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When you Wish Upon a Frog
  • When you Wish Upon a Frog

    Book II of Jim Henson’s Amazing Tenure at the Walt Disney Company


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    Image Source legolas310.deviantart.com




    HI-ho and welcome once again to the continuing stoooory of a Hippie who went to the Magic Kingdom. This is the continuation of the Jim Henson at Disney saga initiated in Book I: A Hippie in the House of Mouse.

    If you haven't yet read that timeline, then I recommend that you start there. Spoilers lie ahead, just sayin'.

    Go ahead. We'll wait.

    ...

    ...

    ...

    Ready? Not yet? Ok...

    ...

    ...

    You done now? Great! Got a little hairy around 1984 didn't it?

    Well, without further ado, here's what happens When you Wish Upon a Frog:



    More than “Muppet Moms”; How the Henson Women are Reshaping Hollywood
    From Ms. Magazine, October, 1992


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    (L-R) John, Lisa, Brian, Heather, and Cheryl Henson in the early 1990s (Image source Cathy Crumpler on Pintrest)

    They were born, you might say, as emerging entertainment royalty. Their parents, Jim and Jane Nebel Henson, had already begun to make a splash in entertainment thanks to their Muppets when eldest child Lisa was born in 1960. By the time youngest daughter Heather was born a decade later, Sesame Street was rewriting the book on children’s entertainment largely because of their parent’s Muppets. By the time they all came of age, their father was an executive with the Walt Disney Company.

    There’s an assumption that the children of powerful, wealthy people will follow one of two paths, the first a path strictly set out for them by demanding parents who insist that they are to inherit the kingdom, and the second a path of idle wealth and mindless hedonism marked by overindulgence from absentee parents and hired caregivers. Typically, the sons are chosen for the former path and the daughters by default fall into the latter. And yet, none of the five Henson children has followed either of these paths. Lisa Henson, of her own volition, became a respected producer at Amblin where she produced two Indiana Jones sequels, the hit Hooked!, and the recent Mask of the Lone Ranger and is now the president of Fox Studios. Brian has become a renowned special effects wizard with the Disney Creatureworks and is reportedly being groomed for a leadership position at Imagineering or the Disney Parks. Cheryl became a respected television producer and cinema art director before making her foray into the fashion world. John has become a beloved philanthropist who operates at the community level alongside big names like former President Jimmy Carter. And Heather has recently cofounded an independent multimedia studio with the modest aim of reimagining entertainment for the 21st century.

    All of the Henson children have made their own way in the world, but the three daughters have managed to breakout in areas not typically welcome to woman entrepreneurs, like production, technology start-ups, and studio leadership. Ms. Magazine sat down with the three Henson daughters to discuss their careers, the advantages and limitations of being the daughter of an entertainment Icon, and their own projects as independent women.

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    Jim and Jane from an ad for Sam & Friends (Image source “teligraph.co.uk”)

    All three thank the support that they received and continue to receive from their parents, allowing them the opportunities to go where they have.

    Lisa: Both of our parents encouraged us to find our own way in life. They were both from that free-wheeling “make your own way” Beat Generation and the expectation was always that we [the Henson children] would all do the same. I never once asked if mom or dad would approve of my choices, though I of course secretly hoped that they would.

    Cheryl: Yea, the same [for me], and the nice thing is that they generally did.


    They all in particular spoke about their mother Jane, who broke ground in entertainment herself.

    Heather: Mom kicks ass. She always has. She and dad were real partners on the Muppets and he couldn’t have gotten to where he was without her equal partnership. Mom was there with dad on every production. If there were two Muppets on screen then one of them was her. Yorick was her favorite and I’m sure that she found particular delight in eating Kermit or whichever Muppet dad was playing at the time.


    Lisa: Traditional gender roles were not exactly sacrosanct in our household. Dad majored in Home Economics in college [at the University of Maryland], which back in the ‘50s was a “girl’s major”. One of those “M-R-S Degrees” for women there to find husbands, or so the stereotypes of the time went. But it was the only major that gave him the combination of skills in sewing, finance, design, and textiles that you needed to make soft puppets for television. Mom and dad met in college and they were business partners before they were romantic partners.

    Cheryl: They were apparently dating other people at the time [they founded The Muppets] and – it’s so like mom and dad to think this way – they decided to cut out the “middle men” and date each other. (laughs)

    Lisa: And yet while dad is very progressive on gender issues and always was, he’s still a product of his time, so when I came into the picture it was assumed that mom would be the one to drop out of daily production [on The Muppets] while dad brought in Jerry [Nelson] and Frank [Oz] to fill in as Muppet performers and Don [Sahlin] to man the workshop.


    Jim and Jane Henson legally separated in 1983 and Jane returned to the New York area with Heather. Jane ran Henson Associates, East, while Jim, simultaneously the Creative Chief for Disney, ran Henson Associates, West. But when Disney absorbed Henson Associates in 1984, Jane stayed out, instead dropping out of the company she co-founded and accepting her share of the stock as an outside investor. She instead became the de facto CEO of Henson Arts Holdings (HAH), a privately-held holding company that manages the Sesame Street Muppets and other former HA property that didn’t follow over into Disney. Furthermore, she is now the president for the Children’s Television Workshop, allegedly at the insistence of Joan Ganz Cooney herself. She has worked with Disney and her estranged husband, particularly on their forays into theater on and off Broadway. But she maintains her independence.

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    Jane Henson c1990 (Image source “disney.fandom.com”)

    Heather: [the separation] was hard on mom and me. She and he had so much history together, both good and…less good. She’d borne the brunt of being the “mom at home” while he played breadwinner, and I know she’s still a little bitter about the company she cofounded being absorbed into Disney. The Muppets are her “other children” and now they’re with his “new wife” Mickey.

    Lisa: Mom’s resilience shines through for me. She’s still The Boss. Go to the Muppet Workshop in New York [City] and she’s calling the shots. She took over for Joan [Ganz-Cooney] as head of [the Children’s Television Workshop]. She was and is my inspiration.


    And if anyone knows how to be a Boss, it is Lisa. She’d worked since childhood on her parent’s projects, including The Muppets and The Dark Crystal. After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard and interning at Lucasfilm, she went to work as a producer at Amblin Entertainment where she produced such classic films as Mask of the Monkey King, The Judgement of Anubis, The Land Before Time, Hooked!, and most recently Mask of the Lone Ranger. She has since taken an executive position as Chairwoman and President of Fox Studios, split off from 20th Century and rebranded a few years ago by Triad Entertainment as a family-friendly studio. One job conspicuously not on her impressive C.V. is an official position at Disney, her father’s company. We asked her about this.

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    Lisa with Father Jim in 1983 after accepting the job with Amblin (Image source “themeparktourist.com”; image credit Jim Henson Productions)

    Lisa: Honestly, I felt like I needed to find my own way. I could have taken a job with HA or Disney, no problem, but, call it ego, I had to be a success on my own, not as ‘daddy’s girl’. When George Lucas offered me an internship I jumped at the opportunity. I could tell that it was a real offer, not a favor to dad, because George was constantly asking me about the things I learned as a student of folklore and mythology, a subject that he was and is obsessed with. I knew that Steve Spielberg and Kathy Kennedy were sincere in their offer [for a production billet at Amblin] because I’d worked with them already at Lucasfilm on Indiana Jones. Things went very well with Amblin and I feel blessed for my opportunity to work there, but it was clear that there was no real future there with Steve, Kathy, and Frank [Marshall] being the three “partners” who owned everything. So, when my old college friend Mira Velimirovic[1], who was working at Warner [Brothers], alerted me to the new position opening up at Fox I jumped on it.

    Lisa expects to be quite busy at Fox between managing children’s programming for PFN and greenlighting movies under the Fox Films label. She’ll also be ultimately in charge of the animation company Filmation, now a subsidiary of Fox. Her most recent greenlight was for the upcoming Macauley Culkin, Catharine O’Hara, and Joe Pesci film Wicked Stepfather, written and directed by Chris Columbus.

    Lisa: I’m starting to gain a real appreciation for what Dad and Steve [Spielberg] do on a daily basis. When you’re a producer you typically manage a couple of films at a time. As an executive you’re juggling a hundred balls. It takes constant multitasking and a willingness to choose your battles, an ability to make split-second decisions and then be willing to stand by them, and a flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances. Amblin prepared me there as we always had a dozen floating ideas out there that Steve, Kathy, and I juggled, and as the New Kid I ended up doing a lot of the dull but necessary paperwork, budget, and management stuff, which ironically prepared me for my current position better than the more glamorous production work.

    We asked her if her gender or last name ever gave her issues.

    Lisa: Well, duh, really. (laughs) It’s a challenging job for anyone. When you’re the child of a big name in Hollywood there’s this ironic assumption that on one hand you’ve inherited talent as though it was genetic and on the other hand that you’re only there because of your parents’ legacy. You’re expected to be a genius and held to a higher standard while simultaneously they’re expecting you to fail, and possibly rooting for it to happen. And if you’re a woman facing the engrained “boy’s club” of Hollywood you’d better have one hell of a good left cross because your right hand is tied behind your back.

    Cheryl, the middle daughter, has an impressive C.V. on her own. Like Lisa, she began as a child working in the family business and went on to receive a degree in History from Yale in 1984. Unlike Lisa, she returned to the “family business” of HA just in time for it to be absorbed into Disney. She went on at Disney to produce the popular Tale of the Bunny Picnic and other productions in the Benny Bunny franchise that spun off from it, as well as other TV productions such as Song of the Cloud Forest, The Storyteller, Dog City, and the upcoming Tales of the Dark Crystal. She also recently served as Art Director for The Dark Crystal: Return to Thraa. But working with the lush and amazing fabrics on these series enchanted her, and so with a recommendation from Disney Board Member Emeritus Caroline Ahmanson, she attended the prestigious Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles, graduating with an Advanced Associates Degree in Theatrical Design in 1989.

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    Cheryl Henson modelling fashions inspired by The Dark Crystal, 1981 (Image source “darkcrystal.com”)

    Cheryl: I guess I’ve always been the girliest of my sisters. Lisa was always outgoing and Heather always finding her own way like some modern-day hippie, but I liked dolls and makeup and playing dress-up. Benny Bunny was as much about designing the cute little costumes as it was building a fantasy world for me. One of my earliest “jobs” as an adult with HA was modelling some of the Dark Crystal inspired clothing lines back in ’81. Getting a degree from FIDM was kind of the next logical step.

    She has since returned to Disney and taken a Costume Design billet at MGM Studios and its semi-independent subsidiary Skeleton Crew Productions. Her most recent production has been costuming for her sister’s Mask of the Lone Ranger along with the fabulous costumes for the Tales from the Crypt movie Death Becomes Her, which are already getting Oscar buzz. She is currently doing the ‘50s-inspired costume design for Jurassic Park. Of course, the one area where Cheryl moves out of that traditional “girly” sphere is in her deep, abiding love for her father’s The Dark Crystal.

    Cheryl: [Our family] all worked on it, of course, but I like to think of myself as dad’s first superfan…We were snowed in at a hotel near the airport in Newark when he put his amorphous thoughts on a dualistic [Brian] Froud-inspired fantasy world to paper for the first time. He was most interested in the split between the urRu and what were to become Skeksis: the divided nature of the ruling species. I hung on his every word as he described his thoughts[2].

    Youngest daughter Heather, meanwhile, has gone in her own direction entirely, skipping the Hollywood system and setting up shop with fellow Hollywood Royal Leslie Iwerks (granddaughter of Ub Iwerks, Walt Disney’s original partner and Mickey Mouse artist). Heather skipped the four-year college route and got a 2-year film degree from the California Institute of Arts where she met, and partnered with, fellow CalArts alumni Leslie Iwerks, Craig McCracken, Rob Renzetti, and Genndy Tartakovsky. Together they founded Whoopass Studios, a multimedia collective and studio in Van Nuys, California, that has been getting into everything from animation to puppetry to computer repairs to automotive repair and customization.

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    Heather with Father Jim in 1989 (Image source “Muppet.fandom.com”)

    Heather: Yea, Whoopass Studios is kind of in an “anything goes” mode at the moment. I brought in an old friend of mine, Jeri Ellsworth, whom I worked with at Nintendo doing sound for a Dark Crystal game. Frankly, she’s keeping the studios afloat at the moment by restoring, upgrading, and flipping old computers on the side. That said, Craig, Rob, and Genndy have a literally kick-ass animated series in the works called “Whoopass Stew”, and your readers will be happy to know that it takes Girl Power to a whole new level.

    Heather has worked in a variety of areas, studying film production, direction, and cinematography at CalArts, but has worked with everything from building Muppets to doing art design and animatronics for The Land Before Time to programming in the sound and color for videogames. Her love has always been bigger-picture, and she loves to operate in that interstitial space where several media such as sound, light, motion, and user experience converge to tell a story.

    Heather: As a young teen I remember checking out Disneyland behind the scenes, whether that was the animatronics behind Pirates of the Caribbean or the lights and pyrotechnics behind a Halyx show. And I remember seeing this old medieval Japanese temple where they made magic using the acoustics of the building. Clap two wooden blocks together and hear the dragon “sing”. It fascinated me how you could achieve such a sensory experience with just a few well-placed effects. I’m hoping to find the ways in which the senses best work together to tell a story and I have plans for an interactive walk-through experience.

    The three sisters followed different pathways, and yet all three are making impacts, subtle and profound, on the roles for and perceptions of women in Hollywood. Lisa’s executive leadership role at Fox[3] represents a significant step towards improving gender representation among Hollywood executive leadership, though so much more needs to be done to reach true gender parity. Long a “boy’s only” job, Lisa’s ascension to the upper echelons of studio leadership marks a significant step and one that generations of women fought for before her. It’s an inheritance that she takes seriously.

    Lisa: Oh, I’m standing on the shoulders of giants here, no doubt, my mom among them. So many women have fought to break out of traditional job roles and overcome the roadblocks that were built up over the centuries of Western culture to exclude us from participation. I’m indebted to those like my friend Dawn Steel who fought before so that I could get where I am today, and I owe it to the women who come after me to keep up the fight.

    Cheryl’s path into costume design, by contrast, may seem a step back to some, and yet as we enter into a third wave of feminism where personal choice becomes the rallying cry, the fact that she chose on her own, not under external pressure, to leave the more glorious world of production in favor of following her bliss in costuming marks a significant step in self-empowerment.

    Cheryl: The irony is that I felt a certain degree of pressure to stay in the world of production. Some of the older women in particular were a bit disappointed in me. I was supposed to be making a big statement for women everywhere by becoming a big Hollywood producer like Lisa, and they felt that by going into a traditionally feminine field like costuming that I was betraying the battles they fought in order to give me the opportunity to get into the male-dominated field of production. Instead, I decided “what’s the point of having the power to make your own choices if you end up doing what others want from you anyway?” I guess that’s mom & dad’s old hippie-beatnik values shining through.

    Lisa: And as that “Hollywood Executive Female” myself, I stand by her decision. Anyone who gives my sister grief for doing what she wants can kiss my ass, to be blunt.


    Heather, it seems, has taken the whole concept of female empowerment to a whole new level, not only striking out into the challenging world of the corporate startup, funded entirely with her own money, but is, as previously mentioned, attempting to redefine art itself.

    Heather: At CalArts, Les [Iwerks] and I ran into a lot of ingrained sexism. It was subtle, but it was there. Rob and Genndy got complemented on their “bold vision” and “storytelling”, for example, while Les and I got complimented on our “color choices” and “gentle touch”. Pretty lame, really. (laughs) I’m glad that Jeri [Ellsworth] wasn’t there with us at the time, or she’d have been kicked out for assaulting the professor! We knew right away that trying to find a place in the wacky world of the Hollywood studio system was a non-starter for us. And while it’s true that money can’t buy you happiness, what it can do is drastically reduce the risk of pursuing your own happiness.

    Whoopass Studios is a co-equal partnership between three women and three men, and any preconceptions on who should do what according to his or her gender seem to be absent from the discussion.

    Heather: Jeri runs the garage and rebuilds computers and does roller derby on the side. She’s equally likely to have grease under her fingernails as nail polish on them, but she still has a beautiful fashion sense with the cutest dresses. Les is doing all the duties of CEO and is working on an MBA on the side, not that we have a formal CEO billet or anything that lame. In fact (laughs), we like to call her “boss” or put fake “CEO” signs on her desk because we know it irritates her! Craig says that he’s basing his Whoopass Girls on us. Meanwhile, Genndy helps me stitch together the puppets for the immersive show I’m building and he and Craig have a really excellent sense of color and a gentle touch. (laughs)

    The three women, like their brothers, have made successful individual lives, all following their own paths using the skills and attitudes they inherited from their parents. And how do their parents feel?

    Lisa: They’re ecstatic, really. Mom and dad tell me that they are both very proud of my sisters and me, and it feels good to hear that. Dad likes to jokingly call me “the competition” now, but I know that he’d hire me back in a second if I let him.

    Cheryl: Well, I still work with them both, so it still feels like I’m a part of the family business. Whether I join the “competition” or not, I know mom and dad will support me wherever I go.

    Heather: Are you kidding? Dad freaking loves it when he comes to visit Whoopass Studios. “It reminds me of HA back in the day!” he said, and that’s a big compliment, since I know how much he loved that small company atmosphere. He said to me “if this Disney thing doesn’t work out for me, let me know if you’re interested in hiring an old Muppet guy.”




    [1] Recall that in our timeline on Lisa’s advice, Jim Henson hired Mira Velimirovic, Lisa’s college friend, as his Creative Assistant at HA in 1983 in our timeline. Here he had plenty of help already at Disney, so Mira instead takes the job at Warner Brothers that Lisa took in our timeline when Lisa went to Amblin in this timeline.

    [2] These last two lines are real Cheryl Henson quotes from our timeline. Read them (and others) here.

    [3] In our timeline she rose high into the production ranks at Warner Brothers before ultimately becoming President of Columbia Pictures before retiring to become CEO of Jim Henson Productions.
     
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    Indy's Adventures in your Living Room
  • Indy Comes to Television Pt. I: The Young Indy Saga (1992-1994)
    From The TV Obsessive, by Hanmii Dahri-Mote, a regular column in TV Guide and other publications


    In the year 1992 George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Lisa Henson brought Indiana Jones to television for the first time. It would not be the last. Intended as an educational show, the series brought together a host of great creative artists, actors, writers, and directors to bring the world the Indiana Jones who existed before Raiders of the Lost Ark.

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    It all began when George Lucas found himself constantly being asked about what Indy’s life was like growing up. This originally manifested as the River Phoenix flashback set piece at the beginning of The Judgement of Anubis, but soon Lucas was interested in using the power of the Indiana Jones brand for “good” as an educational showpiece. Not only would he show more of “Young Indy’s” life, he’d use the opportunity to showcase history from 1905 to 1930. This was the era of the Children’s Television Act of 1989 which on one hand mandated more “socially and educationally redeeming” television for youth, but which also included a ratings system that was allowing creative artists to push the limits of television more than before.

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    River Phoenix as Young Indiana Jones (Image source The Guardian)

    The show began life as a partnership between Lucasfilm, Amblin, and Paramount Television, though producer Lisa Henson soon also took advantage of some contacts in the Department of Education through her mother at the Children’s Television Workshop, gaining over $2 million in federal dollars and, ultimately, partnerships with US School systems, much as had been done in the past with PBS programs like Voyage of the Mimi[1]. It was the first private-public venture of its kind. The Department would produce and distribute educational tie-in resources and lesson plans that would cover the actual historical events that Young Indy just experienced, giving educators a chance to teach the real history (along with art, music, culture, dance, literature, and other ancillary subjects that would come up in an episode) which the show (supposedly) would get the kids excited about. Similarly, a share of the revenues would go back into the Department earmarked for poor and underperforming schools.

    This partnership led almost immediately to a class action lawsuit filed by parents’ groups and competing studios. The former objected to the partnership on principle, upset to see tax dollars spent on making a TV show with for-profit businesses or seeing it as backdoor advertisements for the franchise. And many disliked the fact that some episodes were rated PG and had some adult subject matter. The competing studios, meanwhile, saw it as the government unfairly backing one private company over the others. The lawsuits eventually got thrown out due to the precedent of Voyage of the Mimi, the fact that the actual partners were the George Lucas Edutopia Foundation and Fox4Kids Charities (rather than Lucasfilm and Fox Studios) in an ostensibly non-profit production, and the Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander himself stating emphatically that just because Triad got there “first” didn’t mean that other studios wouldn’t get their fair opportunities. This comment, of course, led to a string of such public-private partnerships, bringing us such memorable productions throughout the 1990s as Warner Brothers’ Super Science with the Justice League on ABC, Columbia’s Civil War Remembered on CBS (which gained notoriety for occasionally dabbling in Lost Cause tropes), and Disney’s Math Madness with Mickey and the Muppets on NBC, among others.

    The production duties were soon handed off to Lucasfilm’s Rick McCallum after Lisa Henson took over as Chair and President of Fox Studios, the first woman to assume the role and only the third woman to head a major studio. Lisa continued to be involved in the production as the Studio Head, which gave her a bully pulpit that let her interject her own thoughts and ideas. Thankfully, she had a good working relationship with both Spielberg and Lucas and knew how to work around each of their quirks. In fact, they say that she, like Spielberg and Coppola, is one of the few people in existence who can tell George Lucas “No” and have him listen.

    And there was a lot for them to discuss! Two big questions hung over the production: 1) how do you tell the story while passing along the educational information and 2) how many, if any, supernatural events do you include? On the later part, George Lucas’s answer (along with the Department of Education’s answer) was a resounding “no”. He envisioned this as “the true story of the real Indiana Jones that the fictional stories are based upon.” But Spielberg and Henson both pushed back. What’s the point of an Indiana Jones adventure without some fantastical experiences? The first question, how to tell the story, would offer the solution to the impasse.

    The tales would be told through a framing device where Indy himself, now in his 90s, would relate the stories of his past as part of a lesson to his grandson “Henry the 4th”, also known as “Dawg”, played by Joaquin Phoenix. Dawg is 16 and having trouble at school. He’s brilliant, but restless and running with bad crowds. He can’t really relate to his father Henry the 3rd (Dennis Quaid) or his mother Anne (Carrie Fisher), who are, in ironic polar opposite to Dawg’s grandparents Indy and Marion, very square and grounded people (Henry the 3rd is an architect and Anne a freelance editor). Dawg is also harassed by his precocious younger sister Marion (Summer Phoenix), who is the “good daughter”, a straight-A student, and very popular with her peers. Dawg, on the other hand, is more like Indy himself, a restless non-conformist, but one who lacks an outlet for his restless energy in the “settled” 1990s.

    Thus, his “eccentric” grandfather Indiana is the only one who can reach him.

    To play the critical role of Old Indy, Henson pressed for someone with “attitude and gravitas”, ultimately recommending classic film actor Jack Palance. Palance, who looked dashing and just a little mischievous in the fedora and eye patch, relished the role, deliberately taking up some of Ford’s mannerisms, like pointing and leaning in when he talked. Unlike Ford, however, Palance had a laid back, smug, satisfied, “seen it all, done it all” attitude, an “old cowboy who’s finally content to stay back on the ranch,” whatever restless energy and dissatisfaction that drove him in his youth satisfied by a life fully lived.

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    Old Indy from our timeline vs. Jack Palance from City Slickers (Image sources Wikipedia and "fiveforhowling.com")

    Inspired, it is said, by Peter Falk and Fred Savage in The Princess Bride, Palance and Joaquin Phoenix would start and end each sub-episode, add in occasional voiceover for the flashback narratives, and appear in occasional breaks from the action, typically at commercial breaks. The interruptions back into the framing story into the modern day frequently came after Indy told about some fantastical element or supernatural encounter, to which Dawg would essentially call his grandpa out on it, typically adding some exposition on what “really” happened based on established history (“mummies are just old dead bodies, grandpa, they can’t walk around and curse people!” “I know what I saw, kid.”). This allowed the production team to add the occasional fantastical element in keeping with the films, but still ground it in reality and maintain the “true historical” aspect for the primary educational purpose.

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    Corey Carrier as Young Indy, Lloyd Owen as younger Henry Jones, Sr., and Ruth de Sosa as Anna Jones (Image source Wikipedia and indianajones.fandom.com)

    The stories, meanwhile, all flashbacks “told” by Old Indy, typically followed one of two versions of Young Indy. The first was Child Indy played by Corey Carrier, and the second was Teen Indy, played once again by River Phoenix. Phoenix, it is said, took the job “for the paycheck”, liking but not relishing the role, and using the good pay to free him to do the small, independent films and special “for the art” projects and charity work that he loved. Usually, these sub-episodes were paired in a kid/teen twin-episode following a central theme or lesson, each tied to the ultimate life’s lesson that Old Indy had for Dawg, adding PSA points for “socially redeeming value” on top of the historical and arts education. Kid Indy tagged along with his father Henry Sr. (Lloyd Owen) and mother Anna (Ruth de Sosa), going on adventures through Europe, Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world. Teen Indy would go on adventures of his own, having run away from home as a teen, with many of these adventures taking place in the trenches of the Western Front or African theater in World War I (famously punching a young Corporal Hitler in the face in one scene). But Teen Indy also had adventures in Mexico with Pancho Villa, frolics with the Lost Generation poets and artists in Paris, or other jaunts with famous historical figures. Each episode would introduce a new historical figure or two.

    Several historical figures were seen, like Pancho Villa, Albert Schweitzer, Mata Hari, Manfred Von Richthofen, Louis Armstrong, Ernest Hemmingway, Walt Disney[2], Franz Kafka, and Fritz Lang. Many episodes had a guest director or guest writer, including Sam Raimi (“The Secret of the Blues”), Terry Jones (“Barcelona Blunders”), Terry Gilliam (“The Process in Prague”), Akira Kurosawa (“Samurai Secrets” costarring Toshiro Mifune and George Takei), Frank Oz (“Down and Out in the Dustbowl” costarring Steve Martin), Tim Burton (“The Dutch Angle” about Fritz Lang and the making of Metropolis), Eddie Murphy (“Old Jim Crow”, starring Murphy himself[3]), and even Star Wars sound legend Ben Burtt (“Attack of the Hawkmen”). People like Terrys Jones and Gilliam, Tim Burton, Jerry Juhl, Frank Darabont, Lawrence Kasdan, and even Carrie Fisher contributed stories and teleplays. It became a “thing” among Hollywood writers and directors to write or direct an episode.

    The Young Indiana Jones Saga officially lasted for three “seasons” and a handful of made-for-TV features in the following couple of years, though the term “season” is a misnomer since in reality the episodes largely debuted as occasional “events” and Sunday Night Movies rather than as a weekly series. With high production costs due to the star power and location shoots (offset by the use of 16 mm film, which makes modern day High-Definition remastering impossible) it was always a marginal production and labor of love which helped to boost PFN’s ratings during critical sweeps periods and gained tax incentives via the charitable/educational connections, but it was never going to be a cash cow. Indiana Jones merch reportedly saw only a modest bump in sales.

    Millions of American school kids in the early 1990s, along with many others in other nations who made their own educational partnerships, may remember the worksheets with River’s face on them or the many “lesson plans” tied to each episode. You might recall learning about the Lost Generation through Young Indy hanging with Ernest Hemmingway, Gertrude Stein, and James Joyce. Or you may recall learning about Egyptology with Kid Indy or the horror of the Belgian Congo with Indy and Al Schweitzer.

    And how much of it stuck? Did we really learn anything, or was it all, as many have accused, a back-door commercial for Indiana Jones merch? Well, I can say that I remember things I might not have known otherwise. I’m sure my Podunk public school would never have taught me who the Hapsburgs were, none the less who Princess Sophie of Hohenberg was. Sure, it wasn’t AP History, but it did give many of us an interest in history, art, or literature that we might otherwise not have had (I can all but guarantee I’d never have read Gertrude Stein without this show).

    Either way, The Young Indiana Jones Saga holds a special place in TV history as a multipart “edutainment” show, the first big public-private television educational collaboration, a reflection of the changes that the 1989 Children’s Television Act were bringing, and a milestone event in the memories of many school kids who suddenly got to play Indiana Jones in the classroom and not get sent to detention. It led directly to similar public-private edutainment opportunities.

    And it eventually led to my next article about the second time that Indiana Jones came to television!

    See you then!



    [1] Featuring a child actor from Boston named Ben Affleck!

    [2] Appears briefly as an ambulance driver alongside Hemmingway. Disney’s Grandson Chris Miller plays him.

    [3] Murphy’s character and Indy need to team up to prevent a lynching. It’s a pretty brutal PG-rated episode that did not try to hide the racism and had some warnings.
     
    Tim Burton VIII: Dead and Loving It
  • Part 9: Bringing Things Back from the Dead
    Excerpt from Dark Funhouse, the Art and Work of Tim Burton, an Illustrated Compendium


    In 1990 Winona Ryder brought Tim Burton a James V. Hart script titled “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”. A long-time fan of the original novel, Ryder was particularly fascinated by Hart’s romantic take on the classic story. “What attracted me to the script is the fact that it's a very emotional love story, which is not really what you think of when you think about Dracula,” she said in a later interview. “Mina, like many women in the late 1800s, has a lot of repressed sexuality. Everything about women in that era, the way those corsets forced them to move, was indicative of repression. To express passion was freakish[1].”

    Tim Burton looked through the script, and agreed wholeheartedly. Alas, he was too busy to direct it himself. Instead, he handed the film to his cinematographer and second-unit director on The Addams Family, Barry Sonnenfeld.

    220px-Bram_Stoker%27s_Draula_%281992_film%29.jpg


    “The early ‘90s were all about bringing things back from the dead for the Skeleton Crew, be that the rich bitches of Death Becomes Her, Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi, Vlad Dracula, or a Tyrannosaurus Rex.” – Henry Selick

    It was Sonnenfeld’s directorial debut, but after a decade of providing skilled cinematography for some of the best auteur directors like the Cohen Brothers and, of course, Burton, he was already well established behind the camera and had learned from the masters, as it were. Still, to do the picture right would require a very large budget. It would also require a major studio to support it.

    When MGM and Fantasia showed only tepid interest, Burton and Sonnenfeld decided to take full advantage of the semiautonomous nature of Skeleton Crew Productions and approached Universal, the studio noted for the most famous monster movies of the classic film era. Universal was interested and a deal was signed. This partnership with Universal caused some consternation on the Disney board of directors, coming as it did at a time when a growing theme park rivalry between the two studios was playing out in Orlando. When news of a possible Dracula-themed attraction at Universal Studios Florida surfaced, some on the board wanted Burton’s head on a plate! Creative Head Jim Henson smoothed out some ruffled feathers, and the production went on. Still, though, Burton decided to play things a little more carefully in the future when major rival studios were involved.

    Burton and the Crew approached the film as both a salute to the old classic films, complete with cameos by Christopher Lee and Michael Gough, but also wanted to make it a modernized retelling, making the titular vampire into a romantic, Byronic antihero rather than a soulless ghoul. They would use deliberately old-fashioned model work for the effects with some deliberate nods to Hammer Horror, but with a Burtonesque set and costume design and color desaturation that gave it all a modern, gothic feel. Cheryl Henson would lead costuming, combining traditional Victorian fashions with a sort of grungy, lived-in feel. The smog and industrial towers of London would be played against the mists and castles of Transylvania with themes of the “horrors of the modern” versus the “terrors of the medieval”. Sonnenfeld’s visual storytelling choices made deliberate comparisons between the terrified villagers of Transylvania and the struggling factory workers and frantic asylum inmates of Victorian London.

    For the most part, it was played completely straight as a tragic romance and horror film. But, like Burton, Sonnenfeld gave it all a very slight comedic touch, based mostly on subtle and ironic winks to convention. Just enough over-the-top to soften the darkness.

    Casting choices were made that gave the film a youthful feel. Ryder, who brought Burton the film to begin with, took the romantic female lead of Mina Murray and they brought in Johnny Depp as Johnathan Harker when River Phoenix proved uninterested in the role. Up-and-coming British character actor Helena Bonham Carter, who’d worked previously with Burton and Ryder when she voiced Ysabel in Mort, would play Mina’s friend Lucy. British stage actor Timothy Spall was brought in as the insane insectivore Renfield. And for the critical roles of Dracula and Van Helsing, they would bring in acclaimed actors Jason Isaacs for the former and Jeremy Irons for the latter. Isaacs in particular gave the titular vampire a mix of charming, sophisticated, menacing, and alluring that perfectly captured the tragic romantic that the production team was seeking, and maintained great screen chemistry with both Carter and Ryder. By contrast, Irons made the outwardly heroic Van Helsing into an obsessive, Ahab-like character, driven by anger and revenge, giving him many of the tropes of a villain.

    tumblr_onbkuouTbL1sarywjo1_500.gif


    Filming would alternate between sound stages, London location shots, and on-site filming in Romania and Yugoslavia. The Chiodo Brothers’ model work would be slipped into these location shots in a clearly artisan manner, intended to evoke a nearly dreamlike sense. The Chiodos also provided grotesque makeup and creature effects. Finally, Danny Elfman would give the film an ethereal score, flowing and haunting in contrast to his more stereotypical staccato “bounce”[2].

    But what set Bran Stoker’s Dracula apart from the many, many prior Dracula films was the focus on Dracula as a “Romantic” in the Victorian, Byronic sense of the word. He was no longer a satanic fiend, but a troubled man, cursed by his own tragic losses. His infernal pact was in this telling not an evil path to power, but an extreme if understandable reaction to lost love. This was, in Sonnenfeld’s words, “a tragic romance that transcended space and time wrapped in the guise of a horror film.”

    And between Sonnenfeld’s humanizing direction and Burton’s signature aesthetic, the film clicked with audiences, earning positive reviews and making a good $194 million against its $42 million budget[3]. Critics generally liked it and audiences, particularly teenage audiences, found a lot to love in the tragic romance between Issacs’s Dracula and Ryder’s Mina (whose English accent had noticeably improved compared to Mort thanks to coaching). The film would cement Sonnenfeld for success, and while he’d turn down a permanent job with the Skeleton Crew, he would become a frequent collaborator, in particular on the Addams Family sequels.

    Universal, meanwhile, was ecstatic and immediately offered the Skeleton Crew the opportunity to work on another Hart treatment, this time based on Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, but Burton and crew reluctantly turned it down given the earlier protests of the Disney board. Instead, Sonnenfeld would go to work with Universal directly as a freelancer, and would become the film’s producer right after he finished on Addams Family Values, ultimately hiring David Cronenberg as director.

    For the Skeleton Crew itself, Bram Stoker’s Dracula marked another big success, and one that would help balance out the underperformance of James and the Giant Peach and the losses from the mostly-arthouse Ed Wood. It also eased the minds of the Disney board, who were concerned about Burton’s plans for the upcoming Jurassic Park, which was set to be Burton’s biggest and most expensive film to date.



    [1] Ryder took the script to Francis Ford Coppola in our timeline, with whom she was working on Godfather III before dropping out. Since Coppola worked with Rebecca Schaeffer in this timeline instead of Ryder, she instead takes the script to Burton. This quote is per our timeline.

    [2] Visually, this will be somewhat similar to the Coppola version since Burton’s aesthetic and proclivities lend themselves to a similarly stylistic approach. Costumes will be more Burtonesque, being not far removed from our timeline’s adaption of Sweeny Todd. Music-wise, I am personally deeply saddened to butterfly the iconic Wojciech Kilar score, which is not just a “killer” score for the Coppola film itself but one of the best film scores, and indeed best and most memorable works of Classical Music, ever in my opinion. But I’d need to stretch things pretty far to have Burton go to anyone but Elfman.

    [3] Not as good as the Coppola version, which had a bit of an “event” vibe to it, but still a very solid performance on par with Sonnenfeld’s Addams Family movies from our timeline.
     
    "And when does Carol come in?" "Not now, Fozzie."
  • Interview with Michael Caine
    Des O’Connor Tonight, December 15th, 1992

    Interior – Des O’Connor Tonight Set

    The Theme Music plays as the show returns. Michael Caine sits across from the host, Des O’Connor.

    Des
    With us now is the brilliant Michael Caine, who truly needs no introduction. His distinguished acting career has spanned three decades with numerous BAFTA and Academy Award nominations, and with one each under his belt. And yet for today, he is speaking to us about his latest film, where he teams up with Jim Henson’s Muppets, playing Ebenezer Scrooge in A Muppets Christmas Carol. What can you tell us about the film? Can we expect a sillier Scrooge?​

    Muppet_christmas_carol.jpg


    Michael
    Why, quite the contrary, actually. Yes, the Muppets themselves are up to their usual level of silliness, but I endeavored to play Scrooge completely straight. I told Brian, “I'm going to play this movie like I'm working with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I will never wink, I will never do anything Muppety. I am going to play Scrooge as if it is an utterly dramatic role and there are no puppets around me[1].” And Brian, to his great credit, wholeheartedly supported me on this. In fact, he was determined to play the story straight. Sure, Gonzo would be playing Dickens, but they would not scrimp on the drama or tragedy. Tiny Tim would remain a sick and pitiable creature, despite the cuteness of Robin the Frog. And I feel that is what makes this adaption work so well.

    Des
    And was it a fun production for you?

    Michael
    Well, Des, I must say that it was a very fun experience, despite the harrowing nature of the open pits.

    Des
    For the Muppet performers, you mean?

    Michael
    Yes, you had to walk on planks while the puppeteers stood in the pit below you so that the Muppets would be at the right level. And yet even though you had to watch your step, it was as I said, a wonderful experience, and one that I almost didn’t get to experience. At first, they had approached George Carlin to play Scrooge since he’d worked with them on Thomas the Tank Engine, but something came up and he had to drop out. David Hemmings was approached, but declined. There was a strange serendipity that brought me to the role, really, like forces pulling us together, so to speak. Brian too felt rather serendipitously pulled in to direct.

    Des
    Brian Henson, the director and son of Jim Henson, the Muppets creator.

    Michael
    Yes. He’d actually branched off into special effects and away from Muppets and was a Vice President for Special Effects at Imagineering, as it were. But when Ken Kwapis and Frank Oz proved unavailable, Jim specifically asked Brian if he’d direct the film. Brian was hesitant because there was so much to do on his main job, including managing effects on the next Spider-Man film, where they were having issues with Doctor Octopus’s mechanical tentacles, but as Brian explained it, Jim told him that he had an obligation as a leader to make sure that the job could be done without him. “Brian, if the ship can’t sail on without you, then you haven’t done your job properly,” he supposedly told him. So Brian took some time away to direct the film.

    Des
    And how involved was Jim Henson in the production?

    Michael
    Well, he was the Executive Producer, of course, but he’d delegated a lot down to others on his signature creations already by this point, so he had a very hands-off approach. “A nod or a grunt,” as they’d say to let us know when we were on the right or wrong track.”

    Des
    A lot of the classic Muppets were performed by new performers, from what I hear.

    Michael
    Yes, Jim and Frank Oz had largely retired from active Muppetry, and Richard Hunt, of course, had recently passed away. Others had largely taken over, primarily Steve Whitmire for Jim’s roles, such as Kermit, and Eric Jacobsen for the Frank roles, such as Miss Piggy.

    Des
    The film is dedicated to Hunt[2], if I recall.

    Michael
    Yes, and even though I hadn’t had the honor of working with him myself, I could feel his ghost there in the production, as it were.

    Des
    And we hear that they made a Muppet version of you as a gift. We have an image here.​

    1640437284820.png

    (Image source “muppet.fandom.com”)

    Michael
    (laughs) Yes, quite the honor to see yourself in felt.

    Des
    I can imagine! Now, the Michael Caine Muppet wasn’t the only original. There were new ones for the three Christmas Ghosts.

    Michael
    Yes, generally they were these worn-things where one performer wore the outfit with the giant Muppet head and another sat just off camera with the mechanical mitten and controlled the facial features. It’s a trick that Brian and someone named Faz designed, and they used it on everything from Waggles [SIC] to The Lizard in the Spider-Man film. But here, they took the technology back to the Muppets and made three Ghosts of Christmas with them. Well, one of them, at least. The Ghost of Christmas Past was a standard Muppet and they used a lot of camera tricks to make her ghostly, and I guess Yet-to-Come was mostly a hood and gloves. In the end, the puppetry effects were quite charming and surprisingly relatable. In fact, it’s amazing how easy it is to believe that even the basic hand puppets are living beings and talking to you. I found myself conversing freely with Kermit the Frog and paying no attention whatsoever to Steve in the pit below me. That’s the real magic of the Muppets, not the technology of the animatronics, but the ability of the performers, the “man behind the Muppet,” to make you forget that they’re lifeless felt and truly believe, like a child on Christmas, that they are living, breathing beings with their own lives and personalities.

    Des
    Why believe in Father Christmas when you can believe in a talking frog?

    Michael
    (laughs) Exactly.​

    450full.jpg

    (Image source “chud.com”)

    Des
    And the sets were quite spectacular, considering the low budget.

    Michael
    Why, yes. They built them at Shepperton [Studios] near where they were filming Thomas [the Tank Engine]. They used a lot of forced perspective to make the tiny little set look like the sprawling streets of Victorian England and did remarkably well with it. Quite elegant, really.

    Des
    And yet in what may be one of the most magical parts of the film, you sing your own parts.

    Michael
    (laughs) Yes. Nobody has ever accused me of being a virtuoso singer, but Brian insisted that I sing my own parts. The biggest challenge was a duet that I had with Meredith Braun. It’s a romantic and melancholy song about how Scrooge Past ruined a chance at happiness with the beautiful Belle because of his greed, and it was a serious bit of work for me since Meredith is a celebrated West End performer while I am simply me. A lot of folks at the studio wanted to cut the song when the kids in the test audience were growing bored, but Jim intervened and it stayed in, thankfully. I would have felt put right out had it been cut, given the effort that I put into it[3].

    Des
    As alluded to earlier, this is, despite the Muppet whimsey, still a very sincere adaption of the Dickens tale.

    Michael
    Yes, down to the original Dickensian language in many cases, the darker stuff included. Sickness, poverty, sadness, and even death, with Gonzo as Dickens and [Rizzo] the Rat commenting upon it all, of course. “Dark stuff for the kids at home,” and all. But Brian and Jerry Juhl, the writer, were very clear that they wanted to play the story straight both in spirit and in dialog, so Kermit-as-Bob Cratchit is still objectively Bob Cratchit without a bunch of winks to the audience…OK a few winks, but still very grounded in that original Dickensian Cratchit with his hopeful romantic nature[4].

    Des
    Not too far a cry for Kermit, really.

    Michael
    I guess not! Good “casting” as it were! (laughs)​

    MUPPETCHRISTMASCAROL_.jpg

    (Image source British GQ)

    Des
    So far, A Muppet Christmas Carol has done fairly well, having a decent opening weekend[5]. However, Disney’s own The Bamboo Princess, made in partnership with Studio Ghibli in Japan, has stolen a lot of its thunder. It also has plenty of competition from other studios. Do you think that it will perform well?

    Michael
    That always remains to be seen. Though I recommend seeing it, and not simply because I happen to be in it. It’s a loving and affectionate remake of the Dickens classic that just happens to have Muppets. I felt very happy to take my daughter to see it. Admittedly she is a teenager now, but she still enjoyed it. She says Robin was “adorable”, or I believe that was the word that she used.

    Des
    And that brings us to the end. Thank you, Mr. Michael Caine, for your time.

    Michael
    And thank you as well, Des.

    Des
    A Muppet Christmas Carol, starring tonight’s guest Michael Caine, is in theaters now. Coming up next, we discuss another puppet-based production when Gerry Anderson comes to talk to us about his upcoming Space Police spin-off series Galaxy University. I’ll see you then.​

    Theme music to Des O’Conner Tonight plays. Fade to Commercial.



    [1] Quote also from our timeline.

    [2] In our timeline it was dedicated to both Jim Henson and Richard Hunt.

    [3] In our timeline it was cut from the theatrical release and only later restored on home video. It tends to bore younger kids but connect strongly with their parents and older siblings.

    [4] I strongly considered making this notably different than the version from our timeline, with Carlin as Scrooge and a much more whimsical and satirical take on Dickens. But then three ghosts came to visit me in the night and convinced me to leave it pretty much as it. Merry Christmas, all!

    [5] Very similar to our timeline’s film. Will do better without having to compete with Home Alone 2 and Aladdin, making about $42 million against a modest $12 million budget.
     
    Election '92 Live Coverage!
  • Gore-Tsongas Declared Winners of 1992 Election

    Democrats Make Marginal Gains in Senate, Lose Ground in House

    From New York Times, November 4th, 1992


    220px-Al_Gore%2C_Vice_President_of_the_United_States%2C_official_portrait_1994.jpg
    Senator_Paul_Tsongas.jpg


    “It’s the economy, stupid!” said Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, whose canvasing for Gore brought in critical urban and blue-collar voters in several swing states. It was hardly the first time that he’d said the now famous phrase, allegedly first crafted by campaign manager James Carville, which became a kind of mantra for the campaign. And while it may seem reductive to place it all on a single issue – after all, Bush was mired down not only by economic recession, but by a broken promise not to raise taxes, allegations of groping by several women[1], an allegedly tone-deaf response to Hurricane Bonnie’s devastation[2], and by a growing public perception of being effeminate, elitist, and out of touch – economic stability and jobs remained exceedingly high on the list of voter concerns, subsequently seeing Bush’s poll numbers plummet from a lofty peak of 89% after the Gulf War to around 40% in the leadup to the election. Altogether, this allowed Gore to ride a wave of “rust belt” angst to victory.

    Bush also suffered from poor turnout from Evangelical Christian voters, many of whom saw the replacement of the gaffe-prone Vice President Dan Quayle on the ticket with Jack Kemp as a betrayal. While Kemp managed to help Bush in the suburbs, likely helping him to secure Ohio and Georgia and bringing both New Jersey and Maryland within striking distance, it appears to have hurt him in the rural South, West, and Midwest, allowing Gore to claim North Carolina, Michigan, Montana, and Kentucky. Whether Bush could have overcome his disadvantages and won had he stuck with Quayle is, of course, a matter of speculation[3].

    Following a sweep of the Northeastern, Midwestern (save Indiana and Ohio), and Pacific Coast states, Senator Al Gore of Tennessee is projected to claim victory in the 1992 Presidential Election by a margin of between 341 and 366 electoral votes to President George Bush’s 172 to 197, with votes still coming in from some districts and Florida still too close to call[4]. Florida is so far within 0.005% and will face a mandatory recount, but even assuming that Bush claims it, it will not be enough to overcome Gore’s already certain 341 electoral votes. Gore also came startlingly close to Bush in Arizona, Ohio, Georgia, Louisiana, and Wyoming, which has given Republican strategists pause.

    In addition to the economy, many credit the work of Carville for helping to guide Gore on his public persona. Gore, whose dry wit and technocratic approach to politics can come across as “dull” or “boring”, reportedly worked hard under Carville’s tutelage to project a down-home, fatherly image; a “friendly Tennessee working man” to contrast with Bush’s alleged “Yale Elitism” in Carville’s words. Gore worked to project this hard-working image as a man of the people despite, like Bush, being a highly educated Harvard man from a political dynasty. Rumors persist that Walt Disney’s public persona was used as a model, though this may reflect public awareness of the support of Disney Chairman Frank Wells, even as Disney CEO Ron Miller supported Bush. And while this image makeover didn’t always succeed as planned, many voters, particularly younger voters, saw Gore as a bit of an awkward but endearing dad “trying to be cool for his kids’ friends.”

