What's Opera, Doc?,' a cartoon that would likely never be made today, celebrates golden anniversary
Jul 08, 2007 04:30 AM
STEVE WATT
Special to the Star
At any other time, the film would not have been made. Imagine the pitch: "Let's steal time and funding from our other projects so we can go way over budget making a cartoon with no jokes, and no real gags. The score will be a German opera. Kids won't get it. Most adults won't get it, but I don't care because I think it's funny."
Fortunately, the time was 1956, the director was Chuck Jones, and the place was the Warners Bros. backlot animation studio dubbed "Termite Terrace." The result – released 50 years ago this week – was "What's Opera, Doc?," voted by animators in the 1994 book The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals to be the greatest cartoon of all time.
It is the antithesis of the routine cartoon. In place of snappy one-liners we see Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny singing their parts with complete sincerity and commitment. The backgrounds are beautifully textured paintings. The score is powerful and moving. Bugs cuts a striking figure in a metallic brassiere before Madonna was even born. It's audacious and decadent and beautiful and bold and everything the vast majority of cartoons would never dare to be.
Years later, it was my immense pleasure to meet Chuck and spend several hours with him. Never before, and never since, have I encountered someone as smart, funny, passionate and wry, all rolled into one delightful and charming package. I can only imagine the magic at work as he and fellow geniuses Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett, Mike Maltese, Maurice Noble, Mel Blanc, Carl Stalling and a host of others created thousands (yes, thousands) of cartoons featuring history's greatest ensemble cast.
Chuck told me he and his team of writers and animators never saw themselves as making cartoons for anyone but themselves. Months, and sometimes years, passed before their work ended up in theatres, and by then they had made so many new cartoons public reaction just wasn't on their radar. It was because they made cartoons to humour themselves, and because studio executives didn't much care what they did so long as they stayed on time and on budget, that "What's Opera, Doc?" was possible.
The key was placing it between two Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons in the production schedule. Formulaic by design, those ones could be done fast and cheap. Knock off the Coyote films ahead of schedule and under budget, reallocate the time and money to "What's Opera, Doc?" so the overall budgets remained intact, and voila! A masterpiece created right under the noses of studio executives who would have vetoed the idea long before Elmer Fudd could have raised his spear and donned his magic helmet.
A few years ago, when I staged a tribute to Chuck and his incredible body of work, showing 15 of his greatest cartoons on the big screen as they were originally meant to be seen, it wasn't "What's Opera, Doc?" that got the biggest reaction, initially. The nearly 500 people in attendance gave their most enthusiastic reaction to the opening credits of "One Froggy Evening" featuring Michigan J. Frog, and "Rabbit of Seville," the famous Bugs Bunny-Elmer Fudd barbershop ditty. Both great cartoons, to be sure, and both on any animation historian's top 10. The interesting thing was that for weeks afterward, people told me how moved they were by "What's Opera, Doc?" Some had never seen it before. Others had seen it on TV, but absent the big screen and big sound, they had failed to fall under its spell. Seeing it that day, the way audiences first saw it in 1957, they were enthralled.
That's what makes "What's Opera, Doc?" the greatest cartoon ever, and that is why a piece of such grandeur will never be repeated.
That's not to say good work hasn't been done in recent years. The laughs are plentiful with The Simpsons in its heyday, Family Guy most of the time, and South Park when they find that sweet spot between satire and absurdity. On the big screen, Pixar tells stories as captivating as the greatest Disney epics of the past, and pulls the viewer into spectacular and compelling worlds.
They are all great in their own way, but they are to be expected. Animated sitcoms are supposed to be funny and irreverent and mildly scandalous. Feature films are supposed to have rich character development, radio-worthy songs, and captivating storylines. Bugs Bunny cartoons are not supposed to feature a lisping Viking rabbit hunter enthusiastically professing his operatic love for a bunny in drag.
These days, cartoons are made for the small screen, for syndication, for licensing, for Happy Meal toys and theme park rides. Gone are the days when someone like Chuck could trick the system and go on a flight of fancy to animation immortality with such a hugely impractical and absolutely beautiful film.
No one who knows and loves "What's Opera, Doc?" will ever hear Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" without hearing, in their own minds, "Kill da wabbit ... kill da wabbit." While classical music aficionados may be offended by that fact, I'm okay with it. More than okay with it.
