Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the lost third film

Have you ever seen Chinatown, the famous noir detective movie starring Jack Nicholson by the infamous Roman Polanski? Yes, I have seen Chinatown. You have. Did you know, and most people don't know this, did you know that it's actually a trilogy? My favorite is the one with Bob Hoskins in it instead of Jack Nicholson. No. Bob Hoskins never replaced Jack Nicholson. Although if anyone could, it's Bob Hoskins. I mean, I was going to say, clearly, if you're going to pick anybody to ever replace Jack Nicholson, Bob Hoskins is your man. Hello and welcome to The Popcorn Isn't Real. I'm Leif Eric and I'm here with my co-host Torvald. This is the podcast where we talk about fan theories and we've got a treat for you today. we're talking about some of the greatest movies ever made yeah Roger Rabbit Chinatown the two Jakes oh great movie so what am I getting at well there is a pretty cool fan theory that Roman

Polanski the famed and infamed um infamous uh is that is that a word uh the the both famous and infamous he wrote chinatown as a trilogy so chinatown came out to you know wide praise huge accolades everyone loved chinatown for some reason for some reason it was doing great but then he couldn't make the others in the trilogy for reasons why not various reasons he basically had to like flee to france and uh go into hiding for a while stay there forever you know but uh people still love him i guess for some reason well some people do yeah there was a time in the 90s and 2000s where it was like let's let's let him back let's let's forgive and you know but he didn't end up coming back fortunately for him jack nicholson was actually able to pick up the second movie the two jakes which is the sequel to chinatown which a lot of people don't even know about it didn't do well no one liked it honestly i feel like it should have done just as well as chinatown

because they were very similar to me but they're the same i don't understand why one is is regarded to be one of the probably like some call it the greatest american film ever made and the two jakes is just completely forgotten i don't know like no one even knows about it they're the same movie they're the same i agree i agree i don't know dude there are some differences there's less incest in the two jakes i guess well so like i said not that many people know about the two jakes even less people know about the third movie in the trilogy the one that you know was apparently forgotten and then never released except that it actually was released and the two jakes was held up in production for so long that the third movie in the trilogy beat it to the punch and was released first that's right everybody's favorite detective noir slash looney tune filled romp who framed roger rabbit is actually the third movie in the chinatown trilogy in the roman

polanski chinatown detective noir trilogy now how can i say this so conclusively so definitively well it turns out what no i can that third film was titled get this cloverleaf as in the evil construction company in the film that was trying to take over the town and also the evil construction company that roger and you know detective valiant foil the plot of the movie was apparently exactly the same pretty much as polanski envisioned it just with toontown instead of chinatown chinatown was gonna make a comeback in the third movie after it was it was finally after being absent for the first two movies the first movie had nothing to do with chinatown dude i was gonna ask why is it called chinatown and why is that line so oft repeated i thought like that forget I get it, Jake. It's Chinatown. I thought that it would have way more like matter meaning. Yeah. I mean, I get that it has meaning as in like, you know, oh, it's all hopeless. The meaning is, in my opinion, pretty clear. It's like, oh, sad.

Racist. Oh, no, no. It's just the way their way of saying like, you know, it's it's Chinatown. You know, this happened before when your partner got murdered. It's happening now. Bad stuff and you can't do anything about it. But it doesn't deserve people like repeating that line infinitely forever. And like Inside Out, they repeat it. It's Cloud Town. Yeah. I don't know. Forget it, Jake.

The biggest evidence comes from the fact that Who Framed Roger Rabbit was ostensibly based on a book, a novel by Gary K. Wolf. Yeah. Who Censored Roger Rabbit. That's what I've heard about. Yeah. In fact, I think our dad even told us about that. Right. Yeah. The movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, is nothing like the book it was based on. They have literally nothing in common except the idea of toons, which, whoa, crazy idea, right? Yeah, toons. And the characters. The character of Roger Rabbit exists. The character of Jessica Rabbit exists. The character of Eddie Valiant exists. The character of Baby Herman exists. That's it. That's it. That's all. The stories are so vastly different that there is no possible way that this movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, came from that book. It did not. This movie was clearly lifted from some other idea that someone already had. Someone else had a script.

And then they liked the ideas of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. And they were hooked up with a producer who had optioned the rights. I want to give Gary K. Wolf credit because I do think. Yeah, he's embraced the movie. He has very much embraced the movie. So I've read all of Gary K. Wolf's books about Toontown. He came up with, I think, some very interesting and very cool ideas in Who Censored Roger Rabbit. I love the idea of Toons living with humans. I like that he really dives into it, like he embraces it. Let's talk about Who Censored Roger Rabbit. So that's the first clue that you might have that the movie has nothing to do with the book. The movie is called Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The book is called Who Censored Roger Rabbit. I feel like Who Framed Roger Rabbit was the better title. I think the book could have even been titled Who Murdered Roger Rabbit would have been a better title. The book, unlike the movie, is about Roger Rabbit dying.

The dude's dead and they need to solve the murder. So, you know, there's the first clue that you may have that this has nothing to do with the movie. Roger Rabbit is D-E-A-D. He is dead in the book. So, yeah, the plot is completely different. In the book, Eddie Valiant, same name. It's kind of similar character, but he is investigating a contract disagreement between Roger Rabbit and the studio boss, followed by a double homicide. Roger Rabbit and the studio boss, the studio he works for. There's other differences. In the books, the tunes, they speak in written speech bubbles. They can also vocalize. They can make noise. So are they tunes or comic book characters? Yeah, so they're tunes. They do make comic books and they make those comic books by setting up a photo shoot and literally just having the tune say the words and then taking a picture of it. Then they've got a comic book panel, right?

