Stephen Anderson Left Disney

[Daniel]

Stephen Anderson has left the Walt Disney company after 26 years. From roles as story artist on Tarzan, Zootopia and Frozen, to supervising the story on The Emperor’s New Groove and Brother Bear to directing projects like Meet The Robinsons and Winnie The Pooh, he established himself as both an artist and a leader. His last project was supervising director to the Disney+ series "Monsters At Work".



Thanks Steve, keep moving forward! You will be missed.

[Ben]

Hopefully he’ll have had a project he’s bailing for.

Also, notice how Monsters is "just" a Disney show now, and not Disney-Pixar, thus blurring the lines further between Mouse House and Lamp properties. Not that anyone is playing that old "Pixaren't" card anymore thesedays…

[ShyViolet]

It’s also especially impressive how decent Robinsons turned out to be (I’d rate it around a “B”) even after Lasetter made Anderson change so much.

It could have wound up a huge disaster and then Lasetter/Pixar (and maybe even Iger) would no doubt have claimed that they simply hadn’t gotten to WDFA soon enough to fix it.

[EricJ]

At one point before Lasseter, Robinson's story was JUST going to be about Bowler Hat Guy stealing the invention, and the Robinsons were so inexplicably shrill/nutty, no one wanted to meet them, let alone hang around them.

Lasseter reportedly wanted to drop BHG completely, but after talking with Anderson, let him tap into his own orphan upbringing to give the story an emotional center and a third act. And that's why it feels so Pixar-ish at the end.

Also, notice how Monsters is "just" a Disney show now, and not Disney-Pixar, thus blurring the lines further between Mouse House and Lamp properties. Not that anyone is playing that old "Pixaren't" card anymore thesedays…

I'm assuming Toon Studios D+ work is still Mouse House "character marketing", as Eisner threatened, although people still debate who gets custody of the two Planes movies.

[Daniel]

This reminds me of an old quote from the TAG blog:

John Lasseter tried to get rid of the Bowler Hat Guy altogether because he thought he wasn't enough of a threat. But instead the writers came up with the idea that Doris (the hat) was the true threat. The story didn't change quite as much as people think with the arrival of Lasseter. It was strong to begin with, and Steve Anderson deserves the credit, not John Lasseter. I know because I worked on the movie.

Sounds believable.

[ShyViolet]

Oh wow, I didn’t realize Lasetter didn’t change that much. Well, either way it was a very enjoyable film. I actually cried a lot at the end.

Good on Stephen for hanging on to his vision and not letting Lasetter mangle it.

[Ben]

That whole movie is the ending.

[EricJ]

This reminds me of an old quote from the TAG blog:

Although most of Jim Hill's "Insider scoops" during the Eisner-Lasseter changeover were his scanning his loyal "friends" at the TAG blog (picture Trump watching Fox News), back when there was a disgruntled-animator movement to spin every single news story that John Lasseter would be a "disaster" for the company, that he wasn't a big deal anyway, and Disney would ultimately rue the day they didn't hire that nice Jeffrey Katzenberg back instead...
And when Hill tried to spin stories about the "risky" new 11th-hour rewrite, to play up his campaign that They Shouldn't Have Spent All That Money, no prize for guessing his sources.

Robinsons was already being considered a "disaster", and had been put into the April Slot of Death (the one they gave Home on the Range to) long before Lasseter's involvement--
But even if writers felt the first draft was becoming unworkably weak, the schizophrenic change from the first act's peanut allergies to the last act's huggy-Robinson-family Pixar Ending and Incredibles hat-chase, it still doesn't look like the sort of thing Anderson just woke up one morning and figured out.

[Farerb]

I think people are giving Lasseter too much credit, and not just with this movie, but with the Revival in general. You'd think that the directors didn't have a say on their own films.

[Ben]