The Sweatbox

While many know The Emperor's New Groove as a cult classic in the Disney lineup, it was originally a completely different film called Kingdom of the Sun. Almost all of the evidence was documented by singer Sting and his wife Trudi Styler in The Sweatbox.

In the mid 1990s, Disney had contacted Sting to write songs for an Incan Prince & the Pauper story. Throughout the documentary, the key thing Styler and co-director John-Paul Davidson focus on is how Sting and the animation crew are affected by the drastic changes to the film brought on by the Disney executives, including former president Thomas Schumacher. The film's title derives itself from the Disney animation screening rooms, famous for their lack of air conditioning causing the animators to sweat while their work got critiqued. While the documentary might lead a bit more into Sting than the actual production process of Kingdom to Emperor, it nonetheless emphasizes how much of a task it was for the Disney crew just to please the executives in the short and long run.

Despite the troublesome production the film went through, the documentary blissfully paints both the artists and the executives in the same light. Throughout the film, we get interviews from the Kingdom crew and the Emperor crew later on, all of whom detail their processes in putting the work together based on both the material they're given and the constant changes from the higher ups. Anyone working in animation can understand just how mind numbing this process can be, let alone at a major Hollywood animation studio. As for Sting, he only made two songs for Emperor, and the difference in quality between both productions is jarring to say the least.

Despite the film barely getting screened outside of mini festival runs, The Sweatbox details one of many true stories behind the making of what seemed like a goofilly cartoony buddy comedy from the getco.

A fascinating and depressing deep look into the peephole of the dirtier side of Disney animation and how inconsistent business practices can drag down the moral of exploited animators and completely transform their creations into something completely different (even if that new movie is arguably better when you see what it costed). Don't get me wrong. I love "The Emperor's New Groove", but I feel bad for all the original directors, writers, and animators that poured so much love into their original vision for "Kingdom of the Sun". A much more dramatic and ambitious movie with such a grand scale and more faithful homage to Mesoamerican culture. "Snuff Out the Light" is easily the greatest Disney song to never see the light of day and just one of the best villain songs in general. So damn catchy and sinister with jazz lounge music that blends surprisingly well with the more traditional Peruvian instruments. Thank God for Sting's wife getting to videotape the behind-the-scenes or else we'd be lost to this raw unfiltered look into the hardships of making a Disney movie come to life.

It's easily the most in-depth and well-made look at how the studio is run, leaving in both the good and the bad. Sting's roller coaster of emotions as the contracted help is a great emotional anchor, even if he comes off a bit self-righteous. Banning this was a mistake; if anything, I just have more respect for how Disney makes its animated features.

The Sweatbox is a fascinating look into life cycle of a Disney production. I knew that Disney was extremely focused on story, but I didn't know that they were so focused that they would throw out an entire score, twice, and completely rewrite a story that had been in production for over a year.

The basis of this makes a good foundation for a documentary. You get to see a world you don't normally see, and there are continuous conflicts.

I make film essays on YouTube, which means I sometimes make mini documentaries. Deep into the research process, you often have all these threads and tangents that need to be sewn together. You need an overarching narrative. And it helps if that overarching narrative has some kind of emotion tied to it because that emotion creates an attachment in an otherwise purely informative piece. You could create this emotion from the interviews with your subjects, or you could decide on your own, and guide the narrative of the film there.

The Sweatbox doesn't pick a particular emotion. Its narrative is that we're going to watch where the production started and where it ended. There's this really interesting emotional thread where the first director of the film gets his initial vision destroyed. And then he leaves the production, presumably. This is the strongest emotional thread in the film. How did he feel about the film that was finished without him? How did his life change after that? This is the emotional story behind a troubled, completely overhauled film production.

Instead we get footage of responsible adults who accept their jobs are sometimes to create things that change or die. They reflect in logical, unemotional ways. And we march to the end of the film in an orderly fashion.