Dali and Disney | A Date with Destino (Full Documentary)

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the dahle news time stretches on all the news artists Salvador Dali wants you to see Dateline Hollywood November 1945 world-famous surrealist painter Salvador Dali and animation pioneer Walt Disney have reached a decision to produce a surrealist animated film in a new medium never yet tried a film Valley describes as the first motion picture of the never seen before [Music] sarva totally and world Disney together on the project it was very very strange because I believe that it's two opposite person Salvador Dali was considered the crazy modern artist by the general public Walt Disney was the great animated cartoon maker it's just so on the face of it absurd Walter we're here with dancing fairies and things and here's a dolly over here with the blackness of nightmares how did they come together two great artists at the peak of their powers thinking they're going to do great great things the tragedy is destino was a casualty of the financial pressures of the studio the project disappeared so deeply that when they came upon the art many years later in the archives it was like somebody uncovering a van Gogh up in their attic that they didn't know they had the only dolly mature in the world that's never been seen by the public Roy really inspired me with his interest in the art it was a very personal thing I really wanted to do this and experiment that the medium we get there was a period of history that was incomplete and now it's complete you can finish off the story of destino all of Hollywood was very intrigued by this idea of Walt Disney and Salvador Dali working together on a project because the way they visualize these two artists they visualize them as totally different personalities Salvador Dali and world Disney Delta so a big talent I believe they decide to work together tally was bigger than life you know you know in a million ways and so was Walt and they recognized something in each other that was common ground they were both immensely talented they loved drawing they loved magic and they loved animation it was interesting how many similarities there were Walt Disney was born in 1901 in Chicago Illinois three years later and halfway around the world Salvador Dali was born in the small town if they get a spade Walt Disney had a very difficult childhood his father was a very tough man Elias Disney was one of these guys who didn't drink didn't smoke didn't laugh very much kept his nose to the grindstone a father who was very tough unforgiving and in some ways unloving Walt found his release in art he loved to draw from the time he was a little boy as he got into grade school he was always drawing he was the artist for the high school magazine and he drew attention by the fact that he was a very good artist [Music] Dolly's father was a very strong man he was very strict he was conservative he wanted Ali to become a teacher over [Music] the first painting of Raleigh was painted when he was six years old Dahle wanted to be the center of attention of all the students in the school [Music] dally was aware that he will become a very famous artist he wrote that in in 20 so he were 16 years old [Music] who doesn't he came to animation relatively young teenager when he first started animating and then start his own animation studio before he was 21 Walt Disney's film studio went bankrupt but he got right back up and started another film studio this time in California and in that studio he met some difficulties a character that he had designed Oswald the rabbit was taken away from him by the distributor and Walt was left with nothing but once again he got right up and created Mickey Mouse Dizzy's whole Drive seemed to be to tell stories that would move you from the the daily mundane realities to this magical experience and I think dolly was engaged in that same processes trying to remove you from this daily tedium to something much more fantastic dolly was very ambitious he was very talented and he was very successful he had his first one-man exhibition in Barcelona in 1925 but he's just 21 over the next two or three years he became really central to a very lively Catalan avant-garde in Baz Luhrmann Figueres Sitges Donnie was gripped and absolute passion for Freud while he was in Madrid as a student about 1924 1925 he read the interpretation of dreams he interpreted his own dreams like mad he became very accomplished about psychological ideas symbols of dreams [Music] when Walt lost Oswald one of the lessons he learned from that was that you have to control everything you have to own your characters if to own your studio we'll perform the the Disney Brothers Studio and what he moved to Hyperion in Glendale he was determined to create this paradise Walt was trying to create a perfect world I suppose Walt was always about this notion that you could return to some sort of idealized place [Music] for wolf the idealized place was Marshall in Missouri where he spent a few years of his very young life it was a farm town and he was only there for a handful of years but those were seminal years for him years he remembered very very very fondly and I don't think it's too much of a stretch psychologically to say that Walt Disney spent the better part of his life trying to either recreate Marceline in various ways either in animation or physically as he does a main street at Disneyland that sense of home that sense of place that sense of peace that sense of security when you come in the main gate past the railroad station straight ahead lies the heart line of America hometown USA just after the turn of the century he said you know grandpa tailor's barn burned down in Marceline when I was about five or six and I thought the whole world was on fire I put that in Bambi [Music] Dollywood fisherman's house very very simple in poor lega that scape craves and it's about two kilometers from Caracas police paintings are inspired in that rocky formations of cake creams [Music] it's a rocky landscape very desert II very blue sky very powerful everything is very clear that in Dallas wire cut these objectiveness this was his chosen landscape this was the site of almost all his paintings that was really felt he belonged but also where he was able to restore his creative energies he spent every summer painting back in porta gap [Music] we'll Disney's mission is young 20s was to take this form of animation essentially a bunch of gags and jokes and crudely drawn characters first time I met Nicky he was a hungry Lavinia whom the house playing in his first movie he was so poor that he didn't even own a pair of shoes and refine it to make the characters for to give them personality characters in animation were not just drawings they were breathing living feeling things and Walt Disney's mission was to elevate the form the medium of animation into art well doesn't he had many many qualities that obviously made the company into the great empire that it ultimately became but one