Pixilated

As Cartoon Brew points out here, Turner Classic Movies is presenting the Oscar-nominated live-action short, Stop, Look and Listen (1967) in a couple of hours (Saturday morning, 1:15 am pacific time). This unusual film, featuring drivers zooming around city streets without cars (the actors playing the drivers sit directly on the pavement) employs pixilation—a sort of live-action cartoon technique using stop-motion animation to amusing and at times mind-bending effect—and was created by Chuck Menville and Len Janson (who also play the two main drivers). At the time, Chuck and Len were two young Disney animation artists who were encouraged by Disney animation legend and resident iconoclast Ward Kimball to produce this little film. Ward reportedly convinced Walt Disney to loan out editing facilities and the Disney Studios sound effects library for the film, even though it was not a Disney production. Later, Menville and Janson (perhaps through their Disney connection?) produced some pixilation Stop, Look and Listen-like TV commercials for Gulf Oil, which were regularly showcased on The Wonderful World of Disney when the weekly series was sponsored by Gulf in the late 1960s-early 1970s. (Ironically, Ward Kimball related that his own Oscar-winning short, It’s Tough To Be a Bird [1969]—originally conceived for the Disney TV hour— was forbidden to include the subject of bird-endangering oil spills because of pressure from Gulf.) You can learn more about the pixilation films of Chuck Menville and Len Janson here at Cartoon Brew, and if you miss TCM’s screening you can catch Stop, Look and Listen here. (By the way, tomorrow on TCM you can also see Them! [8:00 am], the 1954 film in which Walt Disney spotted Fess Parker in a small role and selected him to portray Davy Crockett for the Disneyland TV show, and also Disney’s notorious 1979 science fiction flop The Black Hole [11:30 am].)