NFR Project: ‘Porky in Wackyland’
Dir: Bob Clampett
Scr: Warren Foster
Ed: Treg Brown
Premiere: Sept. 24, 1938
7:23
Nobody was paying attention, and they got away with it.
As I wrote for Senses of Cinema in 2005, “American animators in the 1930s were a scruffy, itinerant bunch. Most bounced around from studio to studio, serving apprenticeships in the cartoon production houses of such figures as Walt Disney, Walter Lantz (best known as the home of Woody Woodpecker), the Fleischer Brothers (Betty Boop, Koko the Clown), and Disney’s once and future partner, Ub Iwerks. Serendipitously, an irreverent and rowdy crew came together at Leon Schlesinger Productions, in a ramshackle, bug-infested back-lot bungalow that later earned the affectionate sobriquet of ‘Termite Terrace.’
“For a time this group included such leading lights as Chuck Jones, Frank Tashlin, Robert McKimson, and Bob Clampett, all working under the loose supervision and raucous inspiration of Fred “Tex” Avery (who lost the vision in one eye during an office paper-clip fight!). The team enjoyed that most happy of fates to be found inside any corporate structure – they were largely ignored. Left to their own devices, they began gradually and collectively to shrug off the nominally logical, linear, kid-oriented whimsies that emerged from other rivals’ drawing boards.”
In terms of structure, Porky in Wackyland is a classic type, here the “hunted outsmarts hunter” paradigm, common in the cartoon lives of Porky Pig -- he Warner’s first big cartoon star, soon to be joined by Elmer Fudd, and gradually relegated to a supporting role, usually serving as a sidekick to Daffy Duck – Bugs Bunny, Daffy, and later examples such as Speedy Gonzales and the Roadrunner.
Director Bob Clampett was working under Avery, who saw no reason why all the rules of cartooning should not be relentlessly violated. Warren Foster was the writer, but it was common for the inhabitants of the Terrace to help each other out with gags. The teamwork needed to produce a quality cartoon in a set amount of time makes every Warners cartoon a collaborative effort. And in this case, it was open season on reality.
The film opens by breaking the fourth wall. Out in front of the title credits strides a doggy newspaper vendor; “Ex-tree! Ex=tree! Read all about it! Porky off on do-do hunt! Paper, mister?”
The headline: “PORKY HUNTS RARE DO-DO BIRD WORTH $4000,000,000” (four thousand million, technically) “P.S. 000,000,000”. They really hammer the gag into the ground, an early sign that all bets are off when it comes to verisimilitude. The front-page photo comes to life, and Porky is winging his way east. He turns to us, displaying a picture of his quarry – an oblong, pointy-headed, tufted loony bird. “Hi, f-f-f-folks, here’s a pudda-- -dip-a-pudda--dip--p-p-p-p-p-picture!” He weaves his way through Dark Africa, Darker Africa, and Darkest Africa, straight into territory marked “?” Porky is an unlikely colonizer.
He screeches to a halt in front of a large sign. “WELCOME TO WACKYLAND. IT CAN HAPPEN HERE.” (A reference to Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel about an attack of American fascism, It Can’t Happen Here.) “POPULATION: 100 NUTS AND A SQUIRREL.”
Porky and his plane tiptoe nervously into a forest of mushrooms under a sky that changes immediately to night. From the foliage emerges a ravening monster, who comes at Porky, growling and howling. Suddenly, it changes to coy, lisps “Boo!” and sashays offscreen. From monster to drag queen in zero seconds.
The sun rises, held aloft by a stack of eccentric figures. Again, Porky turns to us and gives us look, pointing gleefully at the scene. The camera pans right to a creature sitting in a flower, playing its nose like a flute – then switching rapidly to drums and then piano. We track past a bizarre collection of chattering, absurd beings who seem lost in the surreal actions they execute. All of them cavort against abstract backgrounds.
We see a rabbit swinging by his ears, a derbied, bow-tied frog with human legs. There’s more creatures, a slew of them that pass in front of us – something called a Foo, another that’s only a head with legs and feet, no body; upside-down signs, crazy clocks, a jailbird who carries his own cell with him, free to move but clamoring to be let out. A tiny policeman rolls up on a wheel and bashes him in the head – which breaks the bars, triggering a handful of stars, while the prisoner grins with delight.
Another creature crosses the screen, mouthing with its big lips “Mammy! Mammy!” a la Al Jolson. A whirling, snarling streak circles Porky, then comes to rest. It’s a half-dog, half-cat fighting with itself. Another being emerges from behind an igloo – it’ a three-headed critter that abuses itself, a la the Three Stooges. The three heads address the camera in gibberish. A tiny creature rolls out and explains, “He said his mother was frightened by a pawnbroker’s sign!” (three balls were the ancient symbol of a pawnbroker’s shop).
Finally, Porky runs across a rolling-eyed goon wearing a lit candel that advertises “INFORMTION ABOUT THE DO-DO”.
“Oh my gosh, where is he?” Porky gasps. “Where did he go?” A profusion of pointing hands explodes, indicating everywhere. “THATAWAY!” the goon cries. Then the signboard flips, revealing shaft and proclaiming “TO THE DO-DO.” Beckoned, Porky leaps into the opening – a finds himself sliding rapidly down a long, bumpy ramp.
He is squeezed out of a tap like a drop of water, reconstituting himself in a small tub. A curtain appears in front of him, and a voice from above declares, “INTRODUCING . . . IN PERSON . . .”, after which a series of doors open, rise, turn – to reveal a castle, on which there is a neon sign reading “the Do-Do.” The castle’s drawbridge falls, and across the moat in a motorboat comes the do-do!
He anchors his boat, which blithely sinks. “Are you ree-ree-really the last of the do-dos?” asks Porky. “YEAH,” replies the bird, bending Porky backward with his emphasis. “I am de last of the do-dos!” And he proceeds to dance all over the hapless pig, singing, “Vo-do-de-o-do!” He runs off, runs back on from the other side of the screen, and hoots at Porky, driving him up into the air.
The do-do is clearly in charge of what’s real and what’s not by now, and he leads Porky on a merry chase across a surreal landscape, hiding behind impossibly thin pseudo-trees. He demonstrates his mastery over the medium by producing a pencil from this air, drawing a door to escape through -- then lifts the door up like a curtain to escape. Naturally, Porky can’t follow him.
As Porky struggles to open the door, the do-do hoots at him from a nearby second-story window suspended in the empty sky. Porky leaps into the opening, as the do-do circles behind him and kicks him through, landing him in the desert beyond, not in a notional room in a house. The do-do withdraws his permission for Porky to live by the rules he establishes.The do-do creates an elevator car, and takes it up and out of the shot. Porky stretches up to look at it, and then most bizarrely the do-do rides in on the Warner Brothers logo and snaps Porky in the head with a slingshot, retreating from whence he came.
The dodo finds himself trapped, then lifts the scene like a shade, escaping into a fresh background behind it. He pulls a brick wall across the screen after him, which Porky crashes into. The poor pig sits in the wreaked pile of bricks and cries, finally worn down to defeat.
Or is he? Disguised as a newspaper vendor, Porky cries “Ex-tree! Ex-tree! Porky catches do-do bird!” He has adopted the backwards logic of Wackylnd to achieve his goal. The do-do bird strolls by him and stops. “What’s that? What’s that? How? Where? When?”
“N-n-n-n-n-n-now!” cries Porky, and he bashes the creature on the head. Grabbing him by the neck, he exults. “Oh, b-b-b-boy, I caught the last of the d-d-d-d-d-do-dos!”
“Yeah, I’m really the last of the do-dos,” the bird exclaims. “Ain’t I, fellas?”
A hundred more do-dos fill the screen. “Yeah, man! WOOOOOO!” they cry. Porky’s discovery is not so special.
This is the comedy of frustration, extended as far as possible into absurdity as the creators thought they could go. The theme of a cartoon character not having control over his surroundings would be used again, as in Duck Amuck (1953). However, the cartooning at Termite Terrace would never go as far out of this world as in this one.
The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The River.
