Duck Amuck

Duck Amuck
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Airdate:	28 February 1953
Series:	Merrie Melodies
MPAA Number:	15191
Production Number:	1240
Vitaphone Number:	2232
Runtime:	6 minutes, 59 seconds
Copyright Renewed:	19 January 1979
Starring:	Daffy Duck
Crew
Voice Characterizations:	Mel Blanc
Director:	Charles M. Jones
Written By:	Michael Maltese Ben Washam (dialogue) (uncredited)
Producer:	Eddie Selzer
Animated By:	Ken Harris Ben Washam Lloyd Vaughan Abe Levitow (uncredited) Richard Thompson (uncredited)
Assistant Animators:	Al Pabian (uncredited)
Ink and Paint:	Jan Cornell (uncredited) Peggy Drumm (uncredited) Lee Guttman (uncredited) Peggy Matz (uncredited)
Layout Artist:	Maurice Noble
Background Artist:	Philip DeGuard
Film Editor:	Treg Brown (uncredited)
Camera Operator:	Ken Moore (uncredited)
Musician:	Carl Stalling
Orchestrations:	Milt Franklyn (uncredited)

Duck Amuck is a 1953 Merrie Melodies short directed by Charles M. Jones.

Plot

Daffy Duck is a musketeer in a medieval setting, who boldly acts out an action scene with a fencing foil. As he thrusts the foil and advances, the background abruptly is left completely white. Confused by this, Daffy turns to the animator and asks him to complete the background. He walks off the screen, and the animator fills in a new background that has nothing to do with the previous scene. Daffy returns and starts to repeat his opening scene, but quickly notices the different background and leaves, returning in a different costume and altering his performance to match the new scene. The animator substitutes several different, unrelated backgrounds, each time prompting Daffy to change costumes until the background finally disappears completely.

Daffy tries to reason with the animator. While he's talking, the animator erases him completely, then redraws him as a cowboy with a guitar. Daffy tries to play it but gets no sound. Holding up a sign asking for sound, his next attempts result in several random sound effects. Daffy himself also generates random sound effects for a moment before finally shouting angrily at the animator, demanding some new scenery.

The animator draws a simple line-art background, then when Daffy asks for some color, paints Daffy himself in a bunch of random colors and patterns. Daffy angrily yells, "NOT ME, YOU SLOP ARTIST!!", and the animator quickly erases his body and, upon Daffy asking where the rest of him is, redraws him as a bizarre mismatched animal with a "screwball" flag on its tail and a flower shaped head. Daffy walks around and talks to himself if he wasn't living up to his contract and soon becomes suspicious of this form, before the animator draws a mirror nearby and reveals his form and he berates the animator for drawing him bizarre and in respond, the animator erases Daffy and the mirror. Daffy is redrawn as a sailor, and as he begins to sing "The Song of the Marines", the animator draws an ocean background around him, without a boat. Daffy promptly falls into the water and emerges on a distant island. He asks for a closeup, then the camera crops out everything save for one small bit. An annoyed Daffy responds "This is a closeup? A CLOSEUP, YOU JERK! A CLOSEUP!!", then the camera zooms in to Daffy's angry eyes.

As he tries once again to negotiate with the animator, a black curtain falls on him. The animator draws a stick for Daffy to hold it up but it breaks and Daffy screams hysterically and rips apart the background, then becomes even more frustrated when he tries to say the cartoon needs to start. A "The End" card appears, causing Daffy to yell "No...NO!" and pushes the end card away from the screen. Again trying to negotiate with the animator, Daffy suggests that they go their separate ways. Daffy then apologizes to the presumed audience and dances for a moment while the film goes out of alignment, resulting in two Daffy Ducks on the screen. The two argue with each other and start to get in a fight, but the animator erases one of them just as the other takes a swing.

Daffy is drawn into an airplane, which he excitedly flies around in until a mountain is drawn in his path. The plane crashes off-screen, resulting in Daffy flying on his own with only the windshield in front of him. He "bails" out of the remains of his plane and floats downward with a parachute, which the animator replaces with an anvil. Crashing to the ground, Daffy is seen hammering on the anvil while dizzily reciting "The Village Blacksmith". The animator replaces the anvil with an artillery shell, which explodes after being struck by the hammer four times. After the explosion, an enraged Daffy finally snaps and angrily demands that the animator reveal himself. The animator draws a door in front of Daffy and closes it on him, then the camera draws back to reveal that the animator is Bugs Bunny at a drawing table, who says, "Ain't I a stinker?"

