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Disney Animates Dalí's Flick
By Jason Silverman | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 1
02:00 AM Sep. 12, 2003 PT
In 1946, Walt Disney and Salvador Dalí, in one of cinema's oddest collaborations, teamed up on a short film called Destino. But Disney's studio ran into financial trouble and put the unfinished film on the shelf.
Now, 57 years later, a team of Disney animators has finished what Dalí started. The six-minute film, spearheaded by Walt's nephew Roy E. Disney and producer Baker Bloodworth (Dinosaur), premiered at the Annecy Animation Festival in June and is currently touring festivals worldwide. Recent stops include the Telluride, Montreal and Venice festivals, along with the Melbourne International Film Festival, where it won the grand prize for best short film.
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Disney Animates Dalí's Flick
Destino will likely be shown in theaters next year before a Disney feature film, and eventually will be released on DVD.
Though Dalí's admiration for Walt Disney might seem strange today -- for some the name Disney now evokes the opposite of subversive -- the outrageous surrealist painter held the animator and studio chief in high-enough esteem to want to make a movie with him.
"I have come to Hollywood and am in touch with the three great American surrealists -- the Marx Brothers, Cecil B. DeMille and Walt Disney," the artist wrote to his friend Andre Breton in 1937.
The remnants of the aborted film include 150 storyboards, drawings and paintings, which have sat for the last half-century in the Disney vaults. Those works were the basis of the new Destino, which combines some of Dalí's iconic images -- the melting clock, the tower of babble, a nightmarish beach, a pyramid with a clock embedded in its base -- and adds motion. Images morph into one another, everything unfolding with a haunting, dreamlike serenity.
Though Destino uses some computer-generated imagery -- part of the film was modeled on the animation program Maya -- Bloodworth said the intent of the computer generation was to enhance the film's period look.
"We wanted be true to its original design and conceit of 1945, and we were careful and not liberal with the use of CG," he said. "We used CG very specifically to preserve a look that represented what we think Dalí and Walt would have tried to create."
The effect, said film critic and historian Leonard Maltin, is a blend of '40s Disney kitsch and pure Dalí, with an overlay of contemporary sensibility.
"It makes perfect sense that Disney used computer technology to do the 360-degree turns and to make some of the images seem more dimensional than they might in a 2-D cartoon," said Maltin, whose books include Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. "Dalí's work was always very dimensional, and he was keenly interested in playing with perspective."
Dalí, whose previous film experience included two short films with the Spanish master Luis Buñuel, approached Disney at a dinner party at the house of Warner Brothers head Jack Warner. Dalí, then working on Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, believed he and Disney could create what he called "the first motion picture of the Never Seen Before."
Disney agreed, and assigned director John Hench to help Dalí turn the Mexican ballad "Destino," by Armando Dominguez, into a kind of prototypical music video. (Hench, now 95, continues to come to work every day at the Disney lot, and consulted on the new Destino.)
Dalí spent his time at the Disney studio painting, drawing and discussing with Hench the challenges of adding motion to what he described as his "hand-colored photographs." The project continued for eight months, and was abandoned in 1947 when the Disney studio ran into financial problems. Dalí died in 1989.
Parts of the Destino portfolio have occasionally shown up at auction -- some believe that cels and sketches were stolen from the Disney studio. But the remaining paintings, sketches and storyboards, along with 15 seconds of a test reel, were enough source material for director Dominique Monfery and his team of 25 Disney animators, based in Paris.
Would Dalí -- an artist who once said, "I don't do drugs, I am drugs" -- have approved of the revived Destino? That's the question Bloodworth asked himself throughout the making of the film.
"I wish he was still alive," he said. "I do think Dalí and Walt would both be very proud that it was finished, no matter what they thought of it."
One qualified Dalí expert did approve: A curator from the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, which oversees Dalí's estate, called Destino "the perfect combination of Dalí and Disney." The film will be included in "Dalí 2004," a Spanish exhibit celebrating the 100-year anniversary of Dalí's birth.
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More stories written by Jason Silverman
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Disney Animates Dalí's Flick
By Jason Silverman | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 1
02:00 AM Sep. 12, 2003 PT
In 1946, Walt Disney and Salvador Dalí, in one of cinema's oddest collaborations, teamed up on a short film called Destino. But Disney's studio ran into financial trouble and put the unfinished film on the shelf.
