The ‘Sorcerer’s’ Apprentices

Disney animator Eric Goldberg was 15 years old and living in Cherry Hill, N.J., the first time he saw “Fantasia.” He’s not sure precisely when, but at some point during the display of undulating mushrooms and erupting volcanoes, Goldberg made up his mind what to do with the rest of his life.

“I sat in the first row and let the lava wash all over me,” says the 44-year-old Goldberg. “I thought it was just amazing. I knew right there that I wanted to become an animator.”

On the Disney lot in Burbank, the story is often repeated, with only the names and locations changed. Says Goldberg: “Pretty much everyone at the studio saw ‘Fantasia’ at some point and said to themselves, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ ”

They got their wish. Saturday, 60 years after the original confounded critics and inspired future animators, Walt Disney Pictures premieres “Fantasia/2000”--in giant-screen Imax theaters, no less--to once again alter expectations of feature animation and the studio where the art form became an industry.

As ambitious and eccentric as anything released by the studio, “Fantasia/2000” features seven new animated sequences and a glossy new print of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” It’s also noteworthy that Donald Duck gets roughly equal time in the new film, helping Noah herd animals aboard his ark to Sir Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance.”

The film opens with a swarm of abstract color, shifts to a chaotic cartoon about a flamingo with a yo-yo and ends with a piece inspired by the Art Nouveau prints of Alphonse Mucha. Like the original, all the action is set to classical music, but this time the swirling visions are accompanied by 48-track digital sound and projected on a 56-foot-tall Imax screen. Combining crowd-pleasing vignettes with segments that verge on fine art, it’s a far cry from the usual Disney blockbuster.

“Fantasia/2000” owes its oddness--and its very existence--to Roy Edward Disney, nephew of Walt Disney and chairman of the studio’s feature animation department. Disney says he always adored the 1940 original and remembered his uncle’s pledge to make “Fantasia” an ongoing project, updated periodically with new sequences set to new selections of classical music.

Making good on his uncle’s dream has been a nine-year effort for Roy Disney, who faced commercial pressures, the formidable legacy of his uncle and the reluctance of studio brass to complete what was planned as a 1995 release called “Fantasia Continued.” The 69-year-old executive supervised the entire project, from the choice of music and celebrity hosts to the dizzying variety of animation styles.

“This has been hugely personal for me,” Disney says. “I know this wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for me making it happen. It would have been a quaint idea that Walt had 50 years ago. But good ideas have a way of always being good.”

One measure of Disney’s commitment is the presentation of the film in Los Angeles. Unable to reach an agreement with the operators of the only Imax theater in central Los Angeles, Disney has built a temporary theater especially for the run of “Fantasia/2000.” The steel and fiberglass tent, built at a cost approaching $4 million off the 405 Freeway near Howard Hughes Parkway, will be dismantled at the end of April to make room for a shopping mall. (The film, which also will open at Edwards Imax Theatres in Valencia, Ontario and Irvine, will move to regular theaters after its four-month Imax run.)

Disney says the appeal of “Fantasia” is the freedom of its format. Short films set to music--Disney calls them “little fun folderols”--can go places features cannot, exploring artistic styles and narrative techniques that would never work in a movie starring saucer-eyed animals singing Broadway songs in enchanted lands. “ ‘Fantasia’ is a big box of assorted chocolates,” he says. “Your favorites are always changing.”

If the original “Fantasia” contained a few flavors of chocolate, “Fantasia/2000” features the whole candy store. In one sequence, the plies and pirouettes of a toy ballerina are realized with the help of a newly developed digital animation system. In another, the Jazz Age in Manhattan is summoned by mimicking the flat, expressive line drawings of caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. The segments are introduced by a roster of celebrity hosts including Steve Martin, Itzhak Perlman and Penn & Teller.

This potpourri of personalities and animation styles is the result of a production process worlds away from the autocratic approach favored by the studio founder. “The original is Walt’s movie,” Disney says. “This one is everybody’s.”

Which is just as it should be, since the Disney building in Burbank is full of people whose professional aspirations took seed with “Fantasia.”

