“Now in this part of Florida, all the fish are federally protected, except from each other.”

Homer Groening’s travelogue combines found footage ala Craig Baldwin with cosmically disoriented voiceover  ala Miranda July.

To place this in Oregon film history…..

Ten years after this, Penny Allen would take Property to Sundance. The ever resourceful Allen had paid her crew, which included Gus Van Sant, with CETA funds.

Ten years after that, in 1989, Gus Van Sant would make Drugstore Cowboy.

1989 was also, of course, the year that Matt Groening would begin his conquest of prime time television, with The Simpsons moving out from under Tracey Ullman’s wing and debuting on their own.

But in 1969, all this was in the future.

I hereby claim Basic Brown Basic Blue as an Oregon film, on the basis of Homer Groening’s contributions as producer,  writer, director, editor, and narrator.

Brad Bird demonstrates his Pacific Northwest roots by a) thanking Matt Groening, with whom he and Eric Goldberg shared the award, and b) asking his employees to “use all of the buffalo”.

Bird had to record his acceptance speech on video as he is out of the country scouting locations for his next film, Mission Impossible IV.

The good people over at Oregon Cartoon Institute would like to point out that Mel Blanc (Portland), Marc Davis (Klamath Falls), and Bill Plympton (Oregon City) preceded Matt Groening (Portland) and Brad Bird (Corvallis ) in receiving this award.

Congratulations, Brad!

Matt Groening is one of five judges who will select the Best Documentary at this year’s Sundance.

Meanwhile, Kim Morgan, former Oregonian and Willamette Week film critic, is judging the Short Films.

]]> http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2011/01/oregon-goes-to-sundance-2011-judges-division/feed/ 0 http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2010/10/banksy-in-springfield/ http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2010/10/banksy-in-springfield/#comments Wed, 13 Oct 2010 16:15:38 +0000 Anne Richardson http://www.talltalestruetales.com/?p=9488 Click here to view the embedded video.

From an interview with Al Jean, an executive producer for The Simpsons.

Q.Were you concerned that what he ( Banksy) sent you could get the show into hot water?

A: I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it for a little bit. Certainly, Fox has been very gracious about us biting the hand that feeds us, but I showed it to Matt Groening, and he said, no, we should go for it and try to do it pretty much as close as we can to his original intention. So we did. Like we always do, every show is submitted to broadcast standards, and they had a couple of [changes] which I agreed with, for taste. But 95 percent of it is just the way he wanted.

This post brought to you by Oregon Cartoon Institute, the Matt Groening Fan Club sub-chapter.

Caricature by Martinus Van Tee

Myth #1. Mel Blanc graduated from Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon.

False! Lincoln High School has no record that Melvin Jerome Blanc ever graduated. He did attend.

Myth #2. Mel Blanc moved to Los Angeles in order to become a voice artist.

False! Mel Blanc already was a voice artist when he arrived in Los Angeles. His first professional gig was here in Portland, on KGW radio, in 1927.

Myth #3. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig formed the center of Mel Blanc’s professional universe.

False! Mel Blanc’s first love was radio, and he worked steadily in radio throughout his entire life.

Myth #4. Mel Blanc’s phenomenal talent was a freak of nature.

False! Mel Blanc worked hard to develop his talent. He conducted two parallel careers in Portland from 1927 to 1935: he was both a musician and  a radio performer. As a musician, he had front row seats (in the orchestra pit) to study the comic delivery of the nation’s top vaudeville comics, a group which included Jack Benny, with whom he would eventually work. As a radio performer, he spent 6 years on a nationally syndicated one hour weekly show at Portland’s KGW, and two years on his own daily one hour show – which he wrote, produced, and starred in – on Portland’s KEX. He was eight years into a show business career when he moved to Los Angeles.

Myth #5. Matt Groening, Oregon’s other animation supernova (who did graduate from Lincoln High School), idolizes Mel Blanc.

Not sure! Matt Groening has gone on record stating that Bill Plympton is God.

Here’s Mel Blanc himself, in a clip introduced by Dennis Nyback. Mel appears at 2:55.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute in honor of Bugs Bunny’s 70th birthday.

Basil Wolverton displays his pioneering “spaghetti and meatballs” approach to human anatomy.

As Oregon Cartoon Institute heads into its fourth year, I sat down to retrace the steps that led to its creation.

This timeline of development was originally written for Jill Hartz, at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Thank you, Jill, for providing me with the impetus to pull this together!

1990’s in New York

As I fly back and forth between Portland and New York, I begin noticing the way Oregon press underplays the fame of Oregon’s most well received artists (Chuck Palahniuk a great example ) while at the same time New York press omits the Oregon citizenship of an artist all together. I begin to understand the way this has created a misperception that Oregon does not produce artists.

At about this same time Columbia sportswear begins showing up on the subways. The Simpsons are becoming a cultural mainstay. Elliott Smith, the Dandy Warhols, Courtney Love, Gus Van Sant — I start to feel  surrounded by Portland even when I am 3,000 miles away.

1999 visiting Portland

David Chelsea tells me about Basil Wolverton.

I knew about Homer Davenport, the Hearst newspaper cartoonist from Silverton.

I’d heard about Mel Blanc, Portland’s most reknowned voice artist.

But I am stupefied by Wolverton. How could a guy from Central Point (pop: 12,000)  influence an entire generation of  Americans? And do it via Mad Magazine ?

A seed starts to sprout in my mind.

2001, in Portland

Dennis Nyback and I teach an avant garde film survey course at Northwest Film Center. Preparing for it, I discover avant garde animator Harry Smith was born in Portland.

Smith was both the disciplined, insightful, completely original collector behind Folkways’ enormously influential Anthology of American Folk Music and a self taught, extravagantly experimental, completely original filmmaker. I never dreamt he had anything to do with Oregon.

In my previous understanding, Oregon rarely produced nationally known artists.

Now with Harry “High Brow” Smith and Basil “Low Brow” Wolverton in the picture, I am completely confused.

2003 in New York

Standing in Kim’s Video, I stumble across a footnote in a book about Robert Crumb which identifies Carl Barks, creator of the comic books which were a huge influence on Crumb, as being from Merrill, Oregon.

I turn the book over to see who wrote it — D. K. Holm, from Portland.

At this point I compile a list of living and dead Oregon cartoonists and animators and send it to John Canemaker, asking what he thinks. He calls me, excited and impressed.

He adds two new names.

He tells me Marc Davis, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men, graduated from high school in Klamath Falls

and that Pinto Colvig, an early animator turned voice artist, is from Jacksonville.

2006 in Portland

Dennis and I interview Portland cartoonist  John Callahan for The Portland That Was.

Callahan is surprised to learn that Mel Blanc, a life long hero, is from his own home town. Our intern, a graduate of Lincoln High School, the school Blanc attended, tells us she never heard of him.

About this time, graphic journalist  Joe Sacco returns home to live in Portland, bringing with him his 1996 American Book Award.

Dennis and I return home too.

2007 in Portland

We hold the first Oregon Cartoon Institute public event, a three week screening series at Disjecta of 16mm animation from Dennis’ collection. Jim Blashfield and Rose Bond come and speak. Both have conducted far ranging film careers from Portland.

Blashfield made his acclaimed music videos here, and Bond her monumentally scaled installations. Both use animation.

Our model for engaging audiences emerges  — we will use living artists as interpreters as we raise awareness about the dead ones. Chel White, Bill Plympton, Joan Gratz, Joanna Priestly, Marilyn Zornado and Will Vinton loan us 35mm prints for the final night of the Disjecta series, which takes place at the Hollywood Theater.

Second Oregon Cartoon Institute event: Dennis conducts video interviews with visiting and local artists at the Platform International Animation Festival. We put these online.

At this point, I thought we had found all the historic Oregon animation and cartooning figures there were to find.

I was wrong.

In the course of researching Oregon film history for the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival, I stumble across George Bruns, a four time Oscar nominee for animated film scores, from Sandy

and Dennis stumbles across Ralph Wright, who won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 1957. He’s from Grants Pass.

2009 in Portland

Third Oregon Cartoon Institute event: we co-sponsored Bill Plympton Day at the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival at Marylhurst.

Bill is as fascinated with this history as we are.

Not all our research comes from history books. Some comes from the news. Just when we weren’t looking,  Brad Bird received first one, then two Oscars.

Looking ahead:

An interview about Oregon Cartoon Institute’s next public event, which will take place in 2011, can be found online at  KBOO.fm. Conducted by S. W. Conser as part of his Words & Pictures series, this interview introduces our first artist in residence, Heather Perkins.

Oregon Cartoon Institute is all about partnerships. As soon as the details get finalized, we will announce our upcoming partnerships with others who share our goal of raising public awareness of  this state’s rich animation and cartooning history.

Strange but true: A River Runs Through It, the Montana family saga/fly fishing tale, is an Oregon film. Director Robert Redford shot the fishing scenes on the Rogue River.

Thanks, and a tip of the hat to Grant McOmie for mentioning this particular chapter of Oregon film history  in the course of profiling Wolf Creek Inn, Oregon’s little known getaway to the stars.

