Doodle for Saul Bass' 93rd Birthday

The Doodle pays homage to the uneasy and ever-shifting lines of “Psycho’s” sequence; to the heroin addict’s forearm from Preminger’s “The Man With the Golden Arm”; to the power structures of “Advise & Consert”; to the fiercely liberating “Spartacus” poster art for Kubrick; to the kinetic streetscape of “West Side Story”; to the watchful eye and psychological spiral of “Vertigo.” We get the racing and disorienting lines of “North by Northwest” (a third Hitchcock nod, if you’re counting); the segmented body from Preminger’s “Anatomy of a Murder”; the LED glitz of “Ocean’s 11”; and the literal globe-hopping running clock from “Around the World in 80 Days.” Bass is also famous for such sequences as Scorsese’s “Casino,” “GoodFellas” and “Cape Fear”; the nostalgic “That’s Entertainment, Part 2”; and the whimsical “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” (and for obviously inspiring a direct descendant today: the opening “falling man” sequence from TV’s “Mad Men”).

And the entire Doodle (created in Illustrator and animated in After Effects) is smartly set to the 1961 Dave Brubeck Quartet song “Unsquare Dance.” (Bass, the Doodle artist says, was a Brubeck fan.)