The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 258

N8 THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE JUNE 22, 1997 Disney flexes its muscles iii 'Hercules' I I ft S- is' i- vr ft PHOTO GARY KRUEGE Scarfe (above) and one of his preliminary sketches fof "Hercules," this one for the character Hades. but when he got angry he would ex- plode like a fireball," Scarfe said. Animating this concep- tion fell to Disney veteran Nik Ranieri, who was inspired I not only by Scarfe but bv the voice of James Wood9. 1 (Known for his mercurial acting style, especially in coldly villainous roles, Woods gives the vocal performance most MOVIE Continued from Page Nl Except that this time, Disney did something completely uncharacteristic. Look closely at the animation, which has a loose, free-form feel not seen since "Aladdin," and you'll see the influence of British artist Gerald Scarfe, a caricaturist, newspaper cartoonist, and theatrical designer brought in by the studio as production designer.

It's not every day that Disney incorporates the style of Pink Floyd, but Scarfe designed and directed the animation sequences for MGM's "The Wall." If the drawing style has changed somewhat, the promotional style has not. Disney has begun its usual mega-sell for "Hercules," investing untold hundreds of thousands on a national mall tour throughout the spring. (Untold because Disney never reveals its budgets, Disney publicity chief Howard Green said.) In New York alone, Disney spent more than $500,000 to cover police and sanitation expenses for a Hercules-themed nighttime parade up Fifth Avenue last weekend, seen live by an estimated 2 million people and on television by millions more. Disney also hired a stable of renowned athletes to provide famous-face time at a splashy party for the movie's Ne.v York opening a week ago. Among them were Olympic decathletes Bruce Jenner and Bob Mathias, and an international roster of sports champions that included tennis star Gabriela Sabatini, auto racer Emerson Fitti-paldi, skier Alberto Tomba, and cyclist Miguel Indurain.

The Disney formula is also on display in the movie's dramatic structure. There's a sympathetic male lead, his beguiling love interest, an evil foe, wisecracking sidekicks, and a benevolent mentor to guide the young protagonist. Young Here is comically awkward (remember Bambi skittering across ice?) and has the sort of aw-shucks, thank-Zeus-I'm-a-country-boy mannerisms designed to elicit sympathy and milk sentiment. Plus, in the best recent Disney tradition, the musical numbers are meant to wow the whole family. This time the score pairs tunes by Disney veteran Alan Menken with lyrics by Tony award-winner David Zippel.

Much of their work is gospel-inflected but it's a pop ballad, "Go th.e; Distance," that gets the reprise over the closing credits in a version by Michael Bolton that should be topping the Billboard charts sometime this summer. And then there are the toys. Disney movies are famous for moving merchandise that in turn moves more tickets, and the action figures, dolls, swords, bow-and- GLOBE STAFF FILE PHOTO STAN GROSSFELD One of Gerald Scarfe's animated backdrops for Pink Floyd, as seen on tour in 1980. arrow sets, lunch boxes, backpacks, and so forth are already in stock (indeed, the merchandising of Hercules product is even kidded in the movie itself). McDonald's holds the fast-food licensing contract, so the allied marketing blitz has likewise begun.

Outsider comes Inside When directors John Musker and Ron Clements, the partners who guided "Little Mermaid" and "Aladdin," enlisted Gerald Scarfe to work on "Hercules," they were going outside the Disney tradition. Like or IBM, Disney has its own corporate culture and organizational hierarchy. Outsiders are rarely brought in to conceptualize major projects. Certainly not a household name, Scarfe is perhaps more familiar for his drawings in Rolling Stone and The New Yorker. Born in 1936, the Londoner did satirical cartoons for Punch and Public Eye before working for The Daily Mail, The Sunday Times of London, and then Time magazine in the late '60s.

His nightmarish scenes for "The Wall" are instantly recognizable to rock fans. He has also written and directed films for the BBC, and designed sets and costumes for musicals and operas. Musker had collected Scarfe's work over the years, and in 1994 he brought Clements to see a British production of Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute." As costume and set designer, Scarfe said in a telephone interview, he "tried to make this Mozart thing as entertaining as I could. I had some animals that were mutants, half one and half another. There was one I called a crocoguin a head of a crocodile and the body of a penguin and a giraffestrich." Soon after, Musker and Clements hired Scarfe, and through 1994 and '95 he worked on basic design elements for all the "Hercules" characters, many of which were translated into the final look of the film, with their bold angularity and exaggerated lines.

