The directors placed a great deal of emphasis on art (like Browngardt, a CalArts graduate, those early directors came from art backgrounds and often art schools) and music (hence “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies”), and less on formal plots. The original Termite Terrace became legendary for its excessive workload, abundance of pranks and its general lack of studio oversight. “What is this weird, secret world? As a child, it’s your window to history, to great music, to amazing comedy. “I remember watching those as a kid and being like, who’s this Humphrey Bogart character that wants Elmer Fudd to make him a sandwich?” Ryan said. Most of all, they watched the original cartoons, more than 1,000 in all. To prepare, the crew read classic texts about the show (“Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare”) and watched the sorts of vaudeville-inspired acts the original artists had drawn from (The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy). “I’d say there was a good month of just terror,” he added. “It’s like someone saying, ‘All right everybody, we’re writing new Beatles songs! Everyone get to work writing Beatles songs.'” “It’s hard, any time you have to work on your favorite thing,” said Alex Kirwan, a writer and supervising producer. “I thought it would be fun,” Ryan said.Īfter the initial high, the gravity of the project set in. Before his “Looney Tunes” gig, Ryan was perhaps best known for his work on the indie comic books “Angry Youth Comix” and “Prison Pit,” which feature frequent scenes of nudity, torture, bodily excretions and random violence. “I was like, you’re hired,” Browngardt said.įor the position of story editor, Browngardt brought on the Los Angeles-based indie comics artist Johnny Ryan. A lifelong fan, Khatam had collected and cataloged QuickTime versions of every “Looney Tunes” short since their beginnings in 1930 - something the studio itself had neglected to do. He enlisted animator Jim Soper for character design (“I’ve been waiting my whole life for this call,” he told Browngardt) as well as storyboard artist Ryan Khatam. Browngardt quickly began assembling a crew of true believers, dogged fans who had watched the originals on syndicated TV. “And I was like, well, that is impossible.”Īfter a meeting between Browngardt and Sam Register, the president of Warner Bros. “She said, ‘How about 1,000 minutes of Looney Tunes shorts?'” he recalled. That one doesn’t quite seem right for me, Browngardt told her, but could I maybe direct a Looney Tunes short? He didn’t know it at the time, but an initiative was already in play to revive the classic franchise. executive Audrey Diehl over lunch about a possible new series. This latest run began in the fall of 2017, when Browngardt met the Warner Bros. They literally invented a language of cinema.” “And those five directors: Frank Tashlin, Bob Clampett, Tex Avery before he left for MGM, Chuck Jones, and Friz Freleng. “There was something about the energy of those early cartoons,” Browngardt said. The creators of the new series hope to do justice to the directors, animators and voice artists of the so-called Termite Terrace, a pest-ridden animation facility on Sunset Boulevard where many of the franchise’s most beloved characters were born. “Looney Tunes” characters have cavorted with pint-size versions of themselves (“Tiny Toon Adventures,” which ran from 1990 to 1992) played basketball alongside Michael Jordan (1996’s “Space Jam,” and they’ll join LeBron James in the forthcoming sequel “Space Jam: A New Legacy”) been transformed into futuristic superheroes (“Loonatics Unleashed,” 2005-07) and moved to the suburbs (“The Looney Tunes Show,” 2011-14). has taken considerable liberties with the franchise. Since the original run of “Looney Tunes” shorts ended in 1969, Warner Bros. (AT&T, which bought Time Warner in 2018, controls the entire portfolio.) film and television, among other properties. It premiered this week as part of HBO Max, the new streaming service combining shows and movies from the Time Warner entertainment empire, which includes HBO, TNT, TBS, CNN and Warner Bros. The resulting series, “Looney Tunes Cartoons,” is a throwback effort being used to help fill out a shiny new platform. But “Dynamite Dance” is of much more recent vintage, one of scores of episodes created by a new crop of Warner Bros. The short has the look, feel and unabashed mayhem of a classic “Looney Tunes” cartoon, circa the early 1940s. The relentless assault moves from rowboat to unicycle to biplane, each blast timed to the spirited melody of Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours.” Over the course of the short animated video, the explosives get bigger and more plentiful, as Bugs jams dynamite in Elmer’s ears, atop his bald head, and down his pants. In “Dynamite Dance,” Elmer Fudd comes at Bugs Bunny with a scythe, prompting the hare to jam a stick of lit dynamite in Elmer’s mouth.
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