MAN: If we put the...
ROBERT ZEMECKIS: Now, your mark's
gonna have to be in front of the refrigerator.
Back up, so you can't get your hair in front of the rabbit.
Let's start inching our way through it.
- All right? - All right...
(BELL RINGS)
STEVEN SPIELBERG: thought it was a really interesting idea for a movie.
A detective story
with an irascible rabbit named Roger.
And it just...
I said I wanted... This is a movie that I'd like to go out and see,
but this is a movie we're not going to see overnight.
This is gonna take years to make.
This is not gonna be inexpensive, and it's gonna take a long time.
But if done right, it could be...
I don't wanna say "breakthrough" because...
But it could be something that no one's ever seen before.
Now, the Roger experience took so long that there were many times
when the movie almost was destroyed.
Because we had too much time to tinker and too much time to think.
FRANK MARSHALL: When Bob challenged the animators, who said,
Here, we got all these rules about
”what you can do and not do with the camera,“
Bob said, Look, I'm gonna shoot this movie just like a regular movie,
"and you guys figure out how to put the Toons in it.“
It was a real leap of faith on Bob Zemeckis' part
and kind of brave on his part when you think back about it,
as he was shooting this elaborate invisible man movie,
and with the trust that his team would pull it off later.
There wasn't that much confidence that we were gonna deliver on time.
(CHUCKLES)
And that was the worry,
that he had to make every shot count.
Technologically, yeah, it was a challenge to everybody,
and I had no idea
how difficult my part was gonna be in it.
I'm not sure it was ever green lit.
(CHUCKLES)
It was always sitting there, about to be canceled at every moment,
as I remember.
Every day, we had to sweat it out.
We were flying blind.
There was no way in real time to know
that the actions you were performing on the sets were perfect.
And so, we would just go, “Yeah, let's do it,“
and it would be horribly hard later, but we'd just go ahead and try it.
The worst that could happen is that we fail. (LAUGHS)
DEAN CUNDEY: Before we started, we, of course, all had questions.
Could it be done with the style that we had envisioned?
And so, the answer was a test.
Well, the test was essentially to prove
to Disney and Amblin, I guess,
that the movie could be done and have a certain look to it
that you would believe Roger was in the shot with an actor.
Interaction is the key, you see?
The comedians, like Laurel and Hardy,
are constantly all tied up together, so, we said...
I remember, I think I said, “Have the rabbit run down...“
The guy walks down some stairs, the live actor,
and then the rabbit follows him.
And the rabbit is clumsy anyway,
so he crashes into some boxes at the bottom, or tin cans.
Roger, what the hell are you doing here?
I need a place to hide. I'm in trouble, Eddie.
Then Why'd you run?
In case you haven't noticed, I'm a rabbit.
Right, and you're not gonna
get away from me again this time, are you?
Of course not, Eddie. I would never...
(HORN HONKING)
I wish there was some way that that thing could be in the film,
because when we saw that the first time,
we were, like, going, 'What is that?"
You know, 'This is gonna be fun."
I remember, when it was done,
we showed it to the executives at the studio,
and they were like, 'What is that? Is that, like, a guy in a rabbit suit?“
And it was, in fact, I think the thing that thoroughly convinced Disney
that we were gonna be off on this great journey
that looked like it was going to be possible.
It was clear that all the elements
to do this trick, novelty combination,
they were all existing,
of how to do the backlighting,
how to make the arms look round with little mattes,
and we just said, Oh, gee,
"all we have to do is put the pieces together,“ you see?
The problem is not going to be how to do it.
The problem is going to be time and money.
Shortly before we started production,
all the key people went up to ILM,
and we sat down in the conference room,
and put our heads together about how we're going to pull this movie off
and what our respective jobs were,
and what our needs were from the other people
doing the special effects, doing the animation.
So, we had this meeting,
we thrashed the whole movie out and what our needs were,
and then we flew back to Los Angeles.
But all I remember after that meeting
is being in the San Francisco Airport and having this gigantic headache
and thinking, “How are we ever going to pull this off?“
Well, actually, it was three elaborate movies in one.
It was a period, film noir live-action movie,
it was a feature-length animated movie
and it was a special effects movie.
(MUFFLED SHOUTING)
- (GRUNTING) - (ARMS CREAKING)
Cookie. Ahh.
(TWEETING)
Door opens.
And cut.
MAN: Cut, cut, out, cut, out!
Baby Herman, you were perfect.
You were better than perfect.
- MAN: Wait, wait, wait, so... - I blew the line.
ZEMECKIS: Wait, you gotta get his line in, okay? So...
And cut.
Now, let's figure this out. He comes in...
STARKEY: Bob actually approached the filming of the movie
not unlike the way he would shoot any movie.
Which means he would block the scene as if the cartoon character were there.
There was a sort of rule
that you can never move the camera when you're doing animation,
which no one... I never understood who made up that rule.
And he said, "Why did these other animation directors say you can't?“
And I said, "Because they're lazy."
(LAUGHS) I mean, we're supposed to be able to turn things in every direction.
That's our job.
"So, you can shoot your movie, and we'll just fit the character in.“
He said, "But isn't that a lot of work?" Yeah, twice as much work.
And action!
PHIL NIBBELINK: The first take was always a walk-through
carrying these large rubber dummies of Roger Rabbit and the weasels.
And that would place the camera move
and set up the pacing and staging of the shot.
MAN 1: 70J, take one, reference.
Okay, quiet, we're rolling. And action.
Hello, boys, I didn't hear you come in.
I said, where's the rabbit?
You mean the one with the orange pants and the big, floppy ears
and the buckteeth and the clodhopper feet?
- Yeah, - Haven't seen him.
- Cut. - MAN 2: 121 J, take nine, reference.
ANDREAS DEJA: So, when Bob Hoskins was there, or Joanna Cassidy,
they needed something to focus on,
some reference point, because they just looked into thin air.
And they had the puppet there,
they had the dummy right there on the set.
Does this help?
LOU HIRSCH: They would then take the dolls out
and shoot the scene without the dolls,
and then check them to see if the eyelines were the same.
- Does this help? - Yeah. Thanks.
You mean to tell me that
you could have taken your hand out of that cuff at any time?
No, not at any time. Only when it was funny.
NIK RANIERI: I've seen other shows
that have live-action/animation combination,
and the people aren't looking at them at all. (LAUGHS)
And you can tell, even if they're looking at them,
it looks like they're looking through them,
not looking at them,
looks like they're looking into dead space,
only at the same eyeline.
So, I'm looking at his eyes there...
ZEMECKIS: And then you just drop him to throw the plate
and then back up to that level. Right.
We also put the actors in mime training
so that they can learn how to, say, actually...
Like, Bob Hoskins could learn how to pick up the rabbit by the neck
and learn how to make it look like there was weight in his hand,
and have his hand put around mass and that sort of thing.
You know, it was a lot of work.
Roger!
- Yikes! Stop, will ya'? - Let's use this!
Yah!
Let's get out of here! What are you waitin' for?
There's no damn key!
The rabbit and myself are gonna be in the shot
at the same time, all the way through.
So, I've gotta be focused on that rabbit all the way through the shot.
Come on, Eddie You're my only hope.
- (WEASEL KNOCKING) - Open up in the name of the law!
How do you do that?
Because you hold your hand up like that and focus on it,
then take it away immediately,
your eyes open up to focus, and it's obvious that you're not focused.
- What are we gonna do? - (KNOCKING ON DOOR)
What's all this "we" stuff? They just want the rabbit.
(MACHINE GUN FIRING)
You can't lose sight of the fact that
the thing that makes the animation interaction work
is his side of the performance.
It's him believing that the rabbit is really there.
All the special effects in the world wouldn't work without his performance.
- Remember. You never saw me. - Get out of there!
SIMON WELLS: When he picks the rabbit up,
you can feel 60 pounds of weight in his hand,
even though there's nothing there.
And the way in which he is focused on a place in space,
there's never any doubt that he's got that rabbit right there in his hand.
