First of all, thanks to a whole bunch of you who've sent in questions so I no longer have to write about Celebrity Penis Sizes on this blog. (It does occur to me that if any Democratic candidate for president had told that story in a public speech, every single person who has or is about to vote for Donald Trump would say that it alone is reason enough to not vote for the candidate who told it.)
I have two questions here from William Dodson who says that he's from "Lavergne (not Shirley) TN. The first one is…
Is Maggie Thompson of the Comics Buyers Guide still around? I miss that paper.
Maggie is absolutely still around. She was a Guest o' Honor and panelist at the Comic-Con and I need to call her today as we're working together on the next volume reprinting Walt Kelly's Pogo. She's one of my favorite human beings so she'd better still be around for a long time. Next question..
Just exactly what does the director of cartoon shorts do? As opposed to live action directors. Guys like Chuck Jones and Fred Quimby especially.
Well, first off, Fred Quimby was a producer, not a director. He had very little to do with the content of cartoons that had his name on a title card except to hire folks to make those cartoons.
What a director like Chuck Jones or Tex Avery did back in the days of theatrical animation was basically to be the boss of the entire production. A director then had final say on the story and dialogue and then either designed the characters and storyboard or supervised those who did. He also "cast" the voices and directed the recording of them and approved the music and, well, basically he was the guy in charge.
There are those who would tell you that there is too much of a tendency to treat those men — they were all men — as if they were the sole makers of those cartoons. A few directors either believed that or found it was good for their careers to act like that was the case. I had a brief friendship with one of the great storymen, Michael Maltese, before he died. If he hadn't died, he'd be around today telling you how many of the ideas and characters and gags in cartoons he worked on were his invention, not the director's.
There are many different divisions of work in animation for television today but basically, the word "director" usually denotes the person who works out the timing sheets. He or she may have had nothing to do with the script or the storyboard or the voices. He or she may have had nothing to do with the character design or the coloring or the backgrounds or the final assembly and editing. Or he or she may have done some of that. It varies from studio to studio and even on show to show within the same studio.
I had an unpleasant relationship with a director who only did the timing sheets but who insisted on acting like he was the "auteur" (and I believe he used that noxious, self-obsessive noun) on the cartoons he directed. There are directors who are all that he claimed to be but when you have to produce an episode a week — and you're shipping them off to Korea for animation and you neither go there nor speak their language — you really can't be the sole creative force in the process.
So the answer to your question is that it varies. I worked on cartoon shows where I was the main creative supervisor and I worked on some where I was just one stop along a very long assembly line…and you really can't tell which was which just by looking at the screen credits. Thanks for asking, William.
