With a large group of characters under the "Looney Tunes" umbrella, the creators of "Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol" had the ability to cast the key roles with the proper players. How did they do?
They did a great job!
You first look in-house when casting your Scrooge and they had a likely candidate in Yosemite Sam! He's certainly ornery enough! Is his name here actually "Sam Scrooge" or is Yosemite Sam not good at remembering lines?
With Scrooge cast, what to do with Bugs Bunny himself? Do you make him Bob Cratchit, the seemingly second biggest role? No, that wouldn't work. Bugs is way too independent. What they did here was have him come into Scrooge's office like nephew Fred, although he does not seem to be Scrooge's nephew, then carry out the haunting in typical Bugs fashion. As always, Bugs is in charge every step of the way.
The Looney Tunes stable does have the perfect Bob Cratchit, however, in the form of Porky Pig! Porky always was able to play a sympathetic everyman convincingly.
As is often the case with big cartoon stars like Porky, he has a significant other, Petunia, who easily slides into the role of Mrs. Cratchit.
Porky does have a cartoon nephew named Pinky, who perhaps is playing the older Cratchit son. There's also a Cratchit daughter, perhaps played by a niece of Petunia?
Tiny Tim is an important role, and who better to portray him than Tweety, the tiniest Looney Tunes star of all! Some may say that if Bob Cratchit is played by a pig, then his son should also be a pig rather than a bird. But these are cartoon characters acting out a story for us, so anything goes!
I'm of the school, by the way, that Tweety's full name is "Tweety Pie," as evidenced by the title of his 1947 Oscar winning cartoon of the same name (also directed by Friz Freleng).
Tweety's frequent costar, Sylvester shows up as Scrooge's cat, which is pretty wacky.
Bugs also leads a group of carolers consisting of Pepe LePew, Elmer Fudd and Foghorn Leghorn!
So, a lot of classic characters here. Conspicuous by his absence is Daffy Duck. Did he refuse to participate if he couldn't play Scrooge?
Hmmm...
No comments:
Post a Comment