Original ‘Fantasia’ Drew Wrath of Critics

Disney animator Tony DeRosa was in high school when he first saw the original. “I was just blown away by it,” says DeRosa, who’s in his early 40s, who worked on the closing sequence of the new version. “The combination of music and animation, without any dialogue, is just so pure. It fires up your imagination.”

When it was originally released, however, “Fantasia” didn’t fire up much of anything--except the ire of critics. Disney started work on the project in 1939 as a vehicle for Mickey Mouse, who had been largely forgotten amid the fanfare over “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Pinocchio.” To get the star of “Steamboat Willy” back into the spotlight, Disney struck up a collaboration with conductor Leopold Stokowski on an adaptation of the fairy tale “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”

Once “Sorcerer” was done, however, the work continued. Disney dreamed up a vision of Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours” as a ballet for ostriches, alligators and elephants. Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” was envisioned as a tale of warring dinosaurs, with studio artists preparing by sketching the reptilian movements of a group of iguanas brought onto the Burbank lot. Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony became a dance of mythical creatures on Mt. Olympus. At one point, Disney and Stokowski discussed the idea of spritzing theaters with floral perfume during a Debussy prelude. Disney was certain his take on classic music and myth would strike a chord with mass audiences. After seeing the “Pastoral” sequence for the first time, Walt remarked: “Gee, this’ll make Beethoven.”

The final film was more than two hours--the longest animated film ever released by the studio--and played in just 14 theaters that could afford the elaborate sound systems Disney demanded. Commercially, it was the studio’s first bona fide flop. But what really stung was the response of the classical music and critical elite, who bristled at the intrusion of a Hollywood showman onto their hallowed ground. Stravinsky himself called it “an unresisting imbecility.” (That didn’t stop him, however, from later selling Disney the rights to more of his music, including a piece that provides the finale of the new film, “The Firebird.”)

Roy Disney says the failure of the first film always haunted his uncle. “He was accused of being an impertinent young Kansas City cartoonist trying to mingle with the greats,” Disney says. “They called him a god------ rube.”

But a funny thing happened over the next few decades; Disney’s Edsel became its Mustang. While the high-brow may have sneered at Disney’s venture into culture, many others had immense fondness for “Fantasia.” Fans included a young James Levine, now artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera, who says the film sparked his interest in classical music (Levine served as conductor for “Fantasia/2000”). When the film was re-released in the late 1960s, it was a surprise hit with bleary-eyed moviegoers who turned up in droves to trip on its psychedelic mingling of sight and sound. And 20 years later, the video release “went through the roof,” Disney says.

The success of the video gave Roy Disney ammunition to fight for a sequel. In late 1991, he wrote a memo to studio Chairman and CEO Michael Eisner encouraging him to dust off the sorcerer’s cap. “I told Michael, ‘Not only do people remember the old film and have some love for it, but look--we can afford it now. We’ll take the profits from the video and siphon that off into ‘the “Fantasia” fund.’ ”

Eisner agreed, and Disney set about assembling a group of four top animators, including supervising director Hendel Butoy, who had just completed “The Rescuers Down Under.” From the beginning, Disney says the approach to “Fantasia” was altogether different from the way most Disney features are developed.

“I knew if this got into the meat grinder, it wouldn’t turn out right,” he says. “We needed to be left alone with this.”

Ideas were developed in a forum known as “The Gong Show”--everyone from the animation and story departments was given 3 1/2 minutes to pitch a segment or present a rough idea. Notions flew fast and furious. Some staffers nervously read prepared statements, others played favorite pieces of music, others presented sketches and photographs.

“We went through a zillion ideas along the way,” Disney says. “It was enormous fun.”

