TOON TALK

As an artist working at Warner Bros. Feature Animation, I don’t understand your exclusion of “Space Jam” in your consideration of animated films (“Can Anyone Dethrone Disney?,” by John Horn, June 1).

It was probably one of the most successful non-Disney films in cartoon history and we put many, many hours of work into it--the fact that it was worked on in several studios throughout the country (and abroad) is a further testament to what a great accomplishment it was! And it is more difficult to do animation that has to be combined with live action.

Please give “Space Jam” the credit it deserves. Everyone loves Bugs!

ALLISON SGROI

Monrovia

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An article on the modern era of animation and no mention of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”? Pu-pu-pu-please! Opening in June of 1988, it grossed nearly $350 million worldwide. Also, to call “Arabian Knight” a low-rent knockoff is not only unfair but inaccurate, as it had been in production long before “Aladdin,” making Disney’s film a high-rent knockoff.

DAVID S. KAROLL

Los Angeles

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One fact John Horn omitted in his piece on the Hollywood animation war is that all the Disney megahit cartoons were done under contract with the Screen Cartoonists Union, the largest professional organization for animators in the world. Disney imitators in the past have tried to do films cheaper by sending American jobs overseas, but all their efforts flopped.

Don Bluth is currently doing his “Anastasia” project in Phoenix not because he likes the climate there but because Arizona is a right-to-work state and Mr. Bluth is an implacable enemy of the rights of the American worker. His union-busting efforts in the 1980s failed, so he fled to Ireland. Now forced back home, his studio is made up mainly of immigrants who don’t brag about their salaries as much as they complain about their treatment.

Twentieth Century Fox has recognized this problem and has a union contract in Los Angeles, but despite the PR, Don Bluth is considered by his peers not so much a quality studio as a rogue operation. Shareholders in companies that use people like him, Viacom or the “Rugrats” people should seriously question why their CEOs say that the finest Disney quality is their goal, yet compromise their projects by denying them the best talent pool in Hollywood.

The finest animation in the world was and still is done union!

TOM SITO

President, Motion Picture

Screen Cartoonists Union

Local 839, IATSE

North Hollywood

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Horn’s very well-written article didn’t express just how tragic the premature burial of “Cats Don’t Dance” truly was.

By rights, “CDD” should have been a perfect fit for Warner Bros. Family Entertainment when Time Warner acquired Turner Entertainment. It is a story about Old Hollywood, and the glories of the movie musical--a genre that Warner Bros. helped create with their Busby Berkeley-directed spectacles.

“CDD” had it all: a fun and funny story, great characterization, eye-popping art and the rollicking music of Randy Newman. All it needed was a modest promotion budget.

If Warner Bros. doesn’t want anything to do with “CDD,” they should cut their losses and sell the rights to a distribution company that would know what to do with it.

MICHELLE KLEIN-HASS

Staff Writer, Toon Magazine

Panorama City

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Did anyone at Fox ever question whether it might be distasteful, insensitive and rather foolish to make a cartoon about the woman who claimed to be Anastasia Romanov?

They decided to do a family cartoon about a suicidal woman, found in an insane asylum, who claimed she was the only surviving member of a family that was ruthlessly murdered by soldiers at the start of the Russian Revolution. That sounds like the perfect opportunity for a big animated song-and-dance.

In “The Lion King,” Simba watches his father get killed, but in “Anastasia,” the girl can watch her entire family get gunned down. What is Fox going to do next, an animated version of “The Diary of Anne Frank”?

RICHARD NATHAN

Studio City

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One important thing makes Disney animated features better than all those other studios’ products: a good story. Walt was a storyteller, and his studio today carries on that tradition by working longer and harder on that primary requirement than any of those other animation units out there.

It isn’t just relentless marketing--you have to know your audience. And you’d better entertain them once you’ve gotten them into the theaters, or they won’t be coming back!

LARRY NIKOLAI

Valencia