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More of When I was President

Here is part TWO of my three part account of my years as NCS president. Read part ONE and part THREE of the story. –Daryl Cagle


Jack Davis’ lovely theme art for the NCS 2000 convention shows King Kong on the World Trade Center towers, along with the comics characters waving goodbye as Snoopy flies off with the posthumous lifetime achievement award trophy for Sparky.

This is the story of my first Reuben Awards convention as National Cartoonists Society (NCS) president, in 2000.

We wanted to do a 50th anniversary of Peanuts celebration, but hotel construction put the plans for a Santa Rosa convention on hold. United Media, the syndicate that owned Peanuts, was located in Manhattan, and NCS conventions draw the biggest crowds when they are in New York City, so I decided to do the 2000 convention in New York. My wife, Peg and I flew to New York twice and visited a half dozen prospective hotels. We got competing bids from three hotels and spent a month haggling prices with all three before deciding on the World Trade Center Marriott in lower Manhattan, which gave us a great deal on Memorial Day weekend, when lower Manhattan is traditionally deserted. Before that, the NCS usually had their Reuben Awards on Mothers Day weekend. I got some angry blasts of criticism from old NCSers in New York who thought it was outrageous to have the convention in lower Manhattan because it should have been in Midtown, where it always used to be. “Nobody wants to go downtown!” they told me.

The convention was extra difficult because our previous management company had crashed and burned soon after I became president. I had just hired a new management company, but they didn’t want to run the convention because they hadn’t gotten to know the NCS yet; they wanted to come to their first NCS Reubens event just to observe. My wife Peg ended up doing nearly all of the organizing work that we would usually expect a management company to do: starting with handling registrations and tracking all the payments, making seating charts and dealing with menus, responding to the many special requests, arguing about hotel bills and comps, manning the convention registration desk throughout the weekend, and serving as the bouncer for those who overstayed their welcome in the Presidential Suite. I couldn’t have done it without Peg. (And the new management company folks were good sports; they ended up pitching in on site –more than they first planned.)

The convention would be a celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Peanuts. Charles M. Schulz (“Sparky”) was on board with it; United Media was delighted and generously offered to cover the cost of a big Sunday brunch for everyone at the Windows on the World restaurant at the top of the North Tower. Political cartoonist, Mike Luckovich stepped up and was a tremendous help; he did all the organizational work of getting the newspaper comic strip artists to draw 50th anniversary of Peanuts strips on the same Saturday that our banquet was held, when we planned to give our lifetime achievement award to Sparky.

All seemed to be going well when we received the terribly sad news that Sparky had died in February. With all the Peanuts celebration stuff planned for May, 2000, and with the commitments I had already made in the hotel contract, I thought we might be in trouble. We ended up having the biggest NCS convention ever, kicking off with a grand opening cocktail reception on the 2nd floor promenade of the North Tower lobby.

Mike Luckovich contacted all the newspaper comic strip cartoonists and got them to draw Peanuts “tribute cartoons” for that Saturday, rather than the Peanuts anniversary cartoons we had planned earlier. The tributes in the “funny pages” were great, and I was walking around the convention the whole time, with my cell phone on my ear, giving interviews to journalists who were writing about the big newspaper comics tribute. We gave the lifetime achievement award to Sparky posthumously.

Steve McGarry and Jeff Keane both have previous show business experience and ran the shows for the first time, raising our production quality to levels the NCS hadn’t seen before. Bil Keane, Jeff’s dad who drew The Family Circus comic, was a very funny guy; he had been the emcee of the Reubens for many years, but at his insistence, this was going to be his last year as Reuben emcee. Steve had the idea to do a Bil Keane Roast on the Sunday night, which led to a repeat of the King Features/Mort Walker kerfuffle, this time with King objecting to the Bil Keane Roast –Bil liking the Roast idea, and King adopting a positive tone again, becoming a second big sponsor, and paying for dinner before the Roast. Steve’s Roast of Bil involved lots of cartoonists doing skits and was great fun.

There were other fun things that happened. I’m a big David Levine fan, and he was a speaker, so I got to meet him. We had a panel of features editors from top newspapers across America talking about the comics (that’s something that would never happen today). There was an odd debate in the NCS at that time about seminars at the conventions, which were still a new part of the Reubens weekend; some old-timers thought the conventions should only consist of parties and objected to seminars. I was “pro-seminar” and pushed lots of seminars into the schedule. RJ Matson managed the many seminars and did a great job.

