[Goldberg] I'm one of the guys who gets to draw Mickey.
I take pride in the fact that the studio trusts me enough.
It's kind of like being handed the keys to the castle.
I remember the first time that I drew Mickey in a public forum,
Roy Disney, Walt's nephew, was with us.
And I'm thinking to myself, "Oh, my God, [chuckling] I better not screw this up."
When I was very young, the first Disney movie I saw was Dumbo.
I was just absolutely struck...
by how wonderful animation looked and made me feel.
It's life, pushed. [chuckles]
It's making something larger than life.
I was a very focused kid.
You know, knowing at a very early age what I wanted to do.
I've made my key positions,
and now I'm putting the positions in between to help flesh out the movement.
When I started making my Super 8 films,
my parents would willingly give over the dining room table,
and I would lay out all my cels, drying, you know, [chuckles]
and the living room would become where I would shoot the stuff
on my downshooter.
Put a new sheet of paper down.
I never thought that I'd be good enough to work at Disney.
Back in 1974, I applied to their training program.
And the response was,
"Well, you didn't make it, Eric, you're not good enough."
In the late '80s, in London, I was running my own animation studio.
It was a very successful commercials company.
But I was getting very stressed out working on commercials.
I go to an animation festival in Los Angeles, bringing my reel,
and there are a couple of Disney guys there.
One was Charlie Fink,
who just kept calling me once a month.
"You wanna jump ship yet, huh? You wanna join Disney's yet, huh?"
Charlie finally dropped the bombshell.
He said, "They're thinking of doing this film Aladdin.
And they're thinking of getting Robin Williams."
I just thought, "Okay, if I don't do this now,
I'm gonna miss the crest of a wave."
My first week at Disney,
and I'm starting to draw developmental sketches of the Genie.
And here we are.
If you look at Mickey, he's got this organic way of being drawn
where one line leads to the next.
Same thing with the Genie.
You know, you've got all these lines
that kind of add up to something whole.
So, I started doing Robin William-esque Genies in my designs.
John and Ron said,
"Why don't you take a couple of Robin's bits off his comedy records
and animate a Genie to them?"
But first, before we do the play,
I'd like to talk about the very serious subject of schizophrenia.
-No, he doesn't. -Shut up! Let him talk!
[audience laughs]
[Goldberg] And I have to say, it's one of the great joys of my life
to have made Robin Williams laugh.
[screams]
-Oy! -[bones crack]
Ten thousand years will give you such a crick in the neck!
[Goldberg] I was in the right place at the right time.
Animation, all of a sudden, is hip again.
Aladdin was getting towards that peak of what people call the Renaissance.
Welcome to my wall.
[chuckles]
The Shanghai assignment was great.
They wanted to decorate a restaurant in Shanghai Disneyland,
à la Hirschfeld/Sardi's.
I even got to do modern characters like Anna and Elsa.
Whenever I have to draw characters from the Disney canon,
I always feel all those people who created those characters
looking over my shoulder saying, "Do it right."
[chuckles]
Often, they would straddle two drawings like this with Gaston and LeFou.
Every one of these movies has a theme and they're universal.
How many people of our generation grew up dealing with death
because they saw Bambi's mother die?
[calling] Mother?
♪ I've got no strings To hold me do-- ♪
[Goldberg] With Pinocchio, it's,
"Always let your conscience be your guide."
In the case of Aladdin, the theme was, "Be yourself."
And even though, yes, they do deal with serious subjects,
you always walk out of a Disney film delighted and feeling like...
"Yeah. That was great.
I think I'm gonna see it again."
[chuckles]