A Cheetah's Rear View Mirror

I’m surprised you didn’t ask about the Olympics first. “What is it like to meet all those athletes? What are your favorite moments from the interviews? How did it feel to race the sprinters in mock competition? Do you think it’s fair that you’re not allowed to compete?” Those are the questions I get asked the most. Oh and then you could ask if I actually like Vitaflakes, the cereal of victory! The world needs that question answered again. Ha!

Or you could inquire about the arcade games that bear my face. Gamers still ask me, ironically, if I know the strategies, if I can handle the “Speed Force Power.” Generally I smile and nod at them. I still play Cheetah Quest now and then, mostly for nostalgia’s sake, though the surreal feeling of controlling one’s pixelated self never goes away

But you want to hear about the cartoon. You want to know about how my career started. You’d be shocked how rarely that comes up. It’s true that we only made thirty episodes. It’s true that each episode was only fifteen minutes long. It’s true the show was designed to be educational. It’s true it was dull as dishwater. The episodes never made syndication so the next generation never saw them. Unless they sought out the VHS of course. Not many did though. Ha!

Believe it or not, that show was a big deal at the time. We won an animated short Academy Award. And the critics loved us. It all came down to how I moved. I learned to run like a real cheetah: all four paws to the ground, lunging forward with my whole body, my spine expanding and contracting. I did so many stretches while training so as not to throw my back out. And I never got close to real cheetah speed, I’m just a cartoon after all. But I can still lick any human sprinter, I was drawn well enough for that.

That’s the only part people remember today, the video of me running. We spent the better part of a day on it, just me sprinting flat out in a straight line over-and-over, take after take. By sunset I could barely stand, needed two crewmembers to carry me back to the tent. That night I dreamed that I’d be forced to run forever. That I’d show up at work every morning and run, and run, and run, until I burst into flame.

Lucky for me those cheapskates just needed one loop. I got in the best shape of my life over several weeks for one day of shooting which they edited down to ten seconds of video. That shot of me running made it into all thirty episodes. They’d just change the background to have me run alongside a river, run across the open savannah, run through a Herero village, even run down Broadway in New York in one unfortunate episode.

Thanks for the cigarette by the way, what brand is this, Gold Crest? Anyway, that was such a short time of my life, we filmed all thirty episodes over a single month in Namibia, though it was “Southwest Africa” then. Still can’t believe those cheap bastards paid to shoot on location. They learned their lesson though. Scooby Doo was filming around the same time, shot all on California sound stages, cheap ones at that. It really showed, yeah it really showed. But that show was a huge hit, I hear they’re making another movie this year. I don’t blame Scooby, he’s a good, humble guy. Get that money Scoob!

But I digress. There’s not that much to tell about my show. A Cheetah’s Tale, the company’s bid at respectability: shot on location, educational, scripts drafted by interviewing South Africans… and a real cheetah, a cartoon cheetah anyway, in the leading role.

Of course, the plot was just Lassie. Some disaster happens: a local kid falls down a well, poachers on the plateau, drought in a far-off village, that kind of thing. And I’d run from place-to-place, carrying the warning. And each time they’d use that same stock roll of me running. We were so proud of that clip, it was the whole draw of the show: An animated cheetah running like a real life cheetah!

Everyone jokes that I must have been on coke, or “speed” or whatnot. And there were amphetamines around, “greenies” as they called them then. And sure, I partook. The whole crew did, I wasn’t going to be left out. 

But I didn’t need them for the acting part of it. You saw the show, I was barely acting at all. They specifically wanted me to talk slow and monotone. Simpler for the kids, easier to translate to other countries, ”more respectful” one producer told me (whatever that means.)

So all my lines were like “Village in danger. Tinkara fell down the well. Poachers with rifles.” We rarely did second takes, but when the director yelled “cut” he’d invariably ask me to talk slower. I honestly can’t go back and watch my own acting. If we can get through this whole interview without me having to watch myself I’ll be overjoyed. Ha!

Still, the show must still be on television somewhere, as I get a royalty check every year for a few thousand dollars. I guess being easy to translate gave the show a long tail, no pun intended.