And then he'll turn away and he'll talk, and he'll turn back to the rabbit,
and he still finds exactly the same place in space every time.
So, whatever it was,
it was some particular thing that he knew how to do
that really nobody else could do.
We're supposed to be hiding. What's wrong with you?
Ow. What's wrong with you?
You're the only person in this theater that isn't laughing.
Is there nothing that can permeate your impervious puss?
ZEMECKIS: Well, every time we saw dailies,
it was like watching an invisible man movie,
because you had this actor looking at nothing
and a voice coming from off-camera in every single shot.
- A Toon killed my brother. - A Toon? No.
That's right A Teen.
We had actors, real actors,
not just the script supervisor or stand-ins,
but we cast American actors in London to be the voices,
and they would be there
and they would give us real-time, full performances.
- Roger, say something! - Look, stars!
Ready when you are, Raoul. (LAUGHING)
CHARLES FLEISCHER: Bob Hoskins and I would rehearse
as though we were two actors in any movie.
Then, I would step off-camera
into this little place that they had sectioned off for me with my own mic
and watch whatever happened,
because if Hoskins were to pull Roger, I would have to react to that.
I came to call it “trans-projectional acting.“
So then, whatever he was doing, I would watch it
and I would project myself into that space.
After a while, it just felt very natural.
The guy who was doing Roger was with me all the time,
was Charlie Fleischer, who is completely nuts.
He, like, the first day, insisted on a costume.
I said, "Charlie, you're a voice."
"Have I said anything about your character?“
"No, no, no."
I'm a rabbit.
Three years of acting school, and I'm a rabbit.
Shakespeare, and I'm a rabbit.
You figure it out.
They had made Roger's clothes up to fit Charlie,
and Charlie, to be in character, wore Roger's clothes.
And I thought to myself,
"If they think I'm wearing a diaper,
(LAUGHING) "they've got another thing coming."
"There's just no way I'm walking around on a set with a diaper on.“
Well, I just approach this like I'd approach any role.
I don't consider this to be a voiceover.
If anything, if it had to be categorized, it's off-camera acting.
I'm just there doing...
I prepare in the same way I'd prepare for any role.
I learn my lines...
(IN BRITISH ACCENT) Just a minute, please, I'm doing an interview.
DON HAHN: Early in the shoot, we broke for lunch
and we all went to the Commissary at the studio,
and Charlie went in wearing his rabbit outfit.
And we overheard a couple of the guys in the Commissary going,
"Geez, did you get a load of that Roger Rabbit movie?
"That's gonna be awful. Did you see the rabbit?“
And we're looking at Charlie going,
"Oh, God, who's gonna wanna go see that?“
HOSKINS: So, anyway, he's sort of over there,
and I'm doing the scene here and he's doing the voice there,
and we're doing some technically very difficult things,
and he starts improvising.
P-please, Raoul.
I can give you stars! Just drop the refrigerator on my head one more time!
STARKEY: In most instances,
Charlie rerecorded the voice of the rabbit in Roger,
in addition to the other voices he did.
But it was still used as a guide track,
and in most cases when we turned the shot over,
that guide track that was shot on the day
was used as a guide track for animating.
(RATTLING)
Wouldn't you know. Locked.
Whoa!
(FLUSHING)
Well, in every single shot in the film,
if there was physical interaction that occurred on the set,
whether minor, bumping something that caused it to move,
or he ran through a window,
creating the shape of a perfect rabbit blasting out of a room,
in any of those instances,
the physical effects team had to create devices
that mimicked what it would be like
if a cartoon character had, in fact, been in the real room
and caused something to happen.
(SINGING) I would love to raise some Cain
Believe me, it's no strain It feels so great 'cause I'm so tight
And look, there is no pain
No pain. No pain No pain...
Ow!
Bob!
MICHAEL LANTIERI: Bob Zemeckis' initial vision on this picture
was to take cartoons and bring them into the real world.
Yah!
To absolutely make you think that
they believe and are walking around with you,
so we had many meetings on where we would draw the line
of where a cartoon ends and the real world starts.
