A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)

[Geekhis Khan]

Mad About Muppets: Impossible (1991)
From Mad About Muppets with Mad Molly Moolah Netsite, April 13th, 2004

Hi, I’m Molly and I’m mad for Muppets. And so are you, or why would you be here?

And is it any surprise that I LOVE LOVE LOVE 1991’s Muppets: Impossible? (Well, duh, right?)

(Image source “pinterest.com”)

But seriously, Muppets: Impossible is awesome, a collaboration between Disney and Paramount to produce an affectionate parody on Mission: Impossible, which at the time was back on TV on PFN.

Yes, the Muppets do Mission: Impossible! I know, right?

I mean, if for some stupid reason you haven’t seen it, these lines tell you a lot of what you need to know:

[Mission: Impossible theme plays]

CD Player (Bob Johnson V.O.)
Your mission, if you choose to accept it...

Robin
(whispers) Are we going to accept the mission, Uncle Kermit?

Kermit
(whispers) It’d be a short movie if we didn’t, Robin.

CD Player
…infiltrate Madam Carbroek’s fabulous penthouse suite and acquire the MacGuffin Papers...

Rizzo
Hey…no problemo, me and some of the boys…

CD Player
Hey, I’m still talking here.

Rizzo
(raises hands) My bad!

CD Player
Anyway, the IMF will disavow any knowledge of your actions, blah-blah, you know the schtick. Speaking of schtick, this message will self-destruct in 5 seconds.

Fozzie
Well, that message wasn’t very informa…​

The CD Player EXPLODES in a massive shower of sparks.

Gonzo
Hey! That wasn’t five seconds!

Remains of CD Player
I miscounted. Sue me.​

Yea, it’s like that.

And it all began with a video game!! Can you believe it?!?

Yes, crazy, I know. But, like, at Nintendo there was a teenage intern named Jeri Elsworth and she was working on redoing both Muppet Adventures: The Disneyland Dilemma! and Mission: Impossible for NES and, well, I’ll let her tell it (from an interview she did with Wired):

“OK, so I’m at Nintendo and I’m mostly doing basic coding for game ports, and my team was assigned all kinds of crazy stuff, like The Dark Crystal, The Muppets, Godzilla, and Mission: Impossible. So, one week I’m tired and bored because I’ve been working long hours and me and another code monkey needed a break. So as a joke on our supervisor we replaced all the graphics files for the Mission: Impossible characters with the graphics files for the Muppets, so now Kermit and Piggy and Beaker are all doing Mission Impossible’s stuff. We slipped it onto his sandbox [testing computer] and changed his shortcut link and watched the fun happen!

Well, not only was the boss a good sport about it, he actually pitched the idea to Disney and Paramount for a crossover video game. And not only did they like the game idea, Jim Henson and Jeffrey Hayes actually thought that it would make a good crossover movie!!

So we got one!!! (Yay!)

(Image source “muppetmindset.wordpress.com”)

And the plot’s pretty simple, really. The Muppets are on a location shoot in Prague for a new movie when for some crazy reason a dying spy (cameo by Tom Cruise) stumbles onto the set and hands Sam the Eagle a packet containing “The MacGuffin Papers”, pleading to his patriotism to deliver them to his “contact”. Suddenly Kermit and the gang go to meet the spy’s contact to deliver the MacGuffin Papers, and the contact turns out to be none other than Agent Phelps (Peter Graves) of the MI series. But, alas, the MacGuffin Papers are (gasp!) a forgery (and openly labelled as such: “Look, it says so right there: ‘Forgery of The MacGuffin Papers!’”), and Phelps and the IMF enlist the Muppets to break into the chic Hôtel de Prétentieux in Monaco and retrieve the real MacGuffin Papers from the safe of the sexy and nefarious Madame Carbroek (Michele Pfeiffer).

“But why us?” asks Gonzo.

“Because otherwise this would be a very short and pointless film,” Phelps replies.

“But first,” he continues, “You will need training!” And he sends them to see Agent Montage (Rene Auberjonois in his most outrageous French accent) who leads them, naturally, through a training montage after starting a CD called “The Best Inspirational Power Ballads of the ‘80s, Vol 4.” The montage is, of course, full of gags and cameos.

(Image source “muppetmindset.wordpress.com”)

Soon the team is assembled and the plan is made. Kermit, the Leader, will take up position in the hotel casino and coordinate the whole mission through his watch communicator with a “totally non-conspicuous” spinning dish antenna (along with providing wry commentary to the fourth wall, of course!). Link Hogthrob will disguise himself as “Rico de Straction”, a dapper Argentinian rubber duckie import baron, and charm and distract the stunning Madame Carbroek. Piggy, who is playing the stunning feme fatale “Victoria Snout”, will seduce the guards into complacency so she can karate-chop them out so Beaker can then slip into the utilities room and tap into the security system, allowing Dr. Honeydew to hack it. Then Gonzo and Rizzo Rat will break into Madame Carbroek’s penthouse suite to crack the safe and steal the MacGuffin Papers. Animal (tended by Floyd and Janice) is the Muscle on hand for when needed. And finally, Sam the Eagle and Fozzie Bear are in a helicopter, the “eye in the sky and bear in the air”, ready for the extraction.

This plan then unfolds exactly like any spy caper/break in caper should, with wall climbing, glass cutting, safe cracking, security camera disabling, and all of the standard clichés and tropes you expect.

And naturally everything goes exactly according to plan, they get the MacGuffin Papers, and the day is saved!

(Image source “muppetmindset.wordpress.com”)

Psyche!!! One by one they all screw up their jobs, Madame Carbroek is alerted to the duplicity, and soon an epic chase and hostage situation sets in, with Madame C. closely clutching Link to her, holding a shrimp fork to his neck (Link, of course, actually kind of likes this situation; “I see your passion has overcome you, my dear!”).

And soon every other spy caper cliché and trope sets in with car chases, bond-like gadgets, Animal being Animal, and Kermit hanging from the skid of a helicopter while Gonzo looks on jealously (“He’s stealing my schtick!!”).

The huge conclusion, which as Kermit notes takes up “most of the effects budget, so I hope you’re enjoying it,” is just too much fun to describe! You just have to see it!!!

Yaayyy!!!

“I will, uh, pass on the barbeque sauce, ok?” (Image source “muppetmindset.wordpress.com”)

And of course there’s all the other gratuitous and unnecessary cameos: Paul Reubens as a snobby waiter. Clint Eastwood as a master thief and Sandra Bullock as a martial arts instructor during the training montage. Roger Moore as a high stakes gambler and “obviously not a British agent” interacting with Kermit and Statler and Waldorf, as well as Alan Rickman, who is “obviously not a Russian spy”. Tom Hanks as the Hotel concierge with Sweetums as his bellhop (sadly, it was Richard Hunt’s last appearance before his tragic passing!). Robin Williams as an eccentric Greek cabbie whose cab they commandeer during the chase scene.

And it was the first Muppets feature film without either Jim Henson or Frank Oz doing any Muppet performance. Ken Kwapis directed and people like Steve Witmer and Kevin Clash took over the Jim and Frank Muppets, with Frank doing some voiceover in post where needed. Alf creator Paul Fusco even performed Link!!

So, Disney and Paramount both had really big hopes for this film. I mean, not like Number One Hit big, but Paramount’s MI reboot was struggling through season four on PFN[1] and they hoped to boost that and maybe launch a true MI movie and Disney was hoping to reinvigorate the Muppets brand (and I’m sure it’s hard for my readers to imagine this, but in the early 1990s the Muppets were losing their novelty and were a far cry from how popular they were ten years earlier. I know, crazy, right?). Well, it’s true, so the movie made a good profit, like $55M against a $24M budget, but it wasn’t, like huge. The critics were, like, it’s fun, but it’s not, like deep. There weren’t really, like, character arcs or anything, it was just taking the Muppets we love, putting them into crazy situations, and letting the fun happen, right?

There weren’t even any songs this time unless you count the Electric Mayhem’s diegetic playing of the MI theme or the montage power ballad “Keep Up”.

I mean, I loved it and Gene Shallot [SIC] and his stupid porn ‘stache can kiss my butt and a lot of us grew up with this on VHS and VCD, right? So, we saw it a hundred thousand times and have every line memorized (say it with me: “Oh good, I was hoping for a car chase!”; “I do all my own stunts, you know.”; “I bet Sam Neill never has to go through this!”), so it’s a modern classic now, no cult required.

So, we all love this movie, and a lot of people like, love it in hindsight and it played a lot on the Disney Channel and then Disney Movie Channel.

And I still love it. Go figure!!

Oh, and as to Gene Shallot, well, his exact words were “While nobody expects The Muppets to be producing Shakespeare…” It seems that Frank Oz read that review and had some thoughts of his own…

Can you guess what my next post is about? 😊

---

[1] In our timeline since the Paramount Fox Network (PFN) never existed Paramount took the Mission: Impossible 1988 reboot to ABC. Season One did fairly well on Sunday and Saturday, but then ABC for some reason (arrogance? Sabotage because the profit margins were too low? Ironically attempting an actual Mission: Impossible of beating Cosby?) moved it to the Thursday 8 PM slot for Season 2, up against The Cosby Show and A Different World, which went about as well as you’d expect (hint: there was no Season 3).

 

[Geekhis Khan]

The Spirit of ‘91
From Animation Magazine, August 1991

Five years ago, we interviewed a young animator named Brad Bird, a former Disney employee who partnered with Steven Spielberg and Disney to produce the award-winning TV animated cartoon The Spirit. Now Bird and his partners at Bird Brain Productions, Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, and Jerry Rees, who gained wide renown for their groundbreaking Batman animated series for Warner Brothers, are returning to the character that built their career as The Spirit: The Long Reach of the Octopus releases this month in movie theaters.

AM: So, here we are again, half a decade later!

BB: (laughs) sure enough!

AM: Back then, we were congratulating you on your new TV series The Spirit for Disney, which you’d wanted originally to do as a feature film, but now you get to do that theatrical movie you always wanted.

BB: (laughs) Ironically, yea. The circle is now complete! Alas we do not get to do the original film that we planned, as those storylines all ended up becoming TV episodes. Instead, The Long Reach of the Octopus is a new story of a nefarious plot by the Octopus to, well, go see the movie! (laughs)

AM: Rumor has it that you reveal the Octopus’s face for the first time in this film.

(Image source Etsy)

BB: (laughs) No comment. Instead, I will tell you that it is a thrilling journey and The Spirit’s most dangerous encounter with his nemesis to date!

AM: Of course, one thing that’s notably different about The Spirit today that wasn’t the case in 1986 is that The Spirit is now a Marvel property.

BB: Yes, in the intervening years since we made our TV deal with The Mouse, they went and bought up Marvel Comics. When we started doing Batman [the Animated Series] for Warner Brothers, a DC title, obviously, we’d planned on having a crossover with The Spirit, but when we approached Disney for the permissions [who still had the distribution rights] suddenly Jim Shooter is launching an all-out campaign to stop the crossover and all but harassing Kitchen Sink Press for the comics distribution rights [to The Spirit]. Eventually, Kitchen Sink gave in and sold the rights in 1990 for a sum even I’m not privy to, thus preventing the world from seeing The Spirit and the Caped Crusader side-by-side, unless DC and Marvel do another big crossover, of course. The good news, of course, is that we got to see The Spirit interact with Spidey and the X-Men last year in those cartoons, which we co-produced. I’m angling for a crossover with The Punisher and Daredevil, personally. Seeing Denny Colt’s old school values contrasted against Frank Castle and Matt Murdock would be incredible[1].

The Spirit and Sammy from a pencil test by Jerry Rees (Image source Cartoon Brew)

AM: Speaking of “old school”, The Spirit TV series gained some criticism for reframing Sammy as an African American child, which for many comics history fans was a little reminiscent of the, shall we say “regrettable” character of Ebony White.

BB: (sighs) Well, yea, I get it. We were trying to update the characters with the years. We worked hard to get Sammy to be a real person who happens to be Black and dropped Ebony and the old minstrel show stuff like a hot steel bar. Still, though, yea, there’s some pretty bad stuff in the comics’ past. But frankly both Bugs and Mickey and even Kermit have some pretty bad stuff in their past as well.

AM: You also received both criticism and praise for your female characters.

BB: Yea, the whole “femme fatale” trope is a double-edged stiletto, as it were. Is it empowering? Sexualizing? Well, to be honest, a bit of both. We worked hard to present our female characters as rounded and relatable individuals, and frankly I feel like we did very well there.

AM: And speaking of “femme fatale” characters, Harriett Lee “Harley” Quinn, from the latest Batman season. People seem to love her or find her annoying.

BB: Yes, it’s not surprising since she started as a bit of a joke. Originally, she was just a one-time background henchman, sort of a gangster’s moll type in part inspired by a female Klown from the [1989] Batman movie…you know, the one with the acid bowl that Harvey Dent’s face got pushed into? We then figured that a moll should have a crush on the main villain and we started to think about just what kind of person would actually go for a murderously insane madman like The Joker? Particularly one voiced by someone as creepy as Tim Curry?[2] Well, a pretty messed up and underconfident one, to be honest! She was supposed to be a one-time joke character, but [Warner Animation VP] Mira [Velimirovic] begged us to bring her back even as Bruce [Timm] was reticent about the whole thing, as we didn’t want to humanize The Joker too much. But it seems to be working out since his unjustified abuse of her just makes him that much more despicable. We get such an even mix of fan love letters and hate letters for Harley. Some find her sympathetic, others annoying. We’re working to push the ratio more into the former than the latter next season by giving her some more backstory.

Harley in this timeline is a cross between these two images (Image sources “pngitem.com” and “clownopedia.fandom.com”)

AM: Tell us about the design for the character? How did you get to that particular look? What spurred the Brooklyn accent?

BB: We took some visual cues from that female Klown of course, but, well, we replaced the booty shorts with some leggings and the push-up halter top became a harlequin shirt to make her a bit more G-rated and less fan-service-y[3]. We took cues from the old Harlequin character from the commedia dell’arte. The character, voice and all, is based entirely on Paul [Dini]’s old friend Arleen Sorkin, who does the voicework, and she’s just incredible, I feel. Really gives some pathos to what began as a joke character. She did this weird roller-skating jester bit for Days of Our Lives that originally inspired Paul. Do you know that she sings “Adelaide's Lament” from Guys and Dolls before each recording to get into character? But anyway, as the series continues, we hope to flesh her and a few more of the characters out.

AM: On the subject of Batman, Sam Raimi’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns released earlier this summer and became a massive hit like its predecessor. Two Face returns as a villain, along with Catwoman and the Black Mask. Do you expect the changes made in that film to change how you portray the characters in the animated series?

BB: Well (sighs) it’s a bit of a conundrum, right? Audience expectations evolve with each interpretation. I happen to like how we did both villains, so my gut feeling is that Sam can change to fit us (laughs), but I have a feeling that Mira and Tom [Rothman] will have something to say about it all.

AM: And Batman is just the start, we hear.

BB: (sighs) Limited on what I can say at this point, but yes, the increasing Superman and Wonder Woman appearances, among others, are indeed the start of The Justice League, which we will launch this fall in First Run Syndication with Warner Bros. Aquaman, John Stewart’s Green Lantern, the Martian Manhunter, and Black Canary[4] will join them.

AM: What, no Flash?

BB: Gah! How could I forget the Flash? Yes, he'll be there, with other DC stars like Green Arrow and Hawkgirl and Batgirl making appearances.

AM: But back to The Spirit: The Long Reach of the Octopus, you are getting excellent preliminary reviews with many compliments on the animation and direction. Do we smell a hit?

BB: (laughs) Well, we hope so! But I’m not quitting my day job[5]. It’s essentially an extension of the animated series rather than a full-blown Disney Animated Canon feature. Our budget was pretty small and we only had a handful of DIS stations and a small render farm of three MINIBOGs to work with. We were really only released in the theaters as a promotion for the upcoming VHS copies and the official syndication of the old series, to be honest.

AM: Still, Brad Bird’s cinematic debut must count for something.

BB: Hey, I’ll take it! (laughs)

AM: A little bird told us that Bird Brain Productions has been getting buyout offers from both Disney and Warner Brothers.

BB: No comment! (laughs) I will say that Bird Brain is perfectly happy and on solid financial ground and being independent lets us work with both studios and any others that we like.

AM: Aren’t you afraid that you’ll just get cut off since both studios have well established in-house animation departments now?

Yes. (Image source “dc.fandom.com”)

BB: Does The Spirit wear a red tie? Yea, that’s always a fear, of course. But partnerships like these have their advantages too. The studios can deflect risk, or blame, onto us. In fact, I’d argue that the Age of the Small Studio has only just begun thanks to the Ottos, Galas, Barneys, and Virgins [i.e. Disney Animation Stations, Apple Gala, Silicon Graphics stations, and Virgin x000X series], particularly with the MINIBOG compiler now out there.

AM: So, you’re of the opinion that traditional animation is doomed, we take it?

BB: I wouldn’t say “doomed”, but with the costs of computer animation quickly approaching parity in many respects with traditional, and with the advantages that digital allows in time savings and editing and perspective-control, that in another decade – and it pains me to say this – traditional handmade animation will become increasingly a niche thing done “for the art”.

AM: And will Bird Brain maintain a handmade line?

BB: That remains to be seen. I love hand drawn animation. There’s a sense of wonder very specific to me about hand-drawn animation[6] that digital just can’t meet. We still hand-draw the initial sketches of course, but we’re almost entirely digitally inked and painted now.

AM: A sad day for fans of traditional animation.

BB: Not necessarily. Digital animation will, mark my words, open up entirely new areas for the art and give even the smallest startup the ability to hang with the Big Boys, meaning that eventually we’ll be seeing risky, truly original stuff that would never have been greenlit by one of the major studios, not even by Jim Henson or Arlene Klasky.

AM: And what projects do you have coming up at Bird Brain? Anything that you can share?

BB: Well, there’s only so much I can discuss publicly. Batman will continue in partnership with Warner Brothers, of course. Justice League we mentioned. Perhaps some other DC titles…all that I can say there. We’re even looking at some feature-length options there. We are also in talks with Disney on a new TV series with some popular Marvel heroes. And most exciting of all, we are discussing an idea right now with various studios for a feature animated film that’s, well, let’s just say that Fritz Lang would approve and leave it at that.

AM: How about a hint?

BB: I can’t talk too much about the Future, mind you. Noir do I want to. (laughs)

AM: And that brings us to the end. Thank you for speaking again with Animation Magazine.

BB: It was my pleasure!

AM: The Spirit: The Long Reach of the Octopus is in theaters this month.

---

[1] This will happen in comics and animation in the mid-1990s and be quite popular with fans. The Punisher/Spirit crossover “What is Street Justice?” will be legendary for delving deep into the ethics and morality of vigilantism and is seen as a monumental moment of Dark Age self-reflection that even Alan Moore lauded.

[2] Fear not, Hamill fans, Curry will price himself out in 1992 and Mark Hamill will take over, because no butterfly can possibly save us from the madness that is the Hamill Joker!

[3] She (or her inspiration) allo-ironically starts out dressed a lot like the overtly sexualized Margo Robbie version and transitions to a G-version more like the Batman Animated version in this timeline.

[4] Bad Green Lantern CGI Mask tip to @Pyro.

[5] Will make a good $39 million against its $15 million budget, but do much better on home video over the years.

[6] Real quote up to this point.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Judge Clarence Thomas Rejected from Supreme Court
Washington Post, October 15th, 1991

(Image source Time)

Washington – The US Senate today rejected the appointment of Appellate Court Judge Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court on a narrow 54-46 vote with ten of the Senate’s Democrats voting in favor of Thomas’ confirmation and three Republicans voting against[1]. Thomas was appointed by President Bush to replace the retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall, the nation’s first African American Supreme Court Justice. While many on the left have expressed concerns with Thomas’s past decisions on subjects such as Roe v. Wade and Civil Rights, the rejection is largely seen as a response to the shocking testimony of former employee Anita Hill, who accused Judge Thomas of a long and egregious pattern of sexual harassment, creating a hostile working environment.

Thomas’ fate was sealed when Senator John Vinich, a populist Democrat from Wyoming, announced earlier today that he would be a “nay” vote, leading to many of the undecided Senators swinging for “nay”. “As my republican colleagues like to say,” Vinich told the Post, “Character matters. And a real man treats his women with respect.”

Comparisons are already being made to the Senate rejection of Robert Bork in 1987. President George Bush expressed his “deepest regrets” at the decision, which he… Cont’d on A2.



Judge Emilio Garza Confirmed to Supreme Court
Washington Post, January 25th, 1992

Washington – The US Senate overwhelmingly approved Fifth Circuit Appellate Court Judge Emilio Garza to the US Supreme Court on a 62-38 vote. Garza will be the first Hispanic to serve on the Court and will replace retired Justice Thurgood Marshall. The quick and overwhelming approval is largely seen as a reaction to the long and contentious hearings of Judge Clarence Thomas, who was rejected late last year in part over allegations of egregious sexual harassment against former employee Anita Hill[2]. Garza, who has a conservative voting record, was first nominated to the District Court of West Texas in 1988 by President Ronald Reagan… Con’t on A2.

* * *​

Chapter 18: Drama Behind the Scenes (Cont’d)
Excerpt from The King is Dead: The Walt Disney Company After Walt Disney, an Unauthorized History by Sue Donym and Arman N. Said

Sometimes the biggest changes in a company come from outside events. These events act as a sort of “forcing function” that causes long-engrained company culture to be reexamined. Such a change came to the Walt Disney Entertainment Company starting in the Summer of 1991 and from the oddest of places. In July of 1991 US Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Thurgood Marshall retired and President George Bush appointed Appellate Court Judge Clarence Thomas to fill the empty seat. The move was criticized right from the start by civil rights leaders, who saw Thomas’s criticisms of Affirmative Action as an affront to the legacy of Marshall, a civil rights icon. Others were wary of his stance on the controversial landmark Roe V. Wade decision. But it would be a different issue that would dominate the hearings and the public discussion and indirectly affect Disney.

(Image source Facebook)

During the hearings, a former employee of Thomas’, Anita Hill, had reported to the FBI that Thomas had subjected her to persistent and egregious sexual harassment, creating a hostile work environment. The FBI report was leaked to the press, causing an uproar. Hill’s testimony during the confirmation hearing turned the uproar into outrage as the details came out and led to a very public and very acrimonious discussion on sexual harassment in the workplace, particularly so shortly after the shocking allegations of massive sexual harassment and assault by Navy and Marine Corps aviators at the 1991 Tailhook Association Symposium. Thomas was ultimately rejected by the Senate in a razor-thin vote, forcing many across the nation to come to terms with their own issues[3]. Soon the controversy began an ongoing discussion on the subject of sexual harassment in the workplace that led to some soul-searching on the part of many companies, lip service from others, and flat-out denial by others.

In the case of Disney, it was the former. The atmosphere in the corporate world following the Thomas hearings caused lots of heated arguments among the management of the company. At first, the leadership was inclined to ignore it all and wait for the public outcry to blow over. There was a prevailing feeling of “boys will be boys” or that the boys were “joking around”. Others were in denial, assuming that “that doesn’t happen here”.

But the truth was that it did happen at the Happiest Place on Earth. In fact, Disney was only one studio among many with a long history of sexual inequity and harassment[4]. Such behavior was frighteningly common in the industry, and Disney in particular had a long and challenging history with gender. As recent leaks have revealed, under Uncle Walt women were openly discouraged from taking jobs considered “not suited for women” like animation direction and leadership roles. Women were encouraged or flat out forced to take roles as secretaries, receptionists, and, in the Animation Department, work as “Ink & Paint girls”, since women were assumed to be incapable of the creativity required for an original animator. Things were somewhat better in Imagineering, where women were central to the design of many now legendary attractions, and yet even there they were steered to “feminine” things like color design and fabrics rather than engineering or architecture.

And yes, there was indeed a persistent “hostile work environment” as well. Things had improved somewhat with women now entering the animation department beyond Ink & Paint, and Imagineering beyond colors and fabrics. The common practice in the ‘20s through ‘70s of covering the walls with sketches or even photographs of nude women had been ended, though such images regularly circulated under the table. However, crude jokes and aggressively masculine behavior were common throughout the company (“boys will be boys”) and aggressive pressure on females for sexual relations or even flat-out sexual assault were seen in several groups. 3D in particular was gaining a reputation among the women in the company as a place to avoid both for its aggressively hostile work environment and its open misogyny and dismissal of the idea of “female coders”. 3D Creative Associate John Lasseter in particular had a reputation as “a hugger” whose unwanted physical contact with female employees was starting to seem excessive even to his male colleagues, some of whom started to quietly intercede to distract him away from them.

As the hard truth of the matter was acknowledged, management was divided on how to approach it. The Disney Personnel section advanced the idea of circulating some of the same bad VHS videos on “ending sexual harassment” that were the norm in the rest of corporate America and recommended that they settle a few of the more egregious cases out of court, and then sweep the rest under the rug. But several executives, most prominently Creative Chief Jim Henson, pushed back.

Henson, it should be said, had a complex history with the women under his employ. While progressive on social issues and a self-proclaimed “feminist”, Henson was also a product of his generation, born in the Great Depression and coming of age in the post-WWII atomic age. While he accepted Jane as his near-equal partner in the business and personal sense, the second that Lisa was born the assumption was that Jane would devote much of her time to motherhood while Jim took the lead on the Muppets. Jim quickly brought in new, overwhelmingly male Muppet Performers to replace her. As Muppets, Inc., and Henson Associates grew, women found many places in the company, particularly in the Workshop where women like Caroly Wilcox advanced into leadership positions. But Muppet Performance remained a male dominated place, a “boys’ club” where female Muppet Performers were struggling to find a voice even despite the equity of Waggle Rock. Excuses for the gender imbalance reigned, typically surrounding “height discrepancies” or the intimate quarters of a Muppet performance, where performers were mashed up against each other. Crude jokes persisted and women who did break into performance, such as Fran Brill, discovered that they sometimes needed to become “one of the guys” and be willing to shrug off the crude and sophomoric behavior of their coworkers[5].

