Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood

Turner Classic Movies and filmmakers Peggy Stern and John Canemaker, who earned Oscars® for the animated short The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, have collected the memories of one of Hollywood’s greatest animators in a unique, half-hour film entitled CHUCK JONES: MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD. This film combines an interview with the legendary animator with newly created animated segments.

“Chuck Jones used a lot of his childhood memories in creating his extensive collection of outstanding cartoons,” said Tom Brown, senior vice president of original programming for TCM. “Peggy and John’s film lovingly recreates those memories through in-depth interviews and animated segments. We are extremely proud to be involved with them on this one-of-a-kind film that reveals so much about what made Chuck Jones such a master of the art form.”

CHUCK JONES: MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD is a film by Peggy Stern, with Canemaker also serving as producer and animation director. The project grew out of director Stern’s interest in exploring the childhood experiences of artists. In 1997, Canemaker, a longtime mutual friend of Jones and Stern, brought them together for the interviews that became the basis of the film. During the interviews, Jones spontaneously began sketching his boyhood self as he related his memories. These sketches later inspired the documentary’s animated sequences, which Canemaker directed.

Shortly before his death, Jones had an opportunity to see a test cut of the film, with new animation and archival imagery blended into the interview footage, and pronounced it “delightful.” The Jones family subsequently provided additional material from the family archive, resulting in an intimate film full of revealing anecdotes about the events and personalities that influenced his early creative life and long career in cartoons. —TCM