Wow. That's fun. That's so much easier. But they also make movies. So, I don't know. I mean, it makes sense. They would make movies. But, yeah, for that reason, tunes are able to talk. They can make, you know, vocal noises. And there are also tunes who repress their speech bubbles, even though that is the natural way for tunes to talk in this book. Like Jessica Rabbit, for example. A lot of the more human tunes try to repress their speech bubbles. Jessica Rabbit's still in the book. She is pretty much the same character. The only lines of dialogue from the book that are used in the film were one line by Baby Herman, where he says, I've got a 50-year-old lust and a three-year-old dinky. Baby Herman's, like, a lot more lusty in the books, but pretty much the same character. And then Jessica Rabbit, also the same. And in the other line that is reused is hers, when she says, and this is a great line, actually.

I like this line. She says, I'm not bad, Mr. Valiant. I'm just drawn that way. This is a good line. She couldn't control the awful animators and artists that animated her as this, like, grotesque snake woman with massive shoulders. most of the plot of the book is actually even though it's about investigating a murder it's actually about hunting down an old antique teapot which like where is that where'd that come from that has nothing to do with anything you've ever heard about roger rabbit right also in the book tunes have the abilities to produce what they call doppelgangers any tune can create a doppelganger of themself at will a doppelganger is just an identical version of themself that they produce out of thin air um and that doppelganger can then go and do whatever they want it to do like it's a fully you know autonomous creature it can just do anything and it can last even for days

and days and then it just disappears one day it's gone so that's interesting uh they can only do that in in mr wolf's first book there are no doppelgangers ever again after that they forgot know how to do that after the first book um all of his other books align more with the movie than his own book which i think is really funny but anyway so in who censored roger rabbit um eddie valiant is investigating roger rabbit's death he's trying to figure out who killed him and he's doing so with his sidekick roger rabbit uh-huh it's actually roger rabbit's doppelganger i mentioned that all toons can create doppelgangers roger rabbit just so happened to create one right before he died and that doppelganger is now helping eddie eddie valiant to solve his own murder all the crazy stuff they find out all the you know crazy kooky twists and turns that they go through turns out everything going on besides the murders is revolving around some convoluted plot by

Rocco the uh film like uh the guy who owns the film studio his son uh as well as a photographer named Carol and a porn producer who is also a transvestite also in in the in the book Jessica is like really bad like she she well I mean she's been in porn she's not just drawn that way she's just a really bad person she's constantly cheating on Roger Rabbit and she married him but is she like left him to go back to her old boyfriend and now she's kind of stringing him along and she's always saying like horrible things about roger she just hates his guts um it's unclear why she married him at all uh until the very end either way the whole plot yeah it's about this uh studio executive son uh and porn producer and uh photographer lady they're trying to steal the photographer lady's photographs back from the film executive's son's own gallery right like he owns like an art gallery they're trying to steal her stuff out of his own gallery

and then sell them multiple times by using this insane new groundbreaking technique that the porno guy has created to make a perfect copy of a film negative which he's the only one who can do this out of everyone in the entire world. What does it have to do with the murders? Absolutely nothing. I feel like there are ways to perfectly copy film. I feel like that too. Otherwise, the whole industry wouldn't have functioned for most of this history. Well, right, and it's just so weird that they dropped this out of the blue that, oh, and by the way, this random character in this book has created, he's the only one on earth and has created this entirely random technique and he's using it to commit crimes. And we're like, what? First of all, I didn't even know that was a problem. And second of all, if it is a problem, what are the odds that he was the guy who managed to solve it? And if he did manage to solve it, why not just like profit off of that instead of using

it to commit crimes? I just don't understand. Anyway, that plot sounds nothing like Who Framed Roger Rabbit. And it is nothing like Who Framed Roger Rabbit. But wait, let me throw you a curveball. Like I said, that plot has nothing to do with the actual murders that took place in the book. The actual plot. And this is completely insane. The actual plot is that a literal genie was doing everything. Yes, you find out at the very end of the book, like in the last chapter, you find out that there was a genie that made Rocco, the film executive, and his brother, the two film executives, he made them into humans. They used to be toons, but he turned them into humans. Why? I don't know. It doesn't matter, but they used to be toons and he turned them into humans. Then Roger somehow accidentally ended up taking the genie from them. And then he accidentally wished for Jessica to fall in love with him and marry him.

And he accidentally wished to be successful, all the while not knowing that he had a genie. It also turns out that this genie is a murderer. He does not want to grant wishes. He wants to kill you. And luckily, well, right, except most genies kill you by granting your wish in a horrible way. This guy just takes out a gun and shoots you. He doesn't grant your wishes. It's so insane. And lucky for Roger, it turns out that every time he made a wish, the teapot containing the genie just so happened to be in another room. So he didn't know he was making the wishes and the genie could not kill him. So it just had to grant his wishes, whereas it would have killed him. So the genie can't move? No, except. So two things about this. Number one, why didn't the genie call out to him and say, hello, master, come over here so I may grant thine wish. The genie was so embarrassed. He didn't even think about calling out to Roger.

