Only 99,000+ to go!

I just found this while stumbling around for something to read. It's a book by Hugh Kenner entitled "Chuck Jones: A Flurry of Drawings." I haven't read the entire thing yet, & I started out of order with the chapter called "Termite Terrace," since that's the page I first came upon, but it didn't seem to matter. It is very well written & provides a great deal of insight into the series of events both planned & unplanned that resulted in some of the most creative & talented minds of the day coming together in a veritable "perfect storm" of cartoonists. I'm speaking of course of names like Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, & Bob Clampett, all of whose work is the stuff we call genius.

There is really so much I want to comment on just from the single chapter I read, but I will try to keep my commentary shorter than the book itself. For one thing, I took note of what Chuck said regarding his mother's encouragement when he was young. She never criticized him, but just as importantly, never excessively praised his work. Rather, she would comment on the colors, shapes & such that he used in each piece. He also made the point that she didn't look at his drawing first, she looked at him. His eyes were enough to tell her how she should react, and she obviously knew her son well, because her encouragement paid off in spades down the line.

Also, it is obvious what an influence literature had on Jones, particularly in the area of character design. Kenner was sure to point out how much thought Jones actually put into his characters seemingly random & wacky behavior, but everything was done for a reason.

Something else I found extremely interesting was the fact that much of what came out of Warner Bros. in the early 40's was almost accidental. In a sense, some great toons came about throught the neglect of Jones' boss, Leon Schlesinger. Hugh Kenner refers speciffically to the Minah Bird toons, which Jones' could't even believe was ever released. What's funny is that up until that point, WB had been chasing Disney, and were seemingly desperate to imitate Disney's "perfectly drawn" style. Cue the role reversal, because with the release of Minah Bird, Disney began trying to capture & emulate the "gag" style of Warner Bros(coincidentally with no more success than WB had in imitating Disney).

Finally, what Kenner makes abundantly clear about Jones is his work ethic. Jones is famous for saying we all have 100,000 bad drawings in us, & it was his belief that one should expel all of those failures as quickly as possible. I can't even wrap my head around that number, but it seems like his 100,000 was nothing more than proverbially clearing his throat, & once they were done it was time to really start. START!! after that many drawings... start!? I suppose I'm on my way though, since more of my drawings are bad than good the numbers are beginning to stack up. It's unreal to me just how many cells of animation this man has produced, I wouldn't be surprised if he could throw a stack of cells in the air & have them all painted before they hit the ground. Something to aspire to...