Any project that involves Weta Workshop demands attention. When Jevon Phillips heard that the New Zealand outfit responsible for the memorable movie magic of the "Lord of the Rings" franchise was working with Disney XD, he picked up the phone to find out more. Here's his report:
The Disney XD television movie "Skyrunners" is the tale of two brothers who stumble across a downed UFO and decide to keep it -- please, kids, don't try this at home -- and then proceed to uncover an alien plot to take over Earth.
Kelly Blatz (of the hit Disney XD gamer series "Aaron Stone") and newcomer Joey Pollari star as the brothers. For Blatz, acting became a career path of choice after he fell in love with Steven Spielberg's films of the fantastic, among them "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" and Blatz's favorite, "Jurassic Park."
Recently, as the 22-year-old actor-musician took a break from meeting with the members of his "vintage-rock" band, Capra, he talked about coming face-to-face with a Weta-created alien creature in "Skyrunners."
"It was amazing," Blatz said. "We walk in there and it's all dark. This thing -- no matter how close you are it still looks completely real. So everyone [steps back] -- it was really eerie. Just the lighting and everything. They built this thing that was so unique and frightening. It was just this transparent thing with a mouth full of teeth... And these people were so great and so talented and so passionate ... we were picking their brains about working on "Lord of the Rings" and everything. I mean, these people are Oscar winners." Here's a podcast of a longer "Skyrunners" interview from Disney XD :
The program airs Nov. 27, so if you're not at some Black Friday sale, you may want to tune in. But you can also have the alien ships come to you; there's a Google Maps program that the telefilm's online team cooked up that allows you to put in your address, access satellite photos of the area and get back a picture of a crashed spacecraft at your doorstep. Why look, there's a crashed spaceship next to The Times building on sunny Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles...
Last week, at the precise moment on screen that millions of screaming, tanned Angelenos tumbled down into a mile-deep cataclysmic crack in the planet’s exploding crust along with their high-rise condos and labradoodles, a man’s phone rang in the row of seats behind me. In a voice rising even above the sound of continental plates and Hummers scraping on each other, he discussed dining options with his caller.
“Szechuan!” he spouted. “It’s spicy!”
I looked around at my fellow multiplexers. I’d need help strangling him. I only had licorice twists. But the others didn’ t seem to notice his conversation. Worse: They didn’t care.
As I studied their faces, lit up with the shockingly realistic images of their own burning city disappearing down into the bottomless black depths of both hell and the accounting department of Columbia Pictures, I spied a common expression on them all. No, no, not rapt fascination or terror. But not exactly boredom either. Something else. It took me a moment to identify: Numbness.
Then this thought: HungryBoy behind me would not have taken that call in 1954 if he’d been watching the tentacles of a giant squid wrapped around the riveted tail fin of the Nautilus submarine, yanking James Mason toward its snapping, slobbering maw amidst a howling Technicolor typhoon. Sorry. No way.
In 1954, the only numbness in that theater would have been in beguiled eyeballs, extended out from skulls an inch more than normal.
With the release of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" 55 years ago, Walt Disney stumbled upon a mostly unexplored emotional response from movie audiences. This unique feeling had been lurking in cinema’s murky, black and white depths, waiting to emerge and attack moviegoers and their imaginations in a way that tears, laughter and fear – the emotions of radio, theater and books -- could neither match nor compete: Awe.
As in Awesome.
Awe as in slack-jawed and struck dumb: The Red Sea parting before C. Moses Heston. Steven Spielberg’s mothership rising behind Devil’s Tower, reducing it in scale to an overturned Frappuccino. The Imperial Star Destroyer lumbering over our heads in the first seconds of "Star Wars." Each provoked a collective, adolescent “whoooa” from dazzled audiences. Remember that sound? I do. Heard it lately? Many of you just watched Africa slide over and smash into Brazil on screen last weekend. What’d you hear?
I heard, “Szechuan! It’s spicy!”
Awe. From the latin Awesemonus, or Aw, man did you see that? A subjective reaction to visual stimulus that would, like that giant squid — the most tenacious of sea beasts — wrap itself around the Hollywood blockbuster until finally, reluctantly letting go in the late 1980s. It was hit square between the eyes with not a harpoon but something far deadlier: A pixel.
The blockbuster remains busting ever bigger blocks every weekend. But with the smothering ubiquity of magical computer effects in even commercials selling products to battle talking toe bacteria, too often we emerge from the modern action spectacular pummeled and numb, the only residual awe being in yawn. Or awful. Or prawfits.
By now, we and our children — flooded daily with pixels — have simply seen it all. Yawn.
Or too much. Numb.
The old school, spine-tingling adolescent movie wonder may have had its last gasp somewhere in the neon-lit hallways of Darth Vader’s Death Star… but I submit that it was born, fresh, new and exciting, in the dank blue steel passageways of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, decades before.
Now, it’d by churlish not to suggest that lots of respectable, fantastic stories had found their way to film by then. I’m sure you remember 1951's “Flying Disc Man from Mars.” And no, I don’t forget 1933’s King Kong. Nor do I forget Willis O’Brien’s smudge of lunch peanut butter on Kong’s two inch shoulder in one shot. I can see it. Please don’t write me.
Without real movie stars, without meaty themes of war and loss and villainous angst, without saturated color and Cinemascope, without the budget, the exotic shooting locales and sweeping elegiac score and without much concern to hide the black wires holding the spaceships up … neither awe nor wonder nor even atomic-powered Victorian submersibles could fully surface below the lid of cheese that capped that era’s typical science fiction cinema.
That in mind, Walt Disney and director Richard Fleischer risked the entire fate of the Disney studio, as well the plans to build Disneyland, in rolling the budget dice -- flinging them, really -- at Jules Verne's classic but plotless novel. It was Walt’s first live-action picture, his inexperience reflected by a talky, episodic script that couldn’t, for the first time, fall back on the crutch of a comedic sidekick cricket or dwarf.
All forgiven though, with the other cinema luxury he delivered that was otherwise unseen in the fantasy genre up to that point: razor-cool production design. Nemo’s outrageous ship, spontaneously carved from a foot-long piece of pine by Disney designer Harper Goff one inspired spring day. That marvelous, malevolent submersible of anti-war vengeance that looks like what every kid knows a proper submarine should resemble but does not: A pissed-off fish alligator.
Fifty-five years later, it’s what everyone remembers. Poor Kirk Douglas.
My mother -- who remembers nothing from film -- thinks that “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” is a motto on cans of tuna fish. And she swears on the lives of her dogs that Spartacus simply could NOT have kissed a seal in any movie.
But she knows she’s seen that submarine before.
Kirk may have chewed up the scenery in every shot, but he couldn’t take a bite out of the dominating profile of Goff’s wonderful underwater sub -- native warriors leaping off its electrified cannibal-repelling hull as it sliced through both the Pacific ocean and the movie-soaked cerebellums of young boys like me.
Full disclosure: The home office in which I’m presently writing this has been fashioned after the interior design of the Nautilus – all paneled colonial cherry wood, faux arched steel I-beams overhead, steam tubes, rivets, red velvet upholstery and flickering Victorian lights. A suitable creative environment for an arrested adolescent but one also compelled to cook up fantastic stories and call it respectable work.
Where better, I ask, than within the romantic innards of the Nautilus?
A padded cell, my wife would answer.
Alas, no pipe organ, but my outer studio doors feature a child-repelling electric current that is always switched on. (This is wholly believed within the family and I’d like to keep it that way.)
Ever anxious to bury an ironic lead, I should add that with the 55th anniversary of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," Disney’s new studio head Rich Ross just sank the nearly-to-production revival of Captain Nemo.
It would have been stuffed like a haddock, no doubt, with CG spectacularityness. I sort of suspect it would have been all Disney could do to resist the temptation of showing Captain Nemo destroying, in photo-real detail, the entire solar system.
And maybe, just maybe, they sensed this. And maybe they came back up to the surface to take a breath and rethink just exactly whence the wonder of their new Nemo movie should flow: From the dazzling story, characters, production design and — did I mention story?
Or from its CG images of computer-processed, over-the-top liquid action?
Go. Hold your breath and dive deep, Disney. But remember, we’ve pretty much seen it all before. And probably in a Depends commercial.
-- Berkeley Breathed
Berkeley Breathed is a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, illustrator, novelist and screenwriter. A Disney adapation of his book "Mars Needs Moms!" will be released in 2011. He lives in Santa Barbara, and, in a home office designed in homage to "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," looks out on the sea and waits for Nautilus to surface.
"Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure" will be released on home video on Oct. 27, but, no, that's not a scene from it above. The iridescent pixie shown above is a conceptual design drawing of Tinker Bell, Peter Pan's sprightly sidekick, from the late 1930s. This version was created with the beauty of a Dresden doll in mind and lacked that spunky hot-headedness that defined Tink when she finally reached the screen in the years-in-the-making "Peter Pan" in 1953. It's interesting to see the long history of a character that, really, is only now getting her Disney close-up.
Aside from her regular appearances on Walt Disney's various anthology TV shows -- "Disneyland," "Walt Disney Presents" and "The Wonderful World of Disney," among others -- she's traditionally was a character that Disney put little effort into developing as a key property. That changed with the creation in 2005 of the Disney Fairies campaign, which includes children's books, dolls, play-sets and a Pixie Hollow attraction at Disneyland and Disney World's Magic Kingdom -- all set in Tinker Bell's fairy world.
Last October, Disney released "Tinker Bell," the first movie starring the fairy, on DVD and Blu-ray, and that was just the beginning, with a planned four more in the works. The second of those releases is "Lost Treasure," which, like the previous film, takes place before the events shown in "Peter Pan" and draws its inspiration from a season -- the first film was spring, this one is fall and, in this second image, you can see Tink is very different than she was in her protean stage of seven decades ago.
Despite Tink's very lady-like associations, her latest film is being overseen by a couple of guys: director Klay Hall and producer Sean Lurie. The guys talked to Hero Complex contributor Patrick Kevin Day about working with Pixar mastermind John Lasseter, updating Tinker Bell's look and making a fairy movie despite being male.
PKD:What was the origin of the idea of making four Tinker Bell movies at once?
Klay Hall: It started when John Lasseter took over as the chief creative officer for [Walt Disney Feature Animation]. He sat down with myself and the rest of the directors and producers, and we talked about what this whole [Disney Fairies] world could bring to film. We landed on the idea to go with four stories based on the seasons. We liked the idea that fairies brought seasons to the world, so we decided to go out and start coming up with four different ideas for four different movies that would support the idea of seasonal change. They weren’t supposed to be sequels, they were supposed to be stand-alone movies that could just be able to be played by themselves and you could get the content and the characters and everything.
PKD: What's it like working with John Lasseter?
Hall: At first it was as scary as you can imagine. He’s an amazing guy and has such an incredible track record. We were all in awe of him. But once you got to know him, he’s a real personal, warm guy who greets you with a big bear hug and is a real collaborator. And really supportive of the creative process and a director-driven movie studio. He sat down with us all, he embraced us. It felt we were on a level playing field. It never felt like an executive coming in to help guide you.
Sean Lurie: He had such a great way of giving notes. He wants directors to solve story problems, and he’s there to help. The way he approaches it, he says, "I’m going to tell you the things that I think are working and the things I think aren’t working. I might even have some ideas, but you don’t have to take those ideas." He has a way of being critical of material in a warm, open way. You embrace it and appreciate it. He’s tremendous.
PKD: What Pixar-style methods did he introduce to you?
Hall: Right off the bat, he eliminated the executive-approval process. What he incorporates was the brain trust or story trust, modeled after the Pixar one, where it’s a group of directors and some producers and you read each other's scripts or you screen the dailies and basically everyone is asked to be brutally honest. Check the ego at the door. No agendas other than to make a quality product. He brought that in. It worked out well for all of us. Now it’s an ongoing process.
PKD: How many people are in the group?
Hall: Probably around 10 or 12. We don’t have set meeting times. If a director needs help, he’ll call a meeting and people will scramble to get there. We have a very open atrium in the middle of the studio. When people go to get coffee or go to the restroom, people bump into each other there.
Lurie: At Pixar, Ed [Catmull] and John had this big atrium where you can get food. They intentionally put the bathrooms out there. Their intention was to create a central area that would create an informal dialogue among people. It’s amazing how much that actually factors in. We have a similar thing here too. A lot of conversations come out when you’re going to get a bowl of cereal.
PKD: How did you update the look of Tinker Bell?
