JIMPRESSIONS ENDS SUCCESSFUL 2011 RUN!

Last weekend, November 4 & 5, was the last of my scheduled shows at The Acting Center, and it was really terrific; great audiences, great response and a lot of laughs!

I began the run of this show in March of this year, and performed about one weekend a month; we knew December was going to be crazy with other demands, so we decided not to have shows after the November dates.

JIMPRESSIONS was an experiment.  When I wrote it and put it on its feet with director Tait Ruppert, we really weren’t sure if audiences would find it worth their while.  It’s a work in progress, and one which we will continue to develop, but so far the results are more positive than we ever expected.

There were ancillary wins, too.  On a whim, I decided to post a video of me doing my Shakespeare Impressions, and it went viral, thanks to the Tweets of Craig Ferguson, Stephen Fry, the Facebook sharings of many of my friends and mysterious others; the tally now is over 700,000 views and a lot of very nice comments.

My other follow up videos have been warmly received too.

As a result, I’ve been in high demand, which is really gratifying, and which I am hustling to honor every day.

My intention was to create a funny, inspiring, very entertaining family-friendly show, based around celebrity impressions and storytelling.  Here’s what a few of you had to say:

“I was able to see your show Saturday, you are amazing! Besides being captivated by your craft, I can’t remember when I laughed so much and so freely. I had a delightful and truly heartfelt experience, thank you for a terrific evening. I can’t wait until next year!”  –Susan Kohler

“I was AMAZED!  The way he artfully wove comedy and a heartfelt, personal story around each of his characters was not only hilarious, but also nothing short of masterful!  I never expected to be so moved by a comedy show, but I really was, and I thank Jim for these gifts he gave us!”  – Jierra Clark

“Jim captures the essence of the celebrities he impersonates — from the tightening of the face for former President Bush, to Garrison Keillor’s odd octave changes and looong inhales, to Woody Allen’s patented phrasing and asides — and he slides from one to the other maddeningly effortlessly.  –John Rabe, KPCC

“Not only did I feel like I was in the hands of a major pro, but my face hurt from all the laughing and smiling! The world needs to see this! It is clever and touching and inspirational and just downright GENIUS!” – Keli Landry

“Jim Meskimen is a giant among impressionists. But beyond that he is an amazing actor. These two skills come together in a truly wonderful performance. I’d recommend seeing it now before he only does sold out amphitheaters.”  – Eric Matheny

So, what’s next for JIMPRESSIONS?

Well, a trip to Australia to perform at a business conference, an appearance on the Australian TODAY SHOW, and a few live shows in Sydney and Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef.

That’s the immediate future.  Next year?  I look forward to returning to The Acting Center, which treated me so well and is such a great home for this show.  And I hope YOU will be in the audience sometime in 2012!

And you can keep your eye out for more YouTube videos, too.  (In fact, I hope you will subscribe!  It’s free.  Like this Blog.)

And when the Letterman show schedules their “Impressionist’s Week”, I hope to be there.

Big thanks and kisses to everybody who came and saw the show and shared the dream with me, my director Tait Ruppert, producer (and incredible soul-mate) Tamra Meskimen this year, and I promise to keep improving the show so that it is even more entertaining for you.

“Thunder, Thunder, THUNDER…”

If you happen to know the next couple of utterances that follow that repetitive call, then you may not know it, but I had a big effect on your childhood.

It’s generally not well known that in the 1980’s, when I lived in New York, I had a job at Rankin/Bass productions. (Yes, the same Rankin/Bass of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” fame; his cute little articulated figure was in a special case at the office.)

I was the chief character designer of their hit animated show, Thundercats.

I was not only the chief character designer, I was the ONLY illustrator on the premises.

The main heroes, Lion-O, Snarf, Tygra, Cheetara, Panthro and the main antagonists, the “Mutants”, and the villainous Mumm Ra were all designed by another artist before I got my job. My job became designing all the new characters that populated “Third Earth”, and a lot of weapons, devices, vehicles, and strange plants and animals.

