Jim Hill
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Roller Coaster Rabbit
But Disney doesn't just cut in-jokes because they're offensive or break a film's mood. More often than not, gags that look great on paper don't end up playing all that well when they finally reach the big screen. Take -- for example -- the legendary "Long Car" joke that got lopped out of the Roger Rabbit short, "Roller Coaster Rabbit."

This 1990 Walt Disney Pictures / Amblin production (Produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida at their Disney/MGM facility)'s climax features Roger and Baby Herman trapped on a runaway roller coaster. One of the more memorable sight gags in the film is Roger's eye-popping reaction as the two toons reach the top of the lift hill and spy the state of Florida, hundreds of miles below them.

But before Roger & Baby Herman reached the top of the coaster, they had to chug up to the top of this impossibly tall hill. As originally written, Roger's coaster car would have come to a crossroads on the lift hill. A traffic light would have just turned red as Roger & Baby Herman's car reached the crossroads, which would cause them to pause.

It was then that the "Long Car" was supposed to have zoomed through the intersection in front of Roger & Baby Herman's car. Riding in this roller coaster train was supposed to have been every single animated character that has ever appeared in a Disney film. Mickey & Minnie were to have been seated in the front car, while Monstro the Whale from "Pinocchio" would have been towering over everyone from his seat at the very back of the train.

Sounds like a wonderful gag, doesn't it? Well, the animators at Disney/MGM labored for weeks to get this particular scene right. They had ancient model sheets pulled from the studio's animation research library, just to make sure that they got the look of every single character just right. They then endlessly debated which Disney character should go where on the train to maximize the impact of the gag.

But -- in the end -- all of this effort was for naught. The animators ended up cutting this elaborate gag because they could never quite figure out how to play it. If the "Long Car" zoomed through the scene as fast as it was originally supposed to, the audience sitting in the movie theater would have never gotten a good enough look to recognize any of the Disney characters riding in the coaster. However, if the animators slowed down the action enough so that folks could see who was actually riding in the train, the "Long Car" gag threw off the frantic pace of the rest of the "Roger Rabbit" short.

So -- in spite of all the pre-production work that had gone into the "Long Car" scene -- this particular in-joke still hit the cutting room floor. "Roller Coaster Rabbit" still had plenty of laughs without it. But -- even so -- Disney animators continued to toy with the idea of creating a sequence that would feature every single character from every Disney animated film.

When "Fantasia 2000" (Or -- as the film was originally known -- "Fantasia Continued") began pre-production back in the early 1990s, Disney's animators thought that they had finally found a way to resurrect their much loved "Long Train" idea. But -- instead of wasting this brilliant concept on one quick don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it sight gag -- they decided to build an entire section of the revised concert feature around this ambitiously amusing idea.

All by itself, the core concept for this proposed "Fantasia Continued" section seemed ingenious. Start with Sir Edward Elgar's classic piece, "Pomp & Circumstances." Get famous comic composer Peter Schiekele (AKA P.D.Q. Bach) to write a rollicking arrangement of the music. Have James Levine and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra record the new arrangement. Then add every Disney character known to man. And -- Presto! -- you've got a show stopping sequence for "Fantasia Continued."

But -- just like with "Roller Coaster Rabbit" -- what may have seemed like a great idea on paper just didn't play out on film. This section -- as it was originally supposed to have been mapped out -- was basically a big screen sequel to the memorable 1942 Mickey Mouse short, "The Symphony Hour." Mickey would have stood on stage at the Hollywood Bowl, conducting a Disney all-star toon orchestra. However, seated behind him in the amphitheater would have been every Disney character ever created.

Intriguing as that may sound, the idea just never came together the way "Fantasia Continued" producers had hoped it would. With the constant cutting away from Mickey & his orchestra to highlight yet another set of characters seated in the amphitheater, the proposed sequence just never added up into anything. It just came across as more of a stunt than a showstopper.

So -- with great reluctance -- "Fantasia Continued" producers decided to abandon a proposed section of their film that would have probably had more Disney in-jokes than 1988's "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" But the studio still liked Schiekele's arrangement of "Pomp & Circumstances" as performed by James Levine and the Chicago Symphony orchestra. So what should they do now?

Try dozens of different ideas for this section, of course. Which is why the deluxe DVD version of Disney's "Fantasia" anthology is so fascinating to animation fans. For it actually allows you to see several different versions of the short animated film as they would have played out to this particular piece of music. The "Donald as Icarus" version. The "Fat, grouchy dove who's Noah's helper" version. And -- finally -- the version that we all saw in theaters last year: "Noah's Duck."

This story -- of course -- just barely scratches the surface of the many thousands of great gags that have been proposed for various Disney animated films over the years that eventually got dropped. Take -- for example -- Adam West's appearance in "The Emperor's New Groove" (Where TV's Batman would have gotten to exchange a line or two with his old arch nemesis, Eartha Kitt AKA Catwoman). Or how Ariel & Sebastian's cute little cameo got cut just weeks before "Hercules" hit theaters in 1997. Not to mention that demented "Jaws" tribute (Picture Captain Quint providing the voice for a mangy looking Tiger teething toy) that John Lasseter wanted to put in the original version of "Toy Story."

So many wonderful tales from the cutting room floor. Plus -- if you animation insiders have stories of your own that you'd like to pass along -- I'd be happy to share them with the rest of the LaughingPlace.com family.

Because ... Lord knows, we could all use a laugh right about now.

-- Jim Hill

-- Posted September 18, 2001