I saw Pete Browngardt‘s THE DAY THE EATH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE because I asked for it when it ran as part of the Animation is Film Festival a couple of months back. To be honest I had no hope for it. Most of the recent long form Looney Tunes films have not been good (or scrapped) so my expectations was very low. After the film was finished I found myself delighted and I felt it was one of the best films (full stop) of 2024. (My review is here). I also found myself in the middle of some social media discussions about the film because people here in the US wanted to know about the film.A couple of weeks ago I was contacted about possibly doing an interview with director Browngardt. Normally I balk at doing interviews, however the film was too good not to talk about the film with the man behind it.
I had a blast doing the interview. Pete just went and what was supposed to be a 15 minute interview doubled, in part because we started a little earlier, but mostly because we kept going and blew through the stop signal. (We were bonding over being Long Island natives and a love of Hundreds of Beavers)
What follows is most of our discussion. I removed the talk of Long Island, but pretty much everything else is here. It’s a great discussion of making the film, of making films under the current Warners regime and of a way to make Looney Tunes relevant a again.
I want to thank Alexandra at 42 West for setting up the interview and for Pete for taking the time to talk to a fan.
STEVE: Hi, Pete. Thank you for absolutely one of the best films of the year. I genuinely feel that way. I think it was actually on my vote. Just so you know, it was in my voting for the New York Film Critics Online as best animated film or one of the best animated films.
PETE:, That's so nice of you. Thank you.
STEVE: I want to begin with how is it that you managed to make such a wonderful film with 11 credited writers? I've never seen a film with, say, more than, three or four writers that's any good, and you have 11 credited writers.
PETE: And they're all good writers, too. I'll explain that one.
So, basically, I'm a storyboarder. I started animation pretty much as a storyboard artist for Cartoon Network. And we would get outlines, and we would have to write and board the story. There was no script. It was just sort of a page of what should happen. And we got writing credit on that. Because we are writers. We're writing this.
And then every project after that I'm going to try storyboard artists writing credit because they are writing. We are writing it, not just the pictures, because pictures speak a thousand words. We are writing the dialogue, changing the dialogue, rewriting situations, reimagining the whole script at times, throwing the whole script out and starting over and rewriting. And a lot of people don't realize how much storyboard artists do in animation. And Steve Hillenburg, when he made The Spongebob Squarepants movie, he got Paramount to give the storyboard artists credit on that. They had a smaller storyboard artist crew on that. We just happened to have a little bit of a larger crew, and that's why there's that many credit. But basically, there are two actual writers that only work in the word form in that credit list, and everyone else is a storyboarder.
It's like saying, is Charles Schultz the writer of Peanut? He draws it and he writes it. It's the same for storyboarders.
That's how I look at it. And I feel like it's one of my proudest achievements of getting the studio to agree, and I had to really make the case and show the evidence of it to get it. And I wish more studios gave, and more storyboard artists got credit for writing it because they deserve it.
STEVE: With previous Looney Tunes movies you never felt like it was one story from start to finish. And with this film, it's a one story from start to finish. And not only is it one story from start to finish, you've got all the characters arcing. I don’t think you see that in any other Looney Tunes film. You get a little bit of backstory or this or that. But this is the first time where you actually have character arc...
PETE: Yeah, that was from the get go. I knew that's what it had to be. I knew walking in when I pitched it to Warner Brothers that no one is going to watch just a long Looney Tunes short. It has to have an emotional arc. And Porky and Daffy, being a buddy situation, they are the only two Looney Tunes characters that aren't always trying to kill each other. They lend each other to give that vehicle to tell an emotional story and give those arcs in the film and storytelling of the film. I knew if we were going to make this right and tell a 90 minute story, have an audience engaged in it, it was a must.
And it was also one of the hardest things to do on the film. Is to go, well what is it? How do you not overdo it? How do you not underdo it? How do you find the balance? It was challenging. And it was a lot of trial and error, a lot of feeling it out. And we all, we were saying, well the writers, we would all be on Zoom calls together and we'd talk for hours upon hours, sitting just like this, talking through and sketching up ideas. Because we made the film during COVID, so we weren't in the room together. But we were in the virtual room. And it was important. And then we tracked it. And we had two great heads of the story, Ryan Kramer and David Dimmel, who sort of supervised the story department. And then myself, just overseeing the whole thing and making sure it does it.
STEVE: How much did Warners leave you alone? What did you have to give them? How much did you have to argue?
PETE: So a couple things helped me with this. First of all, when I first worked for Warner Brothers, I did a large number of short Looney Tunes films for Max. We did 209. And they liked what I did with that. Also, when I walked in to pitch that project to them the bar with Looney Tunes at Warner Brothers was very, very low. It was a couple of TV series that didn't really hit. They didn't know what to do with it. So I think their hands were up in the air a little bit. So, I went in and I said, well, you guys are changing stuff. Don't change it. Just make more, as best you can in this modern age. Which is hard because TV production, animation production is so different. It's so piecemealed and farmed out to places. So that helped me, and that was well-received.
Those were critically well-received. A lot of people haven't seen them because of the streaming wars and all that. We kind of got stuck on Max. But the people that have seen them really liked them. We've won a bunch of awards with those, with festivals and whatnot. So that gave me a lot of cachet, you know, as far as them listening to me when we were making it.
Also, it was streaming boom. We were a low-budget, $15 million budget. So the eyes are on it. That's why we survived, too. We had one of the lowest-budget films. They were axing all the films. And also the quality of our film. I think I put together a great team. I think we were showing results, everything they were seeing they were liking. And it still was an uphill battle. But they did leave me alone.
Let me put it this way, they were smart enough to leave me alone and leave my team alone.
STEVE: I have to ask this because this was right before I spoke with you I had seen something quick on Coyote vs. Acme. Were you ever fearful that ever a possibility that they would just junk the film like Coyote?
PETE: 100%, 100%, absolutely. Every day while we were in production, when that started to begin, not just that movie but Batgirl and David Zaslov taking over, I was waiting for the phone call every single day. And that adds to the stress and emotions that go into when you're making a film and how much hard work it is, to have that in the back of your head was hard.
And Ketchup Entertainment saved this film. Warner Brothers was smart enough to allocate funds to finish the film because we were at a low budget and I think they were able to squeeze it out. But if it wasn't for Ketchup Entertainment, we would be sitting on a shelf somewhere.
And GFM. GFM, they did international distribution, sort of led up to Ketchup being the movie. And the reception at Annecy saved the film.
STEVE: I was sent the film as a screener for Animation is Film. And when I posted the review, people went bananas saying that, because apparently they were afraid that the release is going to be bad because this is played elsewhere in the world and it still hasn't played here. Has it made enough money overseas that it's going to be a to hit? Or are you going to have to rely on what happens here in the US?
PETE: It's very important, in the film business, if you really want your film to get some traction and seen, domestic release is the way. You have to have a domestic release.
It's just very, very important. Internationally, it's great. And we got a lot of good buzz internationally, but Ketchup coming on and securing the distribution rights on that is huge, and putting some money behind it to not only get some attention for award season, but also to put it out for 1,500 screens in February 28th next year, this coming year, a couple weeks, two months away, whatever it is. It's just monumental. And I just hope, I mean, I don't know the financial budget, I mean, not budget, I know, I don't know how much money it's made. I'm not at the studio anymore. They don't tell me that stuff, so I don't really know.
STEVE: There’s all these lovely little references in the film, and you balance it so that you don't have them screaming to be noticed, everything's not glaring of, like, this is a reference to this film and this is a reference to that film. You have different shifts in style… How difficult was that? How did you balance that? Because you hit it, like, perfectly, so that it's not too much, it doesn't over power the story. How did you decide what you were going to do? Like, the stylistic changes and stuff of the art?
PETE: Really, just by instinct, and the instinct of some of the other people on the film working with me. I feel like we have better taste. I mean, I'm just not going to lie. I think people, they think of animation in a certain way. It's got to be loud and screaming, or it's got to be overdone with this, and, oh, you have to have this in it. People always go like this. But I feel no, you can do anything you want. You can tell any type of story. You can tell it any way. You can paint it any way, color it any way. You can paste it any way. You can act it any way. It's the most incredible medium of film storytelling, and it's not utilized in a broad sense enough of a variety, in my opinion. So I think it's that, and they left us alone. They left us alone. And, yeah, I just truly believe it's just my sensibility and taste to go, no, that's cheesy, that's dumb, or I don't like that, or, you know, eh, I've seen that before. I'm a harsh critic. I'm very hard on myself and on what I like. I like good stuff. I try to make good stuff the best I can. So I really think it's that, you know.
