kill the wabbit (13. 826)

Via Kottke, we are directed towards an engaging essay on the enduring Merrie Melodies classic, a collaboration directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese, with the voice talents of Mel Blanc and Arthur Q Bryant as Bunny and Fudd respectively. Released in theatres in July of 1957, What’s Opera, Doc? still registers among the greatest cartoon of all time nearly seven decades on and in addition to its deserved reputation as introducing generations to classical music, Bugs pursued by Elmer through Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, Der Fliegende Holländer and Tännhauser, the project was exponentially more ambitious than the usual Warner Brothers’ fare. Those involved in its production, whilst denying that they were aiming to create a masterpiece, spent more than six times the budget and overtime, hidden by shaving hours and outlays from other assignments and retained the talents of background artist Maurice Nobel (see also here and here) to storyboard the narrative with over five hundred sketches, abstract and offset which became the signature of Looney Tunes going forth, his surrealistic and absurdist style rejected by Disney’s Silly Symphonies—his previous employer, whom worked on Fantasia and may have seen this film as his rebuke of suppression of his creative license. The title tags the Walkürenritt (Ride of the Valkyries) of the last act of the fourth epic from the Ring Cycle, the leitmotif of the figures who guide the souls of the dead to Valhalla (incidentally also the name of the North Hollywood cemetery where Bryant is buried—Blanc was lain to rest in Hollywood Forever grounds on the backlot of Paramount). This short was the last of three in which Elmer wins but shows regret this time