Brown Blog Films

On Saturday night, I went to see ‘Bugs Bunny on Broadway’ which played in the National Concert Hall. This was a rare chance to see the great Warner Bros. cartoons on the big screen, the way they were intended to be seen when they were made back in the 1950’s.

You can’t mention Bugs Bunny without talking about Chuck Jones who was the father of Bugs and he directed hundreds of animation shorts in his career. For me, Chuck has got to be one of the all time greatest directors and the event was a welcome musical tribute to Chuck who masterfully intertwined superb classical music with slapstick animation.

We were sitting close to the stage and when the orchestra started playing the Merrie Melody theme tune on front of me, tingles went up my neck and I had a huge grin for the entire performance. You really didn’t need to be a self confessed animation nerd like me to enjoy the event. Classical music in a concert hall can sometimes be a very serious event so it was refreshing to hear lots of laughter during the performance of Wagners ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ while Elmer Fudd sung ‘Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit…’.

George Daugherty conducted the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and spoke to the audience putting the role of music and animation into context. The music was superb and high praise to the RTÉ Concert Orchestra came from George who said they were among the best orchestras who have performed the show. Chuck Jones’ grandson made a guest appearance and presented the national Concert Hall with a painting of Bugs conducting the orchestra that Chuck himself had painted.

Chuck died in 2002 but I had the lucky opportunity to see him a few times, once at the Dublin Film Festival and another time at Ballyfermot Animation College. Chuck was truly an inspiration for me and I asked him to sign a VHS cover of the Bugs Bunny Movie when I was in college that I still have it proudly hanging in my office today.

Bugs Bunny was made ‘back in the day’ when you could shoot characters using great big guns or chase each other around brandishing hatchets and explosive Acme TNT was de rigeur. Nowadays, working with broadcasters on ‘Standards & Practices’ (ie Cartoon Health and Safety for 3 year olds) is often a frustrating experience. I sometimes wonder how I turned out to be a ‘normal’ adult, I grew up watching violent cartoons which were punctuated by commercial breaks advertising Cigarette smoking and Alcohol (OK, so I may have been paying some attention to the alcohol adverts!). I’m not advocating violence for preschoolers and I know audiences change over time, but I expect that Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote will still be ‘Classics’ in 50 years time while many of the cartoons on television today will long be forgotten.

Bugs Bunny on Broadway is on a European tour and I strongly recommend that you try and get some tickets to experience it yourself, even if means you have to blow someone up for the tickets using Acme TNT!!