A talented animator whose shop recently produced the well-received film, The Secret of NIMH, Don Bluth, 44, walked out of Disney in 1979 with two colleagues and was soon followed by 14 others. His film was bankrolled and marketed by two other ex-Disneyans, Richard Irvine and James Stewart, who head Aurora Productions.
While working an eight-year stint for Disney, Bluth says, he became increasingly disenchanted with the studio's practice of skimping on production values to save money -- leaving out such details as reflected images, the sparkle of water, whiffs of smoke from a fire. According to Bluth, Disney was also producing namby-pamby stories, protecting youthful audiences from the grim realities of traditional fairy tales. Bluth's goal, he has repeatedly told the press, is to return to the "classic" Disney techniques of Snow White and Pinocchio. Some critics thought he did just that in The Secret of NIMH, a tale about grim threats to a family of agreeable mice.
The folks at the Disney studio have not taken at all kindly to Bluth's critique. An outspoken rebel in the placid precincts of the Burbank studio was simply unheard of; if people left, they went quietly, not exploiting their apostasy to market their products. In an interview with FORTUNE, Disney President Ron Miller, who had taken an avuncular interest in Bluth's career, called him a "son of a bitch" -- language not often heard on Mickey Avenue.
Responding to Bluth's artistic attack, one of Disney's directors of animation, speaking for the studio, (a) said that a lot of smoke and sparkling water were left out even in Walt's time; (b) argued that such production details were of no great importance; and (c) pointed out that touches of this sort will be included in Disney's next animated feature, The Black Cauldron. As for the charge of taming fairy tales, this Disney executive hinted at the possibility of competitive slaughter in the fairy kingdoms: "We're not afraid to kill somebody off."