Inspired by a real-life incident--getting his tie caught in a moving Moviola editing machine--Gene Deitch, cartoonist, animator, memoirist, renaissance man, created Nudnik, his Everyman character, a cross between Candide and Godot. The star of 12 Paramount-produced animated shorts that ran in theatres as an opening to the main movie in 1964 and 1965, Nudnik was one of Deitch's most creatively personal and commercially successful creations in a long...