of the qualities he had very early on was making everybody believe that they were part of his mission yeah the mission of perfection in 29 dolly Hale his first exhibition in Paris he was very well accepted by the surrealist group the Solaris group needed a person who was provocative and ali was the man there he also met a lot of American influential people like Alfred Parr the director of the MoMA Julia Leigh be an important ardilla leave he came back to the United States with that famous painting persistence of memory they paid two hundred and fifty dollars for it and he exhibited in his gallery dolly became the most talked about of the surrealist artists [Music] when the group of Surrealists come to visit this extraordinary young man in his home there in catechism he falls in love with Carla Ella the wife of a great surrealist poet Paul anywhere Galois left her husband and Ally marries her and garlic changes his trajectory in all sorts of very very significant ways Carla was a stabilizing influence on him Vala was his meals his mother she was a very cultivated woman but also she took care of the economy of agreement they made a good team [Music] in the 1930s Walt Disney was considered a genius on the level of chaplain and Eisenstein in terms of filmmaking and he was considered a great innovator of a new kind of visual language what are the things that Walt Disney was absolutely determined to do is to make artists out of animators he instituted a permanent instruction course at the studio an instruction course in fine art it was Walt's theory that there was no distinction between animation and fine art as his animators got better he started to try to use the medium in ways that had not been seen before in telling stories where he started to use more abstract imagery [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] throughout the 1930s Walt used the Silly Symphonies as his testing ground here was where he could test different types of effects different types of characters than he was putting into the Mickey Mouse cartoons [Music] [Applause] old Disney was not just a film studio head Walt Disney was a brand name Salvador Dali was as much an icon as Walt Disney was an icon of modern art Dali really loved movies and he especially loved the newsreels that preceded the films the Disney cartoons I think he recognized in the Silly Symphonies the potential for serialism in animation Walt Disney was someone that was really changing the whole field of animated cartoons Dali had a lot of interest in cinema because at a very early age he knew that that would be the language of the 20th century if we look back at Ali's earliest realist paintings there was a kind of cinematic dimensioned his paintings there was the notion of narrative already there he had become a close friend of a filmmaker Luis buñuel and early in 1929 he and Boonville made the famous film an Andalusian dog which was immediately picked up by the smartest among guard circles in Paris later on they created life door they are both the most important to release film they created powerful images very strong very provocative and the lead discover that he wanted to be a filmmaker he loved a lot of the things that were coming out of Hollywood his early paintings I think you could easily argue have a lot of qualities that come directly from the cinema Dali came to America the first time in 1934 Julian levy had a small gallery on 57th Street invited him to show his work when he first came over on the boat with his wife Dali was met by published who's who hits to him he can make you or break you meaning the press so he immediately launched into a story about doing a portrait of his wife with pork chops her arms because he said I love my wife I I love meat I mix the two things I love the most and the press went nuts and it was sort of this love affair between him and the press deficits dalla kept coming back to the United States almost every year it's time that he arrived at the state he made like of happening he asked people to create a long loaf of bread and then when he arrived in the States all the press talked about that Dahle was the greatest marketer in his field the way Disney was in his by the early 1930s Walt Disney was already beginning to sense that he had gone about as far as he could go with the short form by 1933 he had hatched the idea that he was going to make a feature film Snow White something that would be radically different than the kinds of animations he had been making one that would be advancing this idea of perfection one that would have a real story to it not just a series of gags one that would have real emotion clearly if he was going to elicit that kind of response he was going to have to create much more realistic characters much more realistic backgrounds much more realistic palette than the kind of bold colors that have been in the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies nobody had ever thought in terms of what it would entail emotionally narrative ly visually and Walt Disney did when snow-white was premiered the response was overwhelming when snow-white was on the bier and the dwarves were watching her crying the audience began to weep and that's when Walt knew he had achieved exactly what he wanted to achieve everyone now recognized his cultural status he was only 36 years old he got the cover of Time magazine Salvador Dali was described by Time magazine as the surrealism oh he had his picture on the cover of Time 1936 [Music] 19:36 was a big year for him because he came with not only a one-man show at the Julian Leedy gallery in New York but also he was part of this big show at the Museum of Modern Art which was called fantastic heart Dada and surrealism [Music] and Disney had two cells in that exhibit as well so Disney and Dali were connected in the fall of 1936 by the mid 30s Walt Disney was already attracting a tremendous amount of attention from intellectuals kind of adopted Walt Disney as this wonderfully naive folk artist who just has his finger on the American pulse everybody wanted to the man who had created these wonderful characters it's a great attraction for many people and all different kinds of arts he was friends with the Marx Brothers his interest in classical music led to a meeting with Stachowski George Balanchine visited during Fantasia he had lectures at the studio with people like Frank Lloyd Wright studio was a lodestone for all of the Arts at that time what was just plain folks at the studio and at home with his family but there was the site that's socialized and lived in a bit of that Hollywood lifestyle he liked to go to parties he liked to hobnob with Hollywood stars he had his picture taken with Spencer Tracy and Laurel and Hardy he'd liked to play polo very Hollywood thing in those days dolly went to California in 1937 for the first time with his wife gala and he immediately looked up Harpo Marx because he thought that he was in one of the great surrealist of the cinnamon dolly wanted to meet her for Marx and to make some portrait of him so he sent her paw marks on art but a special kind of art with barbed wire so helpful mark said okay you can make a portrait of me I will play you are and they become friend he wrote to Andre Breton who was the founder of surrealism in Paris I have come to Hollywood and I am in contact with the three great American Surrealists the Marx Brothers Cecil B DeMille and wolf Disney Dali said Walt was one of the great American surrealist given the enormous numbers of art influences that go into the Disney film surrealism was inevitable and if you look at the Disney films and you look at Dolly's paintings you can perhaps make some comparisons here the first through smiley fest in 1924 emphasized the notion that in dreams and in certain kinds of non controlled speech or writing you actually have a glimpse of the way in which the unconscious mind works Freud talked about the dream condensing two or three different things into one Elly was very interested in the kind of morphology one thing changing to another or one thing obviously containing other images that reveal themselves if you stared at it line Dali was interested in shames of connected images things that could symbolize something else [Music] he created the conservative Alima to invisible image his paranoia color critical metal in a meter of what you see and what you sing at the same time surrealism fit with the way Walt saw reality Albert her who was a great designer at Disney's his strength was seeing the hidden similarities in two objects and making one look like the other even if you look at some of the early Mickey Mouse cartoons where everything animates it seems so simple almost primitive today but it was pretty innovative wonderful thing about animation is anything you can think up you can do and it can come from one artists hand which is very interesting and once you allow yourself to use two-dimensional animation and come from the pen or the brush of an artist you're already taking a step beyond reality it's surreal because the technique itself allows you to be much more imaginative and creative there's so many surrealistic sequences in those early films pink elephants on parade is extraordinary and would be worthy of anybody's wildest dreams you and also flying keyboards and floating keys I see a real influence of Salvador Dali in that here's the quote from Dali my ambition is to give the world of the imagination the same degree of objectivity and reality as the everyday world well that sounds like a quote from Walt Disney and that was sort of his philosophy as well that he took the imagined world and made it real for audiences there are hidden similarities every place things that look like or remind us of things that they certainly are not many of his gags our base on that and Dali was a master of that there are all sorts of ways in which Dali was naturally inclined to the world of animation in which I think he really did see as are the ideal mediums for realizing his particular take on surrealism and I think he saw animation as the the medium of the future Walt Disney was looking forward to the future all the time and trying to see how new developments and other art forms could be used in his art form animation after Snow White and its tremendous success well its ambitions grew he in Stachowski began to collaborate on a cartoon of Sorcerer's Apprentice that ultimately expanded into what became known as Fantasia Disney who was a popular artist was now reaching across the aisle so to speak to a high art critic Robert Hughes said that the moment when Mickey Mouse shakes hands with the conductor Leopold Stokowski is the moment when high art and lo are to converge in 1939 Dali did an exhibit at the World's Fair called the dream of Venus [Music] Time magazine said that the dream of Venus should win more converts to surrealism than a dozen highbrow exhibitions dollie really didn't make distinction between so-called high art and popular art yeah Bonwit teller who was on Fifth Avenue they're given him a commission to design for Windows in a surrealist style to coincide with his opening of his exhibit but store chain some pieces and in the Lee became furious he said I'm an artist you have not respected my work of art they dashed into the display was in the window and he pushed the bathtub and he pushed it too far and he and the bathtub ended smashing the windows at Bonwit ending up on the street well this resulted in him going to jail for a few hours which ended up getting him a ton of publicity so it became even more notorious the press was fascinated by him they covered everything he did and he loved every minute of it it was like an actor he was the first artist to be so conscious of the power of mass media and advertising and cinema and Hollywood Dali was a great showman Walt was a great showman I think they saw that in each other this uncommon ability to promote themselves I think that's one of the reasons why the two men got along so well given his propensity for self-promotion Dali probably would have loved to have his very own newsreel [Music] spreads across the continent world famous surrealist painter Salvador Dali pleads to the safety of the United States eventually taking up residence at the Del Monte lodge in Pebble Beach California the rugged landscape reminds him of his beloved Catalonia there he continues to paint in a mass greater and greater Bay in 1941 Dali put on a party place in Pebble Beach called a night in the surrealist forest was a very famous party in the Del Monte load he organized Oldham after all the scenery this was to establish himself and his wife gala as socially desirable on the west Cota people like Bob Hope Ginger Rogers being Crosby all came up to Pebble Beach for the party Hollywood people loved it he became very popular here in Los Angeles with the success of Snow White well went right into Fantasia he went into Pinocchio he went into Dumbo he went into Bambi but the years those films came out was right at the beginning of World War two and this was causing intense problems for Walt Disney Snow White had made half of its profit in foreign countries and suddenly the foreign markets for the Disney films are all cut off the studio wasn't producing the kind of income that the Bank of America thought it it should be producing and once America entered the war almost all of the production of the studio was shifted to making training films for various government services [Music] yeah Walt was making a lot of training films and propaganda films and none of them for a profit believe me one of the few films that the Bank of America allowed to be kept into production during the war was Bambi everything else was shut down the war and the Bank of America took four prime years out of Walt Disney's creative life [Music] the 1940s on Donnie was remarkably eclectic in the kind of medians he chose to work here o noble theatre poetry scripts for the cinema it says we design furniture dresses he worked for a publicity they was a Renaissance man he designed costumes