Cartoon Gravity/Road Runner

Among the many subjects on which I am tutoring my grandson is cartoon gravity, as best exhibited by the Road Runner cartoons. That is, when the Coyote runs off the edge of a cliff, he doesn’t fall until he looks down. I am also slowly teaching him the nine Roadrunner rules (which, if you’ve never deduced them, include the roadrunner staying on the road and never being caught, and all the Coyote’s tat comes from Acme).

Chuck Jones, the director of the majority of the Road Runner shorts (and ALL of the good ones), developed the rules. If you missed the director credit, you would know a cartoon was directed by some ham-handed second-stringer off the bench when the coyote holds up a sign, like “Not again.” It makes the cartoon unintelligible to four year olds and foreigners, unlike the Jones cartoons, which can be understood at any age and in any country.

Comments

[Robert E. Malchman]

Did you ever read Wile E. Coyote v. Acme Co.? It's a brilliant piece in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1990/02/26/coyote-v-acme

Apparently it's been made into a film, but last month Warner Bros. shelved it, and then unshelved it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_vs._Acme#Aborted_cancellation

[Clark Smith]

Yes. The other destruction of true comedy in the Roadrunner cartoon series was the introduction of a laugh track. What a buzz kill.

[Paul Schindler]

Yes I did read it, loved it and hope to see it with my grandson