BEFORE: Seth Green carries over from "Animation Outlaws". I can't say that I met Seth Green at a Comic-Con, but I saw him, twice - we just were not formally introduced. One year I worked at a booth way down at the far end, and the booth next to us had been rented out by Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, JUST for the purposes of holding autograph signings there. A different group of animators from a different show showed up each day. One day it was the guys from "Metalocalypse", one day it was Tim & Eric, and one day it was the creators of "Robot Chicken". So I got to watch Seth Green sign postcards for a couple hours, I was too chicken-shit in those early days to talk to celebrities directly. I think maybe I gave him "the nod".
And here's the crazy part, they RE-decorated the booth every day. They had fountains and fake shrubbery and statues of owls, and every day they re-did everything in a different color scheme. So they didn't just have statues of owls, they had them in four different colors. That's crazy, who does that? 99% of people would decorate their booth ONCE and then they're good for the whole event. I like the enthusiasm, but man, that was a lot of unnecessary work. If my boss asked me to re-decorate the booth every damn day I probably would have quit a lot earlier than I did.
There's one other person in this doc I met at a con, Bill Amend, creator of the "Foxtrot" comic - I didn't recognize him at first, like who recognizes print cartoonists? But I got a little sketch of his characters out of the deal, so we good.
THE PLOT: A documentary about the impact of the newspaper comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes", created by Bill Watterson.
AFTER: This is really a documentary that wants to waste your time. After explaining to us what the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip was about - and why use ONE person to do this when you can use TEN - there's a montage of different people telling us what it meant to them. Umm, "WHO CARES" to each and every one of them, that's a very personal thing, and although in this case it's nearly universal, the fact that it's universal and that everyone loves this comic strip should be an indicator that this montage is not needed. At all.
This is followed by another montage, from fellow cartoonists - since Bill Watterson was not available and/or did not respond to a request for an interview, assuming one was made - and they all say the same exact thing, that they LOVE the comic strip. Again, something that goes without saying is exactly that, it does not need saying. Some of the other cartoonists admit they learned storytelling or drawing techniques from "C & H", well, OK, now we're getting somewhere, but this also hardly counts as constructive or informative.
Really, if you're a documentary fillmmaker and your subject declined to be interviewed - or possibly could not be found - then the best thing to do is to choose another subject. Seriously, now you've got 90 minutes to fill and you can't interview the ONE person who knows the most about the subject matter. Still, he persisted, he interviewed not just other cartoonists but also people who run a comic museum, people who run the archive for the original art from the comic strips, and then more people who just LOVE "Calvin & Hobbes" - and the whole thing feels like he's grasping at straws, from start to finish. Filler, filler, filler.
The director goes to the hometown of Bill Watterson, which is Chagrin Falls, Ohio - and what do you know, he finds scenery there which resembles that seen in the comic strip. Umm, so that's houses and yards and a town square, which basically can be found in just about every town in America. So, again, no great ground being broken here, no grand revelations about the meaning of life or much insight into the creative process of a man who somehow nobody has ever met in person.
THAT should be the story here - in the age of the internet, how is it possible for someone to hide away from the world? I should just be able to Google or Wiki the guy and come up with his home address, or at least what state he lives in. Instead the director has to go to his home town, a place he probably hasn't been to in a decade or more, and find illustrations he did for his local newspaper and high-school yearbook. Umm, sure, those are great but they don't have Calvin or Hobbes in them. So really, it's more wasted time.
This ended up being more about the director of the film than his subject matter, and that's not really appropriate for a documentary that claims to be about something. The director spends some time near the end trying to tell us which of his favorite Calvin & Hobbes strips is his favorite, at least his current favorite, because that changes over time. Guess what, nobody cares, and by the way, it's not about YOU, or at least it shouldn't be.
OK, maybe there's a question over who "owns" the strip - the cartoonist, the syndicate or the fans? I once appeared in a documentary about George Lucas that posed a similar question, namely who owns "Star Wars", and does the director have the right to keep making changes in the film, and restrict access to the classic versions that some people prefer. Well, guess what, he does, because he's George Lucas and he owned the rights, at least before he sold out to Disney.
That's the other point almost made here, that other comic strips have created merchandising based on their characters, and that's turned out to be a rather profitable venture. The money that Charles Schulz got from licensing his "Peanuts" gang to MetLife Insurance and dolls, lunchboxes and network TV holiday specials created an industry much larger than the "funny pages" ever could. While I will agree that Mr Schulz was a total whore, at least he had the stones to make money from his characters, which could be seen as the whole point of living in a capitalist society. Mr. Watterson has shown incredibly restraint (or stupidity) over the years by NOT licensing Calvin & Hobbes characters for any merchandise outside the strip.
And yet it endures, with book collections passed down from father to son or older sibling to younger sibling, and who knows, maybe that was the point all along, not this "take the money and run" approach that has worked out so well for others, and all it really cost them was their self-respect. Maybe Watterson knows something we don't, or maybe he just wants the art to speak for itself. We'll never know if nobody has the opportunity to ask him.
There's still one more day of San Diego Comic-Con going on, and I intend to take advantage of it, since my subconscious brain planned it that way. Back here tomorrow with something sci-fi related.
Directed by Joel Allen Schroeder
Also starring Joel Allen Schroeder, Bill Amend, Brian Anderson, Tommy Avallone, Berleley Breathed, Tony Cochran, Todd Dziobak, Jan Eliot, Andrew Farago, Norm Feuti, Jennipher Foster, Zeke Hanson, Tim Hulsizer, Dave Kellett, Keith Knight, Jef Mallett, Nevin Martell, Wiley Miller, Stephan Pastis, Chari Pere, Glen Phillips, Dan Piraro, Jenny Robb Lee Salem, Jean Schulz, Melissa Sears, Charles Solomon, Lucas Turnbloom, Joe Wos, Mia Ziegler
with archive footage of Fred Armisen (last seen in "Claydream"), Walt Disney (ditto), Johnny Galecki (last seen in "I Know What You Did Last Summer"), Simon Helberg (last seen in "American Symphony"), Kunal Nayyar (last seen in "Spaceman"), Jim Parsons (last seen in "Spoiler Alert"), Amy Poehler (last heard in Inside Out 2"), Pamela Reed (last seen in "The Burial"), Steven Spielberg (last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad")
RATING: 4 out of 10 drawing boards (which the director here should have gone back to)
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