Showing posts with label animated TV series. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animated TV series. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 08, 2024

Sea Dentist v.3

 

( From around 14 years ago, a brief example of things I wrote when I wasn't being paid to write—TV animation, that is. I was writing a whopping great amount of marketing copy.)

 (Part one of a Write Enough series on TV animated shows that never quite made it to air.)

With the growing success of "SpongeBob" in 2000, the TV animation industry sought out a nautical-themed show that hopefully would absorb success vapors from the popular Nickelodeon series. The race was on and Cartoon Network appeared to be leading after staff artist Cleve Metapontum pitched a series idea revolving around a rude veterinary dentist who lived aboard ship and serviced various sea creatures—willing and unwilling.

Metapontum had been working as a background artist on I Am Weasel and conceived the idea after an unstable Burbank dentist flung salt water in his face. (There was a law suit, later settled.)

Cartoon Network executive Laudi Krate quickly spotted the potential of "Dentist" and wasted no time calling Atlanta for instructions. A pilot was ordered and Krate told to 'hustle this one along.'

Under pressure, Krate promoted character designer Higgins Benzine to produce. Benzine was controversial. Despite many years in animation, he could not draw an oval head. Worse, he despised Metapontum whom he considered a 'cubicle ape,' lacking the skill to 'draw a game of Hang Man.'

Often great art emerges from a clash of personalities but not this time. After a series of loud arguments and flung pencils, an angry Metapontum produced a dark 22-minute script in which Sea Dentist extracts the teeth of a tiger shark and cements them into the mouth of a harbor seal who then proceeds to kill and eat a wind surfer. Sea Dentist, employed by "The United Nations Sea Counsel," denies having anything to do with the incident and sails to Panama.

Krate was horrified. The script lacked several key elements considered necessary in children's animation. Among them were likable characters, humor, and no wind surfers slashed to pieces. Metapontum defended his script, claiming, "Dentists are really like that. Seriously." More drafts were ordered and eventually the story acquired a child character while deaths were changed to prat falls, and Sea Dentist became 'crusty but lovable.'

Nevertheless, the caustic chemistry between Benzine and Metapontum poisoned the production. Factions formed and artists would lunch with either producer or show creator. So intense was the hatred that artists in the Benzine camp began losing the ability to draw oval heads. Meanwhile, Metapontum supporters voiced a hatred for dentists and oral hygiene in general.

After several contentious months, an episode was completed in which an acerbic but kindly Sea Dentist aids a killer whale by installing a fixed partial denture (or bridge). Later, in a battle with anti-aquatic dental forces, Sea Dentist falls overboard and is saved by the very whale whom he earlier helped. The story and artwork were a compromise enforced by Krate. Metapontum hated having a dentist portrayed in a positive light while Benzine loathed the art work, claiming the oval heads "looked all wrong."

By now, Atlanta was demanding the pilot. In a frenzy, layouts, model sheets, etc. were shipped to a Korean animation house. But no one figured on Benzine. At his own expense, he flew into Seoul and tinkered with the models. As a result, the human characters lacked oval heads. Sea Dentist had a head that was pumpkin-round with what appeared to be a ramp extending out above his right ear.

Krate and Metapontum went ballistic when they saw the footage, but there was no time or budget for retakes. Krate shipped the program to her Cartoon Network bosses with a cover note praising the 'quirky animation that is also iconic in an unspecified way.'

Despite a compelling all-lute music track, the project was mercifully put down. Like The Day the Clown Cried, grainy copies of Sea Dentist circulated quietly throughout the animation world and became the stuff of dystopian legend.

Not surprisingly, Cleve Metapontum, Higgins Benzine and Laudi Crate resurfaced at different studios. And while they would never work together again, this trio was involved with other animated TV shows that managed to miss the airwaves.

Images: fossilsforkids.com and istockphoto

Monday, December 25, 2023

A Warner Bros. Merry Christmas v.2

 Ten years ago,  posted the below remarks. All the best today to you and your family.

 Inspired by a Facebook post from friend Josh, and plucked from the blog of Tom Ruegger, here are the Warners Brothers (and sister) as shepherds from "The Little Drummer Warners." Back in the day, we showed the episode to Steven Spielberg who joked that we now owed him a Warner Bros. tribute to a Jewish holiday. Hanukkah and Thanksgiving at the same time would have been perfect, but that kind of calender gold doesn't roll around too often. Plus Animaniacs would've needed to be airing for twenty years like Gunsmoke. So we still owe him.

