What the Biz Rep's Been Doing

So let’s catch up a little. While I was out in the studios, a Disney animator related: ...

I hadn’t seen “Tangled” in close to a year. Last time I saw it, there was still a lot of story reel and unfinished animation and I thought it worked okay, but didn’t completely grab me. But I saw the whole thing last week and they’ve really goosed it. They’ve added some short sequences that weren’t there before, with the parents, put in new things into some of the existing sequences, nothing major, but it really works now. Works really well.”

”I was amazed how much better the movie’s gotten. It’s real good.

At the Disney theater on the Burbank lot: Left to right: Charles Solomon, Ruben Aquino, Chen-Yi Chang, Serguei Koucherov, John Musker.

I went to Pres Romanillo’s memorial at the Disney studio.

”Don’t grieve for me, for now I’m free.

I’m following the path God laid for me.

I took His hand when I heard Him call,

Turned my back and left it all. …”

It was a moving service with a lot of sharp reminiscences from Pres’s co-workers. They showed a lot his artwork, a lot of his animation and characters, and I was hit with the thought (again) that none of us know the time or place when God or fate or whatever you choose to call it will take our hand and whisked us out of this bright, carnival tunnel.

The memorial was upbeat, and the reception at the Disney commissary afterward was lively. Given the artist and animator we were there to remember, it seem entirely appropriate.

Earlier this week a reporter for a Great Metropolitan Daily called and said:

”I’m hearing that Disney/Pixar is going to do another Toy Story feature. Have you heard anything about that?”

I allowed as how I hadn’t, since I’m not plugged in to all things Pixar, but that I would lay odds that it was true, since the Big Mouse isn’t one to walk away from a billion-dollar feature franchise when there is still money on the table.

By coincidence, A DreamWorker said that he thought DWA would do another Shrek feature. I had the same answer for him that I had for the reporter:

“Of COURSE DreamWorks will do another movie! Number Four made $700 million! You think DWA is going to walk away from that kind of Big Casino?”

Companies, in the end, are not Florentine art studios pursuing some high, artistic ideal, but money-making enterprises. This is why there is a Cars Too, and later a “Son of Monsters, Inc.” It’s about the money, first and always.