Chris Mitchell

by Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir

  As a character, I would be indestructible, a superhero as real to those kids as Saturday morning cartoons, more real than homework or bedtime. In wardrobe, I would get hit, kicked, head butted, and barfed on. I’d have my face licked, my hair pulled, and my fingers bitten. Child after child would squeeze my nose, punch my legs, pull my tail. And why wouldn’t they? They’d seen characters take worse. Over and over, on the television screen, Goofy falls out of trees, jumps out of buildings, throws himself into impossibly grim situations, and still emerges without a scratch. How much damage could a five-year-old do?

  As a character, I would be a celebrity, capable of doing anything. I could bounce from one end of the Magic Kingdom to the other in no time at all. I could work all day in the diamond mines and navigate a magic carpet. I would be capable of feats that even a stuntman couldn’t perform. On command, I would have to be a martial arts master, a contortionist, an artist—the ultimate Renaissance critter, no matter which skin I was in.

  As a character, I would be a father confessor. Children told characters all kinds of secrets they wouldn’t dare tell anyone else, secrets they knew would be safe with a five-foot-tall mouse. They’d check over their shoulders to make sure nobody was listening, then bring their popsicle-stained hands up to their mouths and whisper, “I have a new mommy now” or “I don’t wet my bed anymore.” Then, they’d giggle and hug me and wave at the video camera in Daddy’s hands.

  For adults, I would be therapy, more effective than a psychiatrist, more powerful than a prescription drug. I could always tell the ones who needed it the most because they resisted most vehemently. “Tigger’s for kids,” they’d say, “not mommies.” They’d try to hide behind a camera or an autograph book held at arm’s length. They pushed dark glasses up on stern noses and stood firm like Mr. Darling. Sometimes, a character only had to flirt a little. Sometimes, it took a little more convincing, but eventually, everybody gave in. That was part of the Magic. There was nothing like throwing tired arms around a life-sized cartoon character to revert a sensible grown-up into a cooing child. It was a flashback to a world of nap time and Nilla wafers.

  Most parents played along with the game, but every once in a while, I’d see some dad who was just too clever to be fooled by kids in costumes. One day, I was shooting a little girl in Mickey and Minnie’s kiosk. She was just standing there wide-eyed with a Cinderella bow in her hair and her heart in her open mouth, following Mickey’s movements like a sunflower tracking the sun. Her dad gave Mickey a nudge and said, “Boy, I bet it gets hot in there.” Then he smiled and gave his daughter a know-it-all wink as if he just told the Easter Bunny a dirty joke.

  Right before I took the photo, I told the little girl, “You know what Mickey told me before you got here? He said he wants to see you stomp on your daddy’s toes.”

  The girl tilted her head to one side. “Really?”

  I nodded, solemn as a priest. “The harder, the better.”

  I kept that photo in my wallet for a week.

  Anonymity was the luxury of doing fur. Face characters had to be present and witty from the moment they stepped onstage until the moment the break-room door closed, but inside a character head, the performers were totally anonymous. They became the soul of a cartoon, animation itself. Behind Geppetto’s bewildered smile or Tigger’s bounce, they could be sullen or hungover or horny or dehydrated, but their true emotions were concealed within layers of fur and Velcro. Almost anything they did in costume was forgivable because it wasn’t them doing it. If Aladdin flirted with somebody’s wife, it was because that was part of his character. If Tigger stepped on a kid’s foot, it was forgiven because Tiggers are bouncy. These characters were written to be unpredictable.*

  To be approved in a character role, I would first have to go through a not entirely objective audition process. How well I would do depended as much on the panel of judges as my ability to portray accurate character animation. Two friends of mine, Katia and Cameron, were identical twins. They were genetically indistinguishable, from their long, thick eyelashes to their Scandinavian noses to the little dimple on the left side of their pouty mouths. In fact, they were both left-handed. However, while both girls had been approved for Ariel, only Katia could do Cinderella and only Cameron could do Belle. They were approved for different roles at different auditions by a different set of executives. Of course, they became equally proficient in all three roles so that they could switch to cover each other’s shifts without the managers knowing. It was against the Rules, but the coordinators either didn’t realize or didn’t care. As long as there was a Cinderella on the float making eyes at Prince Charming and dancing with mice, everything was okay.

