Hello, my name is Spencer, and in my podcast called The Dictionary, I literally read from The Dictionary,
but add in my personal comments and stupid jokes to make it more interesting. Episodes are family-friendly,
short, and air every single day on basically every podcast platform. Come join me on this journey,
filled with edutainment. Hello and welcome to How Did This Not Get Made!
This is the podcast all about the movies you never saw, the scripts that were never finished in
the ideas that never even made it to the page. My name is David Spencer. My name is Daniel Kawka.
You know, I don't think I've really seen much of the old Popeye cartoons, so this is something that,
like obviously I know of the character, and I know a couple of the character names, and actually,
I kind of wish Alexa was just gonna sub in for me because she has a lot of love for original
Popeye stuff, and yeah, she will have a couple of like Popeye cartoon quotes that she'll say all
the time, specifically, I'll gladly pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today, when I was watching
the animatic Alexa was kind of going in and out, and her only criticism is that the Popeye movie
did not have enough whimpy in it. Dan, do you have a lot of familiarity with Popeye?
For me, Popeye has definitely been one of those characters that has just always been in the zeitgeist.
I don't think for me I've really sought out Popeye. I know the comics I've seen many of the old
cartoons, I know that the reruns have appeared every once in a while on Cartoon Network, but I was
quite aware of Popeye. Oh, it's hard not to be. I mean, it's one of the characters that I feel like
most people with any awareness of American pop culture have seen or heard of Popeye, especially
if you're thinking of classic cartoon characters. There's not a lot of other characters that would be
placed above Popeye as far as how much people know him, except for, you know, maybe Mickey Mouse.
He's also like a time capsule of his era. You know, Mickey Mouse has been used so many times throughout
the generations that it's not like you don't picture steamboat willy as the first thing, but I feel like
Popeye feels so much emblematic of the era of animation that he comes from. As I'm talking about this,
I'm thinking about who framed Roger Rabbit, and I'm surprised that Popeye is not a part of that for
the era of animation that it's dealing with. Where's Popeye? Actually, yeah, David, I'm kind of surprised
that he didn't make an appearance. Yeah, I don't think we've actually mentioned what we're talking
about, but I'm sure people have gathered based off of the conversation and the title of the episode.
What are we talking about, Dan? We are going to be talking about Popeye. We're going to go through
the history of Popeye, but then we're going to go specifically into the unmade movie that was going
to be directed by a legend amongst the, how did this not get made, creators? Another common name that
has been mentioned a lot on here. Yendi Tarikovsky. Just like Guillermo del Toro, his name has been
attached to so many projects that inevitably a lot of them didn't get made. Yep, and there might be
another name that pops up that comes up pretty frequently amongst our not get made movies, and you
will get to that soon. This is another one of those like legendary stories, because this is definitely
something I've heard before, and I feel like we've probably had people suggesting before, because this
was one of those like pretty publicized canceled projects where a lot of people on the internet
are like, "Oh, they were going to do a Popeye movie that never happened." And I think it's probably
helped by the fact that an entire animatic for the movie was leaked, so a lot of people have seen
what the movie was supposed to be, and it's definitely helped contribute to its legendary status
amongst the annals of internet film history. Let's get into the history of it, but before we get into
the history, we are going to get into the history of these products and services. We've got an ad break!
And we are back. Let's get into this. So, Popeye first appeared in the comic strip Thimble Theater on
January 17th, 1929. Now, Thimble Theater Comics was created by E.C. Seeker. Now that comic was first
published in 1919 in the New York Journal. Later with the help of King Feature syndicates,
the comic was published in 12 newspapers over the decade. Popeye wasn't introduced until 10 years later,
and was actually introduced as a one-off character. Before that, Olive Oil was a main character,
and was created when the comic first came out in December of 1919 as the fiance of the main character
Harold Hamgravee. Now, when Thimble Theater was first conceived, it followed the tradition of
making a Lafayette comic strip. Around 1925 is when newspapers began introducing the large format
color comics, which allowed Seeker to create stories with continuity. So, Thimble Theater was one of
the first comics to tell a serialized story. In September 1928, Seeker started an ongoing story
with Hamgravee Olive and her brother, Castor Oil, where they planned to go to Dice Island in the
hopes to swindle millions from a shady casino with a lucky wiffle hen. Based off of the character names
and everything, I assume that this was still very much a funny comic, which I would not expect to be
one of the first continuous story comics. I kind of imagine that to be a Prince Valley.
Yeah, considering that this is a Lafayette comic that says that where it starts,
just making funny names in funny characters just for that short moment makes sense for
that type of names like Hamgravee Olive Oil, Castor Oil. So, on this continuous story about
them going to Dice Island, so they buy boat and they hire the first sailor that they see on the
docks and it is a quick wit. One-eyed toothless sailor named Popeye sporting a corn cob pipe
and anchor tattoos on his enlarged forearms. The look of Popeye was distinct but was actually based
on a real person, Frank Rocky Fiegel. It was a man from Seeker's hometown of Chester, Illinois.
Rocky was known for his strength in participating in multiple fights. Seeker found Popeye hilarious
and found any reason to reinsert him into the story. He was someone who was bad tempered,
had an irritable personality and sarcastic comments while showing that he was loyal and had a good heart.
Basically, he ended up percoling this comic. Yeah. What made him truly stand out was superhuman
strength. David, I'm going to have you guess what gave him his superhuman strength? Oh, I know this.
Of course, I know that it's spinach. Actually, no. It is when he rubs the head feathers of
Bernice the lucky, little hen. Oh. David, you should know better. I set you up for this every time.
I guess? Yeah. When I was a kid, spinach was like the only vegetable that I enjoyed for a while,
so my parent called me Popeye. Along with getting the superhuman strength, he was also able to
survive 12 gunshot wounds. Popeye was first dressed in an all white sailor suit, but then in a
dice game, he lost his white shirt and then he replaced it with his iconic black shirt.
After the dice island storyline, of course, Seeker moved on to the next symbol theater story with
no intentions to bring back Popeye. Readers were furious, writing letters to newspapers that
published the comic to bring back Popeye. And five weeks later, the crusty sailor was back in
the funny pages. By 1931, Popeye was front and center and the comic was renamed
Fimble Theater Starry in Popeye the Sailor. And poor Hamgravy and Castor just kind of faded
out of the script. Also added to the regular roster was the hamburger loving Jay Wellington
Wimpy. And the character Eugene the Jeep was introduced in 1936, the supernatural fourth dimension
creature, which was originally gifted to olive oil, but then the ownership was later given to Popeye.
Jeep is not a character that I knew about when I saw that character in the animatic.
It was just strange to be like, this is a thing about a sailor and I was not expecting this
dimension hopping animal. I guess it was not expecting any sort of like magical elements in
this sailor cartoon. The character was nearly lost after Seeker's death, but also there was a rumor
and I couldn't find this to be true, but I want to believe it. So there's a rumor that
Willey's M.B. vehicle was actually given the nickname Jeep in World War II because of the
car's ability to go anywhere. Wow, wow. Oh, I hope that's true. Now the use of spinach wasn't
introduced until July 1931 when we see Popeye in a spinach garden eating up all the leafy greens
claiming that this is the source of his powers. Not only did he become superhumanly strong,
he was also bulletproof. With his abilities, it's arguable that Popeye might have been the
very first superhero. Even Jerry Siegel stated that Popeye wasn't influenced when he was creating
Superman. Throughout the 30s, the Popeye comic strip grew in popularity in Thinble Theater,
was now being published in over 500 newspapers. AC Seeker died in 1938 from leukemia and a liver disease
at the age of 43. The comic strip still continued under other artists, most predominantly,
Bud Seagandorf, who was Seeker's assistant. He would take over the Daily Stripe and Sunday comics
from 1958 to 1985 and he continued to write and draw the Sunday comics until his death in 1994.