The group first began work on Ottorino Respighi’s “Pines of Rome,” a piece Roy Disney had long envisioned for “Fantasia.” Disney, Butoy and a few others listened to the piece over and over in Disney’s third-floor office--an airy corner space originally occupied by Walt--and discussed the images that came to mind. “It sounded to me like something flying,” Disney says. But what? An animator suggested clouds, sketching a cluster of clouds resembling a pod of whales. “We worked with that for a while, until someone said, ‘What about actual whales? What if they flew?’ ”

The result is one of the film’s most elaborate sequences, with a pod of humpback whales taking flight over an icy landscape after the explosion of a supernova. Spectacular and surreal, the sequence was animated using a blend of computer effects and hand-painting. “The music told us what to do,” Butoy says. “It works in the same way that dialogue does in a feature. You listen to it over and over and you try to capture all its inflections and character.”

While one team completed “Pines of Rome” in 1995, another group was working on a manic sequence cooked up by Joe Grant, a staff animator who worked on the original “Fantasia.” Set to Camille Saint-Saens’ “Carnival of the Animals,” the sequence features a frenzied flamingo as he flings a yo-yo around a flock of perplexed birds. Eric Goldberg and wife Susan, 42, decided to work entirely in watercolor, hand-painting 6,000 individual frames on heavy-bond paper.

‘Rhapsody’ With Hirschfeld Drawings

The studio had never attempted such a feat. “When they heard our plans they almost had a heart attack,” Susan Goldberg recalls. “But we really felt there was no other way to get the kind of pure color we wanted.”

The husband-and-wife team was also given the approval to animate George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Eric Goldberg says Gershwin’s lush, jazz-inflected composition suggested very particular visuals to him. “I’d stand in the shower listening to it saying, ‘That sounds like cars screeching to a halt. That sounds like a pile driver.’ I could hear New York in the 1930s very clearly.”

To bring the setting to life, Goldberg wanted to adopt the style of New York caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. He set up a lunch with the 96-year-old illustrator to gauge his interest. “Bless his heart, Al said he’d be on a train to Hollywood tomorrow if he was 50 years younger,” Goldberg said. “While he couldn’t design new characters, he gave us approval to adapt any of his old work.”

While the animators toiled over their pieces, Disney struggled with how to make the film hang together. In keeping with Walt’s original plan, Disney intended to include three or four original pieces along with the new material.

“No matter how we put it together, the new stuff and old stuff fought,” he says. Disney re-cut the movie at least a dozen times, testing different versions and sequences, seeking the right rhythm and mood. Last spring, Disney in desperation cut all the original material save for “Sorcerer.”

“We screened it and the film flew by,” he says. “It was like being baptized again. It was like, ‘Oh my God, that was right all along.’ ”

‘What Would Walt Have Done?’

Not that Disney felt much reluctance removing his uncle’s work. “It doesn’t help being too reverential about Walt,” Disney says. “After he died, it was a real problem around here. People kept looking over their shoulder and saying things like ‘What would Walt have done?’ or ‘That’s not the way Walt would have done it.’ It was awful. It was stultifying. I kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, I hate to tell you this, but he’s dead. He can’t help anymore. What do you think? Do you have an idea?’ ”

In the end, Disney feels his take on “Fantasia” would make Walt proud. “I hate to say this, but I think this is a better movie than the original,” he says. “There were moments in the first one that were just luminous, but parts went on forever. This one really moves.”

No matter how well “Fantasia/2000” performs commercially, Disney says he’s already thinking about the next installment. Future “Fantasias” might include pop or world music--Disney would love to set his animators loose on a Brazilian samba or a Beatles ballad--or even the incorporation of a software interface that would let audiences influence the way the animation depicts the music.

“I’m hoping this is a wedge into a world of many more ‘Fantasias,’ ” he says. “God knows there’s a lot of willing talents here that would love to do more.”

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BE THERE

“Fantasia/2000” at the Disney Imax Theatre, Howard Hughes Parkway at the 405 Freeway; (800) DISNEY6. Admission is $12 for adults, $10 for children 3-11 and seniors. VIP tickets $20 (no waiting, reserved seats, popcorn). Also in Imax Theatres at Edwards’ Grand Palace Cinemas in Valencia, (661) 287-1740; Irvine Spectrum 21, (714) 832-4629; and Ontario Stadium 22, (909) 476-1500. Admission at Edwards locations is $11 for adults, $10 for seniors, $9 for children.