The blog of Richard Thompson, caricaturist, creator of "Cul de Sac," and winner of the 2011 Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Today's Cul de Sac, August 17 2010


So it looks like we've got a theme this week: Alice the Media Mouthpiece. Which seems to make sense, as Alice, in her natural state as an attention hound, would gladly exploit Petey's meager adventures if it'd bring her an audience. As in yesterday's strip, the fun in this was mimicking the language of the press secretary. The second panel as originally written had Alice giving out a thicker chunk of boilerplate, something like, "We currently await confirmation blah blah hopeful of a positive response in this matter blah blah something." I forget how it went (I shouldn't be so quick in tossing out roughs) but you get the idea. It was too much and it got expunged.


There's a scene in one of my favorite movies, Gregory's Girl, that I hold dear. The title character, Gregory, is a gangly Scottish teenager who lives in a kinda faceless suburban development, and there's a brief bit where he steps out his front door, I think on the way to school, just before his father accidentally almost runs him over with the car while taking driving lessons. And there's one shot a few seconds long of him standing in his tiny front yard surrounded by small squally children out playing, just a brief tableau of him looking lost and befuddled in the midst of all these feral toddlers. It's a scene that keeps popping into my head when I work on the strip as it seems emblematic of, I don't know, the collision of mutually ignorant worlds or some such thing. I haven't seen the movie in years and may be completely misremembering the whole bit, in which case I've just embarrassed myself and exposed my whole world view as built on a poorly recollected shot in an obscure movie.

8 comments:

Doug said...

I'm lovin' these commentaries!

Andrew said...

Indeed - what Doug said. I probably won't comment too often, but I'm thoroughly enjoying the inside look that you're providing each day, Richard. Thanks much.

Andy said...

Woah. What th'heck's going on with the alignment?

richardcthompson said...

Was it wonky before? It looked odd on the edit page but seemed to post ok. Whichever, I reconfigured it some.

exeyevee said...

Just looked up "Gregory's Girl." It's not on DVD. Now that's obscure.

richardcthompson said...

Exeyevee= Amazon lists it on DVD here-

http://www.amazon.com/Gregorys-Girl-John-Gordon-Sinclair/dp/B00005O06T/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1282079824&sr=1-1

Well that's an ungainly link. The same director, Bill Forsythe, did Local Hero, the best movie ever. And several others, including one called Comfort and Joy that's not on DVD, but should be.

Guy said...

Today's strip has a similar vibe to today's Heart Of The City (www.gocomics.com/heartofthecity/). I like it when two unconnected comic strips randomly hit the same theme on the same day!

Dan H said...

We have Gregory's Girl on DVD, and I just watched the scene. You have it right, Richard. Gregory leaves for school (late). As he goes out his front door there's a mass of small children, and he has to step through them as he goes down the walk (and encounters more on small moving vehicles). One is also in a small tree. A short time later he is almost hit by the student driver his father in instructing.