The Evolution of Chuck Jones, the Artist Behind Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck & Other Looney Tunes Legends: A Video Essay

Not­ed car­toon per­son­al­i­ty Bugs Bun­ny has war­bled his way through Wag­ner­ian opera, played every defen­sive posi­tion known to base­ball, styled a monster’s hair…is there any­thing that was­cal­ly wab­bit can­not do?

Yes, in fact. Accord­ing to his long time direc­tor, ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones, Bugs could nev­er pick a fight. Unlike his hair trig­ger Looney Tunes col­league, Daffy Duck, the bun­ny had to be pro­voked before enter­ing the fray. That applies whether he’s a box­er, a gang­ster, or imper­son­at­ing the biggest movie stars of his day.

Abid­ing by the strong rules he estab­lished for the char­ac­ters in the Looney Tunes sta­ble was crit­i­cal to his com­ic approach, as Jones explains in the above video essay, a bit of a depar­ture for Tony Zhou’s cel­e­brat­ed cin­e­ma series, Every Frame a Pic­ture. Rather than exam­ine the fram­ing and tim­ing of “one of the all-time mas­ters of visu­al com­e­dy,” this time Zhou delves into the evo­lu­tion of his subject’s artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ties.

Like all good direc­tors, Jones learned from his actors–in this case, ani­mat­ed, and not all of them his babies. Bugs and Daffy were the brain­chil­dren of the great Tex Avery. Friz Fre­leng cre­at­ed Yosemite Sam and everyone’s favorite stut­ter­ing pig, Porky.

Jones teased out the desires that became the pri­ma­ry engines for those char­ac­ters’ phys­i­cal­i­ty as well as their behav­ior. Daffy comes off as an unhinged lunatic in his ear­ly appear­ances. His com­ic poten­tial grew once Jones reframed him as a con­niv­er who’d do any­thing in pur­suit of wealth and glo­ry.

Once the char­ac­ters’ moti­va­tions were clear, Jones could mess around with the ol’ one-two punch. It’s a clas­sic com­ic struc­ture, where­in real­i­ty wreaks hav­oc on the audience’s expec­ta­tions about how things should unfold. Then again, a child can tell you what dri­ves Jones’ cre­ation, the pas­sion­ate French skunk, Pepé Le Pew, as well as how those amorous ambi­tions of his are like­ly to work out. Fun­ny! Depend­ably so!

Zhou also draws atten­tion to the evo­lu­tion of the char­ac­ters’ expres­sions, from the antic to the eco­nom­i­cal. John Belushi was not the only com­ic genius to under­stand the pow­er of a raised eye­brow.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chuck Jones’ 9 Rules For Draw­ing Road Run­ner Car­toons, or How to Cre­ate a Min­i­mal­ist Mas­ter­piece

How to Draw Bugs Bun­ny: A Primer by Leg­endary Ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones

The Strange Day When Bugs Bun­ny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Queen & Elvis Presley Star in Delightfully Absurd Musicless Music Videos

Some­time in the last decade, as both YouTube and smart phones became our pri­ma­ry means of cul­tur­al trans­mis­sion, the iso­lat­ed vocal track meme came into being, reach­ing its sum­mit in the sub­lime ridicu­lous­ness of David Lee Roth’s unadorned “Run­ning With the Dev­il” vocal tics. His yelps, howls, and “Whoooohoooos!” pro­duced the very best ver­sion of that vir­tu­al nov­el­ty known as the sound­board app, and wel­comed many a caller to many a kooky voice­mail greet­ing. The iso­lat­ed track has since become a phe­nom­e­non wor­thy of study, and we’ve done our share here of por­ing over var­i­ous voic­es and instru­ments stripped from their song’s con­text and placed before us in ways we’d nev­er heard before.