The Thinble Theater starring Popeye was simply renamed to Popeye in the 1970s. The Daily Stripe
was canceled in 1992 but the old strips did run in syndication as a replacement but the Sunday strips
still continued to this day. And Popeye in Thinble Theater remained as one of the longest running
comic strips of all time. In the same year that Popeye made his appearance in the newspapers,
the animation studio Fleischer Studios, founded by Max and Dave Fleischer, was getting it start.
They were known for inventing rotoscoping. Primarily used for their first signature character,
Coco the Clown. Fleischer Studios' best known original character was Betty Boop, who first appeared
in 1930 as part of the "Tocatune" series and was soon given her own spin-off. Now Fleischer Studios
was receiving a lot of pressure from their distributor Paramount to come up with more characters
and cartoons for them to release. Part of the reason was so that they could compete with Disney,
who was coming out with technical cartoons and their star character, Mickey Mouse.
Now another reason is because Paramount was in the middle of recovering from bankruptcy. So that's
why they were putting a lot of pressure onto Fleischer Studios. Now Fleischer Studios knew that there was
no way that they can come up with an original character that could compare to the mouse. So they turned
to comic strips. So they went for the most popular, established comic strip character, Popeye.
So Fleischer contacted King Features to license their Thinble Theater characters. Before going
all in on Popeye, they did a test cartoon where Popeye would be a guest character on an episode
of Betty Boot. The episode was solely animated in secret by Roland Crandall. The episode
Popeye, the sailor premiered July 14, 1933. The episode primarily focused on Popeye. In it,
we see a headline news that Popeye is now a movie star. We get many iconic first. Popeye sings the theme.
I Popeye the sailor man. I Popeye the sailor man. I strong to the finish because I eat my spinach. I
Popeye the sailor man. We see the rivalry for Olive Oil's affection challenged by Bluto. He only
appeared once in the comics before. It was just a one-off villain, but I guess he was like such a presence
there. They were like, this is the perfect villain. He has the villain look to him. It's perfect. Yeah.
So in it, Bluto kidnaps Olive Oil and Popeye eats a full can of spinach to give him the strength to
save the day. Popeye and Betty Boot briefly share the screen as she's presented as a Hula dancer
and Popeye actually joins her. I know we're gonna get into Popeye non-binary icon. Is he wearing a
Hula skirt? Oh wait, he is wearing a Hula skirt. Oh. Yeah. He's wearing it over his pants still,
but like he is wearing the skirt. Hey, a skirt's a skirt. So King features was so amazed by the
cartoon that they actually signed a five-year exclusive contract with Fletcher before the episode
even aired just two months later. Popeye had his own series starting with the first episode,
I am what I am. After that, Fletcher Studios began releasing new episodes every month for the next
25 years. Popeye was a huge hit and became even more popular than Betty Boop. Even the sales of
spinach increased by over 33%. During the depression. Wow. It sounds impressive to me now and I don't know if
it would be considered impressive for the times, but a new cartoon every month for 25 years,
that's like Simpson's level of just longevity. It's no wonder that even though there isn't any
contemporary Popeye entertainment, he's still such an icon in pop culture. I didn't put into my notes,
but something to like keep in the back of your head is that the way that they were premiering and
presenting these shorts was before movies. Like you would see them in the theater. Oh, that's true.
Okay, yeah, I get what you're saying now. But still, the idea that audiences would still be interested
in watching Popeye cartoons for 25 straight years. It feels like a big deal to me. Yes. Now,
consider that with Fleischer Studios and Paramount. That means that they have the exclusive theatrical
rights. So keep that in mind. Many of Seagars' more complex storylines were dismissed and replaced
with the formulaic independent stories, olive oils and trouble, Popeye with the help of spinach,
beats up whatever that threat may be. Popeye was first voiced by Billy Castello, aka Red Pepper Sam.
Now, he was there for the first 26 shorts, but due to his alcoholism, he became more and more
incoherent. The Fleischers fired him for "bad behavior." Jerry Placem was the in-betweener Jack
Mercer, who also voiced Felix the Cat. The production of Popeye was unconventional in the way that
they animated the cells before recording the voices. So the actors would have to sync up their voice
with whatever the animators timed out the characters' mouth to say. So for Jack Mercer, he actually
took advantage of this by improvising a lot of Popeye's trademark grumbles and mumbles. What size?
What size? Anybody knows? That's crazy. Oh boy. A flip, flip, flip. I take a three and a half
but a night feel so good. I better get 12, so. Fleischer Studios had to crank out these cartoons as
quickly as possible, and one way that they could save time was to do away with pencil tests. So a lot
of times what they were initially drawing was used as the final product. Wow. Wow. Also something about
the earlier comics you may notice that the look of Popeye was inconsistent, and that was because they
had no model sheets whatsoever. So basically Popeye's liquid very depending on the animation team
that was working on that month's short. The style of animation in Popeye is known as the rubber hose
animation where the movement of the characters were very loose and flexible rather than the squash
and stretch animation, which makes characters a lot more rigid. Up until 1936, Popeye shorts were
typically in black and white. The cartoon made its debut in Technicolor with the short Popeye,
the sailor meets Sinbad, the sailor. Released in November 27th, 1936, this was also when the
Fleischers introduced the stereotypical process. Now this is a technique where cartoon cells were
filmed in front of a 3D background. This was a way to compete with Disney's multi-plane
camera technique. Does that make sense to you, David? What that is? I know the multi-plane camera. I can
guess what the other thing you're talking about is. Would they ever use like real world imagery,
you know, film it in front of like a sky or something like that? No, because they wanted a lot of
control. That makes sense. Yeah. There's this behind the scenes video of Crow that's like flying
through the air and it's flying around a mountain. And what they did was they created like a paper
machine mountain that was like on a lazy Susan. And they would replace the cells in front of the
camera of this bird flying. And then every cell that was taken that they took a photo of, they
would just rotate the mountain just little by little by little. And then someone's shouting,
"I'd like to see Walt Disney do that." So for the Sinbad short, that actually ran at 16 minutes
long, which was actually twice as long as what the usual shorts were. And it took them too reals
to present it when they put it in theaters. Now the flyshers produced two more shorts in
technical color in the hopes that Paramount would fund a full length feature. This is around
in 1937. And if Paramount agreed, this would have been the first ever feature length animated film.
Wow. Paramount was hesitant on taking on the risk and waited for Disney to really snow white in
the seven doors and just watched the results. Yeah. Imagine not wanting to be the first people to do
the thing. Nowadays, every film studio would want to be like, "We got there first." I guess I assumed
that something that is technical or something where you can claim that you were the first person to do
this specific thing. I certainly don't assume that studios would ever take creative risks. Why would
you ever want to try a new story? Paramount did agree to a feature film and the flyshers did begin
working on Gulliver's Travels with Papa being the main character as Gulliver. What?
Now that idea was scrapped when the flyshers studios moved their studio from Miami, Florida to
Hollywood, California. And a straightforward interpretation was animated instead.
