Worth pointing out: Brad Bird commented about his love of Hubley’s work in this ROOTY TOOT TOOT post from last week. Brad makes an excellent observation that even though Hubley’s films had a daring sense of design, it was never at the expense of the animation. Hubley’s sensitivity to the movement of characters is even more remarkable considering that he was one of the few directors of the era who hadn’t been an animator prior to directing.
And one final bit of ROOTY randomness. Below is a postcard of a restaurant—Johnny’s Steaks—that had a mural of ROOTY TOOT TOOT on its wall. The decor of the restaurant suggests the photo might be from the 1960s. This was posted before on Cartoon Brew, but I think it’s pretty cool so here it is again. If anybody knows where this was (is?), let me know. We’ll all go and have a steak there.
Your comments on this film have been great - another look at that mural makes me see it in a different light. Very nice.I also realize, looking at this model, that the characters of Rooty are precursors to those in Tender Game. He just eliminated the lines and went wholly with the shapes.
Comment by Michael Sporn — April 3, 2006 @ 4:46 am
I’d bet 100 bucks this was on Wilshire…hmmm. I’ll try & find out further. What a great photograph.
Comment by jenny — April 3, 2006 @ 12:31 pm
Whoops! I see that this place was actually in Chicago, IL. Damn…was sure it was a Wilshire googie-style place. I wonder how on earth the RTT chaacters wound up in Chicago–or was that where the “Frankie & Johnny” story was set?
Comment by jenny — April 3, 2006 @ 1:53 pm
Jenny - Thanks for the detective work. Who knows why that restaurant was decorated with these characters. It’s cool that it existed though at one time.
Mike - I think a lot of what Hubley did in his later independent films with Faith can be traced back to his earlier commercial work, like the similarities in character design that you mention. Other examples: the improvised dialogue that appears in Moonbird was how he recorded Jim Backus for Magoo and his son for the Maypo spots. And the use of segmented figures in Tender Game was something he did on a UPA industrial called More Than Meets the Eye (1952), as well as on TV commercials, like the E-Z Pop popcorn spots. He was able to make these ideas more pronounced in the later independent films, because there was no longer a commercial component, but the ideas were already established.
Comment by Amid — April 4, 2006 @ 8:26 am