Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

A year ago I wrote an e-mail to the Mogul's Friend (I know, I KNOW, I shouldn't have bothered, he only answers stars and CEOs) predicting AOL's animated Looney Tunes flick would bomb. I based that on one line, a singularly unfunny and anachronistic "joke" that had the Friend rolling on the floor of the LALATimes' luxury news suite in pure abandon, in which an executive played by Jenna Elfman yells:

"Sell all my Warner Bros. stock! I got an inside tip that Daffy Duck is about to die!"

I don't have the e-mail -- BILL trashed it long ago -- but I remember writing something like this:

For such a line not to be anachronistic would depend on when the film is set. If it's set before 1967, the exec could say, "Sell all my Warner Bros. Pictures stock!" If it's set between 1967 and 1969, she could say, "Sell all my Warner Bros.-Seven Arts stock!" If it's set between 1969 and 1972, she could say, "Sell all my Kinney National Service stock!" If it's set between 1972 and 1990, she could say, "Sell all my Warner Communications stock!" If it's set between 1990 and 2000, she could say, "Sell all my Time Warner stock!" If it's set after 2000, she could say, "Sell all my -- never mind, it's worthless." [That would apply to the recent name change too.]

Well guess what? This "$100-million-plus film that is perhaps the most ambitious combination of live action and animation since Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988," this masterwork with its prime "position in the Warner Bros. firmament," is BOMBING AT THE BOX OFFICE. The public can tell between the real Warner Bros. cartoons and a fake. Just that one line marks this as an indisputable fraud. (The ad-blurb copywriters' raves confirm it.)

P. S. Not wanting to enrich JACK and his CONSPIRACY I don't know if this line made the final edit, but I wouldn't be surprised.

P. P. S. I wonder too whether the superdupermarketers at the CIA in ENCINO (i.e., the people who concoct JACK'S ALPHABET SOUP) may have hurt. Those secret agents gave this a PG, the same letters the Mogul's Friend berated AOL for using when it released Kangaroo Jack. Just as that batch of SOUP led innocent parents to believe they were paying to watch a family film, so this batch may have led people to think, what tricks are these folks up to with something that should be rated G? SLEAZEBALL GUMBO, ditch the SOUP NAZIS!