Some cartoons stay with you because they were funny. Others stay because of where you were sitting when you watched them.
I grew up on a farm. Sheep, cows, chickens, and every day there was something that needed doing. Then school on top of that. We did not watch a lot of television. But at 5pm on weekdays the chores eased off, and The Bugs Bunny Show came on. Half an hour of classic Warner Bros. cartoons, and that was my ritual. We were not a Saturday morning cartoons house. We were a five o’clock house.
Years later, when I finally went to study animation, that half hour is what I was thinking of.
A Poster Called Speechless
When Mel Blanc passed away, a commemorative poster was made called Speechless. I found a framed copy of that print one day, and I drove 200 kilometres to pick it up. It has been one of my most treasured things ever since.
My framed copy of Speechless.
I did not drive that far for a poster. I drove that far for the many half hours at five o’clock.
The Characters Keep Coming Back
Those characters are having a moment again. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie found its audience, and Coyote vs. Acme finally made it out after a long, rocky road to release. It is a good time to be a kid who grew up on them.
Then Eric
Eric Bauza passed away at 46. He was one of the voices keeping those characters alive: Bugs, Daffy, Porky and more, across more than 400 credits. He was the Road Runner in Coyote vs. Acme too.
In the days after, social media lit up with stories. People who worked with him, people who only met him once, people who never met him at all. The details were different, but the feeling was the same. He made people feel warm. He brought smiles to everything he touched, and the love people sent back was proof of it.
Four hundred credits is a career. Those stories were a life.
What It Hands Back
When Mel Blanc passed, I realised for the first time that the time we have is not infinite. Eric brought that back, and age gives it a different weight now. I have kids of my own, and what I want for them is not a formula or a list of rules. It is character, built with love. Values that help them grow resilient, and room to find their own way to the kind of joy I found at five o’clock in front of Bugs Bunny.
More than anything, I want them to grow up knowing they are loved, and comfortable enough to be themselves. I am 50, and I am still learning how to do that one myself.
A lot of what I learned about feeling, I learned from cartoons. The comedy, the joy, the goofiness and playfulness of characters coming alive on the screen. Those were emotions I hung on those cartoons, and it was Mel Blanc playing so many of those characters.
That is what Eric’s stories keep pointing at. It was never about how far his voice reached. It was about how it felt to be reached. He was humble and genuine, and that came through in the way he approached his work and the joy he shared with fans.
Mel Blanc gave those characters their voices, and through them I got the comedy, the joy and the goofiness I was looking for. A kid on a farm sat down at five o’clock and was handed half an hour of that, and it was enough to make him chase the idea that he could animate, and move other people the same way. Eric carried those voices on for the next generation.
Then diolotdraw made a new Speechless for Eric, and it is worth a look. I still have the original, framed. Two posters, two voices, one word. Speechless, and speechless again.
Your Turn
Who gave you your five o’clock, the half hour that was yours when everything else was chores? And who might be getting that from you right now? It does not have to be big, and it does not have to be famous.
Thank you, Mel. Thank you, Eric. Another generation got to feel why my five o’clock was always the best half hour of the day.