Much like Larson's strip, there's no single cohesive story, or even recurring characters; it's just a string of largely unrelated gags mostly only with tenuous connections to one another. Which strikes me as a difficult premise to sell for television. Even sketch comedy shows have recurring actors and characters. But even more strangely for a network special, there's almost no dialogue throughout the entire half-hour. I have no idea how that snuck past network executives.
And yet, it somehow was greenlit for a sequel! But not until 1997, nearly three years after Larson's last new Far Side comic ran in papers. However, that sequel was only broadcast in the UK. Both eventually made it to DVD in 2007, but they have long since sold out.
Continuing with the strangeness of all this, after the first special aired, Larson made any number of changes to the piece. Not just a bit of re-editting or changing the order of the gags, but he added several entirely new sequences as well as changed the animations on some of the existing material. I've only seen the home video version but based on the descriptions of the original, it seems to me that all the changes were done for the sake of improving the humor.
Ultimately, the whole endeavor of producing an animated version of Larson's singularly absurd comic is almost a tale as equally absurd itself. Although I'm grateful for it, I really don't understand how any of it actually happened.
Neither of the two specials, either in their original or editted forms, are online. You can find a smattering of short clips but the most extensive look at them that I've found is from animator Paul Johnson's Adventures in Inbetweening series in which he discusses some of the details of the animation process -- not surprisingly, mostly focused on the inbetweening frames that he specifically worked on -- from the second special.
3 comments:
Brilliant! Thanks, Sebastian!
The first one is on youtube, you didn't look very hard.
Mr. Kleefeld! Thanks so much for the post, I made this video 2 years ago and am grateful for you sharing it, working on this project was a life-long memory for many reasons, not the least of which was meeting Mr. Larson who had come up from Seattle (I think?) to Vancouver, about a 3 hour drive.
I still have my VHS tape of The Far Side 2, which (amazingly) I was sent several years after having worked on the project. Animation is notoriously feast-or-famine, with people often coming to work together temporarily and then not seeing each other again until another company and another time, which makes for a sprawling, disconnected community (though this has been helped by the internet). But back in 1996 when I worked on this, phone numbers were pretty much it. So when I was called (maybe around 2005?) by Michael VanDenBos who had been the producer at Rocketship and told "hey, what's your mailing address, we'll send you a copy!" I was forever surprised and grateful, and indeed, such a thing has not happened since, in my 30 years in the industry.
I hope this show gets a high-quality re-release one day, it's a unique, quirky, wonderful, eclectic collection of ideas done by some of the most creative people I've ever worked with, and I appreciate you shining a light on it.
Warm regards,
Paul
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