So, Amid Amini, who does the website Cartoonbrew.com with Jerry Beck (!), thought it might be a good idea to feature an interview about The Recobbled Cut at that site. Which is flattering and cool. It might help people find out about the project who wouldn't otherwise hear about it ... hopefully including more artists who worked on it. We'll see.
He sent me a few questions to answer via email. I hate interviews which sound "typed" so I just kind of replied the way I'd reply if I were talking out loud. No real edits to my brain vomit. I babbled on for a while, and it's quite long, and if you're reading this thread this is nothing you don't already know, but here's what I sent. Which will probably be shortened for the site. =D
Cartoon Brew talks to Garrett Gilchrist
(or, Garrett Gilchrist talks and talks at Cartoon Brew, as usual)
> What is it specifically about THE THIEF AND THE
> COBBLER that has inspired you to invest so much of
> your time and money to restore this film?
Lot of time, lot of money, yeah. Heh. When I was seven years old, I read an article in Comics Scene magazine - I still have the magazine - which shows absolutely no artwork from The Thief - Richard wouldn't let them - but interviews him about it ... and he says he's trying to revolutionize animation; he's trying to create the greatest animated motion picture ever made. That he's been working for 23 years on this one film, The Thief and the Cobbler. Now at the time I was sleeping on Roger Rabbit bedsheets, I had Roger Rabbit bendies, a Jessica PVC, so if the man who animated Roger Rabbit says that, you better believe I was interested.
Richard just had a way of talking about this film - he made it seem uniquely magical. He exaggerated like P.T. Barnum, but you can tell he really believed in this project, that he wanted to make the best animated movie he possibly could, no matter how long it took. I've heard the same thing from a lot of other people, how when they were kids they read about this legendary unfinished movie that this guy was spending 10, 20, 25 years on .... how it was going to be a masterpiece. Even the people who worked on the movie, they worked on it because they were in love with the idea of it.
I was about 14 when I actually saw a trailer for Arabian Knight in the theater, and I thought it looked awful. I thought, "someone's ripped off Aladdin." But it stuck in my mind that this was from the animator of Roger Rabbit ... long-lost memories came unstuck ... hang on, somehow this is the same masterpiece he was talking about when I was a kid. Something's gone horribly wrong here. It wasn't until I was in high school that I read the actual story of how the movie was destroyed, never finished as intended.
Richard Williams spent 26 years working on this film, but it wasn't until after Roger Rabbit that he was actually able to get funding to make it properly, because now he'd won three Oscars and animated the first modern animated blockbuster, so he had clout again. Richard always wanted The Thief to become a blockbuster and kick-start a new modern golden age of animation, but Roger Rabbit wound up doing that instead ... which is nice. He started the film afresh with a team of mostly young animators that he could teach as he worked, but now, after 22 years he had to meet some sort of deadline. Warners needed him to deliver the film on time and on budget ... and he'd gotten so used to working on it slowly over time that he couldn't do it. He got close - he only had 15 minutes left to go - but when Warners saw the film, they didn't like what they saw. It was too arty, too old-fashioned.
Disney was making leaps and bounds in the 90s - this was the era of Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin ... and Dick's film, so long in production, seemed old-fashioned by comparison. I've heard that Dick hated The Little Mermaid, because it was driven by dialogue rather than visuals. Dick wanted to make a film like Fantasia, like the classic Disney cartoons, but now there was a new style at Disney. Dick never cared about dialogue, he cared about the visuals, creating a whole world onscreen. The funny thing is that Dick influenced that - over the years so many people had trained under Dick and they were mostly working at Disney now. Eric Goldberg, Andreas Deja, Dick Purdum, a few thousand others.
And Disney was making this film called Aladdin - which is, I mean, Aladdin is an excellent film, but it's basically a musical-comedy version of The Thief and the Cobbler. It's widely known as a ripoff - the characters are identical, much of the plot is identical, even individual shots, lines, line readings, are identical. And frankly it's sort of juvenile compared to The Thief. But now there was a big problem with The Thief ... because Aladdin was coming out, and he would have to compete with that! They were racing to finish before this film that they'd inspired. And Disney had been very inspired by Dick, so you can just imagine Dick trying to play catch-up to all the young guys he'd inspired, who'd taken his ideas and ran with them. Disney was in a golden age, but Dick was screwed ... which is another reason not to spend 26 years on a film, if you needed another reason.
