Johnny Showtime: Walt Walt Walt Walt Walt

 by JB

We had visitors this week. Patrick Bromley and his wonderful family left the comfort and convenience of F This Movie’s Midwest Offices and ventured West to visit our palatial branch office in Oxnard, California. Between you and me, I think he was checking up on us, making sure we were “keeping up the brand,” not serving Pepsi in our home theater, and a hundred other details only a man like Patrick would notice...

Besides more mundane matters like "watching" the kids (more like "commandeering" them for the day, because we enjoy their company) so that Patrick and his lovely wife could attend Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair at the Vista Theater, going to the drive-in to see The Fantastic Four, observing the Dallas Cowboys summer training camp, and visiting Bugs Bunny’s celebrated Pismo Beach, our habit is that any sabbatical with the Bromley family must somehow involve Walt Disney. For many years, we vacationed in Disneyworld; last year, we visited the secret facility where they keep Walt’s head cryogenically frozen, which is located in the basement of the original Haunted Mansion. Don’t ask cast members about this: they will deny it.

To celebrate its 70th anniversary last week, Disneyland debuted a new verse to the iconic song in the "It’s a Small World" ride, a new attraction at the Main Street Opera House titled Walt Disney: A Magical Life, and a ton of new merchandise in the gift shop. I do not begrudge the Disney Company its merchandising revenue. There are far worse things you can wear on a t-shirt than Mickey Mouse in his fancy anniversary jacket.

The new "Small World" verse is delightful; the Walt Disney show has proved to be controversial. I thought it did a fantastic job of distilling Walt’s life to a clean seventeen minutes. SPOILER ALERT: Some Disney fans think the Walt animatronic robot that ends the show doesn’t look enough like him. I found there was a significant difference between seeing the show on the YouTube machine and seeing it live, where sightlines and theatrical lighting sell the illusion. Here’s the entire show. You be the judge. Comment in the space below this column!



Let's take a look at “Human Walt,” so you’ll have something to compare to the above “Robot Walt.” Here he explains the nascent Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, one of the ground-breaking theme park rides Walt ushered into being. I’ve always thought of Pirates (and The Haunted Mansion, which opened in 1969, after Walt and the Imagineers worked on it for almost a decade) as the most ambitious and influential theme park attractions in history. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. What’s your opinion? I’ll fight you.



In the park for two magical days, with actual children on hand to provide their delightful reactions to things, I was reminded once again that Walt Disney is one of the few things about which I am not cynical. Walt Disney was a true American genius; his innovations in the world of entertainment, both theme parks and motion pictures, will never be matched. (I am also not cynical about the idea of American democracy OR the transformative power of the Arts, but those are lectures for another day.) I am not so naïve as to think that the real Walt Disney (as opposed to his public personal or animatronic) was always happy, folksy Uncle Walt. He ran a multi-million-dollar multi-media empire. Sometimes, I am assuming, Walt had to kick butt:



While we were in the parks, one of our friends texted us a link to a video on the YouTube machine, pointing out a “Hidden Donald” in Galaxy's Edge, the Star Wars area of the park. As soon as my lovely wife began playing the video, I recognized the familiar voice of Brickey, who hosts an informative vlog about all things Disney. (I watch too many videos on the YouTube machine.) Here’s another Brickey video detailing Walt’s canny business acumen when it came to monetizing the theme park:



Why am I telling you all of this? Because I wanted to spend a little time, after my pilgrimage to his theme park last week, to meditate on the man and his accomplishments and why I hold him so close to my little black heart. As Linda Lohman says in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, “Attention must be paid.”

Walt Disney was a complicated man. I would love to one day see a Disney biopic structured something like Citizen Kane: all opinions of the man expressed, every side of him examined, every triumph celebrated, every setback explained... (Have you all heard the tale of Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit?) I am not talking about a movie like Saving Mr. Banks—that film is demonstrable nonsense, meant to burnish the reputation of Uncle Walt at the expense of P.L. Travers. The movie I’m talking about would need to be unauthorized and made by a different studio.

I bet Universal would greenlight that.