cc >> Jeanan Yasiri: As we begin
today I would like to extend thanks to our partners in
supporting this course. The UW office of corporate
relations, the UW college of engineering for their technical
support. Financial support that is
provided from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which is
committed to advancing academic education and entrepreneurship.
Additionally we'd like to thank our media partners, Wisconsin
Public Television and their University Place crew for taping
today's lecture. Today I'm very pleased to
introduce a very special guest to our course, Peter Schneider.
Former president of Walt Disney Feature Animation and
co-producer of the recently released documentary
"Waking Sleeping Beauty." Peter was president with the
Walt Disney company for 17 years during one of its most historic
and innovative periods. While at Disney, he was
responsible for helping turn the feature animation department
around and created over 50 animated and live action movies.
Including some of the most critically acclaimed and highest
grossing animated features that Disney released.
They included, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit,"
"The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," which
was the first animated feature to be nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Picture, "Aladdin," "The Lion King,"
as well which was one of the highest grossing animated
films of all time. Peter also sealed the deal that
created the highly successful partnership between Pixar and
Disney. He was promoted to studio chief
in 1999 and a few years later, he left Disney to form his own
theater production company. His career in theater includes
having won a Tony Award for producing "The Lion King"
on Broadway. He also directed "Sister Act:
The Musical" in London, and currently is creating
a new show with a renowned Florentine artist Maria Cassi.
As I mentioned before Peter is co-producer of the recent
documentary "Waking Sleeping Beauty," and that focused on the
revival of Disney animation during the 1980s and early '90s.
He has earned an honorary doctorate from Purdue University
and as we close our semester it is very interesting for us to be
able to learn from entrepreneurs over the course of this semester
of course, but it is a distinct pleasure to introduce you to an
entrepreneur who quite literally reawakened animation for
millions of people across the world.
Please join me in welcoming Peter Schneider.
( applause )
Peter Schneider: Thank you very much.
I got to apologize for a couple of things.
First off, today was supposed to be the Governor Jim Doyle
was on your schedule, I'm not Jim Doyle.
Of course we share maybe one thing in common, we're both
unemployed, but never mind that. The other thing was,
we didn't know quite what to talk about to you.
I asked Jeanan, "Give me some guidelines."
She said well, talk a little bit first to introduce yourself and
talk a little bit about yourself.
Well, she did that already. So there's not much more to talk
about. Then I said to her,
well what is the class about? She said entrepreneurialism.
I had no clue what that meant. Literally, I had no clue.
So I went to the dictionary and I looked up the word.
Do you all know what the word means?
You're in this darn class. What does the word mean?
Anybody? Okay, what?.
Innovation okay. So Marion Webster, is that the
right way how you pronounce it? Defines the damn word--
Oops, I'll say "darn" word-- in the following way.
Someone or organization who organizes, manages,
and takes the risk. That seemed to be manages,
organizes, takes the risk. I have no clue what they're
talking about. Then I said to Jeanan,
"What are the four things that entrepreneurialism does?"
Their risk. >> Their risk.
Wealth creation. >> Wealth creation.
Speed of wealth creation. >> Speed of wealth creation.
And... >> Innovation.
Other than the last one, I have no clue.
I have no interest in the first three.
I thought well then, what the heck am I actually going to talk
about. What I want to talk about
is a related subject to this. You're all out there trying to
be entrepreneurs and my basic question is what are you
entrepreneuring with? Where do the ideas and
activities come from that you can organize, manage,
and take risk? My parents are here, and I was
sitting at the breakfast table this morning and my father said
to me, "Well this is simple." If I had $10 million,
I would find a 100 people and I'd give them all $10 million
each, and hopefully one of them would be Google and the other 99
would fail. Then I'd be rich and wouldn't
have to work again forever. I said well your missing
one really key ingredient in that scenario.
Which is, how do you pick the first 100?
Because for everybody out here in this audience,
there are 1,000 different things that can be done, but are they
any good? So what I want to talk about
today is can you define and help yourself in terms of maximizing
the possibility that whatever you do might be good.
And my entire background is an artist, basically.
I worry about, think about the creation of art.
And I struggle with the following question, and this is
the first time I've ever used KeyNote or PowerPoint.
See how nervous I was? I knew I was coming here, it's
going to be recorded, you have to do something appropriate.
So, the first question I always ask myself in terms of this
question of how do you create movies, like where did "Little
Mermaid" come from, where do these things come from?
The first question I ask myself is can the creative process be
defined? The kind of thing you'd ask
yourself about any industry, forget the word creative.
Can the generation of successful things be defined?
Can Google be defined? Can it be defined in some
empirical way that when you evaluate something, it gives you
a better chance of being successful.
