February 18, Warner Archive will bring out the first volume of Tex Avery's MGM cartoons on Blu Ray. I don't think too many animation fans will challenge me if I say that during his little Golden Age at that studio, Tex produced some of the funniest, most imaginative cartoons ever made and it's way overdue for them to be available in this format.
The hope is that Warner Archive will keep issuing these until all 67 cartoons he made for the studio are out but since there are only 19 of those cartoons on this Blu Ray…well, you do the math. I doubt Warner Archive is planning to bring out 3½ sets of these…but maybe there will be two volumes that each have 24 cartoons or three more that each have 16. One set with all 67 would have been even nicer but this is all minor quibbling.
Major quibbling is, of course, already starting. The following is in no way an attempt to stifle anyone's free speech but I have my First Amendment Right to suggest that one thing that is discouraging some folks in the home video biz from doing more releases of cartoons is that it's hard to do without getting bludgeoned. The bludgeoning is done by a small group of folks who love animation so much that they are livid when a DVD or Blu Ray release isn't done the way they think it should have been done. 95% perfect might as well be 0% with these people.
Never mind the need to bring these releases in on a budget that leaves them a good chance of showing a profit. Never mind the problems that may exist with less-than-ideal source material. (Some movie lovers — and I'm not just talking about cartoon fans — firmly believe that there is a pristine, uncut, perfect print of everything somewhere in the world and that if you haven't found it, it's just because you don't care enough about quality to look hard enough. I still sometimes run into someone who is utterly certain that there is a complete, virgin print of the original release version of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and why the hell didn't they put that out instead of the edited versions that they have? And exactly where is this print? They don't know but they do know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who claims to have one.)
We want what we love to be available but we also don't want to wait until it can be as absolutely perfect as inhumanly possible. We'd also like to have the studios spare no expense to remaster and restore our favorite films but not charge more to make back that unspared expense.
I think some folks are forgetting what seems to be the basic rule of the dwindling market for hard copies (DVD or Blu Ray) of films that will mostly be available in the future only via streaming. The rule is that if a lot of people buy it, you'll eventually put out an improved version of it with more restoration and more extras And if no one buys it? Well, there's a film for which there's no audience. No point spending a lot of money to bring that out in an upgraded release.
As I've been writing this, I've just received an e-mail from a cartoon fan who read the news of the Tex Avery set on another site and wants to launch a boycott. "These great cartoons," he writes, "deserve nothing less than a complete set in chronological order." I agree they do but I also understand the position of whoever at Warner Archive said, "Okay, we'll put out a Volume One and load it with the best stuff Tex did. If that doesn't sell, there isn't much point in doing more." I'd really like to see them do more.