There was some dissent from animators unaccustomed to Scarfe's style, but by July 1995 Scarfe and 15 key animators and designers had developed working prototypes for every character in the movie. "Sometimes in films," Scarfe said, "you see the front guys, Hercules or Hades and all that, and they're designed really well, and the guys in the back, they don't bother about. I wanted to design every character so that it looked like they all came from the same world." previewers are Duzzing Scarfe was certainly aware that he was working on a film whose audience would include millions of he didn't feel hampered: "I said to the director11 when there's a bad character, wicked character, let's go" for it. Let's make them really bad. I think kids can take'! it.

I think that children instinctively know, like in a fairy1 story, that if the bad characters get theirs in the en'dj' that things will end up happy. I think they know that in'aj fairy story, or in a Disney movie, everything is going be OK." Scarfe played a somewhat smaller role in creating the film's menacing, many-headed Hydra. The monster was the main computer-animated character and by far 3 the most complicated: A battle sequence that lasts minutes on-screen took 2h years to grow from idea final image. Scarfe's contribution was felt mostly in the prelimi-, nary stages. After a few rough drawings to give thel beast the requisite fangs and serpentine necks, the task.

of animating the Hydra was turned over to Roger Gould and his computer-animation team. Along the way, beast was turned over to a sculptor, who made a claylj model whose dimensions were digitized into a "wircH frame" image that Gould's computers could jrotate and set in motion. It's a standard animation process, used.ifj" each of the Disney films since "The Great Mouse Detec-" tive." All the movies have incorporated small doses of) computer-generated animation to enhance the producV; tion, Gould said, and to "show audiences what regular animation couldn't show them." r.H For "Hercules," the computer enables the Hydra -to" regenerate a swirling, snarling tangle of 30 identical' heads, all trying to crush Hercules in their powerful! jaws. "Imagine taking 30 friends and putting them ono stage and trying to get them all to move in some cohei' ent way," Gould said. The sequence may ultimately" prove to be one of the most striking of all the Disney films, rivaling some of the most fearsome scenes in "Fantasia." That classic is a half-century old and still inspires2 animators.

But then everyone on the "Hercules" project" had the longevity of their work in mind, Gould said. "We felt that we had better make this thing good, because it's going to have to stand up to a lot of viewing over the years." And Scarfe came away from the process with re-j newed appreciation for the Disney artists. "Those tion guys, I've really learned to respect them," he sairT. "Andreas, who did Hercules, he gets into this Aj scene where he's meeting a girl and gets all that uncer tainty and awkwardness into his face and body theylfej drawings, moving one after the other. He makes theni' seem real." Inventing the villain Hercules and Hades, the god of the underworld who is the movie's villain, were the most challenging characters to adapt into a Scarfian style.

Hercules had to be hunky, a paragon of physical beauty. "He didn't have too many possibilities for caricature," Scarfe said. "He's a good-looking guy, so you can't do wild things with, his face otherwise he doesn't look good-looking." The hero's chiseled visage was refined by animation guru Andreas Deja, who elongated his neck, made him robust and athletic, and carved his chin into a promontory befitting Kirk Douglas. Hercules is immediately likable and unmistakably studly, proportioned like a giant living amphora: a slender neck anchored by broad shoulders, arms that swoop outward in a convex, muscular bulge. of the first things I did after I read the script," Scarfe said, "was to go to the British Museum and start looking at the Greek The coolly malevolent Hades was easier to define as a distinctive entity, Scarfe said.

"When I first thought of him, I thought that being from the underworld, he would be completely made of fire." Early drawings show Hades appearing in various incarnations, one as a giant, scarlet, sunglass-wearing cockroach sitting on a foreboding throne. These were eventually tossed in favor of a Grim Reaper-type hellkeeper. "I eventually hit upon the idea that since he was sort of a cool, sardonic, sarcastic, laid-back sort of guy, he would have a cool blue flame flickering there all the time, ft -w hAr 0.i Live In Disney's world, even the bad guy gets cute sidekicks little devils named Panic (left) and Pain. Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts Wednesday, July 30th Tickets Tickets on sale Monday at 10 a.m. on 11111 illOl 'V MS The ticket window opens on Monday, June 23rd at 10am on Boston.com for tickets to see Live at Great Woods on July 30th.

To purchase tickets simply log on to Boston.com on the World Wide Web. Ticketswill be sold on a first-come, first-served basis. Simply log on at http:www.boston.com and enter keyword: tickets. Plus a $5.75 per ticket surcharge and a $2.00 per order handling charge. ill! fj b.c 62297 Something for Everyone.

Check us out at bttpJlwwi.bOStOf)tCQffi Something for Everyone. Check us out at.