Thursday, January 10, 2008

Reading Dick's Moods

One of Michael's posts reminded me of one of my favourite stories.Dick is legendary for his temper and outbursts and one would do well to learn to read his mood. My desk at the Forum was situated between Roy Naisbitt's at the window and Dick's in the middle of the large floor.This gave me an exceptional vantage point to observe Dick and I learned quickly what kind of mood he was in. As mentioned before, even when very busy, Dick was always approachable to be shown a test.If I saw him frantically flipping drawings, I usually waited a while as not to disturb him in 'action'.
One day he was hunkered down, working on a scene, when one of the assistant animators , who shall remain nameless, sauntered towards his desk. As this guy had a talent for stepping into dog%$@ , my attention immediately focused on the action to unfold.He hadn't read Dick's mood of utter concentration and approached him with a cheery: Hi, Dick, can I ask you something? Dick kind of surfaced from his animation fever to look at ... and gave him his attention. Needless to say, I was already grinning at that point.... said: Dick, can you draw the fish from Pinocchio for me?
If you ever stood near mount Aetna with the ground shaking, you may have an idea of what happened next ( to my delight, I might add, not for nothing is the word Schadenfreude a german word).
Dick's face turned purple, he threw his pencil across the room and started on one of his rants at the top of his lungs, about how he was trying to f^^#$^ make a movie and he wanted the f^$%$% fish from f$#^@ Pinocchio.
Still makes me laugh to this day.

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