A Political Cartoon

A Political Cartoon is a 1974 American satiric independent short film produced by James K. Morrow, Joe Adamson and David E. Stone, under the name "Odradek Productions". Combining live-action and animation, the short follows a political campaign manager and a cartoonist who decide to run an animated character for President of the United States. It was distributed by The Creative Film Society and released on October 1, 1974.

The short won awards and prizes at many film festivals; it was exhibited at the Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was nominated for a Gold Hugo for Best Short Film, and won the Francis Scott Key Award at the Baltimore Film Festival, the Judge's Prize at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, the Jury's Prize at the Columbus Film Festival, and the Audience Prize at the Midwest Film Festival. The Los Angeles Free Pass rated the short "film poetry of the highest order". It was broadcast on television in the 1980s and released on VHS by Kino Video on September 24, 1996 as a part of Cartoongate!, a compilation reel of animated shorts. Another rare VHS release of the short, signed by Morrow and Stone, was put up on eBay years later.

Plot

The film begins with Bugs Bunny campaigning on behalf of equal rights for cartoon characters everywhere. At night, a political campaign manager named Lance Mungo enters a laundromat and meets an unemployed cartoonist named Bernie Wibble. Lance enlists Bernie's aid in creating a vague-talking, innocuous cartoon character named Peter President and running him for President of the United States. After Peter's election, people begin to have negative reactions to cartoons because of him, which includes Bugs being put on sale at a pet store as an Easter rabbit. Peter unexpectedly takes a firm stand against an evil business conglomerate named the Consolidated Commerce Conglomeration, who respond by sending all the India Ink back to India, rendering him catatonic. After an unsuccessful attempt to revive Peter by transporting ink through a tube, Lance and Bernie decide to reuse the latter's animation of Peter for his next press conference. Later, the Consolidated Commerce Conglomeration hires two 1930s gangsters to kill Bernie. Bernie runs into a printing factory in order to escape them, and ends up getting turned into a comic book named The Wonderful World of Wibble, so Lance replaces him with a puppet master.

Cast

• Alex Krakower as Bernie Wibble
• Liam Smith as Lance Mungo
• Marshall Anker as Consolidated Commerce Conglomeration CEO
• Allen Lieb as Consolidated Commerce Conglomeration Member #1
• George Stapleford
• Bob Kingsley as Consolidated Commerce Conglomeration Member #2
• Mel Blanc as Bugs Bunny
• Joe Adamson (uncredited) as Astronaut, News Reporter, Mailman and Gangster #2 (voice)
• Lindsay Doran (uncredited) as Waitress
• James K. Morrow (uncredited) as the Narrator, Bingo, Bongo, Peter President and Cartoon Characters

Production

The short was written, produced and directed by James K. Morrow, Joe Adamson, and David E. Stone. Morrow, Adamson and Stone were young filmmakers who all knew each other and collaborated on each other's films (some of which won awards) at Abington High School in suburban Philadelphia. The short was shot in 16mm, minimally financed, and made on a shoestring budget in the Boston suburbs during Richard Nixon's second inauguration in 1972-1973. They shot principal photography (all the Lance and Bernie scenes and the Consolidated Commerce Conglomeration) and the Panacea commercial on the campus of Drew University and around town in Madison, New Jersey. The living marionette at the end and the press conference were the only scenes shot in Boston environments (actually closer to Nashua, New Hampshire). The marionette was played by a 12-year-old girl, with a giant pinewood chair abetting the illusion where it manipulates its own strings. Other pickups (aerial image animation, etc.) were done in New York City and in State College, Pennsylvania, where Adamson was teaching at the time. The scenes with the 1930s gangsters were achieved using a black-and-white reversal original, a scratched and violated dupe negative, a positive copy with printed dust slugged into the A-and-B rolls, a carefully filtered voice track (with Adamson dubbing the second gangster's voice), and a hissing, thumping crackle supplied by an old 78 record.

Stone designed and animated Peter President, as well as Bingo, Bongo, the astronauts and the other cartoon characters. Much of the surreal quality of the short was inspired by Out of the Inkwell, which combined live action and animation. The astronauts were stop motion models filmed against a blue screen in a video transmission. Mark Kausler (who was the winner of the first Bobe Cannon scholarship to the Chouinard Art Institute in 1968) did the Bugs Bunny scenes, animating Bugs and painting the backgrounds. He was only paid around $400.00 for the work. Kausler received criticism on his animation of the character from Chuck Jones and Robert McKimson, even though he used an old McKimson model sheet. The inker for the cels in the scenes was Manon Washburn. The original version of the script had Bugs as an old rabbit (like Jebediah Leland in Citizen Kane). At one point Bugs would say, "Will you send me up a couple of carrots? They won't let me have them anymore. Wrap them up to look like cigars or something." However, Warner Bros. did not want Bugs to be shown as old, so a new scene was written where Bugs was painting Easter eggs in the Bugs Bunny Easter Egg Factory. Bugs would then sigh that it was a rough life and that he was talking to Daffy Duck about it. He would say, "You think it's tough being a cartoon character. What do you think it's like being a black cartoon character?" Warner Bros. was finally agreeable to this scene, but Kausler objected and refused to animate it. He said that while the scene "fit with the whole concept", it "just made [him] laugh and cry at the same time" and was "silly". The scenes in which Bugs campaigns on behalf of equal rights for cartoon characters everywhere and is interviewed at the pet store were written and submitted to Warner Bros., and were included in the final version of the film. Mel Blanc recorded the voice while he was in the hospital with a broken leg. He propped himself up in bed and made about $300.00 for two minutes work. Some of the cels and drawings of Bugs for the short went on the market as early as 1975, two years after production finished. The short also features cameo appearances from Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse in a picture, and Clarabelle Cow, Porky Pig, the Big Bad Wolf from Pigs in a Polka, George and Koko the Clown as part of the crowd of cartoon characters revolting outside the White House; mentions of Dumbo, Bosko and Snoopy's "Joe Cool" alias as name suggestions, and Bambi, Betty Boop, Farmer Al Falfa and Krazy Kat as the cartoon characters in trouble; and references to Sylvester the Cat (the narrator says, "Paid for by Suffering Succotash, Washington, D.C.") and Looney TunesTemplate:'s "That's all Folks!" (used by the narrator at the end of Peter's first press conference).

Due to the short's low budget, there was a sparse amount of sound effects added. Morrow, Adamson and Stone had not heard the term Foley at that point. The sound effects added were basic and supported the humor of the short. At one point Stone and Adamson were in the editing room when the time came to cut the sound effects track for the scene in which Peter loses his India Ink and is catatonic, and Lance and Bernie improvise an ink transfusion. It was Stone's idea to begin the process simply, by dropping in existing sound from outtakes, adding that to the sync production sound, which never would have occurred to Adamson.

External links

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