John Musker told the audience: �I only met him briefly as his career and mine had a narrow window there...I met him when he came to speak at Cal Arts. But I first heard about him�.it was 1972 and I�m from Chicago and I was at the Film Festival, where they were showing a retrospective of Richard Williams work and he (Richard Williams) was there. I was studying animation and they had a Q and A at the end of it�Richard Williams at a Q & A is a kind of scary thing as you could never tell who he was calling on and someone asked him about Disney animation�.(Williams answered) There�s this one guy, who did the tiger in Jungle Book and he is amazing and he went on�.then someone said well, he used live action for that didn�t he? (Williams) No, no, no, it's all out of his head�.�

Brad Bird said �They were just starting to get the idea that their animators weren�t going to live forever. And nobody was learning that kind of animation�. The people, who were going into animation, were learning TV stuff, which is not at that time was not great animation. They didn�t have a training program set up so they sent me to Milt�.They said anytime you are in L.A., you can work with Milt so I made sure I got down to L.A. �.I remember going to the bathroom the first time and thought Milt Kahl peed here. It�s the best pee I ever had�..There was a screening. He (Milt) thought the mice in the Rescuers were animated like they were big. And he felt they should be animated like they were small and there was a line that Eva Gabor Mouse said if I was only a ten foot mouse, and he said in the screening room (loudly) YOU ARE!....The last week, I opened the door and he had this bottle of champagne open and this gun out�and he was like oh oh you know and then he thought do I straighten up and then it was like oh the hell with it�.Target practice, he had a little thing on top of his desk that he was shooting at�..He was my first teacher in animation and he actually wasn�t a very articulate teacher. He would just kind of sputter and curse and �but he would do these drawings that said everything.�

Charles Solomon added �I should point out there is a certain intimidation factor that even extended to Walt. He (Walt) taught his secretary that if Milt called and was angry, to wait three days before calling him back, by which point he would have forgotten whatever he was angry about and would just be delighted to hear from Walt.�

When asked by Charles Solomon which of the X Men Milt Kahl most resembles, Minkyu Lee said � Maybe the Phoenix�..because he�s so all powerful�He just does freakishly good drawings�.I was just watching one of the shorts he worked on called All The Cats Join In� And I thought this is cool and I haven�t seen this for awhile�.this is fun, this is fun and then suddenly this one scene (which was Milt�s), I was just like Whoa, where did this come�it just didn�t belong there because of how good, like in terms of the knowledge of controlling every frame��

The evening ended with a video taped message from Richard Williams, who had only praise for his friend, Milt Kahl, and referred to him as a genius. In the lobby were numerous cels of Milt Kahl�s work for the audience to enjoy.

 
Alice Davis (hostess of The 13th Marc Davis Celebration of Animation at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), Antran Manoogian (President, ASIFA-Hollywood), June Foray (Legendary Voice Actress who started the Annies
Click here for a much larger version of this picture

Discuss It

• Discuss this article on the LaughingPlace.com Discussion Boards

-- Posted May 26, 2009
-- Text and Pictures by Scarlett Stahl