Was it a Beauty or a Beast?

I have a theory about movie trailers. The number of trailers released in advance of a movie is directly proportionate to the poor quality of a film. If the movie is a dog, we get buried in advance release hoopla. A good film will succeed critically at the box office without a constant barrage of hype.

For the last several months there are two reasons I have tried not to view trailers for the new Beauty and the Beast. First, I wanted to be surprised by the film. I didn’t’ want to have any preconceived thoughts and I wanted to keep an open mind, even as my dread increased in direct proportion to the amount of hype. Movie trailers often leave me feeling as if I’ve already seen the movie or at least what the marketers think are the best parts. Second, the alarming number of trailers left me with the nagging feeling that Disney thought the movie was not beautiful and wonderful, but beastly and horrible.

Please be advised. I’m not a professional movie critic. If you’re expecting a review of the film, there are literally hundreds of newspapers, magazines and websites who make have people who make a living writing reviews you can read. Or, better yet, go see the movie and form your own opinion. But, since I’ve already started writing about the movie, I will happily give you some of my thoughts on what I think was good and bad.

Psst! Avast there! It be not too late to alter course, mateys—there be spoilers ahead.

Even though I knew the plot, I was still drawn into the story in its new form. In an earlier post, Drunk on Do-Overs?, I discussed the remake frenzy going on at the Disney Studios and my hope that the new filmmakers would, at least, add something new to the stories. I’m not talking about making it more “real” by removing some of the fantasy inherent in an animated film. I hope that they will, as Walt would say, “Plus it”, make it better. And, indeed, I feel the director, Mr. Condon definitely plussed things up in this movie.

First and foremost, was the deeper and more interesting relationship between Belle and Maurice. The tenderness, emotion, and natural chemistry between them at the beginning of the film makes Belle’s choice to take his place as prisoner that much more heartbreaking. And that she tricks him to do it makes our heart break for Maurice as he is dragged out. Condon came back to this key relationship several times later when we learn what happened to Belle’s mother and again in their short stay in the Asylum wagon.

In addition to Maurice and Belle’s backstory, we are given more detail about how the Young Prince’s upbringing laid the foundation for his later, fateful decision. This helps us see the Beast as more “human” rather than just a spoiled kid. He wasn’t a bad person, just flawed — like the rest of us. That context, together with the servant’s admission that they were complicit in the Prince’s inability to care or love for others, allows us to understand why the Beast has struggled in vain to lift the curse. (And why the innocent servants are suffering along with him)

Condon then lets us see the gradual development in the Belle/Beast relationship. The library is not just a gift, but the means by which they begin to bond. The intimate conversations we are privy to between Belle and the Beast let us see the development of their relationship that goes beyond feeding a few birds and throwing snowballs. We begin to see Belle warm to charms that the Beast has not exercised in many years, while the Beast begins to feel something other than self pity and hatred of the world.

I welcome the additional songs into the B&B canon. The work of Alan Mencken and Tim Rice shines in Evermore and How Does A Moment Last Forever. And putting some of the original lyrics back into “Gaston”, puts more punch in the song and makes the character seem even worse (shooting beasts in the back, etc.). Here again we’re given more rounded and developed characters than we were presented with in the animated film.

In the negative column. They left out three of my favorite lines: Cogsworth has two. “This is yet another example of the late neoclassic Baroque period. And, as I always say, if it’s not Baroque, don’t fix it!” and “Well, there’s the usual things. Flowers, chocolates, promises you don’t intend to keep.”

And from the song Gaston:

Gaston: LeFou, I’m afraid I’ve been thinking

Lefou: A dangerous pastime

Gaston: I know.

It’s all in the timing and it works better when sung rather than read.

I liked the dance break in the “Gaston” pub scene as well as the addition of Cadenza and his relationship with Madame Garderobe. And overall, the movie was beautiful to watch. There were lots of other small things that made the movie enjoyable. But now it’s time to turn to some things that detracted from the film.

The poorly used Pere Robert, as the spiritual leader of the small town, is made to appear more enlightened than others in the town because he shares books with Belle. But he then shows no inclination to do anything to help Maurice or Belle when the town turns against them. I expected he was going to be the one to let them out of the asylum coach. But, he just seemed to melt away. That’s no way for someone who would should have been a model of forgiveness and compassion.

I applaud the Disney leadership for not squashing Condon and Josh Gad’s decision to portray LeFou as gay. But, while I’ve enjoyed Gad’s performances in other things, I found his portrayal of LeFou to be uninteresting. His acting choices left me with a gay man displaying stereotypical behaviors that the worst in our society believe to be true. In the original, LeFou was employed as comic relief and a foil for Gaston. Gad’s LeFou always seemed to be a little out of place in his scenes with Gaston, who’s darker and more cowardly than the animated version. I felt that all that was left of LeFou was a whiney sycophant with little to remind us of his role or purpose in the story.

Taking away some of Cogsworth’s facial expressions caused him to lose some of his zing and appeal. And finally, I still don’t understand the snowball. Was I supposed to be surprised and amused? I think I was mostly horrified.

With any remake of a well-regarded film, there will be those who simply are unable to view the new version as a different movie. That would be easy, if the picture was bad by any measure. But, overall, I think the movie is an excellent film that can stand on its own without constant comparison to its animated predecessor. While there are facets of character that, in my eyes, keep it from being a great film, they are not devastating. I believe that this Beauty and the Beast will be a movie I will add to other Disney films that can watch many times in the future.

 

Ahead of His Time. . . Again

Software developers may owe a debt of gratitude to Walt Disney. For those of you not tuned to what it takes to deliver the latest version of your favorite smartphone app, the buzzword is Agile. Instead of having to wait until the entire application is done, forcing us to wait months or years for a finished application, the Agile approach breaks the project down into smaller releases of features and capabilities that can be delivered quickly. If you compare the Agile manifesto to much of Walt’s quotes about entertainment and quality you can see the similarities.

Walt embraced the same goals that are at the foundation of an Agile mindset — “Deliver the maximum customer value in the shortest period of time, while providing the highest possible quality to our customers and society”. You can argue the fine points of what drove Walt’s creative energy, but if he didn’t like what he saw, he would scrap everything and start over if necessary, to make the film better.

Because of the time it took to hand draw the thousands of images required for even a ten minute short and later hundreds of thousands of individual images for a full length feature (Snow White contained about 250,000 individual drawings), Walt often did not get a chance to see even a part of the final product until right before the cartoon was to be shipped. In the early, short feature period, he had already committed to delivering as many as 2 a week. Since he couldn’t and didn’t want to change the drawing part of the process which delivered the quality he was after, he looked for ways to speed up everything around the animators and still give him the control he needed over the final product. This is the same approach Agile developers take. Get the best quality product to the users as quickly as possible.

In the Agile world, there is a lot of emphasis on communication, giving everyone on the team a view into what the goals of the project are and how the leadership team wants to achieve those goals. This is done through a regularly scheduled event called a Program Increment meeting or Big Room Planning. Walt pioneered the use of this this critical step called storyboarding, during the creation of The Threee Little Pigs. It became even  more critical for the Snow White project. Since no one had ever tried doing an animated film that long, he needed a way to get all the individual scenes defined so the entire picture would work as a whole. And he needed his director and animators to be in synch with his vision. There’s a reason Film makers like Hitchcock, Lucas and Spielberg and the Coen Brothers continue to use the process. First, it allows them him to convey their vision for the film to everyone at once and get immediate feedback.

Drawings were used by Walt and are still employed to guide everyone through the key plot and character developments. And, using the storyboard drawings Walt and the director could then break down the animation assignments into manageable sections. In film, those sections might be scenes or key moments. In Agile those sections are called User Stories which describes Who Wants What and Why. In both cases they describe the what the section of work will represent or deliver as a part of the larger film or application.

