The Extras - What's Up Doc? The Bugs Bunny Collection

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

Legendary animation historian Jerry Beck is back for part three of a multi-episode discussion on Looney Tunes.  In this episode, we dive into a fun-filled discussion on our favorite wise-cracking rabbit, Bugs Bunny.  Who turned 80!  Jerry provides a brief background on Bugs Bunny and his early cartoons and where he got that New York attitude.  And then we discuss the curation choices that went into the selection of the 60 cartoons that make up the Warner Bros Home Entertainment release of the “Bugs Bunny: 80th Anniversary Collection.”  We also briefly discuss which Bugs Bunny cartoons are still unreleased.  And Jerry gives us his opinion on the recently released film “Space Jam: A New Legacy.”  Finally, Jerry reviews a few of his favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons.That’s all folks!www.cartoonresearch.comwww.animationscoop.comOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers.  Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals.  www.otakumedia.tv The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. and it's called The Extras. And my good friend and colleague, Tim Millard, is the host of that podcast. And my good friend and colleague and partner in animated crime, Jerry Beck, is his special guest. So if you really, really want to hear a fantastic dialogue between two fantastic people, I heartily urge that you listen to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. This is part three of a multi-part discussion with animation historian Jerry Beck about the iconic Looney Tunes cartoons.

In part one, Jerry provided background on how he got into animation history, and he detailed for us the history of Looney Tunes. In part two, Jerry discussed his collaboration with Warner Brothers executive George Feltenstein on the curating choices that went into the fan-favorite Looney Tunes Golden Collection that was first released on DVD and subsequently on Blu-ray in the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection. In this episode, we dive into a discussion on the Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection and get Jerry's input on the recent Space Jam film. So here is animation historian Jerry Beck. Jerry, that leads us into the other part of our discussion today, which is

the Bugs Bunny 80th anniversary collection on Blu-ray that was released in 2020. But before we get into the release itself, can you give us a brief review of the origins of Bugs? Bugs as we know Bugs. The Bugs that the raw material for Bugs has two beginnings, I suppose. The one that Warner Brothers acknowledges as the first Bugs Bunny cartoon is in 1940 in a cartoon called A Wild Hare, directed by Tex Avery. And it's the one where he has the sort of the voice that we know Bugs. He says, what's up, Doc? He's hunted by Elmer Fudd and a lot of the cliches or, you know, of that sort of thing. You

know, I'm hunting wabbits and that sort of stuff all kind of comes from that cartoon. But he still doesn't look 100% like the Bugs Bunny we know later. But he's on the road. He's essentially there. And Warner Brothers acknowledges that one as the first Bugs Bunny cartoon know later, but he's on the road. He's essentially there. And Warner Brothers acknowledges that one as the first Bugs Bunny cartoon. But the reality was that there were at least four or five appearances by this wacky rabbit before that particular cartoon. The very first one, I think, was in 1938, Porky's Hair Hunt, which features Porky chasing a anonymous white rabbit who happens to be screwy, happens to be crazy, pulling all kinds of gags on Porky Pig. That cartoon's reaction led to more cartoons with hunters chasing crazy rabbits. And there's at least two or, like I

said, two or three others. Chuck Jones did one. The next one was done by a short-lived directing duo, Ben Hardaway, whose nickname was Bugs. Bugs, by the way, was an expression back then, meaning crazy, nutty, nuts, out of his mind. That's what Bugs means. And so that was a nickname for Ben Hardaway. And on the model sheets for the artists that have all the poses of the rabbit that's going to be in this cartoon, it would be marked on that particular one. It would say Bugs Bunny. Again, it was a crazy rabbit. It was called Bugs Bunny, but it's still not what we think of as Bugs Bunny. Two or three were made like that in 38, 39 into 40. And then Wild Hair comes out in 1940 as well.

