Two-thirds into this and I’m back with Hans Christian Andersen with one of the best examples of the grateful dead motif (no, not that Grateful dead)The Traveling Companion.
The Traveling Companion is one of my favorite Andersen stories but it’s also one of the more frustrating ones since once again there’s not much about it that really stands out. Sure, there’s some really cool scene’s in it, my favorite being the one where he chases the witch in flight using borrowed wings, but there really any images that I could show you and you would say, “Hey. That’s from the Traveling Companion, isn’t it?”
So pretty much that leaves me with our hero, John, meeting the traveling companion. Not much about it to write home about, but it brings the general theme across. I think it’s important to capture the look of the companion. I always see him as tall and dignified, sort of a cross between Max Von Sydow and Ian McKellen.
I thought I’d return to westerns once again only this time look at the funny side of the genre with western parodies. Regrettably, I’ve seen the greatest of these, Blazing Saddles so many times that I can recite a lot of the dialogue from memory. Therefore I have to look a little bit deeper in the barrel, but don’t worry. I’m not scraping just yet.
The first film on my list, Rustlers’ Rhapsody, takes a long loving look at early, idealistic 30s westerns and asks the question what they would be like if they were filmed today.
For one thing the hero of many of these films, Rex O’Herlihan, the Singing Cowboy (played by Tom Berenger), a hero so clean cut he travels with his own wardrobe and considers ironing as one of the most important skills for a hero, suddenly finding himself in a world of technicolor comes as an incredible surprise.
He adjusts fast enough. He still knows everything the villains have planned, western towns are the same in the movies, but the villains decide to change the rule book by hiring another hero to fight Rex.
This was a fun film skewering everything about early vanilla westerns creating a hilarious G-rated setting. The tough bar’s “live entertainment” includes a trained animal act and acrobats. (The token hooker with a heart of gold only talks dirty (one of her customers wonders out-loud why he hast to pay so much since it’s the 1800s)) In the end, nobody who was shot was actually killed, and the villain (played wonderfully by Andy Griffith) Is really sorry he caused any trouble.
The next film on my list, Gunless, takes up north to frontier Canada.
I’ve heard it said that since The Mounties got there first, the Canadian frontier could be considered the “mild west”. Into this setting an American gunfighter (played by Paul Gross), and is shocked that nobody, including the blacksmith he challenges to a fight, owns a pistol. Because of this, he spends much of the film repairing the one gun in town (which is busted) so he can give it to the blacksmith so they can fight. In the meantime, he is slowly assimilated into the community, who are either horrified by him or unnecessarily romanticize his exploits.
I mostly enjoyed this film. The only real problem I had with it was it was being played straight enough that I’m pretty sure I missed most of the humor. But that was okay it worked just fine as a drama. Make no mistake it was quite funny Most of the humor being about Gross’s culture shock. For me the funniest part was Graham Greene playing a native guide for the mounties, trolling his clean cut, by the book, tenderfoot, boss every chance he gets.
I also like what it has to say about the violence of the west with Gross insisting a man has to have a code… because otherwise, he hast to admit he’s nothing but a murderer.
When I first pulled today’s story out of the magic Tupperware I was almost tempted to cheat and pick another one. It’s not that I don’t like the story, no The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear, is one of the Grimm Brothers’ fun ones with a whole lot of fun stuff going on… And there’s the problem. There’s a LOT of stuff, so much that not one image really says the story to us when we look at it.
I ended up taking serious liberties and going with a general scene that I thought presented the general idea of the story. Fool goes to a haunted house to learn how to be scared, but because he doesn’t know how he is oblivious to all of the scary stuff around him… or he’s aware but doesn’t know they’re scary.
Well, it looks like I’m hitting the deep end of the pool of the truly macabre, with The Grimms’ version of the Bluebeard story, The Robber Bridesgroom. It’s easy to choose the scene in the story that tells us everything we need to know about the story. Unfortunately, that scene is essentially torture porn. I tried to have it as off camera as much as possible, and focus on the heroine’s reaction.
Well, I drew another fun one with Godfather Death. I always find it a bit of a catch twenty-two on just how to do a lot of these illustrations, especially when it involves stock characters like Death. At one level there’s no reason to do him as the skeleton with the scythe. After all, in the story, all we’re given as a description are withered legs and cold hands. I could at least give him flesh like in Seventh Seal or do something completely different like Neil Gaiman’s goth cutie… And if I were working on a longer project I’d be more than happy to. But for something quick like this you need to do broad strokes that appeal to the viewer’s cultural vocabulary… so walking skeleton it is (scythe optional) I went with something a little more affluent with a dark coat with a fur lining rather than the usual which I am positive were originally monk’s robes.
As for the rest of picture the lighting was the trickiest bit. At first, I figured I’d do a couple of candles in the dark cave and braced myself for a lot of crosshatching… then I realized just how many candles that would be. I may have botched the shadowing on the figures. I’m mostly happy with this though I still think it’s a little too close to Maurice Sendak’s version. In hindsight, I think having the candles in the foreground might have looked better.
So today when I shook the tupperware before picking a name this one fell out… Literally. So obviously that meant I had to draw this one. The Fisherman and His Wife, one of the classic examples of be careful what you wish for, is another one where it’s hard to choose the image. I ended up with going with a collage of the Fisherman making his wish and the final result when his wife wants too much.
Two-thirds into this and I’m back with Hans Christian Andersen with one of the best examples of the grateful dead motif (no, not that Grateful dead) The Traveling Companion.
