Rebelling against the Walt Disney studios may seem tantamount to rejecting motherhood, but for animator Don Bluth, whose full-length cartoon feature The Secret of NIMH opens Friday in Toronto, rebellion was tantamount to artistic survival.
"I left Disney on my birthday, Sept. 13, 1979," the filmmaker said yesterday at lunch. "I felt that animation should be an art process -- you should be passionate about the film and the story. I was at Disney for nine years; I felt like I was trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Management did not understand animation.
That allegation should ring true to parents forced to accompany their kiddies to recent Disney disasters such as The Fox and the Hound or Robin Hood, animated films tasteless as pureed ice. Bluth, 44, who worked on Robin Hood, remembers that the emphasis was on "doing what Walt would have done. They were imitating their old movies -- art was imitating art, and when art imitates art, you're in trouble." Meanwhile, children who had the luxury of choice were deserting Disney's imitations for Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T., three cartoon-like movies Bluth characterizes as "full of delightful things to see."
Animation's demise was thought to be imminent, but Bluth, who fell in love with Disney as a small child on a farm in Utah -- "I'd ride my horse to the movie house in town and tie him to a tree while I went in and watched the latest Disney film" -- was convinced the fault lay not with the medium but with the message.
"I always felt the emphasis should be on story first, animation second, which is what makes Snow White, Bambi and Pinocchio so good. The later Disney films seemed to reverse that. As the cartoons got more and more subtle they tried to look like live action, while the Disney live action features became more and more broad, like cartoons. There has been a decline in interest in animation, and that's because the pictures have been boring to look at."
What of the movies of Ralph Bakshi, creator of Fritz the Cat (the first X-rated cartoon), Lord of the Rings and the recent American Pop? Predictably, Bluth, who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and who conducted a teaching and recruiting ministry for the Mormons in Argentina, is less than laudatory regarding Bakshi.
"But his visuals many times are superb. I think he has advanced the art of animation. I think he didn't work at the box office because the stories weren't very strong. I think, too, that you have to have a philosophy of life that allows you some kind of hope -- when Bakshi takes you down, he leaves you down."
The story of The Secret of NIMH is based on a classic children's novel, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, a lightly political parable (the acronym stands for National Institute of Mental Health) by the late Robert C. O'Brien. Although it is not a downer, neither is it entirely escapist; it is a moderately tough, realistic little piece that celebrates self-reliance.
There is some violence. "Pressure to get rid of the violence did come from the movie's backers," Bluth said. "They wanted something cute and safe that would make them a lot of money. I wanted something delightful and new, a movie like no one had ever seen before. If you make a film that's totally inoffensive, it's also 'inexhilarating.' Psychologists say that children need to be tempted, threatened, scared, and then rescued from it. Children not protected from the facts of life are better prepared for life."
The $8-million Secret of NIMH, which took two "intense" years to complete, features the voices of Elizabeth Hartman (as Mrs. Frisby), Dom De Luise (as her crow companion) and John Carradine (as the wise -- and terrifying -- old owl). Miss Hartman had suffered a nervous breakdown and had not worked for several years, Bluth revealed.
"I had been a fan of A Patch of Blue and had a tape of it. I listened to many actresses' voices, but Mrs. Frisby is a timid character, and most modern actresses sound very strong. One night I put the tape of Patch of Blue on, and there was Mrs. Frisby! Elizabeth was so shy -- she said, 'I'm not very good any more,' and when she went to the microphone for a recording session, she would shake for 20 minutes -- but she was terrific." Did he have similar problems with De Luise? Bluth laughed. "When he was told he would be playing a young stallion of a bird, he loved it. He had only one request: 'Don't make the crow fat.'"
The next project, to go into production on Monday, is an $11-million, 80 minute feature, East of the Sun, West of the Moon, based on a Norwegian fairy tale. Disney is known to be at work on The Black Cauldron; an epic that Bluth does not think will compete with his new movie. "They've been on it five years and are estimating that it will take between two and seven more to finish. It's a good story, but I think they may be too timid to tell it." Timidity is not Bluth's major failing, and his new film, like the present one, is conceived as a picture that will talk up to its audience, instead of down to it. "One of my pet peeves," Don Bluth announced as he excused himself to take a call from Good Morning America, "is people who talk baby talk to children."