First Movie Disaster: Tom's Reflections

by Fantasyland2015

25 years after the release of their first movie Tom and Jerry: The Movie, Tom looks back on his and Jerry's experiences making the movie, along with the impact it had on their careers, his personal thoughts about it, and their struggles to overcome this particular bad experience.

First Movie Disaster: Tom's Reflections

A Tom and Jerry Fanfic

Author's Notes: In celebration of Tom and Jerry's 80th Anniversary, here is my first fanfic and my first Tom and Jerry fanfic. Since Tom and Jerry are two of my favorite cartoon characters and since I've known for years that their first movie, Tom and Jerry: The Movie is hated by a majority of people, I came up with the idea what Tom Cat himself would think about the movie, his experiences making it, and what he would think of it today. I have also included some of their history before the movie was made to build up the events of the main story and also some of the movie's production notes by using the US Press Kit for the movie that I bought off of eBay in November of last year as reference. I started writing the story in July 2018, the 25th Anniversary of Tom and Jerry: The Movie's US release in theaters, and finished it last summer after months of writer's block and brainstorming ideas. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and let me know what you think!

Another Note: I do not own Tom and Jerry. All copyrights and trademarks belong to Warner Bros. and any other respective owners.

From the desk of Tom Cat:

My name is Tom Cat. Millions of you probably know me and my partner Jerry Mouse as the stars of Tom and Jerry, the much loved series of theatrical cartoon short films that have delighted and constantly made people laugh for generations. In addition to shorts, we have expanded to starring in a number of TV shows, cameo appearances in two movies during our days at MGM (short for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer): "Anchors Away" and "Dangerous When Wet", and even feature-length movies of our own. Jerry and I are proud to be part of not only MGM and Warner Bros., our current home, but also a part of Toontown, the home of all animated characters both past and present, and where we all are blessed with the gift of never-aging immortality. Of all the on-screen projects Jerry and I have made together, there were some that were an absolute torture to work on, but none more so than our very first feature film, the infamous theatrical animated film known as "Tom and Jerry: The Movie".

To be very honest with you… I HATED MAKING THE WHOLE THING RIGHT FROM THE START.

It was already bad enough that Jerry and I made a Saturday morning TV show with our creators, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera in the mid-1970s, where we were forced do away with the comedic slapstick violence we have always been known for and become friends due to the super-strict rules for Children's television at the time, but to star in a theatrical all-animated feature film that not only practically copies Disney's The Rescuers, but also reduces us to side characters and hardly even focuses on us was an absolute disgrace, not to mention that it nearly ruined both our lives. This was especially a problem because it was the first time in 25 years that we worked on a project made specifically for the big screen, let alone a theatrical feature film. In fact, I remember perfectly well the whole experience making this wretched trainwreck of a movie.

Up until we started making this movie, Jerry and I had already been established as legendary screen icons. In our 27 years of making theatrical cartoon shorts for MGM (starting with the very first one that we made, 1940's Puss Gets The Boot, which also marked our debut), we worked with 4 different directors, the first 2 being of course, our creators, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Hanna and Barbera made a total of 114 shorts starring us for MGM until rising costs coupled with competition with television, then a new and growing industry at the time, led to MGM's decision to close down their cartoon studio in 1957. The last 5 shorts that we made with them were already completed by then, but their release to theaters was held up until the following year. After Hanna and Barbera left MGM to form their own studio, Hanna-Barbera Productions, which went on to produce hundreds of successful animated cartoon series for television, Jerry and me continued to make theatrical shorts together in the 1960s with two different directors, Gene Deitch from 1960 to 1962 for a series of 13 lackluster shorts produced overseas by the European studio Rembrandt Films, and legendary Warner Bros. animator Chuck Jones, who after being fired by Warner Bros. in 1963, had been hired by MGM to make a new series of theatrical cartoon shorts starring us through his own studio Sib Tower 12 Productions (which was eventually bought by MGM in 1964 and renamed MGM Animation/Visual Arts) from 1963 to 1967, all with his distinct animation style.

