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

[Geekhis Khan]

Chapter 14: Tilting at Windmills
Post from the Riding with the Mouse Net-log by animator Terrell Little

In ’91 all of animation was in a tizzy. Aladdin was in post, they were finishing up animation on The Bamboo Princess, and Ron Clements had finally achieved his desire to get The Little Mermaid greenlit and into early production. 3D was playing with Shrek and I’d just finished my section of War Stories and was still supporting TaleSpin when Roy Disney pulled me, Andreas [Deja], and Mike and Patty Peraza into a new project, one that he told us was “something that Walt himself always wanted.”

(Image source “Disney.fandom.com”)

The subject was an old novel, in fact the oldest novel, they say: Don Quixote. And, ironically, Disney had been tilting at that windmill since the ‘40s[1], always starting and stopping, stuck in pre-production, never able to get it into full animation. But with Disneyland Valencia in a rush to be completed and opened by the spring of ’92, Jim and Roy knew that now was the time for Disney’s Don Quixote to finally see its moment in the Andalusian sun.

But time was short and resources spread thin, so animating the entire film would be an impossible dream. But then Terry Gilliam, who’d been directing Toys, got wind of the project. He’d been considering a version of Don Quixote himself, and with principal photography over on Toys, he practically begged Jim to let him do it. Terry, Jim, and Roy decided that the feature should be a hybrid live action/animation feature, with Don Quixote and the other characters all played by humans, and Don Quixote’s hallucinations all animated[2].

“I swore after [Who Framed] Roger Rabbit that I’d never mix live [performance] and animation again,” Terry told us with a laugh.

I remembered Roger Rabbit 1. They had to shoot it twice: once with a stuffed rabbit so Ed Harris and Tim Curry knew where to look to maintain eyelines, and a second time with nothing there so they could animate in the Toon characters later. But Jim had a different idea. They’d been experimenting with Digital Puppetry techniques since Waldo C. Graphic on Inner Tube, but so far, the applications had been limited. Jim called in his son Brian, whose team figured out how to mix the digital puppetry with some motion capture tracking, allowing a real puppet with an integrated Waldo and some motion capture balls to automatically generate a digital wire frame image. Us animators could then use DATA based technology to digitally ink and paint a two-dimensional image onto the animated character that the puppet was standing in for.

This digital rotoscoping meant that Terry could direct the actors in the live film interacting with the puppet, which the Waldo and motion tracking converted into a digital wireframe linked to points of reference in the original film image. Then we could digitally ink and paint the animated figures using the wireframe as a reference and then composite it back over the original puppet. No dual-takes required. The eye lines were maintained since the actor was interacting directly with the puppet. Multiple takes could be made and selected from. And the puppet performer could interact in real time with the actor, they could ad lib, they could play off of one another, they could physically touch, and they could walk around each other in a circle, even. We could match some of the most complex toon-human interactions we’d done on Roger Rabbit and with a fraction of the work.

I hear that Terry wanted to film on location in La Mancha, and they did in some cases, particularly for recognizable landmarks (they flew us animators out to the region for a week to study the landscape). But Jim pointed out that La Mancha looked quite a lot like some parts of California, particularly around San Luis Obispo, saving money for where it counted. They took advantage of sound stages as well.

Gilliam searched far and wide to find his Quixote. He’d find him in the strangest of location. Acclaimed French actor Jean Rochefort was visiting Disney Studios. He’d just made a critical splash in Hollywood from staring in The Hairdresser's Husband (Le Mari de la Coiffeuse), but he was known to Roy and Jim for another reason: he was a voice actor for the French translation of several Disney Muppet and animated series, beginning with Welcome to Pooh Corner[3]. He was in discussions to do the French translation of Death for Mort. Terry knew the very second that he saw him that he’d found “the perfect Quixote.”

Jean Rochefort as Don Quixote (Image source The Guardian)

After considering Michael Palin as Sancho Panza, eventually Chicano actor Cheech Marin was selected for the role. Terry rounded out the main cast with Rita Moreno as Aldonza Lorenzo, the crass and vulgar peasant woman that Don Quixote hallucinates as the perfect princess “Dulcinea” (we even modelled the animated Dulcinea from Quixote’s hallucinations on Rita back in the 1960s). Plenty of Python regulars made cameos as well. And while Jean and Cheech were near perfect as Quixote and Panza, Rita really stole the show as Aldonza/Dulcinea, putting on both the crass and vulgar in live action, and over-the-top sweetness in the animation. Seriously, it’s no wonder why she’s got a PEGOT! She’s incredible. They even gave her a special Annie award for the role, so now she’s a…PEGOTA? APEGOT?

Gilliam even recorded each scene in both English and Spanish, giving the Spanish Language release an organic realism that made it a smash sensation in Spain and Latin America. He didn’t have to do that. In fact, he’d likely have gotten in trouble if the execs had found out since it added about $5 million to the cost of production and added weeks of filming time, but the extra sales in Spanish speaking nations, where it was a breakout sensation, more than made up for it.

But enough about the live action stuff. This is my tlog, so let’s talk in detail about the best part: the animation. Rather than be traditionally drawn, inked, and painted by hand, the animation would, as I briefly mentioned before, make use of the new digital techniques the Pixar software and the DATA systems allowed. My first experience with digital animation techniques was actually in Japan working on Porco Rosso, though we heavily used it on TaleSpin as well since it allowed for easier editing in post. The technique also allowed for bright and vibrant colors, almost like the old lumage animation method that John Korty pioneered. We’d make pencil test sketches by hand the “old fashioned way”, which is why most people still refer to it as “hand drawn”, which is technically correct even as the majority of the animation is digital after that. The hand images were then scanned in where they’d be digitally inked and painted using the DATA software. The Ink & Paint folks were right to fear for their jobs at that point, and poor old Inky the Llama was sending out her resume.

But we very rarely did any actual hand drawing on Don Quixote. As mentioned earlier, with the digital puppetry creating convenient wire-frame images in addition to the original live puppets, actually digitally inking and painting the hallucinations became essentially a computer-age case of rotoscoping! We drew the digital ink lines directly over the wire frames and live puppet images, over the actors themselves on occasion (in particular Rita for the Dulcinea transformations), and over any important background items such as windmills (especially when they transformed into giants!), and then we colored in the gaps, this latter step was often as simple as “point and click”. The result was the most realistic human-animation interactions yet seen, and would be applied to future hybrid films, particularly the Roger Rabbit sequels.

And the slight bit of uncanny that comes with any rotoscoping just added to the hallucinatory surrealism of it all.

The project became seriously fun in large part because of the novelty, and in large part due to Terry, who’d stop in all the time with excited suggestions and with a childlike glee. Normally no one wants a director looking over their shoulder, but Terry, a skilled and eclectic animator himself, had great suggestions and would listen to yours and it all sort of became a collaborative project. I have no idea why Terry has a reputation as “difficult to work with”. Probably because he demands perfection, but when “Perfection is the Minimum Requirement” already (as it is at Disney), then he’s simply another inmate helping to run the asylum.

(Image source “jimhillmedia.com”)

The biggest challenge artistically speaking was the transformation sequences, turning the real world into the chaotic and colorful hallucinatory dreamworld of Don Quixote’s mind. I took lead on transforming the iconic windmills into giants, basing the design in large part on the old 1940s UPA-inspired concept art out of the archives. Taking advantage of some digital “pull, bend, and skew” functions DATA allowed, and stealing some style choices from Bat-Shit Productions (particularly Fear & Loathing), the blades of the windmills transformed in a fluid, acid-trippy kind of way into the reaching arms and striding legs of giants. At Terry’s suggestions we took a further cue from Salvador Dali and stretched limbs out in impossible lava-lamp-like ways and had everything seemingly on the verge of melting.

We also deliberately made things stylistically reminiscent of illuminated medieval manuscripts as a nod to Terry’s Monty Python animation.

And the production could not have gone better![4] Jean, Cheech, and Rita had perfect chemistry and seemed to intuitively “get” what Terry wanted, so take after take went according to plan. No setbacks or accidents, no massive arguments on set, not even a “wrong brand of bottled water” incident.

We had so much fun in animation, the whole team just coming together in near perfect partnership: me, Andreas, Mike and Patty Peraza, and the rest. In fact, we ended up finishing principal animation early simply since we were all having so much fun that we’d work late into the night, laughing the whole time. In fact, the biggest difficulty that I ran into was my wife starting to think that I was having an affair because I’d return home late on a Friday night, laughing and singing! Thankfully Mike & Patty bore witness to the actual silliness of the time.

We even had a John Williams sound track, only not that John Williams, but the other famous John Williams in the classical music business: the world class Classical Guitarist!

This John Williams, to be precise

John Williams partnered with Paul Williams (no relation) as a Lyricist and arranger and Rita Moreno and Cheech Marin joined in to help produce the music. Since they had a “John and Paul”, Cheech jokingly called the four of them “Los Escarabajos.” While not a musical per se (Terry really wanted to avoid direct comparisons to The Man of La Mancha), there are a couple of notable times in the hallucinatory cartoon world where Quixote, Panza, and Dulcinea break out into song and dance in a pseudo-diegetic way that’s real enough to Quixote, at least. For the most part, the music was deliberately Spanish, based on traditional music from the La Mancha region, but with a strong Grenadine/Flamenco influence, all led by John’s virtuoso guitar (digitally rotoscoping his dancing fingers as he played was a major challenge!), occasionally joined by other traditional Spanish instruments and in particular by Rita’s amazing voice.

What emerged was a bright and vibrant world, somehow both Medieval and Modern, Stylistic and Surrealist. We won Annie awards for our work, just as the Digital Puppetry techniques won technical awards and the film itself won for Best Adapted Screenplay in ‘93. John, Paul, Rita, and Cheech won the Oscar for Best Original Score with rumors persisting to this day that John Williams won the Oscar after being mistaken by the Academy for the other John Williams (“Wow, he’s really branching out! This is a whole new side to him!”). At the Academy Awards, the camera even panned to the other John Williams in the audience (who laughingly waved it off), having to whip-pan over to the right one!

Not this, but a more faithful adaption of the source material

But perhaps the coolest part was that we all got to go to Spain and Disneyland Valencia for the World Premier of Lost in La Mancha[5], all a part of the weeks-long Grand Opening of the long-awaited Disneyland Valencia resort! We got to do a self-guided auto-tour of La Mancha, ironically getting lost ourselves and needing to ask directions from the locals, who instead invited us in for Sangria.

We also got to see the new Disneyland, which was frankly the best Disneyland ever! Sleeping Beauty’s Castle was breathtaking and while I love the original Space Mountain, it’s got nothing on De la Terre à la Lune, which is just so awesomely designed and executed.

There are times when I can’t help but to love this job.

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[1] Read all about the literally Quixotic attempts to get it off the ground, along with awesome concept art, here. Also read about the even more Quixotic Terry Gilliam attempts to get a Don Quixote film off the ground here. And a Bedpan Helm tip to @TheFaultsofAlts for reminding me about this.

[2] Note that the idea for a Quixote-inspired film set in the present day didn’t fully get fleshed out until the late 1990s, and in the early ‘90s Gilliam wanted to do a more faithful adaption, though still set in the present day. But Disney wants a fully faithful adaption. As such, this film will be a more faithful adaption of the source material set in the time of Cervantes.

[3] True in our timeline! In this timeline he becomes a Disney translation regular.

[4] Allo-ironically took it in the exact opposite direction from our timeline’s legendarily (and ironically appropriately) Troubled Production.

[5] The final name of the film, allo-ironically enough!

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Disneyland Valencia Opens in Spain
The Times of London, April 21st, 1992

(Image source Pinterest)

Alicante – With much fanfare, pomp, and circumstance, Disney Chairman Frank Wells and Creative Head Jim Henson cut the ribbon for Disneyland Valencia, the first foray into the continent by the Walt Disney company. It was just one of numerous flashy (and often gaudy) celebrations that lasted throughout the day and went on into the night as fireworks lit on the modern castle and the actually medieval streets of the nearby Spanish towns alike.

“To all who come to this happy place, welcome. Once upon a time...Walt Disney visited Europe and all of its wonders as a source of inspiration for his own stories and ideas. Through those visits, he created fanciful tales of fantasy and adventure, while inspiring generations of people to believe in a brighter tomorrow. Soon, he envisioned a Magic Kingdom where all of these stories can come to life in the happiest place on Earth: Disneyland. Now his dreams return to the land which inspired them. Disneyland Valencia is dedicated to the young and the young at heart, with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration for all of Europe and the world," Jim Henson, CCO of the Walt Disney Entertainment Company, told the crowd.

Disneyland Valencia is here, constructed amid the orange and olive groves of the small Spanish town of Pego near Alicante rather than Valencia. Beset with delays and overruns and rumored to have cost over $3.5 billion (£2.3 billion), Disney hopes that the park will be a success worthy of the massive investment.

“Disneyland Valencia is Disney at its best,” said Henson in his address. “No corner was cut, no detail too small. This is magic made real.”

But will magic be enough? The decision to build a Disneyland in Europe was a source of controversy from the beginning, with many fearing the damage that Disney would do to European culture and the local economy, not to mention the spectre of massive hordes of tourists descending upon the once-quiet backwater. This latter fear certainly came to be. Opening day crowds jammed the new train stations, injuring a small child in the press. A cruise ship visiting the new port facilities as Denia struggled to unload its passengers with the inexperienced dockworkers and customs authority overwhelmed. And the tiny, winding streets of Denia and tiny Pego were jammed with busses. Some guests complained of ride malfunctions, though these seemed to be few compared to other opening day jitters at other major parks in history, the original Disneyland included.

But the opening day numbers were impressive, and even a small group of protestors were not enough to dampen the enthusiasm from guests and staff alike.

“Opening numbers look good, really good, and guest experiences seemed positive,” said Disney Parks President Richard “Dick” Nunis. “In all, it was a good opening day and we expect this momentum to continue! And with the Olympics coming soon to Barcelona, we’re expecting great things.”

Other analysts are less sanguine. “With the costs of travel still high due to petrol prices, there is little doubt that once the initial curiosity wears off that visitation will dwindle,” said the Times’ financial analyst. Many question whether the giant park will be sustainable in the long term.

Still, the show was profound and the tangible results of the investment itself impressive. The iconic Disney Castle, this one assigned to Sleeping Beauty, is made from real stone and stained glass. Even those of us familiar with such real castles as Windsor or Neuschwanstein can’t help but appreciate the attention to detail here. British Muppets fans will also be pleased to know that Mr. Henson’s creations have their own land and characters to meet.

And yet will it be enough to cover the costs in the long run? That remains to be seen.

Still, it can now be said, for better or for worse, that Europe has its own Disneyland.



Disneyland Valencia Visitor’s Guide [EN]

All 6 lands of Disneyland Valencia are included here, including all of the attractions and hotels![1]

(Image by @Denliner)

Main Street, U.S.A

Valencia’s Main Street, U.S.A. is very different from the ones seen in other Disney parks, as it is not strictly themed after the turn-of-the-century period where Walt Disney was born in Marceline, Missouri. Instead, Imagineers took inspiration from 1920s California where Walt Disney moved to in order to find success with animation. In addition, it allowed them to use Spanish architectural influences in Main Street in a salute to California’s history with Spain and Mexico[2].

Attractions:

Disneyland Railroad: The classic Disneyland Railroad which goes around the entirety of the park. It has stops in Fantasyland, Discoveryland, and Frontierland.

Main Street Vehicles: Vehicles like in any other in the existing parks, but includes electric trolleys like those from Who Framed Roger Rabbit lined in the center of the wide boulevard that moves passengers between the Disneyland Railroad and Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.

Main Street Theater: A modestly sized cinema theater that often plays either classic live-action Disney films, classic animations, or European silent films for a ticket.

History of Lady Liberty: An exhibit detailing the history of the Statue of Liberty and the cooperation between France and the United States.

Inspiration Plaza: How Europe inspired Walt Disney! This exhibit details how European fairy tales and castles helped inspire Walt Disney throughout his many animated films, as well as at Disneyland itself. Small scale miniatures of Schloss Neuschwanstein and Cinderella Castle are shown side-by-side as a comparison. Historical European fairy tales are also presented to audiences, in addition to the artwork and medieval manuscripts that helped inspire the Earle artwork.

The Magic of Disney Animation: A unique attraction for Disneyland Valencia, this large exhibit shows guests about the history of Disney animation from the original cel animations of decades past to the groundbreaking CGI technology used in films like The Black Cauldron, Where the Wild Things Are, Aladdin, and the upcoming Shrek! Actual Disney animators will educate visitors about how to draw Disney characters like Peter Pan, Mickey Mouse, Snow White, and the newer characters such as Figment, Taran, Gurgi, Max, Mort, Genie, and more!

Copies of Walt Disney's cels, Jim Henson's own concept art on the Muppets, and Tim Burton's drawings of The Black Cauldron characters are also displayed in the exhibit.

Additionally, there are screens that displayed animated shorts from The World of Magic/The Wonderful World of Disney, giving novice animators at Walt Disney Animation Studios a platform to share their creations with a foreign audience[3].

Fantasyland

Unlike other Fantasylands in the Disney resorts, the setting is much more realistic, presenting an idealized fantasy version of a Medieval town marketplace in Europe, coupled with wooden stalls, bards, jesters, knights, and troubadours. Nicknamed “La Plaza Medieval” by our Spanish employees, it closely reflects common Medieval fairs, albeit brought to a much higher standard of historical accuracy and quality thanks to the research of the Imagineers while keeping it whimsical and romantic. Even the Disney characters are dressed in appropriate costumes, or at least costumes appropriate to MickeyQuest!

Alcazar Castle vs. Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Our Timeline (merge these in your mind; Image source Wikipedia))

Attractions:

Castillo de la Bella Durmiente (Castle of the Sleeping Beauty): A castle inspired in large part by Alcazar in Segovia, which is built from real stone with real copper and real handmade stained glass. The hedges are even cut square in imitation of Eyvind Earle medieval-inspired style of Sleeping Beauty.

Sub-attractions include:

• Castle Walkthrough: A walkthrough of the castle with the story of Sleeping Beauty displayed in medieval manuscripts, written in English, French, and Spanish.
• El Carrusel de Galahad (The Carousel of Galahad): A carousel themed after the knight Galahad from Arthurian legend[4].

La Tierra de los Cuentos de Hadas (The Land of Fairy Tales): A European twist on the classic Storybook Land Canal Boats.

El Teatro Fantasyland (The Fantasyland Theater): The counterpart to the Club Cyclia Theater in Discoveryland, but modeled after a Spanish Golden Age theater. It is mostly used for stage shows related to Disney’s classic fantasy films.

Fantasyland Railroad Station: Right on time!

Don’t forget the Classic Rides!

• Peter Pan’s Flight
• Dumbo the Flying Elephant
• Pinocchio’s Daring Journey
• It’s a Small World
• Mad Tea Party
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
• Mickey’s House
• The Sword in the Stone

Adventureland

Adventureland is similar to its previous iterations in every Disney Resort that came before, but this version has replaced most of the Polynesian influences with a Southeast Asia/Chinese flair inspired in part by Indiana Jones and the Mask of the Monkey King. Not only do you have Big Thunder Mountain, but the Imagineers created Adventurer’s Island, an artificial island that harkens back to the Golden Age of Piracy!

(Image source French Wikipedia)

Attractions:

Indiana Jones: Race with the Monkey King: A massive roller coaster thrill ride[5] based on the blockbuster film Indiana Jones and the Mask of the Monkey King.

Jungle Cruise: Similar to other Jungle Cruises, but this one has a more pronounced focus towards places in India, China, and Southeast Asia, with most animals being accurately portrayed in the ride. Disney’s Creatureworks were instrumental in making the animatronics as life-like as possible.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Valencia’s version of a Disney Classic with a focus on famous European Pirates.

Captain Hook's Galley: A great place for a scurvy knave to mess, aye?

Adventure Island: Inspired by Tom Sawyer’s Island, Imagineers designed a new island based on the Caribbean for Adventureland, focusing on individual exploration throughout the island, allowing guests to find hidden treasures or tidbits if they veer off the beaten path.

Enchanted Pirate’s Cove: Valencia’s version of the Enchanted Tiki Room where animated parrots and macaws sing along to a sea shanty alongside some other inanimate objects.

Spanish Fortress: A miniature recreation of a Spanish fortress in Florida where guests can walk through and learn about the history of the Caribbean.

Spyglass Hill: The highest point of the island that has telescopes for visitors to peer through.

Swiss Family Treehouse: The same treehouse as what is found in the American theme parks but looks significantly more abandoned and overgrown due to its isolation.

Pirate’s Beach: A children’s playground for families.

Frontierland

A Disney Classic[6] with a Jazzy twist! Tony Baxter and the Imagineers have created a very intricate storyline for Big Thunder Mountain and the Phantom Manor (Valencia’s counterpart to the Haunted Mansion) by crediting the construction of Big Thunder Mountain to Henry Ravenswood, a British-American mining magnate that discovered gold on the island after setting out from Delta City. Later, he would lose his daughter, Melanie to a horrific accident in the Phantom Manor, leading her to become one of the ghosts in Ravenswood’s old home!

(Image source “bestoforlando.com”)

Attractions:

Big Thunder Mountain: a Disney classic, but one generally bigger than their previous counterparts.

Phantom Manor: Valencia’s version of the Haunted Mansion, being a much darker and more tragic take on the tale of the attraction due to its connection with Frontierland’s story and Big Thunder Mountain, with the ghost of Melanie haunting the manor.

Legends of the Wild West: An exhibit detailing the achievements and misdeeds of America’s Wild West cowboys and bandits.

Frontierland Shootin’ Arcade: Grab yer’ Six-guns and draw, partner!

Delta City: A large gazebo and theater themed after New Orleans where bands play jazz and blues music with some restaurants and shops nearby. Be on the lookout for a blues club in the basement or a hidden speakeasy!

Thunder Mesa Riverboats: Inspired by the Mark Twain Riverboats, but tied to Big Thunder Mountain.

River Run Keel Boats: A rename of the Mike Fink Keel Boats in Disneyland and Magic Kingdom.

Frontierland Railroad Station: All aboard!

Discoveryland

A unique replacement for Tomorrowland in Disneyland Valencia. Instead of a land based on a hypothetical future of our own time, it outlines a future dreamed up by great European minds such as Jules Verne, Leonardo da Vinci, H.G. Wells, and homegrown Spanish novelist Enrique Gaspar. Unlike Tomorrowland’s more futuristic theming, Discoveryland is aesthetically modeled after classic Victorian-era steam-age Science Fiction motifs, which was inspired by Tony Baxter’s older concept of Discovery Bay back in Disneyland. The highlight of the land is Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune, the crown jewel of Discoveryland and is even believed by some to be the best ride in the entire park[7].

(Image source Wikipedia)

Attractions:

Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune (From the Earth to the Moon): A Verne-inspired twist[8] on a Disney Classic!

Orbitron: A stylized version of the Astro Orbiters from Tomorrowland to fit with the theme of Discoveryland.

Les Mystères du Nautilus (The Mysteries of the Nautilus): An undersea adventure! Guests travel into the full-scale submarine[9], visiting several rooms of the Nautilus, including a side room where you can see a massive animatronic squid hidden underwater of the lagoon. An underwater restaurant called the Grand Salon will be in the front of the submarine, serving high-end French cuisine for guests w/ a reservation.

Le Visionarium (The Timekeeper): A 360 Circle-Vision Film. Known for its European cast and the Timekeeper animatronic created by the Creatureworks.

Horizons: Inspired by the Horizons Pavilion at EPCOT[10]. See the Future Today!

