Cofounder, The Walt Disney Company
INTERVIEW ROY DISNEY & GLENN KEANE 1995 Pocahontas Premiere
About Roy Disney
In December 2006, Roy E. Disney appeared in bonus features for the Volume 3 DVD release of Walt Disney's True-Life Adventures, filmed at Disney's Animal Kingdom. During a cheetah medical exam at Conservation Station, Disney stated, "And this is as close as most people will ever get to an animal." He also reflected on the original True-Life Adventures films, saying, "We made all those films way back in the 50s and early 60s with the whole idea behind every one of them was that it was basically timeless. There were no humans, no telephone poles, no fence posts, nothing. It was nature as it always was, always had been, always will be." In a separate segment on the park's elephant program, Disney discussed the birth of a calf named Too Funny and noted that the films influenced generations to pursue animal care. Animal operations director John Lenaerts described the films as influential to his own career, recalling reading The Vanishing Prairie in third grade. Disney expressed happiness that new generations would have the chance to see the films again.
Transcript (31 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
I
Interviewer0:28
Hi, how are you, Mr. Disney?
R
Roy Disney0:30
Very well, thank you. This is the first Disney animation movie based on a true story, isn't it?
I
Interviewer0:34
Yes, it is. Based on the story of events that happened when the British settlers first came to America in the early 1600s.
R
Roy Disney0:47
At the Central Park, this is the first time... as far as we know, it is the first time, and probably there are a few people hoping it will be the last. But maybe we've talked about that.
I
Interviewer1:04
How do you feel in these days, as the parents with the children burning?
R
Roy Disney1:11
Well, we're feeling very happy, and we're anticipating this event tomorrow night enormously. And we're very happy about Pocahontas.
I
Interviewer1:20
Very important people is coming, I think so.
R
Roy Disney1:24
The most important people of all are our audience. It's families, and so there's going to be a hundred thousand mothers and fathers and kids here. It's amazing.
I
Interviewer1:36
It's a Central Park life. This is... yeah.
R
Roy Disney1:40
We think we should probably be in the Guinness Book of World Records when we're through.
I
Interviewer1:47
Please, you have a camera there. Argentinian people is saying to you, tell them what they're going to see when they meet Pocahontas in a few days.
R
Roy Disney1:56
Well, the first thing you're going to see is really one of the most beautiful girls that was ever animated, I think. In her story, which is about the meeting of two cultures, which is about the Indians that were in America when the British settlers came, and about a wonderful young woman who stood between them and tried to prevent them from fighting each other.
I
Interviewer2:19
Thank you very much, Mr. Rodriguez. Bye-bye.
R
Roy Disney2:22
My pleasure. Bye-bye.
I
Interviewer2:46
Hi, how are you? I'm doing great. Congratulations for Pocahontas. Thank you. What does the animated supervisory measure do specifically?
G
Glen Keane2:57
Well, my job at the beginning of the film is to find out who the character is. It's almost as if somebody's introducing you to somebody that's really there. You know that when I start on the character, I know this person is real, I just don't know what they look like yet. And I know that pretty soon I'll find out what she looks like and who she is, and I have to believe that she's real.
The first thing that I learned about animation was taught to me by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, the masters. They've done Pinocchio and Snow White, and they kept saying, 'Glen, you need to animate with sincerity.' Okay, well, how do you do that? I mean, you press harder on your pencil if you grit your teeth? What it was is that they wanted me to believe that the characters were real. And the more inspiration, the more conviction I find about a character, the more I can animate with the sincerity.
So the course of designing Pocahontas was to find the inspiration, find any drawings of her, to find inspirational faces around me that I could use as a basis for my design, visit Jamestown, meet her descendants. I mean, a whole array of sources came together for me.
I
Interviewer4:14
But you said this film has been a real learning experience for you. For you, what was the challenge for you learning more?
G
Glen Keane4:24
Well, I feel like animation, each step that we've got from every film, we're standing on the shoulders of the film before. Like we would never have been able to animate Pocahontas three years ago. I mean, there's no way when I did The Little Mermaid was I skilled enough to animate the complexity of the acting, the subtleties in the performance in this character, Pocahontas.
See, Pocahontas is not about the character whose face is really animated and squashing and stretching. This is a character who you're trying to communicate a person with a lot of depth in her spirit and her soul. But how do you draw that? It has to come through very, very, very subtle little expressions in her eyes and her mouth, or even her hair.
Like for the first time when John Smith sees Pocahontas, she's standing in this mist, and the mist is swirling around. It's very romantic, it's this magical moment. And what I wanted to communicate was not that this girl is a babe, you know, not that she's got this incredible figure, but that she has this attractive spirit. There's something inside of her that's drawing him to her. And to me, the best way to do that was to animate her hair as if it's a symbol of the character of Pocahontas. And as it moves, it's drawing him in, it's captivating him through the movement of her hair.
And things like that where I feel like I'm learning the importance of the subtleties of this art form. Whereas before I was thinking animation's about moving drawings, now I'm realizing it's not about moving drawings, it's about moving people with your drawing.
I
Interviewer6:12
When you worked with The Little Mermaid, you had to fight with the hair in the water. Now the challenge was to fight with the wind with the hair too.
G
Glen Keane6:24
Yeah, they're both very rhythmic, lyrical movements. I don't know why I keep doing these characters with all this hair, though. I am getting very jealous about all these characters.
I
Interviewer6:36
One of the things that's challenging with Pocahontas is that we're drawing a face that... what's the difference between The Little Mermaid and Pocahontas?
G
Glen Keane6:45
Well, deeply different, yes. I mean, Ariel was based on my wife, very Caucasian face. She has kind of a girl-next-door look. She was a cheerleader. And Pocahontas is not Caucasian. She's based on a Mongolian facial design. Structure is entirely different. Matter of fact, every aspect of the face is the opposite. Instead of her cheekbones coming in and being lower, it's up high and pushes out. Or instead of these big eyes, they're very narrow and angled. Instead of a nose turning up, it's much straighter. The lips go the opposite way. The jaw is much more square. The face angles, all these things. It's one thing for me to learn it, but then you have 18 other animators who I have to teach, and to get them all seeing the same vision of this character so we don't have 18 different versions of Pocahontas up on the screen.
I
Interviewer7:43
How are they alike, Ariel and Pocahontas?
G
Glen Keane7:47
Well, there's a similarity with Ariel and Pocahontas, and I'd say even with Beast and Aladdin. For me, all these characters have one thing in common: they have a burning passion in their heart, a desire to be something and to do something that's impossible, but they're not going to take no for an answer. They're going to reach that no matter what gets in their way.
For Ariel to someday live on the land and walk like the humans do. For Beast to believe that somebody could love him. For Aladdin to rise out of a station in life that he is and somebody live in the palace. And for Pocahontas to find this invisible calling to follow her path, even though she doesn't know what it is. And in the end, when she thinks she's found it, she finds it wasn't John Smith, it wasn't the man she loves. Matter of fact, in order for her to really find her path, she has to give him up to do something that no other Disney heroine has ever done. I mean, when Ariel finds her man, and when Cinderella finds her man, they found everything. For Pocahontas, she has to give that up to find and follow her highest calling. It's a big step of growth for a Disney heroine.
I
Interviewer9:00
Glen Keane, thank you very much. Congratulations, genius.