On Walt Disney World
“Here in Florida, we have something special we never enjoyed at Disneyland…the blessing of size. There’s enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.”
“We’ve got to study the land.. . . . .We’ve got to put Disneyland, which everybody will know, at the very upper end of the property because that will be the weenie.”
“I’ve always said that there will never be another Disneyland, and I think it’s going to work out that way. But it will be the equivalent of Disneyland. We know the basic things that have family appeal. There are many ways that you can use those certain basic things and give them a new decor, a new treatment. This concept here will have to be something that is unique, so there is a distinction between Disneyland in California and whatever Disney does in Florida.”
“I’m doing this because I want to do it better”
“Believe me, it’s the most exciting and challenging assignment we have ever tackled at Walt Disney Productions.”
On EPCOT
- (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow)
- “But the most exciting and by far the most important part of our Florida Project…in fact, the heart of everything we’ll be doing in Disney World…will be our Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow! We call it EPCOT.”
- “It’s like the city of tomorrow ought to be. A city that caters to the people as a service function. It will be a planned, controlled community, a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural and educational opportunities.
- “EPCOT will be an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.”
- “I don’t believe there’s a challenge anywhere in the world that’s more important to people everywhere than finding solutions to the problems of our cities. But where do we begin… how do we start answering this great challenge? Well, we’re convinced we must start answering the public need. And the need is for starting from scratch on virgin land and building a special kind of new community that will always be in a state of becoming. I twill never cease to be a living blueprint of the future, where people actually live a life they can’t find anywhere else in the world.”
On Fantasia
“Fantasia, to me is a whole new opportunity. For my medium it opens up unlimited possibilities. Music has always played a very important part since sound came into the cartoon. Now, the full expression that comes from the new Fantasound opens up a whole new world for us.”
“I was doing Sorcerer’s Apprentice with Mickey Mouse and I happened to have dinner on night with Leopold Stokowski. And Stokowski said, ‘Oh, I’d love to conduct that for you.’ … Well, that led to not only doing this one little short subject but it got us involved to where I did all of Fantasia and before I knew it I ended up spending four hundred and some thousand dollars getting music with Stokowski. But we were in then and it was the point of no return. We went ahead and made it.”
On Animation
“Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.”
“I started, actually, to make my first animated cartoon in 1920. Of course, they were very crude things then and I used sort of little puppet things.”
- “We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.”
- “Cartoon animation offers a medium of storytelling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.”
“In learning the art of storytelling by animation, I have discovered that language has an anatomy. Every spoken word, whether uttered by a living person or by a cartoon character, has its facial grimace, emphasizing the meaning.”
“Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.”
“I take great pride in the artistic development of cartoons. Our characters are made to go through emotions which a few short years ago would have seemed impossible to secure with a cartoon character. Some of the action produced in the finished cartoon of today is more graceful than anything possible for a human to do.”
“Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon’s unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.”
“To think six years ahead – even two or three – in this business of making animated cartoon features, it takes calculated risk and much more than blind faith in the future of theatrical motion pictures. I see motion pictures as a family-founded institution closely related to the life and labor of millions of people. Entertainment such as our business provides has become a necessity, not a luxury. . . it is the part which offers us the greatest reassurance about the future in the animation field.”
“I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters – to make them personalities.”
“We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.”
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On CALarts
- (California Institute of the Arts)
“I want people to graduate from there really able to do things. I don’t want a lot of theorists. I want to have a school that turns out people that know all the facts of filmaking, I want them to be capable of doing anything needed to make a film-photograph it, direct it, design it, animate it, record it, whatever. That’s what I want. Heck, I’ve hired theorists, and they don’t have any knowledge I can use. I want to have everyone in that school come out capable of going in and doing a job. These dilettantes who come out with pseudo-knowledge, they give me a pain. I want it so if an actor is needed, they can get an actor right out of school. If a musician is needed, they can go to the music department and find a musicians who can compose music.”
“This is the thing I’m going to be remembered for.”
