Ron Clements and John Musker take our Dis­ney movies quiz

Ques­tion 1: In your 1997 film Her­cules, who lent his voice to the vil­lain, Hades?

Ron Clements: James Woods, of course. Jack Nichol­son was our first choice. We actu­al­ly wrote the script with the idea that Jack might do the part. We had an ear­li­er expe­ri­ence writ­ing for Aladdin, the idea that Robin Williams would be the voice of the Genie even though we didn’t have any idea if he would do it or not. That worked out, but it didn’t work out so well with Jack.

John Musker: Jack Nichol­son came in and we showed him the draw­ings. He brought his kids and his lit­tle daugh­ter at the time was dressed as Snow White. The whole deal. We had a scene of ani­ma­tion from Her­cules and showed him the draw­ings of Greece and said, ​‘the one thing in Greece is you’re nev­er far from water and all these rocks.’ He said, [adopts Jack Nichol­son voice] ​‘Rocks and water! That’s what it is!’. But ulti­mate­ly they couldn’t make a deal with him because, back then, he had to have a mer­chan­dis­ing deal and it wouldn’t work out.

RC: But it worked out because James Wood did a fan­tas­tic job. A lit­tle dif­fer­ent than Jack Nicholson

JM: He took it in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent direction.

RC: I think the movie’s short­er than it would’ve been, because Jack Nichol­son talks slow and James Wood talks real­ly fast.

JM: He was like, ​‘c’mon, c’mon, c’mon’. He got the con­cept. Rest­less. Volatile. So we got that one right.

RC: The space between the teeth.

JM: With Kei­th David that was a dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of his. Actu­al­ly we did it on Moana a lit­tle bit with Jemaine Clements.

RC: With Maui as well.

JM: Yeah, but that wasn’t based on Dwayne Johnson.

RC: But Facili­er also has a gold tooth…

JM: …which Kei­th David does not have. And actu­al­ly Facilier’s name used to be Duva­lier in the very first draft. But then there was a real Dr Duva­lier who was the dic­ta­tor of Haiti. And so there was the ques­tion that it might send things in the wrong direction.

Ques­tion 3: In which decade did Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen pub­lish his orig­i­nal sto­ry, ​‘The Lit­tle Mer­maid’, on which your 1989 film was based?

JM: I’m just remote­ly guess­ing… 1880s?

LWLies: Do you want to guess again…

JM: Is it far off?

LWLies: Wrong half of the century.

JM: Real­ly? It was before 1850? I’ll say 1840.

LWLies: 1837.

JM: Real­ly? Okay, that’s good to know. 1837, got­ta remem­ber that now.

RC: I’ll tell you a fun sto­ry relat­ed to Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen. I pitched The Lit­tle Mer­maid with a hap­py end­ing even though Andersen’s sto­ry doesn’t have a hap­py end­ing. She dies and in the end turns into sea foam. Not hap­py. It didn’t both­er me too much, except when I was doing press in Copen­hagen and peo­ple seemed to have a prob­lem with chang­ing the sto­ry. I start­ed to feel a great deal of guilt about it, some­thing I hadn’t felt before. But we had a pre­mière and the Queen of Den­mark was in atten­dance and I apol­o­gised to her for chang­ing the end­ing of Hans Chris­t­ian Andersen’s sto­ry. She said, ​‘Oh, he nev­er knew how to end his sto­ries any­way, so now it has a prop­er end­ing.’ So I felt much better.

Ques­tion 4: Dwayne John­son is among the cast of your new film Moana. As The Rock, what was the name of his trade­mark fin­ish­ing move?

JM: The people’s… eye­brow? Let’s see… The people’s… leg lock? The people’s… elbow, fore­arm? I don’t know what it was, what was it?

LWLies: It was the people’s elbow.

JM: The people’s elbow! I think we get that.

Ques­tion 5: Ron, you came up through Dis­ney under the wing of the great Frank Thomas, one of the ​‘Nine Old Men’ who cement­ed what we now refer to as the clas­sic Dis­ney style. Can you name the oth­er eight?

JM: Eas­i­ly, easily.

RC: I think I can. They were Les Clark, John Louns­bery, Frank Thomas, Ollie John­ston, Ward Kim­ble, Wolf­gang Rei­ther­man, Marc Davis, Eric Lar­son. Who did I not men­tion? Milt Kahl. I was an ani­ma­tion trainee when I worked with Frank. He taught me animation.

JM: He still has a lit­tle hand-drawn note from Frank on his bul­letin board at work, of things to remem­ber when doing animation.

RC: Frank was a per­fec­tion­ist. He once said that of all the scenes that he ani­mat­ed – and he ani­mat­ed some of the great­est scenes in ani­ma­tion his­to­ry – there are only a hand­ful that he was real­ly sat­is­fied with.

JM: Frank was also known as ​‘the vel­vet nee­dle’ because he could give you a very sharp, point­ed crit­i­cism but in a very del­i­cate way.

RC: A very smart man. Very intel­li­gent. He was also a musi­cian. He played the piano in a jazz band called The Fire­house Five, which some oth­er Dis­ney artists were also in. They per­formed at Dis­ney­land and oth­er places. Chuck Jones called him the Lau­rence Olivi­er of ani­ma­tors. And he was a great actor so that was accu­rate in those terms.

JM: He wasn’t as good as some of the oth­er artists, but his act­ing was the best.

RC: He did a break­through scene in Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs, which was the scene of the dwarves mourn­ing the death of Snow White. That was the first scene in ani­ma­tion that made peo­ple actu­al­ly cry. No one ever thought ani­ma­tion had the pow­er to do that before that. He also did the spaghet­ti sequence in Lady and the Tramp, which has become a sort of classic.

Ques­tion 6: Relat­ed to Moana, what’s the name of the FW Mur­nau fea­ture that was filmed on the island of Bora Bora?

JM: Sun­rise? Oh wait, don’t tell me… Except that’s prob­a­bly the only one I know. The island of some­thing? Give me an initial?

LWLies: It begins with T, four letters.

JM: Tabu. I don’t think we saw that one. We did see the Robert Fla­her­ty film also called Moana that was kind of a staged doc­u­men­tary done in 1926. That was shot in Samoa. He lived there for like a year. We saw that in Fiji. It’s a short, only like 20 minutes.

Ques­tion 7: In Aladdin, what is the first thing that Robin Williams’ Genie says when he is released from the lamp?

JM: ​‘Oi! Ten thou­sand years will give you such a crick in the neck!’

LWLies: Word for word.

JM: I think we actu­al­ly wrote that one, except for the ​‘oi!’ which Robin added.

Ques­tion 8: In The Great Mouse Detec­tive, there’s a scene set in a toy shop where you can see a toy of which famous Dis­ney character?

Both togeth­er: Dumbo.

LWLies: You know your own films very well.

JM: Well, we worked on them a lot.

RC: But did you know that in Moana there are a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ref­er­ences to oth­er Dis­ney films that will be very dif­fi­cult to spot.

JM: East­er eggs!

RC: This is a test for you. Did you see Olaf from Frozen in the movie?

JM: Sven you saw, that’s pret­ty obvious.

RC: He’s the rein­deer from Frozen, you saw him, maybe. But maybe you missed him?

JM: But regard­less of Sven, Olaf is also in the movie, hard­er to spot. Floun­der is in the movie, very hard to spot. Bay­max from Big Hero 6 is also in the movie, very hard to spot. Aladdin’s lamp is in the movie.

RC: They’re hidden.

JM: We’re in too but we’re very hard to spot. But we’ve been in all of the Dis­ney movies since Aladdin. We are not in The Lit­tle Mer­maid, but we are in Aladdin, pret­ty obvi­ous­ly, ear­ly on. Next time you watch Aladdin you can look for us. We were much younger then, but there’s a scene ear­ly on where Prince Ahmed is com­ing into town after Aladdin has just giv­en some fruit to some hun­gry lit­tle kids in a back alley, and he comes over and he’s stand­ing between a roly-poly beard­ed guy, and a taller, angu­lar guy, and one of them says, ​“On his way to the palace I sup­pose?” And the oth­er one says…

RC: ​“Anoth­er suit­or for the princess!”

Moana is released in cin­e­mas 2 Decem­ber. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.