You mean a raptor? Owls are technically birds of prey.
And it depends on who his patron god is - in the OG myth (and most spinoffs) it's Athena, and her spirit animal is the owl.
A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
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And it depends on who his patron god is - in the OG myth (and most spinoffs) it's Athena, and her spirit animal is the owl.
Yes, and I meant another kind of bird of prey.
Well yeah, but there's nothing stopping the would-be animators from choosing something else.
But anyway for this would-be Medusa film, should we include Stheno and Euryale as other cursed women?
As for the obvious origin of Medusa, I think Poseidon would instead of raping her, he would curse her into Medusa for rejecting his advances.
Yeah, so maybe get Zeus or Apollo (eagle and hawk, respectively) joining Athena for the "power-up" scene - we're trying to avoid Yankocentric anachronisms this time.
Might be a bit too cluttered for one movie. If it were me, I'd focus on Perse and Medi and leave her sisters for a sequel or TV spinoff.
Sounds good to me - great contrast with the Beast's Enchantress, too.
Not if it is a gift from Athena.
Maybe someone could transform the original version of the False Face Society into something similar to OTLs Court of Owls.
This would really only work if her first appearance isn't in an animated series.
Don't forget those films that failed because of a changing of the bosses who go out of their way to sabotage the projects of the old guard.
So we going to remain true to the source material for Hercules but it's okay to go off the rails for Medusa.
What are Yankocentric anachronisms?
Also would this take away from any possible message of female empowerment?
Can't wait. Food for thought - Perseus was sent on his quest by his wicked king of a stepfather, and Disney loves that kind of stuff.
Like you said, going off the rails. "It's all the same thing, really" should be less likely with a Henson!Disney.
It's the Greek pantheon, maybe make it a sibling rivalry thing: Apollo and Athena just keep bickering and trying to outdo each other until Perce gives up and says "okay, okay, how about I just take your mechanical hawk and your shield and go adventuring now?"
Wouldn't Artemis be the sibling that Apollo would bicker with while Athena opposed Ares?
Ares' bird is the vulture, though. Maybe Ares could offer the sword?
Good idea on the False Face Society! It just makes sense that a local secret society was responsible for keeping Gotham's crime high while the crime rate in America in general goes down.
Yeah, the animation age ghetto hit Harley hard. I'd take her a lot more seriously if every portrayal wasn't set on emulating a cartoon character to a fault.
Yeah. Nothing like pointlessly ruining movies you didn't greenlight to get it over on your predecessors at the cost of your new studio.
To be fair my portrayal of Zeus has him going off the rails by making an honest effort to stay faithful, unlike his mythological counterpart. And Ovid's "Medusa was wronged" take on the character has a lot more to work with than the traditional "She was born a monster, lived a monster, and died a monster" take on the character.
1. That would be a tremendously rich role for any actress; a lot of female villains don’t get as much variety after all.
2. Yeah, that does sound like a grand idea. Explore the actual myth with a modern twist on who to sympathise with.
3. Fair enough. I’m certain Curry was great as Doom ITTL.
4. When Batman 2 happens ITTL we’ll know for sure what Geekhis does.
5. Give any story long enough to exist and SOMEONE will do something like that in their run to explain what might bother people about the setting. Or just someth- NOPE! Not going to go on a rant about Spider-Man and f**king magic totem bull, it’s not the place for it... Anyway, I expect a Court of Owls analogue to appear ITTL, regardless of whether Geekhis touches on it.
6. It really would; Robin CAN do comedy well, with or without his usual antics, but for whatever reason IOTL he got stuck in a rut of mediocrity and formulaic trash. Felt like it took his tragic death (which even if averted won’t help his pain - post-mortem he was diagnosed with Lewy Bodies dementia...) to re-evaluate and appreciate his work and remember how great he was.
7. Even putting aside her costume changes, a LOT of people don’t get how smart Harley is or how nuanced even BTAS alone made her.
