Fastest with the Mostest

Fastest with the Mostest is a 1960 Warner Bros. cartoon in the Looney Tunes series featuring Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner. It was released on January 9, 1960, making it the first Warner Bros. cartoon of the 1960s.

Plot
Wile E. Coyote sneaks up on a firework and lights it, hoping for it to explode when Road Runner passes over it, but it explodes instantly. The credits are shown within the dust. Road Runner, significantly late, zooms into view. The action resumes and both characters begin the chase. Wile catches up to Road Runner and passes him, but on his side. Wile continues to move further from Road Runner until signaled. Then, as he is looking backwards, he fails to spot the end of the cliff and falls off. Wile shakes it all off and climbs the cliff in sections, visibly straining himself. Finally, he hangs on to the very edge and pulls himself barely up onto the end of the cliff. Road Runner then scares Wile off the cliff. Wile E. looks backwards and soon deduces the situation, thus causing gravity to activate a second time.

Wile then plans to drop a bomb on Road Runner from a hot air balloon. However, while inflating the balloon with his mouth, the balloon inflates the coyote instead and Wile floats and bounces through the air, desperately holding onto the bomb before he deflates and flies through the sky. When all the air leaves him, Wile sighs with relief until he sees he is holding the bomb. He lets go of it, but falls through the sky. Wile attempts to slow down, but the bomb catches up to him. Wile hides to avoid the bomb, but the bomb lands where he is hiding. Wile spots the bomb's end poking through the rock and hears it "ticking", and thus unscrews the head and takes out the explosive. The bomb's clock stops ticking, but a relieved Wile is blown up when it abruptly starts ticking again.

This time, Wile uses trickery to stop Road Runner. He posts several white signs along Road Runner's path, including "ANXIETIES AND ULCERS" "COME FROM EXCESSIVE SPEED" "SLOW DOWN!" "LIVE LONGER" and"USE TRANQUILIZED BIRD SEED!", in an effort to get Road Runner to stop. Road Runner obligingly munches while Wile prepares to lower a bucket to trap Road Runner. However, he steps on the bucket and cannot get his foot out of it. Finally, he falls down and has to hold onto the string to stay up, then ends up twisted inside the bucket. Wile unties the rope, but then sees that was the very rope holding himself up. He hides in the bucket prepared for impact, but the bucket hangs itself up on a tree branch. Wile relaxes hunched in the bucket until the excessive weight on one side causes Wile to fall out again and down to the ground. Road Runner provides a convenient spring, and Wile thanks his rival with a small "THANKS" card as he is bounced directly up into the first branch and is hung up by the wire.

Wile hammers a Detour sign into the road, directing Road Runner to go down a very dangerous outcropping. Road Runner stops at the very edge, and Wile follows, trapping the bird. Wile then prepares to eat him, but the thin outcropping breaks and sends Wile to the ground, with Road Runner standing on a floating piece of rock.

Wile's own utensils follow him down, scrape the skin off his back, and spear his tail, despite his efforts to avoid them. Wile leaps all the way into the air and rejoins his napkin, and both are hung up on another branch. The entire tree then falls down, pounding Wile through the ground and into a waterfall. Wile is swept downstream, under a bridge, and through an entire network of progressively thinner pipes before his arm protrudes out of a spigot. He twists the spigot and the rest of himself comes out, leaving Wile staring at Road Runner, still standing on the floating piece of rock.

Wile then holds up a sign to Road Runner and the audience: "I wouldn't mind - except that he defies the law of gravity!" The camera cuts to Road Runner's response on a second sign: "Sure - but I never studied law!" Road Runner leaps off the floating rock with a mighty burst of speed onto a safe haven far to the right (not toward the much closer road) as the cartoon fades.

The title is a reference to the epigram "Git thar fustest with the mostest", often erroneously contributed to Nathan Bedford Forrest.