“The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie” is one of the animated delights of the year. In the franchise’s first fully 2D-animated theatrical feature, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig (both voiced by Eric Bauza) discover a secret alien plot to take over the world via mind-control and chewing gum, gumming up the works with their inimitable antics in the process.
Peter Browngardt (“Looney Tunes Cartoons”) captures the essence of the wacky odd couple with wit and warmth, channeling the outrageous style of Bob Clampett. But were it not for Ketchup Entertainment, “The Day the Earth Blew Up” would’ve been killed off by Warner Bros. Discovery for tax purposes like the live-action/animated Looney Tunes hybrid “Coyote vs. Acme.” Thankfully, “The Day the Earth Blew Up” will receive a Best Animated Feature Oscar campaign from Ketchup (with a qualifying run starting December 13) ahead of its theatrical opening February 28, 2005.
For Browngardt, there was never any question about making the Looney Tunes film about Daffy and Porky. They’re the only Looney Tunes buddy characters who can co-exist and provide a necessary emotional core. They represent chaos and order and drive each other nuts on the way to becoming BFFs. Their designs were modeled after the ’40s Clampett style.
“We wanted the audience caring about these characters,” Browngardt told IndieWire, “but still also realizing that we’re trying to make a cartoon here. And cartoons are sort of the art of the impossible, so you can do the classic Looney Tunes surrealist jokes or slapstick and push what a character can do in animation.”
Browngardt is fond of B movies and considered many genres, including horror, westerns, and Bing Crosby/Bob Hope “Road” pictures. He settled on sci-fi in CinemaScope and got to play with “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and some obscurities. Warner Bros. Animation did the bulk of the work, with assistance from Tonic DNA, Powerhouse Animation, Snipple, and Titmouse Vancouver.
For the Daffy/Porky origin story, Farmer Jim (Fred Tatasciore) — animated like a statuesque figure from a Thomas Hart Benton painting — adopts them. “We actually wanted to do set pieces in the film in different styles, especially with Farmer Jim, because there were a lot of styles in Looney Tunes cartoons,” added Browngardt. “They always pushed the envelope as far as design and aesthetic, and we wanted to introduce that a little bit into the film.”
There are two funny set pieces: a montage where Daffy and Porky get fired from a series of gigs that end violently for their employers (shot in the narrower aspect ratio of 4:3), and a musical montage tribute to Busby Berkeley (“Push the Button, Pull the Crank”), where they’re happily employed at the local bubblegum factory, thanks to Petunia Pig (Candi Milo).
“The montage of all of their failed jobs was early on,” Browngardt said. “I wasn’t sure they were gonna let us do that. We probably had four or five times as many jokes of failed jobs, and then we decided to do that rapid-fire thing so we could show how much they failed and really hit it home to the audience, balancing the humor with the horror but not making it too scary. But also having a little edge there to raise the stakes. The Uber one with the horse is one of my favorites.”
Meanwhile, “Push the Button, Pull the Crank” was inspired by Art Deco posters and had lots of pink, recalling the surrealism of “Pink Elephants on Parade” from “Dumbo.” “We did a pre-score on it, so we animated to the track, to help time things out and build the cartoons,” he continued. “The whole point of it is to show they finally won.”
For the alien baddie, they wanted a new character called The Invader (Peter MacNicol). He was inspired by the large-headed creatures from “Invasion of the Saucer Men” (1957), who were green in the garish poster. “Basically, I took that poster and I put Porky and Daffy running from the poster and I said, ‘I want to make this sort of ’50s B movie,” said Browngardt. “We wanted him to sort of be nebulous. Originally, his head was going to be more soft and less structured. But then we realized we needed him to feel stoic and to get that silhouette to feel imposing. We wanted to make him feel very menacing and threatening and then slowly sort of diffuse as we got to know him more.”
Browngardt and his team found writing for Porky and Daffy the perfect formula for comedy. “It goes to most classic buddy comedies and how it always seems to work, this sort of wacky, out-of-control, off-the-cuff character, and the more grounded, sensible character,” he said. “And I just was always amazed that it never got old. You can always throw them in a modern situation and figure out how to make them funny. Daffy is just sort of the greatest cartoon character in a way. He can play so many personalities, he’s so versatile. He’s loony. But then he became a greedy asshole when Bugs needed an adversary, and that was relatable. Some people prefer the old one, but I like them both. They both served their purpose.”