Hall: Her original inspiration was the Blue Fairy. She went through several forms all the way up through Marc Davis' designs in the early ‘50s for the "Peter Pan" release in 1953. We started there, with the Marc Davis design, the classic Tink. Everyone’s familiar with the iconic figure from the theme parks. She’s on so many products in her little green skirt and pompoms on her shoes and a little bun in her hair. We felt it was important to not only embrace the classic Tink, but to give her a fresh look in these new films.
With the seasons supporting her change, her costume could adapt to the seasons. For our movie, we transported her to a far-off world, where she can’t wear this little dress. It's not just because of the elements, but because it’s more of a rough-and -tumble ride. We had the opportunity to give a new fresh look to her. We kept the pompoms, but we added boots. Leggings. She still has her traditional outfit over a long shirt and leggings. We added a shawl. Added a little hat for her. We wanted to emphasize the adventure aspect.
PKD: So the only change in her look was her costume?
Hall: Primarily, it was a costume change. The change in her face was from taking a 2-D design into a 3-D film. We went back to the archives and the original model sheets Marc Davis drew and incorporated those into the three-dimensional model. The way it’s lit and her facial expressions are all based on Marc’s key drawings.
Lurie: We tried to stay true to the original Tinker Bell from "Peter Pan." John came to us with a number of specific notes, including the shape of her eyes. We were doing a more almond shape early on. He said, "I want you to take these drawings out and look at the shape of the eyes." We tried to make it look as much as we could like the original 2-D drawings.
PKD: You’re both guys making a film to appeal to little girls? How do you trust your instincts?
Hall: We are both guys, and both of us have two sons each. So we come from a boy/man angle on this thing. It was a great challenge. I really welcomed that challenge to take the iconic Tinker Bell and make a great movie with her. Adding the adventure aspect to the movie. And pushing her personality as much as we could. She’s a tomboy, and we went back to that.
Lurie: The film has some adventure, and it’s a quest movie. That’s Klay’s influence and, to a lesser degree, mine. We tried to make a film that is a broad family film, that would appeal to everybody and their family. So if there’s brothers and sisters, and maybe the brothers would be interested too. It’s a fairy film, and boys, for a variety of reasons, won’t be running out to get that. But it’s a great classic adventure. I think that although our primary audience might be young girls, if you make a good movie, you'll pull in a lot of people.
Photos: Top: Tinker Bell design from the late 1930s; Middle: Tinker Bell from "Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure"; Bottom: Marc Davis' Tinker Bell design from the early 1950s. Credit: The Walt Disney Co.
Talk about heroic: Four film franchises, one decade, more than $10 billion worth of theater tickets sold.
And more than that, in their very best moments, each of these franchises shown above delivered sparkling adventure and escapism for moviegoers. Now, though, with the decade winding down and all four franchises sitting a nice tidy trilogy, the question must be asked: Isn't three the magic number? Do we really need a fourth movie from any of these aging popcorn enterprises? Clearly, all of them will be written up in the Hollywood history books but right now the indelicate must be asked: "How can we miss you if you won't leave?"
We also put the question to you: Which of these franchises is making a mistake by adding a fourth film?
You made it clear that "The Hobbit," with director Guillermo del Toro taking over with a new vision, is in a class by itself -- the other franchises may tack on new editions to cash in, but fans are expecting nothing but magic from Del Toro's arrival in Middle-earth. The remaining three franchises got a frostier reception. For five days last week, more than half of our reader voters named "Pirates" as the cinematic series that should walk the plank. Over the weekend that changed and (with a lot of late-arriving Depp fans?) the surging "X-Men" became the top choice as a franchise hitting bottom.
It's not too late, though, we'll take votes for the next 48 hours before declaring our, uh, winning loser. In the meantime, thanks for reading, commenting and voting.
-- Geoff Boucher
VOTE: WHICH FRANCHISE IS MAKING A MISTAKE WITH A FOURTH FILM?
Photos at top, from left, Ian McKellen in "Lord of the Rings," Tobey Maguire in "Spider-Man," Halle Berry in "X-Men: The Last Stand" and Johnny Depp in "Pirates of the Caribbean." Credits from left: New Line Cinema, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios. Bottom photo of Sam Raimi by Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times
They are four of the biggest franchises in Hollywood history and each is at a major crossroads. This week the Hero Complex will look at "The Lord of the Rings," "Spider-Man," "X-Men" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" and size up their future as they attempt to move past their original trilogies and into a new decade.
Tuesday "Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit": How can Guillermo del Toropossibly match up to Peter Jackson's magical conquests ($2.92 billion in global box office and 17 Oscars including best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay)? At least he has Jackson on his side ...
Wednesday "Spider-Man": Director Sam Raimi and stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are back for more and that's no surprise considering "Spider-Man 3" had the highest-grossing opening weekend of the wall-crawling films -- and went on to make $891 million worldwide. Still, the last film got decidedly mixed reviews, and some fans are wondering if the magic is gone.
Thursday: "X-Men": The summer 2000 release of Bryan Singer's "X-Men" truly signaled the beginning of the modern era of superhero cinema and its new ambitions. While the 2006 release of "X-Men: The Last Stand" led to commercial success ($459 million), the hero-snuffing plot, the finality of the title and those cruel reviews all suggested the run was over. Now, though, producers are looking for a return to the mutant chronicles...
Friday "Pirates of the Caribbean" : The fourth film, "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," hits theaters in 2011, but after a shake-up at the top of Walt Disney Studios, star Johnny Depp said he is feeling glum about the project. If he's not excited, should you be?
Check back to read them all, but in the meantime, give us your opinion: Which franchise would be making the biggest mistake by continuing past the original trilogy? Vote below ...
-- Geoff Boucher
Photos from left, Ian McKellen in "Lord of the Rings," Tobey Maguire in "Spider-Man," Halle Berry in "X-Men: The Last Stand" and Johnny Depp in "Pirates of the Caribbean." Credits from left: New Line Cinema, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios.
UPDATED: Previous version of this post had an incorrect year of release on one of the X-films.
Next year marks the 70th anniversary of "Pinocchio," my favorite Disney film, and Dick Jones, the actor who gave voice to the beloved title character, will be a special guest at the Lone Pine Film Festival next weekend (Oct. 9-11).
If you're not familiar with that festival, it's got a wagon-wheel ethos with its emphasis on Old West fare, frontier imagery and the great old cowboy serials. So, um, how does the star of "Pinocchio" -- which is based on the 19th century Italian children's classic -- fit in with the campfire conversation?
