Feature: 'Roger Rabbit' back in the frame

LOS ANGELES, April 3 (UPI) -- "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," hailed in 1988 as a milestone in feature animation, is being celebrated all over again with a 15th anniversary home video edition.

Don Hahn -- who produced the animated segments and went on to produce such animated classics as "The Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast" -- said the groundbreaking blend of live-action and animation helped pave the way for the renaissance of animated features.

Since "Roger Rabbit," animated features such as "Toy Story," "Shrek" and "The Lion King" have taken their place among the top box-office attractions of all time -- and Hollywood studios have engaged in at times fierce competition for supremacy in the animated feature field.

Three years after "Roger Rabbit" was released, "Beauty and the Beast" became the first -- and so far, the only -- animated feature to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 2002, the Academy of Arts and Sciences instituted a new Oscar category, for Best Animated Feature.

In an interview with United Press International, Hahn said he and his team in 1988 were still doing animation the old-fashioned way -- hand painting it frame-by-frame and shipping their work off to an effects house to be shot on film.

Hahn doubts, though, that audiences in 2003 would notice the difference.

"All they care about," he said, "is did it make me laugh? Did it make me cry? Is Jessica sexy?

Jessica, of course, is Jessica Rabbit, the toon famous for saying, "I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way."

Kathleen Turner provided the voice of Jessica, part of a cast that included legendary voiceover artists Mel Blanc and June Foray. Actually, the cast was a who's who of voiceover artists, since the movie featured virtually every major animated character in Hollywood's history.

Legend has it that it was very difficult for producers Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy to get clearance for all those images. But Hahn said Spielberg had sufficient clout that all he had to do was ask.

"He was able to call up studios and say, 'I need Betty Boop and Yosemite Sam,'" said Hahn, "and people returned his phone calls."

At the center of the live-action portion of the movie, British actor Bob Hoskins played the gumshoe detective Eddie Valiant -- who teams up with the manic Roger Rabbit to solve a series of mysteries and save Toon Town from the wrecker's ball.

Hahn said Hoskins was "brilliant at being able to focus on things that weren't there" as he acted opposite characters that would only be added to the frame later, through animation.

"These are things that we now take for granted," said Hahn. "'Attack of the Clones' and 'Spider-Man' are essentially live-action animation movies."

Hahn said fans have frequently asked him over the years about prospects for a sequel, but he discourages such talk.

"If you talk to most of the players in the movie," he said, "it is one of those times -- it's like striking a match. The match glowed beautifully bright, and you can't strike it again."

But for a while there, he said, the "Roger Rabbit" team actually held the possibility open of doing a sequel. That was one of the reasons why he produced "Roger Rabbit" short subjects after the feature ended its theatrical run.

"We were doing that to keep the characters alive while we were contemplating doing a sequel," he said. "It became apparent after a few years that a sequel wasn't going to happen so we stopped doing cartoons."

Right now, Hahn is producing "The Haunted Mansion," a movie inspired by the Disneyland ride of the same name. Eddie Murphy stars as a real estate agent who gets stranded for the night in a haunted house.

Hahn said Murphy's experience in effects movies such as "Dr. Dolittle" and "The Nutty Professor" prepared him well for shooting "The Haunted Mansion."

"It's pretty fantastic because he's done such detailed visual effects work in the past," said Hahn. "Of course, he's already a funny guy, but his knowledge of visual effects tends to help us tremendously."