And it doesn't become real practical or funny
unless they interact with something,
unless they pick something up or touch something
or show that they actually are doing the same things that you are.
When you see doors opening and cushions depressing,
and they have guns and all kinds of things.
The interactivity of the cartoons and the real world
was, like, the whole key to making the movie work.
I tell ya, Valiant, the whole thing stinks like yesterday's diapers.
Look at this.
CUNDEY: So, there was a lot of talk about,
"How do we get the props to move in a more realistic way?“
So, there were a couple of key moments.
Baby Herman's cigar, for instance,
was something that he always had,
and we figured he would always gesture with it.
I've been tryin' to make him quit, but he just won't listen to me.
So, George Gibbs had built
a pretty sophisticated rig,
which was exactly the same length as Baby Herman's arm,
and it would go off to a controller off to the side
Where a human, using his own arm, would manipulate the small one.
Well, this system was developed,
because as you can see, you got six degrees of movement,
and there's only six degrees of movement in anything.
It looks a bit, sort of crude, with all of these wires and motors showing,
but, of course, when Baby Herman is drawn in,
all this becomes covered behind the actual cartoon,
so all we'll actually see is our cigar.
I just figured since you were the one who got my pal in trouble,
you might want to help get him out.
I can pay you.
For us at the time, we were looking for as much as possible
how to get the real world connected with the animated world,
and moving the props was key.
And also key was having it done by puppeteers,
because the puppeteers are used to
creating the illusion of life out of unreal objects.
Well, originally, I was asked in
just to look at the octopus bartender scene,
and the animators didn't want to have mechanical rigs,
because they wanted the arms to be constantly moving and flowing.
So, they didn't want to have to paint out mechanical rigs.
So, they wanted an invisible man technique
of moving all the octopus' objects around,
like the shaker and the bar cloth
and pouring the martinis.
STARKEY: It was a surreal experience
to watch the Ink and Paint Club in action without any Toons
and just all these objects moving all over the place
that represented cartoon characters.
- (POUNDING ON PIANO) - (QUACKING) Hey! Hey! Cut it out!
Does anybody understand what this duck is saying?
STARKEY: And it was a veg! difficult sequence to turn over to the animators,
because it was hard to spot every single interactive device
that Bob designed on the day and had going,
but it was really quite something
to try to recreate that in your mind later when you went to animate it.
(GRAND FINALE)
(CACKLING)
Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! (LAUGHNG)
Shooting the live-action part of this movie,
as difficult as it was, was really enjoyable,
because it was working with a sensational crew
of craftsmen and great actors.
MARSHALL: It was the longest movie I'd ever worked on.
I mean, we had a year of post-production,
where we were animating and doing ILM stuff.
And remember, all of this was done by hand.
All of the characters in the movie are drawn by hand.
There's not a computer shot in this movie.
ZEMECKIS: Well, I always thought when I read the script
that there was a specific style and the type of animation
that the film should have.
I mean, the best technique was always done by Disney,
and the most interesting characters were done at Warner Brothers.
What's up, Doc?
And Tex Avery always did, in my opinion,
the funniest humor.
(GRUNTING)
Have a good day, sir.
That's what I wanted in the characters, the combination of those three.
- You heard me. I said, drop it. - Roger, darling!
Yes, it's me, my dearest. I'd love to embrace you,
but first I have to satisfy my sense of moral outrage!
Put the gun down, you bucktoothed fool!
I always knew the technique was gonna work,
because I had a great animator in Richard Williams,
who understood the tone of the movie.
And he's an absolute genius.
- (HORN HONKING) - Aah!
I'll save you, Baby!
(LAUGHS)
WILLIAMS: The 40's cartoons, they all look like clowns.
So, I took the orange hair and the Droopy head,
and semi Bugs Bunny cheeks,
and Porky Pig's bow tie,
Goofy's pants
and Mickey Mouse's yellow hands from the '40's,
and then I thought, the color,
"Well, the thing is, I'll draw it like an American flag. ”
This White rabbit with a red thing and a blue bow tie.
