ot too many people cook up a renaissance in their garage. But that's just what former Disney animators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman did when they set out to rediscover the techniques used in classic cartoons like Fantasia. What made the water look so wet in "Sorcerer's Apprentice," for example? Answering that question—and many, many more—put Bluth and Goldman on the road that would lead to The Secret of N.I.M.H., Anastasia, An American Tail and nine other cartoon features beloved by children and parents alike. Don Bluth Productions quickly achieved the same status as Walt Disney Studios and in the process ushered in a new golden age of animated films.
Meanwhile, Bluth and Goldman pushed the frontiers of classic animation into areas of which Disney never dreamed. Their 1983 interactive adventure, Dragon's Lair—one of only three video games on display in the Smithsonian Institution—made arcade play a cinematic event. Now Bluth and Goldman seek to reinvent Dragon's Lair for a new generation, making a movie out of the arcade game. In an exclusive interview, Bluth and Goldman talked to Science Fiction Weekly about the film, scheduled to begin production early next year.
What prompted your decision to turn Dragon's Lair into a movie, and what challenges have you faced in the process?
Goldman: We've been asked for about 16 or 17 years now when we will make Dragon's Lair into a movie, because it's been so popular, especially among the younger animators.
Every year—for every picture we do—we get a lot of job applications. There's a big turnover in animation. People are like gypsies who move from one camp to the next. But we're getting a whole new batch of younger animators, and every wave of younger animators asks the same question: "Won't you, please, do Dragon's Lair? I'd love to work on Dragon's Lair. All the animators will come running to you if you start this project—and they'll probably be willing to work for nothing, because they'd love the project so much." Not that we'd take advantage of that, but I think it brings home the idea that the characters are very popular.
When Don first designed Dirk for the game, he pushed the idea that Dirk was like Everyman. He wasn't real bright; he was sort of a C student. He meant to do the right thing, he meant to do right, but he wasn't that great. We called him our Charlie Chaplin.
I think the message got across. The characters were endearing to everyone. The fact that Dirk could rescue the princess—or you as an interactive player could rescue the princess—put Dirk in the position of every guy playing the game.
It related. And I think what we're doing with the film will relate, as well, to the young people today who are being introduced to the game in all the different formats. It's been in about 15 different formats—including DVD and DVD-ROM and CD-ROM—and right now we're working on a 3-D version of the game that will be out next March.
Seems like you've got a lot of Dragon's Lair projects going on.
Goldman: Yes. It's interesting, because even 18 years ago, when we did Dragon's Lair, we promoted it like a movie, and licensees came out of the walls wanting to do product—action figures and dart games that were Dragon's Lair games and little squirt guns. Sixteen or 17 different major companies came out of the woodwork based on Dragon's Lair, because it was such a hit in 1983.
How do you translate an interactive game into a movie where you have a single possible plot line?
Goldman: We're going to try to introduce many things that people saw in the game, but the story is going to be the key ingredient. The title will be really attractive to the audience, but the key is whether our story captures their imagination. Don's been working very hard during the last six weeks to reintroduce things to that film that they remember from the game.
Which particular features of the game do you want to retain for the film—and which ones do you want to drop?
Bluth: One of the attractive parts of the game was what we called the Death Node—where you can watch all the strange ways that Dirk is defeated. I have to keep the action a little like that in places, so you can enjoy those moments again. There is a bit of nostalgia about all this, so we've got to do that.
Another thing that was really glaring to me: Dirk didn't talk in the games. In a full-length movie, we need him to talk somewhere. I'm trying to address that. The other part is Daphne was an airhead. Back then, in the arcade, you could get away with the boys going in there and saving a princess who wasn't real bright, but you can't in a movie. I believe you have to set a role model.
Every time you do an animated film, it's going to go to the kids—the girls and boys—and they're going to pattern things after it. So Daphne has to take off her mask and be revealed as someone who has substance. That's a big challenge right there, because you don't want the boys to go, "Oh no, she's smart." But I think we have to go there. So we've made Daphne and Dirk kind of competitive. It's almost like the Moonlighting thing. They're very competitive, but when push comes to shove, they're rescuing each other, which is the way it should work.