Club Cyclia Theater: An exciting Disney Discothèque including the dirigible from The Island at the Top of the World. The theater is even used as a major soundstage for most bands performing in Disneyland. The building also included gift shops and a food court that were unaffiliated to rides like Space Mountain.

Discoveryland Railroad Station: Mind the step!

Phase II Attractions (coming soon!):

Voyage au Centre de la Terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth): The entire ride structure is to be built inside of a simulated mountain similar to the Matterhorn, but instead it is Snæfellsjökull, the Icelandic volcano from the novel. Guests will enter the ride vehicle from the top of the mountain from a large escalator, where their ride vehicle will slowly descend to see the underground wonders of the Earth, separated by 4 levels before it suddenly malfunctions, sending them on a terrifying ride up and down the mountain, eventually leading to the deep center of the Earth, where they will experience a Mesozoic jungle made into a food court and gift shop[11].

Le Tour de Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours (Around the World in 80 Days): A more peaceful dark ride where guests hop on a train locomotive ride vehicle and go on an adventure across the world, seeing places like Britain, Egypt, India, China, Japan, and etc. as the conductor makes passing comments about each place. The train’s ability to traverse oceans and mountains is explained through phlogiston-powered technology, allowing it to fly, which is reflected in the dark ride, where the ride vehicle seemingly levitates from the ground by separating the rail from the bottom of the ride building at varying sections and at varying heights. Heavily based on Peter Pan’s Flight but sections often take a closer look at the places it is visiting and the people that reside there.

War of the Worlds: A simulator ride similar to Star Tours, but a darker-themed ride where the guests try to avoid the Martian Tripods as they see soldiers fighting back against the metallic behemoths before finally witnessing the HMS Thunderchild making its heroic sacrifice to save the passengers from the tripods[12].

Muppetland

And what would Disneyland be without Jim Henson’s wonderful Muppets? Great for all ages, Muppetland gives you a chance to meet your favorite Muppets. Have a space adventure with Pigs in Space. See the park from on high on Kermit’s Ferris Wheel. Have a meal courtesy of the Swedish Chef! It’s Muppet Madness and Mayhem on a massive scale!

Like this, but more like a carnival-style land. (Image source “themeparktourist.com”)

Kermit’s Ferris Wheel: A classic Ferris wheel based on Kermit the Frog, with his face plastered on the sides of the ride.

Gonzo’s Wild Ride: An intense roller coaster where riders join Gonzo on his many thrill-seeking attempts!

Pigs...in…Space!: A comedic dark ride spoof on The Muppet Show’s skit Pigs in Space, which parodies classic sci-fi shows[13] such as Star Trek and Star Wars.

The Muppet Show, Live!: The incredibly innovative animatronic stage show adapted from the Magic Kingdom and customized for Disneyland Valencia. See the Muppets perform several shows based on The Muppet Show with pre-recorded audio.

Muppet Backstage Meet & Greet: The building is themed after The Muppet Show backstage, taking inspiration from previous meet & greets[14].

The Great Muppet Scavenger Hunt: A seasonal event that happens every Easter or Christmas where kids can locate several well-hidden Muppets randomly placed around Muppetland. (Look out for the Wilkins and Wontkins and Sam & Friends Muppets!) Winners receive special Muppet prizes, including Muppet plushies and other merch, with the 1st place getting an actual custom Muppet of their own.

The Swedish Chef’s Smorgasbord: A restaurant with a twist! You meal is prepared by none other than the Swedish Chef himself[15], who does live cooking while speaking to guests!

Hotels

The perfect place for the family to stay during your Disneyland experience! Disney Imagineers gave each of the Hotels a single theme, which are based on the different countries and time periods of Europe. Currently four hotels are available, with three more potential hotels planned for our Phase II expansion.

Current Hotels:

• Disney’s Victorian Hotel (themed after Victorian Britain)
• Disney’s Great Bavarian Resort (themed after the German State of Bavaria)
• Disney’s Mediterranean Resort (themed after Ancient Greece)
• Disney’s Italian Riviera (themed after the Italian Riviera)

Phase II Hotels:

• Disney’s Nordic Village Resort (themed after Scandinavia) A homage to the Polynesian Village Resort but with a Viking twist!
• Disney’s Versailles Resort (themed after France) A deluxe hotel in the grandeur style of Versailles Palace in Paris.
• Disney’s Red Square Hotel (themed after Russia) A hotel inspired by classic Russian architecture from both Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Enjoy your visit!

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[1] Developed by @Denliner with assists by @El Pip. Hat tip!

[2] It is very similar to Buena Vista Street from Disney’s California Adventure, but bigger in scale to be just like our timeline’s Main Street, U.S.A.

[3] This attraction will eventually be ported over to the Magic Kingdom, Tokyo Disneyland, and Disneyland itself, but only Valencia and Anaheim’s version survives to modern day, with Walt Disney's original cels being displayed in Anaheim.

[4] An out-of-universe jab at our timeline’s Disneyland Paris because Galahad is considered to be a more noble and more successful version of Lancelot, the character behind Paris’s Carousel.

[5] Initially Imagineers wanted to do a complex dark ride utilizing the conceptual Enhanced Motion Vehicles being developed but this was scrapped as the technology was very much in its infancy. However, it would soon give birth to Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom’s iterations of the Indiana Jones Adventure in the mid-90s. In spite of the scrapped concept, the roller coaster was truly one of the most intense ride experiences that Disney had ever produced up until that point, as riders would go on truck coaster vehicles and fly through a Chinese jungle up through multiple loops and inversions that would rival any amusement park ride like from Six Flags or Kings’ Island.

[6] While Imagineers initially sought to change the theming of the park to reflect European tastes, their construction partners at Dragados y Construcciones encouraged them to stick to the original Western theming, as Westerns were popular in Europe, only suggesting to add New Orleans-inspired Delta City as a tie-in to the Thunder Mesa Riverboats, with the music venue providing an endless source of jazz music that Europeans, especially the French, love. Many Disney fans consider Valencia’s Frontierland to be one of the biggest, yet the most intricate iteration of the classic land as of yet, thanks to Baxter’s attention to detail and much needed lore.

[7] Upon release, Discoveryland is considered to be one of the most successful lands ever created by Disney, finally solving the “Todayland Problem” plaguing the Disney I-Works ever since the New Tomorrowland refurbishment two decades ago. It also served as a model for future Tomorrowlands in Disneyland and Walt Disney World towards a more fantastical vision of the future envisioned by peoples of the past and the future. Examples include Tomorrowland 2055 in Disneyland, Tomorrowland 1955 in the Magic Kingdom, and Tomorrowland Nextworld in Tokyo Disneyland.

[8] Same as the Disneyland Paris version due to the downfall of Discovery Mountain. This is because of Tony Baxter deeming the entire pavilion to be far too expensive for the park. Instead, Discovery Mountain would be downsized by Tim Delaney into Space Mountain while the rest of the attractions would be built separately in Discoveryland over time. Regardless, Valencia’s Space Mountain would be seen as one of the best attractions that Disney has to offer due to being the first Space Mountain to have an inversion, while also having an extreme attention to detail in terms of theming, soundtrack, and story. For these reasons, Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune is considered to be the icon of Discoveryland and perhaps the entire park.

[9] An expanded version of our timeline’s attraction due to a vastly increased budget, with a full model of the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea anchored near Space Mountain with a larger lagoon.

[10] Albeit much smaller due to space restrictions and the budget being focused towards the E-Ticket attractions like Space Mountain or Indiana Jones. It only has 2 endings compared to EPCOT’s 3 as a result and the track layout is further optimized and compressed, consisting of futuristic depictions of a sustainable future over land and in space.

[11] With the opening of Space Mountain, this ride is considered to be the “ace-in-the hole” attraction to reignite interest in the park if attendance stalled or simply as an expansion. Space Mountain was built first because Tony Baxter turned down Tim Delaney’s request to build the ride, considering the technology to be far behind as it required a garish structure of rails on the side of a mountain to simulate a free-fall ride. Eventually the technology would catch up within years of Valencia’s opening through the use of Autonomous Guided Vehicles or AGVs. Still, being a trailblazer came with some pitfalls, as it was sometimes prone to breaking down despite its numerous safety systems. In addition, the ride is considered to be very inefficient for modern Imagineers due to low capacity and the concept forcing the ride system to be loaded from the top level, something that would be rectified in future free fall rides. However, it’s for these reasons and more that Journey to the Center of the Earth will ultimately be considered to be one of the greatest rides that Disney has ever built and as much of an icon as Space Mountain or Big Thunder Mountain. The thrill ride was a huge risk for Disney at the time, pouring at 100-200 million dollars into an E-Ticket attraction on the same scale as Space Mountain or the Matterhorn with an experimental free-fall design.

[12] Concept credited to Ideal Buildout. When built, it will match the set design of a certain to be announced Disney West End experience!

[13] Easter eggs and references for British sci-fi such as Blake’s 7 and Doctor Who are also included, though very much absent in the American versions, instead being replaced by Battlestar Galactica and Babylon Five references.

[14] Muppet walkarounds are often used instead of puppets or animatronics due to budget constraints and performer availability.

[15] Originally designed to do a series of actual comedy skits closer to the show, the Imagineers quickly found out that this was too complicated because of the amount of content that needed to be programmed and the complexity of movements required to make him hold multiple tools. Instead, they used a remote “waldo” arrangement where a live performer watching everything through a camera and listening through a microphone guides the animatronic. In Disneyland Valencia’s version of the restaurant, while he speaks gibberish to most guests, during times where Swedes are dining or Swedish Cast Members are in the restaurant, he begins to speak perfect Swedish, often apologizing to guests for his bad "Swedish" since the Americans tell him to speak in “fake Norwegian gibberish”. It quickly became an inside joke for many of the Swedish guests, making the attraction very popular with the Swedes. The reason this was added is because Henson wanted to entice Swedish visitors, who he noticed either weren’t as enthralled with the Muppet or were slightly annoyed or offended by the Swedish Chef’s gibberish (which sounded to them more like Norwegian). Additionally, the Smorgasbord served actual Swedish food in Valencia, with meatballs, mashed potatoes, open-faced sandwiches, lingonberry jam, and spit cake or semlor for dessert, from the beginning. In the Magic Kingdom’s version of the restaurant, however, American cuisine was originally served in Orlando, as Disney executives thought that people wouldn’t get Swedish cuisine (they were mostly right at the time). This changed over time as Ikea’s food choices began to gain popularity in the US. Eventually, Swedish guests in Orlando would try to elicit actual Swedish conversations with the Chef such that Disney started to specifically hire Swedish speakers for the job and train their non-Swedish speaking performers in a handful of phrases in case it comes up. Eventually, other versions of this restaurant with different animatronics were used in places like Tomorrowland.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Chapter 17: Expansion and Challenges (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

The 1990s saw a period of rapid world expansion for the Disney parks and resorts. Hoping to leave a lasting legacy as he contemplated retirement, CEO Ron Miller pushed for an increased Disney presence across the globe, a plan which was backed by Frank Wells and Dick Nunis. The biggest of these expansions would, of course, be Disneyland Valencia, which opened on time in the spring of 1992. But the early 1990s also saw a rapid expansion in Disneytowns and the phased development of Port Disney, an increased presence in Cruise Lines to supplement the Port, and even the launch of a third gate at Walt Disney World.

(Image by @Denliner)

The biggest Disney theme park event of the early 1990s was, of course, the opening of Disneyland Valencia[1]. No expense had been spared. Even the tight-fisted Frank Wells had insisted that every detail be perfect, down to the minutiae on the decorative archways where visitors could shelter from the harsh Spanish sun or autumn downpours. Knowing that no European was likely to be impressed by a concrete castle when the “real deal” was available in every city, Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, inspired in large part by Alcazar in Segovia[2], was built from real stone with real copper and real handmade stained glass. The hedges were even cut square in imitation of Eyvind Earle medieval-inspired style of Sleeping Beauty.

Other efforts were made to appeal to the European consumer, from the availability of wine and beer at the parks to the “Inspiration Plaza”, an exhibit that showed “how the continent of Europe inspired Walt and us” through a series of displays, such as side-by-side comparisons between Cinderella’s Castle and Schloss Neuschwanstein, the European fairy tales and legends that inspired so many Disney features, or the medieval illuminated manuscripts and tapestries that inspired the Earle artwork. The style and manners guide for the park employees had been made in cooperation with local religious and professional leaders in order to appeal to Spanish sensibilities. “Disney Ambassadors” wore flag lapel pins to announce what languages they spoke with fluency. The walkaround characters even got “European” makeovers, the main mascots being Mickey and Minnie in Flamenco costumes, but representative characters from all over Europe were on display, though early plans for a “French Kermit” were abandoned after the problematic ethnic slur was pointed out (“Mademoiselle Piggy” in her Can Can dress, however, remains a favorite with French guests).

Appealing to a European audience also meant finding the right balance between American Disney culture and European sensibilities. For example, it was quickly determined that the nostalgia-driven “Main Street USA” would have little familiarity to Europeans, so instead “La Plaza Medieval” was added to Fantasyland, a shopping center and culture display based upon an idealized Medieval marketplace with lute-playing troubadours, juggling jesters in motley, tumblers, blacksmiths, knights, and (of course) princesses in what was assumed to be the “local equivalent”. Main Street USA itself, meanwhile, received the “Hyperion” treatment, giving it a 1920s California vibe that also allowed them to add Spanish flair to the attraction, creating a familiar and yet exotic “Old Hollywood” look for the locals.

And despite some doubt by the Disney team, their European partners convinced them that Frontierland should stay as is (Europe loves cowboys!) and suggested adding the New Orleans based “Delta City” on to it as a showcase for the Jazz and Blues music that Europeans, particularly the French, inevitably and nostalgically associated with America. Delta City became primarily known as a music venue with some restaurants and bars, though it did feature a Mississippi Riverboat ride through the lake at Disneyland Valencia. The many music venues from street performers to stages and halls of various sizes from “blues club basement” to concert hall showcased mostly American or American-inspired music, including a concert in the Halyx Reunion Tour of the late 1990s. Jazz was a regular, of course, but also rock & roll, hip-hop, “Copeland” style American classical, folk, country, bluegrass, and blues, the latter very popular with the Germans at the time.

MGM Vice Chairman Bernie Brillstein even recalled taking his friend and former client Dan Ackroyd to see a performance at Delta City by a German Blues Brothers cover band[3]. “They were really good,” Brillstein recalls. “Even though the performer playing Elwood was clearly singing phonetically when he did “Rawhide” and “Rubber Biscuit” and didn’t speak any English, he had the tone, expression, and the moves down pat, which impressed Danny. And the guy who did Jake, well, it brought tears to my eyes how well he captured John, ponytail aside. Danny and I met them backstage and congratulated them and took some pictures with them. I think it was the thrill of their lifetime!”

Following the success of the Magic Kingdom’s Muppetland, Jim Henson and the Imagineers looked towards expanding the concept in Disneyland Valencia, pitching it as a cheap yet incredibly fun land to Disney executives due to its carnival theming and the possibility of carrying over or copying existing assets from both Muppetland and The Muppet Show. With so many of Valencia’s lands, such as Adventureland, Frontierland, and Discoveryland, all extremely costly and sometimes grossly over budget, and with executives noticing the lack of attractions for younger children or families, it became the perfect way to add flavor while constraining costs. It certainly helped that the Muppets remained hugely popular in Europe even as their popularity had faded in the US.

Muppetland was also an opportunity to utilize the new animatronic technologies that the Creatureworks have been developing for the past decade, illustrating the immense technological leap that has occurred since Jim Henson entered the Walt Disney Company. However, forced budget constraints limited the potential of what Muppetland could have been, with more intricate versions of the attractions being planned by the Imagineers, though they would never see the light of day. As a result, they are part of many tantalizing articles and videos across the Net about unrealized Disney attractions and lands like Discovery Bay or Rock Candy Mountain.

Muppetland would eventually be one of the inspirations for Roger Rabbit’s Toontown in Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland, as Jim Henson decided not to use his Muppet properties for Disneyland, seeing the use of his characters as a hostile takeover of Walt Disney’s original park (him seeing the Muppets overtake characters such as Mickey Mouse in the late 80s in popularity was a huge reason towards this decision) and also feared over-saturation of the IP that he created. As a result, modern Disney fans often see the two lands and IPs (Kermit and Mickey especially) as friendly rivals, although the company has never officially confirmed this. WDW would soon consecrate Muppetland as a legitimate land in the Magic Kingdom, copying much of the attractions built in Valencia.

Discoveryland at Disneyland Valencia (Image source “disneyparks.disney.go.com”)

Finally, and most successfully, Tomorrowland was reimagined as “Discoveryland” based in part on the old abandoned ideas for Discovery Bay. Rather than the “world of tomorrow” as seen in 1992, with its inevitable “Todayland” problem, it was reimagined as a Jules Verne/H.G. Wells inspired retro-futuristic Victorian sci-fi world where Space Mountain was now a giant brass-and-bronze cannon that “shot” the riders to the moon in a sequence right out of Verne. They even named it “De la Terre à la Lune”. Many consider it the “best” version of Space Mountain that ever was.

Disney, Dragados, and the Spanish Government had worked hard to get all of the infrastructure in place to support the influx of tourists, with new roads, rail lines, and upgrades to the Port of Dénia to permit the largest cruise ships. Careful landscaping was done to protect the Marjal wetlands from pollution or runoff. Solar panels and windmills were erected for power along with a natural gas cogeneration plant (mounted performers dressed as Don Quixote and Sancho prowled the wind farm as a joke). In all, it cost over $3.5 billion US (some say as high as $3.8 billion) with the Spanish Government absorbing about a third of that, in addition to another roughly $1.2 billion spent by the Spanish government in infrastructure costs, though much of this cost overlapped with the developments made for the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics, so a true accounting is difficult.

Disneyland Valencia held a “soft open” on the 6th of April, 1992, for employees, family, and the locals of Alicante, with free entry and rides. The soft open not only served as a “thank you” to those who built and maintained the park and a “good neighbor” gift to locals who’d borne the brunt of the construction and would now have to face the influx of crowds, but it also gave the park a “dry run” to help new employees get over their learning curves and discover and fix any bugs in the systems. All went so well that Disney had big hopes for a smooth opening.

Sort of like this… (Image source “allears.net”)

The official ribbon cutting on 21st of April, 1992, was attended by CEO Ron Miller, Chairman Frank Wells, Recreation President Dick Nunis, Imagineering President John Hench, and of course Creative Chief Jim Henson, who’d been a driving force in the design and construction of the park. The week-long celebration successfully brought out huge numbers, particularly as the new cruise ship docks and rail lines filled up. First month projections on attendance were met or exceeded[4].

However, all did not go smoothly. There were protestors, some of whom resorted to violence and vandalism (“There goes that coat,” joked Jim Henson after suffering a barrage of eggs). Even despite the soft open there were mechanical issues with some of the attractions, with crying children stuck on the rockets at Discoveryland for half an hour at one point. While the docks at Dénia were indeed capable of sustaining several cruise ships, the harbormasters and longshoreman that worked there were not. For centuries they’d been a small, out of the way port. Suddenly they were a tourism hub! Furthermore, the winding streets of Pego and Dénia between the port and the park, dating back to Roman times in some cases, were not sufficient for the sudden influx of tour busses. The once-quiet streets were soon gridlocked with smelly diesel busses and locals began to rethink their earlier enthusiasm for “El Ratón”. Likewise, the streets were jammed coming off of the new winding coastal highway and the train stations were jammed with crowds. Tragically, a 5-year-old boy was crushed against a wall in a rush for the train and had to be hospitalized. Disney paid for his medical expenses and rehabilitation costs and gave the family free passes for life, but the damage to the Disney brand was done and all of the anti-Disney crusaders on both ends of the political spectrum gladly played the “we told you so” card.

And yet the biggest problem for Disneyland Valencia was economic. Simply put, the timing could not have been worse. The global recession that began in the late 1980s had stretched into the early 1990s. Fewer families had the disposable income to afford the travel and hotel stays necessary to visit a theme park in Spain. The hotels that they built generally failed to fill to capacity after that initial spring influx. There was a surge in the summer of 1992 that came with the Summer Olympics in nearby Barcelona that once again filled the parks and hotels to capacity, but as the torch went out at the closing ceremonies the underattendance returned, save for a short-lived peak in the middle of the winter as visitors from Northern Europe came to escape the cold rain and snow. “We should have gone with Paris” became a recurring theme among Disney leadership, who assumed that the proximity to the major metropolitan center of Paris would have alleviated the early attendance woes[5].

Hotel and ticket prices were lowered to accommodate the lower demand and special events like conventions and company retreats were encouraged to consider Disneyland. Still, Disneyland Valencia would notably underperform for the first two years, at least until the recession ended[6]. By 1995, however, attendance was up, the traffic issues had been sorted out, and Ron Miller was able to claim victory on his signature initiative, a Disney footprint in Europe.

The bigger question remained, however, could it be maintained?

As Disneyland Valencia opened to disappointing numbers and technical difficulties in 1992, Port Disney continued to struggle. The Disney’s Pier Revue Disneytown-in-all-but-name and the Disney Shoreline Hotel were bringing in plenty of funds for their size, but they couldn’t hope to keep up with the costs of the Phase II and III efforts under construction next door. Frank Wells and CFO Mike Bagnall were coming to the dark conclusion that work may have to be stopped if the solvency issue couldn’t be managed.

Bagnall and his new Treasurer Richard Nanula, who’d replace him as CFO in late 1992, proposed a radical idea: an outside investor. Kingdom Holdings, the “company” that managed the investments of the Saudi Royal Family, were looking to partner with Disney on a park somewhere in the Persian Gulf, ideally one themed on the popular Disney’s Aladdin (this would lead fairly quickly to a Disneytown in Saudi Arabia). However, growing public distrust of the Saudi investors due to women’s rights issues, accused links to terrorism, and other factors made the prospect of bringing the Saudi flag to Long Beach, however indirectly, politically problematic, even as the Bush family urged Roy Disney in particular to support the deal.

Stan Kinsey proposed the Japanese Oriental Land Company, who owned, operated, and licensed Tokyo Disneyland. But OLC, who was resistant to the idea of financially partnering with Disney beyond simple licensing agreements and design work with Imagineering, was not financially up to it anyway. Japan was in the midst of a stock market crash and looming recession following an economic bubble. Kingdom Holdings, the name eerily reminiscent of the Kingdom Acquisitions holding company that nearly took over Disney in 1984, was looking to be a good option.

And yet it was Jim Henson who offered a third option, or, technically, his good friend and former business partner Lord Lew Grade who offered the option. Grade had listened to Jim lamenting the issue while in London and had his own proposal: Pearson PLC. Pearson had a long and storied history in UK business, starting in the 1840s as a construction firm. They had since gone largely over to publishing, but they owned the Tussauds Group, which included various themed attractions, most notably the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum chain but also the Alton Towers, Chessington, and other UK-based theme parks. Pearson was flush with cash at the moment and looking to invest in parks outside of the UK[7]. And the Port Disney project, along with Disneyland Valencia, offered exactly the opportunities that the company was looking for.

Grade himself set up the negotiations via his old acquaintance James Joll, an old Oxford-and-Cambridge educated man of Old English sophistication. The negotiations went quite smoothly given that both parties were eager to work together. Ultimately, Pearson put up $2 billion in cash and assumed $1 billion in existing Disney debt against both Disneyland Valencia and Port Disney, claiming a 12% stake in the former and a 30% stake in the latter[8]. Pearson hoped to not only gain direct income from the investment, but hoped to learn directly from the “masters” in Imagineering and Disney Parks & Rec and apply the lessons to their own parks in the UK. The deal would also lead to an eventual Disneytown adjoined to Chessington World of Adventures in the southwest of London.

Additionally, the deal brought with it a synergistic relationship with Madame Tussauds, which immediately began work on adding one of their eponymous wax museums to Port Disney and to select existing Disneytowns. The museums helped bring visitors to the Disney parks and the Disney parks helped bring visitors to Madame Tussauds.

Disney and Pearson also managed to smooth over the contentious relationship with neighboring Maersk by agreeing to take some of their fill dirt for the Phase III effort right out of the channel leading into the Maersk terminal, which helped widen and deepen it ahead of projected increases in shipping sizes.

With the finances stabilized, Port Disney Phase II opened in the Spring of 1993, including two new hotels: the wetlands-themes Disney Tideland (Kermit featured heavily) and the transportation-themed Disney Port (Thomas featured heavily), the latter of which included the opening of the integrated Long Beach Transportation Museum in partnership with the Smithsonian and Department of Education. The museum was built around the Spruce Goose, of course, but also featured numerous restored historic air, land, and sea vehicles, military and civilian. Phase II also included the beginning of the restoration of the Queen Mary in cooperation with the Smithsonian. It would open as a “living museum” and floating hotel in 1994.

And yet the biggest part of Phase II was the official opening of Port Disney itself, featuring five docks sized for the biggest cruise ships built at the time with room left over for the next generation of ships[9]. It also featured World Port with smaller docking facilities for small charter cruises like tours, fishing, and eco-tours, including a ferry to Shoreline Drive. An “Evening with the Muppets” dinner cruise became a popular attraction, with performers Muppet-lip-synching to a prerecorded sketch that changed every season. And as the cruise ships began arriving, the shuttles to-and-from Disneyland began to increase in frequency. Henson really wanted to expand the monorail all the way from Anaheim, but the cost and zoning requirements were more than even Disney in partnership with Pearson were willing to handle.

Port docking fees and services became a good source of ancillary profits in addition to covering the port operating expenses. The Port had a synergistic relationship with not only cruise ships, but with small private boats and the US Navy, who made special deals to occasionally park a naval vessel at the port and let the Sailors descend on the Port. This, needless to say, led to some incidents that ultimately led to the Shore Patrol establishing a permanent presence as an adjunct to the private security and Long Beach Police.

And yet when Stan Kinsey saw the spike in attendance to both Port Disney and Disneyland that appeared with every ship, military or civilian, he began to get ideas of his own that went beyond Phase III and the Disney Sea resort.

---

[1] Mouse-eared Hat Tip to @Denliner for the design assist on Disneyland Valencia and another to @El Pip for the details of the engineering and construction and costs.

[2] Steel helm tip to @Denliner.

[3] I saw these guys when I was stationed in Germany in the mid-nineties when they did a Christmas concert in Trier. The Germans at the time were obsessed with Jake & Elwood. And yea, there’s just something indescribable about seeing a German Blues Brothers cover band on a cold December day in the Trier marktplatz after a couple of warm glühweins to keep you thawed out.

[4] Disney attendance projections are humbler in this timeline than the projections for EuroDisney in 1992 since Pego is still “off the beaten path”. Disney was overly optimistic about the Paris location since it was right in the middle of the most populous parts of western Europe. Here, Disney expects to “build” an audience rather than have them all start flooding in from the start.

[5] Eisner’s decision to place the park in Paris has been criticized in hindsight. Disney’s arrogant refusal to bend Disney rules to meet local custom (e.g. alcohol and grooming standards) have been rightfully criticized in my opinion. Many of Eisner’s decisions seemed to be trying to “one-up” the French at being “cultured and European”, as if he was trying to prove a point. Attendance targets were certainly overly optimistic. However, Euro Disney’s early woes were largely driven by the recession. Simply put, the early 1990s were one of the worst times to open a new Disneyland. People in this timeline will question the decision to go with the Spain location rather than the “obvious” location near Paris. Did I mention that I love Irony?

[6] In all, Disneyland Valencia will underperform, but thanks to efforts to appeal to a European audience rather than try to “one-up” the French at their own game, and thanks even more to the bump from the Barcelona Olympics and its popularity as a winter retreat for Northern Europe and Russia, it will perform better than our timeline’s EuroDisney and will not need drastic measures to prevent bankruptcy. Disney will take a dip in revenues in the early 1990s, but will still manage to keep moving up and forward.

[7] In our timeline they invested in the Spanish PortAventura park, but with the announcement of Disneyland Valencia in this timeline, that park was cancelled. And another hat-tip to @El Pip for suggesting this option.

[8] For reference Disneyland Valencia is now 55% Disney, 33% Government-backed Spanish Banks, and 12% Pearson while Port Disney is 60% Disney, 30% Pearson, 10% various banks and minor investors.

[9] Note that they would need to modify Port Disney in the 2010s to account for the monster cruise ships of the era, reducing the five berths down to four.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

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

In the spring of 1992 Jim Henson led the opening ceremonies for Disneyland Valencia alongside Ron Miller and Dick Nunis. It was an exciting culmination of years of design, construction, deal making, and partnerships that had alternately been a joy, a burden, a frustration, and, now, a celebration. And what a celebration! The locals took the week off for all intents and purposes and turned the whole town into a festival. Disney probably could have fought a war with the number of fireworks they set off. Whole streets in Pego and Denia were closed, the celebration becoming like a miniature carnival. Even the anarchists’ protest became a festive event that got absorbed into the larger fiesta atmosphere after word came down that Valencia CF had managed to beat the mighty FC Barcelona 2-1.

Spain had become a regular place to visit for Jim over the past few years as the park construction continued, and he’d developed a passible command of the Spanish language, though his odd mix of New York Puerto Rican, LA Chicano, book-Castilian, and Catalan tended to cause near universal confusion. His fame posed few issues for him there. People would smile to see him and tourists would occasionally ask him for an autograph as he walked the increasingly-less-quiet streets, but they would mostly just leave him alone. And the one time he’d been accosted by some inebriated punks looking to hassle the awkward old foreigner, he had “Kermit” talk his way out of the situation, said “punks” buying him a drink instead[1].

He was really growing to love the freewheeling, informalized nature of tapas culture and growing to appreciate Spanish wine and sangria, though he wasn’t quite ready to try the absinthe since he’d heard that it was narcotic[2]. He implemented tapas stations at Disneyland Valencia from opening day, where they proved popular and profitable enough that he added localized “tapas” options to other Disney parks[3], where they fit in well as part of a long history of eat-as-you-go “street food” at the parks, albeit with higher quality and better health than the standard pizza, popcorn, and churro fare.

Life in LA had opened him up to Spanish culture even more than his time in New York already had, and as such Valencia felt a lot like California to him, only with less traffic, though admittedly what the traffic lacked in volume it more than made up for in chaos. Who knew a Fiat or Renault could be such a dangerous vehicle? Still, he felt safe and respected walking down the medieval streets of Pego and Denia with Daryl Hannah, whom he was still seeing. No Paparazzi hounded them. No one seemed bothered by him and Hannah being together, wealthy and powerful men having affairs with younger beautiful women being almost the cliched expectation in the Mediterranean. While he and Daryl alike were utterly appalled at the continued existence of bullfighting, which they considered ritualized murder, most aspects of Spanish culture and society appealed to them[4].

He floated ideas of a deeper relationship with Daryl, but she was uninterested in anything like formal ties, a hippie free spirit to the end. She often insisted on paying for her own meals and travel despite the fact that Jim had more money than he had any idea what to do with. He instead respected her distance and enjoyed her intimacy. He briefly went back to vegetarianism with her before reverting quickly to become a pescatarian for the most part. In Spain, however, he frequently “cheated” behind her back in that regard, since the meats were just so much better than anything in the US, though he ironically ended up refusing to eat octopus after discovering just how intelligent that they were even as he made excuses for the occasional pork.

One morning in Denia he awoke before dawn and walked to the shore in time to see the sunrise. He reflected on how much had changed in his life, and in his family’s life. Jane was still running the CTW. Lisa was on her way to become the head of Fox Studios. Brian was an executive at Disney by his own merits. Cheryl was managing her new career in costuming, primarily with Tim’s Skeleton Crew, and bugging him to launch a Dark Crystal TV series. John was running a major charity, underwritten by President Carter. And Heather had graduated from CalArts and rather than pursue a position at any of the numerous opportunities that awaited her among the companies of Hollywood given her name and connections, she was founding her own small studio with some of her CalArts friends! He offered her a fallback job at Disney if the bold but risky plan fell through, which he well expected that it might.

(Images by @Denliner)

He returned to LA and into a rather mad summer of movie releases and park decisions, greenlighting in particular three new Disneytowns in Seattle, St. Louis, and Chicago. The Seattle site was built on Pier 57 in partnership with the landowner, Hal Griffith, who’d been trying to develop the pier into an amusement park for years and was super-enthusiastic, even footing much of the bill himself. The Chicago Disneytown was likewise built on the waterfront, in this case on the site of the old Navy Pier, made in partnership with the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority. The 50-acre space was already mostly filled with historical structures, which required some careful renovation (aided by restoration grants) to allow for track rides and for recycled Hooked! sets to be put in as a walk-through attraction. Both Disneytowns would feature their own localized versions of Disney’s Pier Revue, with the Seattle site featuring Chinook-influenced artwork and themed like Adventureland (complete with a Pacific Northwest “Enchanted Potlatch” in the vein of the Enchanted Tiki Bar and a localized version of the Adventurer’s Club) and the Chicago site given a 1920s gothic revival take on the “Hyperion” style and made vaguely analogous to New Orleans Square. The Chicago site featured a “Gangstertown” animatronic dark track ride and “Blues City,” a blues and jazz themed music club. Universal would later create “Jake & Elwood’s House of Blues” in response, which put Bernie Brillstein, a producer for The Blues Brothers, into a strange position.

Both sites would do spectacularly well in part thanks to their enviable locations right downtown and in the case of Seattle in particular thanks to the long, dark, wet winters, which made the happy glowing neon of the Disneytown a welcome respite.

Image by @Denliner.

The St. Louis site, on the other hand, struggled from the very start. It was a labor of love for the whole Disney family, an attempt to recreate Walt’s old plans for Riverfront Square. It was tied to Main Street USA and designed to be “Marceline in its heyday” in honor of Walt. But hopes to build it near the Gateway Arch to original plans were dashed quickly as the City of St. Louis, likely due in part to intense lobbying by Warner Brothers’ Six Flags, rejected the plan. Instead, they built across the river in the Eagle Creek area, not far from the historic Cahokia Mounds. The development effort went well, with the local governments all eager for something to compete with St. Louis and with luck stimulate the struggling local economy.

But all did not go according to plan. After a promising opening day in 1993 and an initial surge of visitors, Six Flags St. Louis began ruthlessly undercutting the small Disneytown in every way. Ticket prices were slashed and locals were given even greater discounts. If Disneytown scored a big-name entertainer, Six Flags would try to pay them more to come to Six Flags or would run a competing act. Disney even alleged that Six Flags was sending limos to grab musicians bound for the Disneytown at the airport and instead rushing them to performances at Six Flags, though Six Flags denied the accusations[5]. And most devastatingly, existing plans to expand the Six Flags park into a full-blown Warner Movie World were accelerated, as they had been in Dallas in response to the San Antonio Disneytown, but in this case being right across town it was able to undercut the Disneytown directly.

As close to enraged as anyone ever saw him, Jim tried to fight the flagrant bullying as he saw it as best as he could, with ad campaigns that played up the “Walt’s hometown” angle and framed it as a “David and Goliath” story, but it was really hard for a company like Disney to play the “little guy” card. The little park continued to suffer losses each quarter. The board, who desperately wanted to keep that resort in particular alive to honor Walt, would have to face a tough decision on whether to spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to upgrade the Disneytown into a full-blown Disneyland capable of going toe-to-toe with Six Flags, or simply accept defeat and cut their losses.

But this struggle was still in the future in the spring and summer of 1992, and Jim was at a height of personal success. Despite the initial resistance of many in animation, Roy Disney in particular, Shrek! was completed and released that July. The Amblin-coproduced animated “anti-fairytale” was released under Fantasia Films and Spielberg’s new “Amblimation” label since Roy and others objected to releasing it under the Disney label with its frequently rude and misanthropic humor. And despite the assumption by many that it would be a flop with its hideously gross Princess, the film became a noteworthy success, earning $182 million against its $34 million budget[6]. The film did well with boys ages 7 to 12 precisely because of the “ugliness” and it also did very well with teens and young adults due to the satirical and deconstructive elements and stealthy adult jokes.

By contrast, The Bamboo Princess, done in partnership with Studio Ghibli, was turning into a beautiful masterpiece and The Little Mermaid was taking on a spectacular life of its own with Freddie Mercury and Alan Menken teaming up for the soundtrack. Both films followed a more traditional Disney Princess model, though the former was, despite intense lobbying by Roy and others, going to retain the bittersweet original ending at the unbending insistence of producer and writer Isao Takahata. Even so, Bo Boyd was having a field day with the toy lines, with Disney Princesses now an ever-increasing brand in their own right, and with a span of cultures and personalities to choose from, from the sweet and persistent Cinderella to the spoiled Princess Jasmine to the literally haunting Princess Keli to even the hideous Princess Argyle from Shrek, who had her own small but devoted fandom[7].

And on the subject of Shrek, the titular character’s voice actor was another Second City turned Saturday Night Live actor that Bernie’s daughter Leigh managed named Chris Farley. The young man was at once hilarious and loaded with pathos, which made him so relatable even while acting in a totally over-the-top manner. His vocal takes on Shrek were nearly as sidesplitting as Robin Williams had been on Aladdin with each and every minor little crisis or inconvenience blown wildly out of proportion in the funniest way possible. He and fellow SNL-er Steve Martin, who played the obnoxious antagonist Prince Guyling, were hilarious playing off of each other. For that matter, every voice actor was enhanced by playing off of Farley. Fran Drescher and Gilbert Gottfried as his parents, Carol Kane as the Princess Argyle, and even the great George Carlin as the literal wise-ass Donkey.

Behind the scenes, though, Farley was quickly emerging as another “worry case” for Jim. Farley idolized John Belushi, and was following his same career path. Unfortunately, that included the self-destructive habits. Farley, like Forrest and Phoenix, was heavily into drugs. Jim and John began to call them the “three Fs” based upon the phonetics of their last names (even though Phoenix was a Ph) and began to wonder if there was any hope for any of them. Forrest in particular was spiraling fast, and Phoenix and Farley were right behind him. Phoenix seemed to regret the drug abuse, but Farley practically seemed to want to die in a drugged-out self-immolation, taking the Belushi route all the way to the fiery end, as it were.

Bernie, Leigh, Jim, and John pushed Farley into rehab, but after emerging sober he quickly returned to substance abuse. And Jim began to wonder if trying to save lives was a Sisyphean task.

---

[1] In a similar event in history, Johnny Weissmuller, who played Tarzan, used his famous yodel call to save himself from revolutionaries in Cuba after the Batista regime fell.

[2] Not actually true, mind you, but in 1992 it was still illegal pretty much everywhere in the world except Spain based upon a false belief in its narcotic properties that just wouldn’t die.

[3] Another brilliant idea from Mrs. Khan! Probably a better idea than the Handwich, I dare say.

[4] Daryl Hannah was far less than impressed by the machismo culture, mind you.

[5] Morning talk shows allegedly did this nasty trick to steal talent from each other.

[6] Will not become a phenomenon like in our timeline, but a fun if forgettable film that has a cult following. There will be no sequels. More on Shrek! in a future post.

[7] Perfect for the young Daria type who wants you to know that she’s her “own person” and has no time for your stupid old beauty standards, thank you very much, and doesn’t care one bit what you think of her. Look at her not caring what you think!

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Chapter 24: A Peach of a Location (Cont’d)
From Theme Park Confidential: The Corporate Machinations and Machiavellian Intrigue behind your Favorite Parks, by E. Z. Ryder

In 1992 Columbia Peach Grove Studios and Park opened to the public, just weeks ahead of the grand opening of the Warner Movie World expansion to Six Flags over Georgia. The crew had worked overtime, and at great expense, to beat Warner to the punch. Ted Turner had made it a personal mission to beat the rival project that he’d personally dubbed (much amused at his own cleverness) “Palmetto Bugs”.

“Palmetto Bugs will be open in just three months!” he reportedly told his board, “We need to get that goddamn Scooby house working!”

Like “Black Sunday” at the original Disneyland and the similarly nearly disastrous opening of Universal Studios Florida just a couple of years earlier, Peach Grove Studios had a rough opening day, with disgruntled crowds, long wait times, and malfunctioning rides, in particular the Totally Fun built animatronics for the Scooby Doo’s Mystery Manor attraction, which was to be the crowning attraction for Hanna-Barbera’s Cartoon City. For the life of them they couldn’t get the great unmasking scene (where Fred pulls off the Ghostly Colonel’s mask to reveal that it was, to the surprise of nobody, Old Man Devereaux the whole time) to work properly.

By week three most of the worst bugs were worked out. The Rocketeer-based ride, originally intended to have the guests lying prone before ergonomic and safety concerns drove it into a more traditional inverted coaster design, was working well enough as a partially-indoor thrill ride with some spectacular scenes (like the Zeppelin encounter), despite the film not being a spectacular blockbuster. The Tom & Jerry’s Wild Chase indoor track ride was popular with all ages. The Flintstone’s Bedrock neighborhood was looking great. The Jellystone Park Picnic Place food courts were popular, with their Chuck E. Cheese like animatronic shows featuring Yogi and other H-B classic characters. And if Jetsons Towers were a bit too much like Tomorrowland and the John Ford inspired Boot Hill a bit like an uninspired copy of Frontierland to some, Turner could live with it. The Stone Mountain Battlefield, where reenactments of famous battles occurred – not just Revolutionary or Civil War, but World Wars, Medieval battles, and the like – was proving a rather unique attraction and served double-duty as a place to film for Columbia Pictures.

But Turner and Totally Fun’s Peter Alexander were most proud of the Close Encounter attraction, a big, outdoor attraction with a giant descending UFO and a mockup of Devil’s Tower, based on the climactic scene of the Spielberg-directed Close Encounters of the Third Kind and made in partnership with Amblin (Spielberg by this point was being playfully referred to as a “theme park whore” for his willingness to sponsor competing attractions with any company). While the fifteen-year-old film had largely fallen out of the public eye, the attraction was so well done as to win high praise (and several awards) within the amusement park industry. Guests said it was best after dark when all the lights were at their most impressive.

Otherwise, Columbia Peach Grove Park was mostly standard-issue spinning rides, roller coasters, a flume ride, and carousels, each given various Columbia, CBS, or H‑B theming, and hardly much to write home about. The general lack of good IP was becoming a hindrance with so many of Columbia’s films being old or just not something that translated to a park attraction. Turner nearly flipped out when someone suggested a Tootsie-based drag show, for example. Columbia Pictures was frankly struggling to make a real name for itself. Their biggest recent hit had been Dances with Wolves, but Kevin Costner refused to allow it to be made into an attraction or even have the film’s characters featured at Boot Hill.

Even so, Peach Grove was managing to bring in guests, even after “Palmetto Bugs” opened across the city. The studio tours were popular, as was the tour of the H-B animation studio. And strangely, Peach Grove and Warner Movie World turned out to be mutually beneficial, as tourists would go to the one park on their first day and the other on the second, the crosstown rivalry ironically working well for a long weekend style visit.

And yet one of the biggest knock-on effects of Peach Grove was that it spurred a reckoning in Columbia Pictures, with an irate Turner lambasting his studio executives to stop “phoning things in” with forgettable films and give him an Indiana Jones or Star Wars level hit that lent itself well to “park synergy”. Columbia Pictures head Dawn Steel pushed back, not afraid to tangle with Turner. The two had many a knock-down, drag-out fight with bets being placed on how much longer Steel had before Turner replaced her, or she left for greener pastures.

In the end, however, both knew that Columbia Pictures needed a win, and needed one soon, so they set aside their differences and set out to find that Big Film that could be Tuner’s Indiana Jones. Steel approached Kevin Costner with a screenplay that Turner had snagged after a long bidding war with Triad and Warner Brothers. Costner read through the screenplay, falling in love with its post-apocalyptic setting and its potential for sweeping cinematography and action, and signed up on the spot.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

🦃Happy American Thanksgiving, all! To celebrate, there's a Turkey, courtesy of @GrahamB:

---

Thunderbirding (1992)
From “Eight Mockbusters of the last 25 years Actually Worth Seeing,” CulturePolice.co.uk Netsite, June 26th, 2012

Guest Post by @GrahamB

What it cashes in on: Top Gun, Iron Eagle 1-3, The Starfighters

Notable actors: Davis Jones, Valerie Pringle

Whom to blame: Davis Jones, Walter Edgar[1]

Why it’s worth your bloody time:

Affectionate parodies are a rare breed, on the one hand you have to make fun of something you love, on the other you have to genuinely love what you're making fun of. Thunderbirding is a low budget love letter to the barely-disguised military aviation recruitment films like Top Gun, Iron Eagle, and The Starfighters accomplished by filming a load of airshow footage and wrapping a story around it. Said story involves a pair of star-crossed lovers whose luck in love seems directly tied to wannabe pilot Steve's (Jones) chances to join the US Air Force's illustrious Thunderbirds aerobatic team (that is, none whatsoever).

Amazingly for a movie with a shoestring budget and a would-be auteur actor/director/producer like Davis Jones, Thunderbirding manages to have romantic chemistry better than a lot of actual romantic comedies. Hollywood could learn a thing or two about how actual people fall in love watching this film, assuming you're not distracted by playing the game “Stock Footage or Model” whenever an actual plane appears on screen. Even so, most actual military aviators or aircraft maintainers will tell you that it’s hardly less ridiculous than the films it apes, with the flight physics hardly much more ludicrous than, say, Top Gun.

Like in the movies that it mocks, Jones managed to get some good Cockpit footage using a real jet cockpit. Unfortunately, the cockpit that he got was a Cessna Citation.

Come for some genuinely good cinematography courtesy of Walter Edgar in his first job as DP, stay for the genuinely good if ultimately doomed romantic comedy.

---

[1] All fictional.

 

[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

When Disney announced the groundbreaking for their Disney-MGM Studios Hollywoodland theme park with Bass Brothers’ Arvida subsidiary as the prime construction manager, Eisner knew that the proposed deal to buy out Bass’s share of Disney would fall through. A call from Richard Rainwater a few days later confirmed what he already suspected. Bass was standing by Disney and the Miller-Henson-Wells triumvirate.

Eisner looked for other options. He knew that a merger with NBC or Columbia, owners of CBS, or Triad, owners of PFN, would be a non-starter with government regulators, so he continued his informal discussions with Warner, Universal, Time-Atlantic, and even Disney-MGM. All four were giving him the runaround, though Universal was hinting that should he tire of life at ABC that Universal might have a position available.

With strategic options dwindling, Eisner looked inside the studios for his next big success. In a coup on the television side, in a deal struck with Helen Kushnick he poached the popular Tonight Show go-to guest host Jay Leno from NBC, getting Leno his own 11:30 talk show, ABC’s Up Late, with Jay Leno. Leno, whose hopes to take over for the retiring Johnny Carson were reportedly stymied after MGM’s Bernie Brillstein intervened with NBC on Dave Letterman’s behalf, was grateful for the opportunity. Leno managed to steal a lot of The Tonight Show’s audience with his relatable everyman persona, which contrasted with Letterman’s snarky chaos, which some Middle American audiences found off-putting[1].

