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Teaching the Pussy to Sing RETURN |
Tom McFaul contributed the account below about the creation of the famous Meow Mix singing cat commercial in response to an e-mail question as to whether anyone was credited with having written the "lyrics." (Meow, meow, meow, meow, etc.) |
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The idea for the Meow Mix singing cat came
from Ron Travisano.
Ron was an art director/partner at
Della Femina/Travisano & Partners, the agency that had the
Ralston Purina account in those days. Ron had a few feet of film
— outakes of the "talking head" cat. He looped
the footage, front to back, back to front, middle to front,
middle to back, etc., with his editor, Jay Gold, to get thirty
seconds out of it. Then he called and asked me to come over and
look at the footage.
He asked if I could make the cat sing. I said sure, and took the film back over to my place, racked it up on the movieola (it was that long ago), and made a special click track to follow the "tempo" of the cat's mouth movements. A regular click track wouldn't work because of irregularities in the cat's mouth movements, so I made a special click by banging a pencil on the movieola in time with the cat.
When I got the synchronization right, I wrote the little tune to fit the cat. Ron then got the idea to put the "lyrics" under the talking head, and then added the bouncing ball. So I guess you ought to credit Ron Travisano as "lyricist."
— Tom McFaul (in correspondence 4/1/2002)
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