America

If you are leaning right, you will embrace this film and feel encouraged that someone is articulating views similar to your own. If you lean left, you will understand the views of those who see the world differently than you do, and if you don't care about politics and history, you should go see "Transformers" and wait for this to show up on your cable channels later on. This is a movie that takes some motivation to see because it is not always as polished and cinematic as the commercial films playing in the next theater, and it has a pretty clear agenda, so you know going in that you will be listening to an argument. I will try to focus on the cinematic and story telling elements but inevitably, the argumentative issues will become a part of this post. I write about films here because I want to talk about movies, but when the movie involves politics, I hope people will listen with an open mind, regardless of their political persuasion. 

Dinesh D'Souza is a controversial conservative author, who has turned to making documentary films in the last few years. Two years ago, his film "2016 Obama's America" was a surprise box office hit.  He took his political theory as to the President's agenda, and presented an argument that was easy to follow with a variety of proof that was sometimes convincing and sometimes stretched credulity. In the midst of an election year, it was exciting to see a movie in theaters that came to grips with a political point of view directly. This year is another national election year, but it is not a Presidential election year. Toward the end of the film, you would not know that because D'Souza targets not only the current President but also the most obvious national figure that he sees as a dangerous successor to the President.

Before the film starts making political points however, it has a much broader and I think more acceptable agenda. "America" presents a full-throated defense of American values in contrast to a simmering narrative of the nation that has been percolating for nearly fifty years. Nothing in the film attempts to whitewash the sins of the past, but it does put many of those sins into context and some of them are directly challenged for accuracy. He begins laying out an indictment of America as presented by left leaning and socialist based scholars and activists. While he as the film maker does have control of the editing of the interview sequences, I don't think any of the subjects would deny that he has presented their criticisms accurately. The late Howard Zinn is not interviewed directly but his thoughts are paraphrased for the audience, and again, it seems that no one could object to the interpretation that D'Souza has made of his perspective. Having set out five specific indictments of the American system, D'Souza proceeds to answer each of them with well selected examples, interviews of other relevant public figures and scholars, and some statistical data in the right places. With the exception of Zinn, the approach is largely clinical without a direct attacks on the advocates or the interview subjects from earlier. Zinn on the other hand comes in for some direct criticism from a noted historian who openly mocks some of the "truths" that Zinn has supposedly exposed. The tone is still even handed despite the other professor's clear disdain for Zinn and his history. 

There are some sincere but amateurish theatrical recreations of historical moments to make the points that D'Souza is trying to get across. These add an element that makes the film feel more like a History Channel program than a theatrical feature but they also sell some of the ideas effectively. The one major exception is hinted at in the trailer above. Although the ad asks us to imagine a world without America, and an early hypothetical event shows how this could have happened, it is really not the focus of the film. Occasionally we get to a point where a rhetorical question is posed, but there are no recreations or long sequences that attempt to answer those questions. For two thirds of the movie, the focus is on why the historical views that are promulgated currently are either inaccurate or without context. The most effective parts of the arguments are the counter stories and opinions that are shared. There is a long piece of footage from a press interview with Bono of the band U2, that expresses the feelings that D'Souza and many other Americans have about this country. When the question of American Exceptionalism comes up, this should be one of the first quotes used by defenders of the concept that there is something different about the American character.

The last third of the film returns to more overtly political issues and attempts to link the philosophy that "blames" America to those political figures that the film makers clearly are opposed to. This will be the section of the movie that is most infuriating to partisans on the left, because it  is not subtle about how President Obama and Hillary Clinton are viewed through this political prism. Whether you are convinced or not, it is a plainly stated case and the proof offered by D'Souza is interesting. Challenges to his reasoning are likely to emerge, on the assumption that heads have not exploded at this point and we are not already reduced to name calling. It takes a great deal of fortitude to listen to positions that you vehemently disagree with. You can't respond logically to an argument though if you don't understand it's premises. "America" makes clear what the perspective of many on the conservative side of the national divide is. The campaign law that D'Souza admits he broke in the recent court case is also used as an argument to demonstrate the dangers that the right perceive from the power being accumulated in government hands. While he might not be the poster child that civil libertarians would want to champion, there were plenty of other examples that should disturb anyone, regardless of their political ideology.

I have not read other criticisms of the film yet, as is my custom, I try to see things for myself first. It is not hard however to imagine some of the vitriol this movie will earn from those who disagree with the positions of the film makers. This is a hundred minute film that attempts to cover a broad range of topics at a thematic level rather than a microscopic one. As a result of the broader approach it indulges in some pretty clear appeals to patriotism. Someone is going to jump on this as political propaganda but that misses the point. Propaganda seeks to obscure the truth with imagery or slogans, this uses imagery to make the analysis entertaining and compelling to it's intended audience. That imagery is not merely a token from the clip art book of patriotic pictures. The figures represented have principles that align with the argument. The contrast in narratives is told visually in a film and so some of this is just necessary. I do not remember anyone being shown in a negative light through manipulation of the images. Certainly the editing of some messages may create a negative impression, but the quotes from the President and Senator Warren were not taken out of context. They were explained and used to contrast the  positions of the  two views, not to diminish the advocates. Oliver Stone spent ten episodes extolling the history of Howard Zinn. This film is not as complete, but certainly deserves as much attention as that other enterprise did. It is enlightening to look though more than one view of history.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The original series of the Planet of the Apes films were some on the most interesting and thoughtful science fiction stories of the late sixties and early seventies. They explored themes of war and humanity in a Topsy turvy world where apes were the dominant species on the planet and the films  questioned the wisdom of humans who believed that they could reach the stars but could not stop destroying themselves. We discover that man has destroyed his home and lost the alpha position through nuclear annihilation. In the seventies, at the height of the cold war, that seemed to be the most likely scenario. Almost fifty years later, as the series is being re-booted, the threat to and from man has shifted from destruction in war to elimination by biotechnology. As we become more and more dependent on technology and the size of the planet shrinks due to easy transportation and open access to other countries, the threat shifts to disease and technology as the most likely pitfall for the human race. "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" is a zombie apocalypse story with apes replacing the zombies and a new cold war developing between species. This new series again raises provocative questions about humanity, war, and nature.

In "Rise of the Planet of the Apes", the mutation that leads to a more dominant simian species is found in a laboratory. Cesar is the result of an experiment to fight Alzheimer's disease, the experiment results in an ape that can bridge the gap between animal instinctive behavior and reasoning type thinking. This sets up the current story by allowing the apes to populate a section of the Bay area (I assume it is Point Reyes)  while thousands of human survivors of of what they dubbed the "Simian Flu", struggle to rebuild civilization after more than ninety five percent of the human population has died. The story picks up ten years after the plague and shows us once again how human need for technology can be threatening to the peace of the planet. I appreciated that this part of the story was more subtle and less moralizing than it could have been. There are also dark hints about what happens to the human population when technology breaks down. It appears that civilization requires a certain amount of sophistication and technical ability or the result is brutality and savagery become the social structure.

The ideas of the film and the story itself are quite admirable and are enough to recommend the movie. I do have a bit of a reservation that I hope will be taken in the proper spirit as opposed to a direct criticism of the film makers. I recognize that the apes are still in a primitive developmental form. They communicate at the beginning of the movie using a sign language that Cesar has taught them. When the first utterance of a word by an ape occurs, it is a dramatic moment. During the rest of the film, the apes use a combination of spoken and sign language, and the spoken language is the issue that concerns me. To paraphrase "Spinal Tap", "It's a fine line between stupid and clever". The Tarzan lingo sounds like Indians in a western from the 30s at times. If people can suspend their disbelief for the apes developing a more sophisticated civilization, than most will be able to do so for this communication process. In an attempt to make the transition to a new culture more realistic, the screenwriters have relied on a tool that can easily be mocked. Later in the movie, as an ape rides a horse, through a wall of fire, with machine guns blasting from both hands, it is a cool visual moment, but it also invites another opportunity to mock the seriousness of the tale. Once again, I think the tightrope is strong enough to sustain those willing to go along but I can imagine that this would be rich territory for parody down the road. 

