Mickey: The Story of a Mouse, on Disney+

When the depression hit, Mickey Mouse licensing deals saved several companies from bankruptcy. That’s mouse power. He is still a constant pop culture presence. Just look at your wrist—you might see him there. Those big ears appeared in some of the most popular animated films ever, including Fantasia, but his significance as a corporate icon nearly overwhelmed his vitality as a character. Jeff Malmberg chronicles the Mouse’s history and his evolving role within the Disney Empire in Mickey: The Story of a Mouse, which starts streaming Friday on Disney+.

It all goes back to when Disney was a very different company, but it was in dire straits. Walt Disney had lost control of his first creation, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, to his distributor. According to one corporate mouthpiece, this is why the company has always been so notoriously rigid protecting its copyrights. Regardless, Walt Disney did indeed pivot to his next creation, Mickey Mouse. His original name was Mortimer Mouse, but Walt’s wife fortuitously suggested Mickey instead.

Obviously, Mickey was a hit, but the level of his popularity in the 1930s was even greater than The Simpsons in the early 1990s and SpongeBob SquarePants in the early 2000s, combined. He became the iconic face of Disney, but even from the start, such a role demanded good manners, so Donald Duck was created to behave badly and serve as the butt of more jokes. Yet, there were periodic attempts to present Mickey in fresh new contexts, like his appearance as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Malmberg and his talking heads do a fairly good job of Mickey’s early development and his recent re-emergence, right up to the latest, short-short, “Mickey in a Minute,” whose production is documented throughout the film. However, they skip over a lot in-between. The most conspicuous omission might be that of the 1995 short “Runaway Brain,” which has been largely out of circulation, despite its Oscar-nomination, because of its enthusiastic horror imagery (including an Exorcist reference). Also, the classic “Lonesome Ghosts” never gets its due depicting Mickey, Donald, and Goofy as the Ajax Ghost Exterminators, fortysome years before Ghostbusters.

Of course, the film also spends sometime wallowing in guilt over some of the dated cultural representations of the earlier shorts, but from what Malmberg shows us, Minnie looks like a much greater offender than Mickey. Rather awkwardly, former CEO Bob Iger appears as a talking-head in Story of a Mouse, rather than current CEO Bob Chapek, but since the company’s stock just hit a nearly ten-year low under his stewardship, stockholders certainly won’t be in the mood to listen to him talk about Mickey Mouse.

Floyd Norman: An Animated Life—The Disney Legend Speaks His Mind

You know someone is important when the Disney mouse licenses clips and likenesses for their documentary produced outside and completely independent of the Magic Kingdom. Animator-storyman Floyd Norman has that kind of stature in the business. Although he is an officially recognized “Disney Legend,” Norman has had a complicated relationship with the Disney company, but that never diminishes his pride in the work he did there. The beloved animator takes stock of his career and speaks his mind throughout Michael Fiore & Erik Sharkey’s Floyd Norman: An Animated Life (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Apparently, Santa Barbara was a tucked away corner of utopia in the 1930s and 1940s, which is why the extended Norman family flocked there. According to Norman, he had a happy, well-adjusted childhood there, availing himself of the museum’s art classes, just like any other resident. As a teen, he even had the opportunity to assist local Archie Comics veteran Bill Woggon on his Katy Keene fashion model comic book. Eventually, Norman’s talent and experience landed him his dream job at the Disney studio, working under the master himself on classics like Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, Jungle Book, and 101 Dalmatians.

Walt Disney was a no-nonsense boss, but always fair in his blunt-spoken way. Years later, Norman would be incensed by Meryl Streep’s unhinged attacks on his former boss’s character, so he fired off a decidedly pointed rejoinder. Sign us up for Team Norman. After all, nobody understands the history and evolution of Disney’s corporate culture better than Norman. Frankly, he is always reluctant to make a big deal out of his status as the first African American in the animation department. As far as he seems to be concerned, race was never an issue in his career. Granted, that sentiment might come with a few caveats, but it is the ageism that forced him into early retirement that really rankled Norman, as he makes crystal clear.

It is easy to see why Norman is considered a legend among his peers and savvy ComicCon attendees. During his various Disney stints, he periodically penned satiric cartoons at the managements expense, much like vintage David Letterman needling the pinheads at G.E. He also had a tenure at Hanna-Barbara and was part of the team at Pixar that made Toy Story 2 too good to be released straight to DVD.

Norman pretty much is animation history, but he never comes across as a museum relic. Animated Life basically captures the two sides of Norman: the enthusiastic fanboy and the plain-speaking truth-teller. Both are completely engaging. As it happens, Norman’s story continued to develop as Fiore & Sharkey were documenting it.

Arguably, the extent of Disney imagery allowed throughout Animated Life says what you need to know about Norman’s place in the studio’s history. Fiore & Sharkey recognize his winning screen presence and have the good sense to run with it. The co-directors are clearly down with Team Norman as well, but Animated Life is too opinionated to be considered mere hagiography. It has an edge, but there is still plenty of nostalgia for Disney (and Hanna-Barbara and Fat Albert) fans. Highly recommended for those who value the art and craft of animation, Floyd Norman: An Animated Life opens this Friday (8/26) in New York, at the Village East and in Orlando at the AMC Disney Springs.

