Who Framed Roger Rabbit

[JD]

Oh, I guess I can see that. I guess my thought behind it is that animation is so different from live action that it deserves it's own recognition.
I don't think there's anything to stop an animated movie from getting nominated for Best Picture too. If Parasite can get both Best Picture and Best International Feature Film, then I don't see why something couldn't win both Best Picture and Best Animated Film if it's that good.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think there's anything to stop an animated movie from getting nominated for Best Picture too. If Parasite can get both Best Picture and Best International Feature Film, then I don't see why something couldn't win both Best Picture and Best Animated Film if it's that good.

I hope you're right. But there's long been a prejudice toward animation in America, a sentiment that it's less important or worthy than live action. I guess giving it a category of its own is a way to compensate for that, but at the same time it makes it more unlikely for an animated film to break through.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Its partly that the academy knew that aninated films fron studios like pixar had - for successive years- been getting very high rankings and scires on rotten tomatoes.. but the academy didnt want to seem like they were ignoring those films.

It's a consolation prize

 

[gblews]

I hope you're right. But there's long been a prejudice toward animation in America, a sentiment that it's less important or worthy than live action. I guess giving it a category of its own is a way to compensate for that, but at the same time it makes it more unlikely for an animated film to break through.

Key word here is “ prejudice.” There are just too many academy voters who are just not obliged to vote for an animated feature for Best Picture, solely because it’s animation. I can see some nominations for animated films, maybe, but no wins.

But I do get what you’re saying about the ghettoization of certain genres. Comedies and genre films just can’t catch a break either.

Its partly that the academy knew that aninated films fron studios like pixar had - for successive years- been getting very high rankings and scires on rotten tomatoes.. but the academy didnt want to seem like they were ignoring those films.

It's a consolation prize

Yeah, for a minute there I thought they might start calling the animated feature Oscar the “Pixar Award.” But fortunately, some new blood has emerged and with it, some diversification in the animated feature category.

 

[Tosk]

I think you must've fallen prey to the Mandela Effect

The Mandela Effect does not refer to an individual false memory, it is when multiple people experience the same false memory.

 

[Christopher]

The Mandela Effect does not refer to an individual false memory, it is when multiple people experience the same false memory.

Serves me right for trying to use a trendy term...

 

[Maurice]

<unhumblebrag>I met and briefly chatted up Richard Williams 11 years ago</unhumblebrag>. I posted the following when he died last year:

Pardon a minor detour from the usual here, but I just heard that master animator Richard Williams has passed away (obit on The Hollywood Reporter (link)). You may not know the name but most people know his work, most notably, his turn on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, for which he shared the Oscar for best visual effects, and also received a special achievement Oscar for his animation direction.

What I appreciated most about his work was his dedication to the craft and his (sometimes arguably self-destructive) refusal to take the easy way out. When everyone else was animating on twos (one drawing for every two frames of film) he was animating on ones. When others insisted animated characters combined with live-action actors had to be done (like Mary Poppins) in a flat frame he'd say "that's lazy" and animate them in moving perspective. When to anyone else a background was just something you animated characters against, he would do dizzying drawings where geometric patterns on flat surfaces became Escher-esque insanities (as in his unfinished masterwork The Thief and the Cobbler).

I'm not usually one to trot out news like this, but I've had my opportunity to meet and talk to quite a number of film types and even some Oscar winners. Mr. Williams was one of them. The day I met him I posted the following on my old blog (I am fixing a few typos though):

(He) Framed Roger Rabbit
Nov. 1, 2008

When I speak to my sister on the phone, the moment I mention something I'm thinking about doing she jokes, "I don't want to hear about it!", impressing again and again all the options I have here in the Bay Area compared to where she lives.

Well, she's right about that. Last night I opened one of the emails I receive regularly from the Cartoon Art Museum. Usually I glance at what's coming up in the exhibits and that's it. This time I opened the email and did a Tex Avery-esque jaw drop when I saw that Richard Williams was doing a presentation. I think my eyes then performed a cartoon "take" when I saw that this was to be held Sunday Nov. 2nd at the Balboa Theater. The Balboa is only a few blocks away, in my neighborhood. I could walk to see Richard Williams!

