Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with the first of 'the Hunting Trilogy' Daffy Duck/ Bugs Bunny/ Elmer Fudd Looney Tunes cartoon, the 1951 Rabbit Fire, directed by Chuck Jones. This is the first pairing of Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny.
In two interviews conducted years after this cartoon was first released, director Chuck Jones fondly recalled voice artist Mel Blanc improvising hilariously as Daffy when he was trying to think of another word besides "despicable". However, in the finished film, only the words from the original dialogue script actually appear. Historians believe that Blanc did indeed improvise, as Jones remembered, but then Jones had decided instead to use what was originally written.
Before the start of our feature presentation - It was Ingmar Bergman's birthday earlier this week, the staff of ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour wanted to honor him with a couple of shorts:
You probably never thought Bergman could be that funny.
We've picked another entry from the excellent reference book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider. Today's film is the 1963 experimental short film, Scorpio Rising , directed by Kenneth Anger, and starring Bruce Byron. Scorpio Rising received praise from film critics and is recognized as a predecessor to the development of the modern music video. The film has influenced such diverse directors such as Martin Scorsese, and John Waters. Photographer and fellow scorpio, Robert Mapplethorpe, used Scorpio Rising as a reference point while shooting some of his most famous and controversial work in the underground BDSM scene.
Anger’s sexual objectification of biker subculture in the film was met with heavy backlash, especially from the motorcycle gang who appeared in the film. Byron, who was never paid by Anger, was known to show up at screenings of Scorpio Rising demanding that the film be pulled from the theater. Other members of the gang would spend years trying to distance themselves from the film’s political and religious overtones, vehemently denying any involvement with nazism or occultism. So please join us here at The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour and sit back, get comfortable and enjoy watching this influential short, Scorpio Rising.
Bruce Byron worked as a motorcycle messenger in Manhattan. His zodiac sign was Scorpio, and so he called himself that, as well as carrying at all times the scorpion amulet which he is seen kissing and holding in the film. The honorable discharge certificate from the United States Marine Corps, on the wall above his bed, was his own, as were all the pictures of James Dean and Marlon Brando, of whom he was a big fan.
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