So I said, okay, I've made this fantastic movie, which some of
you saw. Anybody see the movie?
Okay, so some of you saw the movie.
And the movie was called "Waking Sleeping Beauty."
It covered ten years at Disney Animation.
Our premise was that something extraordinary happened from 1984
to 1994, something happened that revolutionized and changed the
way animation is perceived today in Hollywood.
We set out to capture that. We didn't really set out to
capture the story about how you make animation, because
ultimately, nobody cares how well you manage things in
Hollywood. All they care about is the idea.
So I looked at this movie, and then what I've done today is
taken a five-minute sequence out of this movie and broken it down
to try and answer this question, can the creative process be
quantified, can it be defined, and can you maximize it.
So what I'm going to do, for those of you who didn't see the
movie, and for those who did see the movie, I'm going to play the
five-minute clip, and then I'm going to break it down so you
see where the ideas come from. We're going to try that.
Who knows if it's going to work.
Again, this is in the middle of the movie.
And where we are in it, is that we're talking to the two
directors of "Little Mermaid," John Musker and Ron Clements.
They're sort of discussing where did "Little Mermaid" come from.
This is the first fairytale-- ( tone )
Take two. >> In the last 30 years,
three decades. Why was Mermaid chosen?
Well, I mean, it was chosen because we all went to a lunch
about three or four years ago, and all of us, it was sort of
a development type thing. And we were supposed to come in
with our three ideas. I don't know if you can use any
of this, but this is sort of more the truth that what we may
wind up saying later. Basically, they wanted to draw
on different ideas. One of the ideas that Ron
brought in was the "Little Mermaid."
That was one of his three. >> Jeffrey's friend David Geffen
called him about a song writing team, Howard Ashman and Alan
Menken, that he'd worked with on the off-Broadway hit
"Little Shop of Horrors." Peter had worked with them on
the same show as company manager, so he brought them in
to work on the "Little Mermaid." >> Howard was just coming off a
terrible disappointment when his musical "Smile" crashed
and burned on Broadway. He came to Los Angeles to start
over again. >> Howard wasn't exactly the
first guy who sprang to mind when you said Disney.
He was born into a Jewish family in Baltimore, where he grew up
on stage in the local children's theater association.
He's gay, edgy and loved musicals,
especially "Peter Pan." >> When I was approached with an
opportunity to work for Disney, period, I leapt.
I said what about animation? What about working in that?
That's what I really wanted to do, much, much more than
anything in live action. Because I'm really a musical
theater person, and I do see a very, very strong connection
between these two media. >> We had this character in the
original treatment in the script that was a crab character, that
was kind of, would be sort of, look after the mermaid and try
to keep her out of trouble, and watch over her.
He was kind of the crusty old-- >> He was the King's right hand
guy. >> He worked for the King, and
he was like a conductor in the undersea world.
Howard said, I'm going to make him Jamaican.
And our first reaction was Jamaican?
I mean, it was a total twist on what we were thinking.
He rounds up all of these fish, and all of this stuff,
to convince Ariel not to try to become human.
And they more or less put on a show for her, by playing all
these instruments and themselves.
Okay, so here it starts. He starts establishing the
rhythm, clams pick it up, and oysters are beating on lobsters,
whatever.
All the percussion...
The seaweed Is always greener...
There was electricity in the air.
There was a real genius at work, and people knew it.
But that is a big mistake Just look at
the world around you Right here
On the ocean floor Such wonderful things
Surround you What more
Is you lookin' for? Under the sea...
Howard, in a sense, tried to treat it a little more
off the cuff, but I think he had practically written all the
songs, you know, five minutes after he got the treatment.
He said, here, say you had a song, let's just say it was
called "Part of Your World." It could be called anything,
but let's just say it was called "Part of Your World."
Then he and Alan Weaver in Howard's apartment in Greenwich
Village, and it was Alan came over and played it on the piano,
and Howard sang it right there. It sounded great.
Look at this stuff Isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think My collection's complete?
Wouldn't you think I'm the girl
The girl who has everything? >> So really try and work with
just the intensity. It's like it's about
all that emotion, and then not letting it all out.
Not letting it out. >> Not letting it out,
but having it here. When's it my turn?
Wouldn't I love That stuff really, it's--
Am I still a little too loud? >> You're great.
Oh, better that time? >> You're great.
It gets a little bright in here. What would I give
If I could live Outta these waters?
The intensity is better than... ( louder and bolder )
What would I give Is better than noise.
Yeah. >> But it's inner intensity.
In almost every musical ever written, there's a place,
it's usually about the third song of the evening,
sometimes it's the second, sometimes it's the fourth.
