This is a film which is basically a triad" says Robert Zemeckis, "this huge, live-action, period detective story, this massive special effects film, and this full-length animation film, all combined into one movie."
So, since Back to the Future, as well as his wife having their first child, the 38-ycar-old director has made three movies — which you can see for the price of one admission ticket wherever Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is playing.
On screen, the story of Toons in LA and humans in Toontown may seem to proceed effortlessly, but it was the result of a complex, painstaking and unimaginably detailed production effort, beginning with the screenplay. "The script was sent to me by my agents in Los Angeles," Zemeckis says, sitting in the screening room at the production's London animation studio, "This was along lime ago. It has been around for years and years; I read the script the first time before I even did Romancing the Stone [which he discussed in STARLOG #85].
"The Roger Rabbit screenplay did two things: one, it created a story where this type of animation, both in its artistry and its humor, had a place to be seen, because I realized that animation humor is something that there is no forum for anymore. It used to be done in short films played in theaters, and then television destroyed the art form, because they just became these Saturday morning commercials for toys.
"Animated features tended to have to be stories about fables and fairies and magic and things like that, and cute little mice; and so suddenly there was this great idea for a movie where you could actually have a character who was like a short film-type cartoon character, where it was extremely funny. That was the most important thing that attracted me to the project.
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