Henson also had a way of failing to notice things when they were inconvenient. So, when he, as Chairman of Disney Studios, was asked to look into sexual harassment in his Department, he expected to find a few cases of crude jokes or inappropriate artwork, but not much else. However, unlike a lot of male executives in the 1990s, Henson actually took the task very seriously. While largely apolitical in the partisan sense, Henson had seen the charges made by Hill and was utterly appalled. If there was one thing that Henson despised, it was a bully, and for Henson Thomas’s alleged actions constituted a bully in power abusing his subordinate. So, Henson first approached the one person in his employ that he knew would not be afraid to tell him the unvarnished truth without fear of retaliation, his daughter Cheryl, who spoke candidly to him for three straight hours. To his shock and disgust, not only were “crude jokes” and inappropriate images common, but open job discrimination remained, as did pressure to engage in sexual favors, and flat-out sexual assault occurred in some egregious situations, particularly in certain divisions like 3D.

Cheryl related that she’d been able to largely escape it since she was “the boss’s daughter”, but many of her female friends and colleagues had been subjected to inappropriate contact. It was a shock to Henson, who tended to assume the best in people. He immediately appointed her to spearhead an internal investigation and audit, not only of Disney Studios but the entirety of the company. She was tasked with assembling a team of her choice and empowered to go where she wanted, protected by Henson and backed by Miller and Wells from any pushback or reprisals.

“When Jim appointed Cheryl, we all knew that he was taking [the situation] seriously,” said “Jennifer” (not her real name), who worked in the animation department. “We knew that he knew that Cheryl would tell him the absolute truth about what happened when he was out of the room.”

Cheryl put together a team of experts from personnel, legal, and the union, as well as hiring therapists – slightly more female than male – and set out to interview anyone who wanted to speak anonymously. She worked with an outside attorney recommended by Al Gottesman, an “outside director”, as a neutral third party. The union leadership was invited to be a part of the process and willingly participated since nearly all of the accusers were union employees, as were a large percentage of the accused. The investigation was met with a mix of support and opposition. Cartoons that portrayed the situation as a witch hunt made the rounds, as did counter-cartoons that showed a cabal of actual witches throwing Mickey and Minnie in the oven while complaining about being subjected to “witch hunts”. Some were emotionally invested in the ongoing investigation, but most simply went on with their jobs.

“They asked me what I’d experienced,” said Frank Oz, “I told them. I went back to work. Whatever.”

Jim and Cheryl Henson managed to contain the fallout and animosity of the investigations through a “principle of compassion and understanding”, as Cheryl put it, where accusers and accused alike were treated with respect and where the investigators worked hard to maintain an aura of neutrality. Men generally interviewed men while women interviewed women on the assumption that the interviewees would feel more at ease that way. Cheryl and her team endeavored to be as “minimally invasive” as possible while still gathering as much data as they could. And when accused harassers were ultimately confronted, it was performed “more like an intervention than an inquisition”, with the accused allowed to bring advocates or union representation with them.

Most of what came to light was relatively mild, such as the occasional dirty joke or inappropriate drawing, but other incidents were shocking, with reports of persistent unwanted touching and pressure for quid pro quo sexual favors. For the most part the “interventions” went smoothly. Only a handful of employees took real offence to the discussions, typically those facing the worst accusations and who had no legal legs to stand on, and a few of them quit in protest. The more egregious examples of quid pro quo or severe sexual assault were met with zero tolerance and those found to have engaged in such unacceptable behaviors were ejected from the company for “actions unbecoming of a Disney employee”. Two lawsuits for “wrongful termination” were launched and summarily dismissed by judges since the Disney legal team had been careful to build a rock-solid case for termination prior to taking action. Perpetrators of relatively minor offenses (“the occasional dirty joke”) were gently admonished to follow the new standards of behavior. Despite some grumbling, most complied with the new rules and moved on with their professional lives, most pledging to rectify their behavior and sincerely apologizing to those whom they hurt with their actions. Only a small number required additional admonishment or administrative action after the fact.

The harder cases proved to be those in the middle or those with no other witnesses. What level (or locations) of “touching” was forgivable? Was an occasional “hug” acceptable? For how long? What level of evidence was required, particularly in cases of “he said, she said” when the accused denied the allegations? One such “in the middle” case involved 3D division Creative Vice President John Lasseter, who was accused of inappropriately hugging and kissing female employees without their permission and “touching legs”. Upon intervention, he acted honestly shocked that his actions were hurting his employees.

“I thought that I was being friendly,” Lasseter told the authors in an interview, “I didn’t know that my improprieties were hurting people!”

He described the intervention to us: “I went into the conference room along with my council, not really knowing whether to expect a tribunal or a ‘nudge-nudge don’t do it again nudge-nudge’. I expected a conference table, but it was a circle of chairs. There was this aura of, well, openness, but seriousness, if that makes any sense. Legal and Union were there, and so were Frank [Wells] and Jim [Henson]. I’d expected Jim to either be looking at me with anger or disappointment, or else to just give me a sly ‘it’s all good, kid’ wink. What I didn’t expect was him to be crying. I mean, the whole time his eyes were wet with tears and he could barely look me in the eye.

“God, Jim had given me everything and he seemed so…betrayed.”

While Jim looked on in pain, Frank Wells read off the accusations and then made it very clear to Lasseter that if he persisted in his inappropriate actions that Wells “could not guarantee [Lasseter’s] continued employment at Disney.”

“Frank put the fear of God into me. I loved my job and nowhere else in the world seemed as great of a place to work. But it mostly pained me…” He paused, overcome by emotion, before continuing: “It pained me that I hurt my coworkers. It pained me that I hurt Jim. To this day I can’t get Jim’s face out of my mind.”

Lasseter was stripped of his leadership role and the associated pay and placed on a 6 week leave of absence. Joe Ranft would take over the creative leadership position at 3D. Upon returning, Lasseter made formal in-person apologies to those whom he’d hurt and was transferred to the Imagineering Softworks as a simple programmer while on an 18-month probation, eventually returning to Animation once the affected employees all declared their willingness to work with him again. “It was awkward to see him back,” said one of the accusers, “But he seemed genuinely sorry for what he did[6]. I can never fully forget how he acted, of course, but I was willing to give him a second chance. True to his word, he kept his hands to himself from that point forward.” It would be years before he regained a position as a producer, eventually getting to work as an art director and assistant producer for his long-running passion project The Brave Little Toaster, directed by his former employee Joe Ranft.

Witnesses report that things did improve fairly quickly at Disney, at least in terms of harassment. The worst offenders were gone or forcibly reformed. “It was still a while before we received equal pay or opportunity, of course,” said “Jennifer” with an ironic laugh, “But we were at least freed to do our jobs without worrying about grabby hands or lewd comments.”

But the investigation didn’t just turn up sexual misconduct. Some directors, producers, and managers were singled out for verbal and emotional abuse. Several employees faced administrative actions for “abusive conduct” and “creating hostile working environments.” Sometimes this was persistent yelling, sometimes it was insults over appearance or beliefs, sometimes it was persistent passive aggressive comments, and sometimes it was overt threats of violence or retaliation. All of these, it was made clear, were not acceptable behavior. “There is no justification for hurting people,” said Jim Henson in a written statement to the Disney staff. “Whether you’re pressuring someone for sex or berating people on the set for minor transgressions, abuse is abuse and it is not welcome at Disney.”

“I’ve always been a bit catty, to put it mildly,” replied then-writer Joss Whedon after facing disciplinary actions for making hurtful comments to colleagues. “As a kid and teen, I faced bullying and reacted in passive-aggressive ways. I made snide comments. It was my way of fighting back. But when I began to work at Disney those tendencies resurfaced amid the stress and I started undermining my coworkers [with those tendencies] whenever I felt threatened or disrespected, whether I actually was or not. I’d make little “jokes” as I called them that were really intended to put the person down. Occasionally I’d lose my temper and yell at my proofreaders or an actor or director that was, I felt, ruining my screenplay.

“I’d occasionally even snipe at my religious coworkers for their beliefs because, well, I’d had such bad experiences with the church and was externalizing my anger[7]. One time I openly mocked Pete Docter’s Christianity. Shit, he’d never once tried to push his faith on me. He was, well, honestly Christ-like about it all in hindsight.

“Jim and Bernie had a long talk with me about it; the Union rep and a Lawyer were present, so I knew this was serious and that I could lose my job. At first, I sort of turtled. Weren’t nerds like me the victims? It took me a while to see that I was being the bully and that I was becoming the thing that I hated the most. ‘He who fights monsters,’ and all. Jim and the mental health people he’d hired helped me get some anger management counseling and I worked to make amends to my coworkers. I even had Easter Dinner with Pete, whose family was so welcoming to me that I felt like such an asshole in hindsight. It was really hard to admit to myself that I was the asshole, but I was. But when the man behind Kermit tells you you’re being the jerk, it kind of strikes home.”

Reportedly, even Jim Henson himself wasn’t spared by the examination. He’d begun seeing an unnamed animator from Ink & Paint earlier that year, and while there was reportedly no coercion or quid pro quo involved, even so Henson and the unnamed employee ended the relationship at the strong recommendation of company lawyers. Rules regarding relationships between employees were even rewritten in detail with strict guidelines, particularly when it came to supervisors and subordinates.

“The days of dating the secretary were over,” said an inside source who claimed familiarity with the issue. “Even if there’s no impropriety going on, it still sets a bad example. And when you can fire or demote the person you’re dating, how can you be 100% sure it’s fully consensual? The answer is that you can’t, and if you can’t, then you shouldn’t.”

The Disney revelations and actions, meanwhile, sent shockwaves through the animation and tech industries. By openly admitting a problem and taking decisive action, Disney put all of the other studios in a bit of a public relations bind. Over the course of the 1990s other major studios, both animation and live action, started receiving calls from their fans and employees for a similar accounting, and not every studio acted with the finesse that Disney did. Triad and Warner Brothers mostly followed the “Disney approach”, but received several legal challenges that complicated matters. Columbia Entertainment, driven by an “irate” (and possibly internalizing) Ted Turner, went through what even many of the accusers saw as a heavy-handed reaction that resulted in ongoing drama in the press and in the courts. ABC and Universal largely swept things under the rug and bought off accusers with out-of-court settlements and non-disclosure agreements.

Several smaller studios were hit as well. Production company Miramax Films was hit by multiple simultaneous lawsuits, all settled out of court for undisclosed but reportedly high sums. In an event that’s largely seen as related to the lawsuits, Miramax partner Harvey Weinstein retired from active production and disappeared from the public eye. He’d be arrested and jailed in 1998 for aggravated sexual assault of a guest at a party, his high-priced lawyers unable to do much to help him when the event was captured by the venue’s closed circuit security cameras.

Bakshi-Kricfalusi Productions, meanwhile, was revealed to be a place of severe and persistent sexual harassment and casual sexual assault. Both partners faced lawsuits due to their “predatory actions” that nearly drove the struggling company bankrupt and strained their working relationship with Triad. Bakshi largely blamed “Henson’s witch hunt” and a “radical feminist agenda gone amok” while Kricfalusi disappeared from the public eye, admitting to friends that he came to realize that he “had a real problem” and sought psychological counselling. He was later arrested and imprisoned, awaiting trial, in 1997 on charges of possession of child pornography and soliciting sex from a 16-year-old. He was found hanging from a bedsheet in his cell, dead from an apparent suicide. Bakshi blamed the “witch hunt” for “murdering” his friend and “depriving the world of an animation genius.” Bakshi’s career, meanwhile, would never really recover, Bakshi-Kricfalusi’s ongoing productions were sold to their partnering studios as a part of the bankruptcy litigation.

The biggest entertainment name to fall in the ensuing press storm was none other than Bill Cosby. Numerous women surfaced to accuse the popular comedian of drugging and sexually assaulting them from the 1960s into the present day. These revelations created outrage. Many refused to believe them. Cosby was “America’s dad” after all! White men and Black men were divided on the accusations, and race politics entered into the fray, clouding things further. Cosby’s own outspoken attacks on certain Black comedians came back to haunt him, with said comedians helping to spread the anger among the Black population. Black Women in particular made their voices heard in a series of headline-grabbing protests in LA, Atlanta, and New York. An LA district attorney hoping to make a name for himself went after Cosby in what was called The Trial of the Century. Despite a now-legendary defense by attorney Johnnie Cochrane, Cosby was ultimately convicted of sexual assault and spent time in prison.

As the fallout continued over the next several years it merged in with the fallout over child sexual abuse into a larger society-level reckoning on a “culture of abuse”. It took with it actors, producers, politicians, CEOs, real estate developers, and other famous and influential men and even some women such as fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley (along with her husband Walter Breen). Some of the accused escaped consequences, but others did not. Some managed to use the accusations to build up political and financial support from those who saw the entire thing as a “witch hunt”. Others were found not guilty or saw their cases dismissed due to lack of evidence. And in a small number of cases the accusations were demonstrated to be false or made in bad faith for other reasons, though these were few and their number later exaggerated in the media

The culture war of it all continued long after the original incidents, of course. Talk Radio commentators echoed talk of “witch hunts” and amplified claims by some of the accused of being put through false and politically motivated accusations by “Feminazis” intent on imposing a “female chauvinist agenda”. Bill Cosby, long lauded as “one of the good ones” by people who would never call themselves racist, became a right-wing martyr despite his generally left-wing political views. The subsequent rise of the Political Correctness movement, which quickly became a self-parody with its ham-fisted attempts to control language, simply added to a growing sense of conservative victimhood.

Disney and its leadership became occasional targets of right-wing wrath and boycott calls, though no appreciable impact to profits was noted, with some concluding that growing support from those who supported Disney’s move was countering the halfhearted calls for boycotts on the right.

When interviewed about things later, Jim Henson was rather reticent about the whole affair. “You know, there’s what’s right and what’s wrong. How we treat each other matters. How we treat those [whom] we have power over matters even more.”

---

[1] Democratic “Ayes” include Dan Boren of Oklahoma, John Breaux of Louisiana, Denis DeConcini of Arizona, Jim Exon of Nebraska, Wyche Fowler of Georgia, Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana, Chuck Robb of Virginia, and Richard Shelby of Alabama. Republican “Nays” include Bob Packwood of Oregon, Jim Jeffords of Vermont, and John Warner of Virginia; the first two voted “Nay” in our timeline too and Warner was on the fence. Hat tip to @jpj1421 for the assist on determining the "voting".

[2] Garza, by comparison, has a clean and relatively dull personal history. Garza, for what it’s worth, is pretty much a bog-standard Originalist/Textualist, so assume that he votes the same way that Thomas did in our timeline unless I mention otherwise.

[3] While Thomas’ accusation in our timeline also led to a reckoning on sexual harassment and assault, here a powerful man has suffered serious consequences for his inappropriate actions (rejected from the highest court in the land) sending a totally different message than in our timeline, where the message was “boys will be boys, so grope away, Harvey!”

[4] Read accounts of the ugly reality of gender and animation here.

[5] Fran Brill, to the apparent surprise of her male coworkers, related exactly such a situation on Muppet Guys Talking.

[6] Since the revelations of his inappropriate behavior at Pixar came to light in 2017, John Lasseter has made an effort to apologize and atone for his actions. He says he “will continue to work every day for the rest of [his] life to prove [...] that [he has] grown and learned.” Whether he’s being sincere or just playing the game I don’t know since I can’t read minds, but I’m assuming that he’s acting sincerely and trying to atone. Here Disney taking firm, clear, and decisive action early on, rather than just using “minders who were tasked with reining in his impulses”, has avoided a lot of pain down the road for everyone.

[7] Numerous allegations of such abuse have recently surfaced regarding Joss Whedon from many of his employees with many others corroborating them, starting on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and continuing up to the present day. Generally speaking, people don’t start off as openly abusive to their coworkers, but start small and every time they “get away with it” they’re more inclined to push the limits a little further next time. Eventually this can spiral into a persistent hostile work environment. I’m playing a bit of armchair psychologist here, so take my assumptions on his motivations with a grain of salt, but my hypothesis is that had management taken a firmer stance with him and others like him early on and made it clear that such behavior was unacceptable from the start, then the accused abusive tendencies could have been nipped in the bud before they became habitual, and before they reached the persistent and egregious level that they allegedly ultimately did. So, is Whedon truly “redeemed” here, or is this just a passing moment of him “playing along”? Stay Tuned. Note that in general the question of who among the accused is “redeemable” and who is not is a question that I struggled with…a lot.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Chapter 12, Making a Difference (Cont’d)
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)

One of those Semitic concepts that inevitably seems to confuse my goyim friends is the idea of The Mensch.

“It means being a man, right?”

Yes and no. I mean, anyone with a swinging dick can be a man but it takes a special man to be a Mensch.

A Mensch is the man you should aspire to be. A Mensch does the Right Thing because it’s the Right Thing, not for some personal advantage or expectation of a reward. A Mensch stands up for himself and stands up for others. A Mensch is cognizant to the consequences of his actions. A Mensch admits his mistakes and makes good to those whom he hurt. A Mensch never uses, abuses, or puts down those below him. A Mensch never beats his wife or gropes his secretary because such things are beneath him. In short, a Mensch plays life straight and fair, lives up to his word, and shows honesty, integrity, and decency to everyone.

Or to put it another way, a Mensch is content in his own internal power and feels no need to take power from others. And bonus points if you lift others up along the way.

And it has nothing to do with how big you are, how tough you are, or how rich or respected you are. While walking the streets of Brooklyn with Sam Fuller and Spike Lee we saw a skinny little Puerto Rican kid standing up to these two big guys that had been whistling at his sister. They beat the shit out of him. I walked up, handed the kid a hundred-dollar bill and said “this is for being a Mensch and standing up for your sister.” Spike and Sam matched me with bills of their own.

But by 1990 this concept of a Mensch was increasingly running smack into how America increasingly wanted to define a Man. Looking back it started with Bogie and the whole Hardboiled Detective guy and it reached its peak with James Bond in the ‘60s. It reached self-parody in the ‘80s with the musclebound guys with the big guns and the inevitable dick jokes. By this definition, a Man took what he wanted when he wanted, a User in a world of Used. Women were like toilet paper: used and flushed and of no consequence save as a scorecard for Manliness.

Hell, James Bond was so Manly he could rape a lesbian straight, apparently.

Yea, this never quite jived with what it meant to be a Mensch. A Man by this definition would put a thousand hardworking people on the street to sponge another few million on top of the hundreds of millions he already had. No Mensch worth the name would ever do that.

And I’d been thinking about this more and more ever since the whole Clarence Thomas thing.

Honestly, it was never easy for women in entertainment, whether it was the showgirls at the mob clubs in New York obliged to give hand jobs to middle aged club members under the table or the casting couches of Hollywood, there was shit that the ladies had to go through that we guys didn’t. And honestly, for years you kind of accepted it, or at least learned to look the other way.

The self-proclaimed “Men” saw this as the natural order of things, and if you could squeeze out some “side benefits” from some naïve young starlet then hey, that’s Hollywood, babe! Grab what you can when you can. If she says “no”, threaten her with retaliation. Hell, sink her damned career, because there’ll always be another naïve young starlet ready to take her place.

But even then, those of us who strived to be Menschen didn’t sink to such things. There was never a casting couch in Bernie Brillstein’s office. Never[1]. And even before the Thomas hearings if I caught anyone working under me using one, I showed them the door. Menschen didn’t do that. If you couldn’t earn it through charm, you found a professional and paid her for her time, the terms of employment clear to both parties up front, and you treated her with respect and professional courtesy the whole time[2].

So Disney-MGM weren’t really bad places even before the Thomas hearings. Even the goyim strove to be Menschen. But we weren’t perfect, and there was some stuff that we let slide, though nothing of the type you might see at, say, Miramax. Even so, some of my Hollywood contacts looked at us as insane when we started booting the gropers and putting talented folks like Lassiter on probation for getting a bit too “huggy”.

“Hey, Bernie, if you want to throw away talent just because he has a little case of grabby-hands we’ll be happy to take him and the money he brings in!”

Yea, you go ahead, because for every swinging dick that left to work elsewhere we brought in three very talented women to replace him.

Because, you know what? The women of Hollywood talk to each other. Cheryl and [my daughter] Leigh let me in on that little secret. If you were a woman in Hollywood, you quickly learned which producers expected a little grope or worse as the price of stardom. You quickly learned that if you went to work for Harvey Weinstein then chances were at some point, he’d be reaching up your skirt or defiling a house plant in your presence. Or you learned which executives locked you in the office during interviews. Or you learned which directors expected you to see them after the shoot, or would replace you with someone else who would.

And Richard Hunt told me that the Gay and Lesbian community had a similar grapevine.

And what all these talented young artists learned is that Disney and MGM were safe places free of grabby hands and lewd references and casting couches, so they came to work here. And they told their friends and acquaintances, who came to work here. And they told others. Disney and MGM had new blood coming in every day and even some older actors, classic talents, came to us because they knew that they’d be treated with respect and appreciated how we treated others.

I’ll trade a Louis C.K. for a Cameron Diaz, a Helen Mirin, a Nathan Lane, a Rose McGowan, and a Jodie Foster any day.

Sure, sometimes it hurts. I cut ties with Woody Allen in ’92 after the child molestation charges hit the press, and only a year after finally arranging a working relationship I’d spent years bugging him to set up. It was just months after 1991’s sleeper hit A Resounding Maybe and it could have led to so much more (the man is admittedly a genius), but in the end being a Mensch meant making the hard but right call.

And sure, the culture change within Disney-MGM was hard for some. I mean, Disney was actually a pretty good place in that regard already. We’d made an effort to hold abusers accountable when other studios were sweeping them under the rug. On the gay/lesbian side, we had people like Andreas living on the edge of open at the time and Howard and Richard living right out in the open. Still, for many of the old timers it was a hard sell. Me, I’d lived and worked in Broadway and Hollywood for years. I’ve known so many powerful women and homosexual artists over the years that it’s old hat even for an old New Yorker like me (hell, I knew about Rock Hudson years before he came out. Open secret in Tinsel Town).

It was hard for Roy in particular. It certainly wasn’t what Walt would have wanted. But Roy is a Mensch. He learned to accept it the way he learned to accept that depictions and roles for Black people had changed since he and I were kids. We’ve all got our baggage. Even Jim. Even me.

Hell, especially me!

But being a Mensch means learning where you were wrong and evolving and growing up. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result, then the definition of a boy is encountering new experiences and sticking to the same old actions and opinions.

Yea, the 1990s were a tumultuous time in Hollywood as the studios came face to face with the sins of our past, whether that was Mickey’s uncomfortable minstrel show origins or the omnipresent casting couch, but the Menschen look their hits, made their sincere mea culpas, did their penance, made their restitution by active service in making things right, and thus remained Menschen.

---

[1] In his autobiography Where did I Go Right? Brillstein claims that he never took sexual advantage of clients himself (calling himself “Too Moral” if I recall), even as he saw it happen all around him. While I am clearly putting words in his mouth (once again) I feel that this is how he would describe things post-facto given this earlier reckoning on sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood.

[2] In his Where Did I Go Right from our timeline Bernie made no bones about his frequenting of a high-priced call girl when he was a young agent in New York in the 1950s and ‘60s. He had very kind things to say about her and the role she played in his life. Probably not the type of conversation or topic that you’d expect in this circumstance, and we certainly known the dark side of prostitution and the culture of use surrounding it and the sanitized myths underlying the “hooker with a heart of gold” trope, but that’s Bernie for you.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Part 7: A Spooky, Ooky Family
Excerpt from Dark Funhouse, the Art and Work of Tim Burton, an Illustrated Compendium

As a child, Tim Burton loved the 1960s The Addams Family television show starring John Astin, Caroline Jones, and Jackie Coogan, not just for its macabre gothic stylings, but for its real familial love and connection[1]. It was a show that spoke to a young suburban boy who felt different and out of place. As an adult he discovered the original Charles Addams cartoons and gained an even deeper love for the macabre characters. It was only natural that he would be given, or would take, the opportunity to produce an Addams Family film. And yet, his participation was far from a given when he was first approached by Orion Films in 1990.

“As a kid I liked to imagine that the Addams’ were my real family and that I’d been accidentally switched at birth.” – Tim Burton[2]

The 1991 Addams Family movie came to be thanks largely to one man: Scott Rudin, at the time an executive at Triad. He pitched the film as a project for Fox, but the studio wasn’t interested in rebooting a “forgotten old TV series”. So instead, he took the idea to Orion, who still possessed the film rights along with Charles Addams’ ex-wife. When the ex-wife finally agreed to sell the remaining rights, Orion greenlit the effort. Burton was Rudin’s first choice to direct, but Burton was under contract with Disney[3].

Burton, just finalizing production on Mort, begged Studio head Jim Henson for a leave of absence to direct the film. To his surprise Henson not only said “yes”, but asked for a meeting with Rudin to discuss “areas where we could partner” such as creature effects or distribution and promotion. The Addams Family seemed to Henson to be a perfect product for the Fantasia Films label and another opportunity for the Skeleton Crew – and the Creatureworks – to hone their skills. Henson, Burton, and VP Margaret Loesch met with Rudin and discussed production, which bounced between drawn animation and stop-motion animation before settling on a live action interpretation backed by Creatureworks effects. Rudin brought in cinematographer and aspiring director Barry Sonnenfeld, who in addition to cinematography would serve as a second unit director. The Addams Family 1991 film was born, a partnership between Orion and Fantasia.

Sort of this… (Image source “IMDB.com”)

Casting brought in an unknown Benicio Del Toro as Gomez, Angelica Huston as Morticia (despite serious lobbying by Cher)[4], Danny DeVito as Uncle Fester, Carol Kane as Grandma Addams, Carel Struycken as Lurch, Shari Weiser as Cousin It, and introduced Aaron Schwartz as the mischievous Pugsley and Christina Ricci as the macabre Wednesday, the latter of whom stole every scene that she was in, ultimately becoming a Burton go-to actress. Rounding out the film was Edie McClurg, who played the jolly, ever-smiling, and secretly psychotic villain Sarah Susan Smith. Several of the surviving original TV actors, including John Astin, Ken Weatherwax, and Lisa Loring, made cameo appearances. The Creatureworks performed their magic bringing the various aspects of the Manor to life, from the living bear rug to the Addams’ pet octopus Aristotle. Jim Henson himself reportedly hand-modelled for Thing[5].

Tim Burton developed the story and the screenplay was written by Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson with script doctoring by Tom and Joss Whedon. The story involved the Addams’, whose old family mansion occupied two hundred acres, discovering that they owed decades in back taxes and were thus forced to sell off the surrounding land. This land gets subdivided and developed into suburban sprawl in a montage played like a desecration, and soon the gothic Addams Manor is surrounded on all sides by a sea of “dreadful” (to quote Morticia) cookie-cutter ranch-style houses with pastel colors and hyper-green lawns (Burton and Sonnenfeld used color saturation and desaturation techniques to highlight the contrasts)[6]. The story then plays out like a horror movie in reverse with the suburbanites, worried that their property values are being hurt by “the dilapidated old house on the hill”, falling in line behind insane home owner’s association president Sarah Susan Smith[7], and getting progressively more aggressive in their attempts to get the Addams Family to conform or leave.

The children of the neighborhood, at first terrified of the “haunted house”, grow to love both it and the Addams Family and soon hatch a plan with Wednesday and Pugsley to overwhelm the forces of the home owner’s association. Sarah Susan Smith’s ire is dialed up further when her nerdy son Timothy (Ben Savage) develops a schoolboy crush on Wednesday. It all culminates in a siege of the Addams Manor in a scene right out of the old Universal Frankenstein films.

Filming the scenes became fun for the whole crew and Burton cemented his reputation as “an excellent actor’s director.” Benicio Del Toro played Gomez “like a washed-up, overly melodramatic theatrical actor,” a deliberately over-the-top performance that blended well with Angelica Huston’s cool sophisticated sensuality, a combination now known in the industry as “ham on ice”. The two maintained an excellent chemistry[8], even though several tricks had to be employed to make the 5’10” Huston appear several inches taller than the 6’2” Del Toro. Boxes, pits, and lifts became a usual part of the actor’s scenes together. “Once you’ve danced the Tango in eight-inch heels, you know that anything is possible,” said Huston in an interview.

Like a lot of Burton films, The Addams Family is a satire about “normal” American suburban life and deals in themes of prejudice, acceptance, original thought, the dangers of conformity, and the pathos and ennui of the outsider. The “normal” Sarah Susan Smith and her posse/lynch mob of a home owner’s association is portrayed as unhinged and dangerously psychotic while the “weird” Addams Family is, despite their macabre eccentricities, shown to be a loyal and loving model family.

Bolstered by Burton’s growing audience, The Addams Family went on to make a surprising $200.5 million worldwide against a $25 million budget, almost triple what the producers expected. The bizarre story resonated with a recession-weary early ‘90s zeitgeist that was moving away from the neon excesses of the ‘80s and embracing the aesthetic of the once-underground “Goth” subculture. The film launched the careers of Benicio Del Toro, Christina Ricci, and Aaron Schwartz and made Tim Burton one of Hollywood’s most bankable directors. It also helped launch the directorial career of Barry Sonnenfeld, who would go on to direct the sequel Addams Family Values two years later and Addams Family Reunion two years after that, among other popular films of the 1990s and 2000s.

Even so, Burton considers The Addams Family a “mild disappointment”, finding the themes and imagery to be “derivative” of some of his other works, in particular Jonathan Scissorhands, rather than something wholly original and unique[9]. Several critics came to the same conclusions. The resemblance to aspects of the 1988 flop Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, in particular the Edie McClurg character and her lynch mob, were also on his and the critics’ minds.

Still, though, the “Skeleton Crew” family, increasingly seen in Disney as a lovable bunch of outcast weirdoes and an “island of misfit toys” even within the already strange world of Disney, would gain massive respect within the industry following the success. The Crew were, it seems, a creepy, spooky, ooky family of their own that marched to the beat of their own drums. They gained increasing recognition from the Disney Studios board as unique talents best left to their own devices with only minimal shepherding by executives.

This recognition would soon translate into a newfound freedom: being spun off into their own semi-independent production studio. But that’s a tale for next time.

---

[1] An educated guess on my part. And nod to @nathanael1234 for correctly guessing that Disney would do this in this timeline and to @HonestAbe1809 for correctly guessing that Burton would direct!

[2] Putting words in his mouth (not an actual quote, obviously). Does he really feel this way or is this hyperbole for the press? You decide!

[3] Was approached by Orion to direct in our timeline, but was busy doing Batman Returns, so they went with Barry Sonnenfeld.

[4] Sorry @TheMolluskLingers, but one out of two ain’t bad, right?

[5] Fans will debate, mostly in jest, whether this makes Thing officially a Muppet.

[6] The visual similarities will lead to fan theories that The Addams Family is a Prequel to Jonathan Scissorhands, with the theory being that the Addams Family move out and the Inventor moves in.

[7] The role will be quite similar to her role as Chastity Pariah in the 1988 Elvira: Mistress of the Dark film.

[8] Though, alas, not as great as the chemistry between Raul Julia and Huston in our timeline.

[9] Here, hold this lampshade for me.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Star Trek VI Passes the Torch (1991)
From Trektronic Netsite, November 19th, 1997

Six years ago, we Trekkers said a bittersweet goodbye to the Original Series Star Trek Crew in Star Trek VI: The Last Voyage. It was at once the end of an era, the beginning of another era, a celebration of a quarter century of Trek, a fond farewell to the crew of the NCC-1701 and -1701A, and a warm hello to the Next Generation.

On one hand, it was widely considered the best Trek film since The Wrath of Khan, and indeed like that film it was directed and co-written by Nicholas Meyer. On the other hand, it saw the sacrifice of beloved characters and marked the official passing of the torch from Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, and the rest over to Riker, Data, Geordie, and the rest, whose next film comes out soon (I’m grabbing my tent!!).

+

+ a bit of

= Star Trek: The Last Voyage! (complicated enough for ya’?)

Now, STVI is a unique film even by the standards of Trek. It’s the only Trek film so far to feature a crossover between crews (though rumors persist that the coming film will feature a brief VOY crossover). It was also the only Trek film to feature two parallel plotlines. And it’s amazing that the results were as good as they were, particularly given that the development of this film an insane mix of attempted scripts and strange ideas and fan frustration!

It all begins in 1989. The mediocre response to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was casting a long shadow. TNG was making up for lost time on TV with Picard and Riker et. al, but Triad head Frank Manusco was seriously considering the future of the franchise. With the 25th anniversary of Star Trek approaching, there was a feeling in the halls of Trek that something BIG was needed. But Manusco, increasingly disturbed by the growing production costs (driven largely by the pay for the principal actors) and the dwindling returns of the franchise, was looking for ways to cut costs.

Several ideas were considered. Trek producer Harve Bennett revisited an idea that Ralph Winter had for the fourth film. Called “The Academy Years”, it would have been a prequel featuring new, younger actors to play Kirk, Spock, and the rest[1]. The cast and the fans both revolted at this idea. Chekov actor Walther Koenig penned a treatment called “In Flanders Fields” that would have seen all of the original crew save Spock and McCoy killed in action while saving the Federation. Manusco approached Leonard Nimoy, who presented a couple of ideas of his own: one involving a crossover with the Next Generation crew and another featuring a Berlin Wall Comes Down in Space scenario[2].

The producers of the Next Generation were hesitant to pause filming on The Next Generation and the latter idea was thus gaining traction. Nicholas Meyer began working on a screenplay involving a “space Chernobyl” and a Gorbachev-inspired Klingon Chancellor when the Season 3/4 Cliffhanger to TNG aired to great controversy. Trek fans were screaming about the assimilation of Picard and the rise of Riker as Captain. Suddenly Bennett was under considerable pressure from Manusco to “make peace with the fandom” and buff up Riker’s cred as Captain. The idea for a crossover was resurrected, hoping to throw a time travel angle into things. Although irate at the last-minute change, Meyer added in a subplot involving the Borg, who have accessed Picard’s memories, sending Locutus/Picard and a Borg team back in time to disrupt the events of what would have been the “moment of peace” between the Federation and Klingon Empire.

There were more changes. Gene Roddenberry, weak and near the end of his life, objected fiercely to many of the elements, in particular a subplot involving having many Federation people willingly participating in a plot against the peace and had to be placated through strategic rewrites that included the quasi-mind control aspect[3]. Entire sections that reintroduced the individual original Crew in a “where are they now” from the early “past only” treatment were scrapped to make time for the new “future” elements. An entire set piece involving Kirk being captured and put on trial by the Klingon Empire, complete with an exciting escape from a prison planet, was cut. Similarly, many of the Shakespearean references and themes were scaled back into a few thematically-linked quotes. Finally, and most controversially, a key element of Koenig’s treatment was adopted: the deaths of characters.

The results were complex with a lot of moving pieces, and had a lesser writer than Meyer been working the screenplay, it would likely have fallen apart, been in a rush to squeeze it all in, or swollen into a three-hour movie. As it was, focus for individual actors was lost in the shuffle and costs were all but guaranteed to swell despite Manusco’s desires to reduce them. A cameo with Eddie Murphy’s Admiral Synor was cut entirely to save money. The resulting film ended up divided between two narratives: a “past” narrative centered around Kirk, past-Spock, and Riker’s team trying to unravel a nefarious conspiracy to stop the emerging Federation-Klingon peace process, and a “future” narrative with Data, future-Spock, and Worf attempting to hide from the Borg cube while distracting it from further interference with the past.

The film begins in the “future” world of TNG, with a major battle between the USS Enterprise-D and a Borg cube. Fans of TNG immediately recognize it as an edited and updated version of the battle from “The Best of Both Worlds” as Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and the Enterprise attempt to battle the cube that holds Captain Picard, now assimilated into Locutus. As the newly configured Dish weapon fires and destroys the cube, Captain Riker awakens from his quarters in a sweat. He’s pulled to the bridge where Second Officer Data (Robert Englund) informs him that they have received an encrypted high priority notice from Star Fleet Command. Riker takes the message and discovers that they are to rendezvous with a warp shuttle with a special passenger. Riker is annoyed that his primary mission is getting disrupted, but he’s told by the Admiral that the shuttle’s passenger will have his new mission, which is to be their only priority.

They meet the shuttle and the passenger is Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy), who has a pair of Bynars with him. He directs the Enterprise to a set of coordinates, but won’t tell anyone, not even Riker, what awaits them other than “a temporal anomaly”. Data notes, “curiously”, that they are the coordinates of “The Enterprise-A Incident” of 2293. Meanwhile, Geordie LaForge (Levar Burton) is shocked to see the Bynars installing a cloaking device in the engineering bay, which they are “under highest orders” to install. “Isn’t it against the Treaty of Algeron to install one of these?” asks Geordie. The Bynars discuss things in their binary language and reply, simply, “Yes.”

(Image source “tvtropes.com”)

The Enterprise-D arrives at the coordinates to find a Borg Cube, which is shooting a green beam into a spot in space. Riker goes to Red Alert and is advised by Spock to initiate the cloaking device, which he does. Spock then informs them that Star Fleet’s Department of Temporal Investigations has intelligence indicating that Captain Jean Luc Picard, or Locutus of Borg, is believed to be on the cube. This revelation shocks the crew, who can’t believe that Picard is alive. “Technically,” says Spock, “Picard is not alive. At least not as you knew him.”

Spock informs them that Temporal Investigations believes that the Borg, having assimilated Picard’s memories of Federation history, are attempting to disrupt the events of the “last voyage” of the crew of the USS Enterprise-A with the intent of disrupting the historical events that, along with the Enterprise-C incident, led to the ongoing peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. They believe that the Borg hope to turn the various factions of the Alpha Quadrant against one another in a divide-and-conquer strategy to expedite assimilation. Spock then gives Riker a memory stick with sealed orders. He is to assemble an away team, which will include one of the two Bynars, and take them through the wormhole that Temporal Investigations has determined will be opening shortly. Once there, they will intercept and disrupt the Borg’s mission and maintain the “peace timeline”.

Riker assigns Commander Shelby to the bridge and leads the away team, bringing LT Commander Yar (Rosalind Chao), Ensign T’Lon (Lukas Haas), and Bynar Beta-007672, along with three redshirts.

Ambassador Spock and Bynar Alpha-007672 will stay in the present day. Geordie and LT Worf (Michael Dorn) will remain in the future as well, the latter for obvious reasons.

(Image source “jeffreyharlan.com”)

Riker and his team enter into the warp shuttle just as Data reports that a “temporal rift” has opened and that the Borg Cube has launched a small spheroid into it. With timing critical, the Enterprise-D decloaks and Riker’s team launches, T’Lon piloting. As the Enterprise-D fires at the Cube as a distraction, putting itself between the Borg and the rift to block all fire on the shuttle, the warp shuttle flies into the rift.

As the strange lights and turbulence of the rift shake the shuttle, T’Lon and Riker exposit the history of the Last Voyage, which is portrayed as a mission of peace where Kirk and Spock and the rest of the crew of the USS Enterprise, helped by the USS Excelsior and Captain Sulu, defeated a coup attempt by group of rogue Klingons. This event allowed Chancellor Gorkon to sign the “Charter of Omicron”, which was necessitated following the “Praxis incident” that saw a strategically critical Klingon moon destroyed in an accident. It was the start of a long process of de-escalation and lasting peace with the Klingon Empire, but the battle cost the lives of several crew, including Captain Kirk himself.

The film then cuts to Trek Past where the USS Excelsior, led by Captain Sulu (George Takei), is patrolling the Klingon Neutral Zone. Suddenly there’s an alert and a huge shockwave strikes the ship, shaking it and spilling Sulu’s tea. They fly forward to investigate and record massive fluctuations of antimatter radiation, and determine that the shockwave originated at the critical power generating moon of Praxis.

Meanwhile the Borg Spheroid, now revealed to be crewed by Locutus/Picard, and Riker’s shuttle both emerge from the rift only to be hit by the shockwave, which scatters them light years apart. Riker and the team discuss where to go to find and stop the Borg. T’Lon speculates that they will be heading to find and destroy the USS Enterprise-A, given the ship’s critical role in the defeat of the coup attempt. Riker finds that to be the “logical and likely” plan, and they set out to where the historical records indicate the Enterprise-A will be so they can intervene and save them. Riker mentions how he “always looked up to Captain Kirk” and sees this as a “chance to say ‘thanks.’”

The film then cuts to the bridge of the USS Enterprise-A where Captain Kirk’s log exposits how he and the crew are on the way back to Earth, where Kirk will retire with the rank of Admiral restored and the Enterprise will be retired as a museum ship. He speculates that he might “retire to Montana.” Uhura interrupts him to report a message from Star Fleet. The Admiral (reportedly originally going to be Eddie Murphy’s Admiral Synor) then diverts the Enterprise to the Neutral Zone to meet Klingon Chancellor Gorkon and escort him to Earth for negotiations. Kirk, owing to his "warrior's reputation", has been "specifically requested" by the Klingon Chancellor. Kirk resents this assignment, still not fully trusting of the Klingons after one killed his son.

They are in hyperspace when Spock suddenly raises his eyebrow and asks Chekov to run a “tachyon scan”. Asked why he replies that he’s “not sure, but it seems imperative.” Sure enough, the scan reveals a small ship has appeared behind them. Spock alerts Kirk, who calls out to the pursuing ship over all comms bands. The reply (audio) states, “This is Captain Riker of the U…of the shuttle ‘Schrödinger’ requesting emergency docking under code two-two-eight-one-three.”

It cuts to Riker on the shuttle, where he says he hopes that “the historical code database is accurate.” Kirk (audio) ascents to the docking and the old and new Enterprise Captains meet at last, with Riker acting a bit star-struck. Riker manages to inform Kirk and past-Spock about being from the future. When they show suspicion, T’Lon advises Spock to mind-meld with the Bynar. When Spock does, he confirms to Kirk that Riker is truthful. He also later talks with T’Lon, who acknowledges that, yes, his intuitions are correct and that Spock is now very loosely linked via the Bynars to his future self, warning “you must keep this link, or we will be trapped in the past.”

Kirk, Riker, Chekov, and Yar prepare for the assault from the Borg Spheroid, developing special scanners based in part on future science to detect the tachyon particles that the time travelling vessel should still emit from the journey. But surprisingly, the Borg never show. “Where are they?” Riker muses.

It cuts to the Borg Spheroid where Locutus stands among the other eight Borg. The cloaked Spheroid approaches the USS Excelsior, which sits near the Neutral Zone across from three Klingon Cruisers.

We then cut to a hallway on the Excelsior where LT Saavik (Kirstie Alley) is walking alone and we see a pair of Borg beam in behind her. One stuns her with some sort of blue beam while another shoots a green laser into her eyes. They then beam away. Saavik shakes her head briefly and walks on. It cuts back to the Spheroid where the nine voices of the Borg, including Picard’s, say as one in a machinelike cadence, “Alpha protocol initiated…proceed to Beta protocol.”

(Image source “pinterest.com”)

The Spheroid then flies on towards the Klingon vessels.

The film then returns to the future, where the Enterprise-D is dodging Borg fire. Bridge shaking, Shelby tells Leslie to engage the cloaking device, which they do. The Borg cube scans space with a green beam, but doesn’t see them. Future-Spock exposits about the advanced cloaking technology, but warns that eventually the Borg scan will find the right “phase superposition” to find them. “We just have to stay hidden until the away team returns,” says Data. “By my calculations we have less than 48 standard hours.”

Back in the past, Enterprise-A has reached the Neutral Zone (and is greeted by Captain Sulu), but there’s a hanging tension in the air as they plan their next move. It is clear to Spock and Kirk that Riker isn’t telling them everything, which Spock finds “the logical choice” to avoid disrupting the very timeline that they wish to save. Kirk can tell that Riker is anguished about something even so. Riker asks Kirk how he thinks they should proceed. “Logically,” says Kirk, looking to Spock, “We should proceed as we would have had you not arrived. I plan to greet the Klingon Chancellor as ordered.”

The Enterprise-A arrives in time to meet the Klingon battlecruiser Kronos One, which holds the Chancellor. Kirk greets the Klingon Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner) on the Enterprise in a large ceremony that includes Captain Sulu of the Excelsior and Saavik. Riker is there as well, dressed as a Lieutenant Commander in the old generation uniform. Gorkon introduces his Chief of Staff, General Chang (Christopher Plummer), who seems intrigued in particular by Tasha Yar, saying she “has the eyes of a Klingon”. The assembled Federation and Klingon officers have a tense dinner where the promise of peace is strained by the lingering distrust on all sides. Gorkon and the Klingons return to his ship, which flies parallel to the Enterprise-A.

After the meal, and too much Romulan Ale, Kirk expresses his distrust of Klingons in a tense log entry. He’s then greeted by Saavik, who requests to remain on the Enterprise for an “extended audience with [her mentor] Spock,” noting that Captain Sulu has given his permission to the requests. Kirk nods and acquiesces to the request. Saavik then meets with Spock, and the two discuss the nature of the peace project and Spock expressing the logic of hope and trust and Saavik expressing the logic of suspicion. They then head off to their staterooms to sleep and prepare for the next morning’s meeting with the Klingons.

Suddenly, as everyone sleeps, a torpedo fires, and slams into Gorkon’s ship, knocking out the artificial gravity. Two Star Fleet personnel with opaque helmets and magnet boots beam aboard the Klingon ship and assassinate Gorkon. Colonel Worf (Michael Dorn, playing the TNG character’s grandfather) rushes to the dying Gorkon’s side. Gorkon says to Worf that he was “like a son” to him and makes Worf swear an oath to him that Worf will “see the peace process through, regardless of what price you must pay.”

Back on the Enterprise-A, Kirk rushes to the bridge and asks what happened. Uhura tells him that the Klingon ship was attacked, and Scotty confirms that the records show that the attack came from the Enterprise. Riker tells Kirk and Spock that “this didn’t happen according to history” and seems as shocked as anyone. He says that he suspects the attack must have come from the Borg, but the Bynar indicates that the special scanners they installed are not detecting any tachyon residue.

Back on the Kronos, the gravity is restored. Chang assumes command of the ship and demands that the Enterprise surrender, which Kirk immediately complies with. Against the advice of the rest of the bridge, he allows the Klingons to beam him aboard and throw him (after a vigorous assault) into their brig. He maintains his innocence, but “for the sake of peace” will not fight them. They plan to return to Klingon Space, but Captain Sulu and the Excelsior block their return, imploring them to trust that the Enterprise couldn’t and wouldn’t have attacked. But Chang plays a recording of Kirk’s log entry where he expressed his eternal enmity towards the Klingons for killing his son, shocking everyone on how he could have gotten access to the highly encrypted log files. Yar suspects an inside job, but Spock assures her that he has vetted all crew.

Riker immediately organizes an away team to take the shuttle Schrödinger and “find the Borg, wherever they are,” certain that he can clear Kirk’s name by exposing the Borg. Riker, Chekov, Yar, and some Red Shirts take the shuttle and fly towards the neutral zone, scanning for the Borg. Spock assumes command of the Enterprise and orders a hand-count of all torpedoes. Word comes in from Captain Sulu that the Klingons are massing along the Neutral Zone and demanding Kirk. Star Fleet Command tells Spock to attempt to hold the peace but “be prepared for a fight if you must. Do not let Kirk fall into the hands of the Klingons.”

In a private meeting with Spock, T’Lon notes that General Chang was the one to lead a coup in the history as he learned, and died trying to capture the Klingon ship and kill Gorkon, all with the intent of starting a war with the Federation in a bid to “die on his feet rather than live on his knees.” Only the intervention of Kirk and the Enterprise saved Gorkon and the peace. T’Lon suspects that “events have already been irreversibly altered.”

In the future, the Enterprise-D is still hiding from the Borg. In a reference to Das Boot, the Borg begin exploding random torpedoes in an array as the Enterprise-D attempts to “run silent”. Worf asserts that he can’t abide by this “hiding” and that it’s “affecting me in strange ways,” acting slightly off-kilter. Future-Spock then announces that “something has changed,” but can’t articulate what. Data notes that, according to records, Worf’s grandfather was part of the diplomatic team, and wonders if that’s linked somehow.

Back in the past, as the standoff with the Klingons continues, Kirk is being tortured. Kirk screams in pain, but refuses to “falsely confess” to the killing of Gorkon. The torturer advises Chang that Kirk’s health is failing and that he will “surely die” if the torture continues. Colonel Worf, now Chang’s first officer, advises that “the death of Kirk will surely mean war.” Chang says, simply and gravely, “so be it. Continue the interrogation.”

On the shuttle, Riker’s team manages to use the tachyon detection system to finally discern the location of the Borg Spheroid and fly to intercept. Riker, Chekov, Yar, and the Red Shirts beam over to fight the Borg. In the ensuing fight two Red Shirts die along with several of the Borg. Chekov is shot and mortally wounded attempting without success to prevent the Borg from setting off a self-destruct sequence. Riker captures Locutus hoping to de-assimilate him, and beams the away team back to the shuttle just before the Borg ship explodes. Back on the shuttle Chekov dies dramatically in Yar’s arms, requesting that she “save the Captain.” Riker, fighting back rage, confronts Locutus, who says, simply, “the protocols have been initiated. Change is spreading. Resistance is futile.”

Back on the Enterprise-A, Scotty confirms that all torpedoes are accounted for and that “someone with a very high clearance has altered the records.” He recommends that they pass the data on to Chang, but Spock notes that it “will not matter, for Chang logically wants war, and will claim that they are a forgery.” Instead, he has Uhuru open up the channels and tells Chang and all within earshot that “The Enterprise has determined that Captain Kirk acted under emotional duress and without Federation permission,” and tells Chang that he may proceed to Klingon Space. All of the crew and Sulu are shocked and outraged, but Spock cites “the needs of the many” and that one man, even a friend, is not worth the cost in lives that a war would bring.

On the Klingon ship, Colonel Worf requests permission to set a course for Kronos from General Chang, but Chang seems shocked and even irate. He orders Worf to kill Kirk and fire on the Enterprise. Worf, recalling his oath to the dying Gorkon, refuses, and draws his disruptor. Chang declares “mutiny!” and a fight breaks out with the Klingons all choosing sides. Chang hits a button on his wrist and beams away as Worf’s forces emerge victorious.

Suddenly we cut to the bridge of a Bird of Prey in time to see Chang beam in. He orders them to “fire on the Kronos One.” We now see a torpedo fire from a still-cloaked Bird of Prey – something that “should not be possible” at that point in history – and slam into the Kronos One.

On the Enterprise-A, Spock orders red alert and orders the Enterprise to “take up a position between the Kronos and where the torpedo was launched.” Saavik dissents, loudly, but Spock makes it clear that they must “prevent a war.”

On the Excelsior, Sulu, catching on quickly, orders the Excelsior to “match the Enterprise’s orbit around the Kronos” and “protect that ship!” When asked by LT Rand (Grace Whitney) why, he says, simply, “Whatever Captain Spock is doing, I trust his judgement.”

In the future on the Enterprise-D, Worf is suddenly complaining of dizziness, and then starts fading in-and-out of existence. Dr. Crusher rushes in and declares that she “can’t detect anything wrong with him.” Data exposits “His ancestor’s life must be in temporal flux,” and that “if he dies, Worf will never have been alive to begin with.”

Back in the Past, Chang, in the cloaked ship, continues to blast the Enterprise and Excelsior with torpedoes as they circle blindly. Chang quotes Shakespeare the whole while.

(Image source “memoryalpha.fandom.com”)

On the Enterprise-A, Spock gives the Bridge to the watch officer and calls Saavik aside. He notes that ship’s records show that she alone was outside of Kirk’s quarters when he was recording the stolen log entry and forces a mind meld on her. He thus determines that she is the one who falsified the records, gains the name of a Star Fleet co-conspirator, and verifies that she’s been in secret communications with General Chang, with whom she had a “shared goal”. She confesses that it was only “Logical” to eliminate a threat when the opportunity presented itself, citing the needs of the “many more lives lost to a future war with a stronger Empire.” Chang, she relates, simply sees no honor in peace, only capitulation. Spock laments her choice and has security take her to the brig along with the co-conspirator, a human male.