But it's quite early. The leading lady usually sits
down on something. Sometimes it's a tree stump,
in "Brigadoon." Sometimes it's under the pillars
of Covent Garden in "My Fair Lady," or it's a trash can
in "Little Shop of Horrors." But the leading lady sits down
on something and sings about what she wants in life.
And the audience falls in love with her and
then roots for her to get it for the rest of the night.
Look at this stuff Isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think My collection's complete?
I heard "Part of Your World," Jodi Benson singing that,
and it just captivated me. I have to do that.
I went and told those guys, I really want to do Ariel.
They said, oh, I don't know. This is supposed to be
a pretty girl. Can you do that?
I said, I have to do Ariel. I could feel it in my heart...
Okay, so that's a very innocuous, interesting
five-minute clip. I want to break it down for you.
The first thing that's the most important thing that you're
going to do with any project is the fundamental idea.
Do you have a good idea? Does the idea resonate?
Is the idea commercial? Because there's lots of good
ideas out there that you're going to have and they're not
going to make a dime. I'm going to pick on John Roach.
Where's John Roach? He wrote "The Straight Story."
John wrote "The Straight Story," it was a David Lynch movie,
and it was the first movie I saw as president of the studio.
I was so blown away by the idea of the movie, the emotion of the
movie, and the fundamental power of the movie.
But I knew it would make a dollar, and not a hundred
dollars, or ten thousand dollars, or how much did it
make, John? Not that much,
$6 million to $8 million. And it's nothing in Hollywood.
But the idea was really good. So, first you have to say,
is the idea good? And how much money, or how much
resonance will the idea have? When you talk about "Avatar"
as an idea, boy, that's a billion dollar idea,
in terms of just the idea of what he's doing.
So the first thing is to think about the idea.
Let's look at this in terms of just the idea, and
break this clip down in terms of what they talked about.
>> This is the first fairytale--
( tone ) >> Take two.
In the last 30 years, three decades.
Why was Mermaid chosen? >> Well, I mean, it was chosen
because we all went to a lunch about three or four years ago,
and all of us, it was sort of a development type thing.
And we were supposed to come in with our three ideas.
I don't know if you can use any of this, but this is sort of
more the truth that what we may wind up saying later.
Basically, they wanted to draw on different ideas.
One of the ideas that Ron brought in was
the "Little Mermaid." That was one of his three.
Okay, so the idea goes, Ron Clements goes to a book store.
He knows we're having a gong show, a Disney
gong show to find ideas. A gong show was any employee,
no matter who they were, could come in and pitch us
their ideas. Me, Tom Schumacher, Roy Disney
and Jeffrey Katzenberg, and sometimes Michael Eisner.
We'd all sit behind a table, and give anybody 90 seconds,
literally 90 seconds to tell us your idea.
If you couldn't tell us your idea in 90 seconds, we stopped
you and threw you out of the room.
So every idea, by and large, again, we're talking about
collaborative art forms, we're talking about sort of commercial
media. We're not talking about
academics. We're talking about in
Hollywood. If you can't reduce your idea
down to 90 seconds, it probably isn't good enough to be
commercially successful. So, when you hear this clip,
the words "fairytale," "Little Mermaid," which is
a derivative of "Splash," was gosh, that sounds like
a good idea. So, we in Hollywood don't get
paid to manage, organize. We don't get paid very much
money to manage, organize or run things.
You can make a lot of money, if you can have an idea, writers
who have ideas get paid a lot of money; and people who can spot
good ideas and then bring them to the stage or film.
You get paid two ways in Hollywood.
Either you're good with ideas, or you're brilliant at spotting
them. I spent 17 years.
The reason I lasted 17 years, is because by and large, I had some
good ideas, but I could also spot good ideas and be right
more than I was wrong. So the first thing you have to
do is have an idea, and then believe in the idea, and then
okay, your gut says it's the right thing for my market place,
my environment. Again, why I loved "The Straight
Story," I'll tell you exactly why I said yes to "The Straight
Story," is it would redefine Disney live action.
Disney live action, which had been kiddie movies, as animation
had been, but in 1990, whatever year it was, 1995?
When it came to me, 1999, I used it as a repositioning tool, of
what Disney could be. Everybody in the industry went,
wow, that's a Disney movie? I can make a Disney movie, too.
And that was the beginning of sort of the Disney live action
rebirth. It didn't make any money, but it
was really a powerful idea in terms of what I wanted to get
done. After you have the idea, you
have to find the people. Once you have an idea that you
think is interesting, can you gather a group of people
together that are going to help you make that idea come to life?