Jason Clarke is an actor that I have become familiar with in the last couple of years. As his career has grown, the parts have put him into movies that I am now likely to see. He seems to have had an extensive career prior to 2012, but with "Lawless", "Zero Dark Thirty", "The Great Gatsby" and "White House Down", I know now that I have seen him before. Andy Serkis is still the lead of the movie, but Clarke has to be the character we place our trust in and he manages to convey decency in a world where that standard is not always valued. Serkis again does a marvelous job with the motion capture work. It's great that he is getting steady work in big films but it must be a little frustrating that almost no one would recognize him from those movies. (On the other hand, it may be a great delight to have that anonymity). Gary Oldman is the biggest name in the movie and he is not really a star despite being one of our best actors and being featured in some of the biggest movies of the last fifteen years. This is not a star vehicle and Oldman plays his role effectively, although he is absent from the story for more than eighty percent of the film. I also appreciated that he was not cast as a villainous human bent on war with the apes. That humanity contributed to the bitterness that prompts the outburst of violence that comes, it was refreshing to see the screen writers acknowledge that the emerging ape community will suffer the same pressures and failures that humans did. It speaks to a more universal truth than simply saying "humans are asses that will destroy the world".

The army of apes is matched only by the army of technical credits listed to bring them to the screen. In some ways the depiction of the apes here is so technically superior to the masks of the seventies films, that it could render those movies quaint relics of their time. There is still something unnatural about the CGI creatures that sometimes makes the film feel a bit mechanical, but then there are bits like the newborn son of Cesar, interacting with the humans, that will make the barriers between CGI and animals or actors disappear. The film tells an exciting and thoughtful story with enough action to keep a broad audience involved, and a more thoughtful audience challenged. That is a second balancing act that has been managed here. I like the fact that the titles at the start of the films ape (yes I made that joke) the font from the original series. So far, the two story lines of the two versions of the franchise have managed to coexist. The story is set up for further development and doubtlessly, "Rule of the Planet of the Apes" will be coming to a theater near you sometime in 2017.

Chef

Every few years a movie comes along that focuses on food and makes you want to eat, now. I remember seeing "Like Water for Chocolate" and hoping I could find a Mexican place that cooked food like that. When I saw "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" I wanted to consume foods that I had never heard of before. "Big Night" romances Italian food so much that it might be better to eat than to fall in love. Hell, even food made by a rat was appealing a few years ago. This movie sits in that tradition. Nearly every scene will have your mouth watering in hopes that this restaurant, or food truck, or just that guy, would appear on the scene and you'd be able to enjoy a meal that reminds everyone why people watch the Food Network in the first place.

Along with the great looking food, there is a nice story here about living your passion. Chef Carl has a history of promise but a present of so what? When an opportunity to impress a food critic goes wrong, he must figure out how to restore his status as a Chef and balance his personal life, especially with the son he has neglected since divorcing the kid's Mom. This story will not surprise you. It goes exactly where you think it is going to end up. It does take that journey in an entirely charming and entertaining path, so even though you know the destination, the journey is still worth your time.

Jon Favreau has cast himself in the movie that he wrote and directed. It is a nice return to the indie roots that he has not haunted much since directing some pretty big films in the last few years. For my money, he is a great storyteller and makes a picture worthwhile without special effects and big budgets. He is however helped by some star power. Dustin Hoffman shows up for a couple of scenes to create a motivation to get out of the rut the chef has been stuck in. Scarlett Johansson buts in a little time as a minor character that gets as stimulated as we do by the process of creating great food. Robert Downey Jr. appears in one scene, steals focus for the whole sequence and than leaves us with a sense that the world is a weird place. The standouts however are not the big names but the more modestly familiar. Sophia Vergara is the most wonderful ex-spouse a person could have. If there is a flaw in the script, it is that we have no idea why the two exes are no longer together. They understand one another better than anyone else in the story. John Leguizamo and Bobby Cannavale are terrific background characters. In the second half of the movie Leguizamo steps out a bit more and the movie is better for it. Emjay Anthony is a young kid playing a young kid. He has a pretty good part and shows a nice amount of promise. Finally, Oliver Platt is in the movie, and he is wonderful in the role of a food critic that pushes the story forward.

