The Great Mouse Detective is twenty years old this summer. Exactly how much of Ratigan"s joy still lingers within the animator two decades later is something I discovered in my conversation with him this past week.

I wanted to look an aspect of your work that is not discussed as often. I want to talk about Ratigan.

It"s fun to think of somebody actually rediscovering Ratigan. I sure had a great time doing it and I look forward to someday doing a character like that again.

RW

What did you enjoy about it?

GK

Well, I liked his villainous justification. I love the fact that here is a thoroughly bad, wicked guy who believed that he was completely justified in everything that he did. It was fun to believe in a villain. I guess I have to believe in a character before I can animate them, and I really could get into Ratigan"s skin. It was just pretty cool.

He started off as a very skinny little rat, my first designs on him, but it just didn"t have the power. He was sort of weasely. I just didn"t like it. I don"t know, there was something that…he just didn"t have the presence that he needed. Then, at that time, Ron Miller, at the studio – (was) the president – had this big powerful frame of a football player. And when he would walk in to a room everybody would pay attention, and I thought “that"s what we"ve gotta" have with Ratigan!�? So I started designing him as this big powerful rat. It just fit so nicely. At the same time I watched a film called “Champagne For Caesar�? with Ronald Coleman in it. We were looking at Ronald Coleman as a type for Basil, and I just happened to notice that Vincent Price was in it, and Vincent Price"s character was so comic and big and bold and broad, and I"d never seen Vincent Prince play a comic villain. I said “That"s it! This is Ratigan.�? So I just recorded that and I did all my first drawings of Ratigan to that “Champaign For Caesar�? and presented it to Ron and John and it just seemed to fit perfectly.

RW

You make mention in Frank and Ollie"s book on Disney Villains of having taken some inspiration from a photograph of some railroad bosses you had seen.

GK

Yes.

RW

How long was the design process on the character?

GK

It was probably about two months of developing and finding Ratigan. There"re usually big turns that take place, and when I saw the photo of the railroad worker – he was an owner, a boss guy – he had this top hat and there was such a superiority about his face, and I started to do drawings based on him. At the time I don"t remember if I had already had the big rat or the small skinny rat, I kind of think he was still skinny at that point. The size came in later. It always seems to help me when I can base it on something real, somebody I know, something I"ve seen. You don"t ever make up anything out of the top of your head, there"s something at work viscerally in the back of your mind – whatever it is that you"re working on.

RW

A lot of that goes back to what people like Eric and Frank and Ollie were talking about. It"s really calling on your sense of observation.

GK

You can"t really animate with conviction if you don"t believe in what you"re doing. I"m not a villain, but I know what it feels like to be justified. I know what it feels like to have somebody do something that I don"t agree with, and you animate that part of it. So, it"s not only just the visual cues that you get in the observation, but also your own internal…I don"t know…experiences. You feel indignant when somebody has done you wrong and you know I just drew on those emotions and expressions, and I had so much fun doing Ratigan that way. I love the fact, or well, I guess one of the things that I really liked was I knew that underneath, the guy was a rat and in that sense he had this animal wildness and power - strength. Yet, he preferred to cover it over with sophistication. The way he walked, everything, was all for show, for showing that he was of a much higher bearing and standard than everyone else around him. But underneath was this creeping, wild rat and I don"t know…there was just a fun about it, so much more fun to draw a guy who truly is a villain on the inside and on the outside is appearing to be completely reasonable and sophisticated.

RW

There are so many little moments when the wildness leaks out, like in the lead up to the song The World"s Greatest Criminal Mind. He has this great little twist – a fit almost – that"s a kind of jazz slide and a rim shot inside of a waltz. His hair askew, his eyes just shy of fully ejecting from their sockets. It"s so terrific!

GK

Thank you. He was psycho at that point, you know where he really reveals (the animator grits his teeth and tightens his voice) how much he really just…!!!! (he relaxes) I mean every muscle is taught and the guy just reveals that he really, really is overselling that phrase. I guess he"s sort of spastic at that moment.

RW

It"s like having a little fit or a chill running up his spine that once it"s over he can ease back into being normal. It"s such a smart little bit of acting.

GK

Yeah, he lifts his pinky and kind of straightens his hair a little bit and goes on after that. It"s always the aftermath that"s kind of the fun. You bring him to the edge of wild animal and then it gives you something to regain composure with (sic). I also love the fact that there"s so much strength in this guy and that you torque his joints in all of that. There"s his arms, his legs, his wrists, his neck, everything is torqued and twisted at that point. There"s so much tension in his body, and then you relax it and it goes smooth and soft as he walks. It"s great for contrast.

RW

It"s not only great for contrast, but it"s great comedically, and at the same time there"s something very menacing about that kind of easy, sort of oily shift back into the elegant. It adds up to something so rich, and complicated and with so many layers. It"s that kind of specificity that makes him more than a caricature.

GK

And if you look at Champagne for Caesar, you will see Vincent Price playing that character. He"s goes into these wild, little psycho moments and then he regains composure. In that movie, he is such an animated character. He hits these broad, wild poses, and he holds them! For seconds at a time without moving. It"s just like a held drawing – just the way I did it in Great Mouse Detective. I really used Vincent Price as an inspiration for the character, and I asked him to play that character for us. He just pushed it further with Ratigan, and it was absolutely no…I don"t know… struggle for him at all to find that character because in essence he had invented it.

