Weekend 521.3

“It’s been remarked many times that Walt was Mickey, Mickey was Walt—and nowhere is that more evident than in the iconic scenes of Mickey eagerly improvising an airplane and taking to the skies; scaling a beanstalk and challenging a giant; donning a Sorcerer’s hat and “conducting” the courses of the stars and planets. That joyous, wholehearted celebration of life was at the core of Walt’s spirit—and the same spirit was, and still is, embodied in his most personal creation: Mickey Mouse. As long as Mickey lives, that carefree spirit will continue to venture forward, with boundless enthusiasm and great good humor, toward distant horizons we cannot even yet imagine.”

Taschen was highlighted in “The Art of _______________________” in Weekend 461.0. They publish beautiful books and the recently released Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History is no exception. It’s a must for any Walt Disney / Mickey Mouse fan.

Weekend 485.0

(1) A quote from How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of your Life by Pat Williams with Jim Denney:

“Walt Disney was a walking paradox. He was probably the greatest nostalgist who ever lived—a man who treasured and revered the past. He spent millions recreating the Main Street of his boyhood, the frontier era of Davy Crockett, and Mississippi riverfront of Mark Twain’s time. He also went to considerable trouble and expense in resurrecting Abraham Lincoln. Yet, for all his love of yesterday, Walt had an obsession with tomorrow. As Imagineer John Hench put it, ‘Walt has one foot in the past and one foot in the future.'”

Grim Grinning Milestones

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of fifteen-days to flatten the curve.

Still drafting a post on Walt and the Walt Disney Co. but Sarah Hoyt linked to this on Chicago Boyz. My own comment on Instapundit related to Deleting Disney:

“I would go to WDW to see traces of Walt’s influence (search ‘Mary Blair’s Grand Canyon Concourse mural in the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World’) but most have been erased. Walt would be cancelled in ten minutes to-day because his art often celebrated tradition and history. My guess is ANTIFA and SJWs would topple his audio-animatronic version of Abraham Lincoln from the 64/65 NY World’s Fair. I will NEVER return to WDW (and haven’t watched ABC or ESPN in years). IF you love Walt, read the Gabler tome. Disney wore a Goldwater pin and he knew exactly the kind of threat commies represented when they infiltrated his company and he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee.”

It’s time for a national boycott of the Walt Disney Co.

Update
I mentioned Walt Disney: Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler but How to Be Like Walt by Pat Williams with Jim Denney is equally good. The books are very different but read together provide a Circle-Vision 360° view of Walt.

More to come…

Weekend 473.1

“Michelangelo and Walt Disney are the stars of my show.”  — Robert Moses

(1) A quote from Tomorrow-land by Joseph Tirella:

“Although not one to share the spotlight—or the credit—Moses wanted Disney to have a headlining role at his Fair. From the get-go the Master Builder and the Master Showman hit it off. Although Moses was thirteen years older than Disney, the two men had characteristics in common. Disney had remade the American pop culture landscape, just as Moses had reshaped the actual landscape of New York City—each according to his own vision. Both had outsize imaginations and egos; both were leaders who surrounded themselves with armies of technicians on whom they could rely; and both were intensely driven workaholics.”

Walt Disney

Do you remember being younger and hearing old geezers tell you things like ‘that’s a slippery slope?’ What happens if we’ve slipped and are now in the midst of a mudslide? What does this have to do with Walt? Quite a bit actually and this post involves a cast of heroes like Mary Blair and Ray Bradbury.

Weekend 461.1

(1) A quote from Walt Disney and the Quest for Community:

“The EPCOT philosophy continued in other ways. Disney’s favorite community topic was transportation, be it model railroading or promoting the monorail. It should come as no surprise that the EPCOT concept’s most lasting influence would be in the area of public transportation. Community Transportation Services was formed as a subsidiary of Walt Disney Productions in 1974.”