Originally, I had been hired to do storyboards, based on my experience, much inflated by me, of working at Hanna Barbera studios in Hollywood, which I did in 1978. I was totally undeserving of the job of storyboard artist, as I was entirely untrained, really had mostly just darkened with #2 pencils the blue-pencilled storyboards of my senior, Don Rico.

I knew about as much about telling a story visually with a storyboard as I did about whaling.

Perhaps that became apparent in my first weeks at Rankin/Bass. In any case, for some reason that was intensely satisfying to me, I was taken off storyboards, and told to design CHARACTERS, starting with a character named “Pumm Ra”, a half man, half puma.

Now THIS I could do.

Every Thundercats script contained new “guest characters.” I got to envision them, and once approved, they were sent along the assembly line. The schedule for some reason was not very intense, or if it was, I didn’t notice it, because most of the characters were approved very quickly with minimal changes if at all.

I would draw them, sitting at my lone artist’s desk next to the accountant and the head writer, and then use a new piece of technology called a “Fax machine” to transmit the designs to the animators and artist in the Pacific Rim studios that were producing the finished animation.

In New York (at 53rd and Fifth Avenue, above the old Museum of Broadcasting) the scripts were written, the recordings were organized, and the character designs were done. Overseas, the actual animation was done, the in-betweens, the layout, the camerawork… and all long before digital anything.

I worked with a pencil on paper, and some watercolor pens. Oh, and white-out.

My mother had given me a little stone “Chop” with my name in Chinese, so I would put that stamp on my drawings before faxing them. That the recipients were not Chinese didn’t ever occur to me.

The Thundercats recording sessions were where the fun happened.

The voices of the actors playing the principal characters were recorded down near Grand Central Station in the Graybar building, at Howard Schwartz recording.

I visited a Thundercats session one day and watched the series regulars Larry Kenney, Bob McFadden, Earl Hyman, Earl Hammond, Peter Newman and Lynn Lipton run thru the script and goof around on mic.

“THIS is the job!” I epiphanized.

I worked at Rankin/Bass about a year, then continued to work for them as a freelancer, on a new series they followed up with called “Silverhawks” . I think my greatest contribution as chief character designer was to bring on as my successor the great cartoonist Bob Camp, who cut his animation teeth on Silverhawks before going on to put his indelible mark on shows like the hilariously subversive “Ren & Stimpy”.

In about 1985, I moved on from my life as a professional illustrator/cartoonist/designer to enter the world of acting fulltime. One of my first big jobs was doing voices for a Rankin/Bass cartoon series called “The Comic Strip”.

I never pursued character design ever again, and Thundercats left my mind utterly.

But, just a few short weeks ago I received a call from my voiceover agent. The excellent animation director Andrea Romano requested that I provide some character voices for the latest version of the Thundercats series, now being produced at Warner Brothers by a young artist and producer named Dan Norton, who was a big, BIG fan of the show.

I don’t know if Andrea knew of my early relationship to the show when she hired me, but I know she sure does now! I’m telling EVERYBODY.

So now at this point I have worked twice as a voice actor on the brand new Thundercats, some 25 plus years since I started working for Rankin/Bass on the original Thundercats…

Pretty cool.

And the funny part?

I’m actually allergic to cats.

Here are some of the designs I did for the show:

 

Goodbye to Area 51

Today marks my 51st birthday, or the end of my yearlong excursion into “Area 51”.

I find I have a lot to admire and be thankful for. First of all, being alive and still a part of this incredible experience called living. I enjoy life very much, even when it is more or less insufferable. How is that even possible? Only in a world like this, where irony seems to be the underlying glue holding everything together.

I have a magnificent family. My wife Tamra is simply a goddess. My daughter Taylor brings me so much joy, and I have been thrilled to watch her truly come into her own this last year, as she left the house and began her career, with all the enthusiasm and earnestness that such great beginnings require.

My incredible mother, now 82 (!), is just now wrapping up a record-breaking five week run of a play with her husband, the magnificent actor Paul Michael, down in San Diego at the Old Globe Theater. We’ve gone to see it twice. (Knestor Jackdaws did, too.) Starring in a wonderfully funny two act play written expressly for her and her mate by Tony-winning playwright Joe DiPietro, Marion continues to pull off the impossible, setting a marvelous example for performers everywhere.

