A Star Is Bored

Plot

The opening frame depicts the exterior of Bugs' dressing room, inside which he is talking to the journalist, Lolly (a reference to the nickname of famed Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons). Outside, we see Daffy sweeping arguing about the job he got. Fed up, Daffy decides to be a movie star.

Daffy then marches into the casting director's (possibly Jack L. Warner) office just as he is on the phone with another executive discussing the difficulty in finding anyone "stupid enough" to be Bugs' stunt double for his next picture. Daffy of course takes the job!

After a visit to the Make-Up Department, Daffy gets his first taste of on-the-set film action shortly thereafter (a Western co-starring Yosemite Sam). Initially, Daffy is extremely excited to be finally in any motion picture. He takes Bugs' place in a rabbit costume and holding a carrot, and stands next to Sam. Daffy gets the worst of it instead of Bugs!

Next, Bugs is in a scene where Elmer Fudd is cast in his usual role as trying to hunt Bugs. Bugs is high in a tree, and Elmer is supposed to climb it to saw the branch Bugs is sitting on, off (though not all the way through, as Bugs reminds him). However, Daffy has other ideas. He tells Elmer to come closer to him, as he has something to tell him. Lacking a clue to Daffy's actual motive, Elmer shuffles closer to Daffy, who whacks him in the head to knock him out. Daffy tries to upstage Bugs by sawing off the branch Bugs is on; unfortunately for Daffy, the branch Bugs stands on is solid, while the part Daffy stands on falls to the ground!

After this sequence, Bugs is fishing off a pier, but Daffy takes no notice. He also takes Bugs' place at the end of the pier and his fishing rod. Yet he is not safe from the film script even now, as a giant bluefin tuna swallows him whole.

Another scene wherein Bugs is chased by Elmer follows this one, culminating when Bugs dives into another tree. With the "scwewy wabbit" cornered, Elmer aims his gun into the tree but gets poked in the rear by the gun's barrel (in reality, it's really Bugs holding another gun). When Elmer pulls his gun back, the other one makes the same movements. Wondering just how stupid Elmer is, Daffy furiously marches onto the set, snatches Elmer's gun and shoves him off. Daffy sticks the gun into the hole in the tree in which Bugs is hiding but what he believes to be another gun (in reality it's HIS gun bent around so that it points at his hindquarters) sticks up through a hole in the ground just behind him! Daffy retracts his gun; the "other" gun does the same. Daffy does this two or three more times before he decides to try a small experiment. He ties a red ribbon around the barrel of his gun, then sticks it into the tree, and looks behind him. The ribbon on the gun in the ground is white with red polka dots, leading Daffy to believe it to be a fake. He shoots, intending to mark Bugs, but the bent-around gun plan is revealed when the bullet hits him in the hindquarters and he pulls the gun out of the tree. The ribbon is white with red spots! Daffy didn't notice that Bugs switch the ribbon.

The next scene has Bugs piloting a plane accelerating up to 20,000 feet, then going uncontrollably in the direction of the ground. At the last second, the plane is "stopped" before crashing and Bugs get out and his place gets taken by Daffy who as usual gets the worst of it!

Having finally had more than enough, Daffy announces that "I'm through playin' stooge to a rabbit. I wanna star in my OWN picture!" to the casting director, who promptly tells the distraught Daffy that he has just such a script: the starring role in a new movie called The Duck.

The final scene shows the filming of The Duck, with Daffy starring as a typical duck in a peaceful pond and directed by the same man who helmed the earlier movie wherein Daffy subbed for Bugs. Just as in the first scene of the earlier film, Daffy digs out his script to rehearse his line. When the director announces "Rrrroll 'em," Daffy says, "I wonder where all the hunters are today?", at which point ten hunters suddenly surround the pond, gun Daffy down and leave. Again infuriated, Daffy shrieks, "I DEMAND TO KNOW WHO WROTE THIS SCRIPT!" The cruel screenwriter turns out to be none other than... Bugs, to whom the camera is now transferred and who says, "I'd love to tell him, but... hehehehe... modesty forbids."

Cast

Availability

As of 2007, A Star Is Bored is available on the four-disc DVD box set Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 5, as well as the similar, two-disc DVD Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection: Volume 5. It is also available as a bonus on the PlayStation 2 version of Looney Tunes: Back in Action, and the "Daffy Duck's Madcap Mania" VHS. The short is also available on the 2011 DVD The Essential Daffy Duck.