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If you have been a participant (active or otherwise) in the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists 401(k) Pension Savings Plan, you should by now have received additional funds into your accounts. Let us explain:
In January 2002, the trustees of the 401(k) Plan voted to liquidate 62,949 shares of Principal Financial Group Stock that became part of Plan assets when PFG issued an initial public offering of common stock at the end of 2001. The sale resulted (after service fees) in $1,444,956.61 flowing into the plan.
Each participant of record as of October 1, 2001, received new money into his 401(k) account totaling 3.22% of her or his assets. This means that, above and beyond the contributions you make in 2002, your accounts got a "bonus" equaling 3.22% of your total holdings to date.
If you have $100,000 in the MPSC 401(K) Pension Savings Plan, your bonus would have been approximately $3,000. If you have $75,000 in the Plan, your bonus would have been $2,250. If you have $50,000 in the Plan, your bonus would have been $1,500.
This new money was distributed into the various funds and accounts you now hold, weighted to the size of each.
To check on this additional contribution, go to www.principal.com and get into your personal accounts using your social security and PIN numbers. From your account's main screen click on the tab for "History" and select "Activity Detail." Request dates including 02/01/2002 to 03/01/2002 and the money will be listed as "Demutualization Compensation."
Who says we never get a match?
From the PresidentHave you ever been by to visit us? By that I mean, have you had the opportunity to come down to the union building on Lankershim, for a class, a meeting, whatever? What did you think of our home? If you haven't visited, come on by and check it out.
Where I'm going with this is simply to raise the question: does our building serve our needs, or is it holding us back from being as dynamic and responsive to members' needs as we could be? We own our building outright, we've been there for over twenty years, and some people are shocked at even considering this question. "How can you consider spending money on a new building," they ask, "when many of us are losing our jobs?" It does sound extravagant when put that way. The fact is our financial balance sheet is solid, and we would never go forward if it would jeopardize our fiscal health. We would sell our current building and put a small fraction of our financial reserves towards a new building. But the goal isn't to have a new building for its own sake; it's to have a place that gives us the flexibility to respond to membership needs, now and in the future. If we are comfortable doing exactly what we've been doing, then it's a moot point.
We need to start by asking what we need in a building. First, we have to be able to get to the building. That's hard now, since we have no parking and members have to walk several blocks down unlit streets or scramble across four lanes of busy road to get there. This fact alone keeps many members from ever coming to meetings, and it completely prohibits us from having large gatherings or community events. The building must have space for our staff of five and for our American Animation Institute classes. This we now have, though the AAI classes have to be limited to no more than twenty-five students due to room size.
We need space for membership meetings. As long as only about 2% of our members show up for meetings, this is no problem. If even 4% of our members ever show up for a union event, our building couldn't handle it. Right now we've happily traded our "large" meeting room to free up space to sublease to Tom T Productions. It might be nice to have even more space to continue and expand the approach to helping create jobs. It would also be nice to have a large meeting room for seminars, screenings, book signings, and large meetings for both our members and the animation community at large. Currently we handle these needs by leasing space at the Beverly Garland, the Hollywood Heritage Museum, other union local's halls, and so on.
I think scattering our activities around town diffuses our energy, and I know the logistics keeps us from planning many events that we'd otherwise love to. We've also talked with a couple of the digital training centers about leasing them some space to set up computer training in our building. There's no guarantee this would happen if we had a better building with actual parking, but it would make it more likely.
Then there are aesthetics. The last thing we need is a marble-walled showplace, but a building is a physical representation of who we are. People find it hard to believe that Local 839 is robust and financially healthy when they come to our building. I've heard it described as dingy, threadbare, and shabby. There's no handicap access and the hallways are so narrow that people literally have to turn sideways to pass in the hallway.
I'm not advocating change for its own sake. This article is meant to start a discussion, to start people talking about what kinds of things the union could be doing that it's not, what kind of programs and events, what kind of classes, and what it would take to get members to come to meetings. By the time this gets to you, our website bulletin board should be operational. Think about it, talk about it, and let us know what you think. I'm at Kev839@aol.com.
