Issue 19: Getting A Story Together Is Challenging
On building: what we can learn from paying attention to behind-the-scenes stories. A little long, forgive me.
PSA: I want you to share this letter — forward it to a friend, share it on social media, and talk about it. (Pretty please) It’d make me happy. I enjoyed writing this letter to you, but I also enjoyed everything I had to read and watch in order to write it properly.
I love reading a good BTS (behind-the-scenes) story. How was Instagram made? How was the touch screen phone invented? (Watch General Magic H/T Rose) What was Michael Jackson thinking when he wrote ‘Billie Jean’? What’s the real history behind Sound of Music? For me, it’s rarely about grass to grace, less about trial and error — as some BTS stories embody — although these are alluring and inspiring. It’s about the ideas, how they’re born, and all the transitory stages between their birth and when we, the end-user or customer or audience get to see it, use it, watch it, read it.
Think about a book: you get the idea and then you write. Right? Nope. Not that simple: there’s writing and rewriting, then you have to work with an editor or several editors and other staff of the publishing house, as you would learn from the American Dirt process. Or a movie, where you have the producer, the director, the actors, the screenwriters, etc. I’ve always wondered how anyone was able to work with such complexity (because working with humans is complex) and create something so amazing. But it’s no different from working with a team in a company right?
Let’s go back 12/13 years. I must have been in secondary school when I first watched Emperor’s New Groove, and then subsequently, Emperor’s New School — which I hated because Kuzco was/is really annoying. My memory isn’t the sharpest, but I remember that Disney Channel came to DSTV around the mid-noughties and after years of watching Cartoon Network, STV (on the days they had good cartoons), and Nickelodeon, it was a breath of fresh air. We got to see animated films that we had seen on DVD and a whole lot of shows like That’s So Raven and Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
Emperor’s New Groove didn’t leave much of an impression on me when I first watched it. As I said, Kuzco was very annoying and I’m tempted to say he deserved all the bad things that happened to him. Then I stumbled on this article: ‘An oral history of The Emperor’s New Groove’ in One Great Story, the New York Mag newsletter. Of course, I was going to read it after the great hook: ‘We’ll Never Make That Kind of Movie Again’. My main question? What was so special about the Emperor's New Groove? And why would they never make it again?
First a basic storyline:
Like I said, Kuzco is annoying AF, but he’s also the emperor of the Inca Empire. He’s not just annoying, he’s arrogant, self-centered, selfish, rude, proud and all the other synonyms you can find in a thesaurus. Then there’s Yzma, voiced by Eartha Kitt who was just simply amazing; she’s Kuzco’s advisor. Yzma feels she should be emperor. Kuzco is not cool with her doing his job. He kicks her out. She poisons him with the intention of killing him and taking over his throne. The problem? He doesn’t die. Kronk, Yzma’s sidekick(?), with his Johnny Bravo bod, makes a mistake with the potion and so, Kuzco the emperor becomes Kuzco the Llama. Now Kuzco had been a complete asshole to this guy called Pacha. Just before he was poisoned, Kuzco told Pacha that he was going to destroy his village to make room for his summer home. (How callous? I KNOW). After he’s turned into a LLama, Kuzco somehow ends up with Pacha and has to depend on him to become normal and get his throne back.
Emperor’s New Groove was released on December 15, 2000. I was five and six days later, my sister turned 10. We had a nice outside party with a red-nose reindeer cake, played boju boju, and wore blue Mary-Amaka dresses. Just as an aside.
The interesting history
The best thing about the New York Magazine is that it’s written in oral history format. So you get everyone’s side of the story in a sequential timeline. The timeline: Disney had just made Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, etc. and they were successful. They wanted to do something different from the hero-villain, love-story pattern they already had going. Let’s call this the problem. They wanted the new film to be cultural and entertaining. Diversity.
Enter Kingdom of the Sun
The plot for Kingdom Of The Sun is different from the plot I just shared, (Emperor’s New Groove) although the two share similar characters. The New York Mag article explains everything that led to the change in direction, plot, name, music choice, etc. But before all of these, Kingdom Of The Sun was the solution to the problem that Disney wanted to solve.
