Waking Sleeping Beauty Page #4

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because I promise you, if you have

another one of these things at 8 a.m.,

I'm showing up in my pajamas."

Aren't you proud of it, Mr. Disney?

WALT:
Why, I'm so proud, I think I'll bust.

ALLERS:

I think it was right around the time of--

The Oscars were--

It was just around the corner.

And he said,"You know, I'm not interested

in the Academy Awards.

I'm interested in

the Bank of America awards," you know.

"What the money these things pull in."

And it was just absolutely

the worst thing to tell a room full of artists.

It was so discouraging.

ROY:

Jeffrey, one day, he said to me,

"You really need

to get your own Jeffrey Katzenberg."

And I began thinking and thinking,

"You know, it's right.

I can't do this by myself

and I'm not that talented anyway."

So the call I made was

to Bob Fitzpatrick,

who was in the Olympic Arts Festival

at the time.

He says,"l think I have somebody.

I'll send him over to you.

His name is Peter Schneider."

SCHNElDER:
I was living in a small

apartment with my wife and baby daughter,

and she said to me,

"Go get a job," you know.

I was naive. I had no baggage,

no preconceived notions.

I didn't care

what had been done in the past.

I knew that I could do no worse

than The Black Cauldron.

You know,

you can't fall off the first floor.

Peter was given the title

of vice president,

which, to the insurgent population

of animators, made him the Man.

And the main weapon to fight the Man

was the dreaded caricature.

PRUlKSMA:
Well, Peter was

kind of a scary thing, you know.

A small frame, wiry, and, you know,

full of nervous energy. He was like,"Nyah."

TROUSDALE:

He looked like he was about 15 years old.

He had this perpetual smile

that everybody caricatured.

It was like this kind of wide-eyed,

predatory smile that really worried people.

PRUlKSMA:

You'd go into his office,

he would just sit all twisted up

like a pretzel. It was odd.

And he had a little button that closed

the door behind you when you went in.

When the door closed,

you'd kind of look back

and see if there were scratch marks on it

or something like that. Ha-ha-ha!

SCHNElDER:
When I got to Animation,

I knew I had a hundred days

to change the culture

before it changed me.

I was trying to empower people,

to make them feel good about themselves,

to value the work.

I brought in some of my own people

who'd worked for me in theater.

Kathleen Gavin, Maureen Donley,

Tom Schumacher.

Sticky buns.

ANlMATORS:
Sticky buns.

SCHNElDER:

I brought in Lakers coach Pat Riley

to talk about winning and teamwork.

Peter picked apart every piece

of the production process.

Why are we punching time clocks?

Why are we making our own paint?

Why can't we update our animation pegs?

Why don't we have more computers?

What about training?

It had this feeling of a freight train

leaving the station at light speed.

You betterjump on orjump off fast.

Most people got on and it was a wild ride,

an exciting time.

There was this team-sport mentality.

You can't play the game unless

everybody is firing off on all cylinders.

Even second string, you were hungry

to be part of this, to jump into the game.

There was an openness,

a permission, almost,

to be critical about anything.

Anything but the Marketing Department.

Marketing thought that the title

Basil of Baker Street

was a real head-scratcher

and they wanted to change it.

So Peter sent off a memo announcing

that they were changing the title to:

The Great Mouse Detective.

GABRlEL:
The resistance was pretty

fierce and we all started trying things

to get it to be our way

and it wasn't gonna change.

One of the artists got the bright idea

to send out a fake memo, in Peter's name,

saying that now all the Disney films

will be renamed.

From now on, Snow White would become

Seven Little Men Help a Girl.

And Pinocchio would be

The Wooden Boy Who Became Real.

Peter saw the joke memo

as undermining his authority

and demanded to know

who wrote the memo.

The artists saw it as good clean fun

and kept the author a secret.

They even sent it up to Jeffrey's office

for added amusement.

GABRlEL:

Peter, I think his tires were slashed

or somebody busted his window

in his car in the lot.

Some, you know, really mature way

to handle the situation.

Peter came in and put us all

in the screening room

and just tore us a new one.

TROUSDALE:
That was the fabled

triple-veiner that Peter had,

where, I mean, he was, like, levitating

and glowing, he was so mad.

GABRlEL:
I think after that meeting,

we all kind of respected him.

What I love is he didn't say,

"Shut up.

If you don't like it, there's the gate."

He said,

"We're gonna make great films."

SCHNElDER:
And Jeffrey just laughed it off

and said,"Don't even worry about it."

And I think that cemented my relationship

with Jeffrey, in some weird way,

and also cemented my relationship

with the artists.

And as a bonus, the memo even ended up

as a category on Jeopardy!

TREBEK:

And finally, In Other Words.

In Other Words came about

as the result of a big foofaraw

that occurred at the Disney Studios

last year

when the employees staged

a minor revolt

when they changed the title of

Basil of Baker Street

to The Great Mouse Detective.

In Other Words for 300.

TREBEK:

"The girl with the see-through shoes."

Marjorie.

Who is Cinderella?

TREBEK:

Who is Cinderella? Good.

The Great Mouse Detective was released

in 1986 to good reviews

and respectable box office.

But there was a new animation threat

in town.

Steven Spielberg.

Steven loved the films of Walt Disney,

so he jumped into the game,

teaming up with none other

than Don Bluth,

the animator who kicked us

when we were down.

That year,

An American Tail quickly became

the highest-grossing

non-Disney animated feature ever,

beating out The Great Mouse Detective

by over $22 million.

ALLERS:

Oliver--

That's funny.

SCHNElDER:
When I first got there,

Oliver and Company was being made.

It had two directors.

CARTWRlGHT:
This is Rick Rich.

Hello.

CARTWRlGHT:
This is George Scribner.

SCHNElDER:
I fired Rick Rich,

who was belligerent to me,

and kept George Scribner,

who sucked up to me.

It seemed like the right decision

at the time.

People who like you get ahead.

Peter brought his theatrical background

to the animation business.

He demanded that filmmakers pick

their own teams based on talent

and who they wanted to work with,

not on some form of institutional seniority.

If you didn't have a strong point of view,

you disappeared.

There was creative debate.

You had to defend your ideas.

It meant that more drawings went into

the trash than went up on the screen.

Throwaway drawings.

The drawings we just throw away

that don't mean anything.

MAN:
Tore it in half.

These are the ones

that we didn't even use.

Revisions. Every line a writer changed,

SAWYER:
And because the family name

is still the franchise,

the company still produces

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