A Look at Waking Sleeping Beauty
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From Beauty and the Beast, David Ogden Stiers (Cogsworth),
Angela Lansbury (Mrs. Potts), Jerry Orbach (Lumiere)
Everyone, including the filmmakers themselves, brought their own viewpoints to the film. In an attempt to maintain distance and objectivity, which was immensely successful, they chose Patrick Pacheco, a veteran journalist to conduct interviews of over 75 people. The filmmakers had the difficult task of telling a truthful story in a sympathetic manner about the animation team members and the studio chiefs who were competing against one another for control and credit. As Eisner said in the film, �Go to any institution, any university, any hospital, any corporation, any home, any house, you know what, the human condition overshadows bricks and mortar, every time. And it�s about fear, and envy, and jealousy, and comfort, and love, and hate, and accomplishment. Every institution has it. Were we a bunch of artistic, emotional people, running around screaming and crying and ranting and raving? No, it was an organized group of people, working together, saying, let�s put on a show.�
�It was Don Hahn who came up with the idea to use only footage that was shot during this 10-year period, with current voiceover,� said Schneider��Using only the archival footage from that era was the big breakthrough,� Hahn adds, �I wanted to transport the audience into the rooms where Peter and I sat, into the eye of the storm.� They were able to find some rare footage from artist Randy Cartwright, who would walk the halls with his cameraman, John Lasseter, and film the animation studio. Of course unauthorized photography was prohibited on the Disney lot and he could have been put in jail. In one scene Ron Miller, studio head and husband of Diane Disney Miller (Walt�s Daughter), walked into the shot but luckily for Randy, Ron was good natured and the film survived. These home movies transported the audience back in time with glimpses of the young Glen Keane, Tim Burton, John Musker, Ron Clements, Mark Henn and Andreas Deja at the beginning of their careers, clowning around. In the archival vaults at Disney they found archival tapes. In addition Don's own mother had taped television coverage of the opening of films. There was a wealth of caricatures created by animators for an annual art show to choose from for the film. To release tension, the animators had drawn caricatures of themselves as well as their squabbling and infighting bosses. �There were thousands of the funniest, nastiest caricatures imaginable to choose from so the biggest problem was selecting which drawings were best to tell the story,� said Hahn. The animators themselves are shown to be children at heart, which helps the viewer to understand how they can create such humor and childlike wonder in their characters. This footage lent humor to an otherwise serious film.
Caricature of Howard Ashman, Kirk Wise and Gary
Trousdale
Waking Sleeping Beauty was shown at Telluride, the Toronto International Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the Hamptons International Film Festival. The documentary will be released in the following cities on March 26, 2010: New York City at the Landmark Sunshine, Los Angeles at the AMC Century Cityand AMC Burbank, Chicago at the AMC River East and San Francisco at the Landmark Embarcadero.
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-- Posted March 16, 2010
-- Story by Scarlett Stahl
-- All pictures are Copyright Disney