See Spot star

Gary BASEMAN used to wonder what his dog Hubcaps did when Baseman and his wife went out. Although Hubcaps never told him, the artist let his imagination run wild. He pictured his cocker spaniel enjoying some of the amenities of being human -- looking through the refrigerator and pulling out something to eat, watching TV, drawing at his art table. Thus was born the character of Spot, a dog who wants to be a boy, and such things are possible in Toonland as they are possible, and acceptable, nowhere else. Baseman’s vision of Spot the dog dressing up as Scott the boy, who enthusiastically throws on a backpack and goes to school, spun into an ABC Saturday morning cartoon series, “Teacher’s Pet.” And now it has evolved into a full-length Disney movie replete with catchy songs and orchestral score.

But given Baseman’s off-kilter vision of the world, it’s not the usual warm and fuzzy Disney ‘toon, although it has a warm and fuzzy side. Baseman is in love with the flip side of life -- the funny, the sarcastic, the dark -- and there are enough weird and wacky elements in “Teacher’s Pet” to have adults chuckling while kids enjoy the flurry of visual gags. “I like to find a balance between silliness and intelligence,” Baseman says.

He also likes to project a certain bad-boy quality. suggests an expressive id full of free-floating aggression and twisted desires. A recent series he showed in a New York art gallery featured a snowman hopelessly in love with a mermaid.

“Gary’s drawings are very strange,” says Bill Steinkellner, half of the husband-and-wife writing team that’s worked with Baseman since the television version of “Teacher’s Pet.” “But what most people don’t know is that there’s a sweet side to him, and there’s elements of that in the movie.” He’s referring to the fact that the main cast, including Spot’s owner, Leonard, and fellow house pets, Pretty Boy (a cranky canary) and Mr. Jolly (a scaredy-cat cat), all have lovable sides.

Baseman’s studio, in the back of his spacious Hancock Park house, is a lair of channeled creativity. A computer sits at one end of the room, near a tilted drawing table where he often works standing up. Today there’s an original painting of turquoise-blue Spot on the table -- he likes to paint on canvas, and “Teacher’s Pet” has a decidedly hand-drawn look -- surrounded by dozens of pieces of scrap paper covered with cartoon doodles. Baseman draws incessantly. When he leaves the house, he carries a notebook into which he doodles thoughts and ideas, working out present and future projects. It’s a security blanket, he admits. “I just don’t feel comfortable without it.”

All around the studio are memorabilia from his collection of toys and advertisements, mostly from the ‘30s to the ‘60s. Multiples of Fritz the Cat, Porky Pig, and bolt-shaped Reddy Kilowatt, symbol of “your investor-owned utility company,” fill two steel bookcases and sit atop file drawers.

And then there are the prototypes for various toys and figurines Baseman has designed, including Dumb Luck, a peg-legged rabbit eerily holding his “lucky” rabbit’s foot. Propped in a corner is a large canvas he’s painted for a fine arts gallery. It’s all part of the artist’s nonstop creative drive (see sidebar). Fortunately, despite the volume of stuff crammed in here, everything is neatly organized and displayed. Baseman may be an artist, but the left side of his brain is engaged as well.

A move to New York

As a young boy in Los Angeles, Baseman, now 43, was constantly drawing and winning recognition for his work. He was especially fond of the wacky Warner Brothers cartoons from the ‘30s -- Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig -- as well as Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat, and the Flintstones. While he learned by copying, he was soon inventing his own characters and making up his own strips. At UCLA, he majored in communications and went to work for an ad agency, but he lasted only a year in an office job.

He moved to New York to pursue his love of drawing. By showing his portfolio around, he managed to get art commissions from ad agencies, newspapers and magazines, eventually counting Nike, Kodak, Time, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker and the Los Angeles Times as his clients. (His New Yorker cover from May 2002 shows a young chicken serving up breakfast in bed to his mother -- two sunny-side-up eggs. She, of course, is aghast.)

In the mid-1990s, Baseman began several animation projects with Nickelodeon, none of which came to fruition. But since he had already sold his New York apartment in anticipation of relocating to Los Angeles, in 1997 he moved back anyway. Armed with a portfolio that now included two Nickelodeon pilots, he made the rounds of studios, trying to sell his ideas. Disney liked his story about the dog who wanted to go to school, and he was teamed with director Timothy Bjorklund and the Steinkellners, Bill and his wife, Cheri (“Cheers”), all of whom went on to work on the movie.

Debuting in 2000, the series ran for three seasons on ABC, winning awards that included three Emmys for Baseman. Although it was a critical success, it never made big ratings and was eventually dropped. (It now reruns on Toon Disney.) But Baseman was already busy trying to bring it to the big screen and managed to interest Disney.

In “Disney’s Teacher’s Pet” the movie, Spot (voiced by Nathan Lane) yearns to be a boy. He’s already passing for one, putting on his beanie and clothing and trotting off to school with Leonard (Shaun Fleming). But that’s not enough. One day he sees his salvation on a Jerry Springer-style TV show -- Dr. Ivan Krank (Kelsey Grammer with a Transylvanian accent) claims he can transform animals into human beings.

With a monobrow and prominent scar in the middle of his crazed face, Dr. Krank is one scary guy, but Spot thinks he has found his Blue Fairy. Although Krank is in Florida, it just so happens that Leonard and his mother, Mrs. Helperman, are on their way there, so Spot, transformed into Scott, conspires to join them. Scott does eventually find Dr. Krank, but the results drive home one the movie’s promo lines, “Be careful what you wish for.”

Baseman served as the feature’s executive producer as well as art director, overseeing the look of the film. Although he sees himself as a natural maverick, he has come to realize that he also likes working with others. “I found that my job was to keep them inspired,” he says. “I’m good at encouraging others to push themselves, the way I push myself when I’m working alone.” What then was hardest about making the movie?

“Getting it to the screen,” he says.

Since Baseman’s film doesn’t fall into a standard genre, knowing how to promote it has been difficult for Disney, and the release date has been delayed a couple of times. Of course, he already considers himself fortunate for making a film under its auspices. And being able to reference Disney films and characters -- Pinocchio, Mickey Mouse and the Seven Dwarfs appear -- was a boon.

The feature let the creative team cut loose a little in writing and depiction. “With the TV show, we had a mandate to do an educational show -- teach lessons such as be true to yourself, be nice to each other,” Cheri Steinkellner says. “We were also trying to expose kids to cultural literacy, bringing in Shakespeare and Sartre, art and philosophy.”

Baseman welcomed the chance to more fully work out story lines and themes. Though half his characters are animals, specifically pets, he draws a parallel between them and us: “Human beings are basically domesticated animals, like pets are.”

“It’s really interesting to take these simple pets who don’t seem to have much of a life,” Cheri Steinkellner says, “to go into their inner life and find these deep feelings and neuroses, to find that they’re really complex.”

They’re complex, of course, because the creators are. “I’m personifying dogs and cats to tell human stories,” Baseman says. “Somehow we can tell truer stories by distancing ourselves.”