Robert Zemeckis (center) during a meeting for Rabbit. Courtesy of Tom Sito.

AF: Another element of Who Framed Roger Rabbit that really stands out is the interaction between Warner Bros. and Disney characters. Did Warner Bros. have much input during production? And how were you able to get permission to use all of these classic characters in a single production?

DH: There is one reason that it all worked: Steven Spielberg. His relationship with Warner Bros. was good enough that he could just pick up the phone and get us the characters that Bob wanted. They were great to work with.

At first we had to do some convincing about the style. They assumed we would use the Chuck Jones Bugs and Daffy, but we wanted to do the Bugs and Daffy from the Bob Clampett days. Dave Spafford animated a lot of the Daffy scenes and Andreas [Deja] did an amazing once in a lifetime scene of Bugs and Mickey together. It was all very surreal and will probably not ever happen again.

The most fun I had was working with the great director Richard Fleischer, whose father, Max, had created Betty Boop and KoKo the Clown. He approved every shot, and I loved working with him. Also, working with Mae Questel on Betty's voice and the genius Mel Blanc on the Warner character voices was icing on the cake.

AF: Director Robert Zemeckis faced challenges with Roger that no director ever had before. What was it like working with him on the film? Were you directly involved with the live-action filming in London? Did the animators spend much time on the set, or did your part not come in until after filming was completed?

DH: I can pretty safely say without hyperbole that Bob is a genius. He's one of those rare humans that have extremely high standards, are very technically minded and are extremely well liked by the cast and crew. We all wanted to please Bob. Richard Williams and I were pretty much there from the start, even before the animators came on board. Richard animated a terrific test of Roger that sold Disney on the project, and certainly he and Bob were very close and mutually respected each other. Bob loved Dick for his talent and his bravery when it came to breaking the rules, and Dick loved Bob as a filmmaker. We attended pretty much all of the shoot in L.A. for two weeks; then the company moved to London in early 1987 to shoot at Elstree studio. I would get up early and be picked up by a driver then drop by Dick's house and get him into the car with coffee. We'd drive to Elstree and Dick would hang out on the stage and draw. After the style of the film was set, we started spending more and more time in London to begin prep on animation. We knew the first thing we wanted to animate was the Maroon Cartoon [Somethin's Cookin] at the very beginning of the film. Dick did a lot of the animation himself because he wanted to set the bar high for the look of Roger.

This is Richard Williams' original design for Jessica in a test shot with actor Stubby Kaye playing Marvin Acme. Her final costume and model changed and was based on drawings by animator Russell Hall, who animated Jessica.

As animation started ramping up, we spent less time on set. When the film wrapped, we had regular turn over meetings with Bob and the animators. Bob would go shot by shot thru the film and dictate what he had in mind. Dick would make detailed sketches of the scenes which became the bible for the animation. The animators would rough out a scene and show it to Dick. If it worked, it would go on to Bob for approval. If Dick liked it, a scene would seldom get sent back by Bob, unless it was just a misunderstanding and wrong. Bob trusted Dick that way. I kept the production rolling and made sure the studio was full of great talent, which it was.

It really got exciting when we finally started sending work to ILM and a few weeks later color dailies would start flowing in. The crew went nuts because it was so clear that the film looked like nothing any of us had ever seen before. It really motivated us to push ahead. There were really demoralizing times when the work came slowly. One I remember clearly was the last shot of the film when all the toons come pouring into the Acme Factory.

The budget was running low, the pressure to finish from the studio was harsh and we had thousands of characters left to animate. We brought in meals for the crew, three meals a day, for months. They would go home to sleep and shower and then back on the underground to do it the next day again. Seven days a week. It was a marathon race, but in this race you were strapped together with two hundred other people and forced to run in lock step. To their credit, they delivered and the film got done.

We had a horrible preview in the final months where audience members, who were not used to looking at pencil tests, thought the movie was in black and white. A couple dozen walked out of the preview screening, but to Bob's credit and to the studio's credit, they stuck it out, did a few small edits and the final film was exquisite. Nobody walked out again.

AF: Following the success of the feature, Disney released two Roger Rabbit shorts, which were shown with the big budget, very successful films Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (Tummy Trouble) in 1989 and Dick Tracy (Roller Coaster Rabbit) in 1990. There was a third Roger Rabbit short released in 1993, before a much lower profile Disney film A Far Off Place (Trail Mix-Up), after which Disney abandoned the theatrical short for over a decade. Can you discuss why there was so much lag time between the second and third shorts, and why no subsequent shorts were produced?