That question is answered in this wonderful video, which was put together just for you Hero Complex readers by Don Kelsen, a veteran photographer at the Los Angeles Times who also happens to be an amateur authority on vintage westerns and saddleback serials. Great stuff, hope to bring you more retrospective videos like this one in the weeks to come.
The shockwaves are still being felt in Hollywood after the abrupt departure of Dick Cook from his longtime post atop The Walt Disney Studios. Just last weekend, Cook was on stage in Anaheim at Disney's D23 Expo where he was sharing hugs and backslaps on stage with elite talent such as Johnny Depp, Nicolas Cage, John Travolta and Tim Burton. (You can find links to our coverage of those moments below)
Dawn C. Chmielewski led the Los Angeles Times coverage of Cook's ejection from the Disney corporate cockpit, which is being framed as a dispute with the big boss of the Mouse House, which would be Bob Iger, chairman of Disney as a whole. Here's an excerpt from her piece (reported and written with Claudia Eller and Ben Fritz) which hints at the popularity that Cook enjoyed with the on-screen talent and directors even as his corporate connections turned sour...
Cook, the onetime Disneyland ride operator who rose to head the studio, is viewed as a traditionalist at a time when Iger is seeking new ways of doing business. Cook tended to be uncommunicative to the point of secretiveness -- a personal style that frustrated Iger, who emphasizes collaboration.
Iger nonetheless lauded Cook's contributions to Disney, in a tenure that included the launch of 63 movies that exceeded $100 million in domestic box office, the release of "Toy Story" and the first release of a digital film, "Tarzan."
"Dick Cook's outstanding creative instincts and incomparable showmanship have truly enriched this company and significantly impacted Disney's great legacy," Iger said. "We thank Dick for his tremendous passion for Disney, and his many accomplishments and contributions."
Some of Hollywood's most prominent figures reacted to the news with dismay.
Johnny Depp, star of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, said he was "shocked and very sad" to hear about Cook's abrupt departure.
"He is the utmost gentleman," said Depp, whom Cook contacted personally in London. "He said, 'I'd like you to hear it from me before you hear it from someone else or read it.' He said today was my last day. He didn't give me a reason."
In a statement, Cook said he had been contemplating stepping down for some time. "I have loved every minute of my 38 years that I have worked at Disney . . . from the beginning as a ride operator on Disneyland's steam train and monorail to my position as chairman of the Walt Disney Studios," he said. "To wrap up my Disney experience in a neatly bundled statement is close to impossible. But what I will say is . . . we have achieved many industry and company milestones."
I wouldn't be surprised to see Depp decide that this is a pretty good reason to cut the "Pirates" franchise off with the fourth film that he and Cook were promoting in Anaheim. In fact, I wonder if Cook's ouster was postponed until Depp was publicly locked in for that return trip aboard the Black Pearl.
Again, you can read the full story from the Business section right here. -- Geoff Boucher
After contributing mightily to the Hero Complex coverage of Disney D23 Expo, Los Angeles Times business writer Dawn C. Chmielewski has more tidbits about the strange marriage between the Mouse House and the House of Ideas...
With Walt Disney Co. buying Marvel Entertainment, inquiring minds at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia XVIII Conference in New York wanted to know if there will be a glut of superhero films.
"You can never have too many heroes," Tom Staggs, Disney's chief financial officer, deadpanned.
Asked, and answered, puny mortals.
Staggs said once the $4-billion cash and stock deal closes, there would be an immediate impact on Disney's consumer products division. That's probably code for Marvel's 5,000 characters appearing on backpacks, bedding and action figures.
Over time, the Marvel characters will present new video game opportunities -- both for those games published by Disney's group, as well as by third parties...
When it came time to create the third installment of the "Toy Story" saga, John Lasseter gathered members of the creative team who worked with him on the groundbreaking computer-animated film -- Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter -- and retreated to a little cabin where they developed the story for the original 1995 animated film.
The group spent two days brainstorming ideas to arrive at a story drawn from their own life experience. Lasseter said he had just dropped his son, Ben, off to college at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
"Driving away, when you leave your child behind at college, all I could think of was him as a little kid, sliding down the slide," Lasseter said in a press conference. "It was very emotional for us."
Lasseter said this life experience was the basis of the new story for Buzz and Woody, as the toys deal with the ultimate rite of passage -- Andy's departure for college.
Never-before-seen footage screened for the audience at the D23 Expo opens with home-movie-style vignettes from Andy's childhood, as a boy being measured against a door frame (and measuring Woody), playing on the floor with his toys, followed by the jarring image of Andy as a teenager -- and the toys discussing his impending departure for college.
Next, the audience sees the familiar "Toy Story" characters dumped at a day-care center -- where the children disassemble Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head, slime Buzz and commit other comic mayhem. The toys decide to make a break for it.
Lasseter offered no more details about the much-anticipated movie, but he did talk casting. He said Michael Keaton will provide the voice of Barbie's anatomically incomplete beau, Ken. The movie's other voice talent includes Ned Beatty, "Curb Your Enthusiasm's" Jeff Garlin, Bonnie Hunt and Whoopie Goldberg.
The only new "Toy Story 3" character to put in an appearance at the fan convention was a hedgehog in green lederhosen and accessorized with a traditional German feather cap. The character, a thespian dubbed Mr. Pricklepants, will be voiced by none other than former Agent 007 Timothy Dalton.
PHOTO CREDIT: Disney and Pixar Animation Studios Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter shared sneak peeks of such upcoming films as "The Princess and The Frog," "Rapunzel" and "Toy Story 3." Credit: Disney.
Say what you will about the Mouse House, but no Hollywood power holds onto its heritage with the fervor of the Walt Disney Co., which means a lot to the stars and artists of past classics still occasionally get the royal treatment. That happened Saturday night at the D23 Expo in Anaheim where several hundred giddy fans enjoyed a very special screening of "Sleeping Beauty" in the company of a famous princess who was wide awake and ready to embrace every one of them.
"If people get sleepy, tell them I have a prince out here who will give them a kiss," the vivacious Mary Costa told me right before the 10:20 p.m. screening of the 1959 classic in which she gave voice to Aurora, the beauty who dozes while awaiting true love's smooch. "This is going to be amazing. Are there really people waiting in line?"
