Great Animated Performances: Pleakley as Supervised by Ruben Aquino
Page 3 of 5
(c) Walt Disney
Enterprises, Inc.
PLEAKLEY as Supervised by RUBEN AQUINO
or
“How To Escape Type Casting and Save the Mosquito
Population�?
I’ve long held Ruben Aquino in very high regard. I’ve
wondered at the diverse cadre of characters Aquino has inhabited over his twenty
years at Disney, and always marveled how it is that this quiet, unassuming and
gentle man is able to consistently turn it up a notch with each character he
supervises.
Ruben Aquino has worked for almost every major director and producer at Disney and never once turned in the same kind of performance. In the repertory company of cartoons, Aquino is the actor who can do it all, and yet never step out of the frame to do a star-turn, always the consummate ensemble member.
When I asked producer Don Hahn about Ruben he said
“Ruben has always impressed me as one of the more versatile animators. Some animators would get cast as comic characters, other the more dramatic stuff, but Ruben could do it all from Belle’s wacky dad Maurice, to the noble and vulnerable Simba in Lion King.�?
Eric Goldberg, who along with Mike Gabriel directed Ruben in “Pocahontas�?, had a similar perspective when I asked him about the animator. Said Goldberg:
“Ruben is one of those great animators whom I would call a "quiet genius" - in his unassuming, self-effacing way, he continually produces work of enormous depth, subtlety, and range. Equally at home with the comic (Ursula, Pleakley) and the serious (Powhatan, Shang), Ruben's work always displays emotional truth, as well as technical virtuosity. In particular, his animation of Powhatan floored me all through the production of Pocahontas - he gave the character strength, grace, and a connection to American Indian spiritualism that was, by turns, quietly impressive and surprisingly powerful. Plus, Ruben is a really nice guy.�?
Ruben Aquino has played such a diverse range in his key animating and supervising animating roles that the list reads like the breakdown of classic cast of characters from almost any film or play: Dawson from “The Adventures of the Great Mouse Detective�?, Francis in “Oliver & Co.�?, Ursula in “The Little Mermaid�?, Jake in “The Rescuers Down Under�?, Maurice in “Beauty & the Beast�?, Adult Simba in “The Lion King�?, Powhatan in “Pocahontas�?, and Capt. Li Shang in “Mulan�? and both Agent Pleakley and David in “Lilo & Stitch.�? He defies convention and has yet to reveal any short hand or tricks which you could detect and point to as “an Aquino moment.�? As both Hahn and Goldberg pointed out, where most of Aquino’s peers in the industry have particular strengths that find them typed into roles Aquino simply can not be typed.
Aquino just might be the most reliable and solid anchor in Disney’s Feature Animation Florida unit and at least the most diverse talent in Florida if not the entire division. In the live action world of his counterparts, Ruben Aquino is a bit like Lon Chaney or Gary Oldman in that you think to yourself “That was him? Wow, I had no idea. And he’s in almost every film I love!�?
He is the model for journeymen and assistants as well. Key leads who have supervised his characters in clean-up have told me that they learned more working with him than for anyone else in the business. His drawing style is so tight and refined that even his most rough work can look as if it were CAPS and camera ready. And his patient, gentle and nurturing working style has placed him among the most admired animators because he is passing along a critical amount of knowledge that comes with experience, and a large part of that is what he learned from one of his earliest mentors at Disney, the late Eric Larson.
“Lilo & Stitch�? Co-Director and Co-Writer Dean DeBloise told me this about Ruben:
“Ruben is a fantastic person to work with. He's such a professional, overflowing with years of experience and an amiable, forever helpful disposition. A lot of our artists look up to him for advice and coaching. He's one of those people that just makes a film "happen" - with a lot of hard work and dedication. As a first-time director, I found a lot of reassurance in that.�?
And when I asked co-writer and co-director of “The Little Mermaid�?, Ron Clements, about Ruben’s work, Ron said
“Ruben's a wonderful animator! (We) actually haven't worked with him since "The Little Mermaid" because he moved to Florida right afterwards. But his work on Ursula in that movie was truly inspired. Of course his own personality is nothing like Ursula's. He's quiet and shy and genuinely really, really nice. But he totally got into the character. He relished every nuance of Pat Carroll's dialog. And while a lot of animators might have concentrated their acting on Ursula's upper half, he did amazing things with her lower half as well. The way he choreographed her movements and expressed her sinewy personality through her tentacles was complex and thrilling to watch. In fact, it was after viewing one of his very first rough scenes of Ursula pirouetting in the Poor Unfortunate Souls number that I remember thinking, ‘This movie's really going to work!’"
And indeed this “nice guy’s�? supervision of Ursula is a masterful performance. Back before animation teams were specifically credited, I remember calling a friend the day after I previewed Mermaid in New York. I phoned him in Burbank and said “Hey, who animated this stuff?!!�? “Why?�? he asked. “Because..well because Wow!�? I said. I had worked as a dresser for Pat Carroll during a segment of her tour in the one woman show “Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein�? and I was struck by how the vocal performance from this larger than life personality had been opened up and elevated to a still larger animated character to such stunning effect. “His name is Ruben Aquino,�? my friend said, “and he’s the nicest guy working at the studio.�?
I took my cue from “the Little Mermaid�? to carefully watch this second generation - each emerging at his or her own pace, partly determined by personal growth, partly determined by willingness of directors and studio brass to take the chance on them in a supervising capacity. I would meet Ruben Aquino for the first time just over a year later, but in the interim we had an infrequent exchange of letters on the craft of personality animation that eventually led to my own work with animators. He was always humble about his last work and matter of fact about his next role. He lets his work speak for itself, and sometimes gets no specific credit for some of his most wonderful stuff. As example, on one visit with him I discovered him working on two scenes of Frollo from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.�? Produced almost entirely in Burbank, Ruben was in Florida - back when Feature Animation Florida meant working in mobile office unit anchored in the parking lot just behind MGM Studios. You could hear the screams of each elevator of guests falling through the Tower of Terror only a few dozen yards a way. Kathy Zielinski (another gifted artist who we’ll talk about later this year) had moved on from Disney to DreamWorks, and Ruben was assigned two very powerful moments at the end of the film. One where Frollo approaches Esmeralda tied at the stake and the other as he reveals himself in the Court of Miracles and orders Phoebus taken away, taunting Quasimodo with mock praise for his good work at leading him to the capture. Those scenes are Ruben’s.
“Oh, yeah�? he said, “they’re in crunch and I’m helping out.�? I couldn’t help but think it was like asking Dustin Hoffman to step in for the last few shots of a film because another actor is tied up on location and they just have to wrap by Friday.