Did Tex Avery dislike Daffy Duck?

For my Tex Avery birthday post this year I'd like to address a hypothesis of mine that's been nagging at me for some time now.  Tex Avery is the one revered and celebrated as the man who created Daffy Duck.  However, as far as being his creator goes, Tex didn't seem to do much with Daffy.  I've read that Tex was not fond of very screwy characters constantly chewing up the scenery and going crazy, which feels like a contradiction when you see the very zany and highly active style of his cartoons.  For instance, Tex was so disenchanted with his other wacky creation Screwy Squirrel that Tex actually had Screwy killed off in his 5th and final cartoon.  He also

had a red hot strong disdain for Woody Woodpecker.  I can venture a guess as to why he felt this way. If one character is so wild and crazy that he dominates the screen then for balance every other character has to be sane or normal.  Maybe Tex did't want to spend agonizing time designing boring old normal characters just to accommodate a wacky one?  If Tex Avery himself were alive to explain himself that would be ideal.  Sadly, since that hasn't been possible since August 26 of 1980, we'll have to settle for theories.

The first Daffy Duck cartoon, as many people know, is of course Porky's Duck Hunt first released on April 17, 1937.

Tex had no special plans when he made this cartoon.  It was just a rudimentary storyline of their current star Porky Pig going out duck hunting.  Unfortunately for Porky, one of those ducks is "less than cooperative".  Bob Clampett was given the awesome duty of animating this duck's first big scene.  Tex' instructions to him were "bring him in from the left and take him out on the right.  What you do in-between is completely up to you."  Well, that inspired Bob to go as wild as possible.  He had that duck jump all over the lake and even bouncing on his head a few times.  That duck became a huge hit in theatres causing many patrons to ask when they could see that duck again.  That duck of course would be called Daffy and the rest is history.
As pleased as Tex was that this duck now called Daffy from his cartoon was doing well, I think he was hoping for another creation of his to become a star.  That same year, Tex made a cartoon called Egghead Rides Again starring his other creation Egghead.

It looks like Tex deliberately put the character's name in the title so that audiences would catch on to him quicker.  Also he hoped that adding the phrase "rides again" would give some validity to Egghead.  People would read that and subconsciously think that Egghead had 'ridden before' as in many cartoons about him had been made before.  You can also tell Tex really wanted Egghead to go far by the next Daffy Duck cartoon:

It's actually called Daffy Duck and Egghead and was released on January 1, 1938.  It looks like Tex was hoping that some of Daffy's popularity would be transferred to Egghead just by proximity and association.

Of course, Daffy would continue to be a popular character while Egghead would fade into obscurity without ever really developing any kind of following.

Later in 1938, Tex would release his third and final Daffy cartoon:

Legend has it that the pig director character in this cartoon, "Von Hamburger", was a caricature of a real director who was brought from Germany to Warner Bros. to make live action movies.  Apparently he was an egotistical jackass who constantly ordered people around and made demands of everybody.

I guess Tex Avery felt that unleashing Daffy Duck into his personal space would be a suitable punishment for him and bring him and his ego down so many pegs.

Then after that, Tex never worked with Daffy ever again.  Fortunately for WB and the animation industry in general, other directors at the studio like the aforementioned Bob Clampett as well as Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Frank Tashlin, Bob McKimson, and Art Davis all put Daffy into many of their cartoons thus making him the very complex dynamo of a character we know today.  But Tex seemed to have walked away from Daffy for some mystery reason.

Animator and animation historian Mark Kausler has talked about his dealings with Tex Avery back when Tex was still around.  One anecdote of his is that he would constantly write fan letters to Tex with a drawing of Screwy Squirrel in the top corner.  These letters received no replies.  Then, he sent a fan letter with Droopy drawn on the side which did receive a reply of something "thank you, I appreciate it".  So obviously Tex had no qualms about expressing his low opinion of his squirrel creation.  But I personally haven't heard Tex say a thing about Daffy, good or bad.

Oh well, I guess I'll leave that as a mystery for the ages.  So now, I'll end this post with Tex Avery's cartoon that started it all.  Happy 109th birthday Tex.

Porky's Duck Hunt (1937) by iadb

My SJW video now in easily digestible increments

It has come to my attention that people are having some troubles watching my recently made video.  Besides the copyright strikes that I mentioned earlier making it unavailable to anyone on Youtube, people are also uncomfortable with the video's length of 1 hour and 22 minutes.  Hey, the movie All Dogs Go To Heaven was about that long and I don't recall too many people complaining (except for some movie critics, some parents that had to take their kids to it, some online personalities pointing out its flaws, and from artists who actually worked on the movie).
But yes I can understand the disgruntlement.  It's much easier and more delightful to watch animated dogs have a grand adventure for approximately 82 minutes than it is to watch me prattle on about my opinions in a cold basement for that same amount of time.  So here's what I've done.  I've divided my video up into its 14 individual segments and embedded them below.  That way you can watch one or two or three (or however many you can muster) at a time.  Then if you're ever tired, you can go rest for a bit and then start again where you left off.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

"Why did I even make this video so long in the first place?", you ask.  I just had  a lot to say.

Also, as an FYI, this{these} video{s} was meant to promote both of my books, as it is with pretty much everything on my blog since about 2010.  So, here's yet another link to those books on Amazon: Jesus Needs Help and Censor Monkeys Have No Class.

Now on to the video(s).  Enjoy!  If you've seen it/them already, feel free to enjoy again.








sjw_004_tippergore by Daffyduckandthedinosaur












sjw_010_francesca ramsey by Daffyduckandthedinosaur

Steve Bannon is NOT a nazi.....

The notion of Steve Bannon being the second coming of Goebbels and thus spinning America and then the world into some nazi-like dystopia is at best a paranoid hypothesis presented by irrational children.  However, I do agree that Mr. Bannon is a problem and it would be best if he were not in the powerful position that he is in at this time.  I will use this blog post to explain that.

Steve Bannon's ultimate goal can be seen in a movie he created called Torchbearer.  I have embedded the trailer for it below:



I think this trailer might have started the rumour of Steve's affiliation with nazis.  He used a lot of old stock footage of Hitler and third reich marches in it.  So, if one was to just quickly glance at it, they could easily jump to the conclusion that "OMG Steve Bannon supports nazis! Run for your bomb shelters everyone!!!"  But you have to actually pay attention to the full trailer (and possibly even the full movie) to really see the agenda Bannon wants to push.  His opinion is that all the strife in today's world is caused by atheists turning their backs on God thus angering him and setting the apocalypse in motion.  The old nazi footage was simply used to conflate atheism with nazi activities.

That would explain why fellow Breitbart employee Milo Yiannopoulos gave a speech saying that "Catholics were right about everything.



It also explains why he's wants Trump to reunite 'church' with 'state'.  Everyone's afraid of this administration making the world return to the 1950's when they should be more concerned with a return to the 950's.  That church and state reunion is a huge mistake for several reasons.

1. That kind of thinking is what made the Medieval or Dark Ages so dark.  By incorporating the most dominant religion (that being catholicism at the time) with the government many innocent people were slaughtered for not showing allegiance to that religion and intellectual enlightenment was pretty much forbidden.  Galileo famously was put to death under this system for the crime of scientific discovery.  Thankfully, historical figures like Martin Luther and Leonardo Da Vinci lead a Renaissance and helped free the world of this suppressive way of life.

2. The founding fathers of the United States made sure to keep church and state separate for a very good reason.  The reason the US came to be in the first place was because the Quakers were being religiously persecuted in England.  They set sail for a better life and found a whole new continent full of indigenous and non-judgemental people with which they could live in harmony. (Of course many settlers that came afterwards would disrupt this harmony but that's a whole other blog post).  The clause about 'Freedom of Religion' means that every citizen is free to practice whatever religion they so choose and be free from persecution for it.  That separation of church and state is there to insure that no one religion dominates enough to impose itself on any other religion in the country, and that includes atheism.  Really, if church and state are reunited, there's potential for Muslims to dominate and thus impose sharia law which is what Donald Trump is trying to prevent and what the Muslim version of Sarah Palin, one Linda Sarsour, is fighting to implement.

So really, the worst or most problematic thing you can say about Steve Bannon is that he's the Preacher Monkey among my Censor Monkeys.

His desire to return to 'traditional values' could make him the Victorian Monkey as well.

Also, yes I know at the very top I said that Steve Bannon is not a nazi.  However, by rising to the position of Trump's advisor, he is obviously trying to infiltrate the US government to put his opinions into practice thus making him very much the Nazi Monkey.

But I will end this post by also saying that Breitbart "News" is not a 'nazi recruiting website' nor is it a news site.  It's simply an opinion site meant to amuse and/or horrify some for the amusement of others.  They're just on the opposite end of the same propagandist horseshoe that Buzzfeed is on.

No need to panic, folks.  All we have to do is remind Steve Bannon (an the Antifa while we're at it) about the constitution, keep him in check and then sit back to enjoy the ride.

My SJW video on Dailymotion

So apparently a lot of people are having trouble seeing my video on Youtube.  That's because of two copyright strikes.  One was for a rather long clip from a Quantum Leap episode.  I fully accept that one.  I thought I did a clever enough editing job on it that it could fall under fair use but I was mistaken.  The other strike took be completely by surprise.  It was for a clip of Frank Zappa reading his speech at the PMRC hearings.  The group that claim they own that clip called it a "song" which I found baffling.  Below is a screen shot I took of that copyright notice I got.

Oh well.  Hopefully Dailymotion will be more forgiving.  Anyway I've embedded both parts of my video below.  Enjoy!



Instead_of_saying_sjw_why_not_say_this_part1 by Daffyduckandthedinosaur



Instead_of_saying_sjw_why_not_say_this_part2 by Daffyduckandthedinosaur

My video about the SJW topic

This is the video that has occupied my time for the passed several months.  Of course, if I didn't have a full time job and I didn't take a trip to the Philippines to get married last December, I would've finished this 2 or 3 months ago.  So, because it took longer than I anticipated, in the video above I talk about Donald Trump's presidency as a "possible future" rather than a very real present.  However, I do think the rest of it still holds up.  Let me know either way in the comment section below.

Oh, if there are any toes I haven't stepped on with the blistering satire all throughout my video, let me know and I'll try to get around to stepping on them next time.

Enjoy!