    “He reminded me of the dad from Full House,” said one University of Tennessee student, “You’re kind of embarrassed for him, but you still kind of like him anyway.”

    Others cite the endorsement of former independent populist candidate H. Ross Perot, who dropped out of the race in order to support Gore. Perot supporters tended to come roughly equally from both sides of the political aisle or represent demographics who don’t normally vote, according to NYT political analysists, making the endorsement possibly a factor in pushing wavering swing voters over to the Gore side. Other factors indicate that Perot, even in absentia, acted as a spoiler for Bush, having dampened enthusiasm on the populist right and among “Reagan Democrats” by severing Reagan’s coattails, adding to the damage done by Pat Buchanan, who refused to endorse Bush and continued to attack him over the dropping of Quayle.

    Gore’s presumed victory sent blue chip stocks lower in anticipation of higher corporate taxes and possible limitations on fossil fuels and emissions while sending the tech-heavy NASDAQ slightly higher on promises of investment into “Green Technology” and computer technology as part of a long-term plan to transition to sustainable power and transportation infrastructure. Economists remain divided on whether investments in green tech can really bring back northern industrial jobs lost to sun belt states in the 1970s and ‘80s, but “Atari Democrat” Gore remains confident that “the Green Economy” is the future of American jobs along with high tech, computers, and cutting-edge research. Continued on pg. A2.


    genusmap.php

    Gore/Tsongas: 341 - 49,515,712 - 51.37%
    Bush/Kemp - 197 - 44,372,538 - 46.04%
    Bush/Quayle
    [5] - 1,498,821 - 1.56%
    Ross Perot (write-ins) - 287,062 - .35%
    Others - .68% - 660,085 [6]

    Colors represent the depth of each party's control (red = republican, blue = democrat). The lighter the shade, the closer to 50%, the darker the shade the closer to 100%.

    (all Election Maps from “uselectionatlas.org”)


    Closest States:

    Florida - R+0.0048%
    Ohio - R+0.42%
    New Jersey - D+0.68%
    Georgia - R+1.63%
    Maryland - D+1.88%
    Michigan - D+1.92%
    Wyoming - R+2.44%
    North Carolina - D+2.69%
    South Dakota - R+2.79%
    Louisiana - R +2.82%
    Missouri - D+3.14%
    Kentucky - D +3.38%
    Colorado - D+3.67%
    Alaska - R+3.94
    New Hampshire - D +3.95%
    Indiana - R +4.7%
    Kansas - R +4.96%



    Gore’s Cabinet-to-Be:

    Secretary of State: Zbigniew Brzezinski

    Secretary of the Treasury: Lloyd Bentsen

    Secretary of Defense: Sam Nunn

    Attorney General: Sonia Sotomayor

    Secretary of the Interior: Bruce Babbitt

    Secretary of Agriculture: Dan Glickman

    Secretary of Commerce: Ron Brown

    Secretary of Labor: James Blanchard

    Health and Human Services: Pat Schroeder

    Housing and Urban Development: Henry Cisneros

    Secretary of Transportation: Frederico Pena

    Secretary of Energy: Hazel O'Leary

    Secretary of Education: Richard Riley

    Veteran Affairs: Jesse Brown



    1992 House Election:

    genusmap.php

    Colors represent the depth of each party's control (red = republican, blue = democrat). The lighter the shade, the closer to 50%, the darker the shade the closer to 100%. Gray states are split. Green is Bernie Sanders.

    Democrats: 270 (-11) -50.9%
    Republicans: 164 (+11) -47.8%
    Independents: 1 (+/-) - 1.3%

    Differences from Our Timeline:

    Alabama 2nd District - Faye Baggiano (D) defeats Terry Everett (R) - 59.1 - 38.3
    Alaska At Large - John Devens (D) - re-elected 56.5-33 in a rematch with Don Young
    California[7] 4th - Patricia Malberg (D) defeats Patrick Doolittle (R) in a rematch, 58.6-36.9
    California 10th - Wendell Williams (D) defeats William Baker (R) 54.4-45.6 in this new district
    California 11th - Patti Garamendi (D) defeats Richard Pombo (R) 52 - 41.2 in this new district
    California 22nd -Gary Hart (D) defeats Michael Huffington (R) 46.3 - 41.4
    California 43rd - Mark Takano (D) defeats Ken Calvert (R) -52.8- 40.3
    Connecticut 5th - Toby Moffett (D) defeats Gary Franks (R) in a rematch 41.5 - 33.2
    Georgia[8] 4th - Cynthia McKinney wins with little challenge in this newly drawn heavily Democratic district
    Georgia 6th - David Worley (D) defeats Newt Gingrich (R) in a rematch 52.8-47.2.
    Georgia 11th - Cathy Steinberg (D) defeats John Linder (R) in this new swing district 52.7-47.3
    Iowa 2nd - Eric Tabor (D) defeats Jim Nussle (R) in a rematch 61-39
    Iowa 3rd -Elaine Baxter (D) defeats Jim Lightfoot (R) - 49-47
    Illinois[9] 18th - Glenn Poshard (D) wins without major challenge
    Maryland 5th - Larry Hogan (R) defeats Steny Hoyer (D) - 49.8-46.9
    Massachusetts 1st - Patrick Larkin (R) defeats John Olver (R) - 48.7-46.2
    Michigan[10] 7th - John Conyers (D) defeats Nick Smith (R) - 53.5 - 38.4
    Michigan 11th - Milton Carr (D) defeats Joe Knoellenberg (R) - 65.8-30
    Minnesota 2nd - Cal Ludeman (R) defeats David Minge (D) - 48-47.3
    Missouri 9th - Rick Hardy (R) defeats Harold Volkmer (D) - 48.9-44.2
    New York 2nd - Thomas Downey (D) defeats Rick Lazio (R) - 51-49
    New York 4th - Phil Schiliro (D) defeats David Levy (R) - 51.4-48.6
    North Carolina 11th - James Clarke (D) wins 57-43 in a rematch with Charles Taylor (R)
    Ohio 6th - Bob McEwen (R) defeats Ted Strickland (D) - 50.4-49.6
    Pennsylvania 13th - Jon Fox (R) defeats Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (D) 51.4-48.6
    Pennsylvania 18th - Jon Delano (D) defeats Rick Santorum (R) 53-47
    Pennsylvania 20th - Bill Townsend (R) defeats Austin Murphy (D) 51-49
    Washington 4th - Doc Hasting (R) defeats Jay Inslee (D) 52.2-47.8



    1992 Senate Election:

    genusmap.php

    Dark Blue: Democratic Pickup; Light Blue: Democratic Hold; Dark Red: Republican Pickup; Light Red: Republican Hold

    Democrats - 61(+1)
    Republicans - 39 (-1)

    Differences from Our Timeline[11]:

    California Senator Class I - Dianne Feinstein was elected Governor, so there's no special election. Pete Wilson (R) is still Senator.

    Illinois - Alan Dixon (D) voted against Clarence Thomas ITTL and so isn't primaried by Carol Moseley Braun. He is re-elected 51-49 over Richard Williamson (R). Same party, different Senator

    New York - Former Vice Presidential Candidate Geraldine Ferraro (D) defeats incumbent Senator Al D'Amato (R) 49.6 - 47.2

    Oregon - Congressman Les AuCoin (D) defeats Superintendent Norma Paulis (R) 52.3-46.3 after Senator Packwood's abrupt withdrawal from the race after his scandals were revealed.

    Closest Races:

    New Hampshire - R+.09%
    North Carolina - R+.55% (Flip)
    New York - D+2.4% (Flip)
    South Carolina - D+2.5%
    Pennsylvania - R+3.2%
    Georgia - R+3.25% (Flip)
    Washington - D+4.94%
    California - D+4.97%



    Governor Race Changes:

    genusmap.php

    Dark Blue: Democratic Pickup; Light Blue: Democratic Hold; Dark Red: Republican Pickup; Light Red: Republican Hold

    Differences from Our Timeline:

    Montana - Dorothy Bradley (D) defeats Marc Racicot (R) 53.4-46.6
    Washington - Ken Eikenberry (R) defeats Don Bonker (D) 50.8-49.2



    Governors after Election:

    genusmap.php

    Democrats: 36(+2)
    Republicans: 12 (-2)
    Independents: 2 (+/-)



    Year of the Woman Becomes Reality[12]
    Washington Post, November 4th, 1992


    It was at last month’s debate in Richmond where President Bush infamously declared, “This is supposed to be the year of the women in the Senate. Let's see how they do. I hope a lot of them lose.” This blunt statement came from the reality that while a record number of women were running for elected office, most were Democrats inspired to run by Clarence Thomas’ failed confirmation after Anita Hill’s dramatic testimony. Three female freshmen were elected to the Senate, joining Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski, who was re-elected easily despite Maryland being close at the Presidential level, and Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum. Nearly fifty women are set to be elected to the House. And in Montana it looks like Democrat Dorothy Bradley will be narrowly elected Governor, the first woman elected to that office.

    Between both parties there were 10 female nominees for the Senate and just over 100 nominees for the House. Fortune favored female Democratic candidates; as Senator Al Gore was elected President, many women down ballot were elected as well. Unfortunately for the Republican Party, many of their female candidates went on to lose.

    In New York, Geraldine Ferraro, who was the Democratic Party nominee for Vice President 8 years ago, parlayed her ties with the national party and the upswell of support for women to overcome a swirl of scandals around her family to narrowly win the Democratic primary in September and narrowly unseat Republican Al D’Amato.

    In Washington State, Patty Murray (D), a self-styled “mom in tennis shoes”....Cont’d on A4.



    * * *​

    Dave Letterman: The election results are in and the winner is… (pretends to doze off and snore) …Oh, what, hey! I must have nodded off.

    Paul: Who needs valium when you have a VHS tape of the Bush-Gore debates?



    [1] Bush has been accused of groping women (some as young as 16 at the time) in a manner he considers “playful”. With such “zinger” lines as calling himself “David Cop-a-feel”. In this timeline with an earlier reckoning on such things, the allegations have surfaced earlier, and at the worst possible moment politically speaking.

    [2] Random weather butterflies mean that a weaker Hurricane Andrew missed the US but a stronger, deadlier Bonnie hit the gulf coast as a Class 4.

    [3] Note that @jpj1421 ran the numbers both ways. The electoral map changes slightly with a Bush/Quayle ticket (e.g. Ohio and Georgia flip blue and Kentucky flips red), as do several down-ballot races, but Gore still won by a similar Popular and Electoral College vote margin.

    [4] In a strange allo-ironic parallel to our timeline’s 2000 election (and one that came as a surprise to us), Bush will win Florida by a relative handful of votes, representing 0.0048% of the electorate. Unlike with his son in our timeline, it won’t matter since Gore still claimed 341 Electoral Votes even without Ohio and Florida.

    [5] The New York Conservative Party Ticket nominated Bush with Quayle as the VP over New Yorker Jack Kemp.

    [6] Convention boater hat tip to @jpj1421 for the calculations for election returns and help on picking the Gore Cabinet.

    [7] Governor Feinstein and the Democratic Legislature of California agreed to a districting plan where districts are 5-15 points more Democratic than in our timeline. Ah the power of flagrant Gerrymandering.

    [8] Georgia has lines more like what they have in our timeline later in the nineties as Dick Thornburgh is still AG under Bush and isn't as aggressive with the VRA districts as AG Burr was, plus Gingrich isn't in Congress so the Georgia Speaker, who was his constituent, doesn't need to spitefully draw his house out of a Republican district...that he just moves to and wins in anyway.

    [9] Illinois Democrats get to gerrymander the state in this timeline, whereas Republicans won that right in a coin toss in ours, and 7 out of 20 districts are completely different than their allohistorical counterpart. Districts 1, 3, 4, 5, and 18 are supposed to be heavily Democratic, 6 is given a slightly more Republican tilt, and 15 becomes a Republican vote sink as Minority Leader Michl and Thomas Ewing are drawn into the same district.

    [10] Much like Illinois, Michigan in this timeline is drawn with districts heavily favorable to Democrats.

    [11] New York: Geraldine Ferraro wins the primary and defeats Al D'Amato. D'Amato was the primary instigator of the White Water and Ken Star investigations. Hillary Clinton particularly savored campaigning for Chuck Schumer in 1998 to beat him.

    Oregon: Bob Packwood's problems come to light and Les AuCoin (D) is elected

    [12] Guest Post by @jpj1421; Note that The Year of the Woman is actually slightly down compared to our timeline for a number of reasons. Dianne Feinstein is Governor of California so there is no special election to replace Pete Wilson in the Senate. Alan Dixon voted against Thomas in this timeline, and so didn’t face a primary challenge from Carol Mosely Braun. In this timeline Geraldine Ferraro gets a slight boost from increased support for women enough to win the primary narrowly and enough to win the general election narrowly. Yeakel in Pennsylvania does better than in our timeline, but Kemp’s support in the suburbs boosts Specter’s support while also sinking Marjorie Margolies, who was narrowly elected to represent Montgomery County in our timeline. The drop in base support from the Quayle switch secures Montana for the Democrats.
     
    In the News...
  • Happy New Year, all! Let's start with something fun: the news!

    wildebeest.jpg

    (Image source Britannica)



    Murphy Outed as Trek Director!
    From Entertainment Weekly, September 19th, 1992


    Eddie-Murphy-had-a-Role-in-Star-Trek.jpg

    (Image source “democratlive.com”)

    Los Angeles – Are you a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation? Did you love “The Andorian Shuffle”[1] or “The Lasting Limits of Logic”? Well, have we got a surprise for you! Observant Trekkies may have noticed that these two episodes, among others this last season, were directed by “Murphy Edwards”, who also has a story credit on both “Shuffle” and “Logic”. Well, guess what: Murphy Edwards is none other than comedian and movie star Eddie Murphy! Yes, the celebrated A-lister has secretly been directing some of your favorite episodes alongside Jonathan Frakes and other cast-directors. Long known to be a Trekkie himself, Murphy starred in Star Trek IV alongside William Shatner and had an important cameo in Star Trek V. As such, it should be no surprise that he’d want to be involved in the popular television reboot. And given the second-class status of the small screen when compared to the big, you can understand why he’d hide his contributions behind a nom de plume.

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    Murphy in a Cameo in Season 2 (Image source Reddit)

    While rumors of Murphy’s contributions in the series have circulated in the fandom for a while, exclusive leaked set photos and anonymous interviews by EW have revealed the truth behind the rumors. The staff here at EW are certain that he’s using the opportunity to hone his directorial skills, which were savaged following his box office flop The Cotton Club. But behind the scenes, the buzz is that this television sandbox is just what he needed. “He’s a delight to work with,” said one anonymous cast member, “and a skilled director. Great with the talent and crew alike.” Will this small-screen success translate back to the big screen, or will this “outing” doom Murphy with the stink of television? That remains to be seen. Until then, keep an eye out for “Murphy Edwards” in the credits of your next Trek episode.



    Tensions Escalate in former Soviet Union
    The New York Times, October 7th, 1992


    Ethnic and political tensions continue to escalate across the Union of Sovereign States (USS; also known as the Union of Sovereign Republics, or USR, and CCC in Cyrillic), the federated union of nine former Soviet Republics and numerous smaller ethnic autonomous zones. The secession and attempted secession of many former Soviet Republics, exacerbated by ethnic, religious, historic, and strategic concerns, have led to unrest that threatens to spill out into the larger world, with some fearing that unsecured nuclear weapons could fall into dangerous hands.

    Tempers continue to escalate in the east Baltic Sea as talks broke down between the USS Federal Government and the three former Soviet Republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The three small states, which have their own history and culture, have long sought independence from the USSR and its Tsarist predecessor. All three have declared full independence and continue to rebuff advances by the USS to join the new Federal Union as member states.

    The three Baltic Republics, which control the majority of access to the eastern Baltic Sea, also cut the USS off from its Kaliningrad Oblast, which represents the USS’s second most critical Baltic Sea port after St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). Talks to determine USS transit rights to and from the Kaliningrad Oblast have stalled, complicated further by ongoing efforts by the Baltic Republics to join NATO and the European Community, moves seen by Moscow as a strategic threat.

    Similar tensions are persisting in the oil-rich State of Azerbaijan, which has remained in the Union but which for ethnic and religious reasons has a strong internal secessionist movement. Accounting for a large part of USS petroleum reserves, the loss of the State would have severe economic consequences were it to leave. Tensions between Azerbaijan and the neighboring Republic of Armenia, which did not join the USS, are exacerbated by territorial disputes that have led to sporadic violence, particularly in and around the heavily Armenian Autonomous Oblast of Nagorno-Karabakh.

    Religious and cultural issues also plague many of the former Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, recently redesignated Autonomous Republics (AR) by Moscow[2]. For example, in the AR of Checheno-Ingush the populous is divided between those who seek greater autonomy within the USS and those who demand full independence. Former Soviet Air Force General turned Chetnik politician Dzhokhar Dudayev is demanding that the AR be made a full Sovereign State with co-equal status to the other nine USS States[3]. Protests in Grozny turned violent with many arrests made. The region, which borders Azerbaijan and the newly independent Republic of Georgia, is adding to the ongoing regional ethno-religious tensions.

    Meanwhile, the Central Asian States of Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan, which have historical ethnic and territorial tensions of their own, are suffering from a refugee influx with fears of increasing regional violence due to continued internecine conflict in neighboring Afghanistan. With the feared rise of militant extremism in Afghanistan and with several thousand Soviet-era nuclear weapons suspected to still be located in the Central Asian USS States, world leaders have expressed “grave concerns” with the potential for such powerful weapons to fall into the hands of non-State actors[4].

    US President George Bush was joined by President Elect Albert Gore in calling for calm. The US has been joined by the UK, France, and Germany in an offer to help negotiate tensions. USS President Gorbachev has so far resisted calls for external arbitration, but agreed to a multilateral meeting in Geneva this November to assure UN leaders that the internal strife will not bleed over into neighboring countries. UN Secretary-General Boutros…Cont’d on A2.



    US Troops arrive in Somalia
    Washington Post, December 4th, 1992


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    Outgoing President George Bush today announced the deployment of US military forces to the East African nation of Somalia. Dubbed Operation Restore Hope, the US forces will be tasked with reinforcing UNOSOM forces in order to maintain ceasefire in the war-torn nation and ensure that humanitarian aid gets to those who need it. Ongoing hoarding and belligerent actions by Somali warlords continue to hamper UN efforts in this regard, and it is hoped that the US forces will provide the stabilizing force necessary to finally enforce UN aims.

    “We do not foresee major combat,” said President Bush. “Instead, our fighting men and women will simply be there to maintain the peace and restore hope and humanitarian aid to those who need it.”

    Critics have expressed cynicism to the US involvement, with some claiming that the US plans to use their presence to gain concessions for US Oil Companies in the nation, which contains noteworthy reserves in the northern Somaliland region. Bush denies that this is the case, maintaining that the troops are there only to maintain the peace and enforce the UN mandate.

    In an interview with the Post, US General…Cont’ on A3.



    [1] Alas, no Andorians appear in this episode (’92 is still too early for audiences to accept Blue Aliens again). Instead, it involved Riker and the crew running a long con to claim a MacGuffin from a troupe of Ferengi.

    [2] The “Autonomous Republic” designation covers all of the old ASSRs. The USR also still retains the various strange historic cultural-regional designations like Krais and Okrugs and Federal Cities that have rough equivalence to a Russian Oblast in terms of internal authority and sovereignty and power. Autonomous Oblasts remain as culturally-unique Oblasts with special cultural rights and autonomy similar to their equivalents under the USSR. It remains a complex and Byzantine system of subtle differences in laws and rights that will continue to confound outsiders and complicate internal politics and economics, but resistance to change and the possible loss of special (often cultural) rights under the current system will hamper attempts to streamline it into a simple three-tier system of Oblast-Republic-State. Krais, Okrugs, and AOs have the right to apply for AR status and numerous ARs have been pushing for the right for ARs to apply for full Sovereign State status.

    [3] He reportedly was pushing for the ASSR to be made a full Soviet Republic in the late 1980s, but moved towards pressing for full secession and independence in the wake of the failed 1991 coup attempt and its chaotic aftermath. Here the apparently stronger USS government means that he’s (at least for the moment) hedging his bets and continuing to pushing for Sovereign State status.

    [4] Don’t you just love these Utopian Timelines?
     
    War Stories
  • Chapter 15: War Stories
    Post from the Riding with the Mouse Net-log by animator Terrell Little


    There’s an old story that’s been circling Disney Animation for years about the time that Card Walker walked up to Jim Henson with a request. You won’t meet a single eyewitness to the conversation, but there are plenty of folks who “heard it from someone who was there,” naturally.

    The details change, but the general idea is the same: Card walks up to Jim and tells him that he has a request for an animated film for the WED Signature line. He says that if Jim backs him on the project, then he’ll throw whatever weight that he has left behind “any idea that [Jim] wants to back.” Sometimes they add “however strange.”

    Jim agrees and askes the idea, and Card presents his idea for “War Stories”, an animated depiction of veteran’s experiences in World War II set to their voiceover telling the stories.

    Jim agrees to the deal, shakes Card’s hand, and says he knows exactly the new project that he wants to do and wants Card’s support for: an animated feature called “War Stories.”

    Some say Card smiled, some say Card cried, but whether there’s any truth to the tale or not, it’s a good story, so it sticks around.

    Whatever its origins, War Stories was launched in mid ’90, and I got dragged away from Talespin and Lost in La Mancha to lead the animation on a segment about a Tuskegee Airman fighting over Germany in ’44.

    War Stories began life as a simple series of vignettes. All digital-2D, naturalistic, frequently action heavy. By this point Softworks advances in real time digital input-output driven by digital puppetry was allowing us to digitally pencil in real time as well using a light pen or a stylus table. You could effectively hand draw right on the screen in real time almost as easy as paper, the prior image lightly superimposed so you didn’t have to wear out your wrist with the old “paper flip” technique, then ink and paint as easily as point and click. You could stretch and skew lines, zoom, move, and reposition and thus dynamically edit. And you could use layers to create a pseudo-3D effect like was done back in the day by the multilevel camera rig, and all at a cost lower than the traditional or fully-3D way at the time.

    And in a huge boon to me as someone developing dynamic aerial dogfights, there was even the ability to build true 3D wireframes and movement vectors and a feature to allow you to “project” a 3D image onto a flat surface to create a 2D image with the appearance of 3D depth, essentially recreating what Richard Williams used to do by hand and eye alone. I honestly feel a little guilty about that.

    As stated, we worked in teams, each assigned a specific point of view of a single warfighter. Each team had a single story to follow. All would be placed one after another. Each story would feed into the next. Rather than just stick to the American perspective, Jim wanted to tell stories from all sides, even the Axis, which caused some early controversy. When the full story was put together, in particular when “Werner’s Tale” was fully told, the controversy evaporated. I’ll explain later.

    Soon George Lucas found out about the project and wanted to see the storyboards, which were being managed by Glen Keane as Head Director. George saw the storyboards, and was not impressed. “There’s no story,” he said.

    “No, there are several stories,” Glen replied.

    “There needs to be one,” George said.

    I should know. Unlike the earlier tale with Card and Jim, I was in the room where it happened. And what George meant was that it needed a sense of narrativity. Like the Ken Burns Civil War documentary that had been all the rage on PBS the year before, George felt that we should mix up the stories, overlap them. Like Ken Burns, we could tell the whole story of the war, from the rise of Hitler to the Atomic Bomb and VJ day, through the individual interwoven tales. Glen was now the “Supervising Director” and suddenly all storyboards from the individual tales would be duplicated for the “master board” that Glen controlled.

    We soon found ourselves mixing up the stories, following a vaguely temporal line, as if we were seeing the whole war unfold before us, the battlefront and the home front, through the experiences of several people’s stories. We began with Werner, a young and naïve German man, whose father died in the first world war. Through him we see the struggles of the average German during the difficult Weimar period and the prevailing mood, and can see through naïve young Werner how he, like so many, got seduced to disaster by the siren’s call of the Nazis.

