Joe Dante began his filmmaking career working with the legendary Roger Corman, directing such cult horror hits as Piranha and The Howling. Even when making a family film he couldn't quite renounce that grisly sense of mischief, scoring hits with Gremlins and its sequel. Innerspace came between those two films, with subsequent credits including Matinee and Small Soldiers.

Is Looney Tunes: Back In Action the most technically accomplished film of its type since Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Probably. But it was so much easier for us than it was for them because the technology has changed completely since 1988. Then they had to have their props live on set and photograph them hanging by strings. We were able to avoid all of that because with computer generated imagery we were able to create the props in the computer. We had the freedom to have our characters run all around the frame, holding whatever objects they had picked up from the actor.

The level of technical confidence seems to have freed up the imaginations of your scriptwriters - it works on many levels doesn't it?

That was the intent, as it was in the original cartoons. We were just trying to be true to the models, particularly with the wartime cartoons. I remember when I was a kid I didn't get half the jokes when I saw those cartoons on television. I wouldn't compare this stuff to Shakespeare, but the further you go into it, the more you understand it, and the richer the experience is. These cartoons have had such a long life precisely for that reason, because they speak to people of different ages.

Are there certain rules for what Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck will do?

There was for me, and for Eric Goldberg, the animator director. We basically took these characters from the period of the late 40s and early 50s, when Chuck Jones was first putting Daffy and Bugs together as antagonists, and when the animation style was becoming a little less Disneyesque. And we had a very specific idea of who these characters were. There were a lot of times when they asked why Bugs couldn't do this or that, and we had to explain that Bugs doesn't do that, Daffy does that. These characters are very specific, they have very specific neuroses and very specific character traits. If you break from those to any real degree then you're not being true to the character.

Looking at the effects-driven films you've done over the years, it looks like you're a bit of a technophile...

I'm certainly not a technophobe. I've often done commercials or taken on certain jobs just because I want to see what the technology is doing. If you're absent for a couple of years, all of a sudden everything can have changed by the time you come in and you have to catch up. This film actually took so long to make that the technology had significantly improved by the time we'd finished the picture.

Do your early years working with Roger Corman come in handy, even on big budget films like this?

I've found it invaluable working on studio movies, because even though they take forever, and cost a fortune, there is a certain desperation in being able to find quick solutions to problems that come up. You don't really have the time to noodle about and get 25 more writers in, because the movie's coming about in two weeks. So yeah, I've found it to be a tremendous help.