Don Bluth
Don Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluthis an American animator, film director, producer, writer, production designer, video game designer and animation instructor who is known for directing animated films, such as The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heavenand Anastasia, and for his involvement in the LaserDisc game Dragon's Lair. He is also known for competing with former employer Walt Disney Productions during the years leading up to the films that would make up the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAnimator
Date of Birth13 September 1937
CityEl Paso, TX
CountryUnited States of America
Reese Witherspoon. She's sophisticated enough that you just like her. You like her and she's smart.
With movies, you are always in search is a good story, one that everyone will relate to and love. I love finding those stories and creating a visual world to tell the story.
But I've been surprised over the years. I mean, someone told me the other day that maybe 360 million people have played this game in the world. That's a lot of people.
We started getting the script to different people and we were in the business of trying to fund it so we could get it off and running, and all the characters and sets designed and everything.
When I think about how fat the studios have become, I laugh. You have 24 people in the layout department-we're fat with personnel. All the rules and attitudes change in that kind of environment.
You know what, the second Dragon's Lair game... I think very few people saw it. And Dirk and Daphne did get married and they had children. They have 13 kids. And she still looks great!
The studios are not hiring right now, and they're beginning to have second thoughts about what they're producing. Even Dreamworks.
A picture will wind up costing $90 million dollars... Well, animation can't stand that. It can't bear the weight of a $90 million dollar budget, because it can't recoup. Then everybody's surprised when it only pulls in $50-$60 million domestic.
If you go back to-I think it was Hunchback, then there was Hercules-those picture were sagging. They were in a formula groove. The audience knew that. The box office fell off, but it came back up with Tarzan.
In the corporate structure, you get people who are highly competitive with each other... Trying to get more money and more prestige.
I knew nothing about sci-fi. We took it. I figured, space hardware, everybody's seen, and you can call in Industrial Light & Magic and all the pros in the world.
The best studio exec that we worked with was Bill Mechanic at Fox, because he was a listener. He was pliable, flexible.
Computers have taken so much drudgery out of it. Just one to mention, painting the picture. It used to be that everything was wet, everything was with a brush. Everything was wiggle it in water, wipe out your brush, get a new jar of paint, spill the paint, mop it up.
Disney knows that they're in a formulaic rut, and they're trying very hard, I think, to find something that's different. They've got so much money, they can throw it at anything.