    The larger story expanded, bringing in additional viewpoints: a British woman, a Polish pilot who escapes to fight in the Battle of Britain, a French soldier turned POW turned Underground fighter, a Japanese Navy sailor, a Jewish child from Lodz (Jack Tramiel of Commodore, one of our principal financers). As the war went on and expanded, so did the points of view: a Russian soldier on the Eastern Front, an American sailor at Pearl Harbor, a Marine at Guadalcanal, a Navajo “Code Talker”, a navy carrier crewman (Card), a Black man training at Tuskegee, Alabama. Then deeper into things: the trials of the Home Front in multiple theaters, a Japanese American child sent to an internment camp (George Takei), the horrors of Auschwitz (Jack), a Japanese Hiroshima survivor. The storyboarding was carefully interwoven, the whole war, one piece, one point of view at a time. The highs, lows, horrors, and triumphs, and most importantly where those things blurred together.

    We could have ended the film on VJ day or Hiroshima. But instead, somewhat controversially, we went right back to Werner, with whom we began, now a disabled veteran of the Eastern Front, a man riddled with guilt and trauma after what he’s witnessed and what he’s done, which we have witnessed with him. And his last discussion is about a single empty storefront in his small home town. I’ll copy his words here, because I couldn’t do them justice:

    “I looked at the storefront where once Frau Appelbaum’s shop was. As kids she gave us treats. She was a kind old woman. As teens we did nothing when the Brownshirts smashed her windows. We did nothing but look on as she was taken away by the Gestapo. She was ‘going to a new home in Israel’ we were told. She instead went to Treblinka.

    “I expressed my guilt to a friend of mine who also survived the war. ‘That was not us,’ he said, ‘that was the Nazis.’

    “‘No!’ I said. ‘We killed Frau Appelbaum when we did nothing to stop the Nazis; when we looked the other way. We killed her as sure as if we’d pulled the trigger ourselves.’”

    War Stories
    got a lot of attention, even if it wasn’t coming close to the top 10 in sales. I won an Annie award for the aviation sequences on the Tuskegee tale. The film won numerous Annies and the Oscar for Best Animated Film. The Smithsonian and other museums still play it. It even made a fair profit over the years. But none of that matters as much as the fact that we did something good. Not just good animation, but good for the world. Good for society. Good for those Veterans trying to deal with the pain of their experiences, regardless of the wars they fought.

    We didn’t try to make the war into something to celebrate or something to condemn, only something to remember. We made no efforts to editorialize or inject opinions. We let the narrators tell their tales and gave each veto over their own portrayals. We didn’t shy away from the horrors or the controversy. The graphic animation ended up receiving a T rating and came close to an R, or so I hear. Truth was the core philosophy of the project.

    If there’s a central lesson, it’s that war truly is hell and that human resilience can be an amazing and wonderful thing.

    During production, Card, whose own story became a part of the film, had some hesitance about some of the Axis perspective pieces at first. But as the full narrative unfolded, his reticence drained away. He saw that we were playing fair and acting in good faith to let the people tell their own stories, including his.

    Whether there’s any truth to the origins of War Stories, I can say as an eye witness that, at the original test screening at the Dopey Drive theater, as the lights came up, you could see Card Walker and Jim Henson, eyes wet with tears, embracing one another as everyone, myself included, gave a thunderous standing ovation all around[1].





    [1] War Stories will have an Arthouse release in the Spring of 1993 under the WED Signature line and will go on to win Best Animated Feature in 1994, soon gaining a wider release. It will become popular with veterans groups and schools and will eventually prove mildly profitable through home media sales.
     
    Mickey X
  • alive-dead.gif


    Yep, I live near Fredericksburg, VA, and we got hit by about 8-10" of heavy, wet snow. Trees down everywhere and power out for about 33 hours. Some of my coworkers are still without power. I-95 is still closed. So yes, missed yesterday's post. But all good here. Long, cold day and a half cooking over Sterno like a train hobo, but we all got through. Thanks, all, for the best wishes. So here's yesterday's post, which feels somehow strangely apropos to the situation in a way I can't quite explain.


    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)


    So, bringing Spike Lee on board helped the MGM Lion get its bite back, but by 1991 I was increasingly starting to think that it had bitten off more than I could chew. His Jungle Fever had gone well for us, $44 million against a modest $14 million budget, despite the controversy of the interracial relationship plot. Looking back, it’s crazy to believe how that was such a big deal back then…things have come so far in some ways, even if not in others, but I digress.

    But in the fall of ’91 Spike showed up in my office with a proposal/request: “Bernie, I’d like you to take over Malcolm X from Warner.”

    Malcolmxdvdset.jpg


    Oh boy, where to start?

    Malcolm X was a controversial figure back in his heyday in the ‘60s and ‘70s. A lot of white people saw him at the time as the anti-Martin Luther King, the angry, violent counterpoint to MLK’s peaceful ministry of acceptance and forgiveness. Back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, in the face of increasing inner-city anger as the recession hit there hardest of all, Malcolm X had increasingly become a folk hero, and “X” hats were suddenly a thing. Warner had picked up the biopic and tossed it around Development Hell for decades. I remembered the uproar when they announced that Norman Jewison was slated to direct. And now Spike wanted MGM to pick it up.

    “Isn’t he the guy who hated white people?” I asked.

    If looks could kill, my head would have exploded on the spot. “It’s much more nuanced than that,” Spike said, flatly. He tossed a well-dogeared paperback of the Autobiography of Malcolm X on my desk. “Read it for yourself, Bernie, then tell me this isn’t a life’s story worth telling.”

    Ok, challenge accepted. I read the book. I met with him again.

    “I get it,” I told him, looking him in the eye. “It’s about rebirth.”

    He smiled. “Yea.”

    Yes, it turns out that Malcolm X had many lives. He started as a country boy, became a hep cat in the big city, became a small-time crook, became a prisoner, became a Muslim believer in prison, became a controversial spiritual and political leader, and then went on his Hadj and embraced a more peaceful, inclusive humanitarian outlook and started preaching love and tolerance. So, naturally, that’s when he got shot.

    We got down to business. Spike had essentially seized the production from Jewison. He’d challenged Warner to hire a Black director, so they hired him. Jewison was frankly relieved, as he knew he’d be walking on eggshells. Even so, Spike got a ration of shit from Amiri Baraka and others for being a “Buppie”, whatever the hell that meant. So Spike took over the Warner production, but they refused to give him the budget he requested, so Francis Ford Coppola advised him to get the film “pregnant” by producing things until the studio had invested so much in sunk cost that they felt compelled to follow through with the larger budget needed. Even then, he’d sunk $2 million of his own $3 million paycheck on the picture. It still wasn’t enough.

    “They’re going to take the film from me,” he said. He meant the bond company, which was on the verge of taking possession of everything and ending production. They wanted him to cut it down to two hours, fifteen minutes, where his envisioned cut was over three hours[1]. “I’ve got half the Black folks in Hollywood eager to pay the rest of the cost,” he said. “But I need to do the film I think needs to be made, not Warner, not the bond company, and not you, Bernie.”

    It was a serious risk. Even beyond the standard controversy surrounding the man himself, race was on the verge of an explosion in the early 1990s. Just earlier that summer a young black man had been shot and killed by a Jewish man in a store in Brooklyn. To hear the one side say it, it was self-defense during a robbery. To hear the other side say it, it was a racially-motivated murder. Suddenly the borough of Brooklyn was in flames and the unrest threatened to spill over into Queens, the Bronx, and even Manhattan[2]. Spike had spoken out about it. Sam Fuller snapped back, and soon the two of them were back to lighting up the studios with their arguments.

    Well, they apparently fought their way to a mutual understanding, because soon the two of them were off to New York, together, to appeal for calm and justice all around.

    An old Jew and a young Black man walk into a riot. Stop me if you heard this one.

    Anyway, the two were on the border of friendship at this point. Maybe past it. Whatever the case, Sam was lobbying me to take up the picture too. They convinced Jim to support it.

    But the truth is that they didn’t need to convince me. I was on board. I called up my contacts at Warner Bros. and we worked out a deal. MGM would take over production and financing for the remainder of the production, we’d split the costs of distribution, which eased the minds of the bond company, and worst-case scenario we’d all have a neat tax write-off for the next couple of years and maybe some statuettes. Maybe they could help us out in a future production.

    When the press got word that Disney was taking over a Malcolm X biopic, they had a field day. People on both sides of the Malcolm X legacy were outraged, either because we were somehow “polluting” Disney (even though it was an MGM picture!) by dealing with a controversial figure or because we were making a mockery of Malcolm X. You can’t win some days.

    There were some modest protests and a few political cartoons and some outraged speeches, but the controversy passed as newer outrages appeared to grab America’s goldfish-like attention span, like the Cosby Trial.

    All said, the most lasting legacy of the controversy was a spate of graffiti that started in New York and soon began appearing in LA and cities the world over. It featured Mickey Mouse as Malcolm X. Mickey X, I guess?! To this day I’m not entirely certain whether they were painted appreciatingly, ironically, insultingly, or some weird combination of these.

    But anyway, Spike came through with pretty much every major African American star[3] from Eddie Murphy to Oprah to the Artist at the Time Formerly Known as Prince signed on to help fund the film through to the end. They didn’t even ask for a share of anything. They just wanted to see it screen. We gave them all cameos anyway.

    By the time we took over production, the film was already half in the can, but some of the more expensive and challenging shots had yet to be made. We had to hire an all-Muslim crew, for example, in order to film the scenes in Mecca, not to mention we had to get special permission just to film there, period. I have to say, being a Jew in Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s was a strange experience, and I was sure that I’d be marked for trouble, but it turns out Spike (Christian) and I were for the most part welcomed as “People of the Book” by the people we met. I took the opportunity to visit Jerusalem and the Western Wall while I was there in the region. I’m hardly the most devout member of the tribe, but damn it, it was a moving experience.

    The final cut of Malcom X was over three hours. An epic length drama with a mostly Black cast. Made by a director-writer-producer as a passion project. With a long and troubled production. Passed from on studio to another. To hear the usual Hollywood know-it-alls, it should have failed miserably.

    And yet when Malcolm X screened in December of ’92 to great critical acclaim, to the happy surprise of us all it became a moderate success, making back double its ultimately $35 million budget. Maybe it would have done better without Steve’s picture as competition, but who knows? After heavy lobbying, we got Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, and Denzel naturally got nominated for Best Actor, but, well, you already know what happened with Steve’s big movie.

    In the long run, Malcolm X is seen by many as Spike’s Magnum Opus. In a better world, maybe it would have swept the Oscars. It should have gotten at least one, in my opinion. But Oscars or not, Malcom X is remembered as a great moment in cinema history. And even with all the insanity that started two weeks later when Steve’s movie debuted, I’m glad that MGM got to play a part in it.



    [1] All in accordance with our timeline so far.

    [2] A similar thing happened in 1991 in our timeline in Crown Heights after a car that was a part of a Rabbi’s funeral hit two young black children. The proximate cause of that is butterflied, but random butterflies alone will not end years of mutual distrust exacerbated by economic challenges and a lack of opportunity.

    [3] Notably not among the big-name stars involved in this timeline is Bill Cosby, who’s money is going to high priced lawyers as he attempts to fight off numerous sexual assault accusations.
     
    Movies Fall-Winter 1992
  • New York Times Short Movie Reviews, Fall & Winter 1992

    Catch the Hell Train


    It’s a future world, perhaps our own. The sun is now swollen into an expanding red giant, or perhaps it is another star. Humans live crammed into filthy cities. The elites live atop towering skyscrapers. And everywhere death, darkness, and sadism reign. And those who fall too far get literally swept up by The Train, an evil looking bio-mechanical underground locomotive designed by H.G. Giger of Alien fame. And you thought the C Train was bad. Ridley Scott and Giger team up with director John Carpenter to create this sexy, surreal, and visceral science fiction horror story for 20th Century informed by Giger’s art and sensibilities. Alas, the film is kind of bloated and nonsensical, lacking the cohesive storytelling of Alien or The Thing, even as it takes cues from both. Stylistically brilliant, the story fails to come together in the end. But for fans of the dark visions of Giger and who want to see a twisted morality play through his dark lens, it is an occasionally moving if inconsistent vision. Still, what visuals they are![1]

    gigers-species-train.jpg


    Isobar, Rated R for horror, disturbing scenes, nudity, sex, violence, action, adult language, and adult situations, ⭐ ⭐ ½



    “Mr. Right” is Wrong in So Many Ways

    Sandra Bullock is a hot up-and-coming actress, but this Hyperion Rom-Com is hardly her best. While her performance is perfectly adequate, the film itself is a formulaic mess with little to distinguish it from any other romantic comedy. With the premise of Bullock’s Carry Harrigan seeking a short-term relationship with the obnoxious but sexy Jake Fleming (Tate Donovan), who in turn seeks something more lasting, this mild sex comedy manages to be neither particularly sexy nor particularly comedic. Bullock and Donovan maintain a good chemistry, likely a result of their real-life romance, but not even good chemistry can make up for a vapid plot and sappy dialog. While probably a workable date movie if you can’t agree on anything else, the spotty direction and terrible, cliched dialog make this a hard slog.

    Mr. Right Now, Rated T for sexuality, adult language, and adult situations, ⭐½



    Love and War

    This film was a long time coming, a labor of love for writer and director Neil Jordan, who sought for years to get his screenplay, originally named “The Soldier’s Wife,” greenlit. And once you are shown the controversial “reveal”, as it were, you will know that The Crying Game was a risky production and that only a company willing to court controversy like ABC’s Miramax, a label struggling to recover its image after the scandals of its cofounder Harvey Weinstein, would be willing to touch. Thanks largely to lobbying by musician Freddie Mercury, the film was nearly picked up by MGM with Creative Chief Jim Henson reportedly a supporter, but that went nowhere thanks to pushback from the board, reportedly from the Disney family itself. But what MGM dropped, ABC has picked up and run with, producing an Oscar-worthy film. The Crying Game is already getting a reputation for its “shocking twist”, which is a shame, because it is an important story of our fears, our love, out hate, and our expectations. It addresses ethic strife, war, crime, sex, gender, and relationships, and the pressures of society, political and cultural, that divide us and tear us apart. It deserves to be milestone in cinema, for the “twist” is not “all you need to know about The Crying Game.”

    250px-Crying_game_poster.jpg


    The Crying Game, Rated R for nudity, sex, violence, adult language, and adult situations, ⭐⭐⭐⭐



    Bloody Brilliant

    When this film screened at Cannes earlier this year, it caused a riot. And yet the real drama was yet to come. Reservoir Dogs, the first production of debut writer-director Quentin Tarantino, who prior to this was working in a video store, began as a low-budget 9mm film project before being discovered by Harvey Keitel. It is almost ludicrously violent and profane (take that R-rating seriously!) nearly to the point of deconstruction (the “Stuck in the Middle with You” scene will haunt your nightmares). And yet between the quirky dialog, the memorable characters, and the dark ironic bathos that plays extreme acts of violence against some jaunty pop songs, there’s a subtle genius to the film that made it the most talked about film at Cannes, even as many walked out during the screening.

    But as mentioned, the real drama came later, when Miramax Films agreed to distribute. At first, Tarantino seemed to have found a good partner in Harvey Weinstein. But then, following in the wake of the post-Thomas/Hill reckoning on workplace sexual misconduct, Weinstein was suddenly being called out in the press amid numerous accusations of often egregious treatment of his female employees. And just as Reservoir Dogs was seeing wide release, Tarantino, in an interview with E! News, bit the hand that fed him…as hard and viciously as any of his psychopathic characters. “Thank God that we had an all-male principal cast,” he said[2]. “I’d hate to think that I’d lured some young woman into Harvey’s office!”

    While the interview reportedly infuriated the Weinstein brothers and likely sabotaged any future deals with Miramax, the sheer controversy of it all has been making the rounds, and spurring a huge spike in attendance. And reportedly Hyperion, Orion, and New Line have all approached Tarantino about future productions!

    The real-life drama has mirrored the story beats of the film itself: egregious and uncomfortable violence and the reactions to it driving a true act of bravery and brilliance.

    Reservoir_Dogs.png


    Reservoir Dogs, Rated R for extreme violence, frequent profanity, crime, drugs, and adult situations, ⭐⭐⭐



    Sometimes you Need a Crook

    Mr. Murphy goes to Washington in this satirical political comedy directed by Jerry Zucker of ZAZ fame. When small time con artist Thomas Jefferson Johnson (Eddie Murphy) takes advantage of name recognition to claim the Congressional seat from the recently deceased Jefferson Davis "Jeff" Johnson (Warren Beatty doing his best Huey Long), hilarity ensues as he soon finds Capitol Hill to be the biggest con of all. But when the real-world consequences of his actions begin to become apparent to him, Johnson must choose between maintaining the long con and doing what’s right. Zucker’s direction here is beautiful, and just slightly over the top, while still maintaining a sense of humanity. It’s a “serious” directorial turn for Zucker when compared to his zany slapstick stuff with ZAZ, but it still packs in gags and funny situations aplenty. This Hollywood Pictures film is sure to score points with the crowds[3].

    225px-Distinguished_gentleman.jpg


    The Distinguished Gentleman, Rated T for adult language and adult situations, ⭐⭐⭐



    In Brief:
    • Last of the Mohicans: Michael Mann’s perfectionist tendencies pay off in this beautifully shot historical epic adventure; ⭐⭐⭐½
    • Sexual Advances: Donna Deitch directs this timely erotic drama about sexual harassment and office power dynamics[4], starring Jodie Foster; ⭐⭐⭐½
    • Chaplin: Robert Downey Jr. excels with an Oscar-worthy performance in this otherwise spotty biopic of the great Charlie Chaplin; ⭐⭐½
    • The Mighty Ducks: Another fun Disney children’s sports film, this time about hockey, starring Judge Reinhold; ⭐⭐⭐




    [1] Evolved from Dead Reckoning/The Train by Giger and Scott. In our timeline production never came together at Carolco, so Scott went on to direct Thelma and Louise and Carolco let it lapse into Production Hell and fade away. Giger eventually resurrected the Train visual for Species as a toss-away dream sequence. Here Scott convinced 20th Century to pick up The Train in turnaround from Orion in exchange for helming Alien 3. Hat tip to @Plateosaurus.

    [2] Tarantino in our timeline expressed outrage when he found out about what Weinstein had done to the actresses that he hired.

    [3] Unlike our timeline’s overpriced, underperforming meh-fest, Zucker will take the talents that he applied to Ghost in our timeline to make this a fun winter’s distraction with some humorous but biting political satire, making $130 million against its $35 million budget.

    [4] Was made for TV in our timeline. Here her success with Life Stinks and the stronger reckoning on sexual harassment make it a star-studded theatrical release.
     
    No Good Deed goes Unpunished
  • Chapter 12, Making a Difference (Cont’d)
    Excerpt from Where Did I Go Right? (or: You’re No One in Hollywood Unless Someone Wants You Dead), by Bernie Brillstein (with Cheryl Henson)


    But that’s the thing about Doing Right. It can be just as addictive as any drug. Suddenly you’re getting handshakes and pats on the back and called a Mensch and you’re the talk of the town because you Did Right. You didn’t do it for the praise, or at least you tell yourself that, but there’s a rush to it all the same.

    It hit Steve [Spielberg] too. Suddenly a Spielberg Production [Maus] won an Oscar for something other than technical categories, and it did so while raising millions for a worthy cause. Suddenly Hooked! wasn’t going to live up to it in his mind. He was “Hooked” on something else now.

    “Bernie,” he told me at the Oscar after party, “I think it’s time for Schindler.”

    Schindler%27s_List_movie.jpg


    Schindler’s List was a script that he’d been toying with for years. He’d alternately thought about making it himself, or talked with big names like Scorsese and Pollack and Polanski. He’d never felt “ready” for such a big leap into drama, particularly with everyone seeing him as the “blockbuster guy”. But now, with Maus getting near universal praise, he felt ready. “I need to do this for my children and family,” he told me.

    Maybe I was high on it all myself. “Let’s do it,” I said. “MGM. Christmas release. Proceeds to the [Holocaust] museum. It’ll probably crash and burn, but let us do Jurassic Park too and that should help cover the costs.”

    “I want to direct Schindler,” Steve told me.

    “Absolutely. Before or after Jurassic?”

    “Instead. Give JP to Burton. If he can do with that what he did with Maus and Scissorhands, he’ll knock it out of the park.”

    Steve set into Schindler with a passion I haven’t seen from a director in years. Beatty, Costner, and Gibson all wanted to play the titular role, but Steve gave it to Liam Neeson based on his success in Dead Poet’s Society for Hollywood Pictures. Steve even liked the pathos he gave to the Lizard. Filming began in the spring of 1991, just weeks after we’d signed the deal.

    Steve ultimately didn’t even take a share for himself, considering it “blood money”. Just enough to cover his company’s expenses. We brought in our other partners on Maus, ultimately seeing the film co-produced by Brooksfilms under the neutral B&B Productions label, and funded in partnership with Jack Tramiel of Commodore.

    Production went well. Steve outdid himself. It was gut wrenching in all the right ways. Neeson was sublime and deservedly took home the Oscar. You knew all that. It would debut for Christmas of 1992.

    Strangely, this put it up against MGM’s other Big Important Picture, Malcolm X, which we’d scooped up from Warner. I’ll talk about that one at another time.

    The important thing is that Schindler, which we released two weeks after X, became a surprise hit! Even the Germans loved it, making it a breakout hit there. Guilt? Hoping to identify with Schindler? Who knows? It would go on to break $300 million at the international box office, with about $25 million of it going to the museum. I’d have given more away but after the kerfuffle with the board over Song of Susan I wasn’t about to make that same mistake again. They can have their 30 pieces of silver.

    Yea, I just said that. Sue me.

    But if Steve and I were ecstatic, then Spike was furious. “You fucked me, Bernie!”

    “I did no such fucking thing, Spike. Nobody expected this to happen with a Holocaust movie!”

    “Even from Spielberg?”

    Especially from Spielberg! He does killer shark movies!”

    I eventually talked Spike down. I even showed him our projections for Schindler, which we gave an even chance of breaking even and were prepared to write off entirely. Of course, we didn’t expect much better than breaking even with his film either, to be honest. And Malcolm X still made bank, breaking $70 million internationally after a surprisingly good international showing. And pretty soon he had a new target for his ire: The Academy, which gave all the statuettes to Steve and Clint Eastwood.

    Would Malcolm X have done better if we’d delayed Schindler? Who can say?

    But he wasn’t the only one who saw red. When X failed to take home a single statue in March of ‘93, not even one for Denzel, the streets of Brooklyn erupted into angry protests and soon counter-protests as the simmering tensions between the Black and Jewish communities exploded once again. The Nation of Islam, even, hypocritically enough, Farrakhan himself (which is kind of ironic given his recent admissions), used the opportunity to spread antisemitic conspiracy theories. Some of my own tribe said some stupid shit that Steve and I had to call them out on. There were even some isolated incidents of rioting and a case of arson that the press blew up into “as bad as LA” (it wasn’t!).

    But what a story, right? “The Oscar Riots!” People rioting over the fucking Oscars!

    No, Peter Jennings, you putz, they were rioting over decades of poverty, bigotry, antisemitism, and ethnic tension. If it hadn’t been over a couple of movies, it would have been over something like George Steinbrenner benching Charlie Hayes.

    Steve and Spike agreed to appear together to ask for calm. Steve pushed for more people to see Malcolm X and got it a slight bump at the Box Office. Others reportedly went to see X and Schindler both, wondering what all the fuss was about.

    That fucking riot probably made us another $10 million, if you can fucking believe it.

