King of Cartoons: Hanna-Barbera's David Kirschner
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Transcript of King of Cartoons: Hanna-Barbera's David Kirschner
PROFILE
KingofCan6ons
Dauid Kirscbner is creatinga uibrant new imagefor
Hanna-Barbera
ALII \. Yogi Bear himself
might put it, new Hanna-Barbera president and
CEO David Kirschner is smaarrrter than the aver-age studio executive. Ask Kirschner, however, andyou get modesty worthy of Boo Boo. "There are
MBAs out there who crunch numbers much betterthan I ever could, and business-affairs people whomake killer deals I could never make," he says.ooBut I like to think I've got good street smarts as
far as taking an idea, recognizing a void in themarket, and going after it."
In other words, Basic Business lOl-until yourealize that Kirschner is as much a basic business-person as Yogi is a basic bear. In an unlikely careeras a professional dreamer, Kirschner created andproduced the Rose Petal Plare children's book se-
ries, which spun off a $35-million toy line for Hall-mark; devised the characters and concepts of AnAmerican TaiI (1986), the most successful non-Dis-ney animated film and a merchandising bonanza;and produced the horror movie blockbuster Child'sPlay (l9BB), which made a cult star of a murderousdoll named Chucky that Kirschner conceived of as
a parody oflicensed characters. And all this beforeturning 34.
Last October, the Cincinnati-based CreatAmerican Broadcasting (contirutcdonpage64)
By Frank Loaece
CONTINENIAI- PROFILES M,!V 1990 3l
!
ELF
Kirschner ( continued from page 3 I )Company tapped the boyish wonderto revitalize their wholly owned sub-sidiary, Hanna-Barbera Produc-tions, Inc. The famed cartoon com-pany was still nominally run byco-chairpersons William Hanna,79, and,Joe Barbera, 79, the anima-tors who gave the world the Jetsons,the Flintstones, Top Cat, Scooby-
Like Spielbug,Kirscbnu had grown
up makingelaborate Super-B
1cnome mouxes.
Doo, Quick Draw McGraw, andenough other cartoon classics towarm any baby-boomer's heart. Yetthe glory days were over; Hanna-Barbera hadn't had a hit since TheSmurfsTY series premiered in l98l,and those characters weren't eventhe company's own creation. Kirsch-ner found himself presiding over aleiendary, consistently profitable,but creatively listless studio.
"Hanna-Barbera was not func-tioning as it should have," Hannahimself observes at his office in thecompany's high-school-like, two-story building next door to UniversalStudios.
"The company had sat on its lau-rels for a lot of years," Kirschneragrees. "They watched these youn-ger animation companies come upand begin to take over the market."Indeed. The company even leasedaway its rights to most of the Flint-stones car'or', which a couple ofyearsago went to the ad agency Saatchi &
(continucd, on page 69)
PROFILE
Kirschner ( con tirurcd, from page 64 )Saatchi DFS Inc. for 14 years andabout $40 million.
But now the doldrums seem readyto exit, stage left. In June the com-pany debuts "The Funtastic Worldof Hanna-Barberar" a "motion con-trol" amusement park ride throughanimated worlds. The $I5-millionattraction puts ooriders" in a roommade to resemble a vehicle, wherethe seats realistically pitch and rockas if you're flying through the car-toon scenes you see out the oowind-
shield." Part of the new UniversalStudios theme park in Orlando, Flor-ida, it goes head to head with thesimilar "Star Tours" ride in nearbyDisney World.
hen this summer, UniversalPictures releases the long-awaited Jetsons animated
feature, which inaugurates a seriousHanna-Barbera merchandising blitz.A new sister company, BedrockProductions, is producing live-action films for theaters and TV; al-ready in progress are an MGM/UAsuspense drama, Canundrurn, star-ring Sally Field, and The Endan-gered,, an animated feature Hanna-Barbera is doing for 20th CenturyFox. In development, too, is an inno-vative live-action/animated seriescalled Wakn, Rattle & Roll, plus a
host of new cartoons.Though some of these projects
were under way when Kirschner ar-rived, the young mogul has broughtalong his own ideas-new charac-ters for licensing, new distributionchannels, new marketing strate-gies-as well as valuable movie-in-dustry coritacts. But most of all, he's
. brought back a sense offun and for-ward motion. "Hanna-Barbera wasnot really organized as it should have
been," observes Hanna. "You hadtoo many factions pulling in toomany directions. It needed onestrong person to pull all those endstogether."
