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Posted: |
Nov 12, 2020 - 2:59 AM
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By: |
impetigo
(Member)
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How can you have 74 minutes of music for a 69 minute movie?
Because ten minutes of the film was excised at Steven Spielberg's request due to it being considered "too frightening" for little kids. What I wouldn't give to see that footage (clips of which were featured in the trailer).
I was a big Don Bluth fan in the 80s as a kid, mostly from American Tail and this movie, and I remember reading articles about how much crap Bluth had to endure with no creative control because his studio was financially struggling (heck, even Disney was until Little Mermaid) and he needed to yield a lot of control to the bigger studios/companies to produce and release his movies. This was one unfortunate result of that, and why this movie is less than an hour and 10 minutes. Considering how much time and effort goes into a minute of animation (don't know how far in the process they got though, but likely past the storyboards and rough animation), it must have killed him to have Spielberg swoop in and cut so much out of his film, which turned out to be a classic. And then have Universal release 10+ sequels over the years to diminish what ideally would have been his company's IP... sigh.
Anyway, I also love this soundtrack and always have. Someone said it makes them ugly cry and this one definitely brings some mistiness to my eyes when I listen to it, especially the end credits and the Diana Ross song. And even more so now after having learned not long ago that Judith Barsi ("Ducky") was killed, along with her mother, by her father before the release of All Dogs Go to Heaven a year or two later.
Speaking of ADGOH, no doubt that movie would have fared better if James Horner had scored it, although I saw part of it for the first time last year when it was on Amazon Prime and it was a bizarre movie, so maybe nothing could have saved it.
Finally, I noticed that The Secret of NIMH Intrada release is on Amazon, sold by Intrada (but out of stock on the intrada website), so good days as I'm getting back to collecting after a couple decades mostly on haitus, and needing to recollect a bunch of discs I accidentally donated to Goodwill in a (black) CD rack...
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Posted: |
Nov 14, 2020 - 3:38 PM
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By: |
EricHG30
(Member)
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Spielberg didn't understand animation, the time to produce it or the costs. Bluth complained when Spielberg nonchalantly requested a one minute sequence be reanimated. Bluth told him that would take a month and cost an extra million dollars. (I'm paraphrasing I don't remember the exact details.) It didnt help Spielberg was busy filming his own movie at the time so approvals came very slowly over long distance. We will never see the "uncut" version of the film as much of it never got past pencil animation stage.
Spielberg has always been very odd about animation, but particularly back then. He loved and admired the classic Disney features and so wanted classically animated films to be part of his rising, well, empire at Amblin. And he wanted to try to go back to the famous pre-war first five Disney films in terms of how luxurious they looked, some serious elements, appeal to all ages, etc (which is why he was so won over when he saw Secret of NIMH which was aiming for just that). And yet, he really didn't understand it. I believe he didn't get the need for storyboards and that process for just one example. Also, he seemed very timid about not making his films *too* scary (when really the scenes he cut from the planned Land Before Time, for example, are nothing compared to, say, parts of Pinocchio). I think if you look at the post Bluth Amblin films you particularly get a sense of this--it's true that Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (as we'd increasingly see after NIMH) always had problems with story (check out their treatment for a planned Beauty and the Beast which thankfully never got far once Disney announced theirs). But Spielberg, who with his live action movies is known for a strong story sense, never seemed to get that for animation. (Side note, I do wish Amblin had gone on with their animated CATS musical which had some great concept work and they spent a lot of money on pre-work. Would have made so much more sense than the movie we got.) So on one hand he wanted to make these animated films that could stand aside the Disney classics--and yet contrarily he was constantly scared about them being too scary for small kids, etc.
I feel mixed on the Dreamworks films (I have a lot of affection for Prince of Egypt though and actually really like Sinbad which was a huge bomb and shut down their traditional animation department) but its success there is probably due more to Katzenberg, who had some sense of how to make a successful animated film, was so involved.
