The journey The Day the Earth Blew Up went on to reach the big screen is Looney to say the least. Those scrappy Tunes managed to avoid the chopping block of one David Zaslav thanks to Ketchup Entertainment, which acquired the film by Looney Tunes Cartoons‘ current cadre of creatives led by director Pete Browngardt. And on March 15, animation fans will be able to enjoy the 2D adventure on the big screen.
io9 sat down with the voice actors behind some of our favorite cartoons, Eric Bauza (Daffy and Porky in the film) and Candi Milo (Petunia Pig in the film), to discuss playing in a longer format story for the Looney Tunes’ first full-length animated feature—as well as the future of animation versus AI and the timelessness of characters no machine can replicate.
Sabina Graves, io9: You both have worked together over the years, more often as some of the other Looney Tunes, but here as the trio of Daffy, Porky, and Petunia that gets to lead this alien invasion movie. How would you say having chemistry as long-time collaborators helped with stepping into these different characters?
Candi Milo: I’m always so excited when anybody realizes that there is a chemistry between the characters, and it is not easy playing against someone that plays two characters with two completely different dynamics. But it’s really easy when it’s Eric. It’s because I do really respect his talent level and his dedication to these characters. But, we have great chemistry because we’re both a little lunatic. We have the kind of the same vibe, like we’re not coming in like, “I’m sorry I just left the nunnery yesterday. Please don’t use that language around me.” We’re both like “Whatever, let’s bring the funny.”
Eric Bauza: Well, thank you Candi—without her and her body of work and what she’s done before me, there wouldn’t be a runway for me to land on. So it only makes sense that I am working with someone like her. And yeah, I think the key is to have fun and not take it so seriously, you know, and especially when you’re behind these characters, driving the Daffy-Mobile and the Porky-Mobile.
Milo: Could you die from the way Daffy is back? For me his Daffy, which [is] less mean, this is the idiot that I grew up on. Bringing that [back] with [director] Pete Browngardt and the whole team, deciding that that’s the Daffy they want him to play, just made my life. That’s the Daffy that I remember seeing.You know, when they hand him the hammer. Shut up! I was like, “Shut up!”
Bauza: [Playful Daffy voice] “When you think of aloof, think of Eric Bauza! Someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing.” But yeah, again, it’s these characters that you know. You don’t want to see Porky get punished, but in a way you’re eating popcorn while watching this poor pig get served by Daffy every turn in this movie. But then towards the end it it all comes together. And I think it’s a beautiful story.
Milo: Friendship always wins out.
io9: So would you say Pete really did let you run free with creating these characters? But also, did you look back on the introduction to the characters—I mean specifically [Candi] for Petunia—when you were bringing them to life here?
Milo: When I got the audition, I did look back, Sabina. I looked back at the very early ones where it was—and it took me all day today to figure out that it was—very Judy Holliday. [Imitates voice] “It was kind of like she talked like this,” and so I did two takes; the second one was just me. The feedback came back from [Warner Bros. Animation president] Sam Register that they didn’t want to do a stupid girl, and they didn’t want to do a girlfriend. They wanted this character to be a scientist, so Sam kept saying, “Tell her to lower her register,” and they played Sam my second take, and he went, “Let’s go with that.” But Pete writes for my sense of humor, anyway, and that [whole] team—they write the way that I think is funny, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same thing for Eric there. You guys have a shorthand.
Bauza: Oh yeah, Pete and I had been working for a number of years on Looney Tunes Cartoons, and then, of course, Uncle Grandpa for Cartoon Network. So it was kind of a match made in [cartoon] heaven because he really is just like those directors back in the ’40s. He really has that sensibility of like, Mad or Cracked Magazine a little—not the “Disney,” not the “perfect picture.” It’s kind of a little off, and I think that’s why Candi and I were on it because we’re a little off. We get the sense of humor, is what I’m saying.
Milo: It is that thing where I think that both Eric and I, in our acting, go against traditional voice acting and traditional roles. Sometimes gender gets pushed onto women. [Petunia is] a scientist that is made fun of for her brain, and she [rebels] against that, but always on the side of friendship. I really believe that if Petunia thought she had come between the friends, she’d take herself out of the picture, and she joins the friends at the end. So I just think that [the team], Pete, Alex [Kirwan], Johnny [Ryan], [is] so great [at that].
io9: I definitely agree. Taking it back to what you were saying, Eric, about how you’re very influenced by the different Looney Tunes cartoon production units of the past, with Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones and the voice actors who have since then taken part in this incredible legacy of the franchise, and have really made it recognizable in style and in voice. What is so essential in keeping that human element of that “little bit of crazy”—that artistic expression that’s true to the Looney Tunes cartoons, and not letting AI get its hands on this?
Bauza: Well, you know there’s a certain manic-ness to [performing]. I think AI is good to a point, technology will always be there, it’ll always advance. And hopefully, it lands in the hands of good people and not bad people, because it can be used at least in the production sense in what we do as a guide. But when it comes to the final execution of something then that should be turned off, you [should] bring the people back to their desks and have them do what they do, what they’re supposed to do, and that’s create art from only a place that a human can. You know, after all, AI is just collecting information from what we’ve already done, right? [Daffy voice in a standard inflection] “But then it gets to a point where you know it might sound like this, and that’s fine.” [Daffy voice in a more chaotic inflection] “But when you gotta do this, that’s when you can tell.” That’s when the wheels fall off AI, when it needs to emote.
Milo: There was a commercial. I forget what it was for—it might have been during the Olympics—where you had a couple walking down a lane and they were not real, the child was not real, the cherry blossoms were not real. I had participated in this group of looking at this, and they ran three ads and [asked], “Which one of these is AI?” and I called it and said, “All three of these are AI because it’s the coldest. It’s not how people move. Things aren’t moving.” [I think to myself], I don’t want you to get better. I want you to go away and just help us medically. That’s what I would really like. It’s just help [on] medical [issues]—figure out how we can feed people. What can we do to stop the spread of diseases, that that’s what I want you to do, and leave this alone because it is just in-artful … I think we’re going to see it [evolve], But I think we’re we’re going to see hand drawn 2D animation is art.
io9: The Looney Tunes in particular, especially across mediums and across generations are so timeless. I call them the Lords of Memery, because the younger generations will immediately recognize the Tunes in memes. And even in a meme, there’s still a creative mind that has come up with the little anecdote that speaks to the choatic id within us that characters like Bugs, Daffy, and the rest tap into. How do you think modern audiences will find their way to The Day The Earth Blew Up thanks to that?
Bauza: Yeah. Well, I mean, with The Day the Earth Blew Up again, there’s just countless countless visual gags in it, and such well drawn scenes with characters that you know they look great on a poster. They’re very well designed, but there’s some things in here that I’ve never seen in any other cartoons.
io9: The Farmer John stuff! I was dying.
Milo: Oh yeah! When we were doing the nomination screenings people were dying when only the mouth was just [still] and then floating, but never moving. To me that’s just genius like, who thought of that? Hey, here’s a great idea this is what this character is, he is the antithesis of [Daffy and Porky], these never stop lunatics. And then this guy here—
Bauza: Who happens to have the luck of adopting them or having them on his doorstep.
Milo: And so I’m hoping [and] I know that Eric is as well—everybody at Ketchup [Entertainment] is praying that we do well. [That] people clamor for more of this quality, this 2D hand-drawn, and maybe we can come out of the CGI [animation] oval flat oval like that. That’s a whole genre, that’s a whole thing, and I dig it, and I get it. But I would love to see much more of this. Not skewed for an age group, but for a sense of humor.
io9: Exactly. These are different genres within the medium, and they should all be able to coexist!
The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie opens this Friday.
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