Disney Movie Insiders Presents, a new podcast from the program that rewards Disney fans for seeing and owning Disney movies, debuted their new series with a celebration of the 20th anniversary of The Emperor’s New Groove. As a nice companion piece to the podcast, you can learn more about how the project evolved from Kingdom of the Sun, which is briefly mentioned in the episode, in Tony’s retrospective post. Guests on this episode include Director Mark Dindal, Story Artist Don Hall and Board Artist Stevie Wermers-Skelton.
While a lot of the conversation wasn’t exactly news to bonus feature junkies, we did learn that Adam West had a role in the film and his character was cut. Playing Mochi, a crazy man in a village that was once the setting for the films second act, Stevie shared her experience meeting TV’s Batman, who misheard her name as Evie and she didn’t care to correct him.
That same cut character also came with a deleted song that was written by writer Dave Reynolds. “The Sun’s Up Song” had a Partridge Family/Brady Bunch vibe to it and the village where Mochi lived sang this song every morning to wake everyone up, much to Kuzco’s annoyance. When the story was retooled again to be a road movie, the entire village was cut, Mochi and the song along with it.
The team only had 18-months to transform Kingdom of the Sun into The Emperor’s New Groove, a title change that came late in the game. With that tight deadline, the filmmakers were given free reign and ended up drawing inspiration from the Looney Tunes shorts they saw on TV as kids, which is why the film has such a different comedic approach for Disney animation. One joke that was cut that went too far was in the scene where the camera pans back and finds a monkey eating a bug, prompting Kuzco’s narration to ask what’s up with it. Originally, the camera would’ve then panned back again, this time into space to see a space shuttle leaving earth.
When the story switched from a drama to a comedy, one of the few Kingdom of the Sun voice actors kept on was Eartha Kitt as Yzma. The directors were worried that she wasn’t going to care for the character’s new direction, but she switched gears on a dime and instantly understood the new version of the character. She was also very animated in her sessions, using her arms and body, which helped animator Dale Baer bring the character to life on screen.
Actors were encouraged to improvise in their recording sessions and a lot of Kuzco’s insults in the film were improvised by David Spade. Patrick Warburton would redo his lines until he got the rhythm of them perfect. John Goodman was very thoughtful and pensiev with his approach to Pacha.
As a special little preview, Don Hall talks briefly about his next film, Raya and the Last Dragon. When this episode was recorded, Walt Disney Animation Studios was still making the final tweaks to sound and color. Last week, I attended an early press day for the film and learned that it had all been finalized days before. You can learn more about how research trips and a South Asian Story Trust helped breath authenticity into the fantasy world of Kumandra here.
The episode ended with the “Insider 5” game where each participant was asked five questions about their Disney fandom to get to know them better. Disney Movie Insiders members can also score 10 bonus points with a code revealed at the end, redeemable through February 28th.
I really liked the format of this debut episode of Disney Movie Insiders Presents and hope to see it continue. It would be neat to hear more anniversary retrospectives as well as conversations about new and upcoming films. You can check out the debut episode anytime on your favorite podcast app.