We do not typically re-post articles from other websites or publications. This however, is not your typical article. John Favreau, director of Iron Man 1&2, Elf, and Cowboys & Aliens is a huge fan of Walt Disney. On what would have been his 110th birthday, Favreau details the many aspects that have made Walt Disney a timeless icon, for the LA Time's HeroComplex.
Walt Disney was born 110 years ago this week and, if someone decided to build a Mount Rushmore for Hollywood next to Griffith Observatory, we all take it for granted that he would be in granite. Disney the brand is among the strongest in the world but Disney the man has a more elusive legacy. We invited filmmaker Jon Favreau (the “Iron Man” movies, “Elf,” “Cowboys & Aliens”) to share his thoughts on that legacy. Favreau has been in a Disney state of mind recently — he’s doing research for a project called ”Magic Kingdom,” a fantasy set within the confines of the Anaheim theme park – but, as he writes, Disney has been in his dreams since he was a child.
I was born in 1966, the year Walt Disney passed away. He would’ve been 110 this week. I’m too young to have had a first-hand memory of him. In fact, I didn’t even know Disney was a man until late in my childhood. Disney was a place (Disneyland) and it made cartoons (Mickey Mouse) and it made movies (Snow White). I later learned that Disney was a person and not a swirling entity defined by Disneyland, Mickey Mouse and Snow White. Or so I thought.
As childhood slipped away, I clung to it through the discovery of Walt’s entire catalog of animated content. Even the earliest nightmare I can remember having was my family’s Toyota driving past me on a New York city street with Mowgli from “The Jungle Book” sitting where I belonged behind my parents. As I got older I became enamored with Fantasia and all of its psychadelia in the revival houses of Greenwich Village. Even as an adult, I am caught in the guts whenever I see Dumbo cradled in the trunk of his caged mother, no doubt accessing repressed pain through emotional back channels to when I lost my own mother as a kid.
And I’m not alone. In some families this emotional connection spans four and five generations. We have incorporated these myths into our own psychological makeup, like a tree growing through a chain link fence. In our secular and pluralistic society, the Wonderful World of Disney has emerged as a de facto least common denominator of shared cultural archetypes.
How did this happen? Was it some conspiracy of corporate America? An overachieving marketing exercise? I don’t think so. I’ve been on both sides of the curtain, having climbed from outsider to insider over several decades, and I believe the answer lies in a man who dreamed for an entire generation.
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