Which leads me to my next Disney Agile approach. Walt’s ideas and approach to a film would often change from day to day or week to week based on external influences like things he heard or saw, and internal influences which might come from story staff, animator or directorial suggestions, or his own gut instincts. He would often scrap days or weeks of work to start over and incorporate the new ideas. This process was both time consuming and expensive.  But Walt came up with an Agile answer to limiting wasted work that is critical to Agile development success and that is to fail early and quickly. Agile development work is organized into 2 week “sprints” at the end of which, all interested parties get to see a demonstration of what was planned and promised.

Walt’s approach this regular demonstration of progress was to use what would eventually be called the Sweatbox. Animators would quickly put together a section of the work they were asked to complete in very rough pencil format. These pages were then photographed and could be viewed on a moviola. Walt and others would huddle around the tiny screen in a windowless, dark room (the heat from the moviola, the many bodies and the closed room gave the room its name) and watch the what was completed. If Walt hated it, then the animator and any support staff had only spent a short time on the work. In many cases Walt would make minor suggestions or tell everyone to carry on. This process insured the quality Walt demanded and reduced the strain on staff when he asked them to change course. This process is still used today. Since most movies are shot digitally, the director can immediately look at the various takes, instead of having to wait for film to be developed and viewed in daily rushes.

Another approach Walt initiated that matches Agile development was filming people for the animators to use as models for animating scenes or aspects of scenes. Agile calls this rapid prototyping. Both examples are fast inexpensive ways to work out the logistics of the action or application functionality.  This was especially useful in Walt’s animation approach, since much of the subject matter had never been animated in a realistic fashion before. How does the body move when someone dances or how does a deer bend to eat the grass? It’s one of the reasons that many of the characters look and act like their real life counterparts. The animators had the live action film of the people reading the dialog doing the actions in the scene to use as models for the animated versions of the characters.

Walt was a tireless innovator throughout his career in, animation, film, transportation, merchandising, TV and theme parks. While he was too early for what has now become the Application Economy (meaning every business is in the software business), I’ve tried to make the case that the revolutionary approaches he used in his to improve the speed and quality of animated films as early as 1933 can be seen in Agile software applications development in the 21^st century.

I’ve posted a more technical version of this on LinkedIn.

Drunk on Do-Overs?

The Disney film division is drunk. Drunk on remaking many of the classic animated films as live action movies. Aside from the recent Jungle Book and the upcoming Beauty and the Beast, there have been announcements and some rumors that Pinocchio, Dumbo and the Lion King are in various stages of development. Then Tinkerbell (rumor of Reese Witherspoon) and Cruella (rumor of Emma Stone) are going to have live action renditions of their own.

With the critical and box office successes of Alice and Wonderland and The Jungle Book, it’s not hard to understand why Robert Iger and the rest of Disney’s management is jumping into this trend with both feet. Not only have the movies been viewed positively by the critics and made very handsome profits, but they are introducing stories and characters to a whole new generation of movie goers. And if there’s anything Walt Disney knew and the current management knows, characters and their franchises can drive long term profits and fan loyalty.

It’s no secret that Walt had a particular view of the world. In some ways his movies reflect the world and the time in which he lived and the idealized world of Marceline, Missouri he had grown up in. Even at the time of his greatest successes, many described his entertainment as “corny”. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say that Walt created what we now call Family Entertainment. His story telling insures his work remains timeless and just as entertaining now as it was many years ago. In much the same way we can still watch and enjoy Gone with the Wind and Singin’ in the Rain, even though they were made long ago by entertainment standards.

But, I don’t think we can ignore the this generation’s expectations for any form of entertainment. We’re not satisfied with a roller coaster that goes up and down, it has to go upside down. Fireworks can’t just be loud and bright, they have to make pictures and be synchronized with music. Cars can’t just get us from here to there, they have to do it while we surf the web and stream only the music we want to hear.

