The Cricket In Times Square

I grew up next door to Chuck Jones. Not the Chuck Jones, Chuck M. Jones, the beloved animator we're all celebrating this week, of course. Another, random Chuck Jones, who worked a 9 to 5 job and had a daughter named Lindsey and a trampoline in his backyard.

So I was quite confused when, one day, my dad came back from one of his numerous business trips with two pieces of butcher paper. One had a caricature of Bugs Bunny on it. The other had Daffy Duck. Both were signed, in that unmistakable script, by Chuck Jones. He told my sister and me to take care of these pictures, as they'd be worth money some day. Neither of us got it. Sure, cartoons are great, but what does our neighbor have to do with it?

I suddenly remembered all this when I heard the sad news of Chuck's passing. I called dad, and asked if he still had those two signed drawings. He kind of laughed, and said yes, he kept them safe because he knew we'd be wanting them someday. And not because they're worth money (though they surely are collector's items now), but because Jones and his imaginations of the Looney Tunes mean something to me now.

Jones and Mel Blanc -- the other invisible superstar of the cartoon world -- were heroes to children who never knew their names, no matter how indelibly their characters were etched in our memories. When we all agreed to do this roundtable, I went to the IMDB to have a peek at Jones' work, thinking I'd select one of his many Looney Tunes shorts, or perhaps "Grinch" ... and I saw that Jones was the force behind "Cricket In Times Square," easily the most beloved movie of my childhood. That made twice in as many weeks that I suddenly realized how large an impact Chuck Jones had on my formative years.



Like Filmboy, I was a huge fan of "film projector days" at Ye Olde Public School For Wee Ones. We saw "Grinch" the day before every Christmas break, naturally. But I distinctly remember seeing "Cricket" one rainy day in music class, and falling in love with several things simultaneously: music, newspapers, and New York. It was the first movie I begged my parents to buy when we finally got a VCR. I must have seen it hundreds of times. Then, I never saw it again, until I rented it for this roundtable.

The movie stands up to my childhood fondness for it. This TV special was created in 1973, after the zany peak of Jones' career in the '50s and '60s. New York was just sliding into a two-decade fallow period of grime and crime, when even the Yankees would have trouble winning the Series more than once every dozen years, and Broadway was trapped between post-hippie bohemianism and maudlin Hammerstein hangovers. Morale in the City of Cities was low.

"Cricket" tells the very simple and straightforward story of Chester C. Cricket from Connecticut, who's accidentally absconded to Times Square station while raiding a picnic basket of liverwurst. There he's befriended by a young boy named Mario, and a mouse-and-cat team (they're friends, much to Chester's country astonishment), who encourage his musical gifts. Mario and his Italian immigrant parents run a newsstand in the subway station that only sells magazines and newspapers about music. Business is going badly (as one might expect). When it's discovered that Chester can memorize and play back any song he hears on the radio, he's put to work as a special attraction, pulling paying customers back to the stand and earning adulation in the press.

This is not one of Jones' comic masterpieces. Rather, it's a straight gag-free telling of a heart-warming story, geared toward thoughtful pre-pubescent children. Mel Blanc voices the mouse, but aside from his distinctive Brooklyn accent, there's no exaggeration necessary on his part. The story is told from the viewpoint of the animals, meaning it's all legs and looking up -- a great perspective for children to grasp. Human faces are completely hidden from view, actually, until the climactic scene of Chester's last performance (he naturally must go back to Connecticut), when Jones pulls off a gorgeous montage of faces being illuminated by the power of music. This gentle push through the humanity of New York culminates in a long sweeping shot up the tall buildings of Times Square -- which are elongated into a supernatural spindle in the sky -- and ending on the moon and stars, bright as they ever were.

Music changes the faceless crowd into a collection of individuals, each of whom long to be somewhere else, or someone else, or larger than they actually are. This longing can wear down a person, shield his joy from the world the way a face is obscured from the view of a cricket. But music unlocks it all, physically transporting people to wherever or whatever they want to be. That scene, which I've watched over and over, still makes the most compelling argument for the importance of art I know. Jones, with his masterful visual shorthand, created with "Cricket" a brilliant homage to the spirit of music, of immigrants, of New York.

I only hope another talent finds the time to create so brilliant an homage to Chuck Jones himself. We'll miss him.
posted by Chris at 12:30 PM