Waking Sleeping Beauty Page #10

---

but, boy, did we get invited to the ball.

The next day, it was back to work.

Hi there.

LASSETER:
Hi, Ron.

CARTWRlGHT:

This is Ron Clements, once more.

He moved out of his tiny little room.

What are you working on right now?

LASSETER:
Aladdin.

These are sketches from Aladdin,

another Academy Award winner.

Who knows, you know?

You'll know better a few years from now.

KEANE:

By the time Aladdin came,

the animation marathon was really

beginning to tell on the physical strength,

I mean, just in terms of endurance.

Now there was this,

"Okay, how are you in the long run?

Can you keep going?"

Many of the artists had physical problems

with their carpel tunnel syndrome.

And I remember on one day,

it was the Day of Atonement.

Jeffrey came to the studio

and asked everybody to sit down with him

and just tell him what it was like

to work with him.

And he said,"Just be honest with me."

People started to share what working

at Disney Animation was really like.

Some people couldn't have a family,

because they really had no way of being

able to raise kids in this kind of pressure.

For me, holding a coffee cup,

my hand would shake,

was just shaking so badly,

because I'd been animating

the whole night before.

It was the only time that I had seen Jeffrey

with a tear in his eyes

from just being moved

by what he was pushing the artists to do.

And he said,"This is not right.

You have to have a life."

Nothing changed. In fact, it got busier.

And it would have been easy to blame

Jeffrey or Michael for pushing hard,

because they were, but, you know,

the truth is that the artists were pushing

just as hard.

The rewards were pouring in,

so we all kept trying to top ourselves.

Suddenly, there were bonuses

and the parking lot was just full

of BMWs and Porsches.

We were getting a new building

and people were getting lawyers

and agents and appearing on talk shows.

You always look into somebody's eyes

and if you're going to make

a mistake in the drawing,

don't let it be in the eyes.

GlBSON:
Right.

KEENE:

That's where everybody's reading it.

DURAN:
It's interesting, because

that was also, personally as an artist,

when our salaries went up.

When everybody became rock stars.

When it looked like you couldn't stop it.

Even with the sacrifice, the cold dinners,

the nights away from family,

we were living the dream.

Raises. More money.

Cut that.

Disney became the place to be

for animation.

Alumni like Tim Burton and Henry Selick

returned to the studio

to make a stop-motion movie,

The Nightmare Before Christmas.

And Peter tried to hire John Lasseter

away from Pixar,

but John insisted on staying

with the struggling start-up company.

So Peter struck a deal with John

to direct a computer-animated

co-production with Disney,

the first of its kind,

a buddy picture called Toy Story.

There was already a satellite studio

in Florida

and now production started

on A Goofy Movie

at another studio in Paris.

Rehearsals began on the new Broadway

production of Beauty and the Beast.

Five years earlier, the care and focus

was on one picture at a time,

and now there were five movies

and a Broadway show

in very active production.

Everybody was spread too thin.

I don't care what I am. I'm free!

Offer void where prohibited by law.

Ha-ha-ha!

Master, I don't think you quite realize

what you got here.

Aladdin opened on

Thanksgiving weekend, 1992.

It was the first animated feature

to gross over $200 million.

SCHNElDER:
These movies

became the heart and soul,

once again,

of The Walt Disney Company.

The entire company rallied around them,

sold merchandising,

put them on TV,

made specials about them,

became characters in the park,

became rides in the park.

It was an extraordinarily heady

period of time.

We could do no wrong.

Everything we touched turned to gold.

Every movie was bigger

than the last movie.

MUSKER:

And it was great just to see people--

The stigma of animation

being just a kids' medium

kind of get peeled away

by these various films.

HAHN:
While we celebrated

the success of Aladdin,

the next movie

was bearing down on us.

It was a coming-of-age story

that everyone called Bambi in Africa.

MlNKOFF:
I remember having

seen a documentary called

The Eternal Enemies:

Lions and Hyenas.

I mean, it was so incredibly powerful

and dramatic and intense.

And I thought,

"Wow, if this movie could capture,

you know, a tenth of the power of

this documentary, then it would be terrific.

FOWLER:
He's just saying hello.

He's saying hello to you, by the way.

You notice that they are

very contact-oriented.

He just walked under

this man's leg just then.

WOMAN:
And in this case, the yellow

caution tape really does mean caution.

MlNKOFF:
We'd been working on it

for a couple of months,

and then Jeffrey calls

a breakfast meeting.

And in the meeting, we have the whole

crew from Pocahontas and Lion King.

And Jeffrey says,

"Pocahontas is a home run.

It's West Side Story, it's Romeo and Juliet

with American Indians.

It's a hit.

It's got hit written all over it.

Lion King, on the other hand,

is kind of an experiment.

We don't really know if anybody's

gonna really wanna see it."

And after that meeting, absolutely no one

wanted to work on Lion King.

SCHUMACHER:
No one had any faith

in that movie, which is, actually--

If there's a lesson in The Lion King,

it's"nobody knows nothing."

We start with Simba in a secluded glade.

He's kind of contemplating life,

when he looks up and sees the stars

and is reminded...

KATZENBERG:
The kernel of that idea is

something that actually originated with me.

It was really about that moment

in each of our lives

in which we sort of have to grow up

and take responsibility.

We have to take our place

in the circle of life.

It's allegorically a young person born

with a future that's to be fulfilled,

who has to go through a lot of difficulties

to get there,

and most especially,

who has to learn to believe in himself

before he can become

what he is fated to be.

It became more and more

this Shakespearean tale

about the responsibilities of leadership.

And in a really strange way,

it seemed almost autobiographical,

all about the brinksmanship that can arise

in this competitive male environment.

SCHNElDER:
I came out of a story

meeting and ran right into Frank Wells.

And he asked me,

"How are things going on The Lion King?"

I said,"Great.

We're making a movie

about ourselves."

It's a Disney fantasy, your life.

At the moment. I never thought

I would be a CEO of a company.

I never thought I would run Disney.

I'd like to freeze everything right now.

I'd like to just freeze.

I'd like to stay my age. I like my age.

I like my wife's age.

I like my children's age.

I like the way Disney is going.

This is your big night.

ElSNER:

Yes, it is.

I'd like to freeze my life right now.

It was Easter Sunday, 1994.

And a single event

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes