Looney Tunes animator Chuck Jones: A character isn't drawn, it's thought up
Chuck Jones said the key to animation isn't what a character looks like or how it's drawn, but "who he is" — he understood the character first, which is how Daffy could be cowardly and overbearing at once, and how Bugs Bunny had to be provoked before he fought back.
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Bugs Bunny's violence wouldn't pass review today
Comedian Dustin Nickerson tried showing classic cartoons to his young daughter and found they hadn't become harmless with time: plenty of characters have speech impediments, and the behavior is highly aggressive. Pepe Le Pew physically holds a female character so she can't leave, while other characters murder each other — the Coyote wants to kill the bird. This runs counter to the cartoon impression in viewers' memories that "everyone is friends."
— David BianculliA shelved Warner film was saved by an independent distributor
After Coyote vs. Acme was finished, Warner Bros. Discovery shelved it and wrote it off for financial purposes. This year an independent distributor bought the rights for $50 million, and last month it finally opened. The film played in relatively few theaters across the US, but it has already recouped almost its entire cost domestically, with another $30 million overseas. The movie itself is about the Coyote suing the Acme Corporation, inspired by Ian Frazier's 1990 parody piece in The New Yorker.
— David BianculliDaffy is cowardly and overbearing at the same time
Chuck Jones said what makes Daffy funny is that he rushes in and is afraid to take a step at the same time, that he's fawning and domineering at once — like when we go into the boss's office to ask for a raise, swaggering at the door and turning obsequious once inside, except Daffy does both simultaneously. He admitted he couldn't understand "crazy" characters, so he always had to "pasteurize" a character and figure out who he was. He stressed that the point of character animation isn't what the character looks like, nor how it's drawn, but "who he is."
— Chuck JonesBugs Bunny is a comedy hero, not a comedy loser
Jones first did Duck Amuck with Daffy, then later did Rabbit Rampage with Bugs Bunny, and the same setup didn't hold, because Bugs isn't that kind of character. He classed Bugs as a comedy hero, whereas the line of comedians running through Chaplin and Buster Keaton are half-losers, more like the rest of us. He liked Daffy because Daffy keeps going, right to the point where Jones himself would stop for fear of what others would think.
— Chuck JonesA two-hour "yes session" where no one may say anything negative
After 1946, Warner's cartoons were directed by three men: Fritz Freeling, Bob McKimpson and Jones. Whoever had an idea for a film called the other directors and the writers into a meeting they called a "yes session": for two hours no one was allowed to say anything negative, and if you had nothing to contribute you shut up. The result was that everyone participated in everyone else's films, but each director had absolute control over the content of his own, and there was no infighting. Jones also admitted that if a good gag he'd given was used by Freeling and the audience laughed, he naturally wanted to go throw up — that's human nature, and it was the Daffy in him.
— Chuck JonesThe narrower the rules, the better the comedy
Jones believed that the more you narrow and restrict a character in comedy, the better it works: once Chaplin put on the Little Tramp outfit, what he could do was locked down. Once Roadrunner and Coyote were fixed in the American Southwest desert, the rules followed — Roadrunner has to stay on the road, can never hurt Coyote, and Coyote can only hurt himself through the lousy Acme products he buys, with no sound in the whole film except "beep-beep." Bugs Bunny is too strong and easily becomes a bully, so every film first lets him live his own life in his natural rabbit environment until someone comes to take his hide or his life, and only then does he fight back.
— Chuck JonesHiding one dirty frame in a twenty-fourth of a second
Jones admitted that Warner's animators all drew that kind of pornographic cartoon on the sly. He himself would sometimes slip a single frame — a twenty-fourth of a second — of something dirty into a Pepe Le Pew film, then call the office manager over and say there seemed to be a little glitch here that he couldn't figure out. He knew no one could see it, but the manager would be shocked on the spot. He always kept a replacement frame on hand just in case, but he enjoyed doing it, in his words, to "reduce him to moccasins."
— Chuck JonesThe networks cut films until they were incomprehensible
Jones said his scenes and lines were never censored; that was left to the "brilliant people" at the networks, and what they cut made the whole film incomprehensible. Both CBS and ABC did it. What he found absurd was that the Roadrunner series, the most complained-about for violence, actually has no violence — Roadrunner never hurts Coyote, and Coyote is simply the victim of his own incompetence.
— Chuck JonesShe sang jazz into something that couldn't be categorized
Cassandra Wilson first drew notice in the 1980s singing difficult pieces by Henry Threadgill and Steve Coleman, then recorded her own albums and became a breakthrough jazz star. Kevin Whitehead traced her thirty-year recording career: early on she already bore the marks of a mature style — a preference for lazy tempos, smoky timbres, the dramatic low notes an alto can reach, and the occasional swallowed syllable. After working with producer Craig Street in the 1990s, she made music that deliberately resisted "jazz" or any category.
— Kevin WhiteheadShe refused to call her improvisation scatting
Wilson said she doesn't like the word "scatting," because it's a product of the bebop era, when singers tended to imitate horns. What she does isn't imitating instruments, it's just improvising, creating a sound that belongs to the voice; sometimes it sounds like an instrument, but that isn't the starting point. She'd rather make a "sound." She also spoke about the historical reasons musicians look down on singers: singers often enter music lacking depth in theory, and function in a band not as musicians but merely as singers. Her own positioning was "a musician who sings."
— Cassandra WilsonIn their own words · checked verbatim
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.
Chuck Jones8:07
he would rush in and fear to tread at the same time, and he also could be fawning and overbearing at the same time
Chuck Jones8:07
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.
Chuck Jones10:14
the Roadrunner can never harm the Coyote. The Coyote can only harm himself by buying those unfortunate things he gets from the Acme Corporation.
Chuck Jones14:27
The coyote was only a victim of his own ineptitude.
Chuck Jones17:31
I just improvise And create sounds That are distinctive to the voice
Cassandra Wilson39:06
basically that's what I am, a musician who sings.
Cassandra Wilson40:09
Figures
| Price paid for the rights to Coyote vs. Acme | $50 million | 4:04 |
| Coyote vs. Acme overseas box office | $30 million | 4:04 |
| Chuck Jones's years at Warner | 1933 until the cartoon department closed in 1963 | 5:06 |
| Year Chuck Jones died | 2002 | 5:06 |
| Year Terry Gross interviewed Chuck Jones | 1989 | 6:07 |
| Age at which Cassandra Wilson died | 70 | 22:33 |
| Cassandra Wilson's last album | Coming Forth by Day, 2015 | 29:44 |
| Year Terry Gross interviewed Cassandra Wilson | 1988 | 32:51 |
Glossary
- yes session
- The Chuck Jones team's creative meeting, in which no one was allowed to say anything negative for two hours.
- scatting
- The bebop-era practice of singers improvising on nonsense syllables in imitation of horns, a label Wilson rejected.
- Acme Corporation
- The company in the cartoons that mail-orders shoddy props to the Coyote, and the defendant in the film's lawsuit.
How to listen
People who grew up on animation and work in content or character design; anyone who wants to hear how a creator thinks a character through rather than drawing it pretty.
The second half's Cassandra Wilson music appreciation and album retrospective — skip it if you only want the creative method.