Oh, how embarrassing. If only he had thought of that. How come the genie couldn't come to Roger? The genie can't move, except that he does move. This genie just so happened to learn how to make his teapot hop around and move himself exactly right then at the spur of the moment after he murdered Roger Rabbit so that he could hop that teapot out the door and down the street, making sure that Eddie Valiant wouldn't find it. Which he didn't know he was hiding from Eddie Valiant. It just served to give Eddie something to investigate. And even if Eddie had found a teapot, who cares? Well, except that, like I said, everyone in this book is looking for that teapot, right? Like I said, the whole book revolves around that teapot. Sure, but you wouldn't think the teapot was the murderer. No, I know. It's completely insane. But yeah, it turns out that Roger Rabbit finally made a wish in the same room as the teapot.

Genie came out, shot him immediately. Roger died. At the same time, Roger had made a doppelganger to go and murder his boss. The doppelganger, Roger, did go and murder his boss. Roger is a disgusting, evil murderer in this book. He's a horrible person. He is an actual murderer. And finally, in the end, so Eddie manages to solve this whole thing. He kills the genie. Eddie, he summons and kills the genie. He has a battle with it. And then he manages to square this away as a, like a, I don't know, homicide-suicide thing where Roger's boss had killed Roger and then killed himself, right? Like he squares it away so that Roger is now completely innocent and forevermore shall be remembered as a good bunny. And then he reveals to the doppelganger, oh, by the way, I also solved the murder and I know that you and Roger are murderers. And then the doppelganger bunny, Roger, who has been working with Eddie Valiant this entire book and seems to be like his best friend and super nice to him and super loving.

He just turns into a total scumbag. And he's like, yeah, you asshole. I knew you would have solved there. I should have known you would solve this. I hate you so much. I hate everybody. I'm out of here. And then he dies. And I'm like, oh, dang. OK. All right, Roger. You're a horrible bunny. There you go. That's the Who Censored Roger Rabbit for you. nothing like the movie. And I mean, it could not be further from the movie. Like it is so off the rails insane. Oh, it's a weird book. This guy, this producer came to me and was like, I have this manuscript optioned. So the book's not even published yet. And I was like, the reason you option a book is like, if it's published, like doing well, right. But anyway, the book's not even published yet. He's like pre-publication. I've already optioned it. He's like, I want you to read it maybe we can rewrite it or something now there is a really weird thing in this book

about how these people get food but don't worry we can change that and i read the book and how the weird thing about how they get food is the entire plot that's the whole plot of the book the point is this book is green yes this book is post-apocalyptic and this family lives in a bunker and in that bunker they have everything they could ever need for hundreds of years except there's no meat they had cows that they could butcher but something happened and the cows all died they got sick now they have no meat they didn't think to make jerky or something i don't know so and humans can't survive without protein and i guess they didn't have like tofu or beans yeah i was gonna say beans and tofu dude i'll do it i there's they're easy so this is so stupid i just tried i just i can't even wrap my head around what stupid writer thought that this is a good plot anyway so the the dad the father of this if this family is the bad guy he has

like three kids that he likes those are his main kids he keeps impregnating the mom and they have these slave kids that they raise on a lower level that the other kids don't even know about that they're raising for food oh no that's our mom the mom would need protein to make the babies like you can't make babies if you have no protein more protein if they're the only source of protein it makes zero sense i i uh it really bothered i don't know it would make more sense if he was like going out and kidnapping more moms to rape and then make babies and then eating babies but at that point just eat the moms right don't make babies no i don't get it it's so stupid and i'm just like first of all there are plentiful sources of protein i'm sure you could find that aren't babies but whatever um and well they weren't even eating them as babies they were raising them to like like at least kid age before eating them yeah well the mom didn't like it but

she like couldn't stand up to him she's like okay and at first they were they were drinking her milk as protein because she can make milk and i was like okay still be her protein that they're right she still needs protein yeah like i don't know does he he apparently just thinks that women have the magical ability to create yeah yeah the author did yeah he he was yeah a guy wrote it he doesn't understand i had never encountered a woman like oh my gosh they're alien creatures they're we thought he's like i've never seen a woman eat they just make babies and they make milk right yeah well i mean it is like like one of the reasons people raised pigs for so long is because they can eat literal trash and turn it and turn it into nutrients yeah yeah so like that's what he thought women were he's clearly sexist so the plot of the book is the kids finding out that they're eating their siblings and then having to like fight against their father

the weird thing about how they get their food him saying it's kind of weird but we so apparently the thing that really just got him like i have to option this before it's even published was like dad has kids in a bunker like and he's abusive before i answer to you whether or not i would have optioned this my only question is can the dad be played by john goodman and if yes then i am in i feel like that movie might have already been made but it was good oh man yeah no it essentially like eating the babies and he'd be like you can have what's left yeah so it essentially was just 10 cloverfield lane i guess is what he wanted and he yeah but with eating babies interesting just hire a writer and say write me 10 cloverfield lane like it's not that original of a concept like you don't need to option a manuscript whose whole plot is something that you don't want just throwing this out there it sounds to me like he knew or was family with

this writer and no i needed to throw him a bone and he's like hey give me a script i'll turn it into something right so then he got that script and he's like oh well this is disturbing hey uh other writer rewrite this for me and there you go oh that's my my my interpretation of that situation a couple other interesting tidbits about who censored roger rabbit this genie's whole like existence in in their world is kind of odd like first of all how did it get owned by the studio execs and then how did it get lost and end up in roger's hands i mean that could have been simple enough it could have just been like roger taking it off of a film set which is actually how he got the teapot he did just take it home off of a film set but why did it end up at that film set if it was the property of these two studio executives who were using it to grant their own wishes and become humans uh it turns out it was stolen from them by a champion hero genie

slayer who wanted to slay this genie because he knew that it was an evil threat to the world so he stole this genie and he researched how to destroy it and he knew how to destroy it and he found out that you could only destroy it by drowning it after a fair combat so he bested this genie in combat and then he you know packaged up the teapot and sunk it deep into the ocean but he didn't realize that the genie can't drown if he's in his teapot so this poor champion failed at his task that champion his identity is never revealed i don't know who he was or what he was doing there he's never seen in the book he existed to remove the genie from the hands of its owners put it in the ocean where it could then be dredged up randomly as part of a shipwreck which it wasn't even in as far as i know but it was found as part of the shipwreck it was bought by a prop master and then used in a movie that was being made by the former owners of this

teapot where they didn't know it though even though they desperately wanted that teapot they didn't know that it was actually within their possession and it got taken home by roger rabbit at that point who also didn't know that it was a genie no one knew it was a genie except for those two guys who didn't know that they owned it yet anyway and the other cool thing about this genie is he will only be summoned from his pot if you say the magic words and roger didn't know the magic words but kept accidentally saying them because the magic words to summon this genie are the final words in the disney song when you wish upon a star if you sing that entire song all the way through the final words in that song are the genie summoning words this copyrighted disney song um roger didn't know that but he just so happens to sing that song way more often than the average person does so he just happened to summon this genie a lot oh man like right he's saying that

like again what an odd coincidence to insert into your book that doesn't need to be there you could have the magic words just be i wish room to his teapot at least what four times yeah yeah he always keeps that teapot nearby but in another room and then happened to make a random wish yes he just so happened to sing the entirety of when you wish upon a star followed by i wish jessica rabbit was my wife and i wish i was a successful movie star just after singing the entirety of when you wish upon a star i like to like if i wrote this roger knew what he was doing me too i agree but if i wrote this i would have had him just like the magic words are i wish right because he might have muttered i wish i was married to jessica rabbit you're the one making it up dude just change it they kind of imply at one point that at least most of the tunes in america were native americans discovered by the pilgrims or imported from china oh dude

Do you remember when we were like way ahead of our time when we found Hottentots in Mary Poppins? Whoa, yes, we canceled Mary Poppins before it was actually canceled. And then like a year later, there was like a big article about Hottentots. Yeah, there was a big article about it saying this movie is not appropriate. I don't know, it was pretty good. All of Detective Valiant's friends are like racist assholes. Like, first of all, one of his best friends, his claim to fame is having an ancestor who forced the toons to cater the first thanksgiving dinner um right because yeah they were the native americans and he has another best friend whose ancestor imported chinese tunes to build the transcontinental railroad um okay well maybe there is a chinatown connection whoa to the book i guess um but yeah as he's playing poker with these friends at one point roger rabbit walks in and is like oh hey

Eddie Valiant I'm here by the way Roger Rabbit in this in the audiobook version of this book he just has like a Jimmy Stewart accent so he's always like oh hey there Eddie Valiant I'm back I'm home I'm gonna make you a carrot cake and it's a nice voice I think it's probably better it really fits him I actually very much agree I prefer that voice for Roger just a nice a kindly jimmy stewart roger rabbit i can't stand roger he's really hard to listen to i know he's supposed to be annoying but no but they could have just had him be like like i said kind of lovable bumbling like a jimmy stewart like oh he's already valiant oh i'm so sad i can't believe my jessica's cheating on me oh you know like that would be way better than whoa um but yeah uh so roger comes in he's like hey they're ready i'm home i'm gonna make us a carrot cake and then all of his friends are like oh what's a tune doing here the one rule we made

when we decided to play poker together eddie was no women and no tunes and then they all leave and i'm like man oh these guys are bad better off without them those are oh my gosh men oh geez one very strong character trait for eddie is that he always constantly he's constantly narrating right because he's a noir detective and he's constantly saying the most horrible things about himself like thinking just awful awful things and then doing the exact opposite like and i just love it i love it because he's such a good guy exactly he in his mind characterizes himself as the absolute scum of the earth but in reality he's a freaking saint doing bad things exactly i know i love eddie he's basically just like a person well exactly you know this thing is like he he throughout this poker game with his friends he's constantly agreeing with them he's like oh yeah you know they had the right idea about tunes uh i would never let a tune live with

me so anyway i i invited him to live with me you're so weird and he just does it over and over i wouldn't jump up and dig my feet onto his couch that's not the sort of thing i would do we're referencing a funny youtube video by the way yeah well no it's not a youtube video it's an interview with rick james where rick james is describing his interactions with charlie murphy the brother of eddie murphy and he uh very explicitly denied having grinded his feet into charlie murphy's not the sort of thing he would do no he's like why would anyone do that the next sentence out of his mouth was yeah i remember doing that exact thing that i just said i wouldn't do and no one would do what a weird dude so that's kind of the the opposite of it well eddie valiant is he thought about the good thing and did the bad thing pretty much but it it happens so often that it's clearly purposeful and in my opinion is very very good writing um i think that's

