Is There an Audience in the House?
A Nostalgic Rant by Harry McCracken
From Apatoons #108, April-May 2000

"During this time [the early 1970s], I was very involved in a semi-private weekly screening of classic theatrical cartoon movies. This was long before the dawn of home video...We always had some fantastic shows, representing the best theatrical cartoons of all the New York and Hollywood cartoon studios...Occasionally even Bob Clampett and Frank Tashlin attended our screenings..."
--Milton Gray, Well, Hallelujah! #49

"That's a downside of the home video revolution. There used to be many more cartoon festivals, since they were just about the only place one could see classic animation. In the late '60s and early '70s, it seemed as if there was one every week somewhere. I recall some glorious evenings, crammed into ancient theaters and auditoriums, sharing with friends and strangers, glorious laughter and a thrilling sense of discovery."
--Mark Evanier, Comics Buyer's Guide #1374

"Other local events recently have included 'The New England Animation Festival,' which I didn't get to, and an all-day cartoon festival at Off the Wall, the local revival house which shows much animation."
--Me, Now Here's Something We Hope You'll Really Like! #11, January-February 1985

Call me an old fogy, a throwback, a hopeless curmudgeon - you certainly wouldn't be the first - but I maintain that the golden age of the cartoon fan is long past. And I pin most of the blame on the ubiquitous home appliance known as the VCR.

Yes, yes - I know that some would contend that this infernal machine has been a blessing to we animation buffs. I confess that I own one myself, plus a ridiculously large collection of cartoons on tape. I've got dozens of cartoons by Jones, Avery, Clampett, and Freleng; a sizable selection of Disney features; the almost-complete Betty Boop; weird obscurities from 1930s studios I know nothing about; wartime propaganda starring some of my favorite characters; and more than a few films whose owners would love to suppress altogether for one reason or another. Besides all that, I get one 24-hour cartoon channel, and as soon as my cable company goes digital (this month, I'm told) I may get two more.

I can watch any of this stuff whenever I want to, in the privacy of my own home. And that's just the problem.

Having been a cartoon fan more or less from birth, I have many vivid memories of watching animation in theaters. In fact, my first time in a theater may have been to see the original release of The Jungle Book. (My sister's first, a few years later: a double feature of Fantasia and Charlie Chaplin's The Circus. We raised that kid right.)

I'm a little too young to have attended animation festivals in the late 1960s, but I did catch up as quickly as possible. In 1972 or thereabouts, the late Abe Levitow, Chuck Jones's talented animator, spoke at the college where my dad taught. I remember that the room was packed, and that I couldn't see or hear very well (we must have been in the back). Levitow talked about his career and showed an exquisite selection of cartoons: I recall Jones's One Froggy Evening and What's Opera, Doc? and Tex Avery's Little Rural Riding Hood, among others. It was likely my first exposure to most of the films, and certainly the first in a theater. Most of all I remember riotous laughter. My dad and I went away thrilled in a way we'd never have been if we'd seen the cartoons at home on TV.

In 1976, a wonderful Boston comics convention called Newcon devoted a night to cartoons: I can tell you that one of the films it showed was Paul Terry's When Mousehood was in Flower. (That's the power of watching cartoons in a theater: Even Mighty Mouse cartoons become memorable.) I don't remember any animation-related events at Newcon 1977, but that's OK; I got to meet and chat with Carl Barks and John Stanley. Then at Newcon '78, Bob Clampett spoke before an appreciative crowd and showed a ton of his work, some of which I didn't see again until I bought the Clampett DVD this year. He also signed a Bugs Bunny animation drawing for me - not from a Clampett film (as a 14-year-old, I couldn't afford one of those) but a then-recent drawing from a TV commercial which I'd picked up at the con for a few dollars. I'd guess that more or less every cartoon fiend in the Boston area was at this event - including Apatooner Matthew Hasson, although we wouldn't meet until years later.

