You're Out of the Picture

We’ve had a post here about Northwest Hounded Police with the Tex Avery unit’s huge takes. We’ve had another post with Johnny Johnsen’s backgrounds in the same cartoon.

The one post we haven’t done is from, arguably, the most famous scene in the cartoon.

Avery and story man Heck Allen employ perfect physics. If someone is going too fast and trying to make a turn, the laws of dynamics mean it’ll take extra distance to slow down to be able to do it. Avery applies this principal to the wolf running to escape Droopy. In this case, the “extra distance” means he slides off the film of the cartoon he’s in.



The wolf uprights himself and is able to run back onto the film.



Notice how Avery has the film sprockets only on every other frame.

Avery used outrageous shock takes in later cartoons (the eye in Droopy’s Drouble Trouble comes to mind) but this short probably had the ultimate in that kind of reaction in his work at MGM. There weren’t too many places to go from here.