A couple of postscripts. By now the H1-B/CSATTF grant CGI training class applications should be distributed. Putting this training program together, and getting this grant money available for you, requires working through a bureaucratic maze of staggering complexity and frustrations. The 839 staff, and Jeff Massie in particular, deserve major kudos for this Herculean job.
And just a reminder that the Peg-Board is on-line and the last six years
worth are in the online archives. We've just added a search function, so
all this invaluable wit and wisdom is at your fingertips. Happy reading.
-- Kevin Koch
From the Business RepresentativeNine years ago, I ballooned up to 205 pounds. This might not sound heavy to many people, but for a guy who could never get over 170 pounds in college it was a rude shock. At an IATSE national convention, I added to the shock by getting a cholesterol check in a little room off the convention floor and discovering my cholesterol was way above normal.
I remember walking out of the room in numbed bewilderment. How could I have gotten so heavy? How could I have gotten my cholesterol up so high? I mean, I jogged, I pushed weights, I was the picture of health. Okay, I had recently bought bigger pants and bigger shirts, but outside of that I was robust. What the hell was I doing wrong?
In the quiet of my hotel room, I figured it out. I had two small children and we went out to cheap restaurants a lot, the kind that have big golden arches in front of them. I would always have one of the dried out, ready-made salads, gloating about how "good" I was being.
And then, after gloating, I would systematically inhale my kids' left-over burgers, fries and malts.
If I hadn't been exercising, I would have looked like Fatty Arbuckle. Sitting on my hotel bed, I realized I would have to stop tucking away so much greasy food and actually watch what I consumed. I did not relish this prospect.
Perversely enough, investing is a lot like overeating, only in reverse. With food consumption, you have to will yourself to push away from the dinner table before filling your plate for the second or third time. With investing, you have to will yourself to not spend every nickel of your weekly paycheck on baubles, bangles and bright shiny beads, and put money into accounts and investments for the future.
The easiest thing in the world is to overeat and overspend. Life styles can expand even faster than waist lines. So below I continue my spiel on saving and investing (and please remember that I am NOT a licensed financial advisor, just a battle-scarred stock, bond and mutual fund player):
Start a money-stash fund that you promise yourself you will not touch. Put money into this every week, whether it be ten bucks, a hundred bucks, or more. The stash can be a bank account, a mutual fund (bonds or stock), a certificate of deposit, Savings bonds, whatever. The point is, your focus should be on making the stash grow.
If you can participate in a company or union 401(k) Plan, do so. If the Plan has a match that's great, but even if it doesn't, it's still a program worth participating in. Every dollar you put into it is tax deferred, so your take-home pay won't decline very much and you'll be salting yet more money away for the future. Do not avoid 401(k)s because there's no match. The average company 401(k) with a match only kicks in $950 per year (which is a big reason why most companies prefer 401(k) pension savings plans over the old-style Defined Benefit Plan -- it costs them one heck of a lot less because employees finance their own retirement.)
Put money into an IRA. For most of us, IRAs won't be tax-deductible (so fund 401(k)s first), but IRA earnings are tax-deferred. And if you are eligible for a Roth-IRA, by all means put moolah into that as quick as you can, since all earnings are tax exempt, like no taxes ever.
Put money into stock and bond mutual funds outside your retirement accounts. When you shove cash into retirement accounts, you generally get penalized for yanking it out prior to age 59 1/2 (there are a few exceptions to this, but I won't bore you with the technical details.)
The advantages to straight-ahead investment money vs. retirement money is this: When it comes time to pull investment money from a mutual fund and USE it, you will be taxed at the capital gains rate -- currently 20%. You could have the same amount of cash in the identical mutual fund, but because that money is wrapped in a "retirement account," you will be taxed at the applicable income tax rate (currently ranging from 10%-38% Federal tax.)