Availability

(1984) VHS
The Looney Tunes Video Show Volume 12

(1985) VHS
Daffy Duck: The Nuttiness Continues...

(1985) Beta
Daffy Duck: The Nuttiness Continues...

(1993) LaserDisc
Daffy Duck's Screen Classics: Duck Victory

(1996) VHS
Daffy Duck

(1997) VHS
Looney Tunes Classic Collection (Marks and Spencer UK VHS)

(1999) VHS
Looney Tunes: The Collectors Edition Volume 2: Running Amuck

(2001) VHS
Looney Tunes Special Bumper Collection Volume 9

(2003) DVD
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1, Disc Two

(2003) VHS
Daffy Duck (2003)

(2004) DVD
Looney Tunes Collection Best of Daffy and Porky

(2004) VCD
Looney Tunes Collection Best of Daffy and Porky

(2005) Mini-DVD
Looney Tunes Collection Mini Volume 1

(2011) DVD
The Essential Daffy Duck, Disc 1

(2011) Blu-ray
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1, Disc One

(2011) DVD
Daffy Duck

(2012) DVD
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1, Disc One

(2012) Blu-ray
Looney Tunes Showcase: Volume 1

(2012) DVD
Looney Tunes 3 Feature Collection Best Of

(2013) DVD
Best of Warner Bros. 50 Cartoon Collection: Looney Tunes

Streaming

Boomerang App (2017 - 2024)

HBO Max (2020 - 2022)

Max (2024 - )

iTunes ( - ) (restored)

Influence in Other Works

• The cartoon's plot was essentially replicated in one of Jones' later cartoons, "Rabbit Rampage" (1955), in which Bugs Bunny turns out to be the victim of Elmer Fudd.
• The 1966 Looney Tunes short "A-Haunting We Will Go" has some gags reused from "Duck Amuck". First, Daffy is again transformed into a flower-faced spotted creature. Later, when Daffy used a parachute, the witch transforms it into an anvil, as the animator did in "Duck Amuck", and then impact in the same rock that the animator draw to stop Daffy's plane in "Duck Amuck".
• The framing material for Daffy Duck's Easter Special was similar to "Duck Amuck", with Daffy once again being tortured by an unseen animator.
• The Super NES video game Bugs Bunny Rabbit Rampage merges both premises from "Duck Amuck" and "Rabbit Rampage", the result being Bugs portrayed as Daffy's victim.
• This cartoon was parodied in the last episode of the short-lived series Clerks: The Animated Series, further proving the short's lasting legacy. The final scene of the series even mirrors the ending of the original short, with Jay and Silent Bob in place of Bugs. They even considered having the ending shot in live-action with the animated characters placed in like in the short, until they have it entirely animated instead.
• It was also referenced in a 30-second short cartoon gag in Johnny Bravo.
• It was used in Babylon 5, in the episode "Conflicts of Interest", where Michael Garibaldi is listening to it. This was used for ironic effect as at the time Garibaldi himself is unknowingly being manipulated by a seemingly omnipotent force.
• On the original VHS release of Batman and Beetlejuice, a short ad for Warner Bros. merchandise was shown featuring both Daffy and Bugs. Throughout the ad, an unseen animator "draws" items such as T-shirts, movie books, and posters (and in classic fashion, when Bugs mentions ties, the animator draws a rope around Bugs, effectively tying him up, to which he response, "that's NECK-ties!"). In the end, Daffy begins to lose his cool, ending in his being erased from the ad by the animator.
• Robert Smigel did a similar cartoon in his weekly TV Funhouse segment on SNL, where Michael Powell, FCC Chairman at the time, played Daffy Duck and Howard Stern played Bugs Bunny.
• In Looney Tunes Comics (DC) Issue #94, Bugs Bunny gets back at Daffy Duck by making him the victim, in switching various movie roles, from Duck Twacy in "Who Killed Daffy Duck", a video game character, and a talk show host, and they always wound up with Daffy starring in Moby Dick (the story's running gag). After this, Bugs comments, "Eh, dis guy needs a new agent."
  • Issue 231 (Duckier and Amuckier) and many comics (Comic Relief) show similar plots.
• The Baby Looney Tunes episode "Duck's Reflucks" uses a similar plot with Bugs as the victim and Daffy as a computer animator.
• In the first segment of The Simpsons episode "Tales from the Public Domain", Homer's ship appears on a map and gets flicked by Poseidon (The Sea Captain), who is standing over the map. He then turns to face the audience and says, "Yarr...Ain't I a stinker?"
• Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck is a video game released for the Nintendo DS in 2007 based off this cartoon, while incorporating elements from several others, such as "Robin Hood Daffy".
• The New Looney Tunes episode "One Carroter in Search of an Artist" is a similar plot to both "Duck Amuck" and "Rabbit Rampage" where Bugs Bunny is the victim and the animator is Daffy Duck, who finally gets his revenge on him.
• In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "You Asked for It" the segment "Duck out of Luck" has a similar plot, with Plucky as Daffy and the viewers as Bugs.
• In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "The Looney Beginning", many moments in the creation of Babs and Buster Bunny reference this short.
• In the Animaniacs 2020 episode "Yakko Amakko", Yakko is shown being tormented by an unseen animator. He even references this short.
• In the Drawn Together episode "Nipple Ring-Ring Goes to Foster Care", when Foxxy Love visits various foster homes, the third one is a blank slate where she is tormented by an unseen animator. At the end of the sequence, Bugs makes a cameo appearance, referencing the reveal that Bugs Bunny is the animator in the original short, with him asking "Ain't I an asshole?", instead of "Ain't I a stinker?"

Notes

• The Bugs Bunny short "Rabbit Hood" contains a title card similar to this short.
• This short marks one of many of the instances where Daffy consistently breaks the fourth wall by asking the unknown animator (Bugs) and the audience about the change of scenery.
• This short was considered for an Academy Award in 1952, but was not nominated.
• The short airs with PAL speed and audio on Turner networks in the USA. PAL is used in most European countries, but the post-1948 cartoons that come from the VHS originally were released in European countries and the USA Turner networks uses the VHS prints. In this case, "Duck Amuck" came from the Warner Bros. Cartoons Golden Jubilee 24 Karat Collection VHS.
• "Duck Amuck" is included in the compilation film The Bugs Bunny Road-Runner Movie, along with other Chuck Jones cartoons. Here, Bugs states that after what happened in Robin Hood Daffy, Daffy decided to have another shot at the musketeer business with the film's version of the title sequence scroll crediting Daffy in the role of the protagonists of The Three Musketeers, but instead got involved with a rather mysterious opponent, which Bugs tells the viewers they would have to see for themselves.
• In 1994 it was voted #2 of The 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field, behind only "What's Opera, Doc?"
• According to director Chuck Jones, the cartoon demonstrated for the first time that animation can create characters with a recognizable personality, independent of their appearance, milieu, or voice. Although in the end, the animator is revealed to be Daffy's friend and rival Bugs Bunny, who famously declares "Ain't I a stinker?" According to Jones the ending is just for comedic value: Jones the director is speaking to the audience directly, asking "Who is Daffy Duck anyway? Would you recognize him if I did this to him? What if he didn't live in the woods? Didn't live anywhere? What if he had no voice? No face? What if he wasn't even a duck anymore?" In all cases, it's obvious that Daffy is still Daffy; not all cartoon characters can claim such distinctive personality.
• The part where Daffy screams and rips the background was used in the montage trailer for Warner Bros.' 75th anniversary in 1998.
• In 1999 the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. This was the second of three animated shorts by Jones to receive this honor; the others are 1957's "What's Opera, Doc?" and 1955's "One Froggy Evening". Jones has the distinction of being the only director as of 2006 with three animated shorts in the registry.
• A photo of an animation desk was used during Bugs' revelation scene.
• The scene where the animator replaces Daffy's parachute with an anvil was made into a bumper for Cartoon Network, but with the 1992-2004 logo on it.
• The part where Daffy asks the animator about the scenery was used for a "Coming Soon from Warner Home Video" bumper in 2000.
• This cartoon was used in the both 1988 opening for Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon and the opening and bumpers for Looney Tunes on Nick at Nite.
• When Daffy gets cloned and erased, it's actually the original Daffy who gets erased, and the clone is in the cartoon from that point on.

Gallery

Lobby card

Lobby card

Daffy as a weird flower-headed creature

Daffy Duck and the black blob

Full title sequence scroll

Layout drawing

Production cel

External links

• "Duck Amuck" at Keyframe - the Animation Resource
• "Duck Amuck" at the SFX Resource Wiki