Ed's Newsletter - September 2009

DISNEY-MARVEL MERGER:
DEFINING MOMENT FOR U.S. FEATURE ANIMATION?
Los Angeles Times film critic Patrick Goldstein, in his September 1st column, "Disney's purchase of Marvel is a super deal," declares that Disney's $4 billion acquisition of Marvel Comics marks the official demise of Walt Disney's personal romantic aspirations for his Mouse studio and the incarnation of a muscular new sales behemoth.

"Once an idea factory full of brilliant animators and imagineers, Disney is now a mass merchandising machine in search of exploitable product, whether it comes from Marvel, Pixar or DreamWorks, which will be releasing its upcoming slate through Disney as well."

Also...

"...with one bold move, Disney has accepted an uncomfortable reality: that the foundation of the family entertainment business has shifted under its feet. If the studio wants to stay at the front of the pack, it will have to change with the times. In many ways, Marvel is the modern-era version of Disney...."

My personal impression is that traditional Disney movies were "soft" with thematically universal appeal, and Marvel Comics movies are "hard" with themes that appeal mainly to U.S. audiences. To be sure, we have all lost a good deal of innocence since Pinocchio, which may account for this kind of sea change at Disney. From the perspective of acting theory, none of it matters much. Excellent performance is still excellent performance, whether the character is Iago in Othello, Dumbo in Dumbo or Peter Parker in Spider Man. Strong acting always has and always will hinge on an artist's ability to hold the mirror up to nature. Still, I confess that the Disney/Marvel cultural evolution makes me a little wistful. Patrick Goldstein is a very perceptive person and quite likely is correct.

ACTING FOR ANIMATORS WORKSHOP SCHEDULE
Sept 12-17 - Changchun, China, 2009 Jilin International Game Forum
Oct 24-25 - Taipei Taiwan, Digital Content Institute
Oct 27- 31 - Beijing, China Aniwow! Festival
Nov 14 - Sunnyvale, California, Cogswell Polytechnical College

CRAFT NOTES
Ponyo

No one understands the power of a dream more fundamentally than Hayao Miyazaki. In his new film, Ponyo, incredible and illogical things happen beginning with the opening credits and ending with a young girl that used to be a fish living happily ever after. Along the way, ocean waves turn into clouds in the sky, the beautiful cratered moon gets knocked out of its orbit so that you might be able to reach out and touch it, enfeebled nursing home residents get out of their wheelchairs and sprint up a hill and prehistoric fish swim alongside hundreds of goldfish with cute little human faces. But every now and then, our storyteller reminds us that it is a dream. For example, there is a sequence in which Ponyo and her friend Sosuke are traveling in a toy boat that Ponyo has magically morphed into a full-size boat, when they encounter a man and woman and babe-in-arms adrift in another boat. Ponyo, being a generous and caring young girl, shares her food with the strangers. She gives some soup to the woman and then offers her ham-less ham sandwich (she already ate the ham herself) to the hungry infant. The mother reaches out and graciously takes the sandwich, but Ponyo protests that it is for the baby. The mother explains (I may be paraphrasing a bit), "He's a little young for a sandwich. He drinks milk. But I can eat the sandwich and make more milk for him." Exactly! That is precisely how real-world mommies make milk. The moment is an anchoring reality check that orients the viewer to the surrounding dream world, and it is brilliant storytelling structure.

I prefer to see the first screening of the day at a public theater because the auditorium is quieter. But at the first screening of Ponyo, there was a four or five year old boy sitting directly behind me with his mom. I stayed tuned in to that kid for the duration of the movie, taking notice of which sequences evoked reactions from him. He perked up early in the film, when Ponyo is seen running joyfully across the surface of the sea. It made him laugh. And he enjoyed all of the morphing sequences, in which the fish turns into a girl and the girl starts making magic on earth. He delighted in every improbability, and he was quiet during the milk-and-ham-sandwich sequence, probably because that made sense to him. And he applauded at the end.

Miyazaki has never grown up, and we are all richer for that. The child in him is adventurous, fearful, happy, sad and open to the possibilities of a dream. This is also one of the secrets to the strong performances in his films. Watch Ponyo when she is happy, for instance. She is happy in every fiber of her being. Her arms are happy and her legs are happy and her toes are happy. She is so happy that she literally dances. She is so happy, in fact, that you cannot help but be happy, too.

I read recently that Miayzaki doesn't personally watch movies any more. And even when he used to watch them, he says he favored Charlie Chaplin films such as Modern Times. This is, I contend, both cause and effect of his artistic genius. After all, what can someone like Miyazaki gain by watching, say, Shrek the Third or Bolt? How to make movies that are more commercial? He overtly does not consider commercial appeal to be a high priority. Miyazaki tells stories, pure and simple, usually for kids, often for the kid in all of us. No Big Mac tie-ins, no Tom Hanks, no Elton John, no cereal boxes or Pez dispensers - just story. And nobody can tell a story more brilliantly.

When the DVD comes out, look more closely at individual scenes in Ponyo, and you will observe that each one is perfectly structured with action, objective, and obstacle. Notice how much internal action there is when the characters on screen are not talking or physically moving. Miyazaki calls that "ma", the silence in between the sound of two hands clapping, and he always fills it with intention, thought, emotion. (Acting Lesson: Acting has almost nothing to do with words.) You will never catch him putting on screen a character that is depressed and moping around. Frustrated, yes; longing for something, yes. But listless, no. Somebody is sure to remind me of Chihiro, the young girl lying in the back seat of her family car in the opening sequence of Spirited Away. She wasn't moping. She was negotiating. Read my book Acting in Animation: A Look at 12 Films.

Hayao Miyazaki is, in my view, the William Shakespeare of feature animation. The thing that is bothering me right now is that, if Patrick Goldstein is correct in his LA Times article, how will Miyazaki fit into the new Disney/Marvel merchandising scheme? John Lasseter may be Miyazaki's Number One Fan, but the Disney board of directors - and shareholders - might be more interested in the market potential for Ponyo luggage sets and Ponyo talking plush dolls.

There simply is nobody else like Hayao Miyazaki, and I fervently hope he never grows up.

Until next month...be safe!
"Actors are Shamans"