DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. At this point, the "Looney Tunes" cartoon franchise has been around for almost a century. Warner Bros. launched the first cartoon under that name in 1930 and spent the next several decades supplying cinemas, and then television, with animated shorts that delighted adults as well as kids. The animators, who over the years included Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones, were brilliantly funny. So was Mel Blanc, who provided the voices for almost all of the characters, from Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck to Elmer Fudd and Pepe Le Pew.
Composer Carl Stalling supplied the memorable music for many episodes, and the combined cannon included such 1950s classics as the "Rabbit Of Seville" and "What's Opera, Doc?" both of which were directed by Jones, with music by Stalling and voices by Blanc. These cartoons and characters were widely adored by several generations, including mine. A streak of anarchy and a lot of violence ran through most of them. But as comedian Dustin Nickerson observed recently after trying to introduce these classic cartoons to his young daughter, they haven't necessarily aged well. More than a few characters have speech impediments, he notes, and lots of them exhibit very aggressive behavior.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DUSTIN NICKERSON: OK, you don't like that. Well, check it out. There's this skunk.
(LAUGHTER)
NICKERSON: She goes, what's he do? I go, he holds women against their will.
(LAUGHTER)
NICKERSON: Yeah. They try and get away, but Pepe won't let them.
(LAUGHTER)
NICKERSON: And all the other characters, what they're doing is they're trying to kill one another. You know how in your shows, they're all friends. They're not in these ones. They're trying to murder one another. There's this coyote who wants to kill this bird.
BIANCULLI: The "Looney Tunes" franchise also got little respect from Warner Bros. itself. A few years ago, the studio, under new corporate management, shelved a completed movie, "Coyote Vs. Acme," before its release as a financial write-off. The film comedy was based on a 1990 New Yorker article by Ian Frazier, who imagined a lawsuit filed by lawyers representing one of the familiar "Looney Tunes" cartoon characters, Wile E. Coyote. Said Coyote, of course, is the persistent but hapless predator who was in constant feudal pursuit of his fleet-footed quarry the Road Runner. The Coyote never succeeded in his efforts, despite devising endless schemes employing rocket skates, spring-powered shoes and other devices purchased from the Acme Company. As his lawyers alleged in that New Yorker parody piece, quote, "Mr. Coyote states that on 85 separate occasions, he has purchased of the Acme Company - hereinafter, Defendant - through that company's mail order department, certain products which did cause him bodily injury due to defects in manufacture or improper cautionary labeling," unquote. The film version intermingled cartoon and human characters like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," with the animated Wile E. Coyote sharing the same screen as his human lawyer, played by Will Forte. The Coyote hires the lawyer after seeing him on a low-rent TV ad, the kind of small-screen huckstering Bob Odenkirk's sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman used to do on "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "COYOTE VS. ACME")
WILL FORTE: (As Kevin Avery) Have you ever set a big stack of TNT on the road, hoping to blow up your nemesis, but the detonator itself explodes? Have you ever pulled the rip cord of your parachute, and only a bunch of silverware comes out? It's not your fault. Acme is evil.
BIANCULLI: It's a very clever, very funny movie but was buried deep in the Warner Bros. Discovery vaults until it was rescued this year by an independent distributor, which purchased the rights for $50 million and finally released it in theaters last month. "Coyote Vs. Acme," written by Samy Burch and directed by Dave Green, has been shown in relatively few theaters nationwide but already has made almost all that money back in the U.S., as well as an additional 30 million worldwide.
Both the movie plot and the film's history are delightful stories of perseverance. So today on FRESH AIR, we're saluting "Coyote Vs. Acme" and the long cartoon history it celebrates by listening back to an interview with "Looney Tunes" animator Chuck Jones. The cartoon that introduced the Road Runner and his nemesis, Wile L. Coyote, was "Fast And Furry-ous" in 1949. It was directed by Chuck Jones and introduced the running gag that recurred ever since, the coyote ordering mail-order merchandise to try, and ultimately fail, to catch the elusive Road Runner. In later cartoons, that company was identified as Acme, which promptly delivered the faulty goods. That inspired the New Yorker article that inspired the movie "Coyote Vs. Acme." And in a way, Chuck Jones, with his Acme idea, also might be said to have inspired the entire rapid-delivery concept of today's real-life equivalent, Amazon.
Chuck Jones worked at Warner Bros. from 1933 until the studio closed down its cartoon division in 1963. He then formed his own production company and kept producing and directing until his death in 2002. Terry Gross spoke to him in 1989. Jones also wrote an autobiography called "Chuck Amuck." That title is borrowed from "Duck Amuck," which was the cartoon Jones made about cartooning. In it, Daffy Duck finds himself at the mercy of a fickle cartoonist. Daffy opens the cartoon as a brave musketeer, but the cartoonist keeps changing the scenery on him to the most inappropriate settings - a farm, the Arctic, Hawaii. The cartoonist eventually erases not only the background, but Daffy himself.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MERRIE MELODIES")
MEL BLANC: (As Daffy Duck) Would it be too much to ask if we could make up our minds?
(As Daffy Duck, singing) Dashing through the snow, ya ha ha ha ha. Through the fields we go, laughing all the way. Farewell to thee, farewell to the thee. The wind will carry back our sad refrain. One last embrace, before we say...
(As Daffy Duck) Buster, it may come as a complete surprise to you to find that this is an animated cartoon and that in animated cartoons they have scenery. And in all the years I - all right, wise guy. Where am I?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
TERRY GROSS: You changed a lot of the characters who you worked with over the years. Can you describe when you first started directing Daffy Duck, who was always my favorite - when you started directing Daffy Duck, what was he like? And then maybe you could tell us a little bit of the character changes that you brought to that - to Daffy?
CHUCK JONES: Well, it's a little difficult to isolate them exactly as to what I contributed, but I - all the characters I felt were part of me. Particularly Daffy and the coyote, because they made the kind of mistakes that most of us make only multiplied a bit. But Daffy was an interesting character, I think, because he could - he would rush in and fear to tread at the same time, and he also could be fawning and overbearing at the same time. And I think that happens with very many of us when we - sometimes in the reverse, when we go in to talk to the boss and ask for a raise, we're overbearing. When we get inside, we're fawning. But Daffy is both at the same time.
At the beginning he was just crazy, as was Bugs. Even in the first great - the "Wild Hare" that Tex Avery directed, the character was really kind of mad. More like Harpo Marx, perhaps. And I was never comfortable with the character unless I can understand him, and I can't understand crazy people. So I always tried to sort of pasteurize my characters to find out who they are. The who is the whole point about character animation is not what - it isn't what a character looks like, or indeed how it's drawn.
GROSS: You sound like a method animator.
JONES: Well, I guess so. I don't think that I could do it unless I cared about the characters.
GROSS: In your cartoon, "Duck Amuck," why did you choose Daffy Duck as the character that was going to be at the whim of the cartoonist?
JONES: Well, I tried it later with Bugs Bunny, and it didn't work. Fortunately, I did "Duck Amuck" first, then I did one called "Rabbit Rampage." And he also had the same problem, and he's - the person in this case turned out to be Elmer Fudd that was moving him around. But it didn't work because that's not the kind of a person that Bugs is. Bugs is a comic hero, you see, as compared with a comic wimp, which would go back to all the great comedians, starting with Chaplin and Buster Keaton and all the rest of them. They were - they're all kind of semi-losers, aren't they? They're more like us. But I was like Daffy because he would continue beyond where I would stop, simply because I'd be afraid of the community would think of me. Daffy continues. So when I was working with him, all I had to do was reach down inside of me and bring the Daffy up to the surface and spread it out and take a look at it and see what would I do if I had Daffy Duck's courage?
GROSS: You told us a little bit about how you changed Daffy Duck and how you drew him a little differently, different characteristics you gave him. What about Bugs Bunny? What are some of the changes you brought to Bugs' life?
JONES: Well, I think one of the nice things about - there were three units there. After 1946, in fact, all the films that Warner now owns were directed by Friz Freleng or Bob McKimson or me. Bob Clampett left in '46 and Tex around '44. So we had these wonderful sessions when I would get an idea for a film or my writer and I would get an idea for a film, we'd call in the other directors and writers, and we'd sit down and have this session, which we called a yes session, which meant for two hours, nobody could say anything negative. If you couldn't contribute to the idea, your job was to shut up. But usually the ideas were pretty good when they came in.
The result of this was that we were all involved with each other's picture. Although each director had absolute control of what went into his own pictures. But there was no internecine warfare. We liked each other, and we wanted each other to succeed. But if I gave a great gag to Friz Freleng, and he used it, and it appeared on the screen and got an enormous laugh, naturally I wanted to go out and throw up. But I - because that's human nature. That's Daffy Duck in me.
GROSS: When you did your recording sessions, the voice sessions with Mel Blanc, what kind of suggestions would you make to him about the characteristics that he should try to be getting at through his voice?
JONES: Well, for one thing, I would have completely laid out the picture, all the key drawings that I would be giving to the animators had already been done, and I would already have finished the exact dialogue. Mel never sat in on story things or anything like that, and in no way could we have let any actor, Mel or anybody else, ad lib because we had to make pictures exactly to six minutes. So the dialogue was all carefully planned to fit into an exact six-minute format. So when I was ready for the actor, usually Mel, about an hour before we would record, I'd call him in. The marvel of Mel was that he was such a brilliant actor that he could get - immediately get the idea of what you were talking about.
GROSS: All the great characters of the Warner Bros. cartoons are all animals. They're animals with the traits of people, but they're not people. They're ducks and rabbits and skunks. What are some of the advantages of using animals instead of people for the cartoons?
JONES: Well, we had ample precedents to go on. I mean, going back to Aesop's fables and Kipling and even Mark Twain did several things about animals, and of course Beatrix Potter and so many others. But the main thing is that it's easier to humanize animals than it is to humanize humans. And as you know from seeing "Snow White" and the poor princes in all the Disney films that it's very difficult to animate human beings.
And when we did animate them, they didn't look very much like human beings. I mean, Elmer Fudd doesn't look any more like a human being than Bugs Bunny looks like a rabbit. Bugs is obviously not a rabbit. Rabbits look more like - the average rabbit looks very much more like a pillow than anything else. However, I think that taking a rabbit and making him as heroic as Bugs Bunny is a lot more easy than it is to take a human being and make him like Bugs with Bugs' characteristics.
GROSS: You always believe that in a cartoon world, that you have to create certain rules of the universe and the characters always have to live within those rules. Give us an example through, say, the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote cartoons, 'cause you created those characters.
JONES: Yes.
GROSS: What - tell us a little bit about the universe that you created them in.
JONES: Well, there are several things that happen. In all comedy, the more you channelize, the more you narrow the - your character down, the better it gets for some reason. Take Charlie Chaplin when he - once he got that little costume, look how much he was restricted in what he can do. He can only be the little tramp, and he also limited the little tramp in - pretty much into living in a city.
Well, we felt that when we when we got the Road Runner and Coyote going, it was evident that they both lived in the Southwestern American desert. And so you immediately say to yourself, they - that's where they live. That's where they got to live. And the fact that the Road Runner is a roadrunner means that he should stay on the road. And there were a number of other rules about that - that the roadrunner can never harm the coyote. The coyote can only harm himself by buying those unfortunate things he gets from the Acme Corporation. And the more rules you apply - and you never hear any other sound except the beep, beep.
And I found that with - going back then to Bugs Bunny. Bugs Bunny is such a powerful character, and he's a comic hero rather than a loser. He's such a powerful character that he could become a terrible bully. So we always started Bugs - in every picture, we started him in a natural rabbit environment, minding his own business, a quiet-living rabbit, something like Rex Harrison, perhaps, before he got involved with "My Fair Lady" ladies. And then someone comes along and tries to deprive him his food or his life or his - you know, or sending him up on a rocket or something. And then he has to fight back, you see. And once engaged in the war, then he's happily engaged. But without that, he would just be a bully.
And there are some characters, like Heckle and Jeckle and even Woody Woodpecker would sometimes seem to go out and just heckle people for no particular reason. Bugs never did that. And this was vital and necessary if you wanted the character to be believable and for people to care about him.
BIANCULLI: Chuck Jones speaking to Terry Gross in 1989. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR. We're noting the triumphant arrival in theaters of "Coyote Vs. Acme," the movie that was shelved by Warner Bros. Discovery years ago but recently was rescued and released. Let's get back to Terry's 1989 interview with Chuck Jones, director of some of the most classic Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Road Runner cartoons.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: You know, I grew up on the Warner Bros.' cartoons, and the older I'd get, the more jokes I'd get. But I never realized I was missing anything when I was young, you know, because I always liked them. And now as an adult, I see things that I didn't see when I thought I was getting all the jokes when I was an older kid. Did anyone at Warner Bros. ever give you an argument that certain things there would go over the head of the - the heads of the audience?
JONES: Hell. Yes, they did. But we didn't pay attention to them. We had - we always had going battles on with our producers. So they would issue edicts like, don't make any pictures about bullfights. Bullfights aren't funny. But, I mean, we would say, well, gee, obviously, the guy has always been wrong. So we made a picture about a bullfight, and it turned out fine. No, we had very little problem. Our - fortunately, our producers were not very bright.
GROSS: I remember once seeing a short film that was a combination of kind of pornographic cartoons that some of the Disney animators drew in their off hours.
JONES: Yeah.
GROSS: And it ended up getting into circulation. Did you guys ever do anything like that at Warner Bros.?
JONES: Sure.
GROSS: Yeah?
JONES: Yeah, everybody did that. In fact, sometimes, in a Pepe Le Pew picture, I would - I'd put a little salacious one frame, one-twenty-fourth of a second. I'd actually put it in the picture. And then I'd ask one of the - ask the office manager to come in, and I said, there's a little glitch here. There's sort of a hop at this point. I don't know what it - I can't figure out what it is. Then I'd bring it to a stop in the Moviola, and - you know that thing when you look through and there it would be, you know? Well, I know nobody could ever see it because it was a twenty-fourth of a second. But then he would go into shock, you know, and we always had a frame to replace it just in case. But I enjoyed doing that - kind of put him in his place.
GROSS: So did he make you take that out, or did those frames stay in?
JONES: No, no, no. I told him it was too late. It would cost money to take it out, and nobody would ever see it.
GROSS: (Laughter).
JONES: But I had already inserted it, and it wasn't there anyway. But I did it to see if I couldn't put him into - as we used to say, reduce him to moccasins.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Were any of your scenes or any of your language ever censored?
JONES: No, no. That was left to the brilliant people at the networks. And they take out things that make the whole thing incomprehensible.
GROSS: Did that happen a lot - that you felt your cartoons were butchered when they got on TV?
JONES: Oh, yes, they were, both at CBS and ABC, to name a few of the guilty ones. What's curious to me is that they feel it was necessary to chew up those cartoons. But Nickelodeon, which is a program that's supposedly designed for children, sees no need to do that.
GROSS: I'd imagine that the cartoons that had gotten the most objections because of the violence were the Road Runner cartoons, since they're all chase.
JONES: Well, that's absurd, though, because the Road Runner and the Coyote - the Road Runner never harmed the Coyote. The Coyote was only a victim of his own ineptitude. So the idea that there was any violence involved there is ridiculous.
GROSS: Did you ever think of yourself as doing a pop kind of surrealism?
JONES: I did some, they tell me. But I never did anything, you know, by sitting down and saying, I'm doing this for a reason.
GROSS: Right.
JONES: What I was trying to do is to develop the characters that I understood and to have fun doing it. And that was the whole secret of Warner Bros. cartoons - is a bunch of people happened to come together from varied walks of life, all of whom were enormously interested in making films that were fun to do.
BIANCULLI: Chuck Jones speaking to Terry Gross in 1989. He died in 2002. "Coyote Vs. Acme," the little movie that could, is still chugging along in theaters nationwide. We'll end our animated salute to "Coyote Vs. Acme" with another "Looney Tunes" clip. This is from "Daffy Duck For President," a 2004 cartoon based on the 1997 children's book of the same name, written and illustrated by Chuck Jones.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DAFFY DUCK FOR PRESIDENT")
JOE ALASKEY: (As Bugs Bunny) Eh. What's up, Duck?
(As Daffy Duck) What's up, is it? I'll tell you what's up. When I'm president, I'm going to pass a law that'll outlaw rabbits. That, my poor, unfortunate, soon-to-be condemned species, is what is up.
(As Bugs Bunny) Very ingenious solution to a long-smoldering problem. But there's just one slight technicality. The president can't pass laws.
(As Daffy Duck) The president can't pass what? That's ridiculous. The president can do anything, anything he wants. He's just like a king. Only better.
(As Bugs Bunny) He's better, all right, but he's no king. Says so right here. You're outnumbered, good buddy, by the Founding Fathers.
(As Daffy Duck) Founding Fathers. Ha bunch of mewling infants, no doubt. What do they know? The Constitution. Let's see here. Oh, yeah. The president is responsible for enforcing the laws. Congress makes the laws. You mean I've got to run for Congress?
(As Bugs Bunny) Well, cheer up, Doc. There's been a lot of funny boys sent to Congress, but you may be the first duck to be elected. At least you're not a lame duck. Ya ca ca ca. Ya ca ca ca. Ya ca ca ca. Ya ca ca ca.
BIANCULLI: Coming up, jazz historian Kevin Whitehead has an appreciation of Cassandra Wilson, the jazz singer, songwriter and producer who died earlier this month. We'll also play an interview with her from our archives. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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