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Joined: 09 Sep 2005 Posts: 3064 Local time: 1:59 PM
Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 7:55 pm Post subject:
Is The Rick Copeland the only person here who thinks "The Family Guy" blows significant quantities of choad? _________________ “I think it’s also important for the President to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they will be withdrawn.”
-- George W. Bush on Clinton's involvement in Kosovo, 1999
Joined: 08 Mar 2003 Posts: 10021 Local time: 7:59 AM Location: USA
Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 8:09 pm Post subject:
It's hard to pick just one greatest cartoon. Rabbit Seasoning is hilarious, too. And let's not forget the work of Tex Avery. _________________ aa #51, DNRC o-, Member of the [H]orde
Atheist Minister for St. Dogbert.
"No being is so important that he can usurp the rights of another"
Picard to Data/Graves "The Schizoid Man"
Joined: 18 Sep 2006 Posts: 4275 Local time: 1:59 PM
Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 8:24 pm Post subject:
rickcopeland648 wrote:
Is The Rick Copeland the only person here who thinks "The Family Guy" blows significant quantities of choad?
I think the 2:38 Youtube Family Guy clips are the funniest things on the internet. However, I cannot sit through a 30 minute episode. _________________
_________________ "Atheists are the driving force behind what I call Big Secularism. Card-carrying members of BS have snaked their way into every branch of our government, except for the judicial and executive. Did you know that in the House of Representatives and the Senate, there are as many as one self-described atheist currently serving? Democratic Representative Pete Stark of California's 13th district, to name just one." -Stephen Colbert
Joined: 08 Mar 2003 Posts: 10021 Local time: 7:59 AM Location: USA
Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 9:59 pm Post subject:
rickcopeland648 wrote:
Is The Rick Copeland the only person here who thinks "The Family Guy" blows significant quantities of choad?
No. It used to be funny, but then it stopped. Now it's just really stupid. _________________ aa #51, DNRC o-, Member of the [H]orde
Atheist Minister for St. Dogbert.
"No being is so important that he can usurp the rights of another"
Picard to Data/Graves "The Schizoid Man"
Joined: 04 Jan 2004 Posts: 3575 Local time: 11:59 PM Location: At E's place for tea.
Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 11:40 pm Post subject:
Indeed, FG was once like The Simpsons, only with massive elephantitis balls. Now it's just a lame knockoff of its counterpart.
'What's opera, Doc?' was pretty good, but my fave Chuck Jones WB short was made seventeen years earlier, and gets a lot of crticism for being the first peice to push 'limited' animation, which would give way to Yogi Bear and eventually South Park.
Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 169 Local time: 9:59 AM Location: USA
Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 12:55 pm Post subject:
I think the best cartoon ever was this one cartoon with all these little elves in a shoe shop making shoes at night for the poor shoemaker. They had so many funny things there, i wish i could remember the name. That or the fireworks episode of Tom and Jerry.
I hate modern cartoons. They all have too much substance. If it weren't for Robot Chicken I would've gone insane by now. _________________ "If God doesn't like the way I live, let him tell me, not you."-Anonymous
"It's true that every time you hear a bell an angel gets its wings. What they don't tell you is that every time you hear a mouse trap snap, an angel gets set on fire"
Joined: 13 Mar 2003 Posts: 1111 Local time: 8:59 AM Location: USA
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 8:03 am Post subject:
My favorite LT cartoons were Roadrunner and Coyote. It was always so funny to watch Coyote buy and build all of these elaborate machines and contraptions and have all of them blow up in his face.
Good times to be had. _________________ "Not everything that steps out of line, and thus 'abnormal', must necessarily be 'inferior'" - Hans Asperger, 1938
"If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten" - Unknown Author
Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 2554 Local time: 9:59 AM Location: I was hoping you could tell me.
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 8:07 am Post subject:
tinker683 wrote:
My favorite LT cartoons were Roadrunner and Coyote. It was always so funny to watch Coyote buy and build all of these elaborate machines and contraptions and have all of them blow up in his face. .
mine too. _________________ "If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." Albert Einstein
"For then we will know the mind of God." Stephen Hawking
"We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes." Richard Dawkins
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