How Eric Goldberg created the Genie Outtakes for Disney’s Diamond Edition of “Aladdin”

Jim Hill

9 years ago

Here’s an interesting tidbit for all of your animation fans out there: An
excerpt from the screenplay for Disney’s “Aladdin.” To be specific,
the scene where the Genie makes his dramatic entrance in this motion picture:

Aladdin rubs the lamp with his sleeve. It glows slightly —
and then, POOF! Colorful smoke spews out of the spout. It eddies and swirls,
filling the cave, taking shape and solid form —

Towering above Aladdin is the gigantic GENIE of the lamp. He
is a hip, hyper, mercurial Robin Williams type, full of exuberance, with a
child-like vulnerability.

You caught that character description, right? A “Robin
Williams type” ? There’s a reason that “Aladdin” ‘s co-directors
Ron Clements & John Musker used this specific piece of language. You see,
back in the early 1990s — as Ron & John were working with Ted Elliott &
Terry Rossio to hammer out a workable script for this proposed animated feature
— they hadn’t actually signed Williams to work on “Aladdin.” Not
yet, anyway.

“‘Yeah, we wrote this part with Robin in mind. We
didn’t know if he would do it,” Musker admitted during a recent appearance
on ABC‘s Good Morning America. “We were totally walking down the plank. If
he said no, we were going to be in big trouble because the whole concept for
‘Aladdin’ was built around Robin.”

Luckily, Ron & John had an ace up their sleeve: Master animator Eric Goldberg. Who — after
years of running his own studio over in London
(where Goldberg had cranked out hundreds of hilarious animated television commercials) —
had recently decamped to Disney. And what was Eric’s very first work assignment
once he arrived at the Mouse House? Musker & Clements recruited Goldberg to
create some test footage of the Genie which could then be used to persuade
Williams to come voice this character.

So Eric got himself a copy of Robin’s 1979 comedy album, “Reality
… What a Concept.” And after listening repeatedly to this Grammy
Award-winning recording, Goldberg found two particular bits by Williams that
really lent themselves to animation. One of which involved the Genie quickly
growing two heads as this crazed cartoon character argued amongst himself about
” … the very serious subject of schizophrenia.”

“And so Ron & John brought Robin in. First they
showed him some concept art for the Genie character. Then they ran the test
footage that I’d animated to those bits off of his comedy album,” Eric
recalled. “And I have to say one of the great thrills of my life was
actually watching Robin Williams laugh at my animation. I mean, it doesn’t get
any better than that.”

Once Williams saw Goldberg’s animation test, he immediately
agreed to voice the Genie in “Aladdin.” And just weeks later,
Williams was in the recording booth riffing on the screenplay that Musker,
Clements, Elliot & Rossio had written.

Robin Williams in the booth recording the Genie’s lines for “Aladdin.”
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved

“Mind you, Robin was always a complete professional.
He’d initially perform the scene as written. Only after we had six or seven
takes recorded where Robin had followed the script would he then begin to
improvise,” John said. “From that point forward, Robin would stay
within the overall structure of the scene but then begin riffing.”

Some of these “Aladdin” recording sessions wound
up being four hours long. With Williams exiting the booth drenched in sweat
after improvising hundreds of comic variations on the Genie’s as-written dialogue.

“And once Robin went home, Ron, Eric and I would then sit
down in a room and listen to hours & hours of tape. As we then tried to
reconstruct the scenes that we’d already written for ‘Aladdin’ around these
brilliant new bits that Robin had just improvised,” Musker continued.
“Eric was a crucial part of this process. He repeatedly found ways to fold
Robin’s riffs in. Create these great pieces of character animation that —
while they directly built off of something that Robin had improvised — still
managed to service the story that we were trying to tell with this movie.”

(L to R) Ron Clements, John Musker and Eric Goldberg.
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc.
All rights reserved

But in the end, given “Aladdin” ‘s 90 minute running time, there was
only so much room within the context of this animated feature for Robin
Williams’ wild improvisations. So a lot of comedy gold wound up hitting the
cutting room floor.

We now jump ahead to 2014. Some 22 years after
“Aladdin” was first released to theaters. And Walt Disney Studios
Home Entertainment was already making plans to release the Diamond Edition of
this Academy Award-winning film in the Fall of 2015 when the world learned of
Williams’ tragic passing.

After a suitable period of mourning, an idea begins to take
shape at the Mouse House that the “Aladdin” Blu-ray should include
some sort of tribute to Robin. Something that celebrated this man’s genius. Which
reminded people of all of the joy that Williams had brought into the world.

It’s then that someone at Disney remembered those hours
& hours of recordings that Robin Williams did for “Aladdin.”
Which were filled with these extended pieces of improvisation that only a
handful of studio insiders have ever heard.

And given that Goldberg was actually there for a number of
those recording sessions (“That was one of the toughest things I ever had
to do in my life,” Eric remembered. “To be inside a recording booth
with Robin and then not be allowed to laugh. Because if I laughed, I then
ruined that take”), he was tapped to review these tapes. See if there was something
that could be possibly culled out of all of this comic raw material that could
then be used to honor Williams’ memory.

This is where the Genie Outtakes featured on the Diamond
Edition of Disney’s “Aladdin” (which — FYI — hits store shelves today)
came from. Under the guidance of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Classic
Projects unit, Goldberg began working on this bonus feature last Fall. Eric
first selected the pieces of audio that he felt best showcased Robin’s comic
genius. Then — over a five month period — Goldberg created all of the
drawings and key pieces of animation which are featured in this
over-seven-minutes-long vignette. This bonus feature shows the Genie changing
into Glinda the Good Witch from “The Wizard of Oz,” Obi Wan Kenobi from
“Star Wars,” even Edward G. Robinson and Don King. This character
also briefly transforms into a football ref, a sportcaster and a punch-drunk
prize fighter.

By the way, if you — like me — enjoy Eric’s distinctive
drawing style, then you’re really going to want to check on his new book,
“An Animator’s Gallery: Eric Goldberg Draws the Disney Characters”
(Disney Editions, September 2015). For this 192-page hardcover not only
includes his inspired take on the Genie but a Goldberg variation on virtually
every major character from the Disney & Pixar film catalog.

Getting back to “Aladdin” now … When I got to
the chance to interview Eric this past August at the D23 EXPO, I asked him —
when it came to animating the Genie — what was his biggest challenge. And
Goldberg’s answer to this query was kind of surprising.

“It honestly wasn’t any of the comic stuff that this
character did. It was the more sincere moments in this movie, when you had to
actually believe that the Genie and Aladdin genuinely cared for one another.
That their friendship really meant something,” Eric explained. “For
this film to really work, the audience had to believe that Aladdin was really
giving something significant up when he freed the Genie.”

“That’s why — in the end — I think we were so
fortunate that Robin agreed to voice the Genie in ‘Aladdin.’ I mean, sure. He
obviously had the comic chops for this character. But what a lot of people
don’t realize was that Robin was equally committed to making sure that the
emotional parts of this story work. He worked just as hard — if not harder —
in the recording booth to make sure that the Genie came across as a sincere
character. Not just a comic figure,” Goldberg continued. “And if it
wasn’t for Robin’s natural warmth as a performer, I seriously doubt if we could
have ever pulled that off. Got the
audience to emotionally invested in the Genie’s plight.”

This article was originally posted on the Huffington Post’s Entertainment page on Tuesday, October 13, 2015