Another damn natural wind event, another rash of giant fires, none of which are sparked by natural phenomena. It’s faulty power equipment left unrepaired by scuzball utilities squeezing every last dime of profit out of people, out-of-sight/out-of-mind cooking fires by what I actually saw in a news item today referred as “urban campers.”
Gee, I wonder what that fabulous euphemism is a substitute for? And God forbid such “urban campers” cooking food or meth (oh, excuse me, not supposed to say that, bad manners) during windstorms among dry brush are actually CLEARED OUT BY LAW ENFORCEMENT BEFORE WINDS GET GOING.
I forget, they’re super-citizens who don’t answer to any law. They live directly off the land, like Daniel Boone, before they start fires that burn up entire neighborhoods overnight.
And just to make sure California maintains economic diversity and breaks down the barriers of class, the other scumbags starting fires from the electric utilities are all fairly wealthy. So everyone is in on the action.
Or there’s always good ol’ cars backfiring, or arson. We’ve got a full menu.
One of these fires is on the other side of the city from me, a good and hopefully will stay safe 10 plus miles away.
But I am sick of this.
I can address the aforementioned scumbag utility company turning off my electricity during windy weather in order to cover their asses from lawsuits resulting from them not maintaining their equipment by adding a battery backup to my house, which is in progress. But I can’t seem to do anything about the stupid mismanagement of land, of non-existent cutting and brush clearing, of making giant graft-spreading “public” utilities maintain their equipment, or of addressing blatantly obvious sources of trouble like groups of unbalanced and often mentally ill drug addicts fending for themselves in dry washes cooking with open fires left to their own devices instead of being treated/dealt with/sheltered/moved along. I’d like to see attempted arsonists shot on sight. But my vote is outnumbered or ballot-harvested away by countless morons who keep voting in the same corrupt incompetents over and over again.
End of rant.
Did my rant start the fire under Bambi’s ass though? Well, not quite – that amazing sequence from the 1942 film is put together beautifully – the fire and falling embers-into-exploding-flame effects are realistic and truly scary. The color palette for those backgrounds and the fireshadows on the Great Prince and Bambi as they flee the burning forest bring home the heat and danger at every turn.
Disney made his animators go to art school and for Bambi, had them re-train to illustrate forest animals realistically. For background design, they brought in artist Tyrus Wong, a production designer for multiple Hollywood films, as well as mural art around Los Angeles, to get the natural backgrounds of the forest correctly. (And being Disney, fired him right after an animator’s strike.)
Bambi credits David Hand as supervising director along with a number of sequence directors – I cannot find a source giving me the specific sequence director for the forest fire, so I’ll offer my own theory. One of the credited sequence directors is Bill Roberts.
Since Disney had an established practice of trying out visual material in their comic shorts before placing them in features, I’d be pretty sure that Bill Roberts, the director of the Mickey & Pluto short “Society Dog Show” from 1939 definitely had a lot to do with this scene, since the climax of “Society Dog Show” has to do with Pluto rescuing another dog from a fire that breaks out on stage. While the flames look more cartoony here (as do the animals), the camera angles and narrow escapes from fire danger match up quite nicely.
I’m happy to be safe in my home and able to watch cartoons with fires burning elsewhere.
All because man came to the forest, so to speak.
Jim Berkin 
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