8. Speaking of BTAS, it really used Harvey Dent well - actually WAITING before making him Two-Face, which made it more impactful. As for the implied mental illness, “The Dark Knight” also alluded to that with Aaron Eckhart’s portrayal hinting at a Mask of Sanity over a damaged man (the novelisation actually has Bruce discover that Harvey was abused by his corrupt cop father as a child, who used the very same coin Harvey does to mess with his mind and then beat him when it inevitably landed... yeah, watch that film again and Harvey’s reference to his dad owning that coin, plus his own use becomes JARRING with this in mind).
9. Agreed; in-universe it makes SOME sense, but out here the more you hear it (so TDK and TDKR more than BMB)...
10. Some films will succeed anyway thanks to word of mouth, or such, and some things should NOT be spoiled in ads (looking at you T2!) but studios pretty much trying to bury their own products is revolting and speak to a complete lack of understanding how and why people are drawn to... well, to ANYTHING, really. Both Dreamworks Animation and WB Animation IOTL (both of whom may not come to exist ITTL) killed their own 2D ventures in different ways - DW hit bigger with CGI like “Shrek”, as well as the production of all its 2D animated movies except TPoE being tumultuous and other issues (Sinbad turning an Arsbic hero Greek, anyone? Hellooo? Bueller!?); WB was just a mess, trying to be Disney but completely failing to understand how their formula succeeded (and in fairness, even Disney has missed with some elements of its films - THoND and TP both made at least one member of their comic relief characters obnoxious as heck). Anyway... hmm, don’t know where I was going with that actually.
I'm not saying don't reinterpret Medusa it just seems hypocritical to say reinterpreting Hercules was bad while it's perfectly okay with Medusa.
To be fair were his mediocre comedies really his fault or that of writers and producers?
I think that The Long Halloween best showed the dichotomy of a pre Two-Face Harvey Dent. I also love Year One Harvey Dent.
It's just that the OTL Hercules movie relied on the tired old trope of basically making Hades Satan because Death God = Bad.
Touche. So not having them stain his career would be a godsend to Williams. The world has too few years with him to waste them on mediocre comedy films.
I'm going to simply metaphorically smile and nod since while I enjoy talking about superheroes I have never gotten into superhero comics. The only comic I followed religiously when I was a kid was the Archie Sonic comics.
That's what I usually do in this scenario as well, only that my religious following was the works of CrossGen Comics.
I PM'ed Geekis earlier about my appreciation for this thread. But after finally blasting through the last of the entries--sadly, skipping the commentary due to time constraints--I am finally free to say how much I've enjoyed this TL. I think my favorite bit was Ivan Boesky forcing Frank Oz to play along as Miss Piggy during that call to determine who he would sell his shares to. The "the Frog never has to know" and Frank visiting Ivan in prison had me smiling.
And Halyx was saved!
And Halyx was saved!
And the tired trope of calling him by his freaking ROMAN name while every single other person gets their accurate Grecian name... especially because his name, HERA-cles was an attempt at appeasement that fell on woman scorned’s deaf ears (and would have made even more sense in OTL!Hercules where Zeus IS a faithful husband). Bloody philistines, the lot of them...
Ironically, “Fantasia” had a segment that accurately depicted Zeus’s caprice and volatility, which shows us how much Turn of the Century Disney was not so much SETTING what is mainstream bur falling into it; Hades is just another casualty of this. I still give Disney some credit though for letting James Woods give Hades personality and depth even within the confines of “evil dickwad”, which is more than most other adaptation I’m aware of in the last 20-odd years (the ones that made him evil, so I’m not counting for example “God of War 3” or “Hercules/Xena”, where he’s no worse than the average Greek god).