Those are big issues. Visually, we brought in the old Giddy Goons and their king—stuff like that. So you'll see a bit of nostalgia. But there's got to be something new and fresh. What I picture happening when we finally get into production is that some of the old crew that built the original games will probably reassemble to build this film. That's going to be fun too—all getting together one more time.
There will be one new element in the mix that wasn't there in the arcade game: actors.
Goldman: [Woefully] I know.
Have you decided who you want for the characters, or are you in negotiation?
Goldman: We've got a cast list, but we don't want to reveal the names before we've spoken with their agents. But I think you'd be real pleased with the people we've chosen. They're from very popular sitcoms and very fine actors. Some people who've never even done film before.
Bluth: But people who do comedy. It's going to be a comedy.
Speaking of actors brings up the subject of direction. Just how do you direct a cartoon?
Bluth: If you look at the big overview of making an animated film, it is really very similar to making a live-action film. You're dealing with theater. A play has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. It has to have a climax and all those plot points in it—the same things. So the key—besides a good story—is actors who can pull it off.
Unfortunately, what we run into with animators—and they don't like to hear this—is that they're trained very, very carefully in graphics. They can do
graphics very well, and a lot of them can draw
extremely well.
But that business of acting is so elusive, and actors spend their whole lives learning how to do that craft. It's very difficult, being brave enough to take off everything and let yourself go out there and take risks. Actors go to school for it. They spend their whole lives doing it, and maybe 30 or 40 years after they've started, they say, "I think I'm finally starting to understand what acting is."
But making an
animated film, essentially, you require acting from
people (animators) who aren't trained as actors. So all we can do is get the actors to come over to our house for a while and shoot some of this stuff. We film them. They actually try to lip-sync to
prerecorded dialogues and everything.
They begin to act like they are the people in the script, and they share their expertise on how their characters should be acting.
Once you've got that, you can go back to the animators and say, "Look at this, study it, understand and analyze it. Understand what these actors are trying to accomplish, because that's your job too."
So the actors contribute to their characters almost from the start.
Goldman: Mainly the voice actor, because not only do you bleed over creating the script and getting the dialogue to work for you, but the actor has to catch on and give you a performance. Directing an animated movie is directing performance in every category through 28 departments, plus the recording and scripting of the film. It's really more about performance. That actor who's giving you the voice performance is bringing all the things that Don talked about from the actor's career in acting and all his experience of life to bring life to those lines of dialogue. We record the tracks first, create a radio show, then animate to that.
Bluth: There is one more thing in here. All along the way, every time one of the actors or the animators or the color stylists or anyone touches this picture, the desire is that the picture springs upward in quality. That everyone is creative enough that they're not just following a rote system. The voice actors come in and give it everything they've got within the framework of what they understand the action to be.
But when we shoot the live action, it won't be with the same actors who do the voice. It will be different actors, because they don't cost as much. The visual actors give, at least, vision to what could be. Hopefully, the animators can see a vision that goes even further and that won't hem them in. You know, go your own way. If you can do better, do better. And understand that you are an actor first and a graphics artist second.
Goldman: The other thing is something Don and I were talking about the other day: the difference between a film actor and a stage actor. Animation is more like stage acting. We exaggerate. We caricature the character's movements. Whereas in film, it's all scaled down, all the dramatics. You may not even move. Sometimes, you may not even blink.
In stage acting, the makeup is flamboyant. You've got to project to those people in the nosebleed seats. It's a different kind of performance. Our duty is to bring the character to life—the brain, the heart, the breathing. We try to move the character in a three-dimensional space.
Bluth: We work with a flat piece of paper. It's flat. You have to give the impression that you actually go into the paper, that it's dimensional. You have to draw a two-dimensional design that shows three dimensions. That becomes very difficult for the novice artist until they understand that you have to think around the character, although you're drawing flat.
That leads into CGI and all the new techniques that are out there now. I know you worked with some CGI on Titan A.E. ...
