Chuck Reducks: Drawing from the Fun Side of Life

The timeless masterpieces of animation director Chuck Jones have kept audiences laughing all over the globe for more than sixty years. The cartoon characters he has shaped and brought to life - Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the Road Runner, the Grinch, and a memorable menagerie of others - have, like their creator, become indelible icons of American culture.
Packed with entertaining anecdotes - encounters with Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney, life with such legends as Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, Mel Blanc, and Carl Stalling in the bedlam conditions of Termite Terrace (the Warner Bros. Animation studio), and collaborations with the genial Theodor Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) - Chuck Reducks is an unforgettable tour inside the endlessly creative mind of one of America's greatest comedy directors. There are character-by-character portraits of Chuck's animated stars, with enough priceless gems to satisfy even Daffy's appetite: Why Bugs Bunny's face had something in common with ice skater Sonja Henie's; Why there is something very peculiar about Marvin Martian's mouth and Witch Hazel's hairline; How inept management inspired Pepe le Pew; and did Michigan J. Frog (1957) inspire Steven Spielberg to name a certain adventure hero after a state and an admired animation director?
Chuck Reducks also includes informative chronologies, illustrations detailing how characters are drawn and given movement, in-depth looks at such masterpieces as What's Opera, Doc? and Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and practical tips for tomorrow's animators.

Now 84, Jones (Chuck Amuck) has been an animator and a director of animated features for more than 60 years and has created such cartoon figures as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote and Pepe le Pew. He also worked with Dr. Seuss on TV versions of How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Horton Hears a Who, in the course of a career during which he made more than 250 films and won three Oscars. Jones's advice here on how to draw and, more specifically, how to draw animals engaging in various activities will prove valuable to aspiring artists; and his portraits of people he has known?from his captivating Uncle Lynn with his surrealistic view of the world to the monsters who ran the Warner Brothers animation department in the 1930s and '40s?are memorable. The book also includes sidebars with quotes, some by Jones himself and others by writers from Thurber to Emerson. There's some filler here, notably pointless lists of unused titles for innumerable shorts and analyses of numerous minor cartoon characters, but Jones, an American original, is good company?if not quite as engaging as his wascally wabbit. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Jones is famous for having refined the characters of Bugs and Daffy, among others, and perfected the art of the six-minute animation short. Like his preceding memoir, Chuck Amuck (LJ 3/15/90), this book consists of reminiscences, informative sidebars, and occasional non sequiturs. His career-oriented anecdotes are more mesmerizing than his familial ones, and much similar territory is covered in Chuck Amuck. Aphorisms abound (e.g., never write down to anybody), and some platitudinous asides are just plain patronizing. Yet Jones ultimately communicates a philosophy about his iconoclastic art that is insightful and unpretentious. Less comprehensive than his first memoir where his early career is concerned, this volume is more of a companion piece than a sequel. Nevertheless, for the new illustrations it promises (not seen), for the chapter on Jones's collaboration with Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) on How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and for what it reveals about the creative process, this is a necessary addition to any film or art collection.?Jayne Plymale-Jackson, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Athens
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Jones was the most distinctive of the many directors responsible for the classic Warner Brothers cartoons of the 1940s and 1950s. Without sacrificing any of the humor and the charm common to all of the studio's animated product, Jones' cartoons were more idiosyncratic and thoughtful--traits abundant in the second volume of his memoirs. Like Chuck Amuck (1989), it offers amusing tales of Jones' formative years, anecdotes of Termite Terrace (the ramshackle Warner animation studio, populated by characters as loony as those onscreen), and insights into the personalities of Bugs, Daffy, the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, and the rest of Jones' cartoon cast. Particularly compelling is the chapter detailing Jones' collaboration with Dr. Seuss on the TV classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and the engaging text is peppered with dozens of Jones' delightful drawings. Moreover, Jones' stories of the early days of animation and valuable tips on drawing make the book highly instructive to cartoon students and aficionados, while his perceptive observations on comedy, creativity, and collaboration give it far broader appeal. Gordon Flagg