"Chuck Jones Conquers Bugs Bunny" by John Kricfalusi

 This is the second part of an article about Chuck Jones by John K.

To read part one, click here.

 Animation Magazine - Issue #31 October/November 1994

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Tradition has it that Bugs Bunny was born in a Tex Avery cartoon called A Wild Hare in 1940. A few prototype Bugs Bunny cartoons had previously been made by other directors but it is generally agreed that this is the first time the characters and the situation gelled.

    The cartoon solidly establishes Bugs Bunny's (and Elmer Fudd's) personalities. Bugs' dominant characteristic is that he is a heckler. Being a heckler in itself was not new in 1940. Daffy Duck was a heckler and he was born three years earlier. Bugs Bunny brought a subtle change to the stock heckling character. He is a calm, cool heckler — for the most part. In A Wild Hare, Bugs Bunny clearly enjoys heckling. He is a young character, kind of a teen-aged wiseacre, a hip class clown.

    This, for cartoons, was a revolution in personality. Bugs Bunny is a character that we can relate to. He's down to earth, realistic, street smart. He's slightly devilish and gets away with things that we would like to get away with. Elmer's personality on the other hand is completely unbelievable. He's a throwback, a slightly earlier Warner Bros.-style character, a surreal cartoon personality. He's too stupid. (Not too stupid to be funny, just too stupid to be believed.) These are the two schools of Warner Bros. personalities combined successfully and the combination created a new style. 

    One of the funniest scenes in the picture has Bugs Bunny pretending that Elmer has shot him. Elmer, realizing what he has done, cradles the rabbit as he goes through his death throes. This is a wonderfully

acted scene, both by Mel Blanc who spoke it and Bob McKimson who animated it. You don't see this kind of professional comedic acting in other studios' work.

    Bugs looks outwardly like a timid forest creature, which masks his potential for damage to his prey. While Elmer is the supposed hunter in the cartoon, it soon becomes obvious that Bugs is the one who is doing the luring and trapping.

    It's interesting that Elmer Fudd never directly provokes Bugs Bunny. He doesn't get a chance to. In A Wild Hare, Bugs is not at all put out by the fact that Elmer Fudd is invading his territory, let alone trying to kill him. In fact, he's glad he's there. He wants somebody to screw with, which he does, right from the start, just for fun. Just because he's a wiseacre. Now this situation is ridiculous. Bugs is a frail woodland creature, Elmer has a gun and could easily kill him. The fact that Elmer goes along with Bugs' routines is completely preposterous.

    Not only Bugs Bunny was born in this cartoon. The perceived Warner Bros. cartoon style was also born. This combination of believable characters with surreal characters and unbelievable gags and situations set what people think of today as the Warner Bros. cartoon style. Bob Clampett brought this style to its peak of success, both popularly and artistically during the mid-forties, and was copied by all the contemporary studios, including Disney. The Warner Bros. "irreverent" cartoon style is raped and pillaged and beaten to death today by its usurpers. It remains the standard for funny cartoons.

    A Wild Hare is not the first cartoon to have all these story elements. A previous cartoon had practically all the same elements, the same characters with the same personalities, the same gags, the same story situations. The cartoon was even written by the same person, Rich Hogan. 

    Only one element between the cartoons was truly different. The director. 

    In Elmer's Candid Camera, as in A Wild Hare, Bugs Bunny screws with Elmer without any motivation, just for kicks. Elmer is not out to harm him, he just wants to take photographs of wildlife. 

    Elmer's and Bugs' characters are pretty well developed in this cartoon, from a written standpoint. They say things that fit their modern personalities but something is missing. They don't seem timed or drawn right. (I don't mean "on model," I mean the expressions don't match the attitude of the dialogue.) There is a lack of conviction.

    The gags and story situations are very similar to the Avery cartoon. There's even a fake death scene in it like in A Wild Hare, except for some reason it's not really as funny.

    Chuck Jones says this about Elmer's Candid Camera, "In this cartoon, we find Bugs stumbling, fumbling and mumbling around, vainly seeking a personality on which to hang his dialogue and action, or — in better words than mine — 'walking around with his umbilical in his hand, looking for some place to plug it in...' "Not only Bugs suffered at my hands, but difficult as it is to make an unassertive character like Elmer Fudd into a flat, complete schmuck, I managed. Perhaps the kindest thing to say about Elmer's Candid Camera is that it taught everyone what not to do and how not to do it..."

    The main difference between A Wild Hare and Elmer's Candid Camera is that one director understood the elements and the other didn't. In order to tell a joke well, you need to get the joke. In order to do the Warner Bros. style well, you need to understand it. In order to present an attitude or point-of-view in your art you need to believe in it and feel it.

    Between 1940 and 1945 or so, while the Warner Bros. stock characters and style grew to become the most popular American cartoons, Jones was directing at Warner Bros.

    It seems only fitting that he would have a quota of Warner Bros. style cartoons and stock characters, so in between Sniffles and Conrad Cat cartoons, Jones worked at learning the house style. He claims that it took him 10 cartoons and six years to finally understand Bugs Bunny.

    "From Hair-Raising Hare (released May 1946) on, I did not have to ask for whom the rabbit toiled; he toiled for me. I no longer drew pictures of Bugs; I drew Bugs, I timed Bugs, I knew Bugs, because what Bugs aspired to, I too aspired to. Aside from a few stumbles, Bugs and I were always at ease with one another."

    Bob Clampett's very first Bugs Bunny was right on the mark. In 1941 Clampett directed Wabbit Twouble a much funnier cartoon than A Wild Hare or any of the other directors' Bugs Bunnies. The character and the director seem perfectly confident with the formula. Bugs Bunny's personality doesn't falter. Clampett made three Bugs Cartoons in the stock mold set by A Wild Hare. He was getting used to

the character. By the fourth Bugs Cartoon he began to experiment with taking the character in new directions, building on his personality — and his look.

    First, he had his head animator Bob McKimson design a new model sheet, less rabbit like, more human in his expressions. His poses changed from the bent-kneed animal to a straight legged human-like pose, or one bent knee and one straight.

    His head was more triangular, more appealing and modern as a design. The confident, cocky personality is all over these drawings.

    The first cartoon to feature the new design was Tortoise Wins by a Hare. In this remake of Avery's Tortoise Beats Hare, Clampett is so confident with the character that he demonstrates what a hilarious sore loser Bugs Bunny, the good winner, can be.

    It would be three years before Jones made a Bugs Bunny cartoon that he was satisfied with, that resembled the one in the first Avery's and Clampett's.

    Actually I think Jones is too hard on himself. There are some very good things in some of his early Bugs cartoons.

    Elmer's Pet Rabbit is drawn better than Candid Camera.

    The cartoon has the same kind of jokes that most of the early Bugs Bunny cartoons do, but some of the gags go on too long.

    In one scene Bugs asks Elmer to kick him. Elmer doesn't want to do it. Bugs Bunny says, "Oh, come on." Elmer reluctantly gives him a light tap. Bugs Bunny swings around and says, "Of course you

know this means war." Bugs Bunny wants Elmer to give him an excuse to heckle him. I think Jones does too.

    In Case of the Missing Hare (1942), Jones introduces a formula that he uses many times in his career: a Lummox does something to Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny says, "Of course you know this means war!" Then Bugs Bunny turns on the Lummox. At the end of the cartoon, Bugs sings a smug little tune that boasts a successful revenge.

    This time when Bugs Bunny says, "Of course you realize this means war" it's motivated. The Lummox (a magician, "Ala Bama") smacks Bugs in the face with a pie. This Bugs Bunny cartoon is exactly the formula Jones used in many later car- toons, the films he says have Bugs Bunny's personality down. The lummox in this cartoon is a proto-lout, a generic design, but still kind of funny. He has the little feet and hands that Jones loves to draw and a big fat body.

    This "motivated" Bugs Bunny is important to Jones. He speaks about it a lot.

    "Well, I always underwrote the idea of Bugs being a heckler — he's minding his own business, and then somebody comes along and tries to disturb him, hurt him, destroy him. But when he fights back, he becomes an anarchist, rather like Groucho Marx."

    In Bugs Bunny Magazine, Jones explained, "I felt that somebody should always try to impose his will on Bugs. That gave him a reason to act, and I couldn't understand a character unless he had a reason for what he did." I don't think I agree with this. A character's central personality trait — who he is doesn't need to be motivated. I think that you have to motivate the character's departure from his personality. If somebody is going to do something against his nature, that you have to motivate. But you don't need to explain why a character acts the way he does naturally.

    Think about The Honeymooners. Imagine if we had to explain why Ralph is an a-hole at the beginning of every show. We don't know why he's an a-hole, he's just an a-hole. And we believe him because he's a convincing a-hole. He likes being an a-hole.

    Bugs Bunny in Bob Clampett's cartoons is completely convincing as a wiseacre; he likes to screw with people. He likes to screw with people in Tex Avery's cartoons, "Hmm...let's see, what can I do to this guy next?" Bugs is a happy heckler in Friz Freleng's, Bob McKimson's, Art Davis' and Frank Tashlin's cartoons.

    If Bugs Bunny deviates from his normal cool behavior, then we need a motivation, as we have in Tortoise Wins by a Hare, Tortoise Beats Hare by Tex Avery and Falling Hare by Bob Clampett. In Chuck Jones's cartoons, we have to explain why he likes to screw with people. Except in Duck Amuck.

    In Case of the Missing Hare, the motivation didn't radically alter the effect of this cartoon compared with Jones's last Bugs cartoon. It is better, due to some experimental layouts and dynamic poses, some-

what in the style of The Dover Boys, although it has some of the same problems as the other early Jones cartoons.

    Jones is still unsure of this style of humor. His drawings and timing aren't as funny as the other directors who are working in their native styles.

    What's important here, isn't whether or not Bugs Bunny's personality needed to be motivated at the beginning of each car- toon. If Jones needs a rationale to do the Warner Bros. style, that's okay. At least having an excuse for Bugs to act like Bugs got Jones over a hump. He was now trying to make funny cartoons.

    In Super Rabbit, Jones started to get a handle on the character and his new formula. In this one the lummox is very specific; a cowboy Lummox named Cottontail Smith, who hates rabbits. "If there's one thing I hates more than a rabbit, it's two rabbits." This line later became a trademark of Yosemite Sam.

    Bugs is more confident in his heckling persona, "Time out, whilst I think of some more deviltry." This is a pretty wacky cartoon for an early Chuck Jones cartoon. Bugs is pretty geeky and playful, full of youthful energy like the Avery/Clampett Bugs.

    Artistically, there are a lot of held poses in the cartoon. This is a specialty of Jones: poses that are so strong that they are worth holding long enough for us to enjoy them.

    In Wackiki Wabbit (1943), Bugs Bunny doesn't seem to have a strong motivation to go after two guys on a deserted island. A tall skinny guy and short fat guy want to eat him, but they're starving, so its justified. They aren't villains.

    At the end of the cartoon, a rescue boat comes. Bugs Bunny escapes on the boat, and leaves the two guys on the island to die, enjoying every minute of it. The gags in this cartoon come out of Bugs Bunny taking advantage of the fact that these two guys are starving.

    Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears (1944) is a weaker cartoon, mostly because the production values are very rough. It seems as if the cartoon was rushed. However, Jones introduces his Three Bears, characters with great potential that he later spun off. These characters are from a whole other world than the typical Warner Bros. cartoons. They are in the tradition of radio sitcoms, the world of the Bickersons and Jack Benny. The relationships between the wild-tempered Father, stupid lummox baby and sexless Mom are more entertaining than Bugs himself. Junior and Pa steal the show. Here are characters that Jones is comfortable with. He doesn't feel the need to over-motivate these characters' relationships to each other. Pa never says "Of course you know, this means child abuse!" after Junior does something stupid.

    The cartoon that for me, shows that Jones finally clicked with Bugs Bunny and the Warner style is Hare Conditioned. 

Next issue, Kricfalusi explains why Hare Conditioned is a triumph for Jones. Kricfalusi is the president of Spumco.

"The Art of Chuck Jones" by John Kricfalusi

 

Animation Magazine - Issue #30 July/August 1994

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Bob Clampett first stretched the animation medium's pure essence — "funny drawings that move funny," then added all the other artistic and technical advantages that were available to him at the time and created a new form of entertainment.

    No other medium can do the things a Clampett cartoon can do. There are emotions and entertainment possibilities cartoons can express that novels, symphonies and other forms of art can never reach. And vice-versa of course. As happens today, when the people who make the creative decisions in animation are ignorant of its workings, Clampett didn't try to bend the medium to conform to his first limited vision of it. He learned the medium, then expanded his vision in order to best use and develop the form.

