I was pleased as punch to see an old friend picked as a classic worthy of preservation by the National Film Registry this year.
It has been almost thirty years since I first laid eyes on "Quasi at the Quackadero" and "Make Me Psychic", two vibrantly inventive and colorful cartoons by animator Sally Cruikshank.
At the time, my friend Peter Hannan and I were fumbling around at the beginning of our careers and trying on different hats in the film business. One idea we had was to produce a series for PBS called "American Film Showcase" that was meant to discover and promote the short film work of a newly emerging generation of American filmmakers. This was back around 1981 or '82.
The show never made it on air, but in the process of trying to put it together we had collected all of this amazing work that we loved and didn't quite know what to do with. As with many enterprises, the original concept morphed along the way, and we ultimately set ourselves up as a distribution company called FutureVision, Inc. and put together a catalogue of these shorts and sold them as what was called "interstitial" programming to cable channels that were sprouting up like weeds back then and had a seemingly insatiable appetite for programming.
Because feature films were of an odd length and the channels did not carry commercials, they would use these films as filler to round out the hour until their next programming slot. It was kind of a gap in the corporate media system that allowed for some fairly alternative work to slip through the cracks and get presented to an unsuspecting public!
"Quasi" was one of our best-selling titles, and we took some pride in the fact that Sally said we were one of the few distributors of her work that actually sent her a check for residuals now and then.
It is a giddy delight of a film set in a Coney Island of the Mind and was voted #46 of the Fifty Best Cartoons of All-Time by the society of animators.
Check it out!
william
Fun Sally has a new fan. What is better than to wake up to cartoons?
Posted by: Diane | January 21, 2010 at 06:04 AM
This is so cool Billy!
Posted by: Elsita :) | January 21, 2010 at 03:41 PM
Thanks so much for this post, Bill, and hello hello! Are you the reason we were invited to the Paramount Golden Globes party? Loved that cupcake tower! Sally
Posted by: Sally Cruikshank | January 21, 2010 at 05:40 PM
Great stuff! I should have known you were behind some of those crazy interstitials. Long live Quasi!
Posted by: Maiz | January 21, 2010 at 08:45 PM
YEAH- Sally and "Qausi" certainly deserve the recognition. Thanks for your part in promoting the film.
Posted by: Christine | January 22, 2010 at 05:55 PM