Oh yes, there were plenty of people waiting in line. I had the pleasure of introducing the film to the crowd and the honor of doing it in the company of Costa and Floyd Norman, who in 1959 was a wide-eyed, 19-year-old newcomer to the animation department at Disney and worked with the team that brought the film's trio of unforgettable fairies to life. Norman would go on to be an enduring contributor to the Disney film legacy and a key player working directly with Walt Disney on his last animated feature, "The Jungle Book," released in 1967 just 10 months after the studio founder's death. Norman is a delight to speak to, a modest man with a twinkle in his eye, and during the 20-minute chat on stage he spoke about the rare emotion of Disney films, the inspirational personality of Walt and the raw energy of an office where an animator might jump onto his desk and, wielding a ruler as a sword, slay the dragon of his own imagination.
The crowd was thrilled to hear Norman but it was Costa they had come to see. And, wow, does she deliver. After years as a motivational speaker, she knows how to work a room and use the charm of her Tennessee accent and respectful tales of Hollywood past. She started singing in public at age 6 with a performance at a church in her native Knoxville and the power of her voice would take her around the world, eventually performing at the Royal Opera House in London, New York's Metropolitan Opera House and the Bolshoi in Moscow.
She had many fans during the years (Leonard Bernstein called her "the perfect" leading lady for "Candide") but especially notable among them were President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy who were taken by her interpretation of "The Star-Spangled Banner."
After that grim November day in Dallas in 1963, the president's widow reached Costa and asked her to perform at the memorial service, an emotional honor that still gives Costa chills when she talks about it. "I just recently watched a recording of my performance, they found one and it's at the Kennedy library now, and it's still overwhelming for me," Costa told me backstage.
I brought my 11-year-old daughter, Addison, to the screening and she adored Costa, as did every little girl there who was taken by the singer's electric enthusiasm and Southern charm as well as her meticulously perfect hair, makeup and jewelry that, for a crowd expecting a princess, only adding to her aura. Costa sat with my daughter during the screening and the two of them swayed to the grand old music by the BerlinSymphony Orchestra channeling Tchaikovsky's 1890 "Sleeping Beauty" ballet. "Every expression, every emotion that Walt wanted was there in the music of Tchaikovskyand all the colors that he needed," Costa explained to Addie. After the screening, Costa kneeled down, put her hands on Addie's elbows and told her to remember in life that you compete with yourself, not with others, and that you need to celebrate every success you see whether it's yours or someone else's.
Then Costa, now a year shy of 80, turned to a long line of grinning fans who were hoping she would sign autographs. She did just that, despite the late hour, and made each and every little girl (and big girl) feel like they had a royal visitation. That kept Costa in the building past 2 a.m. Who needs to sleep when there is princess work to be done?
CREDITS: "Sleeping Beauty" image, Walt Disney Co. The black and white photo of Mary Costa, circa 1960s, courtesy of Costa. Bottom photo shows, left to right in front, Floyd Norman, Addison Boucher and Mary Costa. Back row, Geoff Boucher.
Judging by the faces of Walt Disney Co. officials, the Happiest Place on Earth moved south a few blocks on Saturday to the Anaheim Convention Center. With a crowd surging well over 10,000 (perhaps closer to 20,000) and with the weekend energy of so many youngsters added to the attendance mix, the inaugural D23 Expo hit its stride.
When an encore performance was added for Roy P. Disney's "Growing Up Disney" presentation and an overflow crowd was turned away from "Imagineering the Future of Disney Parks" program at the 5,000-seat arena, you could sense that the event had hit turning point. The message it signaled was a first-year success for Disney's bold plan to create its own dedicated version of Comic-Con International. The crowd on Thursday had left some observers here (myself included) wondering if the expo was too young to fill this cavernous venue, but the size felt just right today.
It will be interesting to see where the Expo goes next year. With images, footage and media accounts of this year's edition, I suspect that the second gathering will bring in Disney faithful from across the country and beyond. Photos of Johnny Depp's three-minute romp on stage on Friday will probably be good for 10,000 tickets sold alone. There's also a big ace in the hole for the organizers: This year the Expo has Darth Vader, Ms. Piggy, Jack Sparrow and Mickey Mouse on stage, but next year they can add Spider-Man and other Marvel characters after the recent acquisition of the comics-industry giant.
The event feels very different than Comic-Con International and not just due to size. This Expo started with Disney's polish and intense appetite for control (which, it must be said, has served the company well at times) which makes its sensibility very different than the scruffy, fan-ruled Comic-Con. You won't see fans sitting on the floors during presentations, and you certainly won't hear Kevin Smith or Samuel L. Jackson dropping F-bombs from the main stage. On Friday, even press weren't allowed to bring their laptops, cell phones or cameras into the presentation by Disney Studios chief Dick Cook which is major departure from the digital freewheeling spirit of Hall H at Comic-Con. Comic-Con wants to be everywhere via You Tube; D23 wants you to know that if you weren'tin the room than you missed something special. Comic-Con is like Grateful Dead encouraging fans to swap bootlegs, D23 is more like, well, a Hollywood studio gripped by piracy concerns and the fear of seeing amatuer-quality versions of its product.
Also, it occurred to me today, there's a big track-meet quality to Comic-Con with so many competing studios, companies and dreamers looking to win over the audience. That creates a kind of lovely chaos that's missing from the one-company show here in Anaheim. The "surprises" at D23 will be elaborate stage moments that are carefully choreographed, such as the delightful Muppets musical number on Friday. The surprises at Comic-Con feel more like a rock concert where the crowd is more actively involved in the ultimate fate of the show.
But on Saturday, here in Anaheim, the careful rhythms of Disney's tune didn't really matter, the big story was that Disney has a hit on its hands.
Johnny Depp is a tough act to follow, so Disney Parks and Resorts Chairman Jay Rasulo brought in the heavy artillery today to announce plans to update the Star Tours attraction at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim and Disney's Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Fla.
Rasulo deadpanned that he had some "bad news" for the Disneyphiles attending the D23 Expo -- Star Tours would close in Oct 2010. On cue, Stormtroopers marched on stage as the martial sound of John Williams' "Imperial March" played. Darth Vader appeared on the giant screen overhead, and intoned, "The Emperor is most displeased with plans to close Star Tours."
Rasulo said Star Tours would reopen on 2011 as a 3-D simulation that, among other facets of the ride, recreates the pod-racing scene from "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace." The audience donned 3D glasses to watch a sequence, in which the space-age vehicles veer through canyons, across the flats and speed into the arena on Tatooine.
"If that doesn't fire you up," Rasulo said. "You're in the wrong meeting."
