Column: Pothole Prairie

You can learn a lot from classic Warner Brothers cartoons. You know, “Looney Tunes” and the whole Bugs Bunny crew of characters.

The primary lesson is never stop trying. Supergenius Wile E. Coyote provides a prime example, and so do Sylvester the Cat, Foghorn Leghorn and Yosemite Sam, but my favorite among all the characters is Daffy Duck.

Bugs is cool, collected and witty, of course, but you will note that when you are laughing, it usually is at something Daffy did or said. Daffy Duck has a great range as a cartoon actor, from being a general screwball to being the foil for Bugs Bunny’s jokes. In the oft-censored trilogy of hunting cartoons by director Charles M. Jones, Daffy is the one getting shot in the face by Elmer Fudd. Seventeen times. That’s the kind of impossible cartoon gags they just don’t do anymore. Yet his spoken lines are what makes him great.

One of my favorites is in the 1952 cartoon “Rabbit Seasoning,” known for the sequence when Daffy utters, “Pronoun trouble,” during an argument between Elmer and Bugs. Here is the script of that exchange, which I borrowed from Wikipedia:

Bugs: It’s true, Doc. I’m a rabbit, all right. Would you like to shoot me now or wait till you get home?

Daffy: Shoot him now! Shoot him now!

Bugs: You keep outta this! He doesn’t have to shoot you now!

Daffy: He does so have to shoot me now! (to Elmer) I demand that you shoot me now!

(Elmer looks at the camera, unsure if Daffy knows what he’s talking about. As Daffy sticks his tongue out at Bugs, he is shot. Daffy puts his beak in its place and pushes the tongue back in and walks back over to Bugs, gun smoke pouring out of his nostrils.)

Daffy: (to Bugs) Let’s run through that again.

Bugs: OK. (deadpan) Would you like to shoot me now or wait till you get home.

Daffy: (similarly) Shoot him now; shoot him now.

Bugs: (as before) You keep outta this; he doesn’t have to shoot you now.

Daffy: (re-animated) Hah! That’s it! Hold it right there! (to audience) Pronoun trouble. (to Bugs) It’s not “He doesn’t have to shoot you now.” It’s “He doesn’t have to shoot me now.”

(Pause)

Daffy: (angrily) Well, I say he does have to shoot me now! (to Elmer) So shoot me now!

(Elmer obliges and lets him have it. Daffy puts his beak back to normal and rushes to Bugs in a pose with him pointing a finger at him with his mouth open.)

Bugs: Yes?

(Daffy looks at the camera and forcibly pulls his arm back and closes his beak.)

Daffy: (shakes his head) Oh, no you don’t. (shakes head again) Not again. Sorry.

(Daffy walks over to Elmer.)

Daffy: This time we’ll try it from the other end. Look, you’re a hunter, right?

Elmer: Wight!

Daffy: And this is rabbit season, right?

Elmer: Wight!

Bugs: (interrupting, pointing at Daffy) And if he was a rabbit, what would you do?

Daffy: Yeah, you’re so smart! If I was a rabbit what would you do?

Elmer: Well, I’d … (Points gun at Daffy)

Daffy: (Looks at the camera in horror) Not again! (gets shot)

(Daffy puts his beak back and walks over to Bugs with a deadpan expression.)

Daffy: (re-animated) Ha ha ha, very funny, ha ha ha! (resumes deadpan expression)

If you are wondering, the other two cartoons in the hunting trilogy are “Rabbit Fire” and “Duck! Rabbit, Duck!”

“Rabbit Fire,” the first in the series, is the one with the famous exchange where Bugs and Daffy argue whether it is duck season or rabbit season. Here is that exchange, taken from The Internet Movie Database:

Bugs: Say, doc, are you trying to get yourself in trouble with the law? This ain’t wabbit huntin’ season.

Elmer: It’s not?

Bugs: No, it’s duck huntin’ season.

Daffy: That, sir, is an unmitigated frabrication. It’s wabbit season.

Bugs: Duck season.

Daffy: Wabbit season.

Bugs: Duck season.

Daffy: Wabbit season.

Bugs: Duck season.

Daffy: Wabbit season.

Bugs: Wabbit season.

Daffy: Duck season.

Bugs: Wabbit season.

Daffy: I say it’s duck season. And I say fire!

Some other great Daffy Duck cartoons are “Ali Baba Bunny,” in which at the end Daffy offends a genie, who says, “Dog! You have desecrated the spirit of the lamp. Prepare to take the consequences.” Now and then, jokingly, I call my dog, “Dog!” in the same curt way. She wags her tail, having grown used to it.

Of course, there is “Drip-Along Daffy,” with the line: “Slight pause whilst I adjust my accoutrements.” “Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century,” when he fires his disintegrating pistol: “Heh, well, whaddaya know? It disintegrated.” “Beanstalk Bunny,” when he points at Bugs and tells the giant: “He’s Jack.” And “Robin Hood Daffy,” with the bill-bending scene surrounding the line, “Ho! Ha ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!”

Finally, “Duck Amuck,” the popular cartoon where the unseen artist keeps redrawing the setting and costumes for Daffy, holds a special place for me because, when I was in Saudi Arabia during the Operation Desert Shield portion of the Persian Gulf War, we spent several months living at a relay site on a hill in the desert. Some members of our platoon liberated a TV set and a TV cart from a warehouse. They took it into our mess tent and powered it up, and the first thing we saw on Saudi Arabian TV was that cartoon, in English with Arabian subtitles. We all laughed our brains out to this happy slice of Americana.

Tribune Managing Editor Tim Engstrom has passed his joy for Warner Brothers cartoons on to his 4-year-old son.