At the recommendation of Uhura, Scotty and Bones, advised by Yar’s future knowledge, devise a Torpedo that can “track the positron residue” from the Klingon ship’s exhaust. They have the torpedo ready as Spock returns to resume command. He immediately orders the torpedo fired, which homes in on the Bird of Prey, striking home as Chang says “To be, or not to be.” The Excelsior and the Enterprise home in on the blast site and pelt the cloaked vessel with torpedoes, destroying it in a massive explosion.

On the Kronos One, Colonel Worf orders Kirk freed. Kirk is escorted to the bridge where Worf awaits. The two speak briefly of their history shared distrust of one another, but each acknowledge the other’s inherent honor and decency and commitment to peace, clasping each other’s arm. Worf opens a three-way communication with the Enterprise and Excelsior and acknowledges that their scans have confirmed that the torpedo that struck the Kronos was from the Klingon ship, not from the Enterprise. Spock reveals that conspirators have been identified on the Federation side, but that “for now, the champions of peace are victorious.”

The shuttle Schrödinger, meanwhile, docks with the Enterprise-A. Locutus confirms to Riker that the Borg have “initiated” the actions of two Star Fleet officers and two Klingon Officers. “You brainwashed them?” says Riker.

“We did not input any ideas into their heads that they did not already possess,” he replies[4].

“Which other Klingon?” asks Riker.

“Protocols are initiated,” says Locutus, “Resistance is futile.”

The scene then fades from Locutus’s eyes to the eyes of a young Klingon on the bridge of the Kronos, who turns and stares at Worf. He draws his disruptor and goes to blast Worf, but Kirk sees, and dives in the way, mortally wounded. Worf shoots and kills the Klingon, and rushes to Kirk’s side. “You sacrifice yourself for an enemy?” Worf asks.

“You…are no enemy,” says Kirk, grasping Worf’s arm, and dies. Colonel Worf swears to all that hear him, including the Federation Captains still on the screen, that “by the honor of both Gorkon and Kirk, martyrs for peace, I swear that I shall see peace between our two peoples!”

There is a massive funeral for the many fallen, with the caskets of Kirk, Chekov, and Gorkon all sent into orbit around a star in the Neutral Zone as a symbol of their sacrifices for peace. Riker is there with Spock, now-General Worf, and Sulu. With the peace process renewed and the conspirators rooted out (Saavik is sent to Vulcan for a long deprogramming), Riker acknowledges that it is time for his team to return to their own time. They launch in the shuttle with past-Spock, who mind melds with the Beta Bynar again.

In the future, future-Spock suddenly realizes that “they are ready,” and mind melds with the Alpha Bynar. A temporal rift opens between the Enterprise-D and the shuttle, past-Spock beams back to the Enterprise-A and the shuttle flies through the rapidly closing rift.

Back in the future, the Borg immediately lock on to the shuttle and attack it. Geordie is just able to beam all of the crew off of it and on to the cloaked enterprise before it is destroyed. Worf, clearly feeling better, notes that the Borg have now locked their weapons on to them! “They’re tracking Picard!” Leslie states.

“Then beam him back to them,” Riker says, coldly.

They beam Locutus/Picard back over to the Borg ship and warp away.

Riker and Spock exchange a few last words on the whole affair, Spock clearly remembering the entire meeting with Riker. Spock notes that while “the details [of the event] have changed,” the ultimate result, Kirk sacrificing himself to save peace with the Klingons, has been maintained, preserving the peaceful coexistence with the Klingon Empire that still reigns after a century.

Back on the Enterprise-A, past-Spock gives one final Captain’s Log, speaking of “his friend” Kirk’s legacy, which will forever be a legacy of sacrifice such that “no man…no one, need live in fear and hatred from another.”

It all ends with a dedication to the memory of Gene Roddenberry, who passed away earlier that year. This led many fans to assume (incorrectly) that Kirk’s death was added in late as a way to honor Roddenberry somehow. In truth, the death was planned from the beginning, with Shatner mixed on the whole thing, but happy to have a meaningful, heroic death.

STVI screened in December of that year, and critics were largely mixed on it, finding the mix of time travel plot and Cold War analogy a bit overwrought. Roger Ebert in particular noted that they would have done better to focus on “one aspect or the other.” Trekkers, however, mostly loved (or at least liked) the film, and it’s often ranked as the second-best original crew film after The Wrath of Khan. The exciting visuals, chance to see Old and New Trek characters interact, epic and monumental feel, lasting consequences, and clever writing and dialog combined to make it popular with the majority of the fandom. Some Trekkers found the plotline too derivative of TNG Season 3’s “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and many Trekkers were mixed about Kirk’s death, with many appreciating that “at least he died for a reason” even as some felt that the late “took a bullet for Worf’s grandad” moment was too tacked on and too gratuitous to truly feel purposeful. William Shatner has famously tried to have Kirk resurrected on more than one occasion.

Compared to the prior installment, though, it was a step up, with fans agreeing that the “even-odd rule” was certainly still at play[5].

But what people most remember about Star Trek VI beyond it being “the one where Kirk and Chekov died” would be its watershed moment for the franchise as the film that officially closed the era of Original Star Trek movies and opened up the era of Next Generation Era movies, or the “next 25 years” as Rick Berman has famously called it.

---

[1] Eventually evolved into the J.J. Abrams reboot in our timeline.

[2] All more or less per our timeline so far.

[3] In our timeline Roddenberry’s objections to Saavik in particular betraying the Federation led to the character being reframed as Valeris.

[4] Meyer’s way around Roddenberry’s “no Saavik treason” mandate while simultaneously keeping the idea that she always supported the plan.

[5] Will break $120 million at the box office (budget of $25 million), ironically more than our timeline's version, due to the "novelty factor" of seeing the Original and Next Generation crews together. My gut feeling here is that hypothetical cross-timeline Trek fans would for the most part a) find this timeline’s Star Trek V superior to our timeline’s, b) find our timeline’s Star Trek VI superior to this timeline’s, and c) greatly prefer Kirk’s death in this timeline to our timeline’s infamous (and pointless) bridge-drop in Generations.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Chapter 8: Big Plans, Big Conflicts (Cont’d)
Excerpt from Man of Iron: The Michael Eisner Story, an unauthorized biography by Anthony Edward Stark

The opportunity to make a big name for himself in the Capital Cities/ABC company through corporate acquisitions came to Eisner in 1991, and from the strangest of circumstances. Clarence Thomas was appointed to the US Supreme Court, his former employee Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment in a news-making public hearing, and this all led to a reckoning on sexual harassment in the workplace, and in the entertainment industry in particular, spearheaded by Disney. Eisner knew that Hollywood Pictures and ABC were far from spotless in this regard, so he moved quickly to nip it all in the bud with internal arbitration, lateral reassignments to separate accusers and accused, and unreported monetary settlements in exchange for accusers signing non-disclosure agreements[1]. Quick, neat, and with minimal cost and public relations impact to the studio, it won him quiet accolades from the directors and executives and stood in sharp contrast to the press-making investigations at Disney and acrimonious corporate purges at Columbia/CBS.

His budding partners, Miramax’s Weinstein Brothers, did not escape the fallout so easily. Multiple lawsuits hit Harvey in particular. And while Bob Weinstein, following Eisner’s lead, managed to settle the issues quietly, the damage was done and Harvey was essentially forced to retire from the company he co-founded. But for Eisner, this was an opportunity, and soon he and Katzenberg were able to negotiate (under duress) a cash-and-debt buyout of Miramax[2], which became a second ABC film label alongside Hollywood Pictures. And with the ambitious and imperious Harvey conveniently out of the way, Eisner and Katzenberg were more than happy to slip into the creative leadership space left by his departure.

The DIC acquisition had also been proven a smart strategic move with the success of The Prince of Egypt. Despite Eisner’s skepticism about the picture, the film had proven a success, breaking $112 million at the box office and directly challenging Disney at their own game. Eisner and Katzenberg floated the idea of a merger to Bluth, dangling the prospect of Bluth becoming the head of a larger Hollywood Animation International, but Bluth was bound and determined to remain his own boss and waved them off.

These numerous successes all came at an opportune time for Eisner. Eisner and Katzenberg had been angling for more power and influence at ABC, even as they also began to suspect each other’s intensions. The successes of The Prince of Egypt and the successful and Oscar-beloved Dead Poet’s Society and Crazy People on top of the continuing TV successes and earlier wins, had given Eisner a growing sway at ABC, which he intended to capitalize upon. Company rumors suggested that Chairman and CEO Thomas S. Murphy was going to relinquish his duties as President to someone else, with most betting on the job going to his protégé from Capital Cities, Daniel Burke. Eisner dispatched Katzenberg to quietly lobby for Eisner to take the position, the assumption being that Katzenberg would take over Eisner’s job at Hollywood Studios.

And while Burke would indeed ultimately claim the positions of President and COO of Capital Cities/ABC, Eisner’s lobbying efforts paid off in another regard, as he was soon able to claim the Presidency of ABC Entertainment, a position that VP Bob Iger had been groomed for. Katzenberg, meanwhile, would backfill Eisner’s job as head of Hollywood Studios. Iger would soon claim the presidency of the ABC Network Television Group, and while Eisner and Iger would publicly work together, each saw in the other an existential threat to their ambitions. A quiet but bitter rivalry cemented itself.

But Eisner wasn’t done. Rumor had it that Disney was experiencing shareholder dissatisfaction over the underperforming studio returns from films that put art above profit and from the short-sighted diversion of film profits into charity. Disney Animation VP Roy Disney called it “putting the dream ahead of the scheme,” but Eisner saw it as just poor business. They were businessmen, there to make a return for their shareholders, after all, and a successful businessman realized this.

Eisner saw opportunity in his rival’s challenges. As much as he personally liked Disney CCO Jim Henson – one of his greatest accomplishments was bringing the Muppets Valentine’s Day Special to the air and one of his greatest regrets was passing on The Dark Crystal – Henson’s business missteps were Eisner’s potential victory.

Rumor held that Bass Brothers CEO Sid Bass in particular was losing faith, and as a major shareholder with a near 10% share in the Walt Disney Entertainment Company, that was a potential Achilles’ Heel. On top of the underperformance of the studios and the recession-based losses to the parks and hotels, Disney Chairman Frank Wells’ Green technology initiatives were antagonizing many of the executives in Bass’s fossil fuel subsidiaries. Conceivably, Eisner could convince Bass to sell his stake in Disney to Capital Cities/ABC, giving ABC a significant stake in the classic entertainment studio. This would not only open up strategic partnership opportunities, but potentially set up a merger in the future. Eisner himself could conceivably replace Arvida CEO Charles Cobb on the Disney board.

With all of this in mind, Eisner arranged to meet with Bass and flew to Dallas with Katzenberg and an ABC lawyer. At the meeting Eisner laid out some options for a stock buyout, such as a direct cash stock buy or swap for an equal value in ABC stock. He showed Bass his own studio’s successes in both the live action and animated areas. Bass admitted to liking The Prince of Egypt, which he’d seen with his grandkid, which made Katzenberg beam. In addition, Eisner noted his company’s, and by extension his, success in quietly dealing with sexual harassment and assault claims compared to the press frenzy kicked off by the Disney investigations.

Bass, advised by Cobb and his Strategic Advisor Richard Rainwater, remained reticent about his intent, but entertained the possibility of future talks on Eisner’s proposal.

Eisner left Dallas without a deal, but far from discouraged. The seed had been planted, he assured Katzenberg, and now they just had to wait to see what sprouted.

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[1] Also known as The Standard Corporate Way of Dealing with Sexual Harassment.

[2] Disney under Eisner bought up Miramax in 1993 in our timeline. Here, the tumult following the sexual harassment and assault allegations allowed Eisner to strike a deal earlier for ABC, and even removed the potential rival in Harvey right up front.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

(Image source PBS)



VP Quayle attacks Henson, Disney
Los Angeles Times, November 29th, 1991

Washington – Vice President Dan Quayle yesterday issued a blistering attack against the Walt Disney Entertainment Company and in particular its Chief Creative Officer Jim Henson during a Thanksgiving Day invocation. Citing such films as The Song of Susan and the new animated feature Aladdin, as well as the Dungeons & Dragons game (a product of Marvel’s TSR division and long a target of evangelical ire), Vice President Quayle has accused the company of pushing a “morally indecent lifestyles” and “pushing these lifestyles for children.”

“They have these films where they push a gay lifestyle,” he said in the invocation. “The Song of Susan. They tell us that gay lifestyles are normal, or something to celebrate. Even their cartoons. Aladdin, a story set in Baghdad where the Genie dresses like a woman and the whole thing is full of these homosexual references like Aladdin falling for the girl that he thinks is a boy. It’s a far cry from the days of Walt and Sleeping Beauty.”

The statements caused an uproar as the public lashed out at his words, the latest in a long series of gaffes and inflammatory statements from the Vice President. Stars from across Hollywood and other entertainment centers condemned the statement, as did liberal politicians, gay rights groups, free speech advocates, and liberal political activists.

“Apparently even Mickey and Kermit are too depraved for ‘Mr. Perfect,’” said comedian and actor Robin Williams, himself a frequent target of the Vice President’s moral ire. “I guess we should all follow the moral cue of a man who supports the wanton bombing of cities full of kids, the pollution of our air and water, and the mass imprisoning of young Black men in a bogus drug war.”

Late night comedians have had a field day with the statement, with Dave Letterman launching into a whole “Top Ten” skit about morally depraved Disney moments, from Sleeping Beauty promoting necrophilia to Miss Piggy dating another species. “The man thinks that there’s oxygen on Mars,” said Letterman. “Why not think that the Genie is a drag queen?”

“The Vice President has a right to his personal opinions,” the Walt Disney Company countered in an official statement, “but he has greatly mischaracterized the intent and meaning of our productions and makes harmful blanket assumptions about our company’s employees, many of whom are devout and practicing Christians.”

MGM Vice Chairman Bernie Brillstein, speaking only for himself, said, “Is there anything that twerp can’t find to Crusade against? First The Bunyans and now Aladdin. Next thing he’ll be complaining that Spider-Man is encouraging man-spider sex acts and that Batman is a bondage queen. And if he has a problem with my old and good friend Richard Hunt or the sainted memory of the great Howard Ashman, then he knows where he can stick his opinions.” Disney has distanced itself from Brillstein’s remarks.

When asked, CCO Jim Henson stated, simply, “I respect the Vice President’s right to his opinions. He’d 100% wrong in all respects, but I respect his rights none the less.”

Others have come to the defense of the Vice President, including American Family Association president Donald Wildmon, who said, “All Christian men and women should stand behind the Vice President in opposing the continued anti-Christian sin and depravity of the Hollywood Babylon. That even the great Walt Disney company has fallen to such sin, particularly from a self-declared witch like Henson[1], is a dark moment for America and a threat to God’s vision.

Talk radio host G. Gordon Liddy said that…Cont’d on A4



Columbia Mogul Ted Turner Marries “Hanoi” Jane Fonda
National Enquirer, December 22nd, 1991

(Image source Pinterest)

Oh boy! The Mouth from the South, R. E. “Ted” Turner the 3rd, the CEO of Columbia Entertainment, has married singer, home fitness instructor, and left-wing political activist Jane Fonda. Worth as much as $4 billion by some estimates, Turner, whom the movers and shakers of the southern Republican Party had once been grooming for public office and who has espoused Confederate sympathies in the past, seems a strange match for “Hanoi Jane”, but opposites attract, we guess? The bigger question is whether Fonda can actually keep the already twice-wed Turner on the straight-and-narrow and away from the notorious philandering ways that cost him his last two marriages, and at great financial cost, we might add. The private wedding in Florida was a star-studded event, drawing such luminaries as… Cont’d on A2.

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[1] Recall his statements in The Wiccan following the controversy surrounding Hocus Pocus. To say he is a “self-declared witch” is a mischaracterization of these statements.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

New York Times Movie Reviews, Fall & Winter, 1991

A Tame (but good) Adaption of a Killer Story

Fried Green Tomatoes the novel is one of the great lesbian love stories of our generation. The film adaption, alas, downplays this aspect in favor of a story of general female empowerment. Now let’s be clear that this is an outstanding film on its own merits. Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates are sublime. The cinematography and sets and costumes are brilliant. The dialog is memorable and pithy. And it’s sure to get good attention at both the box office and the Oscars. And were I not familiar with the novel I would have probably given it the ebullient praise that others have given it. But it has committed the Cardinal sin of pulling its punches. While it works well as a female empowerment tale, it’s unwillingness to touch the homosexual themes of the novel compels me to take a star from it.

Fried Green Tomatoes, Rated T for violence, adult language, and adult situations, ⭐⭐⭐



A Tale of Justice

20th Century Studios has taken a step into the dramatic with the new film Without Prejudice, a biopic and legal drama covering the legal struggles of New York attorney Geoffrey Bowers (played by musician Freddie Mercury in his first acting role) as he battles his former law firm in a wrongful termination lawsuit. The firm maintains that he was terminated for performance reasons, but Bowers maintains that he was terminated for being a homosexual and having AIDS. Producer Scott Rudin and Director Sydney Pollack have created an intense and heart wrenching story that explores our inbuilt biases, the concept of justice, and questions our culture and assumptions. Following on from The Song of Susan, Without Prejudice is the second major release to address the AIDS crisis and the first to center on the experiences of a Gay man, as opposed to the earlier MGM film, which followed a straight woman. Freddie Mercury, himself deeply affected by the loss of many friends to AIDS, gives the lead role a deep, resonant pathos and proves that his skills as an entertainer go far beyond that of music. Without Prejudice is certain to be getting a lot of Oscar attention, including possibly for Mercury himself[1].

This, but earlier, and directly based on the true story of Geoffrey Bowers

Without Prejudice, Rated T for subject matter, adult language, and adult situations, ⭐⭐⭐½



A Story of Hope

Robin Williams again proves his dramatic acting chops in Awakenings, based on the true the story of Dr. Oliver Sacks and his experiments with reawakening catatonic patients using the L-Dopa drug[2]. Directed by Ron Howard and based on a screenplay by Steven Zaillian and starring Scott Glenn as the fictionalized patient Leonard Lowe, this Orion release brings heart and humanity to the tragic story of neurological patients, giving them dignity and gravitas and showing the medical professionals who work with them to be practical saints given the miracles, small and large, that they perform for their patients. With so many other stories out this Holiday season full of sad tales of death, war, discrimination, assassination, and conspiracy, this bittersweet story of hope is a welcome reprise that is sure to attract a good audience.

Awakenings, Rated T for adult language, adult situation, and drug use, ⭐⭐⭐½



A Whispering of Conspiracy

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 was a shocking national tragedy. And ever since that date many have wondered if there was more to the story than we were told. Numerous conspiracy theories have appeared over the years, and in JFK director Oliver Stone has chosen to pursue all of them at once. While beautifully shot and acted, the plot is so convoluted and full of nonsensical and self-contradictory plot points that it leaves the audience more confused than enlightened. Stone’s attempt at a Rashomon-style multiple-narrative further complicates things. The Kevin Costner led all-star ensemble does great work with what they were given to work with, and the dialog and direction can be enrapturing at times, but the long and twisting path just never gives us anything like a meaningful narrative or meaningful conclusion—not even a meaningful non-conclusion. Instead, Stone tries to bamboozle us with a kitchen sink of side plots and suspicious characters. And while this will certainly get the Tin Foil Hat Club salivating for the “truth”, for your average viewer there’s only frustration ahead[3].

JFK, Rated R for violence, drugs, sexuality, adult language, and adult situations, ⭐⭐½



A Saga Concluded

Just when he thought that he could get out, they pulled him back in. Legendary auteur Francis Ford Coppola has struggled for years to make his own way outside of the Studio system, but ultimately, he returned to Paramount to direct a third Godfather, something he’d tried for over a decade to avoid. And you can tell that his heart isn’t completely in it.

The plot, which brings a definitive end to the saga, is a bit convoluted, with Robert Duval’s Tom Hagen working a somewhat confounding deal with the Vatican that the other crime bosses want in on even as Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), who is wracked with guilt over the killing of brother Fredo in the prior film, attempts to find a way out of the criminal life. He is aided in this by his wife Kay Adams-Corleone (Diane Keaton), though his daughter Mary (Rebecca Schaeffer)[4] is simultaneously (and incestuously) falling for Michael’s bastard nephew Vincent (Andy Garcia), who has his own eyes on taking over the family business. It’s a twisting narrative, but twisting in a way that is unfortunately confusing and artificial rather than intriguing. Tonally, it can vary wildly from dark and somber to over the top. For example, the action, which involves such over-the-top elements as a helicopter assassination, pushes the suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. The scene would work well in a summer action blockbuster starring Schwarzenegger, but in this film, and this franchise, it clashes badly with the otherwise naturalistic tone.

The Godfather, Part III is a perfectly adequate film, don’t get me wrong, though it largely lacks the immersive and enthralling appeal of the first two. It benefits from Coppola’s legendary cinematography. The acting is good and even great at times. And had this film not had the word “Godfather” in the title, it would be a perfectly likeable crime film. But with a fifteen-year gap in the production and Coppola’s obvious disinterest in the production, the perfunctory third installment just simply can’t live up to the rest of the franchise. Still, though, as a film it works well enough and will satisfy any Godfather fans’ sense of closure, for the ending, which I will not reveal, is most certainly conclusive. The film is likely to do well at the box office[5], and may finally give Coppola the payday he needs to free himself of his crippling post-Zoetrope debt. Let’s all hope that this film will be, however disappointing it is in its own right, but the beginnings of a Coppola renaissance.

The Godfather, Part III, Rated R for graphic violence, adult language, and adult situations, ⭐⭐½



A Miracle of Collaboration and a Celebration of Honor

It is a miracle that this film ever got made. A passion project of the late, great Sergio Leone, the film brought together several great names in the film industry for an epic war drama, the likes of which haven’t been seen in years. Leone first came up with the idea while producing his epic Once Upon a Time in America, the film that revitalized the epic as a film staple. Enthralled by the Harrison Salisbury non-fiction work The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad, Leone almost immediately recruited Robert DeNiro into the production. Working for years, Leone and DeNiro managed to assemble the funds that they needed (nearly $100 million by some reports) and even gained the full permission of the Soviet government. But, alas, in 1989 Leone died of heart failure and by all accounts his vision looked doomed to die with him.

But DeNiro stood up. Aided by Leone’s longtime collaborator, editor Nino Baragli, he recruited his longtime collaborator Martin Scorsese. Scorsese in turn recruited Francis Ford Coppola to co-produce. The two auteur directors and friends in turn gained production support from Triad and MGM, resulting in a 20th Century/MGM co-distribution with even Columbia, Tri-Star, and Universal lending props and production support. Leone’s passion project became the “passion of Hollywood”, a film that would see differences set aside for the sole purpose of seeing something special come to pass. And soon the Soviet government, itself in the midst of a painful transition into a new federation, offered any help that they could, seeing the film as a cultural olive branch to their former World War allies turned Cold War adversaries in the west.

(Poster by Manaen Ma on “Pinterest.com”)

And all of these cooks could have easily spoiled the broth, as all too often happens, particularly when egos get involved. But instead, all managed to sublimate their individual glory to the legacy of a friend and inspiration.

“This was for Sergio,” said DeNiro in a press release. “Nobody was going to be the Big Man here but him, and if you didn’t get that, you got shown to the door.”

And come together they did. They filmed it on location almost exclusively save for some interiors and the ruins shots, which were done at Elstree Studios and Pinewood Studios. They were given pretty much free reign to go where they wanted to, the USSR-turned-USR government eager to honor their local heroes as much as make peace with the west. Several studios offered up editing space or resources. Rival studios even seem to have obliged to give the film the December 4th weekend without pushing a major competing release.

900 Days in Leningrad follows DeNiro’s Jim Capra, a wartime photographer who gets trapped in the 1941 siege of Leningrad in world war two. It’s a brutal, visceral tale, layered with drama and addressing themes of guilt, family, regret, fear, promise, and forgiveness, all set amidst the horrors of one of the darkest parts of one of the world’s darkest time periods. This is the story of brave men and women facing impossible trials and trying to retain their humanity right up until the end.

900 Days in Leningrad is the film of all films for this winter season, and likely to sweep the Oscars if there’s any justice in Hollywood[6], for it is a celebration of all that Hollywood was, is, and can be when it sets out to do so.

900 Days in Leningrad, Rated R for violence, adult language, and adult situations, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

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[1] Rudin optioned Bowers’ story in 1987 in our timeline and this one, eventually selling the film rights in our timeline to Tri-Star, where it was fictionalized and became our timeline’s Philadelphia, starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. Here the success of The Song of Susan has given 20th Century the confidence to greenlight it up front rather than put it into turnaround. Also, in this timeline the Bowers family will get their fair share of the gross, unlike in our timeline where they got kicked while they were down. I’m assuming, given his natural performing ability, that Mercury would be a good actor, and considering his vocal talents probably able to do an accent. This timeline’s film will do quite well, making over $150 million against a $22 million budget. Mercury will be nominated for Best Actor and the film for Best Picture and Pollack for Best Director, among other awards, but will be overshadowed by Silence of the Lambs and 900 Days in Leningrad. Mercury’s heartbreaking song “Without Prejudice” will sell Platinum, but lose out to Aladdin’s “Proud of your Boy” for the Best Original Song Oscar, but win the Golden Globe.

[2] A year later due to other Williams productions that conflicted, meaning that DeNiro will not be available, as he is instead doing 900 Days in Leningrad. This version actually names Sacks rather than fictionalize him and does a bit better than in our timeline thanks to the sentimentality of Howard’s direction, making $63 million against a $28 million budget. Hat Tip to @CalleachTigerEye for the suggestion.

[3] Will become a slow sleeper hit per our timeline, eventually topping $200 million and as in our timeline reinvigorate numerous Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.

[4] Duval in this timeline gets his “half of what Al gets” and joins the cast, as does Rebecca Schaeffer as Mary Corleone, who was considered in our timeline but was sadly killed by Robert John Bardo, who due to butterflies in this timeline (as you may recall) was arrested and institutionalized following an attempted assault on his original obsession, Samantha Smith, whose own death was butterflied (recall that Smith is playing Leslie Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation at this point).

