Chapter 16: Big Films and Little Films, Part I
From the Riding with the Mouse Net-log by animator Terrell Little
As we moved definitively into the 1990s, Disney Animation continued to expand like crazy. For a long time, there’d always been a single tent pole animation feature, but by this point Disney had moved into a two-film arrangement with a Christmas tent pole and a Summer film, often something experimental or less on-brand. You’d have your sure-fire crowd-pleaser like
The Little Mermaid and your gamble like
Shrek! Any slack or idle animators would be put into a WED-sig film, Shorts, or new TV series. But the success of some of the smaller animated films like
FernGully got the board thinking about the potential of smaller, cheaper films while the ever-increasing abilities of computer animation led the folks at 3D to be certain that they could do an all-vector animated feature for the same cost or less than current methods.
So, for the mid-1990s we expanded, not just in the number of productions, but in the types. Not only would we have the tent pole and the experiment, but we’d start introducing some mid-budget animated features, smaller, less inherently “big” films that would grab a middling audience and make a profit while also giving animators a chance to explore less inherently mainstream ideas, or so the thinking at the time went. It also made use of otherwise idle animators between major projects, whose salaries would otherwise simply become additional non-productive “overhead” expenses.
Original 1985 Stitch Concept Art by Chris Sanders
First up, Chris Sanders. In the mid-1980’s he’d come up with a sort of tiger-koala-spider alien creature named Stitch intended for a kid’s book. He’d taken it to Soft Pitch a couple of times and made it to Hard Pitch in 1991, but the plot of a violent alien encountering forest creatures wasn’t connecting with Roy or anyone else in Animation. That is until he had a talk with Thomas Schumacher from the Disney Theatrical Productions department, who’d been assisting the music production on
The Little Mermaid, allegedly as an excuse to hang out with Freddie Mercury, whom rumor has it he had a small crush on.
Schumacher had been on the Hard Pitch board and generally had liked the concept for the titular alien, but noted that it lacked a “human connection”. They figured out that what Stitch needed was a human, perhaps a little girl, to interact with. They kicked around places to have him crash-land, coming close to having him land in a hillbilly town, playing with the stereotype about rural people and alien abductions, before eventually deciding to move it to Hawaii, where they could make it a commentary on colonialism, drawing direct parallels between the arrival of tourists and an alien invasion.
This time, the Hard Pitch went well, with Thomas signing on to produce, his first animated feature. Skeleton Crew head Tim Burton, who’d been on the Hard Pitch board, loved it and agreed to executive-produce, bringing in Kathy Zielinski as lead animator and art director, but suggested that they move the timeframe to the late 1950s to early 1960s (no year specified). This was a period when Hawaii was just entering into the Tiki Tourist Flood era that saw the isolated new state suddenly overrun with foreign tourists, and which also allowed for the 1950s-era UFO craze and matinee era tropes to be employed.
What emerged was a sort of atomic-era Cold War story of a young Native Hawaiian girl named Ulani, ironically meaning ‘cheerful’ given her anger issues, whose parents had died before the film began and whose exhausted and overworked older sister Luanna (enjoyment) was trying to keep the family together. It was chock-full of midcentury pop culture references, Elvis and Don Ho songs, appearances by surfing legend “Duke” Kahanamoku, long boards and woodies[1], Panama hats and obnoxious shirts, and visual references to the rubber alien matinee films of the era. Theremin music and midcentury science fiction designs added to the visual ties to the midcentury.
Stitch himself would be an intergalactic bank robber whose partner Mahua (based on the Hawaiian word for bragging) decided to turn on Stitch and cooperate with the galactic authorities, represented by the effeminate Agent Kacaki (based on an old Hawaiian word for gangly or clumsy). And when the violent fugitive alien Stitch[2] crash lands on Hawaii and is adopted by troubled, unpopular Ulani, who mistakes him for a puppy, the resulting film plays the alien invasion themes against the colonial history of Hawaii and the influx of tourists, and plays alien abduction themes against the government agency that’s threatening to take Ulani from Luanna and put her into the government foster system, which in the 1950s held implications of cultural assimilation.
It was a screwball, slapstick comedy.
Effectively this a decade earlier, but with a Burtonesque veneer and a ‘50s/’60s setting
Over time the characters and audience alike learn that Stitch is a good being at heart who had a hard childhood, and in many ways is a reflection of Ulani and her own trauma. We watch them learn and heal together and eventually learn the important lessons of Family and how that means being there for one another (“‘ohana means ‘family’, and ‘family’ means no one is left behind”).
Ironically, finding a name for the film became the biggest challenge for the production team. “Ulani and Stitch” was the working title, but Tim wanted something that “popped” and had that “campy, matinee feel”. So they kicked around ideas like “It Came to the Luau” or (in a nod to Satriani) “Surfing with the Alien”. They tried out plenty of names: “From Space to Honolulu”, “My Pet Alien”, “My Friend the Alien”, and even “Alien Puppy from Beyond the Moon”. One animator got a talking-to after jokingly suggesting “Illegal Alien”. About the only thing that all this name-storming led to was the Chiodo Brothers’ low budget horror-comedy
Hawaiian Vamps.
Ultimately, they decided on
An Alien in the Family[3], which fit well with the prevailing theme of family, specifically the Hawaiian concept of ‘ohana.
I always wondered what was wrong with just calling it “Ulani and Stitch”.
Either way, it’s combination of heart, cute, campy, scary, and weird netted a good $227 million against its $56 million budget when it released in July of 1993[4]. It also kicked off a still-beloved line of merchandise, which made Bo Boyd very happy, and eventually a popular ongoing TV series just called
Ulani and Stitch.
The Skeleton Crew was also producing a hybrid stop-motion animation
James and the Giant Peach based on the Roald Dahl book. Henry Selick was directing. It was weird. If you’ve seen it, you know. Part of me at the time wanted to volunteer just to learn the stop motion skills for when I was finally replaced by a computer. Alas, it ultimately flopped.
And speaking of computers, you also had
The Brave Little Toaster by the 3D crew. John Lasseter had been pushing to do a production of the book for years, but it would be his protégé Joe Ranft that finally produced it. Lasseter, who’d just reemerged at 3D as an animator after suffering demotion and probation for his treatment of his female employees, was an animator on the feature, and saw it as his chance at redemption. I had to hand it to John. A lot of employees would have (and did) leave Disney after the reckoning on sexual harassment (he could have easily gotten a job at Hollywood Animation or Warner Bros.), but John seemed honestly repentant and wanted to make amends. Having come to a reckoning on my own issues a few years back, I wished him luck.
This, but later and fully CG
The Brave Little Toaster was revolutionary at the time in that it would be all vector CG. No pencil sketches digitally inked and colored using DATA. Not even light-pen sketching like we did on
Lost in La Mancha. It was all ones-and-zeroes and three-dimensional vectors and polygons. The only solid art was the concept art, leaving little for the archives. While CG animation is dominant today, back then it was brand new. They’d made several Shorts using the tech, such as
Tin Toy Troubles, but this was the first animated feature entirely using the technology, and it was seen as a big gamble at the time. I got pulled in to lead animation on Kirby the vacuum cleaner. I already had learned a lot about vector animation on
La Mancha, but this all-digital project was something new and exciting, and frankly a bit scary. We’d already largely put the Ink & Paint department out of work save for WED Signature stuff done “for the art”, and now it was looking like even the old hand-sketched stuff was on notice. I made sure to learn the ropes on vector animation knowing that the second it became quicker, easier, and most importantly cheaper than the old ways we’d soon be looking at a world where hand-drawn animation was a WED-Sig thing too.
Another fear struck me: as more and more stock vector sets were collected, the more could be recycled Woolie Style, with just a basic software geek to merge an existing skin with an existing motion vector sequence. How soon before I, as an animator, was as much a thing of the past as a locomotive coal handler or a wagon maker? Well, hopefully that day won’t ever come, at least in my lifetime. Even so, I made a point of looking into a rotation at the I-Works just to broaden my skill sets in case that day ever came.
Computer animation would also factor heavily in
Treasure Planet, made in partnership with Studio Ghibli. Ron Clements had been pushing for a “Treasure Island in Space” film for years, but it had always been on the back burner. And then we partnered with Ghibli to do
The Bamboo Princess. Ron, who’d loved Miyazaki-san’s ability with mixing fantasy and technology, pitched the idea as the next collaboration. Miyazaki-san loved how it mixed the old and the new, the technological and the pre-industrial, and its themes of modernism versus traditionalism. And who doesn’t like the idea of Space Pirates?
Though I’d been leading the animation team on Kirby for
The Brave Little Toaster, I soon got pulled in as lead US animator for
Treasure Planet, apparently by request of Miyazaki-san himself. I girded myself for a lot of hard work.
To be continued…
[1] The large old fashioned surf boards and the iconic
car style. Get your head out of the gutter!
[2] Stitch in this case will keep his tiger stripes and be a little more Burtonesque in appearance, just creepy enough in “danger mode” to have the hint of scary, just cute enough in “blending mode” to not cause nightmares.
[3] Merged somewhat with a vague idea that led in our timeline to the ABC Henson Creature Shop supported 1996 failed SITCOM
Aliens in the Family.
[4] Roughly on par with how
Lilo & Stitch performed adjusted for inflation.