Bizarre mash-ups between children’s cartoons and adult-cinema, from 1987, made by filmmaker Todd Graham.
OK, so a few years back I was perusing an independent video store in Atlanta, GA. This particular store was cool for the fact that even though I lived in Florida I could still rent videos from them, and just send them back in the mail. (I can’t remember the name of the store, unfortunately).
The guy in the store introduced me to this crazy animated short called Apocalypse Pooh. It was made in 1987, and that’s about all I know about it. I don’t know who the creator was, but he sure had a lot of spare time, because he used it to join animated scenes from Winnie the Pooh with audio from Francis Ford Coppola’s dark and brooding Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now. Primitive stuff (probably not made using a computer), but funny in a I-can’t-believe-they-did-that sorta way. I suppose that if I wanted to go low-tech I would record the video from one source and the audio from another source… but how to get the cartoon characters to seem like they are actually speaking the dialogue?
Update
I found out that Todd Graham (who was kind enough to comment below) is responsible for what Scott MacKenzie refers to as avant-garde cinema.
Filmmaker Todd Graham made Apocalypse Pooh (1987) as an OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design) student in the 1980s.One of the true ,underground’ films (it has never had any sort of official release), Graham re-edited cartoons from Walt Disney’s Winnie the Pooh series of featurettes, released between 1966 and 1977, drawing his détourned images mostly from the first film in the series, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1966) and the Academy Award winning second short, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (Reitherman, 1968). Graham then dialectically juxtaposed these images with the soundtrack,along with a few live-action images,from Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979).At key moments, Graham reversed these détourned juxtapositions, deploying images from Coppola’s film, and sounds from Reitherman’s animated featurettes.
Apocalypse Pooh had two, unrelated audiences in the pre-Internet era: on the one hand, Graham’s film played in some ‘underground’ and contemporary art forums such as Toronto’s Pleasure Dome collective and the Whitney Museum in New York; on the other hand, Apocalypse Pooh also had a sizable fan following derived from screenings at comic book conventions.8 In the days before the Internet, Apocalypse Pooh was widely bootlegged, passed around and traded on VHS. One could see Graham’s film as an instantiation of comic geek, Situationist samizdat.
Anyway, elsewhere on the tape is a similar mash-up of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and the Peanuts gang. Snoopy plays Frank Booth. Watch it here.
It’s good stuff – having kid-approved, sweet-and-warm animated favorites mixed with nihilistic, adult-oriented material is sort-of jarring, but fun. Check it out:
(Disclaimer: The copyright for some of the audio used in this segment, (like the Rolling Stones bit) is owned by Warner Music Group (WMG). Thus far, they have been kind enough to let the video stand on YouTube.)
Next video: Blue Peanuts (Snoopy/Blue Velvet mashup!)
you won’t believe me, but i am in texas and i actually know the person who put those cartoons together. send me a message if you have the other videos that should have come on that tape, dubbed halloween (the movie) scenes and a dubbed rendition of death wish 3.
[..YouTube..] I used to have this on an actual bootleg videotape. The quality hasn’t improved over the years but its ability to make me laugh remains undimmed!
You’re right! I don’t believe you lacy! I made these in 1987 in Toronto on an analog video editing system. It’s funny how many people claim to know the guy who did this – I guess I should be flattered. Never been to Texas – I hear it’s nice.
Here’s another clue about the “Texas connection”: I’m in Austin, and I originally got my copy of the 3 videos (classics all!) when tape-trading with Richard Linklater.
(I want to do a “sequel” to GStA with Josie & The Pussycats doing the Runaways’ classic “Cherry Bomb”…)
There is a Peanuts Fan Community starting on YouTube!! Check out the IMaLUCY page (click on the IMaLUCY UserName above) to contribute via Video Response and Comments!
you won’t believe me, but i am in texas and i actually know the person who put those cartoons together. send me a message if you have the other videos that should have come on that tape, dubbed halloween (the movie) scenes and a dubbed rendition of death wish 3.
Lacy, I don’t have the Halloween or Death Wish segments… the Death Wish 3 thing sounds like fun.
[..YouTube..] C-L-A-S-S-I-C!
“We mean it, man!!!”
C-L-A-S-S-I-C!
“We mean it, man!!!”
[..YouTube..] I used to have this on an actual bootleg videotape. The quality hasn’t improved over the years but its ability to make me laugh remains undimmed!
I used to have this on an actual bootleg videotape. The quality hasn’t improved over the years but its ability to make me laugh remains undimmed!
You’re right! I don’t believe you lacy! I made these in 1987 in Toronto on an analog video editing system. It’s funny how many people claim to know the guy who did this – I guess I should be flattered. Never been to Texas – I hear it’s nice.
Here’s another clue about the “Texas connection”: I’m in Austin, and I originally got my copy of the 3 videos (classics all!) when tape-trading with Richard Linklater.
(I want to do a “sequel” to GStA with Josie & The Pussycats doing the Runaways’ classic “Cherry Bomb”…)
— NotDan
There is a Peanuts Fan Community starting on YouTube!! Check out the IMaLUCY page (click on the IMaLUCY UserName above) to contribute via Video Response and Comments!
We can’t wait to see you there!
IMaLUCY