Tim DuRoche laid down the challenge. “Have you read Robert Johnston’s book?”  I hadn’t, but, after a summer of listening to the Mel Blanc Lectures, it was time.

Johnston’s book, The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question Of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, takes the political temperature of Portland’s middle class during the city’s rapid growth at the turn of the century. Small business owners Frederick and Eva Blank were part of that population spurt, arriving from San Francisco in 1915 with their two sons, Henry and six year old Melvin Jerome.

In his award winning book, Johnston examines four civic leaders – Will Daly, Harry Lane,Lora C. Little and William U’Ren – who helped shape Portland’s political landscape during that period. Princeton University Press describes The Radical Middle Class this way:

By examining in particular the independent small business sector or petit bourgeoisie, using Progressive Era Portland Oregon as a case study, Robert Johnston shows that class still matters in America. But it matters only if the politics and culture of the leading player in affairs of class, the middle class, is dramatically reconceived

Johnston puts the concept of middle class under a microscope. What is the middle class, and how does it differ from the working class? Is there a line? Where do we draw it? Examining Portland’s voting records, precinct by precinct, Johnston found working class interests receiving unexpectedly wide support.  During this period, where one might expect to find the “middle class” small business owners identifying upwards with the interests of management, Johnston instead found the voting records indicating the opposite – the owners of small businesses identified downwards, and supported the unions.

What impact did this deep populist streak have on the young Portlander who would later become one of our country’s most skilled pop culture practitioners?

On Feb. 8, 2012, Robert Johnston will come to Portland to sit down with Anne Richardson, director of the Mel Blanc Project, for an onstage conversation to explore this question. We will be joined onstage by PSU professor David Horowitz, author of The People’s Voice: A Populist Cultural History Of Modern America.

Thank you to Thomas Luckett, chairman of PSU’s History department, and to John Rowe, of PSU’s Phi Alpha Theta, for partnering with the Mel Blanc Project to make this event possible. Thank you to Carl Abbott for overseeing the matchmaking.

The final Mel Blanc Lecture, an onstage conversation between Robert Johnston, Anne Richardson and David Horowitz, will take place on Feb. 8, 2012 at 7:00 PM.

It is free and open to the public. Find us in PSU’s Smith Center 333.

Thank you, Tim DuRoche, for the kick in the pants!

(Yes, this post is cross posted at  www.melblancproject.wordpress.com.)

Pittsburgh has George Romero, Baltimore has John Waters, and Boulder has the memory of Stan Brakhage.

Portland has Gus Van Sant, Bill Plympton, Matt Groening, Mike Richardson, Jon Raymond, Aaron Katz, Chel White, Jacob & Arnold Pander, James Westby, Jim Blashfield, Joan Gratz, Joanna Priestley, Matt McCormick, Rose Bond, Vanessa Renwick and Will Vinton.

Ever wonder why?

For cities wishing to replicate Portland’s densely populated cinematic scene, here’s a handy “how to” guide.

1.  Start early.

As soon as people were making films in New York and Fort Lee, they were making them in Portland. Portland’s first film studio, American Lifeograph, opened in 1910. That’s the same year movies came to Hollywood.

2. Have a show business friendly mayor.

During the 16 year tenure of theater-owner-turned-mayor George Baker, downtown Portland was wall to wall theaters. John Gilbert, Clark Gable, William Powell, Edward Everett Horton and Eugene Pallette are some of the actors who jumpstarted their acting careers on the Portland stage, some of them in Baker’s own stock company. It was Baker who renamed Seventh Avenue “Broadway”.

3. Support innovation.

Oregon’s oldest source of print media, The Oregonian, responded to the puzzling new medium of radio by setting up a station right in the Oregonian Tower. Radio later served as an Early Warning System to identify the talent of Portlanders Mel Blanc, Suzanne Burce (renamed Jane Powell by MGM) and Johnnie Ray.

4. Grow your own film processing lab.

After WWII, Portland inventor Frank Hood went to work for a brand new electronics firm named Tektronix. He set up his own home lab to process films he made for them, after losing patience with the delays of sending film to LA. Eventually, he went into business as Teknifilm Lab. For decades, independent filmmaking in Portland was supported by Hood’s lax attitude toward payment schedules.

5. Provide a home for an exiled Hollywood film scholar.

Andries Deinum came to Portland during the blacklist. His vision of film as a mode of social discourse laid the groundwork for PSU’s Center For The Moving Image, housed in Lincoln Hall. Jim Blashfield, Bill Plympton, and Matt Groening were among the faithful attendees of the Center’s influential screening series, run by the Portland State Film Committee.

6. Provide a day job for the guy who wants to mentor the guy who wants to revive the archaic art form of stop motion animation.

