Summary
HOLLYWOOD -- Jay Ward was my first auteur. Even as a little fellow, I understood that his cartoons were different from other cartoons, even from the ones -- like "Underdog" and "King Leonardo" - - that were made to resemble them. There was clearly a renegade intelligence at work, and I was on board for anything he put his hand to: from "Rocky and Bullwinkle," to the commercials he produced for Cap'n Crunch (which I regarded as extremely short subjects rather than advertisements) to "Fractured Flickers," his daft recontextualizing of silent film.
In a post-"Flintstones," pre-"Simpsons" age when almost everything animated was marketed to children, Ward's were not the only cartoons that were more sophisticated than they needed to be. But they had a certain independent, wise-guy, delicatessen-hipster, fourth wall-breaking spirit all their own. Shaped in no small part by co-producer, head writer and voice artist Bill Scott, they were satirical, subversive and absurd, and you could picture in your head the strange, special place where they had been created.See the full content of this document
Extract
Reborn 'George' Lacks Edgy Spirit of Original Cartoons
"George of the Jungle," from 1967, was Ward's last cartoon series; 30 years later it was revived as a live-action movie, which i...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