Diversify, diversify, diversify. If there is one rule I've learned, it's that you don't want to have your money in just one type of investment. Think of "investment styles" as squares on a tic-tac-toe board. Bond funds are in one square, small-company growth stocks (specifically, companies that might be high-priced but are growing like crazy) in another, large-company growth stocks in yet another, and different size value stocks (that is, stocks which are relative bargains in the market-place but represent solid-performing corporations) in still others.
The deal here is to not load up your investments on just one square. Like avoiding scrumptious, fat-laden food, this is often difficult. Three years ago, I had animation artists coming up to me with huge grins on their faces, saying that they were putting everything into "tech," that they'd made 70% in one year and the sky was the limit, yada yada yada. Of course, the tech bubble has long-since burst and nobody any longer comes up to me like they've won the state lottery saying "buy tech." And my advice is, don't put everything on the red and keep spinning the roulette wheel. Sooner or later, you'll kick yourself.
Dollar-Cost Average. You're not going to get rich in a week, year, even ten years, putting a small chunk of money into investment accounts and retirement accounts one week at a time. But you're going to claw your way to financial independence over time, the same way you keep weight off year in and year out - avoiding desserts and a third helping of mashed potatoes meal by meal. You have to be disciplined. You have to be attentive. Even when you're aching to take on extra expense by buying a new car, or a new house, or a new stereo. This will insure you'll be buying stocks or bonds when the market's down, and when it's up. It will mean that over the long haul, you'll be money ahead.
Consider index funds as a core investment. Dollar for dollar, index funds are about the most efficient, cost-effective investments around. Almost all index funds have minimal administrative expenses so every buck you put in will go immediately to work for you. Index Funds also don't sell much stock from year to year, so if you put non-retirement money into them, you won't be paying heavy capital gains taxes.
There are index funds for bonds, stocks and international stocks, Real Estate Investment Trusts, and on and on. The Vanguard Group -- the second largest mutual fund family in the U.S. -- has the widest selection, but many mutual fund families have a variety of index funds. (Here are the two biggest fund families: Vanguard: 800-662-2739; Fidelity: 800-FIDELITY. There are, of course, a wide array of other mutual funds.)
If you want to be thin or financially independent, you have to work at
it. The road is sometimes steep, rocky and pot-holed, but it's clearly marked.
And it leads to the promised land.
-- Steve Hulett
An animator at Ground Zero(Written in November 2001)
1.
At approximately 8:47 am on September 11, 2001, I had just heated my coffee and had a sip, when my wife Dabni and I heard a "thump, thump" sound, kinda like a helicopter makes when they get too low and so close that the prop wash bounces off the sides of buildings. Then a beat and an explosion, another beat and then a building and a ground shock-wave; kinda like earthquakes in LA.
We live at 41 John Street at Nassau in DOMA (Downtown Manhattan) on the top floor of a four-story building, perhaps a record for the shortest building in our area, but it means we have skylights in our rooms from which can be seen the tall buildings in the financial district. When people are over Dabni and I say, "Hey look, from our kitchen you can see the World Trade Center. Cool, huh?".
I turned and looked up through the skylights. First we saw thick black smoke and a strange iridescent flitter of what looked like foil.
We saw flitter in last year's subway series at the baseball playoffs between the Yankees and the Mets. The winners rode up lower Broadway from Battery Park to City Hall, passing John Street on the right (east) and Dey Street on the left. Today you cannot go onto Dey Street, one block from "ground zero" and our former Borders Bookstore and Krispy Kreme, without a special pass because it is part of the cleanup and rescue scene.
It is a Federal crime scene and a war zone.
2.
I went to the roof and verified that the North tower had been hit. Actually the first thing I thought about was what our friend Allan Branch said of the 1993 bomb blast in the same building: "I think they meant to bring it down". The idea of another terrorist strike was one of my immediate thoughts.
While heating my coffee just moments before, I had heard the sound of a low flying aircraft, a sound that tells you it is a commercial airliner and doing something it was not meant to, and this was also playing on my mind as these early thoughts were surfacing. I yelled, "Honey a plane just crashed!", I went to our roof, and from there I saw that the smoke from the North tower was increasing rapidly three-quarters of the way up.
