Charles Fleischer is serious. Really serious. Seriously serious. He's explaining why he liked dressing up in a bunny suit.
"It just didn't make sense to do Roger Rabbit's voice in my street clothes," he says. "Anytime you do a movie, you wear a costume. There's something about putting on a costume that helps in the transformation process. It seemed like the right thing to do. So, I wore the costume every day."
Fleischer, of course, voiced the Toon superstar in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the groundbreaking combination of live action footage and animation artistry. Normally, in animation, the voices are recorded first so that the animators have something to draw to (and the voices are frequently re-recorded later to include animators' changes). This was also true of Roger Rabbit, but the film's extensive live-action sequences called for special measures. So, Fleischer, an accomplished stand-up comic and actor, was on the film set daily during principal photography to interact with co-star Bob Hoskins, feeding him lines from off-camera while dressed in a bunny suit.
"I had them make up the suit especially for me," Fleischer explains. "I said I'm playing the part of Roger Rabbit. I should look like Roger Rabbit. At first, Hoskins said [imitating Hoskins' voice], 'He's out of his mind. The bleedin' yank's totally out of his mind.' Then, a few weeks later, Bob thanked me because it really helped him.
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