Latest news with #Tartakovsky
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a day ago
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Genndy Tartakovsky Knows ‘Fixed' Is a ‘Unicorn' of an Animated Movie
Having worked on the project for 15 years, Genndy Tartakovsky is fully aware that his latest film, 'Fixed,' is an anomaly. Here is a raunchy, capital R-rated 2D animated comedy about a dog having one last wild night out on the town before getting neutered in the morning and losing his precious family jewels. Despite having several acclaimed shows and a highly successful animated film trilogy in his resume, Tartakovsky's 'Fixed' could have easily not made it to the screen — and it almost didn't several times. 'I've always said this movie is a unicorn,' Tartakovsky told IndieWire ahead of the film's release at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. 'It's a dream come true to have a 2D animated, hand-drawn, R-rated movie that doesn't rely on pop culture humor. It's very rare.' More from IndieWire The Beautiful, Brutal Action of 'Predator: Killer of Killers' David Harbour Admits He's Ready for 'Stranger Things' to End: 'How Much More Story Is There?' He is not wrong. Though on the surface, it'd be easy to dismiss 'Fixed' as this year's 'Sausage Party,' another animated movie that used the medium's endless visual possibilities to give audiences extremely graphic imagery. For Tartakovsky, who has worked primarily in the all-ages space for the past 30 years, even when he's moved to R-rated animation, he's never written this kind of humor before. Sure, 'Samurai Jack' has humor, but it's never raunchy, and 'Primal' has plenty of graphic imagery, but it's kind of lacking in the buttholes and testicles department compared to this movie. For the director, it was a challenge to have to change his sensibilities and make sure exactly where he wanted the movie to go. 'It can't be just straight dialogue all the way through,' Tartakovsky explained. 'It's my sensibility, it has to have some physicality.' That physicality comes in the form of striking, exaggerated, and caricatured animation straight out of the golden age of Chuck Jones and Tex Avery cartoons. For Tartakovsky, who fell in love with that style of animation growing up, it was a dream. 'I've been studying it for so long,' he said. 'It's part of me and it's informed my style.' Whether it's the slapstick humor of 'Dexter's Laboratory,' or the use of silence in storytelling in 'Samurai Jack' or even the way he uses Bugs Bunny-type physicality in non-comedy projects like 'Clone Wars,' Tartakovsky has brought an old-school sensibility to every project he's worked on, but 'Fixed' feels like the culmination of it. Though there is no squash and stretch, exactly, there is a shared sense of physical humor and slapstick in Golden Age cartoons and a sight gag of a pack of dogs chasing a squirrel and cutting to them tearing the poor creature to bloody bits. Having worked with French studio La Cachette for his last two projects, 'Fixed' was also new territory for Tartakovsky in the form of a new team of animators working to bring that Avery and Jones vibe to 'Fixed.' Despite working in the industry for decades, the caliber of his collaborators intimidated the creator. 'I don't get to animate as much, so when all of a sudden I'm working with great animators, I get in my head and think they'll see that I'm a fake because I've only done my own stuff for so long,' Tartakovsky said. 'I had Disney animators on my team — one of our guys worked on 'Roger Rabbit,' and he's incredible, so am I really going to give him direction? He can out-animate me at any time.' According to Tartakovsky, it ended up not being an issue. 'It was the most minimal amount of notes we've ever done on a film. It was never about the technical side of animation, I'd just talk to them about the joke and they got it right away.' Behind the sex jokes lies a rather heartfelt story of a group of friends trying to cheer up one of their own, and even a sweet romantic story. Possibly the most surprisingly tender, yet still very funny, subplot in the film involves Lucky, a neurotic dog obsessed with weird smells and tastes, learning to love himself after an encounter with Frankie, an intersex dog voiced by River Gallo. 'Everyone was holding their breath, asking if I was sure I wanted to include that,' Tartakovsky said. 'I thought, why not? It's funny and we're not making fun of it. We want to be sincere about it and not mean.' Indeed, there's a sincerity in the way Gallo voices Frankie that makes the humor of their big scene also become a moment of personal triumph, of acceptance, and also funny dog sex. 'Hiring a voice actor who is part of that community added a lot to it. Sometimes I'd do something and they'd explain why it could be misinterpreted because I don't have that perspective, so they'd explain it to me, and then I'd change it up. We worked our way through the whole movie like that.' Preventing the raunchiness from drowning the heart, and the heart from mellowing out the humor, was a balance critical to crafting the film. 'We're trying to build characters that we really like and that are funny,' Tartakovsky said. 'That's really hard to do from scratch in an original story.' It doesn't help that it's a feature, as, unlike TV, you can't just build on happy accidents from one episode to the next. Cracking the right balance took years and several variations of the script. Part of the beauty, but also the problem, of writing for animation is that something that works well on the page, or even with a specific art style, doesn't necessarily translate to another visual style. At one point, Tartakovsky was pressured into trying out 3D animation to sell the film more easily, but that had an unexpected effect on the film. 'Animated balls look better in 2D.' 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2 days ago
