Eddie Valiant is a private investigator who used to have fun at his job back when he and his brother worked for Toon Town. But then his brother was killed by a toon and he became an alcoholic and now hates toons. Eddie gets hired by cartoon producer R.K. Maroon to do a little spying on a toon named Jessica Rabbit, the wife of Maroon’s biggest star, Roger Rabbit. What Eddie finds out is that Jessica could be having an affair with Marvin Acme, the owner of Acme Corporation and Toon Town. Eddie takes pictures of Jessica and Acme playing patty cake which upsets Roger Rabbit. Marvin Acme is found dead after someone dropped a safe on his head. The Los Angeles Police Department suspect it was Roger Rabbit because he went berserk when he saw those photos of his wife and Acme playing patty cake. Roger is being hunted down by a man named Judge Doom, who found a way to destroy toons with this toxic he calls dip. In other news Acme’s will is no where to be found. The toons believe that Acme’s will allows all the toons to be left in charge of Toon Town. Roger finds Eddie, tells him he had nothing to do with Acme’s death and begs him for his help. Roger was framed.
Blaine: Robert Zemeckis was already interested in doing the project back in 1984 after he read a few drafts of the script written by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman, but Touchstone Pictures didn’t think he could pull it off so they didn’t hire him. But then the year after, Robert really made something of himself after “Back to the Future” was released and became a classic. Touchstone called Robert back in and wanted to know if he was still interested in directing “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” and he said yes. There was a lot of talk of how and what it would take to make “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” into a film because it was a mixture of live action and animation, even though there have been movies like that before (“Mary Poppins”, “Song of the South”, “Anchors Aweigh” and “Pete’s Dragon”), but “Roger Rabbit” was going to require more to it. For one the animated characters would have to be holding live action objects from time to time. What Robert wanted was a lot of the cartoon characters everyone knows from Disney, Warner Bros and Acme to be in this movie.
They made a little short as a test showing this detective with a cartoon rabbit, Roger, who would crash into live action objects. They showed it to Touchstone and they were so impressed with how professional it looked. There used to be a rule that you could never move the camera in movies that are a mixture of live action and animation because it took a lot of work to have the animated characters moving as the camera moves, but the rules changed for this project because it’s what Robert wanted. There’s this one shot showing picture frames on Eddie’s brother’s desk and the cinematographer said that the shot shows Eddie and his brother’s history as the camera is moving and focussing on one frame at a time.
These rubber dummies of Roger Rabbit were made to shoot one take of a scene so the actors would have something to talk to. Then they would take out the doll and shoot a different take where the actor is just looking and talking to air.
Bob Hopkins wasn’t a well known actor yet, but he was able to do a really great 1940s American accent because he is British. Screenwriters Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman had to figure out why Bob’s character, Eddie, hated toons. They were having dinner at a restaurant when they thought about Eddie having a brother who was killed by a toon.
Bob and the other actors went through mime training for scenes where they are holding a toon and they are feeling the weight of it. It was a lot of work. Bob Hopkins would have to focus a lot during a take at someone who wasn’t there. Bob used a lot of imagination to believe Roger was right next to him. It was his physical movements that helped make the special effects and the animated department add in toon characters like Roger Rabbit into the shot. By picking up or pulling or grabbing an imaginary character.
They cast actors to do the voices of the cartoon characters and they would be on set to perform behind the camera. Charles Fleischer was the voice of Roger Rabbit and he would always show up on set wearing a Roger Rabbit costume with bunny ears. Charles and Bob would rehearse with each other before shooting a scene because even though there wasn’t anything next to Bob, still he could hear Charles’ voice on set and Bob would be communicating to the voice he was hearing. There were some guys working on a “Superman” movie and they saw Charles Fleischer dressed up in a Roger Rabbit costume thinking that’s what the rabbit was going to look like. But what they didn’t know was that he was just providing his voice. He wore the costume just for fun.
In the first draft of the script, Baby Eddie was the villain and then in another draft, the villain was Jessica Rabbit. When Christopher Lloyd read the script and read through his part, he figured out that his character was the bad guy before it was revealed. They gave him vulture like qualities to his face like his nose for one.
They made these robotics, that were like stick figures, to hold props like a cigar, a gun or a plate. Then later the animators would replace those robotics in the shot by drawing a cartoon character over it. Other times the props would be on string.
Richard Williams was in charge of the animation. He based Roger Rabbit on a few cartoon characters. Roger has Porky Pig’s bowtie, Goofy’s pants, Micky Mouse’s hands from the 40s. He thought of Roger having a clown like quality to him with the red hair due and white color fur. Roger’s ears movement was mimicking ballet motion and movements.
The movie was all edited together before they added in the cartoons. Robert knew what he wanted for this movie and in the editing room he would show clips to Richard and described what he wanted the animated character to be doing and how to act and Robert would be there with a pencil and paper drawing what Robert was describing to him. There was a lot of shots the animation department had to go through drawing and adding cartoons into these shots. Some shots were challenging like putting Dumbo behind live action blinds.
There was 1,004 shots and each frame of the movie would be printed out in large form and the animators would put paper over it and draw the cartoon characters in pencil sketches. Then they would draw them on clear paper and add color to them. And after that they would print them one at a time. Then ILM would combine the live action and animation shots together as one using an optical printer.
My rating on “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” is five out of five stars.
Director Robert Zemeckis and the star Roger Rabbit