[5] It will. In fact, without the glaring cringe-inducing element of Sofia Coppola’s legendarily bad performance to make it a laughing stock (all sympathy to her…she was thrown on a grenade there), it will perform better than in our timeline, making over $210 million compared to our timeline’s $136.8 million.

[6] The Academy will give it Best Picture over Silence of the Lambs as a posthumous Oscar for Leone, who is still listed as Executive Producer and will have several acting and direction nominations, though since so many of those involved were already Oscar winners, they were passed over in favor of others, in particular Demme, Hopkins, and Foster, who will win their Oscars for Silence of the Lambs per our timeline.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Remembering Aladdin (1991)
Post from The Rainbow Connection: Exploring Disney’s Long and Troubled Relationship with Queerness netlog, by Ian Malcolm Scott, posted March 15th, 2007

Today marks the 16th anniversary of the tragic passing of lyricist Howard Ashman[1]. So, to honor his legacy I will talk about what many of us feel is his magnum opus: 1991’s Aladdin, the classic Disney animated feature. While Ashman had done work with Disney before, producing Little Shop of Horrors and contributing music to two Disney animated features and to The Song of Susan, Aladdin was his most personal creation. He drafted not just the original songs, but a full story treatment, receiving both music and “Story by” credits[2]. Ashman had long loved the Aladdin story, having starred in a school production as a child. The play spurred his love for theater and set him on his career path. And thus, he approached Disney Studios Chairman Jim Henson with the film treatment, which represented a culmination of years of his life’s passion. Alan Menken claims that Henson greenlit it on the spot.

And Aladdin is not just Ashman’s best work in my opinion, and one of the best Disney animated films ever, it is also without any doubt the most unapologetically queer Disney film[3].

Aladdin is best known thanks to Robin Williams’s manic work as the two Genies, but peel back the layers of the story and you have a clear story of a queer man coming to accept himself. Aladdin’s masquerade as Prince Ali can be easily seen as a Closet Story as Aladdin (Michael J. Fox, singing by Brad Kane) attempts to play the socially acceptable part of someone that he isn’t, knowing that he’s living a lie. And it’s no coincidence that Aladdin ultimately passes on taking the hand of Princess Jasmine and instead chooses the tomboy Abbi (E.G. Daly) from his gang, with whom there’d been multiple moments of arguable sexual tension and whom he’d always assumed to be a boy[4].

And yet the real story is about Aladdin’s relationship with his mother (Cree Summer), as demonstrated by the Oscar-winning showstopper “Proud of Your Boy”, an important relationship for many queer men. The overall plot revolves around how much he wants to do right for and by her, and about how much she is there for him and accepts him for who he is. A lot of us can relate there.

It’s totally stuck in your head now, right? (Image source Pintrest)

Even beyond this central queer narrative, the film itself is an unapologetic celebration of American queer culture. It’s an Old Hollywood extravaganza with a swinging jazzy soundtrack, Busby Berkeley numbers, fabulous outfits, and some mild crossdressing. It’s gay by every sense of the word. “Friend Like Me” is steeped in Gay Broadway culture, as is “Prince Ali”. Robin Williams, just prior to his delightfully queer performance as Mrs. Doubtfire, hams and glams it up as the Genie of the Lamp and is a delightfully snippy little bitch as the Genie of the Ring. When the two Genies argue it’s like an old gay couple who have lived together forever. The spoiled Princess Jasmine (Kath Soucie, singing by Lea Salonga) seems to invoke the materialistic hedonism of the Hollywood Divas of old, with a touch of Rita Hayworth, Marylin Monroe, and Audrey Hepburn, and to this day is a favorite in the Drag community (as is her Diva-esque song “Call me a Princess”). And the evil wazir Jaffir (Jonathan Freeman) is a vicious little queen who just drips with camp villainy like the queer-coded villains of Old Hollywood (and Old Disney!), shining all the more alongside his snarky little parrot foil Sinbad (Gilbert Gottfried).

The film also explores the dark side of being queer in America. When Aladdin is “outed” as a commoner by Jaffir in the appropriately named “Humiliate the Boy”, it reflects the humiliation of public shaming that comes with being outed against one’s will. And in an even darker subtext, “Humiliate the Boy” is also about AIDS, which was ravaging Ashman at the time. Each thing that Jaffir takes from Aladdin reflects the experiences that Ashman was going through as his body betrayed him, piece by piece, losing his stamina, his sight, and ultimately his life[5]. It is the last song that he and Menken wrote together. Ever. And knowing all that makes this scene and song all the more heartbreaking. Only Mort’s “Death’s Lament” can compete for the most heartbreaking song in Ashman’s history.

Ashman’s fingerprints are all over this film, from the lyrics, which (save for some adjustments recommended by Dodi Fayed[6] to remove some inadvertently offensive lines) were 100 % Ashman, to the story, to the deliberately camp atmosphere.

Ashman got to see a rough cut of the film just weeks prior to his passing. He was bedridden and unable to speak, but cried when he saw it. He’d never get the chance to see the finished film.

But almost like a fabulous memorial blowout for Ashman, Aladdin was a blockbuster hit. It broke all records for an animated film, making over half a billion dollars worldwide[7]. It cemented Disney as the unquestioned master of animated film. It cemented Ashman’s legacy, and makes us wonder what else he could have brought the world had the horrible disease not taken him and far too many others far too soon.

Alan Menken, his collaborator, would continue to work with Disney, both for the job itself and in honor of his close friend Howard’s memory. In a break with Disney tradition, Ashman, though not a Disney permanent employee, received a Window at Main Street USA in Disneyland at the insistence of CCO Jim Henson. It said, simply, “Howard Ashman, Music Man. Music Lessons, Original Songs, Lyrical Escapes”.

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[1] Held on a few days longer than in our timeline.

[2] See his original story treatment here.

[3] That honor arguably goes to The Little Mermaid in our timeline.

[4] The LGBTQ community in this timeline long considered Aladdin to be bisexual or pansexual based upon this relationship, with Disney officially “confirming” this interpretation in the 2010s. As to Princess Jasmine, in the end Aladdin’s friend Omar (Frank Welker) will be the one to marry her now that both he and Aladdin have been made Emirs by the grateful Sultan. As a weird bit of setup for this relationship (and one that caused those who overthink things all kinds of shock), Omar had been turned into a monkey by the evil Jaffir early in the film, and the princess just adored him as a monkey and made him her de facto pet.

[5] This sad aspect is true.

[6] He’d also advise on the costuming design choices to be somewhat less stereotypical and anachronistic, though Jasmine does briefly show up in some revealing “Harem” type clothes “behind closed doors” in her boudoir during “Call Me a Princess (Princesses Get their Way)”, and the belly dancers do show up in the background of “Friend like Me” per the above gif.

[7] As it did in our timeline a year later.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Chapter 17: Renaissance Man (Cont’d)
Excerpt from Jim Henson: Storyteller, an authorized biography by Jay O’Brian

Jim Henson didn’t bother watching the Aladdin weekend ticket sales, though the success or failure of the film may have decided his fate in the company. Instead, he was on a vacation at Lake Tahoe with his children Lisa, Cheryl, Brian, John, and Heather, voluntarily cut off from external contact. They were celebrating Cheryl’s recent graduation from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, celebrating Brian’s recent promotion to Vice President of Special Effects at Walt Disney (a special executive position where he reported to Frank Wells and coordinated the many computer and practical effects groups), and most of all just celebrating an early Christmas, complete with snow, with the family. Sam and Lisa had amicably divorced by this point and mother Jane couldn’t make it, but called in from New York where she was still leading the Children’s Television Workshop.

“I honestly couldn’t have cared less whether Aladdin was a success or not,” Jim told me. “I figured I’d find out soon enough, so why worry about it? I was happy that it did well, but what was more important to me was that Howard’s last vision was shared with the world.”

Jim may have been more concerned than he let on, however, for one of the first things that he worked on when he returned to the office was launching the Disney-MGM Hollywoodland Resort at Walt Disney World. One of the first decisions made on the project was to initiate a no-bid contract with Arvida to manage the development and construction efforts, a rather telling offering to the wavering major shareholder Sid Bass. The looming opening of Universal Studios Florida and recent announcement of Warner Brothers World and Columbia Peach Grove in nearby Atlanta overcame even the most stubborn opposition to the proposed third gate.

Stocks were up by the end of the year after a few volatile months, and up enough to split three ways, but the studios in particular had not met expectations based on prior years. The recession was still taking a bite out of resort attendance and Valencia and Port Disney were costing far more than predicted. The breakout success of Aladdin would effectively hit the “snooze” button on the burgeoning shareholder revolt, but the event served as a warning that you couldn’t ignore the financial considerations of the shareholders forever.

The close call, despite Jim’s later declarations to the contrary, led to a subtle shift in his creative priorities. Pursuing “art and charity” were noble endeavors, but as obnoxious as some of the shareholders might be, Jim had to acknowledge that he had a legal and even ethical obligation to them. And certainly, the momentary panic that he and the rest of the board surely felt when Charles Cobb first reported that ABC’s Michael Eisner had approached Sid Bass about taking over his stake likely made its mark[1].

Frank Wells liked to talk of Disney as a “symphony” that required balance and frequent tuning, with each part of the orchestra needing to get its turn to play. Jim guessed that the symphony had a shareholder’s section that occasionally had to blow its own horns. In the end, Jim realized, the Shareholders simply wanted to know that the management was listening to them, and things like The Song of Susan and Sand were just places where they chose to draw a line in the sand, as it were. The fact that he’d managed to get his way with the Walt Disney Company in the first place by becoming a major shareholder himself and using that as leverage was an irony that he began to appreciate in hindsight.

He recalled his early days in Disney where he traded two extra seasons of The Muppet Show that he had no desire to make in exchange for his passion project of The Dark Crystal getting greenlit. Surely a similar approach was possible, balancing the commercial and the artistic, using the popular to help fund the creative and charitable, just like he’d once used the many Muppet commercials to help fund the “fun” experimental stuff in the 1950s through ‘70s.

Jim worked with his studios. Hyperion offered the perfect vehicle for popular adult entertainment and MGM offered the place for large blockbusters. He noted the success of their MGM ventures with Amblin and Marvel and began looking for more options. He even dusted off the old Eisner manifesto Frank had given him years ago. While he still rejected the “Formula”, the concept of “base hits and home runs” made instinctual sense. He worked with Frank Wells and Mike Bagnall to develop a strategy for reducing risk on big productions and “arts & charity” by mitigating it through popular appeal films, like trying to line up your base hitters around your home run kings, knowing that any of them could strike out at any time.

He’d frankly greenlit or supported several films that had performed well enough in the “singles and doubles” category already: the wildlife epic White Fang, the Norwegian pirate film Shipwrecked, the successful sports sequel Tiny Titans Two: Trophy Troubles, the quirky Julia Louis-Dreyfus Rom-Com Playing with Fire, and the Stephen King thriller Thinner, made in cooperation with As You Wish and directed by his former son-in-law Sam Raimi. The Hyperion comedy What About Bob, directed by his old friend Frank Oz, did surprisingly well despite a runaway cost. Even Warren Beatty’s $20 million biopic passion project Hercules: The Howard Hughes Story[2], greenlit largely to help drum up interest in the Spruce Goose then under restoration at Port Disney, managed to make a fair profit.

And just because something was popular didn’t make it lesser. Spider-Man was both a huge hit and a lot of fun for the creative artists involved. Brian and his team had revolutionized effects with the Baldo and Christmas Ornament Rig. They may have changed special effects forever with that one! Jim knew that he needed more big effects hits like that, so he greenlit more Marvel films, not just Spider-Man sequels, but the Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, and X-Men. He also greenlit an idea that Margie Loesch had for a feature film for Fantasia based upon the Nintendo Mario Brothers franchise. Given the huge popularity of the Super Mario Brothers games, which even sold toys and T-shirts and had an ongoing mixed live action and animated TV show, Jim was sure that a Mario Brothers film would be a can’t-miss.

On the animation front, which was still, he and Roy felt, the “heart” of the company, things were still going well. Aladdin was a hit beyond expectations. Mort had its fans and made a good profit, but perhaps something crowd-pleasing in the vein of Old Disney was in order, a “What Would Walt Want?” And Roy Disney in particular wanted to do another “princess movie”. The confident, adventurous Princess Eilonwy had her fans, Princess Keli and Ysabel had their fans in the growing “Goth” community, and even the selfish, spoiled-rotten Princess Jasmine from Aladdin was (shockingly for Jim) proving to be hugely popular with girls and teenagers precisely because she was spoiled rotten and got whatever she wanted. “Call Me a Princess” (a.k.a. “Princesses get their way”) was a breakout hit and was even covered by En Vogue in 1992, albeit with definitively saucier lyrics, where it broke into the Top Ten Pop charts[3].

Just to make sure that it’s properly stuck in your head.

But a more traditional and sympathetic princess was in order. After long talks with the animators, Ron Clements in particular, it was decided to greenlight The Little Mermaid, which had been in Development Hell since the days of Walt. Princess Ariel offered a classic fairytale story fit for a classic Disney treatment. And Jim, noting the continued success of their partnerships with Studio Ghibli in Japan, worked out an animator exchange and also made a deal with Isao Takahata to partner on a completely different princess: Kaguya-Hime, the Bamboo Princess. Takahata had wanted to do the story for years, and now he and Disney would do it together. He was warned that Takahata could be a challenge to work with, but after not just working with but finding common ground and even friendship with “difficult people” like Card Walker, Dick Nunis, and most of all Roy’s business manager Stanley Gold, he figured that he could handle Takahata. He already knew “Paku-san’s” weakness was whisky. And with two likely commercial successes in the queue, Disney Animation could take a minor gamble on a riskier animation project that Steve Spielberg approached him about: an anti-fairytale written by William Stieg called Shrek.

He had an exciting new year to look forward to.

But 1992 would began with tragedy. His old friend and longtime collaborator Richard Hunt succumbed to complications from AIDS and passed away that January. It had been a long time coming with hard and painful last few weeks. Jim was sad, but also relieved for his friend, whose suffering was evident. He made sure to throw Richard the biggest, grandest goodbye bash ever. And he made sure that Richard was named one of the new Disney Legends and given a window on Main Street:

The R. Hunt Temp Agency:

For Guitarists, Gofers & Grumps

Member of the Eager Assistance Profession (M.E.A.P.)[4]

So many had been lost in such little time. Richard, Howard, Corey Haim, Corey Feldman, Hillel Slovak, and Michael Jackson. And among the other youth of LA that he knew, things were equally in disarray. Bob Forrest had broken up with Drew Barrymore and was back to using and River Phoenix had, as Jim and John long feared, begun using harder drugs himself.

Jim found himself needing something to do outside of work. With Cheryl pursuing her new career in costuming and Heather going full time to CalArts and John now getting further involved in his expanding charitable work with a new grant from Jimmy Carter, Jim was finding himself a bit of an odd-man-out on the Sunset Strip. Even Sunset Puppetry had taken on a life of its own, the young directors, writers, and puppet performers seeing him more as a patron and “president emeritus” than an active leader.

A brief affair with one of the Sunset performers named Angelina served as a nice distraction, but he craved a deeper and less superficial human connection. He called up Jane and had a long and cordial talk, but the intimacy was no longer there. He began working more and more at son John’s charity, handing out blankets or serving food or putting his old set design skills to work with Habitat for Humanity. While there, he met some volunteers who worked for a California Sea Otter rescue charity and found himself drawn into that. The population of California Sea Otters had dropped precipitously and was approaching the point of no return, and as a “keystone species” their loss would result in far worse consequences to the ecosystem than just fewer cute vacation photos.

“There is something magical about them,” Jim told National Geographic. “They hold hands when they sleep so they don’t drift apart.” He then added, with a laugh, “Wow, even I can appreciate how hippie-dippy that sounds!”

While volunteering for a Sea Otter count, he ran into actor and activist Daryl Hannah, with whom he’d briefly worked in the early 1980s on Splash. She’d also guest-starred on the short lived Inner-Tube. The two hit it off and were often seen together on various environmental charity projects. Rumors of an affair began to circulate in the press[5], though both denied at the time that their relationship was anything but a platonic friendship based on their shared conservationism (both would admit to the affair several years later). With Jim still married (though legally separated) and with Hannah still in a long-term relationship with musician Jackson Browne, the reports caused a minor stir. When Hannah broke up with Browne citing physical abuse[6], Frank Wells found himself initiating more than a few “catch-and-kill” operations to quell tabloid rumors.

Jim with Daryl Hannah c1989 (Image source “muppet.fandom.com”)

The rumors by this point had become an open secret within the industry, with Lisa chiding her father about it (“And to think that she could have gone to kindergarten with me?” she teased her father at one point). Jim and Hannah even showed up together at the 1993 Academy Awards. The relationship soon became yesterday’s news as much more shocking revelations emerged with other more bankable celebrities, though some faith leaders and conservative personalities continued to rebuke Jim and admonish him to return to his “actual wife.”

But as the 1990s continued, once again Jim would find that his personal and professional lives would start to intrude upon each other, particularly as the DisneySea resort began to take shape.

* * *​

The Board of Directors for the Walt Disney Entertainment Company, January 1992:

Ronald “Ron” Miller, CEO
Frank Wells, Chairman and President
Stanley “Stan” Kinsey, COO
James M. “Jim” Henson, CCO, President, Walt Disney Studios
Richard “Dick” Nunis, President, Disney Recreation
Roy E. Disney, Vice President, Walt Disney Animation Studios (head of Shamrock Holdings)
Al Gottesman (President, Henson Arts Holdings)
Dianne Disney Miller (Partner, Retlaw Enterprises)
Peter Dailey (former US ambassador to Ireland and Roy Disney’s brother-in-law)
Charles Cobb (CEO of Arvida Corp.; representing the interests of Bass Brothers)
Alfred Attilio “Al” Checchi (representing Marriott International)


Advisory Board Members (non-voting, ad-hoc attendance):

E. Cardon “Card” Walker, Chairman Emeritus
Donn Tatum, Chairman Emeritus
Sid Bass (CEO of Bass Brothers Enterprises)
Steven Spielberg (Partner, Amblin Entertainment)
John Sculley (CEO & President of Apple Computer, Inc.)
George Lucas (CEO of Lucasfilm, Ltd.)
J. Willard “Bill” Marriott, Jr. (CEO of Marriott International)
Ray Watson, Chairman Emeritus (former head of the Irvine Company)
Caroline Ahmanson (head and founder of Caroline Leonetti Ltd.)
Philip Hawley (Carter Hawley Hale)
Samuel Williamson (senior partner, Hufstedler, Miller, Carson, & Beardsley)
Stan Lee (Chairman of Marvel Entertainment)



The Disney Executive Committee:

Ronald “Ron” Miller, CEO
Frank Wells, President and COO
James M. “Jim” Henson, CCO and President, Walt Disney Studios
Richard “Dick” Nunis, President, Disney Recreation
Thomas “Tom” Wilhite, President, MGM Studios
John Hench, President, Walt Disney Imagineering Workshop
Roy E. Disney, Vice President, Walt Disney Animation Studios

* * *​

Stocks at a Glance: Walt Disney Entertainment (DIS)

January 13th, 1992

Stock price: $30.66 [3:1 Stock Split Jan 1, 1992]

Major Shareholders: Henson family (20%), Roy E. Disney (13.4%), Disney-Miller family (12.8%), Sid Bass (9.6%), Bill Marriott (6.3%), Amblin Entertainment (1.3%), Apple Comp. (0.7%), Lucasfilm Ltd. (0.42%), Suspected “Knights Errant” (5.5%). Other (29.98%)

Outstanding shares: 451.2 million

​

3-Year Financial Data, Walt Disney Entertainment (DIS)

Year​	Revenues​	Expenses*​	Net Income​
1989​	$5,188 M​	$4,129 M​	$1,059 M​
1990​	$5,873 M​	$4,867 M​	$1,006 M​
1991​	$6,520 M​	$5,068 M​	$1,452 M​

* Includes Park Expansions

---

[1] Hat tip to @Ogrebear and @El Pip for catching this possibility.

[2] Remained in Development Hell until 2016 in our timeline, becoming Rules Don’t Apply.

[3] En Vogue’s cover, which was a “B” side that ended up getting more airplay than the original Single it accompanied, will lead to more covers, first by Madonna in the mid-1990s, then by Destiny’s Child, then covered ironically by Alanis Morrissette, covered ironically in a different way by Freddie Mercury after he officially comes out in 1999, and ultimately becomes a Pop Standard, particularly among Pop, R&B, and Hip Hop Divas. While this timeline lost the joy of “A Whole New World”, ours alas will never get to see Freddie Mercury and Beyoncé performing a duet of “Call Me a Princess” on the 2000 “Disney’s Salute to Howard Ashman” on The Wonderful World of Disney.

[4] Hat tip to @Daibhid C for this window. Special mention to @clarkwilson6129114@gmail. and @Arizton for their entries.

[5] Rumors persist of an affair between Henson and Hannah in 1989 in our timeline.

[6] She similarly broke up with him in 1992 in our timeline citing abuse.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Setting the Stage 7: Smells Like the ‘90s

1992. The Nineties are In Effect! Big hair is out, and flannel is in. CDs will surpass Cassette Tapes as the musical medium of choice while Vinyl will begin its slow transition from the media of “geezers” to the prized domain of audiophile “hipsters”. Music too is in the midst of a full-blown transformation with the Seattle Grunge scene pushing aside the last vestiges of Glam Rock. Poison will cling on to life with “Dr. Feelgood” in 1993, but “Alternative” bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam are already slowly taking over the airwaves alongside the increasingly mainstream Hip Hop, where both Kris Kross and House of Pain parlay that all-important lesson that one should, on occasion, “Jump”.

As demonstrated… (Image source Glamour)

In another universe Disney’s Aladdin would top the Box Office followed by The Bodyguard, Home Alone 2, Basic Instinct, Lethal Weapon 3, and Batman Returns. The Age of the Sequel that was born in the 1980s was in full force and would reign on to the present day. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, by Francis Ford Coppola, would make a literal splash, bringing an auteur’s lens to the Monster Movie.

In this universe…things will be somewhat different.

Meanwhile, television would continue its transition into quirky character-driven shows and away from three-camera sitcoms. The Cosby Show would end after years of dominance[1], as would other staples like The Golden Girls, MacGyver, and Night Court (all of which also end in this timeline). Tiny Toon Adventures would end, but Batman the Animated Series would begin. Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper would debut along with a lot of doomed animated series like Fish Police and Capitol Critters. Young Indiana Jones would come to televisions too, an “edutainment” show meant to teach children history and culture.

Shown: “Reality”

The Real World will debut on MTV, ushering in the era of “Reality TV”, the first step in artificiality’s diabolical plan to replace reality itself with a postmodern simulacrum. Johnny Carson will retire from The Tonight Show, marking the end of an era. The politics of his replacement will get ugly. Barney and Friends will reach a big audience, threatening to unseat Sesame Street as the official PBS Kid’s Show. The burgeoning Internet would lead to a whole new culture of Internet Hatedom with adult men plotting the slow, torturous death of a purple saccharine dinosaur-like walkaround for kids, unable to think of a target that they hated more…until they met Jar Jar.

The Internet is not quite here yet, but is on the verge of being so, and Usenets and other interconnected networks are just starting to make their presence known outside of the universities and computer nerd culture. The World Wide Web is under construction and will soon join Guttenberg’s Printing Press and Marconi’s Wireless in the pantheon of disruptive information technologies that Changed Everything, but at the moment it’s still primarily a place for computer nerds.

Top notch prime time entertainment c1992 (Image source WBUR)

And as the 1992 Presidential race spun up, with Arkansas Governor William J. “Bill” Clinton finally chosen to “inevitably lose” to the super-popular George H. W. Bush, Television would soon start playing prime time blocks of Texas Billionaire H. Ross Perot, who throws his hat into the ring as a third-party Presidential candidate and buys up airtime out of pocket in what may have been the most expensive and complex political takedown of a hated rival (Bush) in history.

On the world stage in our timeline, US President George Bush and Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin would officially declare the Cold War over even as the former Yugoslavia continued its disintegration in a long, brutal war that will introduce the world to the term “Ethnic Cleansing”. The war’s aftermath will lay the foundation for a new wedge between the US and Russia.

Czechoslovakia will officially split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Riots will break out in Los Angeles following the controversial acquittal of the LA police officers charged with abusing Rodney King.

Barcelona, Spain, will host the 1992 Summer Olympics.

The Buffalo Bills will continue their distinguished four-year run as the Second-Best NFL team by losing to the Washington Redskins in the Super Bowl.

What stays the same? What changes? Stay Tuned.

Because Shopping Malls were just never quite big and wasteful enough (Image source “insider.com”)

And in what has to be the ultimate symbol of the persistence of the now-fading 1980s, the Mall of America opens in Minnesota as a Consumerist Mecca. Surely the Golden Age of the Mall has only just begun…right?

---

[1] It will end around the same time in this timeline, but under a fog of controversy as the shocking allegations against Cosby play out in the press, overshadowing the Last Episode.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Talking TaleSpin with its Creators
Interview with Jymn Magon, Mark Zaslove, and Terrell Little from AniMagic with Debbie Deschanel on the Disney Channel, November 3rd, 2012

Int – Studio (Chromakey)
DEBBIE the host sits in a director’s chair across from three director’s chairs with JYMN MAGON and MARK ZASLOVE, creators, show-runners, and head writers for TaleSpin, and TERRELL LITTLE, lead artist and sometimes director for the series. The chromakey background changes to show the title page and characters for the show and occasionally plays stills and clips from the series to coincide with the discussion. The AniMagic theme plays. The audience applauds.

Sort of this, sort of not! (Image source “Disney.fandom.com”)

TITLE CARD: “AniMagic, with Debbie Deschanel”

Debbie
Hello again, Disney Fans, and welcome again to AniMagic, recorded live from Disney Studios East in Walt Disney World, where we explore the behind-the-scenes magic that brings animation to life. And with me today are producers Jymn Magon and Mark Zaslove and chief artist and director Terrell Little, who brought the popular cartoon TaleSpin, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, to life.

Jymn
Thank you, Debbie, it’s great to be here.

Mark
Definitely.

