Special Report From Rhett Wickham: Honing the Range (Part Two)
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RW
I’m glad to hear about Dale doing so well in CG. He’s so wonderful how he takes characters …the children of Tom Oreb I call them…Dale opens ups these impossibly graphic character designs that are begging to be moved - because they couldn’t possibly come to life in any other medium except this one - and he gives them depth and life.

Under veteran animator Dale Baer’s supervision, Alameda Slim - "a Good-Old-Boy in ten gallon underpants" - ties down seven decades of 2-D Disney Villains with comic menace and a hypnotic yodel.

© The Walt Disney Company

Voiced by Randy Quaid, Slim’s so-called "retro design" starts with anatomically impossibly small ankles and balloons up to a barrel-chested torso decked in spangly duds that would make any Opry’ star jealous.

RW
It’s so appealing without just being a cute graphic design that looks better on a lunch box because otherwise you aren’t as involved with it emotionally, like say Power Puff Girls. It goes so beyond that.

SANFORD
Aw…Craig’s a friend of mine and so I like the Power Puff Girls.

RW
Do you really?

SANFORD
I do. I went to school with Craig and it’s as much … that show and the sensibility is so right out of his head.

RW
I guess it’s good for television, but I don’t think it makes great film. And it’s a great graphic design but for me it has very limited appeal. I don’t want to make it sound like Dale is the only person who is capable of doing this, but clearly he’s taken to it in a way that very few people have. There are just some people who are better at taking that design and opening up the life inside of it better than others. Ken Duncan is another one, for instance, and Duncan…Marjoribanks.

SANFORD
Oh, yeah, Ken Duncan, and Duncan -

FINN
Mark Henn is one of those people.

RW
You know, this will be the first time I think that I’ve ever seen Mark Henn work with a character that had such a distinct and strong graphic design.

FINN
Well the thing about Mark’s drawing is it’s very,very sensitive and it’s also very deceptive because Mark is the fastest animator in the universe and he makes it look incredibly easy and yet Mark works very, very hard on his work and puts an incredible amount of thought and advance planning into what he does, which is one of the reasons he works as fast as he does. You get so spoiled working with someone like Mark because after a while…he just keeps walking in with these perfect scenes.

SANFORD
Scenes you’d just given him that morning, and he’d come in with just beautiful work.

FINN

And sometimes you’d almost feel guilty asking him "Could you just push this?" and "Oh, yeah, sure!", and then he comes back and it’s like faster than you can blink…he’s done it. And he’s such a modest person and so overflowing with talent. And the thing is that his animation doesn’t always grandstand. And I’m saying this to his credit. It doesn’t tend to try to grab the spotlight away from somebody unless that’s what the scene is supposed to do, and so it gets deceptive.

We had to put together reels for everybody’s Annie Award submissions and I was looking at Mark’s reel, and first it was a matter of culling down how much material there was because there’s a ton of it, and the other thing was just marveling at the perfection of each scene, and the subtlety and the sensitivity..Mark is, uh…he’s truly gifted.

SANFORD
He’s a genius. It’s a credit to his work that he doesn’t have to grab at the spotlight and over-animate a scene like a lot of young guys will move the character around. They just move it all over the place "Look at me look at me!" But Mark is very appropriate and very professional at everything he does.

RW
This is also the most sardonic character he’s done, isn’t it? I’m trying to think if there’s ever been anything he’s supervised that was like this in any way.

FINN
Actually the crustiest character he does in this movie is a dog. There’s a basset hound kind of hound dog he animated and he’s kind of crusty and he loved drawing him. Mark really sunk into that. And the character has G.W. Bailey’s voice, and he doesn’t get a lot of screen time. He was originally going to be a recurring character, but what Mark did on it was so strong that it’s an unforgettable star turn on this supporting character.

And because he has that power…you know another character that got considerably cut down

is..uh..Steve Buscemi has a character that comes in to buy the stolen cattle at the end and he’s..you know we always said he’s just sort of this sleazy, weasely Eastern dude kind of character who looks like Steve Buscemi. Joe Moshier drew a model and next thing we knew, Mark was animating it. The great thing about having the combination of Mark and Steve is that they’re both people who can make those little cameo turns, come in and arrest (snap) your attention, and then get out of the way.

SANFORD
It’s true. It’s a good comparison. People remember Steve Buscemi as the Buddy Holly waiter in "Pulp Fiction" and just because he’s so memorable, so great.

FINN
Or the bellboy in "Barton Fink" or the homeless guy in "Big Daddy."

RW
It goes back to specificity.

SANFORD
Yes, very specific.

FINN
And that’s very unselfish, and again speaking of both Mark and Steve Buscemi, they’re very, very giving and they’re totally unselfish about how it fits in with the rest of the stuff and all that matters is "Is this serving the overall as strongly as it possibly can?" and then just do it. It’s amazing.