Disney released a statement today that Al Weiss, the President of Worldwide Operations for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, is stepping down from that post which he has held since 2005. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Weiss’s resignation will be effective immediately although he will officially remain employed with the company until November 1st.
Weiss, who is only 57, has been employed with Disney for 39 years. Most of us on the east coast know Weiss from Walt Disney World, where he was that resort’s president during its long decline from 1994-2005.
What’s intriguing is that Weiss will not be replaced. The Sentinel reports that his position is being eliminated and, according to Disney Parks Chairman Tom Staggs, the parks operations division will receive a new operating structure in the upcoming weeks. This is rather big news, and I look forward to seeing what they have in mind. It’s obvious that there’s some driftwood in the operations structure from the top to the bottom, and a housecleaning would certainly be welcomed by many fans (assuming, of course, that the new structure is staffed with capable people). It’s a shame that former Disney executive Matt Ouimet was announced as the new head of Cedar Fair Entertainment Co. just two days ago; Ouimet is frequently hailed as “the man who saved Disneyland”, and many fans have long hoped that he would return to the fold.
So what does this all mean? Time will tell. I’m very interested to see what this new organizational structure is.
One thing that’s often forgotten nowadays is the fact that in Walt’s heyday – the golden age of Walt Disney Productions – the studio was a favorite of intellectuals and “serious” artists the world over. In recent decades Disney is often derided by cultural commentators, who view it as a vast hegemonic and homogenizing corporate force, and its products are (with certain exceptions) typically dismissed by self-appointed guardians of the culture.
Way back when, though, things were different. In the period between Steamboat Willy and, roughly, the time of the bitter animators’ strike in 1941, Disney’s films were darlings of the elite. And this was an age when the elite truly were elite. Mickey’s fans ranged from Charlie Chaplin to Sergei Eisenstein and René Clair; Salvador Dalí famously worked with the Disney studio, as did, briefly, Oskar Fishinger. And the “star” of the first Disney live-action film, The Reluctant Dragon, was Algonquin wit Robert Benchley.
One could debate the reasons that upper-crust perceptions of Disney changed after World War II, although a second wave of thinkers would eventually embrace the Disney theme parks when they later emerged (think James Rouse, or Ray Bradbury). Or, perhaps, society as a whole was different – after the war, the role of noted columnists, essayists, “wits”, or radio pontificators changed as well.
This piece, however, comes from the time when Walt was still the talk of intellectuals on both coasts, and it comes from one of the most hallowed of them all – author and essayist James Thurber. Writing in The Nation on March 28, 1934, Thurber penned this paean to Disney’s creations and made some suggestions for the studio’s future projects. Could Thurber’s piece have been slightly tongue-in-cheek? It’s possible, and considering that it’s Thurber writing that possibly can’t be discounted. But, more than likely, the essay reflects a sincere appreciation of Disney’s work.
And, let’s face it, of all the fans who have tried to send in their ideas for proposed projects to Disney over the years, I’ll bet Thurber’s didn’t get sent back unread by a pack of vicious lawyers.
Here’s the piece, in its entirety:
The “Odyssey” of Disney
I HAVE never particularly cared for the “Odyssey” of Homer. The edition we used in high school – I forget the editors’ names, but let us call it Bwumba and Bwam’s edition – was too small to hide a livelier book behind, and it was cold and gray in style and in content. All the amorous goings on of the story were judiciously left out. We pupils might, at that age, have taken a greater interest in T. E. Shaw’s recent rendering, the twenty-eighth, by his count, in English; for bang-off in Book I the third sentence reads: “She craved him for her bed-mate: while he was longing for his house and wife.” But there wasn’t any such sentence in old Bwumba and Bwam. It was a pretty dull book to read. No matter how thin Mr. Shaw has sliced it, it is still, it seems to me, a pretty dull book to read.
The fact that the “Odyssey” is the “oldest book worth reading for its story and the first novel of modern Europe” makes it no more lively – to me, anyway – than does the turning of it into what Mr. Shaw’s publishers call “vital, modern, poetic prose.” There are too many dreary hours between this rosy-fingered dawn and that rosy-fingered dawn. The menaces in ancient Jeopardy were too far apart, the hazards prowled at too great distances, the gods maundered and were repetitious. Ulysses himself is not a hero to whom a young man’s fancy turns in any season. The comedy of the “Odyssey” is thought by some students to be unintentional and by others to be intentional, and there must not be any uncertainty about comedy. But whatever may be said about it, the “Odyssey” will always keep bobbing up, in our years and in the years to follow them. The brazen entry into the United States of Mr. Joyce’s “Ulysses” has most recently brought the “Odyssey” again into view; as the magazine Time points out to its surprised readers, “almost every detail of the ‘Odyssey’s’ action can be found in disguised form in ‘Ulysses.'” So, many a reader might naturally enough ask, what? So nothing – that is, nothing of real importance in so far as the “Odyssey” or “Ulysses” itself is concerned. The ancient story just happened to make a point of departure for Mr. Joyce. He might equally well have taken for a pattern Sherman’s campaign in Georgia. Nevertheless, here is the old tale before us again not quite two years after Mr. Shaw went over the whole ground for the twenty-eighth time in English.
My purpose in this essay is no such meager and footless one as to suggest that it is high time for some other ancient tale to be brought up in place of the “Odyssey” – although, if urged, I would say the “Morte d’Arthur.” My purpose is to put forward in all sincerity and all arrogance the conviction that the right “Odyssey” has yet to be done, and to name as the man to do it no less a genius than Walt Disney. A year or two ago Mr. Disney made a Silly Symphony, as he too lightly called this masterpiece, entitled “Neptune.” Those who missed seeing it missed a lusty, fearsome, beautiful thing. Here was a god and here were sea adventures in the ancient manner as nobody else has given them to us. The thing cannot be described; it can be rendered into no English. But it was only a hint of what Mr. Disney, let loose in the “Odyssey,” could make of it.
The dark magic of Circe’s isle, the crossing between Scylla and Charybdis, the slaying of the suitors are just by the way; and so are dozens of other transfigurations, mythical feats of strength, and godly interventions. Mr. Disney could toss these away by the dozen and keep only a select few. For one: Ulysses and his men in the cave of the Cyclops. That would be that scene as I should like my daughter to know it first, when she gets ready for the “Odyssey,” or when she is grimly made ready for it – I presume one still has to read it in school as I did, along with “The Talisman” and “Julius Caesar.” Picture Mr. Disney’s version of the overcoming of the giant, the escape tied to the sheep, the rage of Polyphemus as he hurls the tops of mountains at the fleeing ship of Ulysses and his men!
But I think my favorite scene will be (I’m sure Mr. Disney will do the “Odyssey” if we all ask him please) that scene wherein Menelaus and his followers wrestle with the wily Proteus on the island of Pharos. You know: the Old Man of the Sea comes up out of the dark waters at noon to count his droves of precious seals all stretched out on the beach. In his innocence of treachery or of any change in the daily routine, he unwittingly counts Menelaus and his three men, who are curled up among the seals trying to look as much like seals as possible. It doesn’t come out, by the way, in any rendering I’ve read, and I’ve read two, just what the Old Man thought when he found he had four seals too many. Anyway, at the proper moment Menelaus and his followers jump upon Proteus. In the terrific struggle that ensues the Old Man changes into – here I follow the Shaw version – “a hairy lion: then a dragon: then a leopard: then a mighty boar. He became a film of water, and afterwards a high-branched tree.”
How only for Walt Disney’s hand and his peculiar medium was that battle fought! His “Odyssey” can be, I am sure, a far, far greater thing than even his epic of the three little pigs. Let’s all write to him about it, or to Roosevelt.
James Thurber
OK, so maybe Thurber was having a bit of sport, but you never know.
This was, of course, three years before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs debuted, so Thurber had hardly seen Disney at the full extent of his powers. It’s amusing, though, to think of a time when the only place you could see spectacles of the sort that Thurber outlines was in a Disney film. In a way, Disney was the Industrial Light and Magic of the day; such a perspective really does help one understand why Walt’s films caused the sensation that they did.
Here’s the Silly Symphony that so inflamed Thurber’s imagination:
If there’s one thing this summer has proved, it’s that I control the universe.
We’ve previously cited the events at The Enchanted Tiki Room as proof of this, but for further evidence we should examine the case of The Rocketeer.
It all began a few months ago when I was whinging on Twitter about how overlooked the film is. The new trailer for Captain America had just come out, strongly challenging the Rocketeer vibe, and considering that director Joe Johnston was responsible for both films I felt that now was the time for a Rocketeer revival. After all, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the film’s release (a distressing fact, believe you me) and what better way to promote a restored re-release of the film for home video than by piggybacking on the new Marvel superhero tentpole. “From the director of CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER!!!” Marketeers love those kinds of stickers, and at least it would get us a decent DVD or Blu-ray of The Rocketeer.
A long online chat led to a guest spot on a Metro-Retro Historical Society podcast with the WEDway Radio guys, where we talked about our mutual love for the film. Soon after, we were surprised – and pleased! – to see that D23 had announced its own celebration of the film’s 20th anniversary. And, you west-coasters, the event is tomorrow night.
So make note, you lucky so-and-sos. The celebration and screening is tomorrow, June 21st, at 7:30 p.m. at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood. Tickets are available through the El Capitan at 818-845-3110 or by visiting ElCapitanTickets.com. The event will include a screening of a newly-remastered digital print of the film, previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage, as well as a panel including director Joe Johnston, the Rocketeer himself, Bill Campbell, legendary makeup artist Rick Baker, writers Danny Bilson and Paul De Mio, and illustrator William Stout – himself a friend of deceased Rocketeer creator Dave Stevens. The panel will be moderated by director Kevin Smith.
In addition, there will be a museum of memorabilia and production artifacts from the film, as well as a remarkable selection of merchandise that you should totally, totally buy for me.
Honestly, people, if you live in the Hollywood area or even anywhere near, you have to go to this. Do it for me, because I can’t. And hopefully – hopefully! – this newly-remastered print will show up on a feature-loaded Blu-ray sometime soon.
Find out more information about the event, and see a trailer, at D23’s site.
For those of us in the lowly demographic called “fandom”, true insight is only gained through extreme displays of excess and obsessiveness. This especially holds true when researching older Imagineering projects, and most particularly projects that were somehow altered or never came to be. So little artwork or information escapes from Fortress Disney, that each ancient rendering or photograph that turns up must be dissected on an angstrom-by-angstrom level. Old park models tend to appear only in one or two glossy promotional photos that have been reprinted endlessly over the years, but these images rarely give up the level of detail that we desire.
Images of the EPCOT Center model from 1978 are fairly common. It was the year that Disney re-announced their commitment to the project, and their intention to proceed with planning and design. It was the year that the park really started to resemble the facility that we know today, with a single row of themed international showcases around the lagoon and the core Future World pavilions decided on. But most images of this model are from a single angle, obscuring World Showcase, and they’re rarely reprinted in an adequate size. It would be so helpful to have a new angle on the situation…
Oh look! It’s a new angle on the situation:
The 21st century begins!
This image is undated, but I believe it to date, roughly, to mid 1978. While this is the model pictured when Card Walker re-announced the project in October of that year, other pictures of the model from 1978 show more evolved versions of the Space and Health pavilions so I believe that this model precedes those. One can see the familiar pavilions of Future World, as they were planned at that time. Spaceship Earth isn’t yet a full geosphere, and the CommuniCore buildings were still giant, looming, V-shaped spaceframes. Zooming in to the picture, one can see the various exhibits sitting in the open air.
Universe of Energy shows, once again, that it was the first pavilion to reach its final design; you’ll notice, however, that there was no fountain in front of the building – instead, Future World East was to have large, shallow lagoons much like Future World West. These would never appear in the final design, and Future World East became the “dry” side of the park. Clockwise from Energy, we find Tony Baxter’s first take on The Land – the “ecology” pavilion that was later scuttled when Kraft signed on as sponsor and demanded a more farming-focused attraction. Then comes the Transportation pavilion, which would soon get rounded out and become the World of Motion. In the area between Future World and World Showcase is the American Adventure, in its elevated, modern structure. Sitting where Journey into Imagination would later emerge is an early version of the Life and Health pavilion, and where The Land would later reside is an early and more elaborate take on The Seas. In the last spot, partially cut off in this picture, is what I believe to be an early, placeholder version of the Space pavilion. Other EPCOT models from 1978 show the more familiar, detailed Space pavilion sitting in this spot.
The great appeal of this photograph, however, is that it provides us a rather rare look at the pavilions lining World Showcase. The model dates from a time when Disney anticipated between twenty and thirty national showcases, and so the shores of the model lagoon are far more bustling than they are in real life. It can be difficult to make out the identities of the individual pavilions without obvious landmarks or flags, but we can take a few cues from this site plan, which also dates to 1978 and shows a layout for the area very similar to what we see in the model:
Proposed layout for World Showcase from 1978
The model and the diagram don’t match exactly, but the site plan does give us an idea as to what Disney had in mind for its client nations, and we can match the pavilion footprints in the illustration to the building shapes in the model.
From left to right: Scandinavia, Israel, South Korea, Canada and Mexico
Starting where we find Canada in the park today, we see the familiar greenery-draped pyramid of Mexico. This early version features an aqueduct that extends to the lagoon, and there appears to also be a canal on the far side of the pavilion that extends inwards under the promenade.
Nestled amongst the trees is an early concept for the Canada pavilion, which features a wooden tower and pathways amongst the tall pines. You can see the top of the French Canadian hotel, with its Québécois flag, and a Circlevision show building.
Traveling onwards, we encounter what seems to be a South Korea pavilion, with its shallow show building and temple situated on the lagoon. This is followed by what appears to be the Israel pavilion, and then what is labeled on the site plan as a Scandinavia pavilion. The Scandinavia pavilion has a long and tortured history, being at times themed to Denmark or Scandinavia in general before finally evolving into today’s Norway pavilion. I find it interesting, though, that in this picture it’s flying only the flag of Sweden.
From left to right: Italy, United Kingdom, Africa, Saudi Arabia, France
The France showcase finds itself relatively close to its real-world location, although today’s Eiffel Tower has been replaced in the model by the bohemian cityscape of Monmartre and the spires of the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, complete with its iconic stairs. Next door is a pavilion that I believe to be Saudi Arabia, although at the time Disney was in negotiations with a variety of Arab nations (including the United Arab Emirates) and the possibility of an “Arabic Nations” pavilion was occasionally invoked.
Tucked away in the trees is an early attempt at an Africa pavilion, which would later evolve into the designed-but-not-built Equatorial Africa showcase. I’m unsure whether, at this point, this was intended to represent a single African nation or, like its successors, it was to be sponsored by a coalition of sub-Saharan governments.
Continuing on, we find what seems to be the United Kingdom pavilion, although it differs greatly from the concept that was eventually built. Instead of a meandering high street, we have a large castle looming in the forest, concealing a large show building. There’s a low-slung building – possibly a pub? – and some sort of turret of Tudor design.
Finally, there’s Italy, which appears to draw from similar northern Italian traditions as the actual pavilion does today.
From left to right: Australia & New Zealand, Taiwan, and what is possibly Morocco and Costa Rica
The final pavilions appearing here are more difficult to identify, as we can see very little of their actual themed areas. The showcase representing Australia and New Zealand is easy to spy, with its replica of the Sydney Opera House sitting on the lagoon. Next is Taiwan, with its colorful shrines. The final two pavilions are less obvious; the site plan suggests that these are Morocco and Costa Rica. If so, this Costa Rica pavilion appears to differ greatly from the better-known proposal to represent this nation with a giant glass-enclosed botanical gardens.
What’s most amazing is that, as detailed as these models are, they represent only a brief moment in time at WED Enterprises. The only constant during Epcot’s development was change, and pavilions were getting shuffled in and out of these models on a continuous basis. Remember, also, that they were just as important for advertising purposes as they were for design needs – after all, Disney was hustling as much as they could to get corporations and foreign nations to sign on to this crazy new project. Design work was done on a daily basis, only to be completely discarded when sponsorship deals fell through, or the priorities of management shifted. It was a wild time!
Hopefully, some day we’ll be able to get a glimpse of the rest of this model…
“Modcinema” on YouTube emailed me to let me know of some “remix” videos they’d created using, in part, footage from the Progress City YouTube Channel. Modcinema has its own channel, which you should absolutely check out post-haste because it is a mindbending cornucopia of midcentury retro-madness; jet-age spy-chic lounge-era cool right on the taupe edge of the 1970s. Hopefully we’ll see more Disney-themed remixes like this one, an absolute humdinger of a piece that turns the New Tomorrowland of 1967 into a trippy trancescape with whirling AstroJets and spiraling PeopleMovers. And a finale in the heart of Progress City!
Then there’s this bit of weirdness – an “LSD Grad Nite” from 1976, which feels like the Manson Family at Disneyland…
And to cleanse the palate, some cool, cool swingin’ lounge with a bevy of bobbing mermaids…
From the Progress City archives comes this collection of 33 tall tales and true from Disney history. Available in paperback, hardback, and ebook formats.
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