NewzNEW YORK (AP) — Before it was dubbed “the funeral screening,” it was just when Will Forte was going to see the movie. Director Dave Green, inspired by “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” had completed the editing on the Looney Tunes blend of cartoon and live action. The whole project, which takes an Ian Frazier “Shouts and Murmurs” column from The New Yorker as its source material, was an audacious comic gambit that seemed to be paying off.
But days before Forte, who stars as Wile E. Coyote’s attorney, could see “Coyote vs. Not just the screening — the movie.
The studio hadn’t delayed it or sent it to streaming. “I just thought: ‘Well, they’re canceling the movie. It’s gotta be bad,’” Forte recalls.
Forte and his wife, suspecting the movie must have turned out poorly, joined the cast and crew to say goodbye to the film no one else was going to see. “That was when the real emotions started,” Forte says. “It was everything I wished the movie could have been and more.
It was so special, which made it so frustrating and so devastating. The confusion was amped up, then frustration, then just searing anger. “Then it made even less sense,” he adds.
“We all looked around, like, ‘What’s happening here?’” The abrupt termination of “Coyote vs. Acme” sent shockwaves through Hollywood. Everyone in the movie business is accustomed to sudden, painful twists of fate.
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