Personal Heroes: Falling for Chuck Jones

This week, I introduced a distant friend to the cartoons of Chuck Jones, an experience that opened their eyes and made them laugh out loud at the antics displayed in "One Froggy Evening," while simultaneously feeling the melancholy charm of its story of an entrepreneur who discovers a singing frog...but only when he sees it. Everybody else just sees a frog ("Burrup") and think he's a crack-pot. And...again...it made me flash that it was a story about love—nobody sees the frog the way this guy does (Yeah, he wants to profit off him—and there the analogy breaks down—but still, it's there, a cautionary tale), and it is his downfall. Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese, there was no greater combination.

Here's a re-post of my Chuck Jones appreciation.

Chuck Jones is a big hero of mine, because I grew up watching cartoons. My favorites were always the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies—the products of Termite Terrace, the animated unit at Warner Bros. And of the anarchic geniuses to sync a spitting lisp onto a character,* Charles M. Jones was my favorite. His cartoons had a bit more artistry, a better sense of design. That’s not why I liked them when I first encountered them, sitting on the floor in my ‘jammies, the television looming above me. I liked them because they were meaner.

What I didn’t know at the time was they had a sense of gentleness and tragedy and of doomed inevitability that just tickled me pink--that combination of sweet and sour with a cruel cynicism that delighted me.

I didn’t know how powerful Jones’ influence on me was until I was in college, majoring in communications. In a rather useless assignment for some theory class or other, they were showing one of Jones’ Oscar-winning cartoons “The Dot and the Line,” with the sound off, the challenge for the students being to determine what the cartoon was “communicating.” Easy, right? Except for the fact that the cast for “The Dot and the Line” consisted of…a dot…and…a line. No faces or expressions were painted on either character. They were your basic black India ink dot and line. The film had a narration, but the class was not privy to it. Despite all of that, I was able to suss out exactly what was going on throughout (even though I had never seen it before), and even interpret what emotions the…”dot” and the…”line” were going through. I was the only one in the class to do so.

Now, this had nothing to do with me, but everything to do with Jones’ story-telling style being consistent from cartoon to cartoon. This is the guy who made a cartoon featuring musical notes, for sufferin’ succotash. So, when the dot in a moment of sadness sighed, Jones had a way of animating that…even for just a dot…that was distinctive, and for me, identifiable.

Charles M. Jones Esq. is also the only hero I’ve ever met and had a sit-down discussion with. When I worked at KIRO Newsradio, Jones was selling animation cells and was appearing at a gallery (I believe, at the time, owned by his daughter) downtown, and he’d agreed to appear on the Jim French program. He was in his early 70’s at the time, and my impression of him was that he was just like his cartoons—a short, sweet-looking little man, who was as crusty as all get-out. I had him sign an ad for the video of the Jones compilation movie “The Bugs-Bunny-Road-Runner Movie” (“Where the hell’d you find THAT!?” he rasped.) We had a nice, casual conversation before he went into the studio, and, for some reason, we got into the origins of Marvin the Martian. “Well,” he said, “I based it on Mars, the Roman God of War. I figured with the helmet and the armored toga, I could get away with showing what an angry little guy he was with a minimum of work—so I based it on that.” “So….” I said. “What about the sneakers?” There was a Jonesian pause (approximately 48 frames) while he squinted at me like I was an idiot. “I LIKE sneakers!!” he yelled. I howled, and he chuckled. He was called in to do the interview and that was that. There were a couple of other times I had planned to see him, but at one I was booked to work, and the other—a talk and a showing of his adaptation of his buddy, Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” at the King Cinema, he was too sick to attend. His brilliant background artist, Maurice Noble, came instead.

He died on February 22, 2002, at the age of 89.

I have an animation cell of his that has Daffy Duck (from “Duck Amuck”) holding up a sign that says “Sound, Please!” that I treasure.
 