At a news conference after the presentation, Rasulo said there would be physical changes to the ride -- although he offered few additional details. He said "Star Wars" creator George Lucas has been involved in every aspect of the attraction and the storytelling.
"Ever since we did our original Star Tours attraction with George, the relationship with Imagineering has been very, very close," Rasulo said. "We strive for authenticity in everything we do. This is a Lucas idea, this is Lucas storytelling, interpreted by Imagineering."
The first Star Tours attraction opened at Disneyland in January 1987, and is believed to have been the first to adapt flight-simulator technologies for a theme park show. In it, visitors board a Starspeeder 3000 piloted by an android, careen through a giant frozen comet and join an intergalactic dogfight between the Rebel Alliance and the evil Empire. Yoda was not in the sequence shown, but last year Frank Oz, the voice of the diminutive green Jedi, told the Hero Complex that he had recorded new dialogue for the ride upgrade.
That pirate guy was the showstopper on Day 2 at the Walt Disney Co.'s inagural D23 Expo in Anaheim, but there was a whole lot of show before him at the presentation led by Dick Cook, chairman of Walt Disney Studios. There were famous faces, some great music (and some not-so-great music) and way too many "Old Dogs" puns by Cook during the 100 minutes or so that he promoted the upcoming slate of live-action films from the Mouse House in front about 4,500 cheering fans. Some of the highlights:
* Tim Burton may have gotten the second-biggest ovation (how can you really measure these things in memory?) and, really, he probably deserves a share of the applause that greeted his frequent muse, Johnny Depp, since Burton has shaped so much of Depp's collective screen persona. Burton makes stylish and quirky movies about outsiders and in the hyperbolic corporate Disney setting he seemed like a bit of the sly and smart oddball himself. The "Alice in Wonderland" director came out on stage and immediately corrected studio chief Cook, who had said Burton had got his start as a Disney animator. "I was an in-betweener," Burton said, instead of just letting the error slide. Cook asked the filmmaker why he wanted to adapt "Alice," and Burton answered that one big reason was his disatisfaction with every movie version to date. "Sorry," Burton added, looking at Cook, "I know Disney did one." Cook is a suit, Burton is an autuer, and it was funny watching their clashing rhythms. I can just imagine this is how they talk in meetings, too. Cook asked Burton why this version has been such a challenging production and the director shrugged. "Me." They could do this all day, folks...
* Cook also announced as news that there will be a full-length feature film version of Burton's "Frankenweenie," the short film from his early 1980s career, which folks have been writing about for months, but now I guess it's more official.
* John Travolta, wife Kelly Preston and their daughter Ella Bleu Travolta got a warm reception as they came out to promote "Old Dogs," a comedy featuring the whole family and starring the patriarch and RobinWilliams as well Seth Green (who, by the footage I saw, gets hit in the testicles quite a lot in the film), Justin Long and Matt Dillon.The movie doesn't look like my kind of film, but I have to say when Travolta put his arm around his daughter with obvious pride and talked about her acting debut in this film, you could feel a surge of emotion in the room. This is a family that has suffered a brutal loss with the death of 16-year-old Jett Travolta and it's hard not to root for them on some level.
* John Travolta had an oddly arched (or perhaps ironically grandiose) line when Cook mentioned the actor's string of success with Disney. "I always appreciated the audience love for me."
* Miley Cyrus sang her hit song, something about climbing or overcoming life challenges with lots of hair-flipping and overwrought vibrato. I don't get it.The crowd didn't seem especially moved by it either, although to be fair I should note that there weren't a whole lot of under-20 consumers in the audience (it is a school day) and I suspect there is not a lot of crossover between Burton's core consituency and the most passionate 'Hannah Montana" fans. At one point, a Cyrus project was mentioned right before a "Wild Hogs 2" reference and the geezer-on-bikes comedy got a more robust ovation. I'm not sure what that says, I'm just passing it on.
* There was a live orchestra playing to a long montage of film moments (more than 20 minutes) from the Disney library and it was pretty fantastic to see and hear. Much better than Miley. The singers on hand were great, too, whether singing to "Mary Poppins" or "Sister Act."
* Director Robert Zemeckis came out to talk about "Walt Disney's A Christmas Carol" and he was wearing a navy-and-powder-blue Hawaiian shirt under a sports coat. Interesting look. Later, the Muppets came out on a three-story riverboat that glided across the stage during a great musical number. I noticed Gonzo was wearing a crazy shirt that suggests that he shops at the same store as Zemeckis. The musical number was great, with about two dozen Muppets aboard the boat crowned with small American flags and blinking white lights. Kermit appeared at the end on top of the old Mark Twain paddle-wheeler and, with his banjo, sang "Rainbow Connection." I got misty -- seriously. Cook said that "very soon" there will be a new feature, "The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made." I thought that was a bit of executive humor, but apparently it's not.
* The most compelling footage? That's easy, it was "Ocean," the Disney Nature film that is simply staggering in its wildlife documentation. It opens on Earth Day. I know I'll be taking my kids.
* The "Prince of Persia" footage looked good but not great to me and "Sorcerer's Apprentice" looked like a movie I might have to skip. Nicolas Cage, looking dapper, came out and spoke warmly about "Fantasia" as "the most beautiful movie ever made" and added that he watches it every year. That was nice, but Cage also made a somewhat strained linkage of this new revival and today's date -- he says he feels a duty to "keep our children smiling all over the world" when he considers the tragedy and dark fears stirred by Sept. 11. Hmm. Okay. Well, let's hope they don't catch a trailer for "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans." Cage got a strong cheer from the crowd and there was a major surge of applause when he said he would be "absolutely" interested in another "National Treasure" film.
Photo: Matt Lucas stars as Tweedledee and Tweedledum in Walt Disney Pictures' 3-D fantasy adventure "Alice in Wonderland." Credit: Disney Enterprises Inc.
Walt Disney Studios and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro are forming a production company, Disney Double Dare You, to create animated films with a spooky edge.
Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook announced the partnership today in a star-studded presentation to the D23 Expo fan convention that brought actors Johnny Depp, Nicolas Cage and John Travolta, and directors Tim Burton and Robert Zemeckis, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and singer-actress Miley Cyrus onstage in a packed auditorium at the Anaheim Convention Center.
Del Toro, who is in New Zealand doing pre-production on the film "The Hobbit," delivered a recorded presentation in which he said he hopes to create animated films in the chilling but family-friendly spirit of one of his favorite Disney theme park attractions, the Haunted Mansion. The filmmaker waxed on about the "immersive" journey to another world that he experienced when four decades ago he stepped into the mansion, which to his young mind was "the most demanded real estate in the whole world."