On the animation front, The Prince of Egypt had, against all expectations that he had, become a success. Ritzy Gal was now in production, and he managed to greenlight his idea for Dufus, the story of a German Shepherd as a canine stand-in for Holden Caulfield. While Bluth would produce and lead the storyboarding and character animation, the in-house DIC animators would partner with various Irish and Japanese studios for a majority of the background and inbetweener animation, meaning that Dufus would be largely animated in parallel with Ritzy Gal and thus released in 1994, just a year later.

Don Bluth, their independent animation partner, did not care for the title. Without going through Katzenberg first, Bluth began lobbying Eisner for a name change and a main character breed change. Instead of a German Shepherd, why not a Golden Retriever, whose long hair could mimic the unkept hair of a rebellious teenager? The film could be renamed Retriever, a subtle play on the idea of a “Catcher” as in the J.D. Salinger novel that was clearly the inspiration. Eisner liked it, and approved the change.

Katzenberg was furious. Long insulted behind his back as “Eisner’s Golden Retriever,” Katzenberg took the name and breed change as a personal insult. His other nickname, “The DIC Head”, he could take, even revel in for its implicit power, but the dismissive canine moniker had always struck at his most vulnerable self-doubts. He was right to be suspicious of the name, because Bluth, who was growing to despise Katzenberg after the Hollywood Animation head began claiming all of the credit for The Prince of Egypt, deliberately injected the snipe into the production. While Eisner has long maintained his innocence in this regard, claiming to have selected the name in the good faith belief that Katzenberg approved of the change, speculation remains that he was either consciously or subconsciously taking the opportunity to put his emerging internal rival back in his place.

Katzenberg considered taking a job offer with his friend Dave Geffen, but instead found a new internal ally: Eisner’s biggest rival at ABC, Bob Iger. This alliance would remain hidden at first, worked through a few clandestine lunches or meetings when Eisner was out. But it would soon grow and Katzenberg began to consider a post-Eisner career.

Eisner, meanwhile, was looking at the burgeoning cinematic war between Disney-Marvel and Warner Brothers-DC and began considering if there was a comics company worth acquiring. Dick Tracy had been a disappointment which he largely blamed on Warren Beatty, but perhaps there was another comic company worth exploring. He approached Dark Horse Comics, who had been attempting to spin up a film production company of their own, but found their violent and puerile The Mask not in keeping with the image that he wanted for Hollywood Pictures. He looked at Malibu Comics, but again it had dark stories about evil government “Men in Black” agents ala The X-Files that hypnotized teens into committing suicide. Hardly the stuff of a fun family summer adventure movie. Pacific Comics seemed like a good option, but they were already in business with Columbia after the Rocketeer film.

From director Alex Proyas

Eclipse Comics showed some real interest in working with him. The struggling publisher had mostly subsisted on forgotten golden age heroes or licensed productions of Tolkien or James Bond. Their biggest original title was the Ninja Turtles satire Radioactive Blackbelt Hamsters. Of their classic titles, one stood out: Miracleman, which was very popular in the UK (where he had been known as Marvelman) but a lesser-known name in the US. Eisner was hesitant to greenlight such a (to him and most Americans) obscure title, but the character was at least understandable as a straight-up superhero rather than some kind of nostalgic throwback like Airboy (which given the underperformance of The Rocketeer seemed a non-starter). He decided to greenlight a film version of the dark Alan Moore reboot as an experiment with a relatively low $25 million budget. Katzenberg ultimately handed the director’s reigns to Australian director Alex Proyas.

The darkness of the Miracleman script surprised Eisner at first, but the more he delved into the comics world the more he began to see how darkness was increasingly defining comics of the era, with some already portraying the new “age” of comics to be the “Dark Age”. Perhaps Batman’s dark turn under Raimi wasn’t just a one-off fluke like many were saying, the success of the colorful and campy Spider-Man notwithstanding. Dark comics films might just be the future, and he asked around for another dark comic to adapt, though perhaps not as dark and cynical as Men in Black! An aide brought a copy of the dark, gothic comic The Crow to him. He was rather taken with its nightmarish exploration of drugs and crime and justice and love and death, even if the bloody violence disturbed him, and he immediately had the studio greenlight the picture and asked Sam Raimi to direct. Raimi, though increasingly busy, fell madly in love with the comic and accepted immediately, with the film scheduled for release in 1995.

From director Sam Raimi

Otherwise, The Formula lived on at Hollywood Pictures. Someone brought him a copy of a Danny Rubin screenplay that Rubin’s agent had been circulating around Hollywood called Memorial Day. It was the story of a selfish entertainment lawyer who one day finds himself stuck reliving the same day over and over again, that day being, of course, Memorial Day[2]. It was very High Concept on the surface, but deeper down it had a strong philosophical bent and was also a satire on US society and its values. While Tom Hanks was a bigger and more expensive name than The Formula usually allowed, director Peter Weir swore that Hanks was the only person capable of playing the jerk while also being relatable and forgivable. Either way, the $126 million box office that it earned when it came out in 1993 more than covered the costs.

What a difference a day makes…

New acquisition Miramax likewise continued to perform well, continuing to crank out or distribute film after film, often with sexy and dramatic tales that delved into some controversial areas. The sheer volume of the often-low-budget productions defrayed risk and provided a steady series of singles with the occasional double. The acquisition was already on the verge of paying for itself. CEO Thomas Murphy was duly impressed with the acquisition and commended Eisner. Best yet, Miramax President Bob Weinstein, now effectively torn from his morally repugnant brother, was all but fully under Eisner’s sway and in his power. Eisner began to once again subtly suggest to Murphy that he was ready for bigger things at Capital Cities/ABC.

Eisner was flying high in the early 1990s, no doubt about it. But all of the toes that he was stepping on were starting to add up. Iger and Katzenberg continued to conspire behind his back. Bluth got along with him, but was fed up with Katzenberg and swearing that Retriever would be his last feature with Hollywood Animation, and he thus couldn’t be counted on as an ally. Weinstein’s captive loyalty was inherently suspect. CEO Thomas Murphy had a soft spot for Eisner, but Murphy’s longtime friend and new President Daniel J. Burke was well aware of how Eisner had tried to poach the position of President out from under him.

Eisner was still in a very strong position, but even so he’d soon be in the biggest fight of his career.

---

[1] In a strange flip of our timeline’s situation, Letterman will move The Tonight Show back to New York while Up Late will be filmed at ABC Studios in Burbank. Ted Turner’s CBS, meanwhile, will for the moment stick with The CBS Late Movie, taking advantage of Turner’s vast library of films, and various re-runs.

[2] Written in 1990 and inspired in large part by a concept that Rudin had for a long time (which was later crossed with musings on immortality he had from reading The Vampire Lestat), Rudin opened the calendar to the very next holiday to be his setting: it was Groundhog Day in our timeline. Here, random butterflies mean that the holiday in this timeline is Memorial Day, which changes everything but the basic concept! And yes, I was tempted to make it the exact same film as OTL for the obvious meta-joke, but managed to resist.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Part IV: Darkness Rising (Cont’d)
From Pow! An Illustrated History of American Comics from the Victorian to the Modern

By the early 1990s the Dark Age of Comics, for those who recognize it, was in full effect[1]. It was the era where Venom got his own print while Aunt May died, where Superman would pursue a revenge quest following the near-death of Lois Lane, Hellspawn would launch, and gun-toting, casually-violent antiheroes would take center stage away from the Caped Crusaders. And best of all it’s the era when everyone’s favorite Mouthy Merc would appear, forever making comics a better place for everyone.

Like comic’s awkward adolescence, it was a period ironically marked both by more adult themes, and by more juvenile fantasies. We’d see many of the favorite old school characters like Peter Parker retire while Eddie Brock would go on literal rampages. Antiheroes began to get more overtly hypermasculine and violent, even as the trend towards such musclebound killers was fading away in films. The more mature themes of the Bronze Age evolved into more overt pushing-the-limits on sex, drugs, and graphic violence. And it was really freakin’ funny and awesome. Especially when you-know-who did it.

It was also the era of the Comic Book Speculator’s Market, which saw the hoarding of comic books and the creation of numerous “event comics” to capitalize upon it. Numerous fans bought numerous copies of comics and filed them away, hoping for them to gain value over time, which might actually have happened if everyone else wasn’t doing the exact same thing. It was the era where less scrupulous producers even used limited print runs and forced scarcity to create demand the magnificent bastards. Ironically, it was these more manipulative forced scarcity efforts that actually managed to produce works which could grow in value over time, though not to the degree that their keepers hoped.

In many respects the Dark Age, or early Iron Age if you prefer, I thought you said it was the Bakelite age? was a natural evolution of the Bronze Age, continuing to explore more mature themes and pursue more adult audiences in the absence of the Comics Code. It experimented not just with more controversial subjects, but also explored new art styles, new technologies like digital inking and coloring, and new storytelling techniques. Don’t forget fourth wall breaks! This led to a strange juxtaposition where the same comics lines could feature deep explorations of the philosophy of crime and punishment…and then turn into a gratuitous splatter-fest.

Dark Horse Comics came into its own in this era, distributing not just movie-based lines like Alien vs. Predator, but distributing indie artists like J. O’Barr, whose goth-inspired The Crow would feature in his own film, directed by Sam Raimi. Frank Miller’s Sin City and The 300 would debut, as would the insane Doug Mahnke series The Mask and the punkish Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin comic Tank Girl, both of which also became movies later in the decade. But it would be Mike Mignola’s Hellboy who would have the most lasting impact, appearing in 1993 and redefining what a superhero could be. Mignola, Hewlett, Miller, and O’Barr also broke new ground artistically, each having an unmistakable signature art style that stood out in a world defined by classic DC and Marvel stylings.

The UK comics magazine 2000 AD continued to expand the Judge Dredd character, featuring the popular “The Dead Man” storyline, which saw the titular Judge coming to terms with mortality and beginning to question his purpose. They expanded with strips like Firekind and Sinister Dexter[2]. 1993 also saw the “Summer Offensive” where comics writers including Grant Morrison and Mark Millar were given free rein to write whatever they wanted, resulting in some truly insane works like “Big Dave” and “Slaughterbowl” where convicts ride dinosaurs into battle against each other.

But, needless to say, it was the “big boys”, Marvel and DC, who made the biggest impact on the Age.

DC, post-crisis and under the increasing supervision of their bosses at Warner Brothers, was having a crisis of identity itself. Writers like Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison were adding depth and darkness, with Morrison’s take on Batman following on from Frank Miller’s earlier dark, gothic take exemplified in The Dark Knight Returns. Morrison’s turn on Batman became very popular and a source of inspiration for other dark vigilante characters of the age, and given the success of the Raimi Batman films and the Bird Brain Batman animated series, Morrison was at first given a lot of leeway to continue this darker tone, not just with Bats, but with the whole of the Justice League, rebranded as the “JLA”. This would reverse itself when that asshole John Peters became an executive in 1994 and along with prick producer Tom Rothman pushed for more “toyetic” work even as they simultaneously pushed for more of the “dark, grown-up stuff the nerds like”.

Like this, but the other way around! (Image source Screen Rant)

Superman would be the ultimate victim of this schizophrenia, and rumor has it that they almost killed him off. But they didn’t, the cowards! Instead, Sups entered the decade with the promise of good times ahead, proposing to Lois Lane and becoming engaged, outwardly as Clark Kent. Clark and Lois marry in 1992's Superman (vol. 2) #75 in a big Event Comic that became a major source of financial speculation at the time.

However, marital bliss was not in store for our classic lovers, instead introducing the character of Kenny Braverman, a.k.a. Conduit, whose powers were granted by the crash landing of Kal El’s space cradle, flooding him with radiation and allowing him to emit Kryptonite radiation. Formerly an abused child, Conduit, who blames Kent for his hard life, attacks the wedding ceremony, apparently killing Lois Lane (her fate left as a shocking cliffhanger). While Lois would end up on life support, Superman would watch as Conduit attacks his family and friends, burning the Kent homestead to the ground and kidnapping Lara Lane. This sends Superman on his controversial hunt, dubbed a “revenge quest” by comics fans, where he openly considers killing Conduit for the “greater good”[3].

(Image source Den of Geek)

Also at DC, the adult-themed Vertigo line was continuing to push the limits of what could be in a comic, with Gaiman’s The Sandman continuing its iconic run, taking Morpheus, the avatar of Dream, deeper into existential exploration and into reckoning for his past actions. It was the Goth Culture scene made manifest and was in many ways the poster child for what the Dark Age could be when allowed to move beyond puerile wish fulfilment. But let’s face it, Morphy was kind of a self-absorbed tool. Morrison would take an occasional break from JLA and Batman to provide some Vertigo titles, such as the Steam Romance Sebastian O. and the Phillip Bond collaboration Kill Your Boyfriend.

Like this but far sooner! (Image source Bleeding Cool News)

Gaiman would continue to support The Sandman line through to its conclusion, but remained a freelancer, ultimately simultaneously contracting with rival Marvel following his work with Tim Burton. This of course led to the popular The Mighty Thor: A Debt to the Norns storyline, which delved deep into some of the more twisted and family-unfriendly aspects of Norse mythology, and to the now-iconic “Infinite Regressions” storyline for Dr. Strange, which introduced the idea of Dr. Spektor (who was acquired with Gold Key) as the human avatar for a trans-dimensional incorporeal being attempting to forge an alliance with the Sorcerer Supreme as it battled Lovecraftian Horrors “beyond Cartesian reality”. The latter storyline remains a favorite of fans and academics alike, the latter in large part due to how it delved into intellectual subjects like quantum physics, fractal math, and Fibonacci ratios. This mathematical-metaphysical mix was reportedly influenced by Gaiman’s Skeleton Crew collaborations with Tool front man Maynard James Keenan[4].

Alan Moore, who is largely credited with initiating the Dark/Iron Age, would be lured back to DC after they allowed the rights to The Watchmen to lapse and gave him, via Vertigo, the green light to launch his Twilight of the Superheroes line, an alternate world where superheroes have forged ruling dynasties. It all leads to a Götterdämmerung style ending that sees the fall of many of the most famous DC heroes from Superman and Wonder Woman to the entire Marvel clan. Despite being a parallel world, the cynical, deconstructive, and misanthropic take on the beloved heroes created shock in the industry and fandom alike. It remains Moore’s most controversial work.

Frank Miller, who along with Moore is credited with launching the Dark/Iron/Bakelite Age, would by contrast leave the major labels, completing his Elektra Lives line for Epic, and then going freelance himself. For Dark Horse he’d produce such memorable works as the Noir-tinged Sin City and the historical epic The 300, as previously mentioned.

Hey, baby, wanna Spawn?

In Marvel, by this point firmly a part of the Disney empire, Jim Shooter was in charge and, with Disney keeping the lights on and CCO Jim Henson happy to give them the creative freedom they sought, he opened the door for his writers to push the limits. The Epic line, largely rebranded into an adult line to compete with Vertigo, became the home for some of Marvel’s new wunderkinds like Dale Keown, Todd McFarlane, Art Adams, Jim Lee, Erik Larsen, and Rob Liefeld. 1993 for example saw the launch of McFarlane’s now-iconic Hellspawn, which followed Al Simmons, a CIA assassin who dies, goes to hell, and is “recruited” against his will as a “Hellspawn”, or knight in Mephisto’s service.

Hellspawn rivalled Venom and everyone’s favorite Merc as the poster child of the Dark/Iron Age. Violent, ruthless, cruel, ugly, conflicted, and angst-ridden, Hellspawn set the tone for the dark, tortured antiheroes to come. The comic sold like crazy, eventually spawning (pun totally intended, I’m sure) a movie. Featuring McFarlane’s flowing, dynamic art, Hellspawn was also one of the first Marvel comics to use digital inking and painting using the DIS Stations, pushing the technical as well as thematic bounds of the medium. It also gained the ire of the moral guardians, despite being a part of the adult-focused Epic line, who blasted it for “glorifying Satan”, despite the fact that Simmons’ fate is hardly portrayed as a “good thing” for him. Seriously, did those assholes even read it?

Other Epic lines pushed the limits in similar ways. Shooter, Steve Englehart, and artist David Lapham’s Shadowman and Bob Layton and Bernard Chang’s The Second Life of Doctor Mirage both spun off from Dr. Strange and dipped into necromancy and other “darque” magics. Erik Larsen’s The Savage Dragon, a character he developed as a child, incorporated Cowboy Cop tropes and made the titular character an actual Chicago Police Officer rather than a masked vigilante. The Wachowski Siblings (writing as Larry and Andy at the time I love you either way, sisters!) would start their careers at Marvel, writing for Ectokid and Clive Barker’s Hellraiser and Night Breed for Epic.

(Image source Marvel.com)

Rob Liefeld also began to make an impact at Marvel and Epic, where his exaggerated forms and anatomy-defying poses became indelibly linked to the Dark/Iron Age. While often the butt of snark later, Liefeld is credited with launching some of the most famous characters and storylines of the Age, including Cable (with Louise Simonson) and Youngblood. His second most famous creation of the era was the foul-mouthed, gun-toting, rageaholic Shooter Jim, obviously based on Marvel President Jim Shooter, who at this point in his career loved to play the “bad cop” to Chairman Stan Lee’s “good cop”[5]. His less-famous characters, like the maligned Deathstroke rip-off Deadpan, whose attempts at being “stoic” in an “Eastwood-like” manner came across as “dull”, largely faded into obscurity, however. And who can forget his greatest creation, the beloved Merc with the Mouth, Deadpool! Sure, it took the genius of Joe Kelly to truly unlock his hilarious potential and free him from the confines of the page, a self-aware Meta Character who, by not being bound by print, was in reality a God among mortals. Is it any wonder why he is so universally beloved?[6]

And in a sign of just how insane the Age was, influenced by McFarlane and Liefeld, Joe Kelly took the relatively minor DC character of Ambush Bug and made him self-aware, a fourth wall breaking wiseass who gained a huge cult following specifically because of his medium awareness[7].

Liefeld and McFarlane largely set the tone for the age, with weapons getting larger, antiheroes getting more grimdark, and morality getting slipperier, with even Spiderman and Captain America taking darker turns at various points. The appearance of the alien symbiote and Venom marked a darker turn for Spider-Man in particular, and many on the staff were nostalgic for the “Spidey of old”, who’d lit up the Big Screen by this point. Thus, Peter Parker was given some time off, marrying Mary Jane and having a son together (reportedly in response to the Marriage of Superman) while his Clone Ben Reilly from The Amazing Spider-Man #149 takes over as Spider-Man. The decision to retire Peter Parker was a controversial one, and some in the editorial staff objected, in particular editor Bob Budanski, who wanted to find a way to revert back to Peter, but DeFalco as Marvel Editor in Chief and Shooter, as the “final authority”[8], stuck to the script, particularly once it was discovered that Disney CCO Jim Henson liked the idea of Peter and Mary Jane having a “well-earned happy ending”.

While old comics fans were divided, with many writing angry letters, the crybabies no kidding, the “reset” allowed a “way in” for the many new readers who first discovered and fell in love with Big Screen Spidey, even as the Ben-Peter dichotomy caused some early confusion. Further controversy followed with the death (albeit peaceful) of Aunt May. Spider-Man: The Final Adventure would debut in late 1994, ending with the ironic death of the Gwen Stacey clone who started the whole Clone mess in 1970 and the birth of Peter and Mary Jane’s son, Benjamin Richard Parker. The Fandom and Marvel staff alike split into “Peter” and “Ben” factions, but for the time being, Ben was Spidey while Peter would remain “retired”, returning on occasion to help out or mentor Ben[9].

Spiderman, meanwhile, continued to cross over into other Marvel and Epic comics lines, getting pulled into the Age of Apocalypse crossover with the many X-Men lines along with the Fantastic Four and The Avengers. The Age of Apocalypse crossover led to increasing morally gray actions as the various factions competed, with the fate of the Universe in the balance. While originally happening in the core Earth 616, it later got Retconned into its own Earth 336 since the massive fallout of the series, which resulted in the shocking deaths of many favorite characters, would have been a mess to straighten back up.

Meanwhile, Shooter pushed to relaunch many of the old Gold Key and Harvey characters, recruiting Barry Windsor-Smith and Bob Layton to relaunch Turok, Dinosaur Hunter; Magnus, Robot Fighter; and Solar, Man of the Atom, the latter two of which were given a retro-futuristic makeover. They also launched new lines like Harbinger, Ninjak, and Bloodshot[10].

(Image source “valiant.fandom.com”)

Magnus, meanwhile, served as a vehicle for an all-new Marvel 4000 series[11], which took the many Marvel characters, or at least their descendants and inheritors, into the far future year of 4000. Magnus becomes a darker character in a dystopian, cyberpunkish future world where environmental degradation has left the planet scorched and lifeless and overharvesting has left natural resources exhausted. Robots rule space around Earth where they deliver celestially-mined resources to the Bot-ruled territories on earth that the non-bot-ruled areas have to steal in Viking-like raids in order to survive. Humanity is squeezed into “megopolis” city states, each with its own politics and culture, some bot-ruled, some not. Magnus’ megopolis is ruled by robots alluded to have been built using modified plans for Ultron, but programmed to care for humans and protect them at all costs. And while this seemed like a good idea at the time, is devolved quickly into a Crapsacharine arrangement where humans are kept like pets or cattle, the Bot's original "three rules" style programming skewed into something super-patriarchal. Eh…we’re kind of asking for it. Magnus and a few others have risen up against it.

The success of the Magnus reboot led to the launch of the Marvel 4000 line, with other megopoli introduced in other titles. One megopolis sees the “Old Heroes” of the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and X-Men are revered as gods and Humans and Mutants living peacefully together, but with residual animosity as resources are short. Another megopolis is ruled by totalitarian Mutants following the edicts of the Brotherhood of Mutants, with a hereditary supreme ruler who claims divine descendance from Magneto. Later titles introduced where Space has gone, with the Silver Surfer, further radicalized by the death of Galactus, leading a brutal war of terror against the robots allied to an older and mentally damaged post-Ragnarök Thor.

The Magic Realm even had its own fight as techno-wizardry allowed necromantic cyborgs to blur the lines between bot, zombie, and mage. Necropolis, for example, was introduced as a “necro-techno-wizardry” city of bones (the fandom dubbed it “Zombie Borg Land”). Dr. Strange, Dr. Spektor, and the future Sorcerer Supreme, the magically-cybernetic Eterias, are leading this fight.

Like the Age of Apocalypse, the Marvel 4000 line would ultimately be retconned into its own Earth 4000 setting.

The setting of Marvel 4000 of course reminded the publishers of 2000 AD a little too much of the setting for Judge Dredd, leading them to consider a lawsuit. Who didn’t see that coming? Instead, 2000 AD partnered with Dark Horse and began distributing in North America, making the Judge Dredd character in particular better known in the States, where some ironically considered him a Magnus and Punisher rip-off. In response, Dredd creator John Wagner decided to launch Judge Dredd’s famous (and slightly tongue-in-cheek) “Copycat saga”, whereby a mad scientist named James Magnuson creates robot copies of the Judges in an insane attempt to replace them all and thereby rule the Mega Cities himself. Modeled on Jim Shooter, the character managed to be the second 1990s character after the Liefeld character based on the influential Marvel President.

And if that doesn’t tell you how much influence Jim Shooter had on the Dark/Iron Age, then nothing will.

Eh, I find him overrated.

Totally.

Oh, shut up, Bug.

You know you love me!

---

[1] Massive, multiversial crossover hat-tips to @nick_crenshaw82, @Ogrebear, and @Pyro for the assist in this article. The Deadpool fourth wall vandalism was all me no me, though, so don’t blame thank them.

