We got any "Get Smart" fans out there?
If so, how many of you remember the Cone of Silence? The weird Plexiglas thingy that Agent 86 would insist on having lowered whenever he had something super-secret to share with the Chief of CONTROL? Which was then supposed to shield the outside world from hearing Maxwell Smart & the Chief's private conversation?
Photo courtesy of Google Images
Well, these past few months, it's like a giant Cone of Silence has been lowered over Burbank's Feature Animation building. Where once Disney artists used to brag and/or bitch & moan about the animated feature that they had been assigned to work on, now a lot of these employees have grown strangely mute.
"And why are these formerly talkative cast members now holding their tongues?," you ask. The way I understand it, the main reason that most of these talented folks are now keeping their mouths closed is that they'd like to keep their jobs. You see, under the leadership of John Lasseter & Ed Catmull, a slip of the lip can lead to a pink slip.
"And why are Lasseter & Catmull now taking this newly punitive attitude toward WDFA information leakers?," you query. Well, to be honest, this secretive stance is something that John & Ed brought with them from Emeryville. Where Pixar Animation Studios is renown for its ability to keep a secret.
Of course, a lot of that supposedly has to do with Pixar CEO Steve Jobs. Who — now that he's the Walt Disney Company's largest individual shareholder as well as the newest member of its board of directors — has considerable sway over the way the Mouse House conducts its business.
And Steve? As anyone who's familiar with Jobs' tenure at the Big Cheese at Apple will attest, Steve is a guy who really loves his secrets. He's a man who always tries to keep things under wraps until the most opportune time arrives. 'Til the properly teased release of a new product will then garner the largest possible amount of free publicity.
And Jobs insisted that Apple's secretive attitude toward its products be carried over to Pixar. Which is why all new films that this animation studio has been working on have been kept under wraps for as long as possible. With the hope this practice would then build up audience anticipation for the finished release.
This is why (during the mid-to-late 1990s) "Monsters, Inc." moved through its entire pre-production phase under the code name / working title of "Hidden City." Which is actually the name of a Point Richmond café that Pete Doctor and the rest of his Pixar production team used to frequent while working on this project.
And Lasseter, Catmull & Jobs are now looking for WDFA employees to adopt Pixar's hush-hush attitude when it comes to discussing any projects that are still in their pre-production phase. As one Emeryville exile recently told me:
"Pixar has this reputation of being a worker's paradise. That people up there just loving working for that company. Which is why you never ever hear a bad word coming off of that campus.
The truth of the matter is people who work at Pixar can be pretty paranoid. And for good reason. After all, it's been hammered into their heads that anyone who reveals proprietary information about projects that are still in production will immediately lose their jobs. No questions asked. Which is why everybody up north is now used to keeping their mouth shut.
Of course, what's kind of ironic about all this is that — when advance information did leak out of upcoming Pixar films — it was usually the people at Disney who did the leaking. Our guys would travel down to Burbank to screen a new work-in-progress version of one of our pictures. And invariably a few days later, all of these details about that screening would then wind up being posted on Ain't It Cool News. All because some Disney studio employee couldn't wait to blab to Harry about how cool the new Pixar movie was.
So now that John, Ed & Steve are calling the shots at Disney, look for all of the leaks to stop. At Pixar. At Disney Feature Animation. From here on in, it's all going to be about building the audience's anticipation for the next production. Keeping these films under wraps for as long as possible."
And as quiet as things have been lately, look for things to get even quieter in late 2008 / early 2009. When Feature Animation finally moves into its new digs in Disney's Glendale campus.
Photo by Jeff Lange
Of course, if you were to ask a Mouse House exec to explain why Disney's animators will be soon be vacating the Sorcerer's Hat building (Which — given that it opened back in November of 1994 — is less than 13 years old), they'd tell you that the real reason that the company is building a new animation studio on the Glendale campus was because they want to make life easier for John Lasseter. So that — rather than having to drive up Riverside Drive every time John has to go from a meeting at Imagineering to a meeting at Feature Animation — Lasseter can then just take a quick stroll across the quad.
But the very fact that Walt Disney Imagineering is a division of the company that's pretty good about keeping its secrets (I mean, how many people outside of WDI upper management know about that super-secret meeting that Disney execs had with members of the Anaheim City Council earlier this month? Where — after signing a raft of non-disclosure agreements — these Anaheim officials were then shown Disney's ambitious new expansion plans for the Disneyland Resort?) … Well, maybe Lasseter, Catmull & Jobs are hoping that WDFA's new proximity to WDI will eventually result in the studio's animators adopting the Imagineers' tight-lipped attitude.
So I hope that you folks enjoy that brief burst of information that you got last month. Where all sorts of information leaked out about "Wall * E," "American Dog" & "The Frog Princess." Because now that the Cone of Silence has descended over Disney Feature Animation, it could be quite a while before a story like that leaks out again.
Your thoughts?