October 24

Garfield in Disguise AKA Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, 1985

Welcome to a surprise installment of Saturday Night Movie Sleepover’s October Halloween Horror Movie Extravaganza! J. Blake and Dion Baia decided to do an impromptu episode and look back at their childhoods, particularly during the Halloween season. More specifically, they wanted to cover a television special that has endeared itself to an entire generation of cat-lovers, who secretly would love nothing more than to sit around all day watching TV, while being served pasta and lasagna. That’s right, the boys are talking about everyone’s favorite orange & black house cat, Garfield and his cult classic, Emmy award-winning primetime special, Garfield in Disguise, or more widely known as Garfield’s Halloween Special, from 1985.

Garfield's Halloween Special

Another special near and dear to Dion‘s heart, the boys start off by discussing their memories of the Jim Davis comic strip. They discuss other popular comic strip stars, Garfield‘s primetime television specials, and the many other holiday specials of the era. The boys reminisce about their own childhood Halloween memories, the old costumes they wore, and what other thoughts come to mind when discussing this spooky Autumn holiday. They get into creator Jim Davis‘ original inception of Garfield the cat, the evolution from newspaper comic strip to book form, Davis’ genius in merchandising his creation and Garfield‘s journey to Primetime television. They chat about the eerie narrative theme recur in the various Garfield specials–where a child is lulled into a false sense of security until the third act goes completely off the rails, and becomes anything BUT what you’d think would wind up in a children’s cartoon special. So how scary was this for children growing up? Did this special actually push the limits of what the CBS Broadcast’s Standards and Practices would allow in a children’s cartoon? And how do the boys feel about this compared to the other holiday specials of the era? Well you better get your Halloween costume’s together, make sure you have your partner to go trick-or-treating with, and be careful not to trespass on any small islands that contain abandoned houses with cursed pirate treasure…on the exact night when said pirates’ ghosts are rising from the dead to claim what is their’s…because Blake and Dion are back with a special surprise edition of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers’ October Halloween Horror Movie Extravaganza!

EXTRAS:

Check out Garfield’s Halloween Special as it aired for only the 2nd time on CBS, on October 23rd, 1986, courtesy of YouTube, original commercials included!

Here is Garfield’s Halloween Special minus the commercials, in HD, again courtesy of YouTube.

Take a look at this great 2017 interview with creator Jim Davis, as he talks about the creation and longevity on the Garfield character, in this short called Jim Davis- The Man Behind the Cat.

Have a look at this CBS Television Special from May 17, 1988 called Happy Birthday Garfield!, which celebrates the 10th anniversary of Garfield the cat, courtesy of YouTube

And check out this Jim Davis-hosted 2012 short about the modern process of Garfield comic strip is drawn

March 17

Beauty and the Beast , 1991

It’s that time again… time for another exciting, thrilling and enthralling episode of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers! Dion Baia and J. Blake have a whammy of an installment this week: a lighthearted, musical affair from a company that at the time of this film’s release, was going through a proper-resurgence themselves. And this movie marked its crowning achievement to-date for that company’s Animation Department, which broke new ground in its pioneering uses of CGI in this project… Yes, “it is a tale as old as time” as the boys explore the enchanted world of Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, from 1991.

Beauty and the Beast

The fellas jump right in and go back to the beginning, discussing everything Disney in this epic podcast: They ‘set the table’ by giving a concise timeline on Walt‘s meteoric rise to fame, from his beginnings with the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit animated shorts and the work with his good friend and genius Ub Iwerks (among others), to bringing in Carl Stalling for help creating animated musical shorts, pioneering color cartoons and his finally creating a feature-length animated film in 1937 with the ground-breaking Snow White and the Seven DwarfsBlake and Dion follow Disney‘s journey through the war years and his upswing in the 1950s, and Walt then getting side-tracked with live-action films, a new medium called television, and theme park construction. These side ventures unconsciously begin to take its toll on the animation department and with Walt‘s death in 1966 it almost becomes rudderless, culminating with the near closing of the entire animation branch in the mid 1980s. The boys then go through the renaissance in the late 80’s that brought the famed animation unit back and to the biggest cartoon film to-date, Beauty and the Beast. They go through the history of the popular fairytale with the 1946 live-action Jean Cocteau movie, even hitting on the late 80’s TV series. Dion and Blake then discuss the work it took to get Beauty and the Beast on screen, with the brand new CAPS technology that changed the face of animation, and the work by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman that gave us all those classic songs we know today. So what 1949 Disney animated film do the lads draw similarities between? What are the controversial subtexts that some academics have read into the work and what are their perceptions of the themes within Beauty? How did Walt Disney‘s brilliance in knowing his own limitations actually help in making the company such a huge success? What important character from the 1946 Cocteau film did this Disney story borrow? What character was the song Be Our Guest originally supposed to be sung to? And what famous book-turned-to-film thriller (that is a staple in every serial killer library) do the boys find similarities with this animated classic? Well grab some popcorn and your favorite sipping drink, because the boys are taking you on a musical adventure this week with this mega, Disney-filled new installment of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers!

*Dion misspoke during the cast, the 2012 film Snow White and the Huntsman was in fact a Universal, not Disney film.

EXTRAS!

As the boys described in the podcast, here our exclusive photos taken by them at the Disney Burbank Lot of the Ub Iwerk-designed 14′ high Multi-plane camera, HERE and HERE for the game challenger, Snow White, and check out Walt and the boys HERE and HERE, using it back in the day.

Check out the boys getting a tour from Walt and Mickey themselves, HERE and HERE!

Have a look at some of the original character design sculptures that animators used as references, that were on display at the Reagan Library Disney Exhibit.

Take a look at photos HEREHERE and HERE  the boys took of the original Animation Building that’s located on the Burbank lot (personally designed by Walt), that animators drew the films from Dumbo up to The Black Cauldron within. Check out the plaque inside the building.

And HERE and HERE are the pictures the fellas took of the corner window of the Animation Building that was Walt’s office.

Here’s the original trailer to the 1946 Jean Cocteau Beauty and the Beast film, narrated by Cocteau himself.

Have a gander at this chart of the different elements of animals used to make the Beast.

As talked about in the podcast, here is the Billy Joel rendition of When You Wish Upon a Star, from the 1991 Disney album Simply Mad About the Mouse.

Check out Tom Waits‘ version of Heigh Ho (The Dwarfs Marching Song) from the 1988 Disney album Stay Awake:Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films.