by Bill Chambers It's been fun to skylark about a Blu-ray release of vintage Looney Tunes since the format's inception, but until Warner announced this "Platinum Collection" box set, I don't think anybody truly expected it to happen. And while the DVD transfers that graced the "Golden Collection"s were more than adequate, the truth is that a taste of Bugs, Daffy, et al in standard-def–via recycled "Behind the Tunes" featurettes–after seeing them in all their HiDef splendour is a lot like Dorothy's unintentionally depressing return to Kansas at the end of The Wizard of Oz. Presented pillarboxed in their original 1.37:1 aspect ratio, these shorts pop like never before but have not, unlike Disney's animated features, undergone a digital repainting–though I remain skeptical of a radioactive shade of green that crops up in Daffy's Robin Hood outfit and on the bars of Tweety's cage in Tweetie Pie (to cite two examples), because it looked so revisionist when applied to the title character of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" on Warner's Blu-ray version of same. Nevertheless, the restorers use a gentle touch, dustbusting and correcting damage to the prints while leaving grit trapped between the cels alone. The dark Scaredy Cat is dotted with so much white you might think the background plate doubled as a coke tray.
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Some scattered appraisals: A handful of the shorts–particularly/peculiarly many of Bob Clampett's–are softer and more obviously grainy than others; where this doesn't reflect aesthetic intent, it may point to the source being a dupe rather than the camera negative. Hare Tonic, the first one out of the gate, suffers from an iris effect that makes the outer rim of the image brighter than the centre of it. Errol Flynn's cameo in Rabbit Hood has no doubt been patched in from Warner's meticulous restoration of The Adventures of Robin Hood. Detail gets glassier as we transition into the '50s–almost too glassy, in the case of For Scent-imental Reasons, but I believe that's a photographic issue. I do wish for more, i.e., any, annotation on the technical side of things, though we do get liner notes for every cartoon by CARTOON BREW's Jerry Beck, bound in handsome, if delicate, digibook packaging. The audio is lossy DD 1.0; however disappointing, one doubts there was much fidelity left to be squeezed out of the original recordings. Note that with the exception of a crudely computer-generated offering called Museum Scream, the "Bonus Cartoons" on Disc Three are all in mediocre SD video with optional subtitles that cater to Spanish audiences exclusively. Included among these are the last films Chuck Jones made under the Warner shield (fittingly, his final produced works), and ghettoizing them like this has the presumably-intentional effect of segregating them from the canon.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this set's emphasis is on veritable rock star Jones, the name most likely to tip people on the fence about a purchase, with documentary material on Jones dominating the third platter. Bob Clampett is caught in the residue of that spotlight, while Tex Avery is almost completely ignored, receiving the same number of cartoons as the lesser-known Arthur Davis. (Which is to say: one.) There's a generous helping of stone classics (Feed the Kitty, One Froggy Evening, Duck Amuck, I Love to Singa, and on and on), but with the obvious exceptions of Rabbit of Seville and What's Opera, Doc?, none of them star Bugs Bunny. Disc Two's klatch of compilations–The Complete Mark Anthony, The Complete Witch Hazel, and The Complete Ralph Phillips–make for a hell of a purchase incentive, but five outings with the awfully one-note Tasmanian Devil seems like four too many, especially with Pepe LePew, Foghorn Leghorn, and Speedy Gonzales all limited to a single short.
