DANTE GETS 'LOONEY' WITH CARTOON/LIVE HYBRID.Byline: - Bob Strauss The anarchic spirit of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Daffy was the first of the new breed of "screwball" characters that emerged in the 1930s to supplant traditional everyman characters, such as crashes headlong into that of another maven of cinematic chaos, director Joe Dante, in the live action/animated smackdown ``Looney Tunes: Back in Action'' (Nov. 14). ``Well, it's not quite as anarchic as I might have liked it to be,'' says the (mad)man who made ``The Howling,'' ``Gremlins'' and ``Explorers.'' ``It is, after all, a $100 million studio picture. But I think that we've managed to be true to the spirit of the old cartoons.'' More so, say, than Warner Bros BROS Brothers BROS Benefits and Retirement Operations Section (King County, Washington) BROS Barnes and Richmond Operatic Society (London, UK) .' last attempt to reintroduce their classic cartoon characters to a younger generation, the miscalculated Michael Jordan This article is about the former basketball player. For other uses, see Michael Jordan (disambiguation). Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17 1963) is a retired American professional basketball player. product ``Space Jam.'' In ``Back in Action,'' Dante and company borrow a frame from ``Who Framed Roger Rabbit'': Bugs and Daffy live in a world where 'toons and humans (played by Steve Martin Noun 1. Steve Martin - United States actor and comedian (born in 1945) Martin , Brendan Fraser and Jenna Elfman, among others) coexist on an equal basis - and where the acting Duck gets jealous of the better-billed Wabbit wabbit - /wab'it/ [almost certainly from Elmer Fudd's immortal line "You wascawwy wabbit!"] 1. A legendary early hack reported on a System/360 at RPI and elsewhere around 1978; this may have descended (if only by inspiration) from hack called RABBITS reported from 1969 on a , quits his studio job and forces Bugs to save him from perilous scrapes. ``Having now made this picture, I have nothing but renewed respect for Bob Zemeckis,'' Dante says of the ``Roger'' director, who pulled off a similar blend of animation and live action before computer graphics made the process infinitely easier. ``The amount of man-hours that go into making something like this is just staggering, even with all of the digital help that we had on the movie. I just can't imagine how exhausted they must have been when 'Roger Rabbit' was finally finished.'' Even with top Disney animator Eric Goldberg (``Pocahontas,'' ``Aladdin'') supervising the cartoon aspects, Dante confesses that making ``Back in Action'' was like directing two features at the same time. But he wouldn't have passed up the demanding job for anything. ``I presume that I was chosen because I have a predilection for this kind of thing,'' he reckons. ``And, also, because I was friends with (classic Warners cartoonists) Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated , Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett. I'm a cartoon buff, and I've always liked these cartoons above all others. And we've tried to reincorporate Re`in`cor´po`rate v. t. 1. To incorporate again. their antic quality into this new picture.'' CAPTION(S): photo Photo: (color) Looney Tunes: Back in Action |
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