77 years ago today, Chuck Jones and WB released the 7 minutes that started all of it. Today is the anniversary. Monday 9/21 is his 114th birthday. Here is what we are doing about both.

Watch the full “Fast and Furry-ous” short on Tubi for free (begins at 15:03)

Chuck Jones at work. Courtesy of the Chuck Jones Gallery.

On 17 September 1949, Chuck Jones and WB released a seven-minute Technicolor short (Britannica). Michael Maltese wrote it. Carl Stalling scored it. A coyote chased a road runner across the American southwest, failed 11 times, and created a format that has not stopped running since.

The title is a pun on “fast and furious”, a phrase that was already old in 1949, and one that would not become a film franchise for another half century. Chuck Jones got there first by 52 years.

Today is 77 years to the day. If you want the mechanics of that short, the six things almost nobody knows about it, and the rules Jones wrote for himself, they are at the bottom of this page. The rest of this is about what happens next.

COYOTE AND ROAD RUNNER ARE BACK ON SCREEN BECAUSE OF YOU

77 years on, the Coyote finally got a hearing. In Coyote vs. ACME, (playing in theaters now) he sues the company that sold him every one of those products and hires a struggling lawyer to argue it. Will Forte plays the lawyer.

It nearly did not exist. Warner Bros. finished the film and then shelved it in November 2023 (Variety). The backlash was loud enough that the film was sold on instead.

It has since taken more than $82 million worldwide (Cartoon Brew). Legion M was part of the team that helped make that happen.

A FILM THAT EXISTS BECAUSE FANS REFUSED TO LET IT GO

Studios shelve finished films. It happens quietly and it usually stays quiet. This one did not. Animators, critics, and a very loud audience spent months refusing to accept that a completed Looney Tunes feature would never be seen, and the pressure worked. The film was sold on rather than buried. Ketchup Entertainment completed the purchase in March 2025 and put it in cinemas on August 28, 2026.

Legion M is proud to bring interesting partners into our community, and this has been one of the most exciting to date.

THREE PARTIES, ONE CHAIN

The Chuck Jones Gallery
Linda Jones Enterprises, founded by Chuck Jones's daughter Linda Jones Clough and run today by her son Craig Kausen. Keepers of the work and the archive for decades.

Ben Olson
A licensed fine artist making new work with the characters Chuck Jones created, and a board member of the Center for Creativity Jones founded.

Legion M
A film studio owned by its fans. We met the gallery this year, spent Comic-Con week together, and came out of it with a standing arrangement.

AND ON MONDAY, CHUCK JONES TURNS 114

Chuck Jones at his drawing board. Courtesy of the Chuck Jones Gallery.

Three moments inside of one week. The anniversary today. The film in theaters. His birthday on Monday.

We are not letting that pass quietly. On Monday we are releasing a full line made with the Chuck Jones Gallery, produced for this community and nowhere else. Everything in it traces back to the seven minutes at the top of this page.

THE FIRST ONE SOLD OUT IN HOURS

Ben Olson's first piece for Legion M was The Fine Art of Disregard. The Coyote standing in a field of the exact ACME products that have failed him, holding a warning label. All 150 signed and numbered prints sold out just a few hours after we released them.

The companion piece goes the other way. Nothing to Chase But Stars puts the two of them on a mesa, side by side, looking up. No anvil, no rocket, no chase. After 77 years, Ben gave the chase a night off. We are not showing it in full until Monday.

THE MAN BEHIND THE ARTWORK

Ben Olson. Courtesy of the Chuck Jones Gallery.

Chuck Jones made the characters, and now Ben Olson has picked up the pen to bring them to life for us, under license from the Chuck Jones Gallery for this collection. Every piece of artwork landing Monday came from his mind.

He is a contemporary artist and animation director based in Central Florida, and a licensed Disney, Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera fine artist. His work is built on bold color, kinetic movement and a deliberate streak of nostalgia, and it sits in the space between fine art and animation rather than fully in either.

He is also a board member of the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity, the organization Jones founded.

HE DIRECTED A TRIBUTE TO THE 1949 SHORT, FOR J.J. ABRAMS

Olson's directorial debut was an animated short made with Bad Robot and Warner Bros. for the Max series Duster. The short is a tribute to “Fast and Furry-ous”, the same seven minutes this article is about. Working directly with Abrams and the Bad Robot team was, in his words, a dream collaboration and a career highlight.

He has already made his own answer to the 1949 short, on screen, with the studio that released it.

HE HAS BEEN DOING THIS SINCE HE WAS FIVE

That is when he picked up his first art supplies, and he has not stopped since. Before the galleries there was commercial work for Verizon, Mattel, the State of Illinois and Simon Malls. Deeply influenced by Jones, he found a fitting home with the Chuck Jones Gallery.

He refuses to be pinned to one style or medium. Picasso, Peter Max and Monet all turn up in how he talks about the work, filtered into something modern built on harmony, movement and color. His audience has grown well past the United States, with collectors across Asia and Europe, and his current project, The Journey, runs across fine art, merchandise and an animated series still to come.

