Chuck Amuck: The Movie (1991)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Writer:

John Needham (written by)

Genre:

Documentary | Biography

Plot:

Discussion of the career of animator Chuck Jones.

Plot Keywords:

Animator | Duck | Looney Tunes | Merrie Melodies | Interview

Cast

Chuck Jones	...	Himself
Maurice Noble	...	Himself
Lloyd Vaughan	...	Himself
Retta Davidson	...	Herself
Dick Vosburgh	...	Narrator
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Mel Blanc	...	Himself (archive footage)
Raymond Katz	...	Himself (archive footage)
Michael Maltese	...	Himself (archive footage)
Leon Schlesinger	...	Himself (archive footage)

Runtime:

51 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:Unrated

Company:

Moondance Films

Quotes:

Chuck Jones: I think you must learn - if you're in any filmmaking - you must respect the single frame. And there are twenty-four of those per second. If you don't respect that single frame you're in the same boat with a musician who does not respect an eighth note or a sixteenth note or a thirty-second note or whatever. You have to find the smallest unit and you have to love it and believe that one will make a difference. One frame to me will make the difference between whether the thing's funny or not.

Movie Connections:

Edited from Adventures of the Road-Runner (1962)

there was another documentary about him, I recall

Right after Chuck Jones died in February, 2002, PBS ran a documentary about him. I watched it, but didn't catch the title. When I saw that one of the Looney Tunes DVDs carried "Chuck Amuck: The Movie", I wondered whether that was the same one. It turned out to be a different one. This one starts out with an exhibit in London's Museum of the Moving Image, which was at the time featuring Chuck Jones's work. From there, the documentary focuses on Jones, but he uses much of it to talk about the art of animation in general. There are of course plenty of scenes from the Looney Tunes cartoons to move the action along, but also stuff from Jones's childhood and how it influenced his work.

OK, so maybe the documentary is sort of advertising the museum, and maybe there is more focus than necessary on Jones's childhood. I, for one, find it fascinating to hear about how a person's experiences in life contribute to his/her work. Of course, I like hearing all about the classic Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons, so maybe I'm too biased about all this. The overall point is that even if this documentary isn't the greatest ever made (for ones of this nature, you can't beat "Bugs Bunny Superstar"), it should still be of interest to Looney Tunes fans. Worth seeing.

I wonder what the other Chuck Jones documentary was called.