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5.13 The Mystical Science of DUMBO

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You’ve seen a horsefly. You’ve seen a dragonfly. You may have seen a house fly… but you’ve never seen an elephant fly… in live action that is. With the release of DUMBO, Disney continues it’s string of live-action remakes of it’s own animated properties (the first of in the next 4 months alone). Directed by Tim Burton and starring Colin Farrell, Danny Devito and Michael Keaton, the film is offers a different spin on the material but does it still carry the same endearing charm as the original? ScreenFish veterans Shelley McVea and Allen Forrest return to talk about family, the merging of science and mysticism and power within the film.

You can also stream the episode above on podomatic, Alexa (via Stitcher), Spotify or Soundcloud! Or, you can download the ep on Apple Podcasts or Google Play!

Want to continue to conversation at home?  Click the link below to download ‘Fishing for More’ — some small group questions for you to bring to those in your area.

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Thanks Shelley and Allen for joining us!

Dumbo – Celebrating Our Flaws

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Dumbo is the latest Disney animated classic to be remade as a live action film. The original, a 64-minute feature film from 1941, can be visually identified by most people, but I wonder how many have actually seen it in its brief entirety. Now the story comes back to life in an expanded adaptation under the direction of Tim Burton—a master in telling stories about outsiders. And outsiders abound in this new version.

Like the original, the plot revolves around a baby elephant with amazingly large ears that enable it to fly with the help of a feather. And as in the original, the baby’s mother is locked away as a “mad elephant” after protecting her child, leaving the baby alone in the world. Unlike the original, there are no talking animals in this retelling. No crows (which in the original were something of a black-face minstrel show) or Timothy Q. Mouse, Dumbo’s mentor.

Instead, the remake builds a human story around Dumbo. The story is set in 1919, right after the end of World War I. A run-down circus, presided over by Max Medici (Danny DeVito) is setting off on a new season. Two children, Milly and Joe Farrier (Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins) have lost their mother to the flu. When their father Holt (Collin Farrell) returns from the war, he has lost an arm. He can no longer do the riding and roping that was his act. He is relegated to caring for the animals, which brings him into contact with Dumbo. (Actually, the animal’s name is Jumbo Jr., but because of his freakish ears, people yell Dumbo instead of Jumbo.) When another trainer is cruel to Mrs. Jumbo, Dumbo’s mother, she attacks him and ends up (as in the original) locked away. Meanwhile, Milly and Joe take care of the baby and discover that his ears give him the ability to fly.

Already we can see that the film is about families struggling with brokenness. Mrs. Jumbo and Dumbo are separated. (The film includes its version of the sorrowful nighttime visit of Dumbo to his mother with the song “Baby Mine” from the original.) The Farrier family is without a mother, and Holt is without an arm. And the circus as a whole serves as a family, but one going through very hard economic times. Each version of family is in need of healing, acceptance, and a future.

When word of a flying elephant gets out, it attracts the attention of V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton) a slick promoter with arm decoration Collette Marchant (Eva Green) who swoops in to buy up the circus. He offers Max the vision of the big time, and the chance to take care of all his people—his family. He plans to bring Dumbo and the others to his new extravaganza park, Dreamland, where he will use the act to leverage new loans from banker J. Griffin Remington (Alan Arkin).

I found the vision of Dreamland interestingly similar to Disneyland, which seems like a small nip at the hand that feeds, given that Dreamland turns into a nightmare for everyone we care about in the film.

Getting back to the common Tim Burton theme of outsiders, each of the main characters fits such a category. Dumbo with his grotesque ears, Holt as a rider/roper with only one arm, Milly, a girl who wants to be a scientist, Joe, who loves the circus but is talentless, the whole range of strange circus performers, and Collette, a talented aerialist, who Vandevere treats as a toy. By making the physical or emotional flaws of each character so obvious, it ironically allows us to get beyond the surface to emotionally bond with each as they struggle for acceptance and search for happiness. That is one of the gifts that Burton brings to many of his films. He reminds us that humanity is not about perfection, but about the way all those flaws are what make us human.

