Chuck Jones - Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Contents

I dedicate this book to my wife, Marian, and to my daughter, Linda, who together through light touch, light heart, and deep love have made these past years the happiest, the best years of a happy life.

(Je vous embrasse tendrement.)

and to Stefan Kanfer, whose determination that there was a book lurking in the shadows of my shadowy history put me, because of my love for him, into the uneasy position of having to try to prove him right.

But without Linda Healeysuperb editor, enemy of the false, friend of the trueeven this wan hope would have been only fantasy.

All events related in this volume are either real or fictional the drawings have been changed to protect the innocent.

From ROCKET SQUAD (1956)

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

As the twentieth century whips around its final lap, we can start contemplating how annoying the next century is going to be.

Lets face it: in the years to come were going to be surrounded by increasing numbers of young whippersnappers who arent going to put up with our claims that, despite the wars and genocide and smog and infomercials and disco and car alarms, the good old days had some pretty great stuff going on.

Not the twentieth century again, theyll whine, rolling their eyes.

But weve got Chuck Jones. And even though the immature ingrates of tomorrow will be marching to a different drum machine, no doubt theyll unbegrudgingly acknowledge the joyful genius of his cartoons.

And thats because, among other miracles, Chucks animation continues to make audiences laugh, year after year, decade after decade, and soon enough, century after century.

Comedy is a fragile enterprise, vulnerable to drastic changes in taste over the years, but nothing in the great cartoons of Chuck Jones ever seems musty or out-of-date. We can talk about the transcendental lasting artistic value of Chucks output, or better yet, we can screen Duck Dodgers in the 24 Century and sit back and laugh.

And thats whats great about the great art of Chuck Jones. You cant pin it downits too funny. The laughs sweep over you like a wave, bigger and more powerful than anything bubbling up from your own pitiful brain, with perfect timing, split-second pauses, and hilarious sight gags, all delivered with the relentlessly lively exuberance that came from the uniquely unsentimental imaginations of Chuck and his brilliant collaborators.

For me, the cartoons of Chuck Jones are like wish-fulfillment dreams come to life. One of the thrills of the power struggles of Bugs and Daffy and Wile E. and the rest of the gang is that they capture the heedless glee and immaturity of recurring childhood fantasies. In these feverish, wild vignettes, all the subconscious malice and frivolity and charm and surprise take center stage, anchored in reality by the emotions of humiliation and anger and wit and triumph. As humans, or even as ducks or rabbits, we can all relate.

But Im getting carried away here. Chuck Jones is a geniusthats for surebut even more important, he makes us laugh our asses off.

Matt Groening

FOREWORD

When you hear the name Chuck Jones, what is the first image that comes to mind?

For me, that generically American-sounding name always had the familiar ring of the family next door. One feels compelled to trust a name like that. Its the type of person you might take a broken baseball bat to when your own dad is too busy to glue it Its the local Scoutmaster the greengrocer the best auto mechanic in town.

Its not the sort of name one instantly associates with pesky wabbits, neurotic ducks, or hard-luck coyotes, is it?

If Walt Disney was the first animator who taught me how to fly in my dreams, Chuck Jones was the first animator who made me laugh at them.

With the creation of Pep Le Pew, Coyote, and Road Runner, and as part of the team that created Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and directed over fifty Bugs Bunny cartoons, Chuck broke away from the sweet preschool characters to whom Walt Disney Productions had given eternal life.

Birdus Fleetus and Lupus Persisticus were my childhood heroes. It was out of a heartfelt respect for his cartoon wizardry that I begged Universal to pay Warners for those forty composite seconds of film that lent my first film, The Sugarland Express, its most poignant moment.

Knowing Chuck has been a treat and I thank him for teaching me so much about breaking all the laws of physics just for the joy of it.

CAVEAT EMPTOR

An autobiography that leaves out little things and enumerates only the big ones is no proper picture of the mans life at all; his life consists of his feelings and his interests, with here and there an incident apparently big or little to hang the feelings on.

MARK TWAIN

This book is not a record of facts, it is not exact; it makes no claim to being exact; it is, I hope, a fond catchall, a remembrance of events and people who, consciously or not, shaped my life and character.

All memories are faulty, of course, and some autobiographies are bitter or rueful and waste valuable time seeking to identify those people who were, in the narrators memory, responsible for many of his stumblings and failures.

This book has no one to blame and very many to praise and to love. Like my contemporaries Wile E. Coyote and Daffy Duck, I have little time and no inclination to find fault or failure in others, for I have too many abundant and stimulating faults and failures of my very own. Recognition of my own ineptitudes has always led me to better understanding of my trade. Jumblings, mistakes, and errors in judgment are the essence, the very fabric of humor.

While I have not attempted a thorough and exact recounting of the facts of my life, I have tried to recapture something of the spirit of my involvement with animation. The odd and wonderful and curious truth is this: the animated cartoons I directed are now the factsmy report cards. The varied memories of their origins are often, and perhaps rightfully so, fictional.

For me the startling, unbelievable matter is this: when I was nineteen years old, somebody offered to pay me to draw. For over fifty years and over 250 films, other somebodies have, amazingly, persisted in continuing to reward me for doing what I love to do.

NOTE: For those who seek a chronological thread, no matter how thin, on which to hang the following facts and figuratives, I nervously recommend the Appendix.