Why I Do What I Do and Kvetch at the Same Time
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Speaking of Bill Peet, his was another perspective on that panel. Here was an artists carefully cultivated in the approach that made Disney’s earliest animated films so wonderful. Bill Peet got the last word on the panel by saying:
Walt Disney was very much against a talking picture….The fun of animation is to see drawings in action. The one thing I did want to say here today: after Walt Disney made a big success with SNOW WHITE, his next thought was to make films more realistic, more impressive, and more pretentious. And I think he was going in the wrong direction. What makes SNOW WHIET is the marvelous personalities, and not its attempts at getting more conventional. I remember he tried multi-plane camera work, and all the technology available at the time, but I still say that the charm of animation is the obvious appearance of it. It’s a drawing come to life. And the living drawing is the charm of it. It always has been, no matter how elaborate you can make it. Animation stands alone.
Some people might think that Peet was stuck in old approaches, and biased because of his unique position as a story artists. But I’d say that his thinking has great merit, even in today’s computer animation driven industry. The character designs of TOY STORY and BUGS LIFE, FINDING NEMO and MONSTERS INC. are truly caricatures come to life. They are not the denizens of the land of verisimilitude such as, say Princess Fiona in SHREK (a Ted Elliott/Terry Rossio screenplay by the way.) We still delight that these impossible creatures of fantasy move about and take shape in a very purposefully designed and fantasized world. Computer animation is, in many ways, a digitally charged moving drawing. One need only see the story art and visual development for any Pixar film to understand this.
The cry from inside and out of the animation industry is “Story, story, story!�? But unless you understand animation story specifically then the adherence to this new mantra is useless. I believe in story, good story. But I also believe that the success of animated stories as entertainment (leaving box office or commercial success out of the argument for now) lies mostly in great personalities and great characters. That’s a lot coming from someone who can sometimes be heard barking like a drill sergeant about story structure. But I’m also one of the most passionate apostles of character specificity. Somewhere this character driven approach to story was slowly if not deliberately shifted at Disney’s during the 80’s and 90’s. Schneider’s arguments for story first are excellent, and it tempers the chaos that a bullpen full of artists can bring about. Both he and his mentor and champion, Mr. Katzenberg, went on to do exactly what Bill Peet so wisely counseled against and I think it shows. Katzenberg has yet to fully appreciate the contributions of the genius story talent he hired away from Disney during the late 80’s. So why is it that screenwriters as opposed to story artists were nurtured at the two animation giants? Why were Sanders and DeBlois the only triumphant team to rise above the push for the best and brightest writers from the biggest agencies like CAA and William Morris? Surely Musker & Clements screenplay for THE LITTLE MERMAID and THE ADVENTURES OF THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE are much stronger than the stories that they penned alongside Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. Why was talent like Chapman and Allers and Cook allowed to leave rather than encouraged to stay and be mentored the way that writers were? The tide looked like it was turning there, for a while. Aside from the Sanders and DeBlois helmed LILO & STITCH there was and is Mark Dindal, the genius who wrote and directed and supervised the storyboards on CATS DON’T DANCE over at Warners. Dindal’s reworking of Roger Allers’ story resulted in a brilliantly original story and comic gem that got buried by Disney’s marketing department - THE EMPEROR’S NEW GROOVE. Remember that? But sadly the trend to trust story to artists doesn’t seem to have taken hold. The cry for a focus on story has everyone looking at writers once again. And that makes me sad.
I could speculate endlessly about the reasons, but they’d be conjecture unworthy of print, frankly. The current fashion for MBA’s running in the film industry has a great deal to do with it, of that much I’m certain. Of course, the truth is that the new President of Walt Disney Feature Animation is a guy who has a very strong foundation in character driven properties as well as an MBA. Dave Stainton could well have a better handle on realizing what assets are at his command without having to call in help from the outside, and I’d be delighted to add salt to the shoe lodged in my mouth and eat it whole if he can do just that. But his impact on the medium has yet to be felt - and if this ridiculous and vulgar plan to produce shot for shot CG re-makes of the classic films goes forward it may never be felt. It has all the signs of putting the MBA before the horse, if you will. A least we can look forward to Mark Dindal’s CHICKEN LITTLE. That’s some comfort. And of course, there’s always Pixar - who have wisely lassoed the inspired madness of Brad Bird. (I worry that no sooner will I have noted that, than Stanford will award John Lasseter an honorary MBA and all good judgment will go out the window.)
In the end, in spite of my possibly unnecessary apoplectic response to the news, I truly hope Elizabeth Hunter enjoys her tenure with Disney Feature Animation. She is in for an extraordinary experience and will doubtlessly emerge an even better screenwriter. But, and I mean no disrespect to Ms. Hunter, I hope even more that the head of story on the project learns as much or more from Ms. Hunter than she from them, and goes on to pen something brilliant and original and entirely free of the influence of a screenwriter. Just do me a favor….don’t tell any screenwriters I said that, okay?
Author’s note: Storytelling In Animation: The Art of the Animated Image was published in 1988 by The American Film Institute, and is sadly out of print. It can, however, be found through used book stores and occasionally crops up on … you guessed it, eBay (where we’ll all show up one day. In fact it’s in my will not to burry me, just auction me off under “collectibles.�?) - R.W.
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-- Rhett Wickham
Rhett Wickham is a writer, story analyst and development professional living and working in Los Angeles. Prior to moving to LA, Rhett worked as an actor and stage director in New York City following graduate studies at Tisch School of the Arts. He is a directing fellow with the Drama League of New York, and nearly a decade ago he founded AnimActing ©®™ to teach and coach acting, character development and story analysis to animators, story artists and layout artists - work he continues both privately and through workshops in Los Angeles, New York and Orlando. He can be reached through [email protected]
The opinions expressed by our Rhett Wickham, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future plans of the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
--Posted June 26, 2003