In the world of Disney, the good guys always win, hard work always pays off, dreams always come true.
That things sometimes happen that way in the real world keeps hope alive in dreamers all over the world.
This week, with the nationwide release of Honey, I Blew Up the Kid and the accompanying animated short film Off His Rockers, the world’s masters of make-believe have a real-life happy ending worthy of their best fable writers.
The theatrical debut of Off His Rockers, an experimental adventure in computer animation, wasn’t born of the conventional Disney system. It happened serendipitously through the spirit, persistence and talent of its creators, who, by the way, work at Walt Disney Animation Florida, the animation center at Disney-MGM Studios.
Off His Rockers is the story of a child and his rocking horse – and more. It is the story of people stretching beyond their situation, of the little Florida studio that could.
The five-minute short selected to lead off Disney’s potential summer blockbuster, Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, began at the Florida studio as an after-hours project that its artists believed would wind up, if successful, being showcased at a computer animation trade show. But then maybe they were underestimating the film’s creator and director, Barry Cook.
“I always think of the bigger thing that can happen and sort of shoot for that,” said Cook, a boyish-looking 33-year-old who likes to wear baseball caps, play the fiddle and go to rodeos.
It was always Cook’s secret hope that Disney would become actively interested in his project. Management had agreed early on to support the work by allowing the artists to use Disney resources in production. He needed only to pique their curiosity a little more.
In Off His Rockers, a rocking horse struggles earnestly and comically to regain the favor of his former playmate, a rail-thin tousle-haired boy hypnotized by the pings and pongs of a video game. In the end, true friendship triumphs and the two gallop off into the sunset – a perfect Disney ending.
Cook, who supervises the special-effects animation department in Florida and is a 10-year Disney veteran, began work with his colleagues on the project in 1989, shortly after the Florida studio opened. Cook had been sketching and taking notes on the idea for a couple of years before that. The message of the story, he said, is twofold: In the first place, one should be true to his friends; second, he should be true to himself.
“The moral is not to let your imagination be taken captive by something else, to use your imagination,” Cook said. “That’s what happens in the end.
“The point is not the video game,” he said. “The point is the boy can’t think for himself anymore. The machine is doing all the thinking. It’s controlling him.”
Cook assembled a core team of about six people – some who, like him, had come to the Florida studio from Disney studios in California – to bring his ideas to life. Eventually most of the Florida staff of 73 people, many of them, also like Cook, working beyond their official duties, donated time to the project. They labored nights and weekends and during daytime hours as other official projects, including the feature films The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, allowed them.
“We would do whatever we could whenever we had the time to do it,” Cook said. “My goal was to do something every day. Every day I would try to do something, no matter how small, to keep the ball rolling.”
It wasn’t easy. Each time he wanted more effort, he was asking to cut into his volunteer staff’s leisure time. There was little chance to re-draw anything, even though, he said, “the tradition in Disney animation is if we don’t do a scene two or three times, we haven’t even started.”
“It was extremely difficult at times because the thing that is so important is to maintain people’s interest level,” he said. “I knew there were times when Rob (Bekuhrs) was ready to strangle me.”
But Bekuhrs, whose task as supervising animator for the rocking horse was to give his character emotion through a series of computer commands, said creative freedom was enough compensation.
“It’s nice to work on a project like this when it’s your project . . . It’s a worthwhile tradeoff for me,” said Bekuhrs, 32.
By the same token, Alex Kupershmidt, who animated the boy – the only hand-drawn character in the film – became involved in Cook’s venture simply because he loves to draw.
“It’s really nice to see it up on the screen,” said Kupershmidt, 32. “It’s a great rush . . . when you’re sitting at the board and you’re doing it, that’s really when you’re having the best time.”
As much fun as it was – it almost had that “student-film” feeling, he said – Kupershmidt never dreamed that the short film was headed for national audiences. As time passed, however, he realized it would look far better than he had ever imagined. Cook, it turned out, was extremely serious about the film.
“The thing about Barry,” Kupershmidt said, “(is) he has a pretty strong personality. He gives you an idea of being a very casual person and he is, but underneath that casualness is very strong will and determination.”
Last year, Peter Schneider, Disney’s president of feature animation, looked at the rough animation on Off His Rockers and began to see its potential. To do the score, he hired Bruce Broughton, the Emmy Award-winning composer who most recently had scored Roller Coaster Rabbit, the animated Roger Rabbit film short produced by Florida animators, and The Rescuers Down Under. Off His Rockers was scheduled to open with the re-release of Pinocchio this summer when Randal Kleiser, director of Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, viewed the film.
“When he saw the film, he liked it so much he asked Jeffrey Katzenberg (chairman of Walt Disney Studios) if he could have it as the opening to his film,” Cook said.
Cook’s accomplishment couldn’t come at a better time for Walt Disney Animation Florida, which, already having impressed Disney’s citadel of animation talent in Los Angeles, is now expanding its capabilities. In the next four years, it will more than double its staff to 180 and begin work on the first full-length animated film to be produced completely in Florida.
Off His Rockers is one more feather in the Florida unit’s cap.
“It’s paid off a bit for the Florida animation studio as far as respect from (California) and trust from management to spread our wings a little further,” Cook said.
Indeed, Cook, who never had directed an animated film before, has been hired to direct Trail Mix Up, a new Roger Rabbit short film soon to be in production at the Florida studio. It’s a job Cook said he has been preparing himself for many years.
Cook’s dreams are being fulfilled.
Off His Rockers was his means to a perfect Disney ending.
