This weekend, Jerry Seinfeld gave the commencement speech at Duke University and offered the graduates his three keys to life: 1. bust your ass, 2. pay attention, and 3. fall in love. Then, 10 minutes later, he added essentially a fourth key to life: “Do not lose your sense of humor. You can have no idea at this point in your life how much you’re going to need it to get through. Not enough of life makes sense for you to be able to survive it without humor.” “It is worth the sacrifice of an occasional discomfort to have some laughs. Don’t lose that.” “Humor is the most powerful, most survival-essential quality you will ever have or need to navigate through the human experience.” Amen.
Your hosts Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al explore the characteristics of Jewish comedy with stand-up/graphic novelist Daniel, whose film Reconquistador explores his ancestors being kicked out of Spain. What’s the connection of Jewish humor to anti-semitism?
We talk about relating as a creator to your identity, Jewish people seeing themselves in film and TV, the experience of literally seeing yourself in a film, Jewish comedy as philosophy or social commentary, and “Jewish humor” vs. humor by people who happen to be Jewish.
We touch on Mel Brooks, Larry David, Adam Sandler, Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, and feminist Jewish comedy shows such as Broad City, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Inside Amy Schumer.
FYI this was recorded back in early November when the Gaza war and its accompanying flurry of anti-Semitism was a bit more raw.
Hear more Pretty Much Pop, including many recent episodes that you haven’t seen on this site. Support the show and hear bonus talking for this and nearly every other episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choosing a paid subscription through Apple Podcasts. This week our supporter-exclusive Aftertalk includes our stories of seeing elderly performers; should you run out and see so-and-so before they’re dead?
Early in his collecting odyssey, animation historian, archivist, and educator Tommy José Stathes earned the honorific Cartoon Cryptozoologist from Cinebeasts, a “New York-based collective of film nerds, vidiots, and programmers investigating the furthest reaches of the moving image universe.”
More recently, George Willeman, a nitrate film expert on the Library of Congress’ film preservation team dubbed him “the King of Silent Animation.”
The seed of Stathes’ enduring passion took root in his 90s childhood, when slapped together VHS anthologies of cartoons from the 30s and 40s could be picked up for a couple of bucks in groceries and drugstores. These finds typically included one or two silent-era rarities, which is how he became acquainted with Felix the Cat and other favorites who now dominate his Early Animation Archive.
He squeezed his parents and grandparents for memories of cartoons screened on television and in theaters during their youth, and began researching the history of animation.
Realizing how few of the early cartoons he was learning about could be widely viewed, he set out to collect and archive as many examples as possible, and to share these treasures with new audiences.
His collection currently consists of some 4,000 animated reels, truffled up from antique shops, flea markets, and eBay. In addition to his Cartoons on Film YouTube channel, he hosts regular in-person Cartoon Carnivals, often curated around holiday themes.
Stathes’ passion project is giving many once-popular characters a second and in some cases, third act.
Take Farmer Alfalfa, (occasionally rendered as Al Falfa), the star of 1923’s The Fable of the Alley Cat, an installment in the Aesop’s Fables series, which ran from 1921 to 1929.
His first appearance was in director Paul Terry’s Down on Phoney Farm from 1915, but as Stathes observes, baby boomers grew up watching him on TV:
Nearly all of these folks who mention the character will also reference ‘hundreds’ of mice. Few may have realized that, while the Farmer Alfalfa cartoons running on television at that time were already old, the films starred one of the earliest recurring cartoon characters, and one that enjoyed an incredibly long career compared with his cartoon contemporaries.
The Fable of the Alley Cat honks a lot of familiar vintage cartoon horns — slapstick, mayhem, David triumphing over Goliath… cats and mice.
Stathes describes it as “a rather sinister day in the life of Farmer Al Falfa — It’s clear that the animal kingdom tends to despise him! — and his documentation is meticulous:
The version seen here was prepared for TV distribution in the 1950s by Stuart Productions. The music tracks were originally composed by Winston Sharples for the Van Beuren ‘Rainbow Parade’ cartoons in the mid-1930s.
The mismatched duo, Mutt and Jeff, got their start in daily newspaper comics, before making the leap to animated shorts.
Animation connoisseurs go bananas for the perspective shift at the 14 second mark of Laughing Gas (1917), a rarity Stathes shares as a reference copy from the original 35mm nitrate form, with the promise of a full restoration in the future.
(A number of Stathes’ acquisitions have deteriorated over the years or sustained damage through improper storage.)
Dinky Doodle and his dog Weakheart were 1920s Bray Studios crowdpleasers whose stint on television is evidenced by the midcentury voice over that was added to Dinky Doodle’s Bedtime Story (1926).
The characters’ creator, director Walter Lantz appears as “Pop” in the above live sequences.
Stathes’ collection also dredges up some objectionable period titles and content, Little Black Sambo, Redskin Blues, and Korn Plastered in Africa to name a few.
Stathes is mindful of contemporary sensibilities, but stops short of allowing them to scrub these works from the historic record. He warns would-be viewers of The Chinaman that it contains a “racist speech balloon as well as an intertitle that was cut from the later TV version for obvious reasons:”
Such was the vulgar terminology in those days. To question or censor these films would be denying our history.
Bugs Bunny is a quick-thinking, fast-talking, wascally force of nature, and a preternaturally gifted physical comedian, too.
But unlike such lasting greats as Charlie Chapin and Buster Keaton, it took him a while to find his iconic look.
His first appearance, as “Happy Rabbit” in the 1938 black and white theatrical short, Porky’s Hare Hunt, might remind you of those yearbook photos of celebrities before they were famous.
In a video essay considering how Bugs Bunny’s look has evolved over his eight-decade career, animation fan Dave Lee of the popular YouTube series Dave Lee Down Under breaks down some early characteristics, from an undefined, small body and oval-shaped head to white fur and a fluffy cotton ball of a tail.
His voice was also a work in progress, more Woody Woodpecker than the hybrid Brooklyn-Bronx patois that would make him, and voice actor Mel Blanc, famous.
The following year, the rabbit who would become Bugs Bunny returned in Prest‑o Change‑o, a Merry Melodies Technicolor short directed by Chuck Jones.
A few months later character designer (and former Disney animator) Charlie Thorson subjected him to a pretty noticeable makeover for Hare-um Scare-um, another rabbit hunting-themed romp.
The two-toned grey and white coat, oval muzzle, and mischievous buck-toothed grin are much more aligned with the Bugs most of us grew up watching.
His pear-shaped bod’, long neck, high-rumped stance, and pontoon feet allowed for a much greater range of motion.
A notation on the model sheet alluding to director Ben Hardaway’s nickname — “Bugs” — gives some hint as to how the world’s most popular cartoon character came by his stage name.
For 1940’s Elmer’s Candid Camera, the pink-muzzled Bugs dropped the yellow gloves Thorsen had given him and affected some black ear tips.
Tex Avery, who was in line to direct the pair in the Academy Award-nominated short A Wild Hare, found this look objectionably cute.
He tasked animator Bob Givens with giving the rabbit, now officially known as Bugs Bunny, an edgier appearance.
In the Givens design, Bugs was no longer defined by Thorson’s tangle of curves. His head was now oval, rather than round. In that respect, Bugs recalled the white rabbit in Porky’s Hare Hunt, but Givens’s design preserved so many of Thorson’s refinements—whiskers, a more naturalistic nose—and introduced so many others—cheek ruffs, less prominent teeth—that there was very little similarity between the new version of Bugs and the Hare Hunt rabbit.
Barrier also details a number of similarities between the titular rabbit character from Disney’s 1935 Silly Symphonies short,The Tortoise and the Hare, and former Disney employee Givens’ design.
While Avery boasted to cartoon historian Milt Gray in 1977 that “the construction was almost identical”, adding, “It’s a wonder I wasn’t sued,” Givens insisted in an interview with the Animation Guild’s oral history project that Bugs wasn’t a Max Hare rip off. ( “I was there. I ought to know.”)
