With two autobiographies and the comprehensive PBS documentary, Extremes & Inbetweens under his belt, the late Chuck Jones is probably the most documented Golden Age animator of all time. Which makes you wonder exactly what was the inspiration for Peggy Stern’s peculiar little film, Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood? You can check out a screening tonight at the Museum of Art & Design, Thursday, March 12 and later on TCM beginning Tuesday, March 24.A Warner Brothers animation director from 1935-1959, Jones put his own indelible stamp on Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, as well as creating The Coyote and Roadrunner, Pepe LePew and Marvin the Martian. Stern captures the avuncular Jones at his drawing table, making little doodles and spouting anecdotes of his life growing up on Sunset Boulevard. He rocks back and forth in his desk chair as if he were on a front porch with a grandchild on his knee. Equating his destiny in animation to falling off a railing as an infant and chuckling about his boyhood head being too small for adult sized hats.
The scenes with Jones, which feel like snippets that didn’t make it into a larger interview, are inter-cut with simple pieces of animation directed by award winner John Canemaker. Designed to draw parallels between Jones’ words and his career, the “newly animated” segments would be overshadowed by the work of Jones, which is probably why they show so little of it.
With the exception of revealing his father was an abusive parent (the first time that's ever been stated so bluntly), Stern’s documentary recounts everything about Jones without telling you much at all. But with a running time of 30 minutes, consider it the price of admission for the 11 Chuck Jones animated shorts that will follow on TCM—including short subject masterpieces, “What’s Opera, Doc?”, “The Dot and The Line” and “The Bear Who Wasn’t.”
Craig Kausen