Sadly for OTL!Robin Williams, I’d say his star essentially peaked with “Good Will Hunting” finally netting him a well-earned, long-deserved Oscar; while he got a few more meaty roles over the next two decades, especially his villainous turn in L&O:SVU and some films, he kind of went into B- or even C-List in many circles, not helped by his rapid-fire stand-up comedy style being copied to hell and back, making the Seinfeld Is Unfunny effect hit him HARD (even though most could not be half as natural as he was at it). One thing that a lot of people didn’t appreciate until his passing though was how tremendously generous and compassionate he was: during “Aladdin”, when he was done for the day he’d go next door to the “Schindler’s List” set and make the crew laugh; when filming “Mrs Doubtfire”, he learned the actress playing Lydia Hillard (14 years old) had been suspended/expelled by her school because they didn’t want to deal with her filming schedule and wrote a letter on her behalf (they didn’t lift the suspension despite framing the damned thing, but she was touched because he’d shown he had her back); his other onscreen daughter, Mara Wilson said that she was too young to appreciate her mother’s words about what a kind man Robin was until, a few years later after her mother’s passing, she met him again and saw his sincere empathy for her (thankfully she also recounted a few more encounters with him, the last several years before he passed when she ran into him as a college student and they caught up)... People as GIVING as that are rare, more still for the fact they struggle with their own happiness, and I pray this timeline gives him more to be happy ABOUT.
[NB: Williams should get to do VA work, whether with Disney or elsewhere. Apparently he was a big fan of Japanese media, like Jim H.: if NGE exists in some form here I hope he gets to portray Gendo Ikari (he tried in the “Rebuild” films but lost out to John Swasey); also if Disney get the Pokemon anime (which hopefully will avoid the strobe lights controversy if it gets addressed sooner ITTL) dub he’d be all for doing Prof. Oak (he was after all Nintendo’s only choice for a prospective live action version)...]
On the comics front, I get you; while I’ve read them on-off I don’t follow comics with any fervour. Both because I don’t want the headache that is the perpetual ongoing titles (and their constant retcons, disregard for lasting consequences, lack of character/narrative progression, reboots, etc. *cough* Spider totems *cough*), but also because I personally get MORE out of animated media and literature both (films and tv are more case-by-case generally). I’m not unlikely to know about old characterisations and plotlines originating from comics, but good luck getting me to tell you WHERE said elements comes from in the vast wilderness of canon without help (though I do retain info I’m interested in, like the aforementioned stuff about where Two-Face got his most nuanced characterisation - the Nolan films also drew from “Year One” and “The Long Halloween” after all).
More than I got, either of you have. Cheers.
Brillstein XI: Making a Difference
Chapter 12, Making a Difference
Excerpt from Where Did I Go Right? (or: You’re No One in Hollywood Unless Someone Wants You Dead), by Bernie Brillstein (with Cheryl Henson)
When Grave of the Fireflies was nominated for [the Academy Award for] Best Foreign Language film the Disney board came to realize what Jim had realized half a decade earlier, and what Walt had realized almost half a century earlier: that there was a market for high-brow animation. They spun up the Walter Elias Disney Signature Series shortly thereafter, and we borrowed Bob Zemeckis’s DeLorean and made Fantasia the first film produced under the label. Grave of the Fireflies became title #2 and the upcoming Musicana #3. So, the combined boards of the Disney and MGM studios were brought in to meet the Executive Committee in order to brainstorm on what would be title #4, the first film consciously produced under the WED Signature line.
They should have just asked me to begin with. The answer was obvious.
“Maus,” I said.
“What, like Mickey?” asked Ron Miller.
“No, M-A-U-S, not M-O-U-S-E,” I said. “It’s about the Holocaust.”
The dead silence let me know I’d struck home. We dispatched a Gofer to grab a few copies of the Art Spiegelman comic and the combined board flipped solemnly through the stylistic representation of the horror of one of history’s greatest crimes against humanity. Jim nodded. Ron nodded. Frank nodded. We were greenlit for what I immediately knew was the most important production of my life.
I’d barely started pre-production when Steve Spielberg got wind of it. He immediately offered to foot half the cost and assist in production any way he could. Mel Brooks and Jack Tramiel of Commodore found out too, and similarly offered their support, fiscally and/or physically. Steve didn’t ask for any credit, but I insisted that he tie his name to it. We needed the full gravitas of his name. He humbly accepted an Executive Producer credit. As word continued to circulate, Silver Screen Partners III was inundated with various wealthy menschen wanting to give us their money. Even lots of wealthy goyim were on board. This was important. We could not allow it to fail.
