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The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released) — Page 18

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I'm pretty sure Eddie Bowers has the Froot Loops disc, I've asked him.


I realize it's REALLY unlikely at this point, but I have to know. It is possible that someone did a 5.1 for a planned earlier release which never happened, and that wound up on the Froot Loops disc. Unlikely, but it's not impossible.
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It never ceases to amaze me how far this project's come. I'll probably post about it on a few more forums I frequent. I got a few inquires on on anime board.

Still odd to find such a good copy on eMule. I can't get anything off eMule. Maybe I'll try.


Made for IE Forum's Episode III theme month - May 2005.

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Emule's a bitch. I don't use it personally. It had to be an animator from the film who put that up there. =) Had to be.

I've heard from another source that the Froot Loops DVD had a 2.0 sound mix. =(



OKAY AUSTRALIAN PEEPS --

I half-jokingly told Jerry Verschoor that our Australian posters should break into his house and steal his Thief art. Jerry half-jokingly replied as follows:

"hahahahahahahahahahahaha, my stuff is in the country side of western australia, far from the city of Perth. if your friends are in Sydney, ... they can go right ahead."



So, basically, someone should put on their Thief outfit and steal the golden drawings from the Verschoor palace ....



It's probably hours and hours from anywhere anyone is, but let me know if it isn't.



Two seconds on google turned up the actual address and phone number. I love the internet for stalking.

214 Mitchell rd
Alexandria, NSW 2015
Australia
Phone: +(02) 9517 2777
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I talked to Roy Naisbitt on the phone today for two hours. Very nice, funny man. He cleared up a lot of my little questions about things. He mostly told stories about Dick - lot of respect, he has.

He's planning to send me some video - a bad quality VHS tape of a rare Clapperboard special all about Dick, and some Williams studio commercials.


I recorded over an hour of the conversation with Roy - not all of it, there was a lot of great stuff early on which made me realize that I should be recording it.

Talking to Andreas Wessel-therhorn. Seems like I could get him in for an interview.

I think I'll do a documentary about The Thief. I mean, why not?



The following will make more sense to those who've read the script.


Andreas Wessel-therhorn writes:

as far the the shah goes who wanted to finance the movie, I dont think it was a matter of profit sharing. the way Dick told it was, that he wanted too much of his ideology seen reflected in the movie and dick didnt want to go there. I have a folder of artwork, mostly model sheets, copies of layouts, a bit of animation, sketches..  havent opened it in years. you made me curious to take it out again and see what i have. i remember when dick screened some emery Hawkins footage of the mad witch for us which was absolutely hysterical. I worked a lot on Zig zags henchmen, which unfortunately were not much more than moving background with the promise that they would have a huge payoff in the end, as Goblet would try to take over from Zig Zag. There was a some funny voice over work by Kenneth Williams that was never used.I remember the day that John Patrich Shanley came in for a rewrite.. that never panned out. Or when George Martin came in for the music. i still always prefer the scratch version of the opening with the Vaughn Williams piece. Very dramatic.
There was a scene that.. hmm  not sure if its still in the movie. Two rendered roses circling... i think it was the Princess arranging flowers. It took ages to animate, with all the perfectionism that all thorns and petals needed to follow thru precisely... then it went into rendering. weeks of painstaking work. then they decided to have a song there, with lyrics about moons and stars.. and so Dick had the whole scene re rendered with stars added on the petals. i'm amazed our render artist, an irish lady called dee, didnt commit harakiri. ah.. good times. The discipline and precision that I learned on the movie though, has helped me thru my entire career.
Would be fun to chat about the thief. i just have to censor myself a bit. alex is a good friend and i dont want to say anything that he may find insulting to his dad...though that certainly would not be my intention. but, as his son, he understandably has a different take. and the thing with recollections is, that they vary wildly from person to person. i always thought that the story of the thief, in all its aspects, would make a fascinating documentary
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Things I learned from talking to Roy Naisbitt.

This material I didn't record so I'm writing it down from memory now, as best I can.

