Last Thursday afternoon, I was on the phone with Vance Rest (I.E. The writer who shared many of his concepts for rebuilding & revitalizing the Walt Disney Company in last week’s “Once and Future Kingdom” series.
Anyway … the two of us were chuckling about how Walt Disney Feature Animation was supposedly going to produce their very own “Toy Story” sequel without any creative input from Pixar (“If you haven’t seen Hillary Duff play Buzz Lightyear, you haven’t seen Shakespeare the way it was meant to be seen,” Zance quipped), when Nancy answered the other line at our house. It was my ex, Michelle Smith (AKA the Fabulous Disney Babe) with a really horrible bit of news: John Hench had died.
With that, all the fun went out of the phone call. Vance and I spent the next ten or fifteen minutes discussing John’s many achievements: his work at Feature Animation, his Oscar-winning effects work on “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (a HUGE favorite of Vance’s), his decades of service to the Disney parks, most notably as a storyteller through color.
Then Rest said something that really caught me by surprise: “Years from now, those achievements will be but a fraction of John Hench’s remarkable legacy.”
“Excuse me?” I stammered. “Did John Hench leave some sort of legacy that I — and the rest of the Disney dweeb community — were yet unaware of?” Vance then went on to rhapsodize about some of the more lesser known concepts that Hench had spun out during his nearly 50 year tenure at Walt Disney Imagineering. Ideas that will serve as inspiration for decades yet to come. Both to the folks that visit the Disney theme parks as well as the artists and engineers that create them.
Simply dazzled by the brilliance of John’s yet-unused ideas, I asked Vance if it would be okay to share this story with JHM readers. “It would be my honor,” he replied.
So — in sort on an encore to his highly acclaimed “Once & Future Kingdom” series — here is Vance Rest to share a piece of John Hench’s as-yet-undiscovered legacy.
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JOHN HENCH and the BUILDING FROM NOWHERE
John Hench worked in colors the way Steven Sondheim works in lyrics. And his yeoman-like dedication to his craft is the Gold standard that the rest of folks who work the Themed Entertianment Industry strive to live up to.
His silver tongue and flawless eye for color are legendary. But it is John Hench’s surprising creative foresight and eagerness to impart his unparalleled insight that will perhaps be his most vibrant legacy.
“Designing Disney” comes in Hard Cover. It should come in Stone Tablets.
No one would have faulted John Hench for writing a traditional autobiography. After all, the man led a pretty phenomenal life. Just the time he spent with Salvador Dali provided enough fodder for a full-length play (Kira Obolensky’s “Lobster Alice”). But — being the elegant and self effacing soul that he was — Hench wouldn’t be content cranking out something that was that self-indulgent. So — late in life — John set himself a higher goal: Which was to tackle the amorphous riddles of creating Disney Theme Park Magic.
Just what are the secrets of designing public spaces that immediately resonate with emotions? How are steel, concrete and fiberglass imbued with pixie dust? How do you tell a story to men, women and children from all walks of life, from every conceivable corner of the earth entirely with environment?
John knew, and he shared it with us. His book “Designing Disney: Imagineering and the Art of the Show” finally gave the craft of Imagineering its very own version of Frank and Ollie’s animation bible, “The Illusion of Life.” It’s kind of a miraculous thing.
When Frank and Ollie initially published “The Illusion of Life” back in 1981, animation was a vanishing wraith — fading to a memory. Then when Animation was reborn (“The Great Mouse Detective,” the explosion of the collectible cel market, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” the celebration surrounding Mickey’s 60th Birthday, “The Little Mermaid,” etc. ), a second generation of Animators had Frank and Ollie’s book to turn to for guidance. This much beloved volume actually helped launch the second Golden Age of Disney Animation.
Which — given the parallels between what was happening to Disney Feature Animation then and what’s happening to Walt Disney Imagineering right now — is why it’s rather fitting that John’s magnum opus debut now. Just as Immersive Storytelling & WDI in particular emerge from their darkest hour.
John’s book is constructed just as the parks are, in layers of experience. Reading and rereading his book, each time there is new applicability and resonance to the concepts he discusses. His section on “Liking the Guest and Spending Time with Them” (pages 20-21) should be PANI projected onto the side of the Team Disney buildings.
Maybe more than anything else, John understood the guests’ experience as a continuous whole, sinuously flowing, dream-like, and he knew how to keep from breaking that spell. And his greatest concepts mirror that understanding, the arc of the guests’ day.
