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The Influence Of Looney Tunes On Live-Action Filmmakers

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Despite current management’s mistreatment of the Looney Tunes, people love these characters. Take, for example, the recent Foghorn Leghorn meme that’s spreading like wildfire over the X social media platform. The original Looney Tunes shorts by greats like Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Bob McKimson, Friz Freleng, and Tex Avery are comedy masterpieces, and they’ve had an enormous impact not just on animators, but on live-action filmmakers as well.

In this piece, we dive into this rich history of tributes or references to the Warner Bros. cartoons in live-action movies and tv shows. (Note: I’m omitting official appearances by the Looney Tunes characters, like Two Guys from Texas, My Dream is Yours, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit).

To start things off, here’s a famous line from the Mike Myers-Dana Carvey comedy Wayne’s World (1992).

Despite the popularity of the Warner Bros. cartoons throughout the 1940s and ’50s, the Looney Tunes weren’t often referenced in movies of that period, although they pop up here and there. (You can see paper cutouts of Bugs Bunny and Beaky Buzzard in the 1947 holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street). The earliest movie reference to the Looney Tunes that I’m aware of comes from the Kay Kyser vehicle Around the World (1943), in which singer Harry Babbitt peppers up a musical performance with a few familiar cartoon voices.

One of the earliest and most overt Looney Tunes nods comes from a movie by none other than Frank Tashlin, who directed many of the greatest Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts of the 1940s before moving into directing live-action feature films in the 1950s. Tashlin must’ve been feeling nostalgic for his old stomping grounds when he devised this ending for the Jerry Lewis comedy The Geisha Boy (1958).

It wasn’t until the era of the “movie brats,” who grew up watching the Warner Bros. cartoons, that Looney Tunes references started appearing regularly in films. Peter Bogdanovich’s comedy masterpiece, fittingly titled What’s Up, Doc? (1972), casts Barbra Streisand as a carrot-chomping trickster and ends with a clip from a 1950 Bugs Bunny short (also titled What’s Up, Doc?). In addition to the film’s allusions to old cartoons and classic screwball comedies, the “love means never having to say you’re sorry” line comes from soapy romantic drama Love Story, which our leading man here – Ryan O’Neal – previously starred in.

Steven Spielberg has often listed Chuck Jones as one of his primary influences, summarizing, “If Walt Disney was the first animator who taught me how to fly in my dreams, Chuck Jones was the first animator who made me laugh at them.” You can spot Looney Tunes references in many of Spielberg’s films, from a Wile E. Coyote doll in E.T. The Extra Terrestrial to a Marvin the Martian cameo in Ready Player One. Spielberg also said, “Birdus Fleetus and Lupus Persisticus were my childhood heroes. It was out of a heartfelt respect for Jones’s cartoon wizardry that I begged Universal to pay Warners for those forty composite seconds of film that lent my first film, The Sugarland Express, its most poignant moment.” The scene in question is a sweet moment of relief for Clovis and Lou Jean, two lovers on the run, until Clovis sees the inevitability of their plans blowing up in their faces reflected in Wile E. Coyote’s doomed efforts.

Spielberg’s frequent collaborator George Lucas is also a Looney Tunes fan, and it was his intention to have the sci-fi spoof Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century shown before theatrical screenings of the first Star Wars movie. According to star Mark Hamill, “It would’ve been an icebreaker to let the audience know what was coming was less than dead serious. I was disappointed when we couldn’t get the rights to it.” Even so, Duck Dodgers features prominently in another seminal sci-fi film from the same year: Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

Spielberg is far from the only director to include classic Looney Tunes clips in his movies; they’ve been featured in hundreds of movies and tv series, from the Ann-Margret flick Kitten with a Whip back in 1964 to recent films like Doctor Sleep, Birds of Prey, Babylon, and Five Nights at Freddy’s. As just one example out of many, clips from The Stupid Cupid and Satan’s Waitin’ are interestingly used as a peek into the brains of the characters in Batman Forever (1995).