That's a shame. Yeah. Papa would be the perfect character to insert into Gulliver's Travels.
Oh, yes. I'm now just trying to imagine any other famous book or story that takes place on a boat
or traveling through the sea and just inserting Papa there. So if Papa in Gulliver's Travels was
successful, next we would get, you know, Papa Moby Dick and Papa the Odyssey, Papa Hearts of Darkness.
I want to see all of these movies. Do you say Papa Treasure Island? I did not say Papa Treasure Island.
Yes, of course. Would Papa be the Long John Silver Roll or the Jim Hawkins?
Maybe Jim Hawkins. 1942 was a year of major change for Papa. The flyshers brothers were in
depth and they were expanding their content to make more series. But Papa was the only property of
theirs that was profitable. Studios were rejecting any cartoons that did not start Papa and had to
pay Paramount $250,000 to offset those losses. On top of that, they were penalized with $350,000
for going over budget on Gulliver's Travels, which they failed to pay. They did find much success when
they produced the Superman Short. But when they came to their second feature film Mr. Bug Ghost Town,
the box office revenue couldn't cover the production costs. The studio played it with the idea
of continuing animating Superman Short's, but seeing that the production costs were actually four
times more expensive than any Papa episode. They were risking just losing more money.
So Paramount forced the flyshers to resign and Paramount took over and waived the fees. In May 1942,
Flyshers Studios was renamed to Famous Studios. Flyshers Studios made a total of 109 Papa shorts
before Paramount took over and renamed it to the Famous Papa.
[Music]
In the US, the country had been just attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor the year before.
So the focus was changed to creating propaganda shorts. Papa's costume would change to the US
Navy uniform, which he kept wearing even after World War II head ended. And he uses inhuman
strength to fight off Nazis and the Japanese, and would occasionally fall back into the formula
to fight Blutel for all of his affection. Famous Studios was looking to make their mark on the
iconic character. In 1943, they ran their last Papa comic produced in Black and White and made
the permanent switch to Technicolor. They also mess with the love triangle formula. This time,
Olive Oil would oftentimes fall for Bluto and get together with him while Papa would have to find
ways to win her back. The look of Bluto became more muscular and Olive Oil was given more feminine
features. With the increase in quality, the studio could only produce about eight shorts annually
opposed to Flyshers once a month release schedule. Papa continued into the 50s, but popularity
began to wane with audiences. The formula that worked was become predictable and uninteresting
and the humor was being targeted towards children and wasn't edgy anymore. In 1953, famous studios
jumped the shark with the 3D short Papa the Ace of Space. Now, when you say 3D because of the
time, I assume you mean like it's got the red and blue glasses 3D? Yep, okay. The short didn't
bring back the audience the studio was hoping for and in 1953, they produced their final Papa short
spooky swabs. Famous Studios continued with other shorts, but Paramount eventually closed down the
animation studio in 1969. Famous made a total of 125 Papa shorts. Now, the catalog of shorts were
sold to associate artist productions, which was later bought out by United Artists, with various
mergers, Warner Bros. now owns the rights to those shorts. Wonder if they're an HBO Max? Probably not.
Why would they keep anything on HBO Max? First, they came for the Sailor Man and I said nothing
for I was not a Sailor Man. While we do this, I'm usually like pulling up articles and stuff, so I
pulled up the Papa Ace of Space, which is now just has me looking at Papa animation. Just have
Papa cartoons playing with the sound off just in it to open tab right now. Because you're right,
it's just so easy to watch even without any sound. You don't need the dialogue because it's so visual.
[Applause]
And we're back and we're hoping that all of those products, services, and true crime podcasts will
improve your life in some way, shape or form. In the 1960s, television was increasingly becoming
more widely available and King Feature's syndicate, the original distributor of Thimble Theater,
did not receive any residuals from Papa during its theatrical run. Seeing that they own the IP,
they took this opportunity to make Papa into a TV show.
[Music]
Now from 1960 to '62, they produced the series "Papa the Sailor" that premiered on ABC.
The animation style was vastly different from Flesher and Famous and they took full advantage of
the limited animation style. And because of this, within the two-year span that King Feature's
produce a show, they produced about 220 Papa the Sailor episodes. Even with the decreased quality,
the ratings were high. This might be due to Papa's short "Speed Shown" on television throughout the
50s, creating an audience there. King Feature's syndicate obviously didn't produce those episodes,
but they were the distributor and contractor. To create many of the episodes, they sought out
multiple studios to make their show, which include Jack Kenny Productions, Runbrand films,
Larry Harmon Productions, Halis and Bachelor, Paramount Cartoon Studios, and Southern Star Entertainment.
With this many studios working on the same property, the look of the characters were not consistent at all,
which I guess is kind of consistent with how it started, so it's okay. Although Papa's all-white
Navy uniform was his primary outfit. Now, Bluto's name was changed to Brutus, and that's because Paramount
proclaimed that they came up with the character Bruto, and King Feature's was just too lazy to
look up Bluto in the original "Thin Ball Theater" comics, which they owned. The studios were allowed
to pull any characters from the comics, which included Eugene the Jeep in making him a prominent character.
Flight for studios, yes, they did use him, but they only used him three times out of the 100-plus
episodes. The character became more popular, and over the years has become the unofficial mascot
of the Papa franchise. After the initial run of Papa at the Sailor, the show remained in
syndication until the 1990s. Now, just to throw back a little, we mentioned Bud Sagan Dorf,
who was AC Seagull's assistant. Now, after Seagull's death in 1938, he was still working for King Feature's,
but he didn't take over the strip right away, because he was 23 at the time, and when he got the
assistant job, he was actually just a teenager. So, King Feature's had to move him to New York, where he
would illustrate marketing material in various properties, which helped develop Papa toys and games.
And in 1948, Sagan Hoff was given the task to write and illustrate the Papa comic book for
multiple publishers, including Dell, King Comics, and Gold Key Comics. In the Dell Comics, Papa
was a crime fighter, who was trying to take down his organized crime nemesis, Bluto. Sagan Dorf continued
making these comics until 1967. Papa, the superhero strikes again. Yes. For a while, from 1958 to 67,
Bud Sagan Dorf was working on the comic books, The Daily Strip, and The Sunday Strip. The
Papa comic still continued at Charlton Comics from 1967 to 1977, and it was created by George Wildman.
Some of the comics made at Gold Key, while Sagan Dorf was there, were illustrated by Wildman and was
written by Bill Pearson and Nick Cutty. There was even a manga series published by Shonen Gahosha,
and created by Zobitan and Maroud Damio and creator Kenji Morita.
If it exists, there is manga of it. So in 1988, Ocean Comics published the Papa
Special, written by Ron Fortier, and illustrated by Ben Dunn. This story explored Papa's origin story.
In it, he was given the nickname Ugly Kid. In their second issue, they introduced Bluto and Brutus,
explaining that they're actually twin brothers. That sounds like some classic comics stuff.
I've been reading a lot of like Silver Age, Bronze Age, Marvel comics. They started in the 60s
deciding let's actually have a consistent continuity to all these comics, but the explanations they
try to come up with for the various different Steve Rogers' over the years, or the various
different human torches is very entertaining. In 1999, Ocean Comics, they actually published a
one-shot comic, The Wedding of Papa in Olive Oil, which was written by Peter David. Finally,
we got to see the union of the On and Off Again couple, with guests that included all the characters
from the comic strips and the shorts. For a brief period, in 1989, Papa was the spokesperson for
Quaker Oatmeal. "Based groups are silly, silly, but where is the spinach?" "Can the spinach? I once
me instant Quaker Oatmeal." "It's the hot part of me, Malant's breakfast." "You forget it,
something!" "Oh, hey, now there's a Papa comic book, especially,
Monc Boxes of Instant Quaker Oatmeal." "Papa wants a burger!"
