1962's Adventures Of The Road Runner featurette was a zenith in the most popular series directed by Chuck Jones, and it yielded two semi-compilation shorts released independently in 1965. Of the two, Roadrunner A Go Go is the better, for it focuses on the actual pursuit of the famed speedster by his Coyote counterpart as, for the first time in the Road Runner series, Wile E. speaks - he'd spoken in Bugs Bunny cartoons other than 1963's Road Runner fill-in Hare Breadth Hurry, but never in the Road Runner cartoons.
This short uses the musical intro from Adventures (featuring some very effective animation of flowers blooming the the morning sunlight) complete with roto-scoped remake of the three-way road split gag from 1958's Hip! Hip! Hurry! before cutting to the cliffside rope trick and its unfortunate outcome. We then cut to Wile E. notating observations on flaws in his previous schemes, as he explains to the audience the painstaking research he undertakes to correct errors in a hazardous life such as his - here Maurice Noble and company add enormously to the short's atmosphere in the use of elaborate backgrounds of the vast libraries of film, still slides, etc. used by Wile E. (today of course he'd also have digital film, DVDs, and so forth littered about with his spools of film and reams of slides, which would make for some even more interesting backgrounds).
This short features stock scenes from 1961's Zip 'n Snort before cutting to its signature gag, the catapult that was reused in 1963's To Beep Or Not To Beep with new Bill Lava music; comparing both scenes with their differing scores today shows how much better Milt Franklyn and the mammoth Warner studio orchestra truly were in scoring compared to the more bare-boned efforts of Lava; it also displays the vast superiority of the classic Franklyn-scored 1950s opening title compared to the cheesier Lava-scored "Merry Go Round Broke Down" theme substituted.
While this was by no means the last Road Runner short, nor the last to be directed by Chuck Jones, it represents for both an apex of quality.
This short uses the musical intro from Adventures (featuring some very effective animation of flowers blooming the the morning sunlight) complete with roto-scoped remake of the three-way road split gag from 1958's Hip! Hip! Hurry! before cutting to the cliffside rope trick and its unfortunate outcome. We then cut to Wile E. notating observations on flaws in his previous schemes, as he explains to the audience the painstaking research he undertakes to correct errors in a hazardous life such as his - here Maurice Noble and company add enormously to the short's atmosphere in the use of elaborate backgrounds of the vast libraries of film, still slides, etc. used by Wile E. (today of course he'd also have digital film, DVDs, and so forth littered about with his spools of film and reams of slides, which would make for some even more interesting backgrounds).
This short features stock scenes from 1961's Zip 'n Snort before cutting to its signature gag, the catapult that was reused in 1963's To Beep Or Not To Beep with new Bill Lava music; comparing both scenes with their differing scores today shows how much better Milt Franklyn and the mammoth Warner studio orchestra truly were in scoring compared to the more bare-boned efforts of Lava; it also displays the vast superiority of the classic Franklyn-scored 1950s opening title compared to the cheesier Lava-scored "Merry Go Round Broke Down" theme substituted.
While this was by no means the last Road Runner short, nor the last to be directed by Chuck Jones, it represents for both an apex of quality.