At about this time, Off the Wall, the theater mentioned in my quote at the top of this essay opened -- or at least came to my attention for the first time. The first show I went to was a program of Betty Boop cartoons; up until that point, I'd seen a handful at most. I still recall the excitement I felt walking into the theater that night.

For the next few years, Off the Wall was the center of my existence as an animation fan. It showed live-action stuff (including a lot of nifty silent comedy), but at least a third of its programming was devoted to cartoons. Fleischer was a specialty, but it was just as likely to devote a night to wartime cartoons or a tribute to Bob Clampett or Frank Tashlin. To the best of my recollection, the only Columbia Fox and the Crow cartoon I've ever seen was one that the theater screened. I'd go with my sister or high-school friends. Eventually, when I joined Apatoons, I'd attend with Boston-area Apatooners, then review the shows in these pages and reprint program notes.

The theater was small and funky (you sat at tables and could buy cheesecake but not popcorn), but I remember that it was usually well-attended. No big surprise there: It was showing terrific films that you couldn't see anywhere else. We didn't even care that the prints frequently looked terrible and sounded worse.

In 1983, I heard about a program of cartoons being shown at a local institution called, I think, the Boston Film/Video Association. Naturally, I went. The show had been mounted by a nascent organization called CARTOONE (Cartoon RoundTable Organization of New England), which also produced a little photocopied fanzine called Animato. Mike Ventrella was the prime mover behind the show and the 'zine. We became friendly; he introduced me to another friend, Matthew Hasson, and we all worked on Animato together, pounding out articles on Mike's portable typewriter correcting typos with Liquid Paper, then collating the issues and stapling them by hand to avoid having to pay the copy shop to perform these tedious tasks.

Mike put on a Tex Avery tribute show that I didn't bother to go to. Neither, it turned out, did anyone else; CARTOONE lost its shirt on the program. So Mike aimed to make his next show, which I helped out with, a crowd pleaser. We dubbed it "The Funniest Cartoons Ever Made," and Mike secured a theater at Harvard. We promoted it with fliers drawn by yours truly, and Mike lined up 16mm cartoon prints. (I seem to remember that Jerry Beck supplied some of them.) We had two showings, and made two theater-fulls of Harvard students very happy. (Nonetheless, we were disappointed that the crowd was mostly students and not the mass audience we'd hoped would attend our show.)

By this time, it was the mid-1980s. The home video revolution was upon us, and by 1985 (I think) I had a VCR, a low-end model that cost something like $450 - an immense investment for a college student like myself. (Older, more well-heeled Apatooners had players long before that.) I spent hours taping cartoons off TV and swapping them with friends, and catalogued my collection carefully. Mike Ventrella held frequent video parties; it was at one of these that I met Matthew Hasson, a close buddy and fellow Apatooner to this day. CARTOONE continued to publish Animato, which rapidly grew in ambition - by this time, Off the Wall sold it at its snack bar -- but the organization's animation shows fell by the wayside: "The Funniest Cartoons Ever Made," while very successful, was the last program it attempted.

Still, there were plenty of reasons for a cartoon fan to get out in the world. For two or three years, Off the Wall produced Boston animation festivals that filled gigantic theaters and presented animation aficionados with opportunities that simply couldn't be replicated today. At one, Bill Scott and June Foray recreated a Bullwinkle show with the help of two Boston radio personalities, Billy West and Joe Alaskey. The laughter still rings in my ears. I think that was the same year that Chuck Jones showed around 20 of his best cartoons to a packed house, then popped into a local gallery that was exhibiting his limited-edition cels. Jones was a celebrity, sure - one local TV station reported on the event - but he was remarkably approachable. We chatted for maybe ten minutes, and I didn't have to buy a thing.

At some point in here, Off the Wall's fortunes began to dwindle; I can't tell you exactly when. I presume that audiences began to fall off -- I certainly went less often. The place was beginning to seem redundant. Why make the trek and shell out an admission fee when I owned so many great rare on video? I mean, even my local drug store sold public-domain Fleischer and Van Beuren films.

