In the Bleachers

Former Lake Oswego Review sports editor and cartoonist Steve Moore hits the big time with his nationally syndicated comic panel “In the Bleachers” and the recent release of “Open Season,” a full-length animated film that Moore wrot

By Cori Bolger

The Lake Oswego Review, Oct 26, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Steve Moore

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As the saying goes, everyone who’s anyone had to get their start somewhere. For nationally syndicated cartoonist Steve Moore, that “somewhere” happened to be the Lake Oswego Review.

Fresh out of Oregon State University, Moore breezed into the newspaper’s office one day back in the 1970s and asked for a job – any job.

That same day, he walked out the newspaper’s sports editor and in-house editorial cartoonist.

With his boss’ encouragement, Moore wrote about high school sports, played photographer and illustrated humorous happenings around town, where comedic fodder seemed endless.

“It was really that wide open,” Moore said by phone from his home in Boise, Idaho. “You couldn’t really do that at the L.A.Times.”

Moore cultivated an appreciation for that small-town gig years later, after he found success as both a newspaperman and the oddball-minded artist behind “In the Bleachers,” a sports comic panel that today can be read in more than 200 newspapers.

An avid sports fan, Moore relishes getting paid for poking fun at the insanity and absurdity of organized athletics.

“I’m not one of those people who put paint on their face for their team,” Moore said. “I love observing people like that. I’m fascinated by the spectacle of sports and I get a lot of ideas from that.”

This fall, Moore added another form of media – film – to his resume upon the release of “Open Season,” an animated movie based on Moore’s original story about domesticated wildlife living off resort town scraps – then getting kicked out.

Now in area theaters, the movie follows the Boog, a domesticated grizzly bear (voiced by Martin Lawrence) who helps his scrawny mule deer friend Elliot (voiced by Ashton Kutcher) escape from Shaw, a mullet-sporting hunter (voiced by Gary Sinise).

When they are accidentally relocated to the wild just as hunting season begins, their life of luxury is turned upside-down. The duo develops a strong bond not only between themselves, but also with the wild animals in their attempt to drive the hunters out of the forest.

“It’s about problem animals being returned to the wild, and about animals turning the tables and being smarter (than humans),” Moore said. “That’s in pretty much every one of my cartoons.”

The idea behind “Open Season” found its start about four years ago, when veteran film producer John Carls approached Moore about using humor from his “In the Bleachers” hunting parodies to create a plotline for a movie.

By that time, Moore had moved up the chain of command to become an executive features editor at the Los Angeles Times and a famed cartoonist with a fanbase.

“My nose was too close to the drawing board” to see the potential for a film, Moore said.

But his comic strip – a series he started when he left the Review for the Maui News in Hawaii – had grown enough for Moore to take a financial risk. The idea of working from home was also looking pretty good to Moore, now a married father of three.

“I have always been a closeted Hollywood wannabe type of guy,” Moore said. “I always wanted to get into Hollywood somewhere, and writing seemed the most obvious way.”

With help from Carls, the story was polished, presented to the company and bought for production.

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