"Mr. Lindner brought me in tomove Hanna-Barbera into areas ithasn't been into before," says
Kirschner of his mandate. He refers
Tbe Flintstonesmouie will starJohnGoodman as Fred,andpossibly Tracqt
Ullman, CindyWilliams, and RickMoranis asWilma,Bett!, and Barnqt.
to Carl H. Lindner, whose AmericanFinancial Corp. owns 64 percent ofthe NASDAQ+raded Great Ameri-can Communications Co. (GACC),which bought Taft Entertainment(now Great American Broadcasting)and its wholly owned Hanna-Bar-bera subsidiary for $1.4 billion in1987. Taft had owned Hanna-Bar-bera since 1967, when the cartoonfactory was ten years old.
Today, says Kirschner, with newmanagement in place, Hanna-Bar-bera oois beginning to be taken seri-ously by the movie community. Fox,Universal, and Disney all are court-ing us with projects. People want tomake the Scooby-Doo movie, the Jet-sons movie, the Flintstonss rnsyis-all in live-action!" In fact, the latter,which will star John Goodman as
L
Fred and possibly Tracey Ullman,Cindy Williams, and Rick Moranisas Wilma, Betty, and Barney, is un-dergoing script revisions at a formi-dable home: Steven Spielberg's pro-duction company, A mblin.
Kirschner and Spielberg go back a
few years. It was Amblin that pro-duced An American Tail, and. thecompany is now working withHanna-Barbera on a TV-series ver-sion of that movie. But Kirschner hadmade his mark even before the twomen met.
Like Spielberg, Kirschner hadgrown up making elaborate Super-Bhome movies. "I'd put together a
model of the Cutty Sarfr, sculpt my
sandbox to look like a lagoon, andthen set the ship on fire," he recalls."My friend would push me around on
a makeshift camera dolly while Ifilmed with my dad's camera."
This was in suburban Van Nuys,California, where Kirschner and hissister were raised. Their father was
in middle management with a pho-tography company, and Kirschnerenjoyed what he calls ooa NormanRockwell childhood." That endedwhen his father, a severe diabetic,died when Kirschner was 13.
The tragedy gave life to a chil-dren's book years later, after Kirsch-ner had dropped out of USC's filmschool and gotten a job illustratingMuppet characters for the paper-goods company Stuart Hall. Atnights and on weekends, the 23-year-old created Rose Petal Pla.ce,
about a little girl whose tather haddied. She magically shrinks to thesize of a flower and inhabits a worldexplored in 14 books, two TV spe-cials, and more than 1,000 licensedHallmark products.
'olt wasn't Cabbage Patcho"
EFoRP
CONTINENTAL PROF'ILES MAY 1990
ELFoRP
Kirschner reflects, 'obut at a prettyyoung age it did real well for me.
Hallmark had basically said to me,
'Here's your l0 percent, go have agreat life,o and I said, 'I want 50 per-cent plus the copyright.' And theypretty much told me to forget it.Then they came back and said, 'Ifyou'll pay for half the TV specialsand the promos, we'll do it.' "
Rather than walk away as ex-
pected, Kirschner "remortgaged my
home, cashed in my bar mitzvahbonds, and borrowed from every rel-ative I ever heard of to play this game
with them." After raising about aquarter-million dollars, he says, he
wenl back to Hallmark and securedthe deal he wanted.