[2] A brilliant title for those who know their Latin!

[3] This idea courtesy of @Pyro (hat-tip!). For those wondering what happens, in Pyro’s own words: “Eventually, Conduit lures Clark to a mock version of Smallville filled with android duplicates of its inhabitants programmed to despise him. Superman and Conduit face off in the football stadium. While the two start on fairly even terms with Conduit's Kryptonite blasts weakening the Man of Steel, Superman's rage eventually overcomes them and he tears off Conduit's armor before readying the final blow...only for Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), and members of the Justice League to arrive with a recently-recovered Lois. She pleads with Clark to spare Conduit's life as the Superman she loves would never take the life of another, [and he spares Conduit] when he realizes how far he's gone. However, just as the two walk away, Conduit breaks loose from the Justice League's restraints and activates a self-destruct in a last-ditch attempt to take out his hated rival for good. Superman shields Lois from the blast, but the Kryptonite radiation saturated his cells and left him temporarily powerless until his body absorbs enough solar radiation to filter out the Kryptonite [ultimately] leading into ‘Reign of the Supermen’ where several new heroes appear in Metropolis to fill the void left by the powerless Superman like Steel, Superboy, and [even] a ‘reformed’ Lex Luthor.”

[4] More on this madness to come.

[5] While Shooter has adopted a lot of Henson’s lessons on talent management, he’s still Jim Shooter.

[6] Wade, you’re butterflied! Get the hell out of my timeline!

Ha, nice try, asshole! You ain’t gonna butterfly me!

My Timeline. You’re butterflied. Period.

Nuh-uh!

[7] Hey! I deleted that section!

I rewrote it. Salute to @nick_crenshaw82 for thinking of me, by the way.

Ambush Bug? I’ll totally squash you.

Face it, DP, I’m the fourth wall breaking wiseass of this TL! Butterflies are a bitch.

This ain’t over, Bug.

[8] With Disney underwriting everything, there will be no “five editors-in-chief” mess, with each trying to outdo the others, and no favoritism or sabotage between lines.

[9] Yes, the original plan goes through. No “Maximum Clonage”.

[10] Needless to say, the Image and Valiant Comics lines are Marvel lines in this timeline.

[11] Hat tip to @TheIdiot224 for this idea. This will replace Marvel 2099.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Perot Drops Out of Race amid Bush Feud Revelations
The New York Times, July 6th, 1992

Billionaire independent candidate H. Ross Perot has officially withdrawn from the 1992 presidential election and thrown his support behind likely Democratic nominee Al Gore of Tennessee, leaving his loyal grassroots followers in the lurch. Despite leading in some national polls earlier this year driven by self-funded prime time campaign events, recent revelations about an ongoing feud with President George Bush combined with a refusal to address several hot-button issues such as AIDS and Affirmative Action and recent gaffes with African Americans have cost his campaign. Workers inside his campaign report his unwillingness to follow their advice and rumors persist that his presidential run is more about hurting his rival President Bush than about any real intent to assume the office. Perot’s exit, meanwhile, is bolstering the numbers for Gore in a presumed head-to-head match against Bush, with Gore up 3% in the crucial state of… Continued on pg. A3.



Dan Quayle not to Run in ‘92
The New York Times, June 14th, 1992

Washington – Vice President J. Danforth Quayle has announced that he will not be running for reelection as Vice President in the 1992 Presidential election, citing a desire to spend more time with his family. “The job of Vice President is a challenging and rewarding one,” said Quayle, “but it is taking me away from my lovely wife and kids at a critical time in their lives. After much prayer, I have decided not to run again.”

Vice President Quayle, who has made numerous controversial statements and has a low approval rating, was reportedly the subject of numerous GOP strategy discussions behind closed doors, with many analysts certain that he was asked by Bush to leave. Whether a different name on the ticket will help or hurt Bush’s chances for reelection remains an open question. While very unpopular with the general electorate, he remains very popular with Evangelical Christian “values voters” who see his attacks on Murphy Brown, The Bunyans, and Disney as “speaking truth” about what they see as the continued moral decay of the nation. He also remains relatively popular in the rural Midwest, which includes many critical swing states such as Ohio and Michigan.

Recently vanquished GOP primary challenger Pat Buchannan called the event “a disgrace” and likened it to a “stab in the back” for conservative voters. Other conservative and evangelical voices have made statements backing Quayle, such as…Cont’d on A2.



Gore and Tsongas Accept Democratic Presidential Nomination
The New York Times, July 16th, 1992

New York – Senator Al Gore of Tennessee and Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts have formally accepted the Democratic Presidential and Vice-Presidential nominations at last night’s Democratic National Convention. Long the presumed nominee following his near sweep of the Super Tuesday primaries, Gore, a centrist southern Democrat, emerges slightly ahead in the polls against incumbent President George Bush, whose approval rating has struggled to recover from a poor economy, a broken campaign promise not to raise taxes, emerging sexual harassment accusations[1], and a few high profile gaffes. Senator Gore, who promises to restore dwindling blue-collar jobs in the American Northeast and Midwest though the development of “Green Industry” initiatives while restoring the economy to pre-recession levels through technology investment and “fair market capitalism”, has received the endorsement of former Independent candidate H. Ross Perot, who pledged to support solar and wind initiatives in his home state of Texas if Gore’s proposed financial incentives come to pass. Hoping to take advantage of Bush’s struggling messaging on the economy, Gore is optimistic about his general election chances. Cont’d on A2.



Bush, Kemp Accept GOP Nomination
The New York Times, August 20th, 1992

Houston – President George H. W. Bush today accepted the GOP nomination for President of the United States, with Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack F. Kemp accepting the nomination as Vice Presidential candidate after Vice President Dan Quayle announced his intention not to run again earlier this year.

Kemp’s acceptance speech was met with both cheers and boos. The selection of Kemp and the accusations surrounding it have largely overshadowed the convention itself, with GOP Primary challenger Pat Buchannan alleging that Quayle was “run out” by Bush, who denies that he ever asked the gaffe-prone Quayle to step down. Kemp’s selection, which is expected to play well in the suburbs, has also alienated many Evangelical Christian voters, including many in the critical swing state of Ohio next door to Quayle’s home state of Indiana…Cont’d on A2.



Dave Letterman: So, Paul, did you hear that now CBS’s Ted Turner has endorsed Al Gore for President?

Paul: Is that so?

Dave: Yep, with Ross the Cross Boss and now the Mouth from the South behind the Bore known as Gore, it appears that the South has decided to rise again after all.

Paul: I’ll be sure to get out my Confederate money.

Dave: Do you have any good Dixie music for the occasion, Paul?

Paul: I’ve got this…

[Band starts to play the theme song to Southern Exposure]

---

[1] The earlier reckoning on sexual harassment strikes again, as the women who alleged assault by Bush following #MeToo in our timeline instead come out sooner.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Chapter 28: A Digital Revolution! (Cont’d)
Excerpt from: From a Figment to a Reality: The Imagineering Method! by Marty Sklar

There are moments that stick with you for your entire life. Take the moment when we first screened the Effects Test Reel for Jurassic Park to the Disney Board of Directors, including Creative Chief Jim Henson, MGM Chairman Tom Wilhite, executive producer George Lucas, and producer Steven Spielberg. The last thought on my mind as I lay in my deathbed will surely be that moment, and I will pass on with a smile on my face.

Director Tim Burton was on hand, leaning back in his chair, fingers steepled. Henry Selick sat next to him, a wry smile on his face.

Brian Henson was the Vice President of Special Effects by this time and did a glorious job in upselling the event. I smiled as he repeated the words that I wrote specifically for this moment, and which he had carefully memorized: “With the dawn of Jurassic Park, all other movies effects to come before will be rendered as fossils.”

As the excited buzz drifted across the room, the lights were lowered and the footage began. The tinny, old-fashioned trombone fanfare, lifted from a thousand old cheap rubber-monster matinees, announced the arrival of the footage, all in black & white. The old-timey announcer warned us of “the incredible peril that awaits” when “man dabbles with the very atoms of life!” Footage of hands mixing a chemical concoction in a beaker. Lightning flashes. Extreme Dutch angles even by Tim Burton standards.

Then, with a screaming woman with ‘50s hair in close-up, the Dinosaur Effects began. Jerky Harryhausen-style stop-motion. Canned roars. Theremin music. Obvious forced perspective and models. The old-fashioned superimposed title text of “Jurassic Park”. Like a Roger Corman film directed by Ed Wood.

Sort of like this (Image source “giphy.com”)

The discomfort in the room was tangible. Steve sent us a dirty look. This was not the footage he’d approved! Jim looked confused. Frank looked irate. Tom was starting to panic.

Brian buried his face in his hands. You would assume in embarrassment, until you saw his shoulders shake or heard the soft snort. Jim noticed his son. An amused smile dawned on his face. I made eye contact and smiled, gently pointing to the screen. He wouldn’t want to miss the big moment.

And then it happened.

A crash! A ripping sound! A titanic THX-produced, Dolby surround roar!

“Holy s—t!” screamed Tom, nearly falling out of his chair.

(Image source “gyfcat.com”)

A massive full-color Tyrannosaurus Rex burst through the image, which seemed to tear like a movie screen. He roared again, the black & white retro footage still projecting onto his realistic skin, which bent and folded like natural flesh. The T-Rex turned, ripping down more of the screen to reveal a bright grassy field behind it. A herd of Gallimimus trotted along in the background. The T-Rex gave chase, catching one in its massive jaws.

“Jurassic Park, by MGM Pictures! Everything else in theaters this summer is practically prehistoric,” said the voice of Don LaFontaine, the “In a world…” guy that was in every trailer back then.

Once the shock wore off, we got a standing ovation from the board. Jim gave his son a hug, both laughing like fools. The footage played so well that we used it for the first Trailer.

We’d just revolutionized the effects industry. It’s all pretty old hat today, but back in ’92 it was unlike anything that anyone had seen.

It was only the beginning.

The key was Steven “Spaz” Williams, a foul-mouthed and arrogant computer effects guy who was one of the principal ILM effects guys for Terminator 2. Tim had already been working with the Creatureworks for animatronics and Phill Tippett for some go-motion effects on the advice of Spielberg, but Spaz was swearing to anyone who was listening that he could do the dinosaurs using computer graphics. After getting suspended from ILM for insubordination, he came to join the island of misfit toys that is the Skeleton Crew, where he fit in much better. There he presented a test reel of some computer effects for an animated tyrannosaurus skeleton he’d put together in secret with Mark Dippé. While Tim was still pushing for stop motion simply because he wanted that old matinee monster look, once assistant producer Kathleen Kennedy saw the reel[1] and alerted Spielberg, Spaz and Mark were fully empowered to assemble a team from the Softworks and 3D and go to work.

‘s’not like all effects were digital (Image source “gyfcat.com”)

People always cite JP as the film that revolutionized computer effects. Honestly, Spider-Man deserves that distinction, but since the effects were less obvious most never realized just how many scenes were partly or even mostly digital. By contrast, for Jurassic Park we made a lot of the dinos the old-fashioned way, with Creatureworks animatronics and practical puppetry. You can still see some of the animatronics on display at Creatureworks Corner at Disney-MGM Studios.

But the Death Becomes Her skin effects, paired with the dynamic vector graphics effects that evolved out of 3D, produced true magic in the hands of Spaz and his team. We’d been justifiably proud of The Land Before Time just five years earlier, but this was like a whole new world. We could have Brachiosaurs lift their heads into the night sky. We could have herds of herbivores not just run by, but move together like a flock of birds and capture the “emergent behavior of the flock” as dinosaur consultant Jack Horner put it. We were bringing dinosaurs back from extinction as surely as Timothy Harmon’s scientists, and without any worries that they’d escape and eat people.

(Image source “giphy.com”)

It was magic, plain and simple, and we were its wizards.

What’s now Industry Standard began right there in that boardroom on that tiny, portable screen. A practical joke on the Powers that Be that became the first moment anyone outside of the studios had seen The Future.

Can you blame us for being proud of that moment?

---

[1] This more or less mirrors what happened in our timeline, where Tippett as Art Director was actively repressing ILM’s CG work, which he and everyone else knew could never work realistically, so Williams (who just loved doing what couldn’t be done) animated a running T-Rex skeleton using vector graphics behind his back and essentially sprung it on Kennedy, who was amazed and immediately greenlit further CG experiments. Tippett was irate at the insubordination, but played along. He later lamented the moment as when he knew he was out of a job, or “extinct” as it were. And if you haven’t seen interviews with Spaz, by all means do so. He’s a trip. Like a ‘50s greaser motorhead trapped in a computer nerd’s body.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

The Amazing Journey of FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992)
From Animation Nation, May 13th, 2002

In the early 1990s Disney Animation reigned supreme. Warner Brothers was working their way back into the game and Don Bluth was producing some reasonable competitors, but Columbia’s Hanna-Barbera was mostly sticking to the small screen and Hollywood/DIC was struggling to set itself up as more than an afterthought.

So it was a bit of a surprise when a small husband-and-wife-led team out of Australia managed to produce a star-studded feature length animated film and not just see it screened, but see it become a cultural touchstone. That film, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, was FernGully: The Last Rainforest.

“We’d been working on it for over a decade,” said Diana Young, the writer and one half of the team. “Wayne and I had a passion for the environment, and we’d realized that animation was the way that you made your point best. But animation was out in the late ‘70s and it wasn’t until the success of Where the Wild Things Are that we realized that animated features were a viable option again.”

“We briefly considered going with puppets,” said Wayne Young. “We saw Cheryl Henson’s Song of the Cloud Forest and we thought that we could do that. But by that point we were pretty wedded to the idea of animation. We made a local deal with Hoyts, which ran a theater chain in Australia, and then headed to LA to seek funding and international distribution options.”

It was there that they met screenwriter Jim Cox, who’d agreed to work on a screenplay. He took them to Disney Animation. “We hadn’t even considered Disney,” Diana said. “Why would the giant of animation bother with our little project? But Jim [Cox] wanted us to meet Jim Henson and assured us that Henson would be interested in our proposal.”

Cox arranged a meeting with Jim Henson and Roy Disney and they were taken with the idea. Henson is of course a noted environmentalist while Roy at the time was a conservationist who was moving quickly towards environmentalism after his years working alongside Jim Henson. They found the story “cute at times, moving at others” and agreed to help distribute internationally through Buena Vista. They even agreed to help fund the project and even got them a small studio in Van Nuys and lent them a small team of junior animators including Kathy Zielinski, Kevin Lima, and Brenda Chapman and set them up with former Disney animator Bill Kroyer, who’d spun up a small studio with his wife Sue[1]. They’d previously worked with Disney on Tron.

(Image source “scpr.org”)

The animation went well, featuring a hybrid animation that blended traditional handmade and digital aspects, thanks to a loaner of some DIS stations and a trio of MINIBOGs. In addition to Robin Williams as the insane, scene stealing Batty and Tim Curry as the sludgy villain Hexxus, you had Samantha Mathis and River Phoenix voicing the romantic leads Crysta and Zak, Christian Slater voicing Pips, Judith Barsi voicing the precocious Fae, and guest voices by Tone Loc and Cheech & Chong.

“It was a beautiful crew,” said Wayne. “The actors and animators worked well together. Jim [Henson] and Disney were really supportive. The whole production just felt like magic, like we all knew that we were doing something great, and something important.”

The film debuted on April 10th, 1992, to positive reviews and good attendance, ultimately breaking $42 million at the box office[2]. But more importantly, it managed to become a classic for an entire generation of children. Home video sales were brisk and remain so, and as the “FernGully Kids” have grown into adulthood, many are becoming active in environmental causes, inspired by and often directly quoting the characters from the film at rallies and in internet posts.

Jim Henson cites it as one of his “most important” productions, and was a driving force in establishing the characters from FernGully at the Land Pavilion at EPCOT and in creating the stage show “Life is Magic” at various Disney parks.

“We’re very pleased with how it turned out,” said Diana. “Working with Jim Henson and Robin Williams was an absolute treat. A highlight of my career. But most important to me is when I hear some young environmental activist cite our humble production as an inspiration to them. Life really is magic, sometimes.”

---

[1] Compare this welcome to our timeline, where Jeffrey Katzenberg allegedly went to extreme lengths to crush the upstart feature. Disney allegedly outbid the studio on every workspace that they tried to rent, even trying to buy up a brewery rather than let the FernGully team use it for production spaces. Part of this was driven by Aladdin, then in production with Robin Williams as the voice of the Genie, and Katzenberg didn’t want Williams’s involvement in both productions to potentially take away from Aladdin. He reportedly tried to force Williams to drop out of FernGully and appears to have negotiated in bad faith in terms of using Williams in marketing and promotion, leading to a famous and acrimonious split between Williams and Disney in our timeline. Here Jim Henson simply likes the message of the production, and thus supports it.

[2] Somewhat better than our timeline since Disney is promoting it, not actively trying to quash it.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Chapter 13, The Lion Gets its Teeth Back (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)

But building back MGM was proving to be a continuous running challenge. You couldn’t just release a single big pic and expect it all to work out from that point forward! Each success bred a need to keep up the momentum and every failure (like Toys) was a stain you had to work hard to clean up. Thankfully, we’d made plenty of good contacts and allies, be they Amblin or Lucasfilm. But while MGM took the spotlight, I still had Hyperion to run, not to mention I was regularly getting asked to support Fantasia productions. Jim, for example, convinced us to take a chance on a PolyGram film for Fantasia by an effects guy named A Gnome Named Gnorm. I was dubious, but then again, I fully expected Spaced Invaders and Killer Klowns from Outer Space, both the creations of effects guys, to crash and burn, so what the hell?

Well, guess what happened?

Yea, hard crash.

But also, we had our contacts with As You Wish, who brought us plenty of TV and film opportunities, not all of which we could handle despite increasing our production footprint into Orlando at the new studios there. We had to put the pause on William Goldman’s A Very Good Year for yet another year in its long life and had to turn down Honeymoon in Vegas (which went to Columbia) and instead followed through with a Sandra Bullock helmed Rom-Com Mr. Right Now for Hyperion, which turned out to be a dud, as did Billy Crystal’s Mr. Saturday Night.

But we did get an option on the Rob Reiner helmed A Few Good Men, based on an Aaron Sorkin play. It involved a court case by Navy JAG lawyers, and Rob wanted Jack Nicholson, who wanted five million bucks. I was dubious, even with Rob involved, so I called up Dave Lazer in New York and sent him to check out the play. He called me back the next day. “Do it,” is all he said.

We brought in Nicholson, who actually proved well worth the price. Even he said it was one of the few times he was worth the price he commanded! Poor Chris O’Donnell and Jodie Foster[1] never stood a chance as the two hero-lawyers! Jack ate them and everything else alive and crapped gold, getting nominated for an Oscar for his performance.

Sometimes a film lands in your lap. Diana Birkenfield convinced me to greenlight a women’s baseball film by Penny Marshall called A League of their Own. Ron Miller was enthralled by the idea, and he urged me to greenlight it alongside a little kid’s hockey film I had low expectations for named The Mighty Ducks by a young scriptwriter named Steve Brill (no relation to Fran) and yet both proved to be breakout successes. Tom Hanks led the former and Judge Reinhold for the latter. Reinholdt, in turn, managed to sell me on a production of the Carl Hiaasen novel Tourist Season, that he’d been trying to launch since ’86, which we handed to Joel and Ethan Coen, who turned it into a fun horror-comedy that ended up with an R-rating but made bank . Joel joked it was also a "sports film", at least from the perspective of the killer!

One of these films is not like the others...or is it?

But it’s never that simple when you work for Disney, where the parks are bringing in about five billion bucks to the studios’ one billion, and the latter starts to feel more like a promotional campaign for the former at times. And the truth is that for all of their differences in rating and target audience, the two sports films were a great compliment for the new Disney Good Sports Resort, so we got a lot of promotional backing from Jack Lindquist and Dick Nunis, who wanted to see Ron Miller’s big dream made a reality. We were able to do a lot of filming right there for both films. We even leveraged some government funds under Title 9 to spin up girls’ sports using League as a promotional vessel. You won't believe who ultimately became our patron there! Rosie O’Donnell, one of the films’ stars, was eager to help out there as well, even as she ended up clashing with Dick and later our external patron on many occasions.

Fun times.

And that’s just a peak at the wrangling that you do in production. You get lucky, having a film fall in your lap. Sometimes that film leads to other films or other opportunities you couldn't have imagined. You go whole-hog to sponsor a “can’t miss” like Mr. Right Now or Mr. Saturday Night. You make hard choices, sometimes producing A Few Good Men, and sometimes producing A Gnome Named Gnorm. And sometimes a forgettable pee wee hockey film starring an ex-Brat-Packer is a hit when the clever film by a comedy legend instead crashes and burns. No way to know, so you keep swinging knowing you won’t hit them all.

But you keep at it, and you love what you do.

And that, in a nutshell, is show business.

---

[1] In our timeline it went to Castle Rock’s partner Columbia, who chose Tom Cruise and Demi Moore, two sex symbols at the height of their sexy. Nicholson still ate them alive.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

New York Times Short Movie Reviews, Spring & Summer 1992

Drop Dead Fabulous

Tales from the Crypt, long known for its classic cult comics and TV series, has released its debut film, Death Becomes Her, and it is fabulous. Do you love the glamour of the high fashion world of the wealthy? Well, meet the elite club that people are dying to be a part of, where an immortality potion grants eternal life to those with the right connections. Directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring the great Meryl Streep, Goldie Hahn, and Rick Moranis, this is a twisting and twisted tale of wealth-bought privilege. But immortality does not remove immorality, and soon the conniving Madeline and Helen (Streep and Hawn) corrupt the mortician Dr. Ernest Menville (Moranis) into being their plastic surgeons, keeping them beautiful in death. With jaw-droppingly creepy special effects courtesy of ILM and Skeleton Crew Productions and gorgeous retro-fashionable costumes by Cheryl Henson, Death Becomes Her is a visual masterpiece and a fun, macabre morality tale of greed and excess, and a great start for Takes from the Crypt’s new foray into filmmaking.

Death Becomes Her, Rated R for violence, adult language, and adult situations, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐



Robin and the Red Knight

Robin Williams and Terry Gilliam invoke Arthurian legend in this surreal, psychological drama that’s bound to gain academy attention with its stunning performances[1]. Following the despondent, suicidal radio DJ Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges), who is rescued from assault by a homeless man named Parry (Robin Williams) who claims to be on a quest for the Holy Grail, The Fisher King is ultimately a story of love, trauma, opportunity, mental health, recovery, and the plight of the homeless. Debra Hill & Lynda Obst reportedly took the Richard LaGravenese script to Terry Gilliam in the late ‘80s, who fell in love, but had to put production on hold due to other commitments. And Williams, always in high demand, likely needed the delay himself! And bring the script to life they do, making for a brilliant, dreamlike, and occasionally heart-wrenching film.

The Fisher King, Rated T for violence, psychological content, adult language, and adult situations, ⭐⭐⭐½



Party Time! Excellent!

Goodbye Bill & Ted, and hello Wayne and Garth! Last summer’s B&T sequel may have been a dud, but SNL alums Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey have brought their B&T “inspired” Gen-X slackers from the SNL skit to the big screen in this Hyperion comedy[2]. While the prospect of an hour and a half with the two Aurora IL basement dwellers was not something that I’d looked forward to, the crisp screenplay by Meyers along with Bonnie and Terry Turner is surprisingly fun and refreshing. It even managed to make Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” break the Top Forty again, complete with later Queen cameo (the scene where Brian May consoles the depressed Garth over his life in “the shadow of a living public spectacle” is worth the ticket price alone). The gorgeous Tia Carrere as Wayne’s love interest Cassandra and Timothy Dalton having fun hamming it up as the manipulative TV producer Ben Kane round out the film and provide the emotional stakes even as the flagrantly fourth wall breaking comedy subverts them at every opportunity, sometimes to the detriment of the emotional weight that the stakes otherwise brought. But in general, like the original B&T, Wayne’s World manages to take the concept of the two directionless teens and elevate it to comedy gold.

