Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
Ravishing Light

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Tuesday, June 15, 2004
11:19 - Well, that was fun	(top)
Last night I drove down to Glendale and back. All in one evening. Yes, it was that important. Well, for me it was. See, last night, in the heart of the animation Mecca, ASIFA Hollywood held an event the like of which I knew I'd never get the chance to attend again: a 10th-anniversary reunion of the directors, producers, and animators of The Lion King, in a panel discussion where they could reminisce about the headiest days of Disney Feature Animation, when everything looked rosy and there was no stopping them. In attendance were producer Don Hahn, executive-dude-at-the-time Jeffrey Katzenberg, directors Rob Minkoff and Roger Allers, screenplay writer Irene Mecchi, animators Andreas Deja and Tony Bancroft (and Alex Kuperschmidt too, but he was just in the audience, along with a bunch of other folks who hadn't been explicitly put on the panel), and CGI developer Scott Johnston. The whole thing was moderated by Tom Sito, one of the story developers. A great time was had by all; the directors were every bit the clowns I expected them to be from all I'd seen, and there were a lot of behind-the-scenes stories that I'd never heard. Just getting to meet these guys face-to-face was somewhat of a milestone for me, since I've been following a lot of their careers for ten years now. And it was for a good cause, too. One of the most poignant (while funny at the same time) bits of the evening was the original "Wrap Party" video that Minkoff and Allers shot at the end of production in 1994, getting clips of the denizens of the Disney Feature Animation building mugging for the camera, playing ping-pong, and generally acting goofy. It was interspersed with little congratulatory speeches by the voice actors, producers, and executives; when Katzenberg gave his speech, he talked about how it had only been ten years before then that he'd come to the studio and seen it grow from a slumping, backwater pit of misery to the high-flying powerhouse it had become in 1994, particularly with this very release. In the background of his reminiscing were clips of the Feature Animation building being built in time-lapse, rising next to the 134 freeway, truly a symbol of the studio's explosive renaissance if there ever was one. But as we watch that video just ten short years later, the Feature Animation building itself is derelict and abandoned, with a huge ABC building that resembles nothing so much as a Stalinist wedding-cake building looming over it from its very front parking lot. (When Michael Eisner came on-screen to do his laudatory speech, oh, the hissing that came from the audience...) So in that spirit of bittersweetness, coordinator Stephen Worth opened the evening with a stirring speech about how traditional 2-D animation is not dead (needless to say, virtually everybody in the room was a die-hard fan of traditional animation); he claimed, interestingly, that 2-D is no more replaceable by 3-D CG animation than drawing and painting are by photography. It's a distinct and rich art form that transcends any attempts to characterize it as a mere "technique" that can be replaced. So the panel was also a fundraiser for the project for which Worth is the director, the Animation Archive Project. It's proposed to be a digitized online museum of archival quality scans of as much animation art that ASIFA can scrounge up from the past century of work: sketches, cels, pencil tests, demo reels, everything they can get their hands on. They're only just now kicking it off, and they need $20K before they can buy the equipment and fund the initial development. But judging by the enthusiastic attendance last night, I don't think they'll have any trouble reaching their goal. One day they hope to turn it into a real, brick-and-mortar Animation Museum, and I think that's bound to succeed too. Animation, after all, is a civic treasure for Glendale, Burbank, and Hollywood; there's no way any of the local city fathers could fail to see the importance of preserving something that only ten years ago seemed to be here to stay forever, but today looks all but moribund. 2006, fellow audience members said ominously, is the last slated release date for any traditionally-animated US feature film; after that, nobody's planning anything new. I'm going to be seeing what I can do to contribute. Hey, maybe they could use some help hacking databases... Anyway, a thrilling evening all around, and absolutely worth making the drive for, even if it meant getting home at 3:00 AM on a work night. I'll be writing up a more in-depth account of the panel discussion, along with photos, if anyone wants me to mail it to them.