David Stainton seemed an unlikely candidate to become president of Walt Disney Feature Animation in 2003. In the early 1990s, he worked in creative development and later ran the Paris studio. Stainton, who has an MBA from Harvard, was best known for running Disney's television animation division and overseeing the company's direct-to-video and sequels business, both of which were profitable but lacked the sex appeal of original theatrical films.
Stainton, who became Disney's third animation chief in as many years, was not prepared for the trouble he encountered his first week. He said he was warned that the movie My Peoples, a tale of star-crossed lovers that combined live action and animation, needed an overhaul. By contrast, he was told that the computer-animated Chicken Little was a winner.
"I was sitting there at the screening room watching it and I thought, `Oh my God! What am I going to do?"' Stainton, who is 43, recalled in an interview in his office last month. "This is the movie that's working? I honestly almost started to cry."
Stainton shut down My Peoples. As for Chicken Little, Stainton said he told Mark Dindal, the director who began the project in 2001, that the story line wouldn't work: it was about a young girl who went to summer camp to build confidence so she wouldn't overreact.
At the same time, Stainton was contemplating what to do about the standoff between Disney's two camps of animators: the techies and the traditiona-lists. When he was hired, Stainton said, both Eisner and Richard Cook, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios, said they wanted Disney movies to be wittier, contemporary computer-animated comedies with a dramatic twist (in other words, said one Disney executive, more like DreamWorks' Shrek).
So, on April 4, Keane held his "Best of Both Worlds" seminar. And at the end of that month Stainton lobbed another grenade. He told more than 525 employees gathered at a town hall meeting that the studio would stop making hand-drawn movies for the foreseeable future. Those interested in computer-generated animation could sign up for a six-month "CG boot camp."
"What I was saying to them was, `You've got to embrace it or there isn't going to be a place for you,'" Stainton said.
The announcement did little to soothe the warring camps. Some traditionalists refused to sit with the computer set at lunch, Disney executives recalled. But this changed.
"How hungry were they?" Dindal said, referring to Snow White's animators. "It's fun to be at a place where everybody's hungry for something, as opposed to being well fed.
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