What's Up, Doc? Animation!

By Richard Zoglin

From the creator of gritty real-life dramas like Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law, the idea seemed downright goofy. Steven Bochco's proposal was to do a TV series set in the White House, in which the affairs of government are seen through the eyes of mice, bugs and other critters roaming around the place. A cartoon, of all things. Network executives, Bochco recalls, greeted his suggestion with all the warmth that Sylvester used to display toward Tweety Pie. "They said, 'What, are you crazy? Take a bus.' "

Until recently, the same reaction would have greeted anybody with a notion of resurrecting the nearly moribund art of animation. Feature films as lavishly animated as Walt Disney classics like Fantasia and Pinocchio? That sort of craftsmanship seemed as antiquated as hand-stitched lace curtains. Cartoon shorts before the main feature in movie theaters? Too expensive -- and anyway, they would only slow down the parade of customers filing in and out of the multiplex. Animation in prime time? Went out with The Flintstones.

But these axioms have suddenly vanished in a puff of Road Runner smoke. Hollywood is in the midst of an animation boom. Bochco's series, five years after he suggested it, is being developed by ABC for 1991. At least three other animated shows are in the works for prime time, each hoping to duplicate the success of the Fox network's surprise hit The Simpsons. In theaters, the big box-office numbers rolled up by such films as The Little Mermaid and Who Framed Roger Rabbit have inspired a burst of activity. This summer has already seen a movie version of The Jetsons and a rerelease of Disney's The Jungle Book. Opening this weekend is DuckTales: The Movie, based on Disney's hit TV cartoon series. Due out later this year: The Rescuers Down Under, also from Disney, and Rock-A-Doodle, an adaptation of a Chaucer tale from animator Don Bluth (An American Tail).

On daytime TV, where crudely animated action toys have long dominated the scene, the level of competition -- and quality -- has never been higher. Steven Spielberg and Warner Bros. have joined forces to produce Tiny Toon Adventures, featuring kiddie counterparts of famous Looney Tunes characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. The weekday series, debuting in September, is animated in the witty, wildly elastic style of such cartoon pioneers as Bob Clampett and Tex Avery. Disney is adding two more cartoon shows to an afternoon lineup that already includes DuckTales and Chip 'n' Dale's Rescue Rangers, TV's two highest-rated (and best-animated) syndicated children's shows. The Fox network is entering the fray with Peter Pan and the Pirates, the first of a planned two-hour cartoon block of its own.

Even the long-neglected theatrical short is making a comeback. Disney has resurrected Roger Rabbit in two cartoon shorts (the latest, Roller Coaster Rabbit, is being shown this summer with Dick Tracy). Warner Bros. is about to release its first new Bugs Bunny cartoon in 26 years, and Disney is readying a Mickey Mouse featurette for later this year. Meanwhile, the American Multi- Cinema theater chain has begun showing old Looney Tunes shorts in all 1,700 of its movie houses. "For the past two decades I thought of animation as a desert," says Spielberg. "Suddenly what was a mirage has become an oasis."

What accounts for the blossoming? Most industry observers credit the baby- boom audience, who grew up watching classic cartoons and see them as a reminder of their youth -- and something to share with their kids. From the industry standpoint, the high cost of animation (a fully animated feature ranges from $12 million to $25 million) seems less prohibitive in an era of soaring star salaries and $50 million-plus budgets. The appeal of animation has also been enhanced by home video: such cartoon features as Bambi and The Little Mermaid have been among the hottest sellers at the cassette counter.

Cartoons have, moreover, simply got better. After the golden age in the 1940s and '50s, animation all but disappeared from movie theaters, while TV bastardized the genre with schlocky "limited animation." The current revival was sparked by Walt Disney Studios, which has more than tripled the size of its theatrical-animation unit since 1984 and ventured into TV cartoons for the first time. The busiest newcomer is Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, which has produced cartoon features like An American Tail and maintains an animation unit of more than 300 in London. Even Hanna-Barbera, the K mart of TV cartooning (The Flintstones, The Smurfs), is upgrading quality with such features as The Endangered, an ecological adventure film that will cost $14 million and take a Disney-like 2 1/2 years to produce.

Animation remains a curiously old-fashioned, labor-intensive craft. A typical feature-length film requires 100,000 frames, or cels, each of which has to be painted by hand. Even with simpler TV animation, a half-hour cartoon usually requires 16 to 18 weeks of production, compared with three or four weeks for a live-action show. To save money, much of the work is shipped overseas, usually to the Far East. Artists there do most of the frame-by-frame drawings, working from character models and storyboards prepared in the U.S. Computer animation is also being used to provide more visual texture and fluid motion. With computers, for example, Disney's forthcoming The Rescuers Down Under was able to use a palette of several hundred colors, many times the number used in most animated features.

Computers, however, cannot replace human craftsmanship. "It is really difficult to duplicate the character quirks that an artist puts into animation," says Jean MacCurdy, chief of animation at Warner Bros. With animation in eclipse for so many years, finding those artists was a challenge. "Great animators are like great actors," says Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg. "The talent pool is so small and so precious."

Yet good animation is not entirely dependent on technical wizardry. "The secret is getting good writers who understand how to take advantage of the animation medium," says Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons. "I've always been inspired by old Jay Ward cartoons like Rocky and Bullwinkle, which was fairly primitive animation but had great writing, voices and music."

The animation revival seems to have got Hollywood's creative juices flowing. "It allows you to do physical comedy, which isn't really being done on television," says Jeff Sagansky, president of CBS Entertainment. Among the cartoon shows in development for CBS: a version of The Pink Panther, which combines animation with live action, and Family Dog, a canine's view of the world produced by Spielberg and director Tim Burton (Batman). Rodney Dangerfield will get a cartoon makeover next year in the animated feature Rover Dangerfield. And Spielberg is planning an animated movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats. "With animation, we can get into the heart, soul and fur of cats," he says. "There are unlimited possibilities."

There are also possibilities for overkill. "Animation is an art form that, through the loss of care, fell by the wayside," says David Kirschner, the newly installed president of Hanna-Barbera. "If it's exploited again without care, it will again fall away." Should the field become glutted, the studios that are currently in love with cartoons might make a quick about-face and say, "That's all, folks."

With reporting by Richard Natale/Los Angeles