Post
by disneyaholic » August 4th, 2006, 8:42 pm
The following is what had been floating around on the disney usenet newsgroups back in 1992. In an interview with him in 1999, it was found out the truth behind this rumor that the movie never actually existed but started out as a joke from Kirk Wise after Beauty and the Beast had been completed. How it started was Kirk Wise and Gary Trusdale were asked in an interview what they were working on since Beauty and the Beast was done. Since they didn't have any idea what they wre working on next, they made a half-joking response about Silly Hillbillies from Mars. Well, here is what floated around for 7 years about it.
"Silly Hillbillies from Mars"
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Deleted Feature Animated Movie
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_Cast _
With the vocal talents of Pat Butram, Jim Cummings,
Eva Gabor, Phil Harris, Sterling Holloway, Haley Mills,
Thurl Ravenscroft and Paul Winchell
_Story_
Loosely based on Red Planet (Robert Heinlein) and Out of the Silent Planet
_ Why Deleted_
Wise and Trusdale were given a choice between "Silly
Hillbillies from Mars" and "The Swan Princess" when BATB
was completed in the fall of '91. They decided on the former
when the Richard Rich refused to abandon his version, and
soon after, sometime in the summer or early fall of 1992, SHFM
was abandoned as they couldn't figure out a decent plot. So
they did Huchback.
_ About _
In light of Disney's recent stream of hits, it was bound to
happen: eventually, they would come up with what looks to be a dud.
But who was to know it would be one of such staying
power? Over 25 years in the making, and tentatively scheduled
for release in 1998, Silly Hillbillies on Mars is, without a doubt,
the longest-running project in animation history.
According to sources at Disney (who spoke on the condition of anonymity) the company was demorilized after Walt's death, and was looking around for a project to devote to his memory. The next (animated) feature to be brought out was The Jungle Book, but that didn't seem to be good enough for the late Disney. A better idea had to come.
Then, in 1969, the people at Disney, like nearly everyone else in the U.S.,
were inspired by the Apollo moon landings. Inspiration struck: Disney had not yet done a science fiction flick, and the genera was popular at the time. Since the moon landing had already been done, and the moon wasn't really a very inspiring place after all, they chose to base their film on Mars, and loosely followed both C.S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet and Robert Heinlein's Red Planet for story inspiration.>>>> Though they realized this dicotomy might pose certain problems,(!!!) they felt the challenge would be inspirational in the way Walt was: demanding that which they weren't sure they could deliver.<<< [emphasis mine, JMB]
In typical Disney fashion, an animation branch was set up in Houston, and
animators began to pore over the various pictures of Mars that Nasa had made publicly available, and some animators were sent to the dry valleys of Antarctica to get a feel for what life on Mars would be like. "It was a real blow when Nasa lost track of Magellan," said one animator. "I didn't want to go back to Antarctica."
The project hit a rocky period starting in the mid eighties, when
Michael Eisner and his team took over. To put it bluntly, they were appalled by the amount of time and effort spent on Silly Hillbillies already without it reaching the theaters, and a new director was brought in. Soon, however, it was decided to scrap the whole thing, and it looked like the end for this cartoon epic. But Roy Disney was not about to let his brother's tribute get lost, and work continued in secret.
"Jeff never did figure out why work was going so slowly from '86 to '88," said Roy. "I had animators working on Hillbillies, and hiding their work when Jeffrey came by. But now that he's gone, we can all come out of the closet." In '89, work was moved to Bluth Studios in Ireland, as Mr. Katzenberg was becoming suspicious. Mr. Disney visited his animators under the pretence of "golfing trips."
Now, the film is getting close to completion, and they are trying to figure out how to condense 318 minutes of film done over 3 decades into a coherent whole, of reasonable length. If they succeed, this film may indeed be the magnum opus Walt would have treasured.Silly Hillbillies on Mars Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Don Bluth, and Roy Disney Songs by Robert Sherman and Richard Sherman, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, and Metallica