And that's pretty much been at the beginning of what we now call Bugs Bunny. And really the year after that, they dedicated like making three or four Bugs Bunny cartoons and later years, many more than that, a year to Bugs Bunny out of the Looney Tunes. But that's the beginning of the character. Why do you think that Bugs Bunny became such a favorite? I mean, of the Looney Tunes characters, there's what, 15 or so? Of the main Looney Tunes characters? Yeah. Yeah, there's many more than 15, but there's 15.

I would say without actually counting them, there's something like 15 main ones. And why do you think Bugs kind of has become one of the favorites? Well, he was a favorite right off the bat. He was, he was a superstar character from 1940, 41, right on. It's several things, but the, one of the main things is things comes down to audience identification. This is true of any superstar great character, from Mickey Mouse to The Simpsons. If we can identify with it, or if we know someone like it, is kind of another factor in a superstar character. But mainly, if we can identify with that character, whether we know we

are that character or we want to be like that character. In the case of Bugs Bunny, he's an aspirational character. We want to be like Bugs Bunny. As Chuck Jones has said, we're more like Wile E. Coyote, but we want to be like Bugs Bunny. And that's a factor. And the time he came out, you got to remember, was the ramp up towards the war and then the war in 19, the end of 1941. So he represented the American spirit, the we can do it, fight back spirit. You're not going to bomb our harbor and get away with that. So Bugs Bunny was our surrogate character who could do everything and anything to get even with the person who's attacking us, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, the landlord in our life.

It's like we are the Bugs Bunny. We are the character. So he was, plus, I mean, the combination of other factors, the talent of the artists, the animators, the directors, Mel Blanc, all of that combined make up for what makes a great character. He was the lead. And his cartoons are consistently good. Always having debates with people on, like the worst Bugs Bunny cartoons are, there's maybe two that a lot of us agree are not that

great. And those were made at the very, very end of the 1960s. Pretty much every Bugs Bunny cartoon from 1940s and 50s and even into the 60s are pretty, pretty good. That's how great that character is. Well, you can't talk Bugs Bunny without mentioning Mel, as you just said. That voice, the blend of the Brooklyn and the Bronx, tough guy. What's the story behind how they came up for that sound? Well, it's classic because Bugs Bunny had many, many fathers. So everybody's got their own version of things. And Mel Blanc, being Mel Blanc, has his version. And I tend to see no reasons to debate it. There's other things Mel says about how he originated things here and there that are debatable.

But the Bugs Bunny one sort of makes sense. I think when Mel describes his own making of it, he makes it seem like he created it completely. And I think he deserves probably the lion's share of credit. But I think a piece of the credit has to be to Tex Avery, the director, who is a very strong director who micromanaged every bit of his cartoons and what he wanted. And the fact that Doc was a thing from his childhood, that's not just a story. There are many Warner cartoons directed by Tex Avery before A Wild Hare, where he has the characters referring to another character as Doc. It was a thing with Tex Avery. It was one of his things. So he had a very specific point of view about what

this character should be like. He should be like, it was a variant of the Dead End Kids. The Dead End Kids was a Warner Brothers sensational thing in the late 30s. It was a play in New York of which Leo Gorcey and Hans Hall and a group of those actors came out to Hollywood. They made the movie. They made two or three of them at Warner Brothers. After that, as you know, the Bowery Boys and the Dead End Kids were featured at other lower rent studios like Monogram and Universal. But Warner Brothers actually came up with the original versions of those characters. Those characters presented to the American audience this New York street wise, wise guys, wise guys who wouldn't take anything from others.

And that's really what Bugs Bunny's voice is a takeoff from, the wise guy, dead-end kid, you know, kind of character. Where does Mel fit in the top voice talents of all time? Oh, number one. There's no question about it. There's no question about it. He's not only was number one during his life, but he's been such an inspiration today to people who do voices that aren't Bugs Bunny or Warner Brothers cartoons. He was so versatile. He really pointed the way on how to do that sort of thing. There were other great voice talents throughout the years. And back then, there were people who specialized in it, both for cartoons, but also for radio, which we had back then. Today, we still have a little bit of that. We still have radio ads and radio things,

but we also have podcasts now. So we do have something that's audio related. But cartoons, of course, are still here. Most studios today use big names, star talent as their actors. And I don't have a problem with that. But the guys who specialize in being character actors in voice, Bob Bergens and Tom Kenny's.

