(Walt) said we should have gone ahead and made it anyway

May 15, 2014 11:56 AM

In the mid-1940s, surrealist artist Salvador Dali began collaborating with Walt Disney on a short film. The idea was fully storyboarded and an 18 second test animation was completed by Disney animator John Hench. Soon after, the idea was shelved due to a changing of focus with Disney Feature Animation. Almost 60 years later, Walt's nephew Roy E. Disney (with consultation from the now 95-year old Hench) spearheaded an effort to finish the film. In 2003, the finished product, "Destino", premiered.

In 2004, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short. It lost to the Australian short Harvie Krumpet.

A 2003 AWN interview with John Hench

posted by inturnaround (11 comments total)

Ugh, I half-remember something about someone syncing up the audio from something else to Destino, and it linking up absolutely perfectly. I wish I could remember what the song that went with it was, though.
posted by themadthinker at 12:20 PM on May 15, 2014

It was Bohemian Rhapsody.

In researching this, I found that neither Dali nor Hench particularly liked the song they had in it, but Dali was certain he could make it work because apparently he had some manner of fondness for the banal.
posted by inturnaround at 12:24 PM on May 15, 2014 [10 favorites]

Oh, wonderful, thank you!
posted by themadthinker at 12:31 PM on May 15, 2014

Hey, I remember seeing this years ago (2004?) at the Dali exhibit in Philadelphia. Incredible! I wish Disney had gone more this direction.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:42 PM on May 15, 2014

Holy shit the Bhoemian Rhapsody version is amazing.
posted by divabat at 1:07 PM on May 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's a play called "Lobster Alice" that's based around this collaboration. I saw it in Los Angeles; Noah Wyle did an extraordinarily (and surprising) job as Dali.
posted by infinitywaltz at 2:55 PM on May 15, 2014

Previously (and possibly a double?)
posted by hippybear at 4:07 PM on May 15, 2014

What? What did I just see? I don't even....What?

I thought Walt Disney had a serious problem with nudity? I wonder if that has something to do with why it was canned.
posted by Canageek at 10:53 PM on May 15, 2014

I've never really understood Dali. It's always seemed like surrealism for the sake of surrealism.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:36 PM on May 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

That was quite a fun series of mixed metaphors and wild puns. But I get the feeling like the animator didn't capture everything there. I wonder, is the storyboard anywhere to be found? It'd be an interesting challenge for other animators to try their hand at interpreting the piece.
posted by TwelveTwo at 12:19 AM on May 16, 2014

There seems to be a lot of images available if you do a Google Image search for "dali destine storyboard". I don't know how much of any of this is directly related to the original, unfinished development of this short film, but there is plenty there to explore. Probably even more if you examine the links that each of the images is from.
posted by hippybear at 9:59 AM on May 16, 2014 [1 favorite]