AND HE DREW FOR FOUR DAYS STRAIGHT AT OUR BOOTH

He was at our San Diego Comic-Con booth signing prints of The Fine Art of Disregard, and he drew made-to-order characters on the back of them, freehand, in pen, with no pencil underneath. He made something for everyone who stood in that line, then did it again at the gallery. He signs every print in these editions by hand, one at a time. There is no autopen and there is no stamp.

COME BACK MONDAY FOR THE BIG REVEAL

On Chuck Jones's 114th birthday the whole collection goes live at once, and everything below can be ordered that morning.

Nothing to Chase But Stars (THE CENTERPIECE)
Ben Olson's second signed and numbered piece. 18 by 24 inches, an edition of 149, every one signed by hand. The first one sold out in hours.

Four commemorative cards (SERIES 1)
5 by 8 inches, heavy stock, the Legion M mark on every one. Made exclusively for the Legion M community. Three of the four have not been seen.

Signed artist sketches (THE UNDERDRAWINGS)
The pencil drawing that sits underneath each painting, on art paper, signed by Ben's hand.

Both images, unsigned (OPEN EDITIONS)
12 by 18 inches, fine art stock, not numbered and not limited. The way in for anyone who missed the first edition.

13 originals (AFTER 9/30)
One of a kind Ben Olson paintings. 13 of them, each existing exactly once, following later in the month.

Nothing is on sale today. Set a reminder, come back Monday morning 10am PT, and place your order.

ONE MORE THING BEFORE YOU GO

11 WAYS TO FAIL IN SEVEN MINUTES

The first short runs through 11 or 12 attempts, depending on how you count. Five of them: Knife, Boomerang, Bomb, Rocket, Paint On A Rock Face

That last one is the gag everyone remembers. The Coyote paints a tunnel on a cliff, the Road Runner runs straight through it as though it were real, and the Coyote, following, hits solid rock.

The signs are the tell. The Coyote reads, plans and engineers. The Road Runner does not read and does not need to.

At the end he hears a “beep beep” and swings an axe at it. It is a bus. The Road Runner is in the back seat, and he closes the curtain.

WHERE TO FIND THE SHORT

The classic Looney Tunes library left HBO Max in March 2025 and now streams free on Tubi, nearly 800 shorts in all.

SIX THINGS ALMOST NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT THAT FIRST SHORT

WILE E. COYOTE CAME OUT OF A MARK TWAIN BOOK

In Roughing It, published in 1872, Twain describes a coyote as “a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton” and “a living, breathing allegory of want”.

Jones read it at the age of seven and built a character out of it (Chuck Jones Enterprises).

HE WAS ALMOST NAMED DON COYOTE
A pun on Don Quixote, which would have made the joke explicit rather than letting it sit underneath.
IN 1949, NOT EVERYTHING WAS ACME YET
The running gag that every product comes from the same catastrophically unreliable company came later. In the first short the traps are simply traps.
IT WAS BUILT AS A PARODY
Of chase cartoons generally, and of the road-runner-versus-coyote setup that already existed in nature documentaries.
THEY HAVE LATIN NAMES
Carnivorous Vulgaris and Accelleratii Incredibus. Mock scientific names that appear on screen, a device Jones kept returning to for decades.
THE ROAD RUNNER'S VOICE IS ONE MAN, RECORDED ONCE
Paul Julian, a background painter at the studio, made the “beep beep” sound walking down a corridor with his arms full. Jones brought him into the studio to record it (Chuck Jones Enterprises).

AND THE RULES HE WROTE FOR HIMSELF

Jones set out a list of constraints for every Coyote and Road Runner cartoon, published years later in his memoir Chuck Amuck (Chuck Jones Enterprises). They read like a design document. Paraphrased:

THE ROAD RUNNER NEVER ATTACKS
His only weapon is the beep. Everything that happens to the Coyote, the Coyote does to himself.
NOTHING OUTSIDE CAN HURT THE COYOTE
Only his own ineptitude, or an ACME product doing what ACME products do.
HE COULD STOP AT ANY TIME
He is not trapped, he is a fanatic, and that is the difference.
NO DIALOGUE
The beep, and yowling. Nothing else. 77 years later the feature film still honours this.
EVERYTHING STAYS IN THE DESERT
The American southwest, and the Road Runner stays on the road, because he is a road runner.
EVERY DEVICE COMES FROM ACME
One supplier, catastrophically unreliable, never held to account. Until this year.
GRAVITY IS THE REAL ANTAGONIST
Whenever it can be, it is.
HUMILIATION OVER INJURY
He is embarrassed far more than he is hurt, and the audience stays on his side throughout.
HE NEVER CATCHES HIM
That rule has held since 1949.

Rule three is the one that makes the rest work. He could stop at any point and never does.

Wile E. Coyote was "Fast and Furry-ous" First