Brandon Panther
04-03-2009, 01:56 AM
I just now noticed that a comment was left on the Mice-Looney-ous entry for my Little Go Beep commentary regarding the Stu's Show clip about Earl kress discussing the short. He mentioned he was unable to hear the interview because the quality was bad (I even mentioned in the commentary, that it's a "second hand recording") and wondered if a transcript existed. Well, I made one, here's a transcript of Earl Kress discussing the short. Note that this interview that I posted in my video was edited in a few places. All I took out was a brief moment where Jerry Beck slams "Baby Looney Tunes", and Stu Shostack defends the series. There were a couple other edits I had made, and I don't remember what they were, but anyway, here's a transcript:
Kress: Well, the story is we decided to do... Warner Bros. Merchandising department was pushing the Baby Looney Tunes. It only played for a week in [????] city to qualify for Academy consideration.
Stu: And did it?
BecK: No.
Kress: They narrow it down to 10 finalists and we were like number eleven during that first cut. Let me quickly tell a story behind it. As I said before, the merchandising department wanted to do something with Baby Looney tunes and so they authorized a direct-to-video that I was going to write, and it was going to be 60 or 70 minutes, that would be a bunch of short with wraparounds with the [???? sounds like "book", but that makes no sense] characters. And I had written the baby roadrunner, the baby Bugs Bunny, the baby Tweety and Sylvester, and that was as far as I got and the plug got pulled on it. There was already directors working on it. We had Spike Brandt, Kirk Kingblad (sp?) And I'm drawing a blank on the third director's name.
Stu: So a lot of it had been produced is that what your saying?
Kress: No, none of it had been produced, some of it had been storyboarded. I was only about halfway through the script when the plug got pulled on it. Basically there was no financing for it.
Stu [impassively]: That's surprising.
Kress: But what happened was, Spike Brandt, who was supposed to direct the baby Road Runner segment was so enamored and had already started working on the board, that on his own time, he went ahead and did a full animatic.
Jerry: Wow.
Kress: And he showed it to Kathleen helppie who was in charge of Warner Bros. classics at the time, and she really liked it. After that we took it to Bob Daly who was the head of the studio at the time, at that time it was Bob Daly and Terry Simmel.
Jerry: Wow.
Kress: And he greenlit it.
Jerry: Wow. [Seriously? LOL]
Kress: And gave us... I think... we were trying to do it for a million dollars and I think he said 800 thousand, so it had to come to 800 thousand.
[Stu laughs]
Jerry: For a short that never got released. That's excellent.
Kress: Well, you know what happned, it's the age old story, by the time it was finished, Bob Daly and Terry Simmel were gone.
http://toolooney.blogspot.com/2009/03/commentary-on-little-go-beep.html
And as for the question about if Little Go Beep will come to DVD, one of the things i do recall cutting out of the clip was Jerry Beck saying there was a bias against the newer shorts, but they may come out to DVD in the near future.
Considering the upcoming DVD release of The Looney Looney Bugs Bunny movie will have some of the recent shorts, I think Little Go Beep might get a DVD release someday too.
Kress: Well, the story is we decided to do... Warner Bros. Merchandising department was pushing the Baby Looney Tunes. It only played for a week in [????] city to qualify for Academy consideration.
Stu: And did it?
BecK: No.
Kress: They narrow it down to 10 finalists and we were like number eleven during that first cut. Let me quickly tell a story behind it. As I said before, the merchandising department wanted to do something with Baby Looney tunes and so they authorized a direct-to-video that I was going to write, and it was going to be 60 or 70 minutes, that would be a bunch of short with wraparounds with the [???? sounds like "book", but that makes no sense] characters. And I had written the baby roadrunner, the baby Bugs Bunny, the baby Tweety and Sylvester, and that was as far as I got and the plug got pulled on it. There was already directors working on it. We had Spike Brandt, Kirk Kingblad (sp?) And I'm drawing a blank on the third director's name.
Stu: So a lot of it had been produced is that what your saying?
Kress: No, none of it had been produced, some of it had been storyboarded. I was only about halfway through the script when the plug got pulled on it. Basically there was no financing for it.
Stu [impassively]: That's surprising.
Kress: But what happened was, Spike Brandt, who was supposed to direct the baby Road Runner segment was so enamored and had already started working on the board, that on his own time, he went ahead and did a full animatic.
Jerry: Wow.
Kress: And he showed it to Kathleen helppie who was in charge of Warner Bros. classics at the time, and she really liked it. After that we took it to Bob Daly who was the head of the studio at the time, at that time it was Bob Daly and Terry Simmel.
Jerry: Wow.
Kress: And he greenlit it.
Jerry: Wow. [Seriously? LOL]
Kress: And gave us... I think... we were trying to do it for a million dollars and I think he said 800 thousand, so it had to come to 800 thousand.
[Stu laughs]
Jerry: For a short that never got released. That's excellent.
Kress: Well, you know what happned, it's the age old story, by the time it was finished, Bob Daly and Terry Simmel were gone.
http://toolooney.blogspot.com/2009/03/commentary-on-little-go-beep.html
And as for the question about if Little Go Beep will come to DVD, one of the things i do recall cutting out of the clip was Jerry Beck saying there was a bias against the newer shorts, but they may come out to DVD in the near future.
Considering the upcoming DVD release of The Looney Looney Bugs Bunny movie will have some of the recent shorts, I think Little Go Beep might get a DVD release someday too.