(1a) Passenger Launch Seminole (The Art of Walt Disney World Resort)

“These pretty little launches ply the Seven Seas Lagoon between Magic Kingdom Park and the Contemporary, Polynesian, and Grand Floridian resorts, one of the most satisfying simple experiences that Walt Disney World has to offer.”

(1b) Disney’s Contemporary Resort Concourse Interior (The Art of Walt Disney World Resort)

(1c) Abandoned – Disney’s Fort Wilderness Railroad (YouTube)

Weekend 459.1

“A station is far more than a group of buildings where the passenger catches [the] train, buys a ticket, a meal or a newspaper. It expresses the very nature of rail transport. The new stations, with their functional look, provide for a smooth flow of passengers of all times. Clear sign-posting, logical arrangement of essential services and spacious interiors match the bold, clean shapes of the external structures. There is the minimum of pretension, the maximum of practical commonsense in architectural terms.”

Source: British Rail Architecture 1948-1997 by David Lawrence

“Disney typically appeared to be in search of new technologies to enhance story-telling, improve an attraction, or, in this case, develop the EPCOT concept.”

Source: Walt Disney and the Quest for Community by Steve Mannheim

Weekend 445.0 (Terminus)

(1) A quote from Absolutely On Music by Haruki Murakami:

“In that sense, Seiji Ozawa is simultaneously an unschooled ‘child of nature’ and a fountain of deep, practical wisdom; a man who must have what he wants immediately and who can be infinitely patient; a man with bright confidence in the people around him who lives in a deep fog of solitude.”

(1a) A quote from Score: A Film Music Documentary:

“One of the responsibilities we have as film composers, is we’re the last people on earth who on a daily basis commission orchestral music. Without us, the orchestras might just disappear, and I think that will create a rift in, you know, human culture. I think it will be such a loss to humanity.” —Hans Zimmer

(2) I was in Southampton last weekend (for Saints versus Wolves) and need to keep plussing my original post on The Gateway to the World.

(2a) Crossing the Bar by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

(3) A quote from Remembering Walt:

“On the Park’s opening day, I was walking down Main Street with a cup of coffee in each hand, when I ran into Walt Disney. He stopped me and I thought I was going to be fired, but he just wanted to know where he could get a cup of coffee.” —Scotty Cribbes

(3a) A quote from Designing Disney:

“When we design any area of a Disney park, we transform a space into a story place. Every element must work together to create an identity that supports the story of the place—structures, entrances and exits, walkways, landscaping, water elements, and modes of transportation. Every element must in its form and color engage the guests’ imagination and appeal to their imagination.”

(4) “Like church, the organ will invite the tears…”

(5) Another quote from Designing Disney:

“Like music, color is one of the great joys of life, mysterious and wonderful.

(6) A quote from the Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton:

“To immerse ourselves in Japanese aesthetics and to nurture a sympathy for its atmosphere may help to prepare us for the day when, in a museum of ceramics, we encounter traditional tea bowls, for example, by the artist Hon’ami Koetsu. We won’t believe, as we might have done without the legacy of 600 years of reflection on the appeals of wabi, that such pieces are puzzling blobs of unformed matter. We will have learnt to appreciate a beauty that we were not born seeing. And, in the process, we will puncture the simplistic notion, heavily promoted by purveyors of plastic mansions, that what a person currently finds beautiful should be taken as the limit of all that he or she can ever love.”

Weekend 437.0

“The music was somehow addictive, as he had warned. An uninterrupted stream of emotion, Musical instruments in colorful profusion. It was Strauss who boasted, ‘I can describe anything in music, even a common ‘broom.’ Maybe he didn’t say ‘broom’—it could have been something else.  At any rate, there was something painterly about his music.” — Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore

“In a profession that has been an unending voyage of discovery in the realms of color, sound, and motion, Fantasia represents our most exciting adventure. At last, we have found a way to use in our medium the great music of all times and the flood of new ideas which it inspires.”  — Walt Disney

Related photo from the Limestone Archives.