THE EMOTIONAL RATIONALIST - Steven Paul Leiva's Blog.: Norton Virgien

Recently John Canemaker, a New York-based animator, animation historian, and educator, asked me for a copy of a caricature he did of me in September 1979. I was his guest at his apartment while I was in town with famed Looney Tunes animation director Chuck Jones. At the time, I did publicity for Chuck, and we were there for a screening at that year's New York Film Festival of The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Movie. It was a compilation of some of Chuck's classic cartoons tied together with new animation of a reminiscing Bugs. The caricature was of me, in a bathrobe, reporting to Chuck on my PR efforts.

In looking for the copy in my files, I found several caricatures of me done by various animation artists during my first years in the industry from 1979 to 1984. Why the hell did I save them? Ego, pure ego.

Animators love to draw caricatures. And often, if you are near them, you'll find yourself the subject—sometimes the victim—of their flashing pencils and pens. I was always happy to become one. Why? Ego, pure ego.

Well, actually, I've always been an admirer of the ability of an artist to capture a personality in pencil and pen renderings. To one who can't do it, it always seems like magic. But, of course, it is not magic; it is natural talent honed by training and practice. Which is what we admire. Magic, if it did exist, would be no more worthy of admiration than a spring rain.

Rather than let these renderings continue to live only in the dark in my old yellow file cabinet, I thought I would bring them out into the digital light. And so, here they are.

This first one is by Chuck Jones from July of 1979. If I remember right, he probably did it while I was in his office at the Sunset/Vine Tower, which is now a bunch of condos in the sky.

I was probably meeting with Chuck, or possibly just chatting. In either case, he saw me as bowing my head—in reverence, most likely.

This next one is not really a direct caricature of me, but it is of a phone conversation I had in London in April of 1979. This was when Chuck and I were in London for his "season" at the British Film Institute. A "season" was an examination of a filmmaker and his work. This may have been the first public screening of The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Movie.

At this moment, I was visiting the Richard Williams Studio (Richard was also a client of mine) in Soho Square.

I was in animator Eric Goldberg's office having a phone conversation with someone from a TV or radio chat show that Chuck had been booked on. This drawing by Eric accurately depicts my frustration in trying to explain what the heck a roadrunner was to the very British person on the other end of the line.

Eric, by the way, later in life, was the lead animator of the Genie in Disney's Aladdin.

The following two are by animators working for two of my publicity clients with whom I would spend time. I think Dave Bennett worked for Rick Reinert Productions, and John McGuire was on a project with Chuck Jones.

I refer you to the definition of "caricature" above. Dave and John shamelessly exaggerated what my mother called just being "pleasingly plump." A boy's best friend, you know.

And here is John Canemaker's 1979 Tub-thumper in Bathrobe in the Early Morn.

And another by John. Drawn a year later when I was in New York again for a business trip. This time with Richard Williams I believe. Williams, by the way, later directed the animation for Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

I was, at this time, moving out of publicity and into producing. In that capacity, in January of 1981, I was back in New York. This time with Brad Bird and Gary Kurtz. We were there with meetings I had set up with the great comic book creator Will Eisner. We were negotiating to secure the animation rights to his brilliant character, The Spirit.

This piece by Brad Bird he did, as he captions, while we were flying home.

Gary Kurtz, of course, had previously produced American Grafitti and the first two Star Wars films. I don't know what the hell ever happened to Bird.

When I became an executive in Gary Kurtz's Kinetographics film company, I was tasked with assembling an American animation team for a Japanese-American co-production that Gary was producing with the Japanese animation company TMS. One of the directors from TMS was Hayao Miyazaki, who later became HAYAO MIYAZAKI. One day I shocked his very Japanese core when I gave him my philosophy about sushi:

The only thing that should eat a raw fish—is another raw fish.

Thus this quick caricature of me that he did.

I traveled to London in 1982 to meet with Richard Williams. Gary Kurtz was contemplating getting involved in Richard's animated feature The Thief and the Cobbler. It was a production looking for financing, and Gary was interested in helping. He wanted me to assess the current state of the production and my opinion of its potential. When Richard, who had previously known me as a low-cost publicist wearing thrift store sports coats, saw me in my handsome new London Fog foul-weather coat, he quickly drew this view of the new me.

The Japanese-American co-production with TMS was based on Winsor McCay's early 20th Century newspaper comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland.

Some of the talents I found and hired for the production included: Andy Gaskill as our American co-director; Roger Allers and Robin Budd as our animation directors; and Norton Virgien as our production manager. Roger later co-wrote and co-directed Disney's The Lion King, and Andy worked on the story and was the art director for the film. Robin Budd became a successful animation director for Canadian animated TV series. And Norton Virgien became one of the directors of the Rugrats series, co-director of The Rugrats Movie, and a producer on many projects. All very talented guys.

