Rhett Wickham: Great Animated Performances: Profiles of Modern Masters
Page 5 of 7
RW
I don’t think he knew that until after the box office numbers came in.
RC
He never really told us what his reservations were. But what we were speculating was that it had something to do with the fact that it wasn’t a musical and that it didn’t have a love story, which was a departure.
RW
But it is anchored with a love story of sorts – a very different kind of non-romantic love story that we don’t expect.
JM
Right, right.
RW
It has a strong emotional anchor in the relationship between Silver and Jim – a surrogate father and son story that I think is very powerful and very clear.
JM
That was our intention, at least.
RC
So that was then when HERCULES came up, which we did instead of that. But I guess I’m just saying that the idea of what TREASURE PLANET was meant to be really was there from the start, I mean it wasn’t that things happened in those other years in between.
JM
And this was before ATLANTIS was on the boards and other things and so we were thinking “Oh this is a novel thing.�? And then suddenly “What? You’re doing an action adventure right before you do ours!?�? (He sighs and shakes his head)
RC
And also LILO brought in the science-fiction thing, because we were thinking…part of our excitement was that it’ll be the first time we go into this genre, the first time Disney’s really touched this genre in an animated feature…
Both Clements and Musker sigh and sink back just a bit into their seats for a moment.
RW
It’s timing.
JM
Well along with whatever else it certainly didn’t help. But it really got revived after Jeffrey left because they wanted to keep us on the farm, so they knew they had in their back pocket something that we wanted to do. Then Michael Eisner - we met him at a lunch like this - he said “Hey, I really want to do TREASURE PLANET!�? which he had been lukewarm to before – not out and out rejecting - Jeffrey was more out and out rejecting – but suddenly he was warming up partly because it was a carrot to keep us at the studio, back in the days when they were worried about that. Ironically by the time it was produced and dudda dudda dudda by the time it was released, certainly, their attitude toward hanging on to talent had vastly changed.
RW
Yeah..well it dissipated.
JM
Vaporized.