Jeffrey's friend David Geffen called him about a song writing
team, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, that he'd worked with on
the off-Broadway hit "Little Shop of Horrors."
Peter had worked with them on the same show as company
manager, so he brought them in to work on the "Little Mermaid."
Howard was just coming off a terrible disappointment when his
musical "Smile" crashed and burned on Broadway.
He came to Los Angeles to start over again.
Howard wasn't exactly the first guy who sprang to mind
when you said Disney. He was born into a Jewish family
in Baltimore, where he grew up on stage in the local children's
theater association. He was gay, edgy
and loved musicals, especially "Peter Pan."
When I was approached with an opportunity to work for Disney,
period, I leapt. I said what about animation?
What about working in that? That's what I really wanted
to do, much, much more than anything in live action.
Because I'm really a musical theater person, and I do see
a very, very strong connection between these two media.
Okay, so our contention in this case, is Howard one of the
key individuals who came along as a person to take the idea of
"Little Mermaid" and advance it to the next to the next stage.
What you're looking for, in my opinion, people, are--
Howard came in. People ask me a lot,
the difference between Disney Animation
and Pixar Animation, and is there a connection.
What is the overlap? Why do they make a certain kind
of movies, and why does Disney make other kinds of movies?
I always answer the question with, it's the people.
It's the people and their sensibilities that make movies,
not companies. So if you look at this output,
"Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," "Lion King,"
"Pocahontas," they all spring from a very simple source,
which is the Broadway musical. And what you see in this is
Howard Ashman had, the other thing that you have with people
is great craft and great passion.
And Howard Ashman, along with Ron and John, and thousands of
other people who made this movie, have craft, and they have
passion, and they have great discipline.
So, when you look at this, you hear that he is edgy, gay, etc.
What you see if you look at the movie, and you look at the
culture was, what you drop Howard, me, everybody, into
was not-- It was a very insular world.
Disney Animation in 1984 was 300-400 people.
Very insular, no outside influences.
And along come these outside musical theater people,
from Broadway. They bring that influence
into the department. First you have the idea,
"Little Mermaid," then you say, let's make it a musical.
You go out and get, at the time, Al Menken, unknown.
You all know who Al Menken is today, or he's won Academy
Awards, but at that time, he was just this songwriting guy, back
in New York, working with his partner, Howard Ashman.
They had just done "Little Shop of Horrors."
Howard had just done "Smile" with Marvin Hamlish,
a disaster on Broadway. Opened and closed.
Howard needed someplace new to be an artist.
Someplace where he could reinvent himself and reinvent
something. And along comes Howard.
So now we sort of have the two different ideas, which is you've
got the idea and you've got the people.
You also have to have something else in my opinion, which is
uniqueness. Something about what you're
doing, the people, the point of view, has to be unique.
So watch this again in terms of, from a uniqueness point of view.
We had this character in the original treatment in the script
that was a crab character, that was kind of, would be sort of,
look after the mermaid and try to keep her out of trouble, and
watch over her. He was kind of the crusty old--
He was the King's right hand guy.
He worked for the King, and he was like a conductor in the
undersea world. Howard said, I'm going to make
him Jamaican. And our first reaction was
Jamaican? I mean, it was a total twist on
what we were thinking. >> Okay, so in the process,
in the collaborative process, somebody comes along and changes
your point of view on what it is.
I can tell you the following story about finding unique
people. About 15-16 years ago, Alan
Menken and I went to Disney World with our kids.
His kids and my kids are roughly the same age.
At that time, they were 8, 9, 6, 7, 12, in that range.
It was the premiere of "Spaceship Earth," you know,
the golf ball ride at Walt Disney World?
That big sort of signature thing that Walt Disney World has.
There's a ride in it. Who knew?
You have a little car, and you go through this.
It had just been renovated. There are dioramas, which are
pictures, and you're in this car.
It's fabulous and it's unbelievable.
Then you sort of hang all of a sudden in midair, and you're in
the solar system. You are in the solar system.
It's pretty darn exciting. I get off the ride and I say to
Alan, wasn't that great? He goes, what do you mean, he
says, the music was terrible. And I said, what music?
Because I hadn't heard any of the music.
I couldn't have cared less about the music.
It wasn't about the music. But for Alan, everything in life
is about the music. Alan's entire being is about how
does the music sound, reflect, beat.
He's one of the most unique idiot savants in some sense, I
know, because out of his fingers come melodies.
But in terms of anything else, in terms of understanding maybe
change, no, it's all about the music.
So part of what you're looking for is uniqueness of the people
around you. Because that's what makes art
interesting. We've all seen it.
We've all done it, the idea of "Little Mermaid" ain't new.