The Nemo (which is what we called it—never "Little Nemo") film we were all working on was never made. A Little Nemo in Slumberland film was later made by TMS without Gary Kurtz. The less said about that film, the better. Nevertheless, it was an interesting two years with these very talented guys. And Amanda Martin, the lovely lady who was my assistant and later my lovely wife. And, of course, Gary Kurtz and Roberta Jimenez, who was handling marketing and later became Gary's wife.

ANDY GASKILL WITH CHILD

ROGER ALLERS WITH CHILD

ROBIN BUDD

NORTON VIRGIEN

THE LOVELY AMANDA MARTIN

GARY KURTZ AND ROBERTA JIMENEZ

During the two years that I was on the project, It was Andy who did most of the caricatures of these guys and me.

This first one is a mock Nemo comic strip Andy did as a birthday greeting faxed to Gary Kurtz, who was in London. Gary was splitting his time between our production and the London productions he was involved in. This piece makes a none-too-subtle note of that.

Next is a birthday greeting faxed to me when we were still based in Hollywood before moving to Japan. I was obviously on a trip. Either to Tokyo for meetings or to London trip to see Richard Williams. It has greetings by many of the American Nemo group, including the great Ray Bradbury, who was working with us.

This is Andy's view of Gary, me, him, and Roberta as characters from the Nemo strip. Andy is Little Nemo, I'm Flip, Gary is King Morpheus, and Roberta is the Princess.

Andy loved placing us in the Nemo grab. Here the Princess is being "played" by Amanda.

I'm including this last one because it was in the file folder. It is a commercial caricature of me, obviously done at Disneyland. It proves that when you pay for a caricature, you come out looking not half so bad.

I like this one because it captures the current me doing what I do and being what I am.

Cheers to all!

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In 1982 I joined Kinetographics, a film production company owned by Gary Kurtz. Gary had worked with George Lucas for years producing (and being creatively instrumental in) American Graffiti, Star Wars, and The Empire Strikes Back but was now developing movies on his own. I joined as his director of animation development and as an associate producer on the production of an animated feature based on Winsor McCay’s early 20th-century comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland, which Kinetographics was planning to co-produce with Japanese anime producer,TMS Entertainment. For two year previous I had been involved with Gary in the development of an animated feature based on Will Eisner’s The Spirit (of which I wrote about for the Los Angeles Times in 2008).

Part of my task was to put together the team of American talent that would develop the film with the Japanese, and collaborate on the production in Tokyo. I was proud of the team I gathered, which included Roger Allers (who later co-wrote and co-directed The Lion King); Andy Gaskell (who was later the art director on The Lion King); Randy Cartwright (who later was an animator for, and worked on the story of a number of Disney features, including The Lion King); Robin Budd (who returned to his native Canada and became a major TV animation director), and Norton Virgien (who later co-directed the Rugrats Movie, and has won a couple of Emmy Awards).

I was involved in the production for two years until it became clear to me that this co-production between two very different animation cultures was never going to work. At least not to our satisfaction. I left at the end of my contract with Kinetographics. The film our team was working on was never made, except for an opening sequence that made it into the eventual film TMS made with other American’s involved.

However, the experience was, on a whole, great, My wife (we were married during production) and I loved living in Tokyo, and I got to know one hell of a nice and talented man, Yasuo Ohtsuka.

Ohtsuka was, even then, one of the grand men of Japanese animation. He was very excited by our co-production, as he was as very interested in bringing American style character animation to Japan as we were in adapting Anime’s more creative approach to subject matter for animation. Remember, this is 1982 when Disney animation was “dying” and the Care Bears Movie was setting the pace.

In September of 1982 Ohtsuka gave me a wonderful gift. It was a sketchbook from his teenage years when he was teaching himself how to draw. It was full of his copies of political cartoons he saw in newspapers, including the U.S. Army’s Stars and Stripes (this was 1946, during our occupation of Japan), portraits of American soldiers, and his rendering of American comic strip and cartoon characters.

Imagine this fifteen-year-old-boy, living near an American military base, asking “Yank” soldiers to pose, pouring over American newspapers, drawing, drawing, and drawing, trying -- successfully -- to hone his skills.

I was deeply moved by this gift, and it’s remained precious to me ever since. Sadly I had nothing of such value to offer Ohtsuka in return.

A while back I sent some of the sketches from the book that I had scanned to an old friend from high school. Her son was immersed in Japanese culture and really enjoyed them. I promised I would send more. But I got to thinking, as there a large and active fan-based here in America for Japanese anime, maybe others would enjoy looking at Ohtsuka’s formative work as well. So, below are the sketches from the book, except for a few that were just sketches of American army helmets.

Maybe this is the only gift I have to give to Ohtsuka. To let people see the work of a very talented, enthusiastic teenager, living in a defeated Japan, not being defeated himself, but determined to learn his art and take joy from it. And one who grew up to become a wonderful man and artist, and an important part of a country’s unique film culture.