Several other elements about the story make it a little more unique. There is a solid little critique of social media culture contained in many segments of the movie. There is also a very good demonstration of the power that culture can have for the benefit of people as well. That benefit is not just limited to the economic process of connecting with customers, but also finding ways to connect with human beings. I appreciated that it was not a complete satire on the on-line world. It should be a good reminder to everyone that what you spill onto the net, is going to stay there and all of us should be cautious with that responsibility.

"Chef" is great counter-programming for the summer. In a season filled with sequels that are not as great as we might want, and original blockbusters that are loud and somewhat crude, it is great to have these smaller films that get by on wit and charm to make the summer days more passable. This movie will be a crowd pleaser, but the crowds will be moderately sized. I've been trying to get to it since it opened at the end of may, so for many of you I am late to the party. I feel satisfied by that because this was a good mid-summer bracer and leaves me hopeful that other films will come along and charm me for the rest of the year as well.

Jersey Boys

Let's do a checklist to start with.

Do I like Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons?      Yes
Do I like Clint Eastwood as a Director?                Yes
Did I like the stage version of Jersey Boys?          Yes
Do I love musical films?                                        Yes
Did I like the Movie Version of the story?             For the most part

For the record, my wife loved the movie and does not have any of the reservations that I have except for one. I'll tell you what that is at the end of this post, but for most of the film I had a great time and enjoyed the songs, staging and look of the movie. It does lack something and I'm having a hard time articulating it but I will try. Some musicals can expand and fill a screen with color and dance and energy as a way of opening up the stage bound version of the play. An intimate story like this suffers a little from being so close on the characters and by keeping the structure of having each of the "Seasons" narrate different parts of the story, Eastwood and the screenwriters (who also did the book of the musical) remind us that this is a theatrical piece more than a film. The energy of a movie is different and the transitions and storytelling work in completely different ways than in a stage musical. The reverse is true as well, "Beauty and the Beast" as a film flowed like a stream over a perfect hillside and into our hearts. The stage version feels like it is a wave engulfing us in it's musical tropes. It is a different experience and for me not as satisfying.

"Jersey Boys" the movie tells the same story of the rise of a group of New Jersey delinquents to pop stardom and the tribulations they go through. The songs are worked into the story as part of the backstage process but the songs don't tell the story as in a traditional musical, they just highlight moments from the story. It worked on stage pretty well because it is done in a minimalist style. The mind's eye fills in the blank spaces and connects the dots. In a film, all of that is done for you and the songs stand out as non organic parts of the film. They are not what the story is about. This is not a hodgepodge "Frankenstein" creation like "Rock of Ages" or "Mama Mia", which strech songs that already exist to fit them into a story. These songs are distinct and could be performed at any point in the story. They only advance the story by their success or style, not by their subject.(The one exception being "Oh What a Night", which is tied into an event early in their careers but the song came later in the history of the band).

The integration of the songs into the film is smooth and the staging in several scenes is excellent. The first performance of "Sherry" was choreographed in the style of pop groups at the time and looked terrific. The Ed Sullivan performance was also a standout scene, it was another one that advanced the story but the song mattered not. The staged version in a nightclub of the debut of "Can't Take My Eyes off of You" was also special. When the big band horn section comes in with a curtain revel, it sends chills through the audience on screen and in the theater. The end credits seemed to have the things that a musical needs, choreography from the whole cast, a willingness to suspend disbelief and everyone sings. If the whole movie had been like that, it would have been different enough from the play that it would stand out. It feels like they played it pretty safe by sticking closely to the style of the play and that';s where I think my reservations are for the most part.

The great Christopher Walken appears as a mob connected guardian angel, but that old song and dance guy does not get to do much until the credit sequence. I assume the guys in the lead roles are the actors from the Broadway version of the play because I did not recognize any of them and they are all talented singers and performers. Their acting styles seem to emphasize stage theatrics more than film acting. The reunion at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction is a good example of what I mean. They let staging, costuming and body language do the acting. The makeup conveys the passage of time rather than their facial expressions. That reservation that I mentioned that my wife shared with me has to do with the make-up. I did not see Clint's much derided film on J.Edgar Hoover, but the biggest criticism I remember reading was of the make-up job on Leo. I guess Clint is not very focused on this aspect of the film because the make-up work here was not very convincing. Even though it is not supposed to last long since we flashback almost immediately to the younger versions of the actors, I think the depiction of them as older needs to be convincing, and it was not.

