Nudnik  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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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. His cartoons would go on to be syndicated around 1991. The character's tagline is "Whatever can go wrong with NUDNIK, will go wrong."

The first cartoon of the series "Here's Nudnik" (originally called "Nudnik #2"), was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1965.

Synopsis

Nudnik contains only one major character, simply named Nudnik (or "Yaramaz Nudnik", as the Turkish DVDs refer to him). 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 Gene 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