As the title of this entry gives away, Richard Williams was the animation director on the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (no ? symbol), and while that's what he is best known for, his is an impressive body of work: winner of three Oscars, maker of over 2,500 commercials, as well as arguably the two best title sequences for Pink Panther movies (The Return of the Pink Panther and The Pink Panther Strikes Again), and title sequences for the original Casino Royale, What's New Pussycat, and titles for and animated interstitials for The Charge of the Light Brigade.

The presentation included Q&A and a half dozen examples from Mr. Williams' massive 16 DVD "master class" on animation: The Animator's Survival Kit — Animated. Mr. Williams is a charming and gracious man, and comes across as just a genuinely nice human being.

After the presentation, he sat in the lobby and autographed books and DVDs and took time to talk to and answer anyone's questions. Before coming to show I'd decided I didn't want anything from the man, not even an autograph. But I wanted to give something back, so I waited until most of the people had finished with him, then I walked up, dropped down to eye level next to his table, and said, "Mr. Williams, I've been following your work since before Roger Rabbit, and I remember dying for that film to come out. I've read probably 50 interviews with you and have many in my archive, and I just wanted to say how much I appreciate your work." He looked sweetly embarrassed, and his wife asked me my name; I replied, I shook his hand, and I left. To say more would be to gush, but I just wanted to express that to him and not make it about me.
​

Some non-Roger Rabbit Williams' work (watch it, it's great stuff):

Titles for The Pink Panther Strikes Again

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Titles for The Return of the Pink Panther

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Background insanity in The Thief and the Cobbler (jump to 1:16 for that action)

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Titles for The Charge of the Light Bridage, done in the style of 19th century newspaper cartoons.

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The title for his DVD series (including over 38,000 drawings by Williams himself...and no rotoscope!)

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​

RIP Richard.​

Back to the subject, I know a lot about Roger Rabbit, as I was neck deep in animation at the time it came out.

The production had a lot of problems getting all the animation done in time, especially given WIlliams' perfectionism. Towards the end they threw animators at it, which results in some variable quality here and there.

Apparently the licensing and marketing people at various studios wanted their characters to look like their modern incarnations, so the animators said, "sure, okay" but then went and based many of them on the 1940s models anyway (Bugs and Daffy notably look like they're out of a WWII Bob Clampett cartoo-oooon).

They could not clear the Popeye characters or Tom & Jerry, amongst others, because rights were already optioned elsewhere.

The story is very unlike source novel basically and instead a toon riff on the Jake Gitties Chinatown film series, with lots of nods to the original...several shots are right out of that film and Jessica Rabbit drives the same kind of car as Evelyn Mulwray. The plot element of the dismantling of L.A.'s streetcars was to be a basis of Robert Towne's never-made third Gitties film in the prospective trilogy: Chinatown about how L.A. got its water, The Two Jakes about how it got its oil, and this unmade 3rd film Gittes vs. Gittes about land (hence the Toontown land grab) and about how L.A. lost its trains and got its freeways.

 

[Christopher]

Apparently the licensing and marketing people at various studios wanted their characters to look like their modern incarnations, so the animators said, "sure, okay" but then went and based many of them on the 1940s models anyway (Bugs and Daffy notably look like they're out of a WWII Bob Clampett cartoo-oooon).

The Starlog series says that they did fake animation that they sent to the studios for approval while continuing on with the real stuff in secret, at Williams's encouragement. Some of the animators almost got fired when the results were seen, but Spielberg and Zemeckis ran interference for them.

The story is very unlike source novel basically

And much better than the novel. The book is rather weird; it was set in the then-present day and the Toons were comic strip characters who spoke in word balloons, which doesn't make much sense. Especially since they were described as doing the same kind of death-defying slapstick gags that are more common in animation. They had the power to create short-lived duplicates of themselves that would "die" for the gag, and IIRC the plot involved the real Roger being murdered (apparently) and his double/remnant hiring Eddie to solve his murder before he faded out. Only things weren't what they seemed, of course, and both Roger and Jessica were pretty nasty characters, and it was a much darker, more adult, much less fun story than the movie. It's one of those movies that soundly disproves the belief that an adaptation has to be faithful to be good, and the belief that the adaptation is never as good as the original.

