Waking Sleeping Beauty Page #7

---

We gotta do something."

And we pleaded our case.

He wouldn't listen to us.

Howard pleaded his case.

KATZENBERG:
Howard Ashman said,

"Over my dead body. I'll strangle you."

MUSKER:
But finally Glen Keane

went to Jeffrey and said,

"Jeffrey, you cannot cut this.

You're crazy.

This is the heart of the movie.

It's her whole dream.

And to cut that will really gut our

emotional involvement with our heroine."

KATZENBERG:
He persuaded me

that the issue wasn't the song,

but other things that were not firing up yet

in the sort of rhythm of the movie.

And ultimately he was right.

Not only did it stay in the movie,

but it's one of the more memorable

moments in the movie.

MlCHAEL:
The sparkle is coming back

to Sleeping Beauty's castle.

Over the last five years,

the Disney Animation Department

has grown from a low of 150 artists

to its current level of nearly 550,

doing animation the old-fashioned way,

from character sketch, to pencil test,

to ink and paint, to the screen.

What The Little Mermaid represents,

I hope,

is kind of a renaissance period

for the artists themselves.

SCHNElDER:

Jeffrey started discovering Animation

as a place where he could be artistic,

a powerhouse in the editing room,

and where he could be the frontman

to the press.

I think he realized something

very important to his future.

"I'm good at this. This is fun, it's mine

and it doesn't include Michael."

The press on Little Mermaid

was just spectacular.

And the box office, well,

was even better than Oliver and Company.

And there were loads of toys, books,

puzzles and lunch boxes

that just flew off the shelves.

Animation had a big hit on its hands.

SCHNElDER:

Jeffrey and Michael started focusing on,

"Oh, if we have more titles,

it'll be better financially."

And I always fought for,

"Can you take some of those resources

and put them back into the business?"

Which was where CAPS came from,

CAPS being the Computer Animation

Postproduction System.

One of the technology guys, Lem Davis,

thought we could use computers

to paint the characters in our films

and digitally assemble all the artwork.

That gives us not only the opportunity

to do some really good art,

but it also gives us the opportunity

to really begin to explore

what these computers

and graphics things can do for us

in kind of shorter pieces

where we can get really a little crazy.

And I'm looking forward to all of us

getting a little crazy.

Roy went to Frank Wells with a proposal

to spend $10 million

on a computer system

that might not return a dime,

but would revolutionize the look

of our films.

ROY:
So I just walked down the hall

and stood there in Frank's doorway.

Frank looks up and says,

"What are you doing here?"

And I said,"I'm just here to make sure

you sign that check, Frank."

Frank's check was handed

to Alvy Ray Smith,

the co-founder

of a small computer-graphics firm

that experimented

with character animation

and made Listerine commercials

on the side to make ends meet.

It was called Pixar.

The CAPS computer was thrown

into production on Rescuers Down Under.

It was unchartered territory.

The crew from Disney and Pixar worked

around the clock, sleeping on pallets,

nursing those computers

with duct tape and chewing gum,

and the deadlines and quotas

never stopped.

No, you don't want to hear my thoughts.

You don't want to hear my thoughts.

SCHUMACHER:
What I remember most

of that period was feeling so brokenhearted

that we had attempted to make

a feature film using the CAPS system

before anyone

had even made a short with it.

We had never tested the system

before we committed

to a release date to make a movie.

KlMBALL:

And it's 3:
00 in the morning.

Peter Schneider walks in

and looks over at me and goes,

"Well, is it working yet?

Is it working yet?" Ha-ha-ha.

And it's like,

"Oh, I don't need this pressure."

GABRlEL:
My first film,

Rescuers Down Under, came out.

Phone rings at like 8 in the morning.

"Mike?""Yeah.""Jeffrey."

"Yeah. So, what's going on?

What's the numbers?"

He said,"Made 5 million. It's over."

"Well, excuse me, what?"

"It's over. Forget it. Move on."

SCHUMACHER:

Jeffrey pulled all the TV advertising.

And I said,"Jeffrey,

I just can't believe that. You've pulled it?

There's no advertising, nothing?"

And he said,"Tom,

the movie just doesn't work. It's over."

And I started to cry on the telephone.

And then he said,"lt's okay.

We're gonna move forward

and we'll do something else.

Are you okay?"

I said,"I'm all right." He goes,

"Okay, we'll start again tomorrow."

And then he hung up the phone.

Rescuers was the very first digital movie

produced in Hollywood.

And without it we would never

have achieved what would come later.

Beauty and the Beast was up next

and the budget and schedule

were cut way, way back.

SCHNElDER:
We asked Richard Williams

to direct the film, but Williams declined

and recommended one of his proteges,

Richard Purdum, to direct instead.

Purdum was a very successful

commercial director based in the U.K.

MAN:
Yeah.

KEANE:
And then the horse rises up

right underneath him.

Yeah.

KEANE:
Now he's riding on the rear end

of the horse,

hanging on to the horse's tail,

and one of the wolves grabs up

right onto the tail, yanks the horse,

and the horse rears up

and throws the guy off

and the guy lands on the back

of the wolf, riding on the wolf.

It was my first job as producer

and I wanted to get everything just right.

So I recruited a commando story team

of Disney artists

and we moved to London to set to work

on a non-musical version of the story.

After about six months,

we took the first 20 minutes of the film

to screen for Jeffrey.

WOMAN :

Has my niece given you an answer?

MAN:
Um, not yet.

I think she's playing the coquette with me.

WOMAN:

Forgive her.

HAHN:
It wasn't perfect, but what was

the worst that could happen?

They weren't gonna scrap it and start

over again. That would be just insane.

It didn't work at all for us,

so we literally scrapped it,

the first 20 minutes of the movie,

and started all over again.

SCHNElDER:
Richard Purdum worked for a

few more months on Beauty and the Beast,

and when it became clear that we would

never make his version of the movie,

he resigned.

I recruited two young story artists

to be the acting directors

and moved the entire project back

to the warehouses in Burbank.

The spotlight kind of turned

on me and Gary,

which struck us as incredibly odd,

because--

The spotlight turned on us

like when you turn on the kitchen light

and the roaches are on the floor.

We were like,"What?"

We didn't get away in time

and they caught us.

So we were made kind of the acting

directors of Beauty and the Beast,

which meant--

We had to act like directors.

Meanwhile, back in California,

Jeffrey threw his annual beach party.

SCHNElDER:
And there was Tom Cruise

and Bette Midler and Robin Williams,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes