Please sign the "Save Roger Rabbit" petition

Here's something I've been wanting to share with you all. I know it's not Muppet/Henson-related, so that's why I'm posting it here on the General Discussion...

Earlier this year, I created a petition to try and get Disney and Amblin Entertainment to put aside their differences so that Roger Rabbit and his co-stars (Jessica, Baby Herman, Benny the Cab, the Weasels, etc.) can be able to appear in new Disney projects.

As a lover of Roger Rabbit and Co., I have been very disappointed with not seeing new Roger Rabbit stuff and not seeing him in the Disney Theme Parks.

As of today (9/22/2002), the current number of signatures is 754.

The address for this petition is:

http://www.petitiononline.com/RRABBIT/petition.html

P-P-P-P-P-P-Please sign it and tell others about it.

Thank you.

As a longtime fan of the film and owner of original artwork from the production - i most certainly will sign the petition. I always found the fight quite silly and rather greedy (mostly on Disney's part by not sharing the shorts with Spielverg films).

Nonetheless - I say free the rabbit. Oh, that didn't sound right!

Well, Disney is releasing a special edition 2-Disc DVD next year of the film with new menu animation and boat load of extras.

eeeeeek! that last release really did kind of bite. and i never found the preview that was supposed to be on it.

Sure thing, Philip.

WFRR is one of my all-time favs!

- Billy

Is this why the rabbit got left out of Kingdom Hearts?

Stupid copyrights always mess with our fun! Let's hope the Rabbit will return, and the Muppets have a nice long stay!

Obviously I signed!

I think what people dont realize, is how rare it was for something like Roger Rabbit to happen...the late 80's were a rare, magical time. Disney and Spielberg's Amblin entertainment would be difficult to pull together int he 90's or now, and the rights to use all the non Looney Tunes/Disney characters they used...oh man, a pure trademark rights logistical nightmare.

Btw, when exactly did the bad blood between these two happen?
As they did produce some shorts after the movie.

Anyways, I would love to see more Roger Rabbit...one of the coolest cinema experiences of the late 80's. That film was a cartoon lovers dream, as it was in my opinion the ultimate company crossover ever. Sadly, Disney and Amblin dont like to play nice anymore.

>>>Well, Disney is releasing a special edition 2-Disc DVD next year of the film with new menu animation and boat load of extras<<<

Theyre not gonna butcher the film are they again? I know for the first dvd they totally bungled up Baby's opening int he interest of 'politically correct'. (PG was a much more lenient rating in the 80's) But now that the PC times arehopefully over, Disney needs to release RR uncut, and finally release Song of the South.
There should be a petition for that as well.

As for Roger Rabbit in Kingdom Hearts, that would have been great. But again, the mouse and the ET cant play nice.

The man who animated Roger Rabbit, Richard Williams, is about as far from Disney as you can get, and one of the greatest animators of our times. You can learn an immense amount from his work ... I highly recommend his book "The Animator's Survival Kit," and if you ever get a chance to research his "lost" film The Thief and the Cobbler, which he worked on for 30 years, please do, it's a wonderful film which is unfortunately only available today in a butchered version ... the horribly butchered cut (butchered by Disney!) you can rent at any video shop (and probably should, but you may have to watch it with the sound off, as the soundtrack openly mocks the film ... I told you it was a butchered cut .... all the best scenes are removed for no clear reason and there is MST3K-like commentary over the entire film ... not to mention a lot of bad animation inserted into Williams' unfinished masterpiece ...) You can get a much better cut in a rare version in Australia, called The Princess and the Cobbler.

Why was the movie butchered? Essentially, Williams never finished it, and eventually Disney released a movie called Aladdin which I know you've all seen, which for no clear reason ripped off every character design wholesale from "Thief and the Cobbler!" With such competition, there was nothing to do but for Disney to buy the film, chop it to bits and release it quietly as an apparent Aladdin ripoff ... the opposite, obviously, is the truth ...

Roger Rabbit rocks! Can't wait for the new DVD (which has been rumored for a long time now... hope it shows up eventually). I was hearbroken when the second film was officially canned a couple years ago, but after being strung along for so long, guess it was good to just have a definitive decision on it.

Too bad there hasn't been some really good Roger Rabbit merchandise - especially of Jessica, which is why I had to make my own!:

http://www.geocities.com/rufustein/SCUjess.html

And there was a Roger Rabbit figure made for the 100 years of Disney (or whatever it was) for Mcdonalds... one of the non-ToyFare magazines (Lee's or Tomart's) had an article on the company the made those, and they had a picture of the Roger Rabbit one... wonder if the Disney/Amblin dispute was the reason it wasn't released?

- R -

Wow! Did you really make that? Absolutely amazing! I was going to find out where to order one. LOL!

wow...Rufus, you never fail to impress. that's awesome, man.

Wow... I am unable to think of any other words to say that Rufus. I would allways think to myself "They have actors dressed up as all the other characters at Disneyland, why not Jessica?"

Rufus you rock. and it's not Disney being greedy its Speilberg he is made because they didnt release one of the shorts in front of Arachnophobia and he threw a fit but I think it is good they didnt. and Aladdin isnt a rip-off of anything it is a retelling of Ali-baba and the 40 thieves or something like that. and I have signed this petition and am tired of seeing it over and over and over again

Because it's hard to find gorgeous shapely women without a nose.

