BEFORE MICKEY

It is almost here.


But not quite.

I have been waiting for this movie, "Walt, Before Mickey" since I first read about it on the Cartoon Brew site. "Walt" is a movie based on the book of the same name by Timothy Susanin. It tells the tale of Disney from childhood to the Mintz days and is the only family approved book. In fact, Diane Disney Miller wrote the forward.  Thomas Ian Nicholas plays Walt and Armando Guetierrez is Ub Iwerks.

My concerns are more than a few. First ... considering this is about the founder of a major entertainment company ... that still makes movies ... this isn't made by them. It's what you would call an independent. So this could come off as something you might see on Lifetime. It could be really stinko!!!

 Secondly ... they sold the DVDs before the movie came out. That's right. Took my money. And ... then ... they finally said ... that the DVDs that people ordered ... sight unseen would be sent after the release. And that release has been so sketchy that it was only as I'm writing this that I could tell if the movie was playing one day on the 14th or through the weekend. So far I only know it will play as long as Sunday. And it's only showing at Downtown Disney. And then again in general release, in September ... sometime.

My last concern is the old chestnut. The story of how Walt looses Oswald and comes up with Mickey on the train. ( See my earlier post, "I love Waldo".) This was the publicity story told ... for ...ever. It got me in trouble 33 years ago, when I started working at EPCOT. We were going through orientation, and this pixie dusted cast member started going into the story and I was greatly surprised. I guess it was obvious that my mind had wandered. I kept shaking my head and wondering why we weren't getting the real story. I mean now that we were working for the company ... aren't we now in the inner circle? Why aren't they telling us the truth? I then became aware of her stare and that everyone in the room was dead silent in horror of her anger.

 "DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM!?!" she spat at me.

I answered, "Well I just can't understand why your telling me that story? Why aren't you telling us the REAL story?"

She smiled at me and said, "If you know so much why don't you tell us."

And so I spoke for ten minutes. As I sat down she was stunned and asked me where I heard this. I answered Walt's offical bio.

At that time there was just the Roy Thomas book. Now there is enough tomes on Walt to fill a major library and I know a lot more than I did then. Neil Gabler's work is great as long as you were raised on the Amplified Text Bible. It goes into such detail that you can probably find out what he had for breakfast on any given day. There is even a book that traces the rental properties of Disney of his Kansas City days. The problem is that except for the Gabler book, they only gives a piece of the puzzle. Blind men describing an elephant ... in this case a mouse. I have at varying times considered of trying to put a more manageable volume. 

I know ... I know ...  just what I need another project. 

So with a little luck ... good or bad ... we're looking forward to seeing this movie.

Thank you Yoko for indulging me.