I AM HERE in beautiful downtown Burbank, wherever that is, to pick up the evolutionary threads of the Disney film Faniasia (or Music Appreciation 101, as we used to call it). I will do this by visiting and asking intelligent questions of the Disney studios, wherever they are. The only likely site is plainly a gravel quarry, walled in by a motley array of barriers to keep offensive sights and sounds from the surrounding neighborhood. I chance it anyway, and predictably encounter rocks – plastic rocks that I seem to remember from a particular stirring moment of The Swiss Family Robinson. Its the right place, but the wrong entrance.
At the right entrance I ask whether all this deliberate anonymity is an attempt to foil the attentions of the curious and crazy. The reply is a guarded "Yes. that's probably the idea." The guardedness strikes me immediately. The question was evidently not phrased in accordance with the Disney world view, which exalts (but not forcefully) good will, tolerance, the decent side of life, and the child that continues to live within the man. Still, I flleetingly recall that the satanic monster from Faniasia's "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence gave mv little sister nightmares for weeks. But that is hardly fair. It didn't bother me: I even bought the record.
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