Clampett's cartoons heighten your senses — they wake you up and keep you on the edge of your seat because everything is going on at once and the characters are so alive. In other director's cartoons — even good ones — you feel the directors pushing the characters around. You really felt that in Chuck Jones' films, especially the ones about Elmer, Bugs and Daffy. Take that Rabbit Fire trilogy. In those cartoons Bugs Bunny always wins. But he doesn't do a thing to deserve winning. He stands there and holds up signs.

These "pronoun trouble" jokes were done in other cartoons long before Rabbit Fire. They don't work. And Daffy Duck is not a stupid character. That stuff might work with Elmer but not with Daffy. So really, it's cheating. There's no reason that Daffy should lose except that the writer and director dictate it. Bugs Bunny is the one who should get his face blown off, and the only reason everybody buys that Bugs Bunny wins is because they remember the earlier cartoons where Bugs had a personality and we saw him regularly defeat other characters.

Chuck Jones' take on Bugs and Daffy differed from Clampett.

Bugs isn't the same in a Clampett cartoon. In the early films he's a real character and you can feel his personality coming out of him, not being dictated by the director. He's really fun, has sort of a teenage wiseass personality and picks on other characters. The point I'm making is, the characters in Clampett's cartoons are more alive than in Jones; they seem like real creatures, filled with the spark and the joy of life. So — here's my choice of Clampett cartoons to run. Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (1943) — but they're not going to let me. I have no idea why. I don't know why you can watch Gone With The Wind on TV every year — the same company owns them - you can show that film but you can't show Coal Black, which many people believe is the greatest cartoon ever made.

DT: The speed of that cartoon is dazzling. It's unbelievable all the business Clampett stuffed into that cartoon in the amount of time he had.

JK: Well, Clampett was the most controlled director of all time. He could get five times the information into a cartoon than anyone else could. Then we're going to run Gruesome Twosome (1945), the best Tweety Bird cartoon. A lot of people don't know that Tweety was once cool. In the Clampett cartoons he was totally cool. First of all, he's an actual baby bird — and he's sadistic. Lightheartedly sadistic, but he really enjoys inflicting pain.

Gruesome Twosome is one of the most violent cartoons ever made; not because of the violent gags that happen, but the execution of them — they look like they really hurt, and the energy is amazing. Here's where Clampett really sucks you in: he starts a cartoon with this happy-go-lucky music and you think it's going to be a childlike adventure- then all this sick stuff starts happening! Only Clampett could get away with this combination of "cute" and "sick" because the way he did it was so damn appealing.

The Great Piggy Bank Robbery and Popeye Meets Sinbad are just two of the classic toons that have influenced Kricfalusi.

Tortoise Wins By a Hare is next, one of my favorite Clampett cartoons. I picked it because it's a perfect example of how Clampett understood the characters better than anyone else. Most people think that characters should have only one trait. Bugs Bunny is a winner, period. Clampett's characters have more levels than that. Sure, Bugs is known as a winner. Now, somebody who is used to winning in real life is not going to be a good loser. So in Clampett's cartoons when Bugs loses he goes completely insane and he can't stand it.

At the beginning of Tortoise Bugs is watching the previous Tex Avery cartoon (Tortoise Beats Hare) where he loses the race against the tortoise. He flings his carrot and goes into the greatest tirade in animation. Just watch Rod Scribner's animation of Bugs losing his cool and yelling, "He can't do that! I'm a natural-born speed merchant!"

Then we'll run one of the all-time best, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946). This is the cartoon where I discovered Bob Clampett. I was 23 years old, going to Sheridan College in Toronto. On weekends I would go into town where Reg Hartt used to run old cartoons at his theater. I might have seen Clampett cartoons on TV as a kid earlier but syndication cartoons were a mishmash of scratched-up 16mm prints. When I saw The Great Piggy Bank Robbery I was just floored. Up until then Chuck Jones had been my hero.