I’ve been critical of Disney’s remaking animated classics as live action films. As with any endeavor, some will be better than others. My first reaction to the news that Dumbo was being remade was negative. After all, those animated classics were beloved because they told human stories in ways that touched us. However, Burton, screenwriter Ehren Kruger, and everyone else involved created a new depth to the story and all its emotional touch points. It becomes more than a story of separation and reunion. It is a story about the healing and enabling power of family. It is not about overcoming our flaws, but about making those flaws work for us and allowing us to soar.

Photos courtesy of Walt Disney Studios

Dumbo Filmmakers Meet the Press

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The filmmakers and actors from Disney’s upcoming live action Dumbo recently met with the press in a press conference format. This report is some gleanings from the two press conferences. The first included Grae Drake (Moderator), Derek Frey (Producer). Katterli Frauenfelder (Producer), Rick Heinrichs (Production Designer), Colleen Atwood (Costume Designer), Danny Elfman (Music by), Ehren Kruger (Screenplay & Producer), Justin Springer (Producer). The second session included Grae Drake (Moderator), Tim Burton (Director & Executive Producer), Colin Farrell (Holt Farrier), Nico Parker (Milly Farrier), Finley Hobbins (Joe Farrier), Eva Green (Colette Marchant), Danny DeVito (Max Medici), Michael Keaton (V. A. Vandevere).

Among the questions dealt with in a variety of ways: why do a retelling of the classic Disney animated film now?

DEREK FREY: In terms of the time, so much time has gone by since the original. And it’s a simple story. It’s a beautiful story. And I think a lot of the themes in the story that Ehren created, they’re universal things. It’s about family. It’s about believing in yourself. It’s about overcoming judgment and people looking at you in a certain way. Dumbo is kind of a bullied character. I know that’s something that we’re dealing with socially right now.

TIM BURTON: I just liked, it was just the idea of it. The idea of a flying elephant and the character that doesn’t quite fit into the world and how somebody with a disadvantage makes it an advantage. So it just felt very close to the way I felt about things. It was just a very pure simple image. Like all the old Disney fables had that kind of simple symbolism for real emotions.

In a somewhat related question, the second panel was asked similarities between Dumbo and his mother and the situation of children separated from parents at the border with Mexico.

TIM BURTON:  I think any family situation, but every family is different. I’m different. For me, I wish I had been separated from my parents. But that’s a different story. [Laughter]. But you know, most people would go yeah. You don’t want to separate anybody from your parents. Except me. But that’s fine. So I don’t think about. I think about things more in a spiritual simple way. There is news. I listen to the news and everything. But I always take things from a more like, I try to anyway, a human point of view that way. And because it’s like a fable. And all great fables tap into things that are true about today in human nature and other things. But it’s not literal. And all these people, it’s a period movie, it’s a fable. It touches on all of these things. But we try not to make it like ripped from today’s headlines, you know.

DANNY DEVITO:  The movie was made in 1941. And in 1941, if you remember the movie, 63 minute Disney movie masterpiece from that era, the baby was separated from his mom. So I don’t think it has anything to do with this unfortunate, horrifying thing that’s going on in our current news.

MICHAEL KEATON:  Two separate things. But I’m just going to say this. Thanks for bringing it up. Keep it in the consciousness. Because it’s criminal, it’s cruel, and I don’t think it borders on child abuse. I think it does. It is. [Applause].

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – MARCH 10: (L-R) Director/executive producer Tim Burton, actors Colin Farrell, Nico Parker, Finley Hobbins, Eva Green, Danny DeVito and Michael Keaton speak onstage during the “Dumbo” Global Press Conference at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on March 10, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)

There were also some questions about the changes made to the story, what was kept, and what was added.

EHREN KRUGER:  Yeah. I wanted to be a part of this movie for I think the same reasons that I hope an audience wants to see the movie that for me is a very personal experience of wish fulfillment. Dumbo is not just a Disney character. He’s a mythological character. And I wish he were real. I wish I could have been in the audience of that circus in the golden age of the circus and observe his story. And then to take the next step, not just observe his story, but imagine what it’s like to be Dumbo. And that leads you to a place where you say what would Dumbo want and is the end of the 1941 film truly a satisfying end for Dumbo of that story? And so that just organically led to expanding the story past where the animated film ends.

We made the decision that we wanted to transport an audience to a circus world, to Dumbo’s circus world. And they go and enter the circus. And that meant that it needed to feel real. So early on, we made a decision to not feature talking animals. And that the most important characters in the animated film, Dumbo, doesn’t speak. Mrs. Jumbo I think has one or two lines and that’s it. So that felt organic to the story to let Dumbo be a classic Charlie Chaplin Buster Keaton-esque expressive silent film performer. And make the circus around him feel real. So there are moments when we thought well, wouldn’t it be nice to have Timothy Q Mouse talk? He’s so cute. And we just don’t want to break the spell of where we were asking the audience to go to time travel with us to.

TIM BURTON:  I just like the fact that it’s obviously a very simple fable, very simple story. And it’s heart, about family. And what I liked about it was the human parallel story. This character Holy who comes back from a war. He doesn’t have an arm. He doesn’t have a wife. He doesn’t have a job. Doesn’t have a you know. He’s trying to find his place in the world. And all of the characters actually are in that way. Nico’s character. They wanted to be something. She wants to be something else. Every character in it. Eva is not… everybody is trying to find their place in the world. Like Dumbo. And using disadvantage to advantage. So lots of nice themes. But in a very simple framework.

There was also discussion of incorporating various images and ideas from the original film.

EHREN KRUGER:  Yeah. I just thought about things that I associated so strongly with the story. Pink Elephants, Casey Jr., Firefighting Clowns. And these were all things without going back and watching the 1941 film.

DANNY ELFMAN:  We all have firefighting clowns in our past somewhere. If we look at our own lives. I find.

EHREN KRUGER:  In your band. Yes. Yes. You had firefighting clowns. Just the things that I remember. It’s kind of like Danny talks about. Zeitgeist memories or things in the back of your head. I remember that moment. I remember that image. And of course, in writing the film, I went back and revisited the animated movie a number of times. But I really tried to get to that place of what are the core things that I associate with this? What are the simple things I associate with this story? And those have to be there?

JUSTIN SPRINGER:  Yeah. I think that kind of covers it. It’s not as if you sit down and make a list of all the things that we feel like we’re beholden to include. It’s really just you start from your own fandom and your own respect from the original and you just start to derive a story out of the stuff that feels like it’s in the essence of the movie. And those can be set pieces or visual imagery or fun little Easter eggs even or ways that music might eventually get used if you just put it on the page now and there’s lots of people who will take those ideas that are on the page and turn it into beautiful sets or costumes or music. Those things. But also just in the story, what’s in the DNA of that core story that feels like it’s allowed it to have this lasting impact for 80 years. If you have that foundation, then you can take the story in all sorts of directions. We can expand out and tell a broader human story. We can see where Dumbo goes after, he flies and what the impact on the world ultimately becomes. But it all kind of comes back to what are those original elements both visual but also in the story and then the themes that feel like are core to the original movie.

EHREN KRUGER:  And really quickly. I like to feel like you can, like these movies run on parallel train tracks. So that you can imagine that Dumbo’s conversations with Timothy Mouse are happening off screen in between scenes of this movie. Just wanted to honor the original.

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – MARCH 10: (L-R) Moderator Grae Drake, producers Derek Frey, Katterli Frauenfelder, production designer Rick Heinrichs, costume designer Colleen Atwood, composer Danny Elfman, screenwriter/producer Ehren Kruger and producer Justin Springer onstage during the “Dumbo” Global Press Conference at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on March 10, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)

A question was brought up about what they wanted children to take away from this film.

COLIN FARRELL:  The same thing adults take away from the importance of not just accepting the inherent difference that people have from each other in relation to each other but celebrating it. I think just as Tim was saying, there are simple messages that are very complex it seems to live in as we go through our lives. And those messages are messages of kindness and inclusion and all those kind of things. So that will be cool. Or else if they’re just entertained for a couple of hours and take that as well.

TIM BURTON:  But also with just like the Disney movies. For me, the reason I wanted to do it was like the old Disney movies had all these elements. They had joy. They had humor. They had… [Laughter.] Okay. Let’s go nine rounds. So what was I talking about?

GRAE DRAKE:  Joy.

