How an idea becomes a story.
Spoiler Alert: This post doesn’t give away any plot points, but you’ll appreciate it more if you read it after listening to Season 2, Episode 5 (“Mother”).
OLLIE: I have an idea... PHIL EASTMAN: Great. What is it? OLLIE: Well, it's kind of dumb... GEISEL: Ollie, there are no dumb ideas.
In Season 2, Episode 5 (“Mother”) Ted Geisel has Ollie join him and artist Phil Eastman in a story meeting on a future Private Snafu episode, an episode that, in real life, was named “Rumors,” was directed by Friz Freleng and released on December 13, 1943. I wanted to involve Ollie in the creative process of animated filmmaking, and let the experience spark in him the imagination he didn’t think he had.
I must be honest in saying that Ted Geisel and his Private Snafu cohorts probably wouldn’t have had a meeting like this. Given the visual nature of animated film, such brainstorming would have most likely been done on paper. Geisel would have sketched out his initial ideas for characters, effects and action and then passed them on to Eastman and others to be built upon.
Of course, such visual brainstorming would be impossible to dramatize in an audio podcast. Ollie thus joins in on the kind of “story meeting” that screen/television writers and producers have had every day since cinema was born — and still do to this day — as they build the kernel of an idea into a story. Given I participated in dozens of such meetings during my years as a studio executive, it was easy to take the elements from the actual film “Rumors” and imagine Geisel, Eastman, and Ollie coming up with them.
You can watch “Rumors” on YouTube here.
A word on P. D. Eastman
Born in 1909, Philip Dey Eastman attended Amherst College and the National Academy of Design in New York City. From 1936 to 1941 he worked at the Walt Disney Productions in assistant animation, story-sketch, and production design. From 1941 to 1942, he worked in the story department of Leon Schlesinger Productions. In 1942, he was drafted by the Army and assigned to the Signal Corps film unit headed by Theodor Geisel. Here, Eastman conducted picture-planning for animated sequences in orientation and training films, and wrote scripts and drew storyboards for the Private Snafu series.
From 1945 to 1952, Eastman worked at United Productions of America (UPA), where he was a writer and storyboard artist for the Mr. Magoo series.
A protégé and colleague of Ted Geisel, he wrote many books for children in his own distinct style. He worked with the Dr. Seuss brand of Random House, many of which were in the Beginner Books series. His titles include Are You My Mother? and Go, Dog. Go! (Click here for the Wikipedia article on him from which this info is taken.)
As for Ted Geisel…
Take a look at my Season 1 Website Post about him. It covers Geisel’s time as a political cartoonist for the newspaper “PM.”
Thanks to actors Alan Blumenfeld (Ted Geisel) and Jonah Weiland (Phil Eastman) for embracing the idea of the story meeting scene and having such fun with it!
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