Terrell
(nods)

Debbie
So, everything needs to begin somewhere…what was the genesis of TaleSpin?

Jymn
Well, it began when Mark and I were working together on Duck, Duck, Goof. That show was well into its third or fourth season and we were looking for the next project. Originally, we were planning a spin-off show featuring the dimwitted Barnstormer McQuacken flying around the world for an air cargo company, but the back-door pilot wasn’t getting the numbers that the studio wanted. So, we needed a plan B.

Debbie
Speaking of Barnstormer, let’s remind ourselves about him.​

[clip starts]

Int – Aircraft Cockpit (animation)
BARNSTORMER MCQUACKEN is flying the old rust-bucket of an airplane. HUEY, LOUIS, & DEWEY are in the cockpit with him. The plane bounces.

Huey
Are you sure this bucket of bolts will get us there?

McQuacken
Don’t you worry, my friend, there’s not a plane that ol’ Barnstormer can’t land!

Dewey
Yea…crash-land!​

Ext – Sky (animation)
The smoking airplane starts to spin through the clouds in the air as the four ducks scream in voiceover.

[clip ends]

Audience laughs and applauds.

Mark
As it happens, The Jungle Book had just been re-released and we thought, “what if we did something with the characters of that film?” We really loved the whole Baloo-Mowgli relationship, with the “bad father figure” and the scrappy, bratty kid. We proposed that Baloo would fly the plane and we replaced Mowgli with a young bear named “Kit”. We thought that we had a winner, but in truth the rest of the animation department saw what we wanted to do as blasphemous[1], Roy Disney in particular. “You can’t put Baloo in a jacket and have him fly a plane!” “It’s ‘The Jungle Book’, not ‘The Jungle Pilot’”, etcetera etcetera…

Jymn
So…Plan C. (laughs)

Debbie
And that’s where “The Adventurer’s Club” came in, right?

Mark
Yes, you see Jim Henson had this idea for an animated series for adults based upon the Adventurer’s Club from Pleasure Island, but The Bunyans was just starting at this point and very controversial and the board wasn’t willing to take a risk on an adult cartoon, so we linked up with Roger Cox and Joe Rohde about the idea of merging the ideas.

Debbie
And that’s where “Iguana Don’s Flying Circus” was born, yes?

Jymn
Yes, basically they drew up some of the Adventurer’s Club characters as anthropomorphic animals. Joe’s best was “Iguana Don”, this iguana in a pith helmet and monocle. The image had a lot of personality, all old-world charm and sophistication but just absurd enough to be memorable. Then there was the character of Pamelia Perkins reimagined as a Capuchin monkey. We named her Goldie West, and made her this sort of tough-as-nails Molly Brown meets Mae West.​

Concept Art images play across the chromakey screen.

Mark
But it wasn’t working. There was no story there, just a bunch of clever characters. We needed that central story, so we went back to Baloo & Kit, but reimagined them as parrots. Joe [Rhode] had taken us all to a Jimmy Buffett concert one time, and the fans were called “Parrot Heads” and they all espoused an attitude that was really Baloo: all laid-back in a hammock enjoying tropical drinks…

Terrell
…among other substances…​

All laugh. A knowing cheer from the audience.

Mark
…and this was the revelation. Baloo transformed into Jimmy McCaw – named in honor of Jimmy Buffett and his fans, not (points) Jymn like everyone assumes – and the kid became Kit Loro. Two literal “parrot heads”. We gave Jimmy a Gulf Coast accent and made Kit’s accent a little more street-smart East LA. Hal Smith voiced Jimmy and we found R. J. Williams to voice Kit. It actually worked quite well having parrots. Disney had a long history of parrot characters from Jose Carioca to the Barker Bird on the Enchanted Tiki Room to Mary Poppins’s umbrella head.​

Sort of like the image on this license plate (yes, this is real, Virginia is weird; Image source “pickclick.com”)

Debbie
Let’s take a look.​

[clip starts]

Ext – Tropical Island (animation)
JIMMY MCCAW is kicked back, cap over his eyes, on a hammock between two palm trees. KIT LORO looks on. The Sea Duck bobs in the azure waters behind them. Tropical music plays in from a record player.

Kit
Shouldn’t we be getting the cargo to Bananaville?

Jimmy
Relax, kid! Bananaville ain’t goin’ nowhere!​

[clip ends]

Audience applauds.

Jymn
And speaking of the Tiki Room, the whole Tiki vibe began to take over the design. Joe is from Hawaii and we decided to have the whole thing set in a fictional 1930s South Pacific crossed with the Mediterranean crossed with the 18th century Caribbean. Cape Suzette became this vaguely tiki-ish tropical land of islands and azure waters, all with a jazz age Pan Am Clipper atmosphere. One of our early inspirations had been Hayao Miyazaki's Hikōtei Jidai manga, set in the ‘20s/’30s Adriatic, and the other was a TV show from the early ‘80s called Tales of the Gold Monkey, which was this zany Belisario adventure series with a crusty flying boat pilot with a one-eyed dog in the late 1930s.​

Like this (Image source Arizona Sun)

Debbie
And the Miyazaki connection is where you came into the picture, right Terrell?

Terrell
Yea, for most of everything they’re talking about [so far] I was over on the other side of the Pacific working on Porco Rosso, which was an anime feature based on Hikōtei Jidai. I learned a lot about drawing aircraft, particularly flying boats and how they fly and splash down. Also, how they work at a mechanical level.

Mark
He was the perfect artist for it all. I’d want to have Pablo working on an engine…

Debbie
Pablo Ocelote, the eccentric Jaguar mechanic for the Sea Duck, voiced by Dwight Schultz of A-Team fame.

Mark
Yes. I imagined just some boxes and wires, but Terrell, citing Miyazaki-san, was all “no, no, you got to make the engine work right or no one will buy it.” So, well… (gestures to Terrell)

Terrell
Yea, so the Sea Duck had this split-tail look, sort of an OV-10 Bronco crossed with a Grumman Goose, but the engines were all radials, so I dug into old P&W Wasp engines and how the pistons move. I even found the owner of an old AT-6 Texan and studied how the engine repair went.

Debbie
Let’s see Pablo and the engines in action, shall we?​

[clip starts]

Int – Higher for Hire Hanger (animation)
PABLO OCELOTE and KIT are looking at the Sea Duck’s starboard engine, cowling and prop removed, which is spitting and coughing. The pistons of the radial engine are moving in and out, the valves are clicking, the rotor is turning, but all in a halting, jerky way. Smoke and sparks shoot from the exhaust pipes with each pop.

Pablo
(tongue out, listening to parts of the engine with a stethoscope as if giving a patient a checkup) So you see, Kit, the clickers go clickity-clicking and so this makes the juice go (slurping noise), and that makes the poppers pop, which makes the spinner go ‘round and ‘round!

Kit
Aren’t they called “pistons”?

Pablo
Yea. (beat) I guess you could call ‘em that.​

PABLO stops the stethoscope on a specific part of the engine, smiles, and pulls out a big hammer. He winds up dramatically and gently taps the engine three times in three spots and the coughing and sputtering smooths out to a gentle purr.

[clip ends]

Audience laughs and applauds.

Jymn
It took him a week, but to this day aviation enthusiasts compliment us on how we “got the Sea Duck right.”

Terrell
Miyazaki-san himself said it “wasn’t bad”, which is (laughs) high praise from Miyazaki-san.

Debbie
But there was more to the story than just the planes, as beloved as the aircraft are. For example, you had Molly Mallard [pronounced ma-LARD] and her young daughter Maggie. Voiced by the great Sally Struthers and Janna Michaels, respectively. You gave Maggie a Baloo-like Teddy Bear, I assume as a silent nod to the original character plans.

Jymn
Yes, exactly. The genesis of Molly comes from Cheers. Mark and I were big fans of Cheers, and at the time it was Sam & Rebecca…heck, we nearly named Molly “Rebecca”. We wanted to balance out Jimmy McCaw with a more Type A, driven, hard working Mother Figure. Molly and Maggie sort of came in and bought out “Jimmy’s Air Freight”, making it “Higher for Hire”.

Mark
Yea, and like Rebecca from Cheers she was a recent business school grad with more book smarts than practical experience, so her ideas aren’t nearly as clever as she thinks they are.

Terrell
Like Yin and Yang, or red and blue Onis, as the Japanese would say.

Debbie
And we have to see a Jim and Molly scene.​

[clip starts]

Int – Higher for Hire Office (animation)
MOLLY MALLARD is at the desk writing and typing on a mechanical calculator behind a shaky pile of papers. She looks over to see JIMMY MCCAW snoring on a pile of coffee sacks. Sighing she gets up and walks over to him. She leans in close, smiles gently, and…

Molly
(screaming) GEEEETTT UUUPPP!!!!

Jimmy
(screams and jumps) Ah! I swear, your honor, I’ve never seen…oh, what’s up, Mol?

Molly
The bills are stacking up, is what’s “up”, and we have a never-ending pile of junk in the hangar, and all the while you’re loafing on the coffee that you’re supposed to deliver to Johnny’s!

Jimmy
Come on, Mol, dial it down! Johnny’s won’t open for another three hours! Besides, I told you I’ll get to the hangar mañana.

Molly
You said “mañana” yesterday.

Jimmy
I meant mañana mañana. (smiles)​

MOLLY (hands on hips) looks at JIMMY and smiles, gently. CUT TO…

Ext – Higher for Hire Office and Hangar (animation)
A FROG lazily fishes from the pier.

Molly (V.O.)
CLEAN IT UP NOW!!!!​

The whole building and pier shakes. The FROG screams and falls into the water with a splash.

[clip ends]

Laughter and cheers.

Debbie
And there was quite a bit of relationship speculation in the fandom!

Jymn
(laughs) Yea, if I get one more fan question involving Jimmy & Molly’s “relationship” I’m going to scream.

Mark
Not that we didn’t slip in a bit of subtle suggestions here and there for the parents, so we had it coming! (laughs)

Terrell
Like a dysfunctional Brady Bunch, really.

Debbie
(laughing) But the conflict between Jimmy and Molly was only part of it; you also had rivalries and antagonists! Iguana Don and Goldie West on the friendlier side, and the fan favorite Dom Karnage[2] on the antagonistic one!

Jymn
Yes! I’ll start with Don & Goldie, voiced by the great Kerry Shale and June Foray. They and the rest of the anthropomorphic Adventurer’s Club became Iguana Don’s Flying Circus, the well-organized, highly professional rival air freight company. Everything that Molly wanted Higher for Hire to be, the Flying Circus already was, and then some.

Mark
This helped set the expectations and served as a measure of success for the protagonists. And just as Jimmy and Molly served as foils for each other, Don and Goldie, with their excellent professional working relationship, served as foils for the two of them.

Debbie
Let’s get a taste.​

[clip starts]

Ext – Piers of Cape Suzette (animation)
MOLLY MALLARD cockily confronts IGUANA DON and GOLDIE WEST on the pier.

Molly
And I’ll tell you now, that Higher for Hire will soon be leaving you in the dust!

Iguana Don
Ah, yes, that Mallard “spunk” I hear so much about. Young lady, I can assure you that I welcome the competition! It will be a good morale builder for the crew. But (checks pocket watch) I shall have to save the sporty interplay for another time!​

IGUANA DON starts to walk away in a lazy, easy going way, cane clumping on the planking.

Molly
(yelling after him) Oh, there’ll be plenty of time when we run you out of business! I’m sure your “crew” will be happy to come work for me!

Goldie
Hon, I like your attitude, I really do. But you’re gonna’ need more than attitude, an old Gulfhopper Seaplane, and a washed-up bush pilot if you’re gonna’ slice a piece out of Don’s business!

Molly
Well, hon, I’ll have you know that I’m a magna cum laude graduate from Canard Business Academy. There’s a new way of doing business that’s going to change the industry!

Goldie
Canard…impressive! Hey, if this little business of yours doesn’t quite work out, Iguana Don’s Flying Circus could always use a new Junior Vice President for marketing!​

GOLDIE sashays away smugly.

Molly
Um, yea, well, you can be my Junior VP! You hear me! (sighs loudly, shoulders slump)

Jimmy
(walking up, putting a hand on her shoulder) Don’t let ‘em get to you, Mol, they’re mis-estimating us, which means that we’ve got the advantage!

Molly
Really? Um, yea, really! First thing tomorrow at the crack of sunlight we’re all going door to door until we fill up our entire week’s delivery schedule!

Jimmy
Um, tomorrow?

Molly
Yea! No time like the present!

Jimmy
But…tomorrow Johnny and I were goin’ fishing!​

MOLLY (hands balled into fists) glares at JIMMY as steam shoots from her ears. CUT TO…

Ext – Piers of Cape Suzette, farther back (animation)
A FROG lazily fishes from the pier.

Molly (V.O.)
FISHING!?!?!​

The whole pier shakes. The FROG screams and falls into the water with a splash.

[clip ends]

Laughter and cheers.

Debbie
(laughing) I always loved Goldie, ever on top of things. But needless to say, we all need to know about Dom Karnage.

Jymn
Of course! We created the concept art for an Air Pirate that led to him very early in the process, back when Baloo was still going to be the star. If Don & Goldie were the friendly rivals, then Dom Karnage was the nemesis. We really amped up and camped up the villainy, with him being this scenery devouring egotistical would-be conqueror. He led the air pirates, because you always need air pirates. Depending on the episode they could be a big joke or a real threat. And Jim Cummings just ate that role up, and every bit of scenery around it.

Mark
He loved it. And we found ourselves shoehorning him into episodes that he wasn’t originally in just because we couldn’t get enough of Jim eating up every scene with relish.

Terrell
And we animators had a lot of fun with the aircraft as well. Designing his sleek but scary raider fighters and the big converted zeppelin flying air base they had. Great times! Each giggling hyena or smiling alligator needed a plane to match their personality. And then you got to have fun drawing how they broke apart when shot down, giving the pirates a fun Wiley Coyote plummet into the drink.

Jymn
Let me guess, footage?

Debbie
(laughs) You know it!​

[clip starts]

Int – Pirate Airship Kaos (animation)
DOM KARNAGE stands, sword drawn, as the rest of the air pirates look on. SCHNAUZER [voiced by Corey Burton doing his best Droopy Dog] stands by him, ready to assist.

Karnage
And now, my loyal crew, Cape Suzette shall tremble – TREMBLE I SAY!! – before the might and terror that is DOM KARNAGE!!​

Tepid cheers from the pirates.

Schnauzer
…and his fearsome Black Raiders…?

Karnage
…and his fearsome BLACK RAIDERS!​

Excited cheers from the pirates. Someone yells “Hey, dat’s us!”

Schnauzer
(dryly) Another rousing speech, mon Capitan.​

[clip ends]

Laughter and loud cheers.

Debbie
But Karnage was just the start of the rogue’s gallery

Jymn
Yea, we had Khan Mughali, a wealthy corporate leader vaguely based on Shere Khan from Jungle Book. We even got Tony Jay to voice him, the original Shere Khan himself. Khan had this slimy quality, like we’re not quite sure if he’s a legitimate CEO or some sort of mafioso with all of the big elephants, gorillas, and rhinos he has as minions.

Debbie
Let’s see it!​

[clip starts]

Int – Khan Enterprises – Khan’s Desk (animation)
KHAN MUGHALI, in business suit, hands clasped behind him, stares out the window of his skyscraper over the city below. MOLLY and JIMMY are in the back, two RHINOS in black suits standing on either side of them as if on guard.

Khan
And as you can certainly understand, my business runs on the tightest of schedules, so, any delays…however slight…can prove… (looks contemptuously back over his shoulder at Jimmy) …unfortunate.

Jimmy
Worry not, Mr. Khan, I’m the timeliest pilot you ever hired!

Molly
(aside whisper to Jimmy) Are you sure about this?

Jimmy
(whispers back to Molly) Oh, come on, Mols, you know me.

Molly
(looking worried) Yes. Yes I do.​

[clip ends]

Applause.

Mark
And Ivan Boarsky, who was a boisterous Russian boar who is an opportunistic pirate, smuggler, freelance spy & info broker type. Sometimes he was an antagonist, sometimes he was a begrudging ally.

Terrell
And any resemblance between Boarsky and any corporate raiders you might know is strictly coincidental.​

Laughter.

Debbie
Roll it.​

[clip starts]

Int – Johnny’s Place (animation)
IVAN BOARSKY stands at the bar by JIMMY, hand on his shoulder.

Ivan
Trust me on this, my friend! This is sure thing! We cannot lose!!

Jimmy
Can’t lose, eh? (quietly) That’s what you said last time.​

[clip ends]

Laughter.

Debbie
(laughs) You didn’t skimp on the worldbuilding. Tell us about the geopolitics of Cape Suzette and we’ll go through a few clips.

Jymn
Yes, Cape Suzette is sort of this neutral zone, unaffiliated islands surrounded by competing superpowers. You had the land of Merkia, this not-at-all-the-US-really capitalist place. Many of the obnoxious tourists come through from there on the Clipper. The main character we meet from there is the jingoistic canine naval officer Rear Admiral James K. Bluey, who is more-or-less the grand-dad of the Captain J. K. Bluey the third that Donald served under in Duck, Duck, Goof. The guy who wanted to “make things go kablooey”.​

[clip starts]

Ext – MSS Nomer (animation)
ADM BLUEY and LT PUP are on the bridge wings, looking out over the ocean.

ADM Bluey
I’m telling ya, lieutenant, there’s something in the air, a certain (sniffs loudly) scent…

LT Pup
(sniffs) You mean the garbage scow, sir?​

CUT TO the smelly scow sailing past the battleship. CUT BACK.

ADM Bluey
No lieutenant, I mean the smell…of danger; and opportunity!​

[clip ends]

Mark
Opposed to Merkia is Serpentia, this vaguely Imperial/Fascist inspired totalitarian state. Commodore Komodo, a Komodo Dragon officer, is always plotting to take over the strategically important Cape Suzette. We got Christopher Latta of Cobra Commander fame to voice him up until his untimely passing in ‘94, and then Jim Cummings took over.​

[clip starts]

Ext – Serpentia Plaza (animation)
COMMODORE KOMODO stands before a bronze stature of the Great Leader, mimicking its pose. FLAGBEARER GILA stands by. KOMODO drools noticeably, the slobber splattering as he speaks.

Komodo
Yesss, Gila, the day comess ssoon, when ALL sssssshall kneel before usss!

Gila
(wiping splattering drool off of his face) As you say, Commodore.​

[clip ends]

Mark
Aiding Serpentia is Joe Blake, this Australian snake who is a double agent and spy. A lot of Kaa in him.

Terrell
And any resemblance between Joe Blake and any Australian corporate raiders you might know is strictly coincidental.​

Laughter.

[clip starts]

Int – Johnny’s Place (animation)
JOE BLAKE is slithering and wrapping menacingly around JIMMY MCCAW.

Joe Blake
Ssssoooo, mate…you sssuggessst that you sssshould ssseek my…asssssssisssstanccceee?​

[clip ends]

Jymn
And finally, you had the vaguely communist state of Batavia. Comrade Igor Batsky, a fruit bat officer with a vaguely Slavic accent, sort of a Boris Badunov type, is the main antagonist from there.​

[clip starts]

Int – Batavian Plane Cockpit (animation)
IGOR BATSKY sits in the cockpit, talking into the radio.

Batsky
No one badmouths the glorious Free People’s Freely Democratic Free Republic of Batavia!​

Int – Sea Duck Cockpit (animation)
JIMMY MCCAW sits, listening to BATSKY, and rolls his eyes and lip-synchs along, like he’s heard this spiel a thousand times.

Batsky (V.O.)
A great reckoning shall come to you all! It is inevitable!

Jimmy
(into COMM) Sure thing, Batty, I’ll add that to my schedule.​

[clip ends]

Applause and cheers.

Debbie
Yes, so many memorable characters, good and bad.

Terrell
It certainly made Bo Boyd and Mattel happy.​

Laughter.

Debbie
But I think that who everyone in the audience wants to hear bout is Johnny, the fan favorite.​

Loud cheers.

Mark
Oh, of course! So, we began with the concept of King Louie from Jungle Book as a bartender back when we started, and he evolved into Johnny. With all of the national and corporate and piratical insanity going on, we needed a good neutral meeting place in the middle of it all, which is Johnny’s Place, run by Johnny Frum, a Jamaican Llama with dredlocked fur, who is like our Rick Blane figure. Johnny’s place is where all the shady figures cross paths. Clip?​

[clip starts]

Int – Johnny’s Place (animation)
JOHNNY stands behind the bar, wiping out a glass. JIMMY MCCAW saunters up and sits at a stool.

Jimmy
A glass of your best, Johnny!

Johnny
(looking suspicious) Let us guess, this is added to our tab, yes? (points to a wobbling stack of receipts)

Jimmy
Fear not, Johnny. After this deal, I’ll pay that off with interest!

Johnny
(dryly) I guess I be starting that long-planned business expansion after all, then. (sighs and rolls eyes)​

[clip ends]

Cheers.

Jymn
Johnny quickly became the heart of the show, the one completely neutral character who each and every other character could talk to freely, like Guinan on Star Trek.

Mark
We got Jim Henson’s friend Harry Belafonte to do Johnny’s voice in the pilot, but he dropped out afterwards and Kevin Clash, best known for Elmo, took over.

Debbie
Oh, yes, we all loved Johnny. So, TaleSpin received good reviews, some Annie and Emmy awards, and was popular with audiences, yet it was cancelled after four seasons. Why?

Terrell
We didn’t sell enough toys!

Debbie
(laughs) Copy.

Jymn
Yea, Debbie, we sold some toys and T-shirts, but to the wrong demographic! We had plenty of afternoon fans, but the median age of our viewers was higher than the target, with Gen-X twenty-somethings and even middle-aged Parrotheads making up a substantial portion. We sold Johnny and Jimmy figures and Sea Duck toys, but they ended up in cubicles, not toy chests!

Terrell
My own daughter got bored with it! (laughs)

Mark
It also came full circle and TaleSpin merch started ending up at Buffett concerts! Jimmy himself even performed at the Grand Floridian with the TaleSpin walkarounds at one point.

Terrell
Yea, with PG versions of his songs. “Why Don’t we Get Lunch at School.”

Debbie
VHS and VCD sales were strong and it’s a popular title for Direct Viewing, and a cult classic. It’s also seeing a new lease on life thanks to the Steam Romance and Tech Noir subcultures.

Jymn
Tiki bless those eccentric [censored]!​

All laugh.

Debbie
And with that, our time is up. I’d like to thank Jymn Magon, Mark Zaslove, and Terrell Little, the creators of Disney’s TaleSpin.

Jymn
Thank you too, Debbie, I enjoyed being here.

Mark
Thanks a lot!

Terrell
(smiles and salutes)

Debbie
Stay tuned for a talk with Joe Ranft about his upcoming new feature Loggerheads!​

Theme song plays, lights dim. TITLE CARD displays.

---

[1] Magon and Zaslove had a hard time finding animators in our timeline for exactly this reason.

[2] Since there’s already a “Don” (Iguana Don), Karnage will become a “Dom”. He will be just as delightfully hammy either way.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Bush, Gorbachev declare End of Cold War
New York Times, January 1, 1992

Geneva – US President George Bush and USR[1] President Mikhail Gorbachev today declared an official end to the long-running global competition and strategic rivalry widely known as the Cold War[2]. In a joint statement both leaders, citing the symbolic value of the new year, declared their continued commitment to rapprochement, de-escalation, arms reduction, and openness. World leaders around the globe hailed the announcement as the dawn of a new age of peace and prosperity and… Cont’d on A2.



Buffalo Bills top Philadelphia Eagles to win Superbowl XXVI
New York Times, January 27, 1992

Minneapolis – The Buffalo Bills have emerged victorious[3] in Superbowl XXVI following a come-from-behind rally, defeating the Philadelphia Eagles 28-24. After being held to a mere 7 points in the first half, Buffalo rallied, led by a brilliant passing game by quarterback Jim Kelly and wide receiver Andre Reed using their “K-Gun” offense, to gain two fourth quarter touchdowns, including a third down bomb, to edge out the Eagles. Successful rushing by running back Thurman Thomas kept forward momentum despite a strong defense led by Philadelphia’s Darrell Green. Philadelphia managed a good first half, running up 14 points by… Cont’d on C2.



Riots Erupt in Los Angeles
New York Times, April 1, 1992

(Image source Wall Street Journal)

Los Angeles – Violent rioting including looting, assaults, and arson, erupted throughout the Los Angeles basin following an LA Grand Jury’s failure to charge three LAPD officers in the death-in-custody of Lamarr Jackson[4] last fall. Angry protests turned violent as riot police moved in to quell the unrest. Korean shop owners became common victims of looting and arson as the violence spread, with numerous arrests… Cont’d on A2.



United Nations sending Task Force to Somalia
New York Times, April 25th, 1992

In response to growing famine in the war-torn East African nation of Somalia, the United Nations has passed a resolution (#751) authorizing the deployment of a United Nations Task Force (UNITAF) of around 50 people with the express goal of monitoring the shaky ceasefire and ensuring that humanitarian aid is delivered where needed.

Somalia, a nation bordering the Red Sea, has been in the midst of a humanitarian crisis driven by civil war and drought that has seen heartbreaking images of starvation, particularly among children. However, attempts to provide humanitarian relief have proven ineffective due to the ongoing civil war, which has seen humanitarian aid seized and hoarded by warlords. The UNITAF, to be named the United Nations Operation in Somalia, or UNOSOM, is tasked with maintaining a fragile ceasefire between rival warlords and ensuring that the aid reaches the people who need it.

With the severity of the famine and the dangerously tense situation, some are wondering if the UNOSOM will be enough, with many calling for larger numbers to be…Cont’d on A2.

Time-Atlantic acquires TV Guide, other Print Media from NewsCorp in Debt-and-Stock Deal
Wall Street Journal, May 23rd, 1992

The Time-Atlantic Corporation today announced the acquisition of several newspapers, magazines, and other print media labels, including the popular TV Guide, which were acquired from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in exchange for an assumption of debt and about $500 million in newly issued TAC stock shares. News Corp had built up about three-and-a-half billion dollars in debt following a series of small television acquisitions, including most recently the struggling Hughes Television Network, which was relaunched on basic cable, where it is mostly playing sports and syndicated TV. For Murdoch, the deal clears his debt and gives him a 2% minority stake in Time-Atlantic. The move caused controversy with the Time-Atlantic Board as many of Murdoch’s former holdings have a “tabloid” reputation, but Chairman J. Richard Munro promises to “continue to uphold the storied name of Time as a beacon of reliable and independent journalism going forward.”