    In the process of doing what Clampett did naturally, he pushed Warner Bros. and the whole cartoon medium faster and harder than its own natural evolution was advancing. His example forced other more

naturally conservative directors to follow him. Without Clampett wildly stretching the boundaries of aggressively cartoony animation, brilliant directors like Chuck Jones might have been footnotes in animation history.

    Jones is probably the most famous, and definitely one of the most talented cartoon directors in our history, but the aggressive, sarcastic, violent, slapstick cartoons that he is now revered for were made against his more natural bent.

    Jones (along with Clampett) was a founding member of Tex Avery's "Termite Terrace" unit at Warner Bros. in the mid-1930s. This unit is famous for creating an "irreverent" anti-Disney style of cartoons.

    Incidentally, when people refer to Termite Terrace today, they assume that all of the Warner Bros. cartoonists worked in a wooden shack for their whole tenure at the studio. This building only housed the Tex Avery unit in the mid-'30s and was hidden on a backlot away from the main studio. This crew was younger than the main Warner's team and Clampett, Jones and the others were given to Avery because they didn't get along with the older men and wanted to try out new things. According to Clampett, Friz Freleng wouldn't have been caught dead in Termite Terrace.

    By 1938 Chuck Jones was promoted to director of his own unit and was free to express his own creative style and ideas.

    While Clampett and Avery continued rebelling against Disney and the current cartoon fashions, Jones rebelled against their rebellion. He immediately reverted to copying what Disney was doing. In 1938, the year Clampett directed such surreal, aggressive, admittedly primitive but purely "Looney Tunes" style cartoons as Porky in Wackyland, Porky's Naughty Nephew, Porky in Egypt and Daffy Doc, Jones directed his first cartoon, The Night Watchman. 

    This cartoon stars a cute, Sniffles-like cat. In the story, the cute guy overcomes a gang of rowdy, jazz-loving "cool" mice. It's tempting to read an allegorical message relating to Chuck's own situation as the

cute animator among the trouble-making Clampetts and Averys. 

    Chuck was just getting started. His films got cuter and cuter. The "Sniffles" series and the two "curious puppies" go even further than Disney in their stomach-churning sweetness. He seemed to be aiming at an audience of infants. Many of the cartoons feature very young little boy characters.

    You've got to see Tom Thumb in Trouble (1940) to believe it. A tall, burly, Paul Bunyan-like man lives out in the woods. with his tiny little darling boy who sleeps in the same bed with him. There is no wife to disrupt the harmony of this perfect boy-man relationship. One day, after bathing the naked little fruit of his loins in his cupped hands, Dad goes to work and leaves Tom home alone. When Tom accidentally almost drowns in a pan, a cute little bird crashes through the window and rescues him. Hairy old Dad comes home and finds the bird leaning over Tom, surrounded by broken glass, and imagines the worst. He lunges at the bird with a look of rage in his eyes so intense that you'd swear he's going to beat the living crap out of the little flying fellow. Luckily, the bird escapes. I won't ruin it for you by telling you the ending, but I have to say that this cartoon is so sweet that it's almost dirty. I love it.

    Besides being cute, many of Jones's early cartoons are very slow, and he himself has been known to apologize for this period of his work. He says of Elmer's Candid Camera, "It is obvious when one views this cartoon, which I recommend only if you are dying to die of ennui, that my conception of timing

and dialogue was formed by watching the action in the La Brea tar pits."

    It seems like during this time, Jones was concentrating more on his craft than on his entertainment. He was getting used to the tools of animation.

    He practiced all the tools of the cartoon form except its purest one — the funny drawing. Instead, he worried about good drawing and the art and technique in general. From cartoon to cartoon, the drawings of the characters become more solid and carefully constructed. The staging in these cartoons is very careful and deliberate; the backgrounds wrap around and frame the characters, rather than just sit behind the characters, as in many of his contemporaries' work. There are some very careful and studied attempts at subtle acting, as in the opening scenes of Robin Hood Makes Robin Hood Good (1939).

    There is a definite slow, steady progression, or evolution, in Jones' work, not only from this period, but even through his more popular period years later. Unlike Clampett, he didn't burst forth with new

ideas and experiments in a steady stream. Rather, he carefully built up his techniques and innovations one small step at a time. As Clampett plunged into uncharted waters stark naked, Chuck Jones stepped into the pool one nervous toe at a time. Except once.

