LOONEY TUNES Page 4
Looney Tunes
The Great Houducky
By Scott Gross
PAGE 1
Panel 1: Dramatic wide shot, Houducky onstage in New York’s Central Park clad in a turban and robe adorned with stars, crescents and magic symbols. In the background before the curtain stands his assistant Porky, dressed in a Mandarin gown and hat. Porky stands beside the veiled Peking Duck Sauce Torture chamber.
DAFFY 1: Ladies and germs ― breathe deep! Tonight the air is positively stinky with the scent of sorcery and the perfidious perfume of the paranormal.
DAFFY 2: This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Soon you shall witness an escape ttho dangerous, ttho diabolical, it has been nearly five years in the making!
DAFFY 3: Some of you are heading for the exits. Surely you deign a duck so daring as to defy Death Himself doth dabble as well in the Dark Arttth??
Panel 2: Medium shot, waist-high from behind Houducky looking into the vast crowd. Flashbulbs burst the night sky. With grand flair Houducky throws off his robe and unveils himself, in his swim trunks, to gasps and applause from the audience. Integrate the title / credits into a show placard onstage to the right.
DAFFY 1: Knaves! How dare you doubt me? For I am no ordinary waterfowl ―
CROWD 1: OOH!
CROWD 2: AHHHH!
CROWD 3: Gasp!
SFX: Flash! Flash!
DAFFY 2: I am Houducky!
Title / Credits
Panel 3: Wide establishing shot showing the enormity of the show, lights, speakers, and thousands of spectators packing Central Park to watch Houducky perform.
DAFFY 1: I have tthircled the globe ― from Ttthingapore to San Luis Obittthpo. My legend has its own reputation!
DAFFY 2: Humble yourselves as I tthummon the tthpirits of the ancient world and command the mystical wisdom of the East.
Panel 4: CU Houducky, smug aside to the camera.
DAFFY: And I don’t mean East Flatbush.
Panel 5: Thin tight panel, a single arm shoots up from the crowd holding a lone flickering candle.
DAFFY (OS): May fortune’s benevolent feather bless my beak and tickle my tender bottom.
PAGE 2
Panel 1: Medium shot, Houducky continues to hype the crowd.
DAFFY: Please direct your attention to the drapery behind me.
Panel 2: Wide shot, Houducky gestures back to Porky, who with flourish unveils the Peking Duck Sauce Torture ― an enormous Chinese Food take-out container filled with goopy orange sweet-and-sour sauce dripping down its sides.
DAFFY 1: Behold! The Peking Duck Sauce Torture.
SFX (veil): shoop.
DAFFY 2: In moments I shall enter this chamber bound from feather to flipper. After my assistant seals the lid shut I shall taste neither air nor daylight ‘til I have freed myself.
DAFFY 3: Or, failing that, meet my demise.
Panel 3: CU an old fat hen shrieks in the audience
HEN: AAAIIIIIGGHH!
Panel 4: Medium shot, Porky watches as Houducky solemnly climbs a ladder into the chamber, his arms and torso bound in chains.
DAFFY: Fare thee well, my swinish assistant.
Panel 5: Upshot, looking up from Houducky’s half-submerged head to Porky closing the lid of the chamber.
DAFFY 1: You’ve tthtuck with me since the tthatrt.
DAFFY 2: Remember that old stage coach? The days of bunk beds and tthpace heaters ― the peanut butter and tthardine tthhandwich days!?
Panel 6: Thin black panel. Single word bubble bursting into silence as the chamber hatch closes.
DAFFY: Who would have guessed back on old Lake Nelson it would all come to this…
SFX: CLANK.
PAGE 3
Panel 1: Flashback begins. Wide shot, Daffy’s POV. On the banks of New Jersey’s Lake Nelson a group of young ducks shouts to Daffy.
CAPTION: Piscataway, New Jersey. Five years ago.
KIDS: Daffy ― come quick! That crazy guy is down at the lake again.
Panel 2: At the shoreline sit a disheveled turn-of-the-century Harry Houdini and manager Martin Beck. Houdini wears a soaking wet old-time bathing suit surrounded by chains, leg irons, and handcuffs. Beck has his sleeves rolled-up as if he just pulled Houdini from the water.
BECK: Harry! Harry! I’m telling you it can’t be done! You’re Houdini, not Hou-dolphin.
HOUDINI: It can be done Martin, and I’ll practice here at this lake until it is!