But you asked what it was like. It was a blur. They only drew me up a few years before. I just went along. So yeah, there were parties, and drugs, and sex. But it was just one month of filming. It flew by.

The only memory that stands out, that really stands out, is this party we had with a bonfire at the top of a cliffside of their central plateau. Everyone from this local Herero tribe came, their women in colorful flat hats and dresses. They roasted a bull over the fire and we all danced, danced, danced until dawn. Then it was back to filming on zero sleep. I don’t think my performance suffered.

I barely got to know the human actors. Half the time they filmed my lines with some local terrain or a photographic painting behind me without a single other actor present. I did have one nice conversation with Julia, she played the mom of the family if you remember. She was new to acting too, and seemed… sympathetic. Sympathetic in a way no one else was. Like, looking back, she’s the only one who read emotion into my face, if that makes sense. 

I told her I had no biological family, being animated and all, which is where most people say things like “oh no!” and “so sorry to hear that.” But Julia didn’t react. But then I told her about my money concerns, that I didn’t know where my next paycheck was coming from once the show wrapped. I must have looked so sad, so pathetic. She put her arms around me and we cried together. 

Thinking back I can still feel it, the pit in my stomach thinking about what would happen to me when we flew back to the states. My initial check from the show wouldn’t cover two months' expenses in Hollywood. And what if there were no other jobs for cartoon Cheetahs? Harmless-looking animals got most of the plum jobs after all and I couldn’t imagine anyone being impressed by my performance.

But I got lucky, didn’t I? Because the show was acclaimed right away. A Cheetah’s Tale used actual African scenery, actual African actors. The star of the show, me, ran like an actual cheetah. The plots were wholesome. It hardly mattered that it was boring as an agricultural report, or that the audience was never that big. Everyone wanted to interview the cheetah from the acclaimed kids show, even if none of them actually watched a minute of the show.

And I was good at that stuff. I can chew the fat with anybody. Pick a topic and I’ll go along for hours, even if I know nothing about the subject going in. I’m not a good actor, and only passable at being a cheetah, but I’m great at being a person, if that makes sense. Johnny Carson said he forgot he was talking to a cartoon when he interviewed me. Of course he was always polite,  but I believed him.

I lived off the interviews. Most of the audience forgot what they knew me from, I was just that fun cheetah who you’d love to have a chat with. Every couple weeks I did some interview where we just talked about whatever the big headline was. I did Merv Griffin three days after Nixon resigned. We were both making awkward jokes but also trying to sound solemn. God do I hope that footage doesn’t still exist.

Those interviews are what led to everything since. Post Cereal contacted me in ‘79 about being a spokescharacter. They wanted to compete with Wheaties and Frosted Flakes for the athlete market and a cartoon cheetah sounded perfect. At first they were going to call them “Speed Flakes” if you can believe that. Thank the stars they settled on Vitaflakes. 

Then in ‘81 Nintendo called me about being the main character in an arcade game. “Cheetah Quest with Speed Force Power” Ha! Of course it was the American distributor who added that last bit. I was obliged to learn the game so that I could play it for commercials and events. Felt a lot of pressure to not embarrass myself, and I got decent, but could never keep up with some of those kids. That game still sells too, on those “Arcade Classics” collections. Get a nice royalty check from that every year.

So between that, the royalties from the show, the cereal, plus ABC or NBC hires me as an Olympic interviewer every four years. Between all that I’m in good financial shape. For like fifteen years I felt like I spent my life in taxicabs, going from one interview or promotional event to another. When my accountant told me I was set to make six figures in passive income in one year… It was like a hundred pounds slid off my back. I suddenly realized how secure I was.

And I decided I wanted something different. I didn’t want to prepare for an interview or a commercial every week. It didn’t take me years to figure out what I wanted my life to be. These days I meditate, I paint watercolors, I do jigsaw puzzles with my wife. And I’m content. You want to hear about that stuff? I could talk about watercolors for hours.

Wait, how long have I been talking? Gotta be fifteen minutes or so right? Ha ha! Did you have a second question?