Friends from USC would call and I would just tell them: I quit school and got a job at Disney, and they were stunned. My parents never voiced any opinions about this change of mine. I was always an independent guy, and here I was doing the same old, independent things. And perhaps it sounded like a good job to them. Anyway, I was elated.

I was hired onto the pre-production unit of Beauty and the Beast. There were about 12 people working on the film. The producer, his assistant, a production coordinator, six or seven story people, and two guys who were ostensibly the directors, though the corporate execs hadn’t exactly given them their full blessing. And then me, the grunt. I would make copies, answer phones, deliver this and pick up that, hang this and take down that. The only thing I couldn’t do was buy beer and cigars for the team on Friday afternoons, which was met with some dismay after the first week I was there. 

I had no grasp of it at, but I had come on to Disney at the perfect time. The studio was just coming off the release of The Little Mermaid, which was a massive hit for an animated film. They were willing to throw a lot into their next film, so it was a big budget affair, with all the talent that could be mustered. Our staff was small enough that we

were harbored on the original studio lot in the old special effects building, and I remember having to work around these abandoned multi-plane animation cameras and editing tables that were relics from the days when Walt Disney himself walked the halls and barked out directions.

On lunch breaks I would wander the studio lot and its park-like setting with its manicured landscape and art deco buildings. It actually felt like working at Disneyland every day, but instead of parades and a carnivals, it was professionals hard at work, and I spent every spare moment peering into sound stages to see what was being worked on, to watch real films get made. With my badge, I could go virtually anywhere, as long as I didn’t bug anyone, and it became a challenge for me to get my real work done, as there was always something to do and see. And as an employee I was able to see all kinds of films, pre-release, which was a treat, and probably saved me a lot of money, since I was in the habit of seeing every movie that came out. Working on the Disney lot was everything I’d imagined, and more. Movie stars would walk past me in the halls, every day or so, as I went to Michael Eisner’s office to drop off or pick up whatever was demanded of me.

My film was in pre-production, which meant that we were putting together the story, bit by bit. In animation, every little thing is planned out before production, so every joke, every line of dialogue, every music cue, and virtually every movement is decided ahead of time, so no drawings are wasted, as that is the most expensive part. So here I got to watch the locations imagined, the characters develop, the plot unfold, and the jokes being written every day. It was just a few people with white 5x7 pads and pencils, and they would basically draw out the movie in comic book form. I’d help them pin up the drawings on big 4’x8’ boards, and every few days they’d walk through their scenes with a pointer, making their own sound effects and telling jokes all the way. Then everyone would sit back and discuss it. What’s funnier, this or that? If this happens, then what’s going to happen to that character when he gets to your scene? And so on. It was an amazingly collaborative effort, and it’s the way animated films had always been made. I had no idea.

But Disney was in a time of change, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the executive in charge of production, demanded that a script be written and it seemed to confound everyone on the team. I wasn’t in on it, but I was on Katzenberg’s side -a script made perfect sense! Why, it’s the blueprint for the film! But animated films had historically never had a “Written by” credit. All those big boards with the hundreds of hand-drawn cartoons on them, that was the script.

Katzenberg was a control freak, and couldn’t handle not being able to line out and edit a screenplay, so a screenwriter was hired. For the story artists on staff, some of whom had been on since Disney himself was there, this was anathema to the timeless method that had been around since Mickey first climbed on screen. But a writer showed up and handed them a script, and it was their job to draw it all out -essentially robbing them of so much of their creative expertise. 

Additionally, the film was to be a musical (in the end, only a few minutes would not have song) and the songwriting team of Ashman and Menken, the geniuses behind The Little Mermaid, were true believers in the structural capacity of the song lyrics -the songs must always propel the film’s action- and so I got to stand idly by and watch this battle unfold, as these creative minds would try to outdo one another on a daily basis.

In the end, the screenwriter was clearly reduced to coming in to the story meetings and copying down what she saw on the boards, and then taking the song lyrics and doing the mundane task of disambiguating it all into the proper industry screenplay format. You could see she had been beaten down, eventually, and, in my estimation, outmatched. But upon the film’s release, with that screenplay credit up there on the screen, she reaped all the accolades. That’s Hollywood.

I hiss when I see that credit come up, when my kids watch the movie, because I remember ten or fifteen of the most intelligent, funny, and creative people I have ever known working together, thinking together, and joking together, to make what would be considered one of the finest animated films ever made, and the first to be nominated for “Best Picture” by the Motion Picture Academy. I had never known what a “story artist” was before I worked at Disney, but after my time there I was convinced that every film needed one. And here, I now wanted to be one, but I couldn’t draw.