Per­haps seri­ous analy­sis too shall be the fate of a goofy visu­al meme that also thrives on the ridicu­lous­ness of pop music’s pre­sen­ta­tion: the musi­c­less music video. The idea is a sim­i­lar one, iso­lat­ing the image instead of the sound: pop­u­lar videos, already weird­ly over the top, become exer­cis­es in chore­o­graphed awk­ward­ness or voy­ages into uncan­ny val­leys as we watch their stars pose, preen, and con­tort them­selves in weird cos­tumes for seem­ing­ly no rea­son, accom­pa­nied only by the mun­dane sounds of their shuf­fling feet and grunts, belch­es, ner­vous laugh­ter, etc. Take the par­tic­u­lar­ly fun­ny exam­ples here: Mick Jag­ger and David Bowie pranc­ing through the bizarre “Danc­ing in the Streets” video (orig­i­nal here); the mem­bers of Queen per­form­ing domes­tic chores in “I Want to Break Free” (orig­i­nal); Elvis Pres­ley squeak­ing and spas­ming onstage in a TV take of “Blue Suede Shoes”; Nir­vana mop­ing and sway­ing in that high school gym while a near­by cus­to­di­an goes about his busi­ness…..

Though these skewed re-eval­u­a­tions of famous moments in pop his­to­ry make use of a sim­i­lar premise as the iso­lat­ed track, the sounds we hear are not—as they some­times seem—vérité audio record­ings from the videos’ sets. They are the cre­ation of Aus­tri­an sound design­er, edi­tor, and mix­er Mario Wienerroither, who, The Dai­ly Dot informs us, “works from a sound library that he’s spent years amass­ing.” The results, as you will hear for your­self, “range from humor­ous to dis­turb­ing and every­where in between.” Musi­c­less music videos remind us of how sil­ly and arti­fi­cial these kinds of staged, mimed pseu­do-per­for­mances real­ly are—they only become con­vinc­ing to us through the mag­i­cal edit­ing togeth­er sound and image on cue and on beat.

Wienerroither began his project with the Queen video, inspired when he caught it play­ing while his TV was on mute. The moment, he says, was “a vital spark.” Since then, dozens of musi­c­less music videos, and TV and film clips, have popped up on YouTube (see a size­able playlist here.) One of the most awk­ward, The Prodi­gy’s “Firestarter,” helped rock­et the phe­nom­e­non into major pop­u­lar­i­ty. Imi­ta­tors have since post­ed musi­c­less videos of the Friends intro and Miley Cyrus’ “Wreck­ing Ball.” What can we learn from these videos? Noth­ing, per­haps, we did­n’t already know: that pop cul­ture’s most endur­ing moments are also its most absurd, that nos­tal­gia is a dish best served remixed, that the internet—a pow­er­ful force for good as well as ill—is often at its best when it is a pow­er­ful force for weird. Though the medi­um may be friv­o­lous, these are mes­sages worth remem­ber­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ 1991

Hear Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Tracks From Some of Rock’s Great­est: Slash, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clap­ton & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Peter Sellers Covers the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night,” “She Loves You” & “Help!”

In the ear­ly six­ties, Peter Sell­ers, one of the great­est com­ic actors of his gen­er­a­tion, met per­haps the great­est musi­cians of the age, the Bea­t­les, through their mutu­al pro­duc­er George Mar­tin. The par­tic­u­lar­ly British sen­si­bil­i­ties of the band and the actor—slapstick and word­play, accent and cos­tume changes—had sur­pris­ing­ly broad appeal in the six­ties, and a com­mon his­to­ry in their mutu­al admi­ra­tion of Eng­lish come­di­an and writer Spike Mil­li­gan.

Sell­ers rose to promi­nence on the Mil­li­gan-cre­at­ed BBC radio pro­gram The Goon Show, which the Bea­t­les cit­ed as a major influ­ence on their work. Their con­stant pat­ter in inter­views, films, even rehearsals, their ten­den­cy to break into music hall song and dance, comes right out of Sell­ers in a way (see, for exam­ple, the great com­ic actor in a rare inter­view here), but was also very much an expres­sion of their own extro­vert­ed per­son­al­i­ties. It stands to rea­son then that Sell­ers and the Bea­t­les, as we wrote in an ear­li­er post, “became fast friends.”

And as the Bea­t­les had paid trib­ute to Sell­ers’ com­e­dy, he would return the favor, cov­er­ing three of their most pop­u­lar songs as only he could. At the top of the post, see Sell­ers do a spo­ken word ver­sion of “A Hard Day’s Night” as Lawrence Olivier’s Richard III. And above and below, he gives us sev­er­al ren­di­tions of “She Loves You,” in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent accents, “in the voice of Dr. Strangelove, again with cock­ney and upper-crusty accents, and final­ly with an Irish twist. The record­ings were all released posthu­mous­ly between 1981 and 1983 on albums no longer in cir­cu­la­tion.”

