Jim Keeshen, Seth MacFarlane, and The Family Guy Pilot

Jim Keeshen's ET 2 Storytelling class for Spring 2006, taught at Santa Monica College's Academy of Entertainment and Technology, uses eCollege's eCompanion for the purposes of supplementing its ground course with online material. Inside eCompanion, under the course syllabus, Jim Keeshen has a short biography about himself. Here's a screenshot of the bio:



And here's a closer view of the bio:



In Jim Keeshen's Course Syllabus page for Santa Monica College, he alleges the following: "Jim Keeshen started his animation career producing animated Sesame Street shorts on counting numbers and pronouncing letters from the alphabet." Now he alleges that he was "developing ideas and producing animated shorts for Sesame Street." In his resume, he claims that he "started his animation career during his studies at UCLA by animating a few scenes" for Sesame Street. Clearly, he's elevating his position to sound more important.

The same is true pertaining to his statements about the Academy of Entertainment and Technology. In his course syllabus, he alleges that in "1997 the Academy of Entertainment and Technology was started at SMC and Keeshen was asked to help set up the curriculum and advise on hardware/software purchases. He became the first full time professor and chair of the Academy." His resume reflects this information. However, he is now claiming that in 1997 he was "offered a full-time professorship to establish and run the Academy of Entertainment and Technology."

Did he in fact establish the Academy as he claims? According to our blog article, "A Brief History of the Academy of Entertainment & Technology," it was Piedad Robertson and Darroch "Rocky" Young who established the Academy with the help of project directors Joan Abrahamson and Dale Franzen. Regardless of who really established AET, Keeshen should not brag as SMC, under the California Public Records Act, has failed to disclose the documents filed to the California Postsecondary Education Commission that would reveal exactly how AET received its status as an educational center in 1997.

But the most blatant misrepresentation Jim Keeshen makes in his ET 2 Storytelling Bio is that he not only "produced" the pilot for Fox's Family Guy, but that he also "directed" it. Here's a screenshot close-up of this false statement by him:



Did Jim Keeshen produce and direct the pilot for Family Guy? Not according to the official Family Guy credits listed at the end of the pilot pitch VHS tape that I watched. Here's the screenshot from our blog article entitled "Family Guy Pilot Credits."



As the credits clearly reveal, Seth MacFarlane was not only the executive producer, he was the sole creator, writer, and director. Jim Keeshen and Jim Keeshen Productions are listed as the producers. So, Jim Keeshen clearly did not direct the Family Guy pilot. However, despite this fact, he is now publicizing that he directed it to his ET 2 Storytelling students. He is allegedly doing this to elevate his position on this project and to circumvent credit that belongs solely to the show's creator, Seth MacFarlane. Since Jim Keeshen produced this pilot and distributed the VHS tape to students at AET who worked on the project, he cannot claim that this is a mistake on his part. Rather, it is an outright and deliberate lie in conscious disregard to both his faculty ethics and SMC's academic integrity to uphold the truth in education.

What Jim Keeshen fails to disclose to his students is his bitter history with not only Seth MacFarlane, but with Fox Broadcasting, all of which can be viewed in our Family Guy Index. As previously revealed, Keeshen sued both Seth MacFarlane and Fox. In the Answer of Defendant Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox alleges that Jim Keeshen and Jim Keeshen Productions are barred from recovery, in part, by the Statute of Frauds, the Doctrine of Unclean Hands, the Doctrine of Impossibility, the Doctrine of Frustration of Purpose, the Doctrine of Fraud, negligence, and by the fault of Plaintiffs and its failure to satisfy conditions. Fox further alleges that "Plaintiffs have materially breached their obligations under the alleged contracts." Seth MacFarlane's answer makes many of these same allegations against Keeshen in its defense.

But Jim Keeshen wants to have his cake and eat it too. While falsely laying claim to directing the Family Guy pilot pitch, he turns around and verbally defames and slanders Fox in his ET 18 Storyboarding class. According to a confidential witness, on or about February 22, 2006, Jim Keeshen was passing around scripts of the Family Guy to his students. Were these scripts illegally obtained from Fox after Fox allegedly fired Keeshen? We are not sure. But we are sure that he made the following statements to his students or words to this effect: "Here's another script.... Who has the scripts?.... There's a piece of shit for sure. That's Family Guy. Here's another piece of shit. Family Guy. If you tell me that you watch Family Guy and you love it, I will fail you from this class."

Given the fact that the Family Guy is one of the most popular animated shows on television, he would have to fail most of his students. Regardless, it was highly unprofessional of Keeshen as an instructor to make these kinds of statements to his students. There was simply no justification other than the fact that Keeshen wished to intentionally paint Seth MacFarlane's animated masterpiece in an unfavorable light to his students.

The last question that remains is that who wrote this bio for Keeshen given the fact that it is written in the third person? If we take a peek at the internal eCompanion email list for ET 2 this semester, we see the following names at the end of the list:



Well, what do we have here at the end of the list, but none other than Barbara Ziering. Now, this is a very uncommon name, so it is safe to assume that this is the same Barbara Ziering that we have discussed many times on the SAVE SMC Blog. Ms. Ziering not only worked in various capacities for Jim Keeshen Productions, her name is credited in several places on the Family Guy pilot. She also was at one time an instructor at the Academy of Entertainment and Technology and now teaches at Otis College of Art + Design. On the Otis webpage, Ziering credits herself as "Supervising Animator with Jim Keeshen Productions."

So, since she no longer teaches at AET, how did she manage to be assigned to the ET 2 Storytelling course as a student? Is she acting as Keeshen's teaching assistant despite the fact that she no longer is affiliated with Santa Monica College? Who authorized her into the eCollege third party vendor online software for SMC's course? If she did in fact write Jim Keeshen's bio for this course, she would have known by virtue of her involvement in the Family Guy pilot that it was MacFarlane and not Keeshen who was the actual director of this pitch.

Also notice that Jim Keeshen is again plugging his Day of the Dead short animated film. This gives validity to Keeshen's statements that "Right now I'm just using them so that I can finish my film" and "Lying is better than not lying." Should Keeshen be allowed to use a publicly funded educational institute for his own self-serving purposes and to make false statements to its student body? Who will intervene in SMC's pantheon of administrators to stop this kind of abuse and have this false information removed? Or should Fox Broadcasting and Seth MacFarlane step in to set the record straight? Only time will tell.

-- Des Manttari,
Editor-in-Chief,
Phoenix Genesis

(c) 2006: Phoenix Genesis/MBS LP


Feel free to link or print this; just include the SAVE SMC URL: http://savesmc.blogspot.com/

Technorati Tags: Santa Monica College, Academy of Entertainment and Technology, storytelling, eCollege, Jim Keeshen, Jim Keeshen Productions, Family Guy pilot, Seth MacFarlane, lawsuit, Fox Broadcasting, News and politics, Barbara Ziering, California Public Records Act, fraud