And, you know, there's so many great ones that are out there right now. And they're on those shows like SpongeBob and things like that, that are still popular. But Mel Blanc just did so many voices so perfectly, so well with such a point of view and such attitude. I mean, there's nobody else like him. There really is nobody else. There are other people that I'm a big fan of from the golden age. Some of them you've never heard of, you know, I mean, Dawes Butler, of course, but there's a lot of, you know, Stan Freeberg, who became famous as a comedian, has his own radio show. And he was very famous with comedy records, did advertisements later in later years. But he started at Warner Brothers Cartoons and he's an uncredited voice in a lot of

cartoons working with Mel Blanc. So he's a great one as well. There's a well-known story that Mel tells about when he had a car accident. Oh, yeah. And he suffered a triple skull fracture and ended up in a coma. Do you know that story? And he suffered a triple skull fracture and ended up in a coma. Do you know that story? Well, I think you're getting to the point that he was kind of in a coma or semi-coma or something, and they couldn't get him out of it. And the doctor said something to him like, he says, you know, hey, instead of calling him Mel or Melvin, he started referring to him as Bugs Bunny.

And then the story is that his first words were immediately, what's up, doc? Or he started talking as Bugs Bunny and that was when they realized he was coming out of the coma. Can we verify stories like that? No. Are they great stories? Yeah. We want to believe that. So it's, I believe it. I go for it. The footage of Mel telling that story is in the new documentary extra on the release call and it's called bugs bunnies 80th what's up documentary and uh i i highly recommend that for the fans if you haven't seen it it gives you kind of the whole history of bugs with interviews with um with the different creators and with mel of course and you're in it i'm in it from 15 years ago and i'm in it from today did you do a new interview?

I did a new interview during COVID and it was the first time I went out when I did it. It was, I can't remember what it was, but it was early on when everybody was supposed to stay in. In fact, if you look really closely, you'll see one shot I'm outside and another shot I'm inside because we actually did like three different locations due to noise and other factors. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page

or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Oh, I was wondering about that because some of the interview with you looked newer than obviously some of the archival stuff. There's archival stuff of you, I think, in there as well. Yeah. It's really good. Speaking of Constantine, I think he produced that. Yes. And he's been involved with a lot of the Looney Tunes over the years for Warner Brothers, along with Warner Brothers executive Michael Crawford.

You've worked with the two of them and George Feltenstein on so many releases. So that will be available. I'll have the information for that on the website for the, for the fans in the documentary. And you touched on this briefly. Uh, it talks about how world war two impacted Bugs Bunny's popularity. I did not know that. I mean, I knew, you know, I think we all know about Betty Boop, uh, and the association, but, um, the, the popularity during the war, is it partly because he did the military films as well? Is it partly because he did the military films as well? Well, no, like I said, I think he was popular during the war era because he represented the American spirit. He represented that where we were at that point. We wanted to kind of get even.

We wanted to, you know, end this thing that was happening, just like we want to end the pandemic right now. We want to end this. And, you know, Bugs Bunny was a surrogate character in that effort. They did a war bond selling film with Bugs. And the Warner style just happened to catch right there, right during when the war was on. What we think of as the Warner Brothers cartoon style has just emerged in 1941. It's an interesting period. I sometimes wonder, you know, what if World War II had broken out in the 30s, you know, or later, you know, what would the media had been like, you know, media, meaning the, these training films that they made and things like that would, you know, they would have had a different take,

different flavor. But the weird thing is, is that World War II happened to break out during the golden age of animation and the golden age of Hollywood. So there's, these war films are beautifully produced. You know, it's just, it's just fantastic.