And it looks like an American flag, subliminally,
so everybody liked it.
- Aah! - Aah!
At one stage when I was looking at the animation of Roger,
I looked at his ears.
And once I started focusing on his ears,
it was liked ballet.
And in fact, Richard told me
he was sort of mimicking the motion of these ears
sort of based on, like, ballet motion and movements.
In fact, it was like a physical indication of the emotions of this character.
Get out of that chair!
And the thing about we animators is we're observant.
Our brains may be atrophied in ways,
but we're like children in that we haven't lost our ability to observe.
I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way.
RANIERI: I think, with Jessica,
I think they wanted to bridge the two worlds.
But they didn't want to make her too realistic,
and they didn't want to make her too cartoony,
so they picked somewhere in between.
HAHN: Well, Jessica was hard to design,
because in the concept of the story,
she was Roger's knockout wife.
So, she had to be full of dangerous curves
and had to be everything you would dream of in a cartoon bride.
I'd do anything for my husband, Mr. Valiant.
Anything.
WILLIAMS: If she was real
with that teeny waist and the top and the bottom,
it would just fall over. (LAUGHS)
I mean, it's not possible.
So, that's a rule with animation.
You have to do what you can't do with the camera.
They knew that in 1905, “Don't ever do what a camera will do.“
So, everything in animation
should have an element of impossibility.
But make it believeable.
(SINGING) Get out of here
Give me some money too
Richard did some early tests on Jessica
and looked at old '40s siren kind of actresses
to kind of study and be inspired by great actresses of the period.
And then was able to craft it into something
that you certainly had never seen before
and probably won't see again.
My offer stands firm.
Think about it (KISSING)
This is real important performance stuff here,
because this is where he explains his whole philosophy.
He's here full-figure and he's going,
"But I'm a Toon! Toons are supposed to make people laugh.“
Dick would basically sit with Bob
at a Steenbeck or KEM going through the movie.
And Bob would show the rough cut of the movie
and explain where the characters were going to be
and what the idea was.
WILLIAMS: It was veal clear what he wanted.
And I said to him early on, Look, I'll be your pencil.
You know what you wanna do.
"I'm your living pencil. Tell me and I'll draw it."
So, that's how we worked.
Making animated movies is like watching grass grow.
You direct in slow-motion,
and you're endlessly giving direction to the animators,
and then you get just a few seconds of the performance
every couple of months.
And throughout that process,
you can't let yourself
lose sight of the original movie that you wanted to make.
So, okay, are we all set? Are we all set on this?
There were an enormous number of shots in this film.
I think it was 55 minutes of total animation,
which meant, if you just back-to-back put the animation itself together,
it was 55 minutes.
A normal animated movie has about 85 minutes.
But to have 55 minutes in a live-action movie is huge.
WILLIAMS: I remember Ken Ra/ston saying,
"It's two years away and I'm terrified right now.“
And I said, "Me, too."
And so, at several points, I would go to the door
and just yell, "Draw faster!“ (LAUGHS)
That's what it was like.
NIBBELINK: Roger Rabbit was a very different animation process
than a regular animated feature.
We started out, of course, with a live-action film,
and I would receive a stack of photostats,
and basically, those are black-and-white printouts
of every single frame in the entire film
so that I can put my animation paper on top of that
and draw in relationship to that shot.
DALE BAER: And we would rough out our animation over that
and shoot pencil tests on it to get the director's approval.
And once those got approved, it would go through the normal steps
of in-between and clean-up,
and then those would get sent in to ink and paint,
and it was a little different,
because we had to layer effects elements
over all of the animation.
Zemeckis wanted these characters to be very, very round,
very three-dimensional.
Again, this pre-dates the computer era with round characters.
And so, the effects department
would have to draw highlights and shadows,
and each one of those levels
would have to be then shot individually under the camera.
So, the animation cameraman would shoot Roger Rabbit all alone,
Roger Rabbit as a matte, where they're backlighting him,
Roger Rabbit's highlights and Roger Rabbit's shadows.
