Met with my animation agents. Pitched four ideas. They liked three of 'em. Nice. What were your all-time favorite cartoons?
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- Steven Barnes
- For the last thirty years or so I’ve been a lecturer, coach, novelist and television writer. For the last forty years I’ve been involved variously in the martial arts, and for all my life I’ve studied and enjoyed yoga. Not that I worked at it as hard and honestly as I should have—I’d be a combination of BKS Iyengar and Bruce Lee if I had. After publishing about three million words of science fiction (including the New York Times bestsellers The Legacy of Heorot and The Cestus Deception) and having about twenty hours of produced television shows (including The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Andromeda, and Stargate, as well as four episodes of the immortal Baywatch), I’ve got opinions on the writing life. After earning black belts in Judo and Karate, and practicing the Indonesian art of Pentjak Silat Serak for the last fifteen, well, I have some opinions there, as well. And having struggled to live consciously since childhood...well, those opinions are probably strongest of all.
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14 comments:
Favorite cartoons were "Underdog", "Rocky and Bullwinkle Show", "Looney Tunes" and "Thor".
Johnny Quest, baby! Okay, yeah, the animation was incredibly cheap and limited, and they had like three voice actors total...but man!
Pirates! Lasers! Secret bases! Mummies on the rampage! Dinosaurs! ("Kill, Turu, kill!") Rocket ships! Submarines! Hover vehicles! Invisible Monsters! Robot spies! Evil Geniuses! Pulp Action Out The Yin-Yang! It was glorious.
I hated Bandit with a white-hot passion (even as a young kid I hated the "comic relief" crap), but otherwise I love that show even now.
Robotech.
It was the first cartoon I saw that treated it's audience like adults and told a complex, coherent story.
I still haven't seen anything else like it.
Although Fist of the North Star is just plain fun.
If you don't count "The Incredibles" or the first five minutes of "Up," I'd have to choose the classic Warner Brothers Buggs Bunny cartoons as The Best. The part of "Hillbilly Hare" in which Buggs plays the fiddle for two square-dancing hillbillies is probably my single favorite bit of funny cartooning.
Marco
Mighty Mouse was my top favorite. Others I liked were Rocky and Bullwinkle (some sections) and Tom Terrific.
Gargoyles, best cartoon I ever saw.
Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry
Loved Jonny Quest. First cartoon with a brown-skinned kid, even if he was Indian. The gay subtext on the show is just hysterical to watch now, but I sure never caught it first tiem around...
I thought I had already posted this, but maybe not; I can't find it.
My all time favourite animated work was "Peter Pan". Of course, I saw it when I was about ten years old; I might well feel differently now. The only two others that even come close were "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Shrek."
My second favorite cartoon's the early 70's Star Trek Animated (STA). IMHO, STA conveyed the wonders of space while espousing humanistic and rational values (most rare for Saturday morning fare!). The series also featured scripts in Larry Niven and other accomplished science fiction writers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2P5MUXTQD8
My all-time favorite cartoon's Thundarr The Barbarian. Once you get past the obvious Star Wars and Conan ripoffs (Sunsword cum lightsabre, Mok cum Wookie, etc), you're treated to an fabulous action feast in an exotic, richly imaged world. Apart from the detailed and dark "broken Moon" vistas, the Thundarr scripts were often well written, sometimes even mining classics like The Odyssey or Macbeth. Plus the series was ahead of its time racially, featuring a smoking sexy brown heroine, Princess Ariel, during the otherwise lily-white 80's cartoon lineup.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF_x8wCQedw&feature=related
the ones I posted
never made it to virtual print
here they are again
Heckle and Jeckle
Roadrunner
The Incredibles
and the newly out
secret of kells
looks like it'll be in this list
after I see it
As a kid:
The Smurfs or the Star Wars C3PO/R2D2 cartoon
As an adult:
Batman of the Future (or any of the other Timmverse DC cartoons)
All these shows were very well scripted and had a lot of heart. IIRC the Star Wars cartoon regularly had inter-racial couples - quite forward looking for an eighties cartoon - and as the product of one myself it made me feel a little less odd.
Sealab 2020
Johnny Quest
Skyhawks
I remember one Saturday morning when they preempted my morning cartoons for the Watergate hearings. I was _soooo_ pissed.
I loved looney tunes, rocky and bullwinkle, and jonny quest, actually most of what other have mentioned. i would also include the pink panther cartoons and hong kong phooey!
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