RW: Do you know if any of the staff who were instrumental on the development of the Disneyland show were significantly involved on VICTORY THROUGH AIR POWER?

JB: No, I don’t, but that’s something to look into and see if it ties together.

RW: That’s a great observation, Jerry. What do you think this tells us about Walt as a film maker and particularly where he was at this time in his life?

JB: When Disney in particular and the animation industry in general did these films in World War II, this was the first time anybody had seen anything like this. America didn’t have film like this in World War I. We didn’t have character animators or propaganda in movie theatres with sound and color depicting in drawing and painting and movement the images of war. I mean this was a whole new thing. We’re used to it now because we grew up with it, but this was pioneering at the time. Prior to this cartoons were primarily slapstick or Disney fairy tales, but this was a dose of real life, of what’s going on in the now. I mean this was contemporary; this was about what was happening at the time. This was such a departure. My main goal for the evening of the 22nd will be to put us back in the mindset of the time of this film. We forget so much of the context of the time in which this was first seen.

RW: It strikes me that it did what no other propaganda film -- that is a feature film with an overt message did; that is use one of the most free-form, wide open ways to express ideas and influence emotion. They had a whole arsenal of visual tools that I can’t think of any other propaganda film having at their disposal or at least taking advantage of. At least I can’t think of one, can you?

JB: No, I mean come on; I mean we’re talking about Walt Disney and his animation studio, a magic factory. That’s something that nobody else in the world, no other organization had. As far as I know this is totally original and unique. It also points up that Disney realized he had the power to make a film, make a statement, and make it fast. Something else I want to look into is the production schedule, because I believe because of the urgency of the message he was trying to get across this was something he needed to get out as soon as possible. It came out within the year that the book came out

RW: Which we forget is very unusual for the time.

JB: Exactly. And something again that makes this so different is that some of the animation was limited. It’s actually story that’s told through pictures and they figured out the most economic way to limit the movement and use the picture to tell the story. This is a lot of what limited animation later went on to do - and I’m not going to say this in the introduction to the film but it’s a lot of what anime does. That’s one of the tricks that people don’t understand. There’s an economy with the drawing. They plan it more, the camera, the way they tell the story, the narration. Everything is planned in a certain way. But you’re fooled into thinking that there’s a lot more going on visually than there is, and that’s beautiful, really, it’s great.

RW: SAMURAI JACK does that, taking more advantage of layouts and cuts.

JB: You’re absolutely right. You picked the perfect U.S. example of that.

RW: I don’t think it can be underestimated what the power of this medium was for effectively influencing people’s thinking.

JB: Absolutely. It may have been one of the first big tests of that.

RW: And that has to have had some effect on Walt to see that he had that kind of power, that amount of influence as a producer and film maker. It also had to have been somewhat of a bitter-sweet thing since he tried to do the same thing to a lesser extent with influencing artistic opinion, rather than civic opinion or policy, with FANTASIA.

JB: Here’s another angle. Disney also had his ego and Disney wanted to remain valid. And what I’m about to say is based on what you just said about FANTASIA. FANTASIA bombed. And the war had just started, and every studio in town was making films related to the war, like CASABLANCA, and Disney was looking for “What’s going to make me valid now?�? They knew they had to stop producing such expensive pictures and to start doing the training films for the armed forces, but they had to stay alive in the theatres and stay on people’s minds. Disney wanted to make his war time films just as Jack Warner and Louis Mayer were doing. Where was Walt Disney’s war time picture? I think the GREMLINS project was more of what he was thinking, but VICTORY THROUGH AIR POWER came up and was a way to make an important statement utilizing the power of the studio.