And those four pieces of film then would go to ILM,
and using their optical printers,
they would composite it then with the live-action plates.
JON ALEXANDER: As a company, ILM hadn't done any cartoon work,
and this was a really ambitious project for us.
We were much smaller than we are now.
I think we ended up with having 1,004 shots altogether that came through here
and before that, the biggest show we had,
I think, was Jedi, and it was around 300 or so shots.
At one point, people were sort of mumbling, even way back then,
about how 3D we could take this.
Even like, 3D, early computer ideas,
and I was saying, "Absolutely not,"
because if you're trying to do an homage to these great cartoons,
if you take it there, you're not there anymore, you've lost it.
We have to find an in-between area
where we're doing some shadow work, some tone work,
some things that keep them flat,
but it gives you the false impression
that they're actually part of the world they're wandering around in.
And if you hear or see anything, beep the horn twice.
Yeah, that's it, Beep the horn twice.
ALEXANDER: So, the challenge basically
was to try and come up with a way
to make these painted cartoon characters
look like they had some dimension.
And the different characters,
in particular, Roger and Jessica, had a specific look.
Jessica's dress shimmered.
These were just things, as far as optical printing
or optical compositing goes, that were very ambitious for us,
in the sense of just both sheer magnitude
and trying to come up with a look
that was something that people hadn't seen before.
(SINGING) Give me some money too
ED JONES: But really, the animation process
was very much like a photographic sandwich.
It's where we took many different levels of animation,
whether it was the animation performance itself,
the shadow mattes, or the tone mattes that we call them.
And we experimented with those mattes
by putting color through them onto color film stock.
And we would use rim lights.
It's where the rim lights would be kind of like the light edge
that would be affected by the key light.
And we would use these other mattes
to bring out the darkness in the shadow areas
to give it a sculptured look.
(ROGER LAUGHING)
CUNDEY: They had to develop a technique
for compositing characters in and out of focus.
And that allowed us to do focus pulls, from Jessica, for instance,
when she gets out of the car at the Maroon Studios,
and turns and looks up at the window, there is a focus pull
that is perfectly logical in the grammar of film.
And if it wasn't there, the audience would say,
"Oh, there's something wrong with this shot."
So, we had to figure out with the background characters out of focus,
what that degree of out of focus would mean.
And a lot of times it wasn't putting the characters out of focus,
it was the level of diffusion that we were using.
So, then diffusion on an optical printer
could boil down to anything that diffused the light.
So, you can imagine
holding up a sandwich bag from your lunch
in front of the light that's going to the lenses.
"Does this look great?" And having you do tests.
It got a little crazy, all of us were Looney Tunes by the end of it.
(GURGLING) Aah!
- Aah! - (HORN BLOWING)
Thanks. I needed that.
MARSHALL: Another incredibly important element
to this movie is the music,
and that happened after the movie was out together in its rough state.
Then Bob started working with Alan Silvestri.
ZEMECKIS: It was the most difficult music concept work
that Alan and I ever did.
The score is this bizarre blend of Toon music and film noir.
Benny, you go for the cops. I'm gonna save my wife.
Be careful with that gun, This ain't no cartoon, you know.
There was a technical challenge and kind of a psychological challenge.
I think the psychological challenge was,
once again, remembering the idea of blurring this line
between cartoon reality and live action.
So, the challenge there was to try to make choices
that really supported that effort.
We had this spectacular core jazz ensemble
that sat in the middle of the London Symphony.
ZEMECKIS: The music that accompanies Jessica
isn't really scored.
It's done... Like, when she walks into a room,
it was basically, the jazz musicians were watching the screen
and they were playing their interpretive jazz
based on what they were feeling coming off the screen.
And that's how her tracks were laid down.
It was very, very cool.
You've got the wrong idea about me, Mr. Valiant.
I'm a pawn in this, just like Roger.
Can you help me find him? Just name your price and I'll pay it.
I would like to think that the score was appropriate.
That, to me, is the greatest compliment I can ever receive,
is that what I did found its appropriate place
in the overall scheme of the film.
