Interview: Walt & El Grupo Director Ted Thomas
Disney Documentary Explores Disney's 1940's Latin American Tour
Sep 17, 2009 Dominic von Riedemann
Walt & El Grupo tells the story of a pivotal time in Walt Disney's career, when he regained his artistic mojo via a goodwill tour sponsored by the US Government.
In Part #1 of this exclusive interview, director Ted Thomas discussed how he got involved with the film. In this installment, he talks about some of the technical wizardry that went into Walt & El Grupo, and why it's important for anyone who is interested in Walt and the studio he created.
S101: There were a lot of ways you could have gone into this film, because it’s such a big subject.How did you approach Walt & El Grupo?
Ted Thomas: "The best way into this film was families. During the research phase, we were quite taken by the fact that relatives of El Grupo had saved many letters and photos.
"And when we visited some of the Latin American countries, we met the children and grandchildren of the people who had hosted and interacted with the Disney group. I was struck by this amazing sense of connection with this story that took place almost 7 decades ago. It was a logical and heartfelt way to tell the story because, ultimately, the two major themes the film deals with are art and politics.
"Whenever this story’s been told previously, it generally sketches out the political details. No word is mentioned of art, or what the artists encountered or what they felt or how they made their art. I felt this was a unique opportunity to tell this piece of history in a way that put the art front and center.
“I feel that making art is one of the most important things people can do with their lives. I feel it has a terrific positive effect on society and the world."
S101: What were some of the technical breakthroughs that went into making this film?
"I had seen this technique, in a film called The Kid Stays in the Picture, of using after-effects to slice a photograph into planes so it could have 3 dimensions. Since then, it’s been used quite a bit; sometimes to good effect, sometimes not (laughs).
“I wanted to find a way to use this technique to literally immerse the audience in this past world. So I looked for photographs that had natural foreground, mid-ground, background so when you splice them into 3-D, it means something.
"Because Bill Russell is a very creative guy, I asked him to move the camera not just forward and backward, but to the sides or tilt it. So we dive into this photograph. So he figured out how to create bits of the photograph that originally didn’t exist. Because, if you move the camera to the right or left, you’re changing your parallax, and you’re gonna see something that isn’t there and you need to fill it in. So Bill did this in a very creative, clever way that created a fluid camera move that I have not seen before. It’s very exciting.
"Once we’d done it with still photographs, I thought let’s take it further: if we’re making a film about art, how about if we actually go in the art? So you see a photograph of Herb Ryman drawing impressions of this all-night samba party, and what if we can actually go into the drawing? We’re able to explore inside the drawing and then pop back out, and move over the tabletop where we arranged other artifacts so that, in a cinematic way, you’re an artist, you’re taking the trip with them."
S101: Storywise, what was the biggest hurdle you had to jump through in encapsulating this big trip into a 90-minute film?
"I wish we could’ve gotten it down to 90 minutes; it’s an hour, 45! (laughs) The original cut was 5 hours and a cut we all liked was 3 hours. As you can imagine, there were immense challenges to shrink the film. It forces you to consider what are the most important story points, the ones that come through most powerfully. A film has to strike you on the emotional level where you are involved with what you created as a film.
“The shorter I made the film, the more prominent the character of Walt Disney became. Anytime I went away from Walt, the story ran into trouble staying balanced so I had to come back to him.”
What do you think this film says about Walt Disney that other films and books haven’t?
“You get to see him as a young man, because we just present what we found in terms of newsreels, photos and archival footage. You see a 39-year-old Disney that very few people have seen before.
Anyone who wants an insight into what made Walt Disney tick needs to see this film.”
(In Part #3 of this interview, Ted Thomas tells why both Disney's detractors and the company he built show a distorted image of the animation mogul)
Frank Thomas and Walt Disney in Walt & El Grupo
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