Homer Groening led a dual life – ad man by day and experimental filmmaker by night. He had a family, a home, and his own business doing what he loved – and he did it all without leaving Portland. Aspiring filmmaker Will Vinton paid attention, and followed suit. His career, like Groening’s, would encompass both television commercials and art house films, but on a much larger scale.

7. Work with, not against, a pair of cinema addled students who want to start a regional film center.

When the National Endowment for the Arts decided to seed regional filmmaking, they went looking for the right person to submit a grant for a film center in Portland. They were pointed to Brooke Jacobson and Bob Summers, members of the Portland State Film Committee. Brooke and Bob wrote the grant, Portland Art Museum acted as fiscal sponsor, and the Northwest Film Center went into business. This year marks its 40th anniversary.

8. Work with, not against, a visionary film preservationist who wants to create a moving image archive.

Lew Cook was trained as a newsreel photographer by the first generation of Portland filmmakers. His stop motion film, The Little Baker, made circa 1925, proved prophetic when it came to Portland’s future claim to cinema history. He and Thomas Vaughn conceived Oregon Historical Society’s moving image archive, and Cook personally trained the preservationist, Michele Kribs, who currently presides over it.

To re-cap: by the end of the 1970’s, Portland had a film program at Portland State University, a film archive at Oregon Historical Society, and a regional film festival (now the NWFF) located at Portland Art Museum. That nucleus of film creativity on the park blocks was balanced by a film processing lab, an emerging animation studio, and a warehouse waiting to be filled with  filmmakers’ offices over in northwest Portland. No one entity owned the scene – the infrastructure and the support system served all comers.

The following timeline concentrates on factors which contributed to a culture where independent filmmakers supported each other in Portland. It does not address the important role played by Hollywood productions shooting in Oregon. The symbiotic role of Hollywood and the Indies in Portland is embodied in the career of Gus Van Sant who slips and slides with ease between these two worlds.

A timeline:

American Lifeograph founded 1910

Lewis Moomaw makes The Chechacos 1924

Lew Cook makes The Little Baker c1925

PGE makes It Can Be Done c1936

Tektronix founded 1946

Frank Hood founds Teknifilm Lab, early 1950’s

Andries Deinum arrives 1957

Homer Groening starts his own ad agency 1958

Center For The Moving Image founded 1965

Bob Summers and Brooke Jacobson found Northwest Film Center 197o

Tim Smith and Matt Groening make Drugs: Killers or Dillers 1972

Brooke Jacobson founds Northwest Media Project 1974

Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner make Closed Mondays 1974

Don Zavin makes Fast Break 1977

Penny Allen makes Property 1979

Rose Bond makes Gaia’s Dream 1982

Gus Van Sant makes Mala Noche 1985

Bill Plympton makes Your Face 1987

Matt Groening makes The Simpsons 1987

Jim Blashfield makes Leave Me Alone 1988

Joan Gratz makes Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase 1992

Gus Van Sant makes Good Will Hunting 1997.

Miranda July makes The Amateurist 1998

Chris Eyre makes Smoke Signals 1998

Will Vinton makes The PJ’s 1999

Travis Knight makes Coraline 2009

Jon Raymond writes & Neil Kopp produces Meek’s Cutoff 2010, one of five Oregon films at Sundance in 2011.

This post is dedicated to Portland filmmaker/film writer David Walker, who inspired it by raising the question “how rare is regional filmmaking, anyway?”

6. A Date With Judy (1948) Jane Powell

Elizabeth Taylor tries to steal all her scenes by wearing a slight mustache, but Jane Powell, Taylor’s best friend and fellow MGM starlet, is the star of this peek into America before Elvis. Powell (born Suzanne Burce) arrived in Hollywood at age 14. She would have preferred to stay in Portland, because she was looking forward to going to Grant High School, but it was not to be. Portland radio made a star out of Suzanne Burce. Joe Pasternak made a star out of Jane Powell. She made 14 features at MGM, and was the lead in all of them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

7. What’s Opera, Doc? (1957) Mel Blanc

“This afternoon Melvin Blank, a boy with a good voice, will sing a number of solos, accompanied on the piano by his brother.” Mel Blanc’s first write up in The Oregonian gives little indication of what was to come. Portland is where Mel Blanc learned to play the violin, the ukulele, the sousaphone and the stand up bass. Portland is where he became, at age 23, the youngest bandleader on the West Coast. Mel Blanc soaked up everything the Rose City had to offer him except a high school diploma. “I loathed school” he wrote in his autobiography. He  left in 1935 for Hollywood, where he would become the Man Of 1,000 Voices.