and sets for delays many pictures of the rich and famous they went to a lot of parties the social life was very important for dolly because at this period he painted a lot of portraits the portraits that dolly did were for money basically he could make a lot of money by doing portraits of men and women famous and rich in dolly s landscapes [Music] well the war ended Walt Disney saw the opportunity to do new things to flex his muscles to be artistic again after war too the studio was in financial difficulties and it's very hard to make feature-length films of the Snow White are a Bambi kind they were making these compilations of short cartoons which typically were not as elaborately produced as the feature films after four years of training movies and government films of various kinds the Disney style begun to change because to have animated those films in the old Disney style would have been prohibitively expensive so those films were much simpler much more angular in some ways much more abstract then the great Disney Animation's Walt was starting to take short subjects and put them together to make what eventually became known as the package pictures big man music in melody time there were all collections of bits and pieces of shorts when you go from Mickey Mouse to three kelvil years what you see is this Walt Disney's cultural range Disney movie somehow had his finger on the American plants it was really one of his most extraordinary talents dally wanted to be always in the media because that way everybody talked about Ali he wanted to create a newspaper that talked to him these past projects his present projects especially the future and he published to use of Talon years one in 45 one in 47 he wrote issues Illustrated them he's in the tally News he talks about Hitchcock wanting him to spell on my movie nation an excellent friend Feifei ordered a nightmare from me by telephone it was for defeat spellbound he totally you are the painter of Dreams I want you to be the painter of priority pecks dream dream sequence in films make it all sort of fuzzy and unclear whereas what he wanted was the absolute sharpness and clarity of dream that's what all his paintings did they had a good relationship but lolly created a long scene he wanted grand pianos hung from the ceiling people don't see underneath they couldn't actually create some of the sequences because it wasn't expensive to mammoth too difficult sometime in 1944 we'll to see a book of Dolly's paintings on the desk of Mark Davis one of his animators and all asked to take it home and he did and later he bought a copy himself and send it to dolly to have it autographed which dolly did personal contact between dolly and Walt Disney occurred around 1945 when he was working on spellbound they met at a party at Jack Warner's he was painting Jack Warner's wife's portrait of the time and Warner he also painted Jack Warner's portrait and Jack Warner looked at it and put it in the dog kennel Walt was totally intrigued with this guy when he met him and Salvador Dali was totally intrigued with Walt Disney and they hit it off very well right from the very beginning Disney and Dali have a conversation about gee wouldn't be great to work together and sure enough Walt Disney follows through and a contract was drawn up Dali came in and and deal to produce a short subject and in early 1946 dolly starts to report to the studio every day one of the great things with Walt was he always wanted to do something different so having Salvador Dali come to the studio and essentially apply his surrealistic techniques to animation it seems like a natural leap to me some odd way they needed one another Dali wanted to be a popular artist who still retained the idea of being a high artist Walt Disney was a popular artist who wanted these Steve of the highest so in a way this was a match made in heaven Walt came in one day and he said I have us out to dinner last night my friend Jack Warner's house and he's got that Spanish artist Salvador Dali staying in his house and I asked dolly if he'd like to do some work for me and dallied said he would so he were there tomorrow and I'm gonna bring him to you because I think you can handle let's see I was in luck all right because he was an extraordinary person to share subsequent many months with John hench had attracted Walt's attention through his intellect and his artistic sensibilities and so he assigned him to follow through with the production with Dahle working with him directly I had started with story development but I was curious about the business and what made it take so I sort of transferred myself into layout and then into background painting and then into so in other areas that Walt must have been aware of Walt really trusted John hench to understand what he wanted by putting John hitch in with Dahle it was as close as Walt could get to putting himself in with Dahle on a day-to-day basis it may have something to them but my French he thought would help my French wasn't any worse than his English Dali was given free rein to come up with the subject and the project they decided to collaborate on was an animation of a Mexican folk song which Walt had had scored the studio called destino Dali selected the title because he was interested in destiny he thought the music must be good [Music] with the work being done on saludos amigos and Three Caballeros they were looking at the cultural sounds and sights of our neighbors to the south and so it's quite natural that a song like destino this mexican love ballad would have come to the Disney studio in some fashion Walt Salvador Dali really nurtured the press and this was a great coup for both of them Walt Disney the master of cartoons goes surreal and Salvador Dali goes to animation the press had a ball with it Dali said things that were rather incomprehensible but amusing this is a magical exposition of the problem of life in the labyrinth of time Walt Disney kept trying to convince you of the reality of his characters just a simple love story boy meets girl [Music] [Laughter] the first day on the job John hench brought dolly a stack of animation bond paper to work with and dolly refused it he said no I can't eat to work with these and he held it up in it course animation bond at that time had five holes in the bottom to register it he said no no it already has a design we shared a table and the space and he was very prompt like a regular working guy 9:00 to 5:00 we were working on a storyboard so mostly we drew he use penny and different sorts of pencils until we had the storyboards fairly well spotted that he started to do some painting dollie would make basic drawings of the story as he saw it based on the music Justino and then john would try to find continuity within that from one image to another he had the concept in his head it changed sometimes our head but the the difficulty had was getting from one sequence to another and that was my job [Music] [Applause] [Music] Dahlia never had that kind of a discipline on him he did