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The Thief and the Cobbler By Phillip Moss |
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The Cartoon That Almost Was Written by Charles Phillip Moss II Does
it ever occur to you that something exciting is about to happen but it has
disappointing results? Well, “The Thief and the Cobbler” is one of those
great examples. A movie taken away from its maker to a man using it for the
wrong purpose. |
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Richard
Williams, a gifted artist who had a dream of making the best animated film
ever, to be filmed in Cinemascope. He wanted to make a film that would change
the way we look at animation, pictures moving in a smooth, colorful,
well-timed manner that would blow you away. That movie is called “The Thief
and the Cobbler”; a story about a thief who steals anything he sees
appealing, and one day he steals three golden balls on top of a minaret. Now
the three golden balls play a role in an ancient prophesy. The prophesy states that if the balls are
taken away, the golden city in the middle east will come to destruction and
death. The cobbler, named Tack, is a talented young shoemaker who tries to
save the city along with a beautiful princess named Princess Yum-Yum, and a
band of ugly, dim-witted, brigands who they meet in the middle act. The
villain, Zig-Zag (played by Vincent Price), is the kings vizier, a sorcerer,
who wants to not only overthrow the king, but marry the princess as well. He
talks in rhymes, which not only makes him a weird character, but a clever
villain. The whole film has everything that will make you laugh, cry, and
thrill you with its beautiful art design, backgrounds and smooth texture. The
thief character is a very funny “wile-e-coyote” type character that uses
various tools and plans to steal his targets. The cobbler has white skin and
resembles silent film stars such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, making
him a silent character. What’s also interesting about him is he doesn’t have
a mouth; he uses tacks in his mouth as expressions. Other elements in the
film include magic, a crazy annoying witch and a demonic army of one-eyed
barbarians. Starting in 1968, his original concept was an
adaptation of “Nasruddin,” an Arabian knight tale, but it was scrapped for an
unknown reason so he instead came up with an original storyline, “The Thief
and the Cobbler”. He got the voice actors to do their work, and from then on
spent nearly 28 years trying to complete his animation masterpiece. In order
to finance the film, he spent his spare time working on commercials for
television in the 70’s and 80’s. Then in the 80’s, Robert Zemekis and Steven
Spielberg asked him to help animate the title character in the 1988 hit “Who
Framed Roger Rabbit”. The film won him an Oscar for best visual effects and
also a life achievement award for his commercial projects. And with the
profits he made with the film, he now had the opportunity to finish the film.
However, in 1991, at Warner Bros. ©, he was 15 minutes away from completing
the film, but the executives were getting worried because the film has gone
over budget and overscheduled. It also had big competition with another
Arabian knight story, “Aladdin”, the famous Disney film that actually bared
similarities with the thief movie (in theory because during the making of
Roger Rabbit, Richard showed some people at Disney his unfinished reel with
some completed footage, and some writers were probably taking notes). So
then, the executives asked Richard to show them the film, with 15 minutes of
storyboards and pencil tests and other incomplete footage. They didn’t like
it. Minutes later, the film was taken from Richard’s hands and taken to a
cheaper company: Miramax Films. After the success of “Aladdin”, the people at
Miramax asked Saturday morning cartoon producer, Fred Calvert to finish the
film as cheaply and quickly as possible, and make the characters more
interesting. Even worse, add musical
numbers. Fred and team used footage from the unfinished film and combined
with new animation that looked very bad compared to the beauty of the
original film. Two silent characters, the thief and tack, were given voices.
They hired comedian Jonathan Winters to voice over the thief as if he were
thinking throughout |