Wayne’s World, Rated PG for mild comedic violence, adult language, and adult situations, ⭐⭐⭐



The Humor-Risk Manifesto

Paramount Pictures have certainly knocked it out of the park with this brilliant and timely tribute to the films of the Marx Brothers[3]. Making such a film is not only a tall order, but one that can be very easily botched if not handled by the right people. Thankfully, the chuckleheads at Paramount did get the right folks for the job: Lame Ducks, directed (as well as co-written) by Mel Brooks and produced by the Zucker brothers, is not only a laugh riot from start to end but also a surprisingly biting (and occasionally dark) satire of the film industry and an analysis of how humor can change between decades. The plot (such as it is) concerns one Lillian Oglethorpe (Nancy Marchand), an elderly widow and former starlet of Hollywood’s Golden Age seeking to make a comeback. Shady get-rich-quick schemer Henry R. Adams (Bobcat Goldthwaite) becomes her agent and producer, placing his younger brother Milton (River Phoenix) in the role of leading man much to the latter’s protests. Rounding out the main cast are Larry, an English cab driver (Freddie Mercury) and his partner-in-crime, the near-entirely mute Dusty (Kurt Cobain in his film debut) filling in Chico and Harpo’s shoes respectively. What follows is an onslaught of visual, word- and character-based gags that gleefully inherit the Marxian heritage while both making them their own and updating them for modern sensibilities. Lame Ducks is proof that neither Brooks nor the Zuckers have lost their touch yet, and is sure to become a classic of not only both parties but of comedy in general. A resounding four stars.

Lame Ducks, rated T for adult situations, comic violence, and language. ⭐⭐⭐⭐



Love and Miracles

Magic comes to Venice in this latest Frank Oz film, produced and written by Duncan Kenworthy and released by Fantasia Films. Like What About Bob, it features no Muppets or Animatronics, just a sincere and sympathetic story of love and family with a touch of ironic humor built around the challenges of dealing with family and friends. When a young Italian woman (Mia Sera) experiences a literal miracle, she finds herself the subject of ridicule by the community, but ultimately finds support and then love with a young dreamer (Leonardo DiCaprio) who is obsessed with Leonardo DaVinci[4]. A Miracle in Venice is a dreamlike romance, full of humanity and heart and a touch of that wry yet sympathetic humor to which Oz is so well suited. It’s a magical realist take on faith and love and community and the perfect date movie.

A Miracle in Venice, Rated T for sex, adult language, and adult situations, ⭐⭐⭐½



The Willow Saga Continues

The small in stature but great in power sorcerer Thorn (née Willow) is back, and so is Elora, Madmartigan, the Brownies, and even another beloved character whose presence I won’t spoil. The forces of the evil Deceiver have lain waste to the lands of Tir Aslin, and now our heroes must make difficult choices and personal sacrifices in order to combat the scourge. Taking up from where Shadow Moon (1990) left off, Shadow Dawn is the second part of an intended trilogy, not, as some have assumed, the third part of the trilogy (Willow was, like The Hobbit was to Lord of the Rings, a stand-alone “prequel” story). Director Joe Johnston returns as well, bringing his sentimental workman-like vision to the Lucas and Kasdan screenplay. And much like George Lucas’s middle story in Star Wars (i.e. The Empire Strikes Back), Shadow Dawn is a dark and emotional story full of sacrifice, difficult deals, and loss. It is in many ways the most powerful of the Willow films to date. The special effects are once again top notch, with the animatronics for the Djinn and Dragon so compelling as to be worth the price of admission all by themselves. For the existing Willow fandom, this is a must see, and for casual fans it’s a fun, if often dark, summer treat[5].

Shadow Dawn, Rated T for action, violence, dark themes, adult language, and adult situations, ⭐⭐⭐



In Brief:

• Newsies: based on a screenplay by Bob Tzudiker and Noni White, Warner Brothers’ Newsies recreates the events of the 1899 News Boy strike[6]. As a “little guys against the system” story it’s good, if uneven; ⭐⭐
• Sister Act: Bette Midler shines as a gangster’s Moll and murder witness who’s hiding out as a nun in this Hyperion comedy; ⭐⭐⭐
• CyberGod: when scientist Dr. Lawrence DeAngelo (Ray Liotta) begins virtual reality experiments on the mentally disabled Jobe Jacobs (Jeff Fahey) the subject reaches a level of power that escapes the bounds of DeAngelo’s experiments[7] in this technically impressive but artistically mediocre spiritual successor of Flowers for Algernon; ⭐⭐
• Bartholomew vs. Neff: Sylvester Stallone and John Candy team up as two feuding neighbors whose petty suburban disputes escalate into a comedic farce[8]. A fun if hardly groundbreaking summer comedy still worth the ticket price; ⭐⭐½
• Basic Instinct: this sexy Miramax noir thriller by director Lizzie Borden and starring Sean Young and Patrick Bergen is a mess. Blame it on studio interference. Blame it on constant rewrites. Blame it on the behind-the-scenes issues with Young and the alleged predations of the now-disgraced Harvey Weinstein. Blame it on what you will, it’s another example of a promising director getting ramrodded into producing a sure-fire flop[9]; ⭐½
• My Cousin Vinny: Joe Pesci as a shady New York City lawyer who defends his cousin on murder charges in a rural court. ‘Nuff said. It’s funny, it’s surprisingly well acted, and my lawyer friends tell me it’s the most accurate legal film in history. See it, capiche? ⭐⭐⭐
• White Men Can't Jump: it’s a surprise hit that deals head-on with race and racism! Woody Harrelson surprises with a deep and nuanced performance and Jamie Foxx is at his usual A-game; ⭐⭐⭐
• Unforgiven: star and director Clint Eastwood apparently sat on this David Webb Peoples screenplay for almost a decade, and boy has the “aging” produced a fine product! A deconstructive western from Columbia Pictures that shows the darker side of the American West, Unforgiven is a visual and emotional rollercoaster; ⭐⭐⭐½

---

[1] Production is delayed and release thus delayed until ’92 due to Toys & Lost in La Mancha. An exhausted Gilliam takes a lot of time off after all of this! Will perform on par with our timeline and be nominated for numerous awards.

[2] Bernie Brillstein taking advantage of his SNL/Lorne Michaels ties once again! It worked for Blues Brothers, it worked for Wayne’s World (does about the same as in our timeline here), surely SNL skit-to-film is bound to always win, right?

[3] Guest review by @TheMolluskLingers. Evolved into the flop Brain Donors in our timeline. Will make a good $63 million against a $22 million budget and become a comedy classic.

[4] My best guess on what “The Italian Film” pitched to Henson by Duncan Kenworthy would have been like. “It's a love story about an Italian girl who witnesses a miracle” is literally the full and complete information I can find on it. Hat tip to @nick_crenshaw82 for once again digging up these obscure abandoned Henson projects.

[5] Makes $132 million against a $40 million budget and does well on home video. Good enough to get the third film greenlit, but not a massive blockbuster by the standards of the time. And dragon-helm tip to @Kalvan for the continued assist on the Willow saga.

[6] He took it to Disney in our timeline where Jeffrey Katzenberg had them turn it into a musical with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Jack Feldman. It flopped hard, but got resurrected 20 years later as a beloved Broadway musical

[7] In our timeline the CyberGod screenplay got merged with the rights for Steven King’s unrelated short story “The Lawnmower Man”, becoming the 1992 “in name only” film The Lawnmower Man. For the record, As You Wish has the rights to the original Steven King story.

[8] Hat tip to @nick_crenshaw82.

[9] Happened with Borden’s Miramax film from our timeline, Love Crimes. Which is a shame, as a Basic Instinct directed by Borden on her own terms would be something to see! Basic Instinct in our timeline went to Carolco and Paul Verhoeven, who has yet to break out in this timeline so far, and (thanks in large part to an alleged nasty trick on Sharon Stone that became an iconic scene) became a huge hit.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Man of Steel (1992), a Retrospective
From Swords and Spaceships Magazine, August 2012

So, well, another Superman reboot has risen and fallen in the theaters. And if one thing good can be said for the recent film it’s that it makes us recall the first time that the franchise was rebooted in 1992, 20 years ago this week. Man of Steel was, like 1989’s Batman before it, a darker take on what came before. But unlike the antiheroic Raimi take on Bats, the Ron Howard take on Sups still endeavored to make Sups heroic even as it upped the ante on the villains, making Lex Luthor a real tangible threat rather than a clown in a bad toupee.

So, let’s recall 1992. The Cold War was over, the recession was dragging on, George H. W. Bush was battling for his presidency, Disney was expanding into Europe, and the neon ‘80s were fading into the darkness of the Goth-touched ‘90s. But this transformation was incomplete in 1991 when the movie was in production, and thus even the “darker” film takes were light and fluffy compared to today’s stuff. Sam Raimi’s Batman was a far cry from the campy Adam West series, but not the twisted neo-noir of the latest round. And Ron Howard’s Man of Steel was, like all Howard productions and despite the Raimi-penned screenplay, at its heart sentimental and optimistic.

It’s worth recalling that Superman had not been on the big screen since 1983 at this point. The attempted Superman IV, which reportedly would have seen Sups battle nuclear war (that sounds cool! Too bad we never saw it!), was strangled in the cradle by WB the nanosecond they bought the rights back from the Salkinds. WB largely sat on it until ‘89’s Batman proved a hit, when they immediately greenlit a reboot. Raimi, a comics fan, insinuated himself and his go-to production partner Robert Tapert into the production, ultimately leveraging the success of Batman to get permission to write a new script. And what he wrote is largely what we got in the finished product. But, of course, he was finishing production on Batman: The Dark Knight in 1991 and slated to direct Batman: The Killing Joke in 1992 for release in ‘93, so instead, after much searching, they dug up Ron Howard.

“I’d loved what he did with Willow,” said Tapert. “There was a real feel of adventure there, and it didn’t shy away from dark subjects like death and prejudice, but it also had real heart.”

Raimi agreed, but was blunter: “It kicked ass and it was sweet, but didn’t rot my teeth out.”

2010s Robert Downey, Jr., imagined as Superman (Image by “ishtarman” on “deviantart.com”) and for reference, RDJ in 1992 (Image source “vogue.it”)

Howard immediately took the somewhat darker script and ran with it. He cast Robert Downey, Jr., as Sups, which proved controversial at the time, as RDJ was young and best known at the time for playing John Hughes characters, usually bullies, and a drugged out male prostitute in 1987’s Less than Zero by batshit Director David Lynch. Meanwhile, British character actor Patrick Stewart was brought on as Lex Luthor, Mia Sara brought on as Lois Lane, and Hughes-alum Anthony Michael Hall as Jimmy Olsen. Raimi’s original plan had been for Braniac to be the villain rather than Lex Luthor[1], but the studio execs pushed him to go with the classic nemesis.

The film begins in media res, starting with an exciting helicopter pan across the city of Metropolis (New York and Montreal served as a stand-in). While they controversially ditched the continuity of the earlier films entirely, they kept the iconic John Williams theme, properly updated, because they’re not evil. We’re then taken to Clark Kent walking meekly down the street, getting jostled by passers-by like he was nobody. Almost immediately we see a put-upon vulnerability that pretty much instantly won over the haters to RDJ as Sups. Suddenly there’s a scream, and Kent runs to a phone booth, but it’s one of those little on-the-wall jobs, so he instead runs into an alley and emerges as Superman. Sups flies to the scene of a bank robbery being committed by the nefarious Sarto Family Gang. Sups easily overwhelms the gangsters, attempting in a rather offhanded, quippy way to talk them into just surrendering.

---

SUPERMAN: Consider this option: you put down the firearm, and we can talk through this.

JUNIOR SARTO: Consider this: you eat lead and die, fancy boy!

JUNIOR unloads his assault rifle at SUPERMAN. The bullets simply bounce off of SUPERMAN’S chest and face as he walks up. One of the ricochets shatters a nice vase. SUPERMAN grabs the gun from JUNIOR’S hands and twists it into a ring.

SUPERMAN: You really should be more careful, you know. You could have hurt someone. (looks at the shattered vase, then at JUNIOR) And that was a perfectly nice vase, too. It really brought out the colors in the rug.

---

Ultimately, the criminals, including Junior Sarto (Michael Imperioli, just off of his small role in Wiseguys), son of the infamous gangster Blackie Sarto, are defeated and Sups delivers them to the Metropolis Police. Lois Lane is there to interview him, our bumbling comic relief Jimmy Olsen with her as the camera man. There’s some flirting that’s obvious enough to make Jimmy roll his eyes and sigh. Superman then flies off, disappearing onto the roof of a building. Clark Kent walks out of the front door.

Clark then goes to work at the Daily Planet news network, where he is admonished for being late by editor in chief Perry White (Kevin Costner cameo). We learn some things in the background, like the fact that Lois Lane is a bit of a celebrity star reporter and that Lex Luthor is a widely loved philanthropist who promises to make Metropolis “the city of the future”, with many suspecting that he was specifically designed to be a slam at Walt Disney, though Howard vehemently denies this. We get a few scenes of Clark struggling to make a career at the Planet where we’re reintroduced to hot-shot crime reporter Lois Lane and her goofy photographer Jimmy Olsen (who has an obvious crush on her, but she’s as oblivious to his affections as she is to Clark). We learn that Clark is a “fluff” reporter, doing pieces on puppy parades and the fall fashion lineup. Lane patronizingly tries to encourage him to be more assertive if he ever wants to get out of Section D and onto the front page, but he demurs about being “not really into excitement.”

We’re also introduced to hot-shot technology reporter John Corben (Val Kilmer), who shamelessly flirts with Lois while easily fixing Jimmy’s broken camera and is presented as a romantic rival to Clark. Lane playfully pokes at him about his “green rocks from space” story, but Corben exposits that “those green rocks represent a natural source of real power!” And the audience goes “gee, I wonder what those could be?”

Suddenly the newsroom is thrown into chaos, because Junior Sarto has just been released without bail thanks to a shady lawyer. Lois and Jimmy go to investigate, with Lane sure that this is “the biggest story of the year.” Lois soon discovers through researching bank records that the lawyer has connections to Lex Luthor’s Chief Financial Officer Borden Moseley (Colin Friels), and calls Clark on her giant 1991 cell phone and tells him.

---

CORBEN: (smirking cockily) Hey, Clark! What are you doing here? Is Lex Luthor launching a pony fashion line?

KENT: Hi, um, John. I’m here about the new prosthetics foundation and I must say…

CORBEN: (cutting him off) Yea, impressive stuff, eh? (inspects a prosthetic arm) I’ll let you know if they make any in girl’s sizes. Until then, think you get me a coffee? (winks and smirks)

---

Clark, meanwhile, has been sent to report on the opening of the new Luthor Rehabilitation Center, where he interacts with Lex, Mayor Frank Berkowitz (Morgan Freeman, which definitely pissed off a “certain segment” of the fandom), and the obnoxious Vice Mayor Alex Evell (Raimi’s old friend Bruce Campbell). Clark runs into Corben there, who it turns out is there reporting on the new cybernetic prosthetics technology being developed by Luthor Industries. Corben “playfully” dominates and belittles Clark, who smiles and takes it. Corben then walks up to Lex and asks if he’s hiring.

Meanwhile Mayor Berkowitz asks Clark why he puts up with such bullying at his age. Here we’re treated to a short flashback sequence of young Clark getting bullied by a neighbor kid, whom he pushes across the field, and then getting chastised by his adoptive father Jon (Christopher Reeve in a stunt cast) and mother Martha (Margot Kidder, completing the stunt cast), who admonish him that with his incredible power he must learn to control himself “and always be the better man.”

As night falls, Superman and Lois now separately investigate Lex. Lois is on the wharf with Jimmy photographing Blackie Sarto (Paul Sorvino) and his gang. They get discovered, and Jimmy gets his camera smashed while a shady gangster (Ted Raimi) threatens them with a knife in a nod to Chinatown. Superman, meanwhile, goes to investigate the new Luthor Rehab Center, having become suspicious when visiting it. He hovers outside the building and uses his X-ray vision and super hearing to spy on Lex and discovers that Corben has taken a side job with Lex, building new prosthetics. Corben announces that he needs “a better power source” and thinks that he knows where he can find one.

---

LUTHOR: Behold! The Metropolis of the future! Skyscrapers a mile high! The finest infrastructure, transportation, and support structures! The newest in entertainment technologies!

EVELL: (pocketing a large wad of cash) Yea, a real experimental city of tomorrow. Look, Lexy, Mayor Berkowitz and the Council will never agree to that. You’d need to demolish half the city. You’d leave millions homeless!

LUTHOR: Yes. Millions of desperate lost souls in need of a savior. They’ll fall on their knees in thanks when I give them rooms in the towers. And once the people of Metropolis are in my debt they’ll be forever in my power. And as to Berkowitz and the Council, well, accidents happen, am I right Mayor Evell?

EVELL: (laughs and toasts with his drink) We’ll rule this city like kings!

---

Sups then follows Lex to a meeting with Vice Mayor Evell, who is working with Lex and taking direct bribes from Moseley. Lex reveals his plans for “the New Metropolis”, a futuristic city of skyscrapers all owned by him, and a plot that will see this new city ruled by him and Evell. Evell laughs and toasts a drink. Lex then receives a phone call and agitatedly tells them to “take care of it; search her apartment!”

As Evell leaves, Sups enters the building and confronts Lex, who plays coy while nodding slightly to Moseley, who leaves the room. Lex tells Sups that he can take him in, but his legal team will just let him back out, noting that his “popularity with the masses” would make Sups into the villain. “Besides, aren’t there more important things for you to be doing?”

Suddenly there’s an explosion on the skyline, and Sups runs to the window to see a flaming bridge in the distance. He flies to the rescue, leaving Lex alone, and saves the dangling cars from the collapsing bridge in one of the exciting scenes that made the trailer. The cars, the obligatory school bus full of kids, and all passengers are saved, but Sups discovers that the bridge supports were blown up by a carefully placed bomb.

Lois and Jimmy, meanwhile, return to the city, discouraged and scared, though Jimmy tries to let her know that he’s “with her all the way”. Lois gets back to her apartment and finds that it’s been raided, her documents shredded and burned, her computer smashed, and her film stores destroyed. She returns to work in time to be fired over accusations of trespassing and harassment by Luthor Corp., who apparently own the wharf. John Cordon is there to bear false witness against her.

Meanwhile, Sups heads out to try and clear Lois’s name and reveal Lex’s crimes. Lane and Jimmy, both without a job, set out to do likewise. However, every time Superman starts to get close to something, a major issue like a hostage situation or police standoff keeps demanding his immediate attention, always committed by someone clearly in Blackie’s gang. Sups realizes that he will never be able to get to Lex until he dismantles Blackie’s gang, which is perpetrating all of the distracting crimes, so he sets out to do so. We’re shown a montage of Sups capturing various crooks layered with flashbacks where the Kents find and raise baby Kal’El and teach him the responsibility of his power to help others.

---

While the GANGSTER moans in pain in the background amid the wreckage of the cyber-suit, CORDON takes the green rock and places it into a high-tech rifle. In the background LOIS LANE and JIMMY OLSEN watch.

LUTHOR: From space, you say?

CORBEN: Yes, a meteorite from deep space. Crashed in Kansas in the mid ‘60s. And just watch the power it contains.

CORBEN fires the rifle. A red laser burns a hole through the target and several walls behind it. Someone in a far room screams in terror.

LUTHOR: Impressive, Mr. Cordon. Oh, and while we’re at it, have security remove our visitors. (gestures towards where LOIS and JIMMY are hiding)

CORBEN hits a secret button and THREE SECURITY GUARDS run in and grab LOIS and JIMMY.

LANE: I’m warning you, Lex, I’m good friends with Superman!

LUTHOR: (smiling arrogantly) I know. I saw the interview.

---

Lois and Jimmy, meanwhile, break in to the Rehab center where they see John Corben working on a robotic power suit powered by a glowing green rock intended to let Lex defeat Superman, but the prototype fails spectacularly and painfully for its test wearer (the gangster played by Ted Raimi). Corben demonstrates the power of the rock using a laser and Lex is impressed and takes the laser rifle. Lois and Jimmy are discovered and captured and the security guards take her and Jimmy away.

Sups by this point has wrapped up the last of the Blackie Gang and flies to the Rehab facility, where Lex is waiting, with Lois and Jimmy as hostages. Supes and Lex exchange brief quips, but as Sups goes to grab Lex, Lex pulls out the laser rifle and shoots him, driving him back. Sups, now glowing in the red laser light, starts to push back against it in a nod to the old Fleisher animated shorts and uses his heat vision to destroy the rifle and a section of wall behind him and window beside him, and causing the green rock to fall on the floor.

---

SUPERMAN: You know, Lex, we really should talk about your life’s choices. Have we considered counselling?

For the first time LUTHOR’S arrogant smirk vanishes as a triumphant SUPERMAN approaches him…but then as SUPERMAN gets near the green rock, now obviously kryptonite, he starts to wince in pain.

LUTHOR: (grabs kryptonite) Ah, you don’t like this stuff, do you?

LUTHOR advances holding the green rock as SUPERMAN, clearly in pain, retreats.

LUTHOR: The mighty Superman has a weakness after all.

---

Lex notices that the rock causes Sups pain and picks up what even the densest audience member knows by this point to be kryptonite and advances on Superman. Lex now grabs a steel pipe from the destroyed section of wall and walks up to Sups, kryptonite in one hand, pipe in the other, and begins brutally beating the disempowered Sups with the pipe. Meanwhile, as Jimmy panics, Lois manages to slip out of her constraints and unties Jimmy. Just as Lex gleefully continues to beat Sups, Jimmy walks up, challenges him, and punches him in the jaw as hard as he can. Lex is unaffected and starts to smile. Jimmy shrieks and runs. Lois picks up a chunk of concrete. Lex sneers at her and advances threateningly.

---

LUTHOR: I guess you want to play ball too, foolish girl?

LOIS LANE winds up and throws the concrete chunk like a softball, knocking the kryptonite from his hand. The kryptonite bounces over towards the shattered floor-to-ceiling window.

LANE: All state softball champion.

---

Lex and Lois run for the kryptonite, but Lois gets there first and kicks the kryptonite out the window. An enraged Lex insults her and swings the pipe at her head, but a hand catches it.

With the kryptonite gone Sups is back up to full power. He quickly and easily overwhelms Lex and ties him up by bending the section of pipe around him. He and Lois share a moment, she leaves with a folder full of evidence of Lex’s corruption, and he flies off with Lex as the theme plays.

---

LANE: (smiles nervously as SUPERMAN walks up to her, intimately close) So, I, um, guess that makes us even?

SUPERMAN: Lois, you’ll always be my hero.

---

Back at the Daily Planet Lois is being interviewed about her “exciting adventure” at the Rehab facility. There are journalists talking and headlines detailing the level of corruption exposed in a raid of the facility and we witness footage of Lex Luthor going to prison. Clark smiles at his story on a local tree planting and meekly congratulates Lois, who thanks him and gives him a “best friend” kiss on the cheek, as the whole film reaches resolution.

