Fed Ex delivered two boxes today from art director Fred Cline - boxes full of original materials from the ill-fated Betty Boop feature from 1993. He found them while cleaning out his garage and was kind enough to ship them to me. Original storyboards - an entire first pass - were in one box. Another box had animation tests, scripts, and animatics of a few songs from demos by jazz great Bennie Wallace. Seeing this stuff again brought back a lot of lost memories, including the sadness we all felt when the plug was pulled.
I called Fred on his cel phone to thank him for the boxes. We talked for about two minutes when someone in the background interrupted him. I heard him say, "I'm talking to Steve Moore." Then he laughed and the phone went silent. Not completely silent, but like he set the phone down and walked away.
"Hello? Fred? Hello?"
About fifteen minutes later, Fred called back. Turns out the guy in the background was Henry Selick and he was calling an emergency meeting. Fred was in San Francisco storyboarding on Henry's new feature for Disney. He couldn't say any more about it, and was again interrupted by a background voice.
"Steve, I have go."
I thanked Fred again for the Betty Boop materials, then hung up. Ninety minutes later, I read that Henry's project had just been killed by Disney. Holy shit! It was like The Boop Movie all over again.
My heart goes out to Fred, Henry, and the crew. I know exactly how they feel right now. It's a very sickening part of the business, where studio gatekeepers can completely fuck so many people over. Of course, I don't know the whole story, but I'm inclined to side with the artists. I'm like that, and it's usually the right bet.
I was saddened to read of the passing of Richard Zanuck, film producer and one time head of 20th Century Fox. What many of you may not know is that Richard Zanuck, producer of Jaws and Driving Miss Daisy, once had a connection to animation, and I was part of it.
In 1993, the Zanuck Company began pre-production on a Betty Boop feature to be done through MGM Studios. It was the baby of Richard Fleischer, veteran director of films such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Fantastic Voyage. His father was Max Fleischer, who, with Uncle Dave, created a studio which at one time rivaled Disney. Their star was Betty Boop. Richard Fleischer inherited the rights to Betty, and approached Zanuck, an old friend from their days at 20th Century Fox, to make a Betty Boop feature.
Jerry Rees and Steve Leiva were hired as producers and they, in turn, hired me to direct. We began the development process with a small crew in a Burbank office building.
There were weekly meetings at the Beverly Hills offices of The Zanuck Company, in Richard's office. My first time there, Richard Zanuck stepped out from behind a huge desk, shook my hand and said, "Dick Zanuck. Nice to meet you."
I never, ever, called him Dick. This man was Hollywood royalty. He produced some of the best films ever done. His father, Darryl F. Zanuck, MADE 20th Century Fox. This was Richard Frikkin' Zanuck, man! "Dick" was just way too familiar, too equal par, for a first time director from South Jersey. I called him Mr. Z.
Richard and Lili Zanuck winning Oscars for Driving Miss Daisy.
Entering his office, to the right, was a seating area with matching gold couch and chairs surrounding a heavy duty coffee table. In the two dozen or so meeting I had there, the seating arrangement never changed. As the last hired of the group, I got the only seat left - the ottoman. To my left, sat Jerry Rees, then Steve Leiva. Lili Zanuck, Richard's wife and business partner, sat on the couch directly across from me. To her left was Richard Fleischer (who also insisted on being called Dick), then Mr. Z in His chair.
At the start of one such meeting, he looked to me and said, "Steve, you always get the ottoman."
As I was shrugging it off, Lili patted the couch next to her and with a flirtatious smile said, "You can sit over here."
The room erupted in laughter as my face turned beet red. I stammered, "Ohm uh....I'm afraid of you."
Richard laughed out loud. "Afraid? She hasn't even gotten started yet!"
The fear I mentioned was in reference to her tendency to explode in meetings. Lili's a petit, gorgeous woman with a razor sharp wit and vocabulary that could make Bluto blush. Inevitably, in every meeting, she would get into a nuclear argument with Steve Leiva. Steve liked to preach about filmmaking, and Lili would have none of it. She would tear into him with a bombastic barrage which, for the layman, would kill them instantly. But Steve kept coming, not conceding an inch with a haughty snort. Lili would go apoplectic. The sound of Steve's voice would make her squirm on the couch, twisting her body away from him. She would place her hand to her brow to block him from peripheral view, all while continuing her verbal mauling. It was simultaneously hilarious and painful to watch. Eventually, Richard, or "Bully" as she called him, would step in, and he and Fleischer would have the final word.
Six months into pre-production on Betty Boop, regime change at MGM put the project in turnaround. We set up a Boop pitch room at The Zanuck Company, which stayed up for a few years as they tried to set the film up at other studios. But Fleischer's Boop deal was not favorable. Studios wanted to control the merchandizing revenue, so the project died. The artwork, reels, and recordings generated over that time were dispersed among the crew.
Betty Boop Movie Development painting by Fred Cline
It was through Richard Zanuck that I met musician and friend Bennie Wallace. Bennie did several demo recordings for the film. He would later score my 1997 short Redux Riding Hood and 1999's The Indescribable Nth. I can't imagine these films without Bennie's score, but without Richard Zanuck, we would have never met. I sent Lili a copy of The Nth, and she was so kind to call me with compliments. She's tops in my book. My heart goes out to her, dealing with the loss of her "Bully".
Years after Boop, I called Mr. Z. His secretary didn't remember me, took my name and number, and I figured he'd get back to me eventually, but he's a very busy man. He called me that same afternoon. I thanked him for that, and he said his father told him to always return calls on the same day, no matter what.
He was truly a class act, and Hollywood is a more terrible business without him.
In September of 1995, at Disney TV Animation, Veep Sharon Morrill asked if I would like to direct a Fractured Fairy Tales type of short, and have stylistic free reign.
"Say that last part again?"
Free reign. Go crazy with it.
And so I began working on Redux Riding Hood, a short that would take me to the sixth row at the Oscars. Dan O'Shannon, one of the top sit-com writers around, had written a script about a wolf who, obsessed with his failure to catch Red Riding Hood, builds a time machine to go back and do it right. It was Dan's concept, and the script was hilarious.
Even with a great script, there are plenty of ways for the final product to fail. I set to work on the big stuff: production design, cast, and musical score.
Redux needed a production designer who had never worked in animation, someone not schooled in animation history, not influenced by classic cartoons of yesteryear. Dan Rounds, who I'd worked for on A Goofy Movie recommended a fishing buddy of his in New Mexico named John Kleber. When I saw John's work I knew, from the color palette to the use of textural and photo collage elements, I had found my production designer.
John Kleber artwork. Pieces like this were the springboard to the Redux production design
The first thing John wanted to know was if there were animated films he should view as reference. "NO!" I said, and forbade him to look at ANY animated cartoons while we were doing this project. The only other limitation I put on John was, because of our schedule, the style would need to allow background painters to work quickly.
I had a few meetings with casting director Jamie Thomason, who questioned me about the characters - what kind of person was the Wolf, Doris, Red, Granny, etc. Once we had talked out who the characters were, the casting choices became self-evident. Michael Richards was the manic Wolf. Mia Farrow, as his long suffering wife (I made her a sheep, animation's first inter-species marriage.) I liked Mia's casual delivery and the sound of her plaintive voice was a great counterpoint to Richards' abrasive sound. Writer Dan O'Shannon hated Mia's Doris, because she didn't have that sit-com cadence. He wanted her recast, but I held my breath longer and won out. I could go on and on about the cast - Lacey Chabert, Adam West, Fabio, June Foray, Don Rickles - but for now I'll just say I hit the jackpot. And Jamie Thomason is truly brilliant. There's no one else I would want in a recording session than Jamie.
For music I wanted jazz great Bennie Wallace. I had met Bennie during the ill-fated Betty Boop feature in '93. He knows more about music than anyone I have every met. When I described the project and the off-beat quality of it, he brought me Charles Mingus' album Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus. Like John Kleber's artwork, I was immediately inspired and excited as a new layer of the film revealed itself.
With Mingus as inspiration, Bennie set to the task, casting his musicians to get the right sound - among them Robben Ford on guitar, Emil Richards and his magic box of percussion instruments, Art Baron and his mad trombone, Alex Acuna brought a Latin beat on drums, and Bennie himself on Sax.
We recorded at Capitol Records in Hollywood, in Sinatra's old stage. As the musicians assembled, Disney's music veep Bambi Moe asked Bennie to see the cue sheets. When she saw them, her head exploded. "WHERE ARE THE NOTES?!" the large orafice on her head shouted.
Bennie laid on his Tennessee drawl. "Bambi, this is jazz." He said, "You don't tell these guys how to play." Bennie was right. He had indicated general timing cues and tempo, but the rest was improvised. When the musicians performed, it was magic. I got goosebumps, and was truly depressed when they finished. I wanted them to play all night.
Here's the end credit cue with full band. Bennie and Art Baron have a musicians' joust. The spontaneity of this could not have been reproduced from transcription.
Disney TV President Dean Valentine loved the music, but said, "Jazz is for having a cigar and scotch. Not cartoons." This time my head exploded. How could this guy be in charge of an animation studio and have no knowledge of the history of the medium? I was seriously outranked on this fight, and the score would have surely been scrapped without the intervention of Peter Hastings. Peter's One Saturday Morning cartoon block was a huge hit, so he was one guy who Dean trusted. Peter gave the score his approval, and it was saved.
Thanks Peter!
I got to spend five months in New Zealand for production - what a beautiful country. We did our best with a fairly green crew. Lily Dell did some amazing work on the Wolf and animated the Time Machine combining cut-outs and drawings. While in New Zealand, Jeffrey Katzenberg called me from DreamWorks. I thought it was a friend doing a prank, so I played along rudely. Then it struck me. "This really is Jeffrey Katzenberg."
"Yes it is," he said, "the horse's ass."
I have no idea how he found me, or that he even knew who I was. He wanted me to call him when I got back. I only mention it because it was so bizarre.
Back in the States, the post mix with Dave Stone's awesome sound effects - his custom made Time Machine sound is hilarious. We did some festivals, went to the Oscars, lost, and then the film was put away. Seven months after the Oscars, I was shown the door.
I won't go into that ugliness.
In the years since, Michael Richards had his infamous night club blow-out. Garrison Keillor, our narrator, has made some less famous blow-outs. I don't know if that has hurt the chances of a Redux release, but I hope not. No one at Disney or on my crew endorses the backward thinking of two actors in the cast. And while I dish about some now ex-Disney execs, in the big picture, Sharon, Bambi, Dean, and all the Disney brass were very supportive of Redux Riding Hood. They let me make this film. It would not have happened without their ultimate consent. For that I will always be appreciative. I'd like people to see it, so I post it here.
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