Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Production Cels

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) is a technically-marvelous film blending animated, ink-and-paint cartoon characters and flesh-and-blood live actors, in a convincing comedy/mystery noir thriller, set in Los Angeles in 1947. Earlier efforts to combine humans and ink-and-paint cartoon characters side-by-side in a film [Disney's Song of the South and Mary Poppins, for example] are considered primitive next to this film.

The film is a delightful spoof of the hard-boiled Sam Spade films and reminiscent of the recent Chinatown (1974), (complete with a sultry, femme fatale humanoid Toon named Jessica Rabbit (Jessica Turner, uncredited, with singing voice by Amy Irving, executive producer Steven Spielberg's wife at the time), and a case involving alleged marital infidelity ("pattycake"), murder, a missing will, blackmail, and a conspiracy hatched by evil, Toon-hating Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) (of Cloverleaf Industries). Doom's plan is to bring freeways to LA, thereby ruining the existing Pacific & Electric Red Car public transport electric trolley system. [There was, in fact, a real-life corporate conspiracy to 'doom' the trolley system and encourage automobile use, orchestrated by General Motors, Firestone, and Standard Oil of California.]

The film was a milestone in animation history, one of the top-grossing films of its year, and it received four Academy Awards, one of which was a Special Achievement Award for Animation Direction (Richard Williams). Director Robert Zemeckis must be credited for piecing together the production that involved hundreds of animators, and the special visual effects of George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic, Amblin Entertainment, Walt Disney and other studios. As a result, it was the most expensive film of its decade, at $70 million.

It was filmed as a tribute to the entire pantheon of cartoon characters from Disney, Warner Bros., and MGM, and other studios in the 1940s. Famous cartoon voices were used (Mel Blanc for Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, Bugs Bunny, Sylvester, and Porky Pig and Charles Fleischer for Roger, Greasy, Psycho, and Benny the Cab), and the live-action characters were coordinated with cartoon characters - the animations were drawn and inserted after the live photography was shot. Its revolutionary animation: (1) used light and shadows in new ways to produce remarkably realistic, 3-D effects; (2) extensively panned and moved the camera to reduce a static look; and (3) had the car'toon' characters interact flawlessly with real-world objects and flesh-and-blood people as much as possible.

In this landmark film, the Toons include appearances and cameos by Donald and Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird and Sylvester, Woody Woodpecker, the Weasels - from Disney's The Wind in the Willows, Mickey Mouse, three hummingbirds from Disney's Song of the South, the Road Runner and the Coyote, the black Crows and Dumbo from Disney's Dumbo, Betty Boop, Droopy Dog, and many more. Unprecedented cooperation from Warner Brothers and Disney allowed for classic cartoon characters to be seen together for the first time, such as Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny parachuting together, having both Tinkerbell and Porky Pig end the movie, and, of course, the famous piano duel between Daffy and Donald Duck in a Cotton Club-style nightclub, the Ink & Paint Club.