It’s been 77 years since Wile E. Coyote debuted and 36 years since he fictionally filed suit in a piece by award-winning humorist – and Northeast Ohioan -- Ian Frazier. Now, they’re both heading to the big screen when “Coyote v. Acme” opens Friday.
“I'm just so hoping people like this movie, and I had absolutely nothing to do with it,” he said from his home in New Jersey.
Frazier grew up in Hudson before heading to Harvard and, eventually, a decades-long career as a writer. His books include the Thurber Prize-winning “Coyote v. Acme,” which centers on a piece he wrote for the “New Yorker.” It’s also the basis for the film.
“I typed it up on a manual typewriter, [and] I put it in a manila envelope,” he said. “That's the last I ever had to do with it. And that was January of 1990. Everything else happened between my agents and various people who had taken options on this and then finally with Warner Bros.”
Starting in 1949, the studio put out dozens of shorts featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. Frazier grew up watching those cartoons.
“When people are excited about this movie, I say, ‘Don't forget Tex Avery … the people who did these original cartoons,” he said. “Chuck Jones was a visual genius, a narrative genius. He was amazing. I always try and remember them.”
Jones, Avery, Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett and numerous others created characters ranging from Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck to Foghorn Leghorn and Marvin the Martian. They’re all in the new movie, which focuses on Wile E. Coyote and his endless pursuit of the Roadrunner. In almost every cartoon, the coyote bought a deadly gadget from the fictional Acme Corporation (not to be confused with the Akron-based grocery chain). Those gadgets never worked.
Frazier’s piece, structured as a legal brief, imagines what would happen if Acme were sued for their defective gadgets. The idea came to him when he was co-executor of his parents’ estates in the late 1980s.
“I was going through their stuff in their apartment, and they had cassettes of Warner Bros. cartoons,” he said. “At the same time, I was going through their will. And it's not something most people do: Read legal language. So, I was reading that and watching the cartoons, and the two sort of blended in my mind.”
Among the hundreds of essays he’s written, Frazier counts “Coyote v. Acme” among his best. He said its longevity stems from two things. First, the legal language that’s familiar from decades of TV shows like “Perry Mason” and “Law & Order.” Yet there’s also the appeal of the coyote’s habitat, with its wide-open vistas.
“Immigrants came here, and they had this new landscape and it fascinated them,” he said. “It was full of promise for them. And here, the coyote is interacting with the landscape to his disadvantage. He's crashing into mesas, smashing into the side of cliffs, trying to keep up with this great big, wide, long vista that the Roadrunner can go down in a split second. And the coyote has to hop on a rocket sled to keep up with him. I think it is the combination of trying to make sense of life through legal language.”
Although the film was shelved for three years, as Warner Bros. reportedly to simply write it off for tax reasons, it’s finally coming to theaters thanks to Ketchup Entertainment. Frazier has been part of the film’s promotion.
“The screenwriter, Sammy Birch, [is] just a wonderful person, and I talked to her for the ‘New Yorker Radio Hour,’” he said. “I did a video sketch with Will Forte. He's an incredibly nice guy. I think he's a very funny guy. And I made a little phone video for Dave Green, the director. I'm really keeping my fingers crossed for this movie.”
And, presumably, for the coyote’s legal team.