Warner Bros. wanted The Thief to be like Aladdin, like Mermaid. And it's not - it's more like Yellow Submarine, like Fantasia. It could never be a broadway musical. It's purely about the fascinating visual potential of animation. Most of the characters are silent - there are incredible war sequences - it creates a whole world - It's closer to 2001 than Aladdin. Or to Pinocchio for that matter. Anyway, Warners got scared and backed out, Richard was fired from his life's work, the film was finished by a hack named Calvert, and it's terrible. The version of The Thief and the Cobbler you can get on video is terrible.
It's even more terrible because Disney got scared of it, and recut it themselves to turn it into an Aladdin ripoff. They had Tack talk about Genies and talk about Aladdin ... they really ruined it, Disney really ruined it. They were scared I guess that anyone would watch this movie and LIKE it, and realize that Aladdin wasn't an original film. The version you can get on video, it's terrible, it's almost impossible to like, so that makes it seem like an Aladdin ripoff rather than the other way around. To quote Judge Doom in Roger Rabbit: "I bought the red car so I could dismantle it."
It's a very sad story. Richard was obsessed with this movie, probably to an unhealthy level, and when it was taken away from him it was obviously such a terrible blow. Now he's known as the master animator, the Animator's Animator - he's written The Animator's Survival Kit which is now THE textbook for any animator, it's the best book ever written on animation. His animation masterclasses were huge events, always sold out. People who took them became teachers themselves. A lot of the great animators today, they learned from Richard, or they owe a lot to Richard. But people have never seen his masterpiece. You can't rent or buy or watch Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler. It doesn't exist as it was meant to be seen. I think that's a pretty damn good reason to restore this movie!
> It was rumored some years ago that Roy Disney had
> been trying to convince Disney to do an official
> restoration of the project. Do you see this as a
> replacement to any eventual official restoration
> that Disney might do, a companion piece, or something
> completely different?
God, I really hope Disney does restore this film someday. The latest I hear is that Don Hahn is working on it now with Richard. Or was, a few months back. So it's in good hands. I don't think they're scared of the film anymore, as certain people were for awhile after Aladdin. Certain people at Disney who are now long gone. Roy Disney tried to get a restoration done for almost a decade, but it's a film that's ... it's impossible to get those two sides to come together.
Richard doesn't trust Disney with this fim (or trust anyone with this film after what happened!), and Disney can't quite play ball with Richard. The story I heard was that they just weren't spending the money to do it right - that they'd let Richard be involved but wouldn't pay him. Or wouldn't pay him to have a staff, he'd have to do it alone. Richard always wanted this film to be a blockbuster, like Roger Rabbit wound up being. It's not a tiny project to him, and they were lowballing him because they didn't think there was a market. This is a huge film among animation geeks, but the general public doesn't know about it. So raising the money ... hmm.
Anyway, I wish them a lot of luck. I'm not trying to step on Disney's toes. I'm hoping that what I'm doing will help their cause. For one thing, my goal is to prove there IS a market out there. I'm spending a lot of my own money to prove there is a market out there. I said I was doing a restoration of The Thief and the Cobbler and people went nuts ... it's such a legendary film among people who really know animation. They would sell a lot of copies. If they can ever do a restoration, what I'm doing is a companion to that I guess. Because they could do it with much better picture quality than I ever could, and people who have seen my version would want to buy Disney's version in a second. But what I can do is ... I don't have to worry about rights issues, so I can collect anything and everything related to this film. We've collected an amazing amount of material. And I hope it generates even more interest in this classic film, because people can show this stuff to their friends. I feel like I'm doing Disney's job for them, doing their marketing. Heh. No, I don't need to, there's quite a cult following out there.
> It looks like you're also compiling some amazing
> dvds of supplementary materials like documentaries,
> interviews, and other Williams animation projects.
Yeah. Ten DVDs so far, which is pretty remarkable. Everything about this project has been larger than life, which is appropriate since Richard is a larger than life figure and this is a larger than life film. We've collected lots of documentaries, including a whole bunch recently from 1969 and 1970! That early, which is really fascinating. From 1980, from 1989 ... We've collected rare short films, commercials, promo pieces, lots of things you just can't get on video, in good quality. I'm geeking out, it's great stuff.
There's also the matter of all the artwork, images, interviews, articles ... I scanned 1000 pieces of original Thief artwork this week. We've scanned about 500 pages worth of interviews and articles. I mean, dear god, when will it end? It would be silly if Disney told us to stop at this point. They'd be silly not to just take it all from us and use it on their own release. We've done more work for them than they would ever do in a million years. I say we because it's been very much a group effort, a lot of people who worked on the film have been ridiculously helpful. I don't want to name names.
