Coyote v. ACME (4/5 Stars)

Chuck Jones’s Rules for Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote Cartoons

Rule 1: The Road Runner Cannot Harm the Coyote Except by Going “Beep-Beep!”

Rule 2: No Outside Force Can Harm the Coyote - Only His Own Ineptitude or the Failure of the ACME Products

Rule 3: The Coyote Could Stop Anytime - If He Were Not a Fanatic. (Repeat: “A Fanatic is One Who Redoubles His Effort When He Has Forgotten His Aim.” - George Santayana)

Rule 4: No Dialogue Ever, Except “Beep-Beep!”

Rule 5: The Road Runner Must Stay on the Road - Otherwise, Logically, He Would Not Be Called Road Runner

Rule 6: All Action Must be Confined to the Natural Environment of the Two Characters - The Southwest American Desert.

Rule 7: All Materials, Tools, Weapons, or Mechanical Conveniences Must be Obtained From the ACME Corporation

Rule 8: Whenever Possible, Make Gravity the Coyote’s Greatest Enemy.

Rule 9: The Coyote is Always More Humiliated than Harmed by His Failures

The foregoing rules (or more like guidelines, there are no consequences for the breaker) were laid down by Chuck Jones for those animators who would take on the challenge of a Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon. They are pretty strict and given the constraints you would think that all forms of this sub-sub-sub genre of Looney Tunes would stay confined to the strictures of a near five-minute length cartoon. And for decades it was.

Then in 1991, Ian Frazier, a writer for the New Yorker dreamed up a different scenario, one involving a personal injury attorney bringing a case on behalf of Coyote as against ACME Corporation for product liability. It was a much beloved short story confined entirely to the opening statement of Coyote’s attorney in the United States District Court, Southwestern District, Tempe, Arizona. Here is the link:

https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Say_What_&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=35463

A few excerpts:

“My Coyote states that on 85 separate occasions he has purchased of the Acme Company (hereinafter, “Defendant”), through that company’s mail-order department, certain products which did cause him bodily injury due to defects in manufacture or improper cautionary labelling…”

“...Again, Defendant sold over the counter, without caveat, a product which attached powerful jet engineers (in this case, two) to inadequate vehicles, with little or not provision for passenger safety. Encumbered by his heavy casts, Mr. Coyote lost control of the Rocket Skates soon after strappring them on, and collided with a roadside billboard so violently as to leave a hole in the shape of his full silhouette…”

“..As the Court is in no doubt aware, Defenadnt has a virtual monopoly of manufacture and sale of goods required by Mr. Coyote’s work. It is our contention that Defendant has used its market advantage to the detriment of the consumer of such specialized products as itching powder, giant kites, Burmese tiger traps, anvils, and two-hundred-foot-long rubber bands. Much as he has come to mistrust Defendant’s products, Mr. Coyote has no other domestic source of supply to which to turn. One can only wonder what our trading partners in Western Europe and Japan would make of such a situation, where a giant company is allowed to victimize the consumer in the most reckless and wrongful manner over and over again…”

Therein lies the dual inspirations for this movie Coyote v. Acme. But how to go about actually making this movie. You have the cartoons with their very strict rules, characters that do not speak, and nearly identical plots. Then you have this New Yorker short story that takes place in that most verbal of locations, a courtroom, and importantly, does not feature the Road Runner.

Not surprisingly, it took over thirty years to figure out how to make this movie. [And then, we will get into this further below, an evil corporation attempted to kill it for tax purposes.] But it was worth the wait because Coyote v. Acme is an exceedingly clever movie that somehow betrays neither of its wildly opposite inspirations. The screenplay was written by Samy Burch, with help on the story by James Gunn and Jeremy Slater.

Like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The movie starts with an animated short, a very good Coyote v. Road Runner cartoon, before revealing that the animated characters inhabit a world where toons and humans live side-by-side. The key to this story is the central relationship between Coyote and his counsel, Kevin Avery of Avery, Jones, and Maltese, a billboard attorney that specializes in cartoon accidents. Kevin Avery (played by Will Forte) is a loser like Coyote but in a completely different way. Whereas Coyote is a fanatic consumed with an impossible goal for which he never stops chasing, Kevin is afraid of failure and lacks the motivation to try for a victory. He chases easy settlements and avoids trials. These two foils were made for each other. (Where the Road Runner fits in, I won’t give away).

The serendipity of choices that feel just right fills this movie from wall-to-wall. Of course, Kevin Avery has a past colleague that is lead counsel for ACME who is better looking and smarmy and played by John Cena, that most cartoonish of actors. Of course, Foghorn Leghorn is the villain CEO of ACME Corporation, that Tchiakovsky’s “1812 Overture” provides the soundtrack for the climax, that Bugs Bunny shows up as a type of whistleblower to a secret corporate plot called “Project Sisyphus”, and that Coyote has an ulterior motives to suing the ACME Corporation (which I won’t divulge) that is truly stupid but wholly within the nature of his character.

The Coyote v. Road Runner cartoons were okay to laugh at because Coyote seemed to always get what he deserved. He didn’t have to chase after the Road Runner. But at the same time, there is something wrong when the ACME’s big corporate lawyer rants that “We all know who is responsible. All of his injuries are self-inflicted.” That isn’t true. We’ve seen the cartoons. The ACME products malfunction all the time. And it isn't okay for it to just happen to a cartoon who will be okay after two seconds. There is this real underlying sense of injustice here. You may not want Coyote to catch the Road Runner, but you do want him to succeed against ACME.

Some movies have production horror stories that magnify the themes of the movie. Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo are very good examples of that. Other movies have production horror stories that are maybe interesting but are kind of irrelevant to what the movie is about like Jaws. Coyote v. Acme lives in the first camp. After Coyote v. Acme was written, shot, and animated, essentially when it was already complete, the new CEO of Warner Brothers decided to kill it for tax purposes. (I think this was the same jerk that changed the name of “HBO MAX” to “MAX”). That never happens. Movies in development are canned all the time for all sorts of reasons. But Coyote v. Acme was complete and then killed. That never happens. And certainly not to a clearly good movie. For a few years it seemed like no-one would get to see it, like not even on streaming, because to distribute it in any form would screw with the tax-write off. Given that hundreds of people had worked on it, this too was another corporate injustice.

Many different things happened, the most important of which was the relative theatrical success of a Daffy Duck/Porky Pig movie called The Day the Earth Blew Up, but Coyote v. Acme was finally released in August 2026, four years after it was made. I am happy to relate that it has made its money back and is profitable. And it's a good movie too. Also, I think that hated CEO has been fired. At least HBO has its name back.

One last note for the late voice-actor savant Eric Bauza, who played Bugs Bunny, Charlie Dog, Daffy Duck, Dr. Lorre, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, Gossamer, Porky Pig, Road Runner, and Tweety. I think he played everyone but the Tasmanian Devil and Coyote (neither of which speak). He will be sorely missed.