If you're, you know, you only know Bugs Bunny from TV showings and this and that, to see these wartime era, you know, cartoons is pretty, pretty amazing to,

it's hard for our, our heads to comprehend it, but it's there. You mentioned in the documentary that there are about 170 theatrical cartoons of Bugs Bunny. Do I have that right? It's something like that.

It could be 173, but it's... Right around there. How did you go about then curating the 60 cartoons for this 80th anniversary release? That was easy. It was easy in a way. What happened was this. A couple of years ago, the department there is always coming up with new ways to figure out new collections of things. I forgot who suggested it, but somebody came up with the idea of the essential Bugs Bunny, the essential Daffy

Duck. I'm not sure if we did any others than that, but we did these two volumes. And among those, I curated, they allowed me to pick, and it's really debatable, like really, really, I mean, cartoon fans can have really knock them down fights over it but to pick something like 12 essential bugs bunny cartoons 12 that okay if you're only going to look at 12 these are the 12 this these 12 will inform you of bugs money's oeuvre right and it's got of course you know certain ones come out like what's opera doc and wild hair of course has to be there and certain classic ones that have to be there you know we ones that have to be there. We have to have one of the ones with Marvin the Martian, that kind of thing.

So we did this essential set. Okay, so now the 80th comes around. And we've already done the essential set a couple of years ago. So the feeling is, of course, that those essentials have to be on here. So they have to be. It's an 80th anniversary. And what else can we do? Well, to be honest, they asked me, they definitely said, well, we want to make sure we have ones that fans really want.

Well, I've got my ear to the ground on the fans and what they really want. Well, first of all, the really great ones are already been put out. What they really want, if you really want to sell this today, you've got to put on the ones that haven't been put out yet. There's at least 60 or so that we never got around to out of 170. This is like 60 cartoons we haven't put out. So I looked at the list of the 60. Yeah, the two really, really, really, really bad ones that I was referring to

were on that list, of course. But the rest of them are pretty darn good. And I knew there were some fan favorites and there were a scattering or smattering of really good ones from the 40s. I would have thought that we had gotten all the 1940 ones and most of the 1960s, sorry, 1950s cartoons on already out because they're all so good. But no, a lot of the 1950s ones were not out. And unbelievably, there were like four, five, six, seven of the 1940s ones that we never put out, which I'm shocked that we didn't put them out. So we were able to make, you know, restore, make them look brand new, you know, the ones from the 1940s. So all the 1940s cartoons are out there on Blu-ray or DVD at least. And most of the 1950s, not all, but most of them at this point right now

after this 80th set are now existent, most of the Bugs Bunny ones from the 1950s. And a few, a smattering of 1960s ones are not out or not done yet. So basically, to be honest, it was The Essentials, a redo of The Essentials. We got those already up again. And basically the rest of the set was cartoons that had not been ever been put out before on Blu-ray, never been restored before. We knew the fans would want that. And we put them in a chronologic order so that the essential ones are mixed in with the other ones. And I've not heard any complaints because I'm on the side of,

well, why would you complain? I can't even see what you're complaining about. You know, I'm sure usually we get people going, well, how come you didn't put, you know, blank Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears or something like that? And I'm like, yeah, but the answer is obvious. The answer is, well, that one's already on the platinum collection. So that's one reason I think we haven't had any complaints because, uh, I think everybody kind of understands. And if you don't know the Bugs Bunny cartoons, you have no interest in collecting them. You don't know them that well. The cartoons on the Sadie's collection are great. They're, they're great. They, you know, you have nothing to complain about either. There's no odds here in a way it was easy because that's

what we did. That's the way we did it. It wasn't a matter of, you know, I didn't even have to think about which important ones that we already did that part. So it's like, it was, it was semi easy to do it. Uh, you know, I'm very happy with the, uh, that we did it, that the collection is out. It makes me feel good. My goal is I want to see the whole library restored. And even as of this moment, the entire library is not restored. Hard for me to see the whole library restored. And even as of this moment, the entire library is not restored. Hard for me to believe the entire Warner Brothers Cartoon Library, thousand cartoons should be completely restored and sitting there for whatever the next iteration of technology is. But no, it's still not restored. Warner Brothers has had the attitude of restoring stuff as needed,

you know, when they need it, when there's a sale, when there's a monetary incentive, they'll restore it. And so slowly but surely at this point in time, I couldn't tell you, I'd say probably 85 to 90% of that library is probably restored now.