just a fun character uh where eddie yeah he's every time anything happens he just thinks the worst possible thing about it declares himself to be a proponent of that and then does the exact opposite every time so cool in the other books the first book never happened oh okay like i said the other books are essentially all much more based around the film um they basically have nothing to do with the first book. I have very definitively proven that the book has nothing to do with the movie. So where did the movie come from? Where did Who Framed Roger Rabbit come from if not from the novel it was based on? Well, it couldn't have been Roman Polanski. It came from Roman Polanski. It came from Cloverleaf. How do we know that it was actually originated from Cloverleaf? To uncover this, let's look at the plots of every single movie in the Chinatown trilogy i'm gonna take you through essentially the major story beats of chinatown the two jakes

and who framed roger rabbit and i'm going to show you that these three films are all the same film they're essentially the same film over and over and every single one of them is very much in character for a certain uh jake the detective the noir detective as created by roman polanski Chinatown starts out with Jake, the detective. He's played by Jack Nicholson. He takes on a job. Wait, I haven't seen Chinatown in a while. So let me guess. He spies on a cheating wife. He delivers the evidence that the wife was cheating to the husband. Then the husband or someone else somehow ends up getting murdered because of that. And he feels upset that he was used as an alibi for something because he was sent to spy on this person and it was actually a plot for a murder. So he feels obligated to then solve this mystery himself because he cannot be used like that and it's a matter of personal pride. Is that the plot of Chinatown?

Yes, yes, that's exactly it. Because that's definitely the plot of the two Jakes and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It is, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Yes. So Jake in Chinatown, Jake, the detective, he's spying on a cheating wife. The job turns into a murder. The guy who's murdered, he works in infrastructure specifically. He's actually the chief engineer at the Department of Water and Power. And then Jake, the detective, you know, decides it's a matter of pride. He has to continue to investigate this because he was, you know, sort of caught up in it. He feels like he was essentially used. Same thing happens in the two Jakes. Jake takes a job spying on a cheating wife. This time it's Kitty and Mr. Bodine, Jake Berman, who is the main guy who hired Jake the detective. He's the two Jakes. He's her husband. The job turns into a murder. In this case, yet again, it's a guy who works in infrastructure and buildings.

It is Bodine, a real estate partner to Jake Berman, the other kind of main character of this movie. He decides that he's going to continue this because he feels like he was used. He feels like they sort of, you know, wrapped him up into it unfairly. And he, as a matter of pride, he needs to solve this one. Now let's look at who framed Roger Rabbit. In this case, Eddie Valiant takes a job spying on a cheating wife. He's spying on Jessica, who's cheating with Acme. Jessica's married to Roger Rabbit. The job turns into a murder. The guy who was murdered, hey, he works in infrastructure and building. It is Mr. Acme, the owner of both Toontown and the Acme Corporation. He's been resisting land development contracts where they want him to sell Toontown and Valiant basically as a matter of pride decides, hey, I, you know, they use me. They wrap me up in this. I'm going to solve this just to spite them.

I need to figure out what's going on because I can't let this happen to me. Same exact setup. Same exact plot. From there, let's look back at Chinatown. At one point in the book, Jake gets roughed up while investigating the case and told to drop it. They shove a knife up his nose and then, you know, rip his nose apart. And he wears a stupid giant bandage for the rest of the movie. The guy who slices his nose open is Roman Polanski. Oh, that's cool. In the two Jakes, hey, Jake gets roughed up while investigating the case and told to drop it. In this case, they beat him up and then force him to drop a grenade into his floor safe, which is weird. That was odd. I was just so confused because, like, the guy who beats him up in the two Jakes works for the other Jake. Yeah, I know. Jake is helping. And Jake is also working for that Jake. I was so confused about who was on whose side in the two Jakes.

Anyway. They beat the crap out of him and knocked him out and then just left him laying there dying while they stared at him instead of calling the hospital. Torvald, you have to understand, maybe this has never happened to you, but when a person gets like beat up and knocked unconscious and they're just laying there, that's really entertaining. Like I could watch that for hours. Like I'm just like, is he going to wake up now? How about now? And then in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Eddie Valiant was supposed to get roughed up while investigating the case and told to drop it. There is a famous deleted scene where the weasel gang grabs Eddie Valiant, they rough him up, they actually take him to Toontown and then draw a big pig head over his head and then throw him out. And he's now got a big cartoon pig head and they rough him up and tell him to drop it. Now, that may be, you know, a hallmark of Detective Noir kind of movies and novels and everything.

But in this case, it's very, very similar for all of these three movies. Well, that's what I was going to say, is that you could just argue that perhaps these are all just tropes of the noir genre. However, as someone who got a degree in film studies, I've watched a lot of original noir films. And let me tell you, there are no tropes of that genre. Like, it started out as like the French just naming a kind of film that was coming out of America mostly. It almost means like black or dark, right? Yeah, they're not all about detectives, first of all. Most of them aren't about detectives. Now, there is the element of like the femme fatale. There's some sort of woman who shows up and gets involved in something bad. That is generally always there. Now there's the tropes of like, oh, yeah, the detective gets like slipped a mickey and like beaten up. And you're just describing dead men don't wear plaid.

Exactly. No, but see, what I'm getting at is that original noirs really didn't follow most of these tropes. What solidified them was Chinatown because Chinatown was the first neo-noir. Roman Polanski brought back a genre that had existed but hadn't really been made in a little while. And it was huge because, I mean, it plays with people's nostalgia and also they're like exciting and it's a mystery. That's exactly why I think Chinatown was such a huge success, because it was doing things that people hadn't really seen or at least hadn't seen in a long time. And then to us, you know, watching it kind of feels like old hat because we're like, well, I've seen all this. Right. You mentioned the inclusion of a femme fatale character. Well, in all of these movies, we see that as well. In Chinatown, we find a cheating femme fatale who seems to betray Jake. It's Evelyn, who seems like she lied about her sister, who's actually her daughter, who's actually her sister.