There was a hero in all of this, and I will never forget the day I met him. I had come back a bit late from lunch (everyone took hour and a half lunches) and I was told that I better get back there and stand by in case I was needed. So I headed to the back of the old effects building where my office was, adjacent to the big workrooms the artists were using for their story crafting, and I saw a bit of a commotion. Everyone was standing around, talking and laughing, and moving from area to area to admire the work. I entered, and few folks stepped aside and standing there in the middle of it, smiling, looking at drawings, a smoking a cigar, was Walt Disney himself -ghost-like, alive, but an apparition, and still a seeming fixture of the palace, with a sage-like quality that had everyone around him in full, admiring attention. Then he looked right at me, smiled, extended his hand, and I was introduced to the man.

It was not Walt Disney, but Roy Disney, Walt’s nephew. Roy was known in the Hollywood circle as the savior of The Disney Studios and the champion of traditional animation. As a board member and one of the largest shareholders, he held a lot of power at the place, but he was the one man who knew the origins of the company, and held steadfast to what Disney really stood for. And with his uncanny resemblance to  the guy who started it all, one couldn’t help but shut up and appreciate him.

Feature Animation was Roy Disney’s baby, and when he showed up to see what was going on down there with the artists, everyone would stop what they were doing and get up from their desks. The man was a king, but he loved his subjects, and in turn he was greatly admired. If there is one man who orchestrated a renaissance of animation, it was no keyboard-bound screenwriter, no formula-minded corporate head, no digital effects programmer or marketing machine. It was Roy Disney.

I worked in story meetings with all these folks, including, on some days, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, Roy Disney, and few other inside Hollywood luminaries. I would hustle the boards back and forth as the artists pitched their scenes. Everyone wanted their work to be liked, but Katzenberg always wanted something altered, deleted, or improved upon, as if to put his own “magical” imprint on the work. The truth was, and we all knew it, he would disagree with himself all the time. And, though he had an adept mind for the movies, it was clear he couldn’t work the guns at the battlefront. (But he could pound Diet Cokes like a morphine addict, and it was my job to keep up an endless supply.) The guy would drone on and on about what made a successful story, and everyone would appear to be taking diligent notes, but as soon as the higher-ups would leave, notes would be compared and exchanged -the guys had been drawing comic portraits of each other. And these were some seriously impressive sketches. I still have a few of me.

This is the way it happened with that great film, and I know because I was there, a part of history. I saw it all come together firsthand, but I’ll never forget that the best, most productive story meetings were the ones with the regular old workers -the artists, the directors, and the producer, and the stewards like me. Everyone would throw jokes at the boards until something stuck, and we knew when it was sticking because we’d all be laughing. Other meetings, we’d all sit together quietly, staring at the drawings, not saying a word. A few times the producer would turn to me, the lowly production assistant in the back of the room, and ask, “What do you think?” and all heads would turn, waiting for my answer. And I would say nothing. For I loved it all.

Eventually, I would help photograph all the storyboard drawings and hand the footage to the newly-hired editor, who would take the recorded dialogue, songs, and soundtrack and paste it all together into a viewable product. I remember watching the movie for the first time, shot after shot, drawing after drawing, with no movement at all -save for a 5 second bit of animation- and thinking how strange it all was, this finished but motionless picture, that garnered applause at its close. The film went into full production after that, and all the animators were brought in to give some real life to the thing. As each bit of movement was finished and then painted, the editor would cut it into the assemblage. The film would be shown every few weeks, and you could see it come to life -from the original static, chalky sketches to a vibrant pastiche of color, hue, and energy.

And I became suddenly bored with it all. This wondrous golem that I’d been a part of since its inception was now a buzzing production workhorse, a papered assembly line. We’d moved off the dreamy studio lot and out to a grey, low-rise warehouse in Burbank, with a secured entrance and a labyrinth of cubicles. There were hundreds of artists, all demanding copies and errands. I couldn’t connect with more than a few of them, and the creative guys I’d worked with had moved on to other projects. Once the jokes were down on paper, everything was handed to the people who could really draw; illustrators, background artists, animators. This was animation. Though interesting in and of itself, it was a long, slow, boring process. The movie was coming to life, but my passion for being there was all but depleted when the story was down. The other assistants I had trained into the crew (there were several of us now) all seemed to resent the fact that I was 20 years old and a college dropout, where some of them had put their due time in at film school (and few at USC, no less!)

I found myself utterly bored at a dream job. 20 years old, and ready to retire from Disney. Lost, again.