---

[1] With constant slip-ups and mistakes as people try to say “USS” and “US” in the same sentence, the government and press will almost unilaterally move towards using the acronym “USR” (Union of Sovereign Republics) for the new federated post-Soviet nation. Though technically less correct, it will save many an embarrassing tongue slip among politicians and the media.

[2] A similar joint declaration came in February of 1992 with Bush and new Russian Federation president Yeltsin.

[3] While I have no personal love or hate for the Buffalo Bills, simply seeing them lose four Super Bowls in a row in our timeline was a bit of a downer. In this timeline they’re getting thrown a bone. In our timeline they lost to the Washington Redskins.

[4] Fictional person. Rodney King’s beating is butterflied, but the ultimate events that led to the riots are not butterflied so easily.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Celebrating Disney Legend Richard Hunt
From Disney Magazine, January 1992

“This party is a blast!” said Goofy (or at least his Muppet version) about two seconds before Crazy Harry set off a massive explosion. Already by that point we’d seen Kermit and Piggy arguing over seating arrangements, a chorus line of monsters singing Broadway Standards, Junior Krog complaining to his parents that his “mouth feels all strange…like it’s moving slightly differently,” and Mark Hamill flirting ineffectually with Janice while Floyd laughed on the side and Animal loomed menacingly.

“The Force won’t save you from Animal, brother!” laughed Floyd.

(Image source “Fredonia.edu”)

It’s not the typical way to hold a wake for a lost friend, but then again, Jim Henson’s Muppets (and their performers) are hardly typical.

They were gathering to remember Oscar and Emmy winning Muppet Performer Richard Hunt, who gave life to such memorable characters as Scooter the Muppet Gofer, Janice of the Electric Mayhem band, Statler (one half of the heckling old men duo), and the outwardly scary but inwardly lovable monster Sweetums. And Hunt even had a hand (pun absolutely intended) in bringing the original Miss Piggy to life before handing the now-iconic character off to Frank Oz. He provided animatronic “waldo” performance on a variety of television and movie roles, including Junior Krog in the popular Waggle Rock, and even won an Oscar playing Benny in the acclaimed The Song of Susan.

(Image source “Henson.com”)

Hunt, who passed on early this year after a long battle with AIDS[1], was born in the Bronx in 1951 to a family of performers. After a brief stint as a local weather man, Hunt began his Muppets career providing supporting Muppet performance for Sesame Street, commonly serving as the “right hand” for numerous Muppets, including Ernie. He’d ultimately become known for playing Sully the construction worker, Gladys the Cow, and the Right Half of the ever-bickering Two-Headed Monster. Fitting in almost immediately with the rest of the “wild and fun-loving” Muppets crew, Hunt truly hit his stride in England on The Muppet Show, introducing the world to many of his now-iconic characters, which will be taken over by his friends David Rudman and Steve Whitmire, among others.

“We deeply miss Richard,” said Jim Henson in the opening address. “He was one of the best of us, both as a performer and as a friend. Today we honor and remember him as only the Muppets team can.”

And when you’re a member of the Muppets crew, you will definitely be remembered in a big way. And the wake, a public event to be aired Sunday the 26th of January on The Wonderful World of Disney’s “A Salute to Richard Hunt”, is definitely BIG. And if you are expecting a sad and subtle remembrance of a lost friend then you’ll be surprised, for this is a star-studded gala event, a celebration of the life and accomplishments of a core member of the Muppets. There are songs that range from sweet to bittersweet to melancholy (but always thoughtful). There are clips of his “Best Moments”. There are guest star performances from such luminaries as Julie Andrews, Molly Ringwald, Freddie Mercury, Harry Belafonte, and Elton John.

And above all, there is the full wildness and whimsey of the Muppets on full display, with all of the Original Muppet Performers, even Jane Henson, there alongside the newer generation.

“Richard was my mentor and the man I aspired to be as a Muppet Performer,” said Kevin Clash. “He taught me not just how to be a Muppet Man, but to be a Mensch, as Bernie would say. A Muppet Mensch!” he laughed.

“How does one fill shoes as big as Sweetums’?” asked John Henson, Jim’s son, who has been filling in as the lovable monster for Richard as his health deteriorated. “How does one not?”

(Image source “Jim Henson – The Muppet Master” on Tumbler)

And indeed, Hunt’s characters will live on in his memory, each making appearances at the event to joke and banter in self-aware, pun-plagued performances that highlight both what was great and unique about Hunt himself, and what remains great and beloved about the characters and the legacy that he leaves behind.

“Richard was always smiling and laughing,” remembered Frank Oz. “Even when the world dumped all over him, he was still a beacon of light.

“Even Statler and Waldorf laugh and sing along with Richard.”

(Image source “Jim Henson – The Muppet Master” on Tumbler)

Remember to tune in to “A Salute to Richard Hunt” on Sunday, January 26th at 8 PM (7 PM Central) on The Wonderful World of Disney on your CBS affiliate.

---

[1] Yes, they say the “A” word. No, they will not address his sexuality in 1992. Yes, some assholes in the media will protest. Yes, they will mostly be seen as assholes for doing so.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Chapter 5: The Symphony of Disney (Cont’d)
Excerpt from The Visionary and the Vizier, Jim Henson and Frank Wells at Disney, by Derek N. Dedominos, MBA.

The most frequent criticism of Jim Henson that you’ve likely heard from outside managers and executives is that he’s “too generous” with his employees. He signs favorable contracts, he gives out too many incentives and bonuses, and he’s too easy on the unions. They cite the difference in pay rates and per-employee overhead compared to other studios. And there’s much truth to the criticism. Henson generally pays employees on average 8-15% higher than industry averages, depending on the position.

And yet the criticism ignores one critical fact: the overall overhead is comparable to those studios, even lower in some areas, since he has fewer people doing more with far less turnover.

“I pay my people what they’re worth,” Henson told a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in 1992. “A talented artist or performer is a one-of-a-kind asset, so why lose that person to another studio over a mere few thousand a year, particularly when their work just contributed to a five-hundred-million-dollar win at the box office?”

It was a philosophy that he had always practiced, starting with his own company. Muppet performers in particular had outstanding contracts, a legacy of their time at Henson Associates. Many managers pushed back at paying so much to “mere puppeteers”, but to Henson they were highly skilled performers, on par with an A-list actor or director. “It takes months to even get a start at being a Muppet Performer,” said Kevin Clash. “There’s a long and challenging set of talents needed to take dead felt and make it into a living character. There’s a dynamism to the hands and wrists that takes a long time to master. There’s a skill to acquiring a proper ‘lock’ with the eyes and the audience. You can’t just hand anyone a Muppet and have them go at it.”

Animatronics and effect personnel echo this sentiment. “Working a Waldo is an art, not a science,” said Fran Brill. “You’re watching the remote animatronic and actively moving it with the actions of the performer wearing it. That’s a tough skill to learn for both performers, much less master. And you can immediately spot the difference [in a performance] between a professional and a hack.”

“It’s like learning to play a musical instrument to a professional level,” added David Rudman.

“Jim’s philosophy is one of ‘quality over quantity,’” said CEO Ron Miller in 1993. “Rather than hire a bunch of cheap young performers and expect them to learn on the job and work them until they quit, Jim cultivates a small core of high-caliber performers. Yea, they make a lot more than some kid off the street, but you only needed one of them instead of the four off-the-street kids you’d go through by paying them scale, and they can do multiple roles on multiple productions, like a trained theatrical troupe. We lowered overhead by reducing the total number of employees on the payroll per project in production and reduced our training costs.”

Henson extended this philosophy to other areas, such as animation where the old Walt-era hierarchy of Ink & Paint-Inbetweener-Animator-Lead Animator got loosened up, with talented young animators getting the chance to work on small productions to earn their stripes, learning multiple animation skills at once rather than following the dull trudge through a stove-piped system. Henson also pushed for a management policy of “opportunity and incentive” rather than “threats and deadlines.”

“Jim always had a system of targets,” said animator Terrell Little. “You had a specific quota of film you needed done by a certain time – well, he called it a ‘target’, not a quota, but you knew that it was your minimum expectation – and if you got that done you had the opportunity to do more and be compensated for it as a bonus or you could take time on the clock to work specifically on whatever your personal passion project was. Some would put in the minimum and make the quota and then slack, of course, but most of us really wanted that extra pay or that chance to see our own projects play on the screen.”

What this translated to in practical terms is that productivity increased geometrically while overhead increased linearly. Small teams performing multiple roles, sometimes taking advantage of new animation technologies like the DIS computers and MINIBOG compilers, were able to crank out film at a rate that under the 1970’s stove-piped paradigm would have required combined teams up to 3-4 times larger, and saw multiple specialized workers like Ink & Paint sitting idle for days at a time awaiting “their turn”. And the incentivized side projects often became profitable in their own right. Animated shorts played on Wonderful World or at the start of feature films, with a measurable increase to viewership in most cases[1]. Other side projects became new TV series, some of which (like Little’s 1996-2002 jazzy animated series Boudreaux’s Kitchen) managed to break out and make Disney a good profit (“I’ve paid for myself more than ten times over,” Little said with a laugh).

And the talents of the individual animators soared, particularly as the side projects and “soft pitch/hard pitch” program forced the animators to think outside of their focus area and expand their skill sets. “Yea, once you get forced to write up a budget and stick with it,” said Little, “you’re suddenly made all too aware of just how expensive animation can get, and how quickly. You start to figure out ways to avoid wasted time and materials all on your own. Rinse and repeat and suddenly you have the skills of an animation producer and director and are, like, ‘how in the heck did this just happen?’”

This also translated into less “binge and purge” of the payroll. Instead of surging teams of animators when a big picture went into production and then laying them off when it completed, a policy that resulted in empty offices and time wasted rehiring, retraining, and reteaming for the surge, the extra employees were put to work assisting other projects or pursued their own projects. “Building an effective animation team is long process that requires assembling a good team that is not just talented, but motivated and who works well together,” said Animator Glen Keane. “You can’t just throw a bunch of talented artists in a room and expect magic to happen overnight. Simply keeping teams together and broadening their talents and skills through experience was a game changer for Disney Animation and the key to the dramatic increase in profitable output from 1984 to 1994.”

And those teams stayed busy. “You’d have several projects going on at once,” recalled Andreas Deja. “In the morning you might be brainstorming and storyboarding for an upcoming feature. Later you’d be cranking out sketches for a TV series or digitally coloring someone else’s to help another team meet a deadline. After that you’re working with your own team on a Short you’re producing for Wonderful World [of Disney]. And later that week you’d be asked to join a ‘Tigger Team’[2] to help a struggling project regain its footing in a tough production. You got paid more and you got far more creative freedom than at other studios, but you were expected to do more.”

Yet even with all of this considered, it remains a question of just how much other animation companies can adopt the Disney method. Disney’s depth of talent and the advantages of having a diverse revenue stream allows for them to defray risk. Smaller studios generally lack these advantages.

“Disney is the Cadillac of animation,” said Vanessa Coffey of Wayward Entertainment. “They have the skill sets and the budget and the reputation that can support the ‘Disney Difference’ as they call it. But not everyone can afford to let their name alone drag butts into seats. For a smaller studio working on margins, you don’t always have the luxury of letting your artists pursue side projects, and you lack the number of employees able to support multiple simultaneous efforts to defray risk, making each project a do-or-die, and you lack the depth of resources to ride through even a single major failure. As such, while a Disney or a WB or a Hanna-Barbera can afford the occasional risk or passion project, the small companies need to devote all resources all the time to the projects that you know will pay the bills.”

And yet whether the specific advantages of Disney’s size and reputation were the key factor, or Henson’s leadership, or some combination thereof, within the Halls of Disney the system was working, and thus Henson extended this “quality over quantity” philosophy to other areas of the company, including to the least glamorous, and most reviled performance job in the parks: the Walkaround Character. Said Parks & Rec President Dick Nunis:

Jim completely changed the game on the walkarounds. It used to be the ‘crap job’ we gave to the high school interns and entry level employees. You’d hammer a bunch of kids through a ‘boot camp’ to learn the mannerisms of a specific character like Goofy or Mickey, then send them out into the Florida heat and humidity, 15 minutes a pop, and hopefully pulled them back before they passed out, handing the sweaty suit to the next kid after a quick fumigation.

And the fumigation didn’t always work. One time we had a whole set of Donalds catch the flu after one of the first kids shed his illness all through the suit. You’d end up spending money on treating heat illness and back injuries too.

Jim instead worked to make the job a skilled performance position. And here’s the now-well-known secret: while every executive has to do a day as a walkaround when they first join the company, Jim kept doing it, coming back several times a year to the many parks. Goofy was his favorite and he became one of the best Goofys we had. But he and the Imagineers also worked hard to make wearing the suits bearable, with ventilation screens, fans, and even some blue-ice inserts to keep the internal temperature within safe OSHA limits. We later added the “Krog Vision” miniature cameras and screens developed for Waggle Rock so that the performer could better see around themselves and avoid inadvertently knocking over a four-year-old[3].

Suddenly the 15-minute ‘sprint performances’ could be extended up to half an hour or more, and fewer performers could do just as many meet-and-greets, however hot and humid it got. We ultimately had to pay them more, of course, but we hired far fewer of them. And over time they got really good. We have some ‘superstar Mickeys’ and the like who helped redefine what a Mickey walkaround could be.

And suddenly playing Micky or Minnie was a great training ground for other performance roles at the parks, not just an ugly rite of passage. Some up-and-coming stars like Wayne Brady got their start doing walkaround work. He was Tigger, by the way.

The Henson strategy has also paid dividends in Imagineering, where out-of-the-box thinking and innovations developed “on the side” have often netted revolutionary advances in audio-animatronics for the parks and special effects for the big and small screens. Advances such as Digital Puppetry and near-photoreal Computer Graphics have revolutionized the effects industry and even the animation industry. And often, these big advances began with an Imagineer “screwing around” with a system (their words) outside of their usual duties and projects.

“If we hadn’t been messing around with [the DIS station and Cray II based] “Beauty and the Beast” in the Softworks lab,” said VP Ed Catmull, “we never would have created CHERNABOG, which led in turn to the MINIBOGs that have become a huge source of profit over the past few years. Old Disney would have fired me to ‘screwing around’ like that with expensive precision equipment and probably charged me for the electricity I was using.”

The Henson strategy didn’t always work, of course. Attempts to incentivize maintenance, for example, didn’t work out since it is an inherently schedule-based (preventative maintenance) or reactionary (acute repairs when a system malfunctioned) job. In general, maintenance overhead is slightly higher than industry average, though the well-compensated maintenance teams do reliably keep Disney “down times” lower than the industry average as the company refuses to skimp on maintenance or quality maintainers.

The Henson strategy also ran into some pushback from the unions, and some drama within the union membership itself. Henson’s reputation with the union has been complicated from the beginning. On one hand, his proclivities for high productivity and long working hours clashed with union preference for set schedules and agreed-upon productivity targets. On the other hand, it is well known throughout the company that it was Henson and his associate on the board Al Gottesman who had averted a long and ugly strike in 1982 that might have broken the animators’ union, as it had in many other studios.

It was also a known fact that Henson was a dues-paying member of the Screen Actor’s Guild, a holdover from his time as an active filmmaker.

“Jim was both loved and hated [by the union leadership],” said union representative and lead writer Steve Hulett. “We all thanked him for preventing an ugly strike and keeping animation in-house rather than runaway [production that went overseas], but he also expected a lot out of you. It was flattering, but it led to trouble within the union. He’d lead by example and motivated individual animators and writers, myself included, to start putting in lots of overtime and work well beyond our core hours, which sometimes put us into a hard position within the union.”

Despite the mixed relationship, Henson and Wells gained a reputation as “square dealers” who negotiated in good faith, and it was hard for the individual employees not to notice how much better they were paid and treated than at other studios. And yet there was an expectation not just for performance and output, but for creativity and flexibility and a willingness to learn new skills and expand your duties on your own, which clashed with established paradigms on blanket contracts with clear responsibilities and established pay scales.

“Your standard union-negotiated contract is very prescriptive in terms of working hours, tasks performed, and productivity targets,” said Hulett. “The Henson protocols are very fluid and situational. It kind of catches you in the middle and many of us have felt trapped between the two poles, attempting to reconcile the competing priorities.”

The fact that the ’82 strike had laid bare how vulnerable animation unions were, given how many had collapsed at other studios, further complicated and truncated raw union negotiation power. The union heads had little choice but to remain flexible with management, while management under Wells and Henson had conversely worked to mitigate the last of the holdout confrontationally anti-union sentiment within the Disney management. The results were a less inherently acrimonious relationship, though bitter resentment lingered in many corners on both sides, leading to the occasional outburst that had to be resolved.

“The old antagonistic days of ‘union vs. management’ need to end,” Wells told the board and the union leadership in a special joint meeting at the Disney Round Table. “And that means a willingness to act in good faith on both sides. We won’t resolve our conflicting goals overnight, but we need to work towards a ‘win-win’ here.”

Henson put it more simply: “Hey, I just want people to feel like they’re valued and respected. In my experience a satisfied team member is a high-performing team member.”

The bigger debate on whether the Henson strategy, or “Henson Management Paradigm” is superior to or inferior to the more typical corporate route, however, has no clear answers. Disney animation earns a notably higher box office than the competition on average, though some claim that this is due to brand recognition. While some claim that Disney productions are inherently artistically superior and more profitable on average, others cite the reported higher on-average profit margins and lower overhead of other studios of comparable size and workload (e.g. WB & HB). But the subject of studio profits vs. overhead is more complex than a simple comparison can illuminate, particularly when “hidden costs” like productivity lost to learning curves and the practice of “Hollywood accounting” makes an accurate, objective accounting impossible. Union and partisan politics further complicate matters by adding in subjective preference, fact-mining, and volatile emotion into the debate.

For this author, the ultimate answer is: it is what it is. Disney under Henson and Wells, the Visionary and the Vizier, developed their own unique management style, and one that works for their company. It’s possible, even likely that this paradigm will not translate over to other companies, or at least not in the same way. A future, more volatile union-management relationship could easily sabotage this careful balance, and it remains to be seen if the system will survive once Henson and Wells inevitably leave.

For the moment, though, one can at least safely conclude that it appears to be working for Disney.

---

[1] In our timeline Spielberg specifically blamed Eisner’s moving the latest Roger Rabbit short to play before Dick Tracy instead of his film Arachnophobia for the latter’s underperformance.

[2] Corporate America would call it a “Tiger Team”, of course. The added joke is how they “bounce in” to provide spot assistance and then “bounce out”.

[3] DisneyWar author James B. Stewart describes accidentally knocking over a kid while playing Goofy. “Goofy hit me!”

“Gorg Vision” was deployed on Fraggle Rock in our timeline:

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Chapter 16; Babbling On
Excerpt from Renegade Suit, the autobiography of David Lazer (with Jay O’Brian)

The 1990s rolled around and when I wasn’t loafing on the porch or kicking back at the beach on Long Island, I was for all intents and purposes a freelance producer with an exclusive contract to Disney and HAH. I mostly helped executive produce live theater stuff in NYC and was in the middle of exploring a Broadway version of Mort when Bernie called me and asked if I could come to LA and work with a guy called Mike Straczynski to launch a new Sci-Fi show.

I hadn’t done much with TV outside of Sesame Street in a while, but it was clear that Mike had a specific vision that he wanted to enact and my job was mostly to act as a B.S. detector and see if he had a clue or not.

J. Michael Straczynski is an interesting guy. Very childlike and enthusiastic. He’d worked as an animator and story editor for She-Ra, a female He Man spinoff, and then went to DIC just in time for ABC to buy them out. He’d done some storyboarding for Return of the Littles and really despised every minute of it[1]. Jeff Katzenberg apparently ran the place like a sweat shop, to hear Mike say it, so he fled to the ABC Live Action side and worked as a writer on Ringworld. Rumor had it that his story and character ideas were much of what drove what people loved about the show. He met Jim’s son Brian there, who was managing the creature effects, and they struck up a friendship. He left Ringworld in 1990. He’d had enough with the cut-throat culture and executive micromanagement at ABC and instead pitched his idea for a new Science Fiction story set in a space station directly to Brian. Brian brought him to Dianna Birkenfield. Dianna talked to Bernie. Bernie called me.

The story was, obviously, Babylon 5, and Dianna and Bernie were dubious[2]. They’d just moved Buck Rogers to cable after getting its clock cleaned by Star Trek [The Next Generation], and the thought of launching yet another damned Sci-Fi series was a hard sell. It was up to me to decide whether to give Mike a chance or not.

First off, Mike’s production finances were in great order. By setting things on a fixed space station, it allowed the adventures to come to the crew, which kept costs down by reducing the number of sets. He had accounted for the effects budget both for creature effects and for the ship effects, the latter of which he wanted to do all in computer graphics, which was revolutionary for the time. Also revolutionary for the time was that he’d mapped out an entire 5 season story arc, which carried risks. It would require the episodes to be aired in order, limiting the networks’ ability to air episodes in any order they chose, reducing syndication potential, and also making things harder on casual viewers, requiring the audience to become fully invested or risk missing an important plot point. On the other hand, I read through the show’s “bible”: themes of tolerance, authoritarianism vs. freedom, light and dark, order and chaos…Jim was going to love this.

It would be a risky production, but I recommended that they give him the green light.

Naturally, they asked me to be the show runner. I would have to temporarily relocate to LA. No good deed goes unpunished.

(Image source “tvtropes.org”)

Mike and his crew put together some test footage and makeup tests. The latter was prime stuff, but the primitive computer effects, done with a Virgin desktop, looked like a bad, highly pixilated videogame. However, they got the point across, captured the physics-based motion, and demonstrated the ship and station designs. But the writing was the real winner. The characters and their species had intricate backstories and competing motivations. With some polish, it would be great.

Sure enough, Bernie and Jim saw the potential and we got the green light. We got the budget Mike asked for and Ed Catmull sent us some DIS stations and a trio of MINIBOGs to do proper computer animation[3]. Even some of the creature effects, such as the villainous Shadows, were done mostly with computers. We worked with the Creatureworks to develop the prosthetics and the animatronics and puppetry for the alien effects, including some puppetry effects for the otherwise-CG Shadows for closeups and actor interactions. We even played with digital puppetry (a long way from Waldo C. Graphic!). Between the “Newtonian physics” and the innovative effects, both computer and practical, the show became a huge hit with science and tech geeks. We even brought in some of the Creatureworks’ staff biologists to help make the alien motions the best that they could be.

But while amazing for the time, the CG effects have indeed aged. And yet the writing is what keeps the show popular to this day. And not only did we have Mike’s clever writing (he wrote the majority of the episodes), but we had some big-name guest writers like classic Trek scribes D. C. Fontana and David Gerrold or soon-to-be big names like Neil Gaiman. Sci-Fi legend Harlan Ellison even served as a “creative consultant”.

And yet, execution would be everything. In particular, finding the right actors for the amazing characters would be a critical challenge.

Station Commander Jeffrey Sinclair (Image source “giantfreakinrobot.com”)

Mike had envisioned an older white guy for the lead role of Commander Jeffrey Sinclair and we came close to casting actor Michael O'Hare, but when we auditioned Avery Brooks, who’d been Hawk on Spencer for Hire, we knew we had our Commander. He had this commanding presence and a hypnotic baritone-to-bass voice that demanded to be taken seriously, but tempered this with a hidden compassion. Not only was Brooks the first Black lead in a science fiction show, but his fantastic portrayal of Sinclair became the glue that held the series together. He was incredible. He had excellent screen chemistry with every other performer, was unshaken by green screen and effects work, and imbued the otherwise distant Commander with a deep sense of humanity that made it all work.

Lt. Commander Ivanova and Security Chief Garibaldi (Image sources Wikimedia and “hero.fandom.com”)

We found Claudia Christian to play Sinclair’s first officer Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova, a brave and loyal woman with a wry sense of humor, but locked in a tragic cycle of difficult interpersonal relationships undermined by self-sabotage. Claudia gave the role a sense of humanity and pathos and had excellent chemistry with the other actors. Security Chief Michael Garibaldi was played by Jerry Doyle, who gave the role a jaded, street-smart quality. A recovering alcoholic and natural cynic, Garibaldi became a fan favorite who added shades of gray into the narrative. Jerry’s own political conservatism was blended further into the character as the show went on. For example, the Garibaldi quote about installing “electric bleachers” came from Jerry in a conversation that Mike overheard. Similarly, Jerry’s own experiences with alcoholism helped to define his character’s experiences in that realm, Jerry helping guide the writing for Garibaldi’s relapse in the final season.

Dr. Franklin, Agent Winters, and Ranger Cole (Image sources “fallout.fandom.com”, “tumbler.com”, & IMDB)

Rounding out the human cast we found talented Character Actor Robert Picardo to play Doctor Stephen Franklin, Babylon 5's chief medical officer. Originally intended as a serious, studious character, Rob’s natural comedic timing and amicable screen presence led Mike and the writers to give him more focus and more time alongside other characters, be the interactions comedic (Vir) or serious (Ivanova) or a bit of both (Garibaldi). We even gave Rob a chance to show off his musical chops on occasion, the good doctor slowly revealed to be a man of many hidden talents. For the role of Psi Corps agent Lyta Alexander Mike specifically brought in Patricia Tallman, whose performance in one of the Freddy flicks had impressed him[4]. Patricia gave the role a tough grittiness softened with a hidden gentleness that became more pronounced as the Psi Corps began to show its true colors. Finally, Alistair Petrie was brought in during Seasons 3-5 as Marcus Cole, a human Ranger who battled the Shadows.

