Disney Walt - The Quotable Walt Disney

Copyright 2001 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney Editions, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.

Design by Polly Kanevsky

ISBN 978-1-4847-4789-6

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

The Quotable Walt Disney was compiled by Dave Smith, director of the Walt Disney Archives. Dave is the author of Disney A to Z and the coauthor of The Ultimate Disney Trivia Books 1 through 4 and Disney: The First 100 Years.

Thank you to Randy Bright, Rebecca Cline, Jennifer Hendrickson, Rose Motzko, Bob Schneider, Paula Sigman, Ed Squair, and Robert Tieman.

Because the eye is the most sensitive and dependable of our sense organs, the motion picture offers the widest, direct avenue to our emotions. Whereas the still picture can suggest only a fragment of fact or fiction, the cartoon-in-motion is without limit in communicating ideas, events, and human relations.

The motion picture has become a necessity of life, a part of our balanced existence. It is not a negligible luxury. People are always going to demand and enjoy movies in the theater. Perhaps not as exclusively as they did when public amusements were more limited. Patronage will depend more than ever upon what we put on the screen. And especially on how well we understand the needs and desires of our younger customers. For their favor we must compete as never before.

The business has grown continuously through these years, although at times the road was rocky. But I dont know of any other entertainment medium that can give to the millions of families the world over more value than the motion picture.

Nothing in a lifetime of picture making has been more exciting and personally satisfactory than delving into the wonders, the mysteries, the magnificent commonplaces of life around us and passing them on via the screen.

Well, in order to crack the field, I said, Ive got to get something a little unique, you see. Now, they had the clown out of the inkwell who played with the live people. So [with the Alice Comedies] I reversed it. I took the live person and put him into the cartoon field. I said, Thats a new twist. And it sold. I was surprised myself.

People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check, or an autograph.

To captivate our varied and worldwide audience of all ages, the nature and treatment of the fairy tale, the legend, the myth have to be elementary, simple. Good and evil, the antagonists of all great drama in some guise, must be believably personalized. The moral ideals common to all humanity must be upheld. The victories must not be too easy. Strife to test valor is still and always will be the basic ingredient of the animated tale, as of all screen entertainments.

Speaking for the one field which I feel definitely qualified to comment on, I fully believe the animated picture will emerge as one of the greatest mediums, not only of entertainment but also of education.

Cartoon animation offers a medium of storytelling and visual entertainment, which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.

I started, actually, to make my first animated cartoon in 1920. Of course, they were very crude things then and I used sort of little puppet things.

To translate the worlds great fairy tales, thrilling legends, stirring folk tales into visual theatrical presentations and to get back warm response of audiences in many lands have been for me an experience and a lifetime satisfaction beyond all value.

In learning the art of storytelling by animation, I have discovered that language has an anatomy. Every spoken word, whether uttered by a living person or by a cartoon character, has its facial grimace, emphasizing the meaning.

Animation is different from other [live-action] film. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoons unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.

I take great pride in the artistic development of cartoons. Our characters are made to go through emotions which a few short years ago would have seemed impossible to secure with a cartoon character. Some of the action produced in the finished cartoon of today is more graceful than anything possible for a human to do.

To think six years aheadeven two or threein this business of making animated cartoon features, it takes calculated risk and much more than blind faith in the future of theatrical motion pictures. I see motion pictures as a family-founded institution closely related to the life and labor of millions of people. Entertainment such as our business provides has become a necessity, not a luxury. Curiously, it offers us the greatest reassurance about the future in the animation field. Fantasy, when properly done in the one medium best adapted to its nature, need never go stale for the family taste.

We are not trying to entertain the critics. Ill take my chances with the public.

Moviemakers are often too introverted about their production. They tend to build up myths about audiences and to prattle glibly about shifting public taste and its unpredictables. In considering audiences and our professional function, remember one thing: Americans are a sociable folk; we like to enjoy ourselves in crowds, at sports arenas, at picnics, fairs, and carnivals, at concerts, and at the theater. Above all, we like to laugh togethereven at our own shortcomings. I dont like to kid myself about the intelligence and taste of audiences. They are made up of my neighbors, people I know and meet every day. Folks I trade with, go to church with, vote with, compete in business with, help build and preserve a nation with.

Public taste in amusement has changed very decidedly since the early days when the motion picture was a toy, a novelty; it has changed as much in animation as in live-action cinema offerings.

Before sitting down to count my blessings, I want to make you a promise. I promise we wont let this great honor you have paid us tonight go to our headswe have too many projects for the future to take time out for such a thing. On top of that, after forty-some-odd years of ups and downs in this crazy business of ours, we know too wellyou are only as good as your next picture. (Taken from an awards speech)

Films stimulate children to read books on many subjects.