> How much involvement have original crewmembers had
> on this project, and who are some of the artists that
> are helping out?
All right then. The guy who really kickstarted this proect was a fellow named Simon Downes, who was assistant to Roy Naisbitt (layout) on the film. I kind of mused out loud on a message board that I wanted to restore The Thief and the Cobbler ... something I originally did for fun six years ago, on VHS. Very few people saw that one. Simon contacted me saying, hey, I worked on this film, here's some rare stuff. He sent me the widescreen DVD version of the Thief which is pretty rare, from Japan, a beautiful copy of the 1980 documentary, some really rare camera tests he'd saved from the film ... it was great! And I said, all right, and just ran with it. And I've been hemhorraging money on this project ever since. Heh.
Roy Naisbitt was great, I called him up, very nice man, and a genius at that, he was Dick's assistant and layout man for nearly 3 decades. He sent me some really rare stuff, documentaries from the 60s, commercials. I interviewed him. Alex Williams, Richard's son and a major animator on the film (did Tack and the opening), very nice indeed. Visited him at his home, interviewed him, and that meant a lot, to get a thumbs-up and approval from him. Andreas Wessel-Therhorn, animated the lackeys, he's been very nice, lent me his vast collection of Thief artwork. Tony White, who was and is a hero of mine because his book on animation was the first one I ever read, at age 7, a mindbogglingly gorgeous book called The Animator's Work Book, buy it if you haven't. He's a teacher now and he showed the film to two classes, had a huge screening. I think that's real education.
Holger Leihe, worked on The Thief mostly, Steve Evangelatos, Greg Duffell, Jerry Verschoor, Beth Hannan who did ink & paint, oh god I'm forgetting people now. There are too many. Few very nice people who worked on the Calvert version who may not want their names named ... Heh. I called Fred Calvert, he didn't want to talk, but he's in a bad spot, his wife just died apparently. I doubt I'll ever get to talk to him. Sad.
But it's been a lot of fun. I mean, I've been such a fan of this beautiful film for years and now I get to see it from the inside in a lot of ways, touch a piece of it. It's beautiful, it's such an honor. I hope more people get in touch - if anyone is reading this who worked on the Thief, my email is tygerbug (at) yahoo.com, and what we're doing is, we're putting together a scrapbook. I'm collecting everything, everyone's memories, good, bad and otherwise. If anyone has any saved artwork, saved video, I collect it and I send it to EVERYONE, so that everyone involved in the film can share in it. And that's an honor in and of itself. Costly, but an honor.
I'm planning on writing a book about The Thief, doing a documentary. It's a hell of a story, a major moment in animation history, and it needs to be told, in the words of the people who were there, in all its glory and pain. It's an insane story in some ways, a story of obsession, and the desire for perfection in art. I'm a filmmaker primarily. I've directed seven features and thirty shorts, which you can see at orangecow.org. I once spent three years on one feature so I know a few things about obsession in art.
> There's already a rough 'director's cut' by Richard
> Williams that has been floating around the animation
> biz for many years. How will the version you're
> working on differ from the existing Williams' cut
> that many in the industry have seen?
Yeah, THAT bootleg. Well, that's the whole inspiration for this project, because it's terrible, isn't it? I mean, it's beautiful to watch because it's a great film but the quality is terrible. You can't see anything. And half the film isn't finished. This was Richard Williams' masterpiece, a film of such richness and subtlety that you can only hope to appreciate it on a big screen. And the only version of the thing anyone can get looks like crap with half the scenes missing.
So my goal is to take everyone who has that crappy bootleg of The Thief and the Cobbler, and quietly replace their terrible copies with a gorgeous DVD quality copy. This is why I've been giving it out for free so much, even though I'm so broke I'm getting kicked out of my apartment, because I want this version of The Thief to spread, spread enough that Disney says, hey, we'd better get on to restoring this film. Dick spent 26 years on this film, the least I can do is spend a few months on it.
> I noticed that you're doing some really ambitious
> things like compositing frames from two different
> sources to create a widescreen effect. Can you tell
> us what other types of things you're doing that'll make
> this the definitive version of THIEF AND THE
> COBBLER?