TIM BURTON:  Well, death. You know. Everything. Stuff that are taboo subjects.

COLIN FARRELL:  You skipped so deftly from joy and humor to death.

TIM BURTON:  Did I emphasize that one too much?

GRAE DRAKE:  Two sides of the same coin.

TIM BURTON:  But we always had the mixture of those things. So like Colin was just saying. We tried to present these things without overdoing it. And in a fable like way. But then let it present itself and not just sort of dictate it and just show these people for what they’re going through and who they are.

 

Returning to the Woods: 1on1 with Brigham Taylor (producer, CHRISTOPHER ROBIN)

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Produced by Brigham Taylor (Jungle Book, Tomorrowland), Disney’s Christopher Robin reintroduces fans to such beloved characters as Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore and many more. Taking place in the mid-1940s, Christopher Robin is now a family man living in London. When he receives a surprise visit from his beloved childhood bear, Winnie the Pooh, the two embark on a journey to find Pooh’s friends and, in turn,  help Christopher Robin rediscover the joy of life. A life-long fan of the characters, Taylor felt the time was right to return to the Hundred Acre Wood and explore their relevance today.

“I’ve always loved these characters,” he begins. “I’ve loved these stories and, when I stumbled upon this notion of maybe telling the story within a live action context from the perspective of an adult Christopher Robin, I felt like it was whole new opportunity to re-examine the relationship we’ve all had with these characters for generations. So, it was a new way I think to sort of evaluate who these characters are and what their value is now. That was always a really exciting thought for me.”

Since their introduction to the world in 1926, A. A. Milne’s beloved characters from the Hundred Acre Wood have continued to charm audiences of all ages. To this day, Pooh, Eeyore and company have remained enduring in our culture, a quality that Taylor credits to their commitment to each other and ability to overcome obstacles.

“I feel like they, Pooh especially, embody the ideal sense of friendship and valuing that. All these characters–Rabbit, Owl, Piglet, Eeyore–they’re all very different,” he believes. “They all have weaknesses and foibles, but they all are able to overcome those and value their friendship on top of it. They exhibit amazing patience and kindness for each other, even though they can annoy each other deeply. I think there’s huge lessons in that. There’s a huge amount of sort of charm and sentiments that goes into that. When you see that kind of generosity that these characters have, you both want that in your life and want to emulate that in your life.”

In order to reach today’s audiences, one might wonder if there was any temptation to potentially bring Pooh and his friends into the modern age. Still, Taylor believes that one of the qualities that gives them their charm stems from their consistency and timelessness.

“It was a fun development process,” Taylor feels. “There was consideration about where the movie should be set because we were utilizing Christopher Robin as a fictional character, not as the historical person who lived. So, we were free from biographical detail, but we could tell a more every man story and, at different times, the script was in sort of a timeless contemporary setting. Then, we realized we’d rather just sort of adopt the timeline when we all became a sort of familiar with Pooh, which was when the character was first published in 1926. So, we said our fictional Christopher Robin would have had his childhood then and experienced the war time (being English), and then our story picks up postwar. We have a very real and grounded time period, which I think is helpful. It keeps these characters in this time and space that we ultimately really embraced and liked.”

“Then, the other decisions just flowed out of very simple questions. What would happen to any one of us if we’d had this very active childhood where we had these wonderful imaginary friends that filled our days? Whenever we grew up, what would happen? We all grow up and become busier become encumbered with our responsibilities. What would happen if the childhood friends that you hadn’t seen in 30 years came back? It all just flowed from that. We decided that Pooh never really seems to set about with a specific goal in mind or, at least, the result isn’t usually the because of the specific question that he had in mind. He’s really about his own thing. He doesn’t realize he’s there to rescue Christopher. He thinks he’s just there to help him find his own friends. Out of that, of course, the important journey unfolds, which is Christopher rediscovering his own childhood.”

In order to establish a sense of authenticity to the film, Taylor and his team decided to shoot the film in Ashdown Forest, the actual area that A. A. Milne used as inspiration for his original stories.

