Over 30 years ago, The New Yorker humorist Ian Frazier wrote a short piece entitled "Coyote vs. Acme", which later appeared in a Frazier collection by the same name. The crux of the wonderfully executed joke was Frazier creating a “legal document” where Wile E. Coyote of Roadrunner fame, files a lawsuit against the Acme Company for negligence in the manufacture of their products, which continually malfunction. In short, there is a description of the cartoons written in legalese. Here's a sample:
"The sequence of collisions resulted in systematic physical damage to Mr. Coyote, viz., flattening of the cranium, sideways displacement of the tongue, reduction of the length of legs and upper body, and compression of the vertebrae from base of tail to head. Repetition of blows along a vertical axis produced a serious of regular horizontal folds in Coyote’s body tissues—a rare and painful condition which caused Mr. Coyote to expand upward and contract downward alternately as he walked, and to emit an off-key accordionlike wheezing with every step. This distracting and embarrassing nature of this symptom has been a major impediment to Mr. Coyote’s pursuit of a normal social life."
This same piece resurfaced last week in an article entitled “Lost Art” which appeared in the New York Times Magazine (4/14) Screenland column. The writer T.M. Brown writes that this short five-page piece inspired an animated movie that was made by Warner for $75 million, but then was killed by studio for financial reasons and has not allowed anyone to see it or purchase it.
At the end of the piece, Brown draws the ironic parallel. In Frazier’s satire, Wile E. Coyote is hamstrung that he has “no other domestic source of supply to which to turn”. Likewise, the film’s creators have no recourse to see the film released as Warner has complete control of the work. They have no leverage.
Fortunately, I still have my copy of the Frazier collection, which I paid $2.
Meep-meep
To learn more about the writer Ian Frazier, see pages 80-82 in your The Book Shopper: A Life in Review hymnal. Available here.
