Disney producer's attitude still upbeat
By Jay Boyar | Sentinel Movie Critic
Posted December 10, 2003
These are troubled times at the Mouse that Walt built.
Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt Disney, recently resigned from the Disney company and called for chairman Michael Eisner's resignation.
The company's Orlando animation unit, plagued by layoffs and the recent cancellation of a major project , may soon be shut down altogether.
Attendance at the theme parks, the lifeblood of the company, has reportedly been off since Sept. 11, 2001.
Don Hahn is in a unique position to survey these distressing developments.
As an animation mainstay of the Disney company, he knows all about 'toons. The films he has produced include some of the company's most successful efforts: Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and the animation/live-action hit Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
As a producer of the recent theme-park-inspired Disney film The Haunted Mansion, Hahn also knows his theme-park stuff. In fact, he grew up about 20 minutes from Disneyland and is married to a former Walt Disney World tour guide, Denise Meara Hahn.
And as a top creative force within the company, Hahn understands the issues -- corporate and otherwise -- involved in Roy E. Disney's dramatic departure.
The departure of Disney, who had been vice chairman of the company's board of directors and chairman of its feature animation division, was accompanied by a letter in which he demanded Eisner's resignation. The letter complained about the "perception" that the company has become "rapacious, soul-less and always looking for the 'quick buck'."
The rift between Disney and Eisner is clearly painful for Hahn, who speaks of it in the strained tones of a person whose family members are feuding.
"It's a difficult situation," he says. "It's very hard to take sides in all this."
Roy E. Disney's resignation, Hahn adds, feels like a blow to the company.
"You don't want to say it has no impact, because Roy is a great guy, a great partner, a great defender of animation," says Hahn. But in the same breath he adds, "You can say the same thing about Michael, too."
Hahn calls Roy E. Disney a "thoughtful, caring, temperate" person, which only makes the tough language of that letter sound more jolting.
"He's obviously very passionate about the company," explains Hahn. "I think that passion manifests itself sometimes in strong words."
Hahn has heard the rumors that the company's Orlando animation operation may be closing. Last month, Disney animation chief David Stainton told the Los Angeles Times, "By January, we hope we'll have a more concrete plan for the [Orlando] studio."
Should the Orlando operation close, Hahn's attitude is surprisingly upbeat.
"The truth is, it's a talent-driven business," he says. "There are spectacular talents at that studio in Florida, and I would certainly hope -- and would be confident -- that they would be able to go on and express themselves, either at that studio or wherever else."
Hahn also remains fairly positive about the sort of traditional, or "2-D" (two-dimensional), animation that built his career. He feels that way even though 2-D 'toons seem to be on the decline, and even in the face of the cancellation of the Orlando operation's A Few Good Ghosts, which was to have contained traditional animation as well as computer-generated images.
"I think it's premature to say that 2-D animation is dead," he cautions. "There's great 2-D animation, to this day, being done around the world."
Still, the box-office numbers generally tend to favor such mega-hit 3-D productions as Disney's Finding Nemo, DreamWorks' Shrek and 20th Century Fox's Ice Age.
"You can't deny that the audience seems to love the look of digital movies right now," says Hahn. "At Disney studios, anyway, it's always been about technical innovation. . . . By pushing the craft out there, and getting to a 3-D world, it allows the artist to do a lot."
Hahn adds that one reason 3-D may generally be more popular with today's audiences than 2-D has to do with storytelling style, not animation technique.
"If you had to generalize, there tends to be a little more fairy-tale aspect to 2-D animation that you don't see in 3-D," he says. "There tends to be a little more contemporary sensibility in 3-D."
About the post-Sept. 11, 2001, attendance at the theme parks, Hahn is philosophical.
"There's no question that since 9-11 there's been a lot of challenges, be it in tourism or financially, with the company," he says.
Is The Haunted Mansion, like Disney's summer hit Pirates of the Caribbean, a way for people to have a taste of the theme-park experience without leaving their neighborhoods?
"It may be," Hahn allows. "It's a pretty beloved ride, certainly, over the years." He adds that a key to the attraction's success has always been that, while "it is scary," it also "has a sense of humor to it."
One of Roy E. Disney's charges was that the company has lost touch with its "heritage." Pirates of the Caribbean, for example, was the first Disney-branded movie to carry a PG-13 rating. And even The Haunted Mansion, which is rated PG, deals with murder and suicide.
"To grow, you have to test boundaries," Hahn says, reflecting on the company's history. "I think that's absolutely the spirit of Walt Disney."
