The Mouse That Roared: On the Front Lines with Dave Bossert

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The Mouse That Roared...


Since its inception, the Walt Disney Treasures line has wowed fans and critics alike with its commitment to preserving rare and unusual material from the voluminous Disney vaults. Perhaps no release has exemplified the heights these archival releases can hit better than Walt Disney on the Front Lines. And if there's one person to thank for this landmark DVD, it's producer Dave Bossert. Starting at the studio as an animator in the 1980's, Bossert worked on a wide range of animated projects, everything from The Little Mermaid to Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Since then, he's branched out to become a producer and director, recently producing the Oscar-nominated short film Destino, the realization of a long-abandoned collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. But it was his love of vintage animation that prompted him to take his first plunge into DVD production, spearheading the release of the ambitious On the Front Lines. Last week, Bossert took some time out to chat with us about the project and as you'll see, his enthusiasm for the medium is infectious. The conversation touched on Mickey and the gang, the future of animation at the studio, and, of course, Walt Disney's war record. Adam Jahnke (The Digital Bits): On the Front Lines seems like the kind of project the Walt Disney Treasures line was made for. Was it specifically conceived for that line or did you have the idea before it even existed? Dave Bossert: No, I originally pitched this idea for the first time about ten, eleven years ago and it didn't fly. It got shot down at that point. And I re-pitched it two months after 9/11 and it seemed to take hold. I think people internally were sort of looking at each other and saying, "Hey, we should do this. It'd be a good thing." I initially thought of this as a stand-alone DVD. It was (Buena Vista) Home Entertainment that said let's drop this into Walt Disney Treasures as one of the volumes. And when the suggestion was made, everybody agreed that yeah, that was actually a good place for it to be. Jahnke: Once you got into the project and started going through all this material, what surprised you the most about it? Bossert: I think what surprised me the most was the volume of films produced by the Disney studios during the war years. There was in excess of 200 training films that were done. Propaganda films and educational films, what we would consider to be public service announcements. And I think that was surprising, just the sheer volume. Jahnke: That kind of leads into another question. Is this a complete collection of this material or is there enough left in the vaults for an On the Front Lines, Volume Two? Bossert: I think that if the demand was there, there certainly is enough material to put together another volume. But the issue is would that second volume be as entertaining? And I would probably have to say it probably wouldn't be as entertaining as this first volume. Partly because all of the great entertainment material is on this first volume. The remaining films that we could fill up a second and possibly third volume with are all training films. And the training films completely lack any sort of entertainment quality because they were dealing with serious subjects. So I think it would be a very limited market for films on aircraft identification. And I'm not sure they would want to go through the trouble of putting out a second volume of material that is so dry. But never say never! Jahnke: I did think that the way the training films were handled on the first volume was done extremely well. The sort of montage of highlights, I guess you'd call them.
Bossert: Yeah and that was about five or six minutes and really what we wanted to do with that was give the sort of flavor and variety of the training films that were done, so people had a good smattering. And then we also included the full Four Methods of Flush Riveting. That was in its entirety. And we also included a fairly good portion of the boys' anti-tank rifle (Stop That Tank!), which was a film done for Canada. Partly because the opening portion of that training film is a Ward Kimball cartoon that most people hadn't seen. And then we included a few minutes of the actual training footage and then cut it off, because it went on for another half an hour and it was pretty dry stuff. Jahnke: Well, I do feel like I could pick up a boys' anti-tank rifle now. Bossert: There you go! (laughter) Jahnke: It seemed also that the propaganda posters and insignia designs not withstanding, Walt Disney seemed to take pains to keep Mickey Mouse off of the front lines in the short films themselves.
Bossert: Well, I think there was a conscious decision there that it was really Donald that was being put out and it was because Donald Duck's personality is that he's the fighter. And what better personality to put out there than your best fighter? So that's why Donald was featured in most of those shorts. Jahnke: One of the things that surprised me the most about this collection was how well the animation was able to convey very serious, contemporary issues. Bossert: Oh, absolutely. Without question, I think one of the interesting things that came out of this experience for Walt Disney during the war was just that. That he could use animation to convey complex and serious ideas and issues. It really added to his desire to continue doing educational films, which the studio has done. Jahnke: One of the criticisms I often hear lobbed at animation, even from the animators themselves, is the difficulty they have animating just normal human figures. And they seem to overcome that fairly well in films like Education for Death. Bossert: They did an amazing job on it. Again, you had some of the best talent at the studio during those years working on these projects. Jahnke: There are the education films but apart from those, do you have any idea why Disney didn't continue to do more serious, contemporary animated projects? Bossert: Well, I think it boils down to economics. Certainly the studio was kept afloat during the war years because of those government contracts. And when the war ended, those contracts dried up. And so Walt and the studio had to get going on getting some films done and get things kicked into gear. Jahnke: Another thing about the collection that sort of contextualized some Disney history was why after the war there was suddenly this glut of anthology films like Make Mine Music. Bossert: Again, I think they did a couple of those anthology films and then turned around and were getting pressure from RKO, their distributor, to start coming up with some more feature projects as opposed to these anthologies. But again, there were some tough years right after World War II for the studio and they had to get their act together. Jahnke: Obviously one of the major controversies surrounding this release has to do with changing sensibilities and the fact that some of this material is what would now be considered politically incorrect. It's been a major issue for some time, not just with Disney, with studios changing or censoring original materials or just withdrawing them completely. Do you think there's a real danger in making the original versions of films completely unavailable to audiences or is it just being blown out of proportion by fans? Bossert: Well, it's an interesting subject because I'm very appreciative of the support the studio showed us on this project. And none of the films we put on this piece are censored in any way. We did take some steps in protecting the viewers by baking in Leonard Maltin's introduction to the propaganda films. So if you go to watch Education for Death, you're going to hear Leonard's introduction. You can't skip over it. And we did that on purpose because we wanted to make sure those films that are considered sensitive or might have some unflattering stereotypes in them... we wanted to make sure that people who viewed them next week, ten years from now or whenever would absolutely understand the context in which those films were made. And that was very important for us to do and it wasn't something that was dictated to us. That was something that we, as the producers who were putting this project together, decided we wanted to do. I think as long as you're presenting material in the context in which it was made, then it's appropriate that you can put this material out there. And I'm hoping that this World War II project we did may open up the doors for other projects around town to get done. Because I know there's material that's being kept under wraps because people are fearful of what the reaction might be if they put it out on a DVD. Jahnke: I have to ask, since you sort of segued into it, what do you think the odds are that Disney would do something like this with Song of the South? Bossert: Well, a lot of people thought it was impossible to put the World War II material out on DVD. And there were so many stories about the studio just keeping some of these films buried in a vault and never wanting to release them. Well, we got this collection out and I would hope that the same might happen at some point in the future for Song of the South. Jahnke: Moving over to the extras and interviews, one of the things that really stood out for me was the high level of military presence on the lot. I think that's something that's very difficult for anyone who didn't live through World War II to visualize. Bossert: Yeah, it's really a huge surprise when you tell people that there was an anti-aircraft gun battery right there on the studio lot. At one point, there was a major that was living in Walt Disney's office, which had a full bathroom and whatnot in it. But yeah, there was an enormous amount of military presence on the studio lot during those years. Jahnke: Considering that Disney was such a valuable ally during World War II, are you aware if the government asked for his help selling the public on other war efforts later on down the line? Bossert: I'm not aware of anything to the extent of what was done during World War II, although during my research I did come across some training films that the studio had participated in that were done as late as the 1960's. One of them was a training film for the Army on surviving a nuclear, chemical or biological attack. And I think that was circa 1965, '66, somewhere in there. But that's as far as the extent of my research went because I was primarily looking for those films that were produced during 1941 to 1945. Jahnke: As an animator, I wanted to get your opinion on this. With Disney changing its priorities from hand-drawn to computer animation, what do you think the future is for the characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck? Bossert: Well, I think their future is as bright today as it was fifty years ago. They're endearing, great characters. I think later in the year you'll see some of the Fab Five, as we call them, in a film called Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas. And they'll be CG. They'll be three-dimensional characters. And I think the emphasis is being put from one aspect of animation onto computer generated films. But I also tell people, there's an awful lot of 2-D or hand-drawn animation being done at the company still. There's quite a number of films that are in production that are primarily hand-drawn. Jahnke: Are you going to be continuing to produce DVD's or are you going back to films? Bossert: No, I have several ideas that I've pitched to the company and I'm working on of them to try and move it along. I'm hoping to do more of them in the future. This volume has certainly turned out to be a big success. I've done some film screenings around the country with it and it's all been very positive feedback. And rightly so, I'd say. Be sure to check out my review of Walt Disney on the Front Lines. Our thanks to Mac McLean and Rick Rhoades at Buena Vista Home Entertainment for making this possible and, of course, to Dave Bossert. Adam Jahnke ajahnke@thedigitalbits.com