O.C.’s New Diva: Tweety Bird

Opera Pacific may be having money troubles, but, to borrow a phrase, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings “Th-th-th-th-that’s all, folks!”

Hoping “to put out a signal that things were going to be different at Opera Pacific” next season, the Irvine-based company persuaded veteran Warner Bros. animation director Chuck Jones to draw original illustrations of Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Tweety Bird and others for its 1997-98 season brochure.

“I thought it was a nifty thing to do,” Jones, a resident of Corona del Mar, said recently. “It was a new experience for me and a lovely thing, too. It was such an unusual thing, and in Orange County, of all places. I would have thought they’d be up in arms.”

Opera Pacific general director Patrick Veitch said that beyond the goal of promoting opera in a more whimsical way, the collaboration with Jones, who created Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote in addition to directing some of the best-known Bugs Bunny cartoons, was simply a way “to have some fun.”

In addition, Veitch said, “I am trying to find ways over time to create a unique identity artistically and otherwise for this company.”

Getting some high-caliber help in creating that identity turned out to be relatively easy.

“Chuck’s always been one of my heroes,” Veitch said. “I had found out that he lived in Corona del Mar, and I just picked up the phone and called him. He said he’d be happy to come meet me. He and his lovely wife, Marian, insisted on coming to my office.

“I told him how broke we were, all the challenges facing the company, the artistic and marketing and financial, etc.,” he said, referring to $1 million the company needs to raise by fall to eliminate its accumulated debt. “And he said, before I could say anything else, ‘I think you’re getting around to asking for my help.’

“From that moment, he and I have become friends,” Veitch said.

Since the first brochures went out earlier this month, “the public response has been 100% positive,” Veitch said. “People find it charming, playful. It’s going out in waves. The first mailing went out to recalcitrant subscribers who didn’t renew after our first notice. We’ve just begun mailing it out to potential new subscribers.”

Veitch didn’t aim the brochure specifically to baby boomers or any particular group. “Chuck’s images would probably be pertinent to almost anyone who is alive,” he said.

“The overall marketing strategy is a wake-up one. Any organization that’s been around for a few years, the public starts to take it for granted. So this goes out, grabs them by the throat and says, ‘Wake up. Pay attention to us again.’ Half the brochure does that. The other half says, ‘Now that you’re awakened, would you kindly notice what we’re doing?’ ”

Jones, 84, a long-term opera fan, won an honorary Oscar last year in recognition of his role in creating or helping to create a host of cartoon characters for Warner Bros., where he worked from 1938 to 1963.

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One of the enduring cartoons he directed was the “What’s Opera Doc?” in 1957--one of only five animated shorts chosen by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.

“ ‘What’s Opera Doc’ is a classic example of fooling around and making Wagner squirm in his grave,” Jones said. “We took 14 hours of ‘The Ring of the Nibelung’ and crushed it down to six minutes.

“But we didn’t fool around with the music. It’s a patchwork of Wagner. But it was honest. The music was all played the way it should be played. We figured putting Bugs Bunny as Brunnhilde in front of it would take care of the matter. We didn’t try to be funny with the music.” (Wagner’s text was less sacrosanct, what with Elmer Fudd bellowing “Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!” over the “Ride of the Valkyries” theme.)

Creating images for the Opera Pacific brochure came “very naturally,” Jones said. “After directing 250 cartoons in my time, the mind gets kind of nimble.”

Jones believes his cartoons have remained popular because “all these characters are individuals.

“Each one of the characters over the years developed an individual personality. Bugs is not what he looks like, it’s what he acts like, like any actor.

“Lots of people don’t realize that these are personalities we’re talking about, not drawings. An individual drawing has no meaning. It’s only on the screen for a fraction of a second. It’s the flurry of drawings that makes animation.”

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Such a flurry must seem a laborious process to “someone who doesn’t know animation,” Jones said. “Somebody once said it was like etching “The Lord’s Prayer” on the head of a pin in an assembly line. But we didn’t think about it that way. Every frame was different.”

Jones was born in Spokane, Wash., and moved with his family to Hollywood when he was a toddler.

“We lived in a building on Sunset Boulevard, across from Hollywood High School,” he said. “When I was 6 years old, during World War I, I would go outside and sit on the curb and watch the 106th Infantry march down the street with Mary Pickford at the head. She was an honorary colonel.”

He went to Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, where “everybody learned to draw. So [later] if you could draw, we could make an animator out of you.”

Jones moved to Orange County in 1965.

Veitch said that other plans involving Jones are in the works.

“It clearly is the beginning of a relationship,” he said. “We’re working on a big project together, which I can’t tell you about yet, but it’s not another subscription brochure. It’s much, much bigger than that. Will be able to tell you in another month or two. See where we’re going.

“His payment for this was zilch,” Veitch said. “I could never afford him. I don’t know what you’d have to pay Chuck Jones. A million bucks?”