The Building From NOWHERE
Decades ahead of their time, there was no end to John’s boundary-breaking creativity. And perhaps John Hench’s most revolutionary idea (which he had been floating for years) was a concept to the effect of…
Guests have been walking up and down Main Street U.S.A. all day, giving little notice to that vacant lot that sits on the corner … What if — at sunset — an eerie fog and creepy sound effects washed over this part of the park. And then – as the fog lifts — a brand new building has appeared in the vacant lot. This Building from NOWHERE could then become the threshold to a thrilling new adventure at the theme park.
It will be a long, long time before we can really fully appreciate just how earth-shatteringly innovative this one idea is. More than any other, this concept illustrates John’s mastery of the guest experience — as a single cohesive story — building in climactic theatricality.
Once you are able to pull your jaw up from the floor and mute the trillions of ideas that rocket through your head upon hearing such a marvelous idea, the logistical problems involved in pulling off a bold concept begin to creep in.
The Devil’s Advocate part of you spoils the fun the excited little kid in you was having. “There’s no way you can give enough guests the chance to experience an attraction that’s only open for the last 4 or 5 hours park operation.” That’s true, unless you really see how far the storytelling possibilities of John’s inspired concept stretch.
Imagine an attraction that you experience one way all day. Then, at sunset, there is a show or something truly miraculous that transforms the entrance — nay — the entire facade of the attraction. Now you re-enter the attraction through a different entrance, travel through a different queue and find the attraction in a completely different state of being.
*What if the Villains took over an attraction at sunset? What would the differences be in a “Hercules” attraction if you no longer entered through Mount Olympus, but instead found yourself wandering through an Underworld Job Fair hosted by Hades? Are Pain and Panic along for the ride now, whereas before they weren’t?
*What if Jack Skellington and his Halloweentown friends took over the “Haunted Mansion” each night at sunset — as if returning home after a long day at work? Could there be a shift change at the Mansion? Would we get to see the 999 happy haunts sail away on a ghost ship on the Rivers of America — in a nightly ritual/commute to ‘come out and socialize’ in the real world?
*What if you entered a “Perils of Mickey” attraction through our hero’s home but — at a certain time of day — you instead enter through the Mobile Laboratory of the sinister Phantom Blot, who has tunneled up through Mickey’s front lawn? Has the Blot now sucked all of the color out of the original Show? Is your mission somehow different now? Is this ride interactive now (Something it wasn’t prior to this metamorphosis)?
*What if — at some point during the day — Captain Nemo rammed the Nautilus into Epcot’s Living Seas pavilion? And Nemo’s crew then proceeded to seize control of Sea Base Alpha & tell the Ocean’s side of the Story for the remainder of the day? Or “Finding Nemo”s Tank Gang for that matter?
*What if there was a galloping change? One which, depending on which night you visited, would metamorphose a different entrance and attraction? What if Stitch’s spaceship crashed into a different Fantasyland Classic each night of the week? After which he would proceed to wreak havoc inside that ride (much as he did in the Inter-STITCHials of the film’s brilliant ad campaign)?
That is the MAGIC of John Hench’s concept. There is absolutely NO END to the possibilities of an idea as unabashedly innovative as his. In the decades ahead, we’ll only scratch the surface of the full potential locked in John’s Ever-Lasting SPARK.
Imagine a theme park … Not a theme park as you know them now, where you still the passive observer inside of immersive stories … But a park where you are the hero inside of these immersive environment, fighting alongside your favorite characters in stories that grow with your involvement. Couldn’t this park, with John Hench’s ‘Building from Nowhere’ concept as its guide, be created each morning, right before our eyes?
John Hench was a true Imagineer in every sense of the word. And perhaps his greatest legacy is — in fact — his ability to inspire others. I fervently believe his “Designing Disney: Imagineering and the Art of the Show” will eventually be the North Star for Creatives the world over for many, many years to come. And John’s ideas, such as the “Building from Nowhere,” will resonate out into Art forms that we can not yet conceive of in our lifetimes.
So when you watch a film John worked on, or visit the Disney parks, remember the steadfast dedication that this TITAN (perhaps one of the most stirringly brilliant Creatives who ever lived) brought to his craft. And take comfort in the fact that the breadth of his talents have not yet begun to be explored.
— Vance Rest honored to be a disciple of John Hench