All in all I liked the movie but I can't enthusiastically say I loved it. There are moments that impressed me but there were several times when the picture was just not working the way a film should. I applaud Clint for trying his hand at a musical. He doesn't embarrass himself, but I suspect that the remake of "A Star is Born" that he has been connected to will probably need more than Beyonce to get made.

AMC Classic Series: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Willy Wonka on Wednesday at AMC. Could not talk the wife into accompanying me to the theater which is weird because she loves the movie and it is hot out today. Of course the fact that we were up till late in the morning after going to the Kiss concert may have had something to do with it. I on the other hand have no self control even though I too an tired. I'm going to link to my official post from the movie a day project in 2010. I do have a few extra comments to make however and I plan on being brief. There are only two other parties here to enjoy this classic on a Wednesday afternoon. Still, it seems hopeful.

After watching this I have decided that at my funeral, I want to be dressed in a purple, velvet set of tails, a copper colored top hat and a brocade waistcoat. Willy Wonka rocks the fashion scene. On the way back into town we stopped in Vegas overnightand I dropped a twenty into the Willie Wonka slot machine. It is a little strange to use a kids movie to pick an adults pocket, but of course it is targeted at baby boomers with nostalgic genes like me. When the Oompa Loompas come out for the bonus, it's as if you are one of the naughty children on the tour and they make an example of you. 

Peter Ostrum, who plays Charlie, reminds me of my friend Johnathan Yenny when he was a little boy. He is serious but has a ready smile, and is willing to help in any way he can, and he is a dead ringer at the same age. The part of Charlie was cast very well in this film, and his scene at the end when he swallows his pride and shame and does the right thing is all the more effective because he was not a child actor like the other kids but just seemed like a real little boy. Gene Wilder just turned 83, and he is missed on the big screen and the small. There are plenty of other films of his that I need to catch up on, like "The World's Greatest Lover", but he will always be identified as the magical Mr. Wonka in my head. 

 I've probably violated some federal law by taking a picture of the movie while it is playing, but it was a lovely scene and I wanted everyone to know that it really was up on the full sized screen.

For some reason, my original comments on the movie are one of the most viewed pages each week on the blog, so it is not hard to find. It might even be listed over on the right side of the home page, but if it is not, just click here and you will be transported by the Wonkavator immediately to that post to finish your visit. Sorry, no lifetime supply of chocolate comes with your visit, just a lifetime of warmth and good memories.

Billy Wilder Blogathon: The Lost Weekend

I'm stepping out of the format for this blog to participate in a blogathon for Once Upon a Screen. Aurora has invited us to post in any way we would like on a Billy Wilder film. I was lucky in that no one had yet selected Wilder's first Oscar winning project, "The Lost Weekend". Maybe the reason that it had not been chosen yet is that unlike "Double Indemnity" which came out the year before, "The Lost Weekend" has not aged well. It does not fit into a well loved genre like "Double Indemnity" and "Sunset Blvd.", it is not a beloved comedy featuring another Jack Lemmon performance, and it is as straight forward a drama as you might expect from any other film maker rather than Wilder. There are some very nice elements to it but it but it is also over the top and melodramatic and it sells out at the end, these are not characteristics of a Wilder film.

The previous film that Wilder wrote and directed was the film noir featuring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. At the end of that picture, both of the protagonists are dead and the film is bleak. In "The Lost Weekend" we are shown how miserable and devastating alcoholism can be. Ray Milland gets to act his ass off because there are sequences that are truly harrowing. When the end comes, and the gun is in his hand and the bullets are in the gun, Wilder pulls back and and gives us an exit from the bleakness. Maybe that's how the book that this is based on ends, I don't know, I never read it, but it sure feels like an ending that would come from studio notes rather than following naturally from what we spent the earlier hundred minutes contemplating.

