• il y a 3 mois
Transcription
00:00Hello there, Greg Ford here, and now for something completely different, I mean different from
00:09the films they usually have me attempting to do commentaries for here.
00:13It's different for me because it's so late in the game for Warner Brothers Cartoons when
00:16this film, Mexican Borders, was made, you know.
00:19Within years of its production, the studio would be closed down only to be half reinstated
00:24and I mean half reinstated some few months later under the aegis of de Paddy Freeling
00:29who continued producing more Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies but with drastically reduced
00:34budgets.
00:35I think they spent more on their Pink Panthers, you know.
00:37So I guess you could say that when Fritz Freeling directed this one, it was really, really close
00:41to the beginning of the end, at least as far as the golden age cartoons are concerned.
00:47Now speaking of Gonzales, who had won an Oscar for the studio with the self-titled
00:51cartoon which Freeling directed, not the first one which was Cat Tales for Two which
00:55McKimson directed, was really the last star that the Warner's cartoon department came
01:00up with.
01:01And Slowpoke Rodriguez, who is the sidekick character in this thing and definitely steals
01:05the show from Sylvester for sure but also from Speedy himself, is really the very last
01:10significant sidekick character or secondary character.
01:14Now when you look at these gags about Sylvester popping pills and getting old, you know, he's
01:20popping pep pills.
01:21You've got to wonder if Frizz and the writer of this one, John Dunn, D-U-N-N, not the poet,
01:28they were both pretty hip guys.
01:29You know, you wonder if they were actually making a comment on the health and the life
01:32expectancy of the studio at the time this was made.
01:34I mean, I wouldn't put it past them, they must have known the end was near when this
01:37was made.
01:38Now I love this deflated bagpipe effect of Tregg Brown, Tregg Brown, the sound effects
01:44guy.
01:45It's practically in the clear, as a matter of fact.
01:47In fact, the more undernourished the animation was, the more important the soundtracks became.
01:52The voices and the sound effects had to carry more of the comedy.
01:55And speaking of soundtracks, this voice of Spoke Rodriguez was just great with so much
02:01shading in it, you know.
02:02Now Mel Blanc didn't do this voice oddly enough.
02:04Mel did it on the TV show but not the theatricals and it's hard to remember the name of the
02:08guy who did it because of the ethnic association, it's counterintuitive.
02:12His name was Tom Holland of all things.
02:16He was a contract player who often played Poncho, some character named Poncho, that's
02:20all I know, you look at his filmography.
02:22And he had done Two Crows from Tacos for Frizz.
02:25Now Slowpoke, this is actually a pretty funny character, but Sylvester seems a little stiff,
02:30as you can see.
02:32I like the fact that the lax mouth doesn't even sink, but that's funny, you see, in
02:35this nice slumpy walk there.
02:37Mexicali Schmoe's introduced Slowpoke and that was also a funny cartoon.
02:41But Sylvester is sort of left behind, you know, which is ironic because Frizz originally
02:45borrowed Speedy from Robert McKimson precisely because he wanted another character to work
02:49with this guy Sylvester, his friend Sylvester, you know.
02:53So here's Frizz talking about how the Speedy character started in McKimson's unit and how
02:57he wanted to borrow him to have another character to pair with Sylvester.
03:01So here's Frizz, but we might have to bleep him.
03:03I was either doing Tweety and with Bugs and Sam, that left Speedy Gonzalez.
03:14He was done by Bob McKimson.
03:19I think he did one or two.
03:22Came from a dirty story, you know, that Ted Pierce told about this fellow, Speedy Gonzalez,
03:30who was so fast that the guy didn't even know it and the woman didn't even know it.
03:38And they called him Speedy Gonzalez, that was his joke.
03:41So between Ted Pierce and Bob McKimson, they did a little mouse, you know, with a Mexican
03:48hat on and a goatee.
03:50It wasn't very appealing.
03:52I think he made one or so and then dropped it, you know.
03:57But I could see a possibility with him and a cat, you know, Sylvester, which gave him
04:06another show to work in.
04:09And so, of course, as the story goes, Frizz made that one, which was actually called
04:13Speedy Gonzalez, with Sylvester guarding the cheese factory and Speedy outmaneuvering him
04:18at every turn.
04:19And that's the one that won the Academy Award.
04:22How was it, cousin Slowpoke?
04:27Now the Slowpoke Rodriguez character, though, which is late in the game character, but it's
04:31still a very successfully thought out character.
04:34And the nice thing about it is that it plays to the slow Mexican stereotype, but then turns
04:38it on its head slowly, you see.
04:41Everyone acts toward him according to his slowness, including his cousin.
04:46But in fact, it represents a subversion of the stereotypical Mexican, not because he
04:49doesn't resemble it, but as he says later, he's maybe slow downstairs in the feet, but
04:53he's, you know, fast in the cabeza.
04:57So it ultimately subverts the stereotype.
04:59Meanwhile, Sylvester is, well, in cubes here.
05:03He's rendered in a cubist manner.
05:04It's like cubism.
05:08Ah, and now look at that.
05:11Friez's old team, you know, the old gang still have the goods.
05:14Here's a nice atmospheric Birds Anonymous type background layer from Holly Pratt.
05:19And now here's Friez himself, as a matter of fact, expressing his personal opinion about
05:23Slowpoke Rodriguez and telling us what finally became of the character.
05:26And I think the one that I am referring to is Slowpoke Rodriguez, which is called, by
05:35the way, Slowpoke Rodriguez.
05:36I think that's so wonderfully perverse of Friez, you know.
06:05They go to all the trouble of creating this character, and they could have invented anything,
06:09you know, it's cartoons.
06:10But they make Slowpoke Rodriguez and then turn around and tell him, you're too slow.
06:16Sorry, you eat up too much film.
06:18Gotta go.
06:19You're fired.
06:20You know, it's ridiculous.
06:21Meantime, Slowpoke has turned Sylvester into an automaton-like limited animation character
06:26here, you see.
06:28And so again, I ask, is this a deliberate comment on the diminishing budgets and the
06:32studio's imminent closure?
06:34I hope so, because that's what it seems like.
06:38But in the meantime, you know, the one last great secondary character, Slowpoke Rodriguez.