And there is a balancing with that, too, it's just like some of it happens, like, well, we don't have enough money to do that extra two shots, so we've got to figure out how to make it into one shot, and it turns out to be better, you know. All I can say is it's instinctual a lot of times when you're in the trenches making it because things are happening so fast and you're moving fast, even for animation, like you have deadlines and shit has to get done, and you just have to trust your gut. And I'm lucky enough that I got to make a lot of television. It's really helped me to be able to be confident in my decision-making.
STEVE: Was it always going to be Porky and Daffy as the lead?
PETE: Yeah, always. Because it's just they're not the characters that sell T-shirts, that's for sure. You know, I mean, it was up to the studio, it would have been the Bugs Bunny Tweety Bird movie. You know, those are the ones that sell the merchandise. But the film wouldn't have worked with anybody.
And to be honest with you, the one thing that they've done wrong so many times is they put all the Looney Tunes living together or hanging out together. They don't work that way. The Looney Tunes don't work where, you know, Bugs is hanging out with Foghorn Leghorn and they're roommates. It doesn't work that way. And they think that they can disrespect what was created and throw them all together just because it's like, well, we want them all, we want to sell all the T-shirts, you know. But it doesn't work that way.
So luckily they let us just do this cast of these characters that I thought would work the best to tell their story.
STEVE: Which actually brings me to my next question because you have the great directors, the films that Chuck Jones did and Frizz Freeling and Bob Clampett and everybody else, they did all these films where they worked on individual characters and stuff. Do you think that if they had done a feature film… if they were allowed to just do the feature film, do you think they would have done something that was very close to this?
PETE: Oh, well, I doubt it.. Let me just put it that way. I don't know about that. They're the greatest animation directors that have ever lived. So it's kind of hard to know what they would do.
But there is a great little story, and I don't know, I'm sort of paraphrasing, I don't know the details of the story, but there is a legendary story where they brought Chuck Jones on to the Warner Brothers to show him the original Space Jam. And after the screening, he said such poor things about the film and that they ruined the character that he helped create that he was escorted off the lot. So I don't think it was that movie that Chuck would make, or Clampett, or Frizz, or Robert McKimson, or Avery, or any of the greats, you know, really.
STEVE: The reason I asked is, it's like if you watch some of the stuff that Chuck Jones did where he was doing stuff like Rikki-Tikki-Tavvi, and he was doing certain other things later on, you have these arcs that were never in the short films. I always had the sense that they wanted to do more.
PETE: I think so too, especially in their prime, I think so. You know, it's a thing where it's a shame that they didn't get a chance to do sort of longer form stuff like this. And it's a Hollywood thing where you get pigeon holed. You're the one guy that does, this is all you do.
It happens with actors, it happens with filmmakers, it happens with screenwriters, everything, right? It’s a shame, but yeah, I mean, what it is is that I do believe that my team and myself have the respect, and we did our homework the best we could, and the love of what those geniuses did before us. And they basically give you the manual of how to do it, but no one's read the manual.
We decided to go back and read the manual, and we were reading the manual our whole career. So that's pretty much what it is. I mean, I've been in meetings at Warner Brothers where we have to tell them what the character is, because they don't even know, but they're telling us what to do.
It's kind of maddening in a lot of ways, but that's the truth, that's the truth. You've got to do your homework, and you've got to love it, and you've got to respect it. And we do. I respect it tremendously. Another question is because you've made a feature film, that's a feature film, and it's genuinely that. And it doesn't have completely the story structure of the shorts.
STEVE: You've made a feature film. So I was curious as to who are your favorite animators or filmmakers? And even live action, because I was talking to the director of Flow, and he was saying the film wasn’t influenced by animators but by regular directors like Sergio Leone and others.
