Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/798465
DGA QUARTERLY 45 PHOTOS: (TOP) BUENA VISTA PICTURES/PHOTOFEST; (MIDDLE) WALT DISNEY PICTURES/EVERETT; (BOTTOM) EVERETT but I wanted to use their natural lines of communication, which dogs do have. So that's where ILM came in with facial tics and a head cock here or there. But my daughter grew on the movie and was 8 when I made it. It was very important to me that she wouldn't look at the movie and say, 'I hate that, it's nothing like the cartoon.'" A factor giving them some leeway, the filmmakers have found, is that memory functions imperfectly and that things one seems to re- member with crystal clarity are in reality quite different. "Even if something has the label iconic, it's already been trans- muted in your own viewer's mind," says Kenneth Branagh, surprised by how little he had remembered upon rewatching the original ani- mated Cinderella. "I began to think, 'Well, I suspect other people may find that they have the same experience.'" In Jon Favreau's case, the original Jungle Book was a lightheart- ed musical, a far cry from the scarier, adventure adaptation he had planned with photo-real jungle creatures, which raised the bar on visual effects. "The balancing act," he says, "is to make sure that you're able to sat- isfy both the people who have a relationship with the original and to just tell a story as though it was something that nobody has ever told before. I personally had very strong memories of Jungle Book and, as an audience member, would be disappointed if we didn't reference those aspects of the memory." Without referencing the original film, he assumed as a fan he would be a good proxy for an audience, so he sat down and listed the elements he remembered as an adult: the snake, Kaa, hypnotizing Mowgli and coiling around him; Baloo singing "The Bare Necessities" and pad- dling down the river; the tiger running through the burning woods; King Louie singing "I Want to Be Like You"; and Mowgli's attitude. "I remember he wasn't re- ally a sweet kid," says Favreau. "He was more realistic, more relatable when I was little." Through the process, Favreau found the resulting story unfolding not too differently from what was im- plied in the 1967 original. Condon, for his part, felt it important to reference from the original Beauty and the Beast an iconic cam- era sweep of Belle and the Beast dancing, up to the painted putti on the ceiling. But more important was to translate that sweep into another moment that dis- tilled the thrill of the move but offered something new. So Condon designed the sweep upward to reveal the cartouches on the wall coming to life as the orchestra for the song. "When you're aware of those iconic moments," says Condon, "you either deliver in the way that is expected or you com- ment on and change in a deliberate way to surprise the audience." Branagh noticed in approaching Cinderella a different kind of characterization than he had remembered in the animated original; there had, in fact, been almost none given to the prince whatsoever. "Part of what we love about a classic story is that we continue the relationship with it in [our] own minds," he says. "What that creates is a world of viewers who have particular versions that are just their own. But I think once you've accepted that, you feel a little license to bring something different to the new version. I felt freer to make the With Glenn Close as Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatians, Stephen Herek tried to maintain a balance between being "way over the top but also keeping it rooted in reality. She had just come off Sunset Boulevard on Broadway [and] gave it a real theatrical quality. She brought a lot of Norma Desmond and we brought in the same designer to do her costumes, Anthony Powell." "It was important to me that [my daughter] wouldn't look at the movie and say 'I hate that, it's nothing like the cartoon.'" — S T E P H E N H E R E K