He appeared in comics that were included in specially marked boxes of instant Quaker Oatmeal,
and he appeared in three commercials where he'd lose a parrot, Olive Oil, or Sweepy,
and to save the day, instead of eating spinach, he would eat Quaker Oatmeal to obtain his strength.
And he came up with the phrase, "I'm Papa the Quaker Man." "Blast for me, no respect for the
original source material that also changed his original powers of spinach anyways."
I find it funny that you are, well, quote, unquote, "angry" about that because there was an
actual group that was angry about that campaign because the Religious Society of Friends,
also known as the Quakers, were very upset with him saying, "I'm Papa the Quaker Man."
And soon afterwards, they ended that ad campaign. "That is absolutely fair."
Yes, yes. In 1972, ABC premiered the 60-minute made-for-TV movie, "Papa meets the man who hated
laughter." "Now let's see those fools try to make me laugh." "A hoi, folks, we have a really big
shoe for you tonight. Our first act will be Daisy the Wonder Dogs."
This was part of the Sunday Superstar movie collection. The special was animated by
Filmmation, who took Liberty by inserting many characters from King Feature comic strips,
not just the Thimble Theater. So this included Flash Gordon, the Phantom, Mandrake, the Magician,
Beetle Bailey, and the Quincy's. Many of the character models resembled how they look in the comics,
and Papa was given his iconic black sailor shirt. In 1978, Papa returned to television with the
all-new Papa Hour, which was produced by Hanabar Barra, as part of the CBS Saturday Morning Lineup.
The show shared the one-hour slot with the show "Dinky Dog." Papa was given the original sailor suit,
except the shirt was blue, and Brutus was reverted back to Bluto. If you remember from our Scooby-Doo
episode, there was a restriction put on children's programming that prevented violence to be shown.
So Papa's usual method of punching his way out of a situation had to be changed. In most cases,
he would just pick up Bluto and just throw him. Yeah, returning to voice Papa was Jack Mercer.
Well, the real Jack Mercer, please stand up. Jack the audience would kill me if I let you get
away without giving us some small demonstration of Papa. Just anything you'd care to do.
I think Glad to. Oh, I'm Papa the sailor man.
In 1979, as part of season 2, and CBS aired the Papa Valentine's Day special "Sweet Hearts at Sea,"
and the story took up the full half-hour slot.
What's this? A love note? "Dear Ex-boy-fringed Papa." You forgot Valentine's Day for the last time,
so get lost. Signed your Ex-boy-fring. The new Olive. Oh my God!"
The show ran from 1981 and got rebranded to the half-hour program titled "Papa in Olive Comedy Hour."
The show ran until 1983, the year before Mercer passed away. In the mid-70s,
Columbia and Paramount were in a bidding war to produce the adaptation of the hit Broadway musical
Annie, which started off as a comic strip and was one of the few that was actually more popular
than Papa. After Paramount lost the bid, executive producer Robert Evans held a meeting with the
head of Gulf Western, which is Paramount's parent company. Charles Ladorne, along with the other
executives Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. They were in search for a property
that they could make a musical out of, and they came to the conclusion that it could be about Papa. Why?
Because Paramount still had the theatrical rights to the property thanks to King Feature's contract.
Evans hired Jules Feifer to write the script in 1977. No, Feifer, he started off his career
working for Will Eisner when he was working on a comic strip, The Spirit. After that, he created
his own comic strip titled Six Six Sick and later Feifer's Fables. And finally, Feifer. Actually,
Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick, briefly worked with Feifer, hoping to make Six Six Sick into a movie,
but that film was never made. And Feifer eventually got into playwriting in the 60s and
wrote Little Murders, Feifer's People, Knock Knock, Elliott Loves, The White House Murders, and
grownups. So he didn't really come from a movie writing background. It was a lot of playwriting
and comic strips, and they figured he does comics. He can write this till we find. Although Mike
Nichols adapted one of his unproduced plays, which was "Carnel Knowledge" a film that came out in 1971.
Now for Feifer, his dream cast, to play Papa, he wanted Dustin Hoffman.
Yes, I'm great and will the opponent? Yes, no!
For Olive Oil, he wanted Lily Tomlin, which I kind of agree with. Another consideration, which I
also thought was really good, Guilder Radner. Speaking to your wife in the new mile hour,
nuclear reactor site, where Womos are wanting Wempen, that the president has been exposed to
with the levels of radiation. Now to direct, he wanted John Slesinger, who directed Midnight Cowboy,
but he declined. Next they considered Arthur Penn. He was the one that directed Bonnie and Clyde.
He was unavailable, and then eventually Robert Altman, who directed Nashville, was hired.
Just the names that you are suggesting for this movie based off of a comic strip, about a cartoon
sailor man to get the guy who did Midnight Cowboy or Bonnie and Clyde. That's the kind of tone that we
want to get for this movie. Dark, gritty. Yeah, so strange and Dustin Hoffman. Nowadays, Dustin Hoffman
does as much comedy as anything else, but this is the graduate Dustin Hoffman and Midnight Cowboy,
Dustin Hoffman. That's so strange. Yeah, well, Dustin Hoffman did drop out because he had creative
differences with Fyfer. Now Disney, they joined the production in December of 1979 with a two picture
deal with Paramount. The other picture that they were going to co-create was Popeye and Dragon Slayer.
"You walked away from the flames. You must send me back there. You'll know the time. You must act.
My life is still in me." In exchange, Disney would help distribute the movie internationally.
Now Robin Williams was cast to play the Mumbling Sailor with this being his very first feature role.
This part I did not realize that it was his first movie that he did. The live-action Popeye is
notorious for being a pretty big failure. I have not seen the movie. I know there are people who
have its defenders though. Have you seen the live-action Robin Williams Popeye and have an opinion on it?
I remember trying to watch it. This is around the time when Robin Williams had died. Everyone was going
over his iconic roles and there was Popeye in the mix there. I was like, I had never actually seen
Popeye, so I actually sat down and I tried to watch it and I just could not finish it. It is just
unwatchable. It is really hard to get through. "What am I? I'm Popeye, the seal. I am, I am, I am, I am,
I am, I am, I am, that told that I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am." I do think it is funny that they
gave him those prosthetic arms. It really reminds me of the direction people would go with a dick-tracing
stuff. Short time later with, let's put these comic characters literally on screen.
And then as olive oil, they got Shelley DeVol.
For once, for once in life, I finally felt that someone needed me.
For Bluto, they got Paul L. Smith. Now the original songs was written by Harry Nielsen,
which I looked into and I didn't see anything that was like prominent that I could really pull from
or like it is an example. So he seems to do a lot of like small things but like this is the first
time that he could really like make a name for himself. But fortunately the production was a mess.
The production took place in Malta and the set was built beyond what was needed for filming.
After shooting, they left up the set and it has actually been turned into an amusement park called
Popeye Village. You can still visit it today. Oh, interesting. Along with the set, they also
constructed recording studios and editing suite in living areas for the remote location,
which just inflated the budget. On top of that, the bad weather costs the production three more
weeks of shooting. They also ran into mechanical issues with the giant octopus.