Whatever parallels may exist between Givens’ Bugs and Disney’s Hare, YouTuber Lee sees A Wild Hare as the moment when Bugs Bunny’s character coalesced as “more of a lovable prankster than a malicious deviant,” nonchalantly chomping a carrot like Clark Gable in It Happened One Night, and turning a bit of regional Texas teen slang — “What’s up, Doc?”- into one of the most immortal catch phrases in entertainment history.
A star was born, so much so that four directors — Jones, Avery, Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett — were enlisted to keep up with the demand for Bugs Bunny vehicles.
This multi-pronged approach led to some visual inconsistencies, that were eventually checked by the creation of definitive model sheets, drawn by Bob McKimson, who animated the Clampett-directed shorts.
Historian Barrier takes stock:
Bugs’s cheeks were broader, his chin stronger, his teeth a little more prominent, his eyes larger and slanted a little outward instead of in. The most expressive elements of the rabbit’s face had all been strengthened …but because the triangular shape of Bugs’s head had been subtly accentuated, Bugs was, if anything, futher removed from cuteness than ever before. McKimson’s model sheet must be given some of the credit for the marked improvement in Bugs’s looks in all the directors’ cartoons starting in 1943. Not that everyone drew Bugs to match the model sheet, but the awkwardness and uncertainty of the early forties were gone; it was if everyone had suddenly figured out what Bugs really looked like.
Now one of the most recognizable stars on earth, Bugs remained unmistakably himself while spoofing Charles Dickens, Alfred Hitchcock and Wagner; held his own in live action appearances with such heavy hitters as Doris Day and Michael Jordan; and had a memorable cameo in the 1988 feature Who Framed RogerRabbit, after producers agreed to a deal that guaranteed him the same amount of screen time as his far squarer rival, Mickey Mouse.
This millennium got off to a rockier start, owing to an over-reliance on low budget, simplified flash animation, and the truly execrable trend of shows that reimagine classic characters as cloying toddlers.
In 2011, on the strength of her 2‑minute animated short I Like Pandas, an initially reluctant 24-year-old Jessica Borutski was asked to “freshen up” Bugs’ look for The Looney Tunes Show,a series of longer format cartoons which required its cast to perform such 21st-century activities as texting:
I made their heads a bit bigger because I didn’t like [how] in the ’60s, ’70s Bugs Bunny’s head started to get really small and his body really long. He started to look like a weird guy in a bunny suit.
Lee’s Evolution of Bugs Bunny- 80 Years Explained was released in 2019.
In a push led by Looney Tunes Cartoons’ Alex Kirwan—who spearheads the franchise’s current slate of shorts on HBO Max—the beloved animation icons will soon expand into even more content. There’s the upcoming Tiny Toons Loooniversityrevival, a Halloween special, Cartoonito’s Bugs Bunny Builders for kids, and two feature-length animated movies on the way—and we have a feeling that’s not all, folks!
A funny thing happened on the way to the 15th century…
Dr. James Wade, a specialist in early English literature at the University of Cambridge, was doing research at the National Library of Scotland when he noticed something extraordinary about the first of the nine miscellaneous booklets comprising the Heege Manuscript.
Most surviving medieval manuscripts are the stuff of high art. The first part of the Heege Manuscript is funny.
The usual tales of romance and heroism, allusions to ancient Rome, lofty poetry and dramatic interludes… even the dashing adventures of Robin Hood are conspicuously absent.
Instead it’s awash with the staples of contemporary stand up comedy — topical observations, humorous oversharing, roasting eminent public figures, razzing the audience, flattering the audience by busting on the denizens of nearby communities, shaggy dog tales, absurdities and non-sequiturs.
Repeated references to passing the cup conjure an open mic type scenario.
The manuscript was created by cleric Richard Heege and entered into the collection of his employers, the wealthy Sherbrooke family.
Other scholars have concentrated on the manuscript’s physical construction, mostly refraining from comment on the nature of its contents.
