Commentary: Disney Has No Problem Dissing Failed Pitches

The creative process is often messy. Writers, producers, and other creators talk and toil for hours and days about how a particular work of art should be presented. Most ideas don’t even make the final product. These behind-the-scenes decisions are never really discussed in the work itself. They may appear in an interview or extra content on a DVD bonus features, but their contribution to the work is often an unspoken existence only acknowledged by those involved in the decision-making process. However, this wasn’t the case in Fantasia 2000.

Before each animated segment in Fantasia, there is a brief live action introduction. Fantasia 2000 continues this trend. Celebrities such as Penn and Teller and James Earl Jones make appearances. In one particular segment, Bette Midler talks about many of the failed pitches and ideas that were not developed into full-fledged animated shorts for the film. These are essentially concepts that were left on the cutting room floor. Examples included concept art for a sequence using Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” a short from Salvador Dali in which he used baseball as a metaphor for life, and ballets with both babies and bugs.

While it’s absolutely a known fact that films like this often have tons of ideas that are never developed, it’s very bizarre to see the movie so outwardly address them. On the surface, it does seem like a nice glimpse behind the scenes of what could have been. But Midler’s tone was pretty negative. It’s almost seems as if she were mocking the ideas for how absurd they were. Keep in mind this is a film that had a sequence of flamingos playing with yo-yos. No concept should be mocked or ridiculed, so it should come as a surprise that Fantasia 2000 did this so boldly.

Fantasia 2000 is now streaming on Disney+.