Depends on how many times you slap her. It changes every time. Dude, like, Jake, cool off, man. He was going to town on her face. Jake just starts smacking her. Dude, quick fact about that scene. Apparently, Jack Nicholson was, you know, doing everything right and pulling his punches. And the actor who played Evelyn, she said, hey, we're not getting a good performance out of me. You need to actually slap me. So Jack Nicholson was like, oh, he took his slapping glove on and just wailed on her. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just going to slap your brains out. Well, I mean, then that got the performance they wanted in. That's the take they put in the movie, apparently. I mean, she does look very surprised when he slaps her. She looks very slapped. It's a great scene. he's just going to town on her but yeah it seems like she has betrayed him and then it turns out that this cheating femme fatale is actually loyal to Jake

and they work together for the rest of the movie Jake is essentially helping her to flee with her daughter sister Catherine same exact thing happens in the two Jakes a cheating femme fatale seems to actually betray Jake Kitty the cheating wife from this movie he finds out she was actually Catherine the daughter from the first movie yeah it was her all along and everything that he's been hearing everything she's been saying has been a lie but it turns out she's actually loyal to him and they work together for the rest of the movie culminating in him lying for her in court to keep her and you know her family in the riches which i found to be kind of an unfulfilling uh ending but you know rich people gonna stay rich so yay go katherine i thought in the two jakes that was the best part of the movie was just finding out that kitty is the daughter and i felt like i had more of an emotional reaction

to the two jakes than i ever did in chinatown when he's like telling her like all i ever wanted to do was protect protect you like that was a great monologue i thought that was it was a cool follow through for his character and very very cool that they connected it so deeply with chinatown like i thought they were going to kind of write off chinatown yeah you know do a new story but no it's like really really really a sequel to chinatown and the other best scene from to two jakes was um also a callback to chinatown which again i hadn't even seen recently so it's not like and i don't remember it fondly so but like when that uh cop who hates him starts like insulting him and he hits him back and holds the gun on the floor makes him suck it and he like pees on the floor like that was a really good scene it was all a callback he does not make the guy suck the gun and then turn around whip his dick out and pee on the floor as like a show of like i don't know

claiming the floor the other guy pees himself while sucking the gun because he's scared it's not jack nicholson asserting his manhood makes it suck the gun all because this guy was piss on your floor insulting how um the lady in the first movie died i forget her name what was her name evelyn katherine evelyn katherine is the sister daughter evelyn is the mother sister yeah mother sister however with this uh cheating femme fatale thing the exact same thing happens in who framed roger rabbit uh the cheating femme fatale uh jessica rabbit seems to betray valiant she shows up in the dead of night she whacks roger over the head with a frying pan carts them away in the trunk of her car seems to pull a gun on valiant but it turns out she is actually loyal to valiant and they end up working together for the rest of the movie she was just saving him from doom she was shooting doom who was right behind him she wasn't aiming at him and she was protecting

roger by whacking him on the head and putting him in the trunk which may sound odd but remember they are tunes so you know i guess it makes sense and and this is one of the reasons i think that Chinatown was so successful was because this was a reversal of essentially the only trope that people remember from the old film noirs. The femme fatale was bad. She rarely turned out to be good. And she always died. Always. Usually the main character died too, or at the very least was arrested. But she does die in Chinatown. She very much dies. That's kind of the point of the movie. But she's not bad. Everything she was doing was for good reasons, which was kind of new. In the end of Chinatown, Jake finds out in a twist that he had the wrong culprit all along. It's actually someone else. He thought it was Evelyn. It's actually Cross, her father, who's doing all this dirty work and setting everything up.

In the two Jakes, the same exact thing happens. Jake finds out in a major twist that he had the wrong culprit and it's actually someone else. He thought Kitty and Jake Berman were stealing everything from Catherine, basically signing all of her land ownership over to themselves and some evil con. Turns out she is Catherine. She was just retaining ownership of her stuff by essentially transferring it to herself and her husband. In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the same exact thing happens. Valiant, Eddie Valiant, finds out in a twist that he had the wrong culprit and it's actually somebody else. He thought it was Mr. Maroon, the owner of the film studio, who was essentially orchestrating all this stuff. It's not. Mr. Maroon was just another puppet having his strings pulled by Judge Doom, the owner of Cloverleaf, the evil, you know, land development. Judge Doom is like a really bad judge. Yeah, he's I know that's obvious, but there's so many conflicts of interest.