Friday, September 15, 2023

Animaniacs Celebrates 30th Anniversary

 Yes, I recall it well. The 10th or 13th of September, 1993. A big party on the Warner Bros. lot. Free food.

In honor of the event, here's a festive tune from the olden days.

rainbowzzzzzzzz

Monday, March 27, 2023

Wondercon '23 Notes

 Great fun. Good seeing old friends and meeting fans of the shows. Here is the original Animaniacs panel:

(l. to r.) Julie and Steve Bernstein, Paul Rugg, myself, and Tom Ruegger


With more onstage the next day for Freakazoid!

(l. to r.) Dan Riba, Steve and Julie Bernstein, Mitch Schauer, myself, Tom Ruegger and Paul Rugg—the voice of Freakazoid!


Lots of laughs as we recalled the old days.  Then we all left early to take our medicine.


Friday, December 16, 2022

Paul Rugg and I are Hired at Warner Bros. v.6

 



And I Have the Memories to Prove It

Today, December 16, marked 27 years since Paul Rugg and I were offered jobs at Warner Brothers TV Animation. We were over at Paul's house watching Zontar: Thing From Venusdrinking coffee, eating chocolate donuts, and smoking. We'd just turned in scripts for some new show called Animaniacs. (Mine was "Draculee, Draculaa.") Paul's wife was off earning money as a social worker, while my future wife was still employed at the magazine I'd quit two months earlier. Rugg and I were performing improv and sketch comedy at the Acme Comedy Theatre. (Along with cast member Adam Carolla.) Money was very tight. The payment for one script would really help out my Christmas. 

Then Kathy Page, Tom Ruegger's assistant, called to offer us staff jobs and the trajectory of our lives veered sharply into an unexplored cosmos.

We were amazed, stunned, numb. Walking outside, we smoked more and talked it over. Should we take the jobs or would they pollute our comedy pureness by turning it commercial? We would accept the work immediately. 

Now it all seems opaque. If it weren't for the Web and talking to Paul Rugg yesterday, I'd swear the whole experience never happened. But I'm glad it did. (Paul, too.)  So thanks to Tom and Sherri Stoner. (And her husband, M.D. Sweeney, our Acme director, who recommended us.)


Note: After thirteen years of blogging, I'm running out of life events to chronicle.

Notes: 2019

A little hyperbole last year. I have plenty of life events and more on the way. Now then, Paul's episode was about a pet shop, I believe. In 1991 I wrote on a Mac Classic. (They look so quaint now, like a fancy radio from 1938.) Jeffrey Dahmer, Silence of the Lambs, Thelma and Louise, the unraveling of the Soviet Union and the number of computers on the newly commercialized Web reached one million.

Not mine, but similar.

Notes: 2020
What a year! (Wednesday will be 29 years, but close enough.) Pandemics, riots, politics. It's like 1968 on crystal meth. What's new? Well. You can now obtain the Top 5 Dating Tips of H.P. Lovecraft. Yes, that weird horror guy. For details, go to this nifty spot.  Actually, try THIS nifty spot for my mailing list, should such an act spur you. 

Notes: 2021
NOW it's 30 years. After three decades, events merge together into a clot of time. But I'll never forget that day. A life-changer. 

Notes: 2022
Paul has moved to Virginia. I remain in crumbling California. People on Twitter keep the memory of Animaniacs alive. I thank them.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Ugly Pitch Meeting

An unpleasant pitch meeting this morning. The exec. clearly was looking for reasons not to buy my animated TV show idea and couldn't wait to tell me. On the one hand it was refreshing to receive the blunt, unvarnished truth, on the other hand who wants the blunt unvarnished truth when it isn't good news?

I've never had a rewarding experience at this particular studio, despite the fact that I know many people who have worked there for years and proclaim it a pleasant environment. Several years back, one big exec. dissed me to my agent and would not allow me to even pitch there. What triggered his animus has yet to be revealed. In any case, his no-pitch edict was successfully enforced. Today was my fourth pitch in six years. (On one of those pitches I was the writer attached to a big star's project; on another they passed on a fav, Tomorrow Bear.)

On Wednesday, I have a double-header, pitching a brace of animated TV show ideas to an exec. at another studio where I've had universally pleasant but financially meager dealings over time.

"Each new at-bat holds the potential for a variety of outcomes."
— Billy the Marlin, mascot for the Florida Marlins

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