everything Disney,
getting a summer job
as a sweeper in Tomorrowland.
Tomorrowland Station!
All out for the Magic Kingdom.
Disneyland was
a fantastic place to work.
Everybody was young working there
and it was just...
We had a blast. It was really, really fun.
And he was soon
promoted
to a ride operator
on Disneyland Jungle Cruise,
before returning to studies at CalArts.
There's a few times
in my life
I feel like I'm in the right place
at the right time.
And definitely when we were at CalArts,
that was it.
Okay, everybody. Wake up, wake up.
Come on, everybody. Wake up!
John animated
two short films at CalArts.
Lady and the Lamp
is about a lamp in a lamp store
who accidentally replaces
its broken bulb with a bottle of gin.
Oh, no.
My lamps! My shop!
My gin!
John's second
short film, Nitemare,
is about a boy who sees monsters
when he turns out the lights.
Both films received back-to-back
Student Academy Awards,
an unprecedented record
that instantly propelled John
into the animation spotlight.
This is your
second year winning?
Yeah.
Is there a knack to making an
award-winning short film for a contest,
or is this the real world,
could this film make it commercially?
I think it could make it commercially,
because I think
the knack that you're talking about
is basically entertainment.
I think that's what...
People pay money
to go see a film that's entertaining.
John's success
landed him his dream job
at the Walt Disney Studios.
Hello.
I'm Randy Cartwright.
- And this is Ron Miller!
- Randy, how are you?
- How are you?
- Good to see you. This is Randy.
Great way to start the film!
Well, we're off to a good start.
Here it is, April 9, 1980.
This is the past
to all you folks out there,
and we're gonna go inside
and see what it's like.
Come on. Come on!
Walking into
the animation building
that was built with the money from
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,
when I came in there in the '70s,
I just sensed this history around.
All of the experience
that had gone on before
was somehow impermeated
into the walls.
Hi, Glen. How are you?
This is...
Glen. Glen Keane.
- Thanks, John.
- ... Glen Keane.
He is our directing animator.
Cur cameraman,
John Lasseter.
It was so great to meet John.
There was this immediate
sharing of information
of your passion
and excitement for animation,
and he knew a lot about the history
and the past.
As his first animation
at Disney,
John handled
the introduction of a lead character
in the 1981
teature The Fox and the Hound.
Together, John and Glen collaborated
on the climactic fight scene.
But increasing budget cutbacks
had severely limited
the multi-plane dimensional look
Walt Disney had achieved
decades earlier.
Animation was really at a point
where it seemed like it was
a dying art form.
All of the richness and the atmosphere
was budgeted out of our films,
and it was so frustrating.
While the animation
department felt stagnant,
Tron, a live-action foature
using the latest computer technology,
was screened for employees
at the studio.
Watch it, watch it! Auuughhh!
There Tron was, these light-cycles...
Moving in and out of the scene
and it's...
And we came back to my room
and just sat there
and the depression
started to turn towards a frustration,
like, "Well, why can't we?"
"Why can't we do that?
Wouldn't it be cool, if?"
Computer animation
excited me so much,
and not excited
about what I was seeing,
but the potential I saw in all this.
I was just amazed by it.
And we started thinking,
"Wouldn't it be cool if
"we had a background
that was moving like Tron did,
"but we animated
the character by hand. "
It had never been done before,
but there's something about John
that you kind of get the feeling
that that doesn't matter
I mean,
if it had never been done before,
doesn't mean it can't be done.
John and Glen
soon got approval
to experiment with animation
and