Jim on Film
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Making the Band

Borrowing from the documentary style of Walt Disney television programs from the 1960s, the creators of the new documentary Dream On Silly Dreamer, about the fall of Walt Disney Feature Animation from it’s The Lion King heights to its current state, manage to tell a story in a manner that is both educational and humorous in its satiric use of animated transitional segments. Like most documentaries, Dream On Silly Dreamer uses interviews with first-hand witnesses as a primary source of storytelling; however, according to director Dan Lund and producer Tony West, these interviews were conducted within weeks of the big announcement made by former Feature Animation president Thomas Schumacher on March 25, 2002, that cut the already heavily thinned animation force by over 250 workers and left long-time studio artists and Disney animation devotees with the breath knocked out of them.

The film opens and closes with clever segments which borrow heavily from the classic Winnie-the-Pooh featurettes, a technique that establishes the early years of the studio’s re-found animation success as a sort of blessed storybook existence. Despite this clever visual metaphor and the presence of creative animated transitions, the real stars of the film are the studio’s former artists. Many of the faces will seem unfamiliar to viewers, but the job descriptions below their names—from CAPS artists to visual effects animators—quickly give clue to the importance of their roles in the making of some of the last decade’s most memorable movie moments. The most prominent and well-known face among the interviewees is Andreas Deja, master animator of such classic characters as Gaston, Jafar, Scar, Hercules, and Lilo. It is his position as still being employed by the studio that sets him apart as a unique—and important—presence in the documentary. After Deja, much of the screen time is given to clean-up artist Jacki Sanchez, but among the more recognizable artists are Brian Ferguson, who brought Hercules’s Panic and Mulan’s Matchmaker to life, and Barry Cook, who co-directed Mulan.

There is much for these artists to rant about, particularly when considering the timing of the interviews. In promoting the film, much of the focus has been given to the personal stories of shattered dreams, where people whose driving passion was Disney animation experienced having their sun, moon, and stars fall from the sky with a loud and painful thud. Thankfully, in a time when unemployment is high as a result of lay-offs in every area from business to education and many lifelong dreams have been shattered by a pink slip and an increase in home foreclosures, the film spends very little time on the “pity party�? angle. The reality is that Walt Disney Feature Animation had grown too expensive; there had to be cuts in salaries or staff somewhere—though certainly nowhere near the number made—to make it profitable again because even Disney has to make money.

The strength of the film is that, despite the fresh-wound timing of the interviews, Dream On Silly Dreamer bears a strong sense of reason in its view of the tragic events that brought on the downfall of Walt Disney Feature Animation. Very early, this balance is seen. While recounting the mid-1980s removal of animation artists from the building and grounds originally purchased and constructed by Walt Disney for his animation department from the revenue created by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the artists fondly recall the freedom they found while away from executives, courtesy of their exile to a faraway warehouse “trailer park�? in Glendale. They also recall the generosity of the studio in giving out random perks—hats and other clothing—in the face of the success of their films. Yes, these were small gestures, but the impact they had on artists who were unaccustomed to such acknowledgement was sizeable. And when The Lion King started climbing box office in gross to ridiculous numbers, the studio handed out generous bonuses in amounts large enough for the artists to buy cars or make down payments on houses.

According to the movie, it is the success of The Lion King that really signaled the beginning of the end. When Jeffery Katzenberg left the studio to create his own animation division, the artists recall the money signs in their own eyes as animation salaries launched higher and higher as the studios were fueled by the spectacular wealth generated by The Lion King. When fierce competition raged between the two studios, bargaining for talent rivaled the competition and ego of professional sports players vying for a salary higher than their contemporaries. In the artists’ own words of reflection, they got caught up in it until production costs were driven through the roof, though, in a balance typical of director Dan Lund, one artist acknowledges that the salary for one animator for one year would hardly scrape the surface of what kind of money Michael Eisner was walking home with every day.

Artists are also quick to put the expensive new Feature Animation building into perspective. While there was much money deposited into the building, a structure that has received much press, the building was created without artist input. As a result, it wasn’t really suited to animation production and has become more of a testament to animation mismanagement. In home video footage, one artist, upon seeing the décor, proclaims it to be a “post modern gas chamber.�?