Looney Tunes animator Chuck Jones / Remembering singer Cassandra Wilson
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What is the history and significance of the Looney Tunes characters created by Chuck Jones?
This is Ira Glass. On This American Life, we tell stories about when things change. Like for this guy, David, whose entire life took a sharp, unexpected, and very unpleasant turn. And it did take me a while to realize it's basically because the monkey pressed the button. That's right. Because the monkey pressed the button. Surprising stories
every week, wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Brothers 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, Fritz Freeling, 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 canon 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 Blank.
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.
Okay, you don't like that? Well, check it out. There's this skunk.
She goes, what's he doing? I go, he holds women against their will. Yeah, they try and get away, but Pepe won't let them. 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.
The Looney Tunes franchise also got little respect from Warner Brothers 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 futile pursuit of his fleet-footed quarry, the Roadrunner. 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, Unquote. 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.
Have you ever sat a big stack of TNT on the road hoping to blow up your nemesis, but the detonator itself explodes? Have you ever pulled the ripcord of your parachute and only a bunch of silverware comes out? It's not your fault. Acme is evil.
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 Sammy Birch 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.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the history and significance of the Looney Tunes characters created by Chuck Jones?
0:00–7:30
2
How did Chuck Jones establish the rules for the Road‑Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons?
7:30–13:04
3
Why was the film *Coyote vs Acme* shelved and later revived?
13:04–17:46
4
What insights did Chuck Jones share about directing Daffy Duck and other classic shorts?
17:46–22:21
5
How did Cassandra Wilson’s early career develop and what shaped her unique sound?
22:21–31:05
6
Why does Wilson blend jazz, funk, hip‑hop and blues rather than follow tradition?
31:05–37:12
7
What does Wilson say about interpreting lyrics and improvisation in her recordings?
37:12–44:29
8
How is Cassandra Wilson’s legacy remembered after her passing?
44:29–51:01
Speakers
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