The Legend of Bill Moore

Bill Moore, 1981.                 Photo by Chris Wahl

Thursdays at CalArts were brutal.  Getting to class early to pin our assignments on the long crit wall, we'd wait to be slaughtered by the old man.   Upon his arrival, the room would go silent.  He would casually stroll along the wall, surveying our assignments in his sport shirt and slacks  (or Jordache jeans!), cigarette propped in a bent back wrist, like Tim Gunn and Humphrey Bogart's love child.   Welcome to Bill Moore's design class.  

You could hear a pin drop as we held our breaths, each hoping the Angel of Death would pass over their assignment.  At last he'd pause at someone's piece and say, "Who belongs to this?"  The owner of said piece would then have to stand and "qualify" their work - that is,  explain what they did and why it works while he challenged everything they said.  This went on for three excruciating hours until each of us had our turn hemming and hawing in defense of our work.    

I came to CalArts right out of high school - a Catholic, art-hating prep school at that.  I had ZERO knowledge of color and design theory.  So on a weekly basis, in front of the class, Bill murdered me.  Gleefully.   He gleefully murdered me so much so, he took to calling me "Zombie".

But 40 years on, Zombie lives, as does Bill's voice when I work on any creative endeavor.  I hear him reciting his design mantras, "Repetition with variation....contour continuity....".  And I hear his cold, judgmental prodding, "Is that the best you can do?"  Of all my CalArts teachers - men who had worked with Walt Disney personally -  I would have never bet the most influential would be a guy who never worked a day in animation, and in fact, held a general contempt for it.   
              
Bill's profound influence is almost universally shared among my industry peers, as is their fear and love of him.  Anecdotes have been shared and re-shared to great laughter over the years from those fortunate enough to have been there.  But his life outside of school has been a mystery, beyond stories he'd share for shock value or laughs.  So I did some research and interviewed many former students then cobbled together this piece.  It's not so much a biography as it is the story of a legend.  

Bill would hate it. 

                                                                                                                       photo by Chris Wahl

The List of 1982

Program for the 1982 show, designed by Fred Cline.

Forty years ago this week, I took part in my first CalArts Character Animation Show.  Through the course of the school year, I had managed to fool myself into thinking I was good.  But seeing my film next to those of Dan Jeup, Chris Sanders,  Kelly Asbury, Bruce Smith, Rob Minkoff,  and a couple dozen other better skilled artists, a hard, hard reality hit me like a brick from Krazy Kat.  I sucked.

I did not make the cut for the Disney show, where all the old timers came up to watch.  At the post-show reception, I got to hob nob with Frank and Ollie, Ken Anderson, and Marc Davis.  It was a comfort to know they did not waste a minute of their shortening lives watching my mess of a film.  Marc Davis cut me to the quick anyway, because apparently, he was good for that.  You can read about it in an old post here.

A Zoom Toast to Kelly

Top row: Kevin Lima, Steve Moore, Chris Bailey, Fred Cline.  Middle row: Kirk Wise, Dan Jeup, Rob Minkoff, Wendell Luebbe.  Bottom row: Tim Hauser, Butch Hartman.

Friday night I took part in a toast via Zoom - the pandemic's next best thing to being there.  We were toasting our friend, director Kelly Asbury, who had passed away a week earlier.   There are hundreds of industry people who would have turned up for this, but we kept it to a core group who hung out as CalArts character animation students in the early eighties: Chris Bailey, Fred Cline, Butch Hartman, Tim Hauser, Dan Jeup, Wendell Luebbe, Kevin Lima, Rob Minkoff, Kirk Wise and myself.  These guys are more than an animation who's who to me - they are my brothers. 

For the most part, the gang looked the same - a testament to living the animation life, I guess.  Most of us wore glasses now.  Kevin was rocking a new, bearded cue-ball look. And me with my COVID lockdown '70's hair  (cowbell band, anyone?).  The only real sign of age is that we were on Zoom for more than three hours and never talked shop once. 

Stories I either didn't know or had forgotten kept us laughing for hours - the crazy shit that makes us glad cell phones and social media did not exist back then.  These were not the flattering stories told at funerals, but hilariously human stories about Kelly.  Maybe you had to be there. I'm glad I was.   

"He was like the Sun." Kirk said.  "People just gravitated to him."

Cheers, Kelly!

-Steve

CalArts dorm, July 1984.  From left: Mark Rouse, Kirk Wise (white shirt), Butch Hartman, Steve Moore, and Kelly Asbury. Photo by Kevin Lima

A Great Day for America - The Far Side is Back!