Thank goodness. Oh, that's great. It's good to know for the fans that so much of that release has new, not previously released cartoons. I know you've listed some of your favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons on your website, but maybe you can recount a few of your favorites and why they're your favorites for our listeners today? I actually did a blog post. I think I did a blog post of just my favorite, my favorite Bugs Bunnies. And I, but I, I qualified it by saying that these aren't the classics that everybody thinks of. These aren't the essentials. And I didn't purposely

keep those out. These are just the ones that are my favorite ones. I just have personal reasons for them being my favorite. And I have to also say to your podcast audience listening right now, that I'm not looking at my blog post on this. I'm just going to mention a few off the top of my head. And my blog post would be on my blog, which is called Cartoon Research, cartoonresearch.com. And I highly recommend, if you love cartoons, please check that out. I think you'll find lots of Warner Brothers cartoon information if you search there.

As for my favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons, one of my absolute favorites is one called Acrobatic Bunny, which is a Robert McKimpson cartoon. In fact, I think it's his first Bugs Bunny cartoon from 1946. I like it for a lot of reasons. I like it kind of because it's a pure Bugs Bunny cartoon. like it for a lot of reasons. I like it kind of because it's a pure Bugs Bunny cartoon. It's bugs being chased around a circus by a lion. A lion wants to eat him. And it just is one gag after another. It's fast paced. It's got everything that a Bugs Bunny cartoon should be. I guess I sometimes dwell when I look at so many cartoons, I look for ones that are the purest of that series, of that idea. And Acrobatic Bunny, to me, is a pure Bugs Bunny cartoon. And I think it's funny.

I think anybody seeing it will love it and laugh at it. It's as simple as that. It just means, it means something to me too, because I grew up with these cartoons. I saw this one early when I was re-experiencing them in high school, realizing at that time, hey, wait a minute, this isn't just for kids. I'm laughing at this because I'm getting the jokes. That was during my high school years. So Acrobatic Bunny was one of those cartoons that did it for me. I'm going to have to look back at my list to remind myself of some of the other ones. Because there's so many, to remind myself of some of the other ones.

Because there's so many, they're all good. It's like, it's the other way around. If I were, somebody had a TV show and they were running Bugs Bunnies, they wanted me to introduce each one, a la Robert Osborne. Give me the title, I'll tell you why it's a good one. You know, because that's the way I think about each one of these cartoons.

I'll put on the blog a link to that, to your blog, so that fans can read through it in more detail. But I did read it. That's why I put the question in. Remind me what I said. I thought, hey, it's recent and could be kind of fun. And you did explain, these are not necessarily the essentials. These are just my favorites.

And I thought that was an interesting one. Partially by getting old, I think I'm losing my mind and memory. But the reality is, and this is the reality. I've been telling people this for 15 years or so. I can't remember stuff because every day is something new. I do two blogs. I have a million other jobs. I've had people write to me who are now big name animators at Pixar. And they'll say, thanks to you posting my student film 15 years ago, that led to me getting this job. And that's why I'm directing the next Toy Story.

And I'm like, I don't even remember your film. I don't say that to them, but I don't even remember posting what I put. But then I'll look it up and I'll say, oh, I did. I did. I really liked this film and I mentioned it. So that's literally my life's been, you know, for 20 years now. Right. And you're not just a Looney Tunes expert.