It didn't call attention to itself unnecessarily, but it did its job,
and it provided the support that you would hope it would provide
in a collaborative effort.
I had that feeling throughout that this was gonna work,
and that it would be a real contribution to the medium.
Certainly as far as making animation hot again.
There was something carrying us through this monster that was all good.
And it turned out, when it's done, and it comes out,
and it's that popular and cool, you're going, 'Wow.“
And it's such a huge hit.
And what's funny, too, is those first sneaks...
Has anyone talked to you about the sneaks?
Were a disaster, that we were at.
We went to these sneak screenings at Pasadena with Roger.
Of course it wasn't finished yet.
And they picked the wrong crowd.
They pick this Friday night crowd of 17 to 18 year old guys with their dates
for the first run, and in the first three minutes,
which is the pure cartoon that Richard did, which is brilliant,
they got up and left.
The audience ran out of the theater.
They stampeded out of the theater.
And I remember Jeffrey Katzenberg saying,
"I saw my life flash before my eyes."
It was like a disaster.
When the crowd parts, and the cards are bad,
and the studio's looking for somebody,
everybody gets out of the way
and there's one guy standing there, Zemeckis,
and he had final cut on the movie.
He said, "You know what? I'm not changing a thing.
"I believe in this movie and I think it's gonna work.“
He stuck to his guns.
We didn't give up, we just kept...
And then every preview after that as the film got more and more complete,
the previews went better and better and better and better and better,
until The New York Times said, "This is the biggest movie of the summer."
I have to say that we were pleasantly surprised
at how fast everybody caught on to what we were trying to do,
and that they totally accepted these Toons in this movie.
I hope you're proud of yourself.
NIBBELINK: Well, I was dumbfounded when I saw the completed film.
Because for an entire year and a half,
we were looking always at these rubber dolls going by and pencil tests,
and you never see the finished color until the last week of the show.
And so to sit there and to see the whole thing together,
and with sound and color, it just floored us all.
Yah! It's the Toon Patrol!
Yeah, I think Roger Rabbit changed everybody's life a little bit
when they worked on it.
First of all, you feel like a survivor after you've worked on Roger,
because it was a very difficult movie to make.
And I think everybody looks at it with the same two feelings.
It was incredibly difficult, I'm not sure I would ever do that again.
It's the hardest movie I ever worked on.
And I adored it and I would never trade the experience for anything.
Jeepers, Eddie, that was swell.
You saved my life, How can I ever repay ya'?
(KISSING)
Blecch! For starters, don't ever kiss me again!
(SPITTING)
I love Roger Rabbit. It's odd to say this, but I really love that character.
There's something about him that really just touches me.
I think it's basically 'cause he likes to get laughs and he's got a hot wife.
Look at his wife, and he's a rabbit.
Roger, darling, I want you to know I love you.
I've loved you more than any woman's ever loved a rabbit.
I think always what the trick is to doing something
that's really technically heavy,
is to not lose sight of trying to always have a way
for the audience to identify with the movie on an emotional level.
Even though it's a cartoon rabbit,
the audience is emotionally invested in Roger,
they're emotionally invested in Jessica, and of course, certainly, Eddie.
Well, I'm sorry I yanked your ears.
All the times you yanked my ears?
All the times I yanked your ears.
When it came out, when we went to see the premiere at London,
I remember it was the first film I'd ever made that my kids could see.
And the cinema had all these celebrities with their kids, which is pretty rare.
And I think that's probably the proudest I'd ever been of a movie
with that audience, with those kids.
That was, yeah.
(BELL RINGS)
MAN 1: Hold the work for a moment.
ZEMECKIS: All right, let's try the move and with the playback.
- There we go. - MAN 1: Quiet.
MAN 2: 70m. Take five. - {CLAPBOARD BANGS)
ZEMECKIS: And action.
(RUSTLING)
ROGER: Nobody move. Eddie Valiant, you're under arrest. (BABBLING)
ZEMECKIS: Cut. MAN 1: Cut. Go back.
ZEMECKIS: No. That's a wrap.
(PEOPLE CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)