Panel 3: Wide shot, Houdini hurls himself into water shackled with chains. Beck calls to him from ashore.
BECK: Turkey sandwiches for lunch?
HOUDINI: With mayoooooooo….
Panel 4: Medium shot, Daffy and a surprised Houdini beak-to-nose underwater. Subtle bubbles drip up from Houdini’s head.
DAFFY: Floatation issues?
Panel 5: Wide shot, Daffy strides out before his friends from P1. He’s dressed in an improvised cape and dramatically tosses a deck of cards from palm to palm.
CAPTION: The next day…
SFX: flickflickflickflickflickflick
DAFFY: Ladiettthh and gentlemen, you’ve seen Houdini. I am Houducky!
Panel 6: A wet tomato splats Daffy in the face from OS.
SFX: SPLAT!
Panel 7: CU Houducky with a dry expression as tomato drips from his beak.
DAFFY: Critics.
PAGE 4
Panel 1: Wide shot along the shoreline of Lake Nelson. Houducky is performing for the lakeside locals in a hand-sewn costume on a makeshift stage. A shabby show placard behind him announces ‘Houducky!’
DAFFY 1: For my first trick I offer a challenge to the crowd before me.
DAFFY 2: Bring forth your tightest restraints ― handcuffs, shackles, irons, manacles, ropes, chains and other impenetrablettth.
DAFFY 3: No man can bind me!
Panel 2: Medium shot, Houducky calls and Hennery Hawk zips in from OS dressed as a saluting police officer.
DAFFY: Sergeant at arms!
SFX: zip!
HENNERY: Sgt. Hennery Hawk, Piscataway Township Police Department.
Panel 3: Houducky interrogates Sgt. Hennery, who floats at eye-level holding up a pair of handcuffs.
DAFFY 1: Sergeant I’ve been informed by your department’s armory that these cuffs were hand-crafted by a 16th-century Japanese Samurai blacksmith from steel forged in the red hot lavas of Mt. Fuji!!
DAFFY 2: Moreover, that they cannot be picked, broken, tampered with, disabled, or destroyed.
HENNERY: Aye, sir. They’re our finest pair.
Panel 4: Hennery flies around Houducky in a blur – only puffs of smoke, black feathers, and bits of handcuff / chain pop up from the speed lines.
SFX 1: whir whir whir
SFX 2: tie. tie. tie. tie.
Panel 5. The smoke clears. Hennery has tied Houducky’s arm in a pretzel, wrapped them around his body like rubber bands and tied them in a knot in front with the handcuffs attached. Houducky sneers to the camera with a smug aside.
DAFFY: Little do they know I have extthpertly entthcontthed a locksmith’s master key on the interior of my beak.
Panel 6: Sgt. Hennery gives Houducky a smack on the back, causing him to swallow the skeleton key. We can see the key’s silhouette lodged halfway down Houcky’s throat, beneath his shocked expression.
HENNERY: Good luck, me boy’o.
SFX: CLAP!
DAFFY: gulp!
PAGE 5
Panel 1: Houducky is performing in a new lakeside setting. The stage, show poster, his costume and act are all improved over P4. He struts out before the crowd like a pro wrestler.
DAFFY 1: Let it be known that I, The Great Houducky, reckon this town ttthoft in the underbelly!
DAFFY 2: That’s right. I bet there isn’t a goose in this whole gander I couldn’t lick.
Panel 2: Medium shot, Houducky peacocking.
DAFFY 1: In fact, I challenge any one of you guppies to come up here and punch me square in the gut and I shant bant a feather.
DAFFY 2: That is, if you can unfasten your tutus.
Panel 3: Houducky shouts over the crowd. Porky, now his assistant and a plant in the audience, stands up to accept the challenge.
DAFFY (OS): You heard me right, I can withstand a blow from any man in this crowd!
PORKY: I’ll take that b-b-b-be-b-e, that wager.
Panel 4: Daffy squares off with diminutive Porky, his chest puffed with pride, eyes closed confidently.
DAFFY: You may fire at will, Dempsey.
Panel 5: Crusher pushes a confused Porky aside and looms over Houducky, who opens his eyes just as he is cast into shadow.
CRUSHER 1: I’ll show’ya who thoft in da belly, or whadeva.
SFX: shove.
CRUSHER 2: Lemme at’m.
Panel 6: Wide shot of the forest treeline. A huge SFX blares out, trees shake with leaves, birds fly out into the air, the heavens quake.
SFX: THOOM!
BIRDS: squak! squak! squak!
PAGE 6
The background of this full-bleed page shows a map of one shoreline section along Lake Nelson in Piscataway, NJ. Dots and dashes mark each stop along Houducky’s tour, as he hones his act night-after-night performing for the locals.
Overlaying the map are two graphic silhouettes (one coming and one going) of Houducky’s rickety Model-A travelling coach with ‘The Great Houducky!’ show placard on the back. Houducky sits behind the wheel of the stagecoach while Porky tows it in front from a bicycle.
SILHOUETTE #1: Tthomeday I’ll make it off this crummy lake and do a real show, for a real big-ticket ttthocialite type crowd.
SILHOUETTE #2: Yettthir, tthomeday I’ll play the big tent. New York Thhity…New York Thhity…New York Thhity….
Overlaying the background art are three panels showing bits from Houducky’s evolving act. In each panel a show placard announces the stunt.
Panel 1: Houducky, looking grim, buried above his neck in sand. A crab is just about to pinch him in the beak.
PLACARD: Houducky ― Buried Alive!
Panel 2: Medium shot Houducky’s ankles and blackened feet tiptoeing over hot coals across the wide, thin panel.
PLACARD: Yogi Rashneesh Houducky ― Impervious to Pain!
SFX: sizzle. sizzle. roast. crackle.
DAFFY: …ooh—ahh—HOT—ooh—ahh --- hot hot hot hot…
Panel 3: Houducky lays on the ground face-up, startled, surrounded by dust puffs, fluttering leaves, spinning stars and pound signs. He has just fallen backwards. He has no beak.
PLACARD: Houducky ― Hangs from his beak!
PAGE 7
Panel 1: S/A P2:5 Back in the present at Houducky’s NYC show. Upshot of Houducky locked within the Peking Duck chamber. The thoughts from P6 continue here.
HOUDUCKY (thoughts): …New York Thhity…New York Thhity…New York Thhity….
Panel 2: Wide crowd shot overlooking the vast tree-lined Central Park audience. The spectators stir anxiously. Worried faces look out from beneath top hats. Jewelry sparkles.
CROWD 1: I say ― something’s gone amiss.
CROWD 2: He’s been under too long!
CROWD 3: Show’s over? Let’s beat the traffic.
CROWD 4: NO! Someone help him!
Panel 3: S/A P2:3 CU a fat old hen shrieks in the audience
HEN: AAAIIIIIGGHH!
Panel 4: Porky rushes the stage with an axe.
SFX: pad. pad. pad. pad.
PORKY: Don’t w-w-w-worry Houducky, I’ll re-re-res-resc ― save you.
Panel 5: Porky shatters the chamber glass with a mighty axe-swing spilling candied vegetables and orange sweet-and-sour sauce all over the stage.
SFX 1: Swing!
SFX 2: Shatter!
SFX 3: Burble Blubble Gluggle Gluggle
PAGE 8
Panel 1: Wide shot, the curtain falls before the still-gasping audience.
SFX: Fall!
CROWD 1: GASP!
CROWD 2: Heavens!
CROWD 3: No, really. I want to get out of here.
Panel 2: Medium shot, backstage Houducky casually brushes himself off amidst the sauce puddles and rubble of the Duck chamber. Porky and the stagehands look on in astonishment.
SFX: …brush brush brush brush…
ONLOOKERS: ?!
Panel 3: CU Houducky, nonchalant.
DAFFY: What? I can hold my breath for thirty minutthhh in tthweet and tthour tthauce.
Panel 4: The curtain lifts and Houducky casually saunters out to enormous applause. Fans hold up candles and signs reading ‘Houditto!’ and ‘Marry Me!’ One pair of arms holds up a baby. Flashbulbs and fireworks light the bkg.
SFX 1: CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP
SFX 2: Flash! Flash! Flash!
CROWD 1: He’s alive!
CROWD 2: It’s a miracle!
DAFFY 1: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. You’ve been a great audientthhh.
DAFFY 2: And a fortunate one, for tonight you have witnessed The Great Houducky’s Final Show!
Panel 5: Medium shot, Houducky sneers at the audience.
AUDIENCE: Nooo ― We love you!
DAFFY: You’re too kind. But when it comes to magic, the duck stops here.
Panel 6: CU Houducky, big finish.
DAFFY: With all this extra tthauce lying around, I’m going into the Egg Roll business!
THAT’S ALL, FOLKS!
The Great Houducky Scott Gross