Perhaps the biggest Looney Tunes fan in Hollywood is Joe Dante, whose films are always packed with nods to his animated influences. Dante’s beautifully bizarre neon-soaked segment in Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), in which a cartoon-loving boy controls the world with his mind, is stuffed with Looney Tunes clips and audio samples. Those Bob Clampett-esque animatronics (designed by Rob Bottin) are masterworks all by themselves.

Lots of movies include Looney Tunes references, but how many can boast a cameo from one of the original Looney Tunes directors? Joe Dante’s horror-comedy Gremlins (1984) features Chuck Jones himself in a brief role. Later, Jones can be seeing getting up to leave when one of his cartoons starts playing on the tv screen in the tavern.

Dante’s masterpiece Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) is essentially a feature-length live-action Looney Tunes cartoon. Dante only agreed to make a follow-up to the successful original if he had full creative control, and this allowed him to go full-tilt bananas with anarchic cartoon gags and irreverent satire. In addition to the animated opening and closing segments with Bugs, Daffy, and Porky, the movie includes tons of WB sound effects and a cross-eyed, hoo-hooing gremlin named Daffy. At one point in the movie, the gremlins even break the filmstrip, just as Daffy and Bugs did in cartoons like My Favorite Duck and Rabbit Punch.

Another director who owes a lot to the Warner Bros. cartoons is Mel Brooks. This classic scene from Blazing Saddles (1974) is pure Bugs Bunny slapstick.

And this scene from Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs (1987) pays tribute to a certain Merrie Melodies short that I think you’ll recognize. The scene is a parody of the Chestburster sequence in Alien (1979), with John Hurt reprising his role as the unfortunate victim.

The hit fantasy-comedy The Mask (1994) is a high-spirited tribute to the WB shorts and Tex Avery’s MGM cartoons, starring the one human with the energy and facial muscles to rival Daffy Duck: Jim Carrey. Here’s Carrey doing a variation on one of those great Bugs Bunny death scenes.

So many comedies have made jokes involving the Looney Tunes characters. There’s a funny scene referencing the Looney Tunes in the Weird Al Yankovic comedy UHF (1989) in which Al tries to host a kids show after his girlfriend broke up with him.

But Looney Tunes haven’t only been referenced in comedies. Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic The Shining (1980) stars a child who goes by the nickname “Doc” because of his obsession with Bugs Bunny. He watches the Road Runner and carries Looney Tunes stuffed animals throughout the film, and his methods of eluding his psychotic father Jack could be interpreted as Doc putting his Road Runner escape tactics to good use. Jack’s ultimate fate – frozen in ice wearing a goofy expression – almost looks like Wile E. Coyote frozen by one of his Acme Snow Machines.

In the last 30 years or so, Looney Tunes references have shown up in all kinds of movies, from comedies like Dumb and Dumber (1994) to sci-fi thrillers like Gravity (2013). Here are just a few examples:

As a Looney Tunes nerd myself, I appreciate it when movies toss in a particularly specific reference to one of the old shorts. Kudos to the filmmakers who worked this into the superhero film The Rocketeer (1991).

Tv might’ve killed theatrical animated shorts, but it also introduced them to new generations of fans. Here are a few examples of Looney Tunes references in classic tv series. (By the way, Carla from Cheers is hallucinating. There is no WB short with two Road Runners.)

If some of those references from earlier series are slightly vague, tv shows from the 1990s were more clearly written by people who watched these cartoons constantly growing up and could quote specific cartoons. In particular, the Mystery Science Theater cast would frequently toss out obscure lines like Sylvester’s “Hello, breakfast” from Tweety’s S.O.S. and Colonel Shuffle’s “Oh, Belvedere, come here, boy” from Dog Gone South.

Tv shows from the current millennium haven’t let up on the Looney Tunes references. Watching these through, it’s striking how many iconic characters and moments there are from the Warner Bros. cartoons. You would think all of these shows would be referencing the same one or two lines, but they cite so many different aspects of the shorts. Extra credit goes to Psych for that niche reference about the piano/xylophone that explodes when you hit a specific note on “Those Endearing Young Charms,” seen in WB shorts like Ballot Box Bunny and Show Biz Bugs.

Several otherwise serious shows have formed entire episodes out of Looney Tunes references, like the sci-fi show Farscape and the horror drama Supernatural.

And while this might be breaking my rule about not including official appearances, I feel the need to make special mention of Daffy Duck’s random guest starring role on The Drew Carey Show.

And it isn’t only American artists who have been inspired by Looney Tunes. The absurdist U.K. series The Goodies, which ran from 1970 to 1980, frequently referenced the Warner Bros. cartoons.

The irreverence and fourth wall-breaking comedy of Monty Python owes a lot to animated shorts of the 1940s. Terry Gilliam, director of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Life of Brian, is a devotee of Tex Avery, saying, “The magic of Tex Avery’s animation is the sheer extremity of it all… there is no hesitation in his work, no sense that you can go too far.” Gilliam also pays homage to the Road Runner in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), in which Eric Idle zips around so fast he creates dust clouds.

Tex Avery is a cult figure in France, and many filmmakers there have acknowledged his influence. Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, Amélie), has often spoken of his passion for Tex Avery and incorporated clips of his cartoons in his films. French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless, Pierrot le Fou) was a devotee of Frank Tashlin, and he often raved about his cartoony style in the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. For an early example of a French film clearly inspired by Avery, Tashlin, and the WB cartoons, there’s Louis Malle’s Zazie dans le Métro (1960), which is a surreal delight.

One great thing about highly visual comedy is that it can cross language barriers. Jackie Chan grew up watching American cartoons like the Road Runner and Tom & Jerry, and the action choreography in his Hong Kong films has a definite cartoon flavor. His film City Hunter (1993) drives that point home by using actual Looney Tunes sound effects.

Stephen Chow’s brilliant Hong Kong action-comedy Kung Fu Hustle (2004) is one of the best attempts to craft a live-action cartoon. According to Chow, “The chasing sequence was not originally in the script, like the Roadrunner (where) the legs spin like a wheel. During the shooting, the idea came up.”

Many directors look to the classic WB cartoons for inspiration, including cult favorites like Sam Raimi and Edgar Wright. Even Martin Scorsese, who just announced that he’s funding classic cartoon restorations through The Film Foundation, has talked about how the Road Runner cartoons “represent life” for him. Mad Max director George Miller named the Road Runner as his first action-adventure hero, adding, “I always said that Chuck Jones and Buster Keaton taught me how to make Mad Max because they were pure filmmakers and they understood the pure syntax of filmmaking.” It’s not hard to see the Chuck Jones inspiration in the fearlessly kinetic Mad Max films, which are fashioned like large-scale Road Runner chases through the desert. (You can also spot a Bugs Bunny doll in Beyond Thunderdome.)

Carl Stalling’s music undeniably set the standard for the way animated films are scored, but his influence can be felt in the scores of live-action films as well. Danny Elfman and Michael Giacchino have named Stalling as one of their primary influences, and Alan Silvestri, James Horner, and Jerry Goldsmith have all homaged Stalling in their work. John Williams titled a cartoony track from the Jurassic Park soundtrack “Stalling Around” in reference to Carl. The makers of the Jack Benny comedy The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945) wanted a Looney Tunes feel so much that they hired Carl Stalling himself to score the climax of the film. It was his only live-action project.

Also key to the appeal of the Warner Bros. cartoons is the sound effects, designed by the brilliant Treg Brown. When director Blake Edwards set out the create the epic live-action comedy The Great Race (1965), he went to Treg Brown to handle the cartoonish sound design, and Brown wound up winning the Oscar for best sound effects. (I assume Blake Edwards must’ve been a Looney Tunes fan, given that he hired Friz Freleng to create animated intros for his Pink Panther films, cast Mel Blanc as a drunkard in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and included Looney Tunes clips in The Days of Wine and Roses and Curse of the Pink Panther). Brown’s use of the Taz Spin here is unmistakable.

Quirky comedies like Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, and Speed Racer have often used Looney Tunes sound effects to add to the zany atmosphere, but sounds from Brown’s library show up everywhere, even in straight action films like the James Bond movies (perhaps unknowingly?). Genius sound designer Ben Burtt, the man behind the iconic sounds in Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and E.T., named Brown as one of his sound design mentors, saying, “For me, Star Wars was one gigantic Warner Bros. cartoon.” Here’s Burtt talking about the Road Runner influence on a Return of the Jedi sequence.

Bryan Cranston once said, “Any actor who tells you he’s not inspired by Bugs Bunny is a liar, frankly, or just a hack.” Certainly many actors have taken a cue from the WB shorts: Nicolas Cage was channeling Wile E. Coyote in Raising Arizona. Geoffrey Rush (who names Chuck Jones as one of his heroes and takes a plastic Daffy Duck figure with him to awards shows) said his performance in Diary of a Madman was inspired by Daffy. Johnny Depp said the inspirations behind Jack Sparrow were Keith Richards and Pepe Le Pew, and that he looked to Bugs Bunny as a guide for creating a character that could get away with things a real person couldn’t. Bradley Cooper said he learned to conduct for his film Maestro by watching Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry. And Ryan Gosling has frequently said he weighs up every character he plays by working out what “percentage of Bugs Bunny versus Daffy Duck” they are.

Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas was also a longtime admirer of Mel Blanc, and he spoke at his memorial service. As Douglas said of Blanc, “He’s an amazing man, and he was a great actor. I mean, people think he’s just a voice, but you can’t have a voice like that with all those characters without being a wonderful actor.” Here’s Douglas playing an unreasonable facsimile of Wile E. Coyote in The Villain (1979), also starring Ann-Margret and a pre-stardom Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The incredible layouts and backgrounds in the Warner Bros. cartoons have also influenced the art direction of several live-action films. Wes Anderson’s 2023 film Asteroid City takes place in a beautifully stylized desert of the kind Robert Gribbroek and Maurice Noble designed for the Road Runner series. Anderson acknowledges this cartoon quality by having a Road Runner “meep meep” at the end of the film.

And in case you had any doubt if these cartoons from the 1940s and ’50s are still influencing present-day filmmakers: Denis Villeneuve named a WB cartoon from 1952 as his inspiration for Dune: Part Two, which is so far the year’s biggest box-office hit. According to Villeneuve:

Beep, Beep is one of my favorite cartoons of all-time, and it is truly the idea of efficiency. It’s not about humor, it’s about the incredible efficiency; the perfect cinematic IQ, with very precise ideas and a way of delivering things that is superbly cinematic, that I absolutely adore. It was like a hand grenade that I put in my brain. I said, ‘I’m going full Road Runner with Part Two’, which makes absolutely no sense. I didn’t reveal that to my crew apart from Joe Walker, but that was one of the main influences. For me, the way I wrote and approached mise en scène was just to change my way of doing things, evolve and break something inside myself. And for that, Chuck Jones was the way to do it.

And if you love Looney Tunes, you absolutely need to check out the new film Hundreds of Beavers, a hilarious live-action cartoon about an Acme Applejack brewer who battles an army of beavers (played by people in beaver suits). All achieved through pantomime, with one ridiculous sight gag after another, it’s a cartoon lover’s dream and the funniest film in years. It was just released to VOD, although if you get a chance to see it with an audience, it’s well worth it to hear everyone laughing at these Wile E. Coyote-esque gags.

But how about you? What are your favorite Looney Tunes references in movies or tv shows? Let us know in the comments below. Here’s one final reference for the road, from the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy The Dictator (2012). That’s all, folks!

Pictured at top: Kung Fu Hustle directed by Stephen Chow.

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