Tag: Disney

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Disney Lies: Rewriting P. L. Travers

Marineland should learn from Disney and make a movie about a killer whale who longs to come live at Marineland.  It’s his dream.  At first, he objects to being trapped in small antiseptic pool, but he comes to realize that it is a magnificent tiny little pool and is grateful to Marineland for feeding him.

P. L. Travers absolutely hated what Disney did to her book (Mary Poppins). You have to be pretty shameless to make a movie about her in which you simply rewrite history and reverse her attitude.  She’s grateful for the fish.

It is even more shameless to claim, in interviews, you didn’t do it.

So we have “Saving Mr. Banks” in which we are told that P. L. Travers (the “P” stands for “Pamela”) had reservations about the Disney version of “Mary Poppins” until she sees the results and begins to understand how honorable and wonderful and edifying it is to believe that most people really can’t bear reality and so must be drugged into infantile fantasies or bribed with sugar and so finally understood and approved of Walt’s vision of a sweet, white, oblivious America.

She did not!

She didn’t like what they did to her book at all and tried to withdraw consent for the movie. She did not like the animation injected into the story. She didn’t like the sticky sentimentality, or the fact that they white-washed the Mary Poppins character to move into that “lovable” mischievous rogue category so well-inhabited by the American popular landscape with all it’s Lucys and Gilligans and Jethros and Mr. Haneys and Fonzies and– oh, my god, it’s absolutely sickening just how dominated our culture is with treacle and feyness and posturing.

Is there nobody to sue Disney for this massive public lie?  I suspect that the only people left with standing to do so have been bought and paid for.  That’s how Disney works.  It’s the Animal Farm of entertainment conglomerates.  And it has learned to walk on its’ hind legs.

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Rango

It is striking how the movie “Rango” makes use of the most innovative, daring, cutting-edge technologies to bring you a story that, in most respects, is insipid, boring, and predictable.

Surprise, surprise: it’s nothing more than a remake: Walter Mitty as a lizard, with portions of Chinatown thrown in, along with “A Fistfull of Dollars”. Add in “Puss’n’boots” from Shrek, except now he’s an accordion-player in a Mexican band. The girl, Beans, is not much. She is merely the canvas upon which Rango paints his courage.

There’s a point to that. The adventure seems to take place entirely within Rango’s imagination. It’s makes sense that his imagination has synthesized elements of old movies into a hodgepodge of scenes and incidents that seem disconnected to each other– watch when they suddenly form a posse to go after the water thief.

It’s still disappointing. It’s a moderately interesting rehash of Hollywood kitsch. I just wish someone would put as much effort into developing an original, interesting story and characters as they do into the technology. Boom boom flash flash

This happens consistently, from “Shrek” to “Toy Story” to “Madagascar”.

Rango’s romantic interest, Beans, is “spunky” in that tired, harmless, anesthetized manner of the Disney template: all the important action is carried by the male character, even when he wimps out.

And that is the most tired, depressing moment in the movie: Rango wimps out, trudges off slowly to funereal music, gives up. Well, in the most conventional of American cultural conventions, giving up is the worst sin of all so he must be, he will be, he inevitably will redeem himself, good triumphs, nobody is hurt (Rango never kills anyone), and the threatening horizon of narrative originality is vanquished again.

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Mickey Rat

We were about to see the “Mickey’s Day Care Centre”. With a big picture of Mickey Mouse on the sign in the front yard. Yes, the day was coming.

But not yet. Right now, if you own a daycare, you can’t call it the Mickey Mouse Day Care, and you can’t put a picture of Pluto or Goofy on the sign. Mickey and his friends were copyrighted by Walt Disney way back when, and the copyright stays in force for fifty years. And The Disney Corporation has generally been quite ruthless about enforcing it’s copyright, taking day cares, schools, and other institutions to court to force them to remove Donald and Mickey and Goofy from their advertisements or classroom walls and pay up.  That’s because Disney loves children.  That’s Disney’s “family values”.

Well, in 2003, Mickey is “Public Domain”, which means anyone can use him.

Unless….

Let’s say for a moment you’re the Disney Corporation. The law says your copyright is going to expire because the first legislatures who created copyright law decided that you should not be able to cash in forever on your creative work, to sit on your assets, indolent, dependent on a legislative teat. After a reasonable period of time, you should have to do more work to continue to make money.

But you make a lot of money off this copyright.  It’s had work coming up with new ideas and new products.  So you go to the government, like any other citizen in this great country of ours, and say, “Please, can I keep my copyright?” The government says, “No, of course not. Ideas belong to everyone. Copyright, you see, is not about protecting your rights as an owner. It is merely designed to encourage innovation and creativity by giving a temporary period of protection. Your Mickey Mouse did not come from nowhere. Mr. Disney benefited from all the artists and innovators and creative persons who all contributed techniques and language and styles to our culture before him. Now, Mr. Mouse goes back where he belongs: to the greater body of culture.”  (And, of course, we discover that Mr. Disney did not, as it were, actually invent Mickey.  Someone else did and Mr. Disney took credit.)

