Jim On Film
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Help Wanted

A murmur of excitement has burst through the animation community as the news that Walt Disney Feature Animation head Thomas Schumacher will likely be leaving Disney animation to pursue other interests. Schumacher will probably go down in Disney animation history as the executive in charge of cutting the animation department almost in half after the box office failure of Atlantis: The Lost Empire, a film he helmed and, it has been rumored, didn’t have the ability to steer into greener waters. Since those cuts, anonymous animators have proclaimed him, in various interviews and insider leaks, to be an absentee executive without a strong vision to properly guide the soul of the Walt Disney Company, its Feature Animation department. Dave Pruiksma, a supervising animator at Disney for over twenty-years before departing in frustration at the sight of waves of talented artists getting their jobs cut or their salaries pruned, has stopped just short of calling Schumacher Satan incarnate in three informative editorials on his website.

Whether Schumacher be saint or sinner, it is the future that needs attention now. It is, after all, no help to replace the Wicked Stepmother with Maleficent.

So, I present to you, the classified as it should appear in the newspapers of the world.

Wanted
Feature Animation Head.
Must have love for animation,
understanding of Disney
animation history, a fascinating
knack for storytelling and character
development. Must be able to lead
and rally large numbers of people into
the future.

 The most notable animation head since the death of Walt Disney in 1966 was Jeffery Katzenberg. Katzenberg’s contribution to the studio has, of course, been an area of some controversy. After his departure, studio artists belittled Katzenberg’s role in the creation of their most successful films. At the same time, while bringing to light the inadequacies of Schumacher, some anonymous artists have acknowledged the strong understanding Katzenberg had when it came to animated storytelling. That said, the proof is in the pudding. After an amazing independent debut with the brilliant The Prince of Egypt, Katzenberg’s DreamWorks studio has yet to create a wholly satisfactory animated film, particularly in the realm of traditional animation. Whatever magic he apprenticed at Disney got lost on his later animated endeavors.

This means that, by all accounts, Howard Ashman was the closest the studio ever had to having another Walt Disney. He loved animation and knew and understood the great legacy of Disney animation. But that wasn’t all. He was a genius storyteller. It was Howard Ashman who suggested for Sebastian to be Caribbean, for the Beast’s castle to be full of enchanted objects, and solved other key problems for the Beauty and the Beast plot. When reading stories of Ashman’s input for these films, one cannot help but think of Walt Disney vividly describing how Princess Aurora pricks her finger on the spinning wheel spindle, his description of what the forest creatures would be doing during "Whistle While You Work" in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and so on.

Howard Ashman was not an animator. He did not work his way up in the gears of Hollywood executive positions. He was a lyricist before he became the Executive Producer of Beauty and the Beast. That is what Disney needs--not someone who has been playing the corporate game for years but the next Walt Disney--someone who knows animation storytelling and whose passion for the art drives him/her to create the truly perfect animated film.

As said above, this means someone who understands animated storytelling. He or she must be able to look at storyboards and say, "This is really great, but I think the villain is a little too cardboard. He should be real, like the corporate executive who makes money from the sweat of children. He has a family at home, and he needs the money; he’s just going about it the wrong way. We need to give him that depth."

This person should be able to realize and say, "That’s really, really funny stuff, but I think we’re overdoing the humor. We have heart in the story--don’t undersell our story."

This person should be able to look at a story reel and suggest, "This is really exciting stuff, but we still need two or three lines of dialogue to explain what’s happening. We can wow the audience with all the tricks we have, but if they don’t walk out with an understanding of all that has happened, they’ll be scratching their heads instead of sitting on the edge of their seats."

The person who heads Disney Feature Animation should understand that before throwing millions upon millions of dollars and the blood of the artists into a project, you should know that the story is going to work and not just have a hunch about it. The head of Feature Animation needs to be an artist in his or her own right and on several levels.