Fun
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Choked Up
Curious
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Disney+ has thrown open the doors to the Disney vault, giving fans unprecedented access to classic films, beloved shows, and even behind-the-scenes docs about the world of Disney.
However, there’s one such documentary that shows the ugly side of the Mouse’s most triumphant stretch. Waking Sleeping Beauty is a 2009 film that exposes the tensions, struggle, and strange alchemy of genius that resurrected Disney’s animated film slate from death in the 1980s.
Waking Sleeping Beauty was directed, produced, and narrated by Don Hahn, an animator who worked at Disney and later produced some of its biggest hits. Using Hahn’s own personal footage of life at the studio along with one-on-one interviews, we get a wildly candid look at what was happening with Disney animation in the late ’70s, ’80s, and early ’90s. Hahn paints a picture of a division whose glory days were behind them. When Michael Eisner and Frank Wells are made the new CEO and president of Disney, the struggling animation division were forced to change in major and uncomfortable ways. The animators were thrown out of their offices and forced to work offsite in open concept cubicles. Outside leadership like Jeffrey Katzenberg and Peter Schneider challenged the animators’ creative ideals, and in the case of Schneider, shook up morale. Passion projects were put under a microscope and a new “gong show” way of pitching ideas emerged.
The result of all this tumult? The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, the launch of Pixar, and The Lion King. Yep, out of this crucible of drama came some of the greatest animated masterpieces ever made. Waking Sleeping Beauty examines how the drama afflicting the Walt Disney animation studios pushed people to produce great art. It also coincided with true tragedy. Composer Howard Ashman essentially gave Disney the best parts of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and then died of AIDS before he could see his own passion project, Aladdin, come to life. Later, when Frank Wells passed away in a freak helicopter accident, the fragile balance keeping Eisner, Katzenberg, and Roy Disney in harmony exploded.
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Waking Sleeping Beauty is a must-watch for Disney fans as it makes you truly appreciate the miracle of the Disney Renaissance. Getting to know the artists, composers, and even the executives who shepherded our favorite films to the screen only makes the finished product all the more fascinating. (Not to mention it will make you gobsmacked to see all the ways in which Jeffrey Katzenberg almost ruined it all! He wanted to cut “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid! He thought Pocahontas was going to be a bigger hit than The Lion King! He thinks people want Quibi!)
Waking Sleeping Beauty is a hidden gem sitting right there for you in Disney Plus’s Disney vault.
