Disney's legendary creator Joe Grant. All images © Disney Enterprises Inc. All rights reserved.

Disney legend Joe Grant first came up with the idea for Lorenzo more than 20 years ago after witnessing his fearless cat dive right into the middle of a fight between his two poodles. “What if that silly cat lost its tail?” he wondered. Thus came the inspiration for the story of a narcissistic cat whose tail comes to life, which has been transformed into a funny and innovative new animated Disney short by director/designer Mike Gabriel that premiered last month at the Florida Film Festival.

Not surprisingly, Grant’s influence is unmistakable — the concept, the gag, the dark humor. What an inspiration from the design/story great who had a hand one way or another in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, both Fantasias, Saludos Amigos, Make Mine Music, Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland.

Grant, who turns 96 in May 2004, recently sat down with AWM to discuss Lorenzo, the beleaguered Walt Disney Co. and the current 2D/3D debate with his usual candor, wit and passion

Bill Desowitz: Lorenzo is really a wonderful premise that turned into a terrific short.

Joe Grant: Yeah, I played around with that for a long time. A simple idea. And the man that worked on it, Mike Gabriel, doubled the value. Beautiful job. I should say triple. We have others like that, but, unfortunately, shorts, which are my favorite approach, are economically of no value. They’re trying…

BD: At least Disney is planning on screening Lorenzo and Destino in theaters.

JG: Whenever we did anything experimental [it was difficult]. For instance, on The Reluctant Dragon, we had Baby Weems, and Walt’s idea was why animate it? Just put it up there in pictures with a little narration, and when the reviews came out they picked that out as the outstanding section of the group. That is another unfortunate thing, too. Make Mine Music and that whole group of [anthology] pictures… they were fairly successful but not enough to encourage continuing the idea.

BD: I guess that’s why Destino broke down because after World War II, it wasn’t economically feasible to produce the anthologies anymore.

Disney (right) and Dali had wanted to work with each other throughout the heyday of the studio.

JG: Yes, and also Dali… what I really wanted was to call it Hello Dali [laughs], and I wanted narration by some Frenchman — just a crazy idea to explain his melting watches. But I couldn’t get anybody to go for that. Dali had a good sense of humor — obviously you could tell just looking at him; he was funny. So in this business you have your successes and your failures, which you never seem to [get over]. For instance, on this Dali thing: when I looked at it [I thought], we would have had a better chance of winning the Oscar if it wasn’t so serious…

BD: Well, I think Lorenzo will take a lot of people by surprise, and get a lot of laughs.

JG: I hope so. I do hear an awful lot around the place from those who’ve seen it that it’s pretty good.

BD: So you were happy the way it turned out?

JG: I was, yes. It’s fun to make something that has classic value and that you feel will continue the tradition.