Delenn (out of makeup) and Lennier, the Minbari (Image sources IMDB and Pinterest)

Casting the aliens was even more fun and challenging, as finding someone who can not only act and act with a few pounds of rubber and plastic on their face, but be willing to sit in the makeup chair for hours at a time, can be difficult. The angelic Minbari, who were recently at war with the humans, would be the spiritual heart of the show. Our Vulcans, essentially, though Mike hates it when I say that. We found Virginia Hey[5] to play Delenn, the principle Minbari ambassador, who goes through transformation into a human-Minbari hybrid in an attempt to connect with her former enemies. We later received some protests from family groups after it was discovered that she'd once posed for Playboy, even though she kept her clothes on the whole show. We found classic child actor Bill Mumy of Twilight Zone and Lost in Space fame to play her assistant Lennier. At first, in an attempt to make Delenn’s story a transgender narrative, we tried to make Virginia sound masculine, but the voice modulation wasn’t working[6]. I suggested that we make the Minbari a hermaphroditic species. After all, Virginia had some masculine qualities in her demeanor and Bill was very elfin in appearance and could pass as sexless (sorry, Bill!). Mike went with my suggestion and from that point forward we chose actors who could easily pass as either gender to play the Minbari roles, including a few actually transgender actors (the Jay Davidson appearance in Season 4 became legendary). Thus, at the start of Season 2 when Delenn not only becomes a human-Minbari hybrid but assumes an actual gender for the first time in her life, this became both a mine for writing and a way ahead of its time transgender narrative.

Ambassador Londo and Assistant Vir, the Centauri (Image source “babylon5.fandom.com”)

For the aristocratic and imperious Centauri, we found the amazing Peter Jurasik to play the ambitious Londo Mollari, a role that he performed beautifully. His surname even got him a cameo role in Jurassic Park, which was filming across the lot. He was a delight and stole every scene that he was in. He is even to thank/blame for the iconic Centauri “crown of hair” style, having deliberately fanned his hair out into the crazy ‘do in an attempt to stand out during casting[7]. Mission accomplished! The story behind the casting of his bumbling assistant Vir Cotto, however, is a story in its own right. We’d interviewed a lot of people, but in stumbled this one actor. His hair was slimy and dripping into his eyes, which were bloodshot and teary. He was apologizing relentlessly. He was a total wreck! The actor was, of course, Stephen Furst, previously best known for playing the nerdy Flounder in Animal House. He’d walked in, saw that the other actors had adopted the crazy Centauri “crown of hair” look Pete had pioneered, and tried to do up his hair the same way, at the last minute, using bathroom hand soap as ersatz hair gel! “Oh my God, it’s Vir![8]” said Mike.

Ambassador G’Kar and Na’Toth, one version of his Assistant (Image sources Wikimedia and “tvdatabase.fandom.com”)

For the blunt but sympathetic Narn, former subjects of the Centauri, we found the outwardly intimidating but inwardly lovely Andreas Katsulas[9] as Ambassador G'Kar, who became a fan favorite character. For his Assistant…well, that became a running gag behind the scenes. We originally cast Mary Woronov as Ko’Dath, but she had a reaction to the makeup, so we brought in Susan Kellermann, the character renamed Na’Toth, who likewise hated the makeup. Julie Caitlin Brown came next followed by Mary Kay Adams. It was like the assistants on Murphy Brown or the drummers in Spinal Tap! Eventually, we found Alice Krige[10] in Season 3, who handled the makeup well. She became Ku’Reth, and stayed through to the end. She even managed to be surprisingly sensual and even seductive despite the creepy makeup.

Special guest appearances further rounded out the fun. We brought in some big names in science fiction like Mark Hamill, Walter Koenig[11], and Majel Barrett. We brought in some of our old friends like Dan Ackroyd as a man attempting to sue the Streib for abducting his great grandfather and Eddie Murphy as his sleazy lawyer. We even featured Frank Oz as an obnoxious Centauri bureaucrat.

Vorlon Ambassador Kosh Naranek and a Shadow (Image source “babylon5.fandom.com” & “pinterest.com”)

But of the iconic aliens, it was the “Old Races” that most intrigued the fans: the seemingly angelic Vorlons, who represented order and stability, and the Gigeresque Shadows, who represented chaos and change. It is made clear fairly early on that these are the species that influenced legends of angels and demons for all of the younger races. And over the course of the series the younger species are pulled into the millennia-old war between Vorlon and Shadow. The younger races are pressured to choose sides, driving the plots of the major story arc and individual episodes alike.

But chaos and order were just one of many weighty issues we explored. Democracy vs. authoritarianism, free will vs. destiny, compassion vs. revenge, war & peace, change vs. stasis, religion, faith, sex, gender, substance abuse…serious stuff! We even gave the Sci-Fi world its first openly gay relationships with Marcus Cole and Dr. Franklin and Ivanova and Agent Winters, respectively. And frankly, I feel, we handled them pretty tactfully and tastefully. Admittedly, the Marcus-Stephen relationship was pretty subtle in order to slip it past the censors, so a lot of people never realized that they were anything but close friends.

We debuted in the Fall of ’92 on CBS stations. Their new executive Brandon Tartikoff was looking to take on Star Trek himself. We convinced him not to run it directly against Trek [The Next Generation], but even so, the show wasn’t pulling in the numbers he wanted, so for Season 3 we moved it to the Fantasia Channel and took the modest but dedicated fan base that we’d built up with us, which amounted to great numbers for basic cable and got us through the five-season story. It felt great to be producing again, but the LA heat and pollution was not agreeing with me and I was ready to return to New York. In the end I only ran the show for the first two seasons before handing the reigns to Mike. I returned to New York and he finished out the show’s originally planned five season run on Fantasia. We won Emmys, Nebulas, an Image award for Avery, and several GLAAD awards. We even sold a good share of merch for [Consumer Products VP] Bo Boyd. A success by any metric!

To this day “B5” as the fans call it retains a noteworthy following, even if it’s not going to threaten the supremacy of Trek or Star Wars. I get almost as much fan mail for B5 as I do for The Muppet Show. I’ll occasionally swing by a Con Panel with Mike and the cast. While I hadn’t planned on running a Sci-Fi show during my retirement, in the end I’m glad that I did.

---

[1] Note that Staczynski will thus not be leaving DIC to work as head writer on Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, a toy-driven show created in partnership with Mattel and whose big “selling point” from a marketing standpoint was that the toys had “lasers” that could shoot at (and in turn be shot by) the villains on the screen like a built-in videogame…a novelty that wore off quickly. But what really sold the show and what made many of us watch and remember it was that it had well-written characters with real relationships and emotional stakes despite the nano-budget uber-camp of it all. As such, we the fandom didn’t buy the (rather expensive) toys even as we religiously watched it and the show was cancelled after 2 seasons (Straczynski left after one season due to Mattel’s meddling). I really did like this show and it served as an important transitional piece for me personally into more mature storytelling, and thus I hate to take away JMS and kill a small piece of what I loved about it. But sometimes as a writer you have to kill what you love for the sake of the greater good.

[2] Prosthetic rubber forehead tip to @wietze and @nick_crenshaw82 for suggesting that B5 go to Disney.

[3] From the start, the CGI will be more on par with the later seasons rather than the highly pixilated stuff from Season 1. Babylon 5 will win numerous technical awards over its run.

[4] In our timeline Tillman appeared in the Pilot (JMS had been impressed by her performance in the 1990 Night of the Living Dead remake), but the studio forced him to change her out for the better-known Andrea Thompson. When Thompson left the show Tillman returned.

[5] Mira Furlan doesn’t have to flee Yugoslavia in this timeline, and is currently a popular TV and film actress there.

[6] True in our timeline. They abandoned the transgender angle for this reason.

[7] True in our timeline as well.

[8] The same thing happened in our timeline and is yet another story too crazy to butterfly!

[9] Yes, lots of parallelism. Since they were hiring relatively unknown actors per our timeline, it’s hard to find alternate casting options without going fictional. Besides, with the same creator and casting director on hand, 2nd order butterflies aren’t totally implausible.

[10] Best known to science fiction fans in our timeline as the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact.

[11] By request of @GrahamB. They play Psi Corps leaders who are also bitter rivals attempting to undermine each other.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

“Draft Perot” Movement Starts following Larry King Appearance
The New York Times, February 21st, 1992

A major Grassroots movement to draft Texas billionaire and occasional TV pundit H. Ross Perot has spun up following an interview with Larry King on CNN. The charismatic businessman, who has long been critical of the George Bush presidency despite his earlier support for Ronald Reagan, hinted that he might run for president should enough Americans support him, leading to a flurry of “Draft Perot” movements in several states. Perot, who is highly critical of the planned North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and “trickle down” supply side economics, has beat a populist drum in his interviews, and is expected to appeal to voters on both sides of the party divide. Should he run, Perot’s third-party bid is considered a long shot. George Bush’s popularity remains high (though dropping) following the stunning victory in Operation Desert Sword last year, leading many big-name Democrats such as Jesse Jackson to take their hats out of the political ring. Only Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, who came in third in the 1988 Democratic primary, has failed to rule out a presidential run. Still, Perot’s supporters are bullish about his chances in… cont’d on A8.



Clinton Drops Out amid Sexual Assault Allegations
The New York Times, February 12th, 1992

Arkansas Governor and Democratic Presidential Primary Candidate William “Bill” Clinton announced his plans to drop out of the 1992 Democratic Presidential race today. Despite a strong showing in the Iowa Caucuses, a charismatic presence, and strong support among African American male voters, allegations of infidelity continued to plague Clinton, bringing back uncomfortable memories of Gary Hart’s painful loss to Bush in 1988, with many blaming the sex scandals for Hart’s narrow loss. In addition to ongoing allegations of infidelity, several women have recently come forward with sexual harassment and assault allegations against Governor Clinton[1]. With many big-name Democrats calling for him to drop out, and some even calling for him to step down as Governor, Clinton’s path to the presidency narrowed quickly following the accusations. Clinton threw his support behind fellow southerner Al Gore in the upcoming primaries, even recommending his friend James Carville as campaign manager. With Clinton out, Gore is the favorite in the Super Tuesday Southern primaries while Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown are expected to perform well in the northeastern and Midwest states. Polls show that… Cont’d on A14.



Gore Scores Big on Super Tuesday
The New York Times, March 11th, 1992

Tennessee Senator Albert “Al” Gore, Jr., won big in the “Super Tuesday” Democratic State Primaries, sweeping the southern states of Florida, Missouri, Texas, and his home state of Tennessee, giving him a firm lead. Backed by a large “war chest” of donations and a message of “Fair Market” economics, a “compassionate” approach to the drug epidemic based upon his own son’s substance addiction problems, and Green Technology investments as a way to spur jobs, Gore proved popular with moderate voters and young environmentalists alike. Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas carried the New England states while Governor Jerry Brown of California failed to carry any primaries or caucuses despite a strong earlier showing. The victory makes Gore the odds-on favorite to carry the Democratic nomination to run against incumbent President George Bush, who is himself facing a primary challenge from conservative firebrand Pat Buchanan and whose poll numbers have dropped in recent months. With the populist candidacy of Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot further complicating things, the fate of the general election remains up in the air.

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[1] The butterflies of the earlier awakening on sexual harassment and assault are making their mark. In our timeline with the muted response to the issue none of Clinton’s many accusers came forward until much later, long after he’d retired as President. With a stronger response in this timeline, more women feel empowered to come forward than they did in our timeline.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Part 8: Skeleton Crew Productions
Excerpt from Dark Funhouse, the Art and Work of Tim Burton, an Illustrated Compendium

Things began to accelerate for Burton and his Skeleton Crew, who would expand their portfolio and even spin off into their own studio.

This, but sooner, and underwritten by Disney

“We were Mad Clowns with a thousand burning balls in the air. We did several low-to-mid budget films all at the same time. TV, animation, freelance effects work…you name it!” – Steve Chiodo

Jim Henson, Roy Disney, and Ron Miller authorized the development of a special Skeleton Crew Productions company that would partially spin off from Disney, distributing among the team or selling 45% of the stock, Disney retaining the controlling 55% stake. Skeleton Crew Productions would be free to work with other studios with the prior permission of Disney, which was almost always given. Burton even earned a seat on the Disney Studios board and became a de facto Studio Executive at Disney.

At first working out of a North Hollywood office park, they soon found and restored an old Victorian mansion on the edge of Old LA as a company headquarters, giving it the “Burton Treatment” inside and out, with black and white stripes, spirals, skeletons, spiders, a Betelgeuse-as-serpent stair railing, and other creepy affectations. Props and effects from The Addams Family film (many of them working) were scattered about the place. A series of hidden speakers quietly piped in music, including on occasion the creepy and slightly off-key “Muzak of the Damned” from the afterlife waiting room in Beetlejuice. “You didn’t have to be insane to get a job at Skeleton Crew,” said Henry Selik, “But a few weeks in Timmy’s Funhouse and you’d find your way there.”

For his first independent production under Skeleton Crew, Tim produced and directed the arthouse biopic Ed Wood about the “worst director of all time”. Burton’s go-to actor River Phoenix, however, dropped out of the pic, wanting instead to work on a small indie film called Ned about a cowboy who becomes a vegetarian after coming to understand the beauty and soul of his cattle[1]. Instead, Burton found character actor Johnny Depp, who’d auditioned for some roles with Burton in the past, for the title role. Depp would go on to become one of Burton’s go-to actors. Ed Wood would screen in 1991, a limited-release Hyperion arthouse film that got lots of awards-buzz, but which failed to recapture its $11 million budget. However, the film gave Burton some “industry cred” and became a beloved cult classic.

(Image source Comics Reporter)

The Skeleton Crew also secured the film rights to the Manga Mai, the Psychic Girl in partnership with Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks[2], who along with Skeleton Crew member Danny Elfman provided the soundtrack. Tim Burton returned to animation for Mai, a coming-of-age story of a 14-year-old Japanese girl with powerful telekinetic powers hunted by the secretive Wisdom Alliance, who hope to coopt her powers for their own dark aims. Under Burton’s eye it became a story of the isolation and repression of uniquely talented individuals at the hands of a hyper-conformist society and became a rallying cry for the socially stigmatized and dispossessed. Judith Barsi, herself a burgeoning teenager struggling to find her place in an increasingly confusing world, provided the voice for the eponymous Mai, the first of what would become many future collaborations. Burton recruited a small team of Disney animators and then partnered with Toho to give the film a distinctly Anime look. Tapping into the existing fandoms for both anime and Tim Burton, the film made a modest profit internationally.

Skeleton Crew members Kamela Portugues and Lee Armstrong managed to acquire the rights to the children’s comedy-horror novel Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe and launched it as a practical effects G-rated Halloween release for 1992 directed by Rick Heinrichs. The tale of a vampire bunny that drank the juices from vegetables managed to be just scary enough without being terrifying and just silly enough without being ridiculous, and thus connected well with 6-to-12-year-old audiences while remaining fun for their parents. The canine and feline protagonists were cute and relatable and implemented through a clever (and cost effective) combination of live animal actors, puppetry, and animatronics that the Creatureworks had long since mastered. Young Zachary Ty Bryan of Terminator 2 fame would play 10-year-old human lead Pete Monroe while Internal Combustion’s Johnathan Taylor Thomas would play the younger brother Toby[3]. The film would sport a modest $12 million budget and return a handsome $54 million and saw regular home video sales and TV airplay in the ensuing years as a “Halloween Classic”, leading eventually to versions of the next two sequel books.

Meanwhile, Tim’s Skeleton Crew partner Henry Selick, director for The Nightmare Before Christmas, was in production on James and the Giant Peach, based on the original Roald Dahl novel[4], which was a hybrid live-action, stop motion animation film made in partnership with Steve Chiodo and his brothers, with original musical numbers by Danny Elfman. Burton convinced Dahl’s widow to sell them the rights in 1991 and production began immediately. The film would ultimately release under the Fantasia Films label in 1993 where it received a mixed reception and failed to make back its budget. It would, however, win numerous technical awards and live on in home video, eventually becoming a beloved classic that continues to earn a steady profit from home video sales to this day.

The Chiodo brothers, meanwhile, wrote, produced, and directed (Steve), the gonzo sci-fi horror film Killer Klowns from Outer Space, a deliberately low budget, deliberately campy story of terrifying aliens that happened to look and act like clowns invading earth seeking human blood. It featured some of the brothers’ most macabre and over-the-top prosthetics to date. The film mixed deliberate camp with deliberate creep, probably best personified in the scene where a klown uses a wildly looping crazy straw to drink the blood from a human captive entombed in a cocoon of pink cotton candy. It was the type of production that only the Skeleton Crew would have dared to produce. And with a nano-budget of $2.2 million dollars (they reportedly refused a larger budget and funded it all with internal funds), it managed to earn a surprising international gross of nearly $48 million dollars[5].

The semi-independent Skeleton Crew company was also expanding outside of the Disney sphere. They were approached by occasional Disney collaborator Robert Zemeckis and producer Joel Silver to contribute to their HBO horror anthology series Tales from the Crypt. Ultimately, Burton would direct an episode in 1991 for season 3 called “Better Living with the Dead” about a mid-century suburban neighborhood where using reanimated corpses as maids, nannies, and gardeners becomes all the rage. He later directed another episode for Season 6 based on the Mars Attacks trading cards in 1995[6]. Chiodo, Rick Heinrichs, and Selick would each also direct episodes for seasons 4, 5, and 7, including Selick’s popular “That Vampire Sucks” from 1994, starring Johnny Depp as an incompetent nosfaratu. The Crew would also partner on the campy and surreal “Luau” for Season 5, Jerry Rees’s take on an old Tim Burton collaboration from the early 1980s that never left the idea stage at the time.

The Skeleton Crew even participated in the production, design, costuming, and cinematography for the 1992 Tales from the Crypt film Death Becomes Her, directed by Paul Verhoeven. Burton brought in Cheryl Henson to lead the costuming, where her mix of Victorian and Jazz Age fashions, blended with the Avant Garde of the early ‘90s, helped establish the different cultural worlds between the “Old Undead” and the “New”, a form of visual storytelling through costuming, earning her an Oscar nomination. Cheryl became a go-to costume designer for the Skeleton Crew team, ultimately joining the company in 1996 as Head of Costuming and an occasional writer, director, producer, and script doctor.

Crypt Keeper designer and puppeteer Kevin Yagher, known in the business as the “Jim Henson of the Macabre”, much to Henson’s amusement, would also become a frequent Skeleton Crew collaborator and occasional Creatureworks and ILM subcontractor, frequently enlisting the Chiodo Brothers. His work with ILM on the innovative computer generated “skin effects” for Death Becomes Her won the Oscar, and coincidentally introduced the Skeleton Crew to the rebellious computer effects pioneer Steven “Spaz” Williams. And while Death Becomes Her would underperform at the box office, it did well on video and went on to become a queer culture icon with Cosplay versions of the iconic characters and Cheryl Henson’s iconic fashion designs becoming a go-to look in the Drag community[7].

But the biggest productions were yet to come when Burton was approached by Winona Ryder with a James V. Hart script about Dracula and was then asked once again to work with Steven Spielberg, this time on the MGM production of the Michael Crichton novel Jurassic Park.

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[1] Fictional, but totally the film River would make.

[2] Hat tip to @TheMolluskLingers.

[3] Allo-historical stunt casting! They get to be older and younger brothers after all.

[4] Whoopie Goldberg voices Miss Spider as a stunt cast after playing Aunt Nancy in the Song of the South remake.

[5] Similar box office, slightly higher budget accounting for inflation compared to our timeline. They will get their Soupy Sales cameo in this timeline. Oh, and pointy clown hat tip to @Plateosaurus for reminding me of this “gem”.

[6] What happens to the 1996 film? Stay tuned!

[7] True in our timeline as well, except for Cheryl’s participation.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Generation 5 and the Cultural Awakening (1980-1995) (Cont’d)
From Painting with Light: A History of Chinese Cinema

Qiao Shi replaced Deng Xiaoping as Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China in late 1989. He oversaw a period of explosive economic growth and increasing international influence that marked a continuation of Deng’s so-called Lotus Plan, but also saw massive expansion of Deng’s anticorruption campaign with a focus on expanding Rule of Law[1] and eliminating cronyism. It was a campaign that also ran headlong into entrenched local powers and conservative hardliners, in particular his old rival Li Peng, who quickly became a bitter adversary. Qiao’s plans also clashed with the more radical reformers, like Hu Qili, who felt that Qiao wasn’t moving fast enough. And the growing Chinese Arts community, including cinema, found themselves caught up in the culture war.

While Qiao’s behind-the-scenes battles, aided by Deng, were accomplishing more than was widely realized at the time, the filmmakers of Generation 5 saw Qiao as a simple extension of the prior administration. “We called him ‘Deng Xiaoping 2: The Continuation,’” laughed Wu Ziniu, who nonetheless became a frequent recipient of the Party’s largesse with his epic war films and action blockbusters.

Qiao continued Deng’s attempted top-down push for domestic art intended for export as part of the Lotus Plan. This involved Party officials serving as executive producers in a bid to create art by policy. The Grand Adventure Films and Main Melody Dramas were the government’s primary focus, hoping to compete directly with Hollywood, Hong Kong, and Japan with big budget crowd-pleasers that nonetheless served as expressions of Chinese civilization and culture (and Maoist political philosophy).

The grandest and most famous of these State Productions was Journey to the West, a more faithful adaption of the classic story whose creation became an overt goal of the Chinese Ministry of Culture following the release of Mask of the Monkey King. It was the result of nearly a decade of troubled production as the Chinese film industry attempted to build (and in some cases rebuild) the talent pool to pull off such an epic film. Numerous directors would be called in only to drop out or be fired due to the politics on the set. When finally released to the world in 1992, the final product was visually stunning, with beautiful location shots and gorgeous costuming. The characters wore traditional makeup rather than modern cinematic prosthetics or costuming, which along with the highly-stylized fight scenes gave it a feel of traditional theater rather than a Hong Kong style martial arts epic. Unfortunately, the troubled production, party interference, and constant changing of directors led to an uneven film that was far less than the sum of its pieces. When asked to name a director or combination of directors to credit, the many directors who worked on it forwarded the name Shǐmìsī Ài Lan, a subtle reference to the Hollywood pseudonym Alan Smithee that flew over the heads of the ministers.

While a bit of an embarrassing mess when it debuted, Journey to the West did manage to demonstrate the full range of capabilities and limitations of Chinese Cinema at the time, laying bare what was needed and making clear the massive potential. It also made clear the limits of top-down film production. Some call it the “grandfather of Chinese Wuxia filmmaking” for this reason, and cite it positively as the film which would allow for the later explosion of Chinese epic cinema in the late 1990s and 2000s.

(image source "filmaffinity.com")

And yet despite the top-down productions of the Ministry of Culture, the period of the early 1990s would also be one of relatively free expression, with filmmakers allowed some leeway in the themes they explored so long as certain red lines were never crossed. Even then, Generation 5 pushed the limits in ways that the Generation 6 filmmakers would later dub “Yóujízhàn (Guerilla) filmmaking”. Wu Ziniu gained renown and praise from both Western critics and the Chinese Communist Party for his epic 1992 war drama Cry Not, Nanking, which was praised for its deep emotional content and willingness to address the humanity of its characters, historical or fictional[2], even in the midst of the spectacular action set pieces. Even in his heroic portrayals of Chinese Communists, Wu made an effort to show a weakness and vulnerability subtly at odds with the official Maoist iconography that demanded human perfection. This was a stark change in reception from his 1985 film Dove Tree about the Sino-Vietnamese War, which was banned by the authorities.

Tian Zhuangzhuang would continue to push things in his dramas, sometimes past the breaking point. His controversial 1993 film The Blue Kite was outright banned by the government (even as smuggled copied received praise and awards in the outside world) and nearly led to his being banned from filmmaking entirely[3]. He later recounted being harassed and interrogated by party officials and for years had a party official standing over his shoulder while directing and editing.

(Image source: "IMPawards.com")

Zhang Yimou, meanwhile, focused on historical action films and dramas. 1988’s Operation: Cougar was an action thriller while 1991’s Raise High the Red Lantern was a period drama about concubines in the 1920s. The latter film would be forced to undergo major edits by the government, though uncensored cuts were ironically openly promoted in other nations by the Chinese government as part of the soft power campaign. Zhang also made contacts in the Hong Kong Martial Arts film industry at this time and worked with them to develop what would evolve into the Chinese Wuxia Film style. He co-directed the 1996 action film Streets of Shanghai, which combined Western crime drama and Hong Kong martial arts tropes. The film served as an interesting contrast to his more grounded crime drama from 1995, Row your Boat to Grandma’s Bridge, a.k.a. Shanghai Triad. Both films saw release in the west, with a wide release for Streets of Shanghai.

The two worlds would come crashing together in 1997’s Eunuchs of the Forbidden City, an epic historical drama following the lives of three eunuchs of various ethnicity in the service of the Qing Dynasty late during the reign of the Guangxu Emperor. Written, directed, and produced by Li Shaohong and co-produced by Tian Zhuangzhuang, the story was overtly about the sinful excess and incompetence of the old Imperial system, and was intended by the Ministry of Culture to serve as a contrast to the “enlightened rule” of the Communist Party. However, Li’s direction and some pointed ad-libs by the actors created a subtle, secondary interpretation where one could be tempted to make direct comparisons between the eunuchs and the Communist Party bureaucrats.

Premier Li Peng, once alerted to this possible interpretation, was furious. Li Shaohong and Tian Zhuangzhuang denied that any such interpretation was planned, but Li Peng was not placated and demanded that the two be arrested. Cooler heads, backed by Qiao Shi, overruled the decree and Li and Tian were temporarily suspended from film production and required to make an apology to the government. Li demanded more oversight of the film industry, which Qiao granted, swinging the pendulum of expression back to the more repressive. A People’s Council on Arts and Film was put together, chaired by a Li protégé, with the explicit purpose of preventing such mistakes as Eunuchs from occurring again.

For the time, Li Peng was satisfied, but his resentment for the “runaway changes” in culture and economy under Deng and Qiao grew in quiet and subtle ways.

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[1] Qiao in our timeline as China’s “number three” worked to expand Rule of Law in particular.

[2] Three years earlier than in our timeline due to government backing.

[3] He was banned for nearly a decade in our timeline. Here he is being given a little more leeway…but not a whole lot.