45. BUGS: (Delighted, too) One buwwet weft? (Turns to Daffy) Hey, laughing boy, there was …
46. DAFFY: I know! I know!!!
47. DAFFY: (Reads sign “Duck Season”) Hummmm …
(Turns to audience) Devilishly clever … (Hears Elmer coming. Quickly dresses like a rabbit) Oh oh …
48. DAFFY: (Imitating Bugs) Eh … what’s up, Doc? (Bite, chew, chew) Having any luck with those ducks … it’s duck season, y’know …
49. BUGS: (Dressed as and imitating Daffy) Just a darn minute … where d’ya get that duck-season stuff?
50. DAFFY: (Still as Bugs) Says so … right over on that sign (sign has changed to “Rabbit Season” again), you’re so smart.
51. DAFFY: You know what to do with that gun, Doc!
52. DAFFY: (Himself now; with controlled hatred) You’re dethpicable!
53. DAFFY: (Getting a little out of control; at a loss for words) Yes, you’re dethpicable … and … and … picable … and … and … very definitely dethpicable … How a person can get so dethpicable in one lifetime is beyond me … It isn’t as though I haven’t met a lot of people … Goodneth knows it isn’t that!! It’s not that goodneth knows … (Reaction to Bugs) It ithn’t … it …
54. BUGS: (Pulls cookbook out of hole and reads) Spitted duck Florentine with horseradish … nice … Filet of duck Bordelaise, maître d’ butter … yum-yum …
55. BUGS: Duck Polonaise under glass … mm … mmmmmmmm.
56. DAFFY: (Daffy grabs book of his own) Rabbit au gratin de gelatine under tooled leather … drool, drool …
57. BUGS: Barbecued duck meat with broiled duck bill milanese … Yum-my yum!!
58. DAFFY: Chicken fried rabbit with cotton-tail sauce braised in carrots … umh, mmmmmm …
59. ELMER: I’m sorry, fewwas, but I’m a vegetarian … I just hunt for the sport of it!!! Heh-heh-heh …
60. BUGS: Oh yeah? Well, there’s other sports besides hunting, y’know!
61. DAFFY: (Daffy leaps into scene with tennis racquet and sloppy shorts) Anyone for tennis!!?
(Elmer fires. Daffy’s beak slips sideways)
62. DAFFY: (Goofy) Niceth game!!
63. ELMER: Now, you scwewy wabbit … You’re next!!
(Daffy and Bugs run, dive into hole)
64. BUGS: (Hoarse whisper) Take a peek and see if he’s still around.
65. DAFFY: Okay …
(Daffy pulls self up. Offstage a gun fires)
66. BUGS: Still there?
67. DAFFY: (Slightly goofy) Still lurking about …
68. BUGS: I tell you what … you go up and make like a decoy and lure him away …
69. DAFFY: (Goofy) No more for me, thankth … I’m drivin’.
70. BUGS: Ah … well … like they say … never send a duck to do a rabbit’s job …
71. ELMER: All wight … Come out or I’ll bwast you out!!!
72. BUGS: Hmmmmm.
73. BUGS: (Bugs up out of hole) For shame, Doc!! Huntin’ rabbits with an elephant gun!
74. ELMER: Ewephant gun?
75. BUGS: That’s right, Doc … So why don’t ya go shoot yerself an elephant?
(Elephant walks in on hind legs)
76. ELEPHANT: (A la Joe Besser) You do … and I’ll give you such a pinch!!
77. ELMER: (Furious) Just wait’ll I get that scwewy wabbit and that scwewball duck … I’ll wip’m to bits … I’ll bwast ’em … O.o.o.h … I know they’re awound here somepwace … I can pwactically smew them!!
78. DAFFY: (On four legs like dog) Sniff … sniff … brow … row … rowfff … Sniff … sniff … sniff … Brow row row!! (Hesitates, points) Rrrrrr-r-r-r …
79. ELMER: Hey!! What’s the big idea!!?? Why dontcha look where … huh!
80. BUGS: (Dressed as girl hunter) Oh!! How simply dreadful!!
81. BUGS: (Same) You poor little man … Did I hurt you with my naughty gun!!??
82. DAFFY: (Sniffs around Elmer’s feet)
83. ELMER: (Embarrassed) Shucks … well … I … Ha-ha-ha …
84. BUGS: (Kisses Elmer lightly on cheek) There! Now it feels better, doesn’t it?
85. DAFFY: (Growls) Arrrrgh … (Bites Elmer)
86. ELMER: Yeowwww!!
87. DAFFY: (Pants like dog)
88. BUGS: (Still as girl) Gypsy! You naughty bow-wow … Stop that!!
89. ELMER: (Furious) O.K., wabbit … I see through that disguise!! Say your pwayers!!
90. ELMER: You too … duck!!!
(Daffy and Bugs to tree. Start ripping off sign)
91. DAFFY: (Normal) Wabbit season!
92. BUGS: (Normal) Duck season!
93-95-97-99 Wabbit season!! Wabbit season!! Wabbit sea-
—DAFFY: son!!! Wabbit season!!!
94-96-98-100 Duck season!! Duck season!! Duck season!!
—BUGS: Duck season!!
(Bugs pulls off last poster. Under it is a sign “Elmer Season” with a picture of Elmer)
101. ELMER: (Very small) Oh oh.
102. BUGS AND DAFFY IN UNISON: (Dressed as hunters) Shhh … be vewy, vewy quiet … We’re hunting Elmers … Heh . heh . heh …
Director and writer about to lower the boom on Herr Wagner: WHAT’S OPERA, DOC? (1957)
Our writers were not writers, our writers were gag men, story-sketch men, comedians, they did everything an animated cartoon needed, except write. So it was a surprise to me on my sixty-ninth birthday to discover that all the time there had been a real writer lurking on my staff posing as animator: Ben Washam.
Ben Washam, like nearly all the animators I knew in more than fifty years as a director in animation, came from an unlikely source. He was born in the backcountry of the Arkansas Ozarks, and in his speech, parts of that murky idiom still surfaced. His most violent expletive, when he was thoroughly upset, was: “Thunder over Possum-foot Bridge!” or, when frustrated: “Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin.” He became a truly great animator, one of the most sensitive, one of the most subtle—able to extract laughter by the quirk of a ducky eyebrow, the flick of a rabbit’s eye. He was kind and gentle as well as talented beyond belief, but until just before his death I never knew he could write. On my sixty-ninth birthday he wrote the following letter, and in reading it over now, I wonder whether I can ever approach in writing anything so clear and so honest or whether any of us had greater claim to the term “writer” than Ben Washam.
September 14, 1981
Dear Chuck—
On my tenth birthday my father gave me a mule. It was truly love at first sight. I named him Spencer after a rifle I saw advertised in a Sears, Roebuck catalog.
The spring and summer that followed were the most wonderful in my memory. We rode over and through every hill and swamp in northeast Arkansas.
In the fall after the crops were in, everybody went to the county fair, especially Spencer and me.
Aside from judging cows, pigs, chickens, cakes, pies and the like, stump pulling was a community favorite.
The stumps were dynamited out of the ground (a few days before the fair started), then a mule was hitched to the stump. The mule that pulled the stump the greatest distance won—Spencer and me won.
First prize was a Rhode Island Red Rooster
