Waking Sleeping Beauty Page #5

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a few of those Disney animated features,

even though they cost a fortune

to create.

The new one is an animated version

of Oliver Twist,

with Billy Joel and Bette Midler doing

the singing and barking and growling.

But the finished film may well require

a half-million frames,

each one drawn by an artist at a total cost

of more than $10 million,

more than it can make back

anytime soon.

Can you really afford

to do what you wanna do in animation

as much as you wanna do?

The answer is no,

but we're doing it anyway.

We have to do it in this company.

Have to?

We have to. That is our legacy.

WOMAN:
The animation area,

the full-length animation,

you have made a promise

to do one film a year. Is that it?

Well, Roy made it, so I'm--

We jointly made that one.

Yeah, it's our intent

to make a new one every year.

Oliver will be the first in that group.

And Little Mermaid, the following year,

is on schedule

to be released a year from now.

And we think we can do it.

We're accumulating more and more

and better artists

and certainly more

and more experience as we go.

Helping to feed the coffers in a big way

was a machine called the VCR

that could actually play movies

from a cassette tape

in your own living room.

PAULEY:

The releasing of Pinocchio in video,

Disney was never gonna do that.

I thought that was carved in granite

that they would be held in storage for

seven years and then released carefully.

How was the decision made

to put them out in video?

I don't think there's been any more

careful decision than we have reached.

And we have reached it so far only

in respect to the one classic, Pinocchio.

It's out now this summer.

It's doing very well.

It's only after that that we'll slowly decide

what to do with the rest of it.

And after all, a video release this summer

hardly is gonna affect Pinocchio

when it's released theatrically

another seven years from now.

Pinocchio went out as a trial balloon

and made millions.

It was like a license to print money,

since there were no costs for the old titles.

But that immediately upped the ante

to get more titles into the pipeline.

So to find these new titles,

anybody, artists, secretaries, janitors,

could come in and pitch their ideas

in a gong show.

Some ideas, like Pocahontas,

were green-lit

from a single drawing and a title.

Others, like Little Mermaid,

were gonged at first,

because it was too much like Splash,

but came back later.

And there were all sorts of projects

being green-lit.

A sequel idea called

Rescuers Down Under, set in Australia.

Prince And The Pauper,

starring Mickey Mouse.

And an old shelved project

that Walt Disney himself considered

back in the 1940s, Beauty and the Beast.

SAWYER:
Not only does the ghost

of Walt Disney, the creative genius,

keep Eisner awake at night.

When he first came to the company,

he discovered that executives routinely

made decisions by asking,

"What would Walt have done?"

ROY:
To a certain extent, people,

somebody, would surely have said,

"Walt probably wouldn't

have done that."

We needed to break that cycle

and we needed to get out

into the whole town.

The argument that says,"Some dead guy

is trying to run your operation."

You can't do that.

I don't think Disney

is like the constitution.

I don't think we have to preserve it

and put it in glass.

I think it's a growing--

And if it's not growing, it's gonna die.

Our name is a fantastic asset

and it represents a terrific man

who was very creative.

And I'd hate to be the person

who shot himself in the foot and ended it.

I don't wanna leave that legacy.

I'd like to keep it going.

But I'd like to add to it.

I'd like to have new things.

What do you worry about?

Shooting myself in the foot.

MlCHAEL:
Disney's net profits tripled since

Disney people are proud to call

themselves a Mickey Mouse operation.

According to most analysts,

the magic returned

with the appointment of Frank Wells

as president of the company

and Michael Eisner as chairman.

Under Eisner and Wells,

the new Touchstone Movie Division

became a production powerhouse,

turning out such hits as

Down and Out in Beverly Hills,

Ruthless People, The Color of Money,

and what amounts to a farm club

for feature filmmakers,

The Disney Sunday Movie.

with the addition

of the Michael Jackson attraction,

Captain EO,

and the DisneylGeorge Lucas

collaborative adventure, Star Tours.

The live-action movies, the parks,

the merchandise were all on fire,

but Animation,

well, we still seemed like a stepchild.

KEANE:
And I gotta say, I was very

nervous about where we were heading,

where was the future of Disney going.

It seemed to be being driven

by a maniac at the wheel,

in terms of Jeffrey,

with his heavy foot on the accelerator,

driving full speed in a very crowded city.

Action.

Aaaggh!

An old development project called

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

shifted into hyper-drive when

Steven Spielberg became interested.

You know,

I have been influenced profoundly

by the films of Walt Disney,

especially the films from the '30s,

'40s and right through the '50s.

And I really feel that this is a movie

that we're making for Walt.

Back to the Future director

Robert Zemeckis

was signed to direct Roger Rabbit.

Bob and Steven made up

the creative team on the film,

while Jeffrey

watched the purse strings.

We always wanted the Disney technique,

the beautiful Disney animation,

the great Warner Bros.

characterization.

Yes?

ZEMECKlS:

And Tex Avery humor.

You know,

dynamite-down-your-pants type stuff.

And the rabbit's like--

Doesn't wanna go back in and Hoskins...

It was a trifecta of elements

that Bob knew he couldn't get

from the Disney Animation Department,

so he turned to animation veteran

Richard Williams

to animate the movie in London,

and Peter sent me to London

to ride herd on the animation.

It was a real stomach punch

for the guys back in Burbank,

but the truth was nobody really thought

much of Disney Animation back then.

The combination of Spielberg,

Zemeckis and Dick Williams

was like a talent magnet

and animators from all over the world

just flocked to the project.

So now there was a unit in Burbank

and one in London.

And Peter would travel back and forth

to rattle everybody's cage.

When he was in London,

he'd say how great the guys in Burbank

were doing on The Little Mermaid.

Then back in Burbank,

he'd brag about how great the guys on

Roger Rabbit were doing.

Nobody had attempted a movie

like this before,

and the budget just soared.

It got so heated that Jeffrey

summoned us all to New York

to tell us that we did not have

one more dime to spend on this movie.

No more money.

Then we all took limos, helicopters to

the airport to fly Concorde back to London.

He spent all this money on a meeting

to tell us we had no money.

Animation...

It was a very Hollywood moment.

Back home, Jeffrey was getting beat up

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