    We took some of the Schindler and X money to help rebuild Brooklyn and support community healing initiatives, once again trying to do the right thing—the same right thing that got us into the mess to begin with.

    The whole contrast between the event and the shit I got over The Song of Susan really put a lot into perspective for me. You do the right thing and raise millions for charity and suddenly have to defend your job. You inadvertently cause a fucking riot, and you make millions.

    I guess no good deed goes unpunished after all…and no bad deed unrewarded.
     
    "Oh my, the Prince is a Frog!"
  • Chapter 18: Chairman of the Board
    Excerpt from Jim Henson: Storyteller, an authorized biography by Jay O’Brian


    “Meet the Frog Prince,” said the headline in the January 1993 edition of Fortune, one of seemingly hundreds of similar headlines across the Entertainment and Financial press. They all covered the same story: that Jim Henson was suddenly the acting Chairman of the Board for Walt Disney Entertainment.

    With Al Gore sworn in as President of the United States, Chairman Frank Wells was on a leave of absence and taking a job as the Undersecretary of Commerce for Sustainable Growth, leaving Jim as Acting Disney Chairman and promoting Dick Nunis to Acting President. It wasn’t a job that Jim had sought, but it was one that he vowed to perform to the best of his abilities. He was still the CCO as well, but delegated the position of Chairman and President of Walt Disney Studios down to Roy Disney as Acting President.

    As Acting Chairman, Jim still refused to use the gavel out of principle, but he was quickly reestablishing his standing with the board, who seemed to support his ascension. He’d gained a reputation with them even through the challenges of 1990-1991 as a “straight shooter” who told them the truth, however awkward, took ownership of the problems, and didn’t try to cover up issues or downplay their concerns, even as he stood by his decisions and refused to compromise his ethical and moral prerogatives. He had demonstrated the ability to remain calm in the face of adversity and deescalate the tension, steering things towards a meaningful, good faith agreement. He took responsibility when things went awry and didn’t “throw people under the bus”. Ron Miller was personally amazed that he could work directly with the cantankerous Stanley Gold, who though not a board member remained Roy Disney’s most outspoken advocate.

    Still, the kerfuffle over Toys and The Song of Susan remained in very recent memory. Perhaps this was a final sink-or-swim test for him. While not a suspicious man by nature, Jim wondered if he was being set up to fail as an excuse to remove him from the board. He also wondered if mattered to him if he was.

    Disney Chairman was a strange duck of a position compared to most Fortune 500 corporations. The precedent in Disney in the early 1980s of splitting the roles of Chairman and CEO had lasted for over a decade at this point, and had led to a divergence of tasks for the two positions that were typically claimed by the same person in most corporations at the time, who then became the undisputed “head” of the company. And yet at Disney it became an “outside-inside” thing where, as Wells put it, the CEO was the “Commander in Chief” of all internal Disney operations while the Chairman was the “Secretary of State” tasked with addressing “outside entities”. The CEO “ran the company” and the Chairman was “the face of the company” with both the shareholders and the public at large. That meant being the media presence, the face of negotiations (though Jim let the “Legal Weasels” guide his hands there), the person who calmed the board and charmed the investors, and the guy who “cut the ribbons and smiled for the camera”. Some had begun to call the positions the “Walt” and the “Roy”, often with a touch of irony. Remaining Chief Creative Officer (another “Walt” job) also kept Jim in a position of authority with regards to creative decisions and the strategic direction on things creative, the “Navigator” to Ron’s “Commanding Officer”, to use Card Walker’s Navy-based terminology.

    And 1993 was certainly a challenging time to be the Face of Disney and the Navigator, even though Ron continued to manage the strategic execution of the company as CEO. Disneyland Valencia was still struggling a bit and had been wildly over budget. Port Disney Phase II was about to open, but costs continued to soar, with some fearing that it could top $5 billion before all was said and done. And while Phase I, Disney’s Pier Revue, was getting a reasonable attendance and generally meeting or exceeding attendance projections, it wasn’t nearly enough to justify the operating costs when you had to pay tax on all of the pier, even the idle parts, though Acting President Dick Nunis swore to him and Ron that Phase II would drastically increase revenues and that Phase III would be “the crown jewel of Disney Resorts”.

    Things were better in Disneyland and Walt Disney World. The Good Sports Resort was performing above expectations, which made Ron, its “daddy”, ecstatic. EPCOT was still pulling in numbers as was the Magic Kingdom. And the Disney-MGM Hollywoodland Resort would open in the spring of 1993. The half-day park’s costs were kept much more constrained and controlled than Valencia or Port Disney, with the opening day costs ultimately topping $525 million, not counting the $200-250 million already spend separately by Disney-MGM Studios building the working Disney-MGM Studios East complex, which was already receiving tours from the soon-to-be closed Entertainment Pavilion. Despite, or perhaps because of competition from nearby Universal Studios, Hollywoodland and the Disney-MGM Studios tours were expected to be an immediate success. Best yet, from a purely company politics perspective, the majority of the work had been managed by Bass’s Arvida subsidiary, which helped calm the disgruntled Sid Bass. Jim began to talk with Imagineering and Parks & Recreation (soon renamed Disney Resorts and Recreation or “R & R”) about what else could be done at WDW.

    The Disneytowns were performing at or above expectations, and the studios continued to perform spectacularly, balancing the art and the finance.

    Another discussion surrounded the possible creation of a residential neighborhood within WDW itself, a corporate-administered township as a sort of mini-E.P.C.O.T., with Roy and some of the board in favor but Jim and others vehemently opposed to the idea on principle. “Are we to be feudal lords now?” asked Jim, facetiously, “I mean, I get that we have the castle already…”

    Jim instead pushed for well-built and rent-controlled housing for Disney employees as a perk, seeing Lake Buena Vista and the like as places where WDW employees and their families could live comfortably and affordably. Others wanted to continue the policy of reserving the homes for VIPs and business partners or rent them out as premium vacation homes. They eventually compromised on a division of the houses between employees, guest renters, and visiting company partners, expanding with new “neighborhoods” throughout the coming decades. The debate on whether to sell houses to anyone off the street raged on.

    His artistic reputation was also recovering with the board after the debacle of Toys, a film that he still felt deserved better. Not only had Aladdin been a spectacular hit, shattering records for an animated film, but the unwanted Shrek! had made a good profit and found a receptive audience precisely because it was so far removed from (and so deconstructive of) the Disney Formula. While it didn’t sell as many toys as other animated features, teens and adults flocked to it and soon the kids’ toys were abandoned in favor of adult-aimed “collector’s items” and snarky, ironic T-shirts to sell at places like Spencer’s Gifts and beachside tourist shops. Terry Gilliam’s Lost in La Mancha had become a hybrid animation hit as well, though not to the level of Roger Rabbit, a franchise that was still pulling in money in animated shorts and a TV animated series.

    Closer to his heart, they did a Muppets version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, starring Michael Caine as Scrooge, with his own son Brian making his directorial debut. And while Jim played no part other than Executive Production, plus some “pick-up” background Muppet work, it made him happy to see his creations still doing well on the big screen.

    The Bamboo Princess was also a major hit when released that winter, beloved by critics and ultimately breaking $280 million internationally, even as it pushed A Muppets Christmas Carol into the #3 slot. The Ghibli-influenced animation, which took visual cues from traditional Japanese ukiyo-e art, probably lost some ground with American audiences due to that animation difference and the bittersweet ending, but its artistic beauty and the inherent innocence and beauty of the eponymous princess managed to connect with the “girly girls” who’d been somewhat alienated by the more modern Princesses of late. It was also scoring high with Asian American audiences, in particular Japanese Americans. Freddie Mercury, who was working on the Little Mermaid soundtrack with Brian May, even shocked and amused Jim by mentioning how much the LGBTQ culture adored The Bamboo Princess, particularly the “Gaysian” community, and how Kaiguyahime was becoming a popular “drag” look.

    And indeed “drag” was on the minds of everyone at animation, because Ron Clements’s villainous Sea Witch Ursula from The Little Mermaid was, per the request of the lost but still beloved Howard Ashman, based in appearance off of the infamous drag queen Divine. Roy Disney, who was considered an “ally” despite his political conservatism and seemingly “old fashioned” values[1] (and still stinging a bit from Vice President Quayle’s not entirely unfounded accusations about Aladdin), was overwhelmingly enthusiastic with the project since it had been in production consideration since the days of Walt.

    Jim and Roy discussed their next options in animation and ultimately decided on launching another Japanese partnership, this time attempting a partnership with Tezuka Production to make a feature length film based on Kimba the White Lion. The deal would, alas, fall through amidst the chaos of Tezuka Productions in the aftermath of Osamu Tezuka’s untimely death in 1989. Instead, writer Linda Woolverton suggested that Disney make an original story. Advising Tezuka of their plans for a “King of Beasts” type story as a professional courtesy (and receiving a thumbs-up), the film went into production and included an “inspired by the brilliant artistry and storytelling of Osamu Tezuka” credit[2]. Woolverton, at the advice of Jim, enlisted Harry Belafonte as the musical director. Belafonte also worked with Woolverton and animator/storywriter Brenda Chapman on the evolving story, ultimately basing the plot on the legendary Malinke “Lion King” Simba of the Epic of Sundiata. Belafonte ultimately shared a “story by” credit with Woolverton and Chapman and would even voice the soothsaying mandril griot Nounfari.

    When Shrek was in post, Joe Ranft also came to Jim with plans for an all-computer-animated feature using three-dimensional vector images. Not hand-drawn images digitally inked and painted through the DATA process, but full, 100% digital vector creations, completely three-dimensional without a single hand-drawn sketch or painting beyond concept art. “We can make everything interactive with this tech,” Ranft told him. “The walls, the clouds, the trees, even the horizon! The days of static backgrounds and forced multiplane parallax are over!” It was a revolutionary idea, technically risky, and Jim greenlit it immediately. Since humans created by the software still looked plastic and uncanny, the feature was to be based on non-organic characters, specifically the story The Brave Little Toaster, which had been a passion-project of Ranft’s friend John Lasseter, who would help with the storyboards as part of his “redemption tour” at 3D.

    Similarly, the success of Spider-Man led to the sequels and, naturally, other Marvel productions. The Incredible Hulk was a natural follow-on given the name recognition from the somewhat-recent Bill Bixby TV series, and went almost immediately into production. The Fantastic Four would be the next film greenlit with Joss Whedon writing. Whedon was also pushing to do an X-Men film, which was given the tentative greenlight based upon the performance of The Incredible Hulk. Ultimately, it was determined that the necessary effects to do The Fantastic Four “right” were still a few years away, which led to the X-Men film, which had the benefit of the comics series and TV animation being at their peak of popularity, being produced first and scheduled for release in 1996 after Spider-Man 3, with Fan-Four pushed to 1997. With this, a full-blown Disney/Marvel rivalry with Warner/DC became inevitable, particularly with Warner now fully into the theme park game and directly challenging Disney as the King of Immersive Experiences thanks to the Warner Movie World parks.

    And managing all of this fell on to Jim as CCO while justifying the decisions to the board fell on him as the acting Chairman. And as the Chairman of the Board, even Acting, Jim was undeniably the Face of Disney now, where his friendly smile and “Santa-like” beard, which was becoming increasingly white with each passing year, were inevitably linked to Disney in the public eye. Ron Miller was digging into the day-to-day operations, finance, and strategic planning alongside Stan Kinsey and Dick Nunis while Jim focused on the creative aspects as well as the marketing, outreach, shareholder relations, and “public image” stuff. While Roy continued to host The Wonderful World of Disney, Jim continued to make television appearances and appear in interviews. When a photo-op was needed, Jim Henson was there, occasionally with a Muppet (usually Kermit) in tow.

    The new position fed his inclination towards workaholism, which began to once again affect his private life. Jim and Daryl Hannah were still dating behind the scenes, but with Jim increasingly absorbed in his work, the thrill and the intimacy were dwindling. Then the plans for DisneySea came to Hannah’s attention. She immediately assumed that it was a Sea World style “animal show” and was appalled. Jim maintained that no, it was like a fancy aquarium and that education and animal rescue and rehabilitation were the principal aim, along with conservation. Still, she was increasingly disturbed by stories that she heard about its construction possibly damaging or polluting the waters around it even as Jim swore that they were, at great expense, attempting to preserve and restore as much as they could. Still, DisneySea would drive a small wedge in their relationship exacerbated by this increasing work tempo.

    And while Jim almost never made it to “the strip” anymore, he soon received a call from his son John. Bob Forrest, John Frusciante, and Johnny Depp had dragged an unconscious River Phoenix into his Wellness Center in the middle of the night, the victim of an apparent drug overdose. Teresa, the on-site RN, began giving him medical attention as they awaited the ambulance, with Phoenix entering into ventricular fibrillation at one moment and requiring the crash cart.

    The ambulance arrived and Phoenix was taken to Cedars-Sinai Hospital, where he was put into the intensive care unit. Phoenix would wake up three days later to discover that friends and family, to include the Skeleton Crew and the Henson family, had been running a 24-hour vigil on him. “I awoke to see [my sister] Rain by my bed. John Henson was out in the waiting area. I had no idea what had happened,” said Phoenix.

    Phoenix entered into a rehabilitation program with John as his sponsor and Jim paying the bills. Unlike the other young men that they’d tried to help over the years, Phoenix actually stayed off of the drugs and redoubled his wellness lifestyle, even giving up alcohol. He would take the experience and, with the help of screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, wrote, produced, directed, and starred in Moneymaker, a semiautobiographical account of a young film star driven to drugs by the stresses of Hollywood. Released by MGM in 1997, it would earn him Oscar nominations for acting and Best Picture and win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

    Jim and Daryl would briefly restore the bonds of their relationship in the midst of caring for Phoenix, though soon their diverging lives would start pulling them back apart. “Chairman Jim”, the “Frog Prince”, would relish the small moments, but the ever-devouring hydra of his work at Disney continued to dominate his time and energy.



    * * *​

    The Board of Directors for the Walt Disney Entertainment Company, January 1993:

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


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

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



    The Disney Executive Committee:

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



    * * *​

    Stocks at a Glance: Walt Disney Entertainment (DIS)

    January 4th, 1993
    Stock price: $54.14
    Major Shareholders: Henson family (20.4%), Roy E. Disney (13.4%), Disney-Miller family (12.7%), Sid Bass (9.6%), Bill Marriott (6.3%), Amblin Entertainment (1.3%), Apple Comp. (0.7%), Lucasfilm Ltd. (0.5%), Suspected “Knights Errant” (5.7%), Other (29.4%)
    Outstanding shares: 451.2 million



    * * *​

    Pictures Released by Walt Disney Studios, 1991-1992

    Release dateTitleStudio labelCo-production with
    January 18, 1991White FangWalt Disney PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    February 8, 1991ValkenvaniaHyperion PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    February 14, 1991101 Dalmatians [Re-release]Walt Disney Pictures
    February 22, 1991A Resounding MaybeHyperion PicturesWoody Allen Productions, Silver Screen Partners IV
    March 1, 1991SandFantasia filmsSilver Screen Partners IV
    March 15, 1991ShipwreckedAB Svensk FilmindustriDistributed in North America by Buena Vista
    April 5, 1991An American in Paris [Re-release]MGMColumbia Entertainment
    April 12, 1991Killer Klowns from Outer SpaceFantasia FilmsSkeleton Crew Productions
    April 26, 1991Tiny Titans Two: Trophy TroublesWalt Disney PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    May 17, 1991What About BobHyperion PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    May 24, 1991Spider-ManMGMMarvel Productions, Silver Screen Partners IV
    June 7, 1991City SlickersHyperion PicturesAs You Wish Entertainment, Silver Screen Partners IV
    June 14, 1991Roger Rabbit’s Toon Platoon [w/ Short Captain America: Battling the Blitzkreig!]Walt Disney PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    June 21, 1991Jungle FeverMGM40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, Silver Screen Partners IV
    July 12, 1991Muppets: ImpossibleWalt Disney PicturesParamount Pictures, Silver Screen Partners IV
    July 26, 1991ToysMGMSilver Screen Partners IV
    August 2, 1991Devil in a Blue DressHyperion PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    August 16, 1991The Spirit: The Long Reach of the Octopus [w/ Short: Spider-Man Meets Mysterio]Walt Disney PicturesBird Brain Productions, Silver Screen Partners IV
    August 23, 1991The Sword of CerebusFantasia FilmsBrooksfilm, Silver Screen Partners III
    September 7, 1991Only YesterdayStudio GhibliDistributed in North America by Buena Vista
    September 27, 1991Playing with FireHyperion PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    October 4, 1991Ed WoodHyperion PicturesSkeleton Crew Productions, Silver Screen Partners IV
    October 25, 1991The Addams FamilyFantasia FilmsSkeleton Crew Productions, Orion Films, Silver Screen Partners IV
    November 1, 1991Hercules: The Howard Hughes StoryMGMWarren Beatty Productions, Amblin Entertainment, Silver Screen Partners IV
    November 22, 1991AladdinWalt Disney PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    December 11, 1991ThinnerFantasia FilmsAs You Wish Entertainment, Dino De Laurentiis, Silver Screen Partners IV
    December 24, 1991Ben Hur [Re-Release]MGMColumbia Entertainment
    January 10, 1992JuiceMGMIsland World, Moritz-Heyman Productions, Silver Screen Partners IV
    January 31, 1992A Gnome Named GnormFantasia FilmsPolyGram Filmed Entertainment, Interscope Communications, Silver Screen Partners IV
    February 7, 1992Pinocchio [Re-Release]Walt Disney Pictures
    February 14, 1992Wayne’s WorldHyperion PicturesNBC Films, Silver Screen Partners IV
    March 6, 1992FaberAction FilmsBioskop Film, Stefi 2 Productions, As You Wish Entertainment, Distributed in North America by Buena Vista
    March 27, 1992TMNT 2: The Rise of KrangFantasia FilmsSilver Screen Partners IV
    April 3, 1992A Miracle in VeniceHyperion PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    April 10, 1992FernGully: The Last RainforestWalt Disney PicturesHoyts, Kroyer Films, Inc., Youngheart Productions, FAI Films, Silver Screen Partners IV
    April 24, 1992Mask of the Lone RangerWalt Disney PicturesAmblin Entertainment, Silver Screen Partners IV
    May 1, 1992Porco RossoStudio GhibliDistributed in North America by Buena Vista
    May 8, 1992Sister ActHyperion PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    May 22, 1992Lost in La ManchaWalt Disney PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    June 12, 1992Shrek! [w/ Short Roger Rabbit: Roller Coaster Rabbit]Fantasia FilmsSilver Screen Partners IV
    June 26, 1992A League of their OwnHyperion PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    July 1, 1992Honey, I Blew Up the Kids!Fantasia FilmsSilver Screen Partners IV
    July 17, 1992Mr. Saturday NightHyperion PicturesAs You Wish Entertainment, Silver Screen Partners IV
    August 7, 1992A Few Good MenMGMAs You Wish Entertainment, Silver Screen Partners IV
    August 28, 1992Kid NinjasWalt Disney PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    September 11, 1992The Fisher KingMGMHill/Obst Productions, Silver Screen Partners IV
    October 9, 1992The Mighty DucksWalt Disney PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    October 16, 1992Mr. Right NowHyperion PicturesAs You Wish Entertainment, Silver Screen Partners IV
    October 23, 1992BunniculaWalt Disney PicturesSkeleton Crew Productions, Silver Screen Partners IV
    November 21, 1992The Bamboo Princess [w/ Short: Origami Mommy]Walt Disney PicturesStudio Ghibli, Silver Screen Partners IV
    December 7, 1992Malcolm XMGM40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, Warner Brothers
    December 11, 1992A Muppets Christmas Carol [w/ Short: Roger Rabbit: Trails and Tribulations]Walt Disney PicturesSilver Screen Partners IV
    December 19, 1992Schindler’s ListMGMAmblin Entertainment, B&B Productions, Silver Screen Partners IV
    December 25, 1992Brigadoon [Re-Release]MGMColumbia Entertainment




    - ∞ -


    End of Part VIII; Part IX begins Tuesday (weather permitting!) [3]


    [1] Roy E. Disney and his wife in our timeline were reportedly close friends with the openly gay Thomas Schumacher and his partner Matthew White, inviting them to stay at their castle in Ireland. Roy was also a professional mentor for Schumacher. Though a Reagan Republican, Roy by all reports was tolerant of and friendly to LGBTQ people.

    [2] I debated just doing a Kimba partnership for a long time, but decided that was too obvious. Instead, a truly African legend based on Sundiata seemed inherently more satisfying all around. With the official “inspired by” credit, there will be no controversy in this timeline.

    [3] This is where I preferably would have ended Book I and set up Book II, but que sera sera.
     
    Part IX: The Frog Prince
  • Part IX: The Frog Prince


    Sir Robin the Brave: I'm valiant and daring/And noble of bearing/Courageous and gallant/A mountain of talent/No wonder folks curtsy and wave/I'm Robin, Sir Robin, the Brave.

    Kermit: You're also a frog.

    - From Tales from Muppetland: The Frog Prince


    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 January of 1993 Albert “Al” Gore was inaugurated as America’s 42nd President of the United States. While this meant big changes for the United States, of course, it also meant a big change for the Walt Disney Entertainment Company. Per the deal/bet that he’d made with CEO Ron Miller, Chairman and President Frank Wells would be temporarily stepping down to assume a job in the Gore administration while CCO and Vice Chair Jim Henson and Disney Recreation Chair Dick Nunis would be filling in as Acting Chairman and Acting President, respectively. Roy E. Disney would become Acting Vice Chairman as well as Acting Chair and President of Walt Disney Studios.

    Wells, meanwhile, would become the Undersecretary of Commerce for Sustainable Growth, an ad hoc position with a small committee of government undersecretaries and technocrats and representatives from industry and academia. For the adventurous Wells, the public service position offered a new set of challenges and opportunities. The planned committee would begin as a 2-year pilot with the option to extend further. The pilot program would be the first step in a long-term move towards a sustainable economic policy for power, infrastructure, transport, and regulations and would cross over between the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Interior, Defense, and Transportation, to include the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and National Science Foundation (NSF). Wells would alternate his physical location between the Department of Commerce offices in the Herbert Hoover Building in Washington, DC, and the NIST Building 1 in Boulder, Colorado. Not only did this arrangement give Wells the opportunity for an easy-out if public service didn’t work for him, but the Boulder location, deliberately chosen by Wells for this reason, would let him reacclimate to high altitudes and practice his mountain climbing skills with the local Sherpa expatriate community in preparation for finally summitting Everest, the last of the “seven summits” for Wells.

    For the humble Henson, the Chairmanship was a job that he hadn’t really given much thought to, being perpetually in the “here and now” of late, but for which all agreed that he was fully qualified. Not only had he served with distinction as the Chairman for Walt Disney Studios for the last almost-decade, but as Vice-Chair he’d filled in for Wells on several occasions, where his easy going and gentle nature had proven very effective at averting or limiting arguments, keeping egos in check, and gaining meaningful consensus, even if it had meant a shift in his old not-exactly-professional inclinations. The successes of 1992 and The Bamboo Princess and expected success of Jurassic Park had won over the more hesitant directors and the board voted unanimously and without much argument to hand the job to Henson, who retained his position as Chief Creative Officer. “Gosh, everyone, I’m really flattered,” he reportedly said, honestly surprised at the opportunity.

    For the ambitious Nunis, the Presidency was the job he’d been seeking for a decade, but which his bald ambition had ironically held him back from achieving. But the Dick Nunis of 1993 was a different man from the aggressive bully that openly angled for the job in ’84. His time juggling the competing interests of his increased duties as head of the ever-growing Walt Disney Recreation, a job that included working closely with the equally ambitious and aggressive Director Al Checchi of Marriott and the genteel but unwavering Bill Marriott, Jr. – not to mention his experiences dealing with the mercurial Dragados in Spain – had humbled him and forced him to accept the limitations of yelling your way to power. Similarly, the runaway costs of Disneyland Valencia and Port Disney and resulting “bailout” by Pearson had shaken his rock-solid self-assuredness, forcing a bit of self-reflection of late. Furthermore, despite having a rocky start together, his personal and professional relationship with Jim Henson had grown tight and mutually respectful, Henson the yin to his yang in nearly every respect, and it had taught him the value of positivity, trust, and appreciation for one’s employees while he in turn had taught Henson the advantages of confidence, assertiveness, and a strong handshake in dealing with egotistical people.