And now Superman’s name is on everyone’s lips as he flies across the city and even up into space in a triumphant shot.

(Image source “quaora.com”)

And just before the credits roll, we return to the taped off crime scene of the Rehab facility. The camera pans through the grime and rubble to a pulsating green glow. A hand reaches down from the shadows and picks it up, the smiling face of John Corben glowing in the emerald light.

Man of Steel was a blockbuster hit, the number three highest grossing film of the year. Those who doubted that RDJ had the chops to play Sups were quickly won over by an actor clearly at the peak of his game. The very next year he won Best Actor for his portrayal of Charlie Chaplin and the year after that returned for the first Superman sequel. Patrick Stewart, who need we forget has played Macbeth, also won over audiences as Lex Luthor, giving him just the right combination of sophistication and sinister intent. Ron Howard’s honesty and warmth as a director brought out the hopeful and inspiring message of Superman even as RDJ gave him a little more of an edge than did Christopher Reeve. The central themes of power vs. responsibility resonated well in Raimi’s script (Raimi later joked that it was “his Spider-Man movie” based on this theme, which was prominent in the Marvel character).

While my older cousins will always call Reeves “their” Superman, RDJ is mine, and I have a real hard time accepting anyone else in the role. For me this original Raimi-produced film, as directed by Howard, is, along with its companion Batman, DC superhero films at their finest. It balanced the camp and naturalism well.

Let’s hope that the next time Sups returns to the big screen the producers will think more about Raimi and Howard and less about, well, what we got recently.

So, until then, Excelsior!

And yes, I know that’s Marvel. Shut up.

---

[1] Sorry, @Pyro, but Studios will be Studios! Braniac will have to appear later.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Making The Little Mermaid (1992), by Andreas Deja
A Guest Post to the Riding with the Mouse Net-log by animator Terrell Little

Hi, everyone, I’m Andreas and my friend and fellow Disney animator Terrell asked me to contribute to his net-log. Be sure to also see my net-log post, with some additional pieces of the artwork that I made. Now, I generally do not write much in my posts. I prefer to let the artwork speak. But Terrell is twisting my arm, the bastard!

King Triton pencil test by Andreas Deja (Image source Deja View blog)

So, where do we begin with The Little Mermaid? All the way back to Kay Nielsen’s test art in the 1940s? That was intended to be a short as part of a Hans Christian Andersen biopic. Our archivist dug them up when we started seriously looking into production in the late 1980s. Or perhaps I should speak of Ron Clements and his quest since the mid-1980s to get the film greenlit? He’d come across the original story and really wanted to do it, but other projects came first.

Kay Nielsen concept art (Image source “surlalunefairytales.blogspot.com”)

We’ll just say that there was a long production on this film!

We entered active production late in 1989. Jim was hoping for something very “old school” Disney. Roy wanted more princesses. While others worked with Ghibli on The Bamboo Princess, Ron recruited me as art director, helping Ron and John [Musker] set the style and tone of the animation since he loved what I’d done with Mistress Masham. We took some style cues from Nielsen, which is why stylistically it reminds so many people of Sleeping Beauty. We won an Annie for the art direction because of it.

Music-wise, we’d hoped to get Howard Ashman and Alan Menken to do the soundtrack, but they were beyond busy between Mort and Aladdin and The Song of Susan. Ron did manage to get some advice from Howard on where to take the Sea Witch, a character that we just couldn’t figure out what to do with, and Howard wrote some lyrics for her villain song, “Poor, Unfortunate Souls.”

Original Sea Witch concept art by Kay Nielsen and various Musker concept art (Image source The Paris Review & Pinterest)

Instead, Howard introduced us to Freddie Mercury, who’d been writing the soundtrack for The Song of Susan. “He’s the best lyricist I know,” Howard said. That’s huge praise! Freddie was super excited to work on it. He’s a bit of a kid like the rest of us. Playing in the Disney sandbox was a lot of fun for him. And Freddie had always loved[1] the story of The Little Mermaid, so it all worked out!

And just like Howard really kind of took over Mistress Masham in spirit, so did Freddie take over The Little Mermaid. Freddie ran to some degree with the tone set by Howard’s Ursula, who (and here’s a little secret that still makes Roy a little uncomfortable when he hears us talk about it) is really based on the drag queen Divine! Freddie’s songs were so full of confidence and barely constrained emotion, and that carried over into the characters. Ariel is a girl who knows what she wants. Prince Eric, meanwhile, is a confused man whose external expectations blind him to the happiness beside him. Ursula is the Queen Bitch of the Ocean and knows it. Triton is a stubborn father and king. Freddie and Brian May as arranger gave a very rock-operatic feel to things. Howard told us that he’d have made things calypso and turned Clarence the Crab into a Jamaican, but Freddie leaned on the whole Scandinavian thing and made everything what can only be described as “Rock Wagner[2]”.

His songs were great. “The World Above” has such a lyricism and longing. “The Girl of my Dreams” is passionate and laced with irony as Prince Eric longs for the woman who saved him as the silent Ariel next to him, who unknown to him is that girl, longs for him. Its later reprieve is so full of emotion even I still tear up at it. Each song became a like a milepost for us to animate around.

Hearing the actual voice actors record was a special delight. On Howard’s recommendation we found stage actress Jodi Benson to voice Ariel. We found Paul Hipp for the role of Prince Eric, just coming off of a run as Buddy Holly in the original West End run of Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story. Kenneth Mars was sublime as King Triton. Jennifer Saunders just nailed it as Ursula and Rowan Atkinson was a delightful boor as Clarence[3]. And Kath Soucie brought the manipulative third point of the love triangle, the Duchess Katrine, to life.

(Image source Pinterest)

I took a year off to work on Porco Rosso and then almost immediately got recruited to work on The Bamboo Princess because of it, but was back in time to finish up post production and see the final project completed. Howard had passed by that point, but his “Poor Unfortunate Souls” lived on.

I am proud of what we accomplished.

---

[1] Speculating here.

[2] Not to be confused with Rock Lobster.

[3] Hat tip to @Plateosaurus for Sanders and @Nathanoraptor for Atkinson. Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson will voice Ursula’s snarky eel companions.

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Hi-Ho, Silver! Mask of the Lone Ranger turns Twenty
From Cowboy Up! Netsite, with Gideon Upp, April 17th, 2012

Saddle up, buckaroos, because today we’re talking about 1992’s Mask of the Lone Ranger, directed by Chris Columbus and produced by Lisa Henson for Amblin and Disney!

It was the first time that the Lone Ranger had been on the big screen in just over 10 years since the controversial and disastrous 1981 The Legend of the Lone Ranger, which was overshadowed by the controversy surrounding Jack Wrather’s poorly considered lawsuit against classic Lone Ranger actor Clayton Moore. Well, just to be up front with y’all on that score, Disney done Mr. Moore right, even giving him a cameo as Captain Dan Reid, our hero’s father, but we’ll get to that.

When Disney bought up Wrather Corp in the late 1980s, they acquired the IP rights for The Lone Ranger along with Lassie and some other random stuff including the Spruce Goose, of all things. They kicked around ideas for the character, making an animated short in 1990 for The Wonderful World of Disney and making him, along with Panchito Pistoles, the mascot of Disneytown, San Antonio. And then Dances with Wolves appeared, and swept up the awards and the box office alike. Steven Spielberg showed some interest in the franchise and Lisa Henson was selected to produce a hypothetical film in partnership with Disney. When John McTiernan’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was a big hit too, they greenlit it for Walt Disney Pictures.

(Image source COSI TV)

Lisa Henson, who’d by this point made a huge name for herself in producing Hooked!, worked closely with Spielberg and his co-executive producer, who happened to be her father, Jim Henson. Chris Columbus, the director of Hooked!, was hired to direct. After considering River Phoenix (who turned it down), Christian Slater, Charlie Sheen, and Emilio Estevez, they took a chance on a young and then-unknown Matthew McConaughey[1] as John Reid, a.k.a. the Lone Ranger. McConaughey had been discovered performing as Pecos Bill in a Disneytown San Antonio stage production. The handsome, charismatic, slightly rebellious aspiring actor offered a youthful take on the venerable character that Lisa Henson hoped would bring in young and female audiences, which it needless to say did. The great Wes Studi[2] was brought in as Tonto, and in this case served as an older mentor figure and ally-of-convenience rather than a sidekick. Somewhat controversially, they created a new love interest for the Lone Ranger in Nadua, a young Comanche woman played by Kimberly Guerrero. And, as stated before, the great Clayton Moore himself was brought in as John Reid’s father Dan.

Matthew McConaughey Yearbook Photo, looking actually wholesome-ish (Image source r/askgaybros on Reddit)

Following in the footsteps of 1989’s Batman, they decided against the Origin Story route and pushed the origin scenes into flashbacks. Like with Robin Hood, they worked to balance the legend with the actual complicated history of the setting and tried to balance the old-fashioned swashbuckling camp with the more grounded historical realism popular at the time, managing to walk the line between deconstructive Western (ala Unforgiven) and straight adaption.

The plot follows John as an established hero, saving the innocent from bandits and marauders. But when he and Tonto team up to defeat a band of ruthless raiders and rustlers, they soon find themselves outlaws when the leader of the group turns out to be in the employ of the local State Senator and former Confederate bushwhacker, Bartholomew “Butch” Cavendish, played by Timothy Dalton[3], who brought a jaded, faux-affable charisma to the role and even managed an impressively accurate East Texas accent.

Butch Cavendish, likely up to no good (Image source Mandy Duchovny on Pinterest)

Cavendish, who in this case was based heavily on Nathan Bedford Forrest, is working on a brutal plan that would raid and kill both Texan and Indian villages in an effort to spur a war, and then use this as a pretext to slaughter the natives in a massive land-grab scheme. He’s also an unabashed white supremacist with hints that he’s in the KKK (“rally’s tonight, Butch. Wear white!”) and his raiders are deliberately targeting Black and Tejano Texans in addition to any Indian, regardless of tribe (a village of peaceful Tonkawa is killed by his men in an allegory to Wounded Knee). John and his allies are suddenly the only ones able to oppose this massive conspiracy.

This plot is underlain by John’s internal conflicts, including his guilt over how his rash actions led to the death of his father (which may be a subtle apology by Disney for how Moore was treated by Wrather) and how the actions of “his” people (Americans) have been less than honorable to the Indian. This latter bit caught some negative attention for being “politically correct”, but in my opinion they handled it with nuance and subtlety, and such complaints ignore the fact “[t]hat all men are created equal/and that everyone has within himself/the power to make this a better world,” which was always a core part of the Lone Ranger’s strict Moral Code. Of course, nowadays some complain that they didn’t take this plotline far enough! Oh well, I mean, for 1992 it was pretty willing to at least address some of these things rather than pretend all was good and right and just in history.

And while all of this plot seems pretty heavy, fear not, for it’s still a fun, swashbuckling adventure. It has all of the exciting Western tropes from fantastic trick gunplay, to trick riding, to the requisite train chase. The action scenes, directed by stunt director (and Harrison Ford clone/Indy stuntman) Vic Armstrong, are as dynamic and exciting as anything directed by Spielberg and play with expectations while satisfying fan appetites. McConaughey manages to capture that mix of cocky and vulnerable that has since become a signature of the actor while also giving the character a surprising amount of pathos and maturity for the more emotional scenes despite the youth of the actor (21 at the time of filming).

Mask of the Lone Ranger did fairly well at the box office, making a good $76 million against a $22 million budget. While not anything to live up to the team’s earlier success with Hooked! or the success of Robin Hood, it was still a successful showing that refreshed the brand and helped justify the continuation of the animated series and even a short-lived TV Western on NBC. The original Oscar bait single “Truth Lives On Forever”, written and performed by Freddie Mercury, breached the top forty and became another of those 1990s movie tie-in ear worms, though a particularly memorable one as the title and the lyrics were adapted from the Lone Ranger’s moral code while the melody musically quoted the original William Tell Overture finale while using Texas Blues and Honky Tonk instrumentation[4].

It’s a song only Freddie Mercury could have pulled off and as far as ‘90s Oscar bait songs go, it’s one of the best, I guess I’m saying. And it did get a Golden Globe nomination and sold platinum, so, success there, right?

It was also a bit of a milestone in Lisa Henson’s career, as it was her last Amblin production before taking a job as the Chair of Fox Studios in early 1992. It would actually screen while she was at Fox and cause a bit of an interesting juxtaposition as she promoted competition to her own film! She’d also soon be teamed up with Chris Columbus yet again for Wicked Stepfather with Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, and Catherine O’Hara, the first of many Fox/1492 productions.

From the TV Spin-Off

And as mentioned, the success even spawned a 1993-1998 TV series starting on NBC from Jeffrey Boam and Carlton Cuse, reportedly adapted from an original idea[5]. It starred Bruce Campbell as John Reid, Michael Horse as Tonto, and introduced Julius Carrey as the amicable rival ranger Josiah Bass, who was based on the great Bass Reeves, reportedly one of the real-life inspirations for the Lone Ranger. Only Kim Guerrero returned from the film as the love interest Nadua, though they also brought in Kelly Rutherford as the rival love interest Dixie (the Veronica to Nadua’s Betty), Billy Bly as the evil and psychotic Butch, and soon introduced the legendary John “Gomez Addams” Astin himself as Professor Wickwire, whose crazy inventions soon pushed things into Steam Romance territory. As the show got wilder and sillier, one began to wonder if it was even The Lone Ranger anymore, or something else entirely!

But back to Mask of the Lone Ranger. The obvious question you might have for me if you haven’t seen it is, should you see the film?

Well, folks, the answer is an unqualified “yes”. I for one grew up loving this show, seeing it first run as a kid in the theaters and wearing out a VHS tape. It stands out in an era where Westerns were getting darker and grittier, so having a PG-rated, child friendly, sincere old-style Western with clear heroes and villains (despite the deconstructive elements) was actually a bit of a rare treat for the time. It was something that my parents had no hesitation taking me and my sister to see. The cinematography is epic with brilliant location shoots around the American West. The lessons are good, the action is fun and just comedic enough to not shock or disturb, it stays true to the word and spirit of the source material (unlike the TV series, which was admittedly fun in its own way), and it is honestly a lot of fun. It’s also entirely done with practical effects and stunt men, making it a pleasure to watch from a production standpoint.

Mask of the Lone Ranger was a rare product of that transition from the 1980s Action Film to the 1990s Effects Epic and shows aspects of both of these eras, and yet it holds up well on its own as a timeless film. It managed to reestablish the Lone Ranger franchise, though not to the extent hoped, as there would be no sequel films and only a stunt show at Frontierland and Disneytown, San Antonio, Disney attractions-wise. It even healed the rift with Clayton Moore shortly before his passing.

And looking at it twenty years later, it’s a fun family Western adventure that holds up well as timeless cinema.

So, with that said, I’ll see you all next time.

Hi-Ho, Silver[6], and Away!

---

[1] White Stetson tip to @Unknown for this suggestion. McConaughey is a student at the University of Texas, Austin, at the time, so a summer gig for an aspiring actor (he was doing commercials at this point in our timeline) at DTSA is a natural. And no, he does not say “alright, alright, alright!” at any point.

[2] Tonto in this version will be a total bad-ass, in keeping with the historical Comanche. There will be some “magical Native American” aspects (this is the early ‘90s, after all), though they will be comparatively subdued and mitigated through careful research and giving Studi some creative control of his character.

[3] Will Dalton ever escape villainous typecasting in the US? Stay tuned!

[4] Fun fact: Mercury originally envisioned the lyrics he wrote for Bohemian Rhapsody as a Western song!

[5] Became The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. in our timeline. I know, I know. I’m sad too.

[6] Not to be confused with (HIO3), silver (for my late father, the biochemist and shameless punster).

 

[Geekhis Khan]

SHREK! (1992)
Video from revamped Nostalgia was Way Better when I was a Kid Netsite, Dec. 1st, 2009

Interior – Shrek’s Family’s Hole in the Swamp – Den (Animation)
SHREK lays on his belly in front of a large crystal ball, kicking his feet, chin in his hands, watching it like a television. Rainbow Unicorns prance and laugh on the distorted screen. His PARENTS walk in.

(Image source “quora.com”)

Unicorn (on Crystal ball) [Tara Charendoff[1]]
Come on, unis! We have to chase the ugly goblins from the Candy Crystal Castle or we’ll never be able to have the Sugar-Dumplin’ Dance!!

Shrek’s Father [Gilbert Gottfried]
Shrek, what in the blazing fires are you watching?

Shrek [Chris Farley]
(petulantly) It’s Happy Unicorns of Candy Castle and I have the right to watch what I want!

Shrek’s Mother [Fran Drescher]
How can you watch that rainbow-colored crap? It’ll rot your brain!

Shrek’s Father
No son of mine is going to watch happy fairytale stuff!​

Shrek’s FATHER grabs a magic wand with buttons and points it at the crystal ball. He hits the buttons, flipping through channels, until it settles on a horror film of a monster attacking people.

Shrek
Hey!! I was watching that!!

Shrek’s Father
There, a proper Ogre film.

Shrek
I HATE YOU, and not in the way that you want me to!!​

SHREK runs off to his room and slams the door. As the door opens, we briefly see lots of posters of happy elves and princesses and flowers.

Shrek’s Mother
He takes after your side of the family, you know!

Shrek’s Father
Hey! I can’t help it that Uncle Grash became a candymaker!​

CUT TO:

Interior – Larry’s Study
Larry, host and writer for the net show, sits behind a desk in front of all of his nerdy books and toys. Figures of Shrek, Donkey, and Princess Argyle sit on the desk in front of him. His jaunty theme music plays in the background.

Larry
Hi, I’m Larry, and “Nostalgia was Way Better when I was a Kid”. And today we’re exploring another of those early ‘90s Disney cartoons, 1992’s Shrek! Pardon the yelling, the exclamation point is in the title for a reason, you know…probably. Formed from another of those partnerships between Disney and Amblin and based on a 1990 William Steig children’s book that Jim Henson and Steven Spielberg both loved, Shrek! was an anti-fairytale with a message to love who you are, even if you’re ugly as sin.​

The plodding tuba-led music from the Shrek! Soundtrack plays, Randy Newman sings snippets of “You’re Ugly (and I Love You So)” that are just short enough to avoid a copyright claim; title card of the episode name superimposes briefly. MONTAGE of scenes of SHREK and his PARENTS starts.

Larry (Cont’d)
The film was produced and directed at first by John Lasseter, and then handed to Joe Ranft after Lasseter’s suspension for being a Mr. Grabby-Hands. It was animated by the Disney 3D group and wholly digitally inked and painted with occasional three-dimensional CG bits, much like with the earlier Aladdin. As such, it marks a part of that transition period between 2-D and 3-D digital animation. Thematically, it was quite a change from Disney’s usual fare at the time, and was marketed to older kids and teens. It even sported a PG rating. In fact, some of the themes of ugliness and jaded sarcasm and some of the more ironically juvenile humor led the studio to release it under the Fantasia Films and new Amblimation logos rather than under the Disney logo, the first animated film from Disney animation not to sport the Disney name. Unlike other Disney animated films of the time, it lacked a Broadway-style musical sound track, the first animated film to do so since Elementary. Instead, Randy Newman provided a now-legendary bouncing background soundtrack. Shrek! also had that very Henson-esque way of playing with language and subverting expectations while leaning hard against the fourth wall, a self-parody in many cases of Disney’s own Fairy Tale tropes. They even had an ad campaign where Shrek and Donkey invade and wreak havoc in remade trailers[2] for Disney’s own Animated Canon! Usually with some sort of sarcastic comments related to the tropes of that film, such as Donkey telling Cinderella, “If I were you, Cindy, I’d send your bird friends after those abusive shrews”, meaning her step sisters, in what was simultaneously a self-deprecating poke at Disney Cinderella’s passivity, an Easter Egg for fans of the gruesome original Brothers Grimm stories, and a set-up for a joke delivered in the film itself. Shrek! even pushed the limits on hidden adult humor, sometimes to the breaking point, such as the infamous bathroom scene, which even Jim Henson was reluctant to add for a while.​

Interior – Shrek’s Family’s Hole in the Swamp – Hallway (Animation)
SHREK walks down the hall to the bathroom door, opens it, looks left and right, enters and closes the door quietly behind him. His MOTHER walks up a moment later and bangs on the door.

Shrek’s Mother
Shrek, what are you doing in there?

Shrek (V.O.)
Um…nothing Mom!!

Shrek’s Mother
You’re not delousing, are you?​

CUT TO:

Interior – Shrek’s Family’s Hole in the Swamp – Bathroom (Animation)
SHREK, shirtless, with numerous bugs hopping around his skin, is getting ready to pour “Louse-B-Gone” on himself.

Shrek
Um…no? Just, um…putting on some, uh, stinky swamp water!​

SHREK hides the Louse-B-Gone and reaches for another bottle labeled “Eau de Fantastique”.

Shrek’s Mother (V.O.)
And you’d better not be putting on that smelly cologne!​

SHREK sighs and puts away the bottle.

Interior – Larry’s Study

Larry
Um, yea, so they went there. Thankfully, only the parents caught the reference and the censors somehow missed it or were paid to look the other way.​

Our Timeline’s Art Evolution for Shrek; this one is somewhat similar (Image source “deathmaskofmauricetillet-theangel.blogspot.com”)

MONTAGE of scenes from the movie start to play as LARRY speaks in voiceover.

Larry (V.O.)
So, the titular Shrek, voiced by Chris Farley[3], is this Gen-X teenager type living at home in a hole in the swamp with his unnamed parents, who are bought to life by the ever-dulcet voices of Gilbert Gottfried and Fran Drescher. And his parents are getting tired of his laziness and unwillingness to go out and “make a monster” of himself. Shrek, as a form of teenage rebellion, likes bright and pretty things like elves and unicorns and dreams of being a gallant knight and rescuing princesses. The American Family Association accused the film of promoting a homosexual lifestyle based on this love of supposedly girly things, and in contrast the LGBTQ community embraced the character for the exact same reason, though executive producers Steven Spielberg and Jim Henson maintain that it’s meant to be a joke on the way that suburban teenagers like “scary” things like all-black clothes and death metal and gangster rap in order to piss off their parents. Shrek’s princess and pony posters are thus the equivalent of a teenage boy from Yorba Linda hanging up Slayer and NWA posters, so you can think of him more as the fantasy equivalent of a Brony or Brunny. And, well, needless to say his parents finally have enough of his underachieving ways, and literally kick him out of the swamp.​

Exterior – Forest (Animation)
SHREK walks through the woods, plants wilting around him, birds falling from the sky, and animals and villagers fleeing in terror. SHREK soon encounters a WITCH in a clearing in the woods. She is at a bubbling cauldron.

(Image source Amazon)

Larry (V.O.)
So, the newly let’s-say ‘emancipated’ Shrek goes out into the uncaring world, loving the beauty of the birds and flowers even as they wilt and fall out of the sky as he walks by. He encounters an unnamed Witch voiced by the great Chloris Leachman who, in exchange for some of his “rare” Ogre lice, which recall he was trying to kill earlier, tells him his fortune. In this fortune he’ll meet a talking donkey who will lead him to rescue a princess even uglier than him. And in a running gag that’s catnip to nerds like me who love to overanalyze these things, the plot takes some time to parody Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey by playing with the standard tropes and expectations therein, generally by playing them literally and then subverting them. For example…​

Exterior – Forest – Witch’s Cauldron (Animation)
SHREK continues to talk with the WITCH. She ceremoniously hands him a battered old sword.

Witch
And this is thy Father’s Sword.

Shrek
Um, my father never had a sword. He sat out the whole war after running off to Troll Country.