Naturally, we almost immediately ran into a roadblock. Art Spiegelman slammed the phone in my ear when I called. He refused to even consider a Disney film of Maus. Honestly, I don’t blame him. I also don’t just give up. Steve and I practically stalked the poor bastard until he agreed to meet with us. We met him (sort of ironically) at Katz’s, along with Mel Brooks. “No fucking costumes,” Art said, meaning the walkarounds. “No rides, no T-shirts, no toys, nothing. And sure as hell no fucking songs!”
Funny stuff
“What kind of asshole do you think I am?” I asked him. “None of those things were ever on the table!”
“I was there,” said Mel. “During the war. I saw it all with my own eyes. You think I’ll let this putz,” he pointed to me, “make a mockery of it? Jack [Tramiel] nearly died at Auschwitz. Both his parents did. And we are dead serious here.”
“Dead serious,” I repeated. “I was going to send my dad on a trip to see his old home town in Russia, but it doesn’t exist anymore!”[1]
“Ok,” said Art, “But I want one very strange favor.”
He asked. We agreed. The next morning Frank Wells, Jim Henson, and a very special guest flew up to New York on the Disney Gulfstream.
You see, the New York Times booklist, specifically one schmuck of an editor, refused to put a “comic book” with anthropomorphic mice and cats on the nonfiction list, and instead listed it as fiction. “I shudder to think how David Duke ... would respond to seeing a carefully researched work based closely on my father's memories of life in Hitler's Europe and in the death camps classified as fiction,” he told the Times.
But the King of All Schmucks replied, “Let's go out to Spiegelman's house and if a giant mouse answers the door, we'll move it to the nonfiction side of the list!” [2]
We called his bluff. Steve Spielberg himself invited the Times Editorial Board to visit Art’s house. Needless to say, when the front door opened our “special guest” greeted them: a Disneyland performer in a Mickey Mouse walkaround.
“Fine, fine, we’ll move it to non-fiction!” the schmuck relented.
Frank and Art signed the deal on the spot. The Times ran an apology article about it all, even mentioning the dinner with Mickey.
And yet, once it was announced that Disney was making a movie based on Maus, the real controversy began. People reacted pretty much the same way that Art had to the idea. A letter-writing campaign called “Don’t ‘Mickey’ Maus” began flooding our inboxes. Political cartoons featuring a Vladek or a Nazi Cat walkaround next to Mickey and Roger Rabbit appeared in the editorial section of various papers. In hindsight the outrage should have been obvious. We needed a full-blown charm offensive just to keep the outcry from poisoning the well.
Steve, Mel, Jack T., and I made the rounds, doing interviews, visits to various foundations, even meeting with the Don’t ‘Mickey’ Maus movement’s leaders. We made it abundantly clear that this was going to be held in only the highest of reverence and indeed sanctity. This was serious. This was the story that everyone had to see. We publicly announced that all profits – actual real studio profits, mind you, not “shell company profits” – would go to support building the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The uproar died down for the most part, but then spun right back up again from a new front: The Polish-American community.
(Image source “polishcultureapcp.com”)
Yea, I didn’t see that one coming. Art had portrayed each ethnic group as different species of animals: the Jewish people were mice, the Germans cats, the Americans dogs, and the Poles were pigs. In fact, even plenty of Jewish scholars pointed out the irony that the animal motifs reflected Nazi concepts of racial identity. Yea, they were kind of right. Steve and I convinced Art to let us loosen up the species thing, with only the Polish collaborators and opportunists portrayed as pigs and the rest of the Poles, particularly the ones who sheltered the Jews, portrayed as noble horses. This partly placated the outrage, but there would still be an air of controversy underlying the production, and there remains one to this day.
We went into production in 1988. Steve brought in Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss to help write. I recruited Tim Burton as art director, with his German Expressionist look perfect, I felt, for both the time period and the horror and paranoia of the setting. Tim by this point had a whole class of new artists inspired by his style at Disney to call upon, a group the other animators and producers called “The Skeleton Crew”. The combination of Art Spielman’s comics-inspired art and Tim and the crew’s stark lines, Dutch angles, and lots of white and black space resulted in a minimalist style that coincidentally lent itself to relatively low-cost animation, meaning that we could devote more funds to promotion.