    In 1942, Chuck Jones directed The Dover Boys. This was a radical departure from not only what he was doing, but from what everybody else in animation was doing or ever had done.

    He made a cartoon that didn't look like all the characters were made of balloons. The character designs were bold, graphic, angular and full of contrasts. This kind of look was not new to print cartoons; magazines like The New Yorker and comic strip cartoons in general featured a wide variety of cartoon styles, but nothing like this had been seen in animation. And there was a reason for it. Animators generally thought balloony shapes were easy to move in three dimensions, while graphic shapes would not animate well. This is true. It is easier to animate easy shapes.

    Chuck solved this problem by inventing a whole new way to animate. The Dover Boys features some very stylish and effective ways to move his characters that worked perfectly with the story and gags of the film. The most superficial innovation of the film is the use of huge stretched inbetweens that zip us from one extreme pose to another. Too many modern animators have discovered this and use it in place of animation as in the Sugar Bear commercials. In Chuck's hands though, the technique is wonderful.

    Oh yeah, and the story is funny.

    This was a real landmark for Jones, because it's the first time he was able to marry content with form. Up until then, you could watch a Jones film and say "Gee, that's a nice looking background," or "My, those are beautiful shadows on Sniffles' butt," or "Didn't that puppy move convincingly?" but you could never say "Wow! What a great cartoon!"

    Strangely, Jones never again made such a radical departure from his step-by-step, cautious evolution (unless you want to count The Dot and the Line, (1965) which is really more of a lecture than it is a cartoon). The Dover Boys is also responsible for inspiring John Hubley and the other artists who went on to found UPA years later, although I don't think there is one UPA cartoon that is as entertaining or well executed as its inspiration.

    After The Dover Boys, Jones did continue to experiment, although on a much smaller scale.

    While his characters reverted to the basically generic balloony style that he and Warner Bros. were used to, he continued to toy with background design. Hold the Lion Please and My Favorite Duck both have mildly "designy" backgrounds. The drawings are solid and the compositions have great depth, but the actual painting is flat, rather than the highly rendered and detailed background style of the day.

    In 1943, he started using wildly abstract backgrounds and spent a lot of the time in the cartoons practicing fancy camera moves. The Unbearable Bear, The Aristocat, Wackiki Wabbit and Fin 'n' Catty all feature balloony characters, boring, slow stories and very experimental settings. Unfortunately, the background treatment is so different than the character treatment that it effec- tively becomes wallpaper. Again, Jones was having trouble marrying form with content. 

    Jones's technique was obviously very good, but he wanted you to know it. He put his techniques up front, where you couldn't miss them. By the early '40s, the look, the animation, the tricks and all the window dressing were very clever and inventive, but he really seemed to be resisting what cartoons do best.

    Chuck Jones's early cartoons give off an air of smug pseudo-respectability, as if they are saying, "Look at me, I'm not a cartoon, I'm a work of art." I get the feeling that Jones felt some secret shame at being a cartoonist even though he is, by talent, an incredibly great, natural Cartoonist, second only to Clampett in my opinion. There is just that reservation in his work that needed to be conquered.

    Clampett conquered it for him. By the mid 1940s the wild, seemingly uncontrolled, "irreverent" Warner Bros.' Cartoons and their unique characters became the most popular cartoons in the world. The Looney Tunes were loved because they were "looney" and Clampett's were by far the "looney-est." His unrelenting whirlpool sucked in everyone in its wake, whether they wanted in or not. The other directors were giving up their cutesy Cartoons in favor of this new, more popular, more accessible kind of Cartoon. They turned away from making cartoons for animators and began making cartoons for people. Even Disney began to make harder,more raucous, more Cartoony cartoons, particularly Jack Kinney with his Goofy Sports Series.

    Once he broke from the Disney mold, Chuck Jones began making advances for the medium and eventually created his own unique an inspired cartoons, but he had a tough time making the initial change. By the mid-'40s Chuck made the definite break and consciously started trying to make funny Warner Bros.-style cartoons. It was at this time that he began to try to understand the stock Warner Bros. characters and gag style, although he needed intellectual justification to help him make the leap.

