WALL-E to appear at Tony Awards

wallefanatic · June 2, 2009, 8:17pm

jimhillmedia.com/blogs/jim_hill/ … emony.aspx

This Sunday, mark your calendars. He’ll be introducing the Hello Dolly portion.of the tribute to Jerry Herman.

DarkHandOfSigourneyW · June 3, 2009, 7:22am

The composer was really floored to see how prominently his work figured in the story, even though if you added up the time those two songs were played, it probably doesn’t exceed 5 minutes of the film. It must have been quite a treat to see his song start playing immediately after the Disney/Pixar logo’s were shown. Perhaps it will show up on youtube.com later on Sunday night.

Thanks for the link, wallefanatic. That JimHill fellow has some nice articles…

And here is one that is related to the animatronic Wall-E, which we saw at the British and L.A. premieres, also at the Tokyo premiere and possibly seen at some of the theme parks briefly:

jimhillmedia.com/blogs/jim_hilll … /test.aspx

I’ve been wondering about this for a long, long time and been doing searches of Disney theme park material trying to find out info. This is as much as I’ve found anywhere. He seems too big and certainly weighs too much. I mean he isn’t really cubing, so he doesn’t have a motor for that in there, and he doesn’t need to have his cube that strong since the pounds per sq inch of a compactor isn’t relevant. 700 pounds? He needs to lose weight.

They desperately need a Wall-e exhibit or enclosure at the theme parks!!

wallefanatic · June 3, 2009, 4:37pm

There is an article floating around there somewhere that was published after Jim Hill’s piece on the subject, about the Ratatouille living character initiative stating that WALL-E would be there as part of the living character initiative eventually. So there’s still hope.

wallefanatic · June 8, 2009, 4:28am

Well, turns out the Tony’s decided to once again screw over the film.

UPDATE: Well, so much for that idea. About the same time that this JHM article was being posted, word went out to the various performers who’d already been tapped to appear in this Jerry Herman tribute (and – from what I’ve been told – had been rehearsing their songs & dances for weeks) that the Tonys production team had decided to go another way with this production number. That – rather than have musical theater professionals of today attempt to recreate iconic performances from the past – they’d just show footage of Carol Channing, Angela Lansbury and George Hearn that was filmed back when they originally appeared in “Hello, Dolly!,” “Mame” and “La Cage Aux Folles.”

And since there was now no “Hello, Dolly!” number to introduce … Well, there went WALL-E’s chance to appear on stage at Radio City Musical Hall. I’m told that the folks associated with WDI’s Living Character Initiative program were devastated when they learned that WALL-E’s appearance at the Tonys had been cut. And that – as a sop to The Walt Disney Company (which already put several weeks into the reprogramming of this Living Character Initiative figure) – that when footage from “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” was shown during the Tonys telecast, this song would then be credited to both “Hello, Dolly!” and “WALL-E.”

So my apologies to those of you who stayed up past your bedtimes in order to see this Pixar star share the stage with Jerry Herman. That was – after all – the original plan here. But that’s show biz, I guess.

Your thoughts?

That was posted as an update to Jim Hill Media’s article. So The Oscars are crap with unrehearsed theatre performances and the Tony’s put the kabash on performances that were being rehearsed for weeks. It’s like Bizarro world.

lennonluvr9 · June 10, 2009, 1:20pm

awww, that’s too bad. I was gonna ask how that was. Yet somehow, I’m not surprised.

thedriveintheatre · June 11, 2009, 12:11pm

That sucks. I hate it when things are changed at the last minute, whether it be assignment deadlines, TV programming schedules (something which is a chronic affliction for Oz telly) or in this case, guest appearances!
The event organisers should totally owe an apology to the guy who programmed Wall-E!

Manegirl · June 11, 2009, 3:11pm

deskbanger Do people not LIKE WALL-E or something!? We got snubbed at the Oscars (okay, okay, WALL-E took home Best Anmated Feature! That`s a good award!) for Best Sound Editing/Mixing, Best Score, and Best Song!

I got a feeling Up is going to turn out the same way!

Dragon_of_Omnipotenc · June 11, 2009, 3:39pm

Well, seeing as Pixar movies still remain animated, and seeing how the Academy (alongside H-wood) still chooses to remain cynical, still defining ‘animation’ as a standalone genre, I’m afraid Pixar just won’t get that big break anytime soon.

Sure, Pixar movies are probably the only pieces of modern artwork of the movie world, but from their perspective, their point of view, they are just kiddie movies that won’t really reach out to the 13-20 year olds, whom they’re making a profit out of through movies with great eye-candies and poor quality stories.

Transformers, for example. Terminator: Salvation. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (yes, I am casting this one out, too, because Watchmen is the quality Pixar film of the Superhero genre - in a metaphorical sense, that is). But, I digress.

Hopefully, future Pixar movies would generate enough adrenaline to keep the tweenies happy (and thus, generate more money for Hollywood), whilst, at the same time, keeping their age old heart-filled storytelling methods that had our hearts melting and our brains thinking (instead of shutting off like the times when we see Optimus Prime performed his transformations). But until then, we’ll have to just settle for “Best Animated Feature,” for now.

Manegirl · June 11, 2009, 4:41pm

sigh The Academy should have never added the Best Animated Feature category! Were they ashamed when Beauty and the beast was nominated for Best picture or something?!

Dragon_of_Omnipotenc · June 11, 2009, 4:45pm

These are different times we are living in. The moviepocalypse is almost upon us. Soon, people won’t even mind watching Shrek 709: His Final Adventure (Promised!!!), at all.

Vekoma · June 11, 2009, 4:52pm

Tony awards? Is this something PV set up?

lizardgirl · June 11, 2009, 8:18pm

I LOLed at that, Vekoma.

And how annoying for them to change everything at the last minute! It was such a cool idea too, mixing the old with the new, having that juxtaposition. But yes, like others here, I am not completely surprised.

DarkHandOfSigourneyW · June 12, 2009, 7:35am

Apparently, the rise of Pixar and the second golden era of Disney animated features (1989-1999), and the rise of Dreamworks forced the category to be formed. That in addition to Jeff Katzenberg being furious that Chicken Run wasn’t nominated for Best Picture in 2001, it was the best picture of that year. At least this is what I’ve heard, not an industry insider.

Loppy · June 16, 2009, 12:27am

Wow I’m annoyed. Wall-E is actually motivating me to see Hello Dolly. xD What a shame.

I’m disgusted at how people treat animated films. Granted, most of them aren’t top notch…but Pixar, as well as Japan’s Studio Ghibli have produced phenomenal films. (Disney too, but they’ve been kind of failing lately )

I’ve enjoyed a lot of these animated films a lot more than many live action films. Up could very well be my all time favorite film.

A lot of people don’t appreciate how long it takes to work on these films. Heck, even cartoon programs actually take a lot of work. Being an artist, I can learn to appreciate the art