Jim on Film: They Can't Do the Sum
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My theory is that there a lot of people who are put in positions of power who are like sled dogs. There are a few genuinely creative leaders, and everybody else is too busy staring at butts to become one of those leaders. That’s how you get a big hit like Friends and the following year you get eight carbon copies. That’s how you get Beauty and the Beast followed by Quest for Camelot. That’s how you get the newspaper columnist who said Christina Ricci, at 105 pounds, was overweight.
I will admit that it’s easy for me to criticize because I’m not there. To be in a top position at a studio where you are spending $30-$300 million with the sign of a pen has got to be extremely stressful. The stakes are high. If you screw up, people will savor every second as they dance on your grave. It’s easy to take a risk when you are deciding whether to get Mountain Fresh or Regular scented Tide, but when the pressure’s on, it must be unbelievably tempting to buckle under stress and just follow the pack, to second-guess yourself and those under you. But I guess that’s why Walt Disney was such a genius.
I just wish people in those positions would at least attempt to put on their thinking caps when it comes to analyzing the business. Despite the stresses, it’s critical to remember that great leaders and visionaries take calculated risks. They have a vision and follow through with it. And when the pressure’s on, they reconnected with that vision to help them make smart creative choices.
I find it extremely gratifying that only a few years after the decimation of Walt Disney Feature Animation, the solutions highlighted by little nobodies like myself (not to mention Rhett Wickham, Jim Hill, a myriad of artists, and all those wonderful folks on the Laughing Place message boards) really did know more than those who headed the division. The moment visionary John Lasseter stepped in, what did he do? He restored the Visual Development department (the demise of which was so excellently detailed in bonus features on the Dream On Silly Dreamer DVD) and got rid of anyone involved in the process who couldn’t draw (and for the record, the need for visual development was initiated on the Net by Rhett Wickham).
He red-lighted all those straight-to-DVD sequels that had been a staple for the studio’s get-rich-quick business plan, thankfully at least before the little gem The AristoCats was desecrated. Again, how many studio artists and people online were arguing against these very movies and the long-term effects they had on the image of Disney and the detrimental effect they had on the event quality of their movies.
Lasseter also shifted around the films so that there would be more variety in the studio’s output, making sure that The Princess and the Frog and Rapunzel were all being green-lighted with different songwriters so as not to conflict with each other or Enchanted.
Most importantly, John Lasseter has acknowledged the pivotal role of story in the success of films, not only giving directors control of their own works but also agreeing that there is room for hand-drawn animation in multiplexes, that story is what makes for great movies, not just the method. Furthermore, as we all predicted, there was such a glut of CGI animation hitting the theaters that, had Disney made Meet the Robinson with hand-drawn techniques, it would have helped to distinguish it from the vast quantity of pixel movies blasting screens at all times of the year, a glut so pronounced that it became the talk among Hollywood insiders.
To me, one key theme of James B. Stewart’s fascinating DisneyWar was that “you too could be a movie studio honcho.�? Okay, so maybe it isn’t as easy as all that. In fact, I bet that there are few places in civilized society that are more meat-eat-meat than Hollywood. But we can always hope that at least sometime, someone will finally be able to do the sum.
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-- Jim Miles
With a love for animation discovered from watching Oliver & Company in 1988, Jim Miles has actively been studying animation and storytelling through animation since the fifth grade. In addition to his column for the Laughing Place, Jim has written two novels, both of which he hopes to revise for publication sometime before he dies. His love for great literature and the theatre has also driven him to write a libretto for a dramatic musical entitled Fire in Berlin as well as to start a musical comedy, City of Dreams. Jim will soon move to Los Angeles to pursue a full-time writing career.
The opinions expressed by Jim, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future of Disneyland and the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted June 21, 2007