Even though Chuck Jones's shorts are either loved or hated by people these days, Jerry and I personally had a lot more fun working with Chuck Jones in the 1960s than we had with Gene Deitch, especially considering the fact that Jones was already familiar with the chase, thanks to the likes of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, his own creations at Warner Bros. During that time, the Tom and Jerry shorts that we made with Hanna-Barbera began broadcasting on television in heavily-edited versions that aired on CBS from 1965 until 1972. But it was pretty clear that the entertainment landscape was changing drastically and animation's first golden age was dying out, not to mention that MGM was gradually starting to find itself in difficult and financial troubles. Sure enough, after we finished making our final short with Chuck Jones, which ultimately also became the very last short we made at MGM, Jerry and I were sent into retirement, and three years later in 1970, MGM closed down their second animation studio, this time for good.

Aside from the 1970s Hanna-Barbera TV show and another one produced in the early 1980s by the animation studio Filmation, we spent most of the next 18 years in retirement, but it wasn't until the late 1980s, when media mogul Ted Turner purchased MGM's pre-May 1986 library and formed Turner Entertainment Co., that Jerry and I started to become popular again, thanks to Turner broadcasting our classic MGM shorts on TBS and later TNT (short for Turner Network Television), launched 2 years later as an outlet for Turner's newly-inherited library. But Turner had even bigger plans for Jerry and me, because Roger Mayer, who used to work for MGM and was now president of Turner Entertainment, and after being inspired by the success of An American Tail, The Land Before Time, The Little Mermaid and other very successful animated films made in the late 1980s, started making plans for a full-length theatrical animated feature starring us. And sure enough, around 1989, just as we were preparing to celebrate our 50th birthday, Turner told us that we were going to star in our first-ever theatrical feature film to a thrilling, literally jaw-dropping response from both of us. The best part? Joseph Barbera, our co-creator had been approached by Turner about the idea and was now on board with Hanna-Barbera Productions to make it with Turner.

With Turner announcing plans for our first-ever motion picture, coupled with our continued resurgence in popularity, both Jerry and I were convinced that it would be the crowning achievement in our career and that Turner would know find the right way to bring our talents in slapstick comedy and humor to the style of a feature film. Boy, were we wrong.

For starters, development of the film actually started at Hanna-Barbera before they started going through financial troubles as early as 1990, which resulted in the film's production being moved to Film Roman, the well-known animation studio founded by Phil Roman, the veteran animator who had worked on several of our shorts during Chuck Jones's time at MGM as well as several Peanuts animated specials produced by Lee Mendelson and Bill Melendez. Roman was subsequently hired to produce and direct the film shortly after that and even created a feature production unit specifically for the movie. Then, Film Roman hired Michael Peraza, Jr., fresh off of working on Disney's The Little Mermaid along with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as art director. For our film, Peraza aimed to capture the essence of our early theatrical cartoon shorts while at the same time take us in a new direction and bring the feel of those shorts to the elements required to make a feature film, a difficult challenge given the fact that because of our theatrical shorts' strong reliance on slapstick comedy, even if it was violent most of the time, we wore mostly silent characters on-screen for a majority of the shorts, except for a few instances where we actually did speak, even if it was only for comedic purposes.

Unfortunately from that point onward, that's where the problem really started. When Jerry and I finally got our scripts around March of 1991, we also found out what our movie's plot was going to be about, and believe me, our reactions were not a pretty picture. In fact, our reactions, particularly my own, was a swirling mix of initial hope and pride, followed by confusion, and then shock, anger, sinking sadness, and above all, betrayal. As I mentioned before, I hated making the movie right from the start, because upon my initial reading of the script, I remember thinking, "This is our first motion picture? 'Tom and Jerry, after ending up homeless after their house is torn down, team up to help a young girl named Robyn find her missing father and escape the clutches of her evil guardian, who only wants her for her inheritance, and at the same time they become friends and discover something worth fighting for: each other'?! What they hell are they thinking?! This is just a cheap, cash-grabbing carbon copy of Disney's The Rescuers!"

There was no denying that my thoughts that day obviously summed up the truth, especially after finding out the fact that in our movie, both Jerry and I were going to be speaking regularly on screen for the first time. But the thing that was more shocking and at the same time surprising, was the fact that legendary composer Henry Mancini was chosen to score the film and he invited lyricist and regular collaborator Leslie Bricusse to compose six original songs for the film, but even that still wasn't enough to even make the rest of the movie any good at all. And even worse, Joseph Barbera, our own co-creator responsible for the many wonderful slapstick comedy antics in the 1940s and 1950s, was serving as creative consultant for the whole thing and 100% approved it. I can understand that the slapstick comedy antics that we're always known for can last an entire 7 to 8 minute short film, but not enough for an entire feature film as even that would wear off after a while, but me and Jerry could tell that things weren't looking good, to the point where both of us thought that our future, OUR WHOLE ENTIRE FUTURE, was potentially looking bleak.

Filming officially started in May 1991 and lasted for about 5 months, concluding in October of that same year. The whole filming experience was a nightmare for both of us, especially when we had to film our scenes with the characters of Puggsy and Frankie Da Flea, and that included singing that HORRENDOUS atrocity of a song that was "Friend To The End" (and I thought Henry Mancini and Leslie Bricusse were good at writing songs, given their work on the likes of The Pink Panther, Doctor Dolittle, Victor Victoria, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and scores of other projects). The only scenes in the entire movie that we actually enjoyed doing were the scenes at the very beginning where we get into a chase and in the process get left behind by our owners, who are moving, and the very end of the film, where we resume our usual antics after moving into the Starling mansion, which just goes to show that we still our enjoy our never-ending game of "cat-and-mouse" to this day. Through it all, Jerry and I couldn't help but feel that our movie was more like a Disney movie than that of a classic Tom and Jerry cartoon short.

Once production on Tom and Jerry: The Movie officially wrapped in early 1992, Jerry and I were in a nervous wreck, wondering how in the world audiences all over the world that had fallen in love with us for over 50 years would react to our movie and whether or not they would accept us constantly speaking outside of screams and yelps. Carolco Pictures, who had planned to release the movie in the US through Seven Arts Pictures, its joint venture with New Line Cinema dropped out after said joint venture folded and Turner released the film in Germany on October 1st, 1992, where it apparently got an outstanding response there. Miramax Films eventually picked up the film and finally released it in North America in the summer of 1993, but the response in the US was a different story.

Honestly, I wasn't surprised that Tom and Jerry: The Movie would get so many bad reviews upon release in North America. Having been aware of critics and film reviews for years, I knew all along that it would happen. But the thing that got the most backlash and criticism was the fact that the movie allowed us to speak fluently on-screen as well as sing. In addition to bad reviews, the movie also lost money at the US box office, too, given that it opened on the same day as films like Rising Sun and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. It also didn't help that it opened 4 weeks after Disney's last theatrical re-issue of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But worst of all, both Jerry and I felt that we had been betrayed by both the executives at Turner, because they had come up with the idea of us starring in a feature film of our own in the first place, and by Joseph Barbera, because he served as creative consultant for the entire film and unwittingly approved the whole thing to begin with. We also felt completely disgraced, especially me, because I got hit by the movie's negative reception the hardest that I went through a period of depression over the course of the months following its release in the US.

