You know, out here in LA, it seems like you can’t walk five feet without tripping over a pile of screenwriting books. Brightly colored paperbacks that breathlessly promise to reveal the secret of the perfect pitch, the foolproof way of creating a screenplay that’s sure to sells.
Me personally, I always get a little sad when I see books like this. Why for? Because I genuinely believe that they’re sending the wrong message. That writing a successful screenplay is more about pitching & selling than it is telling a good story.
That’s why I was thrilled to stumble upon a copy of Jason Surrell’s new book, “Screenplay by Disney: Tips & Techniques to Bring Magic to your Moviemaking” (Disney Editions, August 2004) during a recent trip to Disneyland. For here (Finally!) is a how-to book that has its priorities in order.
You see, Jason is a guy who actually understands what it takes to make a great movie. He’s carefully reviewed the creation of Disney animated masterworks like “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin” and “The Lion King.” Jason’s also sat down with the film-makers on each of these pictures (IE. The producer, the writers, the directors, the lead animators, etc.) in order to understand how these films finally came together.
The end result is a pleasing mix of a practical how-to book as well as a Hollywood tell-all. As you breeze through this 192 paperback, you’ll come across great yarns like:
* John Musker’s encounter with the Queen of Denmark following that country’s premiere of “The Little Mermaid.” As you may recall, Disney got hammered pretty hard for changing the original ending of Hans Christian Andersen’s story. So Musker was attempting to apologize to the Queen when her majesty interrupted John and said: “Oh, he never knew how to end his stories anyway. Now it has a proper ending.”
* That October 1997 WDFA retreat, when Disney Feature Animation’s braintrust tried to regroup after “Hercules” ‘s disappointing performance at the box office. It was at this very meeting where Chris Sanders — sensing that the time might be right for Disney to attempt another small, quirk film like “Dumbo” — initially pitched the concept for “Lilo & Stitch.”
Mind you this wasn’t the “Lilo & Stitch” that you and I know today. Initially, Sanders proposed making a movie about a weird little monster who was lost in the woods. It was actually then-WDFA head Thoams Schumacher — over sushi at the WDW’s Swan hotel — who actually proposed changing Stitch from a monster lost in the woods to an alien marooned on Earth.
Even then, there were folks with the Disney Feature Animation organization who didn’t quite get what Chris Sanders was trying to do. Surrell recalls Roy Disney’s comments when Walt’s nephew first learned about the project: “Lilo & Stitch? What’s a Lilo? And what the heck’s a Stitch?”
Admittedly, these little vignettes make “Screenplay by Disney” great fun for those folks who are looking to get an inside peek about how WDFA operates. But — for those of you are looking for practical information on how a good screenplay actually gets written — Surrell doesn’t stint. He provides excellent examples as to how make your scripts faster, tighter and — more importantly — more emotionally involving.
Jason points to great moviemakers of the past like the late Howard Ashman. Who — by appointing himself the “Simplicity Police” — was able to keep “Beauty and the Beast” ‘s story from getting too complicated. Ashman was also the man who insisted that every scene in that movie have (what he called) an “umbrella of emotion.” An overarching feeling that drove that moment in the movie, that made the audience really care about the characters and what was happening to them.
Though I haven’t had a whole lot of free time during my week out here at SIGGRAPH, I found that I really haven’t been able to put “Screenplay by Disney” down. Whenever I’m back at the hotel, I fidn myself picking the thing up again. Re-reading one of the more entertaining passages. Interesting stories like the one where we learn that Aladdin originally wasn’t supposed to fall in love with Jasmine at the end of that movie. But — rather — that “street rat” was suuposed to pass up the Sultan’s daughter in favor of a feisty tomboy who was a member of Aladdin’s street gang.
There’s dozens of great stories like this in Mr. Surrell’s book. Which is why I say — even if you’re NOT an aspiring screenwriter — you should still pick up a copy of “Screenplay by Disney: Tips & Techiques to Bring Magic to your Moviemaking.” For there are great stories to be found inside of this book which — fittingly enough — tries to teach you how to tell a great story.