I even have a brand new niece, my brilliant sister and brother in law’s daughter Roxanne, just a few weeks old today.

I have so many friends who delight and inspire me, they are far too many to list.

I have all my teeth, even the wisdom ones that I was supposed to have gotten rid of decades ago.  (And I even have Knestor’s teeth!  Two sets!)

I enjoy my many creative outlets and have many plans for future shows, paintings, films and on and on.

Life is a tremendous challenge and I strive to play the game better and better. That is going to be the theme of my 52nd year.

Right now I’m just very cognizant of the fact that life is easy to take for granted, that the thin gloss on existence that makes it all seem orderly and assured can wear away in a breath, and that people and their endless abilities to share and enjoy one another’s company is the single redeeming thing in a cold universe.

Yikes!

As Professor Knestor Jackdaws once said (five minutes ago), “The more I look at art, the more I recognize that the boundary between all life and what we commonly view as works of art, is practically nonexistent. When one leaves the gallery or the museum, one simply enters the larger gallery of Life itself, with it’s rotating collections, its special exhibitions, and its permanent installations.”

I am very happy to share my time in this splendid gallery with you.

FROST/NIXON

Notes after the L.A. Premiere

My wife, Tamra and daughter Taylor and I went to the Los Angeles premiere of Ron Howard’s new film, Frost/Nixon tonight, and it is very compelling and well made, and a story well worth telling in today’s world.

I play a small role of one of Nixon’s speech writers and memoir researchers, and I worked for about a month last year on the film. I recall thinking at the time that the script was a good one, based on a very solid play and dramatically interesting. But my overall impression was that it was an intimate sort of story, one that didn’t have tremendously broad relevance or universality, entertaining, but a bit anecdotal.

Did that opinion change tonight!

In light of current events and the world scene, Frost/Nixon is compelling and cogent, and has everything to do with the large canvas of American politics and the immense global dilemmas that burn so hotly today.

Ethics, the struggle for survival, courage and truth… these are the themes that ring throughout this film, and why I believe it will have resonance for the larger public that still remember the voice, reputation and tragedy of Dick Nixon, and for whom the word “Watergate” has indelible significance.

As well, the smaller struggle of two men to reclaim past glory at each other’s expense, distilled down to each character’s struggle to survive and surmount past failures is quite universal and deeply moving. As an audience member, this hit me hard, in the way good drama always does- showing one’s own life through the filter of another’s different but completely congruous experience. This sort of story has special value as the challenges of this modern world press down on ordinary people striving to rise above overwhelming forces.

The performances by the two leads, Frank Langella (who won the Tony award last year for his portrayal) and Michael Sheen are simply masterful. All the supporting cast does splendidly too. All the film’s departments, camera, makeup (Langella’s nose and hairpiece are practically co-stars, yet never steal scenes), wardrobe, music, production design, sound, all support the story elegantly. But once again it falls on Ron Howard to bring it all together and make entertaining a story everybody already knows the ending to; as in his earlier Apollo 13, he accomplishes this with confidence and with a minimum of bells and whistles, doing justice to the tale and the historical circumstances.

This is not a film for everybody. I’m sure the under forty crowd will find it a bit fidget inspiring, and the narrative assumes that most of early seventies American history need only be briskly glossed over, but for those of us who remember the names and the events (even if only by virtue of having a television on at breakfast before going to school) will find a warm familiarity with Frost/Nixon, for the “good old days” of that period, and the questions raised about integrity, responsibility, and that ghost that still haunts our country, “National security”.

And of course in this version of seventies politics, “expletives” are never “deleted”.

And I’m also pleased to report, you will actually see me in the film from time to time, along with several other of my fellow Apollo 13 castmates who are peppered throughout the movie in supporting roles. Nice (very!) to work for a director who counts “loyalty” amongst his many virtues.

Enjoy the movie!

Best,

Jim