That's all folks ...
Matthew Kruk
Brad Ferguson
<jcm113...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:00:55 -0700, "Matthew Kruk" <nob...@home.com> wrote:
>
> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7CclVneVpw
> >
>
> Strange...The poster states that this is a rare Porky Pig "That's All Folks".
> Referencing the animation or that PP was doing it? All that I remember is him
> doing it.
It wasn't rare if you grew up with the cartoons. Sometime during the
past twenty years, though, Warner standardized the lockout so that all
we see is "That's All Folks" writing itself across the screen over the
circles or hoops or whatever they are. The same ending was spliced to
every cartoon.
And that sucks. For instance, "The Old Grey Hare" has a non-standard
lockout. In this one, Elmer is still chasing Bugs in the year 2000
(the cartoon dates from 1940) and, at the end, Bugs buries Elmer alive
in a grave with a lighted stick of dynamite. We then go to the
lockout, which rocks back and forth a second or two later, when the
dynamite explodes offscreen. Well, not anymore, it doesn't.
David Samuel Barr
I don't know where you're getting the idea of there having been a
"standardized lockout". When Turner controlled the pre-1948 cartoons
in the 80s and 90s they made a bunch of changes to many of them for PC
purposes (with the idea that they had to protect the sensibilities of
the children for whom they were never intended), primarily eliminating
things like characters shooting or blowing up themselves or others, or
implications thereof such as the ending cited above (which dates from
28 Oct 1944, not 1940), or redubbing some dialogue to bowdlerise it, but
otherwise there was no reason for them to alter or standardise the
lockouts. I regularly watched the WB cartoons on Cartoon Network for
years before they were exiled to Boomerang and while TOGH was indeed
truncated as described there were still plenty of original lockouts to
be seen. When Warner reacquired those cartoons along with the rest of
the Turner holdings in the mid-90s, rather than altering them further as
you suggest, they began a program to restore them to their original
release condition, not just undoing Turner's work but notably restoring
openings which had been replaced in the 1950s with the "Blue Ribbon"
title cards and revitalizing the colour and sound. Hundreds of these
restored cartoons have been issued in six four-disc DVD sets as the
Golden Collection and in two-disc sets as the Spotlight Collection
(these release series was discontinued last year, but reportedly will
continue in another format at some point).
Brad Ferguson
Samuel Barr <dsb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Brad Ferguson wrote:
> > In article <1guog55pf1dc217hp...@4ax.com>, John M.
> > <jcm113...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >
> >> On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:00:55 -0700, "Matthew Kruk" <nob...@home.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7CclVneVpw
> >>>
> >> Strange...The poster states that this is a rare Porky Pig "That's All
> >> Folks".
> >> Referencing the animation or that PP was doing it? All that I remember is
> >> him
> >> doing it.
> >
> > It wasn't rare if you grew up with the cartoons. Sometime during the
> > past twenty years, though, Warner standardized the lockout so that all
> > we see is "That's All Folks" writing itself across the screen over the
> > circles or hoops or whatever they are. The same ending was spliced to
> > every cartoon.
> >
> > And that sucks. For instance, "The Old Grey Hare" has a non-standard
> > lockout. In this one, Elmer is still chasing Bugs in the year 2000
> > (the cartoon dates from 1940) and, at the end, Bugs buries Elmer alive
> > in a grave with a lighted stick of dynamite. We then go to the
> > lockout, which rocks back and forth a second or two later, when the
> > dynamite explodes offscreen. Well, not anymore, it doesn't.
>
> I don't know where you're getting the idea of there having been a
> "standardized lockout".
They're all the same now. I presume they settled on one, restored it,
and used it over and over again since they're generally similar.
> When Turner controlled the pre-1948 cartoons
> in the 80s and 90s they made a bunch of changes to many of them for PC
> purposes (with the idea that they had to protect the sensibilities of
> the children for whom they were never intended), primarily eliminating
> things like characters shooting or blowing up themselves or others, or
> implications thereof such as the ending cited above (which dates from
> 28 Oct 1944, not 1940), or redubbing some dialogue to bowdlerise it, but
> otherwise there was no reason for them to alter or standardise the
> lockouts.
Either they used a restored lockout over and over again, or they
meticulously restored each and every one as they did the individual
cartoons. And, yes, it was 1944. Thank you.