That's enough looking this gift horse in the mouth for now. Just as each new volume of the Golden Collections became more esoteric than the last, so too should subsequent Platinum Collections begin to bridge the gaps left by this release. The following disc-by-disc guide will be presented in instalments so as to protect the author, me, from going mad like Cheri Oteri in that one episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm". Note that the first platter launches with trailers for the home-video releases of "The Looney Tunes Show" and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Hare Tonic
**½/****
8:18, 1945, d. Charles M. Jones
Baseball Bugs
***/****
7:00, 1946, d. I. Freleng
Hare Tonic and Baseball Bunny are a set by virtue of their sign-off, which replaces Porky Pig's "That's all, folks!" with Bugs bursting out of a drum to deliver the peculiarly charmless catchphrase "And dat's the end!" Of the two, Baseball Bugs–one of Bugs's David & Goliath outings, in which he takes on an entire baseball team (not for nothing named the Gas-House Gorillas)–is the more, well, cartoony. The title is a play-on-words diluted by time, and while the gags therein can be no less arcane (the spacious ballpark serves as a blank canvas for topical and, pardon the pun, inside-baseball humour), they're largely personality-based, highly-visual, and paced like a rocket, culminating in one of the more satisfying–not to mention Dada-esque–"release gags" in the Friz Freleng oeuvre. In Hare Tonic, Elmer drops his hunter persona and simply buys Bugs Bunny at a supermarket–Bugs being the key ingredient in that night's supper, rabbit stew. (Fishing a skosh deeper for a reference than your average DreamWorks production, writer Tedd Pierce has Elmer sing "Wabbit Stew" to the tune of the plantation song "Shortnin' Bread.") Bugs effortlessly escapes Elmer's clutches, but, denied a satisfying comeuppance, decides to stick around and torment his would-be executioner with a vicious rumour of "Rabbititus." Chuck Jones's formal daring is in its nascence in an ending that, presaging the original climax of the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, must've been a trip to see with '40s audiences, but there's something about taking Bugs and Elmer Fudd off the reservation, so to speak (the action being centred around Elmer's house instead of a forest), that messes with alchemy, and the plotting's a tad pedestrian besides. Alternate Audio – Baseball Bugs: Though his veneration for specific pieces of animation is palpable, Eric Goldberg (co-director of Pocahontas and a storyboard artist on the underrated Looney Tunes: Back in Action) is almost stunned into silence by the onslaught of jokes.
Buccaneer Bunny
**½/****
7:25, 1948, d. Freleng
A fairly typical Bugs vs. Yosemite Sam yarn, Buccaneer Bunny is noteworthy as one of a few attempts to treat the "Yosemite" part of Sam's identity as flexible. He would revert after this one-time detour as "Sea-Goin' Sam," but, strangely, the iconography would stick: many promotional materials actually feature "Yosemite" Sam in the pirate outfit he wears here. For what it's worth, Bugs is a real asshole in this one, exploding Sam's parrot just because and coaxing Sam to the edge of suicide; maybe channelling Charles Laughton's William Bligh–as Bugs does for a brief spell–has long-term side effects. Alternate Audio: Eric Goldberg returns, a little less awed. His bit on the dry-brush technique used for water effects should enchant animation nerds.
The Old Grey Hare
****/****
7:36, 1944, d. Robert Clampett
When Elmer Fudd has a minor nervous breakdown over his inability to catch and kill Bugs Bunny, God Himself intervenes, telling him to persevere before inexplicably propelling him forward to the year 2000 A.D.. Despite the expected newspaper gags ("Smellevision Replaces Television"–reads one headline, which actually seems quite prescient when you consider that "television" itself wasn't necessarily a household word or concept yet) and Elmer's hunting rifle becoming a ray gun, the futureworld in which Elmer–suddenly old, à la Rip Van Winkle ("What's up, Pruneface?" a similarly geriatric Bugs asks him)–finds himself is as desolate and primitive as the setting of any random Bob Clampett cartoon. Even more perversely, once ensconced in 2000, the piece spends most of its time in flashback to some bygone era when baby Elmer was hunting baby Bugs (suckling a bottle of carrot juice) with a pop gun. (Unlike the characters' current landlords, Clampett understood that the idea of "tiny toons" was more grotesque than cute.) "The Old Grey Hare" ends with Bugs burying Elmer alive and an explosion so great that it rattles the "That's All, Folks!" title card: End of cinema/end of world. Alternate Audio: Greg Ford chimes in with a few observations about Clampett–his sophistication and his tendencies towards realism and pitch-black humour.
Rabbit Hood
**½/****
7:55, 1949, d. Jones
The lesser of Chuck Jones's two Sherwood Forest cartoons, Rabbit Hood sees Bugs sparring with the Sheriff of Nottingham himself, a one-off foil who sort of looks like a human counterpart to the great Pete Puma–and serves much the same lump-taking function, ultimately, in scenes that got this cartoon neutered for network television. Frankly, for all its witty and oft-quoted wordplay (courtesy trusty Mike Maltese), the head-clobbering does get to be a bit much; the Sheriff is such a benign threat that he hardly seems to warrant the abuse. It's a fine line for sure, but Bugs is just kind of a bully here. Curiously (and maybe tellingly), despite Errol Flynn's surprise cameo (oops), the powers-that-be opted to include Robin Hood Daffy on The Adventures of Robin Hood Blu-ray instead. Alternate Audio: Goldberg touches on the short's topical humour–Bugs, posing as a real estate agent, asks the Sheriff if he's a veteran–and its later censorship.
8 Ball Bunny
**/****
7:00, 1950, d. Jones
Perhaps one inspiration for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, 8 Ball Bunny pairs Bugs with a mute penguin (retroactively named Playboy Penguin) left behind at the Brooklyn Ice Palace by his fellow performers in the Ice Frolics. Trying to catch up with them, he falls down Bugs's transient rabbit hole, and Bugs, taking pity on the little fella, agrees to escort him to the South Pole. Traveling the globe above ground for once, Bugs keeps finding ways to ditch the penguin (shades of Starman), but his guilt repeatedly gets the better of him (ditto). A running gag has a Fred C. Dobbs manqué hitting up Bugs for money, but it doesn't really achieve anything beyond making those who recognize it as a Treasure of the Sierra Madre reference feel smart, and Playboy's silence and one-dimensionality leave Bugs without much to play against. This whole cartoon is the sound of one hand clapping. Alternate Audio: Jerry Beck gives lesser-known animators like Emery Hawkins their due.
Rabbit of Seville
****/****
7:31, 1950, d. Jones
What's Opera, Doc?
***½/****
6:49, 1957, d. Jones (as "Chuck Jones")
Although Jones dispenses with any pretext for breaking into song in its quasi-sequel, What's Opera, Doc?, Rabbit of Seville–wherein Elmer chases Bugs right onto the stage of the Hollywood Bowl just as a performance of "The Barber of Seville" is scheduled to start–is by far the more anarchic of Bugs and Elmer's two forays into high culture, and it's engaged in a constant game of one-upmanship. The other major difference between them is that where the dulcet tones of Arthur Q. Bryan's Elmer dominate What's Opera, Doc?, Rabbit of Seville is, per the title, Bug's show, and Mel Blanc knocks his aria out of the park. If this cartoon is a letdown on any level, it's that the lyrics dry up with half the running time still to go, but invention, madness, and visual delight are in seemingly endless supply, with Jones and writer Mike Maltese at one point predicting Steven Sondheim's Sweeney Todd in a gruesome shaving sequence later clipped for TV. Eh…next: One of three Jones shorts in the National Film Registry (along with One Froggy Evening and Duck Amuck), What's Opera, Doc? is almost defiantly sumptuous from a visual standpoint, with Jones having borrowed extra time to give it polish by fast-tracking a Road Runner cartoon. Compacting Wagner's 15-hour Ring Cycle into a dense 7 minutes, the piece recontextualizes Elmer and Bugs's hunter/hunted dynamic as a Viking/Valkyrie romance. (Like Rabbit of Seville, this is something of a drag revue for Bugs.) Dare I say it's overrated? Despite so many memorable elements–the plump horse (a stand-in for the proverbial fat lady), the tragic ending, "Kill da waaabbit!"–What's Opera, Doc? is a bit too linear for its own good, and by the end it's difficult to say whether Jones is lampooning Fantasia or merely envious of it. Alternate Audio – Rabbit of Seville: Goldberg admits that this is his favourite Looney Tune. Alternate Audio – What's Opera, Doc? (1): Jerry Beck moderates a patchwork commentary assembled out of interviews with Jones, Maltese, and layout artist Maurice Noble. Alternate Audio – What's Opera, Doc? (2): Music historian Daniel Goldmark effectively annotates the cartoon for newbies. Behind the Tunes – What's Opera, Doc?: Goldmark and Beck return in "Wagnerian Rabbit: The Making of What's Opera, Doc?" (9 mins.); the latter quotes Mark Twain ("A lot of Wagner's music is better than it sounds"). A distillation of and visual accompaniment to the commentaries, it shows what ballet dancers Tatiana Riabouchinska and David Lichine looked like as they modelled for Elmer and Bugs.
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery
***½/****
7:32, 1946, d. Clampett
Maybe it's Daffy's diminutive appearance or maybe it's the noir-ish orientation of the piece, but The Great Piggy Bank Robbery feels a lot older, a lot more vintage, than its copyright date suggests. That's not a bad thing. Never truer to his name, Daffy knocks himself senseless while reading and acting out the latest Dick Tracy comic book and dreams he is "Duck Twacy" (natch), tasked with investigating the titular crime spree after his own piggy bank is stolen. Even a second-hand familiarity with Chester Gould's creations–not to mention the general aesthetics of detective movies like the Charlie Chan series–may help foster a deeper appreciation of what Bob Clampett's up to here (like Flattop's head being used as a landing strip), but the gags are universal in their silliness, and they come at you at such a breathless clip that the effect is like being tickled. Alternate Audio: "Ren & Stimpy" creator Jon Kricfalusi says that when he saw this cartoon in school it changed his life. Though he remains entranced by Clampett's inventiveness all these years later, his tone is peculiarly, if characteristically, defensive.
A Pest in the House
**½/****
7:00, 1947, d. Jones
A Pest in the House reworks a shopworn premise, given countless variations by Tom & Jerry, in which a character's survival hinges on maintaining peace and quiet. What's unique in this iteration is that Daffy and Elmer are both in the cast but not playing rivals, though Daffy serves as Elmer's de facto foil as he repeatedly, in his capacity as hotel bellboy, wakes up a tired guest, who in turn takes out his frustrations on Elmer, the concierge. It's a kinetic piece with some inspired gags (including perhaps the earliest instance of a fist coming through a telephone), but stylistically it feels a bit too much like a ventriloquism of Bob Clampett; almost a 15-year veteran of the studio by this point, Jones still hasn't quite found his voice. Alternate Audio: DC Animation's Paul Dini echoes a familiar sentiment in saying that the characterization of Daffy went downhill sometime after this.
The Scarlet Pumpernickel
***/****
7:02, 1950, d. Jones
Duck Amuck
****/****
6:56, 1953, d. Jones
Picking up the mantle of metatextual wonders like Bob Clampett's final cartoon for Warner Bros. The Big Snooze, in which Elmer Fudd tore up his contract with said studio, The Scarlet Pumpernickel lays the groundwork for the later Duck Amuck. It would also, less endearingly for some, help to redefine the Daffy archetype, making him temperamental, insecure, and brashly self-aware. Here, Daffy complains to J.L. (obviously Jack L. Warner) that he's feeling typecast, and so proposes the titular swashbuckler. As Daffy reads the script aloud, virtually every major character in the Looney Toons stable (save Bugs) lends an assist in bringing it to life. In Daffy's increasingly harried responses to J.L.'s unquenchable thirst for more story, we get some sense of what it must've been like to work at Termite Terrace, where the demand for new product never let up. Meanwhile, in the veritable hall-of-mirrors that is Duck Amuck, a solo Daffy learns he's at the mercy of the animator's whim as he's repeatedly erased and mutated and deposited in incongruous environments. But Daffy's existential crisis is oddly revealing of his identity and, for the viewer, a lesson in the possibilities of the medium (and film)–as well as the bizarre ethics that assert themselves in the act of creating. Although I'm not convinced that Duck Amuck needed the safety net of Bugs's closing cameo, at least it gave us his immortal catchphrase "Ain't I a stinker?" Alternate Audio – The Scarlet Pumpernickel: By way of Michael Barrier, Mel Blanc reflects on his squeamishness about filling in for Arthur Q. Bryan, whom the suits refused to bring in for Elmer Fudd's one line. Alternate Audio – Duck Amuck: Partly through interviews (some very poorly recorded) with the likes of Jones, Barrier brings us up to speed on the behind-the-scenes tumult that greeted this one-of-a-kind Looney Tune.
Robin Hood Daffy
***½/****
6:37, 1958, d. Jones
Robin Hood Daffy's tranquil tone and unique character dynamics make for a beguiling 7 minutes. It's almost Beckett-esque. Here, Daffy claims to be Robin Hood, but he's so incompetent that Friar Tuck (an adorable Porky Pig) doesn't believe him. Like a heckled Wile E. Coyote, Daffy tries in vain to rob a nobleman, who in an original touch takes no notice, as though Daffy were a mosquito. Of this cartoon's many endearing qualities, high up there is its Dada-esque cross-pollination of Robin Hood with Tarzan and maybe Superman as Daffy yodels the vine-swinging battle cry of "Yoiks! And awaaay!!!" Alternate Audio: Goldberg pays obeisance to the strikingly simple backgrounds and talks about Jones's protégé Abe Levitow, who won Jones over with his belly-jiggling animation on Porky.
Baby Bottleneck
***/****
7:00, 1946, d. Clampett
This might not be a politically advisable thing to say, but one of Bob Clampett's obvious heirs apparent is Seth MacFarlane. I'll expand on this when we get to A Tale of Two Kitties, but sometimes, like MacFarlane, Clampett is a pop-culture sponge using these seven-minute intervals to wring himself out. When Baby Bottleneck's lips are moving, it's tossing off references to Dumbo, Jimmy Durante, New York nightspot The Stork Club, Bing Crosby, the Dionne Quintuplets, Eddie Cantor, and probably still more things whose recognizability has evaporated with time. (Sixty years from now, "Family Guy" viewers will probably need a glossary.) Like The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, though, it's easy to get on board Baby Bottleneck's comic wavelength even if you're not the savviest trainspotter, especially once the piece becomes a Chaplinesque take on industrial machinery. Alternate Audio: Barrier addresses an awkwardly abrupt cut in the middle of the cartoon by way of a soundbite from Clampett, who reveals that this was one of the few times he pushed the envelope so far the studio intervened. The censored gag in question is frankly too funny for me to spoil. Behind the Tunes: In "Twilight in Tunes – The Music of Raymond Scott" (7 mins.), the likes of Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh and "Futurama" voicer Billy West salute the "controlled swing music" of Scott, which Warners licensed for in-house composer Carl Stalling in the early-'40s. Scott's "Powerhouse" plays a major role in Baby Bottleneck but resurfaced in many a Looney Tune over the following decade, seamlessly integrated with Stalling's original compositions. I love the titles cited for other Scott works, such as "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals." There's also a bonus 2-minute montage of cartoons that utilized "Powerhouse," I guess to prove a point. Its A/V quality is mediocre at best.
Kitty Kornered
**½/****
7:00, 1946, d. Clampett
A Porky starrer that anticipates his various difficulties with house pets over the years. When Porky puts his three cats–one of them a primordial Sylvester–out for the night in the middle of winter, they endeavour to switch places with him. Slight and a little meanspirited, Kitty Kornered is enlivened by some non-sequiturs that are, even by Clampett's standards, pretty wild, like a moose's head joining the rest of his body as it's pulled through a hunter's plaque on the wall. Alternate Audio: Contrary to the WIKIPEDIA entry for this one, Michael Barrier claims that Clampett directed and wrote Kitty Kornered.
Scaredy Cat
***/****
7:25, 1948, d. Jones
In his commentary track, Eric Goldberg dubs the sub-genre of Looney Tunes to which Scaredy Cat belongs (it inaugurated a trilogy completed by Claws for Alarm and Jumpin' Jupiter) "Porky Pig Gothic." Though Chuck Jones and co. maintained that kids were never their target audience, these particular shorts, along with Disney's Lonesome Ghosts and the Abbott & Costello monster movies, have real utility to a child because the presence of iconic cartoon characters inoculates them to–and even advocates for–horror tropes. With pussycat Sylvester–making a persuasive case with his muteness herein for being a funnier silent comedian than a verbal one–in tow, Porky moves into an old dark house overrun by killer mice who operate below Porky's radar, causing him to misinterpret Sylvester's genuine panic for run-of-the-mill cowardice. The pinnacle of the piece's not-for-kids-ness is Sylvester's eventual suicide attempt, rarely viewable since Scaredy Cat played in moviehouses: It's a truly grim moment, honoured by a no-less-bleak ending–although if you see Porky as the antagonist rather than the mice (and I suspect that the younger set, identifying with the repeated trivialization of Sylvester's feelings, will), it becomes fascinatingly, perversely satisfying. Alternate Audio: Goldberg chimes in to identify cheats in perspective and extol the virtues of animator Phil Monroe's "fear poses."
Porky Chops
**/****
6:59, 1949, d. Arthur Davis
I suppose if you're trying to convey the many modes of Porky Pig, one of the more problematic characters on the Looney Tunes call sheet, Porky Chops is as good a benchmark as any, but it seems like better fodder for a later collection, when the selection process starts becoming excavatory. For starters, it doesn't necessarily reflect well on the studio, with its suspicious similarity to Disney's Oscar-nominated 1947 Donald Duck starrer Chip an' Dale; for another, who the heck is Arthur Davis? As it turns out, he's a veteran of the Fleischer Studios who took over Bob Clampett's vacant post. Because budget cuts forced Davis to join Friz Freleng's unit as a subordinate only three years later, he never really got out from under the penumbra of his peers. I'm not overly familiar with the Davis style but it's definitely idiosyncratic, with a wonderful sense of depth–the splinters from Porky's axe-chops fly out in an effect that looks tailored for 3-D–and character designs that eschew the cuddliness of the typical Disney and even Warner critter. Still, the cartoon's major conceptual innovation is to consolidate Chip and Dale into a single antihero (and, to be fair, he's a squirrel, not a chipmunk), and the ending sacrifices spatial dynamics–a bear is suddenly not much bigger than a squirrel–for the sake of a cheap release gag. I like, however, that the bear's first priority upon settling down in his new home is to check the racing forms.
