Here’s an article well worth reading:
mouseplanet.com/8788/Why_Fra … d_Fantasia
In 1939 the (then) 70 year old icon of American architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright visited the Disney animators (who were working on Fantasia) and spoke at length about art, about innovation and about integrity.
Here is but a single pearl from the speech:
“People are very much, as people, like sheep. If you begin to temporize and pat them on the back and cater to their idiosyncrasies, you’ll never get anywhere. This commercialization of things, commercialization of everything, I think that’s what the matter with the country.
“The public doesn’t know what it wants. If the public is paying your bills, it’s entitled to have you stand up to the thing you do because you alone know. The public doesn’t know. I think you’re going back on your public when you try to find out what the public wants and give it to them. No public knows. As compared to the fine thing they might have. They don’t know what they miss. Show them that thing which they miss. Explode once or twice and see what the reactions are."
The entire article is quite long, but absolutely fascinating about Disney, both the man and the company.
Oddly enough, I find that Pixar are the true embodiment of these words today.