Destino
While reading
David Bossert’s book, Remembering Roy E. Disney I was reminded about a Disney
movie I’d heard about but never watched, Destino.
When Dali came to
America he wrote back to friends that he was excited to be in America and in
contact with the three great American Surrealists, The Marx Brothers, Cecil B. DeMille
and Walt Disney.
In 1945/6 Walt
Disney asked Salvador Dali to collaborate with the Disney Studio to make an
animated short. Dali was happy about the idea and for eight months worked with
John Hench on making a short based on the song originally to be in The Three
Caballeros, Destino (Destany).
Destino is a love
story between Chronos (Time) and a human woman. Dali was at the studio every
day 9-5 working with John Hench to make this cartoon but it was shelved after
Dali told Disney he had yet another direction to take the story, adding
Baseball as a metaphor for life. After eight months and tens of thousands of
dollars Disney decided it was time to drop the project. By the time they
stopped the project there were many pictures. Some were made by Dali and some
by Hench. Hench became do adept at drawing in Dali’s style that at times Dali
could not even tell who drew which picture. The 150+ Dali original and Dali inspired
John Hench work was put into the “Disney Morgue” in 1946.
The “Disney Morgue”
was the studio basement where all art and movie props were stored. This
basement was were these items sat until the early 1970’s when Dave Smith was
hired to create the Disney Archives. Dave said the original Disney Morgue was
wet, sometimes flooded with rain water and had large signs saying “Beware of
Spiders”.
In the 1990’s Roy
E. Disney wanted to revisit an idea his Uncle Walt had back in the 1940’s,
Fantasia. While working on it he remembered the Dali artwork in the Archives.
Roy E. Disney became excited about the idea of completing this unfinished film.
He talked to David Bossert about making and they worked together to bring it to
completion.
John Hench was
still working at the Disney Studio in his early 90’s when the Destino project
was brought back to life. The new team working on Destino brought John Hench in
and asked him about the original project. They set up the original storyboards
and asked John Hench to help complete the story and return the story to the original
direction. The idea was to complete as it was intended.
Disney had a
studio in Paris at the time Destino came back into production. Dominique Monfery
from the Disney Team in Paris was asked to direct Destino. He was even able to
use notes written by Dali’s wife Gala. These notes show that Dali actually had
about 40 different story lines for Destino.
Here is what
WikiPedia says about Destino:
Destino (the Galician, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian word
for "destiny")
was storyboarded by
Disney studio artist John Hench and artist Salvador Dalí for eight months in
late 1945 and 1946; however production ceased not long after. The Walt Disney
Company, then Walt Disney Studios, was plagued by many financial woes in the World War II era.
Hench compiled a short animation test of about 17 seconds in the hopes of
rekindling Disney's interest in the project, but the production was no longer
deemed financially viable and put on indefinite hiatus.
In 1999, Walt Disney's nephew Roy E. Disney,
while working on Fantasia 2000, unearthed the dormant
project and decided to bring it back to life. Disney Studios France, the company's small Parisianproduction
department, was brought on board to complete the project. The short was
produced by Baker Bloodworth and directed by French animator
Dominique Monfréy in his first directorial role. A team of approximately 25
animators deciphered Dalí and Hench's cryptic storyboards (with a little help
from the journals of Dalí's wife Gala Dalí and
guidance from Hench himself), and finished Destino's production.
The end result is mostly traditional animation, including Hench's
original footage, but it also contains some computer animation.
The six-minute short follows the love
story of Chronos and
the ill-fated love he has for a mortal woman. The story continues as the woman
dances through surreal scenery inspired by Dalí's paintings. There is no
dialogue, but the soundtrack includes music by the Mexican composer Armando
Dominguez. The 17 second original footage that is included in the finished
product is the segment with the two tortoises (this original footage is
referred to in Bette Midler's host sequence for The Steadfast Tin Soldier in Fantasia
2000, as an "idea that featured baseball as a metaphor for
life").
Destino premiered on
June 2, 2003 at the Annecy International Animated Film
Festival in Annecy, France. The short film was very well received; it won
many awards and was nominated for the 2003 Academy Award for Best Animated Short
Film. Destino was released theatrically in a very
limited release with the film Calendar Girls.
In 2005, the film was shown
continuously as part of a major retrospective Dalí show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, titled The
Dalí renaissance: new perspectives on his life and art after 1940.[2]
The film was also shown as part of the
exhibition Dalí & Film at Tate Modern from
June to September 2007, as part of the Dalí exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from
October 2007 to January 2008; at an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art called Dalí:
Painting and Film from June to September 2008; also at an exhibit at
the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida in 2008. In
mid-2009, it had exposure in Melbourne, Australia at the National Gallery of Victoria through
the Dalí exhibition Liquid Desire, and from late 2009 through April
2010 at the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio,
in an exhibit entitled Dalí and Disney: The Art and Animation of
Destino.
As of 2012, the film is featured in the
"Dalí" exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris,
France.
The Disney DVD "True-Life
Adventures, Volume 3" has a trailer for Destino,
and mentions a forthcoming DVD release. In 2007, the True-Life
Adventure series was suspended and those titles previously announced
were moved to the Walt Disney Treasures line. Destino was
subsequently scheduled for release on November 11, 2008.
From the January 20, 2008 press
release:
Destino began in 1946
as a collaboration between Walt Disney and the famed surrealist painter
Salvador Dalí. A first-hand example of Disney's interest in avant-garde and
experimental work in animation, Destino was to be awash with
Dalí's iconic melting clocks, marching ants and floating eyeballs. However, Destino was
not completed at that time. In 2003, it was rediscovered by Walt's nephew, Roy
E. Disney, who took on the challenge of bringing the creation of these two
great artists to fruition. In addition to the completed Destino,
this exciting addition to the Walt Disney Treasures line also includes an
all-new feature-length documentary that examines the surprising partnership
between Dalí and Disney plus two new featurettes; "The Disney That Almost
Was", an examination of the studio's unfinished projects; and
"Encounters with Walt", which addresses the surprisingly diverse
group of celebrities and artists who were attracted to Walt Disney's early
work.
A June 2008 press release for the Walt
Disney Treasures line revealed Destino was being
excluded from a 2008 Treasures release. According to Treasures host Leonard Maltin,
the film was still likely to see an eventual DVD release, yet not necessarily
within the Treasures moniker.
Destino was made
available as a special feature on the Fantasia & Fantasia 2000
Special Edition Blu-ray released on November 30, 2010.[3]
