The Best Looney Tune You’ve Never Seen, Part 3
When last we left our story, our heroes were down. The plug had been pulled on their Baby Looney Tunes direct-to-video. So, what happened?
Spike Brandt, who was to direct the Baby Road Runner and Coyote segment, loved the material so much, that in his own time, at his own expense, he had a scratch voice track recorded (a scratch track is a temporary track that will be replaced later) and he made an animatic (an animatic is basically a storyboard shot on film, timed to the soundtrack, or visual gags). But this was no ordinary animatic. Spike had posed out the entire film so it practically looked like it was animated and he came up with the title Little Go Beep, which I think is very clever. He called a meeting with myself, Kathleen Helppie and Jean MacCurdy, who was then President of Warner Bros. Animation and showed it to us. I was blown away. He even had sound effects added. Jean and Kathy were also duly impressed and decided to take it to the next level.
Spike worked out a budget and we met with none other than Bob Daley, who along with Terry Semel, were the co-CEO’s of Warner Bros. We ran the tape for him. He laughed. He asked how much it would cost. Spike told him. He asked if there was any way to lower that figure, which, I assume, is something you have to say if you’re a big executive. Kind of like not buying a car at the first price they offer you. Spike also pitched the idea of doing this as a 50th anniversary of the Road Runner and Coyote. After some wrangling back and forth, the project was eventually green-lit. I won’t tell you what the final budget was, but I will say that for this eight minute short, it was more than what we usually spent on a half-hour of Pinky and the Brain.
Next up was casting the voice of Cage E. Coyote, Wile E. Coyote’s dad. Incidentally, his name in the script was originally Craft E. Coyote, but, believe it or not, that name didn’t clear legal. Someone else was actually using that. I came up with a whole list of “E” names, like Shift E. Coyote, Trick E. Coyote and Can E. Coyote. The one they liked that also cleared legal was Cage E. Coyote.
When I told my friend Rick Greene what we were doing, he immediately said a name that I thought was perfect for the role - Stan Freberg. Not only was he a vintage Warner Bros. voice actor (he was sometimes Junior Bear, Hubie and/or Bertie, one of the Goofy Gophers and everybody’s favorite, although he only appeared in one cartoon, Pete Puma), but he played “pompous” and “self-righteous” better than anyone. Spike liked the idea and Stan became our Cage E. Coyote.
The recording session was very difficult for Stan because the person that recorded the scratch track had talked very fast and Spike already had the cartoon timed out to the second, so Stan had very little room to act and put his personal touch on it. Still, he was a trouper and we got a fine performance out of him.
Tomorrow: Animation, music, sound effects, mixing… so much left to do!