Sure thing I will sign the petition

Glad you guys liked my little personal Jess... she was cast in resin, so I have molds and could make another, but even with the sculpting part out of the way it still takes a lot of time to sand and paint and put her all together. But I would like to do a "casual" Jessica (not in the Simpsons sense of the word, although that would be interesting...) with her plain red dress that she had through most of the movie instead of the sparkly one she wore during her performance. And man, that performance scene is incredible, probably one of my top ten favorite film scenes (and WFRR would be in my top ten films as well). The lighting and shading during that scene is just incredible, especially considering when it was made. And her interactions with the audience are flawless.

I remember there was a behind-the-scenes special on TV about Roger Rabbit when it first came out, I hope that's on the new DVD (they broke down how they did the Jessica scene, her sparkles were computer generated, and they showed Eddie riding around in a little go-kart that would be painted over with Benny.)

Oh, and I think everyone around here will be very interested in my next sculpt... my avatar's a hint, although it's a really bad scan.

- R -

Just to let you all know...

The "Save Roger Rabbit" petition is now up to 830 signatures.

Please keep signing it and telling others about it.

That a skeksis?

Sweet jumpin' criminy Rufus, you're a resin-sculpting genius! Jessica and Ray Stantz and everything is just gorgeous. Better than many sculpts sold in stores (Sideshow Toys' Monty Python/Dark Crystal figures, anyone?) I like how Jessica looks more old-fashioned than she actually is in the film .. you made a nice choice there, to give her a slightly 40s cuteness that hits her really well. Your site actually managed to make me jealous ... I'm proud of my art, so very few art sites do that. =)

You take requests?

-- I have a couple of nice docs on Richard Williams and Roger Rabbit/Thief and the Cobbler. The best thing about them is clips from Williams' commercials and other work .... Williams did some amazing commercials, often illustrated in gorgeous comic book and realistic sketch style ... he did this classic Tic-Tac commercial in a noir comic book style ... with a classic noir babe ... whose closeup is broken down in Williams' new book ... The Animator's Survival Kit. I was in heaven. Any animator owes it to themselves to pick up that book ....

Anyone has some more docs on Williams and Roger Rabbit, lemme know, I collect 'em.

More info on the DVD

I'm surprised. In spite of all the bad blood between these two companies, it sounds like they're really putting differences aside to make this a DVD worth buying. Here's an article on it:

"Charles Fleischer will recreate some of the voices he made famous in Who
Framed Roger Rabbit for the extra material and elaborate DVD menus being created for a two-disc special edition of the 1988 movie from Disney with
Amblin Entertainment. Work has only recently begun on the project, which is
set for release in the first half of next year, but sources say a DVD menu
design crew spent a day last month shooting at the same historic Ren-Mar
Studios in Hollywood where scenes of the fictional Maroon Studios from the
movie were shot. That production, which includes compositing, effects, 2D
and 3D animation and rotoscoping, is expected to be complete this month. As
with the movie itself, which had the largest cast of animated characters
ever assembled from all studios, getting clearances to produce new animation
of certain non-Disney characters, such as Betty Boop and even major studio
characters, presented a challenge. So the characters chosen to be animated
in the DVD supplemental material were those that will "create the least
resistance, licensing-wise," according to a source. The movie brought
together the unprecedented partnering of Steven Spielberg and Disney, and
now the DVD is bringing together Spielberg's longtime DVD producer Laurent
Bouzereau with Mark Herzog and Disney's longtime menu designer John Ross of
Gork Enterprises under Disney's executive producing team led by David
Jessen. B1 Media is producing the interactive games. Although not nailed
down yet, the three subsequent Roger Rabbit shorts, Tummy Trouble, Roller
Coaster Rabbit and Trail Mix-Up, which were introduced with other theatrical
releases and issued on a compilation video in 1996, are expected to be
included on the special edition DVD. (Thanks to Video Premiere Magazine)"

Interesting things to note:
--Charles Fleischer returning to do Roger and other characters (in the movie, he also voiced Benny the Cab and at least one of the Weasels -- the main one). In a recent theme-park attraction, Roger's voice was oddly enough done by someone else: Josh Harnell (sp??), a.k.a. Wakko of "The Animaniacs." Glad to know Charles is back to the job.
--They're not just doing new animation; they're actually shooting new footage at the studios! (Most likely they're for backgrounds for the 'toons to interact with, rather than new footage with Bob Hoskins et al.)
--OK, they're going with the "least resistance liscencing-wise." But the fact that they're doing new animation with any of the characters outside of the Disney stable is, to me, astonishing in a good way.
--I'd love it if all the shorts were on the 2-disc set. I'll second the vote for the CBS behind-the-scenes special (entitled "The Secrets of Toontown," I believe), as well as the Diet Coke and McDonald's commercials which featured animation and footage created specifically for those ads. I also want the short deleted scene where Eddie gets "tooned" that was added for part of a network showing once. That would be a cool extra feature!

So, Roger fans, rejoice. With all this attention and care being shown the original film, maybe the idea of a follow-up Roger movie isn't such a long shot after all.

It is too bad he wasn't in Kingdom Hearts, though! (That's the PS2 Disney game, right?)

--------------------------

Eddie: "Wait a minute. Do you mean you could have taken your hand out of that cuff at any time?"
Roger: "No, not at any time. Only when it was funny!"
P-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-pleeee....