Don't know how long this cartoon will last online, but it's good to see it again. "No Parking Hare" (1954) is one of the last cases of a Warner Brothers director semi-remaking a cartoon by another director (another example is Chuck Jones remaking CLampett's "Porky's Pooch" as the first Charlie Dog cartoon, "Little Orphan Airedale"). Bob McKimson and writer Sid Marcus basically remade Chuck Jones's "Homeless Hare," and, surprisingly, came up with a cartoon that is as good as or even better than the original. Marcus, who wrote a bunch of cartoons for McKimson that year, came up with some very imaginative gags -- like the "Raven" sequence with the construction worker's crazy reaction to the electrical shock -- and put some life back into McKimson and his animators. It's too bad that the WB studio shutdown happened at that point, effectively ending the McKimson-Marcus partnership (when the studio reopened, McKimson was working with Tedd Pierce again).
Sunday, September 16, 2007
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5 comments:
This one is pretty good (love the Scribner animation), but I much prefer "Homeless Hare". This one is kind of ugly looking in comparison to the Jones short.
Aha! More evidence that McKimson WAS, in fact, a good director. Thank, you Jaime.
McKimson's animation in the last year before the 3-D shutdown did stiffen up a bit, to the point I actually prefer the drawings in his cartoons the first two years after the studio's reopening, even with a lesser animation staff on board.
Also, considering what a mean SOB Bob and Warren Foster made Bugs in the few years after McKimson moved up to director, it's interesting to note the main difference here in the story is he and Marcus weren't as ruthless as Jones and Maltese were in "Homeless Hare" -- Bugs confronts the highway construction worker, but never gets attacked by him in the same way Jones did, while at the end of "Homeless Hare" Bugs has literally pounded him into the ground; in McKimson's cartoon, he simply gives up after concreting Bugs' rabbit hole.
Gee, I dunno, having the guy crush himself with a 500 ton weight is quite a beating.
True, but he survives into the next scene, and McKimson's final shot of his is simply slapping his head after the concrete is poured. Our last shot of Jones' construction worker is raising the white flag after having a boiler dropped 80 stories onto his head, crushing him into the ground. By comparison, Bob and Sid are real softies.
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