Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Disney's Dark Age

on other humans. And he's talking about our Search for Smock episode we're doing Star trek Fest, and of course he's talking about the Klingon character Maltz, who is kept prisoner at the end of Search for Spock and then Dude, they just don't do anything with him, we never see him again, and well, it can be theorized that he just remained on that klingon bird of prey and has

now probably drowned at the bottom of San Francisco. If you want to reach me here on the roundup or the anthology podcast or whatever crossover craziness I'm doing with Paul Waller, send it to fatherom Alone seven to one at gmail dot com and we'll do our best to answer you right here. Oh, like the one I got

from author Marie Grillo, who sent along a copy of her book Dreams with the Stars, The Celebrity Dream Book. Okay, I don't know if you're team Freud or team Jung when it comes to our subconscious I'm YOUNGI in myself, I believe in the collective unconscious and universal symbols rather

than a personal dumping ground of our mental detritus. Also, I don't blame my mother for everything, but we can all agree what we see in our dreams is its own language, and it's our brains trying to tell us something. But what do those symbols mean? I have devoured dozens of dream interpretation books starting around nineteen eighty five. Is it a coincidence that I had recently seen both a nightmare on Elm Street and a dreamscape. No, don't be stupid,

I was obsessed. But one thing those books could never begin to exp plane where the celebrity cameos. We've all had. This is no joke. My late wife Jessica persistently dreamt about Jim Carey, started before we got together, continued right through to the end.

presence may appear when you're overthinking. Well if that isn't on the fucking spot, that was Jessica all over, and it makes so much sense. I'm going to put a link to the book in the show notes. I highly encourage everyone to go check it out, and because it deserves a description that doesn't involve me saying fuck every second word. Here's a bit of the ad copy. This book draws you into the quiet inner architecture where those

un expected visitors originate. It is a dream dictionary that guides your subconscious and higher self through the shared pop culture psyche that influences us.

Enjoy everybody. When I've been hollering about for a year now, I myself am done rewatching mad Men. Because yesterday, while I was watching season three, the cables started glitching, so I backed out to test to see if it was the whole network or that particular show, and then I put on Boardwalk Empire. So now I'm on season two of Boardwalk Empire. Fuck. What a good series, and I'm sure you're going to be hearing all about it from me. What else is going on in the world of advertising?

Have you seen that Supergirl trailer? Here? It is.

Gunn think he invented the Walkman? I hate when creators imbue their young characters with the trappings of their own youth. This was really evident in every teen movie in the early adds. You're telling me that they're listening to Devo and not my chemical romance, okay, or say Blondie, that makes sense. Star Lord was from Earth in the nineteen eighties, so he owned a walkman. What the fuck would a Candoran with access to every technology in the universe want

with a shitty analog audio device from Earth's past? Not much. I'd say, all right, let's get to it. This week is weird because I was way too lazy to go out and see anything at the theater, because five Nights at Freddy's Part two has zero interest to me. I want to know what your thoughts are on Disney. We've all had experiences with Disney to some degree or another.

Remember Disney's Golden Age, snow White Cinderella Sleeping Beauty, or the Silver Age with Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book and one hundred one Dalmatians, and who can forget the Disney Renaissance with Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and Lion King. And that's all there, ever, was just

varying degrees of reigning over the entertainment landscape. Except there's a twenty year period there that seemingly no one likes to talk about. And it has a name. You read the title of this show, It's a Disney's Dark Age, and it lasted from approximately nineteen seventy two just about nineteen eighty eight. People like to categorize Disney from animation cycle to animation cycle, which accounts for the arbitrariness of

this epoch. That's The Aristocrats in nineteen seventy, which is the last film Walt Disney had any involvement in, to The Little Mermaid's release in nineteen eighty eight. I'd say that what happens in between is a series of failures and generally downward trend of the company. But if there's a switch, it doesn't really come until nineteen eighty and it ends in nineteen eighty four. Is it any coincidence that those are the years that Ron Miller was president

of the Disney Corporation. Absolutely not when I think dark age is a compliment. Miller gets his Disney association because he married Walt's daughter, Diane. He was a tight end for the Los Angeles Rams until Walt attended a game where Miller was knocked unconscious for several minutes. Afterwards, he was supposed to have said to Miller, I don't want

to raise your kids. You should come work for me, and he did, bouncing between Disney's film and television divisions as a co producer or associate producer on flicks like The Monk's Uncle and Son of Flubber. One of his first films is a full on producer was from nineteen sixty eight. It's called Never a Dull Moment. I'm sure you've never heard of it. The film is a lightweight heist comedy starring Dick Van Dyke. Happy one hundredth birthday to Dick Van Dyke, by the way, everybody, let's give

it up for that man. And Edward g Robinson. Also, by the way, have you seen the footage of Edward g Robinson? Testing for Planet of the Apes in full ape makeup. YouTube is Your Friend never a dull moment. Interestingly, enough, is based on a novel by John Gottie. That's good E Y, not the Gangster. His novel, adapted here for the family to enjoy on a Sunday afternoon, was titled The Reluctant Assassin, just one of a string of crime novels from the author of the Taking of Pelham one,

two three. Look, it's not like Dick van Dyke starts pistol whipping bank tellers or anything. This is a Disney movie, but it points to a yearning in another direction for Miller, a perhaps a more mature direction. Let's call it a seed planted in nineteen sixty six, to before the first ever performance of Disney on Ice occurred. I'm joking that's when Walt died. I mean he might be on ice. The problem there is the thawing correctly, not turning a solid into a liquid when you thaw it out anyway,

