By Paul Bacon
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Sheriff Daffy Duck in DRIP ALONG DAFFY.
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Greed, anger, and intolerance may not seem like the stuff of genius, but properly channeled, they can unleash sheer brilliance. Case in point: legendary animation director Chuck Jones, who injected his personal shortcomings into some of the world's most inventive cartoon features.
The self-effacing subject of CHUCK JONES: EXTREMES AND IN-BETWEENS -- A Life in Animation is famous for directing Bugs Bunny cartoons, but he says he identifies with another member of the Warner Bros. clan. "Of all that motley crew, there is one with whom I most clearly associate ... and for whom I have the greatest affinity and understanding. That, of course, is Daffy Duck," Jones writes in his biography, CHUCK AMUCK. "He believes everybody's out to do him in, which is a perfectly legitimate supposition. They are out there to do him in."
Jones' inner Daffy emerged on his sixth birthday. After blowing out the candles on his cake, he was handed a knife -- "my first baton of any kind of authority" -- and was told to cut as large a piece as he liked. "At this point," Jones says, "Daffy Duck must have had, for me, his earliest beginnings, because I found to my surprise and pleasure that I had no desire to share my cake with anyone. There is a prescribed wedge on every birthday cake that is completely and exactly surrounded by corporal punishment. Exceeding these limits by even a thousandth of an inch brands one as 'selfish' ... I learned very little about social morality, but a great deal about survival, and this, after all, is what Daffy Duck is all about."
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The always amorous Pepé le Pew. |
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After mastering the basics, Jones began to stumble up the ladder of self-actualization, entering early manhood with a tragic social handicap. "In high school," he says, "I was not only a wimp, I was a wimp-nerd-nebbish. I was 6'1" and weighed 132 pounds. I was transparent to the other sex; girls could look through me to admire other boys."
Naturally, his teenage experiences inspired a similar cartoon character, right? Wrong. The spawn of Jones' awkward adolescence was not a bashful tyke, but an impetuous lothario named Pepé le Pew. The French-speaking skunk was completely repellent, but immune to rejection -- embodying the essence of what Jones really lacked: confidence. Jones' wife Marian explains, "Chuck loves to talk about being ignored in high school by the girls, probably because he was a lot younger than they were."
By adulthood, Chuck Jones was highly evolved in thought and deed. Like many, he found himself beset by painful ironies, chief among them his own "self-destructive ingenuity." The ill-fated Wile E. Coyote from the ROAD RUNNER series bears the mark of this critical period in Jones' development.
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Arch rivals of the desert, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. |
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"The Coyote is a history of my own frustration and war with all tools, multiplied only slightly," says Jones. "I can remember that my wife and daughter would start to weep bitterly and seek hiding places whenever they saw me head toward the tool drawer, if only to hang a picture. I have never reached into that devilish drawer without starting a chain of disasters of various but inevitable proportions."
As a family man, Jones fell prey to the usual pressures, and vented his frustration into THE THREE BEARS, a skein about love and cruelty, and the naivete required to survive them both. While THE SIMPSONS is often credited with pioneering the tragicomic family saga, series creator Matt Groening tips his hat to Jones: "Look at those three bears, with Junyer and Henry and that poor, hapless wife. That's the American dysfunctional family, predating the Simpsons by 30 or 40 years."
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THE SIMPSONS creator Matt Groening.
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| Now, at the age of 88, Jones is getting ready to unveil another character, Timber Wolf, a forest dweller cursed with having a tree fall on him every time he speaks. Featuring the voices of Joe Alasky (a.k.a. Marvin the Martian), and Nancy Cartwright (Bart Simpson), the 13-episode series for Warner Bros. Online and Entertaindom begins in late November, 2000. USA TODAY reports that the creators of Timber Wolf will allow users to choose story outcomes and select camera angles.
What side of Chuck Jones will we see in Timber Wolf? Chances are it won't be a terribly flattering one. "That's the whole wonder of animation directing," says Jones. "If you're not something you want to be, or are something you don't want to be, you can, through drawing, through action, create a character who will take care of the matter. All you need to do is dig down into your cluttered cellar of frustration or up into your cluttered attic of ambition and lo -- there you are!"
Images of Daffy Duck, Pepé le Pew, and the
Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote: Characters, names, and all related
indica are trademarks of Warner Bros. ©2000.
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