“Well,” says Disney, “would you change the law if I pay you some money?” And Congress says, “Money! You have Money! Why didn’t you say so! Of course we can. We are a group of utterly corrupt and gutless wimps who always pass laws that favour the people who keep us in office by providing us with an endless supply of money to spend on election campaigns. Ask Archer, Daniels, Midland! Ask Jack Valenti! Ask anybody with money! It’s true! And since you have a lot more money than all of the day care owners in the world, you win!”

And so it was.

Disney’s Political Action Committee (PAC’s are created to bypass election laws that restrict the amount of money corporations can give a candidate, just so this sort of thing can’t happen, ha ha) gave election money to 10 of the 13 sponsors of the new copyright bill.

Now you might naively think, “that’s bribery!  That’s corruption!”  Well yes, but those same congressman wear flag pins in their lapels and promise to stop protestors from burning the U.S. flag and illegal immigrants from taking your job.

The new copyright bill extends legal protection for an additional 20 years, from 50 (after the death of the creator) to 70.

Now in 2023, do you think, by any chance, we will see another extension of the copyright law? Why don’t they just go for the gold: “in perpetuity”?

Maybe that would be too expensive for them.

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I am not Paid Enough

I just read in the Globe and Mail (November 11, 1997) that Disney Corporation has settled a suit with Jeffrey Katzenberg. Katzenberg quit after he was denied a promotion by Michael Eisner. So he sued Disney for– get this — 2% of all future profits on any product developed during his ten years with the company.

Now you may think this is a very strange idea. You work for a company. You go into a snit because your boss doesn’t give you a promotion. So you quit. In the real world… pardon me… in the world that people who do real work exist in, if you quit your job you’re told to turn in your tool kit or your notebook computer and get lost. Just imagine your bosses face if you asked him for a percentage of all future profits based on anything you worked on while you were there? But then, that is the world of unionized employees who we all know are ruining our society with their ruthless, greedy demands. Now let’s get back to the rarefied world of capital gains deductions and private boxes at the Skydome.

So, is this another of the endless cycle of incidents demonstrating ruthless greed among the upper classes in our society? You’ll be surprised at my reaction: I think this is a great idea. And since all citizens in this country are treated as equals by the law, I intend to contact my lawyer and initialize similar proceedings against all of my previous employers. I figure that when Katzenberg wins– actually, I think he has won– Disney settled out of court– I can appeal to his precedent.

So I am going back to all my previous employers, including United Grain Growers, and demanding a specific percentage of all the profits they have made since I worked there for four summers about twenty years ago. Let’s see. I worked for three months driving a truck and moving things around in a warehouse. I’ll have to get some figures from them: how much profit did they make while I was there? What percentage of the total work activity performed by all employees at that time did my hours comprise (judging from the level of activity at their downtown office, I’d say about 50%)? How much profit have they made since then? Fifty million?

Let’s see. If they had 5,000 employees at the time, then I represented about .02% of the workforce. Since I only worked from June to August, I’ll have to accept a measly 25% of my .02, which is .005. Now multiply that times total corporate profits of $50,000,000 and you have a modest $250,000 that United Grain Growers owes me right now. But I’ll tell you what, Wheat-Boys: pay me $125,000 cash right now and I won’t sick my twisted lawyers on you!

Boy, I can see now why Disney hired Katzenberg in the first place! The man is a genius! And don’t forget– this is the same company that paid Michael Ovitz $38 million dollars to quit. Why? Why does a company as smart as Disney pay someone $38 million dollars? Because he made their stock go up? Because he masterminded the production of several brilliant movies that won loads of Oscars and grossed hundreds of millions of dollars? Because he opened a new theme park that had to be expanded right away because it was deluged with rabid fans from all over the world? No, my friends. He got $38 million dollars from Disney because– hold on to your hats– he failed. Yes, he was FIRED because he stunk up the place, and Disney preferred to pay him $38 million dollars than put up with his incompetence any longer.

Now kids, before you go to work tomorrow at McDonalds or Burger King and try these same proven strategies for personal success, remember one thing: you don’t make the rules.

UPDATE: Wired Magazine estimates that Michael Ovitz, who left Disney in 1996 after 18 months as President, received $38 Million plus $92 million in stock options. Eisner won’t be crying in his beer any time soon: he himself has earned an estimated $1 billion and still holds 8.7 million shares.