what he did purely because that's who he was and it was his heart he usually set the mood and the setting and the props as it were to indicate what he thought the message was in each sequence then I had to take over with the same setup and try and work out some way of getting to the next one and then that seemed to satisfy him they did lots of story sketches dolly would come in every day sometimes with completely new ideas and what loved that he did that Walt loved that he would take things off into new directions and then there was John hench left trying to tie everything together and make something cohesive out of it what we know about the relationship between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali in terms of their correspondence is that they loved one another Dali couldn't say enough about the genius of Walt Disney very dear friend good day I have not ceased to imagine things for destino it must be the miraculous fusion of leading action and cartoon I have found a new idea a thousand times more spectacular for the temple of love I am sending from New York an explanation in water polar - John hence my affections - mrs. Disney and yourself dear friend your friend Salvador Dali thought was constantly praising the inventiveness the genius of Salvador Dali my ideas just pour out of it Walt said [Applause] dear gala and Dolly I am happy to know that you are both so thrilled over destino we are not going to let the pressure of time stop us from getting something that will be worthy of Dolly's talents if we can find the time missus Disney and I would be happy to visit you again my best wishes to you both and looking forward to a successful adventure with destino sincerely Walt Disney dolly was a very sincere person but apparently very upset minded his wife gala would have to pin directions on him so that he could get from one place to another couldn't drive a car had to have drivers and he couldn't figure out the difference between 300 and a thousand he was constantly asking what's the difference between 300 and 1000 John hench was a tremendous draftsman and John's particular skills enabled him to take the ideas that Dali was coming up with and to try to absorb Dali's style many years later in looking at some of the pictures that had been drawn some by Dali and some by John hench even Dali couldn't tell the difference between the ones he had done in the ones John had done Justino is filled with a lot of Dali symbols the visual motifs that run through his work [Music] we have to know all the Lee's work till the forties to understand all the imaginary that's in the steno all values in there [Music] there is a profound melancholy in many of abdali's best painters of 30s in this Tino there is a very strong sense of nostalgia something with his was within reach and then is lost again that's a love story there's a weakening of love between two people he started out with destiny being a matter of time so there was some symbols of time that the male protagonist was eventually associated with they were both dancers the girl's head becomes like a dandelion and this essence of her is floating all over everywhere there are phases of a love affair that would be developed and being together and being separated it was kind of a ballet destiny of love that film is about a longing so intense it's really in the song and it's Dora la I fell in love with her when I saw the Three Caballeros it says my empty arms are filled now as they were meant to be in distances to time this famous melting clocks is also in the film [Music] and said what do they mean he said well it means that sometimes you're waiting for somebody the time stretches becomes a long time other time you're having a good time and time very fast turtles were another formal of time they were supposed to be very slow the seal the two heads marching towards each other meeting and then their profiles create invalid outside think that's very dull in Ian the animated paranoia commune Shiv I could call it that the way it actually can change before your eyes [Music] he's various experiences with the outside world fame and money and alcohol these things attempted to stop her they were blockages then there's a baby there was Maternity was another that she voided he had designed a labyrinth of different forms that the two protagonists the girl and the guy were separated the male protagonist was lost in this labyrinth and he was searching for a way out and was full of huge statuary Jupiter's head was a barrier and then the hummingbird opened it again the human brain is in several ways the dolly said the poetic key to a solution he says that hummingbird is a symbol of poetry which only takes out the essence of anything the telephone was the communication of other ideas antelopes this kind of a Russian animal spirits I guess the material of a certain aspect of physical pain Dahle painted quite often one of his cousin's jump in wrong and then he converted this image into a well of a search so that's present in this Tina [Music] the crotch has been an old symbol of his that he made out of the idea of that furniture chairs and cabinets and everything were crutches that we were really prosthetic people we need all kinds of things to hold us together this is near the end when he wanted to be a kind of regional heart in this big Citadel her temple he thought it was the ballet and since these two protagonists were dancers there was to be in this reconciliation after being together like a baseball game and the girl's head was the ball it is a little strange but what you gotta remember is that where the ball goes is straight into this catcher's mitt which becomes his heart [Music] Salvador Dali and John hench were well into their work on destino toward the end of 1946 and by this time film distributors were hoping that Walt would get back into doing full-length features again I'd heard that releasing agents didn't want any more of the package pictures so I thought if I'd shoot a little test Walt might be intrigued to go ahead with it and I didn't have any animators so I've got him to paint done two sliding cells and he had already done a background so I thought well I shoot it on the multi-plane camera I just slide two figures together when they touched the negative space between them would be the involvement of the girl and I shot the thing I sneaked it into the projector at that little theater they have in Carmel where Dali was at the time and he was waiting for the hall the people went out put on the picture I didn't know if the manager of the theater was watching it because I after the thing it flashed on and off I heard this big boys my god what was that and so I thought well that'll be good I'll show that to wall there's been a lot of speculation about why the steno never got made one opinion has it that the vogue for packaged films was over although melody time was released a couple of years after they started this project and it wasn't in it the other theory is that this was so bananas a project that Walt just