''Gary Larson's Tales from the Far Side'' is an animated
short film
A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...
created in 1994 by
Gary Larson
Gary Larson (born August 14, 1950) is an American cartoonist, environmentalist, and former musician. He is the creator of ''The Far Side'', a single-panel cartoon series that was syndicated internationally to more than 1,900 newspapers for fif ...
, based on ''
the Far Side
''The Far Side'' is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surreali ...
''
comic strip. It was first shown as a
Halloween special on
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
television,
which aired on October 26, 1994. Later it was awarded the Grand Prix at the
Annecy International Animation Film Festival
The Annecy International Animation Film Festival (french: Festival international du film d'animation d'Annecy, officially abbreviated in English as the Annecy Festival, or simply Annecy) was created in 1960 and takes place at the beginning of J ...
.
Content
The film is a loosely-structured
anthology film, jumping among several simple stories. Many of these situations use staple
clichés of
horror films, such as
undead
The undead are beings in mythology, legend, or fiction that are deceased but behave as if alive. Most commonly the term refers to corporeal forms of formerly-alive humans, such as mummies, vampires, and zombies, who have been reanimated by supe ...
monsters and the
dark and stormy night
''Dark and Stormy Night'' is a 2009 independent film spoofing the haunted house and murder mystery films produced by Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s. Larry Blamire directed and acted in the film and wrote the screenplay. The film also include ...
. The stories sometimes turn
macabre
In works of art, the adjective macabre ( or ; ) means "having the quality of having a grim or ghastly atmosphere". The macabre works to emphasize the details and symbols of death. The term also refers to works particularly gruesome in natu ...
, but are presented in a lighthearted fashion. They are mainly as those in the printed comic, including many background
throwaway gag
In comedy, a throwaway line (also: throwaway joke or throwaway gag) is a joke delivered "in passing" without being the punch line to a comedy routine, part of the build up to another joke, or (in the context of drama) there to advance a story or de ...
s from well-known panels.
The characters and settings are all common to Larson's work, such as
aliens,
anthropomorphic animals and other objects, and cowboys in the
Old West
The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial ...
. The art style is essentially the same as that of the ''Far Side'', with
animation and
sound effect
A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. Traditi ...
s.
Production
The animation was made in
Vancouver
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
,
British Columbia
British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...
, Canada, at director-animator
Marv Newland
Marv Newland (March 9, 1947) is an American-Canadian filmmaker, specialized in animation.
Career
Newland began a career making animated motion pictures in Los Angeles with the creation of the short '' Bambi Meets Godzilla'' (1969). He then desig ...
's International Rocketship Productions.
The film features an original music score by jazz guitarist
Bill Frisell
William Richard Frisell (born March 18, 1951) is an American jazz guitarist, composer and arranger. Frisell first came to prominence at ECM Records in the 1980s, as both a session player and a leader. He went on to work in a variety of contexts ...
.
[ Some of the compositions from the soundtrack are included on his 1996 album ''Quartet''.]
Sequel
In 1997 the film spawned a sequel, ''Tales from the Far Side II''. This follow-up was never broadcast on American television, but it aired in the UK on BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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...
and appeared in numerous film festivals.