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Posted: |
Nov 14, 2020 - 3:43 PM
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By: |
EricHG30
(Member)
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Finally, I noticed that The Secret of NIMH Intrada release is on Amazon, sold by Intrada (but out of stock on the intrada website), so good days as I'm getting back to collecting after a couple decades mostly on haitus, and needing to recollect a bunch of discs I accidentally donated to Goodwill in a (black) CD rack...
NIMH is my fave Goldsmith score, and that's a brilliant release (funny enough, I just upgraded to the Intrada release four or so months back--at that time you couldn't find it at a decent price anywhere on Amazon or their marketplace but Intrada DID have it in stock on their site--now you say the reverse is true). If Land Before Time cribs a fair bit from Prokofiev and his ballet music, I hear a lot of that other great 20th century ballet composer, Stravinsky, in NIMH. (But that's not a bad thing for me and seems fitting--Goldsmith has said that writing an animated film score is as close to writing a ballet score that you can get in film...).
NIMH/Tail/Time are, to me the greatest animated film scores of the 80s (at least until Mermaid kicked off the Menken phase)--well, outside Hisaishi's work in Japan, anyway. (OK and outside a sentimental fave of mine--Jimmy Webb's songs AND vastly underrated score for The Last Unicorn which I'd kill to get a more complete release of...)
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Posted: |
Nov 14, 2020 - 4:24 PM
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By: |
Solium
(Member)
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Spielberg didn't understand animation, the time to produce it or the costs. Bluth complained when Spielberg nonchalantly requested a one minute sequence be reanimated. Bluth told him that would take a month and cost an extra million dollars. (I'm paraphrasing I don't remember the exact details.) It didnt help Spielberg was busy filming his own movie at the time so approvals came very slowly over long distance. We will never see the "uncut" version of the film as much of it never got past pencil animation stage.
Spielberg has always been very odd about animation, but particularly back then. He loved and admired the classic Disney features and so wanted classically animated films to be part of his rising, well, empire at Amblin. And he wanted to try to go back to the famous pre-war first five Disney films in terms of how luxurious they looked, some serious elements, appeal to all ages, etc (which is why he was so won over when he saw Secret of NIMH which was aiming for just that). And yet, he really didn't understand it. I believe he didn't get the need for storyboards and that process for just one example. Also, he seemed very timid about not making his films *too* scary (when really the scenes he cut from the planned Land Before Time, for example, are nothing compared to, say, parts of Pinocchio). I think if you look at the post Bluth Amblin films you particularly get a sense of this--it's true that Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (as we'd increasingly see after NIMH) always had problems with story (check out their treatment for a planned Beauty and the Beast which thankfully never got far once Disney announced theirs). But Spielberg, who with his live action movies is known for a strong story sense, never seemed to get that for animation. (Side note, I do wish Amblin had gone on with their animated CATS musical which had some great concept work and they spent a lot of money on pre-work. Would have made so much more sense than the movie we got.) So on one hand he wanted to make these animated films that could stand aside the Disney classics--and yet contrarily he was constantly scared about them being too scary for small kids, etc.
I feel mixed on the Dreamworks films (I have a lot of affection for Prince of Egypt though and actually really like Sinbad which was a huge bomb and shut down their traditional animation department) but its success there is probably due more to Katzenberg, who had some sense of how to make a successful animated film, was so involved.
Spielberg was having his first child during the time of An American Tail and its believed he was very sensitive of this and despite loving the darker aspects of the Disney films as a child himself wanted An American Tail and Land Before Time to be very kid friendly. Thus he kept asking Bluth to tone down the scary bits. So basically he was making the films for his child.
Though Bluth fought tooth and nail to keep the films intense moments intact he would later unfortunately drink the cool-aid. As he had parents groups and physiologists dictate the tone of his later films which he had more control over.
BTW, years later Gary Goldman said the cuts made to "Land Before Time" were the right decision in making the film a box office success.
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