Tuesday, March 24 Turner Classic Movies premiered a wonderful new documentary called Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood. In The Balcony was fortunate enough to pre-screen the documentary, and found it to be a wonderful and inspirational family-oriented show that children especially will love; Mr. Jones comes across as everybody’s favorite grandpa, reminiscing about his childhood and how he used those memories to build his immortal slate of cartoon characters.

More than a decade ago, filmmaker Peggy Stern proposed a series of educational short subjects exploring artists and their childhood experiences. The interviews that comprise the bulk of the film were conducted between Ms. Stern and Chuck Jones in 1997. During the interviews, Jones sketched himself as a child as he recalled his early years, and those sketches later inspired a series of animated sequences directed for this film by John Canemaker (Stern and Canemaker are Oscar winners themselves, for the 2005 animated short The Moon and the Son: An Imaginary Conversation).

Recently, Cliff Weimer sat down In The Balcony with Ms. Stern to discuss the documentary and her experiences with Chuck Jones.

How did the project come about?

Even though it’s short, it took a long time to make it! I got a grant to start a project geared to schools, middle schools and high school students, to talk to artists about their childhood, and inspire creativity in young people.

John Canemaker suggested speaking with Chuck Jones; he knew Chuck very well and recommended him as an excellent storyteller. The idea of getting somebody of Chuck’s stature, who had created these iconic characters, was wonderful; Chuck agreed – by that time he was 84 and he was passionate about encouraging young people.

I think adults and parents can get a lot out of this, too, to help them encourage their children’s imagination. Chuck loved that idea; he hated what he saw out in the world, with technology taking over the lives of young people. We were very specific in the questioning. It didn’t end up being this topic because he just wanted to talk about it. He was, I think, phenomenal in the details of his memory. It resonated with, “How does a kid stay in touch with his imagination? What are the things that free up free time when you don’t have technology and immediate gratification?” All he did was just make up things out of nothing in his childhood and I think that’s a lot of what the film focuses on in the first half, and then how he took that and became the animator we know today.

Chuck seems pained to talk about his father, who was abusive but also supplied him with endless boxes of drawing paper and pencils and took him out of public school and into an art school.

Chuck’s path wasn’t a very straight-forwarded path; he didn’t do well in school, his father was very hard on him. One of the things we tried to tell in the story was what were the obstacles and were the things that helped him get where he wanted to go. That’s part of thing I do love about the film. Childhood is complex and layered and I think the more young people can understand that you have to take the good with the bad, and how to turn the bad into something that will work for you… that’s all stuff that Chuck really cared about. He didn’t want to wallow in the bad things. He hadn’t really shared some of this ever before.

Chuck suggested that the key to success in what he did was to “find the quirk in something.” Certainly his own cartoon characters were so memorable because of the quirks they had. What was Chuck Jones’ quirk?

He had a sense of humor that was very sophisticated, and a great amount of empathy and humanity. And that’s not always found in the same person. I mean, he could be cutting. He didn’t have a sweet sense of humor, but he had this huge empathy for the world and for people. For me, having those things together is what makes him unique. That’s what I was struck by. The humor is kind of wry sometimes. Chuck got away from being Disneyesque and sometimes allowed the characters to stand still for a minute do one little thing, like raise an eyebrow. He was able to get into nuance.

He was one of the most literate people I ever met in my life, and much of what he said was a reference to a favorite poem or book. He was a brilliant man, and he was passionate about his interests. He said in the film that his mother opened his door to everyone; he clearly had this “earth mother” as his role model, but I do think that some of the intellectual passion came from his father. He talked about his father that way.

He says in the film that they weren’t sure who their audience was; they didn’t know what would appeal to children OR to adults, so they just tried to make themselves laugh.

He didn’t sit down and get marketing research about his demographics. That wasn’t how they made their films. That’s partially why these characters and stories are lasting and so memorable. They came out of the interest and passions and imaginations of grownups who were still in touch with what had fascinated them as kids. So there’s a little bit of that childlikeness…. That never dried up, and they kept in touch with what children might love, but it wasn’t as though he were consciously trying to do it. But he would hate all this psychobabble!

One thing I loved about him… he was very straight-forward and when he sensed that I was maybe going to go down some path that was maybe psychological… that was always one problem, when it started sounding like a therapy session.

Did Chuck live long enough to see any of the completed film?

As Chuck was telling me the stories, he was so incredibly visual, I said to him, could you draw a picture of yourself? So he drew a picture of the young Chuck Jones ‘conducting the waves’ (that’s the opening scene of the film). He did a bunch of drawings for me… then Chuck was thrilled at the suggestion of having John Canemaker, whom he’d known for years, animate the drawings to illustrate the film. We were able to send him the sequence of Chuck conducting the waves, and he loved it. That gave John more confidence; he was very aware of whose drawings he was working with.

Thank you for sharing some of your memories of Chuck Jones with us In The Balcony, and congratulations on this marvelous and inspiring documentary.

I can’t tell you what it means to a filmmaker that somebody watches their film with this kind of care. Thank you!

As part of the tribute to Chuck Jones, TCM will be showing 11 classic Jones-helmed shorts and the rare 1969 feature The Phantom Tollbooth. Here's the full lineup.

8 p.m. (ET): Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood, followed by:
“The Night Watchman” (1938)
“Prest-O, Change-O” (1939)
“Sniffles and the Bookworm” (1939)
“Elmer’s Candid Camera” (1940)
“Scent-imental Over You” (1947)
“Haredevil Hare” (1948)
“Duck Amuck” (1953)
“One Froggy Evening” (1955)
“What’s Opera, Doc?” (1957)
“The Dot and the Line” (1965)
“The Bear that Wasn’t” (1967)
Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood (encore)
The Phantom Tollbooth (1969)