It was the combination of the uniqueness and the people that
maybe starts to make "Little Mermaid" maybe interesting.
You see Howard there. You see these guys talking about
the crab. Well, if you've seen "Princess
and the Frog," this character that they initially thought
about is in that movie, a crusty old sidekick that helps the
princess. Boring.
Dull. Howard's take on making
Sebastian Jamaican was good for the music, because Alan could
then write Caribbean, which was very catchy, and very
successful. But it also gave the character
an edge and a point of view, which was not soft and silly,
but a little more sophisticated. And what we were doing was
trying to make these movies, not for four year olds, but for you
all when you were 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13.
So now you have an idea. You have some uniqueness.
You have the people around you. Now you sort of have to have the
inspiration. It's not just good enough to
have the idea. You have to be able to
communicate the idea. You have to inspire the
communication of it. In this clip, watch for the
following two things. The first time you see Howard
talking, Howard is talking to the animators.
He's sitting in a room with skeptical people, because
anybody outside the animation business who can't draw isn't
worth talking to, at least they weren't at the time.
And here is Howard Ashman, an outsider, and he'll sit in front
of these guys and tell them about the song he has written
with Alan, which is called "Under the Sea."
Now, we faked it up and put the clip in, we put some
animation in, but Howard sat there and did this all the way
through that song, and made the song come to life.
Because if you watch it for a second, and you know the clip,
he is that character. And he sings this character.
It's his demo. Howard is singing on this, not
Sam Wright. But Howard was singing this
demo, which you're hearing. Then you see him working with
Jodi Benson. Jodi Benson is the actress who
played Ariel. Not only is he communicating to
a broad spectrum of people, he is now telling the actress in
the most sensitive way, how to sing the song.
How to make it come to life. So, that is, in terms of the
inspiration, you've got to have somebody, someway, some being,
to inspire a collaborative group of people to go to the next step
and deliver what's in your head. >> He rounds up all of these
fish, and all of this stuff, to convince Ariel not to try
to become human. And they more or less put on
a show for her, by playing all these instruments and
themselves. Okay, so here it starts.
He starts establishing the rhythm, clams pick it up, and
oysters are beating on lobsters, whatever.
All the percussion...
The seaweed is always greener...
There was electricity in the air.
There was a real genius at work, and people knew it.
But that is a big mistake Just look at
The world around you Right here
On the ocean floor Such wonderful things
Surround you What more
Is you lookin' for? Under the sea...
Howard, in a sense, tried to treat it a little more
off the cuff, but I think he had practically written all the
songs, you know, five minutes after he got the treatment.
He said, here, say you had a song, let's just say it was
called "Part of Your World." It could be called anything,
but let's just say it was called "Part of Your World."
Then he and Alan Weaver in Howard's apartment in Greenwich
Village, and Alan came over and played it on the piano,
and Howard sang it right there. It sounded great.
Look at this stuff Isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think My collection's complete?
Wouldn't you think I'm the girl
The girl who has everything? >> So really try and work with
just the intensity. It's like it's about
all that emotion, and then not letting it all out.
Not letting it out. >> Not letting it out,
but having it here. When's it my turn?
Wouldn't I love That stuff really, it's--
Am I still a little too loud? >> You're great.
Oh, better that time? >> You're great.
It gets a little bright in here. What would I give
If I could live Outta these waters?
The intensity is better than... ( louder and bolder )
What would I give Is better than noise.
Yeah. >> But it's inner intensity.
Okay, so again, this clip, this is extraordinary stuff,
because it's never been seen. It was sitting in somebody's
trunk. The movie we made, -- the movie
was that every piece of footage in the movie was shot before
1994, which is 15-16 years ago. So everything was a collection,
was a collage. As a documentary filmmaker,
we chose to immerse you in the process, as opposed to have you
be observational. So if you saw the movie, we had
no talking heads. Most documentaries, if you look
at them today, are modern day talking heads with a clip.
Our process was not that. Our process was to put you into
our shoes Don Hahn's and mine, in the rooms that were taking
place 15-25 years ago. The clip of Howard working with
Jodi had not been seen for 20 years.
It was in somebody's garage, the animator who was animating the
character. He called up Don Hahn and said,
you know, I've got this tape of Jodi and Howard.
Do you want it? And it's about 40 minutes long,
and it's on the DVD release that came out last week.
So the entire thing. It's very emotional if you know
who Howard was and watching him work.
The nuance of watching Howard work is extraordinary in terms
of the performance he gets out of Jodi Benson.
Because it's not just sing the darn song, it's sing the song in
the following manner, make it make sense.
So the inspiration is not external inspiration.