The Nasrudin film shut down because there were crooked dealings going on behind the scenes. An article at Eddie Bowers' site blames Idries Shah's sister for the breakdown - she taking credit for some of the stories that she helped translate, and claiming she owned them outright and would sue. But Naisbitt blames Omar Shah, Idries' brother. A pleasant but shady character on the business end, who was taking advantage of things.

Anyway, it broke down.

Naisbitt doesn't know much about the voice recordings, when those took place. The Bowers article says 1967-1968, Naisbitt thinks it must have been much later, like in the 80s, since the story didn't take obvious shape until then, except in Dick's head. Probably a combination of both. In I Drew Roger Rabbit Sir Anthony Quayle discusses coming in over and over again over the years.

Originally there were two princesses, sisters, Meemee and Yumyum. Nasrudin saw a horrible ogre and jumped over the wall to save - well, probably princess Meemee seemed to be in peril. But Meemee says, "No, I love that horrible creature!"

Later, everyone goes to the old witch to try and change the ogre back into Prince Bubba.

Witch lines from the Thief Who Never Gave Up documentary:
"My child, it is obvious to me that he is under the influence of the double whammy."
"Mystic fumes, show me the way! Show me how this curse to break!"


That IS Princess Meemee you see in the bath with Yumyum. From behind, they changed it to look like a mirror was there instead. Roy mentioned the bath scene before I said anything. =) He said a lot of things right as I was about to ask about them ...


How much art still survives?

Roy said - You'll have to ask Fred Calvert. Which was not the answer I wanted to hear. =( It seems that Calvert got it all. And his Korean animators threw out everything they did.

So ...


Not good news.


Roy is thanked by Richard in The Animator's Survival Kit for having saved a lot of things that Richard would have thrown out. This doesn't apply much to The Thief though - not much was left. Roy notes that Richard's instinct was to throw everything out. There was a huge amount of material from all the commercials, and the huge bunker for The Thief that you see in I Drew Roger Rabbit - so much material. Richard wanted to throw it all away, and Roy wanted to save it.

Roy wound up taking everything he could, having his wife go through it (He says she became quite the expert on animation in the process, though of course she isn't) .... they threw out the less interesting stuff and saved the best.

Eventually, Richard took it all back - and was really grateful that Roy had saved it. Roy doesn't have much of any of it now. "That's all right," he says.


On Aladdin - Roy notes that Eric Goldberg did very little on The Thief, mostly working on commercials. Eric was quite brilliant. He remembers being at a talk where one of the main animators on Aladdin - I can't remember now who but I think I recorded this part anyway - was talking about why they designed Jafar the way they did, a curly beard blah blah blah to signify he's evil and of course he was just talking about the exact design elements of Zigzag. And Roy just throws up his hands.



Roy has another reason for the film shutting down. Warners wanted a different film than Richard was making. They wanted songs. They said they loved what Richard was doing, but in the wake of Little Mermaid et al. they weren't really liking it as much as they said they were .... didn't feel it was marketable enough. Of course it wasn't progressing. Richard was asked to add songs - hence the song about the moons and stars that appears in the script, but not in the known film.



Roy had worked on 2001, and was impressed that Richard did the same thing Stanley Kubrick did, using existing and classical music to fit his scenes. They'd had a lot of composers in, including George Martin, and it was felt that if one composer did the music it might all sound the same ... Roy feels that a lot of film scores, it reassures you, you feel with the music that nothing bad can happen to the characters. It takes the edge off. Richard just used music to suit his scenes rather than another way round. He remembers Robert Folk coming in on the Calvert version, and his work was okay, but not the same.

Roy liked Calvert, thought he was a nice guy, and was amazed at the horrible things he was doing to the film. Richard was long gone at that time, and Roy was still there, trying to fight for the film - He was always talking to Calvert, quite desperately - but it was often in the pub, and after a few drinks he wouldn't fight so hard. It was a lost cause - he notes that Calvert was really working under a committee, who were making a lot of the decisions. He was annoyed that so much great animation was chucked out - he remembers when they cut The Thief stealing Yumyum's shoes, saying it didn't advance the story. He asked, have you see the version where the credits run over animation of The Thief? That's guilt, that's a guilt inclusion. Calvert felt bad for cutting so much out.

Roy says that the film was a little long and that Richard, if he'd finished it, would have trimmed a few things, tightened it. Perhaps. The Thief pole vaulting, the war machine scene, those go on a bit. That's because over the years when they were working on commercials Richard would always have people doing little vignettes with The Thief, and they'd tend to be similar and a little bit repetitive, but nice anyway, and they'd wind up in the film.




I'll post the rest of the conversation shortly.





Andreas Wessel-therhorn writes:

roy was a great guy. i had a desk closest to his and he was the man with the most patience I have ever seen. He had to take a lot of crap from dick and he handled himself always as a gnetleman.. and boy can he put away those pints..






Oh, and Eddie Bowers' site is now linked at:

http://thiefandthecobbler.com

Isn't that nice? Same as it was, and the latest news bulletin mentions my restoration. My latest t-shirt designs etc are also there.

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Looks like Raggedy Ann & Andy has a very similar staircase scene. It even ends with a "moving camera" horizontal pan into another room. Almost like it was a test for what appears in "Thief"
"I was a perfect idiot to listen to you!"
"Listen here, there ain't nothing in this world that's perfect!"

- from The Bank Dick
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I'd have to look up where Alexandria is exactly, but I live in NSW. I might be able to go and steal all of his stuff.

To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com

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Just a crazy ass thought:

After the editing on the final cut is finished, do you intend to mail it to the Thief animators that you're in contact with? Because it'd be awesome if you could set up an appointment where they watch it at home, while they're on the phone, and they do a running commentary on it that you record over the phone, just as you recorded the conversation that you had with Naisbitt. If you pulled that off, even with just Naisbitt, I think people's heads would explode.

Then after you had the commentary or commentaries, you could create a final disc with the finished cut, along with the alternate audio tracks. It would kick ass.
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Tweaker - It's something I've been thinking about. We'll see!
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When you say that all art sent to Korea was lost... did Calvert only send what had to be finished (pencil animation, storyboards, layouts)?

Surely he didn't send stuff out that was already photographed?
"I was a perfect idiot to listen to you!"
"Listen here, there ain't nothing in this world that's perfect!"

- from The Bank Dick
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Who knows? It becomes very important to talk to Fred Calvert at this point.


It would be fascinating to interview him for the documentary too.




I've found a white pages listing in Irvine that matches an address that was supposed to be "the" Fred Calvert's.

The listing is for one Fred Calvert - the only one in California.



Close now ...




STANCH WRITES:
Thanks for the great update. Here's what I know from
various sources:

Calvert has no idea what happend to the art. It was
packed and sent to them, and on completion went into
the hands of the completion bond trustees (not sure if
that's before or after the bankruptcy). Chances are
it's in exsistance somewhere.. Calvert told Mike Dobbs
he had no idea what happend to it all). Maybe Miramax
has it?


MY REPLY:
That's really sad though, because Naisbitt says Dick doesn't have it and says to ask Calvert, and Calvert thinks the same.

And The Completion Bond company went under, so Miramax is the best bet. But their edit didn't suggest that they bought anything other than the Princess cut. There's only a couple of shots in there which aren't in Princess.

It had to go SOMEWHERE. The remains ... somewhere ... Miramax maybe ....
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Spoke to Alex Williams for 30min. Recorded pretty much all of it.

Found out some very interesting things. Alex is a nice guy. He has a British accent, which surprised me since his father didn't - but growing up in London I can see how that would happen.


He confirms that Disney bought everything - the negatives, the artwork, the whole film. Alex himself doesn't have much, but he does have the original drawings for King Nod and Zigzag talking - "Death and destruction, Zigzag!" The well-known shot seen in the documentaries.

As of 2001, the drawings were stored in a bunker in Burbank. He went there personally to check it out.


He confirms that Dick won't talk about the film because it "destroyed his life."


Alex has no love for Fred Calvert, and has never met him. He would have nothing good to say to him.


He was trying to get Disney to release a proper DVD of The Thief as early as 1993. Howard Green, publicity person at Disney and "nice guy" was trying to make it happen over the years, as was Roy Disney. It's never happened, and Alex feels it's never going to happen.


He confirms the rumors that Dick has been working for some years now on a new feature film - working on it basically alone, with a tiny staff. Neither he nor Alex will discuss the exact details of the film for Obvious Personal Reasons. That makes me glad though.
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Does this mean that stuff wasn't junked after all?
"I was a perfect idiot to listen to you!"
"Listen here, there ain't nothing in this world that's perfect!"

- from The Bank Dick
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Clearly a significant amount of material was junked, but it seems that a lot of important stuff was kept - notably a lot of 35mm film. It sounds like a LOT was kept, whatever had value to keep.
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A documentary actuaklly sounds awesome


Sort of like INSIDE THE MAGIC OF THE THIEF: A FILM TWENTY FIVE YEARS IN THE MAKING


What are your ideas behind it?

Would it discuss the whole project from the beginning to the restoration?

What re your ideas... Spill the beans?

And please put in some of the conversation with Roy and Alex and others if you have the chance..

Remember, Highlander, you’ve both still got your full measure of life. Use it well, and your future will be glorious.

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The documentary, if I do it, will be called The Animator Who Never Gave Up. =)


It would tell a long strange story spanning over 50 years ....
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Damn! Dude you gotta do this!! If not now sometime.... His complete story must be told.

In some ways it is sort of magical in what you did with the Thief as it stands. MAGICAL. I have watched your rough cut several times and I am still in awe.


Remember, Highlander, you’ve both still got your full measure of life. Use it well, and your future will be glorious.

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I spoke to Fred Calvert tonight for several seconds.




He said he couldn't talk about it. He was in a bad place right now, his wife just died.




He said, maybe some other time.





=(










The audio on the Alex Williams phone conversation is bad - I had made the mistake of leaving the camera plugged in, which caused electrical interference. You can understand every word that's being said, but it's covered by a LOUD annoying buzzing sound - meaning it's good for transcribing, but couldn't be released as audio for people to just enjoy listening to.
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So, I got two phone numbers from Alex Williams, which were both contacts at Disney.


I called Roy Disney's OLD number, from before he was out of Disney .... I got an answering machine, which is a good sign. I'll call back tomorrow and see who's at that number now, and if they know where Roy is.

I called Howard Green, a Disney publicist who worked on trying to get a proper DVD release of The Thief back in the late 90s. I was shocked to hear an answering machine message starring Roger Rabbit - Charles Fleischer! I left a message and will try again.
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So has this gotten surreal for you yet? I mean, you're talking to all of these folks that worked on the project, Williams' son, now you're calling ROY DISNEY, for christ's sake. This is insane. And it's cool to hear that Green (the "nice guy", as you put it) actually has Roger Rabbit, of all things, on his answering machine. Surely, that has to be a good omen, right?

But I am very, very sorry to hear about Calvert's loss. That's a real shame. Bad luck on both sides of things...

But does it make you nervous, thinking of calling these folks up at Disney and telling them, "Hey, yeah, I'm working on a bootleg restoration of a film you guys own the rights to, hope you don't mind.."? But, I would thingat this point, the good guys would just be relieved to see some publicity coming to this film, and just how beautiful the original version was. If this lights the fire under enough asses in the public, then there's money to be made...

Still, Roy Disney of all people. The closest living relative of THE Disney. Curiouser and curiouser.

And as far as the audio, screw it. Run some clean up on it and release it. It's the only thing you got to work with, unless you can arrange for commentaries. In the meantime, could you at least encode it to MP3 and release it? With some clean up, I'm sure it'd be fine for some casual listening.
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Yes, this is all pretty strange.

When it came time to hang up with Roy Naisbitt, I recall developing a stutter I didn't know I had before.



This has become an obsession as usual.




Aaron Davis has looked at his copy of the Froot Loops disc, and although he's not super tech-savvy PowerDVD reads it as having 6 sound channels, 2 audio streams.


Sounds like a 5.1 mix to me.

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If it does turn out to be a 5.1 mix... I mean, to have the promo DVD feature a 5.1 mix and the official/re-release DVDs only have 2.0 sound. Strange. I know it's the Miramax shitty cut, but if it received better treatment on the side of a cereal box than the official release then that just boggles my mind.

To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com

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As long as you don't mention anything about selling, you could simply point out all the research and work you've done. I know it's tricky stuff, but I really think Roy Disney would understand why the workprint has been bootlegged.
"I was a perfect idiot to listen to you!"
"Listen here, there ain't nothing in this world that's perfect!"

- from The Bank Dick
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Originally posted by: ocpmovieWhen it came time to hang up with Roy Naisbitt, I recall developing a stutter I didn't know I had before.

Gettin' the fanboy heebie jeebies.

This has become an obsession as usual.

This has become my obsession, by proxy. It reminds me a lot of something I was reading about a while ago, and which I have since been fascinated by. A few years ago, thousand year old copies of unknown writings by Archimedes (one of the great early mathematicians) surfaced after having been lost since WWI, and which had been lost for several centuries. The problem was that the manuscript, which had been written on a hundred or so pages of hide and bound in book form, had been unbound, the pages cut in half, scraped clean, and prayers had been written over the nearly destroyed original text (this was the dark ages).

Well now, using x-rays, high-resolution digital photography, and image editing programs, the text is being restored and translated. And it's damn interesting stuff. Turns out this guy essentially used Calculus to do his calculations. The tricky part in this that Archimedes lived around 250 BC, 1900 years or so before Newton and Leibniz invented Calculus. Very, very interesting stuff their turning up.

Anyways, the actual restoration process of this film is really interesting--how all these workprints have been surfacing, and folks that worked on it have been turning up and telling the story of what happened. Just really, really interesting.

Aaron Davis has looked at his copy of the Froot Loops disc, and although he's not super tech-savvy PowerDVD reads it as having 6 sound channels, 2 audio streams.
Sounds like a 5.1 mix to me.


Dude?

That's insane. So now there are contradicting reports on the disc. Interesting. Sounds like you're gonna have another DVD arriving in your mailbox before too long (hopefully).

So where is this project now, anyways? Is it currently on hold, waiting for the restoration of the new workprint (and this possible 5.1 audio mix)? Is there any other material headed your way that you haven't been telling us about? Jesus, this is so god damn weird.

I know it's tricky stuff, but I really think Roy Disney would understand why the workprint has been bootlegged.


If they're as intelligent as I think and hope they are, I would imagine that Disney and Green would understand the necessity of an unofficial release like this. This might be the only way of garnering enough interest in this film to make an official restoration possible.

And damn it, hearing about the rough cut is driving me insane. I know it's going to be a while before the final cut is finished (probably sometime after Duke Nukem Forever is released), and I'm itching to just say screw it and pay the 10 bucks to get the rough cut, but I'm so freagin' broke. Damn it.
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I might be wrong, but I pick up the Miramax R1 DVD at a store just to glance at the specs (hey, maybe it's 16x9) and I put it down after it said fullscreen. However, I do think it has only 3.0 stereo. The credits list only Dolby SR Spectral, which means a 5.1 mix would be a later creation. However, if it's really discrete 3.0, it might help.

I can't get over how awful the drawing of Zig-Zag is... no hat, you see his arms and looks oiled down. Blech.


And I'll be first in line to see whatever film Williams is working on now. Maybe he'll have the chance to get a film out before someone else tries to copycat.
"I was a perfect idiot to listen to you!"
"Listen here, there ain't nothing in this world that's perfect!"

- from The Bank Dick