Nothing quite like it had ever happened before. On the morning of Sept. 13, 1979, animators Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy quit their jobs at Walt Disney Productions.
The next day, 10 more people resigned. Although Disney spokesmen tried to minimize the significance of their departure, it was clear that there were serious moral problems in the Mouse Factory.
"It was a dream that burst," says Bluth, the Texas-born artist who led the exodus. During eight years at the Disney studio "I'd never seen a group of people so unhappy and so unwilling to admit it."
Bluth, a member of the Vancouver International Film Festival for Children and Young People competition jury, had once dreamed the Disney dream. "I loved the product that was once made there," he says. "I thought if I could only work there, I could make all the beautiful things come back again."
When Bluth first went to work for Disney, his commitment to his art was total. It was 1955. Walt Disney was still alive and Bluth was an assistant animator contributing to the studio's most ambitious cartoon feature, Sleeping Beauty. Two years later, Bluth left. A practicing Mormon, he had to fulfil his missionary obligations to his church. Thereafter he completed college and spent some time managing a theatre in Culver City, California
In 1971, after nearly four years in the Filmation cartoon shop, he rejoined Disney. Walt was gone, and animation at his studio "had turned into a very mechanical system."
Bluth, on the other hand, was not less dedicated to his craft. His talent won him regular promotions, increased responsibility and larger screen credits. On Pete's Dragon, a live-action musical in which the likes of Mickey Rooney and Helen Reddy interact with a cartoon dragon, he was director of animation.
In 1979, the Disney studio introduced its "new generation" animation team to the world via a Chrismas short called The Small One, produced and directed by Don Bluth. The new generation's first feature was to have been 1981's The Fox and the Hound, again with Bluth in the director's chair.
As it turned out, the new generation responsible for The Small One left to become the core of Don Bluth Productions.
When Bluth talks about animation, his eyes glow with childlike wonder. "You can't do it eight hours a day and then go home," he says. "You have to be fantastically in love with it."
For seven years before the great defection, Bluth and his colleagues had met in the garage on evenings and weekends to hone their craft far beyond the requirements of their job. "When animation bacomes involved in corporations, it ceases to be an art form," he says.
There was a time for Disney, the man, for Bill Hanna and for Joe Barbera when "the freshness and light of discovery was there," when they felt the "surprise at going home at night and your eyes won't close because there are just too many ideas.
"It's then that the work transcends the paint and the panels," Bluth says. "That's how you make a Snow White, a Bambi or a Bugs Bunny. When you start worrying about the stockholders, well, amen to your art."
As charming and persuasive as Bluth is, the question that remained was, "Can he deliver?" Rich Irvine and Jim Stewart thought he could.
A pair of former Disney executives, Stewart and Irvine had left the Magic Kingdom two years before Bluth to form Aurora Productions. They put together the $6.3 million that Bluth spent making The Secret of NIMH and the further $4.2 million needed to pay for the prints and advertising.
Bluth delivered. Adapting Robert O'Brien's award-winning Mrs. Brisby and the Rats of NIMH, he pulled out all the stops to offer audiences the most impressive display of animated imagination since Disney's own golden age.
Animators, like all craftsmen, produce a product, In doing so, they must balance quality against cost and speed of production.
Since the early 1950s, quality has consistently taken a back seat to the expedients of cost and speed. Filmgoers saw less and less of what Bluth calls "classic" animation.
In the early 1970s, Ralph (Fritz the Cat) Bakshi emerged as animation's best hope. A strong personality, he openly aspired to be "the new Walt Disney."
In the long haul, Bakshi has proven to be an inconsistant force.
Animation fans are now looking to Bluth to set a standard of excellence for the 1980s. Bluth, in turn, has two new features in preparation.
On Tuesday, Oct. 5, Bluth will discuss his art and the craft of classical animation during a special film-festival seminar. Scheduled for 8 p.m. in the Robson Square Cinema, it includes a screening of The Secret of NIMH.
Seating is limited. Reservations information is available from 980-7933.