There are many more Beatles/Sellers con­nec­tions. Before tap­ing his “Hard Day’s Night” skit for Grana­da tele­vi­sion spe­cial “The Music of Lennon & McCart­ney,” Sell­ers had pre­sent­ed the band with a Gram­my for the song, which won “Best Per­for­mance of a Vocal Group” in 1965. “Inci­den­tal­ly,” writes Mersey Beat’s Bill Har­ry, “the [Gram­my] pre­sen­ta­tion was made on the stu­dio set of ‘Help!’ and, inter­est­ing­ly, Sell­ers had orig­i­nal­ly been offered the script of ‘Help!’ (Obvi­ous­ly under a dif­fer­ent title) but turned it down.” Sell­ers and the Goon Show cast had pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Richard Lester, direc­tor of the Bea­t­les films and the John Lennon-star­ring How I Won the War.

Com­pletists out there may have also heard the record­ed con­ver­sa­tion between Sell­ers and the Bea­t­les that appears at the end of a boot­leg ver­sion of the White Album, which cir­cu­lat­ed for years under the title The Peter Sell­ers Tape. That the band and the come­di­an got along so famous­ly is no great sur­prise, nor that Sell­ers had so much fun rework­ing the rather sil­ly, and infec­tious­ly catchy, pop songs of the Bea­t­les’ ear­ly career, bring­ing to them his bat­tery of char­ac­ters and voic­es. We’ve saved what may be Sell­ers’ best Bea­t­les cov­er for last. Below, hear him—in the voice of a lec­tur­ing vic­ar and with a back­ing choir—deliver “Help!” as a 45 RPM ser­mon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Presents The Com­plete Guide To Accents of The British Isles

The Bea­t­les Per­form a Fun Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream (1964)

John Cleese, Ringo Starr and Peter Sell­ers Trash Price­less Art (1969)

John Lennon’s Appear­ances in How I Won the War, the Absur­dist 1967 Film

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Comics Inspired by Waiting For Godot, Featuring Tintin, Roz Chast, and Beavis & Butthead

Godot Comics

Is Samuel Beck­et­t’s Wait­ing for Godot fun­ny?

Yes. It’s a com­e­dy about life’s tragedies, great and small.

Are car­toons inspired by Wait­ing for Godot fun­ny?

…most­ly not. Espe­cial­ly when they’re set in wait­ing rooms (or air­port arrivals areas).

Godot’s a hard trope for a car­toon­ist on the prowl for some­thing fresh. Dogs, psy­chi­a­trists, cast­aways on desert islands are more elas­tic sub­jects, uni­ver­sal, but capa­ble of being spun any num­ber of ways.

To wring a com­ic wor­thy of The New York­er out of Godot, you prob­a­bly have to be an actu­al New York­er car­toon­ist, like Roz Chast, whose instant­ly rec­og­niz­able work can be seen above.

Oth­er New York­er car­toon­ists who’ve tak­en a crack include Dan­ny Shana­hanJack Ziegler and Ben­jamin Schwartz.

Not to imply that New York­er car­toon­ists are the only source for inspired Godot-inspired comics– the late, great Hergé, cre­ator of Tintin made one.

Godot Comics 5

(Oh wait, that’s not Hergé, it’s Tom Gauld who illus­trates the Guardian’s Sat­ur­day Review let­ters page, scor­ing major points by relo­cat­ing the ter­mi­nal­ly upbeat boy detec­tive so out­side his com­fort zone that even Snowy is a neg­a­tive image.)

godot 7

Car­toon­ist Richard Thomp­son sum­moned Godot for a strip with­in a strip install­ment of his pop­u­lar syn­di­cat­ed Cul de Sac. (Click the image above to view it in a larg­er for­mat.) Will read­ers get the ref­er­ence? Alice, his preschool-aged hero­ine, seems to, astute­ly echo­ing crit­ic Vivian Mercier’s assess­ment of Godot as a play where “noth­ing happens…twice”.

beavis beckett

I reserve my high­est praise for the inspired cast­ing of Beav­is and Butthead in R. Siko­ryak’s “Wait­ing to Go.”  (.) Here we find a Vladimir and Estragon who tru­ly embody the final lines of Nor­man Mail­er’s noto­ri­ous “A Pub­lic Notice on Wait­ing for Godot”:

Man’s nature, man’s dig­ni­ty, is that he acts, lives, loves, and final­ly destroys him­self seek­ing to pen­e­trate the mys­tery of exis­tence, and unless we par­take in some way, as some part of this human explo­ration… then we are no more than the pimps of soci­ety and the betray­ers of our Self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Samuel Beck­ett Draws Doo­dles of Char­lie Chap­lin, James Joyce & Hats

Watch the Open­ing Cred­its of an Imag­i­nary 70s Cop Show Star­ring Samuel Beck­ett

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Monty Python and the Holy Grail Re-Imagined as an Epic, Mainstream Hollywood Film

The orig­i­nal 1975 trail­er for Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail (below) start­ed to make some big claims for itself. It opens, with the nar­ra­tor declar­ing:

Once in a life­time there comes a motion pic­ture which changes the whole his­to­ry of motion pic­tures. A pic­ture so stun­ning in its effect, so vast in its impact that it pro­found­ly affects the lives of all who see it.

But then comes the self-effac­ing punch­line deliv­ered by anoth­er nar­ra­tor in Japan­ese:

One such film is Kuro­sawa’s “The Sev­en Samu­rai.” Anoth­er was “Ivan the Ter­ri­ble.” Then there are more run-of-the mill films like “Her­bie Rides Again,” “La Notte” and “Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail.”

… So, if you’re an intel­lec­tu­al midget and you feel like gig­gling, you could do worse than see Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail.

Clas­sic Python!

Now, if want a Python trail­er that takes itself seri­ous­ly, look no fur­ther than the clip above. Cre­at­ed last year, this trail­er re-imag­ines Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail as a main­stream Hol­ly­wood film. No wit. All cheese. If you dig the con­cept, you can see sim­i­lar rework­ings of Stan­ley Kubrick films here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail­Cen­sor­ship Let­ter: We Want to Retain “Fart in Your Gen­er­al Direc­tion”

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

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Watch Twin Beaks, Sesame Street’s Parody of David Lynch’s Iconic TV Show (1990)

Who killed Lau­ra Palmer?

If the answer comes unbid­den to your lips, you’re no doubt old enough to have spent much of 1990 glued to Twin Peaks, cult direc­tor David Lynch’s supreme­ly creepy series. (Note: US-based view­ers can watch the show for free on Hulu.)

The name prob­a­bly won’t mean much to those who entered the noughties with a wob­bly tod­dle, and why would it?  Mur­der vic­tim Palmer may have dri­ven the orig­i­nal series, but she did­n’t rank so much as a men­tion in Sesame Street’s 1991 par­o­dy, Twin Beaks, above.

The Mup­pets also steered clear of Sher­i­lyn Fenn’s teen vix­en cher­ry stem trick

No Lynchi­an dream sequences

No one armed men

No scary owls

What teth­ers this G‑rated kid­die ver­sion to the orig­i­nal, you may ask?

Hint: it car­ries a log.

Of course! The log lady is a sta­ple of Twin Peaks par­o­dies, show­ing up every­where from a Sat­ur­day Night Live skit star­ring Twin Peaks’ Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er (Kyle MacLach­lan) to a 2.5 minute Lego homage that man­ages to pre­serve the sex, the vio­lence, and seem­ing­ly all of the char­ac­ters.

The Cook­ie Monster’s Spe­cial Agent Cook­ie does eat some “darn” fine pie, but ulti­mate­ly, his fix­a­tion on why the town was named “Twin Beaks” is far less com­pelling than his take on Mon­ster­piece Theatre’s host Alis­tair Cooke.

Mas­ter­piece Theatre’s icon­ic pre­sen­ter has proved even more irre­sistible to par­o­dists than the Log Lady.

(In Sesame Street’s case, it worked. There are 35 more Mon­ster­pieces, includ­ing num­ber-cen­tric spoofs of The 400 Blows and (gulp) The Post­man Always Rings Twice.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psy­che­del­ic Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion, Fea­tur­ing Grace Slick, Teach­es Kids to Count

Watch The Sur­re­al 1960s Films and Com­mer­cials of Jim Hen­son

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

An Animated Louis CK on How the Colonists Came to America and Screwed It All Up (NSFW)

I sus­pect par­ents of school-aged chil­dren will find much to relate to in the Lord’s frus­tra­tion with mankind, above, whether or not they’re prone to vent­ing in come­di­an Louis CK’s patent­ed NSFW lan­guage.

Who among us has not turned our back for a few moments, only to dis­cov­er upon our return the house in sham­bles, the nutri­tious snack we set out passed over in favor of junk.

(“Just eat the shit on the floor! I left shit all over the floor! Fuckin’ corn and wheat and shit, grind it up and make some bread—what are you doing!?”)

It’s no won­der ani­ma­tors are drawn to CK. His dis­tinc­tive voice and impec­ca­ble tim­ing have earned him a star­ring role as a talk­ing dog in a CGI fea­ture to be released in 2016. Pri­or to strik­ing it big with the series Louie, he was a fre­quent vis­i­tor on “Dr” Jonathan Katz’s couch. His over-the-top standup spiels pro­vide the unau­tho­rized flash ani­ma­tor with an embar­rass­ment of rich­es.

Cana­di­an film stu­dent John Roney, whose YouTube chan­nel boasts spoofs of Game of Thrones and the Mag­ic School­bus, keeps his visu­als under­stat­ed, min­ing CK’s 2011 per­for­mance at New York City’s Bea­con The­ater for the 2‑dimensional realm.

It could have been so much gross­er.

Turn down the sound and Roney’s adap­ta­tion could be high qual­i­ty children’s pro­gram­ming, the kind most of us god­like par­ents even­tu­al­ly accept as a nec­es­sary evil. Well, maybe not the part where those Aztec kids bowl Louis’ head down the pyra­mids (right above)…though they, like Roney’s oth­er mild­ly observed human and ani­mal char­ac­ters, add to the fun­ny. Here’s the orig­i­nal clip from the Bea­con The­ater show:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

Louis CK Crash­es Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis & Brad Pitt’s Very Awk­ward Inter­view

Jer­ry Sein­feld and Louis CK in Small Cars and Big Yachts, Get­ting Cof­fee

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

John Cleese Explores the Health Benefits of Laughter

If you live in a big city like Los Ange­les or San Fran­cis­co, you’ll dis­cov­er that there are just a bewil­der­ing vari­ety of yoga styles out there — there’s Ash­tan­ga Yoga if you want a real work out, there’s Yin Yoga if you want to chill out and there’s Bikram Hot Yoga if you want heat stroke. Add to this list Laugh­ter Yoga. Yes, Laugh­ter Yoga.

For a seg­ment of the 2001 BBC series The Human Face, John Cleese, a man who knows some­thing about laugh­ter, ven­tured to Mum­bai, India to see what Laugh­ter Yoga is all about. He inter­views the man behind it all, Dr. Madan Kataria, who argues that laugh­ter is bril­liant at low­er­ing stress and improv­ing the immune sys­tem. And best of all, you don’t even need mats or unflat­ter­ing pants to do it. You just need a group of like-mind­ed peo­ple and a will­ing­ness to look sil­ly. In the video, which you can see above, Cleese yuks it up with a group of Mum­bai locals.

“We all know what a good laugh feels like,” he tells the cam­era. “But what struck me was how easy it was to get start­ed. When you have a lot of warm, friend­ly, fun­ny faces com­ing at you, you respond very naturally…I’m struck by how laugh­ter con­nects you to peo­ple. It’s almost impos­si­ble to main­tain any kind of dis­tance or any sense of social hier­ar­chy when you’re just howl­ing with laugh­ter. Laugh­ter is a force for democ­ra­cy”

Appar­ent­ly, you don’t even have to be in an espe­cial­ly jol­ly mood to reap the health ben­e­fits of Laugh­ter Yoga. Forced laugh­ter tricks the body into releas­ing endor­phins too. In Laugh­ter Yoga, as with life, the mot­to is “fake it til you make it.”

So if you are inter­est­ed in laugh­ing like a mad­man in the pri­va­cy of your own home, Dr. Kataria has an instruc­tion­al video for you, which you can see right above. There are a sur­pris­ing num­ber of laugh­ing exer­cis­es avail­able — from the milk­shake move, where you pan­tomime guz­zling a drink, to the argu­ment laugh­ter, where you wag a fin­ger, to the Visa laugh­ter where you pre­tend to laugh through the tears as you open your cred­it card state­ment. So go ahead and try it. You’ll feel bet­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yoga in an X‑Ray Machine

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Son­ny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Prac­tic­ing Yoga Made Him a Bet­ter Musi­cian

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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