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‘Dexter's Laboratory' & ‘The Powerpuff Girls' Creators On How They Broke The System At Cartoon Network
If he was starting out today, Dexter's Laboratory creator Genndy Tartakovsky would 'make cartoon after cartoon until something hits.' That was Tartakovsky's pearl of wisdom delivered to a packed Annecy audience as he celebrated 25 years of Cartoon Network Studios with a sextet of creators of some of the biggest American cartoons of all time, including The Powerpuff Girls, Adventure Time and Steven Universe. More from Deadline From Brink Of Bankruptcy, TeamTO Unveils Six New Shows & Adult Animation Push At Annecy Neil Court Joins Coolabi As Chairman Amid 'Warrior Cats' Growth Push And M&A Opportunities "Je Suis Milhouse": Matt Groening Gets Emotional At Annecy As He Reveals The Motivation Behind The 800-Episode Longevity Of 'The Simpsons' Tartakovsky, who is also in Annecy promoting Netflix's Fixed, figures it's easier than ever to get your big break because young cartoonists can flood YouTube with ideas. 'It's partly independent now because you can make it and put it on your own kind of cable channel,' he added. 'That's what I'd do [if I were starting now]. I'd work a day job and then at night I'd make cartoon after cartoon until something hits. It was more difficult when we were coming up.' Tartakovsky is enthused by the new landscape and said he 'feels like when I was younger, I feel like that energy makes me still want to do new things.' He sat next to his old friend and The Powerpuff Girls creator Craig McCracken, who concurred, saying that for his spin-off of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, which he is making with Warner-owned Hanna Barbera Studios Europe, 'the energy is so Cartoon Network' on set. Adam Muto, showrunner of Adventure Time, was slightly more muted on the current state of things. 'We need to make sure people with idiosyncrasies get to have their own voices,' he said. 'But [commissioners] have to greenlight stuff. They have gotta greenlight.' 'We were breaking the system' Tartakovsky and McCracken walked the Annecy audience through how they broke the system at Cartoon Network Studios a quarter century ago when they were first starting out, with Tartakovsky describing the older generation of cartoonists back then as being 'beaten down' when he landed his Dexter's Laboratory greenlight as a young man. McCracken, who worked with Tartakosvky on Dexter's Laboratory, added: 'We were breaking the system and they didn't like that. They were survivalists and we had been given an opportunity they had been working their whole lives for. I felt a bit bad for them but we were given this golden opportunity, this one seven-minute show. And to be fair some of the old guard loved what we were doing.' Tartakosvky set the scene for the early days of Dexter's Lab, which went on to achieve the rare feat of being a primetime Emmy-nominated cartoon. 'Half the crew were high,' he joked. 'I felt like I was saying, 'Guys come on this is our one shot,' and then they wouldn't start working till 2 p.m.' He said he was 'so worried about getting fired' that he 'didn't have a minute to focus on anything apart from what I was doing.' Soon after, McCracken's Powerpuff Girls landed a greenlight, making him into a star of the animation world, but this wasn't plain sailing either. McCracken spoke of experiencing the worst focus group of his life with a group of 11-year-old boys, one of whom even called for the 'creator to be fired.' At the time, Cartoon Network executive Mike Lazzo convinced McCracken that it was better to have people hate the show than be indifferent, and he was told to push ahead. 'I had to get out of my own head and tell myself to stop being so arty,' said McCracken. 'We felt we could make cartoons at the time so we said let's make this the best thing it can be.' The pair were joined on stage by four younger cartoon creators including Muto, Regular Show's JG Quintel, Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar and Adventure Time's Pendleton Ward. This quartet, who were termed the 'second generation' of Cartoon Network voices, had an intriguing discussion around fear of failure. 'The first season we thought we'd get canned every moment,' said Muto. 'It was during a transitional moment [for Cartoon Network] and our shows had to be hits.' Quintel said creatives live in fear at the start of their journeys that 'if these are bad, then we're getting in trouble.' For Sugar, who is the first non-binary person to independently create a series for the network, it was 'less about competition and more about protection' at the start of her journey. 'I learned when showrunning that when there is something specific on a board, you have to think how to protect it,' she explained. Sugar was delighted to sit on the same stage as Tartakovsky. She recalled pitching him an early version of Steven Universe. When Tartakosvky said he'd direct an ep, 'I crashed my car into a pole on the way home,' Sugar added. The group were speaking at Annecy on the same day as Matt Groening. Best of Deadline Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds A Full Timeline Of Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni's 'It Ends With Us' Feud In Court, Online & In The Media Where To Watch All The 'John Wick' Movies: Streamers That Have All Four Films
