Rabbit Fire
Encyclopedia
Rabbit Fire is a 1951 Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...

cartoon starring Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...

, Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck
Daffy Duck is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, often running the gamut between being the best friend and sometimes arch-rival of Bugs Bunny...

 and Elmer Fudd
Elmer Fudd
Elmer J. Fudd/Egghead is a fictional cartoon character and one of the most famous Looney Tunes characters, and the de facto archenemy of Bugs Bunny. He has one of the more disputed origins in the Warner Bros. cartoon pantheon . His aim is to hunt Bugs, but he usually ends up seriously injuring...

. Directed by Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...

 and written by Michael Maltese
Michael Maltese
Michael "Mike" Maltese was a long-time storyboard artist and screenwriter for classic animated cartoon shorts.-Career:...

, The short is notable for being the first film in Jones' "hunting trilogy"—the other two films being Rabbit Seasoning
Rabbit Seasoning
Rabbit Seasoning is a 1952 Merrie Melodies cartoon, directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. It is the sequel to Rabbit Fire, and the second entry in the "Hunting trilogy" directed by Jones and written by Michael Maltese...

and Duck! Rabbit, Duck!. It is also the first film to feature a feud between Bugs and Daffy. Produced by Edward Selzer for Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc., the short was released to theaters on May 19, 1951 by Warner Bros. Pictures and is widely considered among Jones' best and most important films. It is also the first film to star both Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

The film marks a significant change in Daffy's style, away from the "screwball" and toward the "foil" for Bugs' jokes.

Plot

Daffy Duck lures Elmer Fudd to Bugs Bunny's burrow, and watches from aside when Elmer attempts to shoot Bugs. Bugs informs Elmer that it isn't rabbit season
Hunting season
A hunting season is the time when it is legal to hunt and kill a particular species.In the United States, each state has primary responsibility and authority over the hunting of wildlife that resides within state boundaries. State wildlife agencies that sell hunting licenses are the best source of...

, but instead duck season. Daffy emerges, irate, and attempts to convince Elmer that Bugs is lying. Their conversation breaks down into Bugs leading Daffy to admit it is duck season by a number of verbal plays, for example:
Daffy: "That, sir, is an unmitigated faberication! It's wabbit season!"
Bugs: "Duck season!"
Daffy: "Wabbit season!"
Bugs: "Duck season!"
Daffy: "Wabbit season!"
Bugs: "Duck season!!"
Daffy: "Wabbit season!!"
Bugs: (reversing the flow) "Wabbit season!"
Daffy: "Duck season!!!"
Bugs: "Wabbit season!!!"
Daffy: "I say it's duck season, and I say, fire!" (This entire section is used as the opening in Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Looney Tunes: Back in Action is a 2003 American live action/animated adventure comedy film directed by Joe Dante and starring Brendan Fraser, Jenna Elfman, Timothy Dalton, and Steve Martin. The film is essentially a feature-length Looney Tunes cartoon, with all the wackiness and surrealism typical...

)


Once Daffy admits it is duck season, Elmer fires his shotgun at Daffy, causing the duck to suffer a temporary setback before he comes back and tries again. This repeats multiple times during the short, with Daffy trying different ploys to get Elmer to shoot Bugs, but Bugs continues to outwit him. After Daffy is shot for the third time, he walks away. Elmer tries to shoot him, but his gun has no more bullets. Daffy is then thrilled, grabs Elmer's gun to make sure, but is shot in the face with the last bullet.

Daffy then sees a sign that Bugs nailed to a tree saying "Duck Season Open". As he sees Elmer approaching, he disguises himself as Bugs, telling Elmer that it's 'Duck season'. Bugs then appears disguised as Daffy, complete with webbed feet and a fake bill. Elmer shoots Daffy after seeing a "Rabbit Season" sign on the same tree. Then he goes up to Bugs and says "You're desthpicable!" The 2 get out of their costumes as Daffy rants to Bugs how desthpicable he is. Bugs then begins to read duck recipes from a cookbook, and Daffy does the same with a rabbit recipe cookbook. Elmer tells them he's a vegetarian and only hunts for the sport of it. Although, in previous episodes, it has been stated that he was hunting Bugs for rabbit stew or the like.
Bugs comes in and claims "Oh, yeah? Well, there's other sports besides huntin', ya know!?"
Daffy then offers to play tennis. Elmer then begins shooting and chases both of them all the way to the rabbit hole. Bugs comes out of his hole and accuses Elmer of "hunting rabbits with an elephant gun." Bugs suggests Elmer shoot an elephant instead, but just as he is considering it a huge elephant appears, threatens Elmer and preemptively knocks him to the ground.