It's not selling the project, per se, to an external audience,
it's selling it to the internal audience.
It's selling it to the people that have to go off and do it.
The next thing maybe should be back at number two or three, but
the clips are in the way they are, so that's the way it is.
There are always rules. In any artistic project, there's
a rule someplace. And you've got to know the
rules. In any business you're going
into, you've got to know the rules, because if you're going
to break the rules, you better break them for a reason.
Never stick to a rule if you think it's stupid.
But to do something without knowing the rule, and then doing
it stupidly because you didn't understand the rule would be a
mistake. So before you go do anything,
know your rules, know your craft, know what it is, the
medium you're working in, and what are the rules.
This is one of the most, for me, the most moving, most important
things that Howard said, and left as a legacy.
Howard died of AIDS in 1991. This was a legacy in some sense,
that Howard left. If you go back and look at any
successful show, Broadway show, Broadway musical, movie musical,
look at the unsuccessful ones and you'll discover why from
watching Howard talk about it. >> In almost every musical
ever written, there's a place, it's usually about the third
song of the evening, sometimes it's the second,
sometimes it's the fourth. But it's quite early.
The leading lady usually sits down on something.
Sometimes it's a tree stump, in "Brigadoon."
Sometimes it's under the pillars of Covent Garden in "My Fair
Lady," or it's a trash can in "Little Shop of Horrors."
But the leading lady sits down on something and sings about
what she wants in life. And the audience
falls in love with her and then roots for her to get it
for the rest of the night. >> Okay, very clear.
He's not wrong. In every musical ever written,
there is this song. Now, you might look at, you're
in town, you might look at some of "American Idiot," you may
look at certain newer musicals, they may not do it.
But there's always someplace in a musical where the leading
character, the character, the protagonist, comes forward and
says this is what I want, and by and large there's someone
standing in the way saying, I'm not going to let you have it.
And the hero says, yes, you are. I'm going to get it.
And the villain says, no you're not.
And the hero wins. That's by and large all good
storytelling. It's as simple as that.
Now, can you make it unique? Can you make it interesting?
Can you sell it? Can it be inspirational?
Can it be all those things in terms of, can it be something
more than just cliche? And that I think is what Howard
left us, which is know your rules.
Know your craft and know your rules.
Because from the rules, allows you to break them.
Because the breaking of the rules are equally important as
the rules. And in the last section, it's
what I call the elevation. Animation is an extremely
collaborative art form. It takes a hundred people,
a thousand people, sorry, a thousand people to make a movie,
all the way down from the directors, down to the ink and
painters, to the clean-up artists, the assistants.
And most businesses take a lot of people to do.
Very few businesses are single entrepreneurial, single owner
businesses. Most have one, two, three, four,
five, a thousand people that work for you.
And they're has to be a certain passion that somebody hears the
idea and says, I can make it better.
I hear what he's doing with that, I hear that voice, and it
speaks to me. That particular sound, I can do
something with that no one believes I can do it with.
This is the case of Glen Keane. So let's watch this
in terms of Glen. Wouldn't you think
My collection's complete? >> I heard "Part of Your World,"
Jodi Benson singing that, and it just captivated me.
I have to do that. I went and told those guys,
I really want to do Ariel. They said, oh, I don't know.
This is supposed to be a pretty girl.
Can you do that? I said, I have to do Ariel.
I could feel it in my heart... >> Okay, so Glen Keane was not
known for doing pretty girls. He did villains.
He did all sorts of things. What he used as the inspiration,
which is not in this movie because we thought it was all
too romantic and sickie, he used his wife Linda as the
inspiration. Not only the voice, but Linda
has really long hair. And he'd been drawing Linda for
years. Therefore, the combination of
Jodi Benson and Linda Keane became Ariel in terms of the
hair, the look, the feel, the whole thing, that Glen used all
his personal resources to bring this character to life.
It's probably some of the best animation done in this period of
time, certainly in terms of in the lat 20 years, since 1956-57,
'65, this was certainly the best animation ever done by a single
individual after the nine old men, being Franke, and Ollie,
and the geniuses of that period of time.
So part of this is not only to get unique people to do all
that, but to find the way to elevate the project, elevate the
idea by people's own individual passion.
So the five, again. I'm sure there are hundreds of
them. There are hundreds of things
that I'm missing in terms of what it is that makes it all
happen. But as you go about your own
desires to make things, test it out and see what you've got.
Add more rules. Add more things that make it
possible. But I'm in the business of
trying to find things that are interesting.
I'm in the business of looking at other things and saying, as a
collaborative artist, is there a way for me to do something
interesting with that, with them, that might make some
money. Before I take questions, and
I'll take questions--
Does that go away? It goes away.