Now, 57 years later, a team of Disney animators has finished what Dalí started. The six-minute film, spearheaded by Walt's nephew Roy E. Disney and producer Baker Bloodworth (Dinosaur), premiered at the Annecy Animation Festival in June and is currently touring festivals worldwide. Recent stops include the Telluride, Montreal and Venice festivals, along with the Melbourne International Film Festival, where it won the grand prize for best short film.
Story Tools
Story Images
Click thumbnails for full-size image:
See also
Games Invade Hollywood's Turf
Anime Escapes the Underground
Sinbad Hears Linux's Siren Song
DAT's Entertainment, So Enjoy
Today's Top 5 Stories
Manhattan Mob Meets Its Maker
New-Generation Phones Got Game
Video Game Seeks Life Online
One Extreme Makeover, Coming Up
Disney Animates Dalí's Flick
Destino will likely be shown in theaters next year before a Disney feature film, and eventually will be released on DVD.
Though Dalí's admiration for Walt Disney might seem strange today -- for some the name Disney now evokes the opposite of subversive -- the outrageous surrealist painter held the animator and studio chief in high-enough esteem to want to make a movie with him.
"I have come to Hollywood and am in touch with the three great American surrealists -- the Marx Brothers, Cecil B. DeMille and Walt Disney," the artist wrote to his friend Andre Breton in 1937.
The remnants of the aborted film include 150 storyboards, drawings and paintings, which have sat for the last half-century in the Disney vaults. Those works were the basis of the new Destino, which combines some of Dalí's iconic images -- the melting clock, the tower of babble, a nightmarish beach, a pyramid with a clock embedded in its base -- and adds motion. Images morph into one another, everything unfolding with a haunting, dreamlike serenity.
Though Destino uses some computer-generated imagery -- part of the film was modeled on the animation program Maya -- Bloodworth said the intent of the computer generation was to enhance the film's period look.
"We wanted be true to its original design and conceit of 1945, and we were careful and not liberal with the use of CG," he said. "We used CG very specifically to preserve a look that represented what we think Dalí and Walt would have tried to create."
The effect, said film critic and historian Leonard Maltin, is a blend of '40s Disney kitsch and pure Dalí, with an overlay of contemporary sensibility.
"It makes perfect sense that Disney used computer technology to do the 360-degree turns and to make some of the images seem more dimensional than they might in a 2-D cartoon," said Maltin, whose books include Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. "Dalí's work was always very dimensional, and he was keenly interested in playing with perspective."
Dalí, whose previous film experience included two short films with the Spanish master Luis Buñuel, approached Disney at a dinner party at the house of Warner Brothers head Jack Warner. Dalí, then working on Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, believed he and Disney could create what he called "the first motion picture of the Never Seen Before."
Disney agreed, and assigned director John Hench to help Dalí turn the Mexican ballad "Destino," by Armando Dominguez, into a kind of prototypical music video. (Hench, now 95, continues to come to work every day at the Disney lot, and consulted on the new Destino.)
Dalí spent his time at the Disney studio painting, drawing and discussing with Hench the challenges of adding motion to what he described as his "hand-colored photographs." The project continued for eight months, and was abandoned in 1947 when the Disney studio ran into financial problems. Dalí died in 1989.
Parts of the Destino portfolio have occasionally shown up at auction -- some believe that cels and sketches were stolen from the Disney studio. But the remaining paintings, sketches and storyboards, along with 15 seconds of a test reel, were enough source material for director Dominique Monfery and his team of 25 Disney animators, based in Paris.
Would Dalí -- an artist who once said, "I don't do drugs, I am drugs" -- have approved of the revived Destino? That's the question Bloodworth asked himself throughout the making of the film.
"I wish he was still alive," he said. "I do think Dalí and Walt would both be very proud that it was finished, no matter what they thought of it."
One qualified Dalí expert did approve: A curator from the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, which oversees Dalí's estate, called Destino "the perfect combination of Dalí and Disney." The film will be included in "Dalí 2004," a Spanish exhibit celebrating the 100-year anniversary of Dalí's birth.
Have a comment on this article? Send it
More stories written by Jason Silverman
_
