#jim cox

[jt1674]

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[90smovies]

[otnesse]

Since I mentioned a few times the Jim Cox draft of Beauty and the Beast and how Jeffrey Katzenberg screwed him over back then, I'll provide the source for it. It's in Tale as Old as Time: The Art and Making of Beauty and the Beast. Pages 28-31 to be precise.

"The process that actually led to the making of the film began when Jim Cox submitted two treatments in early 1988. Cox had written the screenplay for Oliver & Company and was already writing The Rescuers Down Under. He recalls, "They asked me what I wanted to do beyond Rescuers; they had five ideas they were interested in, and at the bottom of the list was 'Beauty and the Beast.' I said, ' "Beauty and the Beast!" ' " "Jim shifted the story to rural France in the fifteenth century. He kept the two older sisters from the original story and gave Beauty three feckless suitors. Her father became a befuddled but loveable inventor. At the Beast's castle, the father encounters an array of enchanted but silent objects, including dishes and utensils that serve him dinner, and a shy tabletop candelabra. "I loved the [Jean] Cocteau film, the simple magic of the arms sticking out of the walls holding the candelabras," says Jim. "The candelabra character was kind of an homage to Cocteau's film. The central idea for the animation magic was that the staff of the castle had been turned into the objects of the castle---I loved the idea of anthropomor-phizing objects. I also thought that if her father were an inventor, there would be opportunities for funny interactions between him and the objects, because he would think of them as inventions, like the things he made." "Overwhelmed by the beauty of their unexpected guest, the enchanted objects stumble over themselves in their efforts to please her. On her first night, The fantastic images of the day coalesce into a musical dream. All the mute items of the household have voices and sing to her. Jim also added a scene of Beast rescuing Beauty from a timber wolf. "Beauty's would-be suitors and her conniving sisters make their way to attack the castle to attack Beast and steal his treasure. At the moment Beauty's kiss transforms the Beast into a prince, the suitors and sisters turn into animals that reflect their faults: a peacock for vanity, a pig for greed, and so on. "The executives really liked the second treatment," says Jim. "I was down in Mexico with my wife [Penny Finkelman Cox], who was producing Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and somehow Michael Eisner reached me at the house we'd rented---this was before cell phones. He told me how much he loved the sotry, and they were going to make it, and congratulations." "Cox expanded his treatment into a script---and was rejected: "Jeffrey Katzenberg called me and said, 'Jim, you've done a great job, but no one bats a thousand. We're going to go in a different direction with it.' I don't know what they didn't like about the script."

So, long story short, Jim Cox tried to write an initial treatment of Beauty and the Beast, which was of high enough quality that Michael Eisner, back when he actually CARED about keeping Disney wholesome, had to track Jim Cox and his wife down to congratulate him (likely sinking quite a bit of money into communications revenue in the process ESPECIALLY considering this was before cell phones), and then Katzenberg up and out rejects the script on a whim, doesn't even bother to give Cox an actual reason for why it was rejected. This apparently all happened in 1988, about a year or so before The Little Mermaid hit theaters. The book later indicates Katzenberg was already considering having Linda Woolverton write the movie, but first tried to do Richard Williams, or if not him, certainly Richard Purdum, only to then reject them for the "too dark, too dramatic" take on Beauty and the Beast (bit ironic considering his later role in a certain Pixar draft, but that's a topic for another day). Then after a research trip to France as well as getting the guys behind Cranium Command, we basically got the film we got.

Honestly, this is just the first time Katzenberg screwed Cox over (he'd more infamously do that with the whole Ferngully/Aladdin blowup that Robin Williams got caught in the middle of and led to Williams' feud with Disney until they sincerely apologized). And quite frankly, I'd argue the development suffered as a result, especially when the film we DID get if you ask me was so radically different from the actual fairy tale that it was essentially an in-name movie, and when you think about it, actually was pretty similar to Shrek regarding a more mean-spirited take on Belle's predecessors (Linda Woolverton made no secret to how she wanted to supplant Ariel and had little respect for Ariel's predecessors), that plus most fairy tale tropes. Heck, Belle didn't so much as even get foils, at least, not foils that were DIRECTLY relevant to true beauty coming from within (the closest she had to foils, the closest analogue to her sisters in fact, were those triplets who crushed on Gaston, and quite frankly, they were too nice, and they don't even become villains in the second half unlike Gaston).

Assuming I can find a good scanner, I'll even make sure to post the scanned pages for you to see.

EDIT: Correction, Katzenberg actually screwed Cox over THREE times (Katzenberg was responsible for Rescuers' Down Under bombing in theaters, purely because Home Alone had an initial edge).

EDIT 2: Something else to consider, this also might have been the actual start of the Eisner-Katzenberg feud. Think about it, do you REALLY think Eisner would actually WANT Katzenberg to basically toss out Cox's treatment after he very likely sunk resources just to contact him personally at Mexico (let's not forget, cell phones didn't exist yet, so he had to go through a LOT of effort just to track Cox down, likely pay a really hefty phone bill and expenses to locate him) and request for him to do a full-fledged screenplay? That would mean Katzenberg most likely rejected the screenplay behind Eisner's back. No wonder Eisner kept Katzenberg out of the loop regarding that new animation studio a little while afterward.

[80smovies]

[rolloroberson]

The Doors at Sam Houston Coliseum lobby in Houston, Texas July 1968.

Photograph by Jim Cox.

[soundsof71]

The Doors, July 10 1968, crossing the lobby of the Sam Houston Auditorium, Houston TX, by Jim Cox. 

(Note Jim in leather pants and wool coat. In July. In Houston.)

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