On June 27th, 1990, we debuted in New York at the Waverly Theater in Greenwich Village, sporting a T rating. Not a dry eye in the house. Shocked silence at the end, followed finally by a standing ovation. The film saw wide release. We received wide acclaim. We raised over $14 million for the Holocaust Museum and, more importantly, raised awareness, which was the real aim of the project.
Never forget!!
The film gets daily screenings at the Holocaust museum. It gets play in educational settings. Video sales remain steady, the profits to this day all going to the museum and related charities.
Maus certainly didn’t turn the biggest profit of my career. It didn’t personally earn me a dime. Sure, a lot of us got more stupid golden dust catchers for our efforts. But who the hell cares?
As Jim always makes clear, making something important is a far bigger deal than fame and fortune.
[1] Bernie relates this dark anecdote in Where Did I Go Right?
[2] Both of these quotes are real.
Excerpt from Where Did I Go Right? (or: You’re No One in Hollywood Unless Someone Wants You Dead), by Bernie Brillstein (with Cheryl Henson)
When Grave of the Fireflies was nominated for [the Academy Award for] Best Foreign Language film the Disney board came to realize what Jim had realized half a decade earlier, and what Walt had realized almost half a century earlier: that there was a market for high-brow animation. They spun up the Walter Elias Disney Signature Series shortly thereafter, and we borrowed Bob Zemeckis’s DeLorean and made Fantasia the first film produced under the label. Grave of the Fireflies became title #2 and the upcoming Musicana #3. So, the combined boards of the Disney and MGM studios were brought in to meet the Executive Committee in order to brainstorm on what would be title #4, the first film consciously produced under the WED Signature line.
They should have just asked me to begin with. The answer was obvious.
“Maus,” I said.
“What, like Mickey?” asked Ron Miller.
“No, M-A-U-S, not M-O-U-S-E,” I said. “It’s about the Holocaust.”
The dead silence let me know I’d struck home. We dispatched a Gofer to grab a few copies of the Art Spiegelman comic and the combined board flipped solemnly through the stylistic representation of the horror of one of history’s greatest crimes against humanity. Jim nodded. Ron nodded. Frank nodded. We were greenlit for what I immediately knew was the most important production of my life.
I’d barely started pre-production when Steve Spielberg got wind of it. He immediately offered to foot half the cost and assist in production any way he could. Mel Brooks and Jack Tramiel of Commodore found out too, and similarly offered their support, fiscally and/or physically. Steve didn’t ask for any credit, but I insisted that he tie his name to it. We needed the full gravitas of his name. He humbly accepted an Executive Producer credit. As word continued to circulate, Silver Screen Partners III was inundated with various wealthy menschen wanting to give us their money. Even lots of wealthy goyim were on board. This was important. We could not allow it to fail.
Naturally, we almost immediately ran into a roadblock. Art Spiegelman slammed the phone in my ear when I called. He refused to even consider a Disney film of Maus. Honestly, I don’t blame him. I also don’t just give up. Steve and I practically stalked the poor bastard until he agreed to meet with us. We met him (sort of ironically) at Katz’s, along with Mel Brooks. “No fucking costumes,” Art said, meaning the walkarounds. “No rides, no T-shirts, no toys, nothing. And sure as hell no fucking songs!”
Funny stuff
“What kind of asshole do you think I am?” I asked him. “None of those things were ever on the table!”
“I was there,” said Mel. “During the war. I saw it all with my own eyes. You think I’ll let this putz,” he pointed to me, “make a mockery of it? Jack [Tramiel] nearly died at Auschwitz. Both his parents did. And we are dead serious here.”
“Dead serious,” I repeated. “I was going to send my dad on a trip to see his old home town in Russia, but it doesn’t exist anymore!”[1]
“Ok,” said Art, “But I want one very strange favor.”
He asked. We agreed. The next morning Frank Wells, Jim Henson, and a very special guest flew up to New York on the Disney Gulfstream.