Back down to our place. Channel 5 had it live. How can they do that so fast? It's just happened! Camera shooting south, looking directly at the burning north face. A diagonal, gapping ten-story-looking hole showed clearly. We grabbed our Cairn terrier, Vincent Van Dogh, and went to the street with camera, pad and pen. What looked like confetti was floating down on us and blowing east up John Street, but it was slivers of foil and I still don't know what it was, but it had to be the cause of the glitter we saw from the skylight.
We're both artists and we both work in the city. I am an animator and Dabni is an advertising creative director. My sketchbooks have images of the towers as we used to see them. We took camera, and sketchbook and pet, onto the street. Immediately saw people, rushing, dazed. I saw someone crying.
We took pictures. I managed some sketches which is my personal record of what we saw. I had no idea it was going to be as notorious as it was.
3.
I had to get to my credit union uptown, and like a real New Yorker I thought I should get going or I'd be tied up in emergency congestion. Dabni stayed to walk Vincent. So I was at 55th and Madison when the second plane hit the south tower. Everyone was out on the avenues, looking south. This is no accident, something serious was happening.
Getting back was a different story. There was no subway, they had been stopped. At Rockefeller Center, I got a limited-stop express bus, heading downtown. Near 14th Street, the PA system on the bus told the driver to stop and abandon the bus wherever he found a space, any space.
We exited the bus and I started walking, approximately forty blocks north of my home. At Canal Street, twenty-three blocks north, barricades were in place and we were directed to go north, back uptown, away from the direction of the WTC.
With my driver's license as ID, I went to the cops and said "I live down there. I've got family and a dog". The men in blue said, "No pass", but that I could go see the officers in the white shirts with gold on their uniforms and hats. I went through five barrier-guarded stop points until I was at the City Hall area and Centre Street.
Then I was stopped cold, only one large intersection from my 'hood. No one was going any further south. In fact, people on foot, covered with debris like a mine had caved in on them, were streaming away from my home.
I was at a fountain plaza in the middle of the courts area and there were stretchers lying all over the place. Cops, EMT's, Federal marshals, Marines with shotguns, most with hard hats, were all over the court plazas and the great expanse of steps leading to columns of government buildings.
EMT trucks from all over the five city boroughs were arriving. One officer, his face had been hit, one eye covered. We could see and hear the familiar sounds of F-16's, 18's and the like. Again my thoughts were of the amazing speed with which all these services were in place. After making the rounds of the blue, white, red, gold and camouflaged guards, a Federal cop said the word "bomb" and that we had been attacked and his advice was to leave the city. "But I got family", I said. This one guy said, "My cat"!
One SUV with a dreadlocked NYPD driver and outfitted with a loudspeaker was telling us all to clear out, head north to 14th Street. A roar of, "I want to volunteer!", went up from everyone over the plaza. I mean everyone, all across the globe of ethnic states. The guy in the SUV said "OK!" and for all volunteers to line up at the EMT vehicles and the rest to clear out. I got in line with the volunteers. I could not get the last few blocks home and I did not want to leave, so I stayed there.
4.
Land lines on the island of Manhattan were working inside the island only, and there was one working pay phone at the plaza. No cell phone service -- the transmission towers were on the WTC and were gone. Finally it was my turn to use the telephone.
Dabni had left an alert on our machine
at home saying she and Vincent had managed to get out with the bicycle,
backpack, helmet, whistle and were heading to Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising
at Houston Street, and the West Side Highway, where it was closed-off, and
then on to her writer's place in the Village. This message was the only
way our friends could determine that we were OK, but eventually even this
message was not useful as the infrastructure around lower Manhattan failed,
or was quickly disconnected to prevent further calamity.
I got in one beep to her from where I was, and my turn on the phone was interrupted by a doctor. I started making my way across town through more barricades not knowing if the beepers were working.
Dabni had still been on the street with the dog when the plane hit the second tower and she saw the people falling. After taking cover in an alcove in the ground floor of the Federal Building, she had raced across to our place which eventually became totally blackened out because all the skylights were covered by debris when the towers disappeared from the skyline. It sounded like a hailstorm. She tied a wet kitchen towel over her nose and a wet bandanna over Vincent's nose, grabbed her bike and went back to the chaos on the street. From Saatchi, she walked in the direction of the Village to her colleague Meg and her husband Dave's place. She got my beep but could not return it, but she had left another customized outgoing message on her work phone to me if I called in. Finally we met up at the friend's apartment. And were joined by two friends and colleagues -- Cheryl and Josh, and a guy from their building they had temporally "adopted".
We all waited there glued to the news, and at 2 am that night they were finally able to get their cars out of the parking garage on the Hudson River at Houston. Josh and Cheryl have a country house at Woodstock and we went there, and felt safe. Meg and Dave went to Rhode Island.
5.
We've just come back home this week. For a long time there was no telephone, water or power and the building inside and out was not wrecked, just unliveable. One place we heard of in Battery Park City had part of an airplane wing through it. Ours was not structurally damaged.
After a few days in Woodstock and a few days in Allan's company's apartment in Queens, we ended up in a hotel for four weeks. A pet friendly hotel which at the same time was hosting dogs from FEMA, OSHA, NYPD, NYFD, forensic dogs. Vincent and they spoke, a lot with their eyes. Vincent had traveled to each new location with us. When we finally packed our bags at the hotel to move back, we took one load down and left Vincent until we came back for the second and last load. On our return he was hiding under the hotel room bed. Each time we had packed bags in the last few weeks, we moved to another strange location and he had no way of knowing that this was going to be any different.
Vincent Van Dogh is the social type. He has many friends at the precincts and station houses. He once confided in me that he thought of joining the NYPD K9's or being an NYFD Dalmatian. Some friends, he had met just that week before. Having a dog in the city means you walk 'em at least three times a day, every day, and everybody likes Vincent. He knows everything that goes down in his city especially when it lands on the sidewalk in front of him.
Dogs are creatures of habit and they get stressed when things change too much. Vincent was obviously suffering. When we finally arrived back at our home, it was quite different. Vincent went crazy, racing up and down the rooms, in and out of doorways, playing aggressively with every toy one by one, totally filled with joy at his good luck, and completely unaware that if the NYPD recruiters were looking just then, he would have flunked the entrance behavior exams.
6.
Of all the EMT rescuers, and the four hundred fireman that were racing to help, three hundred and forty-four firemen and many of the others were lost, including most of Vincent's neighborhood friends. Later I learned that the ladder truck I had sketched in the past, with real Texas Longhorns on the front, was lost. Along with the entire squad. The ladder truck from the WTC precinct, with a firefighter straddling the two towers as their logo, was gone. So many.
Vincent is a pet-outreach dog, working out of the NY Animal Center. He is a therapy-like dog, visiting hospitals, nursing homes, the convent houses for runaway teens, guides for the blind, preschool kids. Now he's going to go to the Chelsea Pier at West Side Highway and 23rd Street where the base has been established for the firefighters, rescuers, troopers and police, making new friends. Sadly, the temporary morgue is there too.
Next month: Tales of other artists on 9/11.
Text and illustrations © 2001 by Gordon Bellamy.
Grant applications for CGI training classes funded by the City of Glendale H-1B training program and the Contract Services Administration Training Trust Fund, are now available at the Local 839 office and on-line at http://www.mpsc839.org.
In January, Local 839 members were approved for reimbursement for selected classes at Glendale College, Gnomon School of Visual Arts in Hollywood, Studio Arts in Los Angeles, Video Symphony in Burbank and Weynand Training International in Encino. For a list of approved classes, look in the January Peg-Board or on the members' section of our website.
By now, members should have received a mailing with a postcard to return to the Local 839 office to have applications sent by mail. You can pick up the forms in person at the Local 839 office during our regular office hours, Monday-Friday 8:30 am to 5 pm.
Applications must be completed and returned to the appropriate grant provider office, not to Local 839 or to the school. You must be able to show that you have worked at least thirty days in an animation studio in the last two years, and for the H-1B grant you must show you are a member in good standing (active or on withdrawal).
To access the on-line applications and the list of eligible classes,
you have to be signed in to the [mpsc839] members' e-mail list. If you are
not on the list, send an e-mail to Jeff Massie at jeffm@mpsc839.org with your home e-mail address
and he'll add you to the list.
April 30 is the entry deadline for our T-shirt design contest honoring Local 839's fiftieth anniversary.
T-shirts with the winning design will be given out at the next holiday party in December 2002. The winning designer will receive $500, with $250 for second place and $100 for third.
The contest is open to members in good standing (active or on honorable withdrawal). Submit your design (hard copy or computer .peg format) to Jeff Massie at jeffm@mpsc839.org or c/o Local 839 IATSE, 4729 Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood, CA 91602-1864. Do not put your name on the design, as all judging will be anonymous.
There are no limits on what the design should consist of except that each should contain the phrase "MPSC 839." The design does not have to be "artistic" and non-artist members are encouraged to submit entries based on text designs, etc.
Enter as many designs as you like. The Executive Board will do a preliminary anonymous judging in May to narrow the field to a reasonable number of finalists.
From May 15 through June 30, designs will be posted on the website and on display at the union office, during which time the membership will vote to determine the winning designs. The winners will be announced in July. Winning designs will become the property of Local 839; non-winning designs will remain the property of the designer.
Contact Jeff Massie at (818) 766-7151 or jeffm@mpsc839.org if you have any questions.
(The following was received by e-mail from a union member working at a well-known non-union shop.)
I can't believe that the union has been promoting a studio that is shipping everything but story board over seas. You made everyone believe that the union was renting space to a new studio that actually has jobs.
Animation Magazine's daily e-mail said that they were hiring. For you to have this on the cover of the news letter saying they can produce a product using the best talent in the world for the best price in town was only to the couple of story board artists that they probably already had.
You should have not advertised this company and should not be giving them a break on the rent if you are. What this company is doing should be exactly what you are trying to stop.
This was a kick in the teeth to all your members and I wouldn't promote the union in any way at the non union studio I work. If this is what the new union management has to offer I hope you get voted out. What a joke.
Tom T Productions is shipping overseas what any television animation studio has shipped overseas for the past quarter century.
Here in town they are doing character and prop design, key background, color styling, slugging, timing sheets, rough boards, and cleaned up boards.
They do have jobs, and they have been hiring. When they are in full production, they will employ at least twenty people. They are still in the process of ramping up, and they have signed a straight-ahead union contract, something that numerous non-signator studios -- including yours -- resist doing.
They hired nobody prior to the start of production. At this point, they have board artists, directors, clean up artists, and a designer. They've hired former Disney, Adelaide, and Warner Bros. employees.
I walked a picket line in '82 for ten weeks to stop work from going out of the country. At the end of a long and painful strike, the union lost, and animation work went out of the country (which had been happening before).
Production animation work has been going out of the country for over twenty-five years. Tom Tataranowicz has raised an interesting point. Even if he found a backer willing to pay the extra money to do a TV animation series with 100% union-shop American labor, he doubts the show could be produced entirely in this country -- there simply aren't enough animators and assistants with TV animation experience and skills to get the show out on time for a series schedule.
The non-union company for which you work not only sends work out, but over the years has neglected to pay overtime to various artists and production people who are entitled to it under law. We got a half dozen of your fellow animation artists overtime they hadn't been paid after we filed a lawsuit on their behalf.
Maybe you've complained about things like the above to management, maybe you haven't. (If you have, bully for you. You're a fearless guy.) Every animation shop in town, union and non-union, feature or television, sends work out of the country. There are no exceptions.
Should we refuse to sign a contract with studios who aren't pure? I'm happy to listen to any suggestions you have as to what we should do, but your e-mail basically lambastes us for things we have done -- like sign a contract with a new studio, like rent them space we aren't utilizing, like tout the fact that they had positions to fill (which we do with every other studio, so why not them?)
So, how is working to create more union work, renting space to a signator studio, and saying so in our newsletter, a "kick in the teeth"? In point of fact, the old union management -- former President Tom Sito -- is one of the supervising directors at Tom T Productions. Maybe you begrudge him working for a union shop that sends work out; please know that I don't begrudge you working for a non-union shop that sends work out.
Times are tough in the animation industry, and I understand why and how people have to take the work where they can find it. I only wish you understood why we have to sign contracts with new animation studios who don't do all their work in L. A.
-- Steve Hulett
Artist: Tom Sito
In saying good-bye to Chuck Jones we honor more than just a great animator and director. He was one of the "A" list in the history of animation, in a rank alongside Walt Disney and Winsor McCay. While I never had the opportunity to work with him I was proud that he called me a friend and we used to share many long conversations about Life, the Universe and Everything. Now that he's gone I wish I could have only had more time with him.
In the weeks since his death many have spoken about his contributions to the art form, his place in American Film, his brilliance and his warm humanity. More than just a director of some good cartoon shorts, to us animators Chuck Jones was our John Ford, our Capra, our Hitchcock. He became Our Roving Ambassador to the World for the Art of Animation. He expounded at length to the major media on the Philosophy of Animated Film and gave it a clarity and panache few have been able to equal.
But I want to tell you about another part of Chuck Jones that not many may know about. He was the Champion of Our Dignity. A Prince among Animators.
The only thing that could get his anger up more than modern politics was when the topic turned to the studio suits and how they treat us. He was very passionate about how we animators (meaning all categories of animation HerrenVolk) are respected.
When he recalled old battles with Eddie Selzer, the Warner execs, network affiliates and other corporate types I could see his contempt boiling back from decades of sweet sublimation.
He loved to tell the story about how after ten years of working for the company in 1943 he finally met the real Warner brothers. In this meeting supposedly one Warner brother looked at him and said: "I don't know what the f**k you do, all I know is we make Mickey Mouse!" Later when Chuck decided to create a character out of a skunk named Pepe le Pew, producer Eddie Selzer impotently forbade him to and after viewing the finished film sneered: "No one's going to laugh at that sh*t!" Scentimentally Yours, the first Pepe Le Pew cartoon, won an Oscar and made Pepe one of Warners' most popular stars.
In 1962, Jack Warner found out that Chuck in his boredom of having to do endless retreads of shorts had been freelance directing at UPA. Warner called him on the carpet: "I'm going to make sure your name and Warner Bros. will never be associated ever again!" Jack Warner retired in 1967 and his memory has disappeared except for die-hard Hollywood trivia buffs, while Chuck Jones remained throughout his life Mr. Warner Bros. to an adoring public.
Chuck was one of the great champions in forming the animation union. While many top directors fence-straddled, Chuck threw his clout and reputation into the battle and marched with picket signs up and down Buena Vista St. pulling his little daughter Linda in tow. He liked to joke about the Looney Tune lockout and unionizing as "Our own little Six-Day War", and later he was active in the Disney strike and Guild administration. Needless to say, without Chuck Jones's contribution LA's toon town would not have been the union town it is today.
You see, with Charles M. Jones it was never a matter of seniority or overtime or vacation pay -- deep down what really mattered to him was Respect.
Like all of us at one time Chuck too believed in the idea taught in art school that if you were a good artist the money guys would soon bow down to you. He told me his eyes were opened when he was once arguing for a raise in pay for some of his painters and back-end artists and the exec he was negotiating with said contemptuously: "We are not a charity here."
The callous use of creative folk by the moneymen really got under his skin. Whenever an artist in our business wasn't being treated right, Chuck was annoyed. In a town that worships power and screws the weak he was our Champion. By his example and in interviews, articles and documentaries he pounded home his creed of the special status of animation folk. That cause as much as his own personal joy was what motivated him to fly to France to receive a Legion D'Honneur or a Special Academy Award. He wanted legitimacy for us all. He was proud of our part in the story of World Cinema.
When Chuck related these tales of struggle with the studio powers, you could see the satisfaction in his eyes. I saw that same look of tough, calm experience in the eyes of Charles Schulz, the creator of Charlie Brown. He too started with just a pencil and his dreams, became rich but never stopped being an artist. Many of us in our careers try to be business tycoons but too many of us are devoured by the sharks. Or we just forget about art and embrace the Dark Side of the Force.
Chuck Jones and Sparky Schulz belong to a tiny elite like Picasso and Bill Cosby who fought the moneymen and won. They emerged stronger than the suits and made them dance to their tune. Charles Schulz told us in one of his final appearances to have no illusions about the sincerity of the Money Guys. "Remember at base when all else fails You Can Draw, and They Can't, Which is why they Hate you."
Chuck was from that age when the studio head came from the ranks. Now every major studio is controlled by lawyers, accountants and worse. No matter how many companies Chuck Jones ran he always remained at heart a pencil-pusher. He told us "Artists should never compete against each other."
In our current suffering when our talents are esteemed so little that the studios feel they could get the same quality anywhere and when loyalty, legacy and professionalism have been made into cruel jokes, Chuck's message to all of his children is not to despair, in the end the Emperor's all have no clothes.
Good bye Mr. Jones. I hope you are enjoying your reward. I hope you are in Animation Valhalla with Tex, Friz, Leon, Ken, Maurice and the rest of the Termite Terrace gang. I hope you and Grim Natwick are sharing a chocolate soda again like you did at Iwerks Studio in 1931. Most of all I hope you get to meet your idol Mark Twain and swap some stories. I think he'd like to hear about Michigan J. Frog and that dang Roadrunner.
Look down once and a while on we your children struggling to make it in ToonTown. Smile upon us from above and say " Don't despair. It'll be all right. You will make it. Do good animation, support one another and make sure they Respect You."
-- Tom Sito
BILL BERG, long-time Disney story man and comic strip artist, died of pneumonia in San Juan Capistrano on March 2. Berg was 84.
Starting as a Disney trainee in 1938, Berg worked his way into the studio story department, contributing stories and gags to Donald Duck shorts. In the mid '50s, he became a writer for segments of the Mickey Mouse Club and Disneyland. He also wrote a series of Jiminy Cricket educational shorts and in 1959, was part of the story crew for the award-winning featurette, Donald Duck in Mathmagicland.
In the 70s and 80s, Berg wrote and drew the Scamp comic strip. He retired in 1988.
AKEKSANDR VINUKIROV, one of the leading Russian animators and art directors in the 'fifties through the early 'sixties, passed away January 10 in his native land after a long illness at the age of 79.
Some of his most memorable films he art directed were Beauty and the Beast: A Tale of the Crimson Flower, The Golden Antelope and The Snow Queen.
THOMAS WARKENTIN died peacefully in his sleep, at home, on March 12, following a short illness. He was sixty-six years old. He had worked in animation for more than thirteen years after a diverse earlier career in technical illustrating, advertising, album cover design and magazine illustration, among other artistic endeavors. He also wrote and drew the Star Trek newspaper cartoon and wrote Flash Gordon for several years. He worked for ten years at Warner Bros. doing key background design on such shows as Tiny Toons, Animaniacs (his only Emmy), Superman, Freakazoid, Good Feathers, Road Rovers, Histeria, and Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, and then most recently at Disney on The Weekenders. He will be sorely missed by his wife, two sons, three cats and his many good friends and co-workers.
-- Linda Lyons
There will be a memorial service and exhibition on April 12, from 6 to 9 pm, at the Hollywood Heritage Museum, 2100 N. Highland Ave. in Hollywood, directly across from the Hollywood Bowl. Here is a flyer for this event (Adobe Acrobat PDF format).
Suggested donations of $5 - $10 will help to make the evening a fitting
tribute to this extraordinary artist. Checks can be made payable to the
"Thomas Warkentin Fund" and sent to PO
Box 1979, Venice CA 90294.