Legendary Disney Animator Floyd Norman on 'The Jungle Book,' Those Terrible Sequels, and Working With Walt Disney
Why spend your retirement on the golf course when you can keeping working at Walt Disney Animation Studios? That’s the logic that keeps 81-year-old master animator Floyd Norman happily working at the Mouse House. “I’m the busiest retired guy ever,” Norman jokes to Yahoo Movies over the phone from his workstation at the studios in Burbank, Calif.
The artist’s long history with Disney — which is chronicled in the new documentary, Floyd Norman: An Animated Life — dates back to 1956, when he became the first African-American animator at the studios while Walt Disney himself was still in charge. Over the decades, Norman has occasionally come and gone to pursue other opportunities, but always manages to find his way back to the House that Walt Built.
Norman officially retired after hitting the company mandatory age of 65, but he’s made a point of following his wife — a fellow Disney employee — to campus everyday and picking up a pencil (or these days, a computer mouse) whenever a production is shorthanded. “It’s a lot of fun making cartoons for a living,” he says simply. Watch a clip from An Animated Life, which is currently playing in theaters on VOD, below and read on for Norman’s memories of some of the Disney classics (and not-so-classics) he’s worked on since 1956.
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Norman’s first job at Disney studios was doing “grunt work” — like clean-up and inbetweening — on what proved to be the studio’s last princess movie until The Little Mermaid in 1989. Featuring more stylized animation than previous Disney fare, Sleeping Beauty was initially met with a muted reception, although its reputation has grown with time. It served as an apprenticeship for Norman’s class of new animators, which he describes as a diverse bunch united by their shared love for the art of animation.
When you come in as a kid, you do the little jobs that nobody else wants to do. The film did poorly upon its initial release; audiences did not respond to it, and critics gave it poor reviews. But years go by, and audiences can rediscover a film. Now people speak glowingly of a film that nobody thought very much of at all at the time. And I think Walt Disney knew that. He knew Sleeping Beauty would eventually find an audience, and that’s why he didn’t seem that concerned about its box-office failure. Walt was never one to look back and regret decisions; he always looked forward to the next thing.
By the time Sleeping Beauty was released, Walt had gone into television, he had built his theme park, and he was making live-action films as well as animated films. So it was a very active time at Disney, which made it exciting for all of us kids, who were just out of college, to be there. You’re basically doing an internship where you’re being mentored by the old Disney masters. I remind people all the time that when us young artists came into Disney, we were a mix. There were young women, which was unusual at that time. We had an Asian artist, a Latino artist and one from Lithuania. So my being African-American didn’t make me any different from anybody else. We were from everywhere, but we were all one thing: artists. And that’s all that really mattered to Walt Disney.
The Sword in the Stone (1963)
Norman received one-on-one instruction from one of Disney’s “Nine Old Men” while laboring as an assistant animator on this sprightly adaptation of the King Arthur legend.
That’s a very fun film that, once again, was not well received by audiences initially. I had a great time working with the master animator Milt Kahl on that film. It was one of the rare times where I worked with one animator throughout the entirety of the film; ordinarily you go from animator to animator. The one thing he always emphasized was drawing. If you were going to qualify to work with him, you had better be a darn good artist and you had to take your art seriously. He continually railed about artists who were sloppy and didn’t focus on their draftsmanship. He’d call them “lazy bastards” because he felt they didn’t work hard enough. He was quite an outspoken guy! [Laughs]
The Jungle Book (1967)
Back in the public imagination thanks to Jon Favreau’s recent live action hit, The Jungle Book marked a milestone in Disney’s history as the last movie to be made with Walt Disney himself at the helm. It also proved to be Norman’s last feature at Disney for several years; he left to found his own production company and worked on such made-for-TV cartoons as Hot Wheels and Bill Cosby’s original Fat Albert special.
Walt passed away in December 1966, and we had wrapped story development on The Jungle Book in November. But his signature is all over The Jungle Book. He was with us from start to finish developing the story, so the blueprint was there. After his death, there was a sense of sadness at Disney for nearly 10 years. It’s difficult to imagine today what a part he was of the organization; nothing got done without his approval. Imagine your leader, your visionary, and not really having anybody who could replace him. You have to kind of struggle to find your way forward.
