The Crunch Bird
| The Crunch Bird | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Ted Petok |
| Produced by | Ted Petok |
| Voices by | Len Maxwell |
| Studio |
Maxwell-Petok-Petrovich Productions Regency Films |
| Distributed by | Regency Films |
| Release date(s) | 1971 |
| Running time | 2 min. |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
The Crunch Bird (El pájaro crujiente) is an animated short by Ted Petok, Joe Petrovich, and Len Maxwell. It won the 1971 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Joe Petrovich animated the cartoon. Len Maxwell provided the voices for the husband, wife, and pet shop owner. Ted Petok was the producer.
A woman goes into a pet store seeking a gift for her husband. She decides to get him a bird with a most unusual talent, but her gift brings about an unforeseen result.
With a running time of only two minutes, it is one of the shortest films 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 from 1974 and Louisiana's The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from 2010).
Plot
A Narrator tells the shory about a woman finding a gift for her husband who is at a busy job. She tries to find a store. But her husband isn't a sports fan or a television watcher, so she looks at the pet store and thinks her husband would love a pet. The woman enters the store and asks the pet shop owner which kind of pet would her husband love. The pet shop owner asks her if she would want a dog, cat, or monkey but she thinks her husband wouldn't want any of those kinds of pets. But upon seeing her last choice a bird she agrees to buy it.
The pet shop owner warns her about the bird and shows her what the bird can do. So he commands the bird to destroy a wooden chair, and the bird flies to it and chews up all the chair. The woman is impressed by the bird's talent but she still agrees to buy it. The pet shop owners does give the bird to her. The woman returns to her home and shortly after the husband returns home tired because of a hard day at his job. Upon seeing the bird he gets mad at his wife and while scolding her he accidentally tells the bird to chew him. The bird flies over to him and the screen fades to black with the bird's munching noises heard in the ending credits implying the bird chewed his butt.