A shark? Close. The giant octopus and also Popeye's inflatable forearms.
They actually had to like get them remade somewhere in Italy and like shipped in at the last minute.
And very often if you watch the movie again, which why would you? But you'll notice that a lot of
shots are from the chest up or like close-up shots and that was to avoid seeing his forearms
because they didn't have the prosthetics in yet. Dan, don't say why would you knowing our audience?
I guarantee you we have about at least a dozen people listening to this right now who genuinely
love that Popeye movie. There's always going to be some people who it really speaks to.
If you are one of those people who love Popeye, nothing but respect for you.
Loving weird things is very good in my opinion. Even if that weird thing is not something I love.
So the vocals for the song were recorded live on set instead of having pre-recorded songs for the
actress to sync up with. All that talk from Les Mis being the first to do it and they weren't.
They were stealing from Popeye. Popeye was the original. Get your facts straight.
Now there is a shot where you can see the a can of spinach being thrown at Popeye
in which it hits Robin Williams in the head. After that they had to actually take them to the
hospital to get stitches. No. Yeah. They tried to include Eugene the Jeep but they couldn't find a
way to make the character work as far as like special effects go. They gave the supernatural abilities
to sweep he instead which is why that weird inconsistency is there. Vyfer was on location as the
on set writer along with the production problems which cause a lot of consistent rewrites in the movie.
He did not like the music that was written by Harry Nelson saying that it did not match the tone
and it was way too slow.
Vyfer eventually left the production in the middle of shooting after growing frustration.
For Altman he was not a fan of Robin Williams improv mumbling which made it even more difficult
when they had to dub in his lines in post-production because Robin Williams couldn't speak with a pipe
in his mouth. Supposedly Altman did not finish what he wanted to shoot in Paramount forced him to
turn in the footage after the film budget ballooned to up to 20 million dollars and then the end Paramount
may have come out on top because the pop-up movie actually made three million dollars more than the
anti-movie. Oh really? You would not expect that based on the cultural impact of those two movies.
No. Popeye-Word Return to Television again in 1987 with one season of Popeye and Sun produced again
by Hannah Barbera in it, Popeye and Olive are married and they have a son. Not sweepy though,
it is Popeye Jr who hates the taste of spinach.
And then Bluto he also has a family and his son Tink is actually a bully towards Popeye Jr.
Now to voice Popeye was Maurice March which you may know as the voice of Brain.
A new animated Popeye wouldn't be seen again until 2004 when Lionsgate produced the CG animated
straight to DVD special Popeye's voyage The Quest for Pappy in celebration of Popeye's 75th
anniversary. This time Billy West provided the voice for the Mumbling Sailor. He would later
claim that voice in Popeye was the hardest job he had ever done and talking like him was quote
like a buzzsaw to your throat. I'm looking at images of this movie right now and this is
pretty bad. Yeah, this is like almost food fight levels of animation quality.
On September 18th 2014 Sony Animation Studios released an animation test of their Popeye movie.
Introduce by director Yandee Tardikovsky. When I first started the animation my very first
teacher was a 90 year old Popeye animator from the Flusher Studios Gordon Sheen. So I feel like
it's destiny that's brought me here to Sony Pictures Animation to make Popeye an animated feature.
The development for Sony's Popeye movie was first announced in March of 2010 and like the Lionsgate
film it was going to be CG animated. In November 2011 Sony Animation announced that the smurfs writer
Jack Cherrick and David Ron were hired to write the screenplay. Gandee Tardikovsky who I know is
extremely well known name in animation and we talked a lot about his whole career in our
samurai Jack episode. So if you want to hear a lot more about the life and times of Gandee Tardikovsky
go check out our episode on samurai Jack. In June of 2012 Gandee Tardikovsky joined the production
as the director. In November a release date was announced September 26th of 2014 which then got
pushed back to September of 2015 and then again to September of 2016. While production was getting
delayed Tardikovsky was still working though but he was working on Hotel Transylvania too. Yeah Gandee
Tardikovsky had already worked with Sony Pictures Animation on Hotel Transylvania a movie that I
haven't seen but from what I understand is a pretty well loved or at the very least well liked movie.
It seems to be one of those movies that doesn't have a loud fan base but it seems like everybody who
seen it likes the movie. I love that Sony Pictures Animation is the ones who are working on this project
especially in the post spiderverse world. Sony has gotten a lot of love of doing things with CG
animation that are different than what all of the other major animation studios were doing but
I think even at this time you know cloudy with a chance of meatballs and hotel Transylvania
feel different from Disney Dreamworks Pixar and it's leaning into that cartoony movement and that
cartoony physics and logic in a way that the other major CG animation studios were not doing. So when
I realized this was Sony Pictures that got me really excited. The animatic that we saw there was one
prominent actor who is in there to voice Popeye and that was Tom Kenny. You may know him as SpongeBob.
There was Gray D'Lyzel. Gray D'Lyell. David I actually brought this up with you yesterday.
The voice of Eugene the Jeep. Did you figure out who that was? Yeah the moment that you said oh there
is an animal character in this you want to guess who they had to voice the animal character I'm
like oh yeah so it's D Bradley Baker that's who you're leading me into of course. It definitely is
D Bradley Baker. Famously the voice of Momo and Appa in Avatar the Last Air Bender.
The voice of Bluto which I thought was perfect was John Demagio. Oh. The voice of Bender.
Of course. What time is it? Time for you to shut up. And then the seahag.
I thought this was great. Trust McNeil. Which you remember from? The weird owl song that now I
don't remember which song it was but I know she was in one of them. She was Lucy. And of course
has been in a million animated things. Let me be in your show Ricky. She's also Agnes Skinner.
Every time there's an animated movie based off of a famous animated character or series or anything
like that. There's always this conversation of why are they casting big name movie stars in these
roles instead of voice actors whose career is out of voice actors. We don't need to keep giving
Chris Pratt work as being voices. We could give the voice actors work in the big movies. You don't
need the celebrities and that's amazing to me and wonderful to me that that's what they were doing
for the Popeye movie. Yeah. That might be partly because of Gandy Tardikovsky. He came coming from
television. He's like these guys are great. They're gonna fit this role perfectly. I mean it really
feels like this was gonna be the movie for animation nerds. Now normally I would go into the plot
but this doesn't really fall in line with the timeline on the story and you'll kind of see why.
In March of 2015 Sony announced that Tardikovsky's Popeye film was canceled. That's it. The
picture is canceled. Finished were leaving. Does that mean I'm through with a stupid movie? I guess so, son.
In a movie phone interview Gandy stated with quote "Popeye at least we got to put up the screening
everyone really like the sizzle. We got a positive reaction. I was in love with what we were doing
but I think the studio is going through changes and I don't know if they wanted to make the Popeye
that I wanted to make. So they've got to make a decision. It's hard to let Popeye go but that's
the business. Around the time of the cancellation Sony was going through systematic changes within
the studio. In 2014 Sony pictures got hacked by the Guardians of Peace, something that we covered
in our Men and Black in 21 Jump Street episode in response to the film The Interview, a film
depicting a journalist tasked with assassinating the leader of North Korea. Sony let go of Sony Pictures
Digital Productions, President Bob Oshar and Chairperson Amy Pascal after the hack revealed emails
with some racially insensitive language and hired former DreamWorks producer Kristen Belson as president
of the Sony Pictures animation. Interesting. Popeye was put on hold. Tartikovsky finished hotel
Transylvania 2 and was tasked with making another film Can You Imagine, another film that got canceled.
