Pepe Le Pew

If you can’t do it yourself, animate somebody who can--Pepé le Pew, for example. Pepé’s sexual confidence is absolute. He sees rejection as no more than a temporary setback, and every pursuit as an interesting variation on the road to inevitable success. (For myself, as an eighteen-year-old I took every expression from every girl as a rejection. If I couldn’t find a rejection I liked, I would invent one.)

Pepé is the individual I always wanted to be, so sure of his appeal to women that it never occurs to him that his attentions might be unwelcome, or even offensive. I tried to make Pepé’s confidence a part of my own personality, hoping to share in his sexual success. On the screen it worked.

The skunk may at first sight seem to be an unlikely lover, but these films would never succeed if the hero were a human being with bad breath, underarm odors, or smelly feet. Boot odors are simply not funny. It is only when an animal such as a skunk is unaware of his problem, which is built in and instantly obvious to everyone else, that the situation has comic potential. Pepé fit quite nicely into this role.

Pepé cannot know that he smells. He is clearly shocked to be informed about his odor in For Scentimental Reasons, so shocked that he pulls out a gun and threatens to shoot himself (“I missed, fortunately for you”).

Pepe Le Pew appears in: