Video: Bringing Explosive Life to ‘Coyote vs. Acme’

Hi, I’m Dave Green, and this is Anatomy of a Scene Hi, I’m Dave Green, and this is Anatomy of a Scene for my film “Coyote vs. Acme.” “Mr. Coyote? Co-yot? Co-yot-ay?” Wile E.’s been mistreated for about 80 years. He’s been blown up by Acme TNT and crushed by boulders and starts to realize that there might be a much bigger foe that’s been preventing him from getting what he wants. That inspires Wile E. to mount this case and go pursue a lawyer. Will Forte is playing Kevin Avery, a slip and fall attorney. “How can I help you? Oh, one of my billboards. Ha, ha, ha. Costs a lot of money to put those up. So you’ve been in an accident?” The execution of the scene really begins in prep, in the storyboard process. Cartoon characters move so quickly in the movie, and you can really see Wile E.’s thought process move at a mile a minute. “Do you not talk? Oh, but you have signs. I don’t understand.” We brought that animatic to our puppeteer named Dave Barclay, and he built a life-size Wile E. Coyote puppet. It really made it feel like he was a co-star. “And action.” So when Samy Burch, the screenwriter, and I were first talking about this scene, the film “Tommy Boy” came up. “All right.” “It’s a clip-on.” “Are you sure?” There’s a moment where Chris Farley is frustrated with somebody he’s trying to sell brake parts to. He gets desperate, and he does a big demonstration of what would happen if a car didn’t use brake pads. “Errrr — I can’t stop!” It’s, like, one of the most iconic moments in comedic storytelling. “Oh my God, we’re burning alive!” We were talking about all the tools that Wile E. and Kevin have to communicate with each other, and this scene came to mind. “Is that supposed to be you? And then — who’s that? What?” This animation is an effort to be as close to the rhythms of what the original Chuck Jones shorts would have done from a pose to pose. “Uh, uh, OK, what are you —” [boom] OK, let’s pause here. What you’re seeing in the scene is a real live-action explosion — real interaction with dust and all the papers in the room just flying up to the sky. We really wanted to shoot as many effects practically as we possibly could, so that you could buy the fact that an animated character could come from his world and just walk over a hill into the city and it would be and feel real. “Not entirely necessary to do all that, but OK. So, seems like we’re talking about some faulty rocket skates that backfired when you were trying to capture a bird that you have some sort of sordid history with?”