Looney Tunes: Coyote and Road Runner (Shorts)
**All of these shorts are from the “Looney Tunes: Complete Platinum Collection” set that was released during Warner Bros.’s 100th anniversary.
Shortly after my mother passed away in 2025, I wrote about her favorite Looney Tunes character, Marvin the Martian, and his five main adventures. Over a year later, it’s time for me to write about my favorite Looney Tunes characters, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, and with the long-awaited “Coyote vs. Acme” finally hitting theatres, the time was right.
I’ll write (and speak) more about Looney Tunes on Sonic Cinema in the future. Why are Coyote and Road Runner my favorite characters? It’s true that they don’t have the personalities of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, or any of the other major characters (even Marvin the Martian and K-9), but I think the economical storytelling involved in a Coyote and Road Runner cartoon is my main reason. The only thing we hear said in these cartoons written about here is the Road Runner’s mocking “Beep Beep,” heard on the soundtrack after another one of the Coyote’s schemes to capture him has gone awry. The rest is the animators comedic madness, the story’s outrageous gags, and Carl Stalling’s zany score. And you know what? I love the anarchy of that.
1952’s “Going! Going! Gosh!” is a classic example of the animators letting us in on the joke. We get a freeze frame of the foes with faux Latin names for them in parentheses. Next, the gags, and they come fast and furious. An archery attempt where the bow leaves, but the arrow of dynamite remains. Trying to capture him with quick drying cement. Getting stuck with a hand grenade. And more. All in under 6 1/2 minutes. Ain’t life grand?
In 1953’s “Zipping Along,” Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese find variations on a theme in several of the gags. Dynamite, grenades, trapping the speedy Road Runner. It’s a chaotic 7 minutes and I love every second, especially when all Coyote can do in the end is mimic the Road Runner before his broken body passes out after getting blown up again. I can relate.
This is cartoon violence, of course. The Coyote will persevere, and try another day, and the Road Runner, he’s sassy but he’s ready to joust again. In my head canon, there’s a degree of respect held for the Coyote’s attempts by Road Runner. They aren’t friends, but adversaries that will try to one up one another, time and again.
It’s striking just how strongly the formula was laid out from the first time we see these two in 1949’s “Fast and Furry-ous.” The freeze frame, the different sorts of ways the Coyote will try to take care of the Road Runner, and the ways they go wrong. I did notice that there are a couple of times when the shorts tend to slightly bend one of the rules Jones and the animators had for these shorts, because I would imagine the Coyote would argue that the Road Runner does harm him when he runs Coyote over when one of his doesn’t pan out. Each one of these seem to end with some sort of vehicle running over the Coyote, and well, that seems a little unfair.
“Beep Beep,” also from 1952, adds a lot of wrinkles. One of my favorite elements of it is how we get insight into Coyote’s planning thought process with the snarky notes he writes on his detailed plans. In “Fast and Furry-ous” and “Beep Beep,” the Road Runner leads the Coyote on a merry chase through a geographically complicated maze- first, interlocking roads, then a mine shaft- and the way the animators portray each are a delight. Fast paced, not an ounce of fat on the story. Pure comedic storytelling at its finest.
If I really think about my love of Coyote and Road Runner, I wonder if- when I was a kid- I was predicting my love of silent comedy, in particular, the work of Buster Keaton. Keaton’s characters always find their way through the most outrageous situations, like the Road Runner, and what is Coyote but the embodiment of a mustache-twirling silent film villain who will never get his way. I’m so grateful to my mother for introducing me to Looney Tunes as a kid. And I couldn’t be more delighted that these creations of Michael Maltese and Chuck Jones are finally getting their time to shine in a feature film. Watching these shorts, I was happy, and am so excited to revisit them again, sooner rather than later.
