Here’s Lot Of A Looney Tunes Facts!
After Devil May Hare, the first Looney Tunesshort staring the Tasmanian Devil was made, executive Eddie Selzer made it extremely clear that no more cartoons about him would be made, since Taz was, in his opinion, stupid and unfunny. However, Jack Warner himself liked the cartoon (and audiences were asking for more Taz cartoons), so this was overturned.
- Not that the WB animators were likely to listen to Eddie Selzer anyway. According to Chuck Jones, once while he and his frequent collaborator Michael Maltese were brainstorming ideas for a new Bugs Bunnycartoon, Selzer stuck his head in Chuck's office and said that he didn't think bullfights were funny so he didn't want them to make any bullfight cartoons. They hadn't even mentioned bullfighting during their brainstorming session, but after Selzer left, Maltese waited a few seconds, then said, "Well, he hasn't been right yet..." They immediately produced Bully for Bugs, in spite of Selzer's orders, which turned out to be one of Bugs' better vehicles.
- Insiders have since noted that Selzer had to screen the cartoons after they were made. He obviously said nothing after seeing Bully For Bugs, so it was accepted that like Leon Schlesinger he let the animators make whatever they wanted as long as they were within budget.
- Selzer's meddling had a tendency to backfire: when Chuck Jones was starting production on the Pepé Le Pew short For Scent-imental Reasons, he told them a French skunk was a terrible idea and the short would bomb (they had already made two Pepe cartoons prior to this one, neither of which had flopped). For Scent-imental Reasons went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject, and, being executive producer, Selzer had to accept the award. Boy, if there were ever a grander way to eat your words...
- Executive Meddling is the reason the Daffy/Speedy series of Looney Tunes shorts (the most despised Looney Tunes shorts ever) exists. In 1964, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales were the three most popular characters in the Looney Tunes series. Television companies, thus, demanded more cartoons featuring Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales (who, at this point, had only starred in about 20 cartoons). Unfortunately, since the newly-reopened Warner Brothers Animation Studio had a very limited budget (due in no small part to the Fall of the Studio System), they had no choice but to pair the two characters together rather than give them separate cartoons. And thus we got "classics" like Well-Worn Daffy, Skyscraper Caper, and Speedy Ghost To Town.
- Strict budgets and constrictions were the reason why the Daffy/Speedy series made up the overwhelming majority of Looney Tunes output during that era; they couldn't use very many other characters and were forced to retire the likes of Bugs Bunny, Tweety, Yosemite Sam, and Foghorn Leghorn. The only other characters that actually managed to have starring shorts during the era were Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner and Sylvester; Porky (who only appeared once, twice if you count recycled footage from Robin Hood Daffy), Granny, the Goofy Gophers, and Witch Hazel were featured in some of Daffy & Speedy's shorts. This was a large factor in why Robert McKimson (who directed most of this era's cartoons) hated these shorts
- After the Daffy/Speedy series met its demise in 1968, the rest of the studio's output was dedicated to new characters like Cool Cat, Merlin the Magic Mouse, and Bunny and Claude. When Robert McKimson returned to the studio for one last spell (following Alex Lovy's departure), he was told that he couldn't even use Daffy or Speedy anymore
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