Just as Disney animation seemed on its death bed, however, Roy E. Disney (Walt's nephew) launched a renewed dedication to restoring it to its former glory. Disney helped assemble an inspired group of new executive leaders including Michael Eisner, Frank Wells and Jeffrey Katzenberg, which helped usher in a dramatic turnaround for the beleaguered studio. The fascinating documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009) closely examines the ten year period between 1984 and 1994 during which all the stars aligned for the spectacular renaissance of Disney Animation that generated a string of first-rate instant classics including The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and The Lion King (1994).
Directed by Don Hahn, who produced Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King among others, and produced by Peter Schneider, who served as President of Disney Feature Animation and later head of Walt Disney Studios, Waking Sleeping Beauty is a collaboration between Disney animation insiders that not only celebrates the artistry of Disney's dedicated artists, but also examines the complexities of corporate drama going on behind the scenes during that time. While this fruitful period generated outstanding award-winning work, there was also a riveting power struggle going on between Roy E. Disney, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg in which tensions and egos were running at full steam. Waking Sleeping Beauty makes a conscious choice not to sugar coat or shy away from detailing this volatile but wildly successful era in Disney history - warts and all - with an intimate level of knowledge that can only come from true insiders.
The film's producer Peter Schneider had tried to get the documentary made for ten years before deciding to partner with Don Hahn. "...it struck me that if I partnered with Don," said Schneider in a recent interview, "we actually might get some traction, because Don is very well respected and loved at the studio." Hahn and Schneider ran into each other after not being in touch for several years and immediately reconnected over their shared time at Disney. "...we inevitably started talking about our time together at Disney," Hahn told Animation magazine in 2010. "I think we both remember back then with a combination of euphoria and horror. On one hand, we knew we were part of a winning team of people that made some incredible movies--on the other hand, it took its emotional toll and left us with some of the most unbelievable Hollywood stories. Peter had always wanted to tell the story of what really happened in that watershed. He felt like it had been told poorly by people who were not there and didn't know what really happened from the inside. We did know. We probably knew too much about what happened, but we thought that if we could tell the story in as honest and candid a way as possible, it would be an amazing tale: Shakespearean characters, and palace intrigue, mixed with cartoons. Who wouldn't love that?"
Hahn and Schneider also made the decision to dispense with all talking heads that are traditionally found in many documentaries, and instead rely on a treasure trove of rare archival footage and personal home videos shot at the studio (often against company policy) by the animators and staff who lived through it. Combined with the audio of reflective contemporary interviews, this choice offers unprecedented intimacy and access to all the players behind the scenes (watch for a young Tim Burton, then employed as a Disney animator, perched over a drafting board), and captures both the magic and drama of a moment in time when all the elements came together for Disney's remarkable artistic and financial comeback.
Waking Sleeping Beauty opened to wide critical acclaim and left Disney fans especially rapturous. Roger Ebert called the film "extraordinary," and the Los Angeles Times said, "This tale of artistic reincarnation is a classic show business story, not lacking in temper tantrums and clashing egos, and...it's got a terrific inside Hollywood sensibility plus an unblinking candor that lets the chips fall where they should."
"In some ways, I'm as proud of it - in every way, really - as I am of Beauty and the Beast and Lion King and those films," said Don Hahn, "because it celebrates people that never get celebrated. It celebrates people who were there at the time and says: 'This was a winning season. This was a special time.'"
By Andrea Passafiume
