There’s been a lot of chatter about rising fuel prices spelling Walt Disney World’s doom of late on Disney fan sites – some reporting that if gas continues its increase and crude oil tops $160 a barrel (it’s currently at $133), it would be practical for Disney to sell off Walt Disney World and take liscencing fees.
Others talk of parks closing down during different weekdays, plans of DCA being shelved until something stablizes, etc. Personally, I don’t think anyone would buy all of WDW even if Disney wanted to part with it, but that’s just me.
Regardless, I wanted to take a series of articles and discuss this. Particularly, how it relates to the early years of the Resort, when the Oil crisis of the ’70s was happening. EPCOT was being planned, as were new resorts and attractions for the Magic Kingdom. Some of my favorite WDW ideas were shelved permanently during this time, including Thunder Mesa, The Venetian, Asian, and Arabian hotels (all pictured in this overview provided by Jim Hill media and copywrited 1969 Walt Disney Productions). What happened last time? What will happen this time?
Well, it’s been a while. I feel as if I’ve broken some sacred covenant of the blogger with my handful of beloved readers. Nevertheless, when life in the outside world gets too interesting, exhausting or downright busy, it seems that the blog is the first thing to suffer. Perhaps I needed a small break from all things Disney; I must admit that I’m a bit behind on all the cutting-edge gossip from the last few weeks. My politics addiction has taken up all of my available blogging time, but I guess a change in scenery is good now and again. It recharges the linear induction motors.
Unfortunately, when life moves at near-relativistic speeds time dilation occurs, and even though it seems that little time has passed you might return to the Internet to find that hundreds of news cycles have come and gone. So although I have a lot of catching up to do, now that grants are submitted and life is settling down our world will once more be a World of Motion. In the meantime, here are a few Disney-related thoughts from recent weeks:
– There’s lot of park news dribbling out that I need to catch up on. Plans for DCA continue to be refined, with some elements being cut and some being plussed. I’ve yet to cover this expansion in depth, and my feelings about it are mixed. On one hand, you have a massive and highly-themed rehab coming to one of Disney’s poorest-designed parks. On the other hand, I really can’t get behind “Carsland” as the theme of the centerpiece of a park ostensibly themed to California. The fairly recent decision to cut the new version of The Walt Disney Story is also a major disappointment.
– It looks like Florida’s Magic Kingdom is going to get a clone of DCA’s Little Mermaid attraction. This is great news for a park that has not received an E-Ticket addition in sixteen (!) years, but unfortunately for fans, the clone wars continue…
– Florida’s Hollywood Studios have been allowing guests to test out the new Toy Story Mania. Reports seem to be good so far; some friends of mine have ridden it and quite enjoyed it. The park has long needed more dark rides, and this adds a touch of excitement to an increasingly stale park. Still, the nattering nabobs like myself continue to have issues with the theming of the attraction and its placement in DHS…
– More park rumors: new stuff to come for DHS, Star Tours 2.0 in the works at last, possible DAK expansion… and for some reason, certain parties insist that plans for the so-called “Night Kingdom” fifth gate continue to be developed. I’m really not certain what to think of this project, as there’s certainly a market for high-end experiences but how many families go rock climbing together? Meanwhile, Ed Grier drops word that planning continues for a third gate in Anaheim… make this one count, WDI…
– I saw Prince Caspian last week – sadly it was a bit of a letdown. In fact, it was a major letdown. It’s bad when a sequel makes you doubt the goodwill you held for the original film. Caspian had a major case of the blockbusteritis that plagues many large movies these days, including the vastly disappointing new Indiana Jones movie. The film is entirely exposition and action – it never stops moving. Things like character and motivation are swept aside for spectacle, and one misses the smaller, more meaningful moments that gave the earlier films that extra bit of soul that made them worthwhile.
There’s one exception to this: the scene in which Tilda Swinton’s White Witch appears and tries to trick the protagonists into releasing her back into Narnia. The scene is kind of dropped in there, and doesn’t really have any relevance to the main narrative, but it’s fantastic and by far and away the best scene in the entire film. Of course Tilda Swinton could probably read the phone book and it would still be bizarrely fascinating, but if the rest of the film had the feel and import of this one scene it would be far more memorable.
Also, Aslan was kind of a prissy jerk. No one wants a diva for their messiah figure.
On the positive side, the film was spectacular, well filmed, fairly well acted, and featured some magnificent effects and production design. The action scenes, aside from the glaringly poor editing and pacing of the castle siege, were top notch. I was afraid the final swordfight between Peter and Swarthy McEvilKing was going to just be a by-the-numbers Gladiator ripoff but it wound up being a very nicely staged and interestingly filmed duel – a rarity in the day of the quick edit. Also, no one has even been let down by a movie with a schoolgirl wreaking cold-blooded havoc with a bow and arrow.
I’ve not given up on Narnia – there wasn’t really anything bad in the film, it was just missing some important elements – but it will be nice to get some new directorial blood in the next installment.
– Speaking of movies, WALL-E continues to look amazing. I am seriously so excited about this film I might drink myself into a coma so I don’t have to wait the few weeks until its opening. We’ve also seen a bit more about the short which will accompany it, and it looks about as great as you’d expect.
Anyway, I suppose I should get to work as I have a month of Disney news to catch up on, as well as some larger stories I’d like to write. Thankfully my fellow Disney bloggers have continued to crank out great work whilst I’ve been away, so I have lots of interesting reading to do. Stay tuned!
P.S. Since this is my first post in a while, I’d like to give a shout out to my dear Swingin’ Teddi Barra… Welcome to the ‘ohana!
I feel that I am perhaps the last individual in the Disney blogosphere to post any sort of public comment about the recent controversy surrounding the rumored changes to Disneyland’s version of it’s a small world. This is due to a number of reasons, but mostly, as a grizzled veteran of Eisner’s last decade at the helm of the Walt Disney company, I have attained a degree of scandal fatigue. Quite simply, I have seen so many desecrations and obscenities foisted upon the art of themed entertainment and design that I have become inured to such grand disappointments.
I fought in the Toad Wars of 1998, had the first website devoted to saving Horizons and wrote a letter so incensed by Journey Into YOUR Imagination that I got a call at home from the then Vice President of EPCOT Center. I watched Disney built a park with amazing theming but little to do (Animal Kingdom), minimal theming and nothing to do (California Adventure) and no theming and nothing to do (Disney Studios Paris). I consider Hong Kong Disneyland something of a gated botanical gardens. After wands and hats and Pop Century, I had no store of indignation left.
Young revolutionaries on the barricades – the last Toad-In, September 7, 1998. I seem distracted.
But just as things looked bleakest, there was a ray of hope. Paul Pressler left to destroy another company. Michael Eisner left to hang out with Bette Midler and trade baseball cards. John Lasseter and the Pixar squad rode in on their white horses to give the triage badly needed by a dying WDI and dead Feature Animation department. Even Bob Iger, Eisner’s hand-picked successor, proved me wrong and wound up not being a proxy for the departed CEO but a fairly bold new leader who embraced a far more progressive view of new technologies than his predecessor. Surely, everyone would live happily ever after.
Still, all was not well. The management purges and noxious politics of the last decade had left Imagineering paranoid and factionalized, split between the embattled creatives who had managed to survive in the hope of better days ahead and those who, bolstered by political maneuvering and their ability to “play the game” successfully had risen through the ranks. Not since the Augean stables had an organization so desperately needed a flushing out of the dross and a complete rebuilding.
While change came, however, it came slowly. Sub-par attractions still filtered out into the parks, and more alarmingly, newly announced attractions started to have a noticeably Pixar-centric tilt. The “toonification” of the parks amped up in earnest, and areas that once whisked guests away to adventure in fantastic but real-world settings became new venues for promoting the Franchise of the Month. It seemed that at our moment of greatest triumph, the folks from marketing had won after all. The parks were going to become ads for character merchandise, and the days of the great non-“property” rides like Pirates or Mansion might never return.
Oh noes.
There remained reasons for optimism, though, and obviously a great deal of wonderful, devoted and creative staff continue to try their best to keep the company living up to Walt’s ideals. I’ve tended to cut them slack even in times of irritation, and even though I might disagree with their choices I’m usually eager to see where they’re going in the hopes that the ship will eventually get turned around completely. So, for a while, my crusading came to an end.
Recently, though, rumors emerged of something so strangely unnecessary, blinkered and contrary to both good taste and Disney legacy that I felt that old activist drumbeat once more. Something had been planned so purely based in concepts of “marketing” and “brand awareness” and intended to move merchandise that it can’t help but to raise the hackles of fans. Something that strikes right at the nexus of several “sacrosanct” movements in Disney park history, and something that was neither asked for or needed.
So why not? Once more into the breach, dear friends. Start your petitions and phone calls, emails and letters. Grab the pitchforks and light up those torches, because they’re going to screw around with it’s a small world.
Although unconfirmed, it’s widely believed that Pixar director Andrew Stanton’s next film after WALL-E will be John Carter of Mars. The science-fiction film, based on the series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, has been alternately rumored to be animated, live-action or a hybrid of both. Yet it is not Hollywood’s first attempt to film Burroughs’ tales of Barsoom – several studios have tried and failed over the decades to get a John Carter project off the ground. The first of these attempts was all the way back in the 1930s, and ironically this iteration of the tale was actually intended as an animated serial.
In 1931 Bob Clampett went to work at the Harman-Ising Studios, where the Disney expatriates were producing shorts for Warner Brothers. Here he worked on the early Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts, staying with Warners when Harman and Ising left and Leon Schlesinger took over the animation unit. Working with Friz Freleng and Tex Avery, Clampett would eventually become one of Warners’ legendary animators. Around 1936, however, he had an idea for striking out on his own.
Clampett approached Edgar Rice Burroughs about serializing his Mars novels in animated form. Burroughs, although unfamiliar with the animation world, was enthusiastic about the project and gave it his consent. Clampett worked for about a year on development with Burroughs’ son, John Coleman Burroughs. While still working for Warners, Clampett moonlighted on the John Carter project with assistance from animator Chuck Jones and eventually created a pencil test and demo reel.
Sadly, studio politics were just as wrongheaded then as they are now and executive interference eventually led to the demise of the project. MGM, who held the rights to Burroughs’ properties, didn’t understand the serious, science-fiction tone Clampett was trying to achieve. They instead wanted more slapstick, comical films and wanted Burroughs to adapt his more popular Tarzan character for animation. Eventually Clampett tired of the process and returned to Warners where he signed a new contract to direct.
The project never revived; animated shorts remained the domain of the funny animals and slapstick that had dominated them for years. The closest that Hollywood would come to the aesthetic of Clampett’s John Carter would be the Fleischers’ Superman shorts several years later. Clampett’s project, if realized, might have changed the face of science-fiction and animation forever.
This little history lesson is basically so I can show you this footage – the quite awesome demo that Clampett produced in 1936 to demonstrate his concept:
More information is available in this interesting article by Jim Korkis.
Due to a bit of uncharacteristic good luck, a trip back home last weekend led to a brush with Pixar. I had already decided to drive over to Winston-Salem when my BFF swingin’ Teddi Barra rang me up with the news that Pixar staffer David Park would be a featured speaker at the Reynolda Film Festival. Park was the Art Department Coordinator for Ratatouille and is currently the Animation Department Coordinator for WALL-E. Needless to say, I was in.
After getting up early on Saturday, we met up and headed over to Wake Forest for the festival. While sadly I don’t have any good documentation of the presentation, as it didn’t seem savvy to be snapping tons of pictures in a dark auditorium, I thought that I’d bring it all up here in case you, dear reader, ever have a chance to attend one of these talks. If you have the chance, be sure and go – it’s well worth it.
Park led off with a discussion of Pixar itself – its campus and its culture. His presentation provided us with a brief history of the company’s creation and culminated with an audiovisual tour of its Emoryville, California, campus. Both the technical and artistic halves of the company were discussed, with accompanying pictures and anecdotes from Park’s own experience. Needless to say, Pixar is an amazing place and I will shamelessly solicit tour offers from any of my readers from the pixar.com domain. The tour of Pixar segued into a discussion of their core values which are well known amongst fans – the focus on story which is achieved through a constant, iterative process of collaboration.
To illustrate the process, Park walked us through the production of Ratatouille from its original concept to final rendering. While the actual animation process is not a mystery to any avid fan, it’s still fascinating to watch it play out from an insider’s perspective. Throughout the presentation, Park peppered his speech with little facts and stories from production that gave an insight that was missing in the film’s bare-bones DVD.
All in all, the presentation didn’t contain any earth-shattering revelations, but it was full of great art that I had never seen, and nice slice-of-life peeks into Pixar headquarters. It was highly enjoyable and I would recommend it to anyone, regardless of their animation I.Q. One interesting tidbit: considering Pixar’s history of focusing on a new technological innovation in each new film, my companion Teddi asked Park what breakthroughs the company was introducing in WALL-E. Hedging a bit due to his NDA, Park said that all he could tell us was to watch how the camera moved. So – camera moves! Be prepared. I asked him what Pixar’s specific production contribution would be to its upcoming live-action co-productions (thinking of 1906 and hoping to get him to say something about John Carter of Mars), but Park said that it was too far out to know for sure about those issues.
So there you go, kids – my brush with Pixar. If their traveling roadshow ever comes to your town, be sure and catch it. I’ll now be quitting my job, packing my hobo sack and catching a boxcar to Emoryville. They can only pass me, sitting on the sidewalk outside the front gate, for so many days before someone lets me in, right?
From the Progress City archives comes this collection of 33 tall tales and true from Disney history. Available in paperback, hardback, and ebook formats.
Young revolutionaries on the barricades – the last Toad-In, September 7, 1998.
Oh noes.
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