The Chuck Jones Experience Opens Thursday

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The Chuck Jones Experience opens Thursday at Circus Circus in Las Vegas. Just in time, too, considering that one out of three Americans don’t know who Bugs Bunny is, and nearly half (44%) don’t recognize Daffy Duck. If you’ve ever watched this or this or this, you’d understand why the American public is trying to forget these once-great characters.

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  • http://www.meganlynch.net Megan Lynch

    1 out of 3 don’t know who Bugs Bunny is?? Holy guacamole, I feel like Chuck Heston in Planet of the Apes when I hear that…

  • http://animationreview.wordpress.com/ Gijs Grob

    eh.. aren’t those Yosemite Sam fragments from Friz Freleng cartoons?

    • Ross W

      Yeah, and Robert McKimson’s “Big Top Bunny” also. Hey Circus Circus, here’s how to tell if a cartoon is directed by Chuck Jones- it have the credit “Directed by Chuck Jones”. Yeesh.

      • http://pilsnerspicks.blogspot.com/ Pilsner Panther

        These Einsteins probably got confused because most of his WB cartoon credits read “Directed by CHARLES M. Jones.”

  • http://www.poptique.com Poptique

    I like the theatre showing Friz Freleng cartoons.

    Can’t wait for the Walter Lantz experience so I can go to Vegas and see some me some Mr Magoo.

  • Old Man Father Time

    I could’ve gone without the Looney Tune Show bashing, but yay it’s open! I wanted to catch this when I was in Vegas, but it was during the holiday.

  • http://whataboutthad.com Thad

    So much for those fantastic new designs.

    And I love me some Chuck Jones Yosemite Sam! Or wait, I think it was Bob Clampett who did those. Hang on.. somebody should tell us the truth.

  • George

    I want to walk around with a sign that says “E-Poll Market Research” and see how many Americans know who that is. Until I can find 44% that know what E-Poll Market Research is, I call BS.

  • Ryan Storm

    wish I lived near vegas so I could go see this.
    Also its sadly true that 1 of 3 people really don’t know who bugs is. I’ll draw him or Daffy in school occasionally and the response I usually get is, “isn’t that the guy from six flags?” sad

  • Thom Foolery

    Yeah, right. The American public as been purposefully trying to forget these characters because some some lousy spinoffs exist.

    [Comment edited. Per our commenting guidelines, "Be considerate and respectful of others in the discussion. Defamatory, rude, or unnecessarily antagonistic comments will be deleted."]

  • Mike

    It’s not just Looney Tunes that are fading with the dumbing down of American popular culture. Once in a college class, a friend asked me what kind of computer I had. I joked that it was a HAL-9000, and with a strait face my friend replied: “I’ve never heard of that brand.”

    Pathetic.

    • Old Man Father Time

      Teens don’t know who Vincent Price was.

      *headslap*

      • Mike

        Doesn’t surprise me. I could write a book about the uninformed responses from people of my age group (mid to late twenties). Such as:

        “What’s MAD Magazine?”
        “A Christmas Story? Never seen it.”
        “Rocky? Is that the boxing movie?”
        “Oh yeah, I saw Office Space! Wasn’t Gary Cooper great in that.”

        God help us.

      • Chris Sobieniak

        God help us!

  • Klyph

    The new Looney Tunes show is not that bad. It’s just weird they’re interacting with humans like they do.

    Loonatics however is nightmare food.

    • Funkybat

      I am not a big fan of the sitcom-ish Looney Tunes Show, but I have to admit, it’s practially an instant classic compared to Loonatics Unleashed. My God….I watched about half of that episode linked to above. I mean….the current Looney Tunes Show might be “watered down” from what they were in the Termite Terrace days, but at least they aren’t “burned by sulfuric acid” like Loonatics Unleashed.

  • Rick R.

    I wouldn’t be so shocked if the under 25 crowd barely remembers them. They haven’t been on broadcast TV since the year 2000 and WB Studio Stores closed ten years ago, so no one born prior to 1990 would really remember them.

    But then, most of that crowd won’t know Mickey Mouse except through Disneyland and that horrid Barney-inspired CG Mickey show. And Popeye? uh, no. Most of what we take for granted as the history of animation, they won’t know.

    Those things said, I also doubt the poll is accurate.

    • Old Man Father Time

      Ahem. CN aired the classic shorts again from 2009 onward, on and off. Plus, there was one theatrical film and a few shorts here and there made since 2000, but they were not as successful.

      • Rick R.

        Pardon me, but I said “broadcast TV” for a reason. Yeah, I know it was on Cartoon Network, but they get 1 million viewers tops, as opposed the ubiquitous coast-to-coast coverage they got from the 50s to the 80s.

        True, there was Back in Action in 2003, but that is not remembered with “Avatar” in terms of attendance, and isn’t that far out from the dates I was mentioning.

      • Old Man Father Time

        I don’t think a feature film starring the Looney Tunes would even expect an Avatar-sized audience to begin with. Avatar is a rare, special case!

        And while CN is not part of basic television, it’s still airing shows across the country, ergo, “broadcast”.

    • http://drunkduck.com/anecdote Marbles

      Well, not quite true in Disney’s case. Kids born in the mid 90s and a little after grew up with Mickey MouseWorks and House of Mouse. Which is certainly better than just knowing that kiddie CG show.

      • Funkybat

        I think it comes down to the overabundance of choices in today’s media. A lot of kids watch Family Guy, South Park, The Simpsons, etc. even if they aren’t really “kids shows.” Younger kids or kids with more strict parenting probably mostly watch whatever is on Nick, Disney Channel and Cartoon Network’s regular lineup. I know Nicktoons and Boomerang and Disney XD are out there, but they are niches of already semi-niche networks. “Saturday Morning” as we knew it has ceased to exist, as has the semi-traditional mid-to-late afternoon blocks of syndicated reruns that used to run on UHF and currently-Fox Network broadcast stations.

        Kids these days seem to watch everything either on mobile devices, their PCs, or DVDs. I doubt a lot of parents bought the Looney Tunes Gold Collection for their kids, and even if they own some of them, they are mixed in with all the Nick, Pixar, and other DVDs sitting around their rooms.

        As much as I enjoyed it as a kid, it’s kind of galling to think that Scooby-Doo is probably more familiar to today’s pre-teens than the classic Looney Tunes characters. I suppose one good thing about the “Looney Tunes Show” is that it puts these characters back on their media radar, and may lead kids to discover the classic shorts, which otherwise might have been overlooked.

  • http://www.oddballcomics.com Scott Shaw!

    Too bad Hunter S. Thompson is dead. Otherwise, we’d be reading FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE CHUCK JONES EXPERIENCE, with Ralph Steadman’s twisted illustration of the WB characters and a fold-out depiction of Chuck Jones’ gigantic ego.

  • ShouldBeWorkin’

    Get a load of the first comment on the survey article link in your post.

    Helicopter parents with prejudicial notions of the classic cartoons are one part of the problem.

    • Mike

      Tell me about it! I couldn’t believe what I was reading over there. Some people seem to think the Looney Tunes were created in a Berlin bunker or something.

      Sad.

      • http://drunkduck.com/anecdote Marbles

        It’s honestly kind of surprising to me that parents still talk that way about the cartoons. If this was 20 years ago, yeah, but now?

  • ShouldBeWorkin’

    The Chuck Jones experience although smaller seems like a better promotion and education of animation compared to that Disney animation Hotel you posted last week.

  • http://zeteos.blogspot.com/ mick

    0.32 …. look at her gurning chops as the man describes one of the great features ‘you can stand next to a cut out and see how you measure up to the characters’… good god. ‘learn the history of animation, make your own animation and go beyond that’… ???!!! Go beyond that???!!! What does that even mean? Who the hell is this aimed at???

    I actually like Chuck’s cartoons but this looks like a vacuous nightmare. Ugly, over large leering statues in unlikely poses stare blankly through you as you search for something to care about.

    This looks like exactly what it is. Surviving family making what they can… no harm in that I suppose but my GOD that whole promo had about as much vim as Chuck in his present state

    • Old Man Father Time

      It IS Las Vegas.

      Plus, this is probably the closest we’re ever going to get to returning back into the Warner Brothers retail stores!

  • Steve Menke

    Imagining the Cirque du Soleil version of this (complete with imaginary $125 ticket)…

  • http://www.oddballcomics.com Scott Shaw!

    I hope that this attraction includes an audio-animatronic Chuck Jones having a conversation with its best friend, an audio-animatronic Mark Twain.

  • Dario

    I don’t understand many Americans: many don’t know Bugs, don’t know Daffy… almost half don’t believe men set foot on the Moon. What a society!

    • Mike

      What’s worse is they don’t know Bugs Bunny went to the Moon waaay before Neil Armstrong. I mean, how can anyone not know of those historic headlines?

      “Scientists to Launch First Rocket to Moon”
      “Heroic Rabbit Volunteers as First Passenger”

      (Haredevil Hare, 1948)

      Madness!

  • Andy

    Will be in Vegas in April, & definitely will check this out…although, I must admit I would much prefer a Robert Clampett Experience, Tex Avery Experience, Frank Tashlin Experience etc…In fact, I had a 1/2 hour discussion with my wife tonight over why I’m so excited about “disrupting” our decadent Vegas trip to venture to Circus,Circus, when I’m consistently complaining how Chuck Jones ruined the basic comedic elements in Warner Bros. cartoons.

  • Al Jordan

    Well, folks, don’t mean to get off-topic for the sake of editorializing, but if you ever needed any proof that brainwashing is actually happening in our country, those polls certainly prove it. And polls never lie, given that they’re conducted in a thorough and congruous manner. And if you’re looking to point a finger at the prime cause, look no further than the aggressive tone of beaurocracy within the current climate in the state of politics today. It’s hardly a secret, especially among anyone outside of the “circus ring”, that what influences the general public in America today far more than pop culture or (even sadder) the lessons of the past is either politics or religion. Add to that equation pretentious and abstract (and sometimes even twisted) concepts of faith, freedom and basic human rights, sustained in part by common stereoptypes, force-fed into impressionable adult minds, and you have a certain recipe for disaster for the country’s future.
    At this point, I’ll just digress and get off my soapbox, other than say that my point is that, bottom line, we are now in an age where everything outside of politics and religion is being being taken for granted, pushed to the wayside and left to fade into obscurity. And that unfortunately also includes the importance of enjoying the gifts and lessons we have been given by our predecessors of the past century.

    Getting back on topic, perhaps another reason for the public wanting to forget Looney Tunes is the fact that the brand name itself has pretty much been used in conversation over the years as a derisive term for someone who is not mentally stable.

    Oh, and this could also be another reason: