Dream It! Do It! (Disney Editions Deluxe) (30 page)

There was still another issue to make the fiftieth anniversary a success: rebuilding the morale and training of the Disneyland staff. That responsibility was given to one of my favorite operations leaders from Walt Disney World. Imagineering had enjoyed a great working relationship with Greg Emmer for many years, especially when he was the top operations leader for Epcot. Now he became Matt Ouimet’s operating partner, and together they made themselves the most visible of executives. It seemed that they were always inside the parks—Disneyland and California Adventure—walking, observing, talking to cast members and guests. It was “management by walking around”—and it paid big dividends in motivating the cast and creating the spirit of friendly, helpful dedication that made the fiftieth year a soaring success.

I especially appreciated the invitation from Matt to participate in the July 17, 2005, dedication of a window on Main Street honoring the Disneyland cast. The simple words I wrote for that window say it all:

* * * * * * * * * *

One last personal issue related to “riding the Michael Eisner roller coaster”: whatever the personal animus that grew and festered between Michael and Steve Jobs and consumed the Pixar-Disney business relationship, the creative teams throughout Disney had enjoyed a chance to work with John Lasseter and his Pixar colleagues. We prayed that it would continue. The fun, the passion, the love of story, the technical know-how we found in John and Ed Catmull and their Pixar associates was just too good to lose. We were all ecstatic when, as one of his earliest major decisions as Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger agreed to purchase Pixar from Steve Jobs.

I can’t believe it would ever have happened if the old Strategic Planning process had still been in place. “No, because…,” as Buzz Price said, is the language of a deal killer. “Yes, if…” is the language creative people love…especially in an industry called “show business.”

* * * * * * * * * *

I experienced one more highlight—and honor—as the fiftieth anniversary year began. When the Pasadena Tournament of Roses chose “Celebrate Family” as the theme of the 2005 parade on New Year’s Day, Disneyland was invited to create a float and entertainment, and to lead the entire parade down Colorado Boulevard. In fact, the grand marshal was none other than Mickey Mouse himself—adding to a Disney tradition on New Year’s Day: Walt was the grand marshal of the 1966 parade, and Roy E. Disney enjoyed the same honor in 2000.

When the Tournament of Roses approached Disney to recommend someone with creative and artistic credentials to become one of the three judges charged with choosing the award-winning floats, Disneyland’s liaison to the parade, Brian Whitman, suggested me, as the longtime creative leader of the Imagineers.

It turned out to be an extraordinary experience, beginning four days before the January 1, 2005, event—the 116th parade in the storied history of the Pasadena tradition, now broadcast around the world as a New Year’s Day event—with far more viewers, I’m sure, than all the New Year’s Day football bowl games combined. My fellow judges and I traveled many times to multiple locations in Pasadena, and miles and miles to surrounding communities, to evaluate the floats as they were being built through the vision and labor of talented artists, professional float builders, floral designers, and thousands of volunteers who install each flower by hand, to achieve the designer’s vision.

Even after our “final” voting had taken place New Year’s Eve, the judges were given one more opportunity—as the sun was coming up at 5:00
A.M.
New Year’s Day—to see the floats lined up on Orange Grove Avenue, awaiting the start of the parade three hours later. My fellow judges and I were steadfast and unanimous in the choices we had made, selecting the beautiful entry of the Rain Bird corporation to receive the Parade’s Sweepstakes Award. (A bonus: the parade’s quintessential designer, Raul Rodriguez, who has created the concepts for several hundred Tournament of Roses floats, was the designer of Rain Bird’s award winner. One of Raul’s earliest jobs was at Walt Disney Imagineering.)

After a good night’s sleep or two to catch up after my exciting start to 2005, it was again time to move on—to Disneyland’s fiftieth celebration, and my new career challenges.

Jay Rasulo’s handwritten note of August 1, 2008, was sweet music to my ears. “This update makes me very happy—all the stuff we talked about is happening in spades!” Jay wrote. “You are the hardest working ambassador in the world!”

Jay was the chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. At the end of 2009, he “traded” positions with Tom Staggs and became Disney’s chief financial officer. Early in 2006, Jay had asked me to move my office from Imagineering in Glendale to the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank—the three-mile separation that had so confused Ray Watson when he first brought Michael Eisner and Frank Wells to WED in September 1984. Although I did know the way, it was a true culture change for me.

Traditionally, the creative leader of Imagineering had occupied a good-sized corner office at 1401 Flower Street, adjacent to Edie’s Conference Room and the office of the number-one designer at Imagineering, Senior Vice President John Hench. Only Dick Irvine, the original occupant of the office, and I had been occupants of that corner office from the day WED moved there in 1963 until my departure to the Studio in 2006.

As my seventy-second birthday approached in February, Jay had asked me to take on a new role, as he began the search for a new creative leader for Imagineering. I had actually stepped aside many months before so that Tom Fitzgerald could lead the creative team in story development. But Tom’s skill at storytelling, and his aversion toward time spent in managing the creative group, cried out for setting him free to maximize his considerable talent. Compounding the problem was the fact his intended administration “partner” had no real interest in sharing. Don Goodman, another graduate from Disney Development, was clearly in charge—which meant that the right-brain creative skills were clearly secondary to the left-brainers in Project Management, reporting directly to Don.

Unable to influence the situation, I was clearly ready for a meaty new assignment to round out and, as it turned out, complete my fifty-four years at Disney. On February 15, 2006, in a memo I titled “Change Is Just Around the Corner,” I informed the company of my new role. “Jay has asked me,” I wrote, “to become Imagineering Ambassador for the Parks and Resorts segment, communicating the Disney difference. I will be representing the energy, passion, and talent of the Disney Imagineers I have helped to lead creatively and symbolically for so many of those fifty years.”

It was great timing, I said. “Several years ago, as I looked ahead toward my fiftieth year at Disney, I set two major goals for myself: first, to play a key role in the development and achievement of a spectacular fiftieth celebration for Disneyland; and second, to complete more than four years of creative support and leadership with the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland.” Now, I wrote, “I was ‘all ears’ to a challenging proposal Jay made.… It was clear to me that I am the perfect casting (perhaps the only) candidate capable of originating and organizing this assignment. (I do have an ego, even if I hide it 99 percent of the time!)”

I immediately set out to define the role, sending Jay a memo listing six specific areas I planned to concentrate on:

1. Attract the best young talent.
   
2. Develop/participate in outside programs/events/projects.
   
3. Motivate Disney cast members re: legacy of creativity and innovation.
   
4. Liaison with other Parks and Resorts initiatives.
   
5. Potential new initiatives.
   
6. Marty’s “Personal Projects” (to be determined by Marty).
   

In many ways, I consider the three years and five months I spent as executive vice president of Parks and Resorts and Imagineering Ambassador among the most important of my fifty-four years at Disney. As I told Jay in the note I wrote in response to his “hardest working ambassador” comment, “I think what we’ve found is there’s a need and a hunger for the kinds of things I’ve been doing—both inside and outside the company. When you feed off other people’s reactions, it’s great to feel you’re touching the right buttons.”

When I look back at my twice-a-year reports to Jay Rasulo during those three years, it’s hard to believe how much my tiny three-person staff—my assistant Jim Clark, my administrative assistant Steve Cook, and me—accomplished. The good karma began with our move to the first floor 1D wing of the Old Animation Building at the Walt Disney Studios.

Our three-room suite turned out to be somewhat of a “shrine” at the Studio. Feature Animation had long before, in 1995, moved into its own Robert A. M. Stern designed building on Riverside Drive, a gift of
The Lion King
and
Beauty and the Beast
. No history there, but our offices on the Studio lot were rich in Disney animation tradition: they had been the working spaces for Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, and Milt Kahl in the heyday of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
,
Pinocchio
, and
Fantasia
.

My corner office, not far from the intersection of Mickey Avenue and Dopey Drive, seemed to have a special place in the memory of some of the current stars of Disney animation. One day I returned from lunch to find a pencil drawing of a beautiful girl on my desk, and a note from her creator: “I hope you know you are sitting in a very special place,” it read. “Ollie Johnston’s old office.” The girl Glen Keane drew was the one he created for her namesake movie,
The Little Mermaid
. Glen was reminiscing about the old days and one of his mentors. In fact, “Frank and Ollie,” creators of such characters and scenes as Pinocchio, Bambi and Thumper on the ice, Lady and the Tramp eating spaghetti, the evil stepsisters in
Cinderella
, Alice of Wonderland, King Louie in
Jungle Book
, and the dancing penguins in
Mary Poppins
, were two of Walt’s “Nine Old Men,” the kings of Walt’s animation world of the 1930s through the 1960s. They also wrote the books that explained and memorialized the medium, including
Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life
;
Too Funny for Words: Disney’s Greatest Sight Gags
;
The Disney Villain
; and
Bambi: The Story and the Film
.

A few examples illustrate the highlights of those three-plus years, for me personally as well as for the Disney Parks and Resorts division. To attract young talent, I made speeches across the country, and talked to student groups from Carnegie Mellon, Florida State, UCLA, Cal State Los Angeles, University of California Davis, the University of Illinois at Chicago (U.I.C.) College of Applied Health Sciences, and interns from many schools working summers at Imagineering and in the College Program at Disneyland. It turns out that U.I.C. has one of the premier programs in biomedical visualization in the country. Professor and program director Scott Barrows is a protégé of artist Frank Armitage, whose work ranged from set design on the iconic film
Fantastic Voyage
, to Disney animation (
Sleeping Beauty
) and the parks (his illustration of the Château de la Belle Dormant for Disneyland Paris was an inspiration). Frank also studied medicine, and crafted a second career as one of the country’s best medical illustrators. In his honor, the U.I.C. Medical School created the annual Frank Armitage Lecture. I was honored when Frank and Scott Barrows asked me to be the speaker at the inaugural event in 2007.

We also organized the first-ever “Imagineering Day at CalArts.” There was a CalArts connection to Disney animation, but the panel of talents we brought to the school was the first to communicate about all the disciplines in the arts at Imagineering—we like to say there are 140 different disciplines when you add the engineers, architects, and other technical skills. I was surprised at this omission, given the fact that Walt had inspired this “school of all the arts” with his endowment, and given the number of Disney executives who have served on President Steven Lavine’s board of directors at CalArts. Several CalArts graduates were members of my panel, which included a variety of disciplines. The Imagineers presented examples of their work, often indicating how their CalArts training had prepared them for the challenges they now face.

Events and programs outside the Disney sphere revealed a real hunger to know more about everything Disney. I made keynote speeches at the conventions of the American Creativity Association, the California Association of the Gifted, and at a conference we helped put together called “Courageous Creativity.” Organized by Kristine Alexander, executive director of The California Arts Project, and now approaching its seventh year, Courageous Creativity annually brings together 125 teachers and administrators from throughout California at the Disneyland Resort. There, the group interacts with Disney talent, and discusses ideas and techniques they can implement with young people in the schools of their communities.

Personal favorites for me were the annual programs I presented with Bob Rogers, chairman of BRC Imagination Arts, at the convention of IAAPA, usually at the Orlando Convention Center. Our sessions have been rated number one or number two for a decade at this weeklong convention of attraction industry practitioners; with an annual audience of four hundred to five hundred people. My favorite of all the sessions Bob and I have presented was entitled “Tell Me What Is Never Old.” It began with a twenty-minute recorded session in which Bob interviewed me and Buzz Price. To this day, I review it from time to time to hear the wisdom of Buzz, who passed away at age eighty-nine in 2010. (On a scale of 1.0 to 5.0, Buzz and I were rated 4.89 and 4.93, respectively, by the IAAPA attendees at that session.)

And who would not count as favorites three programs onstage with the great author Ray Bradbury? Two were for standing-room-only programs at the beautiful Cerritos (California) Library, created by our friend, Waynn Pearson. The third, with moderator Leonard Maltin, was a discussion at the annual convention of Science and Technology Centers at the Los Angeles Convention Center. (When Ray turned ninety-one in August 2011, I sent him a note saying that adding the nine and the one made him a perfect ten. What an inspiration!)

Much of my Ambassador years’ efforts were spent on the third category: “Motivate Disney cast members re: legacy of creativity and innovation.” I made talks to Disney audiences in Paris, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, plus at Walt Disney World, Pixar, and, of course, in Glendale to Imagineering’s staff. I organized and acted as moderator for Disney Legends panels that included some of the company’s great talents, all retired: X. Atencio, Harriet Burns, Rolly Crump, Dick Sherman, Don Iwerks, Blaine Gibson, Alice Davis, Bob Gurr, and Orlando Ferrante.

But it was my talks at three Disney Leadership Conferences, held on both coasts in 2004, 2006, and 2008, that seemed to elicit the most favorable reaction from my fellow cast members. It was a little embarrassing to read that my talks about “Mickey’s Ten Commandments” were rated number one at these Leadership Conferences, when highly paid speakers from outside the company and top division executives also made presentations and were also rated.

One of our most important programs came about when Jay Rasulo told me about a discussion with Bob Iger, in which the Disney CEO suggested that employees on the Disney Studio lot, and in the Burbank-Glendale area, should learn more about the people and projects of Imagineering. With the help of Jim Clark, we created “Imagineering Week at the Studio,” which became a popular feature for three years, 2007–2009. All week long, we featured Imagineers and their projects and Disney Legends in lunchtime presentations, culminating in a special Friday event that ran from 11:00
A.M.
to 2:00
P.M.
It was like a county fair, with games, music, an opportunity to meet key Imagineers, prizes, live entertainment, and a major feature in the Studio Theatre. Attendance for the noontime presentations totaled 650, and more than 2,500 employees attended the Friday “fair.”

My reports to Jay, of course, were accompanied by as much feedback as I was able to gather, and every item included some commentary so that he had a clear picture of what it was, and why I spent time doing it. One note in my August 12, 2008, report under the “Personal” category was especially important to me. “The very happy personal news,” I wrote, “is that Leah and I will be in Finland in October, joining son Howard and his family when he receives his PhD in English Literature at the University of Helsinki.”

For this ambassador, it was a very special ceremony, especially when Leah and I watched the awe on then seventeen-year-old grandson Gabriel’s face as he watched and listened to his father’s defense of his PhD dissertation.

* * * * * * * * * *

When Jay Rasulo first approached me to move from Glendale to Burbank, it was partly to free up those office locations along “the Gold Coast” at Imagineering in preparation for new leadership. As it turned out, it took well over a year to achieve, and in the final analysis, it turned into a nice compliment for Mickey Steinberg and me. Disney’s corporate management, on Jay’s recommendation, determined that Imagineering’s best leadership format had been the Mickey-Marty partnership of administration-financial and creative talents. So in May 2007, Jay announced the appointment of Bruce Vaughn as chief creative executive and Craig Russell as chief design and project delivery executive for Imagineering—a partnership of equals with complementary leadership skills.