Click here to view the embedded video.

6. Sleeping Beauty (1959) George Bruns

Here’s a music history scavenger hunt for you. Go to the Oregon Historical Society’s  Oregon Rocks exhibit and find George Bruns. He sits holding a trombone in a group photo of a 1940’s Portland jazz band. You’ll have to ID him by his signature because you have never seen his face. You have heard his music. Bruns was Oscar nominated for three of his many film scores: Sleeping Beauty 1959 (his first), Babes In Toyland (1961), and The Sword In The Stone (1963). The Ballad Of Davy Crockett , his first gig for Mr. Disney, sold more that 10 million records. That’s only a small fraction of the take generated by Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate’s Life For Me, another Bruns composition you might possibly recognize. George Bruns was born and raised in Sandy, Oregon.

Click here to view the embedded video.

9. Don’t Look Back (1967) Derroll Adams

Born and raised in Portland, Derroll Adams dropped out of Reed to follow his banjo. A senior statesman of the 1960’s folk scene, he famously provided Bob Dylan’s introduction to his British counterpart, Donovan. Well, someone had to do it! D. A. Pennebaker was there to catch it on film. Adams remained in Europe the rest of his life, playing folk music and teaching banjo. That’s him in the foreground at the beginning of the clip.

Click here to view the embedded video.

10. Good Will Hunting (1997), Elliott Smith

Did Gus Van Sant cut Good Will Hunting in Portland? Or was he in LA, playing Elliott Smith in the editing room because he was homesick, when it slowly dawned on him  ”Hey I think we’ve got something here…..” ? The soundtrack for this odd little blockbuster about a neurotic orphan with a Robin Williams sized hole in his heart includes Angeles and Miss Misery, which was Oscar nominated.  The Dandy Warhols also show up on the soundtrack. Van Sant is himself a musician. Like Smith, he arrived in Portland during his high school years. Unlike Smith, he basically never left.

Bonus film:

Click here to view the embedded video.

11. Wildwood (2014), The Decemberists

I’m just guessing here. Laika is planning a stop motion adaptation of Colin Meloy’s and Carson Ellis’ book. They may need some music, and Colin might have some ideas about where it should come from.

================================================

Miss the first installment? The first Top Five Movies To See After Visiting Oregon Rocks can be found here.

“When handed my first Warner’s paycheck, I had to blink my eyes. Two hundred dollars! I’d never seen three digits on a check before, at least not on one made out to me.” Mel Blanc

Radio actor Mel Blanc decided to branch out into animation in part because he was worried that radio would be a passing craze. Plus he had heard that animation paid well. Plus he believed there was room for improvement in the voice work he heard in the cartoons he saw. He spent a year and a half pursuing an audition at Warner Brothers before one was granted.

Treg Brown liked what he heard and asked Mel to stick around for a minute while he found a second opinion.

From That’s Not All, Folks!, Mel’s autobiography:

A lively Christmas office party was in progress, so the entire cartoon division was present, albeit in various stages of mood alteration.

He ( Treg Bown) brought back the four directors: Isadore Freleng, whom everyone called Friz, Frank Tashlin, Bob Clampett and Fred “Tex” Avery. The diminutive Freleng was a holdover from the old regime and a Walt Disney refugee. At the time, he was involved primarily with the Merrie Melodies in-color shot subjects. Tashlin had only recently arrived at Schlessinger Productions, directing several of the black-and-white Looney Tunes. A comedy writer and cartoonist, he later went on to a distinguished film directing career. Clampett was an even newer addition to the staff; a handsome fellow with wavy hair and a lantern jaw. Then there was portly Avery, who’d gotten his start as an animator for producer Walter Lantz. At Warners he gained distinction as one of the most wildly inventive directors of all time.

With the four directors assembled around him, Mel Blanc repeated his audition.

“That’s terrific!” Avery exclaimed. “Tell me, can you come in for a recording session next Tuesday?” Not wanting to appear too overanxious, I thought about it for a minute before replying nonchalantly ” Yes, I think I can make it.”

And thus Mel Blanc, Lincoln High School dropout, began his Hollywood career.

Today is Mel Blanc’s 103rd birthday. I am posting Pickador Porky, his big screen debut, in honor of that occasion.

Porky Pig in Pickador Porky is voiced by Joe Dougherty ( who had originated the characterization ). The bull is voiced by Billy Bletcher. Mel Blanc voices a drunk. Treg Brown was the sound effects editor, Chuck Jones & Sid Sutherland & Bob Clampett were the animators. Tex Avery was the supervisor, Carl Stalling was the music director.

I hereby claim Pickador Porky as an Oregon film, based on the contribution of voice artist Mel Blanc.

