The Art of Storytelling

Craft Matters: In the Beginning, There Was...

Magic, Old School:
Part One of a Three Part Riff on Contemporary Fables and Folklore

I won't lie.  I grew up during the Golden Age of cartoons, back when animated Disney movies were still good and overgrown mouse ears weren't synonymous with commercialized satanism.  Sure there was a fair share of schlock and drivel back then (I don't need to dwell on the the Thudercats, do I?), just as there is now (Adult Swim's in-house animation come to mind).  There there were also serious animated films (SAMs?); I'm thinking in particular of such classics as The Hobbit, The Last Unicorn, Flight of Dragons, The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Phantom Tollbooth (just to name a few), all of which used the medium's fluidity and versatility to great effect.

And let's face it, had those films gone the live-action route, no one would remember them.  Hell, I can barely recall the BBC's rendition of the Narnia series--and the production values on that were dismal even by 80s standards.  So logically, animation was a mainstay for anyone who dabbled in the fantastic or futuristic.  In this light, it made perfect sense for Beagle to turn his book into an animated film, after all, who in his right mind would believe for an instant that a horse with a horn on its head was anything else? 

Instead we start with a unicorn in a forest who overhears two hunters saying that she's the last one and off she goes to find the rest.  And just like that, we're in the story.  Why?  Because animation, like the paintings in Lascaux and the visual koans of the Zen masters, is a medium of the imagination.  As such it was an ideal environment, from the 60s onward, for magic and marvels alike.

Coming up: CGI, Animation's Second Advent...

Building Character: Regifting Rosenblat...

Dear Everyone:

Below are a list of corrections I would like to make regarding a series of events, starting with...

OPENING SCENE:

MAN sees WOMAN.  Woman sees man.  There's a fence between.  She reaches through, hands him an apple.  The sign above should read EDEN but instead says BUCHENWALD or AUSCHWITZ. The place doesn't matter.  Names are interchangeable.  So are people.

Besides, "we can always revise the screenplay to reflect recent revelations," the producer says.

He forgets to mention facts.

CUT TO:

ROSENBLAT, 79, and WIFE, authors, originators of the story-tale-myth-legend Angel at the Fence.  Sitting on a sofa, smiling, complacent.

ROSENBLAT:

                           I just wanted to make people happy,
                           What's so wrong with that?

(Author's note: Last part added for dramatic purposes only).

WIFE:

                          (Smiling, nodding) My husband is a
                          good man, we never wanted to hurt
                          anybody.

In the window behind Rosenblat and Wife stands Rosenblat's SISTER-IN-LAW (they're all characters in his life). She's holding a sign: KOOK,THIEF, LIAR with an arrow pointing to him.  There's a casket beside her.

(Author's note: if, only for dramatic emphasis, you choose to have Rosenblat's BROTHER rise from said casket and castigate him, I will not stop you--though I will again stress, through subsequent Oprah interviews, if necessary, that this most emphatically did NOT happen).

Sincerely,

The Truth

Craft Matters: Words on Thought...

Just a few insights from my days in the academic trenches...

 
Literary Alchemy

Out of

crap:

gold.

 

Hidebound

Tense body,

narrow mind.