    He didn't approve of Warners' biggest star characters and needed to find excuses for them to act the way they had been acting when they became so popular. "Bugs is a counter-revolutionary, you know. He's not a revolutionary. He's not a Woody Woodpecker, which is how Bob Clampett used him. Clampett's Bugs Bunny did not involve the disciplines that we would put in.

    "I felt that somebody should always try to impose his will on Bugs. That gave him a reason to act, and I couldn't understand a character unless he had a reason for what he did.”

    By the time Chuck Jones finally broke down and began to make full-fledged Warner Bros. cartoons, he discovered a technique that helped him break down his natural resistance to Clampett-style cartoons and character's — rules. He also discovered another valuable tool: Michael Maltese.

In the next issue, John Kricfalusi discusses Chuck Jones's Golden Age. Kricfalusi is the president of Spumco.

Behind Beavis & Butthead: Mike Judge Interview - Animation Magazine (1993)

 

Animation Magazine - Issue #26 November 1993

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BONUS: MTV's In-House Animation Studio and Interview

DNA Productions: Paul Claerhout, Keith Alcorn and John A. Davis - Animation Magazine (1993)

Animation Magazine - Issue #26 November 1993

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    "The outrageous part of what we do gives us a way to vent our pent-up frustrations at always having to work within the constraints of a corporate or commercial environment where everything has to be politically correct or cute," proclaims John A. Davis, of Dallas-based DNA Productions.

    Davis, Keith Alcorn and Paul Claerhout, the key members of this animation house, first vented with Nippoless Nippleby, a fractured fable in which the title creature is ostracized for not having nipples —until society discovers the useful member he does possess. Weird Beard, a demented and gross musical

tale of a pirate hazing system, and the series Nana and Lil' Puss Puss followed.

    In its most outrageous mode, DNA is best known for Nana and Lil' Puss Puss. Drawn in stark black and white, using a splash of color only when necessary (usually to highlight snot, blood or dung) the series follows the adventures of a Granny-type and her cat. It indulges in, as Alcorn notes, "fourth grade, bathroom humor." But an element of satire is often co-mingled with the anything-goes scat humor. (In One Ration Under God, the crimes of Hitler, David Koresh, J. Edgar Hoover and Jack Kennedy are forgiven in heaven, while Nana is damned for not buying enough cat food.)

    Thanks to festival screenings, what started as an after hours, just-for-kicks release has become profitable. Still, DNA has also had its brush with censorship.

    "The Dallas Video Festival wouldn't let us show Weird Beard, because of the violence, and some of Nana and Lil' Puss Puss," Davis says. "But they showed a William S.Burroughs video in the next room where he's talking about [doing things to] his daughter and all this horrible stuff."

    That episode underlines the strange schism that exists between what is acceptable in live action versus animation. "It's funny how you can get away with things in live action that are just too offensive if it's animated," says Alcorn. "It seems like it should be just the opposite, but people seem to be so much more sensitive to animation."

    Adds Davis: "What can be sicker than watching the evening news and seeing people in Somalia dragging dead bodies through the street — spitting and defecating on them? And then people will react to an [animated] old lady exposing her breasts."

BONUS: ONE ON ONE WITH A REAL LIVE ANIMATOR!

 

Mr. Lawrence Interview - Animation Magazine (1993)

 Animation Magazine - Issue #26 November 1993

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    They call him Mister Lawrence — a moniker that began as a joke but then stuck with the 24-year-old animator.

    By day Doug Lawrence directs (and provides voices for) Nickelodeon's series Rocko's Modern Life but nights and weekends are occupied completing independent animated projects such as Looks Can Kill, about a stripper who gives new dimensions to the term heavy artillery, and A One Story House, about a house that is violently allergic to people.

    While not quite ready for prime-time, these personal projects are not designed just to shock. "I'm really concerned with doing something that hasn't been seen before, but I've seen things in animation that I would never bother doing because they're too perverse," he says, citing excessive blood and gore.

    Unlike many, Lawrence even sees some value to working within network standards. "The first thing that pops into your head is usually the easiest to do, usually the sick joke or the gross joke," he adds. "A lot of people will disagree with me, but I think if you're forced not to do certain things, you sometimes come up with better things, something a little more refined and a better gag — just funnier."

BONUS: Mr. Lawrence's "Looks Can Kill" Short