Animated News had the privilege last night of attending The Lion King Tenth Anniversary Reunion held at the Glendale Public Library and sponsored by ASIFA-Hollywood. The event gathered together a number of people who worked on the film and honored the regal animated feature as a benchmark in animation, one that successfully combined comedy and drama, action and song, and even computer-generated imagery with traditional hand-drawn elements. The panel consisted of Jeffrey Katzenberg, producer Don Hahn, co-directors Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, co-writer Irene Mecchi, supervising animator for Scar Andreas Deja, supervising animator for Pumbaa Tony Bancroft, creator of the CGI wildebeest stampede Scott Johnston, and was moderated by story artist Tom Sito.

Follow this link for some of Christian’s thoughts on the evening, photos and a link to a corroborative account:

Jeffrey Katzenberg

First off, it should be noted that basically everyone in attendance at the event must’ve been acutely aware of all the controversies swarming around the animation industry today. Seeing as how Jeffrey Katzenberg is/was involved directly or indirectly with some of them I had a preconceived notion that his mere presence at the event could be volatile in some way but it turned out that nothing could be further from the truth. Everybody behaved by all the rules of good sportsmanship. Nobody brought up or asked him about feuds with Michael Eisner or Roy Disney. Nobody brought up any real or perceived DreamWorks vs. Disney or DreamWorks vs. Pixar issues. This was surprising to me since at previous press events people in the audience always seemed more than ready to bring up the controversial topics even if they had nothing to do with the topic of the event. Katzenberg even at one point while discussing the genesis of the story of The Lion King respectfully mentioned Roy Disney and at another point praised Pixar’s hit Finding Nemo as a timeless fable. He also never tooted his own horn about the recent and overwhelming financial success of Dreamworks’ Shrek 2, an achievement of which he can be justly proud.

Kimba the White Lion

During the Q&A segment, a question was posed asking if there was any truth to the rumor that The Lion King was in any way plagiarizing Osamu Tezuka’s Kimba the White Lion. The question itself got a big laugh from the audience and with nothing to hide co-director Rob Minkoff explained that production of The Lion King was well under way when someone at the Disney studio discovered some Kimba art and took it around to show everyone, who all got a kick out of the fact that were several similarities between both stories.

Tidbits

Following are brief little tidbits giving insight into the production process for The Lion King.

• Scar’s supervising animator Andreas Deja mentioned that when he got his assignment to animate a character named “Scar” he was only told that Scar had a scar somewhere on his body but nobody had decided yet where it should be, so Andreas decided the scar should be over one of Scar’s eyes
• Lion King story artist Tom Sito mentioned that a scene had been planned where the vultures that try to eat exhausted young Simba in the desert carry on a fairly lengthy conversation with Simba and they all had New York accents (reminds me a little of the scene from The Jungle Book)
• At one point, co-directors Rob Minkoff and Roger Allers sang a little snippet of the song that was supposed to be sung by Mufasa. They said the idea for using the song in the movie was dropped when everyone realized that James Earl Jones has a great speaking voice (emphasis on speaking).
• Producer Don Hahn mentioned that one of the songs that was considered for Timon to sing while acting as live bait for the menacing hyenas was The Bee Gees’ seminal disco number, Stayin’ Alive, before they settled on using the Hawaiian War Chant. I’m assuming the infamous line, “What do you want me to do? Dress in drag and do the hula?!” almost was, “What do you want me to do? Dress in tight pants and dance some disco?!”
• The serious tone of the movie largely fell into place once Chris Sanders (of Lilo and Stitch fame) put together a reel of the storyboards for the scene where Mufasa’s ghost appears to Simba and set it to music from Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack for The Mission
• Andreas Deja mentioned that it was very easy to animate Scar speaking the lines that Jeremy Irons delivered for the rogue lion character. Rob Minkoff mentioned that Jeremy Irons smoked even while he sang, then gave an impression of Irons smoking/singing the villainous song Be Prepared, and his impersonation drew uproarious laughter from everyone in attendance.
• The scene where Simba unsuccessfully attempts to wake his dead father immediately after “the gorge incident,” was meant to recall the scene where Simba successfully wakes his father early in the morning early in the movie (you think I would’ve caught on to that before someone had to spell it out for me)
• Roger Allers mentioned the “big boom” sound that occurs at the end of the opening Circle of Life sequence and Jeffrey Katzenberg said, “And it’s been used in every movie ever since.” Allers then said that when James Earl Jones saw the sequence he said that a “big boom” like that actually is an African tribal tradition used to call people to attention
• Jeffrey Katzenberg referred to The Lion King as the single greatest success in animation merchandising
• Someone asked who Nala’s father was and Rob Minkoff jokingly said that Roger Allers was. After the joke, Rob said they didn’t think anybody would ever pay attention to that but that it was likely to be Scar or Mufasa

Wrap Up

The evening wrapped up with a showing of the Don Hahn-produced video that was shown at the employee wrap party for the movie back in 1994, featuring all the employees at work looking like they were having more fun than working. I’ve always known that The Lion King was a particularly collaborative project but from this event learned even more of how much it really was, with many of the workers contributing significant ideas beyond the scope of their appointed positions. The event celebrated hand-drawn animation in general and a prime example of it specifically. There was more to report but Jim Hill was there and I’m sure he will cover ground I haven’t.

Photos courtesy of Brian Tiemann – Read Brian’s Account of the Event