couldn't release it perhaps Dali was too strong at design for Disney Disney had to put his own mark on to whatever he did and the fear was that it was too much Dali and too little Disney this is one descriptions that what happened at the studio and this is by jim bodrero the social trend of dollies as well as an artist at disney's one monday i wrapped the studio and I found this note on my desk called violet told secretary violet said have you been down in the dolly unit lately the boss is down there he's blowing his top and yelling and screaming for you I went down there and Walt said take a look all the beautiful moody drawings of the girl were gone in a place was covered with the most beautiful drawings of baseball players dolly turned up in Walt said what the hell's all this baseball dolly said nice huh Walt said what's it got to do Haley opened it I pitched sound in frustration dolly said the regard of God the regard of the universe all said what do you mean dolly said sometimes they lie down like this in regard sometimes in both hands they regard sometimes they take a stake in regard but always regarding regarding regarding HIDA said it was inspiring all these men looking at the sky Walt said $70,000 going down the drain and he said it was the in calling off pay him off ultimately all that remained of destino were the sketches done by John Henson Salvador Dali and some original beautiful paintings and 17 seconds of test animation and the project was shelved and everything lay unseen unused if you look back Donny's projects it's extraordinary how many things he got involved in from indice enthusiasm they didn't work out so it's curious how one one thinks of him in terms of most famous artists of the 20th century possibly after Picasso and many of his most cherished projects never actually reached the final I think the relationship of tally with cinema it's a kind of frustration we had two big projects with Luis buñuel and from then on he looked for a big film or even being a filmmaker but that couldn't be I think it's not a romantic story that of Italian cinema Dali was desperately homesick for his house in Portland he wanted to get home to Spain he wanted to get back to the little house that he lived in with garlis into the early 1930s over his spent his childhood holidays even though nothing happened with the destino project in 1946 the friendship between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali would continue for many years artists have a tendency to understand whenever they're on some level and we mere mortals don't and they clearly had some kind of a connection that way [Music] dollie visited wilts hulk a number of times and there's set of photographs that show dolly sitting on this caboose with bored Kimball driving Walt Disney's model train around his property they remained in touch with each other Walt Disney visited with Salvador Dali in Spain they continued even to discuss projects Don Quixote had been a subject to study for Disney for many years it would have been something that would have appealed to dully I'm sure Walt said look your name is golden I'm not gonna waste it on destino Disney dolly Don Quixote that's what it should be but alas there was never to be a collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] but not lean news time stretches on all the news artist Salvador Dali wants you to see decline 1948 after eight years in exile world famous surrealist painter Salvador Dali departs the United States for his home importantly got Spain leaving behind his unfinished collaboration with Hollywood legend Walt Disney ever since Valli and Disney signed a contract to produce the first motion picture of they'd never seen before the most rigorous secrecy on the subject has prevailed in world Disney's studio reigns a silence like the Silence of the mysterious place where they seek the throne is guarded the art was filed away as was art from every other unfinished project in the basement of the animation building then called the morgue means a place where they keep used but usable material on our morgue these shelves tables and file cabinets hold all of the drawings the model sketches and backgrounds for every film we've ever made the real morgue wasn't quite as tidy as Walt soundstage version it was down in the basement of the ink and paint building and under leaky water pipes and there were big signs saying beware of the spiders art was stored from floor to ceiling we had floors that were sometimes covered with rain it was not a very wholesome place to store this very valuable artwork the project disappeared so deeply that there were old-timers of the studio that when they came upon the yard many years later in the archives they didn't even realize that Dali had been here working after Walt's death there was starting to be some thought around the studio that there are elements of Walt Disney's history that are forgotten and we should be preserving all these things one of the things that came out of this was the start of the Walt Disney Archives founded in 1970 and one of the first things that was brought over to me to take care of was the batch of Donnelley art for destino eventually when the animation research library was built much of that art went back to its care because they then had the state of the art protection Disney's animation research library archives all of the company's animation art dating back to 1920 through present-day about 60 million pieces of art for the destino film we have a hundred and fifty pieces of art there are five paintings seventy story sketches and developmental pieces that were drawn by Salvador Dali and another 75 that were drawn by John hench when we moved the destino art into the archives various people in the organization were intrigued by it it was Roy Disney that was really intrigued with doing something with destino Fantasia hadn't always been my favorite of Walt's movies Walt said Fantasia is the best idea I ever had because it's an endless project Fantasia 2000 was the continuation of Walt's vision of having this ever-changing film that would always be going out there with new pieces in it while I was working on that project Roy said let's do one of the interstitials on the Disney that never was s Tino was one of those that there was a lot of artwork produced but never a film so I went and got a few pieces of art each piece you looked at you were just holy smokes this is unbelievable and you just put that aside and here comes another piece that Stephens more magnificent we'd had it for 50 years he's gathering dust [Music] something went ding in my head and I thought oh wait a minute what if we make the film now the next thing you knew we were being charged with Finch and destino working with those storyboards and you could do it about 18 different ways yeah once I decided it was good to do this he's got more emotional as it went forward I was going around to everybody saying look here's this opportunity to do something really unusual I got a lot of resistance about it