  Once approved, I would have to go through a week of training before I could go onstage. In the training course, I would learn:

  Movement: A performer had to move the way the illustrator originally intended for the character. Goofy loped from place to place. Tigger bounced. Any five-year-old girl knew that a proper princess stood with her shoulders back and her chin up and curtsied with her head tilted a little to the side. Baloo and Brer Bear and Liver Lips McGrowl, the Country Bear Jamboree bear, might all belong to the same species, but their movements made each one a unique persona.

  Speech: Face characters had to speak with the accents and affectations of the original character. In the case of Belle and Princess Aurora, this meant being absurdly polite, and in Mulan’s case, less so. Mary Poppins and Burt had English accents and Gaston was French. The Mad Hatter stuttered and babbled like a patient in a psych ward, whereas Tarzan spoke with a stunted jungle vocabulary.

  Writing: Autographs, like orchids, were unique and highly collectible. Each character had a specific signature that needed to look the same every time that character put pen to paper. For instance, Aladdin signed his name with “best wishes” or “make a wish” and a little magic lamp under the double D. Eeyore put a little bow on the tail of the Y, made his two lowercase E’s backward, and drew a rain cloud over the name. Even the most obscure character had an autograph. Pain and Panic (from Hercules) were jagged and bumpy like writing in the backseat of a car, whereas Belle’s signature was flowery and feminine.

  I would have to know the habits, poses, and animation of each particular character before I could go onstage in that costume, and even with all the proper training, there were complications. For example, Chip and Dale looked similar, so their mannerisms had to articulate the distinction. Both chipmunks scurried and circulated, using quick movements to animate their personae, but whereas Chip was composed and philosophical, Dale was mischievous bordering on chaotic. Dale could steal a guest’s hat and wear it around the park for a while, but Chip was the one to give it back.

  There were pros and cons to all the Disney characters, so I had to choose my audition wisely. Fat characters, like Pooh, carried extra bulk in the form of costume framing, which put asymmetrical pressure on the performer’s spine and led to chronic lumbar problems. However, if a costume didn’t have that extra framing, then the performer got very little ventilation, so thin characters, like Brer Fox and Tigger, had a tendency to overheat. In the summer months, Tiggers were always the first to go down with heatstroke and dehydration.

  There were other characters whose costumes didn’t allow them to hold a pen so that all they had to do was pose. Hades had long urethane fingers, which extended well past the ends of the performer’s hands, and King Louie’s arms hung down to the ground, an effect achieved using bars inside the sleeves of the costume that the performer manipulated like a puppeteer. Buzz and Woody negotiated tricky glove issues by using a stamp and inkpad for autographs.

  One person could be approved in many different roles, so it was important to remember which character I would be animating. It didn’t happen often, but occasionally I would see a character fall into a full-blown identity crisis, acting the wrong way, signing the wrong name during an autograph set. It wasn’t such a big deal if they signed Tweedledee as Tweedledum, but there were
times when a performer started the day with a couple of Rafiki sets, then Smee, followed by a quick stint as Drizella. And when it was time to get into the Flik costume, the performer didn’t know if she or he should be signing “Ta-Ta for Now” or “Best Wishes” or “Merry Fucking Christmas.”

  Being a character presented philosophical issues as well. Child abuse, for instance. God knows, Disney had more than its fair share of crying children accompanied by irate parents, so this scenario was in my face every day. As a Cast Member, Disney had a policy regarding child discipline. If I ever saw an adult disciplining a child in a way that seemed too severe, I was instructed to report it to a manager, who would then make the call. But because of the speech and behavioral restrictions, characters were a little more isolated, and that sometimes meant turning off the voice of conscience.

  Those restrictions, in fact, were a big drawback to any role in the character department. Because the actions of the characters had to be consistent with their animated personalities, performers were never allowed to break character, no matter what the circumstances. A friend of mine was doing the Mad Hatter one day when a desperate parent asked how to get to the nearest bathroom. The Mad Hatter, normally a confused, babbling caricature, broke character long enough to give the guest concise directions, and for that crime was issued a reprimand.

