Talking to animator Glen Keane may be as close to interviewing Robin Williams as I ever get. In our half hour interview at the Four Season’s hotel last week, Keane gave me numerous (and humorous) renditions of Long John Silver, the character he animated in Disney’s latest release, “Treasure Planet.”
Keane, in his late forties, has that uncanny ability to become someone else in a moment by merely changing the posture of his body and the timbre of his voice. He thinks of himself as an “actor with a pencil” and had a great time coming up with Long John Silver’s look and the actions that define Silver’s character. But first he had to rid himself of the “pirate clichés”—all those images gathered in his mind over a life time of watching other movies and reading books.
“I spent about three days doing a lot of very ‘piratey’ charcoal drawings.” Then he was ready to move beyond expected images to something new. “I think of my head as a crock pot,” Keane said, miming a motion that lifted the “top” off his head. “I start throwing in ingredients that are going to simmer there for a long time. Things from all different sources.”
He studied actors like Robert Shaw, who played Quint in the 1975 movie, “Jaws.” He loved the lines that he saw in Shaw’s face. “Those are the lines that tell the story,” Keane said. He also incorporated parts of his inspirational high school football coach into the character as well as actor John Wayne’s walk.
Although Keane tried to stay away from other film renditions of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” he admits to watching Wallace Beery’s version of Silver in the 1934 version of the film. “It wasn’t a straightforward performance,” Keane said, while demonstrating the way Beery talked out of the side of his mouth, “Yet, it was perfect for the character of Silver.”
Keane, who also designed other Disney characters like Ariel (“The Little Mermaid”), Tarzan, and the Beast (“Beauty and The Beast”), puts a lot of himself into his characters. Eventually, they all take on a personality of their own. “The producer wanted to know why I designed Silver as such a complicated character and I said, ‘It’s not my fault. That’s who he is.’” Inevitably he must separate himself from the character, but he says that doesn’t happen until they are “believable in a real way.”
Keane gets understandably nervous about seeing his characters up on the big screen. “The very first time my heart is pounding because I feel like it’s me up on stage.” But for Keane, “The animation never gets better than that moment that I’m actually drawing the image on the page.” That’s the moment that’s the most alive for him. “I remember when I was a kid and I would do drawings. I didn’t draw to do a drawing, I drew so I could live in that world and be there.”
Son of beloved cartoonist, Bil Keane of “Family Circus” fame, Glen went to Cal Arts where he really wanted to study painting, but his portfolio was delivered to the Film Graphics program by mistake. Two years later at the ripe age of 20, he started working for Disney and has been there ever since. His next project, based on a classic fairy tale, will be his directorial debut.
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