Afterwards, Jerry and I went back into semi-retirement for the rest of the 1990s, but much to our surprise, people young and old were still tuning in to watch our classic MGM shorts on TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network, Turner's all-animation channel which they launched in 1992, where they were airing simultaneously on a regular basis. We thought that our atrocious first movie would ruin our reputation for life, but ultimately we felt better that people were continuing to love us and our classic shorts more than ever. The next biggest change in our lives came when in October 1996, Turner merged with Time Warner, the parent company of Warner Bros., home of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the rest of the Looney Tunes gang and one of MGM's rivals during animation's first golden age. With that, Jerry and I, along with our co-stars in the Tom and Jerry shorts Spike and Tyke, Nibbles (Jerry's nephew) and Butch and his gang and all of the MGM cartoon characters and Hanna-Barbera characters, which Turner had acquired in 1991, became part of the Warner Bros. family and have remained there ever since.

Yet, even with things looking up for the two of us, it still took us some time to forgive some of the crew that we worked with on Tom and Jerry: The Movie after those unfortunate and horrendous experiences. We forgave Phil Roman at a special party for the 30th Anniversary of Chuck Jones's animated TV special based on Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 1996, when at one point we admitted to him that we never really liked working on the movie. Surprisingly, Roman understood how we felt and admitted that even though he was fond of making it, the movie itself was very different from how he originally envisioned when he was first hired as the director. He also told us that we were pretty lucky that we never held a grudge on the entire experience. I'll never forget the advice Phil gave us that day:

"For every good thing that happens throughout your life, there are also some bad things that happen, too, but just remember, always appreciate life's greatest gifts, even with your careers, and most importantly, always stay strong and be true to yourselves, even in the most difficult times."

Me and Jerry were quick to take that advice to our hearts.

As we entered the new millennium, further changes happened in our lives, for in March 2001, William Hanna, our beloved creator, died at the age of 90. And 5 years after that, Joseph Barbera, who continued to work at Warner Bros. Animation after they absorbed the Hanna-Barbera studio following Hanna's death, died in December 2006 at the age of 95. William Hanna's death was a tragedy for both of us, but Joseph Barbera's was even more heartbreaking. In fact, the last time Jerry and I ever saw him was at our 65th Anniversary birthday party in 2005. It was at that party that we finally admitted to Joe that we didn't like working on Tom and Jerry: The Movie and how the whole movie turned out in the end. For one brief moment I thought he would be very sad that both of us would tell him that, but what he said next completely surprised us.

Joe Barbera said that even though he served as creative consultant for the film, he knew deep down that he had made a mistake in having us talk regularly on-screen and going with a plot that not only felt more like a Disney movie than that of a classic 7 to 8 Tom and Jerry cartoon short, but also lacked the iconic slapstick violence and didn't completely focus on us. In other words, he admitted that he personally blamed the Turner executives at the time for what happened and thus didn't like how the movie turned out either. However, at the same time he was proud of us for having the courage to admit that to him and was amazed that we were still beloved and iconic today, especially at how we survived past an experience like that. "I love both you and Jerry very much, Tom. You were Bill and I's first creations at it was thanks to you two that we both had a very successful creative partnership together." Joe said. "And, Tom and Jerry, promise me you'll always remember me and Bill, as long as you both live?" Jerry and I emotionally agreed to keep that promise. At long last, we had finally forgiven Joe for our unfortunate first movie experience.

All in all, what was supposed to be the biggest crowning achievement in our legendary careers ended up getting turned into an atrocious clone of The Rescuers that forced us to become friends, reduced us to side characters, hardly focused on us and almost destroyed our reputation, but nevertheless, we survived that first movie disaster, which is still one of the lowest points in our career. There are still times when bad things happen in to me and Jerry, both on and off screen, but since then, both of us have remained icons and legends in cartoon history. Our slapstick comedy antics have almost never changed a bit and neither has our typical love/hate relationship. But despite our rivalry, Jerry Mouse, as much as he gets the better of me in our cartoons, has deep down actually been a good friend, that has always been there for me as I am for him, because as much as we can't live with each other, we can't live without each other. And I myself am truly thankful for that.

THE END

And thus, concludes this story!. Let me know what you think, and remember, constructive criticism is also appreciated. Happy 80th Anniversary to Tom and Jerry and I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I had making it!