‘Coyote vs. Acme’ Has the Last Laugh on Warner Bros.

In 1990, author and humorist Ian Frazier wrote his short story, “Coyote v. Acme” for The New Yorker and in 2012, he published it in book form, in a collection of New Yorker stories which he titled, significantly, “Coyote v. Acme.” In rereading that short but valuable tome, the thing that surprises me the most is that “Coyote” is only the second funniest piece in the entire book. The number one story is “Thanks For the Memory,” a dead-on hysterical piece that parodies the literary style of Bob Hope. (Yes, you read that correctly.) What I treasure about these two stories in particular — and I love Mr. Frazier’s entire oeuvre of work — is his unique ability to make fun of comedy itself, to satirize the satirists. In one story, Mr. Frazier’s target is a legendary comedian, perhaps a tad too caught up in his own shtick; in the other, it’s a series of animated comedies that were conceived as a direct satire of the somewhat reductive evolution of the Hollywood-produced cartoon short. By 1949, when director Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese first gave us the Road Runner and Coyote, animated films had become, for the most part, a succession of hunt, chase, and fight-driven physical comedies: Cats chasing mice, dogs chasing cats, human hunters chasing talking rabbits and ducks. They were, for the most part, as funny as they were violent, but you can see how the creative team was beginning to weary of the formula. As the late Chuck Jones once told me and many other interviewers, notably Greg Ford in 1975, they felt compelled to keep coming up with endless somebody-chasing-somebody plot lines, and once postulated, “How about a wildebeest chasing an old gnu?” With the Road Runner / Coyote duo, who were introduced in the 1949 “Fast and Furry-ous,” Jones and Maltese thought that they had created the most extreme chase-and-slapstick pursuit animated comedy that could ever be. Little did they then realize that they would make an additional 15 shorts with the characters before the merry-go-round broke down and the glory years of the Warner Bros. Cartoon studio ended around 1963; and that the characters and concept would prove so enduring that there would be many more Road Runner / Coyote teamups in the decades to come. The new film, directed by Dave Green and inspired by Mr. Frazier’s story, with the title slightly modified to “Coyote vs. Acme,” is by far the greatest manifestation of the characters in the last 60 years precisely because it stays true to the canon. As everyone who has been anywhere near a television set well knows, the Coyote is in eternal pursuit of the road Runner. To that end, he employs a staggering, and increasingly elaborate and ridiculous array of devices, including all manner of explosives, catapults, rockets, and other weaponry and chase gear. One-by-one, said gadgets inevitably backfire in his face, and his frustration, not to mention destruction, pain, and pathos are depicted in hilariously subtle detail. Jones, who was inspired by great pantomime comedians like Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, understood well the dynamics of comedy; the overwhelming contrast between the giant boulder about to land on the Coyote and the defeated expression on his face as he tries to protect himself with a tiny umbrella.When the great Chuck Jones later laid down his nine basic rules of the series, the second commandment was “No outside force can harm the Coyote — only his own ineptitude or the failure of the Acme products.” Mr. Frazier postulated that the Coyote has received so much harm through the failure of those Acme products that it is only logical for him to take the corporation to court; the plaintiff is represented by an underdog of a small, struggling law firm called “Avery, Jones & Maltese” — note the in-joke, the whole movie is one big Easter egg — with the lawyers played by Will Forte and Lana Condor. This aspect of the story is, in turn, a riff on legal dramas, the righteous vs. the monolithic corporate evildoer, ie, “Erin Brockovich.” The leviathanic Acme Corp., whose CEO turns out to be the blustering, six-foot rooster Foghorn Leghorn, is defended by the powerful John Cena, a formidable adversary whether he’s playing an anti-hero on “The Peacemaker” or an anti-villain as here.Mr. Green’s film, cowritten and coproduced by the steadfastly reliable James Gunn, hits all the right beats and stays true to its source material, both Mr. Frazier’s story and the classic original cartoons by Jones and Maltese. For one thing, they resisted the temptation to have the star characters speak. All the roadrunner ever says is “beep beep” (or, more accurately “meep, meep!”) and yes, thank you, they went with the iconic mute incarnation of the Coyote, who never utters a sound, even when he plunges off a cliff or is blown into 17,670,002 micro-cells by some misfiring device or other. There is a version of the Coyote who had the misfortune to set his sights on Bugs Bunny for four cartoons starting with “Operation: Rabbit” (1952). This Coyote, now given the surname “Wile E.” speaks, mostly to himself and in praise of himself, occasionally to the audience and his prey, courtesy of the legendary Mel Blanc in a voice reminiscent of Frank Nelson or any of the more persnickety characters on “The Jack Benny Show.” Needless to say, true Road Runner fans prefer the Coyote speechless.Two years ago, Warner Bros. Animation gave us the excellent “The Day the Earth Blew Up,” subtitled, “A Looney Tunes Movie.” This was an extension of the classic Hollywood theatrical cartoons produced largely between 1930 and 1960, with a more modern sensibility but faithful to the characters. By contrast, “Coyote Vs. Acme” takes its cue from the more deliberately meta post-modernist Looney Tunes shorts created by the redoubtable Greg Ford such as “(Blooper) Bunny” (1991) and “Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers” (1992).‘Coyote vs. Acme.’ Ketchup Entertainment“Coyote” examines, explores, and even explodes the tropes and the interior logic of the very concept of the Road Runner / Coyote (aka the Wildebeest / old gnu) dynamic in a way that the original Looney Tunesmiths would have surely approved of. If “The Day the Earth Blew Up” supplies the original recipe, “Coyote vs. Acme” is extra crispy.The Coyote’s plight never quite brings him the prize he has sought for more than 75 years, namely the Road Runner on a plate. But the story ensnares the entire Merrie Melodies pantheon of anthropomorphic entities: Bugs Bunny as a Deep Throat equivalent in this mock-conspiracy tale; Daffy Duck, drawn from the battier Tex Avery–Bob Clampett vision rather than Chuck Jones’s more “despicable” take on the character; Elmer Fudd, a counterpart to Chief Justice John Roberts, rendered in the lisping voice that no one has managed to get right since the late Arthur Q. Bryan; the eternally pantsless Porky Pig; and even Cool Cat.Talk about conspiracies. The Road Runner and Coyote were both underdogs in the behind the scenes drama in which Warner Bros. itself served as the real-life equivalent of the soulless mega corp Acme, determined to set Acme-like traps for this movie and prevent its release. As on the screen, the Road Runner eventually evaded said traps. Following a public backlash at the picture being shelved, Ketchup Entertainment bought the rights from Warner Bros. for $50 million last year.“Coyote vs. Acme” shows every sign of becoming a well-deserved major hit. In opening weekend it was the #2 top-grossing film —in between two blockbusters, the new “Spider-Man” and “The Odyssey” — which is rarified territory for a lowly Looney Tune.Now I am hoping that Mr. Green and Mr. Gunn will undertake to make a feature film out of Mr. Frazier’s “Thanks For the Memory.” If they need someone to play Bob Hope, I herewith let them know that I am available.

‘Coyote vs. Acme’ Has the Last Laugh on Warner Bros.

‘Coyote vs. Acme’ Has the Last Laugh on Warner Bros.

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