Disney's 100th anniversary is this year, and to celebrate, I'm going to tell the story of this legendary animation company over a yearlong period.
Jerry Rees (our guest star), gives us insights into the making of The Fox and the Hound and…
Disney's 100th anniversary is this year, and to celebrate, I'm going to tell the story of this legendary animation company over a yearlong period.
Jerry Rees (our guest star), gives us insights into the making of The Fox and the Hound and some of the transition that was going on at Disney once the Reagan years kicked into high gear.
The Fox and the Hound from 1981 was the point where the Nine Old Men decided that they were finally gonna hang up their pencils and paintbrushes and pass the torch on to the young animators that they've trained to make animated features, so this was their last go round. It has probably the best character dynamic of any animated film to date, by the early 1980s. Here we have a fox and a hound dog who end up becoming friends not knowing that they're supposed to hate each other, then something happens between them that makes them hate each other, until one suddenly shows compassion for his former friend and then saves him, leading the other friend to stand up for his former friend even if they're supposed to hate each other. The closest kind of character dynamic I can think of in animated features that comes this close is between Moses and Ramses in The Prince of Egypt from 1998.
Transition was going on at Disney during the beginning of the 80s. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston would retire and have an office dedicated to writing a book dedicated to the craft of animation. Eric Larson would retire and instead be an animation consultant from this point. During production on The Fox and the Hound, Ron Miller, who was now the head of Disney, attempted to put Don Bluth in charge of the animation department, but even Don saw that the upper management was so risk adverse in making animated films, so on his birthday in 1979, he left the studio and took many of the animators, including John Pomeroy, with him so he can start his own studio. Their first production was Banjo the Woodpile Cat, and their second production was The Secret Of NIMH, the..