Robin Hood (1973)
While continuing his television career with Saturday morning cartoon factories like Hanna-Barbera, Norman also moonlighted as an assistant animator on Disney’s second post-Walt feature, Robin Hood. The ‘70s were a difficult decade for the studio, as declining box office returns, a talent drain and uncertain leadership took their toll on the quality of the films being made. The studio’s limited resources are on display in the pleasant, but slight account of the legendary medieval outlaw, most notably in the way that many of the characters look like the animals from The Jungle Book dressed up in Robin Hood clothing.
I haven’t spoken well of Robin Hood. In the documentary, I [describe] it as not being very good. I do enjoy the animation, but story-wise, I feel it’s one of our weaker efforts. A lot of people tell me it’s one of their favorite films, so you never know what audiences are going to embrace. You can’t look at Little John without thinking of Baloo the Bear, and things like that I find a little bit annoying. A lot of the animation in Robin Hood is fresh and new, but they used the basic character designs of the Jungle Book characters. I’ve drawn both Baloo and Little John side-by-side and they do differ in terms of stature and weight and personality. But it’s close enough that people are still reminded.
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Norman’s return to Disney became more permanent in the ‘90s, and coincided with the rise of Pixar as a major new force in the animation industry. The artist threw himself into the world of computer animation. He also got a dose of the Pixar method in action, observing as the studio’s “Brain Trust” turned a troubled production into one of its best movies, not to mention one of the greatest sequels of all time.
Toy Story 2 had a rough beginning, but most of our films do. Every film is a struggle, and the reason they get better is because we do it so many times and do so many versions. We work it and rework it until we get it right. And we don’t always get it right, but with enough effort, we’re able to solve our problems and get a great story on the screen.
Unlike a lot of old codgers, I was very open to the new computer technology. I was very excited about Pixar and wanted to work with them. Basically, the computer is just another tool the artist uses to tell a story. It’s allowed us to work faster and more efficiently, making room for more productivity, not less. There are more animated films being made today than every before, so it’s been a good thing for the industry overall.
Dinosaur (2000)
Disney sought to replicate Pixar’s success in the digital realm with this hugely ambitious, hugely expensive dinosaur picture. Unfortunately, the film was also a big disappointment on a financial and creative level; Norman spent 14 months on the film as a storyboard artist and describes the finished product as “not very good.”
That was a massive effort, as it was Disney’s move into using computer technology to create a motion picture. So it will be remembered by the artists and technicians as our training ground back in the ‘90s, but the finished film is not the classic we hoped it was going to be. Story-wise, it was not our most effective job, and I can often see that coming because I’m an old timer. When you’re as old as I am, and have worked on as many Disney films as I have, you can tell when a story’s working and when it’s not working; when a film is in trouble or when it’s moving along smoothly. Young filmmakers often ask me to look at their boards or scripts, not because I’m some kind of a story genius, but I tend to recognize certain bumps in the road and can point them out.
Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (2002)
After finding success with direct-to-video follow-ups to contemporary hits like Aladdin and The Lion King during the ‘90s, Disney started sequelizing the classics in its vault in the ‘00s, and Norman reluctantly found himself working on a few of these ill-fated ventures. Even though sales were brisk, these quickly-made cash grabs were derided by critics and Disney fans as stains on the legacy of favorites like Cinderella and 101 Dalmatians. The studio has since moved out of the direct-to-video game, preferring to mine its back catalogue through lavishly-produced and well-received live action remakes like Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella and Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book. Next year brings Bill Condon’s Beauty and the Beast; new versions of Dumbo and The Sword in the Stone are in the works as well.
I look back on some of those projects, and I regret working on them. Really, they never should have been made; most, if not all, were pretty terrible at least in my opinion. That period of direct-to-video sequels was maybe a great business decision because they made a lot of money. In the larger picture, though, it undermined the Disney classics, and that was not a good thing.
As far as the live-action adaptation they’re doing today, that’s a different thing. Those productions are top quality, not cheap knockoffs, and they honor the original films. I think that’s why audiences respond to them. I’m a huge fan of Jon Favreau, and his live action version of The Jungle Book really honored the original. A lot of the story beats are dead on to the film we made back in 1966. I was delighted with the live-action version and think the two films can exist side by side.