DVDizzy Forum

Stephen Anderson, known for directing Meet the Robinsons and Winnie the Pooh, is leaving Disney after 26 years. He first joined the studio in 1999 as a story artist on Tarzan. He also worked on The Emperor's New Groove and Brother Bear among others. His last project was co-directing the first season of Monsters at Work at Disney Television Animation where he was transferred until his contract expired.


Source: https://www.instagram.com/stories/steve ... 324350418/

Sotiris wrote:Stephen Anderson, known for directing Meet the Robinsons and Winnie the Pooh, is leaving Disney after 26 years. He first joined the studio in 1999 as a story artist on Tarzan. He also worked on The Emperor's New Groove and Brother Bear among others. His last project was co-directing the first season of Monsters at Work at Disney Television Animation where he was transferred until his contract expired.

Just... Wow. Moments like this make me treasure John Lasseter's fall from grace. Better than he deserved. He should be in a jail cell for both the sexual harassment stories and the wage-fixing scandal. Killing hand-drawn animation and saddling us with the garbage buddy roadtrip formula are 'lesser' crimes. But I still despise him for both.

I don't think we can blame that on Lasseter. Stephen went to DTVA in July 2019. Lasseter was long gone by then. However, during Lasseter's tenure Stephen was sent to DisneyToon Studios in 2013 and stayed there for about a year before coming back to WDAS. Also, the next feature he was developing after Winnie the Pooh never materialized under his reign and was left languishing in development for years before ultimately getting canned.

I don't think we can't blame him for a lot of things actually.. Because when he was at Disney things were stable and a few of the films that were under his umbrella are great films such as Tangled, Zootopia, Moana. The man is really good at what he does and has a real talent but unfortunately a lot of great artists also have awful personal lives and problematic behaviours.

It's your prerogative. But I can and do blame him for all those things. He's disgusting.

Of course, he's beyond disgusting and should never work again in the industry but that doesn't take away his talent. If we had to stop enjoying the art of hateful people we'd stop watching more films (animated or not) than you could ever imagine.

Except I don't think most of the films he made or was involved in are "great." Frozen's probably the only film with a real chance at being called that. TP&TF, as much as I love the characters, is riddled with his interference diminishing that film and foisting the horrible Newman onto the project.

I noticed you edited your first post to change can to can't, but that just caused the sentence to become a double negative? I would agree with the statement "I do think we can blame him for a lot of things actually" in that case.

Well, yes I do agree about the ones you're referring to but I specifically mentioned Tangled, Zootopia and Moana. I didn't say all of the films he produced were great because I didn't care for a lot of them.

I was just saying I don't consider those three films to be great.

Regardless of what one thinks of Disney's output under Lasseter, it doesn't change the fact he was a notorious micro-manager who often fired directors who disagreed with him creatively. Even before the allegations of sexual assault came out, that never seemed to me like a healthy, nurturing creative environment.

And something I noticed recently is that under Pete Docter's leadership, Dan Scanlon and Enrico Casarosa were able to finish their very personal films without being replaced unlike what happened with Bob Peterson, Brenda Chapman, Jan Pinkava, etc. Less than a year before its release, Domee Shi also appears to still be the director of "Turning Red." Of course, Docter is still early into his new job running Pixar, but it's a positive sign for Pixar's future, nonetheless.

estefan wrote:And something I noticed recently is that under Pete Docter's leadership, Dan Scanlon and Enrico Casarosa were able to finish their very personal films without being replaced unlike what happened with Bob Peterson, Brenda Chapman, Jan Pinkava, etc. Less than a year before its release, Domee Shi also appears to still be the director of "Turning Red." Of course, Docter is still early into his new job running Pixar, but it's a positive sign for Pixar's future, nonetheless.

Too bad Dean Wellins and Paul Briggs didn't get the same opportunity at WDAS.

farerb wrote:

estefan wrote:And something I noticed recently is that under Pete Docter's leadership, Dan Scanlon and Enrico Casarosa were able to finish their very personal films without being replaced unlike what happened with Bob Peterson, Brenda Chapman, Jan Pinkava, etc. Less than a year before its release, Domee Shi also appears to still be the director of "Turning Red." Of course, Docter is still early into his new job running Pixar, but it's a positive sign for Pixar's future, nonetheless.

Too bad Dean Wellins and Paul Briggs didn't get the same opportunity at WDAS.

Yeah Lasseter can burn in hell for depriving us of this movie. You know, the one that actually featured a black character and POC in the kingdom. Instead we got generic Eurocentric Tangled and the long list of Rapunzel clones like that fake Latina Honey Lemon.

estefan wrote:And something I noticed recently is that under Pete Docter's leadership, Dan Scanlon and Enrico Casarosa were able to finish their very personal films without being replaced unlike what happened with Bob Peterson, Brenda Chapman, Jan Pinkava, etc. Less than a year before its release, Domee Shi also appears to still be the director of "Turning Red." Of course, Docter is still early into his new job running Pixar, but it's a positive sign for Pixar's future, nonetheless.

