Mess O' Blues is a 1993 senior thesis project short film by Johnny Bravo creator Van Partible. The short film stars an Elvis Presley impersonator, who was the prototype version of what would later become the Johnny Bravo character. The title itself is a reference to an Elvis Presley song, A Mess of Blues.
While plot details of the short film are unknown, fifteen seconds of footage was shown in the "Bringing Up Johnny Bravo" look-back documentary, which was a bonus feature on the Season 1 DVD. In a video uploaded by Loyola Marymount University, four animation cels from Mess O' Blues were shown. These depicted the Elvis impersonator holding a mirror, holding a microphone, holding up a sheep with a bow on its head, and sitting on a bench across from an irritated woman. According to Partible, he owns the only VHS tape copy of the film.
As a guest on the What's In My Head Podcast, Van Partible confirmed that he has no plans to release Mess O' Blues. He wishes to preserve the novelty of sharing it with others as a "fun little thing" in private viewings, rather than publicly on the internet for all to see. Partible also reassured that the short film "isn't going anywhere" and that he saved a re-digitalized copy to his hard drive.
History
While Van Partible was a student at Loyola Marymount University, he decided to persue animation, and soon enough began to develop a short film for his senior thesis project. He originally wanted it to star a trio of Elvis impersonators ("Elvi") who fought crime, but settled on just one to lighten his one-man workload. This sole impersonator was described as an "over-the-hill aging rock star who thinks he's Elvis." The project originally had no soundtrack and was presented with a live-reading out of necessity, some friends of Partible's providing the voices and music, with Partible himself providing the sound effects. Due to Mess O' Blues being silent, he was unable to enter the piece in any film festivals.
When Partible learned that the short film was going to be shown to Hanna-Barbera, he added an audio track of himself doing all the voices. His animation professor, Dan McLaughlin, presented the completed short film (alongside student films by others) to Buzz Potamkin, a friend of his at the studio. Soon after, Partible was asked by Ellen Cockrill, one of the heads of development, if he was interested in pitching a 7-minute cartoon based on Mess O' Blues for their shorts program What A Cartoon! on Cartoon Network. When Partible pitched his polished idea of Johnny Bravo, it was met with some hesitancy until Cockrill and two other women fought to get the project made.
Credits: Wiki and YoshiKiller2S