And the next feature down the line for Sony Animation was the emoji movie. Yes. I saw a lot of
clickbait titled articles where it's like Sony's scrap Popeye to make the emoji movie. It's like
no, they just canceled one movie and then just another one popped up. That's really what it was.
If you look at the movies that they made in this time, we've got Angry Birds, then Sausage Parties
and a Smurfs movie, then the emoji movie, and Peter Rabbit. I will say though, Sausage Party is a
better movie than it should be. Okay, I'll take your word for it and not go find out for myself.
Not until Spider-Verse comes along that they get that cred back. Yes. So Tartikovsky knew that when
the hack happened, a lot of productions did not take priority in the company, including his
he would ask executives for feedback. And the only notes that he would get is something along the
lines of, "It looks great," which he knew was a bad sign. He personally went to Amy Pascal's office
and said, "Look, I'm a big boy, I can take it. I just need some information." And she said, "Look,
candy. We love you. We just don't like Popeye." Oh man. In May of 2020, it was announced that
Tartikovsky was back to make a new Popeye movie. This time, not under Sony Animation,
but working directly with King Features. No update so far on what's happening there. But in July
of 2022, an automatic of Sony's Popeye movie was leaked by an anonymous person that goes by the
pseudonym Chip Buddy. For a short time, you could watch the full 87-minute rough film with Tom
Kenny and Gray D'Lyle's voice tracks with the sound effects and temporary reference film score.
The news source, Cartoon Brew, confirmed the authenticity, but they could not get a follow-up on
how many different versions there were and how close this automatic was to the final film.
Now, we were able to watch the animatic. I don't know how much we can really distribute that
animatic, but what we can do is kind of summarize what we watched in that animatic for you to enjoy
in your earballs.
So here is what happens in the movie.
We open on Pappy in a robot at night in the middle of the storm with the sick baby barely arriving
to plunder Island. On the island is a witch, the sea hag, who has magical abilities that she
obtains with the help of a red ruby that she keeps in her eye socket. Pappy presents the sick child to
the sea hag. She agrees to help when she sees the baby as ugly as her. She cures the kid, kidnaps him,
and sends the father away. Later that night, Pappy sneaks into the sea hag's bedroom, takes his
son back and steals the magical jewel. Her goons search the island. In an act of desperation, Pappy puts
his son and the jewel in a spinach crate and sends it out to sea before getting captured. The sea
hag proclaims that in 17 years, all her powers will be gone if she does not get the ruby back. The goons
take to the sea in search of the jewel. Meanwhile, in the crate, the child eats the spinach in the presence
of the magical jewel. A cracking appears and snatches the child, but it is no match when he magically
becomes super strong. The beaten crack in places the child back into the crate. I feel like there's
a pretty common trope of doing these movie versions of classic characters that feel like they have to
tell the origin story that I'm kind of tired of. We don't need to see the origin story for all these
characters. It's okay, I can understand. We don't need to see the spider bite. Yeah, but I think this
had enough fun with all of that that it didn't really bother me. I was not really expecting the
magical aspects, but then again, I don't know too much about Popeye, so maybe sea hags are much more
common in the cartoons than I'm just not aware. Something that we should mention that I can't
really sum up or put in the summary is that a lot of this is a musical, a lot of this is sung.
Yeah, beginning is sort of sung, but I don't remember that being a part of the rest of the animatic.
Even in the beginning, it's like spoke sung back and forth. Yeah, but it rhymes. The dad showed her his
dying boy. She was stunned and filled with joy because the babe was as ugly as her. She let out a
idea. It did feel like it was the introduction to a musical. Yeah, at sea, the baby loses the jewel
before arriving to the shore of sea haven. He's found by woman, Judy, who names him Popeye due to
his one eye and brings him to her orphanage. There, he shares a bed with a bearded baby,
Pluto, who doesn't take kindly to Popeye. The moment that he's laid in the crib and we see
bearded baby, Pluto, that was like the moment that sold me that I was like, yes, I am on board for
what this movie is doing. Yes. Growing up, Popeye struggled to fit in with the other kids. One
morning, Popeye is awoken by a whale. It seems like all the sea creatures are looking out for Popeye.
At the beach with the other children, Popeye tapes a fake paper eye to his face and attempt to be
normal, but it doesn't work. Pluto and the kids still pick on him, observing the orphans is a young olive
oil. She asks her parents what they're doing and they tell her that the kids are pretending
and she isn't sure what pretending means so she asks, what is it? And is told it is to be something
that you're not. She thinks it looks like fun, but her father reminds her that she's from the
house on the top of the hill and she wouldn't want to be anyone else. Only poor people imagine.
Any montage, we see a cluster of orphans being chosen and taking home to a family, but Popeye
is never chosen. Judy informs him that he is just one of a kind, but Popeye sees that negatively
and that he's different. Saturn, he walks to the beach. There, the red ruby washes up on shore.
Unnoticed by the boy, multiple times with the help of various animals, the jewel is thrown at Popeye
to get him to notice. He picks up the red diamond and stares into it. The jewel reveals his origin
story and that his dad is out there stranded on a ship wrecked boat that looks like a shark.
Popeye needs to find his father. In a montage, he builds a ship with parts from a junkyard.
During his build, he finds the magical Eugene the Jeep, resistant at first,
Popeye finally accepts jeeps willingness to help. Through the narration from a talking fish,
we are informed that Popeye is about 18 or 19.
Is it a talking fish? I thought it was always like we would get introduced to a fish and then it would
get scooped up by a pelican and then the pelican would be the narrator. It would kind of go back and forth,
yeah. And that was like the runner throughout the whole thing of this fish kept like doing a dance
and immediately getting scooped up. I think that was towards the end, but yes, I do remember that
sequence being in the animatic. So the ship is complete and prepares to set sail and find his dad.
As they launch, Jeep gives Popeye his iconic sailor hat. Popeye looks out into the sea and realizes,
he has no idea where to go. We cut to an older olive oil, playing in her bedroom, pretending she's
on an adventure. Her mom walks in criticizing her, wondering why she needs to pretend when other people
pretend to be in her wealthy position and that she has a wonderful boyfriend, Bluto. In a flashback,
we see Bluto and Olive meet and that Bluto is more interested in Olive's house and status than her.
Her mother hopes for her to get married have children and live in the house for the rest of their
lives. Olive dreads the thought and is unsure of her true self. In a grand gesture, remexing a very
white song, Bluto proposes to Olive, but her mother stops the proposal when she sees how small the
diamond is. Bluto in a panic goes out and search for a large diamond ring. That evening, Popeye
vists a sailor's pub, which is revealed to be a family restaurant. There he finds an older sailor
that informs him that Plunder Island is the place that he's looking for and not the place that you
want to find. He warns him of the sea hagg. The sailor uses a kid's placemat to make a map.
And this is a great scene where like you see the fish stick forest, he crosses that out and says
the unseen forest. Then there's the Mac and cheese island crosses that out to make
island in the sky and then there's tartar sauce sea, which he crosses out to be the heart of darkness.
