Disney fans should definitely check out Floyd Norman: An Animated Life, which hit theaters this weekend. The documentary follows the life of the Disney animation legend, Floyd Norman, who’s known for being the first African-American animator at Disney and has worked on animated classics like Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians and The Sword in the Stone. Filmmakers Erik Sharkey and Michael Fiore were tasked with capturing Norman’s many stories including his encounters with Walt Disney, his relationship with Disney, and his passion for continuing to work to this day.
“I first met Floyd at San Diego Comic-Con,” Sharkey tells Nerd Reactor. “I was there promoting a documentary I directed on Drew Struzan, who did a lot of work on Star Wars and Indiana Jones. I was introduced to Floyd, and he started telling all these stories about working at Disney. He talked about working with Walt Disney. Rarely people in their lives can say that they’ve actually worked with Walt Disney. He talked about his whole history about how he started in animation. He’s such a great guy with a great personality that he’d make for a great film. Luckily Michael was looking to make another movie and he reached out to me.”
“I had known about Erik because of his last documentary,” added Fiore. “I contacted Erik with a cold call. We spoke for a bit and he pitched me a bunch of ideas [including Floyd Norman]. In my due diligence to research Floyd, I was shocked that nobody had told his story. There have been news pieces, but there has never been anything extensive.”
The filmmakers talk about how Norman still has new stories to tell that weren’t in the documentary.
Fiore said, “There were so many times when Erik and I went, ‘Let’s get together and shoot a couple of scenes today.’ The camera would be off sometimes. [Floyd] would come up with a story, and we’re like, ‘Why didn’t you say that on camera?!’ He’s such a treasure trove of information that there’s always unexpected stories.”
“[Floyd’s] relationship with Disney over the years was sort of like, ‘Now he’s here. Now he’s not. Now he’s back,'” said Sharkey. “The one constant is that Floyd Norman has been a part of Disney since the ’50s. There aren’t that many people that can say that.”
“He’s kind of the missing link because there aren’t a lot of people that were around the last ten years of Walt Disney’s life,” said Fiore.
“Erik and I talk about this a lot,” Foire said on how they wanted to portray Walt Disney in the documentary. “Erik and I are a good team in the sense that we even each other out. We come two different perspectives. He wants to make a feel-good movie, and I wanted to make a balance of the feel good and [the drama]. We found a really nice balance to that in the movie.”
Norman wasn’t able to move on up like some of his peers, and the filmmakers have an idea on why that is.
Foire explains, “We’ve theorized that Floyd is his own worst enemy. His passive aggressive drawings made him a ‘troublemaker’. He’s a company man but he’s got his own opinion. The choice to leave Disney after Walt died to form your own company… it’s a bold move. [He] left Disney and started his own black history company in a pre-Civil Rights U.S. We applaud it [as filmmakers], but is that part of the problem? Had he stayed, would he have been Burny Mattinson, who has never left Disney? Would he have gone up the ladder in the early ’70s or ’80s? Again, we don’t want to overstate because we don’t know why. I think we come away with a general understanding of how choices in our life can put us in a certain path.”
Norman isn’t about to retire anytime soon since he still has a love of working as an artist.
“I think it’s amazing that he still continues to want to work,” said Sharkey. “He loves art; he loves animation. The fact that he’s 81 years old… the guy doesn’t stop… ever. I’m constantly blown away. He’s getting involved in new projects. He worked on Robot Chicken not that long ago.”
Floyd Norman: An Animated Life hits theaters in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Orlando. If you can’t make it to the screenings, the movie will be available soon digitally and on home video. For more information, visit FloydNormanMovie.com.
from Nerd Reactor
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