May 16th, 2022 
Jackson Murphy 
Akiva Schaffer makes-up one third of the popular Lonely Island trio. He’s also the director of Disney’s new live-action/animated feature combo Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers, which premieres this Friday May 20th on Disney+. Turns out Chip and Dale were *actors* on the popular late ’80s/early ’90s Rescue Rangers series. 30 years later, they reunite in a much different Hollywoodland, with a missing friend’s case to solve. Schaffer discusses this wild and ambitious new movie. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: So many animated characters in this movie! Are there more animated characters in this than in any other movie in the history of motion pictures?
Akiva Schaffer: I’m gonna go ahead and say, “Yes”. And I guarantee it. And… let’s not do the math. Let’s just take me at my word that that’s the truth and just leave it at that.
JM: (laughs) There are so many characters OUTSIDE of the Disney vault. Not gonna name all the surprise appearances. How did you get the rights to use the ones not [from] the Mouse House?
AS: It was super important to me, in the spirit of [Who Framed] Roger Rabbit having Looney Tunes and what not, and in this not appearing to be a giant ad for Disney+, that I get a bunch of characters that are outside, from third parties. And also the general idea that this is going to be some sort of love letter to animation: it should include all animation, not just Disney. Unfortunately though, while I was working on it, Disney just kept buying other companies. So now all of a sudden The Simpsons are technically Disney. So they made it difficult by just swallowing everybody up as I was going along.
How hard? Not a lot of filmmakers start doing an interview and say, “Hey, we’ve gotta give it up for the lawyers!” But on this one, the Disney lawyers really had their hands full and they kind of welcomed the challenge. I can say, “It should be a bunch of My Little Ponies and they’re running through and these guys get swept up like the running of the bulls”, but then they have to go call Mattel and pitch them the movie or get me on to pitch it. There’s a whole world that has to happen to get My Little Ponies in the movie. There’s lots of others that you don’t see because it didn’t work out, but the ones that you do see mean that the people who own them were cool and licensed it and made it happen.
JM: You got a lot in. And you’re right that it’s a love letter to animation. There are shots in this Chip ‘N Dale movie where it’s hand-drawn animation, CG animation, claymation AND live-action… all in the same shot! It’s unbelievable. How did you pull that off?
AS: It was what was in the script that attracted me to it because I wanted to learn more about that process and… since Mary Poppins — when I was a kid, dancing with those penguins — or Roger Rabbit (the gold standard), or even MC Skat Kat in Opposites Attract with Paula Abdul, the idea of cartoons with humans has been done and is really exciting and is always cool to see. But the 30 years of animation have existed since then, plus also including stop-motion that existed back with Roger Rabbit… just reading it [I] was like, “What is this gonna look like?” And there is a shot like the one you just mentioned. If you’re gonna do one of those, you have to be excited about it for YEARS because it takes years to make it. That was part of what made me know it could keep my attention and keep it exciting for that long.
JM: Besides the obvious, what do John Mulaney and Andy Samberg give Chip & Dale that fans have never really experienced before out of these characters?
AS: I tried to use… this is a roundabout way to answer… but I tried to use legacy voice actors of the real characters wherever possible in the movie. That is Charles Fleischer doing the voice of Roger Rabbit. And whenever possible when using a legacy character, I try to get animators and artists to do that character again. There is an artist who worked on the original Roger Rabbit who helped with the design and the animation of it in the movie.
That said, when it came to Chip & Dale and this new story we were telling, I had Tress MacNeille and Corey Burton (who did their original voices) come-in. But because we were doing this story where we needed to yell “CUT!”… just like when they come-in they don’t have high-pitched voices. They sound like normal voice actors. That was part of the story of this movie. So the fun idea was that when they’re high pitched, they’re these original voices, which they are in the movie. And when they talk as themselves, they talk as themselves. So that’s something VERY new for these characters that will take a little getting used to for some people. But I feel like it also allows the movie to appeal to adults and be grounded because you’re not having to listen to squeaky voices the *entire* movie, which can be a bit tiresome for an adult.
And on a character level, Chip & Dale from Rescue Rangers, but even a little earlier as their characters in the 1940’s started developing into this odd couple… When they started back in the day they were kind of more twins. As they developed into years and years of doing shorts with Donald Duck and all the way to Rescue Rangers where it really solidified and you could really understand what they were saying — they were always an odd couple, with Dale with the red clown nose, buck teeth and poof of hair and Chip being the more leading man with the chocolate chip nose. There’s a huge tradition of Abbott & Costello, Laurel & Hardy, Matthau & Lemmon, Farley & Spade, Steve Martin & John Candy — odd couples. And they were already in those lanes. The script already had them in those lanes. Then it was the fun of trying to think of, “Who’s the goofball?” and I’m like, “My buddy Andy.” And who’s a good modern day Steve Martin and you can’t do better than John Mulaney in that category?
JM: This movie is a playground for making fun of pop culture. You do a lot with Fan Cons. There is a moment involving the movie Cats that’s really funny. How did you discover that this Chip ‘N Dale movie could be a vehicle for all of these parodies and satire of pop culture and Hollywood?
AS: It was all in the script — not necessarily the specific jokes you’re talking about [but] all the scenes of those ideas. Doug Mand and Dan Gregor wrote the script. I read it. They wrote it, actually, back in 2015/2016. Sat on the shelf. I read it in late 2018/early 2019, and that’s when I came on board and started developing it. And I got them back on board… for them to do a rewrite. It was all in there — all the fun with Roger Rabbit world, the meta stuff, the commentary on reboots while being a reboot. There’s some cynicalness in there in regards to Hollywood and what it can do to people and how it can change people. But ultimately I’m not a cynical person and the movie’s not cynical. It’s all this celebration. It was all in there — that’s part of what attracted me to it. And then we just played in those parameters.
JM: I have to mention that I live 10 minutes away from Albany, NY. So the fact that Albany is mentioned with [the character of] Ellie [played by KiKi Layne] is so cool! Great job picking that city!
AS: (laughs) Well, don’t look up if [Rescue Rangers] actually aired there. Let’s just take the plot points at their word, and once again, just like I’m gonna tell you that this has the most different animated characters of any movie ever, let’s not look up a lot of the details.
JM: How much of that Chip ‘N Dale swag that we see in one of the scenes did you get to keep?
AS: It is all in a Disney warehouse now. But I will say: it was just as fun as it looks like when Ellie walks in there and is like, “Whoa!” Showing up to this real garage — it was not a set. It was a real garage in L.A. where our set decorator had collected over the three months of prep ALL this real Chip ‘N Dale merchandise. It’s all real in there. It was like going into a Chip ‘N Dale museum. There’s stuff from so long ago, new stuff, Shanghai Disneyland, all these big things, little things, the old Nintendo games, it’s all real. The fun was truly being in that room looking around. Every little detail. Thousands of things. And I couldn’t take any of it!
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