In 1979, Warner Bros. finally released a feature-length film centered around Bugs Bunny. And while “The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie” had a few problems, its arrival in theaters signaled a commercial potential that the studio had overlooked for too long.
Unlike the 1975 independently produced “Bugs Bunny Superstar,” “The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie” did not mix live action documentary footage with classic cartoons. Instead, director/producer Chuck Jones created new animation to bridge the presentation of the vintage animation – or to be specific, a selection of post-1948 cartoons that were not part of the collection sold to Associated Artists Production two decades earlier. The new animation featured Bugs giving the viewer a tour of his luxury home and recalling his career on the big screen.
Jones was clearly still pissed over Bob Clampett’s domination of “Bugs Bunny Superstar” (even though Clampett mentioned Jones was a “genius”). In his film, the new footage of Bugs Bunny includes a brief mention of his “fathers” – Jones, Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson, Michael Maltese, and Mel Blanc, with Clampett conspicuously omitted.
But Jones took the diva act one step higher by only including classic cartoons that he directed in this production. Thus, characters that were staples of the post-1948 output from the Freleng and McKimson units (including Yosemite Sam, Tweety and Sylvester, Foghorn Leghorn and Speedy Gonzales) are noticeably absent from the line-up.
Still, what remains is a collection of bona fide classic shorts, albeit with some minor editing here and there. Included are “Duck Amuck,” “What’s Opera, Doc?” and “Operation: Rabbit.” The film wraps up with a 19-minute “That’s Entertainment!”-style presentation of 31 gags from 17 cartoons featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.
“The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie” snagged a slot at the 1979 New York Film Festival, earning positive reviews that were leveraged for a successful commercial release and the encouragement for more Bugs Bunny features.
Oh, an interesting trivia tidbit: the film was originally produced as “The Great American Chase” and was test marketed in April and May of 1979 in a few cities with that title. But the film flopped in that test, hence the rebranding as “The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie.” And if you watch this trailer of “The Great American Chase,” you’ll get a lesson in how not to market a film: