“I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing—that it was all started by a mouse.”
Walt Disney
I grew up on a dead-end street. (Well, technically it was a cul-de-sac, but that sounds less dramatic.) I didn’t watch much television or travel much as a child. In fact, until I graduated from high school most of my life was lived within ten mile radius of my home. Which was fine with me, all I wanted was a open field to play football or baseball. But I did wonder what was out there in the great big world.
And I did have one giant advantage to kids growing up in remote places all over the world— I lived less than an hour from Walt Disney World. I would eventually grow up and travel to New York, London, and Paris, but none of those places captured my imagination like my first trip to The Magic Kingdom; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (R.I.P), The Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the Haunted Mansion were regular staples of my youth. And those were just some of the fruits of labor of a man named Walt Disney. (A man who before building a creative empire, grew up on a farm and later honed his animation skills doing advertising for businesses in Kansas City.)
“There is really no secret about our approach. We keep moving forward opening new doors and doing new things because we’re curious. And curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. We’re always exploring and experimenting. At WED*, we call it Imagineering. The blending of creative imagination with technical know-how.”
Walt Disney
1965 Presentation ”Total Image”
Remember that quote from filmmaker Robert Rodriguez—“You’ll be unstoppable if you become technical as well as creative.” Rodriguez was still three years away from being born when Disney spoke about, “blending of creative imagination with technical know-how.” So that concept was true in the past, it’s true now, and it will be true in the future.
Happy Imagineering.
* Disney called WED, “My back yard laboratory, my workshop away from work.”
Related post: Screenwriting Quote of the Day #54 (Walt Disney)
[...] I grew up on a dead-end street. (Well, technically it was a cul-de-sac, but that sounds less dramatic.) I didn’t watch much television or travel much as a child. In fact, until I graduated from high school most of my life was lived within ten mile radius of my home. Which was fine with me, [...] Original Source… [...]