Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Porky Pig Looney Tunes cartoon, the 1939 Looney Tunes Porky's Tire Trouble directed by Bob Clampett
When Flat Foot Flooky emerges from the rubberizing solution he molds his face into caricatures of Edward G. Robinson, Edna May Oliver, Clark Gable, and Hugh Herbert.
Traveling along the dark shoals of the intraweb to bring you, something interesting, dear Bunkies, the staff of The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour was thinking about Radiohead's classic Creep. I'm guessing many of you didin't realize that this was the bands' first single, released in the UK in September 1992. It flopped, and they rather reluctantly included it on their debut album, Pablo Honey, in February 1993. To their surprise, it started getting some airplay and found an audience, so their label re-issued it in September 1993 and it rose to #7 in the UK.
According to the book Radiohead: Hysterical and Useless, this song was inspired by Thom Yorke's obsession with a stranger. He was infatuated with a woman who was out of his league, who he'd never met but frequently saw in bars, and he found himself following her around.
On the album version, Thom Yorke sings, "You're so f--king special." For radio, he recut it as, "You're so very special." Yorke regrets changing the line for the radio version, saying it disturbed the "sentiment of the song." According to him, the song lost its anger as a result. Billie Eilish and her brother-producer Finneas have long credited Radiohead as one of their musical inspirations. Billie Eilish demonstrated her love for Radiohead during a recent tour stop.
During a performance at Coachella 2008, Prince did a cover of Creep. Later on Prince requested that all of his live footage from the Coachella show be removed, including the cover of Creep, to which Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke responded “Well, tell him to unblock it. It’s our … song.”
We bet you didn't know; The song is musically similar to a 1972 song by The Hollies called The Air That I Breathe, written by Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood, whose publishers took legal action. Radiohead acknowledged that the songs were similar and agreed to share some of the songwriting royalties and add Hammond and Hazlewood to the writing credits.
We’ve selected another entry from the excellent reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, edited by Steven Jay Schneider. Today’s film is the 1988 landmark feature Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, Stubby Kaye, and Joanna Cassidy, with Charles Fleischer providing the voice of Roger Rabbit. The film was very expensive to produce. With an estimated budget of $70 million, it was the most expensive film made in the 1980s and featured one of the longest on-screen credit sequences of its time. The first test audience, composed largely of 18- and 19-year-olds, hated it. After nearly the entire audience walked out of the screening, Zemeckis, who had final cut, said he wasn’t changing a thing. The film opened to critical acclaim for its visuals, humor, writing, performances, and groundbreaking combination of live-action and animation. It went on to gross over $351 million worldwide.
During production, one of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to make the cartoon characters interact convincingly with real on-set props. This was ultimately achieved in two ways. Certain props (such as Baby Herman’s cigar or the plates Roger smashes over his head) were moved on set using motion-control machines operated by technicians who manipulated the objects precisely as needed. In post-production, the animated character was then drawn over the machinery. The second method involved puppeteers. This technique is most clearly seen in the scene set in the Ink & Paint Club. The glasses held by the octopus bartender were controlled by puppeteers positioned above the set, while the trays carried by the penguin waiters were attached to rods operated from below. The wires and rods were later removed in post-production, and the animated characters were added in.
Every frame that combined live-action and animation had to be printed as a still photograph. An animator would draw the illustration for that specific frame on tracing paper placed over the photograph. The outline drawing was then hand-colored before being composited back into the original frame using an optical printer.
A total of 326 animators worked full-time on the film. Altogether, 82,080 frames of animation were produced, including storyboards and concept art. Animation director Richard Williams estimated that well over one million drawings were created for the movie.
So find a comfortable chair, dim the lights, and join us here at The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour as we enjoy this animated classic: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Producer Steven Spielberg was able to convince Warner Bros. to allow Zemeckis to include several of their Looney Tunes characters in what was otherwise a Disney production. Warner Bros. agreed, provided certain quality-control and screen-time conditions were met and that their characters were treated respectfully by the animators. Several years later, while in pre-production on the live-action/animated crossover film Space Jam, Warner Bros. asked Disney to return the favor by allowing a major Disney character to appear as a special guest during the film’s final game. The Walt Disney Company (by then under new management) refused. Warner Bros. accused Disney of breaking an almost decade-old gentleman’s agreement and declared they would no longer cooperate with the studio. As a result - and despite initial threats of legal action - Space Jam reportedly included several barbed jokes aimed directly at Disney.
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