and I really kind of just went in one of the first hurdles that had to be dealt with was what was the original artistic intent what did Salvador Dali and John hench envisioned what was the storyline that they were going and we were very fortunate because John Henson worked at the company he's in his early 90s and was sharp as a tack Joe is an unbelievable help to us the hummingbird which according to him as a symbol of poetry because I mean Bertoni takes the essence of the flower he kind of guided us through that first storyboard series of tries and failures and finally getting it in the into a continuity having a truck yes yeah a truck out exactly yeah so we painted out the background in a modern-day animation we didn't have numbered our story sketches for many years so that we can from drawing to drawing make sure we have the right continuity but these sketches weren't numbered and so there was a lot of debate about the correct running order there was a lot of head-scratching that was going on but ultimately Don Ernst our producer on Fantasia 2000 figured out the sequence of drawings we normally pin up our storyboards on a 4 foot by 8 foot board and you go from top row by row down and then you go to your next story board and what Don had realized was that actually they had worked it so that you pinned across two story boards and then started over again and went across [Music] it was like the Rosetta Stone suddenly there was a story there that we could somewhat comprehend the first thing you want me to do with any animated film it is to make a story reel so we took these story sketches and filmed them and later me and against the soundtrack [Music] and I was kind of amazed to find that there actually was a story there John hench went yeah that's it he sat down with me and we screamed the eight and a half minute story real and I was blown away we started thinking about who should direct it a branch of our animation studio was over in Paris and it was an incredibly talented guy named Dominique Wavre Dominique no fairy and Paris studio had been contributing to our movies for 10 years during minutes of each of our big 2d releases we flew over and hit it off right away Roy explained me as a project of destino and saying that they wanted to give me the direction of the project first I was very proud then I was very anxious because for me it's to name server totally and world is knit together on the project make me a little nervous and my first feeling was it was too abstract to surrealist and it's something that I don't have the feeling with when he briefed me on this first idea I feel that idea to cotton not very in the spirit of this you know I'm never getting back on the plank I got please God please take this movie his thoughts were interesting and provocative in response to the story real he really delved into studying dolly and symbology so that he was connecting this tableau at that tableau with things that were actually dolly asked my wicked he went by and I finally call him I was so nervous Dominique have you thought about doing this and he said yes la première fois boy became opus or teleport a somersault a party to connie say Papa more serious than feds or they by definite pour moi prefer feral circular Portia de viento Cooper visible in woodland I assume we wrestled where the in half ministerial for six to ten months because it wasn't telling a story was Dominic who said you know what I need to put my pencil to paper and redraw the entire movie sir I'm getting to Dolly's head posture de world cetera test reportes on poster was key for lucy Hakata manav economy did not laugh and Oh dolly lollipop sinfully they are simply amputee laughter she was quite a sick note book written by Dolly's wife he came home every night and told her what they did that day and she would proceed to write it down I think he told her something different every night so there were like 40 versions of the same story [Music] Dominique spent four months redrawing the movie he proposed a substantial edit in the piece bringing it friendly in half to just over five minutes so we screened it you want to just run with atomic and we'll be your audience okay I will be Trouville very quickly the main line of the story naked woman and everybody in the room was kind of instantly thrilled with the cat Juicy Couture Batista Patricia chicawa Akira Madhavrao dallied is a consider my own company Lucien second Ave heartily famous personnel more scheming lupus cameo deposit Ella music Samba beaucoup Donna - classroom Sam hadn't envisioned the common kobayashi the music was originally planned for use in Three Caballeros or one of the South American films I love that it's being used in this film as it is fact that a recording from 1945 was released on this movie it's unique when we started the movie we weren't sure that this recording should stay when I first heard the song I thought okay we're gonna rerecord this right the original tracks were scratching a lot of pops it was just an acetate demo after all there was probably made in two hours on the soundstage we had an endless debate about whether to use that piece of music or whether to go back in and rerecord it this is so authentic to try to then duplicate something that we is so unduplicated all right this is fury recording with an amazing singer and yes we would be doing kind of a faux version of it I think yeah even in the hands of the best musician [Applause] we kept saying we need this to be authentic and can't we find ways to revive the tracks out of this scratchy old 78 rpm disc we had there was much time and energy spent on trying to restore it to its tracks these scratches and the noise from VST finally it got to where I remember saying at some point we need to put a needle drop at the front end of this thing [Music] just so that the audience understands that it's the old record and not some new recording consistent music oma Salta la Ola I see a fellow Clarice potato albeit sad music toes and university fees actually a list come a conservator [Music] part of the value of having it produced in Paris under Dominic's watch was that he would be able to draw and animate and supervise every part of it he hand-picked the best animators a artists background painters and developed with the art director theory for Nia the style of the film departed Pandavas naivete mañana to El Faro de Paseo de animación ella freakin kudo teaser - Chris come certain technique Montague had a powful facility poly poly personnel a fastened on daddy Posey Lily me awfully personage dosimetry notion on account of a clear window anemia can see Paula Deen Arabic dunno Ekadasi Tom we live in petite Libya Somalia on a decid ammonia present visit set up off the bat you don't divert the personage on animation kena Vibha you control the lolly the only problem is how do you make a drawing look like a painting we always have to think where the light is coming from we used two levels the first level is going to be the cleanup level where we're going to clean up the rough