Gladstone version of Scarpa's "Lentils from Babylon"

Gerstein, David DK - ECN DGE at ECN.egmont.com
Wed Jan 26 13:46:06 CET 2000


	Hey Hans!

>Scarpa's drawings of the people of a fictitious far-away
>country (as originally printed in 1960) were obviously not regarded 
>as politically correct 35 years later, when the story was to be 
>published in the United States. Some minor "adjustments" were made 
>(by Scarpa himself? by Gladstone's art department?). 

	By Gladstone's art department.
	As the story's American dialogue writer, I can confirm that the
change was done to make the story acceptable to Disney-Burbank. The same
goes for the African "Gold Coast" of the original story (it was not allowed
to be an African country at all, but we *could* get away with making it an
imaginary Asian country).
	We weren't allowed to let the natives sound ignorant by letting them
speak (Scarpa's original) crude, pidgin English, but we *were* allowed to
create the effect of ignorance by giving them very elaborate *old-fashioned*
English - as if they'd learned the language by reading a book. So I hope to
have preserved the original intent.

	David Gerstein
	<dge at ecn.egmont.com>




More information about the DCML mailing list