PigSoldier
to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand wav
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This is an excerpt from the LATimes interview with animation division chief Tom Schumacher:
Q: What kinds of animated films are currently in production, and what do you think the future is for the traditional Disney musical? It seems to have dropped off in recent years.
THOMAS S: It's interesting, the idea of how we used music in these movies. And keep in mind that when I look at the movies, I see them as a collection - or if I want to be very grand, I'll say, the "canon" of these movies. And we've used music in lots of different ways, as did Walt. We've done the film-musical style, we've done the Broadway-musical style, we've done the pop-music stuff, like we did with Tarzan. And this [Atlantis] is not the first time, but close to it, that we've done a film that didn't use songs as either character illumination or a storytelling point.
And if I look forward, for example, next summer, Lilo & Stitch - which is the movie that we're producing out of our Florida studio - I adore this movie. It's set in Hawaii. And that film uses Elvis music. There are six Elvis songs. "Blue Hawaii" is in it. "Devil in Disguise." "Hound Dog." It's fun because they are all original Elvis tracks that are played in the movie because the little girl in the movie happens to be a big Elvis fan. And it becomes a story point. So in that case, we're using what we in the business would call "needle-drop" music. That's the first time that we're doing that, with known music, but in a very unusual context. But Alan Menken [Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid] is writing a Western musical for us right now, that, in fact, k.d. lang has already recorded one of the songs for. It's a wonderful film called Sweating Bullets that doesn't come out for three years. But we've recorded two songs, and we're about to record another one.
Q: So you're tackling two genres at once, the musical and the Western.
TS: Yes. And it's our first Western. It has talking animals. And it's the right place to put music because it's a culture that has music within it - as opposed to just having everyone just break into song. Phil Collins is working on one of the new projects. We had great success both creatively and economically with Tarzan, so that is great for us. James Newton Howard [Atlantis] is doing the score for Treasure Planet, which comes out next year [fall of 2002], which also features a song by John Rzeznik, from the Goo Goo Dolls. So the films all use music.
Q: What is Treasure Planet about?
TS: Treasure Planet is a retelling of Treasure Island set in space, but it's not futuristic. It's got 17th-century elements and 24th-century elements. It's a parallel universe; it's not the world as you know it. It tells the story of Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver, who no longer is the peg-legged pirate with the parrot on his shoulder, but now is a cyborg pirate with this thing called Morph, which is a bit of protoplasm that's a shape-changing thing. And it uses futuristic stuff and 17th-century stuff - Spanish galleons that fly with silver sails - it's a beautiful movie. And the [Rzeznik] song features heavily in it. So, to answer the musical question you asked, I think we've got a version of almost everything. We haven't left one variation behind, but we've been able to do a pretty broad range of them. And there's another musical fairy tale in the works, too. Because, you know, every five years or so, you need [laughs] - we've only made a handful of fairy tales, actually, but there's another one that we haven't announced.
Q: Is it a secret, what it's based on? Or is it an original story?
TS: It's a fairy-tale title that you'll know. [Smiles.]
Sounds good
Q: What kinds of animated films are currently in production, and what do you think the future is for the traditional Disney musical? It seems to have dropped off in recent years.
THOMAS S: It's interesting, the idea of how we used music in these movies. And keep in mind that when I look at the movies, I see them as a collection - or if I want to be very grand, I'll say, the "canon" of these movies. And we've used music in lots of different ways, as did Walt. We've done the film-musical style, we've done the Broadway-musical style, we've done the pop-music stuff, like we did with Tarzan. And this [Atlantis] is not the first time, but close to it, that we've done a film that didn't use songs as either character illumination or a storytelling point.
And if I look forward, for example, next summer, Lilo & Stitch - which is the movie that we're producing out of our Florida studio - I adore this movie. It's set in Hawaii. And that film uses Elvis music. There are six Elvis songs. "Blue Hawaii" is in it. "Devil in Disguise." "Hound Dog." It's fun because they are all original Elvis tracks that are played in the movie because the little girl in the movie happens to be a big Elvis fan. And it becomes a story point. So in that case, we're using what we in the business would call "needle-drop" music. That's the first time that we're doing that, with known music, but in a very unusual context. But Alan Menken [Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid] is writing a Western musical for us right now, that, in fact, k.d. lang has already recorded one of the songs for. It's a wonderful film called Sweating Bullets that doesn't come out for three years. But we've recorded two songs, and we're about to record another one.
Q: So you're tackling two genres at once, the musical and the Western.
TS: Yes. And it's our first Western. It has talking animals. And it's the right place to put music because it's a culture that has music within it - as opposed to just having everyone just break into song. Phil Collins is working on one of the new projects. We had great success both creatively and economically with Tarzan, so that is great for us. James Newton Howard [Atlantis] is doing the score for Treasure Planet, which comes out next year [fall of 2002], which also features a song by John Rzeznik, from the Goo Goo Dolls. So the films all use music.
Q: What is Treasure Planet about?
TS: Treasure Planet is a retelling of Treasure Island set in space, but it's not futuristic. It's got 17th-century elements and 24th-century elements. It's a parallel universe; it's not the world as you know it. It tells the story of Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver, who no longer is the peg-legged pirate with the parrot on his shoulder, but now is a cyborg pirate with this thing called Morph, which is a bit of protoplasm that's a shape-changing thing. And it uses futuristic stuff and 17th-century stuff - Spanish galleons that fly with silver sails - it's a beautiful movie. And the [Rzeznik] song features heavily in it. So, to answer the musical question you asked, I think we've got a version of almost everything. We haven't left one variation behind, but we've been able to do a pretty broad range of them. And there's another musical fairy tale in the works, too. Because, you know, every five years or so, you need [laughs] - we've only made a handful of fairy tales, actually, but there's another one that we haven't announced.
Q: Is it a secret, what it's based on? Or is it an original story?
TS: It's a fairy-tale title that you'll know. [Smiles.]
Sounds good