Witch
Oh. (beat) Yea, that’s right. Why in the blazes did I have this thing, then? (nonchalantly tosses the sword into the woods, where something squeaks loudly as it lands)​

Exterior – Clearing (Animation)
SHREK comes across a DONKEY.

Larry (V.O.)
So, Shrek, now excited at the chance to rescue a princess and live a version of his childhood dreams, goes out into the world following the instructions from the Witch. He has some hijinks with the locals before he finally comes across the Donkey, voiced by George Carlin, who in addition to filling his prophesied role to lead Shrek to the castle to free the princess foul, also serves as a wise and experienced, if really jaded, mentor figure in the most George Carlin way possible. He’s a figurative and literal Wise Ass, in case you missed the joke.

Shrek
OK, you must be the Donkey.

Donkey
(hee-haws dumbly)

Shrek
And...um..."Apple Strudel!" (long awkward pause) Ok, so I said the magic words the witch gave me. You’re going to lead me to the princess now, um, right?

Donkey
(hee-haws dumbly)

Shrek
(slaps forehead) That stupid witch tricked me! Oh, Dad’s right, I’m such a dumb-a…

Donkey
Hey, watch it, pal!

Shrek
HOLY Schnikey, wait a minute…you can talk!

Donkey
Yea, and I always have. The magic words are so I can recognize you. I was just messin’ with you. Seriously, kid, you need to relax!​

Interior – Castle Argyle (Animation)
Scenes at the castle where the princess foul is kept by the arrogant Prince Guyling and his Knights.

Early Concept Art for the Princess in Shrek! (Image source Vaughn Pinpin on Twitter)

Larry (V.O.)
So, we now start to cut back-and-forth to Castle Argyle, home of Princess Argyle voiced by Carol Kane, who we learn is held captive by the handsome but reprehensible Prince Guyling, voiced by Steve Martin, who Spielberg wanted for the role of Shrek, but who instead wanted to play the villain. Prince Guyling believes that the Princess Argyle is in fact cursed to ugliness by a witch and has an incompetent wizard, voiced by John Ratzenberger in his first of many 3D collaborations, trying to develop a cure. Guyling hopes to marry the Princess so that he can lay claim to the bountiful lands she possesses. And yes, Python fans, they make a “huge tracts of land” joke.

Prince Guyling
Don’t try to deny it, Princess, you’ve been cursed by a witch and are secretly beautiful! And once my wizard finds the cure for your curse, you’ll be sure to marry me, your brave, stalwart, handsome, and dare I say charming prince!

Princess Argyle
(snorts) Don’t strain your arm patting yourself on the back there, pal. And I hate to break this to you, but this is the real me. You read too many fairy stories.

Larry (V.O.)
They are, of course, wrong about her being cursed, but don’t believe the princess when she tries to tell them. The Prince finally decides to throw the Princess in the dungeon to be silently executed and replaced by a beautiful peasant girl that the Wizard will then swear is the “real” Princess in a switcheroo. We spend enough time with them to learn about the Prince’s spoiled upbringing and mother-complex, with allusions to Prince John in Disney’s Robin Hood, which has led him to develop an “ugly heart” in contrast to his physical attractiveness. This stands in contrast to Shrek’s more “tough love” background, which taught him to be “beautiful of heart” even if he’s ugly of form.​

Exterior – Fields (Animation)
Farmers flee in terror. SHREK and DONKEY ignore them as DONKEY councils SHREK.

(Image source “Tor.com”)

Larry (V.O.)
And meanwhile, back with Shrek and Donkey, we learn some of the “wisdom” of the latter as they quest for the Castle.

Donkey
You see, kid, the world doesn’t give a pile about your dreams, and it ain’t going to hand you nothing. And if a fairy godmother flies into your window with a great glowing aura and a wand with a star on the end, then my advice is to swat her with a magazine. Trust me, kid, those flighty dames are always up to no good, and there’s always a catch. If you really want to achieve your goals, then you need to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself.

Shrek
But what about believing in the power of your dreams?

Donkey
Yea, sure, believe all you want, but (pokes SHREK in the chest with a with a hoof, accentuating the point) believe in yourself first. And then, and here’s the critical part, act on those beliefs. Sure, Cindy’s Prince finally came, but she slaved away to those lazy interlopers for years first. She should have taken my advice and fled that dump years ago. She had a whole army of cutesy critters at her behest. She could have been Queen of the Forest, and on her own terms, not a kept woman married to that inbred dolt.

Shrek
(long, awkward pause) Life hasn’t been kind to you, has it, Donkey?

Larry (V.O.)
Tah-daa!! Payoff. For a set-up made in a teaser trailer.​

Exterior – The Village of Midpoint (Animation)
SHREK and DONKEY wander through a village, sending the peasants running. They take little notice, talking to one another. Some GUARDS intervene and get scattered by SHREK’S fire breath.

Larry (V.O.)
So, the two reach the fittingly-named village of Midpoint and after an exposition drop by Donkey set out to find the Caves of MacGuffin, guarded by a fierce dragon, where the key that will free the princess foul is hidden.​

Exterior – The Caves of MacGuffin (Animation – dream)
SHREK is now a glorious knight who slays the DRAGON and rescues a beautiful princess, which turns into a terrifying nightmare sequence.

Larry (V.O.)
To mark this momentous screenplay milestone is a terrifying misdirection-dream where Shrek finds himself a heroic knight who vanquishes the dragon atop a glorious steed and rescues a beautiful blonde princess, who goes to embrace him. And soon a bunch of laughing children appear and want to dance and play, pulling Shrek into a happy place right out of the shows he used to watch. Shrek starts to panic as they slowly turn him into a handsome prince.​

SHREK wakes up screaming.

Donkey
Wake up, kid! You’re having a nightmare!

Shrek
(shakes) Donkey, it was horrible! I was so…handsome!​

Exterior – The Actual Caves of MacGuffin (Animation)
SHREK battles the DRAGON.

Larry (V.O.)
And after the terrifying misdirection-dream, Shrek and Donkey go to the also fittingly-named Caves of MacGuffin to battle the Dragon and claim the, um, MacGuffin, passing the charred remains of Knights Fair along the way. Shrek wants to ride Donkey into battle with a lance, but Donkey, after pointing out what happened to the knights who did so, instead describes, with coy references to the “belly of the beast” for us Campbell nerds, that all dragons have a “soft underbelly” that can be exploited. Shrek, of course, finds his own way.​

(Image source “macmillan.com”)

SHREK dodges the claws and bite and fire breath of the DRAGON, then stuns it with his own fire breath and slides under its bulging belly towards its tail. SHREK’S fist flies up, the hand’s hit location hidden by the bulge of the DRAGON’S belly. The DRAGON’S eyes bulge, cross, and then it falls over, moaning and yelping, holding itself between its hind legs.

Shrek
(emerging) Sweet! I found the soft spot!

Donkey
Not the, um, ‘soft spot’ I meant, but it’ll do.​

MONTAGE of scenes of SHREK and Donkey travelling to the Castle Argyle interspersed with scenes of GUYLING and ARGYLE.

Larry (V.O.)
It now cuts back and forth between Guyling at his hammy best confronting Princess Argyle and Shrek and Donkey passing through the Fields of Padding until they reach the castle, where Shrek is met by a group of knights. He defeats them with his fire breath, physical strength, and retched smell. Just as he’s ready to enter the castle, however, Donkey tells him that he’s on his own.​

(Image source “vintagechildrensbooksmykidloves.com”)

Donkey
Shrek, I’ve led you to the castle and fulfilled my narrative purpose. Now you must go on alone.

Shrek
But where will you go? What will I do without your wisdom? Why can’t you come with me to rescue the princess?

Donkey
For the first question, I’ll retire. There’s a nice field of timothy grass I have my eye on. To the second question, that’s up to you. Have faith in yourself, Shrek. And as to the third…well, let’s just say that I’ve seen what happens to mentor figures who overstay their purpose. Now, go get her, Shrek!​

Interior – Castle Argyle (Animation)
MONTAGE of SHREK going through the castle interspersed with scenes of PRINCE GUYLING and the WIZARD.

Larry (V.O.)
So, now the solo Shrek works his way through Castle Argyle battling Knights. This is intercut with scenes of Prince Guyling trying to organize the defense while the Wizard prepares for the Princess sacrifice and switch. At one point Shrek is trapped in a maze of mirrors, and is horrified by all the “terrifying monsters” that he sees, along with various audio clips from earlier in the film of the various people reacting in fear of him and sound bites from his shows about the value of beauty. This is played as him coming to terms with his external ugliness and learning to appreciate the beauty of it, and now fully embraces his self-confidence and self-respect.​

Interior – Castle Argyle – Dungeon (Animation)
SHREK, wearing a discarded helmet, fights his way to the dungeon and finds the Princess’s cell. He holds up the key that he claimed from the dragon, notes that it doesn’t fit the lock, shrugs and chucks it, just ripping the door off with his bare hands. Inside he finds PRINCESS ARGYLE laying on her side. He is overcome by her alluring hideousness.

Princess Argyle
Aren’t you a little tall and ugly for a knight?

Shrek
(removed helmet) I’m, um, Shrek. I’m here to rescue you! The Witch sent me!

Princess Argyle
The Witch? Well, why didn’t you say so, toots?

Larry (V.O.)
This more confident, self-respecting Shrek reaches the dungeon, where, after a sight gag that made the battle with the dragon hilariously pointless, he rescues the Princess in a scene directly quoting Star Wars. They fight their way through the guards, she just as nasty and brutal of a dirty fighter as he. They escape to the courtyard, where the Prince and the Wizard await them for the battle royale…with cheese!​

SHREK and PRINCESS ARGYLE reach the courtyard where PRINCE GUYLING and the WIZARD are there, surrounded by knights.

Wizard
(summoning glowing bands of magic with his hands) Be gone, foul beast, or my powerful magic will...​

SHREK casually head-butts the WIZARD and tosses him over the castle wall into the alligator-filled moat. PRINCE GUYLING and a score of GUARDS then confront them.

Shrek
Alright, pal, we’re leaving, so get out of the freakin’ way!

Prince Guyling
(drawing sword) You shall never pass, you foul monster! You hideous boil! You festering wart! You plague! You beast! You ugly, ugly fiend! You…

Shrek
(interrupting) Yea, yea, I got it! Ugly Ogre. There’s no need to be rude, you know!

Prince Guyling
Well, excuuusse me, Mr. Ugly Pants!

Princess Argyle
Kick his butt, Shrek! I’ll handle the rest of these goons!​

While the PRINCESS proceeds to toss around the knights like they were nothing in a series of moves right out of pro wrestling, SHREK grabs a dropped sword and he and the Prince fight in a sweeping, Flynn-inspired battle across the castle.

Larry (V.O.)
So, while the Princess proceeds to wipe the floor with the luckless minions, Shrek and the Prince get in this big and I must say grandly choreographed sword fight that’s part swashbuckling Errol Flynn adventure and part Three Stooges slapstick. They exchange quips, lean on the fourth wall, and in the end, Shrek asks himself why he’s fighting with a sword and simply heats up Guyling’s shining armor with his fire breath. The smoking Prince ends up diving in the garderobe, which is a fancy medieval way of saying the toilet, to quench the burning steel.​

Interior – Castle Argyle – Throne Room (Animation)
SHREK and PRINCESS ARGYLE are married by an alligator-like priest while a group of hideous monsters, including SHREK’S PARENTS, DONKEY, and the WITCH watch adoringly.

Larry (V.O.)
And thus, Shrek has not only saved the Princess, but saved the lands from a plan by the Prince to develop it all into luxury timeshares. Shrek and the Princess fall totally in love with one another, and thus, the victorious Shrek marries the Princess, complete with a big dance party at the end.​

(Image source New York Times)

Donkey
(to camera) And they lived horribly ever after!​

Theme music for “Nostalgia was Better when I was a Kid” plays.

Interior – Larry’s Study

Larry
So there you have it, nerds, Shrek! It was a watershed film for Disney and a huge break from the standard formula…a formula already on its way out starting with The Black Cauldron and cemented with Mort. Buoyed by smart writing, serious voice talent, and distributed under the Fantasia label, Shrek! is full of that Hensonesque humor plus some Spielbergian childishness. This anti-fairytale managed to affectionately satirize Disney’s own classic formula and that of fairy tales in general while also teaching important lessons about the deeper beauty and ugliness beyond shallow appearance, which many see as a valuable break for the standard-for-the-time trope of “good is beautiful, evil is ugly”. While Shrek! didn’t live up to the numbers of other Disney films of the era – making a good $182 million against its $34 million budget is nothing to laugh at but a far cry from Aladdin’s over half-a-billion – it still performed well thanks to older kids who loved the gross-out humor, teens who loved the cagy adult jokes, and young adults (particularly college students) who appreciated the satirical elements. It got its share of anger and praise at the time and in hindsight is seen as an underappreciated classic that was in many respects ahead of its time. It has gone on to have a strong cult following, spawned a TV animated series, and for a generation was one of the first films that they saw that bridged that child-to-adult barrier and did so with a lot of snark, but also with a lot of heart. Next week we discuss the Disney/Ghibli crossover The Bamboo Princess from the same year. Be sure to hit that Like and Track button, and…​

[Click Return]

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[1] Became Tara Strong in our timeline.

[2] Dented Helm tip to @HonestAbe1809 for this idea!

[3] Farley was a client of Bernie Brillstein in our timeline. In this one he’s a client of Bernie’s daughter Leigh. Right now he’s an up-and-coming comedian who’s making a name for himself on SNL. And in case you’re wondering what it would be like:

 

[Geekhis Khan]

Chapter 6: The Next Summit (Cont’d)
Excerpt from The Visionary and the Vizier, Jim Henson and Frank Wells at Disney, by Derek N. Dedominos, MBA.

In the summer of 1992, Disney CEO Ron Miller visited Chairman and President Frank Wells in his office in the renovated “Old Animation Building” (now the “Walter Elias Disney Building”) and announced his plans to retire that spring after an even 10 years at the helm. “I’d like you to take over as CEO,” he said to Wells, “And I’d like Dick [Nunis] to take over as President.” Miller was grateful for his long opportunity to lead Disney, but he and his wife were ready to retire and devote their time to the growing wine partnership that they had with Francis Ford Coppola and his family.

The surprise announcement caught Wells flat-footed. He was just about to announce to Miller that he was considering an extended leave of absence himself! The truth was that Wells, as much as he was enjoying his time at Disney, was increasingly looking for that next challenge. And that next challenge appeared increasingly to be in the public sphere.

The prospective Al Gore presidency, as a fellow pro-business, pro-technology, pro-civil rights “Atari Democrat”, represented exactly the direction in which Wells wanted the country to go after 12 years of the “voodoo economics” and social conservatism of Reagan and Bush, and the opportunity to be a part of that was tantalizing. The polls in the 1992 presidential race were showing promise for Senator Al Gore, and Gore had approached Wells about the possibility of taking a cabinet position, likely Secretary of Commerce. Wells, not yet sure if public service was in his future, instead pitched to Gore an exploratory public-private joint committee to investigate the regulatory, technological, infrastructure, and resource investments that would be necessary to transition to a “green economy”. Basically, to put into action the plans discussed in last summer’s Green Technology Summit at Walt Disney World.

Wells expressed his plans to Miller.

“Saving the Wonderful World of Disney isn’t enough for you, eh Frank?” Miller teased. “You need to save the entire world now?”

“Perhaps Disney offered good practice!” Wells said with a self-effacing laugh.

Miller, the Reagan Republican, and Wells, the Atari Democrat, were amicably divided over the election and had already playfully teased one another over what would happen if the other’s side won. Both at least agreed that they were glad to see the disruptive Perot exit.

So, they turned their friendly political rivalry into a friendly bet: If Bush won reelection, then Miller would retire in 1993 as planned and Wells would take over as CEO and Chairman while Nunis would ascend to the presidency. If Gore won in November, Miller would extend his tenure while Wells went out to “save the world” with President Gore. If this happened, then Vice Chairman Jim Henson would take over as Acting Chairman and Dick Nunis take over as Acting President for the extent of Wells’ absence, while Miller remained on as CEO.

As for Henson, the thought of being Chairman, even acting, kind of made him queasy. He’d filled in for Frank on numerous occasions and was getting use to the position (even if he refused to use the gavel on principle), and he’d served as Chairman of Disney Studios for years now, but there was peace in knowing that he’d always be handing the gavel back, metaphorically speaking in his case. He felt like he should support Al Gore over Bush given his environmental views and the fact that he personally liked the guy, but even thinking about partisan politics made him upset.

The truth was that he was content where he was, and being the Chief Creative Officer and Disney Studios head was exactly the position that he was happy to be in. But Wells and Miller both assured him that while he’d have to hand off the Studios to someone else (he was leaning towards Roy E. Disney) he’d still retain the CCO’s position and remain the main creative driving force.

Satisfied that he’d remain primarily a creative leader rather than an administrative one, Henson agreed to the deal in principle.

And with that, the bet was afoot, with the near-term future of Disney in the balance.

Either way, come 1993 Disney would be entering into a new era.

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One more post in Book I after this, folks! Book II starts Sunday-Sunday-Sunday!!!

 

[Geekhis Khan]

[click on video]

Interior – Auditorium (black & white)
Low-pitched, menacing music plays. Politician DAN FIELDING silently speaks to a crowd, his face turning photonegative from the filters.

Announcer
Representative Dan Fielding claims to be an American Patriot. But did you know that he put Russian dressing on his salad at last wee…​

[“Skip Ad” clicked]

Interior – Small home office
Books and toys on shelves in the background. The Host sits up front, looking into the webcam towards the audience. He’s wearing a brown afro wig, a blue button-up shirt, and holding a paint brush. Jaunty public domain music plays.

(Image source Wikipedia)

Host
Okay, so, welcome again to Disney Underground, the channel where we dig deep into the history and mysteries of the Magic Kingdom!​

Title Card: “Disney Underground” superimposes on screen.

Host
And today we’re once again talking about Disney Legend Jim Henson, that little rascal! But we’re not going to talk about Disney, if you can believe it! Instead, we’ll be talking about Henson’s happy little collaborations with famous TV painter Bob Ross! So grab your two-inch brush and some phthalo blue and let’s tap-tap-tap another happy little video into existence!​

Animated Sequence – Exterior – Walt Disney World
A crudely animated sequence of cut-out animation over 2D backgrounds shows Jim Henson and painter Bob Ross, their heads ridiculously oversized, at Walt Disney World. Ross is painting at an easel, the finished Happy Mountain painting magically appearing like a raster-printed image as Ross’s paint brush moves back and forth. Soft guitar jazz similar to, but legally distinct from, The Joy of Painting theme plays.

Host (V.O.)
If ever there were Horsemen of Wholesomeness, then Jim Henson and Bob Ross are surely two of them. Henson reportedly first met Ross in Walt Disney World during the first annual Disney Green Technology Symposium in 1991. Ross, who lived in Orlando and had a deep interest in preserving the natural world and its wildlife, arrived to support the event, even filming a special episode of The Joy of Painting there. Henson and Ross hit it off immediately with their shared values and comparable personalities. Ross even became a go-to speaker at future Disney environmental events.​

The lighting of the animation turns darker, as does the music. The Bob Ross figure slumps. The Henson figure tries to comfort him

Host (V.O.)
But all was not Happy Trees and Friendly Clouds with Ross. His wife Jane died of cancer in 1992, and Ross himself was soon diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. But the situation was even more dire.​

Animated images of Annette and Walt Kowalski enter the image.

Host (V.O.)
Rumor has it that Ross was also experiencing growing pressure from his business partners, Annette and Walt Kowalski. Together, they had built an art empire, but the Kowalskis allegedly wanted more: they wanted the full rights to Ross’s own name and image!​

The Ross figures eyes bug out.

Host (V.O.)
With Jane passed on, Ross was now outvoted two-to-one on business decisions for Bob Ross, Inc., and rumor has it that he told Henson that the Kowalskis were pressuring him day and night to relinquish control of his rights to them before he died[1].​

The Henson figure helps Ross up. He turns to a figure of Mickey, who briefly appears, but who then holds up his hands and shakes his head “no” before exiting.

Host (V.O.)
Henson reportedly then decided to act. He at first tried to convince the Disney Board to just buy up the rights to Bob Ross, Inc., from the Kowalskis, but they weren’t interested. So instead, Henson simply dug into his own deep pockets and bought out the rights to Bob Ross, Inc., himself! Some say under the threat of supporting the Ross family in a lawsuit as the alternative.​

The Henson figure removes a giant dollar bill of no obvious numerical denomination with a “ka-ching” sound and hands it to the Kowalskis, who take it and exit.

Host (V.O.)
Suddenly, after giving the Kowalskis cash of an undisclosed amount rumored to be in the low millions, Jim Henson was the co-owner of Bob Ross, Inc., alongside Ross himself and worked out a profit-sharing deal for Ross and his family to assume the 51% majority share while he retained the 49% minority stake. Henson added his stake to his family’s private Henson Arts Holdings company, where it remains to this day.​

The lighting of the animation brightens, and the Ross figure (using fade-in techniques) paints a “Happy Tree” and its “friend” right over the animation itself.

Host (V.O.)
While Ross would soon tragically pass away in 1995, for his remaining few healthy years he helped produce a Disney Channel art show aimed at kids and made numerous guest appearances on other programs from Sesame Street and W.I.L.D. to Captain Planet. The Joy of Painting, now backed by Henson, continued on PBS stations before Ross retired in 1994 as his health declined. His various students and friends and family would rotate through as interim hosts, with even Henson himself hosting an episode and doing “not half bad” by the opinions of Steve Ross, even though he kept populating his “happy trees” with “happy little monsters” and other strange Hensonesque affectations. After a few years of rotating guest hosts, The Joy of Painting eventually found its current host, Sally Simons, in 2002, whose bubbly joie de vivre manages to remain a “worthy successor” in the eyes of most fans. Reruns of the Ross originals run to this day.​

Interior – Small home office
Returning to the host’s office.

Host
The Henson and Ross families continue to manage the Bob Ross legacy to this day. Ross’s son Steve and step-son Jimmie Cox remain the principal Estate Managers, but reportedly rely heavily on the Henson Arts company’s administrators to manage day to day business affairs of what has become a multimillion dollar international company. The two have worked hard alongside Henson Arts to maintain Ross’s image and maintain the “high degree of quality” that he always insisted upon for products bearing his name, with much of the profits going to support environmental and nature conservationism. Travelling classes continue, often taught by Steve and Jimmie. Original Ross paintings from the “vault” are occasionally auctioned off for charitable causes. They even authorized the creation of a calm and friendly perm-haired squirrel-like Muppet named “Painter Ross” for Sesame Street, performed by Martin P. Robinson, who teaches children about things like color, shapes, and nature in a calm, smooth voice. And thus, Bob Ross lives on for the new generations, over two decades after he passed away. Social media direct viewing services to this day allow for fans to watch any classic episode at any time that a Happy Tree or Friendly Cloud is needed to brighten an otherwise dark day. And speaking of Friendly Clouds, whenever the not-so-friendly cloud of bathroom odor strikes, I always turn to today’s sponsor, Azby Gonne’s Air Freshener. Just one spra…​

[Return button hit]

The End of A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Book I of the Story of Jim Henson at Disney)

Continued in When you Wish Upon a Frog (Jim Henson at Disney Book II)

Click Link Below


[click image, silly]​

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[1] All of this is recounted in various sources, in particular Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed, and accusations have been made under oath by Ross’s son Steve and others. I make no personal claims to their accuracy or lack thereof. Consider this post to be rumors based upon these same accusations.