Goldman: And on Anastasia as well and Bartok the Magnificent. We worked with CGI all the way back to All Dogs Go to Heaven, which was back in '88, '89. We think it's a wonderful new tool. It all depends on how people use that tool.
Did you see Final Fantasy?
Goldman: It was disappointing. They did so much reality, which was gorgeous. But the voice actors' performance was much higher than the animators' performance with the characters. The acting on the vellum was so flat and unanimated. Visually unanimated. They spent all their time worrying about the pores on the skin and getting it to look as real as possible that they weren't getting—
Like when a sculptor creates a sculpture, he creates an armature first. If you come by our booth [in the Exhibitors Hall at Dragoncon 2000] and watch Don draw the characters for the fans who come by, he'll do a really rough sketch just to get the pose right before he starts to draw. You got to see it, then do it.
I think the CGI animators on Final Fantasy—or it could be the fault of the director—were focusing on the wrong syllable.
Bluth: Another thing, with CGI right now, the misconception is that the more real we can get things to be, the better off we are. But if you keep going towards real, towards real, why not just photograph it? You miss something along the way. I think what you're missing is that the aim of art is not to be realistic? The aim of art is to caricature what you feel about life around you and do it in such a way that people say, "Oh, I recognize that. I recognize that!" But it's a fresh, new view of it.
If you, with CGI computer, could come up with a human that's as real as a human that you photograph what, really, have you done?
Goldman: Did you watch Shrek? People say that the articulation of the characters wasn't really good CGI. Sure it was. It was so different and fresh and new, and the story and the script performance were really well done. The idea of that little miniature donkey—everybody was going to get discarded, and they all end up around Shrek.
Eddie Murphy's character, the donkey, was actually a dog. All his movements were done like a dog. I got a big kick out of it. That performance and that perspective hit a chord with everybody. Everybody really enjoyed it. It wasn't about trying to achieve some sort of reality—which they did. But among CGI people, some people were pointing fingers and saying, they can do better than that. (Maybe it's sour grapes, the way people point fingers at each other.) But I thought they did a terrific job on that film.
Final Fantasy and Shrek represent two trends in animation. What about the third—what about anime?
Bluth: Anime is becoming really, really popular, and it's strange, because we have two animation camps here. One of them is the Disney camp, which represents children. Then you have anime, which represents young adults and, maybe, on up. I think anime is becoming popular because it's OK to watch it. You won't be threatened with your age.
Anime has some stuff that's really, really good, that's fun to look at; and it has some stuff that's not so much fun visually. But the thing about anime for me is that they get into story, and some of the stories are kind of fun. They're good—some of them. Some of them aren't.
But it's also "monkey see, monkey do." People will go where everyone else is going. It's the sheep syndrome. They will all go there. They don't know why they like it, but all their friends and everybody in their age group like it. So it must be good. So they'll go there. I think the discernment comes later. They'll start to pick out the things that are really, really good and like them. The things that aren't so good, they'll leave.
And they don't leave the Disney backyard forever. Usually they come back when they get their own kids, or when they hit about 20, 21. Then it's OK again to watch it, because they feel secure about their adulthood.
But anime is a good thing. And I think Cartoon Network is a good thing, because it's helping people recognize comic as an art form.
Goldman: The thing that's interesting to me is that I lived in Japan when I was in the Air Force, back in the early '60s, and anime wasn't there yet. I think Speed Racer might have been in its infancy. But I remember the comic books. Comic books were as prolific in Japan as they were in Belgium, where there are more cartoonists per capita than anywhere else in the world.
I was telling Don just the other day that anime is a reflection of those comic books they had in Japan in the '60s. When I was in Japan promoting Anastasia and Titan A. E., I was informed that anime is the cheapest form of filmmaking in Japan. So it's prolific, because of the cost of producing the product and the return. It's very, very expensive to do live action in that country, so animation is just everywhere. It's part of the culture now, and it's due to economics. Economics drive everything—from your magazine to our films.
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Also in this issue: The One's James Wong, Glen Morgan and Jet Li
.
