Keeping Breaking New Trails
“You can’t top pigs with pigs!” That’s a famous quote that people seem to use these days in response to much of what the corporation Disney started is doing lately. Yes, he made sequels, but he didn’t like it, preferring to advance all of his areas of art and business toward new ground. And if he did remake something that already exists, he tried to do so in a fresh way.
The following quote is lifted from an article titled “Hello Dali,” which accompanied a recent special exhibit at the Walt Disney Family Museum. It’s originally from a 1940s interview about Destino, his collaboration with the always original artist Salvador Dali.
The thing I resent most is people who try to keep me in well-worn grooves. We have to keep breaking new trails. We were panned for Fantasia, yet its audience keeps building each year. When the Three Little Pigs made a hit, exhibitors clamored for more pig films. We made three or four, but I’ll bet you only remember the first. You can’t top pigs with pigs!
And here’s a quote found at the end of the 2007 animated feature Meet the Robinsons:
Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
Don’t Pander to Your Audience
This tip is mainly about not pandering to children, as it is Disney we’re talking about. But if you seek advice from Disney, you probably want to make kid-friendly product. Ironically for a man whose name has become synonymous with a level of moral wholesomeness that excludes certain adult-oriented material, he didn’t believe in shielding young people much.
This quote is found in the 1997 book “The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life”:
I don’t believe in playing down to children, either in life or in motion pictures. I didn’t treat my own youngsters like fragile flowers, and I think no parent should. Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature…The American child is a highly intelligent human being – characteristically sensitive, humorous, open-minded, eager to learn, and has a strong sense of excitement, energy and healthy curiosity about the world in which he lives. Lucky indeed is the grown-up who manages to carry these same characteristics over into adult life.
And here’s a quote from 1938 on why he doesn’t patronize children, as heard in the 2007 documentary The Pixar Story:
Over at our place, we’re sure of just one thing: everybody in the world was once a child. So in planning a new picture, we don’t think of grown-ups, and we don’t think of children, but just of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us that maybe the world has made us forget and that maybe our pictures can help recall.
Like What You Do and Be Happy
“The secret of success, if there is any, is liking what you do,” Disney told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1933. “I like my work better than my play. I play polo, when I have time, and I enjoy it, but it can’t equal work!” In the same article, he’s quoted as saying, “Work is the real adventure in life. Money is merely a means to make more work possible.”
When asked what he’d do differently if he had to do it all over again, he says in a 1963 interview that he wouldn’t change a thing. It all led to a great satisfaction and happiness with what he was doing. He goes on to share what happiness means to him:
Happiness is a state of mind. By your own doing, you can be happy or you can be unhappy, it’s just according to how you look at things. I think happiness is contentment, but it doesn’t mean you have to have wealth.
All individuals are different. Some of us wouldn’t be satisfied with just carrying out a routine job and being happy. Yet I envy those people. I had a brother whom I really envied because he was a mailman. But he was the one who had all the fun. He had himself a trailer, and he used to go out and go fishing, and he didn’t worry about payrolls and stories and picture grosses or anything. And he was the happy one. I always said, “He’s the smart Disney.”
What We’ve Learned
Odds are pretty good that there’ll never be another quite like Walt Disney. But his tips for creating and for running a business may suit anyone, whether they’re just looking to make animated shorts or wish to eventually run a giant entertainment enterprise. Disney’s advice collected here basically boils down to recommending people have a plan for work they love and a determination to be successful at that dream, through its ups and downs.
He’s a just do it kind of guy, as in acting rather than talking about it and getting the job done yourself or being in charge of those who get it done. He believed in and suggests innovation over doing the same thing over and over, and he believed in treating all of his audience, no matter what age, the same. From the first bit of advice he was given as a child to the last idea he’d offer about life really sums up together as this: don’t worry, be happy.
Related Topics: Disney, Filmmaking, Filmmaking Tips