The first project is called "The Troll Hunters." The filmmaker also said there will be a shared trait among all the Double Dare projects, which will include books, merchandise and films, but he kept that secret to himself on this day.
"I love to take audiences into fantastic new world and provide them with some anxious moments in the process," Del Toro said. "It is part of the Disney canon to create thrilling, unforgettable moments in the process. It is part of the Disney canon to create thrilling, unforgettable moments and villains in all their classic films. It is my privilege for Double Dare You to continue in this tradition."
It is unclear how many films the acclaimed director of "Pan's Labyrinth" and the comic-book-inspired "Hellboy" is committing to make under the partnership with Disney -- or when he'll find the time. He is directing two "Hobbit" films for Warner Bros./New Line Cinema and MGM, which are scheduled for release in 2011 and 2012, and has been linked to half a dozen other projects, including "Drood" and a "Frankenstein" remake.
-- Dawn C. Chmielewski and Geoff Boucher
Photo: Guillermo del Toro with a "Hellboy" hand. Credit: Egon Endrenyi / Universal Pictures
Johnny Depp, arguably the biggest movie star in the world, surprised the audience of Walt Disney Co.'s D23 Expo in Anaheim by sailing on stage in his famous pirate regalia.
As 5,000 fans jumped to their feet, the star emerged in full character, with his bleary ballet of the forever besotted Jack Sparrow.
Cracking wise about rum he also said he'd like a little snack -- that nice frog named Kermit who had been on stage earlier and "probably tastes like chicken."
Disney executive Dick Cook played the straight man for the short presentation and it was the least he could do: The "Pirates" franchise has pulled in more than $1 billion in domestic box-office alone and Depp is also on tap for a fourth, "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" in 2011. (An earlier version of this post had scrambled title and date -- blame the blackberry!) Depp is also starring "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Lone Ranger" for the Mouse House.
Depp arrived on stage in gliding replica of the Black Pearl pirate ship and, before they saw his famous face, the crowd was cheering at the sight of his silhouette behind a billowing back-lit sail and pumping stage smoke. Depp was the big finale in a program that featured appearances by John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Tim Burton and a performance by Miley Cyrus. Check back here more details on the program, as well as info on Guillermo del Toro's newly announced venture with Disney and Pixar.
The first day of Walt Disney Co.'s inaugral D23 Expo was a loooong one.
I had the pleasure of introducing last night's screening of "Darby O'Gill and the Little People," but I have to say that I was worried that I would be looking out on nothing but empty seats. The film, which celebrates its golden anniversary this year, is a fun artifact from Disney's deep library, but considering the fact that the screening started at 10 p.m. on a Thursday night, well, I wasn't sure even the lure of Sean Connery singing "Pretty Irish Girls" was enough to fill the theater at the Anaheim Convention Center. Also, after seeing the expo's sparse crowds in the morning (which were followed by a more robust attendance in the afternoon) I had some serious doubts about the number of die-hards willing to stick around into the late hours to see the wee people.
Turns out that some people just can't ever get enough Disney. There were several hundred people and a great mood in the room. I brought out Dave Smith, the chief archivist for Disney for four decades now, and we had a nice chat under the spotlight about this 1959 film that Walt Disney viewed as homage to his own Irish heritage.
Some fun facts Smith shared: Walt Disney had started work on the movie in the mid-1940s but the project was delayed as he sought the best way to bring the leprechauns to life on the screen. He resisted the pressure of theater owners to make it an animated film (which at the time, of course, was all theater owners expected from Disney) in whole or in part. Despite making a good number of films in Europe, this one was made entirely in Southern California, and the intense lighting needed to accomplish the trick photography to flattened depth-perception required a massive investment in air-conditioning to keep the work environment tolerable. Smith also said that, reportedly, Connery's performance in the movie caught the eye of James Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli and led to him being cast as 007. Smith also said the film was a commercial disappointment at its release in part because the Irish accents were so dense that American audiences struggled with the dialogue; for re-releases, Disney went back and had the whole film dubbed again to soften the brogues.
The movie screenings continue tonight with the "50 and Fabulous" series of 1959 Disney releases. I'll be interviewing Tommy Kirk before the 10 p.m. showing of "The Shaggy Dog"; hope to see some of you there. Then on Saturday night it's the big one: "Sleeping Beauty." Check back in today for ongoing blog coverage of day two of the D23 Expo, which runs through Sunday night.
Turns out, Bob Iger isn't just some guy running a Mickey Mouse operation. He, too, is a fan.
The president and chief executive Walt Disney Co. said he used his opening remarks the D23 Expo -- the first convention devoted to its most ardent fans -- to make a connection with the faithful.
"I'm sure many of you remember those early years in your life, and those very first, very fond memories of Disney. I'm no different," Iger told a crowd of 4,000. "As a kid in New York, I sat on the living room floor, closer than my mom wanted to the living room TV, enthralled by "TheMickey Mouse Club." Then, there was "Davy Crockett" ... He was my hero. I idolized him."
Iger wore his affection for the company on his sleeve -- well, almost.
At a news conference, Iger showed off a 1930s era Mickey Mouse watch made by the Ingersoll Waterbury Clock Co. He bought the timepiece in New York City to commemorate Disney's 1995 acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC television network and station group, where Iger was president and chief operating officer.
"There was this watch in the window, and I said, "Now, I'm a Disney cast member," joked Iger, who paid $1,100 for the collector's item.
Mickey Mouse is credited with rescuing the Ingersoll company, which was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. According toLinda Rosenkrantz of creators.com, the company sold 11,000 watches in a single day at Macy's.
Iger sports his vintage wrist-wear (with classic Mickey on its face, arms moving to show the hour and minute) for special occasions, like Disney annual meetings.
Captain EO, the futuristic 3-D film starring Michael Jackson, played at Disney parks from 1986 to 1998, only to fade with the pop star's recording career.
But with Jackson's death reigniting interest in (and sales of) his music, Walt Disney President and Chief Executive Bob Iger said he screened the film a few weeks ago "To see if there were some possibilities."
Iger described Captain EO as a product of its time -- "essentially, an extended music video." While rudimentary by today's entertainment standards, he said he found it "charming" and "funny, too."
Disney is considering what to do with the film, Iger said, adding that "it's the kind of thing that will get a fair amount of attention."