Yeah. Well, we spent a few months searching for the best version of the workprint we could find. First I edited the whole film with a poor quality workprint, and I released that as the "Recobbled Rough Cut," which a lot of people have. But better quality copies of the workprint kept turning up - I wound up reediting the whole damn movie twice! Finally a REALLY good quality copy turned up on Emule of all places. I have no idea who posted it there originally, but if you're reading this, please contact me. I'm sure it was someone who worked on the film, it had to be. A PAL copy.
So I'm starting all over again. The crappy Miramax version is available on DVD in widescreen, and I'm using that for 80% of the movie, just not using the picture. So you can see 80% of the movie in glorious widescreen. The audio is from the workprint mostly, and has been noise reduced and restored and sounds great. Anything they cut out, we take from the workprint, and that has been restored by Chris Boniface and looks great. The workprint is matched to appear in the same place as the DVD material, so it transitions seamlessly. It's all color corrected. More music has been added that wasn't there before to make it feel more like a finished film than a workprint, sound is taken from other sources at times, CD quality music sometimes, opening and closing titles and special effects.
I've added back a few scenes Dick originally cut out, and I'm actually using a lot of the stuff Fred Calvert animated, even if it's kind of cruddy, because it tells the story better than storyboards. Some of the film is still unfinished, and you'll see storyboards, but you'll see a lot less of them than you used to - you'll see a lot of finished animation instead, some of which is actually quite good. We've also found a cut of the film which I didn't know existed, Stanch found it, it's a work in progress of Fred Calvert's version and contains some extra Dick Williams animation that I'd never seen before anywhere. So that's going in - there's a scene with One Eye which used to be just pencil test, but Dick finished it, and you'll see it. Yumyum in the bath, Zigzag charging at Tack ...
Now there are some really important scenes that are in Fred Calvert's "Princess and the Cobbler" version of the movie but not in the Miramax cut (which is much worse) ... the old witch, the entire march of the one eyes, a lot of the best stuff in the film. I wish I had Princess and the Cobbler in widescreen but I don't. I have it on DVD in pan & scan, because it was never released in widescreen. So, what I'm doing is pasting the really clear pan & scan image over the less clear widescreen image from the workprint. It works great, because the pan & scan image contains the important part, like the witch herself, and that'll be REALLY clear, and the rest can be less clear but who cares? It's good stuff.
Also, I'm using a lot of trickery to make it work better - I've created my own backgrounds for some pan & scan shots so the whole picture can be clearer - which I've had to matchmove or match changing lighting on as the shot changes. I've composited parts of shots over clearer backgrounds. One shot, the Thief is really tiny in it, so I just composited The Thief over a really clear background from the DVD, and reanimated the FX elements around him myself - flying cannonballs, a grabber hand that comes down. It's remarkable because it's suddenly DVD quality.
I did the same with a shot of the One Eye War Machine - I created a background and animated it with rain. I guess I've gone a little crazy with this. I guess that's the understatement of the year. This film tends to inspire obsession in people. Dick would know that better than anybody. That's my main goal, is to create something Dick would like too. I don't know if I'm capable of that, but I hope so. My cut is not the same as his cut, and his son Alex advised me to tread lightly - he hasn't spoken publicly about this movie in 15 years, it really ruined his life when he lost control of it, his whole obsession, his life's work. Alex was worried that Dick would think that I was just stealing his movie and reworking it, like everyone else. But gonna try and approach him with it. That'd be nice ....
> Since this whole thing is obviously a non-profit
> fan-driven project, how will the average reader of
> Cartoon Brew be able to get their hands on this
> material?
The final Recobbled Cut will be available for free via torrent at myspleen.net. There's already an old torrent there somewhere which has a terrible version of the workprint and some good specials on it, but the real Recobbled Cut will almost certainly end up there. I don't know about the 10+ special features discs, but we'll see. They'll certainly be spreading around, I'll make sure of that.
> And when do you think your final restoration will be finished?
26 years ... No, it ought to be done sometime in May. Probably early May. I'm still waiting for the new restored workprint and Arabian Knight to come in, that Chris Boniface has done his work on. That'll come in and I'll start working on the final cut next week. April 17th, I'll start work on the final cut. The 20th is my birthday, I'll be 25. The 30th I get thrown out of this place for failure to pay rent. And sometime in May ... Recobbled Cut.
But I'll be keeping this research project open, because I'm enjoying talking to people involved with this film, and I'm going to keep gathering up their memories, and gathering up special feaures related to this film. Maybe it'll help Disney when they do theirs. They can feel free to contact me. Heh. It would make a really good book, and a good documentary, and I hope I somehow maintain the stamina to do both. It's been a fun ride so far, and it's only getting better.