Monday, November 17, 2008

The Dickies- Donut Man (2001)

In the summer of 2001 I went to see the band (whom I was always a fan of) with Kurt along with The Dickies publicist, Jon Rosner. Jon mentioned the band was interested in an animated version of themselves. Around that time, a friend had given me an old 'Osmonds' cartoon VHS from the early 70's.

It was a blatant rip-off of the the Jackson 5 cartoon, created by Grant-Ray & Lawrence, same folks who did the Jackson 5. The Dickies were excited about the idea of making it look like THEY'd had a show back then, and the video was going to be the 'show open'. I met with Stan Lee (no relation)and Leonard Graves Phillips at Hamburger Hamlet of all place (where I had to pick up the tab!) and showed them the storyboards I'd done in like 3 days.

The label (Fat Wrechords) also let me know that I had barely 4 weeks to do this.Stan would literally call me everyday with ideas. The results were less than I'd hoped , but it did get delivered on time, and they were really happy.

The band seemed to have this idea that this video would propel them into a new stardom that they'd always felt they'd deserved after 25 years of obscurity. With the state of popular music at the time, I knew that was unlikely. I still talk to Stan every now and then, though we did get in a bit of a heated discussion on the eve of the Iraq War.

1 comment:

Rick said...

I've met both Leonard and Stan on a few occasions. The first time was in the late seventies. This video is so un-Dickies yet it's so very cool. It's very Saturday morning cartoon-like and I love it.