Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote

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Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote are two Chuck Jones cartoon characters who appeared in the Warner Bros. -Productions Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies occur. From the special concept for the Road Runner films it follows that both characters appear almost exclusively together. Only the coyote was combined with other Looney Tunes figures in a slightly modified form. The first episodes were written in 1949 ( Fast and Furry-ous ) and 1952 ( Beep Beep ). Jones' cartoon was originally planned as a satire on the popular cat-and-mouse cartoons like Tom and Jerry . After the pilot was not recognized as such, but was well received by audiences as a comedy, the original concept was dropped.

action

The main characters of the Road Runner short films are:

  • Road Runner - a flightless and furiously fast running bird, which is slightly based on the real existing path cuckoo ( Geococcyx californianus , English Greater Roadrunner ).
  • Wile E. Coyote (also known as Karl der Coyote and Willi / Willy Coyote in Germany) - an increasingly hungry and unlucky coyote . The name is a play on words from wily ( German  torn, smart ) and coyote ( German  coyote ).

The plot of the short films is simple and always the same: Wile E. Coyote, who is constantly looking for food, chases the road runner in a desert-like environment that is modeled on the environment of the southwestern USA . The hunts also go through pipelines or tunnels that have neither a system nor a recognizable purpose. Common running gags include the coyote falling off a cliff, being buried under a boulder, or blowing itself up. The resulting injuries have healed in the next scene. Although the coyote is equipped with high tech and elaborate traps, usually from the Looney Tunes company ACME , it never succeeds in catching the Road Runner. His ingenious constructions regularly backfire - often against all the laws of physics - and injure the coyote himself in the process. The films derive their wit from this exaggerated slapstick violence. Although the coyote is the "villain" of the cartoons, his attempts, which are doomed to fail from the outset, make him popular with the films. The Road Runner itself has no elaborated character, but is rather built into the scene as an accessory. Most of the time he is aimlessly on the road. B. shown as a parcel carrier. All baits laid out by the coyote, mostly birdseed, are willingly accepted by the roadrunner.

The two characters almost never speak, but rather communicate the respective statement to the audience (and each other) by holding up signs. The only regular "words" are in the beep beep (pronounced rather "meep meep") of the Road Runner. The speaker is Paul Julian . There are no other supporting roles in the cartoons.

A similar motif is the hare and the wolf . Here, too, there is the wild hunt of the wolf after the hare. But there are also other animals.

concept

Chuck Jones explained in several interviews and in his autobiography that the Road Runner cartoons are based on some rules (Jones calls them disciplines that the director should adhere to).

  1. The road runner cannot harm the coyote except suddenly appearing behind him and scare him with his "meep meep".
  2. Only your own inability or the malfunction of the ACME products can harm the coyote, no external influence is necessary.
  3. Wile E. Coyote could stop his hunt anytime he wanted - if he wasn't a fanatic.
  4. The cartoons manage completely without spoken dialogue, the only exception being the Road Runner's "Meep Meep".
  5. The Road Runner may only move on the road, as its name ( road 'road') implies. (However, this is not always observed: Road Runner often moves on rails, for example in the episode "Stop! Look! And Hasten!")
  6. The location of the action is always the southwest American desert landscape.
  7. All tools and weapons that the coyote uses are supplied by ACME.
  8. The gravity is the worst enemy of the coyotes.
  9. The coyote is always more humiliated than seriously injured in its failures.
  10. The coyote only falls into an abyss when it realizes that there is only air below it.
  11. The Road Runner cannot read, but can obviously write signs, which is the only form of communication.
  12. The Road Runner does not have to drink (is "said" by a sign in the episode "Beep, Beep", but he drinks a cocktail in at least one other episode).

marketing

Because of their popularity, both figures were used as advertising media. Chrysler bought marketing rights from Warner Bros. for US $ 50,000 to equip the Plymouth Road Runner, built from 1968 to 1980, with images of the Road Runner and a horn that imitates the “beep beep”. The Road Runner was named after the broadband Internet services via the cable network by Time Warner . Both characters appeared in various commercials, for example for Pepsi , Chevrolet or Energizer .

In addition, at least five video games were made:

See also

literature

  • Chuck Jones : Chuck Amuck. The life and times of an animated cartoonist. Farrar Straus Giroux, New York NY 1989, ISBN 0-374-12348-9 . The English autobiography of Chuck Jones.
  • Maureen Furniss (Ed.): Chuck Jones Conversations . University Press of Mississippi, Jackson MS 2005, ISBN 1-57806-728-6 . A collection of various Chuck Jones interviews, also in English.

Individual evidence