-- Reprinted with permission from 2DayinAnimation.com [1]
Two men are in custody after they were apprehended stealing 40 palettes of Mars Needs Moms DVDs, worth an estimated $285.00, from the shipping dock of a Texarkana Walmart.
The pair planned to rob the Walmart by first placing an order for 250,000 copies of the DVDs, then leaving without paying. A sharp eyed shipping clerk is being credited with foiling the robbery when the suspects attempted to pick up the order at the store’s shipping dock. Jerry Lee Austin, who has worked in shipping at the store since 1969, became suspicious when the two drove up in a broken down pickup truck, claiming they could hold down all those palettes with a few bungee cords. As Mr. Austin explained, “There’s no way anyone would risk almost $300 worth of merchandise by handling it so carelessly. I knew something wasn’t right.” Local police were alerted and the would-be thieves were apprehended a short time later.
When asked by investigators how the store could possibly allow anyone to order 250,000 items of any kind, let alone the animated film Mars Needs Moms on DVD, Walmart’s Regional Marketing Director Floyd Sherman-March replied, “People in these parts don’t let themselves get drawn into the whole ‘Is performance capture really animation’ debate. It’s tough to apply the standard ‘frame-by-frame filmmaking’ argument when almost everything today is done digitally. Does motion-capture really capture the ‘illusion’ of motion? Who’s to say? There are no simple answers. Bottom line is that Zemeckis is a misunderstood genius. And, we just think Seth Green is funny. For a Hebrew.”
Mr. Sherman-March went on to tell authorities, “This isn’t unprecedented. Five years ago we had someone order 400,000 copies of Barnyard: The Original Party Animals. Ended up being Rosie O’Donnell making a crank call. But until her manager called back to fess up, we didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary.”
Links:
[1] http://2dayinanimation.com/