 

[Maurice]

The Starlog series says that they did fake animation that they sent to the studios for approval while continuing on with the real stuff in secret, at Williams's encouragement. Some of the animators almost got fired when the results were seen, but Spielberg and Zemeckis ran interference for them.

I have a difficult time swallowing that. They might've done storyboards or key poses for a pose reel but given the crunch they were under I doubt it was more than that. But that rarely stops people from embellishing a good story.

 

[Tosk]

Maurice, any scoop on why Bugs appears in both '40s (skydiving) and '80s (last scene) incarnations?

 

[Maurice]

Maurice, any scoop on why Bugs appears in both '40s (skydiving) and '80s (last scene) incarnations?

Probably the end scene was a unit at a different studio who weren't in on the fix.

As to screen partity, if you watch the Mickey-Bugs skydiving scene you'll notice Mickey enters the scene about 3 seconds before Bugs and pulls his ripcord about a second after. In the end scene Bugs gets a hare more screentime than Mickey due to panning, but not 4 seconds worth. Since the requirement was apparently equal time, my guess is that bit outside the studio is how they balanced the books.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Probably the end scene was a unit at a different studio who weren't in on the fix.

As to screen partity, if you watch the Mickey-Bugs skydiving scene you'll notice Mickey enters the scene about 3 seconds before Bugs and pulls his ripcord about a second after. In the end scene Bugs gets a hare more screentime than Mickey due to panning, but not 4 seconds worth. Since the requirement was apparently equal time, my guess is that bit outside the studio is how they balanced the books.

Bugs can also be seen walking on the backlot earlier in the film

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

About 9:43 you can see Bugs walking around the backlot

 

[Maurice]

Bugs can also be seen walking on the backlot earlier in the film

That's what I was referring to, but I mistakenly wrote "outside the studio" instead of "on the studio lot".

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

That's what I was referring to, but I mistakenly wrote "outside the studio" instead of "on the studio lot".

I apologize, I misread the end of your paragraph. My bad,
Still I always wanted an excuse to get a screengrab of it.

 

[Christopher]

I have a difficult time swallowing that. They might've done storyboards or key poses for a pose reel but given the crunch they were under I doubt it was more than that. But that rarely stops people from embellishing a good story.

Come to think of it, it probably would've been key poses at most, since the in-betweening would've been done by different people.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

And much better than the novel. The book is rather weird; it was set in the then-present day and the Toons were comic strip characters who spoke in word balloons, which doesn't make much sense. Especially since they were described as doing the same kind of death-defying slapstick gags that are more common in animation. They had the power to create short-lived duplicates of themselves that would "die" for the gag, and IIRC the plot involved the real Roger being murdered (apparently) and his double/remnant hiring Eddie to solve his murder before he faded out. Only things weren't what they seemed, of course, and both Roger and Jessica were pretty nasty characters, and it was a much darker, more adult, much less fun story than the movie. It's one of those movies that soundly disproves the belief that an adaptation has to be faithful to be good, and the belief that the adaptation is never as good as the original.

It's been about thirty years since I read the book. I have the vague memory of a couple of scenes, but in the main the impression in my head is that I didn't like it.

I also read the sequel, which I remember nothing about. And I have just discovered that Gary K. Wolf wrote a third book that came out in 2013, which I knew nothing about.

 

[Christopher]

I also read the sequel, which I remember nothing about. And I have just discovered that Gary K. Wolf wrote a third book that came out in 2013, which I knew nothing about.

I read that Wolf set the sequel in the movie continuity and dismissed the first novel as a dream, though why a '40s cartoon character would have a dream set in the '80s was (as KRAD would put it) left as an exercise for the reader.

 

[Maurice]

Well, then there's the script for the unmade WWII-set prequel, which IIRC was titled Toon Platoon...