All the Mouse’s Men: Waking Sleeping Beauty

It is a multi-billion dollar entertainment company, yet it is still guided by the spirit of its charismatic founder, whose family members have held positions of leadership in the company many years after his death. There is only one Walt Disney Company, but the Mouse was not roaring so loudly in the early 1980’s. How Disney’s demoralized animation department recaptured their past glory is now documented in Don Hahn’s documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

For an animator, there was no place like Disney. However, the company seemed to be drifting under the leadership of Ron Miller (Walt Disney’s son-in-law). Still in the business of animated features, Disney’s Fox and the Hound scored a modest success in 1981, but the following Black Cauldron was considered a disaster in all respects. By this point, nephew and former board member Roy Disney had led a shareholder revolt that instilled Michael Eisner as CEO.

Evidently, Eisner and his studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg were not too sure what to make of those weird animators and their costly films, but they had a powerful protector in the new Vice Chairman, Roy Disney. Though they suffered several humiliations along the way, the animation department eventually reasserted itself as the engine of the company with the spectacular successes of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.

Directed by Hahn, the producer of Beauty and King, Waking addresses some surprisingly sensitive company history. However, its allegiances clearly lie with the animators rather than the suits. Indeed, it could have been just as aptly titled Surviving Katzenberg, who probably takes the most hits throughout the film for his relentless self-promotion in the media. Yet the film’s dishiest revelations involve the difficult relations between the triumvirate of Eisner the boss, his lieutenant Katzenberg, and Roy Disney the elder statesman, as well as the mediating role played by the late company president Frank Wells. In fact, Waking clearly suggests the tragic accidental death of Wells signaled the effective end of era for the studio.

Hahn and producer Peter Schneider (former president of Disney Animation) consciously eschewed talking head scenes, instead playing audio interviews over rare archival video of the Disney Studios during the 1984-1994 period under consideration. Though that is usually a more visually evocative approach, there are times during Eisner and Katzenberg’s remarks it would be helpful to judge their facial expressions. Still, they did indeed get the big three on tape, thanks to the hours of interviews conducted by Patrick Pacheco (perhaps not a big name outside of the City, but recognizable to many New Yorkers as a frequent guest commentator on NY1’s Broadway report, On-Stage).

While Waking includes many clips and storyboards from the animated films referenced, it is far more about the corporate-creative tensions at Disney than the animation process per se. Still, even though Hahn keeps the film moving along at a healthy trot, it probably helps to go into Waking with a strong appreciation for Disney’s modern animated classics. More interesting and candid than one might expect, it opens in New York this Friday (3/26) at the Landmark Sunshine.

Good Neighbors: Walt & El Grupo

1941 was a bad year for Walt Disney and the world in general. The future of his studio was threatened by shaky finances and a prolonged strike. Like most Americans, he was also concerned about the state of the world, which is why he complied with FDR’s request to participate in a good will tour designed to counter the growing Fascist and National Socialist influence in Latin America. Successful both as an informal diplomatic initiative and an expedition to gather inspiring new source material for Disney and his animators, their fruitful tour is now documented in Theodore Thomas’s Walt & El Grupo, (trailer here), which opens this week in L.A. and New York.

In many respects, the tour came at the worst possible time for Disney. Reeling from two box-office flops (for the record, those were Pinocchio and Fantasia), Disney found himself overextended. To make matters worse, a contingent of junior animators, steeped in class-warfare rhetoric, launched a strike against the studio, hoping to make it a union shop. Still, in a way, the tour came at a perfect time, allowing Disney to escape his labor headaches, while serving his country by promoting Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor” policy.

The plan called for Disney and his group of hand-picked studio personnel (“El Grupo”) to tour South America, particularly the “ABC” countries of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, to forge individual connections as artists and gather material for a film to be produced with the backing of the U.S. government. Even though the resulting Saludos Amigos generated mixed reactions, El Grupo’s tour still appears to be that rare government program that worked as intended.

Despite his initial reluctance, Disney in particular seemed to have a natural talent for personal diplomacy. Indeed, Thomas interviewed many local artists (or their surviving family members) who fondly remember their time with Disney. The art, music, and natural beauty of pre-War South America would also inspire for most of El Grupo as well, but perhaps none as much as Mary Blair. Recognized by the company as a “Disney Legend,” the film persuasively suggests Blair’s Grupo influences can clearly be seen in her work as lead creative for “It’s a Small World.”

Writer-director Thomas and producer Kuniko Okubo illustrate their documentary with a treasure trove a newly discovered photos of the tour and convey a good sense of most of Grupo members. They also evoke some of the vitality of the Latin American cultures the group encountered, including an appealing soundtrack that features the likes of Luciana Souza and Mercedes Sosa. However, the interviews with surviving El Grupo family members get a little repetitive (and their memories of separation anxiety seem a bit disproportionate considering WWII would soon take draft-age men from their families for far longer than ten weeks).

While Grupo feels slightly padded as a full length feature, it illuminates a fascinating episode in American cinema history. It also serves as an effective corrective to the malicious rumors and urban legends that have recently circulated regarding Disney. The man who emerges in Grupo is an artist, entrepreneur, and patriot, who willing answered his country’s call during a difficult moment in history. The glaring contrast with contemporary Hollywood hardly needs belaboring. Informative and well-produced, El Grupo opens tomorrow (9/9) at the Disneyland AMC and Friday (9/11) in New York at the Quad (with free mini-poster while supplies last).