An amusing behind-the-scenes, studio-tour parody, "You Ought to Be in Pictures" is especially comical as a gag on what was happening to Porky Pig's character in the Looney Tunes cartoons. In the black-and-white beginning, he was Leon Schlessinger and company's top toon, starring as a stuttering everyman-type anthropomorphic hog in such innovative animated shorts as "Porky in Wackyland" (1937). But, he soon began to be overshadowed by one of the characters the cartoonists tried to make his side-kick, Daffy Duck, who in this film tries to trick Porky into getting out of his contract so as to break into live-action features--and not coincidently put Daffy in line for a promotion. Little did they know, however, and unaddressed in this film, is that another star was just getting started at Looney Tunes the same year, Bugs Bunny. In the tradition of tragic irony, the Pig has been a secondary character ever since as if serving out Schlessinger's punishment for him trying to once be released from his contract. Echoes there of John Gilbert's career sabotaged by Louis B. Mayer holding a grudge. Or William Haines run out by Mayer. Or Judy Garland mistreated by Mayer.... Well, Mayer just wasn't a good guy.
Anyways, it seems as though just about every animation department made this type of cartoon-interacting-with-animators film at some point, and it's one of my favorite types of cartoons, for the reflexivity and technical craft of mixing animation and live action. Winsor McCay adding a framing narrative to explain how he made his cartoons and also becoming one himself in "Gertie the Dinosaur" (1914), Willis O'Brien's work with stop-motion animation culminating with matte shots in "King Kong" (1933), "Cartoon Factory" (1924) taking advantage of rotoscoping in Fleischer's Koko the Clown - Out of the Inkwell series, selective double-exposures and editing trickery in Disney's "Alice's Wonderland" (1923) and the rest of the Alice comedies, and this. It's not "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988) , but it's still clever and well done. The bit where Porky pretends to be Oliver Hardy to sneak onto the studio lot is pretty good, and the drawing live-action actors' hands for their interaction with the Pig is an innovation that I'm not sure I've seen done prior, or at least not quite as thoroughly. Another one of the "50 Greatest Cartoons" according to Jerry Beck's Looney-Tunes-heavy book, which although I might not go that far, there are certainly worse ways to spend nine minutes.
Anyways, it seems as though just about every animation department made this type of cartoon-interacting-with-animators film at some point, and it's one of my favorite types of cartoons, for the reflexivity and technical craft of mixing animation and live action. Winsor McCay adding a framing narrative to explain how he made his cartoons and also becoming one himself in "Gertie the Dinosaur" (1914), Willis O'Brien's work with stop-motion animation culminating with matte shots in "King Kong" (1933), "Cartoon Factory" (1924) taking advantage of rotoscoping in Fleischer's Koko the Clown - Out of the Inkwell series, selective double-exposures and editing trickery in Disney's "Alice's Wonderland" (1923) and the rest of the Alice comedies, and this. It's not "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988) , but it's still clever and well done. The bit where Porky pretends to be Oliver Hardy to sneak onto the studio lot is pretty good, and the drawing live-action actors' hands for their interaction with the Pig is an innovation that I'm not sure I've seen done prior, or at least not quite as thoroughly. Another one of the "50 Greatest Cartoons" according to Jerry Beck's Looney-Tunes-heavy book, which although I might not go that far, there are certainly worse ways to spend nine minutes.