Nudnik

Nudnik was a Czechoslovak/Czech animated film series directed by Gene Deitch, produced by William Lawrence Snyder, and distributed by Paramount Studios. Twelve shorts were released during 1965 and 1967.[1][2][3] The character's tagline is "Whatever can go wrong with Nudnik, will go wrong."

The first cartoon of the series, Here's Nudnik, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1965, losing to The Pink Phink.[4]

Nudnik was based on a previous Terrytoons character, Foofle, who appeared from 1959 to 1960.[5]

Synopsis

Nudnik contains only one major character, simply named Nudnik. He cannot do anything right; when he does something, it usually ends with disastrous results, and usually gets him in trouble. At first the idea was for each short to be scored with melancholy jazz music, which was done for the first cartoon. However, the studio wasn't pleased with the musical choice, and they made Deitch use more upbeat music. The song that was used most often was "Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams", used both for the opening sequence and as a general theme of sorts for the character himself.

Though there were other characters, they were unnamed, such as the fat woman, the dog, the cop, and the thief. There was something of an unspoken rule that everything in the world hates Nudnik, further adding to the mayhem.

Shorts
TitleRelease Date
Here's NudnikAugust 1, 1965
Drive On, Nudnik!November 1965
Home Sweet NudnikMarch 1966
Nudnik on a ShoestringMarch 12, 1966
Welcome, Nudnik!May 1966
Nudnik on the RoofJuly 1966
From Nudnik with LoveSeptember 1966
Who Needs Nudnik??May 1967
Nudnik on the BeachMay 1967
Good Neighbor NudnikJune 1967
Nudnik's NudnickelAugust 1967
I Remember NudnikSeptember 1967

TV series

A 'new' animated series, The Nudnik Show, was created in 1991, which showed the 12 classic shorts in syndication, and it also had one brand new Nudnik short, "Nudnik Impossible", however it was mostly made using left over clips from old promotional material from when the shorts were original being produced in the 60s, bringing the number of Nudnik shorts from 12 to 13. It also had 11 bumpers with all new animation, each one being about 30 seconds long, according to the IMDb listing, Jules Feiffer was a writer for the series, so it is most likely that he wrote for the bumpers. The production companies were Paramount Pictures and Rembrandt Films.[6]

The shorts were featured on Cartoon Network's animated anthology series ToonHeads in 1996.[7]

References
  1. "Nudnik Revealed! by Gene Deitch - Cover & Excerpt". August 6, 2013.
  2. "Book Review: "Nudnik Revealed!" |". cartoonresearch.com.
  3. "Self-Help for Nudnik — Part 2". Animation World Network.
  4. "The 37th Academy Awards (1965) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved June 1, 2019.
  5. Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. p. 114. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
  6. "The Nudnik Show". Retrieved Jul 11, 2019 – via www.imdb.com.
  7. Mendoza, N.F. (January 7, 1996). "SHOWS FOR YOUNGSTERS AND THEIR PARENTS TOO : At last, 'Nudnik' emerges from storage onto the Cartoon Network". The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-04-28.


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