Word: freleng
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...could pack a half-dozen insights into a 100-word sentence on Chuck Jones and the Warner cartoon crew - "Despite the various positions on humor (Tex Avery is a visual surrealist proving nothing is permanent, McKimson is a show-biz satirist with throw-away gags and celebrity spoofs, Friz Freleng is the least contorting, while Jones's specialty, comic character, is unusual for the chopping-up of motion and the surreal imposition: a Robin Hood duck, whose flattened beak springs out with each repeated faux pas as a reminder of the importance of his primary ineptness), the Warner cartoonists...
...most Seussian SNAFU of all is "Rumors" (Freleng, December 43), which begins with Geisel doggerel: "Twas a bright sunny day / With the air fresh and clean. / Not a rumor was stirring / Except in the latrine." There, SNAFU misinterprets another soldier's joke about a bombing as a warning that the base is under attack. To a third GI he whispers, "I think we're in for a bombing," and a sign sprouts: HOT AIR. "The hot air is blowing, a rumor is growing," the narrator warns. "Balloon juice is phony, but it makes good baloney." A soldier with a mouth...
...Working mostly with the directors of Warner Bros. cartoons - Clampett, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Frank Tashlin - Geisel dreamed up a series of 3-5 min. animated comedies that taught soldiers proper behavior by showing them the very improper behavior and attitude of a certain recalcitrant draftee. SNAFU was a cocky doofus who looked like one of the Seven Dwarfs in uniform (say, Grumpy crossed with Dopey) and spoke with Bugs Bunny's voice (courtesy Mel Blanc). His refusal to obey the rules gets him into awful scrapes - he often ends up dead - and threatens to compromise the war effort...
...Over the last two decades of his life, Ted would supervise other half-hour specials, with animation artists of gradually diminishing stature: Freleng on "The Lorax" and "The Hoober-Bloob Highway," Ralph Bakshi on "The Butter Battle Book." The character detail was more meager, the backgrounds less vivid. Each of the later films was more didactic than artistic: decrying corporate greed and ecological devastation ("The Lorax"), indoctrinating children before they are born ("Hoober-bLoob"), delineating the madness of America's arms race with the Soviet Union. Of course the liberal in me, and the humanist too, cheer these sentiments...
...Doodle Daffy,? ?Duck Amuck,? ?Wabbit Twouble,? ?Fast and Furry-ous,? ?Feed the Kitty.? These titles of Warner Bros. cartoon shorts from the 40s and 50s don?t sound like the names of enduring works of cinematic art. But they are, as surely as Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett and Friz Freleng were among the great comedy directors; as surely as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are two of the deftest farceurs to grace the movie medium. Now, on a four-disc DVD set, ?Looney Tunes Golden Collection,? the magnificent menagerie lives again, pristinely restored. Any fan can argue with the choices...