Wilder appears to have chosen the book to make a movie out of because he wanted to work on the topic of alcoholism after having worked with Raymond Chandler on "Double Indemnity." Alcoholism is the subject of this film but it is not the vague drinking done by most film characters in the forties. Boogie drinks to forget Ingrid Bergman, that's sad but romantic. There is nothing vaguely romantic about the way Don Birnam drinks. He is compulsive and he is a mean drunk. He is not a genial soul who is released from his limitations by drink. The rye that he is fond of is cheap and it's purpose is intoxication and it releases a man with monstrous tendencies. When drunk, he ignores two different women who are flinging themselves at him. When lacking funds to pay for a drink he loses any sense of self respect, begging, stealing and generally being an ass to others. Sometimes he can wax poetic in a state of inebriation, but he can never remember how to put the word together again when he is sober. As a writer, the blank page mocks his lack of sober creativity.



The problem with the film is that it is so melodramatic. Don sweats out his time as he waits for the next drink. He visualizes singers on stage as dancing versions of the top coat he left in the cloakroom that has his bottle in it. He raises his voice and bugs out his eyes so often that you would think he would get sick from doing that, those facial gestures would become a cause rather than a symptom of his illness. Don has a girlfriend who is trying to help him and a brother who is an enabler at first and then a proponent of tough love. Each of them has over the top moments in which their acting styles seem unnatural. Part of this is the times. Actors were less naturalistic at this point and combined with the subject matter it feels like it is too much. There is almost no subtlety in any of the performances.



Milland practically crawls through the scenes where he is trying to find an open pawnbroker to dump his typewriter to get cash for another drink. Maybe it is accurate and for the times acceptable, but the fact that all the pawn shops were closed for Yom Kippur felt like an artifact from a different age. When he is reduced to "borrowing" from a woman's handbag, we are not sympathetic, we want this bum to get slammed hard. That he does get some comeuppance turns out to be another throwback. This is admittedly the first film to deal with this topic in a serious manner, and the idea of the DTs is scary. When trapped in the alcohol wing of Bellevue, Don gets a second hand look at what is coming for him. The screaming thrashing patient in the corner foreshadows but does so so obviously that it takes away some drama. When Don's turn finally shows up, it is a horrifying vision undercut by a creaky visual effect of a flying bat. When the bat strikes however, then the movie takes on the real dark tone it has been working so hard to deserve.



There are some great choices by Wilder in terms of storytelling technique. The tight close up on the moisture rings from his different drinks shows us the passage of time without requiring more than a single shot. In another visual shot using a glass of alcohol, we are pulled below its smooth surface into the world of intoxication. There is a beautiful moment in cinematography when the liquid in a hidden bottle refracts some light and reveals itself to a frantic Don who has blacked out on where he hid the bottle in the first place. The story is constructed of a couple of bookends that take place in what would then have been the present, but much of the exposition occurs in a long segment that is essentially an extended flashback. This is the part where the film is most like a Billy Wilder picture.



This was the first of three "message" pictures in a row to be named Best Picture. It was startling for its time but now seems somewhat tame in it's approach. There are dark themes in the story that fit the mold of some of Wilder's great non-comedies, but there is  that heartwarming sellout at the end. Most people will be glad for the ray of hope, but people who saw Joe Gillis floating in the pool at the start of one film, and Tyrone Power stabbed by Marlene Dietrich at the end of another, will wonder why Ray Milland's brains were not on the bathroom mirror.

Gumby Fest 2014

In what I hope will be a long new tradition, Glendora hosted Gumby Fest at the Civic Center on Saturday.  It was a day long celebration of everything "Gumby". I first became aware of it through a banner strung across the entry intersection of our uptown village shopping district. Those of you not familiar with my adopted town of Glendora, should know that it a quiet little bedroom community about thirty miles east of Downtown Los Angeles. It celebrated it's centennial in 2011 and for much of that time was most widely noted for the citrus industry. Of course in the last fifty years there has not been an orange farm or lemon ranch in sight. Just families trying to raise suburban kids in Southern California.  There were some rock stars who lived in the town, and Sally Rand and Woody Strode both called it home as well. The Surfaris originated here as well. It was news to me though, that the Art Clokey Studio where the Gumby shows of the 60s and 70s was produced was located just a few blocks from my home.

Gumby had originated at NBC championed by Thomas W. Sarnoff, the son of legendary TV executive David Sarnoff. Created by Art and Ruth Clokey in the fifties, the cartoon show was a success in it's first incarnation on the network. Later as an independent production, more cartoons were added to the series and those were produced in the local studio. The studio also produced the "Davey and Goliath" shorts for the Lutheran Church, using the same stop motion, clay animation techniques. A revival of Gumby in the early 1980s after being parodied by Eddie Murphy on SNL, produced an additional one hundred cartoon shorts that played on Nickelodeon. Even kids who have not seen a Gumby cartoon know the character because of the toys. This event was designed to celebrate the character, the studio, the creators and the town that spawned this great cultural artifact.

When my visit began, we arrived at the back of City Hall and immediately encountered a series of "eazy up" booths for community based programs. There was a Nature Conservancy, and the Library Outreach, and Kids Summer programs. The Chamber of Commerce and the City also had booths with brochures and flyers about local events. Out on the lawn were several local businesses, also making an effort to participate by showing products and selling services. My favorite local business for nearly twenty years is Richard's Framing. They have done all of my James Bond Lithographs and several other pieces for us as well and they were represented with a nice Gumby reproduction that I neglected to get a photo of. There were several specialized catering trucks serving great foods to make the carnival atmosphere even more appealing.

As we listened to several young local rock bands play and we walked around the plaza, it was not exactly clear how we should proceed, and then I found the information booth and learned that for the presentations you had to obtain a ticket for each discussion being held in the large seminar room of the library. We had missed the LAIKA Studios presentation, which is too bad because I am looking forward to their next feature "The Box Trolls", but we did slip in just in time for the presentation by"Stoopid Buddies Stoodio" who generates "Robot Chicken" and other animated fare. The five animators who spoke were all inspired by Gumby and they did some comparison talk and showed a couple of short features that they thought fit the mold of Gumby.

  It was very interesting and they answered questions for a lot of people who were interested in animation, including some very young kids who are using frame capture technology on some of their gaming systems to create their own pieces.They were very encouraging and I was impressed with the quality of questions from the audience. We also encountered one bold young man who promoted his own web site during the audience Q and A.We got in just after the introductions so I can't identify these guys for you but they did a great job.

Tickets for the next two presentations were "sold out" (which is a strange term to use since no one paid for any ticket), but we quickly snatched up tickets for the 2:00 presentation "Meet the Gumby Gang". We had a large gap until that discussion so we went down into the Glendora library, where in one of the community rooms a traveling Gumby Museum had been erected. There were old toys on display and several diorama scenes from Gumby Adventures. On the walls were a series of pictures through the years describing the creation of and the creators of Gumby and Davey and Goliath. I wanted to take pictures to post but a sign asked us to refrain from doing so, and I did, at least after I saw the sign. Here is one picture that I took of a photo wall before I realized the no photography policy. I hope it does not offend any of the organizers and if it does, let me know and I will take it down.

We went off site (home) for lunch and came back an hour before our presentation was to start. Part of that time we spent watching clips of Gumby programs and a couple of shorts from the fifties. We would like to have finished the live action/animated "Sound of Thunder" short by William Stromberg, but there was a line up to get into the afternoon event. 

Joe Clokey, the son of Ruth and Art and the keeper of the Gumby flame, presided over the two presentations that we missed and he was a big part of the final presentation of the day "Meet the Gumby Gang". This was a panel discussion involving almost a dozen former employees of the Clokey Studios who had worked on the Sixties era Gumby episodes, the late sixties early seventies Davey and Goliath shorts and the 1980's revival of Gumby. To say the panel was distinguished is to understate the situation. Animators who were major contributors to "The Nightmare Before Christmas", "James and the Giant Peach", "Coraline", dozens of commercials and such non-animated fare as "Star Wars", "Terminator", "The Matrix", and a dozen or more other major motion pictures  regaled us with stories of their formative years at the Clokey studio and their start in the entertainment industry.

