An Interview with Roy E. Disney
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Chapter 1 An Interview with Roy E. Disney In May 2002 I approached Mark Mandelbaum at the Association for Comput- ing Machinery (ACM) about publishing a new nonprofit magazine Computers in Entertainment (CiE) to cover a wide range of theoretical and practical computer applications in the field of entertainment. Instead of singularly addressing game de- sign, computer graphics, or other specialized areas, the complexity of entertainment nowadays and in the future requires inter-disciplinary technological advances and integrated applications. The magazine offers a broad as well as an in-depth view of computer technology that can be applied to existing entertainment and that can create new genres of entertainment. The first editorial board meeting was held on March 12, 2003 with Disney Fellow Dr. Alan Kay, Kim Rose, Disney corporate vice president Bob Lambert, and myself at the famous Rotunda restaurant located at the Team Disney building (aka the “Seven Dwarfs Building”) at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California (see Fig. 1.1). We discussed the scope of the new magazine, outlined the first issues, and suggested new board members to invite and to interview (among them were Quincy Jones, Seymour Papert, and Roy E. Disney). In October 2003 the inaugural issue of ACM Computers in Entertainment was published with the theme “Educating Kids through Entertainment.” My first inter- viewee for the magazine was Roy E. Disney, Vice Chairman of The Walt Disney Company at the time of the interview. In the morning of May 28, 2003, my colleagues Eric Huff, John Michael Ferrari, and Jessica Chavez arrived at the Walt Disney Studios to assist me with the lighting equipment and video camera. I was nervous because it was my first video interview for the magazine, and Roy E. Disney was the top boss at Disney—the company I was working for. My fear subsided when Roy turned out to be very warm, kind, friendly, approachable, and easy to talk to. The following is the transcript of my video interview with Roy E. Disney held on May 28, 2003 in his office at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank (see Fig. 1.2): Newton Lee: Congratulations on your 50 years of achievements in entertainment. Roy E. Disney: Thank you. It doesn’t seem like 50 years, I promise. Lee: Based on your half a century of experience, what do you think about educating children through entertainment? N. Lee, K. Madej, Disney Stories, 1 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-2101-6_1, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 Chapter 2 Stories Across Media From There to Here: The Beginning of Interactive Stories The early 1990s was a heady time for interactive digital stories. Just a few years earlier, in 1987, Amanda Goodenough had used the newly-released HyperCard to write the first interactive digital story, Inigo Gets Out.1 Her motivation? To capture the traditional storytelling atmosphere her grandmother had created for her when she was a young child: a vital interactive environment in which her grandmother would say, “what do you think happens next?” and in which the lines were never the same. The stories her grandmother told became Amanda’s as she helped shape them with her own interpretations and brought them into her everyday reality. InAmanda’s interactive story, children make Inigo’s actions their own. “Children know intuitively where to click,” and how to make the story happen. It is no longer a “print” story, with words and pictures on a page, but a virtual story environment with which to interact and in which things can be made to happen. Inigo was closely followed in 1988 by one of the first edutainment video games, Mixed-Up Mother Goose.2 Sierra On-Line’s Roberta Williams, who had created the first graphic adventure game Mystery House in 1979, wanted to develop a game for her children that was more than entertainment, that also had an educational component. She chose to work with popular nursery rhymes and in Mixed-Up Mother Goose created an interactive story in which children travel to a land where the rhymes are real and have gotten themselves all mixed up. The children help each of the characters put their rhyme back in order by bringing back objects, people, or animals that Online photos and graphics provide extra detail and are identified by urls the reader can refer to. This additional reference information will be particularly beneficial as an enhancement for the online version of this book. URLs are current at time of printing. 1 Inigo Gets Out is the first interactive digital story created in 1987 by Amanda Goodenough using the HyperCard program. Photo of Inigo Gets Out:http://www.smackerel.net/black_white_03.html. 2 Mixed-up Mother Goose was first released by Sierra On-Line in 1988. Designed as an adventure game for toddlers, it brought them into a fantasy world of nursery rhymes. Great gameplay and engaging graphics (for the time) made it a very popular story game. Cover of Mixed-Up Mother Goose: http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/mixed-up-mother-goose. Screen shot of Mixed- Up Mother Goose: http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/screens/16935/mixed-up-mother-goose/2/. N. Lee, K. Madej, Disney Stories, 5 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-2101-6_2, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 Chapter 3 Early Animation: Gags and Situations Getting into the Business of Animation Walt Disney officially incorporated Laugh-O-Gram Films on May 18, 1922. He was, at the time, working at Kansas City Film Ad Company where he had been hired two years earlier. Film Ad had brought him into the world of animation; his tremendous curiosity and interest led him to experiment on his own time and eventually to make his own films. The ad animations Walt worked on at Film Ad were made entirely of figures cut out of paper. Joints were riveted so figures could be manipulated and changed for each frame of film shot. Animated cartoons on the other hand, a staple at theatres by 1915, consisted of drawings. The first animations entranced audiences with their “magic” quality: moving drawings were novel and audiences loved them no matter what the quality or content. In 1914, Winsor McCay, of Little Nemo fame, brought a realistic personality to animation with Gertie the Dinosaur. McCay depicted a style of movement that endeared Gertie to the audience. In the film, Gertie comes lumbering out of a cave by the side of a lake and proceeds to eat an entire tree. McCay asks Gertie to do some tricks but when she doesn’t raise her left foot as he has asked, he scolds her and she cries. She gets over it quickly and subsequent action includes her meeting an elephant and tossing it into the lake, lying down for a nap, scratching her head, her nose, and her chin with her tail in a charming fashion, drinking the lake dry, and finally, giving McCay a ride out of the picture. In creating a personality for Gertie, George McManus laid the road for animation as a new film genre based in characters not in magic.1 Such animation intrigued Walt. He had come to Film Ad as a commercial artist and a cartoonist without any experience in animation, a typical trajectory at the time. Online photos and graphics provide extra detail and are identified by urls the reader can refer to. This additional reference information will be particularly beneficial as an enhancement for the online version of this book. URLs are current at time of printing. 1 Newspaper cartoonist George McManus bet Winsor McCay that a dinosaur could not be brought to life. To win, McCay made Gertie, the world’s first animated dinosaur. Photo of Gertie: http://cinemamonstruoso.blogspot.com/2010/05/gertie-dinosaur-1914-gertie-on-tour.html. N. Lee, K. Madej, Disney Stories, 17 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-2101-6_3, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 Chapter 4 From Gags to Characters A New Animated Experience for the Audience Margaret Winkler, a New York distributor, had received the promotional letter Walt had sent out in May, 1923. She was having problems with two of the series she represented and was eager to find a new cartoon series with which to replace them. Without seeing Alice’s Wonderland she had written back immediately. Walt, discour- aged with the financial problems of Laugh-O-Grams, had already left for Hollywood in early August 1923 and had “put my drawing board away. What I wanted to do was get a job in a studio—any studio, doing anything” (Gabler 77). He visited them all, looking for ways to get introductions and find work in the film industry, but he made little headway. Walt wrote Winkler back from Los Angeles in August saying he was starting a new venture and was intent on working at one of the film studios so that he could “better study technical detail and comedy situations and combine them with [his] cartoons.” Winkler was persistent in wanting to see the reel and Walt finally got a copy to her in October. She immediately offered him US$ 1,500 each for the first six films and US$ 1,800 each for the next six. Even more important for a fledgling business, she offered to pay for each of the animations as they were completed and wanted to have the first one delivered by January 2. As part of the contract she sent out to Walt, she included an option for 24 more shorts (two series of twelve) to be produced in 1925 and 1926.