The L. A. Bastards

I’ve mentioned several times in the past the phenomenal talent pool that coalesced around Ruby-Spears Productions in their heyday, in particular their storyboard department, led by the truly sui generis John Dorman, one of Hollywood’s genuine wild men. 

Not only was John an amazing talent in his own right, but his Rolodex included some of the most incredible talents it’s been my pleasure to work with:  Kurt Conner, Thom Enriquez, Larry Houston, Tom Minton, Dan Riba, Hank Tucker, Jim Woodring, and a host of others at various times and on various productions.

John ran an effective art crew, and I learned many things from him that proved invaluable in dealing with my own art crews when I was packaging books and educational material.

John and his team always delivered top notch work in a timely manner, often going above and beyond the call of duty to get it out the door on time.

But John did not run a tight ship.

Oh, no, quite the contrary…

They called themselves the L.A. Bastards and the storyboard department was Bastard Central.

I’m proud to say that I was the only non-storyboard artist admitted into that freaky fraternity.  I won their respect by being the only writer who actually went down and talked to them about what would make their jobs easier when I wrote scripts.

They appreciated that and opened the window to all sorts of insider tips I never would have gleaned without their insight.

Whenever possible I’d go down to John’s department and recharge my batteries.  It wasn’t a 24-hour party, but it was a constantly fun environment, and everybody enjoyed themselves making cartoons so much that the love just poured out onto their storyboards.

But they were a handful.

Let’s say “chemically enhanced”
and let it go at that.

One of the legal enhancements I can discuss were the mini-oxygen tanks John kept for himself and his crew.  You felt yourself dragging in the middle of the afternoon, just come on down and get a couple of hits off the old 02 tank and you were fully energized in a matter of seconds.

Classic John Dorman chemical enhancement story:
At one of the buildings Ruby-Spears used as a studio, John’s office was down wind from the ink and paint department’s restroom; anything that entered the air vent there would exit in John’s office.

You’d walk in and swear you just stepped into some Haight-Ashbury hippie pad in the middle of the Summer of Love.  John would swear it wasn’t him, but the smell of marijuana remained so overpowering you could almost get high standing there.

Ken Spears eventually went into John’s office and told him that he and Joe didn’t mind what he did on his own time, but for the luvva gawd, stop toking up in the middle of the workday.

“But it’s not me!” John would wail.

And it wasn’t!  The ink and paint ladies, bored out of their minds slapping paint on Mighty Man and Yukk cels, would take smoke breaks in the ladies’ room and as mentioned above, the purple haze would find its way into John’s office.

John and his crew were merry pranksters, notorious for their wild antics in and out of the studio.  They used to like flamingoing people’s lawns, buying dozens of cheap pink flamingos at a big box store and covering somebody’s lawn with them.

Their antics finally got to be too much for the suits in the front office to bear so Joe and Ken moved the L.A. Bastards out of the studio and into their own space, the former offices of Cheech y Chong.

If ever there was a perfect match of location and occupants, that was it.

Most of the stuff John and the L.A. Bastards did never went into production, development art for shows that went nowhere.  At one time we did a development on Prince Valiant, a large full size artboard showing Prince Valiant astride his mighty steed.

Only something went wrong
in the inking of the horse.

Joe and / or Ken got a look at the art when it was halfway inked, realized it would not fly and by that time apparently already got a signal from the network that Prince Valiant was way down beneath the floor tiles in the sub-basement of possible shows.

So the incomplete art remained behind John’s desk after that.  They copied and enlarged the horse’s head, dubbing it Widowmaker, and made T-shirts with it proudly proclaiming themselves The 5-Hours For Lunch Club.

Not an exaggeration.

In any case, when I left Ruby-Spears I stayed in touch with John but never found out what happened to Widowmaker.  Fortunately for us, Dan Riba scanned a copy of the Prince Valiant art, so here Widowmaker is, in all their pagan glory.

Gawd, I miss you, John…

© Buzz Dixon