Rock-A-Doodle
Short description
Rock-A-Doodle centres on a farm rooster named Chanticleer whose crowing, the other animals believe, makes the sun rise each morning. When the sun comes up one day without his song, the humiliated bird leaves the farm behind and starts a new life as a rock singer in the city. In his absence the weather turns dark and stormy, which suits Grand Duke, a light-hating owl with designs on the farm. A group of the farm's animals sets out for the city to persuade Chanticleer to come home, while Grand Duke works to stop them.
Don Bluth directed and co-wrote the film with David N. Weiss, and produced it with Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, the team behind his earlier animated features. It was released in 1991, the sixth film he directed, between All Dogs Go to Heaven and Thumbelina. Glen Campbell supplies the singing voice of Chanticleer, with Christopher Plummer as Grand Duke, Ellen Greene as Goldie, Kathryn Holcomb and Stan Ivar as the farming couple Dory and Frank, and Toby Scott Ganger as the boy Edmond. The film combines animation with live-action framing scenes.
Made on a budget of about 18 million dollars, it returned roughly 12 million worldwide, a shortfall against its cost. On TMDB it holds a rating of 6.2 from 325 votes, indicating a modest and mixed response from viewers rather than a broad one.
What's left behind the scenes
- The final scene, where live-action acting is combined with animation, was included in the film following the success of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' (1988), which was based on this technique. Similarly, the glamorous image of Goldie the pheasant (voiced by Ellen Green) shares traits with Jessica from the 1988 cartoon. However, after screenings, the management of Goldcrest Films ordered the animators to change Goldie's appearance and remove the cleavage.
- Victor French was initially brought in to film the live-action scenes. Within the first four days of work, French filmed a significant portion of the hurricane scenes, but he subsequently left the project due to the sudden onset of pain. It soon became clear that he had lung cancer, and he passed away three months later. The animated film 'The New Adventures of Dog and His Friends' became his final project; everything French was unable to film before his passing was later completed by Don Bluth.
- Filming the scene in which a claw smashes the bedroom window was very expensive; everything had to be done perfectly on the first take, and Don Bluth, naturally, was very nervous. On top of everything, he was worried about Toby Scott Ganger, who was lying on a special platform and had to be pulled away at the last second to avoid being reached by the claw. Ganger's stunt double, Ganger himself, and his mother, who was also present on set, collectively assured Bluth that there was nothing to worry about and that everything would be fine. When filming began, something went wrong with one of the wheels on the platform, and Bluth immediately closed his eyes. Fortunately, Ganger was pulled away in time, and no one was injured during the shoot. Bluth didn't even see the take, but he was still so shocked that he stopped filming for the day.
- Don Bluth grew up on a farm, and while working on the scene where the family of Edmond the kitten (voiced by Toby Scott Ganger) rescues a cow from the mud, he experienced significant emotional distress. The animal was given a sedative, and Bluth constantly checked on it to ensure the cow was alright. During one such check, he noticed that the cow (who had been named Abigail) was pregnant. Fortunately, participating in the filming had no effect on Abigail, and in due time, she gave birth to a calf, which Bluth decided to name Clifford.
- Glen Campbell (who voiced Chanticleer the rooster) was friends with Elvis Presley and would occasionally parody him in a lighthearted way. He only stopped doing this after the singer's death. In this project, he once again imitated Elvis through the singing of his character.
- Initially, the film contained rather dark plot elements, such as an episode in which the Grand Duke bakes a live baby skunk into a pie in the kitchen and then eats the pie. It was decided to cut this scene from the animation. According to one of the directors and producers, Gary Goldman, this was done not out of a desire to spare the feelings of young viewers, but for a very prosaic reason. The Irish-American animation studio Sullivan Bluth Studios (later Don Bluth Entertainment), founded by Don Bluth, received a complaint from distributors—and the complaint was not about the cruelty of the plotlines, but rather that too many instances of child abuse occur specifically in kitchens and invariably involve kitchen utensils.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
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