Zoom and Bored

Infobox Film
name = Zoom and Bored


image_size =
caption =
director = Chuck Jones
producer =
writer = Michael Maltese (story)
narrator =
starring = Paul Julian
music = Milt Franklyn
Carl W. Stalling
cinematography =
editing = Treg Brown
distributor = Warner Bros. Pictures
released = September 14, 1957
runtime = 6 min.
country = flagicon|USA USA
language = English
budget =
gross =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0051228

Zoom and Bored is a 1957 Warner Bros. cartoon in the "Merrie Melodies" series featuring Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner.

Plot

The pair zooms into view and begin to chase, freezing momentarily for the credits and Latin names to be shown: "COYOTE: Famishus Vulgaris" and "ROAD RUNNER: Birdibus Zippibus". From here, the Road Runner speeds off, leaving the coyote to fall on the ground. Wile recovers quickly, kicks up some dust, and begins to chase the Road Runner. The Road Runner, though, leaves so much dust in the road that his pursuer cannot see where he is going. Eventually, except for his ears, the coyote is completely enclosed in the dust. The Road Runner pulls next to the coyote and beeps, alerting Wile to his surroundings.

The coyote's expression becomes foreboding, and the camera cuts out to show both apparently suspended in midair. As the dust clears, the coyote pokes his hands through the bottom of the cloud, and then looks down to see nothing but air below him. The dust completely clears, showing that the Road Runner is perched on the edge of a cliff and the coyote on the wrong side of him. The poor coyote, once again, is subject to gravity.

Determined not to let this happen again, Wile climbs up a very high escarpment and surveys his surroundings for the Road Runner...who happens to have pulled up right behind him and now beeps such that the coyote falls back down. The camera zooms in on an obviously miffed Wile as he falls to the ground again. Dusting himself off, the coyote gets up and walks out onto the road until the Road Runner beeps a second time and sends his rival directly into a low-slung rock plateau.

Since he hasn't studied it enough, Wile follows the instructions of "THE ART OF ROAD-RUNNER TRAPPING":

* Dig hole in road
* Camouflage hole
* Wait patiently
* Eat Road Runner

..and uses them. However, he never gets past the first step, as the jackhammer he uses vibrates enough to pull the coyote into the hole. When the power cord stretches enough to pull the plug out, the coyote climbs out and finds himself vibrating sporadically. To "punish" the book, Wile walks over to it and prepares to tear it in half, but one of the vibrations does the job for him.

Still trying to stop the Road Runner in his tracks, Wile builds a brick wall on the mountain roads and waits. Soon, he hears the Road Runner braking in front of the wall. When his ears recover from the sonic assault and the dust cloud settles, he quizzically looks around the corner of the wall to see his own rear end. Wile makes random movements, which are imitated by his rear. After looking behind and ahead of him, Wile finally determines that this is a duplicate of himself and rolls dynamite under his "doppelganger"'s rear. The firework promptly explodes, and Wile laughs until he realizes it is his own tail on fire. He leaps directly into the air in pain and falls down to the ground.

Wile E., knowing about the "birds and the bees", leaves out bird seed for his opponent while he prepares to release a jar of bumblebees from a distance. But when Wile pulls the lid off, instead of attacking the munching Road Runner next to them, the swarm flies 400 feet in the distance towards the coyote and repeatedly stings him.

Wile now prepares a second bird-seed trap, this time hoping to squash the bird with an anvil. Of course, when Wile walks onto the board to drop the anvil, it breaks under his weight and falls towards the Road Runner, who simply steps to the side out of danger. The board halves fall on top of the resulting large hole to create a convenient bridge for the Road Runner back to his lunch.

Having had enough of the simple traps, Wile builds a long ramp and lights a bomb which should blow up the Road Runner when it gets to the bottom. All that for nothing: The bomb explodes instantly upon lighting.

Now, the coyote prepares a giant catapult in the road; however, the rock is too heavy for the catapult to sling at the passing Road Runner and flattens its owner.

Finally, Wile hopes to shoot the Road Runner with a harpoon gun. The rope, however, is around one of the coyote's feet, and drags the coyote's rear over a cactus and under several rocks, then directly into open space. Wile sees the pickle he is in and recovers in time to grab the very end of the rope. Unfortunately, the rope continues into a very thin pipe, then out onto the road and directly into a chicken race with a truck. Wile smashes directly through the truck, even, and then the spear finally impales a rock face, but this leads to the coyote being swung down into the path of a train and bumped all the way up to the edge of a precipice, ragged and exhausted.

The Road Runner pulls up directly behind him, but instead of beeping, which would possibly drive his opponent insane (as well as causing more gravity-induced humiliation), the Road Runner shows a soft side by holding up a sign saying: "I just don't have the heart." He dashes back the way he came, and the sign changes to "'Bye!"

Censorships

*On ABC, the scene in which Wile E. finds a duplicate of himself at the end of a brick wall and throws a dynamite stick at his impostor only to blast his own backside, was cut. Also cut was Wile E. constructing a ramp with a bomb at its top only to have the bomb explode in the split-second that he lights the fuse [http://looney.goldenagecartoons.com/ltcuts/ltcutsu-z.html] .

ee also

*Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies filmography (1950-1959)