Daffy Duck has changed

[START]

Help me out if you know what I mean...I saw some older cartoons of Daffy Duck and he was the guy who was goofing on everybody the same way Bugs goofs on Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam and then later they made Daffy the bad guy when they put him with Speedy Gonzalez. Just something I thought I would point out about a classic cartoon character.

[OttoDaFe]

According to Chuck Jones, Daffy was originally a total nutcase with a voice that was "sort of a cross between a stuttering 'hoo-hoo' and a spluttering laugh." But Tex avery thought that the "hoo-hoo"s would go stale fast, and sought a new personality. It was decided to combine Leon Schlesinger's acquisitiveness with Leon Schlesinger's lisp.

They were well into production when they realized that Leon himself would be previewing the results, which could be fatal to everyone's career. So they watched the screening with trepidation, resignations already in hand; but Leon's first reaction was:

"Jeethus Christh, that's a funny voithe! Where'd you get that voithe?"

So Leon went to his grave, his riches gone with Nineveh and Tyre; but wherever the voice of the turtle-duck is heard throughout the land, Leon is enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen.

For more information, see Chuck Amuck, the autobiography of Chuck Jones. It's well worth the read.

[Tuckerfan]

Chuck has also said that Bugs is like us when everything goes "just right" and Daffy is like us when "everything goes wrong." (Good call on the book, Otto, BTW.)

[Miller]

Who was Leon Schlessinger, precisely?

[jayjay]

Originally Posted by Miller

Who was Leon Schlessinger, precisely?

He was the producer of a metric assload of cartoons between 1929 and 1945, mostly Warner Brothers'.

[Marley23]

He was the producer of a metric assload of cartoons between 1929 and 1945, mostly Warner Brothers'.

I just can't understand the damn metric system. Why can't we just say it was 12.7 assgallons?

[Tuckerfan]

Originally Posted by jayjay

He was the producer of a metric assload of cartoons between 1929 and 1945, mostly Warner Brothers'.

He also was a bit of a jerk, according to Chuck Jones, which is why they decided to use his voice for Daffy. That was also why they felt such terror when the preivewed the cartoon for Schlessinger, because they figured that when he realized that they were making fun of them, it was going to be the sack for all of them.

In Chuck Amok, he recounts the sinking horror they all felt as the cartoon was played, they kept hearing the laughter go on and on, knowing that Schlessinger must have been sitting in his seat, stewing with rage at being mocked. When the lights came on, everyone of them expected to see Schlessinger standing in front of the screen shouting, "You're fired!" Instead, the laughing didn't stop, puzzled, Chuck says they all sat up in their seats (having slunk farther and farther down in them as the cartoon progressed) to see Schlessinger wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

Apparently, backstabbing ideas behind cartoons worked pretty well, as Jones relates a time when they got a new producer who told them, "I don't care what kind of cartoons you do, but I don't want to see any bullfighting cartoons." Naturally, the first cartoon they did after that was the one where Bugs ends up in a bullfight in Mexico.

[jayjay]

Originally Posted by Marley23

I just can't understand the damn metric system. Why can't we just say it was 12.7 assgallons?

Because metric is easier. One assgallon equals 32 cheeks, equals 128 hairs. Whereas one metric assload equals 100 centiassloads and 1000 milliassloads. So if someone asks you how much a quarter of an assgallon is, you'd have to divide 32 by 4, but if someone asks you how much a quarter of an assload is, you would automatically know it was 25 centiassloads.

[Marley23]

The thing that screws me up is converting one to the other. You have to multiply by 2.12 to go from our system to metric, and divide by .437 or something to get from metric? I give up. Freakin' Europeans...

[robgruver]

Now to completly hijack this thread:

My friends and I in collage figured out that 49, 12oz. cans of beer was an assload of beer.

[dantheman]

Originally Posted by robgruver

Now to completly hijack this thread:

My friends and I in collage figured out that 49, 12oz. cans of beer was an assload of beer.

Is that how much one of you could pour into his ass?

[astro]

Originally Posted by jayjay

He was the producer of a metric assload of cartoons between 1929 and 1945, mostly Warner Brothers'.

Here's a good, short bio of him