Mickey’s Ten Commandments
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Marty Sklar is a legendary name, even in comparison to other famous Imagineers. He told stories so well that he eventually earned the title of Principal Creative Executive for the entirety of The Walt Disney Company. He also held the title of Vice Chairman at the same time. If anyone understands how Disney tells story, it’s Marty Sklar.
Sklar famously started working for the company right as Disneyland opened. He was a would-be journalist recruited from the Daily Bruin at UCLA. Uncle Walt assigned him the task of writing the Disneyland News in 1955, weeks prior to the park’s opening. The following year, he graduated and started working for WED Enterprises, which became his life’s work. Sklar retired in 2009, 53 years after his hiring; he was one of the longest tenured employees in Disney history.
After his employment with Disney ended, Sklar wrote a book entitled One Little Spark!: Mickey’s Ten Commandments and the Road to Imagineering. In it, he shared company secrets about all the little ways Uncle Walt trained his staff to tell stories. Sklar meant this in the broadest sense as well as the most miniature one. From its opening day forward, Disneyland told a story in and of itself as the Happiest Place on Earth.
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The branding was more than a catchy marketing slogan. It also pressured employees of WED Enterprises to create something so wonderful that theme park tourists could lay down their burdens the instant they entered the Disney Bubble. Disneyland is a place where fantasy blurs with reality, and that’s the explicit design of Walt Disney.
The substructures are equally consistent with their storytelling. Each themed land is an impeccable combination of parallel elements. In isolation, each one fits well into the greater scheme of, say, Tomorrowland, as an example. You’ll notice plenty of quasi-futuristic elements that reflect a better world just a few years away if you simply take a moment to study them.
What’s amazing about this area of the park, however, is that the sum is greater than its parts. Each attraction, store, and restaurant at Tomorrowland stands alone as an accurate representation of the world of tomorrow. In combination, this themed land evolves into a living, breathing re-creation of a place that may not exist in theory yet paradoxically is available to visit each time you head to Disneyland.
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When you enter Tomorrowland or any other Disney themed land, literally everything in sight has a purpose, and that purpose is to transport you into an imaginary realm. To achieve this goal, Walt Disney started with literally nothing but 160 acres of orange groves. Then, he sat down with the smartest people he knew (excepting his brother), who were not coincidentally folks that had impressed him over the years with their problem-solving skills. And they embarked on the journey to solve the ultimate problem. How does someone turn an orange grove into the Happiest Place on Earth? The answer lies in the ability to hypnotize strangers into believing in something artificial. It’s the ultimate truth about how Disney tells story.
The most oppressive physical law of nature
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How does a Disney employee create something from nothing, weaving an impeccable yarn that captures the imagination? They follow the precepts that Sklar lists in his book, many of which he learned directly from Walt Disney. Surprisingly, some of them sound more like marketing than storytelling. Prior to studying them, however, the first thing to understand is how any process works.
Inertia has twin definitions. The first is the Physics concept that “a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.” In Newtonian terms, an object in motion tends to stay in motion while one at rest remains at rest. Any time you can’t get off the couch, blame Sir Isaac Newton.
The non-SAT version of the definition of inertia is that it’s a “tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.” Both of these statements are critical to the work of an Imagineer…and anyone in life, really. Inertia is the physical law that keeps you where you are, whether that’s a positive or not.
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Breaking inertia is the mother’s milk of an Imagineer’s existence. Sameness is their sworn enemy. To create something, they have to disrupt the constant state of inertia surrounding them. Embarking on this grand endeavor is a struggle, and that’s precisely why Walt Disney asked for his beloved staff members to consider a couple of key factors prior to moving forward with any project.
Given his early struggles as an illustrator attempting to make his bones in the corporate world, Disney understood all too well the frustration of a great idea that went nowhere. He’d lost the rights to his own character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, early in his career. He’d also attempted to conquer Hollywood cinemas several times. Due to his high standards, Disney had one of the best track records of any filmmaker in history, but he still had his share of cinematic duds. Have you ever heard of The Sword and the Rose or Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue? Exactly.
Comments
I think you misinterpret Commandment #8 (Avoid Contradictions – Maintain Identity), and I think this is a big problem overall with the addition of the 'Frozen' ride in Norway. World Showcase at Epcot tells stories of actual places with rich histories and cultures. By putting a fictional princess story in the mix, Disney has effectively contradicted that idea and risks losing the intended identity of this part of the park. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a "Frozen" ride - like most Disney fans, I love the film and totally appreciate the popular demand for an attraction related to that. What I'm saying is that they put it in the exact wrong place (Arendelle is a fantastical version of Norway; not actual Norway). Other attractions on World Showcase don't have this problem. Mexico has the "Three Caballeros" take us through Mexico, not an alternate version of that country. The United States takes us through U.S. history without relying on Pocahontas or Tiana to narrate. I think Disney broke its own rules, and I'm afraid it may lead to the demise of the story that Epcot's World Showcase was meant to tell.