Disney Lies

Although Cloverfield was released by some other movie studio, Disney’s special effects department was intimately involved in certain aspects of the film. In particular, the fact that Cloverfield was filmed entirely with a consumer video camera made it impossible to insert conventional computer animated special effects, so former Jim Henson Productions creature specialists were called into create a 900-foot-tall puppet that could be used in the movies more dramatic sequences.

“The movie’s conceit is that huge amounts of the secret ingredient for a popular soda are released into the ocean, causing this enormous baby monster to be over-stimulated by caffeine and just go nuts,” says Jimmy “J.J.” Jaybrams, supposed head of Disney’s Imagineering Creature Shop, Gigantor Division. “We went through a lot of concepts for this one. We eventually settled on a creature by thinking of what Lucky the Dinosaur would look like if he were horribly mutated, angry, carnivorous, gigantic, covered in parasites, and lived on the bottom of the ocean. The final puppet was a real masterpiece. It took more than seven hundred dedicated operators to control the thing for filming, and at one point one of the guys sneezed and accidentally knocked a couple of floors off an apartment building. You should have seen the company insurance guy’s face!”

Those who pay close attention to the film may notice the sly reference to a certain Disney mascot. Says Jaybrams, “If you look at the traditional Disney silhouette of Mickey Mouse, it looks kind of like a mutated three-leaf clover. So many Disney people worked on this film that at one point the director said it looked like a ‘field of Disney’ — which, because of the clover-look thing, became ‘field of clover’ or ‘clover-field.’ So there you go.”

Since we had him on the line, we asked Jabrams for the solution to a number of frequent questions about the film:

What happened to Marlena? “She exploded. On the set we joked that she’d eaten too many churros. It was really funny! Seriously! Okay, I guess you had to be there.”

What is the whispered phrase after the credits? “It’s dirty. We Disney folks always like to put hidden dirty messages into films. It’s jus t part of who we are.”

What falls out of the sky into the ocean at the end of the movie? “I’m surprised anyone even noticed that. It was a model of Michael Eisner’s private plane — a bit of in-joke wish fulfillment from the crew.”

Disney’s new stop-motion-animal direct-to-video holiday special, The Nightmare Before Kwanzaa, premiers today. If you’ve seen it, e-mail us your review!

Actor Kurt “Vogel” Russell will be 57 next March, and is already planning a very special celebration for his 60th birthday in 2011. In coordination with Disney, Russell will be remaking and updating two films from early in his career. The first film, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Rest Home Band will be released in 2010, followed soon after by The Computer Wore Orthopedic Shoes in 2011.

After his work with Disney is complete, Russell will continue his birthday celebration by playing the corpse of Elvis in an upcoming John Carpenter production.

It has been announced that the upcoming Jungle Cruise movie will officially be titled, Jungle Cruise: Heart of Darkness, making its title a combination of references to literature by two separate authors — Joseph Conrad and Upton Sinclair.

Conrad fans know that his work has long been a source of inspiration for Disney. For example:

• The Rescuers was inspired by Conrad’s The Rescue.
• Conrad’s Typhoon is the namesake for Walt Disney World’s Typhoon Lagoon.
• Treasure Planet’s Jim Hawkins was named for the title character in Lord Jim.

Non-Disney sources also often refer to Conrad — the space ship in Alien was named Nostromo after Conrad’s sci-fi novel of the same name, for example, and his The Secret Agent served as the template for James Bond.

But despite the fine pedigree of the Jungle Cruise film’s main inspiration, some Disney fans are apparently worried about another feature based on a Disneyland attraction when two of the company’s three previous efforts (Haunted Mansion: Northanger Abbey, and Tiki Room: A Room of One’s Own) were dismal failures, with only Pirates of the Caribbean: Treasure Island turning a serious profit. When asked his opinion of the Jungle Cruise: Heart of Darkness concept, long-time Disney commentator James Hillock pretended to die and said, “The horror! The horror!” Not a good sign.

Tim Burton fans will be thrilled to hear the famed director and hair stylist is returning to Disney to work on a trio of new animated features.

The first will be a remake of Disney’s classic Alice in Wonderland, reinvisioned so that it retains all of the biting nineteenth-century political satire of the original novels. As Burton has worked with Johnny Depp so many times in the past, the veteran actor will star as the title character.

Second on Burton’s Disney feature list is an expanded version of his frightening stop-motion short subject, Frankenweenie. For those of you who are not familiar with this brilliant piece of animation, it is the story of a young boy who, by calling upon certain forces that should have remained unknown to science, brings a frankfurter to life. Johnny Depp will voice the title character. Despite rumors to the contrary, there will be no cameo performance by Vincent Price, largely due to certain philosophical concerns.

The third in Burton’s trilogy of Disney epics will be a traditionally animated anthology feature in which Burton’s films are reimagined as Disney cartoons starring the “fab four” (Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy) and an animated Johnny Depp. The lineup is currently listed as: “Planet of the Ducks,” “Toontown Attacks!,” “Pee-Wee Mickey’s Big Adventure,” and “Goofy Sciscorhands.”

Continuing yesterday’s update on Pixar, details continue to emerge about the company’s next animated feature WALL-I. Informants deep within Pixar’s maintenance organization were able to provide DisneyLies with the following synopsis for this exciting science-fiction tear fest (which, ironically, was made by humans using computers to animate the computers that act like humans).

The movie is about a robot named WALL-I, the last robot left on Earth because all of the other robots’ dialogue was left unfinished due to the Hollywood screenwriter’s strike. Although WALL-I has work to do on Earth, he is always looking toward the stars because he has this one eye that wasn’t installed correctly and points up instead of straight ahead. WALL-I, although a robot, has human-like feelings, and falls in love with the beautiful EVA, a robot with an excellent singing voice and political aspirations in Argentina.

One unique aspect of this film is that the robot characters do not speak English. Rather, they speak in modern computer languages such as C++ and JavaScript (with older robots shown in flashbacks speaking Pascal, Fortran, or Cobol). In keeping with the technological theme, film’s soundtrack will be made available only in binary.

The rumors are true! Pixar, known for cutting-edge computer animation that shuns motion capture and other shortcuts in the same way that Windows Vista shuns reasonable pricing, now has a live-action film in pre-production! The film, Jimmy Carter, Warlord of Mars, will be a science-fiction romp through the adventures of a poor peanut farmer who is accidentally launched to Mars in his brother’s beer-powered rocket ship. He finds the red planet inhabited by bizarre creatures with more arms than are really necessary, but instead of fighting with them he puts their surplus appendages to work building homes for destitute Martians!

“This will be a feel-good movie for the whole family,” says some who isn’t John Lasseter but is using his name to sound like he knows what he is talking about. “And it will show the world that Pixar can kick serious backside, no matter what kind of film we’re doing. So there!”

On this, the 70th anniversary of its historic prodigal animated epic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (an old movie), Disney is celebrating in its theme parks around the world! Today only, Snow White will make special appearances in each park, apples will be for sale on snack carts, and families with seven children and long-bearded dwarfs will enjoy half-price admission (to defray the celebration’s cost, the price of everything in the parks will be raised a celebratory $7).