“Our locations were a combination of Ashdown Forest and Great Windsor Park, which is… in and around Windsor Castle,” Taylor remarks. “[That’s] unique because it has an untouched and unspoiled section that hasn’t been manicured or logged for a thousand years. It’s really beautiful. We combined those locations to create the Hundred Acre Wood. The goal from the outset was that we wanted to create a very real, grounded [set]. We didn’t want to have something that was super stylized. We wanted the beauty of actual nature to sort of be our guide. That carried over even into our city locations, where we wanted it to feel like a very grounded and real postwar London, not to throw brightly colored paints or CG onto the greenery. We want it to be very real. We thought the characters would be all the more magical if we treated them as actual things that existed in the real environment.”

Another unique aspect of Disney’s iconic original film is the music. Written by Richard M. Sherman and his brother, Robert, classic songs like “Heffalumps and Woozles” and “When the Rain Rain Rain Came Down” have become almost as important to Pooh Corner as the characters themselves. As a result, when the opportunity came about for Taylor to bring Richard M. Sherman (now 90 years old), onboard to record new music for the film, he jumped at the chance.

“I’d had really the wonderful pleasure of working with Richard on Jungle Book because he came in to rewrite the lyrics,” he recalls. “He came in and wrote new verses. It was fantastic! Richard was lovely and he remains really sharp, active and prolific. That was the first time that we said, ‘Richard, we’d love for you to write a few songs in the vein of originals that you and your brother did [for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh]’ and he said, ‘Absolutely!’ We asked for two songs and he came back with three songs and we were just overjoyed about that. Our film opens with one of his new songs, closes again with some songs and then we found some application for some of his classic tunes that you’ll discover in different little ways inside the movie because they were such a strong voice for the original features. So, it’s great.”

Most importantly, however, any return to the Hundred Acre Wood brings with it the challenge of bringing Pooh, Piglet and the rest of the family to life. With this in mind, he also felt the burden of responsibility that comes with attempting to bring these characters to life three dimensionally.

“Pooh was born out of the notion of a very real teddy bear that a young boy could hold, and obviously in the realm of animation, it became a very charming 2D version of that,” he explains. “For most of us, he really existed as that glorious 2D animated character, but I felt like that the ability to transit that character back into a real 3D, hand-sewn, huggable toy, that would be in and of itself a really novel experience. It would force you to re-evaluate what these characters were. They were born out of this conceit that Mel was telling stories about these real stuffed animals that were in the boy’s room.”

Since the most iconic representation of Pooh remains the 2D animated version, Taylor wanted his incarnation of the group to feel authentic to the time period.

“On the creative side, I think the biggest challenge was to translate these characters back into three dimensions in a photo real way,” Taylor reflects. “We really benefited from a wonderful conceptual artist. Our brief was to say to have a character that was recognizable as the animated version that we’ve all known and loved, crossed with the original illustrations from E. H. Shepherd in the book, but also by way of a vintage teddy bear that would have been produced back in the ‘Twenties. He sketched out these original images and, from the first one we saw, we knew he had nailed it. That was our north star as we built it practically because we had hand-built versions of all the stuffed animals with us on the set so that we can use them in shooting, even though they all eventually got replaced by our animation. So, that was a huge challenge to sort of nail down the books and translate them into this movie.”

Since the film reintroduces Christopher Robin as an adult, there is a heavy emphasis on rediscovering your childhood and even running from our past. As such, Taylor hopes that families experience the film in a way that reminds them to focus first on each other.

“For me, from the outset to me, this was an examination of what is the value of Pooh and his friends, these characters in our lives now, even as adults,” he considers. “What better way to understand that then to tell the story through the perspective of an adult Christopher Robin?… I’ve never felt like that either on the page or even in the original animation that these characters were less relevant to me as an adult than they were to me as a child. It brings home the notion that they stand for certain ideas and principles about friendship and kindness that have no expiration date. That’s ultimately what the story’s about. In its simplest form, it’s really just about we need to remember and remind ourselves that we all get preoccupied and we all forget valuable lessons, whether it’s from the age of six, 10 or wherever. We need those reminders. We need external voices to remind us of the important things. In this movie, we focused on the importance of taking time out for each other and just to be present with the people that you love and your family especially.”

Christopher Robinis in theatres now.

For full audio of our conversation with Brigham Taylor, click here.