Pop Smart - Additional viewing for WALL-E’s Andrew Stanton
One detail I left out of my interview with Andrew Stanton, director of Pixar Studio’s new classics WALL-E and Finding Nemo, was a tidbit about his early days. Before joining Pixar (where he was the second animator and ninth employee), one of Stanton’s first Hollywood jobs was on Ralph Bakshi’s short-lived animated sitcom “Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures.” “Mighty Mouse” offered a clever parody of cartoons, superheroes and pop culture and was a delightful anomaly amid the Saturday morning kiddie fare of the late 1980s. Culturally satirical cartoons are ubiquitous today thanks to “The Simpsons,” Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, etc. that it’s easy to forget how strange and groundbreaking “Mighty Mouse” was for its time. This sample, “Don’t Touch That Dial,” directly takes on other cartoons: