I love this mysterious and moody picture of two Imagineers working on Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean in 1965. And who knew Bob Dobbs worked at WED?
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Related Posts...Walter Cronkite is one of my heroes. Authoritative yet avuncular, his constant reassuring presence during the events of the later 20th century made him the perfect choice to narrate EPCOT’s Spaceship Earth from 1986 to 1994. So if I love Walter Cronkite, and I love TRON, what would I love the most? Why, Walter Cronkite in TRON!  Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome… programs!To promote TRON‘s 1982 release, Cronkite recorded a segment about the film’s cutting-edge special effects for his science-related summer series Universe. According to a 1982 issue of Disney Newsreel, “Cronkite was persuaded by ‘TRON’ director Steven Lisberger to appear in a scene shot here at the Studio that was then inserted into the new computer-generated images system used extensively for ‘TRON.'”  Walter Cronkite and TRON director Steven Lisberger“Cronkite ended the segment with a soft-shoe routine and humming ‘Tea for Two,’ admitting that it had always been one of his unrealized dreams. ‘The reason I did it,’ Cronkite said, ‘was because they [Disney] said it could be done effectively with special effects. And I’m a very amenable guy. But – I don’t know whether it will get on the final show. After all, it might destroy the illusion of a serious newsman.'” “‘However, I’m anxious to see what they’ll do with it. It’s fascinating out there. Who knows, I might end up at a pinball machine battling ‘Pac-Man.”” Sadly, we didn’t get a battle royale between Cronkite and Pac-Man, but what did result was pretty amazing. In a world where any punk kid with a copy of Final Cut Pro can slap together a sci-fi epic, it’s staggering to think of the amount of work that was required to create a single frame of TRON. Multiple elements were required for each effects shot, with several different exposures and mattes being optically printed onto the final negative. In fact, one wonders how much it cost just to do Cronkite’s simple few minutes of film. This was labor-intensive work; it’s also extremely cool. Take a look at the final product courtesy of the wonders of Betamax tape. From the summer of 1982, here’s Walter Cronkite battling the electronic scourge with a bit of softshoe. Related Posts...Today’s riveting historical find that has me agog is this amazing video, taken in 1988, of the rarely documented attraction if you could fly. This short-lived ride was a re-named version of the fan classic if you had wings, necessitated when Eastern Airlines dropped their sponsorship of that original attraction. The changes were superficial and quick; If You Had Wings closed on June 1, 1987, only to open five days later as If You Could Fly. All references to Eastern Airlines had been stripped out, including Eastern-specific logotypes, and, unfortunately, the original attraction’s catchy and iconic theme song went as well. What makes this video particularly special is that there’s scant good video documentation of If You Had Wings as it is, and film of If You Could Fly is exceedingly rare. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever seen any online. For the time, and considering it’s a dark ride, the quality of the video is excellent. If You Could Fly remained open until January 4, 1989. It’s show building – and ride vehicles and track – were later used for Dreamflight, which was sponsored by Delta Airlines. Delta had replaced the defunct Eastern Airlines as the official airline of Walt Disney World. After Delta dropped their sponsorship in 1996, Dreamflight became Take Flight for two years until it was closed again to become Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. But the next time you’re riding past the day-glo plywood and zapping Emperor Zurg, realize that you’re traveling on the exact same path that these fine inhabitants of the 1980s took to visit Cancun and olde San Juan. Related Posts...First, Rapunzel became Tangled, when Disney’s marketing department panicked and imposed a title change on Disney Animation Studios. Then, more recently, The Bear and the Bow was re-announced as Brave because… well, who knows, actually. Now it looks like the still-officially-unannounced-once-canceled-but-now-alive-with-a-different-director-project-that-won’t-die Joe Jump is going to be called Reboot Ralph. Because, ya know, the kids love to reboot. According to Deadline Hollywood, the story of an 8-bit videogame character in a quad-core world will debut on March 22, 2013. Meanwhile, while all these semantic shenanigans were afoot, we’ve lost King of the Elves and The Snow Queen. This week, the internet got all aflutter with the shocking news that Pixar had pulled the plug on Gary Rydstrom’s newt. To which I say, well, yeah. So with all this bloodletting, what do we have? Lined up on the Disney side of the fence there’s Rapunzel, Winnie-the-Pooh in 2011, and Reboot Ralph in 2013. Pixar is now sequeltown (next door to Pigs With Pigs Junction) with Toy Story 3 (2010), Cars 2 (2011), Monsters Inc. 2 (2012) and Brave (2012). Brad Bird is AWOL and headed to Paramount to film Mission: Impossible IV (potential subtitle: “The First Good One”), Andrew Stanton’s John Carter of Mars isn’t out until 2012, and Pete Docter is doing… something. But he won’t say what. Then there’s all the mid-level talent creeping out the doors; with only two releases per year, directorial power has remained in the hands of a select few and there’s nowhere for rising stars to go but to other studios. Will the sequels take over, or is there still room for new ideas? So after the much-ballyhooed slate of a few years ago has been picked apart, and the much-ballyhooed return of traditional animation has been pretty much relegated to W.T. Pooh, and the much-ballyhooed shorts program is nowhere to be seen, one has to ask… what’s up? One last thing – I don’t typically do this but I’m feeling particularly saucy tonight. From February:
OK, so I got the season wrong (Monsters 2 be a fall release, not a summer release), but next time, Disney, prove me really wrong. UPDATE: It looks like the Reboot Ralph announcement was official. No word on if Rich Moore is still slated to direct. Related Posts... |
 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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Another month, another crackerjack lineup of events at the
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