Waking Sleeping Beauty Review
Posted by Erik Luers on 03.26.2010
Looking back at a golden time that wasn't always so golden......
Don Hahn ... Narrator
Jeffrey Katzenberg ... Himself
Roy Edward Disney ... Himself
Michael Eisner ... Himself
Don Bluth ... Himself
Oh, the trials and tribulations of being an artist for a multi-billion dollar corporate conglomerate. Director Don Hahn, himself a Disney employee for over thirty years, and his insightful documentary, Waking Sleeping Beauty, take a look back at a not-so-distant past where Disney animation was down in the dumps and ready to throw in the towel. Essentially a classic rags to riches story, the film is interested in the fine line between art and commerce, and the shifting and politicking of and for power behind the closed doors of the suited higher-ups. Hahn is a curious filmmaker, looking back on a (later) successful period in a major studio history and asking what went right; the movie documents the collaborative effort as well as the struggle for individual gratification. Down to its core, the feature is about the business of movies, with all the obscene backstabbing, disaster test screenings, and awards gatherings that can come along with it. With all of the film's eighty-six minutes of images shot before 1995, Waking Sleeping Beauty serves as an elegant time capsule and a personal home movie.
You may recall the late 70s/early 80s efforts from the Mouse House, with such titles as The Fox and The Hound and The Black Cauldron gracing the cineplexes. The studio would prefer you forget these films. A tough time both artistically and financially, the Disney animation department was struggling to recapture the “Disney magic” of the 30s and 40s, while the overall studio was trying to focus solely on live-action films. Images from The Black Cauldron were deemed too frightening for young tykes, and upon its release, the film was slaughtered at the box office by The Care Bears Movie. At around the same time, Don Bluth, a very talented and highly revered in-house animator, chose to head off to Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and take half of Disney's young artists with him. Gutted and left for dead, another crushing blow would occur when the Disney crew were kicked out of their offices (the ones occupied by animators since the glory years) and moved in to a worn down, condensed shack. They were becoming the ugly stepchild of the deceased Uncle Walt, orphan hands without a place to draw.
There was also a seismic shift in power on the executive level. Roy Disney, Walt's nephew, wanted the animated efforts to creatively prosper on a yearly basis, while Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the two young guns on the scene, wanted to make Disney profitable again (the fourth knight, Frank Wells, was an in-the-middle peacemaker, wanting everyone to just get along). The film gives off the impression that although there may have been too many cooks in the kitchen, some good food was produced. The change, or upswing if you will, started in 1986 with The Great Mouse Detective (a funny story is told regarding the flick's original title), and then the Billy Joel take on Oliver Twist in the form of a cat, Oliver & Company.
Hahn quickly goes through the development and distribution of these films to get to his narrative's peak point: 1989 – 1994, i.e. The Little Mermaid, Beauty and The Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King (with The Rescuers Down Under getting a shout-out for being more technologically progressive than most remember). The story of that half human and half fish, Ariel, and her movie The Little Mermaid almost never came to be — execs were afraid people were too mermaided out after the recent success of Splash. Luckily, a passionate and spirited composer by the name of Howard Ashman, fresh off a creative disaster on the Great White Way, took charge, crafting an infectious Broadway score with a Jamaican flair. Crazy as it sounds, it worked and lead to two Academy Awards.
Like the studio it chronicles, Hahn's documentary has a lot of ups and downs. You may be familiar with Jeffrey Katzenberg, the man who's last name now makes up the K in Dreamworks SKG. He's been pushing the 3D format for the past few years, and has almost been as much of an influence on getting commercial theaters to convert to the technology as Avatar's own wunderkind, James Cameron. He's front and center at media related events and is very vocal about where his company and the motion picture industry are headed. According to the documentary, these are his flaws, and he may never change. Hahn makes it quite clear that Katzenberg was very keen on being portrayed as the man who saved Walt Disney Studios; when press came in to sit in on production meetings, Katzenberg made himself look like the Don Juan of the Don Hahns. The film portrays Katzenberg as our story's mainstage villain, and one of the most humorously satisfying clips involves the studio-head getting lightly mauled by a lion while promoting, what else, The Lion King. Only in the movies, folks.
The aforementioned Don Bluth is also looked down upon, serving as the film's backstabbing Judas. He jumped ship and got rich off of Spielberg money, creating the two highly successful American Tale rodent movies (and the atheist favorite, All Dogs go to Heaven). Bluth made a name for himself while others stayed loyal to the Disney brand, and perhaps Hahn is a little bitter about that. In a room full of budding auteurs, only Walt, smiling down from above, was credited as the true author. The film doesn't necessarily attack these men, but Hahn loves to portray his company as the true victim. Everyone that deflected was considered a traitor, heading for greener pastures when the going got tough. Even if this is true, it feels remarkably one-sided; Hahn takes the Elia Kazan approach and names names.
Waking Sleeping Beauty works best as a full fledged trivia smorgasbord. Do you want to see the unfinished test footage of Beauty and the Beast that garnered cheers from the New York Film Festival audience it initially played in front of? Wonder what a very regal, “realistic” version of Beast would have been like had it been directed by someone other than Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise? Wanted to see on-set footage of Michael Eisner filming those peppy introductions for ABC's Sunday Night Movie? It's all here in glorious news footage, press reels, off-camera interviews, and syndicated programming (Siskel, Ebert, and Joel Siegel are shown giving their reviews of Disney films on their respective shows). If you were a child of the 80s or 90s, you'll also find a lot of information nostaglic, particularly the talk of all those old clamshell VHS cases. The film covers the analog to the digital.
With all of its dark tales and themes of struggle, the film is not a pessimistic view of the past. Crude caricatures are drawn to serve as punchlines to a particular scene, and each one looks rougher than a first draft sketch at a Disney artist's drawing-board. The humor springs from how ugly the black and white artwork looks. And if you've ever wondered what Disney animators used to do when they grew bored, well, they did the obvious: reenact scenes from Apocalypse Now. The animation department served as a fraternity with Walt's property the ultimate dorm room. Young artist Tim Burton looked to be more serious than the rest, and yet that may explain his extensive, gothically enhanced filmography.
It's rare for a no-frills project about Hollywood to be granted behind the scenes access and archival footage of the highs and lows of such a private organization. Don Hahn isn't just any man. He still works with the company to this day, and is in production on Tim Burton's Frankenweenie remake due out next year; the studio trusted an insider, thorough and honest, but an insider just the same. Waking Sleeping Beauty doesn't attack Disney as much as it tries to break it down and understand it. Hahn may have looked through the archives and thought to himself, where do I begin to form a narrative? History forms itself, and the images speak to whomever sees them. Frank Wells memorial service is peaceful and moving, but with the backstory fresh in viewer's minds, a Shakespearean power struggle prevails over the proceedings. The film lends us the pieces and we create the whole.
In a moment of dramatic irony, Katzenberg's new film from Dreamworks Animation, How To Train Your Dragon, opens in theaters on the same day as this documentary. No matter the disputes, the machine keeps on churning.
The 411: It's not just for Disney mega fans, that's for sure. Waking Sleeping Beauty is a very touching, always interesting look at the inner-workings of a major Hollywood studio. Above all else, it is uncompromising in the way it tells its story; there's no sugarcoating here, nor are there any moments of falsity. Sure, it's highly opinionated, but these are individual's personal recollections and feelings. This is the way they experienced their time working at Disney. A Katzenberg doc may have proved to be an entirely different movie. And in 3D. Now play me out, Billy Joel.