You see, the New York Times booklist, specifically one schmuck of an editor, refused to put a “comic book” with anthropomorphic mice and cats on the nonfiction list, and instead listed it as fiction. “I shudder to think how David Duke ... would respond to seeing a carefully researched work based closely on my father's memories of life in Hitler's Europe and in the death camps classified as fiction,” he told the Times.
But the King of All Schmucks replied, “Let's go out to Spiegelman's house and if a giant mouse answers the door, we'll move it to the nonfiction side of the list!” [2]
We called his bluff. Steve Spielberg himself invited the Times Editorial Board to visit Art’s house. Needless to say, when the front door opened our “special guest” greeted them: a Disneyland performer in a Mickey Mouse walkaround.
“Fine, fine, we’ll move it to non-fiction!” the schmuck relented.
Frank and Art signed the deal on the spot. The Times ran an apology article about it all, even mentioning the dinner with Mickey.
And yet, once it was announced that Disney was making a movie based on Maus, the real controversy began. People reacted pretty much the same way that Art had to the idea. A letter-writing campaign called “Don’t ‘Mickey’ Maus” began flooding our inboxes. Political cartoons featuring a Vladek or a Nazi Cat walkaround next to Mickey and Roger Rabbit appeared in the editorial section of various papers. In hindsight the outrage should have been obvious. We needed a full-blown charm offensive just to keep the outcry from poisoning the well.
Steve, Mel, Jack T., and I made the rounds, doing interviews, visits to various foundations, even meeting with the Don’t ‘Mickey’ Maus movement’s leaders. We made it abundantly clear that this was going to be held in only the highest of reverence and indeed sanctity. This was serious. This was the story that everyone had to see. We publicly announced that all profits – actual real studio profits, mind you, not “shell company profits” – would go to support building the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The uproar died down for the most part, but then spun right back up again from a new front: The Polish-American community.
(Image source “polishcultureapcp.com”)
Yea, I didn’t see that one coming. Art had portrayed each ethnic group as different species of animals: the Jewish people were mice, the Germans cats, the Americans dogs, and the Poles were pigs. In fact, even plenty of Jewish scholars pointed out the irony that the animal motifs reflected Nazi concepts of racial identity. Yea, they were kind of right. Steve and I convinced Art to let us loosen up the species thing, with only the Polish collaborators and opportunists portrayed as pigs and the rest of the Poles, particularly the ones who sheltered the Jews, portrayed as noble horses. This partly placated the outrage, but there would still be an air of controversy underlying the production, and there remains one to this day.
We went into production in 1988. Steve brought in Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss to help write. I recruited Tim Burton as art director, with his German Expressionist look perfect, I felt, for both the time period and the horror and paranoia of the setting. Tim by this point had a whole class of new artists inspired by his style at Disney to call upon, a group the other animators and producers called “The Skeleton Crew”. The combination of Art Spielman’s comics-inspired art and Tim and the crew’s stark lines, Dutch angles, and lots of white and black space resulted in a minimalist style that coincidentally lent itself to relatively low-cost animation, meaning that we could devote more funds to promotion.
On June 27th, 1990, we debuted in New York at the Waverly Theater in Greenwich Village, sporting a T rating. Not a dry eye in the house. Shocked silence at the end, followed finally by a standing ovation. The film saw wide release. We received wide acclaim. We raised over $14 million for the Holocaust Museum and, more importantly, raised awareness, which was the real aim of the project.
Never forget!!
The film gets daily screenings at the Holocaust museum. It gets play in educational settings. Video sales remain steady, the profits to this day all going to the museum and related charities.
Maus certainly didn’t turn the biggest profit of my career. It didn’t personally earn me a dime. Sure, a lot of us got more stupid golden dust catchers for our efforts. But who the hell cares?
As Jim always makes clear, making something important is a far bigger deal than fame and fortune.
[1] Bernie relates this dark anecdote in Where Did I Go Right?
[2] Both of these quotes are real.
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Henson!Disney being totally, absolutely BASED, as usual. Wonder if they'd be up for a Persepolis movie?
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