Elmer finally loses patience and decides to take out both Bugs and Daffy. Daffy comes into the scene, dressed as a dog and Bugs comes in as a lady hunter. Elmer, however, sees through their disguise and threatens to shoot them. The cartoon climaxes when Elmer finds the two arguing by a tree with a sign that starts with the words "Rabbit Season"; Bugs and Daffy continue to pull off the sign to alternatively reveal it is "Duck Season" or "Rabbit Season" until they hit a final sign, proclaiming it to be "Elmer Season". The tables turned, Bugs and Daffy, dressed as hunters, begin to chase Elmer, telling the audience to be "vewwy, vewwy quiet...we're hunting Elmers!" (Daffy: "Hahahahahahahaha.")

Reaction

Rabbit Fire is generally considered among Chuck Jones' and Michael Maltese's best works, and is noted for its use of dialogue gags in lieu of the physical gags more typical in animation. Besides the two sequels to this film, a number of other notable Jones shorts, including Beanstalk Bunny
Beanstalk Bunny
Beanstalk Bunny, a 1954 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon was released on 12 February 1955. This theatrical cartoon was directed by Chuck Jones, and starred Mel Blanc as the voices of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Elmer Fudd, voiced by Arthur Q...

and Ali Baba Bunny
Ali Baba Bunny
Ali Baba Bunny is a Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies short featuring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, directed by Chuck Jones and released in 1957. In 1994, it was voted #35 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field...

, paired quick-witted Bugs and self-serving Daffy with (or rather against) each other.

The "duck season/rabbit season" argument from this short became one of the most notable references of the Looney Tunes franchise, and has been analyzed both by scholars and by Jones himself (though it should be noted that this gag was actually used by Daffy against Porky 6 years earlier in the cartoon Duck Soup to Nuts
Duck Soup to Nuts
Duck Soup to Nuts is a 1944 Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoon, directed by Friz Freleng, and starring Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. Porky is a hunter looking to shoot Daffy, but Daffy keeps outwitting Porky....

). According to an essay by Darragh O'Donoghue, Rabbit Fire "stands in close relation to human experience, striving and generally failing to grasp an elusive quarry or goal.". Richard Thompson said that in the film, there is "the clearest definition of character roles: Elmer never knows what's going on; Bugs always knows what's going on and is in control of things; Daffy is bright enough to understand how to be in control, but never quite makes it." Jones himself refers to Rabbit Fire as a "corner" picture, among his works that, "as in turning a corner in a strange city, reveal new and enchanting vistas."

The short earned an honorable mention for animation historian Jerry Beck
Jerry Beck
Jerry Beck is a well-known animation historian, with ten books and numerous articles to his credit. He is also an animation producer, an industry consultant to Warner Bros., and has been an executive with Nickelodeon and Disney....

's list of The Fifty Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1000 Animation Professionals. Its 1952 sequel, Rabbit Seasoning
Rabbit Seasoning
Rabbit Seasoning is a 1952 Merrie Melodies cartoon, directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. It is the sequel to Rabbit Fire, and the second entry in the "Hunting trilogy" directed by Jones and written by Michael Maltese...

, made the actual list at number 30. The style, setup, and plot of Rabbit Fire were adapted into the opening sequence of Warners' 2003 film Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Looney Tunes: Back in Action is a 2003 American live action/animated adventure comedy film directed by Joe Dante and starring Brendan Fraser, Jenna Elfman, Timothy Dalton, and Steve Martin. The film is essentially a feature-length Looney Tunes cartoon, with all the wackiness and surrealism typical...

.

The non sequitur elephant character based on Joe Besser was the inspiration for Horatio the Elephant, a recurring character on PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

's Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...

.

Production details

  • In two interviews conducted years after this cartoon was originally released, director Chuck Jones fondly recalled voice artist Mel Blanc improvising hilariously as Daffy when he was trying to think of another word besides "dethpicable". However, in the finished film, only the words from the original dialogue script actually appear. Historians believe that Blanc did indeed improvise, as Jones remembered, but that Chuck Jones decided to use what was originally written instead.

  • Rabbit Fire and its two sequels often have two characters in the same frame for some length of time — an atypical aspect of the "Hunting" trilogy. In order to keep budgets under control, most Warner Bros. cartoons would cut back and forth between characters, rather than put two or more in the same shot.

  • Interestingly, while the film is introduced by the Looney Tunes
    Looney Tunes
    Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...

    music The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down
    The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down
    "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" is a song written in 1937 by Cliff Friend and Dave Franklin. It is best known as the theme tune for the Looney Tunes cartoon series produced by Warner Bros...

    , the opening card indicates a Merrie Melodies "Blue Ribbon" release, and the end card is Merrie Melodies, replacing the original orange-red Looney Tunes title sequences.

  • This marked the first cartoon where Bugs and Daffy starred and appeared together. While Bugs had made a cameo in Porky Pig's Feat
    Porky Pig's Feat
    Porky Pig's Feat is a one-reel animated cartoon short subject in the Looney Tunes series, produced in black-and-white and released to theatres on June 13, 1943 by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was directed by Frank Tashlin with musical supervision by Carl Stalling, and produced by Leon Schlesinger...

    (which co-starred Daffy and Porky Pig
    Porky Pig
    Porky Pig is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He was the first character created by the studio to draw audiences based on his star power, and the animators created many critically acclaimed shorts using the fat little pig...

    ), this was the first where both were stars.

  • The title is a play on "rapid fire".
  • Although this is the first cartoon with Daffy's selfish side replacing his screwball side, he still hollers "hoo-hoo!", an old Daffy signature yelp to show his screwball side

Censorship

  • Network television channels (particularly ABC
    American Broadcasting Company
    The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

    , CBS
    CBS
    CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

    , WB
    The WB Television Network
    The WB Television Network is a former television network in the United States that was launched on January 11, 1995 as a joint venture between Warner Bros. and Tribune Broadcasting. On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation and Warner Bros...

    , and the syndicated "Merrie Melodies Show") have edited this cartoon (and the other two cartoons in the "hunting trilogy"—Rabbit Seasoning
    Rabbit Seasoning
    Rabbit Seasoning is a 1952 Merrie Melodies cartoon, directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. It is the sequel to Rabbit Fire, and the second entry in the "Hunting trilogy" directed by Jones and written by Michael Maltese...

    and Duck! Rabbit, Duck!) to remove the 17 times Daffy is shot in the face by Elmer. While ABC and "The Merrie Melodies Show" would simply replace each occurrence with a frozen shot of Bugs looking on while the gunshot can be heard, CBS and WB removed the entire scene of Daffy getting shot.
  • On cable networks, all of the Daffy getting shot in the face gags were left intact in Rabbit Seasoning and Duck! Rabbit! Duck!, and almost all in Rabbit Fire. However, the "No More Bullets" gag (where Elmer seems to have run out of ammunition, Daffy stares down the barrel of the shotgun and discovers the hard way that there was "one buwwet weft", with the large slug left lodged in his dangling scalp) was cut from Rabbit Fire when shown on Nickelodeon (this gag is uncut elsewhere on cable)

Credits

  • Produced by: Edward Selzer
    Eddie Selzer
    Edward "Eddie" Selzer was an American film producer, most noted for been the producer of Warner Bros. Cartoons from 1944 to 1957....

  • Directed by: Chuck Jones
    Chuck Jones
    Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...

  • Story: Michael Maltese
    Michael Maltese
    Michael "Mike" Maltese was a long-time storyboard artist and screenwriter for classic animated cartoon shorts.-Career:...

  • Music: Carl Stalling
    Carl Stalling
    Carl W. Stalling was an American composer and arranger for music in animated films. He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts produced by Warner Bros., where he averaged one complete score each week, for 22 years.-Biography:Stalling was born to Ernest and...

  • Animation: Ken Harris
    Ken Harris
    Ken Harris was an American animator who worked for several film studios. He is widely considered as one of the master animators of his time....

    , Phil Monroe, Lloyd Vaughan, Ben Washam
    Ben Washam
    Benjamin Alfred Washam was an American animator who is best known for working under director Chuck Jones for nearly 30 years. Washam worked at Warner Bros. Cartoons from 1941 until 1962, mainly under the direction of Chuck Jones. He also worked on made-for-television cartoons in the early 1960s...

  • Background: Philip DeGuard
  • Layout: Robert Gribbroek
    Robert Gribbroek
    Robert Gribbroek was a layout artist and background painter at the Warner Brothers Cartoon studio from 1945 until 1964. He was first credited in Chuck Jones' Lost and Foundling , and he worked mainly for Jones until 1952 when he joined Robert McKimson's unit...

  • Voice Characterisions: Mel Blanc
    Mel Blanc
    Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...


Sources

  • Jones, Chuck (1989). Chuck Amuck : The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-374-12348-9.
  • Jones, Chuck (1996). Chuck Reducks : Drawing from the Fun Side of Life. New York: Warner Books. ISBN 0-446-51893-X.
  • Thompson, Richard (Jan-Feb 1975). Film Comment.
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