Author | Berkeley Breathed |
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Illustrator | Berkeley Breathed |
Cover artist | Berkeley Breathed |
Language | English |
Genre | Children's |
Publisher | Little Brown & Co |
Publication date | 1991 |
Publication place | United States |
Pages | 32 |
ISBN | 0-316-10691-7 |
A Wish for Wings That Work: An Opus Christmas Story is a children's book by Berkeley Breathed that was published in 1991. It was made into an animated television special that same year. The book and special feature characters from Breathed's comic strips Bloom County and Outland .
The story centers on Opus the Penguin (a main character in all three of Breathed's comic strips and, at the time, appearing in Outland ). Opus is downhearted because, as a penguin, he cannot fly. He orders a machine and assembles it, but when it comes time to test the machine by jumping off a three-mile-high cliff, Opus decides to do something less dangerous; he goes home to make anchovy Christmas cookies. He does not give up on his dream, though, and makes a Christmas wish to Santa Claus for "wings that will go!". On Christmas Eve, Santa is making his usual delivery when he loses his reindeer and crashes into a lake. Opus jumps in and uses his natural swimming skills to pull Santa out. To thank Opus for his daring rescue, a group of ducks pick him up and take him flying through the air.
A Wish for Wings That Work | |
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Also known as | Opus 'n' Bill: A Wish for Wings that Work |
Based on | A Wish for Wings That Work: An Opus Christmas Story and Outland by Berkeley Breathed |
Written by | Berkeley Breathed |
Directed by | Skip Jones |
Starring | Michael Bell Joe Alaskey John Byner Tress MacNeille Alexaundria Simmons Andrew Hill Newman Frank Welker Robin Williams (as Sudy Nim) |
Music by | Thomas Chase Steve Rucker |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Producer | Peggy Regan |
Editor | Larry C. Cowan |
Running time | 22 minutes |
Production companies | Amblin Television Universal Cartoon Studios |
Original release | |
Network | MCA TV |
Release | December 18, 1991 |
On December 18, 1991, an animated special based on the book aired on CBS. [1] [2] It was directed by Skip Jones and was produced by Peggy Regan for Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television for Universal Cartoon Studios. [3] [4] It was released on DVD November 6, 2007.
Lisa Horowitz of Variety gave the special a positive review, saying that it "crams a lot of action and intelligence into its half-hour". She also praised the animation and vocal performances. [2]
Breathed, who was credited as the writer and executive producer of the special, was disappointed with the overall results. Asked in 2003 in The Washington Post where a copy of the special could be found on VHS or DVD, Breathed replied:
Hopefully in the rubbish pail. We can do better than that and we will with an eventual Opus film... but I'm glad you enjoyed it. I presume your family was on speed when they watched it. I would imagine it helps.
In a 2007 interview, Breathed said that the reason he disliked the special was simply "unspectacular ratings", and that his humor "wasn't meant for television, even if it was done right". He also blamed his own lack of writing experience, as he wrote the script, and that the director was "way over his head". Breathed said he had wanted Sterling Holloway to provide the voice for Opus. [5] Four years later, Breathed said the director inserted numerous inappropriate jokes into the special's background scenes. [6]
Tiny Toon Adventures is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger that was broadcast from September 14, 1990, to December 6, 1992. It was the first animated series produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment in association with Warner Bros. Animation. The show follows the adventures of a group of young cartoon characters who attend Acme Looniversity to become the next generation of characters from the Looney Tunes series.
Bloom County is an American comic strip by Berkeley Breathed which originally ran from December 8, 1980, until August 6, 1989. It examined events in politics and culture through the viewpoint of a fanciful small town in Middle America, where children often have adult personalities and vocabularies and where animals can talk.
Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed is an American cartoonist, children's book author, director, and screenwriter, known for his comic strips Bloom County, Outland, and Opus. Bloom County earned Breathed the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1987.
Opus the Penguin is a fictional character created by artist Berkeley Breathed. Breathed has described him as an "existentialist penguin" and the favorite of his many characters.
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Opus was a Sunday strip drawn by Berkeley Breathed from November 23, 2003, to November 2, 2008. It was Breathed's fourth comic strip, following The Academia Waltz, Bloom County and Outland.
Outland is a comic strip written and illustrated by Berkeley Breathed from 1989 until 1995. It was a Sunday-only spin-off of Breathed's strip Bloom County, featuring many of the same characters.
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Bill the Cat, or Bill D. Cat, is a fictional cat appearing in the works of cartoonist Berkeley Breathed, beginning with the comic strip Bloom County in the 1980s and continuing in Outland and Opus in the following decades. Bill also appeared in some of Breathed's illustrated children's books, including A Wish for Wings That Work, which was also made into an animated Christmas television special, and also on greeting cards and other sundry merchandise. Bill was originally capable of speaking English reasonably well, but storylines featuring an automobile accident, repeated periods of drug abuse, and brain surgery have since seen the character transition to a nearly mentally handicapped mute state in which the cat's most frequent spoken sentiments are "Ack!" and "Thppt!" - the former a result of his regularly choking on hairballs, the latter an approximation of "blowing a raspberry".
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