Yes, it is. But I personally thought Pete Docter and Jennifer Lee were the perfect choices from the outset.

^^ I was never convinced re Jennifer Lee for two reasons:

1. Lack of experience

She is a newcomer to WDAS and also still quite young. I doubt she has acquired the experience to run the studio to its full potential, and I cannot help but feel that some studio veterans must have understandably felt miffed that a relative newbie like her got the top job.

2. She's not an artist, right?

I would have preferred if the CCO of WDAS was somebody who actually draws - an animator, a background painter, a visual development artist, a storyboarder, a seasoned director with many movies under his/her belt, etc. As far as I know, Lee is a writer. There's nothing wrong with that, but if she is not well-versed in the world of visual art I am a bit sceptical how she could influence the look of the WDAS films.

Still, I wish her luck on her job, and hopefully she will prove me wrong. It is still way too early to judge her performance.

Also, I suspect that if I am right on the above, it could be that after a few years on the job she will gain the confidence and the clout she needs to move the studio forward and to take interesting and unusual decisions for WDAS. (Arguably she has already done the latter with Iwaju!)

And who knows? Maybe she will indeed champion new inventive art styles at the studio in the future! After all she is surrounded by artists who can surely offer sound advice.

I think it helps that even though she's not an artist, Jennifer Lee has been directly involved in the making of the animated movies, primarily the "Frozen" films. She's familiar with the hurdles and difficulties of getting an animated movie up to shape and the collaborative process involved in making them. It will be interesting to see where she takes the studio in later years.

I still wonder if the positive changes to the Disney Princess line (restoring the characters to their original colors / personalities after all these years) has something to do with Jennifer Lee's influence or not. Perhaps it's simply someone else at the top in marketing who isn't being directed by Lasseter anymore, who have made those decisions. I doubt Lee has or wants the degree of control he had over so many aspects of the company, but who knows; perhaps when she stepped into the role, it still functioned somewhat like it did with Lasseter and she was asked her input on things like that since he would always involve himself before her? I wish we knew the answer though, to thank whoever's responsible. I guess I really hope that's a sign B&tB and Cinderella may finally get restorations that make the films look like themselves again. *prays* Especially the latter was always the prettiest Disney film to me, what with the ballgown, the magic scenes, Mary Blair's designs, the animation of Lady Tremaine, etc. Those and a correction of TSitS are probably the things I most hope for.

I take Raya as a good sign so far regards to Lee. We'll see about Encanto. I'm not sure I'll like that one, but I've certainly been surprised before. I didn't think I'd like Frozen or Zootopia either. Perhaps her not being an artist herself might make it more likely she will listen to others--the animators and so on?

Sotiris wrote:Regardless of what one thinks of Disney's output under Lasseter, it doesn't change the fact he was a notorious micro-manager who often fired directors who disagreed with him creatively. Even before the allegations of sexual assault came out, that never seemed to me like a healthy, nurturing creative environment.

Like most Hollywood environnements.. I mean, I am not trying to make it sound like he should get another chance because he should be in jail in my opinion and just the fact that he took away Brave from Brenda Chapman is enough for me to dislike the man.
However, What am trying to get across is that he might be a horrible human being but that doesn’t take away his talent as a producer and director.
That’s why I opened a discussion on another topic a few months ago about these types of people (such a Kevin Spacey) who are very problematic but still offered some brilliant performances throughout the years.
At the end of the day, Hannibal Lecter is a monster but that doesn’t take away the fact that he is a brilliant artist.

As for Jennifer Lee, luck was on her side when she got the job. In my opinion, she’s not qualified whatsoever for it. I guess, she was green enough for the studios heads to think that they could manipulate her and she also had the “Me too” movement on her side at that time.
The fact that she also wrote frozen was ,of course, another factor.

Playing a part in the biggest film of the Revival is why I can't agree she's unqualified. If she was somebody random BTS who'd been involved with, say, Tangled or Big Hero 6, then I'd probably have felt that way. It's interesting to have her there though, since, as you said, some of her ending up where she is was luck, which means she's likely not as cutthroat as Lasseter, Eisner, Katzenberg, etc. were.

Indeed, she did take a part in that and I’m not trying to diminish her involvement but her work on Frozen and Ralph don’t justify her getting the job that she ended up getting. I mean, Chris Buck co-directed Frozen and the Lopez team wrote let it go and who knows what the film would be like without that song so bottom line it was a team effort.

The thing is that she might be a good writer (!) but she got the job for obvious PR reasons as the Disney company needed a face to backup the Me too movement and,to me, someone like Brenda Chapman would have been way a more logical choice as she's been working with Disney for decades and has experience at writing, storyboarding and directing, on top of getting an Oscar for Brave (maybe another PR move but that's another subject).
Now, I’m sure Jennifer Lee is a lovely and hard working lady but without the Me Too movement and the whole Lasseter scandal, no one would have considered her to replace him at the end of his contract and not because she lacks talent, not because she’s a woman but because her resume just didn’t match the position she's in at the moment.