The overwhelming majority of Americans can agree that the return of Gary Larsen's "The Far Side" comics is great news.  I read about this yesterday on CNN's website though it was not headline news for some reason.  In the CNN article, Larsen explains that he decided to make an official Far Side site because so much of his work was posted online without his permission - fan sites, but more irritatingly, sites exploiting his work to promote their own products or services.  His new site will feature the old strips, but promises some new stuff to come.

Remembering EPCOT's Cranium Command - Both Versions

There are some great posts on The Disney Project blog about Jerry Rees'  work for Disney Imagineering, including EPCOT's Cranium Command, where you go inside the mind of a boy as he goes about his school day in real time.  An animatronic figure interacts with characters representing different parts of the body, which constantly react to what is being seen through the boy's eyes.  It was an extremely complex show, logistically.

Like many of Jerry's jobs for Imagineering, Cranium Command was a rescue mission.  As The Disney Project blog puts it, "The project, already halfway through production at Colossal Pictures, was unanimously loathed by everyone at Disney. Jerry was tasked with reviewing the project, assessing its weaknesses, and fixing them."

I, personally, have the unique distinction of being the only animator to have worked on both versions of this show.  In January of 1989, Colossal Pictures producer Heather Selick hired Vince Davis and me as sort of animators-in-residence at their San Francisco studio.  She put us up in apartments on Union St in North Beach, just below the Coit Tower and just two uphill blocks from an area full of blues bars, cafes, Italian restaurants, City Lights Bookstore, and  really old strip clubs with creepy guys in big suits trying to get passersby to go in.  Far out!

Rusty's Memorial Service

As you most likely have heard, Rusty Mills passed away December 8th.  His wife, Andrea, has welcomed all to his memorial service tomorrow:

2:00 pm, Tuesday, December 11

Glen Haven and Sholom Memorial Park
Glen Haven Mortuary
13017 N. Lopez Canyon Road
Sylmar, California 91342
Phone: (818) 899-5211

And you can still donate to the relief fund.. Over $16.000 has been raised to help with medical costs.  

Click here to donate.

So long Rusty.  I'll always remember the fun times at CalArts.  

CalArts Halloween party, 1983.  Mike Show, Rusty (as Boris Badenov0, Rob Minkoff (Sammy Claus), Steve Moore (blue meanie), Leon Joosen, Mona and Brett Koth. 

Disney MGM Studios, Summer of 1989 - Part 2

Roger Rabbit by Rob Minkoff - Rob corrects my animation drawings 

One of the best things about working at Disney MGM Studios was being able to go on all the rides for free. In the evenings after work the Park thinned out and, as employees, we could come and go as we pleased. My personal favourite was the Hollywood Tower of Terror a fantasy ride based on the old Twilight Zone TV series. I rode it endlessly and could never get enough of the butterflies-in-the-stomach final plunge. 

Disney MGM Studios, RollerCoaster Rabbit and the summer of 1989 - Part 1

Me at my Disney-MGM desk, animating a scene from Rollercoaster Rabbit

In the summer of 1989 I managed to get a job as an animator at the newly built Disney MGM Studio Theme Park in Florida, set up by "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" Production Manager Max Howard. Max was hired by Disney to build the new studio from scratch, and he quickly set about making a series of short "Roger Rabbit" films with his enthusiastic but fairly inexperienced crew. 

Kelly Asbury - loving his new jeans

Part of the Studio's production expenses were paid by the Park itself, as visitors would pay to watch the animators at work. We called it the goldfish bowl - guests would walk through the studio all day long and watch us draw. The inexperienced and the unlucky had to sit by the window - closely supervised by camera-wielding tourists.

Some of the animators claimed to be able to line up dates by gradually moving through the studio exchanging nods and winks and finally phone numbers with the girls "on the other side". For me it was heaven - my first proper animation gig since Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a paid summer job in a sunny paradise and a chance to learn and get better at my craft.

Rob Minkoff tells Jim Beihold a thing or two

We were led by the incredibly talented Rob Minkoff - who patiently took the trouble to fix my drawings and squeezed far better work out of me than I thought I was capable of - invariably the sign of a great director.

Master Animator Mark Henn - quality and speed

Lots of extremely able artists got a head start at Disney MGM Studios. I was lucky enough to work with Kevin Turcotte, Kelly Asbury, Mark Henn, Jim Beihold and Tom Bancroft, among many others who brought their huge talents to the studio. 

It was a huge privilege to be there and like everyone else who passed through its doors I thought it was a tragedy that such an excellent studio was eventually closed down by Disney.

-Alex

You can see the second part of this article about Disney MGM studios here, and read more about it in this classic FLIP article.