Jerry Beck

Jerry Beck is a noted animation historian and cartoon producer. His more on 15 books on the subject include The Animated Movie Guide, Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide, The 50 Greatest Cartoons, and The SpongeBob SquarePants Experience.

As a film distributor, his company Streamline Pictures brought Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro and Otomo’s Akira (both 1988) to the U.S. A former studio executive with Nickelodeon and Disney, Beck is currently a consulting producer to Warner Bros. and Universal for their classic animation DVD and Blu-ray compilations. Beck has programmed animation retrospectives and animator tributes for the Annecy and Ottawa Animation Festivals, the Museum of Modern Art and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Each year, he presents “The Worst Cartoons Ever” at Comic-Con International.

He currently teaches animation history at Cal Arts, UCLA, and Chapman University, curates a monthly “Cartoon Club” at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema in Hollywood, and edits two blogs: Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research.