You have Woody Woodpecker, you have the Disney, you have all of these different, uh, the Hanna-Barbera, uh, so many different things that you. Yeah. It comes out of having worked on that of Mice and Magic and, uh, just wanting to know what all the cartoons are. You know, I specialize with Warners because A, they're popular and I love them and they're, they're my favorite. I can't deny that, you know, my favorite and, and, and they're everybody's favorite. And so that's, that's why I've been able to do, I think I've done three for sure, maybe four books just on Warner cartoons. Unbelievably. Uh, I mean, how could I do that? You know, but, uh, there's, there's a lot to say.

Before we wrap up today, I did want to get your take on uh the recently released space jam movie featuring lebron james and looney tunes what are your thoughts on the movie well i mean i love the characters i love the 2d animation sequence which is like the movie's broken up with kind of in thirds, you know, live action segment, an all hand-drawn classic cartoon segment, and a live action CG animation segment. And I don't really like seeing Bugs Bunny with realistic fur. That's kind of creepy to me. But I'm very happy that there's a whole generation that grew up with the original Space Jam and love it so much that a new space jam makes sense to do

as a new movie. Personally, anything that gets Warner brothers to celebrate the Looney Tunes characters is okay. In my book, uh, would I make a different movie? Yeah.

Anybody want to hire me out there? I'll make a different movie. No, I would be doing a full, you know, length cartoon movie that's drawn and all that, that kind of thing. But again, it's just part of the popularity.

This may sound wrong, but I like the new Space Jam, a new Legacy, the same way I like seeing really good merchandise at Hot Topic with the Looney Tunes characters. It's like, wow, that's really cool. That Bugs looks great on that t-shirt and people are buying this and I love Looney Tunes. And I, you know, so I feel the same way about that movie. It's like good on that. But obviously my, my allegiance is to the classic cartoons done in the thirties, forties and fifties and sixties. And, um, uh, the new stuff, I mean, to be honest, there's a new show on the HBO Max, the new Looney Tunes cartoons. Those are great. Love them unequivocally. They're trying to do 1940s style Looney Tunes and they are nailing it. They're getting it. They got it. They're doing a

good job. Highly recommend those. That's what Looney Tunes is. That's what Looney Tunes should be. I want the studio to push that legacy. But on the other hand, I think that I have no ill will towards Looney T just, it's everywhere. It's, we're inundated by what kids, you know, what's available for kids and adults as well. How do you think Bugs Bunny will hold up with today's younger audiences? Well, based on what I know, I think he holds up pretty well. Obviously we're living in a different world. The cartoons, the new ones that are being made, whether are generally aimed at children for the most part, or, or, you know, they're not necessarily aimed at a more grown-up audience. I wish they were. I mean, the characters are stars. They are movie stars. Unlike Clark Gable or Humphrey Bogart, who are real people, and unfortunately we age and die,

that doesn't have to be with classic cartoon characters. And that's what I love about Space Jam. That's what I love about the new Looney Tunes, that they can take this, I don't like to use the term, classic IP and keep it alive and keep it fresh. It's immortal if the studios choose it to be. And Warner Brothers is. Other studios aren't. They're characters that I grew up with that are well known to my generation that nobody, no kids today or younger people have ever heard of. It all comes down to the management of the studios and how well they want to keep those characters alive. I think in the big picture of things, Bugs Bunny has had a lot of great respect by the Warner studio, whether he's been used in a TV commercial in the last 50 years or in a new short or whatever. They always put the best effort,

it seems to me, on Bugs Bunny in those things. They know that Bugs Bunny can be ruined if it's not done right. And so they've been very careful in their handling of bugs, and I'm glad they are that way. Well, Jerry, it's been a real pleasure talking with you today. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing your stories with the fans. Thank you. Anytime. For those of you interested in learning more about what was discussed in the show today, there will be detailed information on the website at www.theextras.tv. Also follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at the extras TV or Instagram at the

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