What's Wrong With Disney?

Sylvain Chomet is the director of Triplets Of Belleville (check out this revue:)
http://www.dirtymonkey.nu/archives/004360.html

In the wake of Disney's patent inability to deliver a decent product over the last ten or fifteen years and their subsequent conclusion that 2D Is Dead Long Live 3D, "Triplets" has hit the screens to rave reviews. Chomain, its director, was once a Disney employee in his native Toronto, (a studio which has since been closed by Disney). His views of that time, of Disney, of incompetent artistic management and of the atmosphere in a Disney studio will stir a sense of recognition in animators all over the world.
How many times must the idiots be told? It's not about 2D or 3D. It's about the script.(this is a NY Times article. cut and pasted here because I can't be confident that it is accessible by non-subscribers, Sorry NY Times.)

T.-CYR-LA-ROSIÈRE, France — When I'm making a film I like to imagine that the movie screen is transparent and behind it the audience can see the teams of artists scribbling away. Deep down, I believe that the energy of a team of enthusiastic animators filters through the screen, filling up the theater and allowing everyone to share the magic of the moment.

It can work the other way, too. There are movies where I have imagined that the animators on the other side of the screen are as bored as can be — yawning, punching the clock like civil servants, looking at their watches. In these instances, I have wanted to dash from the theater.

I bring this up to try to answer a question I am asked with some frequency: why is there so much bad animation? After all, animated movies today are enjoying newfound respect — the Academy Awards' decision to add a category for best animated feature in 2001 is one sign of that. But in some ways, animation has been a victim of that success.

For many years the only successful animated movies were Disney productions aimed squarely at children — dependable moneymakers, perhaps, but nothing to make other studios salivate. Then in 1988, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" proved that adults would flock to see a movie with animation, giving a new generation of producers and movie studio executives a taste for the genre — and the money it could bring in. As a result there are two kinds of animated films today: those made by corporations and those made by humans who love the art of animation. The difference between the two is vast.

The Pixar movie "Finding Nemo" — which like my own movie, "The Triplets of Belleville," is up for the best animated feature Oscar tomorrow — was the top-grossing movie in the world for 2003. Its success will no doubt bring a tidal wave of 3-D animated copycats, but only a few will have its high quality.

Here's why. The early Disney films, "Roger Rabbit," and "Nemo" were inspired by creative people (Walt Disney, Richard Williams and John Lasseter, respectively) who had a strong vision and instilled it in their animators. Each, in his own way, was a pioneer of animation. But it's rare to find a movie project where such a vision can flourish.

An inexperienced producer might think that making an animated film is easy. Take a cute story, tell it with funny drawings, sprinkle it with gags, market it to an unsophisticated audience. A potential investor might equally assume that doing an animated film involves coloring and drawing all day and is by nature fun.

Well, in almost 20 years of doing animation, I have only rarely come across a studio of fulfilled artists. Most of the artists who worked with me on "The Triplets of Belleville" tell me of their boredom or disappointment with the projects they are working on now. (One of the most talented artists has given up animation to do tattooing.)

I know from experience that dispirited animators tend to make lifeless films. In the late 90's, I worked at Disney's animation studio in Toronto, developing characters for a "Hercules" sequel. It was the most frustrating and informative period of my career. Everyone had his own office with large windows and views over Lake Ontario. Coming to work in the morning, I felt as if I was walking into a bank. No one saw each other, no fun was had and there was no sense of teamwork.

I was lucky enough to see the original "Hercules" development drawings of Gerald Scarfe, a talented British illustrator. They were inspired. But over time, studio input robbed Mr. Scarfe's characters of their life. What the studio did to them was criminal — like adding water to wine.

Once, my team in Canada was sent to Los Angeles to meet the people in charge of our project there. By this time we were on the sixth rewrite of the script, and we had a daylong brainstorming session in which we were locked in a big room with executives and so-called creatives. One executive suggested a rewrite incorporating an idea she had in the car that morning. Heads nodded, notes were scribbled and script No. 7 was born. It was like watching a runaway steam train being driven by a flock of headless chickens.

In a sign of how eager corporations are to have animated characters that can be franchised and spun off, work on the "Hercules" sequel had started before the first "Hercules" movie had been released. As it turns out the film flopped and the plug was pulled on the sequel, but already money equivalent to the whole budget for "Triplets" had been spent.

My lasting memory of the office in Toronto was the great view — and the worn patches on the carpet where I paced around in my cage, obsessing about how I could get out. Disney Studios had become a dinosaur, its energy sapped by the need to eat its weight in food every day. The Disney animation studios haven't made a groundbreaking movie since the late 1980's. No wonder Pixar has left Disney behind in the world of animation.

Animation deserves to be considered serious filmmaking. But to nourish itself and its audience, an art form has to keep evolving toward something greater — not just a multimillion-dollar budget and a tie-in deal with a burger chain.

Sylvain Chomet is the director of "The Triplets of Belleville."