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#tex avery

debutniverse
@debutniverse

The Kwicky Koala Show (1981)

This post is part of Debutniverse, a series where I watch just the first episode of various cartoons.

First episode title: Sink or Swim / Gold Crazy / A Close Encounter of the Canine Kind
How familiar with the show am I?: I hadn't heard of it before.
Is this the first episode?: There seems to be some confusion about which individual segments of the shows that make up The Kwicky Koala Show were aired together. Both Wikipedia and IMDb place "Sink or Swim" as the first instalment of Kwicky Koala himself, but put it together with different shorts of the other characters from the ones that were actually there when I went and sought out the episode myself. I don't know whether this means the episodes were constructed differently in different markets, or if the internet is just wrong about this.

Tex Avery. If you haven't heard his name, you've almost certainly experienced his work. He created Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, then moved from Warner Brothers to MGM where he created Droopy. For the last few years of his life, he was working at Hanna-Barbera, and this show, The Kwicky Koala Show, was one of his final works. I can tell you now, the show doesn't hide its inspirations, but that doesn't mean it's not fun in itself!

The Kwicky Koala Show title card
ianmichael
@ianmichael

please watch my favourite looney tunes short, THE DUCKSTERS (1950)

i'd suggest you watch it first before getting into my ~analysis~ below: seven minutes of intense, hilarious cruelty. the short starts in medias res with porky pig tied to a conveyor belt frantically trying to answer a quiz show question before he's sawn in half. porky begs to go home from the show; daffy either ignores him or cajoles him into continuing. my personal highlight is when daffy shoots an audience member dead with a gun (and the cartoon pans away QUICKLY as though nothing happened.) it sounds horrible as i write it but i assure you it is unrelentlessly & shockingly funny.

i'd say chuck jones slightly edges out tex avery as the most famous looney tunes director, but i feel as though his star has dimmed a little in recent years with the suggestion that he took a lot of credit for the jokes/shorts that michael maltese wrote (in Chuck Jones' autobiography CHUCK AMUCK, for instance, he lists a bunch of rules that Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner must follow; Maltese, who wrote most of those shorts, said that he had never heard of those rules until Chuck wrote his book). i used to be a Jones-head as a kid but as i get older i've really come to appreciate the wild, unhinged animation of Clampett, or the lasciviousness of Avery; Jones just didn't have that anarchic dog in him. but my god could the man do facial expressions. just LOOK at these incredible faces:

daffy duck switching off a giant circular saw attached to a conveyor belt with porky big tied to it. porky is terrified.

daffy duck, astonished porky answered a question correctly

daffy held up by the neck by porky, who is ready to sock him one

porky, on the left, is woozy from being smacked around by daffy, on the right, who looks smug. daffy's expression kills me every time

just the GOAT. no one is better at faces than him. and it's important for this short because it feels like a bottle episode; a single background scene, not a ton of complicated animations, only two characters, lots of action alluded to off-screen, etc. the facial expressions pick up a lot of that work, but there's also some really subtle and gorgeous mannerisms as well: daffy adjusting his mic stand, for instance, or when he picks his duck teeth (?) with a toothpick while porky answers a question. incredible work all around. i never tire of it.