In Vanity Fair’s current cover story, The Crowded Mind Of Johnny Depp, poet-turned-rocker-turned-memoirist Patti Smith asks mega star Johnny Depp where he found his inspiration for the perpetually unstable, yet quick witted, Captain Jack Sparrow.

Smith: I overheard someone in your camp—maybe it was on the set of The Rum Diary,or maybe it was The Tourist—talking about how eager you were to get back to Captain Jack, and about how much Jack was like you. How do you feel when you enter into the skin of Captain Jack?

Depp: Free—free to be irreverent. I think it’s like unlocking a part of yourself and freeing this part of yourself to just be—what do they call it?—the id, or whatever, just to be … just to be, under whatever circumstances. The closest thing that I can compare it to was having known Hunter Thompson really well—we were very, very close—and witnessing him, because I studied him so deeply and lived with him for a period of time to try to become Raoul Duke, to try to become Hunter. There was a certain freedom that he had, or control, or command of the situation—there was never anything that he couldn’t get through. Verbally he was just so clever and so quick and so free, and he didn’t give a rat’s ass about what the repercussions were.

Smith: He was the revolutionary’s Johnny Carson. I mean, he always had a punch line.

Depp: Somebody once asked him, “What is the sound of one hand clapping, Hunter?,” and he smacked him. Captain Jack was kind of like that for me, an opening up of this part of yourself that is somewhat—you know, there is a little Bugs Bunny in all of us.

Smith: Young kids love—really love—the Captain. And who is more mystically mischievous, and brilliant in his own way, than Bugs Bunny?

Depp: At the time, I had been watching nothing but cartoons with my daughter—with Lily Rose. I hadn’t seen a grown-up film in forever. It was all cartoons, all those great old Warner Bros. things. And I thought, Jesus, the parameters here are so much wider and more forgiving in terms of character. These cartoon characters could get away with anything. And I thought, They’re beloved by 3-year-olds and 93-year-olds. How do you do that? How do you get there? That was kind of the start.

Further proof of Captain Jack’s debt to Bugs Bunny can be found in this second interview, where Depp once again cites the carrot chomping wiseass (“Ain’t I a stinker?”) as a source of inspiration.

Oregon Cartoon Institute hereby extends honorary membership to both Patti Smith and Johnny Depp.

For more information about Mel Blanc, the voice of (and one of the chief architects of) Bugs Bunny, see the Archives of the Mel Blanc Project website.

Another recommended method of deepening your knowledge is to attend Mel Blanc: The Portland Years, an upcoming lecture series.

For people who can’t wait until the lecture series,  and want to get right down to it, we recommend you attend the Mel Blanc Project Screening Series at The Secret Society, throughout May.

This post is cross posted on Mel Blanc Project. No, you’re not seeing double!

In today’s Oregonian, Mike Russell compares Rango, the new animated Western starring a lizard, to this 1951 Warner Brothers cartoon starring Daffy Duck.

Johnny Depp voices the gun toting reptile. Mel Blanc voices Daffy.

“Hi ho, Tin Foil!”

I hereby claim Drip Along Daffy as an Oregon film, based on the voice acting contributed by Mel Blanc.

This post brought to you by Oregon Cartoon Institute.

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!

Artist Carye Bye provided the above portrait of the great artist whose career we will be exploring, and whose Portland life and influences we will be discussing, in the upcoming Mel Blanc Project.

The project is a partnership with Oregon Jewish Museum, which is opening a Mel Blanc exhibit in May 2011, and Ethos Music School, which is providing the venue for a live concert in June 2011 of original electronic music inspired by Bugs Bunny and composed by OCI artist in residence, Heather Perkins.

More information about the project, including the four part Mel Blanc lecture series, organized by Anne Richardson and Dennis Nyback, will be found here on Oregon Movies, A to Z, and at the Mel Blanc Project blog.

Portlander Mel Blanc provided the voice of Private Snafu in a series of WWII army training films written by Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Suess. Portlander Dennis Nyback first presented The Dark Side Of Dr. Suess to  audiences at the Clinton Street Theater, and has since taken it around the world.

This promotional video was made by Madcap Theaters in Tempe, Arizona.

I hereby claim all of the films in which Pvt. Snafu appears as Oregon films, on the basis of Mel Blanc’s contribution as voice artist.

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute.

Three months after Hitler invaded Poland, MGM released this anti war cartoon. Director Hugh Harman was nominated for both the 1939 Nobel Peace Prize and an 1940 Oscar. Mel Blanc voices the narrator, Grandpa Squirrel.

I hereby claim Peace On Earth as an Oregon film, on the basis of Mel Blanc’s contribution as voice artist.