The chance to work with Richard Williams, above with a Rabbit storyboard, was an important reason why so many animators wanted to work on the film. Courtesy of Tom Sito.

AF: What was it like to work with Richard Williams? What lessons that he taught are still with you today?

JB: Dick was a great guy to work for. He led by example and always expected very high quality out of everyone. The big thing I learned from him early on was to "follow the brief." In commercial art, you are always dealing with other people's expectations, and you can't just do whatever you want. I learned how to ask questions of my superiors so I could always give them what they were expecting (and maybe a little bit more).

AF: Do you see Roger Rabbit as a major turning point for Disney, and for animation as a whole?

JB: As far as Roger being the start of the renaissance at Disney in the late '80s, I think it would have happened anyway, with the change in management at the studio, but there is no doubt in my mind that Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a big jump start. It also brought a lot of new blood to the studio (including me).

Richard Williams
Bill Desowitz: So, what is your take on how Roger Rabbit came about?

Richard Williams: It was very obvious that Disney and Spielberg went into this temporary marriage because Disney owned the book but Spielberg had the 15 to 30-year-old market. And Disney had lost it. So it was very clear that Disney was the bank and Spielberg was the creative drive, and then Disney, as we went along, came in and gave us animators and became more creatively involved. And we knew it was going to work right from the start: we did a camera test at ILM with the rabbit. Bob Zemeckis was worried that we couldn't get the lighting effect, so they set up an obstacle course to see if it would work and I animated the rabbit and Ken Ralston oversaw the test. He was just fabulous to work with. Anything we sent to him they improved because they were doing the final optical printing. You know, there was only one computer shot in the whole movie: a motion control that Ken did where Jessica Rabbit went around the old comedian, Stubby Kaye. Otherwise, everything was sticky tape, pens, pencils. When I went to ILM back then I was just shocked that it was the same as us: rubber bands, sticky tape, erasers.

At one point, the budget was running low, the pressure to finish was harsh and there were thousands of characters left to animate. A horrible preview using pencil tests was disheartening, but Zemeckis and the studio stuck it out.

BD: What was it like working with Zemeckis?

RW: The thing with Bob was that I never saw anybody learn so fast. He learned all about animation in a sort of twinkling. And he was always very clear about what he wanted to do. Otherwise, the only thing was time pressure: there was so much work in it. I used to go to the door to my office and yell, "Draw faster!" So it was challenging all the way down the line but you had to do it fast just to get the thing through.

BD: And what was fun about it?

RW: The fun was we knew it was going to work. But it sure wasn't a party. I remember I bumped into Bob one Thanksgiving or Christmas, and I think I was going to Canada and he was going to America, and I said: "Jesus Christ: it's working!" And he said, "Absolutely." And I said that it felt like throwing darts at a target and we seem to be hitting the target. And he agreed.

BD: What was Zemeckis like with animation?

RW: When he came to me, all the animation directors that he had spoken to -- and there were quite a lot of them -- said we need a locked off camera so the animators wouldn't have to keep drawing things on ones or turning things. And I'd already done some commercials where I violated all the animator's rules and had a moving camera. Bob said he wanted to shoot a modern movie where the camera moves, and I said, "Exactly: shoot a modern movie and we'll draw a rabbit in it." But he said, "All the animators say that's difficult." And I said, "Those lazy bastards! We're supposed to turn things: that's our job!

BD: So he approached it like a live-action movie.

RW: Absolutely. And Bob would shoot it, we'd blow up the big photo stats and stick 'em on the drawing board and draw a rabbit on it.