Review of Behind the Tunes: Tish Tash - The Animated World of Frank Tashlin

. . . Frank Tashlin apparently died before Warner Bros.' legions of Looney Tunes associate Videographers could record hours of what has now become "archival footage" interviews to round out all their "Portraits of the Artists as Old Men." Though Warner had many other animated shorts directors beyond these five giants, this quintet spearheaded the creation of the best cartoons ever. (Tragically, Avery defected to Disney's Rat Cellar after a few years on Cartoon Olympus, and Tashlin himself dropped out to make live action features with Bob Hope, Jayne Mansfield, and Jerry Lewis.) TISH TASH does call upon 14 "Talking Heads" to testify during this 17-minute biographical short, including Frank's son Chris (which, of course, rhymes with an early Tashlin pseudonym, "Tish"). While much of TISH TASH can be seen as "Inside Baseball"-style Looney Tunes minutiae perhaps of little interest to the general public, not every artist is blessed with a serial killer sibling or a suicide-by-shotgun parent. (And even if Tashlin had been so endowed, that would be the sort of forest-scale item that appears oblivious to so many talkers obsessed with cartoon trees.)