They call back to it a couple of times where it's like they've got the traveling sequences where
you show the dotted line on the map, except it's the kid's menu and you're seeing like the scratched
out names of what was written on there. So good. Good gag. Bluto is wallowing in the street,
wondering how he can get a bigger diamond when he runs into Popeye. Bluto makes fun of him for
never being adopted but Popeye shows him that he doesn't need to be adopted because this big red
ruby has shown Popeye where his dad is and Bluto is infatuated with the jewel. That night Popeye is
afraid that his dad might not like him, but Jeep reassures him that if he likes him then his dad
surely will. Bluto sneaks into Popeye's boat and steals the magical red jewel. The next morning
Popeye is about to set sail, but the diamond is gone. He reads in the newspaper headline that Bluto and
Olive are engaged and there in the photo is Popeye's jewel. He marches to Olive's house on the hill
to find her sleeping, wearing the ring with Popeye's diamond. He's about to snag it and that's when she
starts to sleepwalk. Popeye chases her around the town as she unconsciously walks through some crazy
scenarios. At one point he drives a taxi cab, her passenger being Jay Wellington Wimpy who just
wants to go, forget where he wants to go, he wants to go to a burger place. And then Popeye hijacks
a scooter to chase her down. While driving through a hotel, Popeye runs into a womb service cart
serving a spinach salad which he accidentally eats, which then Popeye explodes in power,
soaring into the air. He saves Olive from plummeting to the ground and Wimpy crash lands in front of
a burger haven. Popeye is amazed by his new found abilities and Olive wakes up in his arms. He tries to
explain that he needs this jewel back but Olive is quick to conclusions and begins beating Popeye,
waking the whole town with her screams. Popeye grabs Olive and runs from the sea,
haven citizens and Bluto. Probably the biggest laugh that I had in this was a moment when Olive
oil is in trouble and Bluto shouts out my finances. I mean, my fiancee. Yes, you.
Is such a great line, yes. So jeep starts up the boat as Popeye and Olive get on the ship and they take
off. Through an animated map and a narrating pelican, we learn that the sea hack has been searching
every island in hopes to find her diamond. Her latest destination being sea haven. At sea haven,
Bluto announces he's off to get Olive oil back in a sent-away with great fanfare. When he is out at sea,
he runs into a fleet of old ships led by the sea-hag. Bluto is brought on board and is questioned about her
jewel. He immediately gives up the details. Now Bluto goes back to his boat but he can't go back to the
island because of he does. He'll look like a coward but if he goes after the sea-hag, he will most certainly
die. So he just stays put. Olive oil wakes up to find that they are sailing through a storm.
With some cartoon antics, they barely escape. When they get to calm seas, Popeye explains to Olive
that he just wants his jewel back. Olive freaks out, stating that it's hers and goes on about
marrying and having kids with Bluto and she'll forever be the girl from the house on the hill.
She doesn't believe someone like Popeye could ever own a jewel like that. Olive takes control of the ship,
turned it around in the midst of taking back control. Popeye flings Olive overboard. Popeye jumps into
the sea to get her. The two partake in a zany cartoon chase and accidentally find the unseen
forest which is just an underwater forest. Olive is an awe and she is having a real-life adventure
like the one she pretended to have. They keep on sailing at night admiring the stars, looking
for the island in the sky. Popeye asks for the jewel again and as he asks, a ship headed towards sea-having
passes by. A vision is seen in the jewel and Olive finally believes that this is Popeye's jewel.
Popeye states that if he gets a jewel back she can get on the passing ship and she can go home.
Olive wanting to continue in this adventure lies and says the ring is stuck on her finger and
Jeep notices that she lied. I'm so happy with Jeep's reaction to that as well because his reaction
is getting really excited for a love story that's about to happen. Yeah.
Popeye looks up at this strange-looking moon. In a transition from the moon, we see the sea-hag
transforming into a more hideous creature. She becomes more desperate and forces her goons to work harder.
The next day we cut to Bluto, baking and hallucinating in the sun. He kisses a wish-granting fish for
money, which turns out to be nothing. And Popeye and Olive continue sailing. Popeye is suspiciously
looking up into the clouds while Olive is having fun pointing out that the clouds resemble some things.
Suddenly, sky pirates start falling from the sky, some charge on propeller planes and attack the ship.
Through more cartoon tomfoolery, the three of them fight off the pirates. The three get tangled up
and captured. The pirates assume from the look of the ship that there's nothing valuable until
they see Olive's engagement ring. They piece together that this is the jewel of the sea-hag that they
are looking for. Knowing this, they will make them rich. Olive gives up the ring when they threaten
to cut off her finger, and Popeye sees now that she has lied. Popeye sneaks on to the Pirates plane that
takes him to the island in the sky. He goes back to the ship and makes their way to the island.
There are too many pirates to fight, so they must sneak around in disguise. Olive addresses
like a pirate while Popeye dresses like a female pirate. Olive is not convincing as a seductive
pirate, but Popeye saves the day, seducing all the pirates while dressed in drag. Successfully,
Popeye snags the ring. The head pirate insists that he stay, but Popeye is trying to leave. He offers
a spinach odour that activates Popeye's powers. He's found out and they run and escape onto the ship.
Are you familiar with the Popeye non-binary icon conversation? We have talked about this before.
When we talked about Nemona, way back when. I don't think that conversation made it into the episode,
but we did talk about Popeye, the non-binary icon, and I was like, I've never heard this before.
Yeah, I think what really brought this to be a conversation everybody online was having was
because whoever was running the official Popeye Twitter account said something about being amphibious
and then pointed out comics where Popeye is saying that he's neither male or female because he's
amphibious or something like that, or not neither male or both male and female. I'm butchering what
the quote is. There was like a quote where he is hanging on to sweepy and he's like, I can be both
the mother and the father. Oh yes, that's what it is. There's a lot of people who would argue that
Bugs Bunny is gender fluid or gender non-conforming and it seems to be that any official Popeye source
that gets asked about this says absolutely Popeye's gender non-conforming. So, and I love that this
sequence is in the movie and the way the sequences played out is yes, there's humor in the drag
performance but not in a sense of like, it's funny because this is unnatural. It's more just like
Popeye is fully in it and it makes you as an audience like enjoy it more because like Popeye says that
his name is Poppy while he's you know still putting on the performance and the high-pitched voice
there's a button at the end of the scene after they escape where the head pirate has like a tyranness
sign is like I'll always miss you Poppy and it's like okay at this point the head pirate has seen
all of Popeye's outfit come off and knows that this is not who he was presenting to be necessarily at first
and yet is still in love with Popeye this is beautiful this is some beautiful stuff happening here
that reminds me of a song it's this perspective of this guy who his best friend does a drag show
through the drag show he falls in love with his best friend's drag persona and it's like I'm in
love with Darryl and drag or something like that I have to look up the song but like that kind of
reminds me of that all right so they escape from the island they escape onto the ship
these sky pirates in their planes continue to chase them Popeye in a panic ask all of what they
should do and she is out of ideas but she admires Popeye for his ability to get out of pinch and she
says that this is him doing his Popeye things and this makes him one of a kind and that's what makes
him great they plunge towards the sea but before they hit the water they enter the mouth of a great
whale the pirates are perplexed and the sea hag and her ships are approaching the three are
safe inside the whale's mouth now remember that the sea creatures are friendly to Popeye the whale
lets them out of their mouth Popeye yes all of if she can hold on to the ring but incidentally gives
it to her in a way that looks like he's proposing realizing the mistake he reprisitions and just
hands her the ring this was a great scene of like all the sea creatures all popping out and everybody
is so excited for this beautiful moment and they're like oh all of it midst that she lied and all she
wanted to do was keep going on an adventure Popeye is glad that she stayed the sea hag confronts the
sky pirates about the jewel which they hasn't intently admit that they don't have the goons of
