Well, I'd probably need to learn to use PayPal or some other online banker to truly monetize effectively,
Plus, I'd worry that might be a somewhat over-saturated market-- there's a blogger
I follow by the name of Ferris Wheelhouse who does reviews of old MM/LT cartoons and thoughtful essays on things like
Elmer Fudd and guns, and
Chuck Jones'
Road Runner cartoons. Might be nice to get a guest spot in one of those vids, though, to share thoughts and theories.
For example: my generations' cartoons may have been typified by a dearth of any real creativity and innovation, static poses, and eye-blistering pink-and-purple color palettes, but even in the heyday of creator-driven cartoons, it wasn't all roses, either. The supervisors at Warners were still under contract to put out something like, say, 40 Porky Pig cartoons a year. And from what I've read,
they hated Porky over there. So they'd often get around this mandate by giving the pig as little screen time as possible, say, barely two minutes out of a seven-minute picture. Cartoons like "The Daffy Doc" (Clampett, 1938), and the spot-gag heavy "Who's Who In the Zoo" (McCabe, 1942) are absolute masteries of this little cheat. Studio bosses back then were a lot of clueless boneheads, too.
You think it's all about the money
now, but while a pretty affable sort, producer Leon Schlesinger was so tight-fisted he could squeeze a nickel 'til the bufffalo shat. As long as the public was going to theaters and paying to watch their cartoons, he largely let his directors have free rein (or a least as far as the meager budgets he afforded them would allow), only stepping in and saying something when they felt they got
too out of hand. It's said Chuck Jones would have been canned straightaway over
Dover Boys, but they let him stay on because they didn't really have anyone else to replace him with... and then, whaddaya know,
Columbia turns around and rips him right off. Little wonder we stated seeing a more cynical side of Chuck as early as "Fresh Airedale" (1948), which became full-blown curmudgeonry as the decades passed.
One good thing the nineties had going for them was that a few of the old directors were still alive and willing to mentor young writer and artists...which is what I think partly led to that decade's big animation Renaissance. Tex Avery was brought out of retirement to help teach young TV writers at Hanna-Barbera how to be funny, sadly he would miss the party by some eight years or so; he died in 1980.
Norman McCabe would often sit in on staff meetings at WBA and even ghost-directed on a couple of
Tiny Toon Adventures shorts. Chuck Jones founded a
non-profit art institute for seniors and young prospective future animators in Costa Mesa, CA. But all the old guard are gone now; I don't think we have anyone like that these days, do we? Tom Ruegger, perhaps? Arlene Klasky? John Kricfal...
(glass shatters)--never mind.
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