So does that mean that in order to attract a 21^st century audience, the Disney company has to remake all of the classic animated films? Let’s keep in mind, that Walt was remaking what were, and still are, considered classic fairy tales and fables. I would say, if you sit most kids and many adults in front of the movies we put in the animated Disney classic category, they will be drawn in an enjoy it as if it were made today. So why do it over again? I think if a director has something new he would like to say with the material, then, by all means, have at it. But just modifying the script by putting in some modern references, using technology or making it “grittier”, seems like a waste of good film.

In the case of the live-action remake of Cinderella, I think that the director gave us some new insights into the characters which make the film work. The Mowgli in the new, live-action jungle book, demonstrates more emotional dimension than Walt’s original. And director Favreau raises the stakes for everyone by having Shere Khan kill Akila. The tiger seems more dangerous and determined than the suave 1967 animated character. I will  reserve judgement on Beauty and the Beast and others until I have seen them.

It’s no surprise that we want our movies and theme parks to sizzle with excitement now possible through the use of technology. Now before you start thinking that I want to go back to the early days of Coney Island and silent movies, I’ve been involved with technology and computers for over thirty years. And I do think they have a place in our entertainment. I think attractions like Star Tours, Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster, Mickey’s Philharmagic and others (not to mention those in other theme parks) are great examples of how different kinds of technological advancements help to meet our 21^st century definition of what’s fun, exciting or thrilling. And Pixar has used technology as a way to tell great stories, populated by memorable characters.

Walt himself was always looking for the next great thing to make an idea even better. He called it, plussing. Whether it was adding sound or color to movies, the mulitplane camera, audio animatronics, the monorail, new attraction ride systems, combining live action and animation in films, Walt was often first and more often than not, he was right about what the public would like. We get so caught up in the entertainment empire that Walt built that we lose sight of his constant drive for innovation. If it plussed the story or the attraction, and made it better, then he wanted to use it.

There will always be risks in taking on films and attractions with which the public has formed an attachment. In any case, there’s no chance that the changes will please everyone. Some are wild about Walt Disney World’s New Fantasyland while others still mourn the loss of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. It would hard to imagine that the Disney company will be right every time. There will probably be creative team who will lose sight of story and character and hope that CG will save the movie. No one sets out to make a bad movie or theme park attraction. But it does and will happen (See Stitch’s Great Escape for an example of a good idea going wrong) Don’t forget, once a project has been green lighted, Mr. Iger and Disney has to trust in the producers, directors, Imagineers and other artists, tradespeople and craftsmen to deliver the goods as promised.

I would hope, the Disney risk taking is not limited to just remaking titles from the existing catalog. I’d love to see new ideas and new creative excitement surprise us, so the Disney company can build new audiences through the development of new characters and unforgettable stories. Even if they are not all spectacular hits (see Tomorrowland).  Remember:

For now, I think Disney has earned my trust. I’ll try to keep an open mind as new films and attractions are delivered. Hopefully, the upcoming new additions to the theme parks and new film projects will continue to show that Disney is not quitting.

What do you think?

What’s With You and The Disney Thing?

I was asked the other day what I like so much about all things Disney. That’s an easy question, I thought. I’ve got a hundred reasons why I go to the theme parks, watch and re-watch Disney movies, collect Disneyana, (see my post Hooked on Collecting) pour over Disney message boards, Disney Facebook pages, dissect every announcement of changes and additions to the theme parks and read biographies of Walt Disney. You’re going to have to tell me when to stop. Just tell me when to stop. Only problem was, while I was thinking all those things, I wasn’t saying anything. At that moment, I realized that while I had thought about all those different aspects of the world of Disney, I had never really articulated why it is that Disney means so much to me – at least not out loud.

Source: Gifbay.com

Fortunately for me, the person who had asked was understanding and willing to wait while I put some coherent words together. Not everyone I talk to understands my love of the world of Disney. I get a lot of “It’s so commercial” or “It’s for kids” or “They just want your money”.

I tried to trace back my when my interest had begun. The first movie I ever saw in a theater was The Sword in the Stone. A good movie, but not a great movie. I remember waiting for and watching Disney’s Wonderful World of Color every Sunday on television. There was that great opening with Sleeping Beauty Castle, Tinkerbell and firework sand classic cartoon and nature shorts, sometimes a movie and Walt would introduce the pieces. But not all of it kept my interest.

I saw many of the live action movies while I was growing up, like “Herbie the Love Bug”, “The Ugly Daschund” and “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes”. but most of them were, well mediocre. Even the movies with better stories like “The Shaggy Dog” and the “Absent Minded Professor” I saw at the drive-in. Small, tinny sounding speaker and watching through the windshield did not make for a great movie experience. And the Shaggy Dog just scared and wierded me out. I didn’t go to Walt Disney World for the first time until I was in my late twenties. And that trip is kind of a blur. So how and when did this minor obsession start?

Now, picture for a second, that all this happened in my head, in a matter of seconds, while I probably had this mouth open faraway look in my eyes. I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, A Mother’s Gift, how my mother had been a collector of Disneyana and took me to my first Disney movie. But, as interesting as the items in the collection are and fond as I am of the memories of her telling me about them, and as much as I did enjoy Disney animated movies, and I vaguely remember enjoying my early visit to Walt Disney World, those were curiosities and did not lead me directly to the place where I am today – writing a blog each week about Walt Disney and the world of Disney magic.

Then it hit me. There was a kind of common denominator to all of this. It wasn’t pin collecting, new movies, the addition of Star Wars to the Disney portfolio or escaping into the Fantasy world of a Disney theme park. It’s Walt.

Walt Disney has become a role model for me. Here was a man who came from no means to build one of the greatest entertainment empires the world has ever seen. He persevered through setback after setback, going broke more than once. He could have been envious when it became apparent that others could execute the drawings for his ideas better than he could. He could have quit when Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was taken away from him. (BTW, thank you Disney company for bringing Oswald home) He could have taken the easy path and continued to make short cartoons when everyone told him that people wouldn’t pay and sit for a feature length animated film. He could have folded his tent when many of his animators went on strike. He could have sold out to another company when World War II forced him to make films for the military at almost no profit. And he certainly could have coasted on easy street when the company finally reached financial stability after ignoring the naysayers who said that the theme park he imagined would fail. Instead, he persevered. Instead, he stuck to his dreams and found ways to achieve his goals.

I am in awe of the boundless creativity that Walt exhibited throughout his life. As I discussed in my post How Much do You Want It?, there aren’t many people who have been successful at so many different entertainment genres. Walt had no background, training or experience in television, live action movie producing or theme parks. He even learned animation while he was creating his early shorts. But, he never let that stop him from doing what he instinctively knew what people wanted or needed for entertainment. His boundless optimism that, somehow, despite not having money or many supporters or any real plan for how some of his work would get accomplished, if he just focused on making people happy, everything would work out. He took big, potentially company destroying chances and didn’t look back. His unbridled enthusiasm and can-do attitude made him a natural leader. As a result, people he needed help from to succeed, believed in him and followed him. Bankers, animators, architects, engineers, directors, artists, even his brother Roy all fell under the spell of a man who could weave a great story and who’s enthusiasm for any project was spell binding and infectious.

If you were to describe someone who was not afraid of the unknown, took risks, lead men and women on great campaigns, followed his own heart, stuck to his principles, exhibited a knack for problem solving and built great things, you might be thinking of decorated military man or an explorer, moving from one adventure to the next. Not someone who made movies and created theme parks. But Walt Disney was an exceptional man who followed his passions even in the face of tremendous skepticism and what, to others, were insurmountable obstacles, financially, technically and artistically.

Those exceptional qualities inspire me and, I think, others, even though he has been gone for fifty years, to admire and aspire to be like him. While others have been successful at their chosen professions or endeavors, I’m hard pressed to think of too many who have done it with such style and enthusiasm and seemed to have so much fun at the same time. I’d love to hear where your love, passion or interest in the world of Disney came from.