Acme Poem Company

Nature’s Cruel. Chuck Jones is crueler.
Time stops for the revelatory pause.
The realization, the brief reaction.
Hesitations of inviolable laws
The cosmic clockwork has seized its gears
to present your moment of doom.
Then, once you’ve noticed, it’s on with the show.
Now, wait for it...............
...................................boom!

There are quite a few Chuck Jones cartoons hovering around the web (but they disappear like zephyrs once the Warner Brothers get wind of it). My favorite for sheer inventiveness in toying with the cartoon-form and all of its possibilities is "Duck Amuck," one of the simplest ideas for a cartoon in concept, but is dizzying in its timing and the ability to build on and vary what is essentially a "one joke" concept. It's also a nifty little meta-commentary on the realtionship of animator with animatee.*

[Looney Tunes] Duck Amuck (1953) from Arnaud TISSEYRE on Vimeo.

I can also present, for the time being (as it's been snatched from my clutches before!) "One Froggy Evening." If you’ve never seen it, frankly, I’m amazed—but you’re in for a treat. And, another plus—except for a few songs, it tells its story with no dialog—only visually. Steven Spielberg calls it "The Citizen Kane of cartoons." It, like “Duck Amuck” and Jones’ Wagner parody with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” are part of the National Film Registry, for being "among the most culturally, historically and aesthetically significant films of our time."

Vezi mai multe din Desene animate pe 220.ro

* The lisp was a secret dig at the animator’s boss, Leon Schlesinger, who had a prominent lisp and was loathed by all his employees, and who seemed blissfully unaware of the jokes at his expense.

** The other thing I love about it is that I just know Michael Maltese and Chuck Jones were trying to come up with a concept, and Maltese started with "Daffy comes out and..." and stopped, and they looked at each other blankly, and when they had wracked their brains enough, they just threw out all the rules and went "free-form" with the thing. Desperation and deadlines make you bold as well as crazy.

Chuck Jones’ Official Web Page
The Chuck Jones Center for Creativity
Chuck Jones on Toonopedia
A Chuck Jones Fan Site
Chuck Jones at IMDB
Chuck Jones’ Wikipedia entry
Roger Ebert on Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones section of the “Academy of Achievement”
PBS’ Great Performances: “Chuck Jones-Extremes and In-Betweens”
A comprehensive List of Jones’ cartoons
An essay on Jones from “Senses of Cinema”

Personal Heroes: Falling for Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones is a big hero of mine, because I grew up watching cartoons. My favorites were always the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies—the products of Termite Terrace, the animated unit at Warner Bros. And of the anarchic geniuses to sync a spitting lisp onto a character,* Charles M. Jones was my favorite. His cartoons had a bit more artistry, a better sense of design. That’s not why I liked them when I first encountered them, sitting on the floor in my ‘jammies, the television looming above me. I liked them because they were meaner.

What I didn’t know at the time was they had a sense of gentleness and tragedy and of doomed inevitability that just tickled me pink--that combination of sweet and sour with a cruel cynicism that delighted me. I didn’t know how powerful Jones’ influence on me was until I was in college, majoring in communications. In a rather useless assignment for some theory class or other, they were showing one of Jones’ Oscar-winning cartoons “The Dot and the Line,” with the sound off, the challenge for the students being to determine what the cartoon was “communicating.” Easy, right? Except for the fact that the cast for “The Dot and the Line” consisted of…a dot…and…a line. No faces or expressions were painted on either character. They were your basic black India ink dot and line. The film had a narration, but the class was not privy to it. Despite all of that, I was able to suss out exactly what was going on throughout (even though I had never seen it before), and even interpret what emotions the…”dot” and the…”line” were going through. I was the only one in the class to do so.

Now, this had nothing to do with me, but everything to do with Jones’ story-telling style being consistent from cartoon to cartoon. This is the guy who made a cartoon featuring musical notes, for sufferin’ succotash. So, when the dot in a moment of sadness sighed, Jones had a way of animating that…even for just a dot…that was distinctive, and for me, identifiable.

Charles M. Jones Esq. is also the only hero I’ve ever met and had a sit-down discussion with. When I worked at KIRO Newsradio, Jones was selling animation cells and was appearing at a gallery (I believe, at the time, owned by his daughter) downtown, and he’d agreed to appear on the Jim French program. He was in his early 70’s at the time, and my impression of him was that he was just like his cartoons—a short, sweet-looking little man, who was as crusty as all get-out. I had him sign an ad for the video of the Jones compilation movie “The Bugs-Bunny-Road-Runner Movie” (“Where the hell’d you find THAT!?” he rasped.) We had a nice, casual conversation before he went into the studio, and, for some reason, we got into the origins of Marvin the Martian. “Well,” he said, “I based it on Mars, the Roman God of War. I figured with the helmet and the armored toga, I could get away with showing what an angry little guy he was with a minimum of work—so I based it on that.” “So….” I said. “What about the sneakers?” There was a Jonesian pause (approximately 48 frames) while he squinted at me like I was an idiot. “I LIKE sneakers!!” he yelled. I howled, and he chuckled. He was called in to do the interview and that was that. There were a couple of other times I had planned to see him, but at one I was booked to work, and the other—a talk and a showing of his adaptation of his buddy, Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” at the King Cinema, he was too sick to attend. His brilliant background artist, Maurice Noble, came instead.

He died on February 22, 2002, at the age of 89.

I have an animation cell of his that has Daffy Duck (from “Duck Amuck”) holding up a sign that says “Sound, Please!” that I treasure.

Acme Poem Company

Nature’s Cruel. Chuck Jones is crueler.
Time stops for the revelatory pause.
The realization, the brief reaction
Hesitations of inviolable laws
The cosmic clockwork has seized its gears
to present your moment of doom.
Then, once you’ve noticed, it’s on with the show.
Now, wait for it...............
..............................boom!

There are quite a few Chuck Jones cartoons hovering around the web (but they disappear like zephyrs once the Warner Brothers get wind of it). My favorite for sheer inventiveness in toying with the cartoon-form and all of its possibilities is "Duck Amuck," one of the simplest ideas for a cartoon in concept, but is dizzying in its timing and the ability to build on and vary what is essentially a "one joke" concept. It's also a nifty little meta-commentary on the realtionship of animator with animatee*

I can also present, for the time being (as it's been snatched from my clutches before!) "One Froggy Evening." If you’ve never seen it, frankly, I’m amazed—but you’re in for a treat. And, another plus—except for a few songs, it tells its story with no dialog—only visually. Steven Spielberg calls it "The Citizen Kane of cartoons." It, like “Duck Amuck” and Jones’ Wagner parody with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” are part of the National Film Registry, as being "among the most culturally, historically and aesthetically significant films of our time."

* The lisp was a secret dig at the animator’s boss, Leon Schlesinger, who had a prominent lisp and was loathed by all his employees, and who seemed blissfully unaware of the jokes at his expense.

** The other thing I love about it is that I just know Michael Maltese and Chuck Jones were trying to come up with a concept, and Maltese started with "Daffy comes out and..." and stopped, and they looked at each other blankly, and when they had wracked their brains enough, they just threw out all the rules and went "free-form" with the thing. Desperation and deadlines make you bold as well as crazy.

Chuck Jones’ Official Web Page
The Chuck Jones Center for Creativity
Chuck Jones on Toonopedia
A Chuck Jones Fan Site
Chuck Jones at IMDB
Chuck Jones’ Wikipedia entry
Roger Ebert on Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones section of the “Academy of Achievement”
PBS’ Great Performances: “Chuck Jones-Extremes and In-Betweens”
A comprehensive List of Jones’ cartoons
An essay on Jones from “Senses of Cinema”

Don't Make a Scene: Rabbit Seasoning

The Story: "Pronoun trouble..."

For the beginning of Fall, we present this Scene, which takes place in Fall, in the second of Chuck Jones' "Hunting Trilogy"* with the troika of Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

If you grew up watching "Rabbit Seasoning" on ABC, CBS, or the WB, you probably didn't see this scene in quite this way as it featured Daffy Duck being shot in the face and disfigured...many times. The networks would, instead, cut to a freeze-frame of by-stander Bugs during the actual rifle explosion, fearing that "Little Johnny" at home would try to repeat the stunt with "Little Mary" (or vice versa) and see if their face got re-arranged using Big Daddy's unsecured fire-arms.**

Chuck Jones, the director of this cartoon, saw the children watching his cartoons on TV another way. As he demonstrated with a Road-Runner short (entitled "Zip Zip Hooray!") he saw them as cowboy-hatted little zombies, sitting six inches from the screen.

Probably more accurate.

As pictorially conscious of movement and timing as Jones was, Michael Maltese, his frequent collaborator, was punctilious in his words. His concepts were off the wall, and his choice of invectives encyclopedic ("You're desthpicable!"), his gags were elegant and simple, delivered with a sadist's zeal. Don't believe me? Watch Daffy Duck caught between Bugs Bunny's twisting of language and Elmer Fudd's blasting of features. Comedy (like celebrity deaths) comes in three's: Here Maltese sets up a simple confusion turning on one word ("Pronoun trouble") ending in violence, a calm review of that act ending in violence, and a change of the conditions (where it happens) also ending in violence. It's the same gag, but built on the previous instance and its differentiation that still leads to the inevitability of violence is what makes it funny.

That, and the different ways Daffy's beak gets rearranged on his skull, which in itself is hilarious.

But it all comes out of character—that was part of the magic of the Jones/Maltese collaborations. The comedy comes from character. Bugs is the cagey one, Elmer's the dumb and easily suggestible one—merely a pawn in the Bugs/Daffy tussle of wits—and Daffy is the vain-glorious one, who thinks he's smart, is smart to a degree, but lets his emotions lead him to disaster. It's when Daffy stops thinking and explodes in a hypocritically righteous fit, that Elmer takes the cue and fires. Bugs, who never loses his cool, never gets his fur singed.

Lessons, anyone?

Yeah. Whatever. It's still funny.

Before we do the scene, just a side-note: although one tries, one can't replicate the superb timing that Jones and Co. employ in this cartoon. For that, we have the film itself positioned conveniently under our presentation. Feel free to enjoy.

With that, just as surely as Music Director Carl W. Stalling will put it on the soundtrack, "a-hunting we will go."

Now, it should be noted that in LNTAM's home-state of Washington (coincidentally Chuck Jones' home state as well, he being born in Spokane), there is no season for European rabbit, as they can be hunted year-round (given the hunter is properly licensed) but cottontail rabbits and snowshoe hares cannot be hunted until September 1, 2010. Ducks can be hunted October 17th through the 21st, at which point they're given a chance to think it over or re-group and mount their reprisal attack, then hunting begins again October 24th through January 31st.

Just to clear up any confusion caused by this scene.

The Set-Up: It's duck hunting season. And the Duck, Daffy (in both name and temperament) is hedging his bets by providing that most thick of human beings, hunter Elmer Fudd ("Huh-hu-hu-hu-hu-hu-huh") with deflecting signage saying that it is, rather, rabbit-hunting season..and, oh, by the way, "Bugs" Bunny lives right over there. As we join the scene, Daffy—in hiding—has just watched Elmer shoot his wad down a rabbit hole, while its resident sidles up to the befuddled Fudd with his typical ice-breaker.

Acthion!

Bugs Bunny: [echoing] Ehhh...what's up, doc?

Elmer Fudd: I'm hunting wabbits. It's wabbit season!**

Bugs: Rabbit season, huh? Havin' any luck?

