This week, Dan talks about the 1965 Italian western cartoon comedy "West and Soda" by Bruno Bozzetto. It debuted almost a year after "A Fistful of Dollars", but began production earlier and so co-invented the spaghetti western genre. It's a hilarious movie, similar in technique (though not style) to the howlingly funny series "Roger Ramjet". Dan was so happy talking about it that he left out some of his favorite bits, so be sure to watch it somehow. We also talk about how the animation industry evolved from about 1940 on and what a jerk Walt Disney was.
NOTES / DON'T @ US:
- "West and Soda" is currently streaming on Amazon Prime as of February 2021.
- Bozzetto also did the Mr. Rossi shorts, "VIP: My Brother Superman", and "Allegro Non Troppo". People post them on YouTube occasionally and they might be streaming somewhere.
- “Honcho” comes from Japanese, not Spanish, Hawaiian, or a Native American language.
- "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" debuted in 1959, not 1961.
- This was recorded about three weeks before we collectively found out what a big racist Dr. Seuss was or we would have commented on that when he came up. Gross.
- Calculus was invented in parallel by Newton and Leibniz, not Newton and Spinoza.
- The cartoon studio Dan forgot towards the end was Nelvana, not Nezela.
- Most of Dan's knowledge of cartoon history comes from him being an obsessive weirdo but a recent chunk comes from the 2020-2021 comic book series "The Comic Book History of Animation" by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey. It's really terrific. They also did "The Comic Book History of Comics" and "Action Philosophers!", which are also delightful infotainment. (Ew I said infotainment 🤮.)
- Clips of "West and Soda" used for critical purposes under Fair Use.