He absolutely shouldn't be doing the investigation. That's not what judges do. Yeah, well, he definitely shouldn't be carrying out his own sentencing in the field on the fly. as a judge you can't just like walk around sentencing people to death and killing them unless you are uh judge dredd but i guess he is a toon so it makes sense that yeah it's true he would be doing that kind of thing in the uh comics i believe his actual identity which they sort of hint in the movie that we're gonna find that out when the toons at the end they're all like oh gosh i wonder who he really was and then they just leave it at that we never find out who he really was um it turns out he was baron von rotten a toon who he took up the role of playing the villain and the antagonist in all kinds of movies in who framed roger rabbit in the earlier scripts they were going to say that he had been the villain who in bambi shot bambi's mother he's so evil

even though he did that off screen even on screen i know but uh no he became very well known for playing all kinds of villains but then he suffered a horrible concussion and he woke up with his brains rattled believing that he was an actual villain despite being like a super super nice guy who was just an actor and then he began his horrific crime career well yeah i don't know anyway he did all kinds of horrible stuff he became a robbery he killed teddy valiant by dropping a piano on his head he became judge doom i don't know anyway just thought that was kind of funny so we talked a bit about cloverleaf i just want to say that uh in my opinion um of all of the insanely weird things about who framed roger rabbit the weirdest thing is that the entire movie centers around like red trolley cars in a highway building company like what because because nobody who watched the movie ever even remembers that no it's so like the plot hinges on

that but you don't know that like if you're just watching the movie you remember the tunes yeah you remember like the talking bullets for that the taxi cab so why why is that so central to the plot i'll tell you why it's because this is cloverleaf this is the third movie in the chinatown trilogy um that's the only way to explain it that's the only way it makes sense why else would this have so much like weird infrastructure and development related intrigue going on that is a hallmark of chinatown that is a hallmark of the two jakes all this crazy convoluted infrastructure development building related stuff like i don't know why you would include that in like a disney warner brothers crossover tune detective movie there's no reason other than this being cloverleaf this is the third movie in the chinatown trilogy All right. So Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I think it's a great movie. I really like Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

I think it's fun. It's cool. It has great actors, particularly like Bob Hoskins, because that dude is just an absolute stud. His back, when he takes off his shirt, his back looks like a front. It's so funny. I had the TV on once. I went back when I was like a teenager. I had the TV on and Who Framed Roger Rabbit was on TV and I happened to glance over and then I looked away and then I did an absolute double take. I like became a tune and my eyes popped out of my head and my jaw dropped because I was like, is that man put together backwards? It just so happened to be the scene where Bob Hoskins comes out of that room. Turns out he was just showering the pig head off, but they cut that scene. But he comes out without his shirt on And then he turns away from the camera, but it looks like he's facing the camera because his back looks like a front, but his head's on the other way. And I was like, whoa, what's going on?

I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the events of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and imagine what they would have been if this were Jake. Yeah, let's do it. I noticed that the movie starts with him being annoyed that he has to work with Toons and he hasn't gone to Toontown in a while. I think if you just replace the word Toontown with Chinatown, you got it. He hates Chinatown. That's where Evelyn died. We saw in the two Jakes that he's very sore about that still. It wouldn't have been his brother who died. The backstory was already there. They wouldn't even have to tell us. We know in Chinatown, Evelyn was shot in Chinatown. So he doesn't want to go back and work in Chinatown. I love one of the first scenes in this movie where Donald and Daffy are doing their dueling pianos. We have to talk about this. This is an important theory. I just have to say, Donald Duck, and this is a very well-known theory about this movie,

and I'm just here to confirm it from my side. Donald Duck definitely calls Daffy Duck a doggone stubborn N-word. Yes. Which is hilarious, in my opinion, because Daffy is a black duck and Donald is a white duck. It's a good joke. It makes sense. It's a great joke. Like, I get why Disney doesn't want to admit that Donald said that word, even though he did. Disney Plus, they say, Disney Plus says nitwit in the captions. Yeah. He definitely says a different N word than nitwit. I want to talk about that. Seriously, listen to it. Disney has like actually responded to things like this and a lot of the other dumb rumors that there are. This is one that's true, though. Like the other ones are dumb, like the Aladdin one. But they've said that it's like the power of suggestion. Like people are just hearing what they want to hear. I'm like, no, the power of suggestion is you putting the word nitwit in your subtitles.

You're trying to gaslight us, trying to convince us that he says nitwit. He doesn't say nitwit. The first time we watched it as a family, we didn't have any subtitles on. We were watching it for the first time. No power of suggestion. We didn't know what to expect. And we all looked at each other when he said that. We're like, did he just say that? Sorry, did he just call Daffy the end? Like, we all heard it. That's what he said. You can't understand much of what Donald says. You can understand that. You don't understand that one. And that's the joke. It's a great joke. I mean, I don't condone using that word, but like, in this situation, it made a lot of sense and it was hilarious. I mean, I think maybe he should have called him a quacker. Like, Daffy. Wow, that would have been great. The Daffy Duck should have called Donald a quacker. But that wouldn't make sense because they're both ducks.

So he can't say quacker. I guess he can say quacker because he is a duck, right? That allows him. He's got a quacker pass. Well, the white ducks you call quackers. That's offensive to them. Oh, okay. Okay. The black ducks you call nitwits. I understand. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, but I just have to say that joke, the use of that word as a joke is very, very much in keeping with who framed Roger Rabbit. in its original form a lot of people don't know this but the original theatrical release of who framed roger rabbit contained a lot more racy things that disney then edited out for the you know concurrent releases on vhs dvd blu-ray from my perspective confirmed that donald duck is a potty mouth he shouldn't be saying well he's racist i thought it was kind of funny first of all that poor poor betty boop nobody likes her because of her color or her lack thereof which i thought was a funny little you know a funny take on i like that um the part the joke where valiant is looking

at jessica rabbit and is just like whoa she's married to roger rabbit and betty's like yeah lucky girl like everyone just agrees all the tunes are like dang roger rabbit what a stud the ultimate husband that's a good joke i like this weird stuttering slobbering from a tune perspective though oh my gosh that is hot two jakes and chinatown i wrote that jake whoa jake jake loved that stupid chinese sex joke that the banker told him so much that he had to run straight home and tell it to all his friends and he wouldn't even stop even when they told him to everyone's like stop jake stop he's like no you must hear this joke you gotta set it up that so jake is at the barber ready to like kill some guy yeah like he's pissed he's gonna beat this guy up the barber distracts him saying hey jake jake jake uh let me tell you a joke and then it cuts and jake has just run from the shop he's like i gotta tell everybody guys guys listen this joke is so funny you gotta hear this china

man sex joke and they're saying jake shut up jake stop it and he's like no no no you guys gotta hear this apparently his barber knew him very well he knew what jake likes he likes china china racist china sex jokes oh i didn't even get the punch line the first time i i heard it like it took me a while of thinking about it like it's like i mean if you want to hear the joke the joke is that apparently chinamen they they have sex in a different way where they'll like have sex a little and then leave and then come back and do it a little more and leave and one time this woman was having sex with her husband who was not Chinese and he was doing that man yeah and then eventually she got so fed up with him she said why do you keep leaving you're screwing me like a China man right that's the punchline I mean the joke is that she she knows how Chinese people have the joke is that she has had sex with a Chinese person I was like yeah oh okay yeah it's not even

i mean i don't know it's not a great joke but boy jake loved it it's both racist and sexist like yeah i don't know i also thought that at one point uh jake rips a page out of a library book but he does it in the library um so yeah he coughs and uses a ruler to rip it out straight i'm like you didn't need to do any of that he all he all you have to do to rip out a page perfectly straight and completely silently is you fold it and wet the page at the fold And then you fold it the other way and wet it again. And then it will just peel right apart. It's super easy and silent. And he didn't know that. He's a detective. But it was a pretty big page. Like, he couldn't have licked that whole thing. Whoa. You don't underestimate Jack Nicholson's licking, tonguing powers. No, he could have gotten a cup of water, right? Like, it doesn't need to be spit. When the tonguing is done, we'll take this page and go.

Whoa. Dude, there's even a song about it. I mean, seriously. When the tricky man comes and brings us sugar and tea and rum. Well, no, he brings us like cheating and photos and our wives. Cheating and adultery and murder. And just one thing I noticed in all of these movies, Roger Rabbit, Chinatown, Two Jakes, it's odd that most of these detective films have very little of the detective doing investigation. most of the time it's just random stuff happens to him he gets knocked unconscious he gets kidnapped he gets stolen from he gets beaten up he gets a phone call and then every single one of those events is just some random person like telling him the next thing he needs to know related to the thing he needs to know yeah it's true it's like do some real detective work don't just wait for all this stuff to come to you yeah i mean oddly enough that's kind of how a lot of detective stories happen um i guess it's kind of how a lot of stories happen in general is like the main

character gets acted upon and then you know things are it's so weird because that's like the first thing they teach you is that you need an active protagonist don't just have stuff happen to them they should be driving the story like it's just weird that it's so common when everyone knows not to do that but anyway apparently you should do it it works having said all of that i have to ask you now what do you think of this theory do you think that who framed roger rabbit is actually the lost and mythical final installment in the chinatown trilogy by roman polanski i totally believe it i think definitely i think that they were telling us so like like roman polanski's gone he's not coming back he can't do anything dude's a criminal on the run you have this script that he like probably wrote you could just steal it let's plagiarize something else it's ours now no and they gave us a hint in that they made this one who framed roger rabbit about hollywood conspiracy

it's about a hollywood like like well conspiracy i already said it's about something bad going on like all this seedy back alley stuff and and and you know the executives the people in charge are doing weird stuff and and dealing with bad guys i mean like they're they're giving us a hint they're like yeah we stole roman's script and what's he gonna give us a hint they're giving him the finger yeah exactly yeah it's ours we're gonna put i mean that is very spielberg right that's like totally what spielberg would do and zemeckis and both of them just like steel and stuff wait zemeckis is like i'm gonna go back to the future because i went back to the past and got this script from Polanski and I'm gonna film it in the future Zemeckis did back to the future if you liked this make sure you give it a give it a like give it a subscribe tell all your friends about it we have a Patreon if you enjoy

what we do you can subscribe to our Patreon you'll get access to exclusive outtakes they're basically entire episodes you get crazy conversations about Ken Penders who is the comic artist who created basically knuckles the echidna's entire backstory in Sonic and then like commandeered it and took it for himself and upended Sega's entire comic industry. In this episode one of the outtakes might include me talking about the lost archives of interviews that Roman Polanski did before, shortly before the crime that occurred. And if you believe that then you should also remember the popcorn isn't real in a world of shadows and dreams nothing is quite what it seems we're the fools in a midnight reel the popcorn isn't real

Chasing clues through the silver screen Wishing for a tale that's unseen Hold my hand through this hazy spiel The popcorn isn't real Behind the curtain, there's nothing to feel The popcorn isn't real Caught in a moment that will never heal The popcorn isn't real The craft of fiction within fiction's mind Searching for secrets we'll never find Every clue, just a future we steal The popcorn isn't real We whisper theories, but they all fade A fleeting ghost in a midnight parade Holding on to that surreal appeal The popcorn isn't real Behind the curtain, there's nothing to feel The popcorn isn't real Caught in a moment that will never heal The popcorn isn't real

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