Wit and wisdom from a wabbit
Bugs Bunny Festival spans the ages
His cultural significance is up for debate. To some, he's an anarchist and revolutionary. To others, he's a pop culture icon, or a comic genius, or someone with considerable gifts in the classical music sphere.
This is not some philosopher or renaissance man we're talking about: It's Bugs Bunny, the wacky wabbit. And he's the reason hundreds of grownups flock, without children, to the annual Bugs Bunny Film Festival at the Brattle Theatre, which begins Friday and runs for nearly two weeks.
Now in its 14th year, the Festival has daily matinees to accommodate kids on school vacation break, but also late evening shows to accommodate adults who appreciate a lot more in the cartoons than the giddy antics of a hare-brained herbivore and other Warner Bros. notables.
"The humor is quite sophisticated. It's hysterical," said Ken Bader, 59, of Cambridge, who has not missed a year and whose rabbit-inspired mantra is "the more Bugs the better." "I'm sure a lot of it goes over kids' heads."
Bader, an editor for The World, the public radio newsmagazine heard on WGBH, is a relatively late-life convert to the cartoons, although like most kids of his era he watched them on TV. "But I wasn't a fanatic probably until I had to prepare for a Chuck Jones interview," he said. Chuck Jones was the legendary Warner Bros. animation director who worked on many of Warner Bros.' most famous characters including Bugs, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, and Porky Pig. He created other characters himself, including Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, and Pepe le Pew.
At the time, Bader was a freelance film critic for NPR living in Washington, and he interviewed Jones in 1988. It was clear from the interview that Jones had a lot of respect for Bugs Bunny, whom he described as a "combination of Rex Harrison, D'Artagnan of the Three Musketeers, and Dorothy Parker. You take those elements and stuff them into a rabbit skin and you have Bugs Bunny," he said.
His intention has not been lost on Film Festival devotees. These include Brian Murphy, the vice mayor of Cambridge who attends every year with his two children, ages 12 and 7. "I think it's important to fill in the gaps in my children's cultural literacy," Murphy said.
There will be nearly two dozen cartoons - all shorts - at the Festival this year, including a personal favorite of Ned Hinkle, the Brattle's creative director, "Water Water Every Hare." The plot is pure Looney Tunes implausibility: Bugs finds himself trapped in a castle of an evil scientist who just happens to be looking for a rabbit brain. Chaos ensues. Hinkle regrets that the lineup will not include the popular bullfight-themed "Bully for Bugs," "but only because I like it so much I have to restrain myself from showing it all the time," he said.
Featured will be two Bugs Bunny classics, both lampoons of operas - the Rossini-inspired "Rabbit of Seville" starring Bugs as a scissors-happy barber; and "What's Opera, Doc?," which reinterprets Wagner's "Ring" cycle, including The Ride of the Valkyries, and features the lyrics "Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!" sung to the main theme by Elmer Fudd as Siegfried. (Bugs plays Brunhilde).
"These cartoons are the introduction to classical music for many of us," Murphy said. So much so, in fact, that when Chuck Jones died in 2002, the classical music magazine Andante wrote a lengthy tribute, noting that the cartoons served as "a point of entry into distant musical and timbral worlds that young viewers might never have otherwise encountered." (And praising the cartoon soundtracks for their "lexicon of timbres. . . lightning glissandi, momentary dissonance, frenzied scales, and a host of other musical figures that verge on the avant-garde.")
Yet it's fair to say that Bugs is underappreciated by a lot of adults. For one thing he's old (roughly 68), in a culture that values younger faces, be they Shrek, Nemo, or WALL-E. But for literal-minded grownups, he's also a bit hard to get a handle on; it's easier for kids who can more readily suspend disbelief. He lives, vaguely, underground. He switches characters - one day a matador, another a tenor in drag. (Personally speaking, I've been perplexed and troubled by why Bugs appeared on stage at all in "What's Opera, Doc?," when the conductor was obviously expecting real opera singers.) And Bugs is more violent than a video game avatar, hacking Fudd with an ax, dropping weights on his head, or vaporizing him with TNT.
But those who know and love the rabbit see a much more complex character.
To Bader, Bugs embodies elements of Everyman. "What does he want out of life? He wants carrots. And he wants to be left alone. Elmer is always trying to kill him. Daffy tries to screw him over. Things that happen to him are never his fault."
"I am a big fan of Bugs Bunny," Ned Hinkle said. "I'm a punk rocker at heart, and Bugs is anarchist and revolutionary and so I'm really attracted to that character. I find the Looney Tunes cartoons to be the most intelligent and witty of the classic cartoons. It comes down to what kind of comedy you like and you appreciate, and I've always been drawn to dialogue-driven comedy or concept-driven comedy. Even when it's Road Runner, the gags you get with Wile E. Coyote's expressions or the signs Road Runner holds up, or the machines Wile E. is ordering from Acme" - these are about words.
Murphy acknowledges that the Bugs Bunny Film Festival appeals to him, in part, because "it takes me back to my youth, sitting in front of a TV with a bowl of Cap'n Crunch." But he adds that the typical Bugs stories of rivalry, envy, one-upmanship, eternal hope and eternal disappointment - "these are classic stories that write themselves over and over again in daily life. They really are timeless."
Consider Acme - the fictitious mail order company (and apparent precursor to
Ken Bader maintains it's never too late for adults to rediscover Bugs Bunny. "You don't have to be well-versed in this stuff," he said reassuringly. "It's not like you're walking into the third season of 'The Sopranos.' "
The Bugs Bunny Film Festival, Brattle Theatre. There are matinees and evening shows from Feb. 13-19 and then matinees only from Feb. 20-26. www.brattlefilm.org.
Anime film and discussion. "Grave of the Fireflies," the 1988 Japanese animated vision of two youngsters' struggle to survive in World War ll Japan, followed by a discussion with experts in anime, John W. Dower, Roland Kelts, and Frederik L. Schodt. Museum of Fine Arts, Feb. 11, 7 p.m. www.mfa.org/calendar.
Filmmaker William Friedkin. The Harvard Film Archive presents "The Uncanny Cinema of William Friedkin," Feb. 13 to 22. Friedkin will be present Feb. 20 to discuss his film "The French Connection" and his first film, "The People Vs. Paul Crump," and again on Feb. 21 to discuss his films "Sorcerer" and "The Hunted." 