Then there was a period of time where I discovered Joe Adamson's book Tex Avery: King of Cartoons. I had never seen an Avery cartoon but the pictures in the book were really funny and I thought, "This guy really is the king of cartoons." I finally saw King Size Canary (1947) and Ventriloquist Cat (1950) and thought they were the funniest things ever. Then I saw The Great Piggy Bank Robbery and my jaw dropped.

Not only was Robbery funny, it had real emotion in it. Right at the beginning you see Daffy Duck pacing up and down waiting for his comic book like it's the most important moment in his life. Another one of my favorite scenes is the one where Daffy suddenly realizes that all the piggy banks have been stolen. Over the next few weeks I saw more of Clampett's cartoons and realized that it wasn't a fluke. This director was the real thing.

All the other directors were just imitating this guy, and every other cartoon from this period is just a watered-down version of Clampett. He was the tornado that pulled everyone along in his wake and his energy kept the studio going for four or five years after he left Warners in 1946. After that everything slowed down again.

Joe Adamson's book Tex Avery: King of Cartoons made Kricfalusi a fan of the golden age animator.

The other directors knew they could never match Clampett's timing or pace and were tired of competing with his cartoons. After Clampett left and they had to find another director for his unit, Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng went to the boss and said, " Take Bob McKimson. " And the boss — this must have been Leon Schlesinger — said, "McKimson doesn't have the personality of a director. He's too mild-mannered." But that's why they wanted him. They didn't want a guy in that position who'd be any competition to them. Friz admits that. Chuck would never in a million years admit that.

When I talked to Friz and asked him once, "How come in the early cartoons Daffy Duck was so Daffy and in the later cartoons he was a mean, greedy duck?" Friz told me, "Well, John, y'know, that early duck — he was crazy! How long could a thing like that last?" I said, "How about 50 years?" Friz said, "Yeah, after Clampett and Avery left Chuck and I got together and we said, `Let's bring these things back down to Earth where they belong!' So that's what we did

We'll show Baby Bottleneck (1946). I want to show Russian Rhapsody (1944) but for some reason we're getting a note back that it's racist so we can't show it — but I can't remember anything racist in it. Unless you're not allowed to say bad things about Nazis! That's the best animation of Hitler ever, that's why I picked that one. Hitler's a great cartoon character, right up there with Bugs and Daffy. Then we'll have Tex Avery's King Size Canary, that's one of my favorite cartoons. I wanted to show Uncle Tom's Cabana (1947) but…well, you know….

Then we're going to show Deputy Droopy (1955). That's a really funny Avery cartoon but it's doubly good because of Ed Benedict's design and layout. Ed also did the poses. It's a transitional cartoon between the full animation age and the early TV age and it's the greatest combination of stylized design and animation, I think. Ed wouldn't agree with me, though — he used to say that UPA had the greatest studio. I couldn't figure that out, because I find UPA's cartoons completely boring.

Ed took graphic design, worked with Tex and Tex's great animators and made it beautiful. The animation in UPA cartoons is lousy. They're basically in-betweening pose to pose. There's no timing to it. But the animation in Avery's cartoons is great. Ed didn't like it! He said, "Aaah, damn animators! Ruined the stuff!" I thought they made it look beautiful. I can't figure that out at all!

All right, I want to show at least one Terrytoon and we're trying to get A Cat's Tale (1951), which is a Mighty Mouse cartoon, and it has some of the best animation by Jim Tyer. He fits in with the theme of the night, "When Cartoons were Cartoony." Tyer is probably the cartoonist animator ever, even more than Rod Scribner. There's just crazy animation of the cat and I can't even describe the cartoon because if you just talk about it, it sounds like there's something normal happening. But when you watch it there's nothing normal about it, because Tyer is doing the craziest animation in the world!

Then I'm going to show a Walter Lantz cartoon — hopefully we can get this one — Solid Ivory (1947). It's directed by Dick Lundy and has a lot of Grim Natwick animation in it. It's the cartoon where Woody Woodpecker is playing pool and he knocks the cue ball off the table and into the henhouse. The hen thinks it's one of her eggs and there are a lot of wacky cartoon gags as Woody tries to get the ball back. It's animated and timed so beautifully, and the chicken is so funny that it's fun to watch, especially when she falls in love with Woody.

There are a million cartons I'm leaving out because, well, there are only two hours. One of these days I'd like to organize a festival. We could go studio by studio, director by director, animator by animator. I'd like to do one that doesn't reflect all the history books that have been written. They always list the same 50 or so cartoons!

Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.