As for "The Old Grey Hare," I probably wasn't clear. The gag with the
dynamite is still there. The sound of the explosion is still there,
too, over the closing music. What's not there is the camera shake
caused by the explosion. It makes no sense to me unless it's because
they used the restored lockout video over and over again, and they
didn't care to save this non-standard example.
> I regularly watched the WB cartoons on Cartoon Network for
> years before they were exiled to Boomerang and while TOGH was indeed
> truncated as described there were still plenty of original lockouts to
> be seen. When Warner reacquired those cartoons along with the rest of
> the Turner holdings in the mid-90s, rather than altering them further as
> you suggest, they began a program to restore them to their original
> release condition, not just undoing Turner's work but notably restoring
> openings which had been replaced in the 1950s with the "Blue Ribbon"
> title cards and revitalizing the colour and sound. Hundreds of these
> restored cartoons have been issued in six four-disc DVD sets as the
> Golden Collection and in two-disc sets as the Spotlight Collection
> (these release series was discontinued last year, but reportedly will
> continue in another format at some point).
I saw "The Old Grey Hare" on Boomerang as recently as last year, and
the shake wasn't there. I hope they put it back. It's a great, funny
ending. Thanks for your input here.
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Brad Ferguson <Brad Ferguson> wrote:
> I saw "The Old Grey Hare" on Boomerang as recently as last year, and
> the shake wasn't there. I hope they put it back. It's a great,
> funny ending. Thanks for your input here.
It's a great ending, I agree, but I've never been very fond of this
cartoon. Like too much of Bob Clampett's stuff, it suffers from slow
pacing, weak gags and -- the most unforgiveable sin -- lazy
backgrounds.
(Along with the funny ending, I did get a big laugh out of the
throwaway gag headline in the far-future year 2000 newspaper:
"Quintuplets Give Birth To Quintuplets.")
You can watch the whole thing, including the ending you remember, at:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x417dw_merrie-melodies-the-old-grey-hare-1_shortfilms
(I'm pretty sure the original ending is in the WB DVD version, as well.)
--
_+_ From the catapult of |If anyone objects to any statement I make, I am
_|70|___:)=}- J.D. Baldwin |quite prepared not only to retract it, but also
\ / bal...@panix.com|to deny under oath that I ever made it.-T. Lehrer
***~~~~----------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael O'Connor
> And that sucks. For instance, "The Old Grey Hare" has a non-standard
> lockout. In this one, Elmer is still chasing Bugs in the year 2000
> (the cartoon dates from 1940) and, at the end, Bugs buries Elmer alive
> in a grave with a lighted stick of dynamite. We then go to the
> lockout, which rocks back and forth a second or two later, when the
> dynamite explodes offscreen. Well, not anymore, it doesn't.
That was always one of my favorite BB cartoons; it was kinda sad to
see Bugs and Elmer as old geezers.
Brad Ferguson
<INVALID...@example.com.invalid> wrote:
> In the previous article, Brad Ferguson <Brad Ferguson> wrote:
> > I saw "The Old Grey Hare" on Boomerang as recently as last year, and
> > the shake wasn't there. I hope they put it back. It's a great,
> > funny ending. Thanks for your input here.
>
> It's a great ending, I agree, but I've never been very fond of this
> cartoon. Like too much of Bob Clampett's stuff, it suffers from slow
> pacing, weak gags and -- the most unforgiveable sin -- lazy
> backgrounds.
>
> (Along with the funny ending, I did get a big laugh out of the
> throwaway gag headline in the far-future year 2000 newspaper:
> "Quintuplets Give Birth To Quintuplets.")
>
> You can watch the whole thing, including the ending you remember, at:
>
>
> http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x417dw_merrie-melodies-the-old-grey-hare-1_sh
> ortfilms
>
> (I'm pretty sure the original ending is in the WB DVD version, as well.)
Thanks very much for all of that.
David Samuel Barr
It's most likely that the edited Turner versions of the cartoons (which
can't really be said to be "restorations" and are largely identifiable
by a new lockout with a three-line white-type copyright notice slapped
over the lower third, which was indeed standardised and likely is what
you have in mind) are still being used by CN and Boomerang, but the
original version of TOGH (with the shaking) can be found on various home
video releases, including as part of the 1975 "Bugs Bunny Superstar"
documentary included in Volume 4 (Disc 2) and by itself remastered in
Volume 5 (Disc 3) of the Golden Collection DVD sets.