animators dry and then we add a second level the shadow parts all the line work is going to disappear and we are only going to use colors tocco heavily leveling de personas castle or movement or gender on Nia no decision the que c'est gentil match domain yasukuni mu la fastened on the tiny penis about you there was a lot of debate on the designs of him and her if you look at the original dolly and hand sketches there is a range of design from drawing to drawing [Music] Dominic being a great designer spent weeks flame with the design lies is the dis cycling zone ad at Villa de donated the said van Baalen save those honking positive doses Dominic presented us like 20 different designs of a woman he had extracted from each dolly and hence his drawings different ideas he went upon livadas for my wife Erica shows Oklahoma sexy okoma been pascal dico di Bao Dai family top models only defamatory Joe Roth Konev Remo sure she and open bed or a stereotype the life and profit similarly original Charlie enhance catches the man he even more pay Pinocchio nose si dos - a written ballot is a dramatic people follow a mission a pyramid no visible illustration wanted to scare away the famous audiences you know similarity the guy needs to reflect the cold and callous environment from which he breaks vamos administered a more potent omen from me Novakovich atomo porque no para llevar Oh Papa don't eat a shot open a fan support a tutor initial Alport different OVA Adam a new Pascal bad personality no sweeter Suman Rav with also ever Allah in orbit ref transparent Israeli babanova passive personality alpha Pina Pok obeys a veritable personality hotel valve a federal pyramid sadly de novo from the cloth asus is a veritable personality when abdali's preoccupations was with subjective nature of time in so that whole notion of her moving in these servos staccato bursts of action is raised about time at the beginning it was an economic solution in order to to bless drawing but when we've done the first test in animation it becomes really the spirit of destiny now cross-dissolve is a part of the aesthetic of the movie which Talia asked in a interesting way [Music] levan goes over that aspect even fed personal mimosa velvet different respect at da lemon today [Music] suppose a chronology is not worthy hey Micah Canaveral is a pulmonary ankara employed a solution every could Dahlia peace to machines your Bible that were like a Bible to a normal talk shop so Schumer and Hong Kong claim the particles unfortunately the sound of the server totally virgin and alleys paintings have enormous amounts of depth and so going to 3d and being able to circle things with the camera I'm sure he would have loved it Walton Dali both would have embraced the computer mana passion I found him Kershaw that is don't never simply spray the world is me I met hosted on surfing the Palin imagine with Tusa talk soon a tip a sermon that he said this Danny or Disney this is really an honorary screening for John the reason we're here today is really for you John since you had this major role in the creation of this motion picture when we showed John hence the finished product he said that's destino that was what was supposed to be John was done an easy guy to please and when he got enthusiastic and said wow this is great this is what we were trying to do pleasing him was enormously rewarding he had one note for us when the Frenchmen are riding bicycles on the palm of the hand they're wearing baguettes for hats and John said they weren't supposed to be back at socials new rocks the top of the bicycle errs you've changed it to bread which is probably a better idea than rocks so it was actually supposed to be rotten [Music] the gala Dali Foundation has been a dedicated to preserving nurturing the art of belly when we finished in the film I called Mont Segur who was a director Foundation and I said I'm calling you but with regard to a collection of art and a film that we just fetched you must know I'm speaking of destino and you could have heard a pin drop and she says Mr Bloodworth we have been inquiring about this for many years and I said I'm happy to invite you to Los Angeles to come see it [Music] she was on a plane in about two weeks and sat in the room with us rolling nine we're so nervous and watched the movie I was just holding my breath until Muncie so this is such a great tribute to dolly he would have been very proud of this after Muncie had returned to Spain they called us back and said we are curating an important exhibit in Barcelona and want to include the art of the film and the film will be screened and presented to the royal family [Music] I was a little nervous to bring salvador dali back to figures but it was a wonderful experience Prince Felipe Juan Carlos his son came down we ran the film for him and he seemed to get a big kick out of it there's a terrific and important animation festival in Annecy France and Roy has long been a big supporter we contacted a sarrish brumberg as the director of the festival and said we have this special movie and he said I know this movie well that has to premiere opening night destino was very well received they won prizes at a number of film festivals but it all culminated and being nominated for an Academy Award I was just so happy for everybody you know because a lot of people put a lot of effort and love into this thing such a validations to have the Academy and your peers recognize that this was something special well you think of this great collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali I think there's a certain kind of aesthetic justice in that after all those years and with the collaborators long-dead but essentially their ghosts got together expect and completed the project [Music] it has the language of Disney on the level of feeling very engaging but the ideas of Dali infiltrate every aspect of it it's a really remarkable marriage destiny lirik was a Papa personality DiPaola company's own two cinder cones artist key figure by when I powered Perez paper inside to Nady steel it's not just a short cartoon this is a moving piece of art this wasn't a commercial venture this was art for art's sake [Music] I know the satisfaction every boy feels what a gift to give his uncle a gift to give his father what a legacy for all the Disney files that ever were finishing this piece in honor Walt a really great thing about Disney is that nothing ever goes away nothing ever goes to waste projects get started they get put aside in the age they're just sleeping they're waiting for the prince to come and wake them up with the right kiss [Music]

Channel: Sean Dudley

Views: 62,966

Keywords: disney, making of disney, fantasia disney, walt disney, disney making of, making of destino, destino disney short, full disney, salvador dali, artwork, disney cartoon, making of fantasia, fantasia 1940, fantasia 2000, walt disney cartoon, mickey mouse, disney song

Id: C9Dx3LCXi70

Length: 82min 19sec (4939 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 15 2018