beat them up one pirate pipes up and tells the sea hag that the one-eyed man is headed to plunder
island to find his father the trio has arrived at the heart of darkness the atmosphere is dark and
spooky a mysterious single dark flamingo appears yells and summons the others suddenly the three are
surrounded by blanket-minded evil flamingos they attack more cartoon antics happen to fend off the
birds all of saves the day by posing yelling like a flamingo turns out she can speak flamingo and
learns that the sea hag sent them to stop Popeye feel like this is maybe referring to like bubbles
being able to talk to squirrels it might go back further than that but seeing this is gandy hard to
off-skate and him working on powerful of girls i think that might be it Popeye is proud of all of
and says that what she did was all of the the flamingos leave the red jewel glows and they are close
Popeye spots the shark-shaped shipwreck they enter the abandon ship and sure enough
they find pappy Popeye hugs his father he asks how he found him and Popeye says it was the jewel
pappy asked to see the jewel and shoves it into his eye socket followed by a massive explosion
poppy transforms into the maniacally laughing sea hag she states Popeye's father was a terrible
person that abandoned him and stole her jewel jeep grabs the jewel the sea hag becomes immediately
decrepit and falls into a watery pit the three escape on the ship but are pulled into a whirlpool
but the ship's leg like abilities manage to help them escape that was something that i didn't
really mention is that this ship the way that it operates is not like a normal ship there are things
that like stick out of the boat so like there's these arms and legs that like come out or like
there's these little levers that like make it even more cartoony it's a lot of fun Popeye is depressed
all of tries to cheer him up in states that his father is still out there he's not convinced but
just wants to go back to see haven to drop off olive because he doesn't have a father nor does he
belong anywhere all of states that she doesn't feel like she belongs there either Popeye says that
olive is the girl in the house on the hill that's who she is but olive takes offense to that
he hands her the ring so that she can marry bluto we cut to bluto not doing anything
when he spots Popeye's ship he yells for help Bluto jumps into the ship ready to beat up Popeye
but olive stops him she tells him that they should get married bluto and olive are about to leave
olive stays behind for a moment like she wants to tell something to Popeye but she leaves in silence
bluto takes off in a ship and Popeye turns around in the ocean a broken heart forms from the waves
olive is going through with the marriage we see olive alone and wedding dress
staring at the jewel and looking sad she is following the footsteps of her mother which makes her
even more miserable her mother is appalled by what olive went through but olive states that it wasn't
that bad an independent version of olive is seen in the mirror arguing for the real olive to break free
at sea we see Popeye in his boat jeep is pleading with Popeye wondering why he didn't go after olive
Popeye says that she's better off without him jeep wears olive's pirate hat which
angers him because it's olive's hat she's one of a kind and in a voice over we hear all the great things
olive says about Popeye he decides to go back to sea haven to get olive but in the distance is an
approaching sea hagg flying on a large condor she destroys this ship but the jewel is nowhere to
be found she looks at the top of the hill at sea haven and like a beacon the jewel emanates
that can be seen by the sea hagg she flies off Popeye meanwhile sinks into the sea the wedding is in
progress being officiated by wimpy when olive is asked if she'll marry bludot she refuses
seeing that this is not who she is she's an independent adventurous woman the sea hagg on her
condor crashes the wedding literally bludot runs in fear and olive is captured by the talents of the
condor the ring is pulled off of her finger and is thrown into the air meanwhile Popeye spots a
can of spinach while still underwater he flashes back to all the moments when spinach saved his life
he eats it and becomes supercharged he swims through the water like a torpedo
bursts out of the water and saves olives from falling to her death Popeye apologizes to olive saying
that she's more than just the girl in the house on the hill she interrupts when she remembers that
the sea hagg still has the jewel she shoves the ruby into her eye socket and transforms back into
her younger and more powerful self she and the goon's terrorized sea haven Popeye takes off like a rocket
and hits her so hard she's launched into outer space on the ground the goons are about to attack
olives parents but olives saves the day by fighting them off with a brick filled purse Popeye beats
up the condor the goons close in on olive but Popeye swoops in and beats them up the sea hagg falls
back to earth Popeye catches her and plugs the gem out of her eye she's decrepit again the crowd
booze her but Popeye feels sorry for her Popeye gives her the jewel back knowing that it is truly hers
and that without it she would die and a speech he says i am what i am and that's okay with me
the sea hagg is inspired to do something nice and through her powers she releases Popeye's father
from her prison pappy is not happy to see the sea hagg when released but stops as soon as he sees his
son the sea hagg disappears in Popeye and pappy reunite while others around sea haven hugged their
loved ones Popeye and pappy are joined by jeep olive and an unwelcome bluto in the final shot of the film
bluto's face is punched by Popeye's fist that's the end
like i get why it's there and why they ended with him punching bluto but it did feel a little bit of
a strange note to end on here everybody is hugging and wimpy hugs and hamburger it just felt
little weird to have this like sweet everybody loves each other ending and then Popeye punches
bluto in the face another great ending would to see bluto like clinging onto the house to be like
it's mine can be dragged away from it yeah i don't know if i really have to ask this question but
would you like to see this movie of course that's like the longest animatic i've seen you could
absolutely get the energy from the mostly still images and i am so happy to have seen the animatic
and to be familiar with this story yeah this is like would have been a home run of a project especially
for animation fans and it really does feel like a shame that we didn't get it i really love seeing
that short little clip you could definitely tell that gendy was gunning for like the rubber hose animation
like specifically there's that moment where olive oil is being pulled through the window
olive man we really missed out on a really great movie yeah it's unfortunate that this didn't happen
especially because it would have been so different from CG stuff at the time and i'm really glad
that animation CG animation specifically is starting to branch off a little bit more and try
some things that haven't been done before and i really hope we get something that has the same
zany feel as this i feel like we're at a point in the world of feature animation where we can start
saying more and more things that take as big of a swing as this pop i clip does i will say that the
latest i'm not really counting the sunday comic strips in this but the most modern animated pop i
the latest representation we got was a web series which was titled pop i's island adventures it was
produced by wild brain spark studios the show premiered in december of 2018 and it lasted until
november of 2020 for king features that company they were actually behind the animated cuphead
series which recently got canceled by netflix netflix canceled a show after only one or two seasons
uh what so the only thing that we really could help for is that gandy tartekovsky teams up directly
with king features and comes up with some sort of pop i property most likely it won't be a movie
i mean his willhouse is television shows so if he somehow comes up with a pop i tv show
that would be interesting and his destiny would finally be fulfilled
always something i wonder whenever stuff from projects like this gets leaked my assumption is always
that there's a crew member who really really liked this thing they worked on and is very sad that
they don't get to keep working on this and so they're like you know what i'm just gonna put it out
there and it's gonna generate a lot of buzz and maybe it's gonna get the powers that be to
pick this up again if we generate enough good internet buzz maybe something will change
whenever stuff like that happens it's just a good sign that the people working on this project were
passionate and creative and excited and should continue to work on other things whether or not
that main project gets made they should continue to go do awesome things
all right well i guess it's gonna go ahead and wrap this up thank you everybody so much for listening
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not get made at gmail.com all right thank you everybody so much for listening bye thank you
whatever i'm papa the seal and i am what i am what i am what i am what i am and that's all
that i am because i am what i am you got it i think so yeah