Zoom and Bored

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Zoom and Bored
Directed by Chuck Jones
Written by Michael Maltese (story)
Starring Mel Blanc, Paul Julian
Music by Milt Franklyn
Carl W. Stalling
Editing by Treg Brown
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s) September 14, 1957
Running time 6 min.
Country Flag of the United States USA
Language English
IMDb profile

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

[edit] Plot

The pair zooms into view and begin to chase, freezing momentarily for credits to be displayed, and for the 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 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, scaring the coyote into reality.

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. As the dust clears, showing that the Road Runner is perched on the edge of a cliff and the Coyote on the wrong side of him, the Coyote is subject to gravity.

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, and is beeped again into jumping up - directly into a low-slung rock plateau.

Wile follows the instructions of THE ART OF ROAD-RUNNER TRAPPING.

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

However, he never gets past the first step, as the jackhammer he uses vibrates enough to pull the Coyote into the hole. When the plug finally pulls under the strain, the Coyote climbs out and finds himself vibrating sporadically. Wile walks over to the book and prepares to tear it in half, but one of the vibrations does the job for him.

The Coyote sets up a brick wall to block off the mountain path that the Road Runner is now traversing. Wile waits, and unknown to him, the Road Runner stops short of the wall and kicks up a bunch of dust. He uncovers his ears (for the Road Runner made a big racket) and quizzically looks around the corner of the wall to see his own rear end. Wile scratches his head, and tests it. Seeing that it imitates him, he looks behind and ahead of him. Wile finally determines (somehow) it must be the Road Runner.

He collects a lighted stick of dynamite and rolls it under his rear. It promptly explodes, and Wile, happy with himself, laughs at the disappearing object...until he realizes it is his own tail and leaps into the air and off the cliff in pain.

Wile baits some bird seed with a perched jar of One Fifth ACME BUMBLE BEES. 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. The board halves fall on top of the large hole, and the Road Runner steps onto the boards and continues to eat.

The Coyote now prepares to light a bomb that will run down a long ramp and (hopefully) blow up the Road Runner. 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 to be slung 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. The smug expression is wiped off when Wile sees nothing below him. However, he 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.

The rope continues even through that, and the spear finally hits a rock face. However, the Coyote swings down and into the path of a train. The Coyote, ragged and exhausted, is deposited neatly on a precipice.

The Road Runner is directly behind him. Instead of beeping, which would lead to an almost certain nervous breakdown (as well as another plop on the desert floor), the Road Runner holds up a sign, which says "I just don't have the heart."

He dashes back the way he came, and the sign changes to "'Bye!"

[edit] 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 edited out of this cartoon short. Also removed 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 its fuse.

[edit] See also