The Gentle News

I’d like to take you, if I may, back to a time when nearly everyone had a great sense of humor. The world appreciated a good, smart premise. People liked to hear funny stories that didn’t necessarily have punchlines or the word “fuck” in them.

Don’t get me wrong, I like blue comedy as much as the next guy, but there is something missing today. Few people even giggle when they should be losing their breath from laughter upon hearing Mel Brooks as the 2000 Year Old Man explain that World War II wouldn’t have lasted so long if Winston Churchill hadn’t confused the militaries by instructing them to seek and conquer the “Narzees.” I want more of that. I want more movies like The Producers (thank Yahweh he made a musical out of it), but I will probably never see this dream realized.

However, what I’d like to share with you has very little to do with Mel Brooks. I’d like to share with you an epic from a time when Mighty Mouse actually beat the shit out of his enemies rather than fire a laser at their vehicles and then haul them in with a force field. It’s from a time when the only difference between full-contact, live-action slapstick and animated slapstick was some paint and occasionally the species of the participants.

Let me set the scene for you. Bugs Bunny has run across two members of a backwoods moutain family. These men, brothers, mistake Bugs for a member of rival family. Bugs, in his infinite rabbit wisdom (it’s all those carrots — brainfood), has come up with a plan to get them to stop chasing him and to what’s important: beating the shit out of each other.

Bugs spots a mechanical Square Dance Caller. He winds the sucker up, lets the automaton get the hillbillies’ dance juices flowin’, and then takes over, disguised as the caller himself. The result is a couple of brainwashed country folk who’ll do anything a man says to do while there’s a fiddle and a banjo playing behind him.

Enjoy.