Inspirational Walt Disney

"Save Mr. Disney"

Here goes a beautiful, poetic personal story a friend, David Foose wrote and allowed me to publish. It is this type of text that should be the honest and deep example for everyone to search Disney inside: 
   "When I was young, I remember telling my father that we should tear down the world and let Walt Disney rebuild it. For me Walt represented the force in the universe that has the best ideas and carries them out in the most interestingly creative ways. In my young mind, Walt couldn't be stopped. And his power came from his optimism, his imagination and his perseverance. His power was real because his creations were real. Walt was never about pie in the sky. Walt was about making the impossible possible, actually doing it.  Could there be a better role model for a young mind? And as I grew, I saw that my impression of Walt was not childish but correct. Yes, the quality of Walt being an eternal source of inspiration, curiosity and interpretation is what has to be saved.

"Innocence in Action"

   After reading a view reviews of "Saving Mr Banks" I thought I might owe some explanation for considering Hank's performance the very expression of "innocence in action", like Walt Disney was called. In some reviews, people say things like Walt was canning, or that there were hints of his "dark side". I wondered whether I see things in a totally different way, and to what extent what I see has to do with reality. One should always question oneself, after all. I mentally reviewed the movie. Someone pointed that once Walt got what he wanted, he didn't invite Travers, he wasn't really caring, as he appeared to be until then. "That caring was all out of pragmatism" was the conclusion. The fascinating question, and the fascinating riddle about Walt Disney, is exactly the "confusion", or even identification, between pragmatism and passion, that is inspired by his behavior. Nobody could act the way he did at convincing people, if he were not passionate about his quest, and as singleminded as a child. Pragmatism, on the other hand, is coldness. It "uses" things and actions as means to distant results. Passion, in an even more avid way than love, is oneness with its object. Walt's innocence was his passion and the certainty it gave him that he wouldn't disappoint anyone who believed in him. Walt's innocence was his childlike enthusiasm, pleading, and even the immediate sadness he could not hide, when disappointed. He believed in himself and his product with the egotism of a child who can disregard everything else, and at the same time, with the objectivity of a leader who is responding to a cause. Once this cause was obliged he, with the immediacy of the child and yet the detachment of the leader, moved on to something else. The "something else" in the movie was the Premiere of Mary Poppins, when he felt he had to "protect the film", and Travers became second.

Disney Redemption

"Saving Mr Banks", in the real, hope inspiring Disney tradition, expresses the redeeming as well as resurrecting dimension of rescuing. In Disney Mary Poppins, Mr Banks starts out as a harsh man well acquainted with reality's limitations and is eventually redeemed by letting out his need to dream, thereby equally redeeming all the other bankers. The original inspiration for Mr Banks, PL Travers' father, became her hero for sharing with her a world of imagination and dream, over and against the harshness of reality. He was therefore a hero-looser, becoming, in the Disney version, the self discovered, fulfilled Mr Banks: a mixture of Walt Disney himself and the original dreamer, PL Traver's father. Disney's Mr Banks expresses Walt's constant conflicts with the "money men" and his eventual overcoming of it, like he did in real life, by coming to convince them all, and, in the movie, by calling them to fly a kite. He is a reconciliation of reality and dream, like Walt Disney was. While the original inspiration for Mr Banks was a king in imagination and dream in spite of and against real life, Disney's Mr Banks, by taking the "leap of faith", that step beyond common sense and rationality, reconciles harsh reality and dream, infusing his bosses with the need to sing. "Saving Mr Banks" rescues not just the personal quest of Traver's father, but on a greater scale, that of all dreamers whose flight was interrupted. It shows, through the message of Walt Disney, that the eternity of imagination can indeed make peace with the exactness of figures and money men's world. Only Walt Disney (he did exist! that is what one marvels at, after watching the wonderful interpretation of Tom Hanks in "Saving Mr Banks") could- and, in the movie, it looks like he still can- pull that out…. That's it; if you watch this movie you realize it was perfectly possible that there once was someone who could be best described by the beautiful expression "Innocence in Action"...