    As Wells had long suspected, and had secretly worked to make happen, Henson and Nunis complimented one another and helped balance each other’s limitations as leaders. Furthermore, Miller would be there to serve as a stabilizing force while COO Stan Kinsey would be there to quietly maintain Wells’ well-oiled operations machine, keeping the Company Ship sailing regardless of what happened on the board.

    And as it turned out, things did start out a bit rocky. Nunis was a humbler man than he was in ‘84, but he was still Dick Nunis, “SOB 1”, and acted aggressively to impose his will as the new President in an early show of force. This, needless to say, resulted in pushback from VPs and Department Heads who liked to remind him of the “Acting” part of that title. Nunis and Kinsey also clashed over boundaries and responsibilities and even who “outranked” the other. Miller, in turn, reminded them both that they both worked for him first. Nunis also pressed his authority with Acting Chairman Henson, assuming he could dominate his friend in the way that he often dominated their conversations on their surf outings together.

    But if Nunis had mellowed over the decade, then Henson had learned to become more assertive, particularly within the performance of his official duties. He’d developed what his daughter Lisa dubbed “business Tai Chi”, letting the force of personalities and business stress move past him and redirecting it, defusing the conflict, and steering everyone towards the “win-win” consensus. “You can scream at Jim all you want,” Kinsey noted. “You might as well scream at a smiling statue.” Nunis, particularly once Miller had a word with him, ultimately settled in to a firm but comfortable position as benevolent master of his domain. Nunis and Kinsey, at the urging of both Henson and Miller, drew out the respective lines in their areas of authority and ultimately learned to rely heavily upon one another.

    Once this “forming, storming, and norming” process worked itself out, the Disney Board and Executive Committee settled into the “new normal” of life without the firm but gentle hand of Frank Wells there to steady the rudder. As Wells suspected, the four professionals, each so different in their personalities and leadership styles, balanced each other’s strengths and weaknesses. The Walt Disney Entertainment Company would, he felt, carry on just fine in his absence, and the Symphony of Disney would harmoniously play on.
     
    Meta: Big Brass Butterflies
  • Meta-Discussion: Big Brass Butterflies
    Or: “The End [of Predictable Change] is Nigh”


    As I’ve mentioned in earlier Meta-Discussions, any alternate history has three “zones” as I identify them: the “Immediate After-Effects” zone where the immediate consequences of the Point of Departure (POD) are felt, the “Plausible Butterflies” zone, where the predictable cascade of changes due to the POD occurs even as the general trends of our timeline can be seen and felt, with increasingly large changes as the timeline continues, and the “Fiction Zone” where the changes are so different that you’re essentially making everything up. These are not hard, fast lines, but zones that blend and fade into one another like a spectrum.

    As I’ve also said in these discussions, Pop Culture is as volatile as the weather, and thus would most plausibly be in the Fiction Zone in less than a decade after the POD. I’ve also described how I’ve cheated a bit to keep things far more parallel to our timeline than is strictly plausible just to push back this Fiction Zone lest you get a stream of “Captain Chair Lamp” or whatever.

    Mosura_trailer_-_Mothra_flying.png

    Shown: Emerging Butterflies in this Timeline

    So, as we work our way through the second decade of this timeline, we increasingly approach the Fiction Event Horizon even as I work to artificially keep things echoing our timeline. As such, the days where you see The Movie from Our Timeline and The Movie We Know, but Slightly Different are increasingly past and increasingly we will see The Movie That Never Was playing alongside or increasingly instead of these more familiar films. Some of these will parallel movies or TV series from our timeline, reflecting similar currents in the prevailing zeitgeist, but increasingly we will see something that was considered but abandoned or something entirely new that spun up from similar circumstances and we will increasingly not see what happened in our timeline. Analogs will increase, e.g. Film Somewhat Similar to a Famous One from Our Timeline will debut as a summer blockbuster, as will Film Unlike Anything we Had in Our Timeline. There may also be a few surprise second-order butterflies, but only where the events of the TL justify them.

    Strictly plausible? No. We’d be pure Fiction Zone by now if we were going by Orthodox Butterfly Theory.

    What this means with regards to the timeline is that where the 1980s in this timeline were a mix of the familiar and the fictional, the 1990s will increasingly be a blend of the “reminiscent of something familiar” and the completely fictional. We will see where ideas that began remarkably like they did in our world instead go in completely new directions, so your favorite films of 1996 may increasingly be ones quite similar to them but still unique, or something completely different.

    This will include nearly all of your beloved 1990s and 2000s classics, including the Disney Animated Canon.

    You have been warned.

    Outside events are likewise starting to change. We already have new governments in numerous countries, including the US and former USSR, and resulting changes because of that. This will also influence pop culture, such that an idea that would never have come to anyone’s mind in the 1990s in our timeline will appear here, driven by outside events. A Gore Presidency will mean new priorities in the 1990s compared to Clinton, even though there will be overlap. And even in areas where political priorities align, they will be executed in different ways since the two have such different leadership styles.

    We’ve already got plenty of tastes of this. For example, Gary Hart’s “Monkey Business” stayed hidden long enough to get him the Democratic nomination in 1988, which led to down-ballot changes in the Congress that surprised even me, which led to Clarence Thomas getting “Borked”, which led to an earlier reckoning on Sexual Harassment and Assault, which led to changes in company management (e.g. John Lasseter getting suspended and Harvey Weinstein getting removed), which have led to changes in active productions and new leadership opportunities in the companies. These changes will continue to proliferate, particularly in places like Disney’s “3D” (our timeline’s Pixar) where the more amicable, gender-equitable, and self-controlled Joe Ranft is at the creative helm rather than Lasseter, who is instead working his way back into the good graces of Disney management.

    Things will also start to evolve in new ways. How will 1990s tentpole staples like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series fare in a world where you had 1989’s Final Girl instead?

    What will happen to the Disney Animated Canon in a world with different leadership with different priorities?

    How will Marvel and DC movies continue to evolve?

    How will CBS and Columbia continue to fare under Ted Turner?

    How will theme parks continue to evolve in a world with Disneytowns and DisneySea, Warner Movie World parks in the US, and even Columbia Peach Grove Studios?

    And what will happen to beloved television animated classics like The Animaniacs in a world where Steven Spielberg is tied to Disney rather than Warner Brothers?

    Well, I can answer that last one…next time!
     
    Post = Zany^ [The Max]
  • The Great Retro-Animation Escape-Premise Controversy (1993)
    Post from Animation Nation Netlog, by Mary Mel O’Dea, May 5th, 2013


    The early 1990s saw a new Golden Age of TV animation. It was originally driven by Disney in the late 1980s with Warner Brothers right behind and Triad and Hollywood Animation (a.k.a. DiC) quickly making their mark. So, when Disney announced their latest animated TV series Out of the Vault! in partnership with Amblin, few people paid much attention.

    At least until Warner Brothers cried foul.

    Out of the Vault! is a classic of the ‘80s/’90s animation renaissance. The official Disney story, which I have no evidence to refute, begins with Steven Spielberg approaching Roy Disney and Jim Henson in the early 1990s with an idea: a truly retro cartoon that harkened back to the days of “Steamboat Willie”. In his idea they would reintroduce the precocious Mickey from the Walt-and-Ub pre-Hyperion era: a clever, tricky little scamp who always got into trouble and used his wits – and some violations of the laws of physics – to win the day against insurmountable odds.

    “My kids think Mickey and Minnie are boring,” he reportedly told Roy. Certainly, Mickey had come a long way since “Steamboat Willie”. Over the decades he’d arguably matured and mellowed, losing his trickster edge and becoming an “aw, shucks” everyman. Minnie had gone there with him. And while Mickey in the City and other recent TV animation had given him back some personality (he was “on the verge of becoming a stale corporate mascot before we got to him” claimed Frank Oz), Spielberg had a real soft spot for the clever and chaotic cartoons of his childhood. He wanted a show featuring a return to Mickey’s absurdist, anarchic roots. He wanted Him and other retro-characters to emerge again in the modern day, sewing chaos and madcap in a postmodern, absurdist satire full of self-aware jokes and fourth wall breaks.

    Disney and Henson agreed on the joy of the old cartoons, but Roy in particular felt that Mickey had “moved on” and Henson agreed that a reversion at this point would likely not play well with a generation that had grown up on “the friendly neighborhood mouse”.

    “What if we call him Mortimer?” asked Roy.

    53-538346_unique-mickey-mouse-turns-90-happy-birthday-just.png

    Brother Mortimer (Image source “netclipart.com”)

    When Walt and Ub first created a cartoon mouse to replace Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, which had been claimed by Universal along with most of Disney’s best animators in the late 1920s, Walt wanted to name him Mortimer. His wife Lillian convinced him to go with the friendlier name Mickey. In Roy’s opinion they could “reintroduce” Mickey’s “long-lost older brother Mortimer” as exactly the kind of anarchic old school cartoon that Spielberg wanted.

    Mortimer may have been on his mind because of a recent controversy surrounding Outland, a newspaper cartoon strip by Bloom County creator Berkley Breathed. The strip introduced a character named Mortimer Mouse, a tough, jaded, cigarette-smoking satire of Mickey and by extension Disney and corporate children’s entertainment. Like in the proposed new animated series, Mortimer from Outland was Mickey’s estranged older brother. But in Breathed’s telling, the breakup was far from amicable.

    outland-comic-strip-002.jpg

    Outland’s Mortimer Mouse in our timeline’s response to Disney’s lawsuit (Image source “disneynouns.files.wordpress.com”)

    They’d sent Breathed a “polite, but strongly worded letter” in 1989 to cease and desist and eventually settled out of court. Mortimer vanished from Outland without a word[1] and Fantasia TV later produced TV specials based on Breathed’s new children’s books A Wish for Wings That Work: An Opus Christmas Story and The Last Basselope.

    And thus, Mortimer would return to Disney in a far friendlier form than Breathed’s jaded version, but Mortimer alone wasn’t going to hold the show together. They kicked around some ideas for some sidekicks and co-conspirators, deciding that a trio would work best. Roy at one point lamented the loss of Oswald and his feline girlfriend Ortensia to Universal, recalling how much his uncle Walt always felt anger about that “betrayal”.

    Universal hadn’t been using the Oswald IP in decades and reportedly had no intention of starting now.

    Spielberg said, “I’ve got some friends at Universal; I’ll see what I can do.”

    Sure enough, Steven Spielberg managed to negotiate the sale of Oswald and the rest of that cartoon’s cast to Disney in 1991 for an undisclosed amount rumored to be in the low millions, along with negotiating some minor grievances that had emerged over theme park rights given Amblin’s cooperation with both companies in that area.

    475f79431d3e85dec5c2be3b8d69c0fba78a8eef_00.gif
    1642245769917.png

    Oswald and Ortensia then and now (Image source “aminoapps.com” & “disney.fandom.com”)

    So, they now had their three leads and a few supporting characters, but how to introduce, or reintroduce, the characters to the modern day? The solution “was obvious” in the words of the creative team: the legendary “Disney Vault”. The three characters of Mortimer, Oswald, and Ortensia would “escape” from the Disney Vault and cause chaos in a show guaranteed to appeal to younger audiences thanks to the physical humor and absurdist jokes and appeal to adults thanks to some satirical elements and cagey adult humor.

    The show became Out of the Vault!, the name inspired in part by the old Out of the Inkwell Fleisher cartoons and in part by the (in)famous Disney Vault, and it was a breakout hit when it debuted as part of the NBC Jr. block in 1993. Mortimer became the leader, a tricky but fun-loving and happy-go-lucky type who just wanted to make his way in peace in a cruel world, but he had a very defined sense of right and wrong and took chaotic vengeance on any ne’er do well that challenged or threatened him, his friends, or any innocents. Oswald was a lazy, entitled, and slightly hedonistic but charismatic schemer in a “silly Han Solo” sort of way, who is inevitably up to some get-rich-quick scheme or developing overcomplex ways to avoid even the smallest amount of hard work. Ortensia is a “cute” and comedically melodramatic girly type on the surface, but this hides a whip-smart and industrious side that inevitably saves the day while the “boys” look on, amazed once again. She’s also often the source of some more complex sociopolitical satire for the parents. All three have absolutely no respect for the fourth wall or laws of physics. Mortimer, Oswald, and Ortensia (or “MOO” as the running gag went) became hugely popular with kids and adults alike with their chaotic, Vaudeville-inspired humor. Celebrities, other Disney characters, and even the Disney & Amblin execs themselves were open to abuse at the hands and words of the “MOO Crew”[2]. Nonstop gags, lampshade-hangs, fourth wall breaks, and absurdist elements prevailed, as did some adult humor (“I love that thing that you do with your tail”).

    The MOO Crew would bring chaos wherever they went and even the laws of physics couldn’t constrain them. Ortensia in particular commonly detached her own tail to use as a club, hook, pry bar, or other tool (a gag “borrowed” from classic Felix the Cat shorts, and indeed the success of Out of the Vault would spur Don Oriolo to partner with Hollywood Animation/DiC to debut The Mad, Mad World of Felix the Cat on ABC in 1995[3], where Felix would ironically be accused of “copying” Ortensia by viewers). Tails in general were a regular source of humor. In one famous scene from the first episode, a newly escaped Mortimer asks his younger brother Mickey “Oh, my, what happened to your tail, brother?!”

    Almost no jokes were completely off limits, but some were. A background appearance of a cryogenic chamber in the Disney Vault was nixed by Roy. A joke about Al Sharpton not allowing them to reintroduce all of their old friends in the vault was dead on arrival, but became a favorite behind the scenes anecdote. Still, it was impressive how many things slipped past the internal and external censors alike, particularly the hyper-protective Roy, who reportedly had apoplexy when one of the more infamous tail jokes was explained to him after the fact (“You’ll need to work your tail harder than that if you want that money, my dear,” as said by Oswald while Ortensia struggles to lever open a pirate’s treasure chest with her tail).

    Warner Brothers Animation, however, was not laughing. The entire concept was a little too similar to the plot of their own Animaniacs, released the same year on the PFN Kids block, which featured, among other characters, three wise-talking Marx Brothers inspired Platypus[4] brothers named “The Warner Brothers” who escaped from their years of imprisonment inside the Warner Brothers water tower.

    AnimaniacsDucks.jpg

    The original idea for the Warner Brothers: three Platypuses…err… Platypi…err… Platypae…platy… um…two more than one Platypus!

    The origins of Animaniacs began when Warner Bros. Animation head Jean MacCurdy tasked director Tom Ruegger with producing a new animated show. Inspired, he says, by the iconic WB Water Tower, he imagined a scenario where three wacky old school cartoon characters “of the Tex Avery kind” escaped from imprisonment in the tower into the modern-day world. Jean loved the idea and gave it her full support. For the three “Warner Brothers”, who were inspired by his own precocious sons, Tom resurrected his original art school animation: Platypus Duck. Lucky, Plucky, and Duckie, the Warner Brothers, were born.

    Lucky, the oldest, was a Groucho-like leader with a razor-sharp mind. Plucky was a natural schemer in the Chico mold. Duckie was the youngest, a silent, prop-oriented toddler in the Harpo vein who “spoke” through gestures, charades, and a bike horn or other noisemakers. Much like with Out of the Vault!, the Warner Brothers would escape and wreak havoc in the world using cartoon physics and child logic, though they were clearly more inspired by the 1940s-era Looney Tunes and Tex Avery shorts than by the 1920s-era black & white classics that inspired the MOO Crew. Like with Out of the Vault, celebrities were fair game and frequent targets, though the recurring WB Chairman was left unnamed and only subtly based on Chairman/CEO Richard Daly. And if Out of the Vault pushed the limits on the adult humor, then Animaniacs decimated them, such as with the recurring character/running gag of Hello Nurse and the infamous “Fingerprints” joke.

    The similarities to Out of the Vault were obvious to everyone and not-so-subtle accusations of plagiarism flew in both directions, with MacCurdy and Spielberg in particular each suggesting that the other must have somehow overheard their original plans during one of Spielberg’s visits to Warner Brothers. Others suggested a “leak” by a disgruntled employee on one side or the other. The superficial resemblance between Lucky, Plucky, & Duckie and Huey, Dewey, & Louie also didn’t go unnoticed. Fans of both shows came to similar conclusions, despite a lack of supporting evidence either way and with both sides sticking to their original stories. An inevitable rivalry was born.

    Totallyinsaney.jpg

    Featuring some, but not all of these, plus others not from our timeline…

    But the Warner Brothers were not alone in Animaniacs, joined from the beginning by other now-iconic characters: Pinkie and the Brain, two lab mice inspired by animators Eddie Fitzgerald and Tom Minton who try (and fail) to take over the world. Slappy Squirrel, a cartoon character from the classic age who’s now a grumpy old woman, reportedly inspired by a conversation between writer John McCann and animator Sheri Stoner about the latter’s long career of playing troubled teens, a role that she’d allegedly still be playing “when she was 50”. The sexy but innocent Minerva Mink, who pushed the censors to the brink. The Bird Brains, three would-be superhero pigeons based on exaggerated but affectionate versions of Brad Bird, Bruce Timm, and Paul Dini, who try to fight crime dressed as obvious parody versions of Superman, Batman, and The Flash (the Bird Brain animators loved it, and guest-drew an episode for Season 2). The Wise Acres, three mafia-like donkeys who want to “corner the grain racket” on an upstate New York farm and who were clearly based on the Pesci, De Niro, and Liotta characters from Scorsese’s Wise Guys. Mandy and Buttons, a danger-magnet toddler and the put-upon dog who tries to protect her. The yuppie-like Hip Hippos. The rageaholic Katie Kablooie. Kiev the Communist Chicken, who keeps trying to organize a “worker’s revolt” in the henhouse. And in the end, while Lucky, Plucky, and Duckie would be the lead characters and Slappy and the Bird Brains would have a strong following, it was Pinkie and the Brain who became the true breakout sensation, eventually gaining their own spinoff.

    And indeed, it was these other characters that gave Animaniacs its distinct feel from Out of the Vault and helped defray the controversy of the similarities. While some segments of the fandoms remained angry and accusatory, the animators and producers themselves harbored no grudges. In the end, the accusations never went beyond playful barbs in the respective animated shows (“I have a wholly original idea for a cartoon: I call it ‘Out of the Water Tower.’”; “What’s next, cats & rabbits in a romantic relationship?”; “What, you’d prefer I was a platypus?”; “Any resemblance to another show you’d care to mention is strictly intentional on their part.”). Behind the scenes, however, the animators loved each other’s work and frequently met for volleyball games, picnics, and other inter-studio get-togethers. Some animators even guest-wrote or guest-animated for the others’ shows. Ironically, these were the ones most likely to take shots at the other show in a bit of self-deprecation.

    Ultimately, 1996’s feature-length television crossover event[5] Big House Blues brought them all together and featured the Disney antagonist Pete teaming up with the Warner security guard Ralph to finally trap both the Warner Brothers and the MOO Crew in the ACME patented escape-proof “Alca-Trap” (which springs an entire maximum-security prison out of a small giftwrapped box). The two crews then have to put aside their instant rivalry for one another and end a huge, slapstick fight (Ortensia: “How many more anvils must fall? How many more perfectly tasty pies must be sacrificed in the name of this war?”) and plan an impossible escape.

    Like in Roger Rabbit there was a definitive stipulation for equality in screen time and plot importance. The crossover even extended into the other animated characters, with Mickey and Bugs forging an alliance to rescue their admittedly troublesome but still beloved friends and siblings. And it is ultimately the Power of Love and Respect that saves the day and shatters the Alca-Trap. Well, that and a “Cosmic Can-Opener”, a device clearly labelled as “Mfd. by Ex Machina Machine Corp., LLC,” courtesy of a thinly-veiled Dr. Who parody named “Professor How” who travels through time and space in a flying, flatulent-sounding Port-o-John.

    Both rival series would run out of steam and get cancelled by the late 1990s, but both lived on in VHS and VCD sales, Direct Viewing, and merchandise. The MOO Crew in particular made frequent appearances in video and tabletop games such as Mickeyquest and the Kingdom Champions RPG video game. Both series are reportedly under consideration for reboots.

    These beloved classics continue to maintain a loyal following and an ongoing (usually) friendly rivalry in the fandoms. Both are products of their time and yet also timeless. The rival shows may have controversial origins, but they certainly managed to capture the spirit of fun and frivolity of those classic early animations while attaining a new relevance for the then-modern day of the 1990s.

    And which of the two franchises do I personally prefer?

    The answer is “yes”.



    [1] In our timeline Eisner’s Disney went after Breathed with blood in their eyes. They ultimately prevailed and Mortimer was officially “killed” in a “Who Plugged Mortimer Mouse” series that took Disney and Michael Eisner to task, but Breathed didn’t go down without a fight. Disney did not come across as the aggrieved party in the dispute at all, but came across as a bully stifling free speech. Here they’ve settled things much less acrimoniously.

    [2] In one such scene Kermit will lose patience with Jim Henson (who does his own voicework) and “quit” (“What, am I just a puppet to you?”), physically removing himself from Jim’s right hand and walking off with Steve Whitmire, slamming the door behind them. “Now what?” asks Jim’s bare right hand in Kermit’s voice.

    [3] Hat tip to @Neoteros ‘s unnamed friend. Will be a moderately successful 3 season show that, though a distant 3rd place behind Vault and Animaniacs, would reinvigorate the Felix brand to some degree.

    [4] Absolutely true! Tom Ruegger originally wanted the Warner Brothers to be platypuses, inspired by his college character Platypus Duck, but Spielberg steered him to the vaguely ‘20s/’30s inspired creatures of no clear animal analog that became Yakko, Wacko, and Dot in our timeline. In this timeline Spielberg’s taken his ideas to Disney rather than Warner Brothers.

    [5] Airs first on The WB after a coin flip between Roy Disney and Tom Ruegger.
     
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    In the News... (Brought to you by Mood Whiplash mascara)
  • Gore, Foley announce Bipartisan Commission on Health Care Policy
    Washington Post, February 23rd, 1993


    President Gore, seated with a bipartisan collection of Congressional leaders and health-care advisers in the Roosevelt Room, announced the formation of a Bipartisan[1] Congressional Commission on Health Care Reform. “If there’s one thing that I heard again and again campaigning for this office it’s that our health care system is in crisis, a crisis that hits at the heart of every American family. We have Americans weighing bankruptcy because a parent has Alzheimer's, hundreds of thousands of Americans losing their coverage every month, small businesses having to deny their employees’ health care because they cannot afford it, and even some businesses who’ve provided health care for years suddenly having to tell trusted employees that their coverage will be cancelled. We must act now,” the President said.

    The President thanked the leaders of both parties in Congress for agreeing to work together to get a comprehensive system acceptable to both sides. Speaker Tom Foley and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell expressed optimism that the blueprint for reform could be out of the Commission by the end of April, the end of Gore’s first 100 days, with an eye on ultimate passage by the spring of 1994. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole and House Minority Leader Bob Michel focused their statements on the need to shape the final plan such that the American people see little in the way of disruption or cost increases. Dole mentioned the possibility of an individual mandate, requiring all Americans to pay for private insurance to keep costs down, which was a proposal recently promoted by Rhode Island’s Republican Senator John Chaffee, a Senator likely to sit on the Commission. This bipartisan agreement is not surprising considering a recent Gallup poll of members of Congress, which found that two-thirds felt that some sort of healthcare reform should be completed this term, reflecting a rare cross-ideological consensus[2].