Other Hollywood luminaries who loved Wolf Creek Inn were Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, who came for the duck hunting, and Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who came for the privacy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But that’s not the only Oregon connection. One of the co-producers of A River Runs Through It is from Oregon: William Kittredge.

I spoke on the phone with William Kittredge to confirm my suspicion that he attended high school in Klamath Falls. He said yes, and that it was his English teacher there who inspired him to dream of becoming a writer.

William Kittredge, Marc Davis, James Ivory, and Chris Eyre all graduated from Klamath Union High School, a track record unmatched by any other Oregon high school, including Lincoln High School (Ernest Haycox, Mel Blanc, Matt Groening), the oldest high school in the state; Catlin Gabel (Gus Van Sant, Eric Edwards, Margaux Hemingway), the richest high school  in the state; or Ashland High School (David Fincher), the high school voted most likely to succeed in producing show business oriented graduates.

I hereby claim A River Runs Through It as an Oregon film on the basis of  the location shooting on the Rogue, and on the basis of William Kittredge’s contribution as co-producer. Go Pelicans!

Proof that lightning can strike twice in the same place: animation legend Mel Blanc dropped out of the high school from which animation legend Matt Groening would later graduate.

Blanc first worked as a professional voice artist was right here in Portland, on KGW radio. He was a pit musician (eventually band leader) at the Orpheum Theater.

Here’s a list of characters voiced by Blanc:

Of the many many cartoon characters Mel Blanc voiced, he is most closely identified with Bugs Bunny. He adlibbed the insouciant “What’s up, doc?” which became Bugs Bunny’s identifying phrase.

Melvin Jerome Blanc holds the #1 ranking on IMDB for number of film credits: 1,012.

When are we going to name a street – or a theater – after him?

One name kept coming up. Ellen Thomas said “Homer Groening”. Will Vinton said “Homer Groening”.Bill Plympton said “Homer Groening”. What was the question?  Dennis and I were asking them who we should know about in Portland film history.

From the Seattle Times obituary for Groening, in 1996.

Homer P. Groening was born Dec. 30, 1919, a U.S. citizen in Main Centre, Saskatchewan, the son of Mennonite farmers. He spent his youth in Oregon.

He earned the rank of Eagle Scout and was a co-founder in 1936 of Camp Pioneer at the base of Mount Jefferson. He graduated from Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., in 1941.

He met his wife, Margaret, at Linfield. They married in 1942.

Mr. Groening flew a B-17 over Europe during World War II and participated in the D-Day invasion, winning a Distinguished Flying Cross.

After the war, he returned to Portland and joined the Botsford, Constantine and Gardner ad agency as a production assistant.

He was called up again to fly transport planes in Korea.

Upon his return, he became a vice president at the ad agency, working on accounts such as Jantzen, Pendleton, Olympia beer, Idaho potatoes and Western Hotels. He started his own agency in 1958.

“He was an absolute creative genius,” said former Advertising Federation President Mick Scott, who worked with Mr. Groening to found the American Advertising Museum in Portland.

When film caught his interest, he taught himself the craft.

“He was a one-man show,” said his daughter, Lisa. “He did the producing, writing, shooting, sound recording, editing, directing and narrating.”

Among his film clients were Jantzen, Timberline Lodge, Johnson Motors, Eastman Kodak and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

He won numerous Golden Eagles, given by the Council on International Non-Theatrical Events (CINE), and awards from the Advertising Association of the West and the American Film Festival.

He produced a string of films about water in all its forms, including “Get Wet,” “Getting Wetter,” “Psychedelic Wet” and “Study in Wet.”

Mr. Groening’s son, Matt, said he received creative encouragement at home, in part because his father was a cartoonist himself. Mr. Groening took colored pencils and sketch pads home to his five children. He would make up the beginning of a story and his children would finish it.

When young Will Vinton stood in Portland with his brand new Oscar in 1975, wondering if he should stick around, he took a page from Homer Groening, and decided to stay.

One consequence of that decision…..

Travis Knight and Mark Gustafson next month will be in LA nervously waiting for the moment they open the envelope for Best Animated Feature. Both artists are former Will Vinton Studio employees, mentored by Will, who was in turn mentored by Homer.

Fox asked Morgan “Supersize Me” Spurlock to make a one hour  documentary about The Simpsons — it will air Jan. 10, 2010.

In honor of Matt Groening’s remarkable odyssey from Lincoln High School to world domination, here’s my  favorite interview with him. I love the way he turns the tables, sharing new information the interviewer really didn’t expect (as opposed to agreeing to continue to endlessly bounce empty pleasantries back and forth). His history lesson begins at 2:00.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s Matt’s first appearance on network television, 20 years earlier :

Click here to view the embedded video.

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute.