{"id":128165,"date":"2025-03-12T09:57:02","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T09:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/animation\/peter-browngardt-and-alex-kirwan-on-saving-the-earth-and-2d-animation\/"},"modified":"2025-03-12T09:57:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T09:57:02","slug":"peter-browngardt-and-alex-kirwan-on-saving-the-earth-and-2d-animation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=128165","title":{"rendered":"Peter Browngardt and Alex Kirwan on Saving the Earth. And 2D Animation. |"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Astonishing as it sounds, the Looney Tunes\/Merrie Melodies brand has lasted over 90 years without a single totally-animated original feature-length film\u2014never mind the compilations (The Bugs Bunny\/Road Runner Movie<\/em>, Daffy Duck\u2019s Fantastic Island<\/em>) and live-action hybrids (Space Jam<\/em>, Looney Tunes: Back in Action<\/em>).\u00a0 And now they\u2019ve done it.\u00a0 As of March 14 this year, Warner Bros. is releasing The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie<\/em>, starring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck.<\/p>\n

Much is at stake regarding the film\u2019s box office performance, because major American studios have largely abandoned classical 2D animation.\u00a0 Day<\/em>\u2019s success\u2014or failure\u2014may very well determine the 2D feature-length animation\u2019s future in North America.<\/p>\n

Writer-director Peter Browngardt<\/a> and supervising producer Alex Kirwan<\/a> discuss their primary inspiration from Golden Age director Bob Clampett, the importance of the storyboard artists in crafting the story, why Warner Bros. finally produced a Looney Tunes feature, and how it could be made for an economical $15 million\u2014in an era where CG animated features routinely cost well over $100 million.\u00a0 And of course, they tell us why you should see The Day the Earth Blew Up<\/em> on the big movie screen.<\/p>\n

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\"\"Alex Kirwan:<\/strong> We made a 2D animated feature-length film. We love all forms of animation, but hand drawn animation is probably Pete and my favorite. It seemed like the right way to make this movie. We hope if people like this movie it\u2019ll pave the way for other things like it, traditionally hand-drawn features to find their way into theaters.<\/p>\n

Bob Miller:<\/strong> What persuaded Warner Bros. to actually do something like this?<\/p>\n

Peter Browngardt<\/strong>: In Hollywood a lot of times you get pigeonholed into certain things. Like they\u2019ll look at Looney Tunes and they\u2019ll go, \u2018Well that only works for a short form\u2019 or \u2018That only works if you have a star basketball player and you make it an ensemble cast.\u2019 They don\u2019t think that it has the sort of legs to hold up a story, but I didn\u2019t feel that way and I don\u2019t think Alex feels that way, and Sam Register and a few others at the studio felt that way. And we were fortunate enough to pitch this Porky and Daffy sci-fi comedy adventure film and and make it to this point. It\u2019s really wild to think that it took this long but hopefully it starts a trend where you can get some more classic cartoon character feature films. They\u2019ve done a few and other studios have done some, but this one\u2019s unique to Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

Kirwan:<\/strong> Warner Bros. had asked Pete and I to oversee a series of shorts previous to this [Looney Tunes Cartoons<\/em>]. We made what, 200 Looney Tunes shorts? And they were incredibly fun to make and they were received well. And I think that helped give Warner Bros. the confidence that we knew these characters and had gotten their chops up a little bit with the property. And so they saw the potential in the future.<\/p>\n

Miller:<\/strong> Could merchandise sales have convinced them yeah, let\u2019s do a feature-length film?<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> I don\u2019t believe so. Daffy and Porky don\u2019t sell as many t-shirts as Taz or Tweety or Bugs. So it really wasn\u2019t that. The initial push for the way I got involved initially with Looney Tunes was with Space Jam 2<\/em>. It was something in the studio\u2019s horizon and coming down the road. They wanted to re-energize Looney Tunes a little bit and make a bunch of shorts. So I was able to put together a great team of Alex and many others to help contribute and make these shorts. That was the initial sort of push to get some awareness of Looney Tunes back into the cultural zeitgeist. And then, like Alex mentioned, we had a successful team working with these characters and creating this stuff. So they were like, why not get a movie out of these guys at the same time?<\/p>\n

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Browngardt:<\/strong> [Sam Register] came to me and asked if I had any ideas for a film. I came back with basically the seed of this.<\/p>\n

Miller:<\/strong> It was originally meant to present on Max, correct?<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> Correct, we got greenlit through Max, yes. And then, like most businesses, they go through ups and downs and we had a wild journey to getting to this point, but we got here and very happy to do so. And I believe we got here not only because the cost of the film wasn\u2019t egregious, but also I feel like we made a good material and the film was coming out well. And I think we had a great team of people working on it.<\/p>\n

Miller:<\/strong> It\u2019s been reported that this was done for a budget of $15 million. How were you able to make it for that size of a budget? I mean, The Iron Giant<\/em> was around $50 million and the CG films are easily over $100 million these days, even $200 million.<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> There\u2019s a couple of reasons why I think we were smart economically with this film. Alex and I talked about the fact that we had a team, the right people in place. We didn\u2019t have to redo stuff a thousand times and search and build and train and all these things to do. Sometimes you\u2019re creating something of this caliber; Looney Tunes is highest caliber, in my opinion. So we already had the experience of making the shorts. We created a production model that get maxes out quality but lessens cost. We did character layouts to ensure that we didn\u2019t have to redo scenes. We made the animators use the character layouts so we knew what kind of drawings we were gonna see on the screen. Things like that. A little bit more time upfront pays off in the back end in a lot of ways when you\u2019re making these type of things. And we worked with several overseas studios and that does cut costs. We proudly animated some minutes here in the States, but most of the film was made in Canada or the Philippines.<\/p>\n

Kirwan:<\/strong> I think we also felt strongly the stars of this movie are Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. It didn\u2019t seem necessary to load this up with big name celebrities to try to boost it up. These characters have been around for like 90 years. They should be the draw onto themselves. They are the celebrities.<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> We only had to pay one voice actor [Eric Bauza for the leads]. So they shave in at least one paycheck.<\/p>\n

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Miller:<\/strong> Bob Bergen has specialized in Porky Pig for years. Was he just simply unavailable?<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> No, he was available. It was a choice. I really love Bauza\u2019s take on Porky and Daffy and all the Looney Tunes. And I felt like it was the appropriate casting. Every time they do a Looney Tunes project, we start from scratch. No one owns it. The only person who owned these characters was Mel Blanc as far as being the one and true voice of any of the Looney Tunes cast. So, always a difficult cast. Casting is always difficult, but it was something that I felt was correct for this film.<\/p>\n

Miller:<\/strong> Back to the economics of this, you say that pre-planning or planning had a great deal to do with keeping costs down?<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. Like having a small crew. In the grand scheme of things, we had a modest crew. We didn\u2019t have a huge bloated crew of people. Everybody was really good at their job. Especially the board artists, which is arguably do some of the heaviest lifting in any film or any animated project. We had some of the best in the business. I was very, very happy with everybody in every aspect of the project.<\/p>\n

Kirwan:<\/strong> I agree. We were helped tremendously by making the shorts for several years. How many years did we make those shorts for?<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> Yeah, in 2017 we started and we started the movie in 2019.<\/p>\n

Kirwan:<\/strong> So I think over the course of creating, you know, a thousand minutes of Looney Tunes, we found the people who are most passionate about this property. And also the people who have history with this property and, you know, could teach us a few things about it as well. So when we rolled into this, we felt like we had a pretty great crack team who knew how Pete and I liked to work and knew our sense of humor and knew what we liked about Looney Tunes. Looney Tunes are about a thousand shorts made over the course of four decades. Looney Tunes are actually many different flavors, but Pete and I are very passionate about specific eras of Looney Tunes, specifically the sort of mid-1940s kind of Bob Clampett at Looney Tunes, and a lot of our sense of humor comes from that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n\nMiller:<\/strong> Why choose Clampett style \u2014or I notice a little bit of John Kricfalusi influence too\u2014but why choose that as opposed to a Chuck Jones or a Tex Avery or a Bob McKimson-type approach?<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> Tex Avery is definitely in there for me just because he left the studio in the early \u201840s. But Clampett particularly had it all: the energy, progressing the art form, the way he drew it, the way his crew did it, the animation, unpredictable and off-the-wall. The least conservative as possible version of Looney Tunes.<\/p>\n

Clampett is a sort of a child of Avery. He was on the Avery unit. He learned from Avery. It all comes from Tex Avery in my opinion, all of it. I think the whole tone of Looney Tunes is his hymn. When he came to the studio it all changed. Everyone followed his lead. Even Freleng was influenced greatly by Tex in where the brand was going. But yeah, they\u2019re like candy, Clampett cartoons. Just want to take a bite of them. They\u2019re just gorgeous.<\/p>\n

Kirwan:<\/strong> To be clear, we love all of it. We love all the directors.<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> Yes. Absolutely. Yeah.<\/p>\n

Kirwan:<\/strong> But there is something about those mid-40s Clampett cartoons. They\u2019re so manic, they\u2019re so zany, they\u2019re so high energy, they\u2019re so pushed, and they\u2019re all different from each other and you don\u2019t know where they\u2019re going to go. They\u2019re the looniest of the Looney Tunes. And certainly we love Jones. It seemed like at a certain point in the world when they thought of Looney Tunes, they thought of these later Chuck Jones cartoons, which is great. But we really thought it was important to remind people that Looney Tunes was more than just that there were other flavors in there that were really great. And to your point about John Kricfalusi, I think he\u2019d be the first to tell you that Bob Clampett is probably his biggest influence. I think we\u2019re drawing from the same well there.<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> Stimpy literally has the Clampett nose.<\/p>\n

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Miller:<\/strong> Pete, you mentioned the importance of the storyboard guys. First of all, when you transitioned from Max to a theatrical release, did you have to change the screen aspect ratio on the board, because that\u2019s what happened with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> Right, yeah. Yeah, that way, early on, I knew I wanted to do the film in Cinemascope because of the classic sci-fi films like Forbidden Planet<\/em> and many others have the very super widescreen Panavision, whatever you want to call it.<\/p>\n

Miller:<\/strong> And then the storyboard guys got writer credit. I mean, as they did back in the old days\u2014<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> That was a big deal for me. I came from that area of production. I was a storyboard artist at Cartoon Network before I went into the creator role and producer role and direction roles. And I found very early on that these storyboard artists, I was like, wait a minute, we\u2019re writing these things. We\u2019re putting in the words; we\u2019re writing the jokes. Especially Cartoon Network days, there\u2019s premises and they would be loose. And because of production deadlines, sometimes it\u2019s not fully baked and you have to figure it out. And I know SpongeBob<\/em>\u2019s done that way and a lot of great cartoons. And it\u2019s how they<\/em> made cartoons back in the day. You can\u2019t really transcribe a classic Looney Toons into a script.<\/p>\n

I mean, some of them might work but a Clampett cartoon for instance, trying to describe it in prose of what happens, just doesn\u2019t really work. The job of a storyboard artist is his true sense of a cartoonist where somebody\u2019s working with words and with a pen writing and a pen drawing and putting them together. The best animation comes from those types of minds. I got the biggest lunatics I could find and put them in a room together to try to make this. It\u2019s a certain language and sensibility that not everybody has and the way of thinking about the world and seeing the world.<\/p>\n

Miller:<\/strong> What\u2019s next for you guys?<\/p>\n

Kirwan:<\/strong> I\u2019m gonna hold my cards close to my chest.<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> I\u2019m allowed to say it. I\u2019m working on a Aardman project with Pok\u00e9mon.<\/p>\n

Miller:<\/strong> Finally, what would bring audiences to see your film in theaters?<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> Who doesn\u2019t like to laugh? I mean, laughter is the best medicine.<\/p>\n

Kirwan:<\/strong> This is a comedy. Not all animated movies are comedies anymore. We tried very hard to make this a comedy.<\/p>\n

Browngardt:<\/strong> And I will guarantee you that there\u2019s something in that movie that you\u2019ve never seen Daffy Duck do before in your life.<\/p>\n