a Nice Sign That Not Everybody is Out to Sue You

[Michaela]

Well, not to gloat or anything, but I thought I might share an encouraging experience I had this week. Remember everytime I said "be careful who you respond to"... out of all of the wierdos, scammers and potential traps that find me on google, a famous person visited my site this week and sent me an incredibly nice email.

Anybody heard of David Pal, the animator and son of the famous George Pal - of the Puppetoons film shorts... He stopped by the site and sent an email inquiring on how to get a copy of the dvd collection I had of his fathers' work. He didn't say who he was, but when somebody named David Pal asks about getting Pal's Puppetoons, one has to make the inference that he might be related and I already had a pretty good idea who he was -- but was I about to be sued??

So I emailed back politely, asking if he was indeed related and told him that I could send him a dvd... well after 4 rounds of very nice correspondence and historical film chatting with him, he gave his blessing and said trade away! He even offered to help me acquire some of the missing episodes that might exist on film prints. An all around nice guy who is clearly into film preservation and into preserving his father's memory. Just thought I'd share a nice experience.

[lordsmurf]

I did the very same thing with some people in that past.

Notably Jay Bacal, part of the team that worked on G.I.Joe, Transformers, The Tick, etc ... one of the Marvel/Sunbow guys.

All that work he did, and the studios never gave him squat. He got his very first set of Transformers from my old VHS set in the mid 1990s after Marvel/Sunbow sort of dissolved.

Had some great stories, pretty nice guy.

[debwalsh]

Whoa, that is very cool indeed.

[markatisu]

I hear you on that, both Brent and I know James "Busta Toons" Eatock which to anyone who knows anything about Filmation is about as close as you can get to Lou Scheimer and his family as possible, when Filmation shut down and before they filed for bankruptcy he went through their offices and took just about every art cel, storyboard, layout, bible and Filmation thing he could get his hands on to protect it from Loreal/Hallmark which was probably the wisest thing now that its common knowledge Hallmark burned or had destroyed almost everything after converting it to PAL for overseas syndication (the Hallmark masters and the 16mm in private collections is all that remains of Filmation today)

But the stories he has are amazing, Contender in the UK and BCI here in the US hired him to do commentary and make sure the DVD releases were factually correct, they even used his art cells in the creation of the dvd menus and packaging.

But the funny thing about these guys is they never seem to take themselves too seriously, they are fans just like us when the day is said and done and I think thats cool!

[lordsmurf]

It works the other way around too!

Ever heard of Dan Khanna? I corresponded a bunch with him when we were both in college some number of years ago. I even bought a bunch of his early lithos. Last I saw, he was drawing Transformers artwork for Dreamwave. Met him when he was still a "nobody".

Guys like Jim Lee are the same.

Carl Macek (Robotech) ran a comic book store after Harmony Gold cut him loose!

Most people in animation, be it production side or voicework, as well as people in comics, all tend to be fans. Except they get paid to do it. Not at all like jerkos in Hollywood that make "moo-vees".

[DAJIZZARIZZA]

WOW ,.. I THOUGHT I HAD GUTS ... NICE