Waking Sleeping Beauty Page #3

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where his affectionate nickname

was Squirt.

At Paramount Pictures,

he studied in the shadow of Barry Diller

and Michael Eisner.

And there his nickname was

the Golden Retriever.

At Disney, he really had no nickname,

because this was the place

where he could step out of the shadows

and make his mark on Hollywood.

ElSNER:

I sought him out at Paramount.

We'd worked together.

He was just fantastic.

He was a worker. He was committed.

He was obsessed.

He made relationships.

If we found somebody good,

he would lasso him into our company.

He did it at Paramount

and he did it at Disney and he did it great.

KATZENBERG:
So I always remember

my first day at Disney when I showed up

and I went to Michael's office

and he said,

"Come here,

I wanna show you something."

And I walked over

and he was looking out his window.

And, you know, from his corner,

he pointed down

to the Ink and Paint building.

He said,

"Do you know what they do down there?"

And I said,"No."

He said,"That's where they make

the animated movies."

I went,"Really?" He said,"Yes."

And he said,"And that's your problem."

The first culture clash happened

on a much-anticipated film

that was years in the making

and millions over budget,

The Black Cauldron.

He's overwhelmed.

He'd be jumping up and down.

Jumping, clapping.

He'd be like:

The younger guys were really impatient

and anxious to show what they could do,

but they felt

like they were being held back

by the remnants of the old guard.

While the older guys thought the kids

were brats and should get back to work.

In the case of The Black Cauldron,

we started with five books

and had to condense them down

into one.

KATZENBERG:
In the first couple

of weeks I was at the studio,

I saw The Black Cauldron.

It was a very dark movie

and a very troubled movie.

"This is just way, way, way too violent

and too scary.

You have to edit

some of these things out."

They said,

"Well, you can't edit an animated movie."

I said,"Well, of course you can."

And they said,"No, you can't."

TARAN:

Hey. No, you don't.

KATZENBERG:

Honestly, you would think that

I was causing World War Three

at the studio,

because I literally said,"Well,

you get the film and bring it to an edit bay

and I'm gonna show you

how you edit an animated movie."

I mean it.

Jeffrey was hands-on, elbows-on,

sharp elbows-on.

You never knew

if he was gonna hug you or kick you.

He said in an interview around that time,

"We've got to wake up Sleeping Beauty."

Then Joe Hale, the producer of

The Black Cauldron, was furious.

"Who are these guys?"he said.

"Sleeping Beauty is awake."

He was fired not long after.

Black Cauldron cost

$44 million to make

and made less than half that

at the box office.

And, to add insult to injury,

it was beat out at the box office

by The Care Bears Movie.

Oh!

That day, Disney Animation hit bottom.

This is Ron Clements again.

Hello.

Explain a little bit about

Basil of Baker Street.

Well, Basil of Baker Street

is about a little mouse

that is just like Sherlock Holmes.

KATZENBERG:
One of the first things

Roy did was he arranged one day

for us to be pitched the storyboards

for the entire movie.

It's like going back to what animation

really is supposed to be.

KATZENBERG:

And for the better part of three hours,

literally the entire movie

was pitched to us.

You go through one storyboard,

then they bring another

and you'd sit there for hours and--

I couldn't remember

what was in the first storyboard.

It was a very hard process for me

to deal with.

I'd been used to dealing

in the script area.

KATZENBERG:

So when it was over, we all sort of said,

"Thanks very much," and,"Great job."

And Michael said,

"Walk back to my office with me."

So we walked back.

On the way back to the office,

he said,"What do you think?"

I said,"l have no idea."

And he said,"Neither do I."

I said,"Well, here's the thing.

We have 175 people and we're

paying them every day to come to work.

And we're gonna pay them

whether they make this movie

or they don't make this movie, so I guess

we probably ought to make the movie."

And he says to me,

"Well, that's exactly my feeling too."

The live-action business was booming

and Jeffrey needed offices

for his new stable of stars,

like Bette Midler and Robin Williams.

He wanted the animation building.

The news came down from the head

of animation, Roy Disney,

announcing that

the animators would have

to move out of the building

and off the lot.

What was going on here? I mean,

this was the building where Walt Disney

made Cinderella and Peter Pan,

and we were having to vacate?

All there was was this memo.

There was no meeting, no debate,

just a memo.

I guess Roy didn't want

the confrontation.

On our last day, 200 frightened people,

the remnants of Disney's

once great Animation Studio,

gathered on the steps

of the old Animation building

for one last photo before we left.

GABRlEL:
So to carry that forward

into the new building,

which was in Glendale,

not a great area,

but the building itself was

such a gutted wretch of a building,

with just cinder block and torn-up carpet

and barbed wire around it

and broken bottles

on the crummy little parking lot.

CARTWRlGHT:

So, Ed, what are you doing nowadays?

I'm just emotionally under my desk.

Well, we were all pretty sure

that we'd be fired in a week or so,

so we decided to celebrate

the apparent end of Disney Animation

with a full-scale reenactment

of Apocalypse Now.

[DRAMATlC CLASSlCAL MUSlC

PLAYING]

We don't have long dark hallways

anymore. We got cubicles.

The warehouse was an open plan,

so you couldn't really hide.

It opened the place to frequent

and spontaneous communications

in the hallways, in the men's room.

Come on in.

Come on.

The barriers were down.

After the move, Jeffrey called a meeting

of all the animators,

so the crew could air their questions

and concerns.

So Jeffrey got up and said,

"Give me your best shot.

Hit me in the solar plexus.

Ask me anything. I've got rhino skin."

And somebody piped up and said,"We

don't think you know what you're doing."

KATZENBERG:
And I said,

"Look, I'm here. I'm not going away.

And I'm more than happy to learn

and take the time and be educated by you.

The fact is that the last couple

of animated movies made

were not particularly good."

CLEMENTS:
The animation meetings

were usually scheduled,

a lot of times, at 6:00 in the morning.

And so, yeah, I remember driving

to go to those meetings.

And then that sort of strange atmosphere

at that time of the morning,

and hardly anyone is awake or around.

ROY:
He began calling meetings

for 8:
00 in the morning on Sunday.

And I think it was about the second one,

I was just angry.

Because it's just such a total sign

of disrespect

for a lot of very talented people

who are working their ass off for you.

And I said,"Jeffrey, we gotta have

these meetings at some other time,

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