Happy Valentine’s Day!
Made me remember this story I recently came across, this romance between some characters I hadn’t thought about since I was a little kid. They became more relatable after this video, which incidentally Steven Spielberg told me about over Skype. He said it was called the “Citizen Kane of animation”, basically it’s very influential and kind of a huge accomplishment.
This is a love triangle between a girl and two dudes: a dot, a line… and a squiggle. It’s also less than 10% as long as the usual romantic comedy. Sure, there’s no Sandra Bullock but it’s cool, it’s whimsical, it’s wonderfully narrated (by an Englishman, obviously going to be good) and it struck me as a condensed version of the many romantic comedies to come years later. What’s awesome is how many jokes they managed to stuff into this short video- Puns galore as well as visual gags and great musical accompaniment. Keep in mind this was made in 1965, I’m impressed at how well all the ideas and jokes connect 50 years later. Awesome work.
This IS a great cast: Line is a convincing everyman and Dot has the screen presence required to pull off straddling the line (no pun intended!) of the mercurial love interest. Squiggle’s trademark “grimy guitar” musical effects crack me up too. Combined with his slothful ways, that guy is bad news!
If there’s a lesson here – it’s in Line’s tenacity. When Dot rejected him because he was too straight, Line simply decides to gym up. He’s in there pushing himself and when he comes back Line is slingin’ straight fire! Angles? Squiggles?…Um, How about roller-coasters and cathedrals the people at Six Flags and Romans couldn’t even imagine, respectively.
Line just kept upping his game. That is the lesson.
This V-Day, here’s to the dots, lines AND the squiggles – and we’ve tried all of the roles on by now- keep upping your game. DO YOU. Here’s hoping that even if you don’t live happily ever after, at least it’s reasonably so.
Also, Spielberg just snapchatted me saying that this is his favorite actually:
If you have a problem, take it up with him @MinorityReportSS
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