What is most fun about being the NCS president is that the president gets to “commission” the Reuben weekend artwork; I called my first choice, who graciously agreed, which gave me the delightful opportunity to serve as art director to the legendary Jack Davis. I love Jack’s work and I grew up looking forward to his art in each new issue of Mad Magazine; it was great fun to work with him on this. He was such a Southern gentleman. Jack Davis was, and always will be, my cartoonist hero.

My kids, Susie and Michael, were 16 and 10 years old at the time, and starting with the site visit, they had gotten to know the World Trade Center well, hanging around the shopping mall and becoming well acquainted with every nook and cranny of the entire complex. Susie danced with Jack Davis on Reubens night, and both kids went to most of the seminars.

This is how the Marriott World Trade Center Hotel looked for our convention in 2000.

There were also plenty of nervous moments. There were over 630 people at the banquet (a typical Reuben banquet size is half that size). Several local cartoonists waited until the last minute, that Saturday, to decide they wanted to come, and showed up at the hotel to register on site for the dinner. No one was turned away, though it meant continually juggling seating and adding extra chairs to numerous tables. The ballroom was filled beyond capacity and the new management company people got nudged out of the banquet, so more NCSers and guests could have their seats. We were lucky the fire marshal didn’t make a visit.

We always had a live band in those days, so I hired a band that the old-timers liked; one that had played for the NCS years ago when the Reuben Awards dinner was a single night at the Plaza Hotel on Central Park South. The band didn’t show up until the exact minute that the show was set to begin. I learned that if you want the band to be in place before the show starts, you have to pay them more for those few extra minutes.

The Sunday brunch at Windows on the World ran well over budget, with open bars and cartoonists who will drink everything they see. United Media contracted for the brunch directly, so the bill of well over $100,000.00 went directly to United Media (thank goodness). It was a great, boozy brunch, but chilling in retrospect. All of the staff at the Windows on the World restaurant were trapped above where the airliner hit the building on 9/11/2001, and the employees who served us brunch did not survive the attack.

This is how the hotel looked in 2001, after the 9/11 attacks.

When the Twin Towers fell, the entire 22-story Marriott was also destroyed. Most of the hotel staff got out safely, but forty people reportedly died there, primarily firemen who were using the hotel as a staging area. While it was a shock to the entire world to see the towers and hotel fall, the fact that this had recently been home to our convention and a playground for my kids made it feel personal. Marriott chose not to rebuild the hotel and the site is now a part of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

I look back on our convention at the World Trade Center with both warmth and chills.


Read more old stuff about my career as a cartoonist on DarylCagle.com

Still More of When I was President, PART THREE of three

More of When I was President, PART TWO of three

When I was President, PART ONE of three

Was I Sunk by Submarines?

Baptists, Gay Marriage, Hawaii, Mazie Hirono, Bert and Ernie

Genies Turned me into a Political Cartoonist

Muppet Mob Scene

CagleCartoonists in France

Amazing

TRUE Color

TRUE Stupid Stuff 2

TRUE Stupid Stuff

TRUE Sex 3

TRUE Sex 2

TRUE Sex

TRUE Life Stuff

TRUE Crazy Stuff 4

TRUE Crazy Stuff 3

TRUE Crazy Stuff 2

TRUE Crazy Stuff

TRUE Devils, Angels and YUCK

TRUE Kids 3

TRUE Kids 2

TRUE Kids

TRUE Health Statistics 3

TRUE Health Statistics 2

TRUE Health Statistics 1

TRUE Women’s Body Images

TRUE History

TRUE Marriage 2

TRUE Marriage

TRUE Business

Garage 8: MORE!

Garage 7: TV Toons

Garage 6

Garage 5

Daryl’s Garage Encore! (Part 4)

Still More Daryl’s Garage! (Part 3)

More Garage Art (Part 2)

Garage Oldies (Part 1)

29 Year Old Oddity

Daryl in Belgium

Cagle in Bulgaria

CagleCartoonists Meet in France

Cartooning for the Troops in Bahrain

RoachMan

Answering a College Student’s Questions about Cartoons

Punk Rock Opera

Categories
Blog Newsletter Syndicate

Andy Warhol Meets King Kong

My brilliant buddy, Randy Enos writes about Andy Warhol.

