The Sweatbox
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''The Sweatbox'' is a 2002 American
documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...
directed by Trudie Styler designed to show behind-the-scenes footage of ''Kingdom of the Sun'' (the original version of ''
The Emperor's New Groove ''The Emperor's New Groove'' is a 2000 American animated slapstick comedy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 40th animated film produced by the studio, it was directed by Mark Dindal and p ...
''). It illustrated the slow and painful transformation from ''Kingdom of the Sun'' to ''The Emperor's New Groove'', including director
Roger Allers Roger Charles Allers (born June 29, 1949) is an American film director, screenwriter, animator, storyboard artist, and playwright. He is best-known for co-directing ''The Lion King'' (1994), the highest-grossing traditionally animated film of al ...
, musician Sting, artists and voice cast being dismayed by the new direction. The film's major theme is creative-executive conflicts.


Synopsis

In 1997, director
Roger Allers Roger Charles Allers (born June 29, 1949) is an American film director, screenwriter, animator, storyboard artist, and playwright. He is best-known for co-directing ''The Lion King'' (1994), the highest-grossing traditionally animated film of al ...
asks British singer-songwriter Sting to help write the music to a new Disney animated feature titled ''Kingdom of the Sun''. He is intrigued with the project as is the cast and crew who all voice their love over the epic story, the songs and the quirky tone it is taking. The crew then present what they have finished so far to executive producers
Thomas Schumacher Thomas Schumacher (born December 5, 1957) is a theatrical producer, currently president of Disney Theatrical Group, the theatrical production arm of The Walt Disney Company. Life and career Schumacher studied theatre at UCLA. In 1987 he was ass ...
and Peter Schneider in the titular sweatbox, the room where they screen their half-finished product. However, the producers are harshly dissatisfied and demand that the film be redone, though they underhandedly admit that they liked the "love song" and the "llama song". Allers and the crew are taken aback as they feel that all of their hard work has been for nothing. They concoct a new plot, though the animators are concerned over the new direction with many worried that their contribution will not make it into the final film.
Mark Dindal Mark Louis Dindal (born May 1960) is an American film director, effects animator, screenwriter, character designer, storyboard artist and voice actor, who is famous for having directed popular films like ''Cats Don't Dance'' (1997), ''The Emper ...
takes up the directing duties with the title now slightly changed to ''Kingdom in the Sun''. One of the film's stars,
Owen Wilson Owen Cunningham Wilson (born November 18, 1968) is an American actor. He has had a long association with filmmaker Wes Anderson with whom he shared writing and acting credits for '' Bottle Rocket'' (1996), '' Rushmore'' (1998), and '' The Royal ...
, is replaced with
John Goodman John Stephen Goodman (born June 20, 1952) is an American actor. He gained national fame for his role as the family patriarch Dan Conner in the American Broadcasting Company, ABC comedy series ''Roseanne'' (1988–1997; 2018), for which he rec ...
and the '' Prince and the Pauper''-style story with magic elements is replaced with a comical farce. This ends up earning the approval of Schneider and Schumacher, though Sting is slightly miffed at the new changes. Sting continues to work on the film, though he feels that his role has been reduced somewhat. Nevertheless, his complaints about the film's ending (which went against his conservationist beliefs) actually manages to get through to the higher ups who agree with altering the ending slightly. He later discovers that the title has been changed once again to ''The Emperor's New Groove''. While at first indifferent to the title, he warms up to it once he sees a clip from the almost finished product. The documentary ends with Don Hahn admitting that, despite the hard work and disagreements over the project, he is mostly satisfied with how it turned out.


Background

Trudie Styler, a documentarian, had been allowed to film the production of ''Kingdom of the Sun/The Emperor's New Groove'' as part of the deal that originally brought her husband Sting to the project. As a result, Styler recorded on film much of the struggle, controversy, and troubles that went into making the picture (including the moment when producer Fullmer called Sting to inform the pop star that his songs were being deleted from the film). Disney owns the rights to the documentary and has not released it on home video or DVD. The naming is due to the screening room at the Disney studio in Burbank, which when originally set up had "no air conditioning, causing the animators to sweat while their rough work was being critiqued." The "process of reviewing the animation as it developed" became known as the Sweatbox, and as the documentary was about "the process of making an animated film," the term was chosen as the title. This "making of" documentary was co-directed by Styler and John-Paul Davidson. A review by MotionPictureComics.com explains the plot: While "the first thirty-to-forty minutes of The Sweatbox unfolds as one might expect any in-depth look at the making of an animated film to go"...about forty minutes in, we witness the fateful day in which an early story-boarded cut of the film is screened for the heads of Disney Feature Animation, Thomas Schumacher and Peter Schneider. They hate the film, declare that it is not working, and begin a process of totally scrapping and reinventing huge chunks of the story. Characters are totally changed...voice actors are replaced, and the entire story is shifted around." Dorse A. Lanpher said the film "documents the pain and anguish of the maneuvering to get ''The Kingdom of the Sun''/''The Emperor's New Groove'' made into a movie. The 95-minute film, which was originally supposed to be released at the beginning of 2001, was instead altered for bonus featurette on ''New Groove’s'' DVD release. A Disney-approved version of the film received a worldwide premiere at the
Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...
on September 13, 2002. It also had a short run at the Loews Beverly Center Cineplex of Los Angeles "in an unpublicized one-week run in order to be eligible for an Academy Award nomination". In addition to this, the film was also "shown at The Enzian theater in Orlando as part of the Florida Film Festival".


Reception

The film holds a 100% rating on
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, based on six reviews. According to Wade Sampson, staff writer at ''MousePlanet'' who attended a screening, each time Tom Schumacher or Peter Schneider (then- Disney Feature Animation president and
Disney Studios The Walt Disney Studios is an American film and entertainment studio, and is the Studios Content segment of the Walt Disney Company. Based mainly at the namesake studio lot in Burbank, California, the studio is best known for its multifacete ...
chairman respectively) were on the screen, "there were howls from the audience that was partly composed of animators from Disney Feature Animation Florida." He says that "the two executives did come across as nerdy bullies who really didn't seem to know what was going on when it came to animation," and that they "were unnecessarily hurtful and full of politically correct speech." He adds that it is left to the viewer to decide if this impression is due to editing or a "remarkable truthful glimpse." Sampson adds, "Rarely have artists been caught so evocatively in fear of executives, or executives portrayed as so clueless as to how to deal with artists, how to resolve story problems and how to understand what audiences wanted." He says that "supporters of Allers' original vision still feel that if he had been given the time, money and support that the film would have been a masterpiece," but "instead of the more ambitious ''Kingdom of the Sun'', the Disney Studio decides to go with a supposedly more commercial film incorporating some of the same characters and location, ''Emperor's New Groove''." Although the film in its completed form had been kept under wraps for about a decade, on March 21, 2012 it was leaked online by an eighteen-year-old cartoonist in the UK. After the documentary was leaked online, Amid Amidi of
Cartoon Brew Cartoon Brew is an animation news website created by Amid Amidi and animation historian Jerry Beck that was launched in 2004. Cartoon Dump It also created ''Cartoon Dump'', a weekly podcast showing poorly made TV cartoons featuring ''Mystery Sc ...
gave the following analysis of the film:


Appearances

*
Mark Dindal Mark Louis Dindal (born May 1960) is an American film director, effects animator, screenwriter, character designer, storyboard artist and voice actor, who is famous for having directed popular films like ''Cats Don't Dance'' (1997), ''The Emper ...
* Sting *
Roger Allers Roger Charles Allers (born June 29, 1949) is an American film director, screenwriter, animator, storyboard artist, and playwright. He is best-known for co-directing ''The Lion King'' (1994), the highest-grossing traditionally animated film of al ...
* Andreas Deja *
David Spade David Wayne Spade (born July 22, 1964) is an American actor, stand-up comedian, television host, and writer. He was a cast member on ''Saturday Night Live'' in the 1990s, and he later began an acting career in both film and television. He also s ...
*
Patrick Warburton Patrick Warburton (born November 14, 1964) is an American actor. On television, he has played David Puddy on '' Seinfeld'', the title character on ''The Tick'', Jeb Denton on ''Less Than Perfect'', Jeff Bingham on '' Rules of Engagement'' and L ...
* Eartha Kitt *
John Goodman John Stephen Goodman (born June 20, 1952) is an American actor. He gained national fame for his role as the family patriarch Dan Conner in the American Broadcasting Company, ABC comedy series ''Roseanne'' (1988–1997; 2018), for which he rec ...
*
Thomas Schumacher Thomas Schumacher (born December 5, 1957) is a theatrical producer, currently president of Disney Theatrical Group, the theatrical production arm of The Walt Disney Company. Life and career Schumacher studied theatre at UCLA. In 1987 he was ass ...
*
Roy E. Disney Roy Edward Disney KCSG (January 10, 1930 – December 16, 2009) was an American businessman. He was the longtime senior executive for the Walt Disney Company, which was founded by his father, Roy O. Disney, and his uncle, Walt Disney. At the ti ...
* David Hartley * Randy Fullmer * David Reynolds * Peter Schneider * Don Hahn *
Joe Ranft Joseph Henry Ranft (March 13, 1960 – August 16, 2005) was an American screenwriter, animator, storyboard artist and voice actor. He worked for Pixar Animation Studios and Disney at Walt Disney Animation Studios and Disney Television Animation ...
* John Musker *
Ron Clements Ronald Francis Clements (born April 25, 1953) is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He often collaborates with fellow director John Musker and is best known for writing and directing the Disney films ''The Grea ...
*
Gary Trousdale Gary Trousdale (born June 8, 1960) is an American animator, film director, screenwriter and storyboard artist. He is best known for directing films such as ''Beauty and the Beast'' (1991), ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame'' (1996), and ''Atlantis: Th ...
*
Kirk Wise Kirk Wise (born August 24, 1963) is an American film director, animator and screenwriter best known for his work at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Wise has directed Disney animated films such as ''Beauty and the Beast'', ''The Hunchback of Notre ...
*
Dale Baer Dale L. Baer (June 15, 1950 – January 15, 2021) was an American character animator for Walt Disney Animation Studios and The Baer Animation Company. He was supervising animator of many characters. Biography Baer had over 40 years of experience ...
* Tony Bancroft * Tom Jones *
Owen Wilson Owen Cunningham Wilson (born November 18, 1968) is an American actor. He has had a long association with filmmaker Wes Anderson with whom he shared writing and acting credits for '' Bottle Rocket'' (1996), '' Rushmore'' (1998), and '' The Royal ...
*
Marc Shaiman Marc Shaiman (; born October 22, 1959) is an American composer and lyricist for films, television, and theatre, best known for his collaborations with lyricist and director Scott Wittman. He wrote the music and co-wrote the lyrics for the Broa ...
* Bruce W. Smith *
John Debney John Cardon Debney (born August 18, 1956) is an American composer and conductor of film, television, and video game scores. His work encompasses a variety of mediums and genres including comedy, horror, thriller, and action-adventure. He is a l ...
*
Harvey Fierstein Harvey Forbes Fierstein ( ; born June 6, 1952) is an American actor, playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for his theater work in '' Torch Song Trilogy'' and '' Hairspray'' and movie roles in '' Mrs. Doubtfire'', ''Independence Day'', an ...


References


External links

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''Sweatbox'' Documentary Unedited Version
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sweatbox 2002 films The Emperor's New Groove 2002 documentary films Films about Disney Disney documentary films Documentary films about animation Documentary films about films Films directed by Trudie Styler Films produced by Trudie Styler 2000s English-language films 2000s American films