    Some prominent conservatives, however, have already expressed outrage at Congressional Republicans who have agreed to participate. “We got creamed in ‘90 and ‘92 because we keep giving into the liberals rather than fighting for our principles,” said former House Minority Whip and current Chairman of the American Conservative Union Newt Gingrich. Conservative firebrand Patrick Buchanan lashed out on Crossfire, “Any Republican who helps with this socialist takeover of healthcare is betraying the conservative cause. Red-blooded conservatives should be ready to launch a primary challenge against those RINOS. And if Bob Dole thinks he can throw the Republican cause under the bus and run for President, then he has another thing coming.”[3] Despite these vocal opponents, polling suggests….Cont’d on A6.



    Explosion rocks World Trade Center

    Authorities seeking information on event

    Terrorism suspected

    The New York Times, March 19th, 1993


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    New York – An explosion in the basement parking lot of the North Tower of the World Trade Center has damaged the building, killing half a dozen and injuring dozens. Occurring at precisely 12:24 PM, the explosion is being investigated as a terrorist attack[4].

    So far, no one has claimed responsibility and the FBI is asking for any information that can help find the perpetrators. NYPD Captain…Cont’d on A2.



    Waco Siege ends in Deadly Raid

    Dozens dead in gunfight, mass suicide, including children

    Congress demanding answers for what “went wrong”

    The Dallas Morning News, April 6th, 1993


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    Waco, TX – a prolonged, news-making FBI siege of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco ended in a massive gunfight between Federal and State law enforcement and members of the Branch Davidian group, which many have called a “cult”. Further deaths, many of them children, appear to have been the result of a mass suicide, with poisonous substances detected in the communion wine. Among the dead is David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidians and self-ascribed Messiah, who was wanted by Federal agents on numerous charges of Statutory Rape and Sexual Assault of minors, Child Endangerment, and firearms charges[5].

    The raid, which began in the early dawn on the 5th, was quickly met by heavy firepower from the well-armed Davidians. The Federal agents responded with deadly force in a prolonged firefight that led to the deaths of six federal agents and appears to have led to the deaths of up to a dozen Davidians, some of them women and teenagers. Up to eighty others, many of them children, were found dead in an inner chamber alongside Koresh, the result of an apparent poisoning in what Federal agents are calling a “mass murder-suicide”.

    Events began earlier this year when Federal agents responded to numerous allegations that Koresh was holding minors against their will and forcing them into marriages. The local Waco Tribune-Herald began publishing a series of articles called “The Sinful Messiah” alleging…Cont’d on A2.



    Gore Appoints Lt. Gen. Johnson to head UNOSOM
    Military Times, March 12th, 1993


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    President Al Gore today appointed Marine Corps Lieutenant General Robert B. Johnson[6] to head the United Nations Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM II), taking over for Ismat Kittani from Iraq. Johnson will receive a brevet promotion to full General while in the billet. Acting General Johnson, most recently the Commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF), brings a long and distinguished career with extensive combat experience to the role. As I MEF Commander, he oversaw USMC Operations in Somalia and brings directly applicable ground experience to the position. As UNOSOM head, Johnson will advise UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and oversee combined military operations in the war-torn region.

    The announcement was met with some surprise, as Johnson only recently put on his third star in August of 1991, but few have questioned Acting General Johnson’s C.V., which includes serving as Gen. Schwarzkopf’s Chief of Staff during Operation Desert Sword. His distinguished career began in 1965, deploying to Vietnam with the 1st Marine Brigade to…Cont’d on Pg. 2.



    USR Tensions Remain as Gorbachev, Baltic Leaders sign Vilnius Accords

    Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and USR agree to terms on Kaliningrad Transit, Soviet Military withdrawal

    Ongoing USR disagreement over Sovereign State status for Autonomous Provinces

    Rising ethnic tensions in Caucuses threaten to spill over into wider regional conflict

    The Times of London, April 14th, 1993


    Vilnius, Lithuania – Union of Sovereign Republics President Mikhail Gorbachev today signed the Vilnius Accords with the leaders of the Baltic Republics, including Prime Minister Mart Laar of Estonia, Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis of Latvia, and Prime Minister Bronislovas Lubys of Lithuania. The Accords, brokered by French President François Mitterrand, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, UK Prime Minister Neil Kinnock, and US President Albert Gore, address several key points, such as the official USR recognition of the independence of the three nations, the phased removal of all USR military from the three nations, and the establishment of official transit licenses and corridors for the transit of USR citizens and non-military supplies across Lithuania between Kaliningrad and the USR heartland. The Accords also spell out new customs and duty arrangements and establish “a principle of peace and non-aggression” between the four nations.

    The Accords come on the heels of ongoing talks among the former Warsaw Pact Soviet satellite states over trade, customs, and mutual defense, with several of the new republics (including all three Baltic states and neighboring Poland) openly courting membership in the NATO alliance, this latter aspect openly opposed by Moscow. The recent formation of the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) by Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia, seen by many as a precursor for these nations to enter the European Economic Community, points to larger “western leaning” tendencies among the former Warsaw Pact nations and away from Moscow.

    For the USR, the Accords represent an easing of tensions with the three former Soviet Republics, but other issues remain for the struggling Soviet successor federation. Ongoing protests and sectarian conflict within the Trans-Caucuses Region continue to threaten to set the whole region aflame, with ethnic unrest exploding into bloodshed in the former Soviet Republic turned independent nation of Georgia, where the ethnic Georgian majority clashed violently with its Abkhazian and Ossetian minorities. Within the USR itself, pro-independence protests in the region, in particular within the State of Azerbaijan and the Autonomous Republics (AR) of Chechnya-Ingush, North Ossetia-Alania, and Dagestan, have turned violent in recent months.

    The announcement last month by the USR Duma that the ARs will be granted additional internal sovereignty was met with mixed reactions as many of the AR governments continue to push for full State status while the existing States, particularly the larger States of Kazakhstan, Belarus, and The Ukraine, oppose this move, which they see as diluting their own influence. Chechno-Ingushian Provincial President Dzhokhar Dudayev again reiterated his calls for full Sovereign State status for his region while the leaders of the AR of North Ossetia-Alania have called for active USR support for South Ossetian rebels in Georgia, with some calling for outright annexation of the restive Georgian province into their AR.

    And yet the USR has its hands full in the region as ethic violence again erupted in the heavily ethnically Armenian Autonomous Oblast of Nagorno-Karabakh within the State of Azerbaijan, along with sporadic border clashes with the former Soviet Republic of Armenia, which Azerbaijanis accuse of supporting uprisings in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Autonomous Oblast, meanwhile, has formally petitioned for Autonomous Province status (a move opposed by the Azerbaijani State government) while Armenia has suggested that the Oblast should be transferred directly to them along with a transit corridor, further stoking unrest. Meanwhile, protests in Baku demanding full Azerbaijani independence have flared in recent weeks, with the secessionist movements in Azerbaijan, Dagestan, and Chechnya increasingly making common cause, threatening to spill into a larger insurrection that threatens to cut Moscow off from critical petroleum reserves in the Caspian Sea region.

    Further east, a major refugee crisis is engulfing the Central Asian States of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan, spilling over from the ongoing sectarian and tribal conflict in neighboring Afghanistan. This has ratcheted up lingering ethnic tensions among the four States, a situation complicated by disagreements over water rights, allowable flow rates, irrigation allowances, and holding volumes stemming from the region’s many dams. So far, the conflict has mostly remained verbal, but lingering border disputes complicate matters and secessionist movements have begun to gain ground in all five Central Asian States. US President Al Gore specifically called on USR President Gorbachev to better secure the many nuclear arms in the area, particularly within the neighboring Sovereign State of Kazakhstan, which some experts fear may become the targets of terrorism.

    Further conflict arose in the distant Russian Far East, where a low-level Chinese official made a speech in the Chinese city of Harbin that appeared to some to suggest that the region he called Outer Manchuria, which contains the strategically and economically critical Russian city of Vladivostok, was a traditional part of China. Small protests in the Russian Far East by members of the Manchu and Han ethnic minority groups demanding either increased regional autonomy or outright “repatriation” with China were broken up by police, but may hint at the start of secessionist movements in that critical region or signal the start of a flare up in long-dormant Sino-Russian border disputes.

    “The former Soviet Union is in a challenging position,” said US Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski. “The centrifugal force of disunion, largely along ethnic and religious lines, has so far been balanced by the internal power of the USR Federal Government and military, which is largely dominated by the Russian majority and their Belarussian and Ukrainian cousins. The President takes the situation very seriously and is working closely with his cabinet and the Joint Chiefs to determine the best way to ensure the continued safety of US citizens and our regional allies.”

    Whether the Vilnius Accords spell the beginning of greater regional stability or the end remains to be seen, but the peaceful resolution to one of the many ongoing post-Soviet sticking points gives many hope that the many challenges facing the former USSR can be resolved in similarly peaceful means. To assist in matters, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has pledged $2.5 billion in aid to help shore up teetering pension plans and help restructure Moscow’s debt.

    “The US Government is very much hoping for ongoing constructive dialog with the USR and its neighbors,” said Brzezinski, “and we will do our part to help spread peace, prosperity, and democratic values in the region.”



    Disney Legend Donn Tatum Passes Away at 80
    The Orange County Register, May 14th, 1993


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    In a sad day for Disney fans, Disney Legend and Chairman Emeritus Donn Tatum passed after a long battle with Cancer. He was 80 years old. “Donn was a great man,” said Disney CEO Ron Miller, “and a great friend, both to me and to my father-in-law Walt. His vision and leadership helped steer Disney through a difficult time following Walt’s untimely passing, and he will be sorely missed.”

    Donn Tatum’s Disney career began in 1956 when he became a production business manager working for Roy O. Disney. He quickly advanced through the managerial side of the company, becoming Chairman and CEO in 1971 following the death of Roy. He retired from both positions in 1976 in favor of E. Cardon Walker, and then retired from the Disney Board of Directors in 1984 following the management shakeup in the aftermath of Robert Holmes à Court’s failed hostile takeover bid, remaining a non-voting “Associate Director”. He was one of the first living people to receive the honor of being formally declared a “Disney Legend”.

    Tatum oversaw a tumultuous time in the company’s storied history, an “interregnum” of sorts between the death of Walt and the rise of the current leadership. Tatum had a tumultuous relationship with Walker (a Walt protégé) and then later with current Acting Chairman Jim Henson, with whom he had numerous creative differences. Still, both men expressed a deep and abiding love and respect for Tatum, with Walker calling him “a man of character and integrity” and Henson calling him “a truly wonderful man…full of decency and honor, who was an excellent steward of Walt’s vision and legacy.”

    Tatum is survived by his wife Vernette Ripley Tatum of 56 years and his three sons, Frederic, Donn Jr. and Forbes, and two daughters, Vernette and Melantha. He has eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

    Acting Chairman Jim Henson has announced that the new Production Offices at Disney Studios West in Anaheim will be named the Donn Tatum Building in his honor.



    [1] This section guest-written by @jpj1421; The Gore Healthcare push will be more modest in scope compared to the Clintons’ for two reasons. Healthcare as an issue got a big national boost in our timeline when, after Senator Heinz death, Harris Wofford won the special election in a huge upset after his campaign locked onto healthcare reform as a winning issue. Likely the Gore campaign would discover for themselves, it was a popular issue to campaign on, but with Senator Heinz alive there isn't that splashy example to get a political consensus formed. That aside, even in our timeline Gore believed a bipartisan commission was appropriate for dealing with healthcare, which makes sense given that Gore was a Senator.

    [2] This was a real poll from the time according to Steve Kornacki's book Red and Blue.

    [3] Gingrich and Buchanan quotes are fabricated, but reflect similar statements made by both over the years. Gore’s quote takes elements and phrases from a 1993 speech given to the American College of Physicians.

    [4] Occurs pretty much per our timeline with Afghan-trained terrorists sheltered by Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, investigations, and eventual trials and convictions for some of the conspirators. I debated how butterflies might affect this event, and found little other than “random butterflies” that would divert the event, which traces from a long-running conspiracy rather than an off-the-cuff attack. The ultimate causes for the attack, Islamic disillusion with US foreign policy, have not changed and the WTC is an obvious strategic and symbolic target for a variety of reasons. There are some reports that, had the perpetrators parked the vehicle in a different place in the garage, that it could have succeeded in the primary goal of toppling the North Tower into the South, but other than a passing reference to “testimony by the chief WTC architect” in an old MSNBC internet article linked in Wikipedia (via “Wayback”) that didn’t cite its source, I can’t find any evidence to support what would be a major butterfly.

    [5] Ended in a deadly accidental fire in our timeline. In this one, things ended even uglier with children as young as 12 handed firearms and everyone taking the “Jim Jones” way out in the end. A handful of survivors will recall horrible events and abuses by Koresh while internal investigations will note numerous missteps by the ATF and FBI that will lead to political fallout and acrimony. As in our timeline, the event will trigger numerous conspiracy theories on the far right alleging that the FBI and ATF committed a “mass execution” of “innocent Christians” that will spread like wildfire across the brand-new internet. With the FBI leading the siege and making the child sexual assault the leading charge rather than the firearms charges (given the much more public focus on sexual assault and child sex abuse in this timeline), fewer moderate conservatives will see it as a “2nd Amendment” issue, though many on both sides of the aisle will decry this as a massive blunder and overreach by the FBI, leaving Attorney General Sonia Sotomayor answering a lot of difficult questions. Note that Ruby Ridge is butterflied since the tragicomic set of compounding errors, misjudgments, and simple stupid luck that led to that standoff was unlikely to begin with.

    [6] In our timeline, President Clinton appointed the politically-ambitious Admiral Jonathan Howe to the position, who had little to no real relevant experience but was well connected politically, and who has been accused of being a “Briefcase Admiral” who never left his desk and whose decisions, often made against the advice of the officers on the ground, were cited as exacerbating an already bad situation, leading to “Bloody Monday” and the “Black Hawk Down” incident. Here Gore, a Combat Veteran, has gone for military experience over political connections. Will it make a difference? Stay tuned.
     
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    Best Forgotten '90s Sci-Fi
  • The Five Best Forgotten Sci-Fi TV Series of the Early 1990s
    From Five Alive! Netsite, posted May 4th, 2018


    The 1990s had some epic and legendary science fiction shows, from Star Trek to Ringworld to Babylon Five to The X-Files. But what about those forgotten science fiction shows that we all love? Here’s our Five Alive:

    #5 – Tek War

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    It’s the William Shatner vanity project that’s so bad it’s incredible! Based on the novel series “written” by Shatner (actually ghostwriter Ron Goulart), this “drug war IN SPACE” action series was a cult favorite from the start. Tek War was the inaugural tentpole for the SciFi Channel when it debuted in the fall of 1992. It starred Bruce Boxleitner as Jake Cardigan, a tough-as-nails PI who is (naturally) wrongly accused of crimes in the first episode and has to clear his name. Shatner himself joins the cast, where he brings his (h)A(m) game to the role of the CEO of the Cosmos Security firm. The effects are just bad enough to be good and the acting and writing just bad enough to be unintentionally brilliant. Take this line: Policeman: “I play by the rules.” Jake: “Then start a band!”. Audience: (sighs and rolls eyes) “Brilliant.” It’s also the series that introduced sci-fi fans to the great Marina Sirtis as the android investigator Sam Houston (in a flagrant rip-off of SpaPo) and Torri Higgenson as, naturally, a doctor. While it only survived two seasons, mostly driven by Camp fans, Tek War lives on as a cult hit. And while it’s no Space Police, it’s still an entertaining sci-fi procedural. Watch it now. Bring lots of popcorn and your two favorite wisecracking robots.

    #4 – M.A.N.T.I.S.

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    Brought to you by the great Sam Raimi and Sam Hamm, M.A.N.T.I.S. is a sci-fi superhero series about a disabled scientist using an experimental robot suit, the Mechanically Augmented NeuroTransmitter Interactive System, or M.A.N.T.I.S., in order to fight evil. And if that alone didn’t sell you, nothing will. After struggling through a single season on PFN, Sci-Fi picked it up where it eked out three beloved seasons. Best known today for introducing sci-fi fans to the great Gina Torres, this is pure Raimi: dark, campy, action-oriented, just violent enough to entertain while avoiding the T rating, quirky, and brilliant. It’s also a shining star of diversity in casting for the time. If you like Raimi or you like superheroes or you like Gundam then you’ll like this.

    #3 – The Continuing Adventures of the Lone Ranger

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    Not quite this!!

    And you can’t talk about Sam Raimi without Bruce Campbell showing up! Yes, the star of another overlooked sci-fi gem, the Lucasfilm Buck Rogers, Campbell went full Steam Romance in this deliberately uber-campy but incredibly action-oriented sci-fi western series created by Jeffrey Boam and Carlton Cuse. Campbell, as the titular Ranger, stole every scene, made all the better by such supporting actors as the great Michael Horse as Tonto, Julius Carrey as the friendly rival Josiah Bass, the sexy Kelly Rutherford, and the legendary John Astin. It played on NBC where it made two quite-successful seasons that were so intense of a production that it broke the budget and wore out the cast and crew, so seasons 3-4 ended up with John as the local sheriff in a lower-budget, reduced action follow-up that made bank on Fantasia. Come on, ya’ lunk. Go and see it, already!

    #2 – Galaxy University

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    Sort of like this… (Image source Shutterstock)

    And speaking (earlier) about Space Police, Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbird Productions launched this sci-fi college comedy as a sort-of spinoff of SpaPo where Lieutenant Chuck Brogan’s niece Callie (Lena Headey) goes to the titular institute of higher learning and interacts with a variety of strange aliens in this “out of the nest” comedy. From her literally pig-headed roommate Swansa (voiced by Rachel Weisz) to her literally reptilian nemesis the alpha-bitch Garla (voiced by Sadie Frost) to her many obnoxious professors, like the Lovecraftian Dr. (unintelligible shrieking sound), who will surely remind you of that one teacher that you had, Callie goes through all of the usual trials and tribble-ations of college life, including the struggles of finding a date when there are literally only three eligible human boys on campus, and they all suck in different ways. Heavy on the SITCOM tropes, and yet willing to address some very complex issues like LGBTQ identity and student-teacher affairs (albeit very indirectly through some bizarre alien reproductive biology), GalUni became a hit follow-on to SpaPo in the UK even as it made middling numbers on Fantasia in North America (where it was known as Space College (SpaCo?) to avoid a lawsuit from the makers of the old ‘80s animated kids’ show Galaxy High). If you haven’t seen it, then there is something seriously missing in your life that you need to fix, right now.

    #1 – Doorways

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    In the early 1990s, R-rated fantasy author George R. R. Martin took some time away from writing about sex and dragons (and sex on dragons) and teamed up with Robert K. Weiss and Tracy Torméto produce the brilliant dimension-hopping series Doorways[1], a PG-rated story of parallel universes, a mysterious “Dark Lord”, and a strange sort of cyberpunk-meets-dark fantasy twist. Led by the great Jerry O'Connell and featuring sci-fi legends like Max Grodénchik and Carrie Anne Moss, the dimension-hopping show took advantage of great writing by Martin and his team to create a sci-fi classic that was greatly beloved across its four seasons on PFN, and yet is for some infernal reason largely forgotten today. Not enough tits, I guess? It was brilliant, even if the time he took off from his Song of Ice and Fire series to make it is widely agreed to be the main reason why he still hasn’t written the final book in that series. Well, in a universe where this show died as a pilot they may have the last book, but they don’t have Doorways, so it sucks to be them. Is it not time for a reboot? Just sayin’.



    [1] Hat tip to @nick_crenshaw82.
     
    Heavy Mecha
  • Searching for a Sign of Zeta
    Post from The White Base Netsite by Richard O’Connell, March 2, 2015

    A Guest Post by @Denliner.


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    Ah, Zeta Gundam. Is there any need for an introduction? Along with beloved anime classics such as Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Yu Yu Hakusho, and many others, it practically defined a decade for many budding anime fans in the 90s, including myself. It’s hard to believe that such a show could not have existed in the first place, but just like many of its peers, it might not have happened without a few select factors that helped bring it forth to a Western audience[1].

    In any case, to celebrate its 30th anniversary, let’s take a look back at the show that started an entire fandom and taught a generation of angsty teenagers to grow up amidst the horrors of war.

    It’s funny to think how a lovable monster meant for kids such as My Neighbor Totoro would be related to mobile suits and beam rifles, but it’s true! Totoromania had a huge influence on the growing anime industry in the West. By 1990, millions of dollars in merchandise were sold to kids and Studio Ghibli became a veritable pop culture icon overnight as a result of its success along with their other films. Of course, this was noticed by practically every media exec, and so channels such as Nickelodeon, Disney, and Cartoon City all scrambled to create space for new content from Japan.

    Nickelodeon came out first with Toonami in 1992[2], although Disney would follow suit with Vaultoons in 1994 and Cartoon City releasing Sunburst in 1995. While all three programming blocks released similar content with cartoons and anime, Toonami was often considered to be the most daring with their distribution of T content compared to Vaultoons, its sanitized PG counterpart. Blood, gore, profanity, and sex were all acceptable for the platform and that environment was perfect for the content that Zeta Gundam presented to its audience, who grew up from watching Totoro towards more mature content like Batman: The Animated Series and Akira.

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    While most people know about this today, most people in the 90s didn’t know that Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam was a sequel series to the original Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979, which would be a huge factor later down the line, but to summarize (spoilers ahead!):

    Set in UC 0087, 8 years after the One Year War, the show follows a teenager named Kamille Bidan living in a space colony named Green Noa 1, with his parents working as engineers for the Earth Federation. However, he is constantly bullied and picked on by his parents’ employers, the Titans, the Earth Federation’s elite organization, dedicated to hunting down Zeon remnants. His life changes forever when Quatro Bajeena (secretly Char Aznable of the previous series), one of the senior pilots for the Anti Earth Union Group, or the AEUG, manages to infiltrate the colony and locate the secret Gundam Mk-II test units. In a stroke of luck, he boards one of the mobile suits and decides to fight back against the Titans, leaving with the AEUG as he decides to oppose the Titans and the Earth Federation.

    The war, known as the Gryps Conflict in the official Gundam canon, is the central focus throughout much of the series like the One Year War before it.

    Eventually a third faction appears midway through the series, with Haman Karn’s Axis Zeon, the remnants of the Principality of Zeon. With the introduction of this new faction, the Gryps Conflict devolves into a three-way war as all three factions constantly switch allegiances in an effort to one-up each other, exemplified with the newly built Gryps colony laser, a superweapon that could turn the tide of the war.

    Throughout the entire series, Kamille experiences many hardships as a pilot, including being beaten up by his own superiors, although you could argue that it was justified as he was very immature and provoked many of the adults around him during the early episodes. He also lost precious loved ones, including his parents and his love interest, Four Murasame after a tragic confrontation at Mt. Kilimanjaro. However, he eventually grows up and matures into a competent pilot and a veritable threat to the Titans, especially once he gets the new Zeta Gundam midway through the series.

    By the final episode of Zeta Gundam, many of the characters have already tragically died as the AEUG, Titans, and Axis Zeon all engage each other in a final three-way battle to determine the fate of the Earth Sphere. Racking up huge kill counts already in Zeta, Tomino did something unthinkable to Western audiences: he killed Kamille[3].

    That’s right.

    After he slammed the Zeta Gundam into The O, one of the enemy mobile suits piloted by the main antagonist of the series, the suave yet dangerous Paptimus Scirocco, he wasn’t able to get out in time to avert the explosion, telling Fa Yuiry to escape before cutting off, as both the Zeta Gundam and the O explode in a fiery blaze in the sea of stars, as the AEUG slowly decimates the last of the Titans with the Gryps Colony Laser. Although the rebels have won, it was not without great cost, and there was no greater cost than Kamille Bidan to us fans.