Even so, I think that Mike, Matt, and I were surprised when Off the Wall closed. (Again, I don't recall exactly when - it was probably around 1988.) The theater had some sort of going-out-of-business sale, which we attended. I seem to recall it selling off its animation reference library, and probably the fixtures. Off the Wall did mysteriously reopen several years later, as a once-a-week event at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Cambridge. But somehow, I never found the time to go.

Coincidentally, Off the Wall's initial closure happened around the time that animation on video began to lose its novelty. I no longer felt the need to wake up at 6:30 to monitor the TV for Warners cartoons I didn't have. By this time, Disney was releasing its great features in a slow trickle; I bought everyone (even those I had bootlegs of) and watched them. But I can't say I have a single specific memory of doing so.

By the early 1990s, there were few opportunities to see old cartoons in theaters. However, new independent work was plentiful - there were Terry Thoren's Tournees and Spike and Mike's festivals, and Mike and Matt and I got to most of them. They were events - well-publicized and heavily attended, and we didn't mind the fact that we seemed to see the same cartoons over and over again.

Eventually, these too trickled off. I couldn't tell you if the Tournees exist at all any more, and I've been to maybe one Spike and Mike show in the last three years. But at some point in the mid-1990s, I started going to Cinefest, an annual film convention in Syracuse, New York. There were a million reasons not to go - the focus of the show is silent dramas, which I'm not particularly interested in; Syracuse is a lengthy, boring drive from Boston; and the show is held in the dead of winter, when the town is little more than a giant block of ice. But I went to hang out with some friends whom I knew from Animato, Apatoons and BIX (an early online service where I helped run an animation discussion): Dave Mackey and his brother Bob, Tom Shim, Tim Smith and his girlfriend Vicki, and Mike Dobbs, among others.

At two or three of these Cinefests, we put on private animation shows in one or another of our hotel rooms. They were unusual at the time, and viewed from a few years down the road they seem like period pieces. Dave would tote his 16mm projector and modest but interesting collection of animation reels; I'd bring a VCR and tapes. We'd order pizza, then show cartoons late into the night. I even bought a projector myself at one of the shows, and started collecting 16mm cartoons; Dave and I would premiere films we'd bought at the show that very day.

We were three thousand miles and maybe twenty-five years away from Milt Gray's cartoon shows of the early '70s, but I suspect the spirit was much the same. And I'll bet we even showed some of the same cartoons.

The last Cinefest I went to was, hmmm, four years ago? Maybe five. Dave and Bob were there, as was Jerry Beck, but I don't think Tom or Tim were. I'm not sure if we put on a cartoon party, but one of the official events was Scott MacQueen's program of rare Disney footage, shown at a lovingly-restored theater in downtown Syracuse. It was incredible. I hear ugly rumors that Disney no longer permits such shows.

It's 2000 now. I'm still as enthusiastic about animation as ever, and devote a lot of time to the topic - whether I'm collating Apatoons or chatting at my cartoon-themed Web site, or rushing out to buy a new book such as Walt Disney and Europe.

And I still watch cartoons in theaters, mostly with Matt Hasson: We get out to events like Disney features and Pixar films. We went to The Road to El Dorado just last week. New theatrical animation is plentiful these days, which somehow makes it less special; meanwhile, programs of classic cartoons are exceedingly rare. There's almost no place left to show them - the only two theaters in the Boston area that show old films of any sort are the apparently thriving Brattle (in Harvard Square - you could always count on those Harvard students) and the Coolidge Corner (which still shows a Mike and Spike program from time to time).

I still have all my cartoon tapes, although I don't watch them all that much, and nowadays my video collection only grows by perhaps 2-3 tapes a year. But you know what I do when I do add an interesting tape to my archives? I get together with Matt Hasson to watch it. Somehow, it's just more fun to enjoy good animation in the presence of others.

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