Tex Avery's Droopy-Complete Theatrical Collection coming 5-15-07 (1 Viewer)

[Edwin-S]

So what do you mean by this? That Chuck Jones was a bad director compared to Tex Avery? If so, I couldn't disagree more.

 

[buttmunker]

Yes, Chuck Jones was a bad director.
However, Charles M. Jones was a superb director. Superb!

I pan the evil Chuck Jones for getting involved in the 1960's version of Tom & Jerry.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

Over on "The Digital Bits," the "My Two Cents" column is announcing this "Droopy" set, and it says this:

"(Warner) has announced Tex Avery's Droopy: The Complete Theatrical Collection for release on 5/15 (SRP $26.99). The 2-disc set will include 24 re-mastered and unedited animated shorts ... "

I betcha they WON'T be unedited! There's no way they're putting back in the so-called "racist" jokes that were edited from "The Compleat Tex Avery." I wish they would -- racist or not, they were funny stuff -- but they won't.

 

[Patrick McCart]

After all the Tom & Jerry issues, it would be a bit masochistic on Warner's part. If they're new remasters, there's nothing to worry about. I think the T&J issues were due to using the wrong video masters.

WB is getting more daring on the Looney Tunes sets, so they just have to check to make sure everything is intact and add the disclaimer before the cartoons.

 

[TravisR]

Exactly. After all the trouble of replacing the discs and pissing people off, they probably don't want to repeat the incident. That doesn't mean that they won't screw up and send people into hysterics but they're not going to deliberately edit it.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

I think the single most racist joke I've ever seen in a cartoon was in a Droopy cartoon -- and it was deleted from "The Compleat Tex Avery."

I fearlessly predict it will NOT be on the "Droopy" set, and if anyone complains, they'll say it was removed from the negative and destroyed, so there was nothing they could do about it, or some such thing -- which might be true or might not be, and we'd have no way of knowing.

 

[buttmunker]

What was the racist joke?

 

[John Sparks]

NO, they better be "ANAMORPHIC!!!"

 

[Joe Lugoff]

It was really visual and hard to explain, but it involved a bomb going off and turning a white dog (I think it was Spike) black and the way his speech and personality changed the split second he turned black. They implied his IQ dropped about 80 points. I mean, it was racist with a capital R.

 

[Chris S]

Warner was good about fixing the T&J issues so I'm confident that they would make any corrections/replacements for this set as well.

 

[chas speed]

I don't recall the racist joke you are referring to and it is probably a product of your own mind. I recall reading write ups of the cut material of the compleat Tex Avery set in Video Watch Dog magazine (only 2 or 3 gags were missing) and there was no mention of the gag you described. I do remember one black face gag being cut from droopy's good deed. Some rich man was paying a reward to Spike and a explosing went off turning the man's face black as he was counting out the reward money. The explosing causes him to loose count. It was not racist and I can't imagine why it was cut. I have read they are supposed to be uncut and remastered. There really wasn't anything that racist in droopy cartoons and I don't think there should be any problems. The cinemascope cartoons are garbage, just full screen cartoons cut in half in the miracle of cinemacope.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

OK, that was it --- I was just confused, thinking Spike turned black, but it was the rich man who did.

When you say it was CUT --- there must be a reason, right?

When you say it was "not racist," I'm afraid you're wrong -- it was the fact that it was very racist that resulted in it being cut.

The man, after turning black, starts speaking in black dialect, and doesn't exactly "lose count" -- he can't count, because he's now too stupid to know what number comes after what. In other words, it's racist -- and I stand by what I said, the most racist gag I've ever seen in a cartoon.

This verifies that it was cut from "The Compleat Tex Avery" and I just can't see it being put back into the Droopy set. But time will tell.

 

[Chuck Pennington]

This scene was intact on the late 80's MGM Italian VHS release, but dubbed into Italian. I used the picture from it and the sound from a collector's print to make my own hybrid. I hope it was been fixed for good on the new Warner set, but I'm not going to count on it.

 

[ChrisPearson]

The full details are now up at DVD Times:

http://dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=64355

I see WHV Family Division are still slowly getting to grips with what these cartoons are all about. On the one hand, its nice to see that they finally realise that the MGM cartoons are theatrical films and not "episodes". On the other hand, they are still making basic errors concerning the content. Ah yes, those beloved characters "Nasty Wolf" and "English Fox"...

 

[buttmunker]

On The Compleat Tex Avery, and Droopy's Good Deed - there's a very racist scene that was left intact:

a wood cabin goes up in flames, and Spike gets trapped inside, turning black. Droopy goes in and saves him, then asks him, Any more darkies in there?

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Here is the description of the Cartoon Network broadcast and video censored bits of "Droopy's Good Deed" from the Golden Age Cartoons web site:
Regards,

 

[buttmunker]

...and two bits. LOL.

 

[Tim Tucker]

Strange... I remember seeing those censored bits back in the late 70's when the cartoons were still in syndication.

 

[Jon Martin]

Someone posted Droopy's Good Deed on You Tube. It is the Cartoon Network version (their bug is in the corner), with those scenes cut out.

It still plays rather well. Without knowing about those shots, I wouldn't have known it was edited.

 

[PaulP]

Funny jab by David over at TVShowsonDVD at people like myself:


I don't mind the jab at all. In fact I agree. What I complained about in the past was news by the great TVShowsonDVD site (a resource I visit almost religiously) that presented theatrical cartoons as episode of a TV show. The argument that they were part of a TV series does not really work, as the same holds true for any film that one first saw on TV. And, moreover, what is presented on the DVD is not the compilation TV series episodes but the actual complete and unedited theatrical shorts. But since the news item explicitly states that this is a compilation of theatrical Droopy shorts, and not "Droopy: The Complete Series", I'm okay with that