Late last September one of the home video world's most direly outstanding debts was finally repaid, and it came in the form of a print-on-demand DVD from Warner Bros. Longtime readers may recall that one of my favorite movies ever, specifically my favorite animated film after Fantasia and The Incredibles, is Twice Upon A Time, an utterly delightful and hilarious fantasy with characters like Ralph the All-Purpose Animal, Synonamess Botch and Rod Rescueman. A fleet jaunt through the garden of spoofly whimsy, the George Lucas-executive-produced joint is the only feature-length animation by Korty Films under the leadership of John Korty, animator and TV-movie director, and its singular presence in the film world is partially due to a bungled release by its distributor, The Ladd Company, outputters of Blade Runner. Ladd chose to give it a limited theatrical run in order to give what might be the company's great winter passion to The Right Stuff and the decision ultimately wasn't enough to keep the company from sinking into bankruptcy, and further appearances of the film on TV and home video were complicated by infighting between Korty and producer Bill Couturié. The Warner Bros. Archive Collection release is the only legit video version since the early 90's and features two different audio tracks as a compromise to both Korty and Couturié's preferred cuts, and the cult animation gods smiled down from their seat on top of Mount Animalympus. The film's rescuing is important not only for making a kickass kartoon available once again but also because it helps preserve Lumage, an animation technique invented by Korty and used in Twice Upon a Time for its one and only shot at feature-length glory.
"It's alright, I'm wearing rubber underwear!"
How Lumage actually works might not be apparent from the clips in the trailer (a good thing, as one isn't supposed to think about how a film is animated but rather be sucked into its world) but here's the skinny: the characters are first sketched out, then translucent plastic is cut up to form them, and the pieces are moved around on a light table, the kind used for drafting. The positions are shot frame by frame and viola. If this sounds time consuming rest assured that it's far more time consuming than you think, as every frame of action has to be sketched and then cut out and then filmed, making the work potentially twice as life-consuming as traditional animation. There's a reason not many stop-motion movies are made these days (and why they're so dang expensive) and understandably Lumage never really caught on outside of Korty Films. The real shame in losing the art isn't just that it's cutout animation, a rarely-used technique these days (seen here in John Weldon's The Lump, filmed in "Recyclomation"), but that the addition of backlighting makes the technique not only especially rare but uncommonly beautiful - remember how astonishing it was to see intense, real-life glowing in moments of The Secret of Nimh, such as Mrs. Frisby's convo with the Great Owl? The use of light here allows the liquid textures of the plastic figures radiate and come alive in a way that paper and pen could never accomplish. Korty and co. exploit this throughout the film by using every opportunity to change the textural makeup on the characters, such as Ralph's fur, giving them a magical, almost volatile presence. You might be wondering how a feature-length film using such a difficult and new animation technique got greenlit, and the answer is not only simple but a fine trip in the wayback machine - Korty had used it many times before, all under the great umbrella of 70's children's television.
In the 70s and 80s Korty Films produced dozens of short bits for Sesame Street and The Electric Company, both Children's Television Workshop shows and, at least for the latter, the standard for young children's programming. One of the big draws of Sesame Street was teaching simple concepts, such as numbers and letters, in creative and fun ways, and the quality and variety of artists they got to make these bits kept both Sesame Street and The Electric Company head and shoulders above anything similar before it, and it's the reason that Sesame Street managed to stay on the air and on top for so long that some of the kids who saw the early seasons had grandchildren who watched the show. Korty's shorts were among the best pieces of animation to appear on the two shows, not only for their educational value but also their wit and attention to detail, such as the above bit "Q is for Quiet" wherein the letters of the word "quiet" jabber and argue.
What strikes me the most about Korty's Sesame Street work is his care and respect in depicting people, such as with "Angry Annie" here. Think about how much work it took to cut out and shape her hair and then animate all the tiny movements as she pulls it, shakes her head around and reacts to its presence on the tip of her nose. The most difficult task in any animated film is making the characters believable and Korty makes up for the flat appearance of Lumage with tons of detail drawn from a sharp eye as to how people think and act upon those thoughts in subconscious ways. Also apparent is how the voice actors are allowed to flesh out their performances through ad lib and inconsistency, giving their characters a fine naturalism that Korty worked off of to great effect. The cast of Twice Upon a Time was made up of improv comedians such as Lorenzo Music and Marshall Efron, and different cuts of the film had different dialogue, the main thing keeping the film from a proper video release for so long. For an early example of how those guys worked with Korty, here's James Cranna, the voice of Scuzzbopper, in a Sesame Street bit:
Sesame Street was a notable change from earlier children's programming in two major ways - it's setting was decidedly urban rather than the rural or fantastic worlds before it and its cast was racially integrated, a point of contention with conservative viewers, especially in the deep South. While praising someone for conforming to Sesame Street's values might not seem necessary it is notable that Korty's previous work was actually well-suited to the show's humanistic, pro-friendship values and concern for urban living. Consider one of his earliest works, the anti-nuke docu-short "The Language of Faces", produced by the Peace Education Program of the American Friends Service Committe, a Quaker-run peace activist organization:
That haunting would-be omen might seem a bit much now with its Criswell-esque narration and experimental percussion music but it's far from the scariest of the nuke scare flicks, with Fail-Safe and The War Game taking all cakes known and unknown. It doesn't take a film scholar to point out how the nightmare bombs and Big Red One doomsday button from Twice Upon a Time have more than a passing resemblance to the world's most ominous stockpile, and the horrifying realities of nuclear warfare and our need to come together as a world alliance are obvious enough truths to be self-evident to preschoolers, though Korty never got that particular message on the air. One Electric Company short about pollution is a good substitute, though:
The most extensive work Korty did for these shows was the running Sesame Street bit "Thelma Thumb", no examples of which (in English, anyways) I was able to find, which is a shame as it featured both James Cranna and Judith Kahan, the voice of the Fairy Godmother from Twice. There are plenty more individual shorts, though, and if anything can be said for the content on Sesame Street and The Electric Company it's that it's simple enough for small children to understand, so I don't see any reason why I shouldn't just let them all hang out.
You can get lots more info on Korty at his personal website, a nice piece of design at the very least, and hopefully more exposure of his talents will help more Sesame Street and Electric Company shorts resurface. Lumage's serious difficulties as an art form have logically kept it from spreading its wings farther than the Korty kamp but we cna help honor its vital contribution to American animation by recirculating Korty's bits, as commenting on current political issues with shorts like "Pollution Solution" is what Facebook was made for. To close out, here's one of Korty's most charming and humanistic shorts, a kind reminder of the how human potential can be seen only one step (or foot) at a time.
~PNK
