This hour long panel included guests who worked on the Who Framed Roger Rabbit film, discussing the process from taking the book to the screen, the creation of the characters and the process of animation and special effects. Producer Don Hahn served as host, and guests were Andreas Deja, Tom Sito, James Baxter, Nick Ranieri, Dave Bossert and Charles Fleischer. Here's what was said about Jessica Rabbit:
I want to talk about Jessica.
(Audience hoots and cheers, photo of Rita Hayworth comes on screen)
And Andreas, I want you to talk about Russell Hall. There was an animator on the show who's not with us today. We looked and looked for someone to design Jessica and animate Jessica, teach us everything we could possibly know about Jessica. We looked at Rita Hayworth in these stills. We had drawing classes, this is Walt Stanchfield our drawing instructor, with a leggy supermodel trying to show her how to walk. Walt was frustrated that she couldn't pose right so he finally got up and posed himself.
Charles Fleischer:
He's still doing that now by the way.
Don Hahn:
He's still stuck in that position. But, Jessica was animated by this rather shy looking gentlemen on the right, named Russell Hall. Andreas, what do you remember about Russell?
I do remember him very well. He's one of those animator types who's rather quiet, puts his performance on paper, doesn't talk a lot. He's very deep and thinks about stuff. He kind of had a hard time getting the character going. There was something already to look at because Richard Williams himself had done a test with Jessica and she looked a little too live-actiony I remember. She didn't look like a cartoon character that would fit in with the others, so there needed to be some kind of a change, graphically and how she was animated so it was up to Russell to… do.. uh.. her. Which also sounds funny. I'll have to be careful with my choice of words.
(Audience laughs)
Don Hahn:
In terms of sketching her.
Andreas Deja:
Sketching her, that's it.
Don Hahn:
(Jessica Rabbit sketches shown) Some of Russell's earliest drawings, and I think the key to Jessica, was to exaggerate certain parts of the anatomy.
(Audience laughs)
Andreas Deja:
Once he got a hold of her.. he really.. got her.
(Audience laughs)
James Baxter:
Do you remember Russell animating? I used to walk past his office - he used to smoke all the time, so he would be hunched over his desk like this and then he'd get up and go across the room and kind of go (gets up and imitates walk) and he's like the most unlike Jessica person you've ever met. But, it's him. He made that work, it's amazing.
Andreas Deja:
You also did a few scenes with her, right?
James Baxter:
I did a couple, yeah, towards the end. I did the last shot where Roger and Jessica are walking away to the rubble. I did one row of the crowd.
Don Hahn:
I want to go into the Ink and Paint Club and talk about Jessica and this scene. The set of the Ink and Paint Club was built at Elstree Studios and it was on risers about six feet off the ground - that's so puppeteers could run around underneath the set and have trays that later would become the trays that the penguins carried around. The set as a whole was pretty interesting. In the center of this shot (above photo was shown), near the square little flag there, you see a girl in a leotard, and she would have been the stand-in model for Jessica. So everybody refers with that girl to understand where she would be standing and where their eyelines would be. We'd shoot that with the stand-in and then we would pull her out and shoot it like an invisible man movie with nobody there at all. The set was huge, a beautiful period set, and then racing around underneath you had these guys. So any times you saw a gun or a prop or a cigarette or any of that stuff in the show that was real and you had these amazing Henson puppeteers just moving that stuff around behind the scenes.
Dave Bossert:
Now you just make that stuff digitally. You made a digital gun and stuff and it looks like a photo real gun.
Don Hahn:
Yeah, but digital is for wimps.
(Audience applauds)
Don Hahn:
It's a lot more fun to draw it. We had these great interactions where Jessica sits on [Bob] Hoskins lap and moves his coat, they were done as split screen shots so we could film the actress actually sitting on Hoskins' lap and moving his coat and then spilt screen her out and then draw in Jessica, because Jessica's figure was unlike any female figure existing in nature.
(Audience laughs)
James Baxter:
I remember what the [photo]stats looked like on those, you could see her hand and then it just faded into nothing. It was so cool.
Don Hahn:
I'm going to show this clip, it's Jessica's song from the Ink and Paint Club
(clip shown)
Don Hahn:
I could use a cigarette. Dave, tell us about that.
Dave Bossert:
Wow I spent months working on rounding her out. Boy, it was a lot of fun.
(Audience laughs)
Dave Bossert:
We actually spent quite bit of time putting on a lot of effects elements to really dimensionalize her and really blend her into that. Toward the end of that you can really see a beautiful shot of her just walking through and the light changing you know as the camera went around. It was a lot of fun I have to say. We enjoyed ourselves on those scenes.
Charles Fleischer:
That's a little creepy dude.
(Audience laughs)
Tom Sito:
I was just going to say Kathleen Turner did the voice for Jessica Rabbit and she was actually eight months pregnant with her first child and she said, "It's great I can be sexy with swollen ankles."
(Audience laughs)
James Baxter:
She wasn't the singing voice though.
Charles Fleischer:
Amy Irving did the singing voice. That was Mrs. Spielberg at the time.
Audience Questions
A cosplayer dressed as Jessica Rabbit was in line to ask a question much to the delight of the crowd and panel.
Q:
I've been trying to get confirmation on this and you touched on it a little bit, but they say that Jessica Rabbit is a "Frankenstein" of classic bombshells, Veronica Lake's Hair, Betty Grable's legs and Marilyn Monroe's backside. Is their any truth to this, would you say that she is a "Frankenstein?"
A:
Charles Fleischer:
Have you seen Frankenstein recently?
(Audience laughs)
Charles Fleischer:
Is the moon made of cheese?
Q:
Is she bits and pieces all put together?
Charles Fleischer:
She may be an amalgamation of many fantasies as per se to my friend over here. Ain't no way that girl is Frankenstein. I don't see any bolts or any green skin or any ugliness.
James Baxter:
I don't think it was ever written down as like a document like Jessica is certain percent this, this, this and this - you know, body part this, that. There were definitely discussions, during the design faze, names brought up - Rita Hayworth. It was more of a casual thing. It was just left to Russell to solidify it, to boil it down.
Nick Ranieri:
But it was also caricature. It's a caricature of a voluptuous…
Dave Bossert:
Pin-up-girl. A 1940's pin up girl.
Nick Ranieri:
Yeah! That's the heart of animation in a way. Oh, and I'm sure you're gonna want a hug, right?
(Audience laughs)
Q:
Has any movement been made, are you aware on that front about a sequel?
A:
Charles Fleischer:
There is movement… but it's not in the front.
(Audience laughs)
Don Hahn:
You don't want to make this movie again without Bob Zemeckis, without Charlie, without these gentlemen, without Steven Spielberg. There have been scripts floating around for the last 25 years, which it's amazing it's been 25 years since this film came out. There's none actively in discussion right now. Sometimes I think in this day of multiple sequels is nice to have a movie that may possibly just be a one-off.
(Audience applauds)
Check out the video of the full Making Roger Rabbit panel discussion by Inside The Magic for more Roger Rabbit stories and to hear the voices of Roger and Benny speak again!