Kirschner next conceived of a
project about the turn-of-the-cen-tury Jewish immigrant experience,as seen through the eyes of what he
hoped would be a marketable littlemouse. Hallmark, he says, didn'tthink anyone would be interested ina Jewish rodent, no matter how cute.He broirght his Fievel Mousekewitzto Disney, which also passed, and toTV producer Norman Lear and filmstudio Warner Bros., both of whomshowed interest.
arners asked me, oHas
Steven Spielberg metyou?'I said no. 'Can we
introduce you?' I said yes." On July4, 1984-he remembers the exact
day-Kirschner and his wife, Liz,met the vaunted producer-director at
his Malibu home. "And there'sSteven Spielberg with a baseball hat
on, wearing a pair of shorts, sittingon a big round Looney Tunes rug, allthese [animation] cels all around
this room-I felt like I was at home!"To help sell the project, Kirsch-
ner brought out a steamer trunk with"Ship to America" stenciled on itsside. He opened it up, an Americanflag popped out ("I'm very theatri-cal," he says sheepishly), and insidewere various mice figures Kirschnerhad sculpted. Spielberg loved it. 'iAsI explained the whole thing to him,"Kirschner still marvels, oohe said,'What excites me more than what I
ELFoRP
see before me is what you still haveup there [in your head], and how itwill come out as you mature in thisbusiness.' Well, I thought I'd diedand gone to heaven. And then Stevensaid, olet's make a movie.' "
Spielberg had been hunting for a
project to do with animator DonBluth, who led a team of disgruntledex-Disney people. He brought Bluthin as director of what came to becalled An American Tail, and themovie (which Spielberg releasedthrough Universal, to Warner Bros.'dismay) netted domestic rentals ofover $50 million-more than S5million ahead of the next highestnon-Disney animated feature.
Kirschner next turned 180 de-
grees-or 160, anyway-to producethe R-rated horror fllm Child's Plg.y.The "star" was an animatronic (ro-bot-puppet) killer-doll namedChucky, which Kirschner dreamedup and an animatronics expert de-signed and built. A caustic satire ofthe merchandising biz, the $11-mil-lion film grossed more than $65 mil-lion worldwide from theatrical andvideo distribution.
ll this success broughtKirschner to the attention ofKorn/Ferry, the Los Angeles
head-hunting firm Great AmericanBroadcasting had hired to find a newHanna-Barbera chief. Joe Barberasays the search took a year. At one
point, he recalls, former ABC-TVchildren's programming head SquireRushnell was being considered. Buteventually, GAB chairman and CEOCharles Mechem Jr. and presidentand COO Ceorge Castrucci choseKirschner.
What they have in the intense butexceedingly good-natured Kirsch-ner is a frantically creative mindwho has the rare ability to realize hisdream projects and see themthrough to completion. And he com-bines that with an almost too-keenknowledge of what the public willb,ry.
ooWhat's fascinating about ourgeneration," he muses, ttis what Icall the Barbie ethic, which is that
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ELFoRP
Barbie dolls sell so well today be-
cause, aside from being a good toyline, Mom grew up with Barbie.Same with Mickey Mouse, same withthe Flintstones or Snagglepuss or
Huckleberry Hound. These are
characters who make you feel as ifyou're living your childhood again."
And again: "By the time we're 65years old, we will have spawned an-
other two generations that, if I'vedone my job," he says smiling, "willhave grown up on Hanna-Barberacharacters being exploited throughthe most powerful medium this worldhas ever known: television."
irschner and his wife have
two young daughters: Jes-sie, B, and Alexis, 9. Is he
worried about a different exploita-tion-that of children taught to be
voracious consumers of licensed-character merchandise, no matterhow bad it may be for them?
"It's a good question," he allows.
"As long as licensing is handled
well, I don't have a problem with it.It's an extension of a child's world.It's what built Disney. But I won't do
projects that are toy-driven," he in-sists. o'Three toy companies have
come to me since I've been here and
said, 'This is our toy, would you do
cartoons for us?' And that doesn't
interest me at all."To mer" Kirschner stresses, "it
all starts with the story. If there's a
great story and if the entertainmentis working, I have no problem with atoy. But I don't start with a toy. I'm astoryteller," he asserts. ooGuys from
Madison Avenue are not." n
FrankLance is a nationally syndi-
cated, enJertainment writer and is
co-author o/ Hailing Taxi.
CONTINEN'IAL PROFILES MAT 1990