According to one of the storyboard artists, Chris William, ‘Getting a story together is really challenging…’ but it was even worse with Kingdom Of The Sun.
First, they had the problem of doing too much:
You get an idea for a story, a product, a blog, a meal and you think: hmm, won’t carrots be great in this, or shouldn’t I make this workout app have the ability to tell users when they’re hungry, or won’t it be great if my story had this completely irrelevant military governor from the 80s? I was listening to a podcast this week (can’t remember which exactly, but possibly this one on the role storytelling played in the growth of Charity Water) and someone says, if you can’t tell the story succinctly, or if you’re struggling to tell it, then there’s a problem [paraphrased].
The Walt Disney team behind Kingdom Of The Sun soon realised this. Randy Fullmer, the producer, said he spent an entire trip trying to explain the Kingdom Of The Sun to someone on a plane. That was when he realised there was a problem. In his words: ‘There’s too much here.’ He wasn’t the only one who noted that the movie had all these different elements: It had the Prince and the Pauper theme. It had the transformation of somebody into a llama. It had Yzma, who wanted to raise the dead, snuff out the light, and have a world of darkness, but she also wanted eternal youth and beauty.
You really can’t be everything and that’s okay.
How did they solve this? The sacrifice.
They had to make a good and entertaining story that would sell. Currently, they had something that was too much of everything. It had solved their initial problem, but it had become so cumbersome and lacked any form of simplicity. What sacrifices would help them get there? How would they fix the mess that was their current movie? By killing their darlings or killing off a director. Not actually taking a knife and killing him. But they had to decide on what elements to kill and what to keep. To do this, they split everyone into teams and it became a ‘may the best man win’ situation. When the two teams came back with their movie ideas which they had developed from Kingdom Of The Sun and showed it to the heads of studio, the director, Roger Allers, who directed Lion King stepped down because his team’s idea wasn’t chosen. (I’ve phrased it as a defeat, and in a sense, it was, but it was contextual.)
What did stepping aside mean?
Sometimes, it’s just not a good fit. Either it’s you or something else. You just need to know when to leave, when to give up.
But how?
How do you know it’s really not working out? How do you know when to let go of a story? How do you know when to say, this thing has failed, let’s not force it, let’s just move on. There’s an answer from the article, but you can also listen to this podcast on how Slack's origins H/T Fu’ad.
What’s your motivation when telling a story?
That’s a valid question, and I wrote about it a bit in my first letter to you this year. Here’s what Rohan Gunatillake, the creator of Buddhify, says:
I think a really powerful thing to do whether you’re thinking in the context of business or in the context of mindfulness practices is that every time you’re practicing, remind yourself why you are doing it. That will give you the orientation, the energy, and the inspiration to avoid falling into that pitfall or that trap.
The pitfall here? Complexity. The team struggled to keep up with the initial problem they were trying to solve and that was one of the biggest issues they had in the end.
Final words: if you’re an editor or someone who works behind the scenes, listen:
“You must give artists enough freedom to go do what they want and help shape it. You help make the idea better.” [Paraphrased]
What I enjoyed this week:
That’s all folks! This letter doesn’t have an interview because there was a hiccup in my process. I overcompensated by writing you this long letter, so I guess that’s fine (forgive me if it’s not) Next week, it’s an interview with one of my favourite people, Akachi, and a short note (I promise) on growth.
Don’t forget to share! (Rushed to write this, editor and I did our best xx)
I absolutely loved the Emperor's new groove. What! I loved Disney and Cartoon Network growing up, and I think I had Stitches ears growing on mine and Samurai Jack's resilience at some point. I soaked everything in. I loved the animation and the beauty that was created.
I used to love BTS too, but over time I seem to have fallen out of understanding the creative process. Your letter has reawakened the interest and I should be curious enough to do some research of my own.
The thing about complexity is true. Some stories main problem is that the writers or storytellers refuse to kill their darlings. This is a big no no especially in screenwriting. You cut and cut until you can cut no more.
Thanks again for the letter. It was not too long believe me. I love history and research on stories and life so I didn't really mind. Please do more. See you next week.