Walt's death. Walt's death left the company in a free fall creatively. I think they were already out of touch by this point, and we're going to need a new direction, whether or not Walt was breathing. The fact is, for the next decade, everyone in the company kept limping along,

trying to make what they thought Walt would. And while there were occasional gems like bed knobs and broomsticks, which I've already discussed in an earlier roundup and you can hear it if you just scroll back anyway, more often than not the output was like Million Dollar Duck and Snowball Express apologies to Dean Jones. The exceptions kept coming, though, flicks like Freaky Friday and Hot Lead and Cold Feet,

and then, in nineteen seventy nine, the ultimate example of wait, this is a Disney movie, The Black Hole. I was there, I saw it. I heard those words in the theater, and the common denominator for all these swings toward a more adult themed Disney is you guessed it, producer Ron Miller. Let me just note that the films I'm talking about here,

the Dark Age Disney pictures, are live action. There's plenty to be said for what happened to the animation department under card Walker's reign, and as such, there are docs and books and articles of plenty. Since we're talking about Ron Miller, mainly we're talking live action features. In nineteen eighty technically nineteen seventy eight, same year as The Black Hole win into production, Ron Miller became president of the company, and almost immediately the slate of films took a decidedly

modern turn. First out of the gate was Midnight Madness, the Disney version of Animal House, with several college teams competing in a scavenger hunt around the deserted streets of Los Angeles. I love this flick, notable for being the big screen debut of Michael J. Fox, and it has an entire sequence set in the perhaps Blue Ribbon Factory, and it's going to killer Arcade sequence and it's got fucking trick down vans Man. Next up was Watcher in

the Woods Why Not? A horror movie starring Betty Davis and Kyle Richards shot at the same location as The Haunting. That's the Robert Wise film, you know, the classic. Am I really going to list all of his films? Yes? I am, because so far they're all classics to me. Next was The Last Flight of Noah's Ark. Do yourself a favor. This is a movie about a degenerate gambler pilot played by Elliot Gould, who agrees to fly a plane full of animals to a remote island compound which

serves as a wildlife preserve. Along the way, they got off course and crash on an uncharted island, where they discover two Japanese soldiers who don't know the war is over. And then they have to come together to convert a B twenty nine super Fortress into a boat. You know, with everyone obsessed with IP, you guys already own this, Disney. This is so fucking high concept and it is so fucking cool. You know what, maybe don't rem just re release it. Noah's Ark was the first of two films

Elliot Gould did at Disney for Ron Miller. The other was The Devil and Max Devlin. Have you seen that one? It was written by Jimmy Sankster, who was the main screenwriter for Hammer horror films during the nineteen sixties. In fact, the script was originally intended to be done back in England with Vincent Price in the lead. It's the story of a corrupt businessman who makes a deal with the Devil as he's dying and definitely going to Hell to return to Earth and shepherd three souls to the dark

side in exchange for prolonged life. M I see seial soon, k E why why?

more like The Rocketeer, if the Rocketeer had zero charm. Nevertheless, the villain is played by Oliver Reed, which is a weird thing to reveal before saying I recommend seeing this with a child. It is a very silly film. You're only really gonna dig it if you're nine years old. All right, We've only got a few left before Miller gets the old heave ho Night Crossing. It's kind of a family movie, I suppose about two East German families attempting to sneak over into the West by using a

hot air balloon. It's got families and adventure and the threat of the iron curtains slamming down on that balloon. It may be at this point that the shareholders are starting to look a little ass skance at our man Miller. But that's just one of a trio of nineteen eighty two disappointments. There was also Tex, the least interesting se Hinton novel gets adapted because there was an SI frenzy

thanks to Coppola making the out and then Rumblefish. I guess that makes Matt Dillon the se Hinton actor, having been in three of the four outsiders, Rumblefish and Tex. Sorry, Emilio, you should have taken a small part in Rumblefish. He would have killed it in the Vincent Spano role. Wow, now that I think of it, that would have made that movie a thousand times better. That is a great film, actually,

and we'll need to cover it here sometime anyway. Tex is the uplifting tale of two brothers desperate to keep the family farm after their mother passes away. Woo, give me that popcorn. I don't think I have to say too much about tron Do I visionary classic that was under Miller's regime. At the Mousehouse. I'm not saying he

himself was a visionary. That's Steve Lisberger. But the ability to say yes when everyone in the universe says no, while more often than not, can be disastrous, Sometimes it results in a creation we're still trying to get a handle on. As cool and interesting and exciting as the follow up films to Tron have been, has there been a single moment in either where you thought, what the fuck am I watching? And I mean that question in the greatest way possible, The answer is now, which leaves

his final contribution. I'm recommending each of the films I've mentioned, but if there's one one that I think actually showed the potential of Disney as a family studio, still making live action features with a level of maturity commensurate with contemporary times and values, while still showing and ultimately I hesitate to use the word wholesome, look at the natural world.

