''The Crunch Bird'' (El pájaro crujiente) is an animated short by Joe Petrovich, Len Maxwell, and Ted Petok. It won the 1971
Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film
The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film is an award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as part of the annual Academy Awards, or Oscars, since the 5th Academy Awards (with different names), covering the year 1 ...
.
Joe Petrovich animated the cartoon.
Len Maxwell
Len Maxwell (8 August 1930 – 13 May 2008), born Lenny Maxwell, was an American voice actor and announcer.
Career
Prior to his career in voice-overs, Len was a stand-up comedian.
He appeared on The Tonight Show several times, a CBS special c ...
provided the voices for the husband, wife, and pet shop owner. It was followed by the sequel ''Crunch Bird II'' in 1975.
Plot
A Narrator tells of a woman searching for a birthday gift for her husband Murray, who has few interests and is largely occupied by his job. At a pet store, the proprietor offers a "Crunch Bird." The Crunch Bird devours anything to which its master directs it. To demonstrate, the proprietor commands, "Crunch Bird! The chair!" and the bird reduces a wooden straight chair to sawdust within seconds. The woman is impressed by the bird's talent, buys it, and takes it home.
Murray, exhausted from a hard day at his job, comes home. His wife shows him his birthday present, the Crunch Bird. Crabbily, the husband replies, "Crunch Bird, my ass!" The bird swoops toward Murray, and mercifully, the film cuts to black and the credits roll before we see what follows. . . .
Legacy
With a running time of only two minutes and thirty two seconds, it is the shortest animated short film ever to receive an Academy Award.
It was also one of the first animation outside New York or California (Michigan) to win an Oscar (Oregon's ''
Closed Mondays
''Closed Mondays'' is an eight-minute clay animation film, created by Bob Gardiner and filmed by Will Vinton in 1974. It was produced by Lighthouse Productions, released by Pyramid Films in the United States, and won the Academy Award for Best ...
'' from 1974 and Louisiana's ''
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore'' from 2010).
The Crunch Bird appeared on the 1982 TV series
Jokebook. The short was censored in it as one line was changed from "Crunch Bird, my ass!" to "Crunch Bird, my butt!"
Dailymotion
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See also
* List of American films of 1971
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby unio ...
* Detroit, Michigan
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...
* Culture of Michigan
References
External links
*
Official Website
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crunch Bird, The
1971 short films
1971 animated films
1970s American animated films
1970s animated short films
American animated short films
Animated films about birds
Best Animated Short Academy Award winners
1970s English-language films
Animated films about animals
1970s rediscovered films
Rediscovered American films