Enter Smithee
I dedicate this week’s episode to my cat Diesel, who provided inspiration for the most degrading description of the directing profession I could possibly think of. He’s sleeping on the sofa next to me now, sleeping like a baby with his feet up in the air.
It took a while to arrive at a good caricature of François Truffaut. I wanted to capture the idealism and childlike innocence I see in his face and especially the latter human quality is unchartered territory in this series. Alan Smithee, on the other hand, is Truffaut’s perfect opposite: hollow, mean and deeply corrupt… Business as usual, so drawing him was a breeze!
Keith Uhlich, my editor at The House Next Door, calls my interpretation of Smithee a “zombified, grown-up version of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.” It wasn’t intentional, but you gotta admire Keith’s perception.
NEXT WEEK: What’s a hack like you doing in a place like this?
November 24th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Peet, that’s the thing I love about Truffaut, the human quality. I first saw him, oddly enough, in Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” His humanity shone through in that film very strongly.
November 24th, 2008 at 9:09 am
You’re absolutely right, Rick. That was my first exposure to Truffaut, as well.