Elmer: Well, no, as a matter of fact, I haven't seen...

Elmer: ...a wabbit yet!

Daffy Duck: [spitting, fuming] Thith ith prepostherous-sth-sth!

Daffy: Sthay, what's the matter with you, anyway?

Daffy: Don't you know a rabbit when you sthee one? Hmm?

(Daffy grabs Elmer by the neck and points at Bugs, then pushes him upwards and hands him his gun)

Bugs: It's true, Doc; I'm a rabbit alright. Would you like to shoot me now or wait 'til you get home?

Daffy: Shoot him now! Shoot him now!

Bugs: You keep outta this! He doesn't have to shoot you now!

Daffy: He does stho have to shoot me now!

Daffy: [to Elmer] I demand that you shoot me now!

Daffy: Nyeah!

[Elmer looks at the camera, unsure if Daffy knows what he's talking about. As Daffy sticks his tongue out at Bugs, he is shot.]

[Daffy puts his beak in its place and pushes the tongue back in and walks back over to Bugs, gun smoke pouring out of his nostrils.]

Daffy:[to Bugs] Let'sth run through that again.

Bugs: Okay!

Bugs:[deadpan] Would you like to shoot me now or wait till you get home.

Daffy:[similarly] Shoot him now; shoot him now.

Bugs:[as before] You keep outta this, he doesn't have to shoot you now.

Daffy:[re-animated] Hah! That’sth it! Hold it right there!

Daffy: [to audience] Pronoun trouble.

Daffy: [to Bugs] It'sth not "He doesn't have to shoot you now";

Daffy: ...it's "He doesn't have to shoot me now!"
[Pause]

Daffy: [angrily] Well, I sthay he does have to shoot me now!!

Daffy: [to Elmer] Stho shoot me now!

[Elmer obliges and lets him have it. Daffy puts his beak back to normal and rushes to Bugs in a pose with him pointing a finger at him with his mouth open.]

Bugs: Ye-es?

[Daffy looks at the camera and forcibly pulls his arm back and closes his beak.]

Daffy: [shakes his head] Oh no you don't. [shakes head again]

Daffy: Not again, sorry.

[Daffy walks over to Elmer.]
Daffy: This time we'll try it from the other end.

Daffy: Look, you're a hunter, right?
Elmer: Wight!
Daffy: And it'sth rabbit season, right?
Elmer: Wight!

Bugs: [interrupting, pointing at Daffy] And if he was a rabbit what would you do?

Daffy: Yeah, if you're stho sthmart, if I was a rabbit what would you do?

Elmer: Well, I'd... [Points gun at Daffy]

Daffy: [Looks at the camera in horror] Not again! [gets shot]

[Daffy puts his beak back and walks over to Bugs with a deadpan expression.]

Daffy: [re-animated] Ha-ha-ha, very funny, ha-ha-ha! [resumes deadpan expression]

"Rabbit Seasoning"

Words by Michael Maltese

Pictures by Maurice Noble and Charles M. Jones

"Rabbit Seasoning" is available on DVD from Warners Home Video.

* The first was "Rabbit Fire" (set in Spring) and the third "Duck! Rabbit! Duck!" (set in Winter).

** Writer Steve Englehart once said that the networks censored their cartoons as if children were suggestible morons possessed with the strength of gorillas—actually not a bad strategy for going into parenthood...or town meetings. I can actually imagine Elmer Fudd saying that he didn't want nationalized health-care...and didn't want anybody touching his Medi-care, either! "Yeah, but y'see...oh, nevermind").

*** Wherever possible I've tried to re-create, phonetically, the thound...er, sound...of the Warner Brothers character's speaking voices: Elmer, of course, can't say his "R's" and Daffy is just one of the many Warners characters who have a spitting lisp—an impediment shared by the animation department's old boss, the detested Leon Schlesinger, whom the cartoon creators would openly mock. 'Tweren't in Disneyland, kids!