Before I take questions, I just want to talk about
one other thing, again, a different process.
I have had the very good fortune of spending the last three years
working in Italy. Again, serendipitous, I had two
weeks off in January two years ago, and I didn't know what to
do. I had been wanting to go to
Italy for six months, you know, go live in Italy.
Isn't that everybody's dream? If you have second life,
go live in Italy. Make it to Italy.
So I went to Italy for two weeks, because you know, what
else can you do. I said I would take two weeks of
Italian classes, because you know, you should speak the
language. And I didn't want to go to
Venice, which was a huge mistake, I now discovered.
I didn't want to go to Venice because it looked too much like
Disneyland, and I'm not a big fan of going to Disneyland
again. It's not true, it's
extraordinarily silly. Rome was too big, Milan was too
dirty, so I went to Florence. Randomly, I went to Florence.
And one of my rules, see we all have rules in life.
When I travel by myself, I can do almost anything by myself
except dinner. Dinner is really hard by
yourself. You're a complete loser sitting
by yourself. Aren't you?
You go into a restaurant, oh, who's that loser?
Right? Lunch, fine.
Breakfast, fine. No one cares.
Dinner, loser. So I said, okay, fine.
My rule then in Florence would be that I'm going to spend no
less than three hours at dinner, because by yourself, you eat,
you get out, you're home, you're done.
What's the fun in that? So I won't tell you the long
story of how I got to this restaurant.
But I happen to walk into this restaurant.
I sat down. It's a fancy restaurant.
I sat there and the restaurant has no menu.
They come to your table and they tell you the menu.
Well I know that if you order the food, it's going to come too
quickly, and then I have to go home.
So I tried to order a bottle of wine first.
They wouldn't have it, because in Italy, you're supposed to
order the food, then order the wine.
But I like to order the wine first, because I can drink a
little wine, take up some time, and then order the food.
So we argued for 20 minutes. I want to order the wine.
You have to order the food first, sir.
No, I'd like to order the wine. So finally I got my wine.
They didn't speak very good English.
But by the time they came back to take my food order, I had
forgotten what the menu was, and I was of course too embarrassed
after this whole thing to say could you please tell me the
menu again. So I ordered the shark and the
pasta, because that's all I remembered.
I didn't really want the shark or the pasta.
That's all I remembered. The wine was pretty good by this
time. So I ordered the shark.
I'm one of these people going, oh, I've made a bad choice, huh,
could I have done better? Ooh, ah, ugh, do it again!
So it's a very fancy restaurant, and some guy is walking up and
down in jeans, and I go, oh, jeans.
A fancy restaurant, must be the owner.
I call him over. I say, what's your name?
He says, Julio. I said, Julio--
He speaks very little English. Are you the owner?
No, no, my dad is the owner. Julio, I've made a huge mistake.
I've ordered the shark and the pasta.
And I don't really care how much it costs, or how much you
bring me, could you just please bring me some food.
He said, sure. I'll shorten the story again.
Eleven courses later, not tasting portions, 11 courses
later, extraordinary, I'm presented with the bill.
And I go, oh, dear. Oh, well, I've had a fantastic
four-hour meal. Unbelievable.
I talked to Hugo the wine steward, Julio.
I've made friends with everybody in the restaurant.
They have no clue what I do. They don't care.
I don't care. We chitchat about this in our
limited, I speak no Italian. And three years later, I still
don't speak Italian. Don't ask me why.
So we chitchat. The bill comes, I pick it up
slowly, and I'm charged for the shark and the pasta, and that's
it. So, okay, now I'm walking out of
the restaurant going, that was pretty damn good.
It was basically all fish. And I get to the door, and the
woman says, no, no, no. Julio attends.
Excuse me? Julio.
No, no, no, Julio attends. And of course, we as Americans,
completely understand what they're saying.
Please stand here. Please wait.
Julio is going to come back, and wants to say something to you.
So I go, okay. Julio comes in, and he sort of
beckons me across the street. And I think is he gay,
or just Italian. ( laughter )
So I'm walking across the street, and I'm going, okay, I'm
on an adventure. It's an adventure.
I walk across the street into the theater.
What theater? There's some guitarist, two
guitarists and a flutist playing.
Julio hands me a glass of wine. There's 150 people there.
And he says, enjoy the show. I'm sort of staggered by it.
I drink my wine. I walk out.
Then I say tomorrow night I'll be back for the meat courses.
And tomorrow night, sure enough, I show back up again.
In the middle of the street are three people waiting for me.
And they sort of explain to me what's going on.
The owner, Fabio, runs four restaurants.
