For today’s blog post, I’m going to talk about the best scene of all cinema (in my humble opinion)–the piano battle at the Ink and Paint Club from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. This is quickly becoming a Donald Duck appreciation blog, isn’t it?
Thith. Means. War.
You can find the scene here. Since I’ve seen the movie 21094878392579 times, I’ll be glad to give a bit of context to those of you who have no idea what’s going on.
Basically, detective Eddie Valiant is sent to the Ink and Paint Club (a club where toons tend bar, wait tables, perform) as part of his assignment to investigate Roger Rabbit’s wife, Jessica. I actually love the entire Ink and Paint Club scene, from the moment the hulking gorilla bouncer calls Eddie a “wiseass” to Eddie finding out (in the best possible way) that Jessica Rabbit…isn’t really a rabbit after all.
But the best bit occurs right after Eddie walks in. Up on stage are Donald Duck and Daffy Duck trying to perform a piano duet (Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2), but it doesn’t take long for the performance to descend into chaos.
One cannon blast later and the two are both pulled off stage before their act is even finished.
It’s a really fun scene to watch–so fun, in fact, that when you’re watching it you probably aren’t even thinking about what a technical marvel it is.
We’ll start with the obvious: cartoons interacting with real life. It would have been so much easier for the penguin waiters to carry drawn-on trays, for the bartender to use cartoon glasses, for Donald and Daffy to play animated pianos.
But they don’t. All the toons interact with real life objects. The real kicker here is that it’s done so seamlessly that your brain doesn’t even register the real magnitude of what you’re seeing. Watch the scene twice–the first time, just let yourself take in everything that’s going on. The second time, really pay attention. Appreciate what the filmmakers managed to do.
And then there’s the fact that both Disney and Warner Bros. characters appeared together on the same screen. Talk about worlds colliding; it is surreal to see characters from two different universes inhabit the same stage, much less play a duet together, much less engage in a mini battle that destroys two pianos. Could you imagine a crossover of that proportion taking place today?
The secondary reason to watch the scene–and the movie, if you haven’t already done so–is because you’ll never see anything like it again. But the real reason, the main reason, is just because it’s a damn good scene. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: we are lucky to live in a world where Who Framed Roger Rabbit exists.
Media Madness 