I wish I could relate every story that each one told and make it as interesting as they did but it is beyond my skills and memory to properly attribute all of the information to the right person. On the left side of the picture above, wearing the hat is Joe Clokey, who knew most of these guys as a child and asked some interesting questions and made some relevant clarifications when information got a bit conflated. Next to him is Norm DeCarlo, a bay area animator who worked on the 80s revival and subsequent Henry Sellick projects and owns his own studio. He had several dry comments to add to the conversation and frequently inserted a wry observation here and there to what others shared. Next to him is Chris Peterson who also was deeply involved in the 80's revival and who has contributed to LAIKA Studios productions and was part of the team that was Oscar nominated for the 1996 short film "Carhead".  We did not get to hear much from him during the regular presentation, but in the Q and A, he got the opportunity to tell a couple of amusing stories about meeting Clokey and discovering how determined and single-minded Art could be.

Harry Walton started with Clokey Productions in 1968, and as a young kid always wanted to be a part of animation production. He subsequently worked for Cascade Pictures, Coast Effecxts Associates, ILM, Tippet Studio, Skellington Productions, DreamQuest Images, Imageworks and others. He was one of the old timers who could speak to the period when the studio was located here in Glendora and talked in detail about the work environment and the techniques that the studio used to produce their short films.
Seated next to him was Doug Beswick, who started with Clokey a year before Walton, in 1967. He was known at the time as one of the "serious"guys at the studio but he told a charming story about being embarrassed by acting up and ending up in a silly situation confronted by the very serious Ruth Clokey. He has forty years of visual effects work in his background, including creating the armature of "the Terminator". Rich Zim's first job after graduating college was the Gumby animation production in the 1980s. He was quite irreverent and spoke of the falderal that took place at the studio, one episode of which left a piece of clay in Ruth Clokey's drinking water in a mysterious accident. He is another contributor to the Sellick films and directed an episodes of the PJs, the first stop motion series created for TV, featuring Eddie Murphy.

Recognizable by his mane of silver white hair is seven time Academy Award winning makeup artist Rick Baker. He was interested in make-up as a kid but was looking for any kind of job when he got connected by his father who was making a delivery and accidentally ended up at the Clokey Studio in Glendora. His dad suggested that he try going there for a job. So Rick showed up with some of the work he had done and figures he had put together, and they put him to wok doing character design and art direction. As a seventeen year old getting his first job, it sounds like he took every opportunity to learn and every chance he could find to have some mischievous fun. He worked primarily on the Davey and Goliath shorts.Carl Jablonsky who is seated next, believed he had not met Rick before, but Rick remembered a show that they had worked on together where a prop that Jablonski had created ran him over in a scene that they were shooting. Jablonski left film production but has worked in the entertainment industry as a project manager for the theme park industry including stints at Disney Imagineering where his knowledge of lighting and set design was used in many projects. He also worked for the Burbank Studios and ILM. Ron Dexter sitting next to Carl, has directed and shot television commercials for thirty years. He made helicopter gyros for movie shots and steady cams before they were commercially available.

William Stromberg, worked on the Gumby and Davey and Goliath.He also did the short feature based on the Ray Bradbury story "A Sound of Thunder". He did miniatures and and special effects for movies and commercials (including the Chuck wagon dog food adds with the tiny horses and covered wagon). He proudly shared that his two greatest productions were his sons, William a distinguished conductor for many music scores of movies, and Robert, a special effects figure who has won two Oscars and is the director of "Maleficent". A last minute addition to the panel was Alec, whose last name I did not catch but who contributed to lively discussion of Art Clokey. He is a puppeteer and was trained as such by the WPA in the 1930s. He told us about being fired by Art for wanting a couple of weeks leave back in the fifties to work on a George Pal project. Art's comment was "I'm sick of training all these people for George Pal".

The discussion went on for two hours without much prompting from the M.C. Host, the organizer of the Gumby Fest. Once these guys got talking, they had plenty to say and they were all gracious in trading off time and trying to follow up on another tidbit of information to add to the other guys story. In all it was a wonderful experience and I hope that next year, if they have it back, all of you will consider a visit to the wilderness of Glendora for a nice day celebrating a wonderful cultural reference.