One of them happens to be a club, which is breakfast, lunch
and dinner, and the theater. And his wife, Maria, performs
there. Would you like to come back and
see her perform in two weeks? I say no, I'm going to Israel.
I'm going to London. I'm casting "Sister Act," I
can't come back. So I hang out with them.
They don't know who I am. Don't care.
I don't care. We have a great time.
We eat. We dine.
And I go off to Israel. I go off to London.
And two weeks later, I happen to have three days free.
What am I going to do? I'll go to Florence.
How bad can that be? So I email Miriam, and I say
Miriam, again, I'm going to come back, could I buy one ticket,
please. She writes back and says no,
we're going to give you a ticket, and would you like to
have dinner with the family afterwards.
I go, not really, no, I just want to see the show.
So, I go back, and many things happen, but I see the show.
I meet these extraordinary people.
I have dinner afterwards. It's all in Italian.
The show the is completely in Italian.
The audience roars hysterically, but there's something
interesting about this woman. Really interesting.
I don't understand a word of it. I don't find it very funny, but
she's really interesting. So we sit down at dinner, and I
say to her, tell me about yourself.
Do you have a director? No, the audience directs me.
How do you put your pieces together?
She tells me how she puts her pieces together.
It looks like she's put them together herself, which is
interesting. She's very talented.
But they're sort of disjointed. They're little sketches.
So I say great, fabulous. I go away.
Cut. Tomorrow night, eat across the
street at our other restaurant, the first one I went to, and
then come back here and have dinner with us again afterwards.
So I have two dinners. That next night I come back and
I say to her, Maria, have you ever been to America?
She says no, I'd like to go. Would September work for you?
( laughter ) And I go, well, um, uh, yes,
yes, September might work for me.
And six months later, I'm presenting Maria in Pasadena,
upstairs at a small theater, because why not?
And the show is something called "Crepapelle," which is
laugh until your sides split. Really interesting.
Everybody says to me, everybody in the audience says to me, boy
is she talented. No clue what you do with her.
Even one guy, David Trainor, who's a rather famous TV
director, next to me, I wouldn't go any further than this.
Not gonna work. I go, you know, she's really
interesting. There's something about her.
She has the show sort of half in English, no, a little bit in
English, but it's in Italian. So, along with my friend Patrick
Pacheco, I said Patrick, come out here and see this woman.
And then for the next two and a half years, Patrick and I go
back and forth to Florence. How bad can that be?
We drink wine. We have no objective in mind.
I don't think it's going to make us a dime ever.
But the idea of just creating something with Maria Cassi, and
the extraordinary food. I've eaten and drunk more
extraordinary wines and had more meals cooked for me in various
places than I could ever imagine, all for free.
Of course, there's no free lunch, because it's cost me a
fortune to go backwards and forwards, and Patrick.
But extraordinary. Over two and a half years,
we constructed a show called "My Life with Men
and Other Animals." And last January,
an Italian producer, who saw the show and said they were
Robert Wilson's producer, they said, I think there might
be something here. And over the last six months, we
have presented at Poughkeepsie, in workshop, upstate New York.
It opened in Milan officially four weeks ago.
It's playing in Florence. It went to Bucharest.
I may never see a dime from it, because there's not a lot of
money in these kinds of things, but the idea of walking in
someplace, to such a romantic notion.
And what I urge you all to do, and it's been one of the
highlights, one of the most fundamentally changing things in
my life, was to work in Italy, and to work with these amazing
people. I just basically am the
audience, and I say to her all the time.
I'm just there to hear what you say, and tell you what I think.
We've constructed a really interesting show, which I hope
will come to America, and tour Europe, and will play Paris.
It plays every two weeks in Florence at their theater now
for the next year. It's booked every two weeks in
Florence. So my hope for you all, when I
end here, is that you have the courage of your convictions,
that the romanticism of that story, because it's quite a
romantic story in terms of just what it was, is that when you
walk into any room, any place in the world, the idea might be
there. And it always is.
It's just about finding it, bringing your uniqueness to it,
bringing your collaboration, your point of view to it, and
then making it be something beyond anybody else's
expectations, because they don't count.
Ultimately, the only thing that counts in this business, and
sometimes you're successful financially, and sometimes
you're not, but the only thing that counts is your point of
view in the arts, and how you construct that point of view,
collaborate that point of view, have it changed and molded by
really talented and clever people, and make it something
unique, which then in turn moves and changes an audience, whether
that be one person or a million people, or ten million, or a
hundred million people. A simple idea goes that way.
So I thank you. I'll take questions.
I'll do anything you want now. I'll tap dance.
Whatever you want. Thank you very much.