Email Randy Enos Visit Randy’s archive –Daryl


I saw Andy Warhol twice. Once when he was walking on 14th St. near his studio and I was just leaving my teaching at Parson’s School of Design. The other time was at a party at the Empire State Building.

In 1962, Bantam Books published something called “The Monocle Peep Show” which was a compilation of articles and cartoons and illustrations from Monocle magazine, a political satire publication of the time. Monocle featured work by David Levine, Lou Myers, Robert Grossman, Paul Davis, Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Tomi Ungerer, Charles Slackman, Rick Schreiter, Marvin Kitman, Lou Meyers, Bob Blechman and many others, including me.

In the book, they re-printed a five page feature of mine called “The Giant”. It is so politically incorrect and raw that I cannot show it to you in this venue but I include here, the first page to show the crazy, messy “cardboard-cut” style I was using sometimes in those early days before I got into the full time linocutting.

At the same time Bantam published this anthology, they were putting together a book of King Kong. In 1964, to celebrate the launch of the book, they decided to have a party at the Empire State Building. For some reason they included all of us Monocle people in the invite. We were all going to see a screening of the original 1933 King Kong movie at the Empire State Building. And, to top it all off, we were also going to see a few minutes of Andy Warhol’s  movie “Empire” along with it. Warhol had evidently just finished this famous movie.

“Empire” is a silent, black and white, slow motion movie which consisted of a camera being trained on the building and never moving for 8 hours and 5 minutes. At the grand opening of the movie, audience members reputedly assaulted the filmmakers demanding their money back.

My wife and I had a lovely time at the party full of celebrities and artists and then the moment came to view the original King Kong. Folding chairs had been set up in a long room in one of the top floors of the building. Of course, we all noticed the white-haired Andy Warhol with a coterie of strange-looking girls from his gang standing in the back with his own projector prepared to show his film afterwards.
So, at the end of King Kong, after those famous last words were intoned, “It was beauty killed the beast,” we all had a little rest and a few drinks while Warhol and crew set up their projector.

Then … we watched about 8 minutes of his 8 hour movie. It was certainly good fun to watch both King Kong and Empire at the famous building that starred in both features. The camera stayed riveted on the building. Warhol, or rather his cinematographer Jonas Mekas, had shot it from the 41st floor of the Time-Life Building. I sensed that the audience at the Bantam party started getting restless through those silent monotonous eight long minutes of grayish inactivity. It was certainly a sudden contrast to the action we had just been witness to of Kong’s battle with the airplanes. THEN, miraculously, a pigeon flew across the screen. The audience erupted in applause.

Well, my very, very favorite moment of the entire evening was when, after a monotonous 5 minutes or so had passed in the Warhol movie, a gentleman seated up front said, loudly, “I liked it better with the monkey hangin’ offa it!”

Email Randy Enos   Visit Randy’s archive


Read many more of Randy’s cartooning memories:

Jacques and the Cowboy

The Gray Lady (The New York Times)

The BIG Eye

Historic Max’s

The Real Moby Dick

The Norman Conquests

Man’s Achievements in an Ever Expanding Universe

How to Murder Your Wife

I Yam What I Yam

The Smallest Cartoon Characters in the World

Chicken Gutz

Brought to You in Living Black and White

The Hooker and the Rabbit

Art School Days in the Whorehouse

The Card Trick that Caused a Divorce

The Mysterious Mr. Quist

Monty Python Comes to Town

Riding the Rails

The Pyramid of Success

The Day I Chased the Bus

The Other Ol’ Blue Eyes

8th Grade and Harold von Schmidt

Rembrandt of the Skies

The Funniest Man I’ve Ever Known

Read “I’m Your Bunny, Wanda –Part One”

Read “I’m Your Bunny, Wanda –Part Two”

Famous Artists Visit the Famous Artists School

Randy Remembers Tomi Ungerer

Randy’s Overnight Parade

The Bullpen

Famous Artists Schools

Dik Browne: Hot Golfer

Randy and the National Lampoon

Randy’s Only Great Idea

A Brief Visit to Outer Space

Enos, Love and Westport

Randy Remembers the NCS