Roadrunner a Go-Go is a 1965 Merrie Melodies short directed by Chuck Jones, Maurice Noble, and Tom Ray.
Title[]
The title of the short is inspired by the Los Angeles nightclub "Whiskey a Go-Go".
Plot[]
As the desert sunrise occurs, a choir begins to sing "Out on the Desert". Road Runner starts to run down the road, as Wile E. Coyote searches for him. However, Road Runner beeps behind his back, scaring him and prompting him to chase from behind.
Wile E. first tries to ensnare Road Runner into a noose. However, he misses and falls down a cliff and later gets smashed by a boulder. Eventually, the scene freezes and zooms out to reveal Wile E. at his cave home, taking notes on his failures at catching Road Runner in hopes of detecting where exactly he went wrong and avoiding the same pitfalls in the future. Using a projector to perform slow motion photography on his films and hidden cameras around the desert, Wile E.'s "genius" plan allows him to film at any angle.
To demonstrate how Wile E. can find his previous mistake with the noose, he rewinds to when he tugs on the rope and finds that is the first fault of his plan. He finds the most crucial error, a longer cliff surface is needed for enough backing surface to prevent him from falling again. Learning from his mistakes, he tries the noose trap again, however he catches a truck instead and is pulled until he gratefully stops on the road.
What follows includes a grenade plane and bow and arrow, and a seesaw with a boulder that lands on the coyote instead. Wile E. then goes all in with a simple catapult, which also repeatedly backfires. Now bruised and in casts, Wile E. sarcastically says that the catapult is "So simple a child can operate it," then points at the blueprint before the catapult on the blueprint activates and actually manages to hit the coyote. The blueprint was manufactured from Road-Runner Blue-Print Co., and a Road Runner that is printed on its label beeps before running off.
Availability[]
Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2, Disc Two (part of Adventures of the Road-Runner)
Looney Tunes Collection Best of Road Runner Volume 1 (part of Adventures of the Road-Runner)
Looney Tunes 3 Feature Collection Best Of (part of Adventures of the Road-Runner)
Notes[]
- This is one of three cartoons cut from the unsold pilot Adventures of the Road-Runner; the others were "To Beep or Not to Beep" and "Zip Zip Hooray!"
- Milt Franklyn was credited as the musician with the correct spelling of his name.
- This cartoon and "Zip Zip Hooray!" were the only two Adventures of the Road Runner cut-downs without music by William Lava, due to extremely low budgets.
- This short includes the sequence of Adventures of the Road-Runner with Wile E. Coyote speaking to the viewing audience. This cartoon also features a theme song called "Out on the Desert". The original pilot was produced by David H. DePatie with supervising director Chuck Jones.
- "Shutter Bugged Cat", a Tom & Jerry cartoon produced by an uncredited Chuck Jones, is loosely based on this short, as both feature reused footage from older cartoons with the same result.
- This is the only cartoon in which Wile E. Coyote gets Red Cross.
- The toy plane/grenade sequence is reused from "Zip 'n Snort".
- MeTV aired a previously unreleased restored print of the cartoon on "Toon In with Me".
- This short was not shipped to theaters normally, explaining the lack of a Vitaphone release number.[1] The short's special status of being a cut-down of work from the previous studio also explains the lack of a proper production number. It is presumed that the short was originally intended to be shipped to theaters, but due to rights issues with DePatie-Freleng Enterprises and content from the original cartoon studio, it was unreleased.
Gallery[]
References[]