* * *

Price is, indeed, every inch the comic villain in Champaign for Caesar. There are several moments from which it is clear that Keane and his cohorts gleefully took inspiration. The film is available on DVD and VHS, and worth renting just to see the similarities. At one point Price cradles the chubby cheeks of game-show host Art Linkletter much as Ratigan cradles Fidget, and in another boardroom scene his oily amelioration of his secretary suddenly explodes into a very Ratigan-like “take�?, glimpses of which can be seen in Kean"s animation. But as inspiring a foundation as this performance is, Glen Keane manages to push it further and invent an even larger persona, just as believable and actually a good deal more funny. This is the peculiar skill of great animators, particularly in the age of celebrity voices with their names above the title: they open of the voice-actor"s work and shape it into something better, something different, and something all their own.

RHETT WICKHAM

What"s interesting for me is that I"ve seen some film of Price recording the vocal tracks, and I watch those and then watch the scenes animated to those recordings and there"s something really wonderful that you and the Ratigan team did. You took advantage of just the music in his voice and really pulled that, extended that out to the furthest reaches it can go. In a film actor or stage actor, the voice is often an engine that drives the physical actions – a physical movement is so often the punctuation at the end of what starts out as a vocal arc. What happens with the animation of Ratigan is that it extends even beyond the physical actions that naturally would follow through with a live actor –even in a highly theatrical performance like Price"s. You"re right, he"s highly animated, and there"s a wonderfully purposeful “hammy�? theatricality about him, but you found something beyond that, something more in the animation. That"s impressive, frankly.

GLEN KEANE

Well it"s something that happens in the thumbnailing stage. When you"re listen to this dialogue track. I"m not looking at Vincent Price so I"m seeing Ratigan in that scene, in that shot; what is he doing? He"s standing in front of his crowd of thugs, or he"s about to crush Flaversham"s little dancing doll.

RW

Right

GK

So, that"s the moment, and so it"s no longer Vincent Price at that point. Now it is Ratigan, and he"s living in that voice as I"m hearing it. And I"m imagining Ratigan doing this. At the same time, I know that I"m trying to entertain people, right?

RW

Right

GK

I know where I"m going to go, ultimately, as I start thumbnailing I"m, like …Ratigan is going to crush this little doll and prove to Flaversham that, you know, he means business and he"s going to crush the little doll that Flaversham has been working on. So I know that"s where I want to go. That means that I really want to send everybody on a different trail, I"m leading them down a different path. So I"m showing him so totally relaaaxed and caaasual as he"s talking (Keane slides into character in his voice) and I just really work all the fluid little poses, and the wrist he"s supporting his head with, and … as I remember the scene anyway, animating that way, I think that"s what it was like. Then, you crush it! Crush the doll, and you deliver, in a surprise moment, what you"re building up, but then – if I"m remembering right, right at the end of that, there"s a little coda at the end where you relax and let the steam off. I remember that it was always about the build up, the explosion, and then there"s a recovery at the end of it. I always hear it in all of Vincent Price"s delivery. There was always to play that, it seemed. It was never just the one thing that you were animating; there was always the buildup to it and then the aftermath.

RW

What"s great about that, I imagine, is that gives you some consistency with character. When you can hear that kind of consistency in a vocal performance there"s a great advantage to then finding something to anchor your performance. It"s not relying on pattern, or a trick, so much as it"s taking advantage of it and utilizing it to inform you. At the end of the scene you"re talking about he explodes by crushing the doll, and then he relaxes and lets go and looks down with a little pout, almost like “Oooh, pity�? or a pouting little deflation.

GK

That"s right

RW

Then what happens immediately after that, which is really terrific, is that no sooner has he slumped into this pouty little disappointed pose, but he suddenly cranes his neck in full, with real fury and barks at Flaversham.

GK

Vincent Price just loved to play those moments, too. He was really musical in his timing. I remember at that time I was also struck by something Eric Larson had taught me, that you animate…Eric, and Ollie, I know they both animated by metronome. They would mark off metronome timing on their exposure sheet. That came from the time of doing Silly Symphonies and the parts where music was so important – everything was to a rhythm, and so actions were always done on a beat. A character walked on a beat, if they anticipated they held them for just long enough for the beat to be completed and then they would move a little quicker to catch up with a rhythm, a beat. And so I started doing that, I started putting little “x�? marks on my exposure sheet to a metronome beat. Rather than following footage, I followed rhythm beat. That was happening all the way through Ratigan, he was always moving to this rhythm, which was pretty natural for Vincent Price in his performance, too. So there"s this kind of, I don"t know, it"s a buttery flow to him that works nicely.

RW

It is very buttery. What a great description…buttery

GK

And smooth and fattening! (laughing) Bill Berg"s clean up on Ratigan was absolutely stunning to me. Because I mean I would give him some really very rough drawings.

RW

(teasing) Yes, well, God bless you, Glen, but I think anybody who can clean up your work…I mean there"s a special place in heaven for them.

GK

(laughing) Oh, and Matt O"Callaghan! [editor"s note: O"Callaghan recently directed the traditionally animated “Curious George�? for Universal Pictures.] He was kind of my right hand man at doing so much of the Ratigan animation that I couldn"t do, and overseeing much of the crew who was working for me. I did a lot of the Ratigan work while I was working at home. I would come in and work with Ron and John, showing them my thumbnails, and Burny, and Matt was my presence at the studio. I had actually quit Disney at that time to work at home, to spend time with my family. I was just really thankful that Ron and John continued to work with me freelance. All of my work on Great Mouse Detective was done freelance.

RW

Really?! Wow.

GK

Yeah. Eric Larson was really not happy at all about that fact, that I was going to work at home. But I asked Ron and John if they"d consider working with me on a freelance basis, and they said “yeah, sure! Any way we can get you.�? So, I mean I would never get those years back, it was maybe only eighteen months of that, but I got to spend time when the kids were little, growing up, at home. Animation on Ratigan was done between ten o"clock at night and three o"clock in the morning when all was quiet. I think I ended up producing more work in that situation than if I had been at the studio.