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.)

The Portland That Was is a public history/public art project which uses 12 films from Dennis Nyback’s archive to engage the ghosts of collective memory in site specific ways. Mack McFarland and Dennis Nyback collaborated to create twelve short videos, drawing on Dennis’ films. Damon Eckhoff designed an interface which embedded YouTubes in a Google Map, and I produced.

Probably the most satisfying part of the project was the All Night Caravan which had audiences trooping around after Dennis and Mack as they went from site to site in downtown Portland. Shift 2 Bikes’ Ken Southerland helped with this, moving Dennis’ 16mm projector and equipment from place to place sans automobile, as Dennis screened his archival films against buildings, or, in one instance, a moving Max train.

Executed guerrilla style, without permits, and with crowd sizes from 20 to 100, the All Night Caravan was a one time event, which will likely never be repeated.

For the record, it was the college interns who worked on The Portland That Was who insisted on the All Night Caravan. They were adamant, so we complied. Security guards showed up at #4, and cops at #5, but the show went on.

1. Lincoln High School, now Lincoln Hall
Address: Across from 1620 SW Park
Film: THE SCREWDRIVER, 1941
7 minutes, black & white

Mel Blanc invented the voice of Woody Woodpecker while attending Lincoln High School. Blanc provides all the character voices in this early Woody Woodpecker cartoon, which features an unusually psychotic version of the much beloved cartoon character.

2. Keller Fountain
Address: across from 222 SW Clay
Film: WE ARE THE CITY, 1972
15 minutes, color

Portland filmmaker Tom Chamberlin made this educational film for use in classrooms across the country. Two Portland mayors, Terry Shrunk and Neil Goldschmidt, have cameos, as does the Forecourt Fountain, now known as Keller Fountain.

3. Keller Auditorium
Address: across from 222 SW Clay
Film: WILKIE & McNARY KNOW THEIR FARMING, 1940
10 minute, black & white

The Republican Party chose Oregon Senator Charles McNary as the running mate to their 1940 Presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie. A campaign rally was held at the Public Auditorium (the building which preceded the Keller Auditorium). That audience very likely saw this film.

4. Quest Fountain at The Standard
Address: outside 900 SW 5th
Film: THIS IS PORTLAND, 1971
8 minutes, black & white

Portland filmmaker Tim Smith was 15 when he sent up a locally produced television travelogue show “Don & Bettina” in this spoof starring his brother Duncan Smith and future Oregonian columnist Elinor Markgraf.

5. Pioneer Courthouse Square, site of the old Portland Hotel
Address: SW 6th between Yamhill & Taylor
Film: GEORGE OLSEN, 1940’s
10 minutes; black & white
Jazz age superstar George Olsen was born in Portland and played at the Portland Hotel before he was discovered and brought to New York.

6. Former Headquarters of PGE (in the Electric Building)
Address: outside 621 SW Alder
Film: IT CAN BE DONE, 1937
20 minutes, black & white

The employees of Portland General Electric made this short film to encourage Depression Era farmers to electrify.

7. Site of Northwestern, Inc., recording studio
Address: outside 415 SW 13th
Film: WHERE THE ACTION IS, 1965
8 minutes, black & white

Paul Revere and The Raiders recorded “Louie Louie” at Northwestern, Inc. in the spring of 1963. Two years later they were hosts of a daily half hour television show on ABC.

8. Low Brow lounge
Address: outside 1036 NW Hoyt
Film: BLITZ ME!, 1960’s
14 minutes, color and b & w

What may not  be apparent to people visiting The Portland That Was today: Damon Eckhoff designed the YouTube/Google Maps interface from scratch. Google followed suit a month later, making this option available to Everyman. But Damon’s mashup was his own.

Filmmaker Rose Bond helped create this “making of” featurette by serving as the off camera interviewer. Howard Brotine edited it together. Both early, and wonderfully loyal, supporters of the Oregon Cartoon Institute!

Thanks, Howard!

Thanks, Rose!

If you happen to be in LA: On Nov. 13, 2010, Dennis Nyback and I will be giving a talk about The Portland That Was at the Reimagining The Archive conference at UCLA.

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.

I read my growing list of historic Oregon animators and cartoonists to  John Canemaker in New York. There was a long silence. Then he said “You’ve left off two” and gave me more names. Canemaker, an animator and a historian, had no explanation for why Oregon has consistently produced such greatness in these fields. He did affirm that we had a disproportionate number of artists to claim.

Dennis Nyback and I started the Oregon Cartoon Institute to explore that mystery. On Feb. 25, 2010, the Institute had its first public meeting, hosted by Dan Ackerman of Ackerman Films. Dennis Nyback and I served tea, brownies, and rare cartoons to the scholarly group who arrived eager to be divested of their ignorance.

The small but highly wonderful crowd received a brief orientation speech from me, and then a presentation from our artist in residence, composer-musician-sound designer Heather Perkins. Heather described the focus of her work for the institute, and the form her labors will be taking.

The project will be, basically, a musical tribute to Mel Blanc – and since Mel always said that Bugs Bunny is basically him, it will also (really) be a celebration of Bugs Bunny. The attitude, the character, the jazzy inflections of his voice, the casual “What’s Up Doc?” insouciance, the classically American sense of sassy independence. All that. It will be primarily musical in nature, including samples of Mel’s voice as musical elements, but no spoken word per se.

She also took questions.

We then gave a multimedia introduction to the nine animation and cartooning figures who inspired the founding of Oregon Cartoon Institute, and Dennis showed films featuring the work of two: Pinto Colvig and Mel Blanc.

The nine artists are:

Homer Davenport, newspaper cartoonist (Silverton)

Vance DeBar “Pinto” Colvig, animator turned voice artist  (Jacksonville)

Carl Barks, animator turned comic book artist/author (Merrill)

Mel Blanc, voice artist  (Portland)

Ralph Wright, story board artist and writer (Grants Pass)

Basil Wolverton, comic book cartoonist (Central Point)

Marc Davis, animator (Klamath Falls)

George Bruns, composer (Sandy)

Harry Smith, animator (Portland)

Stunned and humbled by the size of their newly discovered inheritance, most of the new members of the Institute were unable to move for a period of time after the presentations, which condition we took advantage of by asking for some marketing advice. Very useful for us!

The only things that went wrong with the evening were that a) we didn’t have t-shirts to sell, and b) we forgot to ask for email addresses, so now we don’t know who our new friends and members are.

Nevertheless, we consider the event very successful. Among the crowd we spotted S. W. Conser (KBOO’s Words & Pictures), Marc Moscato (Ye New Dill Pickle Club), filmmaker Larry Johnson, and Richard Herzkowitz (Pacific Rim Film Festival ). Very gratifying in the afterglow: Paul Bingman tweeted about us the next day. Thanks, Paul!

Thank you to Dan Ackerman of Ackerman Films for hosting the meeting. A big shout out  to Tom Fitzgerald and V for their help.

For more information about the Oregon Cartoon Institute, contact me, Anne Richardson, at mrs.nyback -at – gmail -dot – com.

It began with a bang. Andries Deinum arrived at PSU in 1957 from LA, and co-founded (long distance) the magazine Film Quarterly. He served on its editorial board until his death in 1995.

The following are the children of Andries. All have some Oregon connection: either they were born here, or moved here, or began their careers here before moving away.

Andries has other film addled children (Cinema Project, I’m looking at you!). These are the ones who write.

Sean Axmaker, Videodrone

Jeff Bayer, The Scorecard Review

Jason Bellamy, The Cooler

Nick Bruno, The Rain Falls Down In Portlandtown

Dennis Cozzalio,  Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule

Erin Donovan, Steady Diet Of Film

Travis Ezell, No Time For Love, Mr. Jones!

Ryan Gallagher, The Criterion Cast

Stan Hall, Beyond The Multiplex

D. K. Holm, Cinemonkey

Brian Kellow, Kael: A Life After Dark

Shawn Levy, Mad About Movies

Jon Lewis, Oregon State University

Aaron Mesh, Willamette Week

Marc Mohan, Mohanthropy, Far From Hollyeood

Kim Morgan, Sunset Gun

Gary Morris, Bright Lights Film Journal, Bright Lights After Dark

Kevin J. Olson, Hugo Stiglitz Makes Films

Darleen Ortega, Opinionated Judge

Jamie S. Rich, Criterion Confessions, dvdtalk.com

Anne Richardson, Oregon Movies, A to Z

Bobby “Fatboy” Roberts, Damnit, Bobby, Nerd Puddle

Mike Russell, Culture Pulp

Eric Snider, Cinematical

Dawn Taylor, Cinematical

John Varley, varley.net

David Walker, Bad Azz Mo Fo, Indie Film Journal, The Missing Reel

Bill Warren, pioneering online film critic

Gary Wolcott, Mr. Movie

Kyle Yount, Kaijucast