Iger offered no promises, though, about Captain EO and his musical alien crew will once again perform in Disney parks.
Walking around the first day of the inaugural edition of Disney's D23 Expo, the Anaheim Convention Center seemed massive and the paying public seemed tiny -- about 4,100 or so, which gave the event the energy-sapping feel of a concert with too many empty seats. [Updated 3:05 p.m.: Robert Iger’s opening speech was attended by 4,100 people, so that number is too low for the overall attendance. What's the right number? Can't say for sure; Disney officials haven't served up any crowd data.]
Of course, this is the first day of the first year, and a weekday, too, so there's plenty of opportunity for the ambitious venture to become a Cinderella story.
Some moments from Day 1:
-- Mickey Mouse, in a spiffy red bandleader ensemble, marched around the trading floor hearing music no one else could hear. It was downright weird to see him (and his Disney handler) completely alone. Kids are in school today and, as I said, the crowd is light, so the most famous character wasn't being chased by the usual mob that seeks his autograph at the theme parks. At 1:30, Donald Duck was at a small booth at the entrance to the event and there were only 12 people in line for a photo.
-- The D23 Expo is copping the promotional mojo of Comic-Con International's Hall H and also Lucasfilm's Star Wars Celebration conventions. One big difference? It may change this weekend, but on Day 1 I didn't see more than three elaborate fan costumes. There were plenty of Mouse-ear hats, Disneyland sweat shirts and Tinkerbell T-shirts, but barely any of the homemade or high-end character costumes that put the bizarre in those other pop-culture bazaars.
-- Tonight I'll be introducing "Darby O'Gill and the Little People," part of the "50 and Fabulous" classic film series here at the expo. Sounds fun, but the movie starts at 10 p.m. (!) I wonder how many people will be in the audience? Now accepting predictions.
-- I don't want to make it sound like the day is a letdown as far as programming, by any means. There are some amazing artifacts on display here (and many more on sale in the dealers' showroom area) and there's a lot of excitement among the fans here. The D23 community (the expo is part of the paid-membership initiative D23) is geared toward fans who want to feel special in their access and appreciated for their passion (and, of course their purchases). I didn't see any fans complaining today that the lines were too short.
On Thursday, Walt Disney Co. will launch its big new marketing event, the D23 Expo, in Anaheim with predictably bright and shiny promotional messages about upcoming projects such as "The Princess and the Frog," "Toy Story 3" and the new-look California Adventure theme park and stars such as Robin Williams, Nicolas Cage and Kelsey Grammer plugging future Disney vehicles.
But on closer inspection the four-day event is as much about the past as it is the future. The D23 Expo -- the name is a reference to 1923, the year Walt Disney founded the studio -- is a major moment in the archival life of the entertainment giant that holds on to its heritage with more intensity than any of its Hollywood rivals.
A "lost" Mickey Mouse cartoon from the 1950s will be screened publicly for the first time on Friday while the bejeweled storybook from the opening live-action sequence of the 1959 classic "Sleeping Beauty" will be on display, as will Fess Parker's coonskin cap from "Davy Crockett" and dozens of never-seen-before props, costumes and art pieces representing every decade of Disney film.
There will also be screenings of vintage films with appearances by creators and cast (Tommy Kirk, for instance, will be on hand for a Friday night screening of "The Shaggy Dog," while Mary Costa, the voice of Princess Aurora, will be on hand for the "Sleeping Beauty" screening on Saturday) and panels that dig deep into company history. How deep? In addition to a Friday presentation about animation cel preservation by chemist Ron Stark, there will be an in-depth panel discussion of the historical repercussions of studio founder Walt Disney's trip to South America in 1941 (which is the subject of the upcoming documentary "Walt and El Grupo").
"This is a major celebration of the heritage of Disney; there will be things that the true fans -- the ones who know the history and love it -- have never had the chance to see and hear," said Dave Bossert, creative director of special projects for Disney Animation Studios.
The Expo might be viewed as Disney's in-house version of Comic-Con International, the pop-culture event in San Diego that has become a powerful promotional opportunity for movie studios and television networks to reach out directly to thousands of hard-core fans. Winning over those fans has become especially important these days with Twitter, You Tube, Facebook and other digital-age opinion amplifiers.Disney officials have declined to comment on crowd expectations, but Charles Ahlers, president of the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor and Convention Bureau, has cited 30,000 to 40,000 as the anticipated crowd for the event at the venerable Anaheim Convention Center. The D23 Expo is $37 a day (or less with multi-day passes) -- for programming that runs from 10 a.m. past 11 p.m.
The event will have some high-interest presentations, such as director Tim Burton's appearance promoting "Alice in Wonderland," a program devoted to upcoming Pixar projects and the first public screening of major footage from "The Princess and the Frog." There are far more than films at the event, however, with a 20,000-square-foot trading floor for collectibles, appearances by television stars from Disney-owned ABC and promotions for Disney cruises, theme parks, music, etc.
Still, a considerable amount of the stage time and real estate at the event is devoted to history. Bossert will be on stage on Friday afternoon for one of the key moments -- a screening of Disney animation rarities such as "Stop That Tank," an instructional video made decades ago for the Canadian military that was "once classified and now is just this fascinating artifact," and "Winged Scourge," an educational video about malaria that is a bit shocking to behold now.
"Some of the techniques it presents are a bit startling now -- such as dumping a layer of oil on top of the water supply to kill mosquito larvae, or using insecticides that are outlawed now," Bossert said.
Those are kitschy artifacts but that panel, which will also be hosted by Bossert and Academy Award-nominated producer and author Don Hahn, will also include two screenings of far more historical heft. One is "Destino," the collaboration between Disney and Salvador Dali that was begun in 1945 and was not completed and released until 2003, after Roy E. Disney championed it. The other is "Plight of the Bumblebee," a Mickey Mouse cartoon that Bossert called "a truly fascinating treasure," a cartoon from the Eisenhower era that was never completed nor shown outside the Disney offices.
"It's hard to find references to it, it's off the radar for even intense fans of Mickey Mouse and company history," Bossert said, adding that longtime Disney employee Bernie Mattenson, with Disney for 55 years, unearthed the six-minute cartoon, which is in various stages of animation but complete in plot.
"There are black-and-white unfinished panels, some parts are rough, others are cleaned-up, but it's an absolute lost treasure. It's perfect for the Expo, which is tuned in to the past. This is a must-see and this is the only place to see it."
