Friday, January 23, 2009

Script research

In reply to the last post Luke Menichelli writes:
"Though it's the donkey in this script, I remember reading an account from someone there (can't remember who) that the sequence involved the Thief with brightly colored wolves.

Garrett Gilchrist noted this from the early Nasrudin script:

THE MAJESTIC FOOL

WOLVES (Sequence 11)

Cut in to reveal six long-headed wolves posing as a tree, They zip in and run over to another pole, a little closer to Nasrudin, and pose again as a tree.
A snow storm hits and as it clears, we cut to Nasrudin asleep, with snow covering his body, looking like a white coffin, the donkey still sits, bored, at his feet,
Cut to the wolf-tree entirely covered in ice. The ice cracks and the icicles drop off, revealing the wolves who have turned blue from the cold. They shiver terribly and run to another tree.
Cut to the donkey whose ear lifts and whose eyes open wide,
Cut to the woIves who run to another tree.
Cut to the donkey, more worried.
Cut to the wolves sticking out from behind a tree, all six of them clutching at their stomachs - they are obvious1y starving to death. They zip back in and go down the hill from tree to tree, like a slalom,
Cut to the donkey, now very worried, Iooking round stupidly.

Cut to the wolves who shoot out from behind the tree, do a long run and zoom into the air.
We hear the sound of a screaming jet engine and they land on the donkey, who disappears in a cartoon bIurr.
Jet and buzz-saw and eating noises as the blurr zooms around,


Cut to Nasrudin with one eye open looking at the demotion of his donkey, entirely calmly, he leans to us and says.

NASRUDlN:
Such is life! One thing is conditional upon another.

Cut to the wolves, now with huge, full bellies, who burp and snicker, pick their teeth and laugh gleefully to each other in
front of Nasrudin, rubbing their bellies with delight."

1 comment:

Liimlsan said...

Thanks for providing context! The photo on page 2 of 'The Animator's Survival Kit', c.1969, with Dick and Ken Harris looking over animation, shows what appears to be a design-y wolf on the flipped pages and (I could barely make this out) several trees, a shot of a wolf, and a spiral-y blur on the storyboard on the wall behind them.

So Ken at least made a pass at this scene - I wonder if it still exists...