Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 24, 1994 TAG: 9406290024
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: EXTRA1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MIKE MAYO CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Even its modest films are well-promoted, and when the studio believes it has a real hit, it pulls out all the stops. ``The Lion King'' - opening today in Roanoke and the Salem Valley View 8 and Tanglewood Mall - is a real hit, and Disney wants everyone to know about it. That was the reason for the lavish celebrity-studded invitation-only premier in Washington, D.C., last week.
At the same time, the studio brought in several of the people responsible for the film to talk to the press. It was one of those controlled-chaos affairs with actors, directors, producers and composers circulating among three tables, fielding variations on the same questions from writers who'd just come from a non-lavish preview screening.
It would be impossible to turn their comments into a seamless account of the making of ``The Lion King.'' But perhaps that's the best way to talk about it. After all, some 600 people worked on the project for more than four years. Here's what six of them had to say about the beginnings of the story, their approach to their jobs and the difficult task of making a children's film based on adult themes:
Don Hahn (producer):
``The earliest influences in the first two years of development were Joseph Campbell's analysis of Greek mythology, the Old Testament [stories of] Moses and Joseph growing up in a royal family and being exiled; a little King Arthur and Merlin. All those things resonate in `The Lion King,' ... but we're not in the message business; we're in the entertainment business. That's our first priority.
``Animation is the ultimate collaborative sport. It ain't star-driven. It ain't the live-action business. You don't go out and hire the $2-million script writer paired with the $2-million director and the $5-million actor and and make `The Lion King,' You go out with 600 people - some of them actors, animators, computer graphics artists - and collaborate.
``It is a rangy cast to say the least, and it plays to the strengths of animation. You're not likely to see Jeremy [Irons] and James Earl Jones cast as brothers.''
Hans Zimmer (score):
``My job in a way is to tell the side of the story they can't elegantly tell in words. ... Somehow, the music and the light - the way it's shot or in this case the way it's painted - they're part of the same thing, the tone color.
``For the animators, more than any other filmmakers I've come across, this is their mission in life. They think that music is more important to the animation [than to live-action films]. The music has to add subtext, heart. I never see [the film's hero] Simba as a little drawn lion. To me, he's a human character, and this is a human story. It's like Kabuki theater or Balinese puppetry. It deals with human things.''
Ernie Sabella (voice of Pumbaa the warthog):
``The catch phrase was `lovable warthog with a heart of gold,' and I wanted to play that. I didn't know what a warthog was, so I went with the `lovable-heart-of-gold' thing.''
Cheech Marin (voice of Banzai the hyena):
``If someone came up to you tomorrow and said do you want to be a part of `Snow White?' you'd say yes in two seconds to be a part of American cinematic immortality. ... And it's fun! I mean, it's fun going to the studio to do voices. You get to be as childlike as you possibly can, and you're encouraged to do it. You're encouraged to improvise. There's no top to go over. You do it as big as possible.''
Roger Allers and Robert Minkoff (co-directors):
``It's typical in live-action for a script to be handed from a studio to a director. That's normal. In animation, for whatever reason, it's not. The development process takes it to a certain place, which is where we came in.''
``We inherited the rough beginnings of a story. The first thing we said was, `How can we do this differently?' ... After we got past the story stage and moved into production on animation, we divided the movie up into sequences and divided those between us.''
``I'm proud of the emotional depth we created and the sense of a spiritual underpinning. It's a hero's story that deals ... with human issues. They're issues people have to approach from whatever level they're at. It's just as appropriate for a child to consider the death of a parent, as it is for a parent to consider the same thing. Of course there will be different levels of understanding.''
``Everybody will experience it on their own level and they'll take away from it what they will, but I don't think that denies or precludes any group from gaining something from the film.''
by CNB