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Tex Avery: Masters of AnimationPost an Event »
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Masters of Animation - Tex Avery , a celebration of one of the funniest, most irreverent animators of the 20th century; the man who created such iconic cartoons characters as Bugs Bunny (and coined "What's Up Doc?"), Daffy Duck, Droopy and many more. Fred "Tex" Avery's iconoclastic style transformed the adorable and fuzzy characters of Di$ney studios into comedians, half-wits and lunatics; often breaking the fourth-wall and confronting the audience with the artifice of the cartoon they are watching. This program features all your favorite characters and celebrity caricatures as well as some forgotten friends history may have forgotten along the way. We'll begin where Avery began at Warner Brothers; his first Looney Tunes short (animated by Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett), with long-lost character Beans in Gold Diggers of '49 (1935). See the very first Daffy Duck cartoon Porky's Duck Hunt (1937) and see why that "crazy, darn fool duck" bounced and cackled his way into our hearts. Then, see what happens when Daffy is let loose at the editing bay and creates an avant-garde collage film in Daffy Duck in Hollywood (1938). While we're in Tinseltown, we'll head over to the club where a few dozen of the most iconic stars of the 1930s and 1940s are all cavorting in style in Hollywood Steps Out (1941). Avery turns a fairy tale on its head when lounge singers, swingin' grandmas and pimped out wolves put a new twist on an age-old classic in Red Hot Red Riding Hood (1943). Educational films get a jab when we learn all about insects in the ridiculous Bug Parade (1941), and all about monkeys, lions and other wacky fauna in (the not always anatomically correct) A Day at the Zoo (1939). Roy Rogers' early band "Sons of the Pioneers" voice the yodels of the feuding hillbillies of A Feud There Was (1938). Bugs Bunny fakes his own death in one of his very first cartoons, The Heckling Hare (1941), the film that led to a dispute that caused Tex to pack his bags from Termite Terrace and head over to MGM where he made our final three films of the night, King-Sized Canary (1947), Doggone Tired (1949) and Counterfeit Cat (1950). It's a night of wit, wackiness and wabbits all screened from 16mm prints.