Dr. Wade suspects that the first booklet is the result of Heege having paid close attention to an anonymous traveling minstrel’s performance, perhaps going so far as to consult the performer’s own notes.
Heege quipped that he was the author owing to the fact that he “was at that feast and did not have a drink” — meaning he was the only one sober enough to retain the minstrel’s jokes and inventive plotlines.
Dr. Wade describes how the comic portion of the Heege Manuscript is broken down into three parts, the first of which is sure to gratify fans of Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
…it’s a narrative account of a bunch of peasants who try to hunt a hare, and it all ends disastrously, where they beat each other up and the wives have to come with wheelbarrows and hold them home.
That hare turns out to be one fierce bad rabbit, so much so that the tale’s proletarian hero, the prosaically named Jack Wade, worries she could rip out his throat.
Dr. Wade learned that Sir Walter Scott, author of Ivanhoe, was aware of The Hunting of the Hare, viewing it as a sturdy spoof of high minded romance, “studiously filled with grotesque, absurd, and extravagant characters.”
The killer bunny yarn is followed by a mock sermon - If thou have a great black bowl in thy hand and it be full of good ale and thou leave anything therein, thou puttest thy soul into greater pain — and a nonsense poem about a feast where everyone gets hammered and chaos ensues.
Crowd-pleasing material in 1480.
With a few 21st-century tweaks, an enterprising young comedian might wring laughs from it yet.
As to the true author of these routines, Dr. Wade speculates that he may have been a “professional traveling minstrel or a local amateur performer.” Possibly even both:
A ‘professional’ minstrel might have a day job and go gigging at night, and so be, in a sense, semi-professional, just as a ‘travelling’ minstrel may well be also ‘local’, working a beat of nearby villages and generally known in the area. On balance, the texts in this booklet suggest a minstrel of this variety: someone whose material includes several local place-names, but also whose material is made to travel, with the lack of determinacy designed to comically engage audiences regardless of specific locale.
Patton Oswalt, William & Mary, Class of 1991, graduated with a 2.8 GPA “into a world full of trivia and silliness and fun.”
The Class of 2023, he observed in a recent keynote address at his alma mater, is poised to enter a “hellscape where you will have to fight for every scrap of your humanity and dignity.”
The comedian seasoned his speech with jokes, but its “hard truth” is one that could find favor with activist Greta Thunberg — namely that the inattention, apathy, and blithe wastefulness of his generation, and all generations that came before have saddled today’s young people with a seriously messed up planet:
Your concerns as you stumble out into reality tomorrow are massive. Democracy is crumbling. Truth is up for grabs. The planet’s trying to kill us and loneliness is driving everyone insane.
The good news?
Your generation has rebelled against every bad habit of mine and every generation that came before it. Everything that we let calcify, you have kicked against and demolished.
He sees a student body willing to battle apathy, alienation, and cruelty, who insist on inclusion and openness about mental health.
(By contrast he was a “little daffodil” who angrily took his Physics for Poets prof to task for having committed an inaccuracy involving Star Trek’s chain of command on the final exam.)
…there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.
The paraphrased sentiment retains its power, however, and his sloppy fact checking squares with his portrayal of himself as a lackadaisical B- student.
Returning to campus 32 years later as a successful writer, actor and comedian, he exhorts the most academic members of the Class of 2023 to take a cue from their peers whose GPAs were less than stellar, “the daydreamers, the confused, and the seekers:”
There are people out there who want to manage every moment. They want to divvy up every dream, and they want to commodify every crazy creative caprice that springs out of your cranium. Don’t let them. Be human in all of its bedlam and beauty and madness and mercy for as long as you can and in any way you can.
He may have dashed off his address in his hotel room the night before the ceremony, but he drives his point home with an ingenious Hollywood insider reference that may send the entire class of 2023, their families, professors, and you, dear reader, rushing to view (or revisit) the 1982 sci fi classic, Blade Runner.
As to why Oswalt merits the honorary degree William & Mary conferred on him, fellow alum and Ted Lasso showrunner Bill Lawrence has a theory:
I guess it’s because he didn’t really deserve the degree he got when he was here.
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