We’re on the second part of the “L.A. Trilogy,” and Sean and Cody are joined by two very special guests: John Dorney and Tom Salinsky, two of the three hosts of the Best Pick movie podcast! The Best Pick guys thought Who Framed Roger Rabbit should have won Best Picture in 1988, and they’re here to make their case. In this zany live-action and animated comedy film noir send-up, cartoon star Roger (voiced by Charles Fleischer) is effing up at his job in 1940s Hollywood when he thinks his wife Jessica (voice of Kathleen Turner) is playing pattycake on him with one of L.A.’s biggest landlords. Private gumshoe and sometime alky Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) gets dragged into the case, which involves a mega-conspiracy to bulldoze Toontown’s rail transit to build a bunch of ugly freeways. The major environmental question of the film is a big one in L.A. and American history: did a consortium of automakers and real estate developers deliberately sabotage the transit system? We puzzle out the answer, as well as the details of one of the most beloved films of all time in this toontastic episode of Green Screen.

What’s the real story behind the “Red Car” train that used to grace L.A.’s streets? Why were nine U.S. companies convicted in antitrust court in 1949 of conspiring to kill rail transit, and why did that case not solve the issue? Did something like the “Cloverleaf company” depicted in this film really exist? How and why did the Automobile Club of Southern California sketch out a plan to use freeways as a tool of ethnic cleansing in Los Angeles? Was the script for this film really first intended as “Chinatown, Part III?” How did the creators of this film manage to make such a huge technical achievement look so easy? What would the cartoon version of Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard look like? How is the film radically different than the book it’s based on? Is Judge Doom the most terrifying cinema villain of all time? Who’s Eddie Deezen and what does he have to do with this movie? All these questions and many, many more are bumping the lamp in this, one of the most fun episodes of Green Screen ever.

Big thanks to John Dorney and Tom Salinsky of the Best Pick podcast, which has been a major influence on Green Screen.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438/ Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/who-framed-roger-rabbit/

Next Movie Up: Nightcrawler (2014)

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