Destroy All Podcasts ST Episode 17 - Doug's 1st Movie
Hosts: Betty, James, Jeremy
This is about Disney ruining things, Nazi-sexy, ripping off E.T., dirty Patti on the docks, and why everyone wants to sleep with a fishy monster named Hermione dressed as a hippie.
Click [HERE] to wear an ugly green vest.
| Posted 20 April, 2009 - 01:14 by Destroy All Pod... |
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Comments
11 comments postedOh wait. It's Disney Doug. Boo!
There is no Doug without Billy West.
I felt the same way. I hardly ever watched the show when it came on ABC. Just felt like Doug through the Disney lens this time around.
Well to be fair...Disney Doug was still a decent show.
I know Billy West is awesome, but Fred Newman isn't like Chop-Liver, okay? Granted, he's Pork-Chop in the show and I like other white meat for supper(I don't eat dog mind you), but there was still some of Doug with Fred Newman around.
M.O.C. he was one of the only reasons why I'm still watching Public Television on a limited basis. I like watching Between The Lions.
But I'm getting a little off topic here,
Despite the fact it migrated to Disney when it aired, Doug was still a decent show thanks to Fred Newman's talent for making bebop vocal sound effects, but NO thanks to Disney watering down the Nick charm to it.
PS: Dear Jeremy,
ALF ripping-off E.T.? Other than the alien thing, I really don't see it further b/c ALF didn't have superpowers, he was mischievous and furry, a smart-ass, and a cat-eater.
-R78
There's also the Project A.L.F. thing where the government captures him and all of that. The friendly alien they hide from the neighbors thing is really where I was going with that. Harry and the Hendersons has the same vibe.
-Jeremy
Yeah...I remember the Project ALF movie that took place after the events in the series finale cliffhanger (too bad The Tanners were replaced w/ 2 friendly scientists who helped ALF escape from the ATF), and I do remember Harry and the Hendersons that came out in the summer of 1987.
So yeah, I see what you're saying with the (friendly alien befriending/living/ with a friendly family + hiding in the house from the big, bad government/military/town mob) formula plot connecting to E.T. I get it.
So in other words, I agree with you with the E.T. connection.
Despite that fact, ALF didn't rip-off E.T. that gratuitously. It was still a good show with it's own comedic charm just like Doug was respectively.
-R78
There's a Destroy All Podcast ST for you guys!
I wasn't too nutty about the film either when I first saw it 15 years ago, what having the Tanner family now being under witness protection in Iceland and all. I started to think it was better off if they had left it as the unresolved cliffhanger than to give it closure as they did.
At least he was still here. Being reminded of him once hosting a show Nick once had back in it's heyday of the early 80's called "Livewire", but didn't realize he went on to voice Mr. Dink and the rest on Doug.
At the risk of sounding contradictive...it's true that Disney has aggressively dumb-downed a lot of their programming all to the point of intolerance from the viewing individual. I admit that Doug was no exception, but in all fairness, Disney didn't decay the show's charm that badly. It was still good to watch thanks to the talents of Mr. Newman, it's creator Jim Jinkins and others. Disney's Doug was still good despite some of the changes from the Nick version.
I wish I could say that The Doug Movie is as good as Hey Arnold The Movie....because I can't deny it's lack of feature film quality. Saying it otherwise would be lying.
-R78
Well, again, I don't know what the Disney version of the Doug TV show is really like, but I do know the movie ain't no good.
-Jeremy
From what I understand, the movie was supposed to be a direct-to-video release. A preview for it was first seen on the VHS English-dubbed edition of Kiki's Delivery Service in '98. It went under a different title then I can't remember, but was changed to "Doug's 1st Movie" a year later for it's theatrical release. Why it was changed from a video to cinema release I don't know for sure. Disney has done similar stunts like this including The Jungle Book 2 which was slated to be a video release as well.
I actually saw the film when it came out, but I was late getting in to see the opening and walked in when Doug had his Nazi fantasy sequence, for which at the time I thought the film looked terrible because of the shift in quality for the sequence to look like an old movie! Otherwise, it felt like a waste of 35mm cellulose acetate if nothing more. It really belongs on the small screen.
Never heard of Guy in this film, unless he wasn't in the ABC show or was just simply in this film (just make up a villain and that's all you need). I would agree it's a shame Roger didn't get a bigger role here. His character was changed a bit in the ABC series from a poor kid who was held back several grades and lived in a trailer home to some rich snotty brat.
The look of Doug in the Nick series was based more on the personal artistic style Jim Jinkins had himself. I think the one episode you had seen "Doug Can't Dance" was the original pilot for the Nick series, and shows a lot more wriggly lines than what would be seen normally as the show progressed.
An earlier prototype of Doug can be seen in several animated bits Jinkins did for USA Network and a PSA for Florida Grapefruit Juice.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3i2bx_doug-usa-network-promo-and-ghostbus_shortfilms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXPe2diN2Mo
I think by the last couple seasons on Nick, the colors started to get richer on the show as the fainted watercolor look started to go away from it. Kinda can't remember how it was in the Disney series, but it got pretty straight and normal-looking in terms of how the characters and backgrounds were made. It feels a lot more sterile and clean over how the show originally looked in that first season on Nick.
I'm being reminded of Jeremy stating how odd he felt Bluffington as a town is, but I didn't really thought of the place as being that small as he thought (and I know of those type of places myself. I once went down a road where two or three of them would pop up the first minute, and you're out the second minute). I felt the place was more a small city, say roughly about 5,000-15,000 population-wise, at least that was the impression I had of the Nick series, not sure where it went in the ABC/Disney series. I know of certain places in Michigan and Ohio that remind me of what Bluffington was, such as Monroe, MI (between Detroit and Toledo). Can't explain the cow in that first episode when Doug's family moves in though, but there's been silly stuff like that happening in the cartoon anyway.
If only someone stuck it up on BitTorrent though, don't really feel like renting a tape myself, and Disney doesn't seem all that interested in giving it a re-issue anytime soon!
Noticed a few YouTube pages of interest here. I said earlier one of the earliest previews for the film was released on a VHS tape for Kiki's Delivery Service back in '98. That promo stated it was going to premiere on video the next year, but then Disney changed it's mind and released it theatrically instead. Here's that promo (at about 4:45 into the clip)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EnrvUk3Z-Q
Also of note, when the film came out on tape, there was this goofy little featurette tacked on where Jim Jinkins and his Jumbo Pictures staff were answering the top 10 questions about Doug the viewers have wanted to know for years. That can be seen here (though I suppose you guys already saw this)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N5YmiEf6S8