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    Killing Kamille proved to have huge ramifications, not just for us Western fans, but Tomino himself. He often cited in his interviews that he did regret killing Kamille in Zeta Gundam, telling fans that he killed him because he thought that there wasn’t much of a future in the franchise, which coincided with a new onset of depression[4]. He would later attempt to rectify this in the movie compilation of Zeta Gundam in the 2000s (called Zeta Gundam: A New Translation), which includes an ending where Kamille survives his battle with Paptimus, spawning several manga detailing his whereabouts in this alternate continuity[5].

    Despite the extremely tragic ending, the series proved to be extraordinarily popular with the growing anime fandom in the 90s. Aside from its mature setting and dark narrative, which was already growing to be very popular among an audience familiar with cartoon and anime like Batman: The Animated Series, it was also unique in its status as the first mecha show since Robotech to garner a large following, and one where it stuck around as the Gundam fanbase we know today.

    Zeta Gundam’s popularity in Nickelodeon also inspired other companies to take notice of the growing mecha genre. One notable example is Disney, no less. While they did control the production rights to Transformers as of this time, they had no plans on reviving the series at the moment. Yet. Instead, they brought back an import from Japan which was ironically based on the Transformers called the Brave Series, which proved to be similarly popular for Transformers fans and a source of exposure towards the Super Robot genre. Eventually, Disney would get a similar Real Robot adaptation for their own, as they would air Patlabor[6] on Vaultoons within a few years of Zeta Gundam.

    The show also paved the way for future dubs of mecha shows like Escaflowne, Neon Genesis: Evangelion, GaoGaiGar, and even Eureka Seven, to the point where many mecha fans consider Zeta as the starting point for the golden age of mecha anime.

    Future Gundam shows would never capture the same spark as Zeta Gundam, but regardless, we are ever grateful that the show existed, as despite the grim story and often violent and gruesome depiction of war, it all taught us the horrors we were often shielded from in our cushy homes, and the power that an animated series, normally reserved for kids fare in the West, could have in our hearts[7].





    [1] What happens when Westerners are first exposed to one of the greatest Gundam anime series ever? Interesting butterflies are afoot here...

    [2] Toonami and Vaultoons are here in full force! After Totoromania and subsequent successes of Japanese media in the West, Nickelodeon, Disney, and Columbia have released their own blocks dedicated to anime and cartoons which function similarly to OTL Toonami. This will be the first in a new series that documents an earlier release of Gundam in the West, which will have huge effects on pop culture and the history of Gundam itself. Stay tuned for more and feel free to PM to collaborate.

    If you’re interested, here’s the opening lineup for each of the blocks, courtesy of @TheFaultsofAlts:

    Vaultoons (1994):
    7:00: Momento Apartments
    7:30: Samurai Pizza Cats
    8:00: Marvelous Melmo
    8:30: Osomatsu-kun
    9:00: Sailor Moon
    9:30: Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water

    Toonami (1992):
    5:00: ThunderCats
    5:30: Justice League
    6:00: Prince Muscle of the Galaxy
    6:30: Kingdom Champions
    7:00: Dragon Ball Z
    7:30: Ranma 1/2

    Sunburst (1995):
    6:00: The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest
    6:30: Ulysses 32
    7:00: Slam Dunk
    7:30: Elara the Robot Girl
    8:00: Magic Knight Rayearth
    8:30: City Hunters

    [3] Even for the notorious Kill Em' All Tomino, this is a huge butterfly. It’s similar to the mind rape ending in the original series (I am serious about the mind rape. That actually happened!), but arguably has bigger impacts on both Tomino and the nascent Gundam fandom since he is physically dead and cannot come back. Plus, imagine a kid who saw Optimus Prime killed in front of your eyes in the Transformers Movie and now seeing Kamille die in Zeta Gundam as a teenager. Now that’s pretty sad.

    [4] Tomino didn’t appreciate Zeta Gundam as much as his fanbase, often citing his regrets for making the series. I don’t think it’s far-fetched that he could’ve killed Kamille in an effort to distance himself from Gundam (he also killed Kamille and Amuro in the novels), perhaps due to a bout of depression, only to regret that choice later.

    [5] A New Translation is most likely the same as OTL, being an adaptation of the TV series, but perhaps it could be fully animated this time around due to the butterflies. Of course, this means the ending will remain as is, albeit with a different context. I’ve heard that he becomes a doctor in Moon Crisis, so I could also see him retiring as one in this continuity as well with the New Translation manga.

    [6] GaoGaiGar and Patlabor for Disney? Hehehehehe…..

    [7] Because Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam came out first, it will be hit with the same rose-colored nostalgia glasses that New Mobile Report Gundam Wing has OTL, as will their successors, so the Gundam fandom in the West will overwhelmingly be for the Universal Century timeline, especially for the older fans, whereas it's more of a mix IOTL. I think this will have a pretty huge effect on how the Gundam fandom will view certain series, including Gundam Wing itself. Expect your beloved shows to be ruthlessly eviscerated by the fans ITTL. You've been warned.
     
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    Hooray for Hollywoodland!
  • 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


    By the early 1990s, the Disneytowns were starting to come into their own. While the original idea of “Disneylands in miniature” had not met the original attendance expectations, the flexibility of the concept allowed underperforming stores and attractions to be quickly swapped out with new ones, allowing the Disneytowns to evolve naturally with the local culture and interests. The Disneytowns’ low construction costs (typically around two-hundred and fifty million dollars at most, about the price of an EPCOT pavilion and often offset by local government incentives, partnerships, and sponsorships) made new franchises a fairly low risk bet. Furthermore, the Disneytowns proved somewhat “recession proof” as financially hurting families in the early 1990s who were no longer able to take their kids to Disneyland or Walt Disney World could at least take them to the nearby Disneytown and do a bit of outlet mall shopping and have a nice lunch or dinner while they were at it[1].

    Even so, performance was mixed. The Denver Disneytown, with its beautiful location near Palmer Lake nestled in the scenic foothills between Denver and Colorado Springs, and with free shuttle service to several locations in the metro areas, had been a wild success, soon boosted by the appearance of outlet malls and vacation rentals. And while the original Philadelphia Disneytown had initially performed below expectations (though Sesame Place continued to perform well), it remained profitable and popular, fed by returning visitors from Richmond to Washington to New York to Boston. The San Antonio location, built on the site of an old quarry, struggled at first, but eventually found an audience, and became a surprising boost to Hyperion Music thanks to Fiesta Stadium. A Disneytown in Seattle built in on Pier 57 performed spectacularly well, particularly in the winter months when sunlight was rare and the comforting bright lights and fun inside were greatly appreciated by its weather-weary populous. Similar reasons drove the success of a Disneytown in Chicago, built on the Old Navy Pier. However, a Disneytown in St. Louis (technically Eagle Creek, Illinois, near the Cahokia Mounds National Monument), which was created with great hopes in keeping with one of Walt’s original expansion plans, suffered badly from competition from nearby Six Flags St. Louis and lost money.

    The overall success led to the investigation of international Disneytowns. The first of these would be Disneytown London, made in partnership with Pearson PLC, and built in 1994 as an extension of their Chessington World of Adventures theme park in the southwest of London, with an Adventureland theme (in particular The Jungle Book), in keeping with the themes of the Chessington park. Disneytown London would be a popular spot for locals and tourists alike and help whet appetites for Disneyland Valencia (“If you like this, mate, wait until you see the full Monty down south!”). Disney also partnered with the City of Sydney, Australia, and local sponsors to build a Disneytown on Glebe Island near the old White Bay Power Station, which would open in late 1996. It would be the nucleus for a growing Disney Resort that would lead, ultimately, to something far grander.

    In Asia, Japan’s Oriental Land Company pushed aside talks of a Disneytown and instead asked about the DisneySea resort then under construction in Long Beach. Exploratory talks with Hong Kong were initiated, though it was quickly determined that a whole new island would need to be dredged to build one, beginning a series of cost-benefit studies that dragged on through the years. This eventually led to a sweetheart deal with the Chinese government, who absorbed most of the construction costs, with dredging starting in 1997 shortly after the transfer of sovereignty. The Chinese Government specifically hoped that the presence of a Disney resort would help ease concerns of “Communist oppression” in the west and among the citizens of Hong Kong. Talks even began with the Saudi royal family for a Disneytown or even full Disneyland in the Kingdom, but they soon stalled based on security fears.

    Finally, and very successfully, a Canadian Disneytown was built in Ontario in 1998 near the city of Hamilton. There it was deemed far enough from Philadelphia and Chicago not to compete directly, but still very close to several major cities in the Eastern Great Lakes region on both sides of the border and close to the tourist Mecca of Niagara Falls, though world events would soon complicate international travel. Special ferry boats were even constructed, though the notoriously volatile waters of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario limited their use. For obvious climactic reasons, much of it was built inside, encased in a large, glass-and-steel atrium reminiscent of the Imagination Pavilion that locals and truckers called “The Mouse Trap”.

    The 1990s also saw an expansion and modernization of the “main” parks in the US. Several proposals were made for the US parks, from a “Disney America” park somewhere near Washington, DC, to a new smaller EPCOT at Disneyland, called “WestCOT” by the Imagineers. The former was judged too risky due to many parks in the immediate area and deemed far too close to (and thematically similar to) Disneytown Philadelphia. The latter was an ambitious plan intended to take up the space used by the Disneyland parking lot. It was first proposed in 1991 as a fallback should DisneySea prove untenable[2], but almost immediately went on the back burner. Part of this was due to cost (an estimated $3 billion), which was increasingly becoming a factor as the recession continued, Disneyland Valencia underperformed, and the construction costs of the Disneytowns and Port Disney added up, even with government grants and corporate sponsorships taking up some of the cost burden. But the main reason for the delay in WestCOT was DisneySea itself! With a sort-of second gate already being built 30 miles away in Long Beach, it was feared that opening WestCOT would compete with DisneySea. As such, WestCOT would go on hold indefinitely.

    kA3wQDq.png

    (Image by @Denliner)

    Instead, the very first US park expansion would be, at the insistence of Chairman and President Frank Wells, a “third gate” at Walt Disney World, specifically the Disney-MGM Hollywoodland Resort and Studios, which he had been advocating for since the days of the Entertainment Pavilion at EPCOT. The recent opening of Universal Studios in Orlando and Warner Brothers World and Columbia Peach Grove Studios in Atlanta appeared to be siphoning off customers from the Entertainment Pavilion at EPCOT, whose attendance had dipped compared to other EPCOT pavilions. Disney and MGM Studios, seeking to expand productions in TV and film beyond their increasingly strained Burbank lots and sound stages, had already begun building the Disney-MGM Studios East complex after the banner 1991 movie season, and had initiated studio tours of these sound stages and lots, including a New York City outdoor lot. Tours, which originated at the Entertainment Pavilion and followed a “Yellow Brick Road” to the Studio lots (actually dyed and shaped concrete) began to expand as the “hands-on” exhibits at the Entertainment Pavilion were expanded at the Studio Lot due to long lines at the pavilion. But Wells, and his right-hand man Stan Kinsey, knew that they could do much more.

    640px-The_Great_Movie_Ride_and_Chinese_Theater_at_Walt_Disney_World.jpg


    Thus, as construction on Port Disney Phase I completed and profits from the Pier Revue and the associated hotels began to come in, Ron Miller greenlit Wells’ long-desired Disney-MGM Studios resort. Starting construction in 1991 and taking a style cue from Disneyland Valencia and Port Disney in Long Beach, the $525 million Disney-MGM Studios Hollywoodland Resort[3], costs partially offset by sponsors and outside investors, would be “the city of Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Hollywood” with the Hyperion Style in full effect. With Phase II attractions still under development, Phase I opened to the public in the Spring of 1993 and became a fast success. Centered around the crossroads of Hyperion Avenue and Buena Vista Boulevard, the main draw was a reconstruction of Grauman’s Chinese Theater and a small recreation of the “Hollywoodland” sign on an artificial hill atop a protective levy, with forced perspective used to make it appear far away. Various buildings on the “streets” would serve as theaters where classic movies would play on a loop or where live performances would be held. Others would host rides, always movie-themed, included The Great Movie Ride (which was relocated from the Entertainment Pavilion), the child-friendly Ghostbusters: We Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts interactive dark ride/shooting game, the older-child-friendly Back to the Future dark track ride (with its innovative DeLorean-shaped ride vehicles), and the decidedly not child friendly Aliens: Enter the Nostromo[4] (based on the 20th Century Fox movie and built in a limited partnership with Triad).

    Outdoor sets with live action shows were added over the years, such as the Indiana Jones Adventure, made in partnership with Lucasfilm and Triad, and The Land of Oz, an outdoor walking attraction where the guests followed (naturally) a pedestrian-only expansion of the yellow brick road that wound through the various encounters of the classic MGM film, with live actors playing Dorothy (your guide), her friends, the Wicked Witch of the West, the Munchkins, and, ultimately, The Wizard himself, with an optional balloon tower ride added to the end in the late 1990s[5].

    Learning from lessons gathered from the experiences at Universal Studios, Orlando, the design was carefully maintained with levees and other barriers used to limit noise bleed-over from the visitor attractions to the active sets and sound stages[6]. This allowed the stages to continue to be used even during peak park hours. Numerous popular TV shows and films would have scenes filmed at Disney-MGM Studios East, with the New York City set finding plenty of use, particularly in the Spider-Man sequels. Extra dollars were made leasing the sets, particularly the NYC set, to other studios.

    The relatively low construction cost of the park compared to Valencia and Port Disney made the park a financial as well as creative win for the company, and the working studios and sets achieved a secondary purpose in serving the studios. MGM Vice Chairman Bernie Brillstein even spent a year in Orlando to set up the studios, which would ultimately take up production on a majority of the MGM, Disney, and Hyperion television shows as well as several feature films. The “make your own movie/TV show” attractions from the Entertainment Pavilion were relocated and expanded upon along with new “effects workshops” and a guided studio tour. There was a walking or tram tour of restored old sets and movie models, including the Titanic model from Lew Grade’s failed Raise the Titanic, which was bought by Henson from ACC as a gift to Grade[7]. Optional fare included private set tours or even the chance to work as an Extra on a show or film.

    redcarline_bvolkner.jpg

    The Pacific Electric Railway (Image source “brookhavenbear.wordpress.com”)

    Later additions to the park in the 2000s included the Pacific Electric Railway Streetcars from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the beloved Timeless River ride (which took guests on a slow tour through the early world of Black & White animation, in particular Oswald and Mickey, and thus became colloquially known as the "Steamboat Willie ride" [8]), the Ghostbusters Tower of Terror (featuring an interactive Haunted Mansion inspired “Ghost Show” with live actors playing the Ghostbusters as entertainment for the guests in line awaiting the optional final attraction: a terrifying drop ride), and the largest and most impressive version of Roger Rabbit’s Toon Town to date, served naturally by the Pacific Electric. Eventually, the Pacific Electric would run all the way to the Magic Kingdom, letting off passengers at Muppetland and the Great Muppet Movie Ride.

    M4NfygX.png
    b2K6wkw.png

    Symbols for the Dream and Living Earth Pavilions (Images by @Denliner)

    The Entertainment Pavilion at EPCOT, now largely made obsolete, would at first be rebranded into the Dream Pavilion (keeping the cloudscape design), and would be rethemed with exhibits on dreams, dream imagery, and the psychology of dreams, but the hastily revamped space failed to attract enough visitors. It would ultimately be completely overhauled into the New Horizons Pavilion after the discovery of a dangerous sinkhole[9] below the original Horizons and other structural concerns forced it the be closed and demolished in the late 1990s. In the place of the old Horizons they would (ironically, given the sink hole) build the Living Earth Pavilion in the early 2000s, sponsored by Bass Brothers, which explored geology and geophysics and the science of mining with a dark ride built around a journey deep into the core of the earth with shining crystals, stalactite-covered caverns, dinosaur bones, and flowing magma, plus a fanciful trip through scenes out of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, a ride reproduced (albeit at a smaller scale) from Discoveryland in Disneyland Valencia.

    In a fitting epilogue, Disney-MGM Studios, rather than simply competing with Universal, Warner Brothers, and Columbia Peach Grove, became the terminus of what was starting to be called the “Studio Tour Trail” by aficionados. Tour companies began to offer marathon ticket and tour packages that picked up clients from Atlanta International Airport on Sunday, ran them to the Warner and Columbia parks over Monday and Tuesday, drove or flew them to Orlando on Wednesday, visited Universal and Disney-MGM on Thursday and Friday, and flew out of Orlando Airport on Saturday. Not wanting to miss the opportunity the “trail” provided, the four rival studios partnered with various tour companies to create the “Four Star” packages running such tours themselves, but “officially” with a special reduced rate, ultimately spawning failed monopoly lawsuits.

    The Good Sports Resort, Disneytowns, and Hollywoodland Resort offered an interesting “low cost” contrast with the Valencia and DisneySea resorts, and their success would lead many on the board (and among the shareholders) to openly ask why Disney was spending billions of dollars on large, showy resorts when the “small, cheap ones” were offering such a good return on investment in comparison. The fate of future of “big” resorts, like the imagined WestCOT or more full-size Disneylands, would thus hinge largely on whether or not Valencia could turn itself around and whether the $5 billion Port Disney and its DisneySea resort could possibly perform to Dick Nunis’s optimistic expectations.





    [1] Disneytowns will see a bump in attendance in the summer months from 1990-1993 compared to better economic times and will in part help pad Disney through the recession. And hat-tips as always to @Denliner and @El Pip for the parks design and financing assist.

    [2] True in our timeline too. WestCOT was imagined as a “backup plan” for DisneySea. Eventually, as a money crunch hit Disney in the late 1990s in our timeline, Eisner, who has himself admitted to being “cheap”, asked for a cheaper alternative, leading to the ill-fated Disney California Adventure on the location.

    [3] Roughly $200 million has already been spent on the Studio Space and Lots, all paid for by Disney and MGM Studios profits.

    [4] Considered but abandoned in our timeline due to opposition by “senior Imagineers”. Eventually Ripley and the Alien made an appearance in The Great Movie Ride and the idea itself morphed briefly into the ExtraTERRORestrial Encounter before that became the much more family-friendly Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin.

    [5] Essentially a much-higher-budget version of the Beech Mountain Land of Oz, which had largely been closed save for “special events” since the 1970s.

    [6] In our timeline Disney didn’t even consider this issue, resulting in many of the expensive sound stages and outdoor sets effectively being rendered worthless as crowd noise ruined takes. Universal, having already learned this lesson, did not have the same issues.

    [7] You all asked, so I found a way!

    [8] Hat tip to Brian Krosnick of Theme Park Tourist and S.W. Wilson of Ideal Build-Out, from whom I stole this idea fair and square. See their brilliant “Disney Hollywoodland” park Ideal Buildout here. And hat tip to @Nerdman3000 for alerting me to it.

    [9] Rumors persist of such a sinkhole being behind the end of Horizons, as have rumors of roof leaks or other structural issues. Either way, repairing and shoring up the original would have been far more expensive than building a new one.
     
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    Alien Puppy from Beyond the Moon
  • 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.

    PreStitch.jpg

    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.

    220px-LiloandStitchmovieposter.jpg

    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.

    220px-James_and_the_giant_peach.jpg


    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.

    Brave_Little_Toaster_poster.jpg

    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.
     
    Sailing the Seas of Cheese
  • Water World (1993)
    From “Eight Mockbusters of the last 25 years Actually Worth Seeing,” CulturePolice.co.uk Netsite, June 26th, 2012


    215px-Waterworld.jpg

    Not Quite This

    What it cashes in on: Mad Max series

    Notable actors: Scott Valentine, Vanessa Angel, Kimberly J. Brown, Brian Bonsall, Bruce Fucking Campbell

    Whom to blame: Roger Corman, Peter Rader, and Brad Krevoy[1]

    Why it’s worth your bloody time:

    It’s a zero-budget, “family-friendly” Mad Max…on water! Released by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, needless to say, Water World is a post-apocalyptic world where melting icecaps have submerged all dry land on Earth and the handful of remaining (and deeply inbred, and almost entirely white) humans cling to little artificial islands or live as boat nomads. And yes, science nerds, there’s not enough bloody ice on all of Earth to flood all dry land, but the laws of physics, much like the rules on color composition, cinematic lighting, creative screenwriting, and natural acting, do not apply to this film. The film started off as some campy film for kids, but via rewrites got turned into an ostensibly serious adventure story, but not far enough, hence how you get Disney-like slapstick of our kid lead evading some bumbling pirates Home Alone style followed by his mom nigh-poledancing while shooting raiders.

    Clearly filmed in a studio pool or just off of the beach and using a handful of awkwardly refurbished jet skis, surfboards, and bass boats – and the clearly-a-model Exxon tanker – the story manages to occasionally, one would expect accidentally, evoke a feeling of endless waters. The villainous “Smokers”, led by The Deacon of the Deep (the great Bruce Campbell at his hammy best), are this floundering crap-fest's saving grace. One-part outlaw motorcycle gang, one-part Vikings, one-part Aquaman villains, and rest-part Pirate-themed BDSM club, they're all something to behold. Campbell, who clearly understands the film that he’s in, gives us over-the-top villainy that would make Brian Blessed, Gary Busey, or even Denis Hopper blush.

    By comparison, our “heroes”, young Theseus (Brian Bonsall) and The Mariner (Scott Valentine) are respectively at best merely competent and at worst dull as dishwater. Mariner's supposed to be a dashing-but-shady swashbuckler of the Han Solo type and father figure, but instead comes off as a total self-serving prick, especially when he casually abuses a little girl and only starts acting decent at the climax, with little set-up along the way for a change of heart. The pinnacle of his screentime is when he drinks his own filtered piss. Theseus merely exists for his adult self to narrate the film, make a few one-liners and helps pull a Deus Ex Machina out for the Mariner. The film's love interest, Theseus' mom Helen (Vanessa Angel), has less good chemistry with the Mariner than you’d see in a 3rd grade science fair project, is way too young-looking to be the maternal/MILF figure she’s supposed to be, and seems to exist to give a soaking bonus to both parents and teens. Nine-year-old sibling Enola, who has a map to the last dry land on Earth tattooed on her back (which occasionally “smears” in the water like all real tattoos do), is a living MacGuffin and is treated like it by the “hero” and the writers alike (though at least Bonsall and Vanessa try to act like she's family).

    But OMG, The Deacon of the Deep! Ham and Cheese on Wry! Campbell shows why he is the Lawrence Olivier of B Movies as he devours every set and drinks up the whole damned ocean. The Smokers are supposed to represent pollution and devouring industry in this ham-fisted environmental metaphor, but in the end, you root for them! Campbell even gets a rocking diegetic villain song, “Drown ‘Em”, where among other things he smacks insubordinates with barracudas akimbo and rides a shark like a Bull, like something out of a Disney movie[2]! Even The Deacon’s smarmy (and creepy, and wholly unnecessary and gratuitous) interest in Enola and Theseus at least manages to treat them as more than a prop, even as you can almost literally see Campbell look at the director as if to say “really? I have to say that to nine-year-olds?”

    From its ludicrous concept to its cheesy title to its mishmash tone to its asinine dialog to its dislikable hero to its burning strawman of a villain, Water World's everything that a bad movie should be[3].



    [1] Who created it specifically as a low-budget “Mad Max on the Water”. Here they get their wish. Hat tip to @Plateosaurus for the assist on this one.

    [2] Eventually a song cover is made of it by They Might be Giants that sells gold. Bruce however, doesn't like his song, saying in All You Need is a Chin “If you're having trouble picturing me singing... well that's because I can't.”

    [3] Film will break at box office, making $12 million in US against $5 million budget, and does way better...overseas, {insert rimshot} making $28 million, resulting in a nice $40 million gross. A good chunk of this comes from Japan, and even influences a couple manga/anime and games for Nintendo. Corman was pleased with that.
     
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