00:00Okay, so this is Chuck Jones, War and Pieces. This is a Warner Bros. cartoon from, I believe, 1963, but it was actually probably made in 1962 when Chuck Jones left the studio.
00:16Okay, this is War and Pieces, and you're going to notice that the designs for the Roadrunner and Coyote are just a little bit different.
00:23That may be because of Maurice Noble, I'm not sure. You'll notice the backgrounds are by Phil Degarde as well. He kind of did some avant-garde backgrounds.
00:34And look at this. Okay, they're going to chase each other here. And a throwback that he hadn't done in a while, the Latin names.
00:41Burn them up as Asphaltus. He kind of poses for that. He kind of starts running slowly. Kind of an homage to the first Roadrunner cartoons.
00:52I guess that would be Beep Beep, which was the second one, and Fast and Furious, which was the first one.
00:59Okay, here comes the Coyote. He's got a grenade. Okay, that becomes clear right here.
01:04The Roadrunner is so fast. Zip! You notice kind of the Roy Lichtenstein kind of, you know.
01:11Oh, oh, here we go. It's going to freeze again, just for a minute.
01:16And then it blows up on him. Pow! You know. It kind of reminds you of the old Batman show as well.
01:23Things coming up on screen. He puts his tail out with his spit, you know, of course.
01:29Okay.
01:34And one thing you're going to notice here is Bill Lava's music.
01:38It's much different from Carl Stalling or Milt Franklin in that it's very dark.
01:44It's very, you know, bass heavy, and there's a lot of brass in it, and it's just kind of creepy.
01:51It's almost like Roadrunner in a horror movie.
01:54And for some reason in this cartoon, it really, really works. I'm not sure why.
01:58In some of the ones, it doesn't really work. It just kind of makes it creepy.
02:03But in this one, for some reason, just the way Jones designed it, it works.
02:07Now here's kind of what happens if Roadrunner meets Star Wars.
02:19This is probably Maurice Noble right here, his idea.
02:23You'll notice that in a lot of Looney Tunes, the classics especially, you'll see, you know, Daffy Duck in space,
02:30or Bugs Bunny in space, and Maurice Noble loved lasers.
02:34He just absolutely loved space-age kind of stuff for design.
02:38This is kind of like the Duck Dodgers or, you know, all that kind of stuff right here.
02:45So, you know, he crosses the laser and the thing clamps.
02:49And of course, Wiley gets stuck in it.
02:52And he's flat. Ouch.
02:55Now notice how flat the invisible paint can right here is.
02:59And how, you know, well-designed the Coyote is.
03:03It's kind of like Chuck Jones couldn't quite break free of his U.P.A. influence here.
03:08You know, you make the backgrounds and anything in the background very stylized,
03:12but then your characters are very, you know, fluid.
03:16They're very solid, you know, very Chuck Jones style.
03:19But he's got this kind of U.P.A. influence going here.
03:22You know, he knows the mirror so he can see himself.
03:28You need to see footprints across the desert here.
03:32That was a cloud of dust.
03:37But it's a truck! It's not the Road Runner.
03:40And where'd he go?
03:42Well, you can't see him.
03:44But that had to hurt.
03:47He goes off a cliff.
03:49There's little prints in the clouds. Isn't that brilliant?
03:53And then he splashes.
03:55Now, I believe Sylvester actually did this in some Freeling cartoons a couple times.
04:06He winds up underwater and he tells the fish to get lost.
04:09I know Jones did it with Pepe Le Pew one time.
04:12You know, the fish comes up to him kind of like,
04:14what the heck are you doing?
04:15And then he just smells Pepe and he just faints.
04:18Secrets of the Harem.
04:25Okay.
04:26Meep, meep, meep, meep.
04:30Meep, meep, meep.
04:31Meep, meep, meep, meep.
04:33You'll just notice that every time Wile E. Coyote gets blown up in this cartoon,
04:42it just makes him even crazier looking.
04:45It's like they really just wanted to exaggerate his explosions, you know?
04:49Make him explode.
04:50And when he does, just make the face more exaggerated every time.
04:58You'd think Wile E. Coyote would learn his lesson, you know?
05:01Don't lasso anything and pull on it.
05:03You've seen that happen a million times in a Roadrunner cartoon
05:06and he just knows what's going to happen.
05:08So this is really bizarre here.
05:10He lassoes a cloud and it zaps him with lightning.
05:14Once again he gets blown up and look at this bizarre pose here.
05:21His eyes turn red.
05:23How weird.
05:24He's going to try the rocket.
05:29Of course.
05:30Now this is really, really cool right here.
05:37This is, he burrows through the earth and he ends up going to China.
05:42But what's interesting is, as far as I know, there aren't any deserts in China.
05:46But Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble design it as if there were deserts in China.
05:50Kind of like, what would it look like if there was a desert in China?
05:53You see kind of the mountains sticking up.
05:55And it's all in a Chinese brush painting style, the background.
05:59And here's the Chinese Roadrunner.
06:01He goes beep beep.
06:02He goes beep beep.
06:03I'm not sure if the Chinese writing there was actually beep beep in Chinese.
06:06Maybe somebody who knows Chinese could tell me that.
06:09Oh!
06:10And he goes back.
06:11The center of the earth.
06:12That's got to hurt.
06:13And then he's back in America or wherever he is.
06:17And the Chinese Roadrunner comes back to say beep beep in Chinese.
06:28And that's it.
06:29Old Chinese proverb.
06:31That's all folks.
