Gene at work in 1976. Image courtesy of Gene Deitch.

Flash is fun, but I can never forget what John Hubley taught me, all those years ago at UPA in Hollywood: "First and foremost, your movie should be about something!"

Even an animated film cannot escape the laws of dramatic structure. Hub recommended a book by author, Lajos Egri, titled The Art of Dramatic Writing. It was published in 1946 by Simon & Schuster, just as I was starting out in the animation profession. Fortunately, the book is still available on the Internet as I write this, and very cheaply, so no excuses for not buying and learning from it. I'll attempt to distill its main point for you.

More clearly than any other book I've read about dramatic writing or screenplay writing, it explains premise -- which is the core of "about something." Premise is largely misunderstood and misused. It is the supposition and line of action upon which every successful dramatic story must be based. It can be stated in just a few words, and found in every play by Shakespeare or any other great writer...even in cartoons.

When I had the task of adapting children's picture books for Weston Woods -- the task of translating a book into an animation film, I first had to find the premise, what I called, "the core of meaning." Once I had this, I knew exactly what could and what could not be in the film adaptation. Whether he or she knew it or not, the author's original story, if truly strong, will have this premise. The premise tells us what the story, at base, is about, and where it's heading. According to Egri it must consist of three parts: character/conflict/conclusion. If you distill your story idea to this essential premise, you will know exactly how it will end, and how you will get to that ending. Note that the premise need not be always true. It may be questionable, but it is what you the author want to dramatically state. A good story must prove its premise.

Here are some sample premises that Egri presents:
"Blind trust/leads to/destruction." (King Lear)
"Jealousy/destroys/the object of its love" (Othello)
"Poverty/encourages/crime." (Dead End)
"Great Love/defies/even death" (Romeo and Juliet)
"Ruthless ambition/leads to/it's own destruction." (MacBeth)

OK, that's all heavy stuff, but the same principles apply to our little cartoons:
"Craftiness/digs/its own grave." (every Road Runner cartoon)
"Bravado/leads to/humiliation" (Bluto in every Popeye cartoon)