Old Glory
**/****
9:05, 1939, d. Jones
Free of laughs of the intentional variety, often tedious, and boasting animation that is both realistic–thanks to extensive rotoscoping–and remarkably rich in colour (there's a joke in there somewhere about its trio of Technicolor hues being red, white, and blue), this lengthy prewar Merrie Melody is an anomaly from top to bottom. If not for the presence of (an infantilized) Porky Pig, this could easily be mistaken for a Fleischer Brothers joint–aesthetically, at least: Not until Paramount bought out the Fleischers' operation did their Popeye and Superman properties begin to exhibit such patriotic zeal. Here, Porky falls asleep reading the Pledge of Allegiance, summoning a spectral Uncle Sam to teach the irreverent swine some respect for the stars-and-stripes. Inevitably, Sam's Greatest Hits approach to U.S. history results in something of a whitewash, though Jones apologists insist on seeing subversive imagery that may or may not be there. Today's propaganda is tomorrow's kitsch, of course, and Old Glory was popular on the revival circuit in the '60s, as the counterculture appreciated the non-irony of a "pig" (their nickname for an officer of the law) saluting the American flag. Alternate Audio: Beck hears from cel painter Martha Sigall, who remembers working on the piece at night because there was no air-conditioning in the studio.
A Tale of Two Kitties
**/****
6:40, 1942, d. Clampett
This may only be a matter of personal taste, but when satirists like Seth MacFarlane (perhaps I should say "satirists") make reference to things that are funny on purpose, such as, for lack of a better example, Spies Like Us, I cringe: That's not finding laughs, it's renting them. So it is with Bob Clampett's hommage to Abbott & Costello, which not only features a tall, skinny cat (Babbit) and a short, fat one (Catstello, natch) trying to snatch a canary from its nest, but also models the bird in question on comedian Red Skelton's "Mean Widdle Kid." Sigh. This cartoon's debatable sub-crime of foisting upon the world an as-yet-unchristened Tweety–here, in homage to a baby picture of Clampett, a nude colour Warner would eventually put the kibosh on–is offset by some exquisitely-ridiculous slapstick, what we might call "the Clampett touch." Alternate Audio: Barrier, with an aural assist from Clampett, acquaints us with the picture's key inspirations, obvious and otherwise.
Tweetie Pie
***/****
7:00, 1947, d. Freleng (uncredited)
This earliest outing for Tweety and Sylvester–which snared Termite Terrace its first Oscar, beating out the aforementioned Chip an' Dale–is a strong start to an inescapably familiar and repetitious series. It was uncredited director Friz Freleng's brainchild to pair Tweety Bird with the incipient Sylvester ("Thomas" in this incarnation, a name soon changed for obvious reasons) after the former's custodian Bob Clampett left the studio to explore the new frontier of television. Though Clampett seemed to feel that his creation could take on a variety of nemeses, Tweety would become synonymous with Sylvester ever after despite the putty tat enjoying side adventures with Porky Pig, Speedy Gonzales, and his own offspring. Maybe Tweety's stagnancy is the source of my irritation with the little bastard, but his increasing victimhood doesn't exactly endear, either. (While he got farther away from Clampett's derivative conception of him as time wore on, his maliciousness was unfortunately curbed in favour of passive-aggressiveness.) At any rate, Tweetie Pie is pretty good, a Tom & Jerry short with the hostility and wacky physics both dialled up to "11." Note that Tweety is eye-searingly yellow in HD. Alternate Audio: Goldberg starts by saying that the purposeful misspelling of "Tweety" for the titular pun continues to cause headaches for studio archivists. Later, he speculates that Tweetie Pie's "hole" gag, in which Sylvester brings down everything surrounding the circle he saws in a ceiling, might be the first of its kind. Behind the Tunes: In "Putty Problems and Canary Rows" (6 mins.), the ubiquitous Leonard Maltin, Jerry Beck, and others recap the geneses of Tweety and Sylvester and their rivalry. Comments from Clampett's widow Ruth Clampett segue into the actual picture of baby Bob that triggered Tweety. TO BE CONTINUED…
