I was bitten early by the animation bug, and I was bitten hard. The wound has never healed, and Walt and his staff were the only shamans who could offer the proper salve to quell the sting. I only slightly recall something that my Mother swears she witnessed the afternoon in December of 1966 when Walt’s death was announced on the news; she claims to have watched me walk around a large live oak in our back yard for over an hour, pacing back and forth shaking my head, occasionally sitting for a moment under the tree and crying quietly to myself. Mom’s retelling of the events may be colored by her having suffered from Marlin’s Syndrome, too, but I at least recall feeling very sad upon hearing the news of Walt Disney having died. It was only two years prior that my family got that first letter from Walt himself – responding to my Mother’s good-will efforts as reported by the Orlando Sentinel Star, a feature story about her having staged a Disney unit of study with her first-grade class that taught the virtues of truth, kindness, faith and being a good friend and neighbor. I responded with a letter about my anticipation of his building a park in our own city and how he could come and stay with us any time, and how I’d like to live in the castle, and how my Sister could live there, too, provided she had her own room. Hope for that was all gone suddenly (and the irony of still looking for affordable housing does not escape me.) Nevertheless, I digress.

Future housing costs and sorrowful seven-year-old soul-searching aside, the Wonderful World of Color continued to hold forth the promise of something extraordinary. Announcement of The Jungle Book followed shortly thereafter, and without meaning to be even the least bit sarcastic or irreverent, I have to tell you that the continuation of animation from Disney after Walt’s passing anchored my faith in life after death (no, I don’t think Walt was secretly married to Minnie and that a protective priory of rodents have been controlling Disney ever since…so just give me a little romantic license). Well into my adolescence, I remained devoted to the Sunday night lottery that would give me hope of something new, or even the cherished gold of a re-release! Without the advantage (or anesthetic effects) or seeing a Disney animated feature over and over and over on video, the seven-year cycle of re-releases made the forgotten moments come alive as if new, and the vibrancy of the film in some format other than super-8 home movies was like lifting a veil and moving from satisfying dream to a more splendid reality. I’ve never been too jaded by the mediocrity of the films of the late 60’s and 70’s, in part because of how the anticipation of their arrival and the sheer gratefulness of their existence colored my perspective, and because of how that memory lingers to this day. Oh, how I miss anticipation.

So, when this Sunday’s Los Angeles Times arrived with a supplemental advertising insert – a full size foldout, double-sided, glossy, heavy stock, color poster for both Cars and Dead Man’s Chest….I should have broken into a sweat. Alas, I did not.

I get Cars. I’ve seen much of it. I love it, I adore it, I’ll enjoy seeing it in its final cut and to see it many times thereafter. But it’s already just a little bit old to me. I’d like to blame this in large part on my working in the industry and being bombarded with tests, and peeks and previews and lunch and dinner and drinks that revolve around what’s in the pipeline and what’s up next and when. In reality, though, even if I stocked vending machines for a living and drove across five counties connected by nothing but dirt roads and poultry farms, never seeing my family for days at a time driving from rest-stop to rest-stop, Cars would feel just a little bit old to me already. Any Disney film would. They just cannot keep it to themselves anymore and it’s killing the thrill.

I’ve tried a self-imposed moratorium on my exposure. Friends and colleagues will say, “Oh, you’ve got to see what we’re doing with…�? “NO!�? I scream, “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to know it. I don’t want to judge it, second-guess it, hear the story meltdown tales, see the initial character designs, no, no, no, no. Surprise me, please!�? It doesn’t work, of course. I’m in too deep in terms of both my personal and professional interest. For a while, I stopped meeting friends for lunch at the studio. I even went to the expense of a messenger to deliver packages because if I walked into the rotunda of Feature Animation I ran the risk of seeing maquettes and visual development for things that weren’t going to hit theatres for a year or two. I stopped going to the animation attractions at Disney MGM and California Adventure. I’m still furious with myself for having spent an afternoon waiting for a meeting in a hallway at Feature Animation seated across from storyboards for the opening of Tarzan that later were discarded; I was somewhat disappointed when the new opening took shape before my eyes at a preview screening and it took me another viewing to appreciate the edit and embrace the new choice. I spoiled something sacred, something I now believe in more deeply than ever before – the power of surprise and the filmmaker’s right to have their final product seen without judgment before the fact. The mythic nature of sitting in the dark and, in effect, having a director whisper through his lens “let me tell you a story�? is lost to the lingering effect of “oh, I think I’ve heard part of this!�? or “Oh, I thought you were going with that other version.�?

I fully believe that even film critics are subject to the effects of a culture that inundates the public with anticipatory reports of plotting, characters, voice actors, all of it. Coming attractions, which already long ago started taking on the characteristics of political campaigns, have now so fully embraced this model that it feels like the effort to get my ‘vote’ begins four years before the film reaches theatres! There is no place to hide from it. It’s just not possible.