And I'd never thought much about rock 'n' roll until that moment." What  kicked off Petty's love of music? And who the hell is the hotshot with the shades? Read on.

Petty had an uncle who owned a film developing business. When the above motion picture was being shot in the nearby town of Ocala, that uncle got a job on the set, and invited his 11-year old nephew to meet the film's star (incidentally, I've seen this movie, and while it's no classic, it's a cut above the average Presley flick.)

Petty seems to have had several bands in the early '70s, the most notable of which was Mudcrutch. That's lead guitarist Mike Campbell to Petty's left...

...an association that would outlive the band after its one and only single failed to chart.

Undaunted, Petty and Campbell, along with bassist Ron Blair, drummer Stan Lynch and keyboardist Benmont Tench formed a new band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Petty sung lead, and also played the guitar.

The band's first single "Breakdown" was a Top 40 hit in 1976.

In 1979, the band released their third album Damn the Torpedoes, which quickly went platinum, and made it all the way to #2  on Billboard's album chart (Pink Floyd's monster hit album, The Wall, was  #1) It's kind of forgotten now, but at the time the Heartbreakers were thought to be a "new wave" band with a southern-tinged punk sound. Later on in the 1980s, the band was lumped with such "heartland rock" acts as Bruce Springsteen, John Cougar Mellencamp, and Bob Segar, though Petty felt he was a bit different from them, believing his band to be a bit more idiosyncratic, and so he was. The sound, probably due to Petty's wonderfully nasal singing style, was unique and always instantly identifiable.

"Refugee" 

"Here Comes My Girl"

"Don't Do Me Like That"

"The Waiting" from the 1981 album Hard Promises.

In 1986 Petty and another wonderfully nasal-voiced singer went on tour together. The Heartbreakers played backup for Dylan, probably his best backup band since...

...these guys.

In addition to touring together, Dylan and Petty were members, along with George Harrison, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne of the short-lived but fondly-remembered supergroup The Traveling Wilburys.

With all this going on, Petty also found time for a solo album (produced by Campbell), which yielded several more classics.

"I Won't Back Down"

"Free Fallin"

Petty also did a bit of acting. He voiced Luann's no-good boyfriend (and later no-good husband) Elroy "Lucky" Kleinschmidt on King of the Hill (note what the show's patriarch Hank is holding in his hands--it was literally a shotgun wedding!)

From rags to riches.

Fortunately for the rest of us, Petty made his fortune through his music.






  

Music is probably the only real magic I have encountered in my life. There's not some trick involved with it. It's pure and it's real. It moves, it heals, it communicates and does all these incredible things.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/tom_petty

Music is probably the only real magic I have encountered in my life. There's not some trick involved with it. It's pure and it's real. It moves, it heals, it communicates and does all these incredible things.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/tom_petty