PETE: Oh I'm a huge, huge filmmaking, film fan, film cinephile. I'm in my office now, you can't see it, but still, Blu-rays and books on cinema. I mean, I love Tim Burton. Tim Burton's a huge milestone in my career, early Tim Burton films. Basically made me want to be an animator filmmaker, because that's what he was. And Paul Reubens and Pee Wee, huge, hugely. I went to Cal Arts because of them, both of them. I was like, they both went to Cal Arts, that's the school for me.
And I got into it. But other filmmakers that I love, I love Hal Ashby. I love Preston Sturgess. It goes on and on. I love the Zucker Brothers. I think they're amazing filmmakers that don't get enough credit as filmmakers. Comedians, comedic writers and comedic filmmakers. I mean, I could go on and on. Kubrick, Scorsese, all the greats, of course. But as the deep cut stuff, I love horror directors. I love John Carpenter, Sam Raimi. Coen Brothers, huge Coen Brothers. I love the Coen Brothers.
Old films, John Ford. My father got to meet John Ford and watch a film with John Ford. I learned about John Ford films. My father was an officer in the military, and John Ford was making military films in Europe. And he got invited to the office recorder, and they actually watched a film, a John Ford film, together on 16mm. My dad also met Walt Disney. Walt Disney is one of my favorite filmmakers. Walt Disney could be the greatest American filmmaker that ever lived, in my opinion. In live action or as a storyteller. I mean, who else has done what he's done? I'm waiting for the Ken Burns... The history of animation. Let's get that going, because... It's such a... It's a little bit off-subject, but I think The three greatest things of American culture is jazz, baseball, and cartoons.
STEVE: Oh yeah, he's done two of them.
PETE: But yeah, yeah, hugely influenced by film. I study film. I read books. I love making up stuff. Oh, I love Alexander Payne. I love Election. I think Election is a masterpiece. Just a huge film fan. And I always tell people…. I meet younger people getting into the business and in animation, and they haven't seen a lot of these classic films, and I go, you just pick a director and watch every single movie. I did that. I lived in New York for my 20s, and I would go to a Kims' Video, and I would go to some of those other video stores out there. They had everything in director, and I would just go watch every single movie, every day. You know, that was my life.
STEVE:The one thing I have to say is, if you love Tim Burton, there's a documentary series that's coming out, which is absolutely one of the best things I've ever seen on film. It's one of the best filmmaker things I've ever seen.
PETE: It's about him?
STEVE: It's about him. It played at Tribeca, and everybody's in it. But it tells you about how he made all his films. It also tells how he made everybody else better, and how he influenced everybody else. He's incredible. You're going to love it.
PETE: He's incredible. I can't wait. I have a whole little archive of Tim Burton, behind-the-scenes stuff of anything he's done, because he didn't do a lot of interviews early on and stuff, especially when he was at Disney and stuff like that.
And there's a lot of footage that's becoming unearthed of him making Vincent with Rick Heinrichs. Rick Heinrichs is one of the great production designers of our time, and they worked together on their early films at Disney, Frankenweenie and Vincent, and even the early Nightmare Before Christmas test.
What a journey. And I live in Burbank. I live in Tim Burton land. It's quite a place. You see where it all ends. All these houses are like, oh yeah, this is Edward Scissorhands. Now I get it.
What is it called, though?
STEVE: It was called THE TIM BURTON DOCUSERIES. I watched the episode that they ran multiple times, and I don't do that at film festivals
And I want you to know that you're sitting there talking about Hal Ashby and all these other guys, and I'm having my smile going wider and wider because because you're mentioning filmmakers who are not the typical people, which I absolutely loved.
PETE: Yeah, I owe a lot to my brother. My brother's an editor in a film, and he's older than me. He's a decade older than me, and he was making films, and we just learned about all these great... Filmmakers, a lot of people don't know about.
There's so much great stuff that people don't know that's out there, and it's just such an awesome...
Do you know what I just saw and loved? I just saw Hundreds of Beavers. I loved it.
My kids watched. We watched it together, and I have a nine-year-old and a 12-year-old, and they can get in it with each other, you know? And it was this amazing bonding thing where they were dying laughing, crying laughing. We all were watching this film. And that's a Looney Tunes film. If you want to see how a Looney Tunes live-action film would be, there it is.
We can do one more if you want to do one more.
STEVE: No, no, no, no, no. You've given me more than I could have hoped for and you've made me smile thank you so much. Thank you for the movie.
