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In retrospect, it should have been obvious that Eric Bauza would begin this interview with a “What’s up, Doc?” That doesn’t make it any less shocking and delightful to hear Bugs Bunny’s voice emerge from a human being’s mouth. That’s Bauza’s job, though. A professional voice actor, Bauza currently stars as most of the Looney Tunes. He started voicing Marvin the Martian in 2011 for The Looney Tunes Show and gradually worked his way up to voicing Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Elmer, Tweety, Sylvester, Foghorn Leghorn, and more in several shows and the films Space Jam: A New Legacy and The Day the Earth Blew Up.
“I was about to say ‘Technically, it’s like any other job,’ but it’s not like any other job,” Bauza admits. Audiences will hear Bauza voicing several characters in this week’s Coyote vs. Acme, but that wasn’t always going to be the case. Warner Bros. infamously shelved the completed movie as a tax write-off in 2023. Fan outcry ensued. Daffy Duck (via Bauza — or should that be the other way around?) was out there at awards shows demanding the studio release the film. Finally, David Zaslav’s number crunchers agreed to sell the rights to Ketchup Entertainment. Much the same way Wile E. Coyote pops back up after falling into a deep canyon, Coyote vs. Acme was back in action. What the whole saga meant for the Looney Tunes, animation, and potentially for the entire movie industry, remains to be seen.
“I had always said this: If Coyote vs. Acme were to come out or not to come out, it would certainly be a chapter in someone’s filmmaking book: ‘The Coyote vs. Acme incident,’” Bauza says, though he’s obviously quite happy about the eventual outcome. “Now, it’s out there as one of the resurrected films.”
Can you explain to folks who maybe aren’t super-knowledgeable about voice acting why it makes sense that one person would do all these voices, rather than having a Bugs guy, a Daffy guy, and a Porky guy?I can’t talk about Looney Tunes without mentioning the great Mel Blanc. He was the blueprint of the Looney Tunes, and it’s amazing that one person could be responsible for so many different personalities. Aside from how different they sounded, it was like having nine people in one in one acting machine.
Today, it’s whoever’s in charge of directing and casting. The actors, of course, never get to decide. Oh, I feel like playing this character today. I wish it were that easy, but we still all have to jump through the hoops of fire. I think in some storytellers’ experience, it probably is easier to just have one person — the nerdiest one who knows more than he or she should about these characters — voice most of them. I know those old shorts. You don’t want to change what Mel did. I would never. No one should ever. The Looney Tunes always stay the same. It’s the world around them that changes.
Are you trying to impersonate Mel Blanc, or not quite?I can dial into these characters by just saying a word or two. Speaking of which [starts doing Daffy Duck’s voice], “Finally let the duck out of the bottle! If I’m talking like this and you’re already smiling from here to here, then I know I’m doing it.” [Goes back to normal.] You have to read words that no one’s ever read before. It’s the tonality, it’s the timing. It’s the [slips into Daffy again] “Oh, brother.”
It’s less that you’re trying to do Mel and more that you’re trying to do Bugs Bunny.Yeah, because he’s such an established personality.
As a voice actor, is it at all frustrating that Wile E. Coyote, the main cartoon character in Coyote vs. Acme, is famously silent?Not at all. That’s not my problem. That’s Mr. Will Forte’s problem. You’re watching someone put a whole movie on his entire back — all the acting, emotion, and pathos. I had people walking out of that Comic-Con screening telling me that they cried. That probably doesn’t happen in a Space Jam movie.
Did you do Roadrunner’s “beep-beeps,” or is that somebody else?That’s the original beep-beep. Paul Julian was an artist from the original Chuck Jones crew who would carry artwork around the Warner Bros. studio to get it approved and would go “beep-beep” when people were in his way. Chuck Jones was like, “That’s the Roadrunner.” I may have snuck in a few beeps here and there, but I don’t want to spoil the film.
Do you feel like you can hear a difference between an all-cartoon Looney Tunes versus one where they are interacting in the real world?Absolutely. It all fits the purpose. Even in the old cartoons, they’ve broken the fourth wall. Yeah, they’re in the forest, but is that even a tree, or is that a cutout of a tree? You imagine they’re on a set somewhere in the Warner Bros. lot. There’s a great old black-and-white live-action/animated mix short of Porky and Daffy called You Ought to Be in Pictures where Daffy tricks Porky into quitting his job at Warner Bros. Leon Schlesinger, the head honcho of Warner cartoons, is smoking a cigar and rips up Porky’s contract. They can always effortlessly exist in any medium. They always seem to be able to sell a movie ticket to a courtroom drama or a pair of Air Jordans.
I was very happy that this movie functioned like a real legal drama in the same way Who Framed Roger Rabbit? functioned like a real noir. Was that genre something that factored into your performances, compared to doing Space Jam or The Day the Earth Blew Up?It all lends itself to the gravity of the situation. When we first meet Bugs in Coyote vs. Acme, we see him in the shadows, playing it up because it’s obvious it’s him. He says [does the Bugs voice], “What is up, Doc?” It’s a bit more serious, and then he gets a little crazy. There are so many characters who are in the movie but are kind of out of character, so to speak (though it is fitting to see Daffy in a minimum-security loony bin). I always rely on someone like Dave Green, who directed this film, to lead me into where he needs the characters to be.
Can you describe the process of making the movie? Were you ever on set with John Cena so he could exchange lines with Foghorn?I never got to meet John Cena until one of our press days. Same with Will Forte. I only got to meet him at a screening. I was never on set for this one. Space Jam, I was in the booth for about four sessions before COVID. If you watch that movie, about 60 percent of it was recorded in my bedroom closet. If you hear lawnmowers or dogs barking in the background, I’ll give you your money back. But then I bought this home recording studio I call the Sherman Oaks Bomb Shelter. I also have canned goods here.
What’s it like to be promoting a movie that you made a long time ago and that for a while seemed like it might never come out?It’s still not real to me until I finally see my name scroll up that screen. It’s very surreal, but I’m thankful that this is seeing the light of day. Who would have thought that this is just how the world works now? These giant companies — I wouldn’t even say studios because of these mergers. Warner Bros. is Warner Bros. Discovery, and we’re still in the midst of the Paramount merger. It’s like seeing Galactus eat planets. While all that’s going on, we’re trying to put this film out. But you know what? My kid needs braces.
It does give the villainizing of Acme in this movie an extra resonance that I don’t know it would have had if the film had come out when it was originally supposed to.I don’t want to say thanks for the free marketing, but I’m gonna say thanks for the free marketing.