It's never cry wolf? What have my provision that bigs the hell of it?

The screenplay was written by Future Batman eighty nine scribe Sam Ham, with passes by La Confidentials Curtis Hansen, and tells the tale of Tyler played by Charles Martin Smith over the course of six months in the Canadian Arctic, where he battles the elements and hunger and isolation with the sporadic help of two Innick natives played by two Innock non actors, and eventually a trio of wolves then

accept Tyler into the pack. This might not sound scintillating, but let me tell you This movie is exactly what you need right now. Made Mike Carol Ballard, who I'm sure you heard in the trailer, was the director of The Black Stallion, another fucking magnificent, unblinking nature film, but before that he had spent twenty or so years making nature documentaries. They took two years to make Never Cry Wolf, and it shows Ballard is a known perfectionist, which when

you add nature, you've got an investment in time. But what he gets is just breathtaking. And it operates as an adventure film, as a nature documentary, as a polemic about modern man, as a portraiture of the Arctic at its most beautiful. There is a sequence laid in the film where Tyler aids the pack in a running down a herd of caribou. This sequence took a month to film, a month of sometimes twenty hour days. It is a harrowing sequence that absolutely boggles the mind with how they

did it, because they fucking did it. More to the point, Jonal Smartin Smith did it. I hope you recognize the name. A true journeyman character actor. Got a film, he's in TV series, in a play he's in Go Off to the Wilderness for two years where for months at a time he's the only actor on set. He's in. He's had a career for over fifty years now. He was Terry the Toad in American Graffiti and More American Graffiti for that matter. He played bass for Buddy Holly and

The Buddy Holly Story. He directed the Fucking Horror classic Trick or Treat. That's Sam Kerr Baby, not that baby Sam. And most importantly to me, he was Agent Oscar Wallace in Brian de Palma's The Untouchables. You remember Wallace killed ignominiously and hung in an elevator. Wallace who actually provided the means to convict Capone. Okay, no secret, My last name is Wallace. Back when I was a tour guide at the Haunted Museum, one afternoon I was delivering a

speech in the ed Geen Room. This room holds a giant cast iron pot. Some called it a cauldron, which ed Geen himself used to boil flesh from bone. The room itself is tricked out like a barn. It's not universal quality, but it does the job, and the object on display does have a certain gravity given its history.

My tour group is in a circle around the cauldron, and I'm turning, making eye contact with everyone as I detail the horrible aspects of Edgean's life, and suddenly I'm eye to I with Agent Wallace, Charles Martin Smith, who's hanging on what I'm saying. I know I finished that speech, but I was no longer present for it. A little later on the tour, there's a celebrity memorabilia section. It's the least gruesome room in the museum, and it's where the least or occurs. You just let the guests take

their time and inspect the various displays. And I got to talk to him, and I told him that it might be a trivial thing that his character was named Wallace, but it was a huge deal to fourteen year old me, who was feeling particularly adrift at that age. But then I brought up how magnificent Never cry Wolf was, and it was like Charles Martin Smith's birthday forty years later, and you could see Caribou in his eyes. He was

very sweet. He talked to me way longer than he needed to, and even found me at the end so he could get a picture together. I will try and post it in the show notes. I don't know, not really sure how to do that, but I will never cry. Wolf was the final nail in Ron Miller's coffin as far as feature films go. The other nail was the Black Cauldron, which maybe we should talk about in a future episode. But the fact is, no matter how well or not Miller was doing, he was from a different age,

too shaped by Walt. To bring the company properly into the eighties. For that, you needed the TV guys who resuscitated Paramount. Thus it begins the Eisner era, and the Magic Kingdom just keeps on a growin. Don't now. I'm not saying Disney hasn't done important work or interesting work in the following three decades. Hell, if they didn't make it,

they'll just buy it eventually. But any level of daring you see him coming from the company, any attempt to revitalize or rejuvenate for a new age, started back with Ron Miller. They call it the Dark Age. I agree, like mister Dark the villain of another adaptation that found its way onto the screen under Miller's tenure, Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, But that is another podcast.

Thank you everyone for joining us once again Friday is Star Trek fest Star Trek for the Voyage Home Save the Whales. Damn it. I hope you dig that one HB and I had a blast recording it. If you want to hear it now, head over to patreon dot com slash Father Malone. Subscribers get everything early, very early, if I can help it. In fact, if you sign up for the free tier right now, I have made free a few of the episodes that you cannot get in the regular podcast feeds, So maybe give it a

free trial. A for Ripley Gene and from me, Father Malone, and from Agent Wallace, and from the Wolves, and from Ron Miller. Long may he reign. Here is Charles Martin Smith giving another fucking great performance in John Carpenter's Starman.