Yay, Didier returns! With the first five already on my shelf (and, yes, Rand, fully opened for a while now!), this is a day one for sure. Was just wondering if we would see another one anytime soon, but under three weeks isn’t a lot of notice! I’d say I can’t wait, but it’s practically here anyway!
I want to talk a little bit about your time at Disney. You were supposed to direct Tangled. How did it change after you left?
We were approaching Rapunzel using a Rembrandt style, where she’s coming out of the dark. There was darkness to the version of the movie that I wanted to make, and that turned out to be not so Disney-like. We had a screening and everybody was like, “I didn’t know we could make that kind of a movie. This is really exciting.” And it really, truly was. But it was pushing the needle away from, maybe, mainstream Disney. I mean, it was a good film. It was so much about this love and healing. It really had so much depth to it. All I can say is that I loved that movie. Then, in the process of changing it — it was very difficult to take something that you love and change it and change it and change it until … Then there was a heart attack that I had. At that point, I stepped off it and just supervised the animation, and that was a pure joy. And Byron [Howard] and Nathan [Greno] came in, and they really delivered a wonderful, fun film. But I felt like I grew in a lot of ways as a director through that. Because I was out there working on it for probably five years before that happened.
So your version of the film was fairly far along. Does it exist in any form anywhere?
It does, on some DVDs that I’ve got spirited away.
Do you think there’s any chance we’d see that version at some point?
I don’t know. I’d have to have you come over, and we’d have some beers, and then I could pull it out. But, no, I have to respect Disney’s choice on that. That’s who they are. It was difficult, but I cherish those days with the studio and will always have that Disney DNA in my heart.
After watching Over the Moon, I'm glad we got Tangled instead of Keane's version. I feel like being a good animator doesn't automatically make one a good director and to me it seems that Keane has inferiority complex and that he doesn't take criticism really well. Making movies is eventually a joint effort of numerous people involved, not just one man. It's especially true to animation.
I feel like being a good animator doesn't automatically make one a good director and to me it seems that Keane has inferiority complex and that he doesn't take criticism really well.
He is technically a director because he did direct Over the Moon, but I said good director. Don't get me wrong I like Keane and appreciate his contributions to animation, but Over the Moon is....not what I expected from him and all I can think about is the same things applied to his version of Rapunzel and I can't seem to shake my thoughts about getting a lesser movie than Tangled and no more WDAS. Sorry but feels to me like the things he says are used against this film (not here but in other places) while people not realizing that Tangled ultimately saved WDAS (think about it - without Tangled there's no Frozen - for some it might be a good thing but not for WDAS).
I'm also aware that he directed short films that got a lot of critical acclaim, but feature length is a completely different thing.