Thursday, December 23, 2004
ANOTHER BAD SIGN FOR "FAT ALBERT": The "coming soon" blurb for Fat Albert on RogerEbert.com contains a point that doesn't bode well for the film: "Originally scheduled for release December 25, 2002, Albert has sat on his fat behind for two years." Very rarely do GOOD major studio films sit in the can for that long. Brenda Starr sat in the can for three years, and (oddly enough), it was also story about a cartoon character coming to life. I can't remember it ever making it to a theater around here, although it obviously played somewhere. Another "licensed cartoon character coming to life" story, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, was above water for awhile before sinking again.
Although I haven't seen either of those movies (Brenda Starr wasn't released, it escaped, and I respect the Bullwinkle cartoons too much to watch him become a CGI nightmare), they point to a trend: stories about cartoons jumping off the page are bad news. Just because Roger Rabbit pulled it off doesn't mean your property will have the Midas touch.
Let me spin a nightmare scenario for you: coming soon to your cineplex, IT'S THE REAL WORLD, CHARLIE BROWN! The story about a kid with a big round head and flesh-colored hair who one day misses the football a bit too hard and comes flying off the page! In the real world, he becomes a celebrity as the first cartoon character to "jump the gap", and finds out that yes, he really is loved and respected...he even manages to pitch a no-hitter. But without him, the cartoon strips are spinning out of control (Lucy runs out of crabby things to say, Snoopy won't eat, six whole weeks of Peppermint Patty and Marcy staring at each other...insert your own joke here), as the Peanuts kids realize that Charlie Brown is the focal point of their stories. Armed with this knowledge, they take an adventure into our world (with lots of heavy-handed celebrity cameos along the way) to lure the King of the Blockheads back to the funnies.
Now really, as somebody who's never lived in a world without Charlie Brown, finding something like that on the big screen would be akin to raping my childhood ([TM] George Lucas Detractors of America). There's something vaguely unsettling about taking a self-contained world, with clean lines and pleasant graphic design, and dumping it into ours, where "clean" is a relative term. My Fat Albert movie would go back to the original routines on Cos's records and rethink the cartoon characters in real world terms, the whole "kids on the block" thing instead of "cartoon characters go 3-D". Of course, maybe that's why I don't have a development deal with Universal or Warner Brothers, so there you are.
But as I reread the scenario I've written for the Peanuts characters, I fear I may have unleashed a plausible plotline on the world. Plenty of angst, tears, and, of course, lots of Dolly Madison snack cakes. Roger Ebert will find it "quirky", cartoon fans will scratch their heads until their scalps bleed, and the Charles Schulz Estate will take out a contract on me if it's ever used. Either way, since I thought of it first, I want a big, fat movie check when it goes into production. I'm not a greedy man, though...I'd like at least enough to pay for the round of therapy which will inevitably follow.
Anyway, the moral of this diatribe is "When a movie is held back for two years for no reason, there's usually a reason."
Although I haven't seen either of those movies (Brenda Starr wasn't released, it escaped, and I respect the Bullwinkle cartoons too much to watch him become a CGI nightmare), they point to a trend: stories about cartoons jumping off the page are bad news. Just because Roger Rabbit pulled it off doesn't mean your property will have the Midas touch.
Let me spin a nightmare scenario for you: coming soon to your cineplex, IT'S THE REAL WORLD, CHARLIE BROWN! The story about a kid with a big round head and flesh-colored hair who one day misses the football a bit too hard and comes flying off the page! In the real world, he becomes a celebrity as the first cartoon character to "jump the gap", and finds out that yes, he really is loved and respected...he even manages to pitch a no-hitter. But without him, the cartoon strips are spinning out of control (Lucy runs out of crabby things to say, Snoopy won't eat, six whole weeks of Peppermint Patty and Marcy staring at each other...insert your own joke here), as the Peanuts kids realize that Charlie Brown is the focal point of their stories. Armed with this knowledge, they take an adventure into our world (with lots of heavy-handed celebrity cameos along the way) to lure the King of the Blockheads back to the funnies.
Now really, as somebody who's never lived in a world without Charlie Brown, finding something like that on the big screen would be akin to raping my childhood ([TM] George Lucas Detractors of America). There's something vaguely unsettling about taking a self-contained world, with clean lines and pleasant graphic design, and dumping it into ours, where "clean" is a relative term. My Fat Albert movie would go back to the original routines on Cos's records and rethink the cartoon characters in real world terms, the whole "kids on the block" thing instead of "cartoon characters go 3-D". Of course, maybe that's why I don't have a development deal with Universal or Warner Brothers, so there you are.
But as I reread the scenario I've written for the Peanuts characters, I fear I may have unleashed a plausible plotline on the world. Plenty of angst, tears, and, of course, lots of Dolly Madison snack cakes. Roger Ebert will find it "quirky", cartoon fans will scratch their heads until their scalps bleed, and the Charles Schulz Estate will take out a contract on me if it's ever used. Either way, since I thought of it first, I want a big, fat movie check when it goes into production. I'm not a greedy man, though...I'd like at least enough to pay for the round of therapy which will inevitably follow.
Anyway, the moral of this diatribe is "When a movie is held back for two years for no reason, there's usually a reason."
|| Eric 11:21 AM#