  For fur characters, speech was strictly forbidden. Even if a Cast Member won her high school talent contest by mimicking the Mickey voice, under no circumstances was she allowed to use it onstage. A fur performer couldn’t cough or whistle or form any words whatsoever. The only acceptable sound was a kiss, usually applied to a child’s cheek or the top of a guest’s head.

  While this might, at first, seem like an easy rule to follow, it presented more than a few awkward situations. One day, I was shooting in the Pooh kiosk, when I noticed a couple pushing a child in a wheelchair at the head of the exit line.* Pooh dropped to one knee and gave the child a big hug, and while he did, the greeter explained that this little girl was five years old and she had come all the way from Anchorage to meet her hero. She was in the late stages of leukemia, and at that point, it was irreversible. Between the lines was the understanding that we would never see her again and that her last, most heartfelt wish was to spend a minute with Winnie the Pooh before she passed away.

  The little girl was crying as she got up out of her chair, and her parents were crying because they hadn’t seen her this happy in months, and the greeter started crying because everybody else was. The little girl threw her arms around Pooh’s neck and told him how much she loved him and how she wasn’t scared anymore. And Pooh squeezed her tight and rocked her back and forth. He couldn’t make a sound, so he made little kissing noises in the air around her head, but I could see that from the way his shoulders shook behind those brave, unblinking bear eyes, he was sobbing uncontrollably.

  In silence.

  As much as I appreciated the comforts of the big, furry animal characters, however, I knew that I could never be one of those anonymous, sweaty creatures. I had worked hard to establish myself at the top of the Cast Member hierarchy. I was the out-of-character photographer. I dated an Ariel. If I took a position as a fur character, I would be backsliding down the food chain. No, there was only one choice for me: I had to become a heroic Disney face character, someone who, like me, came from a humble station on the streets; who, like me, worked his way up the ranks to take his rightful place alongside the princes of the Kingdom; and who, like me, was prince height with Mediterranean features—Aladdin.

  It wasn’t such a long shot. Ever since I showed up at Disney, people had been telling me I looked like Aladdin. “Uncanny,” they’d say, or “Dead ringer.” Stuff like that. So when I saw the notice on the Cast Member message board announcing face auditions, I decided to go for it.

  From the moment I walked into the casting office, I could feel the tension in the air. A couple hundred people filled the waiting room, each one fiddling with a bag, smiling nervously, and trying to calibrate mentally the princess potential of every other applicant. I could tell by the way they did their makeup which girls were hoping to be cast as Belle or Cinderella. Darker-skinned girls did their eyes in exotic kohl-streaked Jasmine strokes. Fairer ones wore their hair away from their collarbones to show off their snowy white throats. Even the boys were affecting their proudest posture, puffing out their chests to imitate royalty. I filled out my casting sheet, lined up to be measured—I was, as I knew I would be, the perfect Aladdin height—and then sat down to wait.

  Every fifteen minutes or so, a production assistant (PA) would read a list of names from the sign-in sheet, and the ten people whose names were called would file down a hallway and disappear for about ten minutes before returning one by one to the waiting room. Some carried slips of paper with character names and callback dates. These were the happy ones, the ones who had been invited to participate in the callbacks. The others emerged empty-handed and tried to exit as gracefully as possible.

  I recognized one girl, a photographer, who came out of the back room with her hands in her pockets. Her face was a naked display of fear, insecurity, and disappointment. When she stopped near me to get her bag, I put my hand on her shoulder. “You okay?” I asked.

  She didn’t look at me for a moment while she fussed with her backpack. “They said my eyes are too close together, and”—her voice drifted off as she inhaled a staccato breath—“my nose is too crooked and my lips are too thin and my teeth are too small. My only chance of making Cinderella is cosmetic surgery.”

  As she scurried away, I tried to put her story in perspective. She was probably overreacting. Most likely, she had been turned down because she wasn’t smiling enough or she forgot to bat her eyelashes, but her imagination had filled in all those horrible details. This was Disney after all, not American Idol.

  Before long, the PA was clapping his hands together and calling a list of names that included mine. We walked into an empty rehearsal studio and stood in a row. Facing us, our casting sheets arranged in piles in front of them, four executives sat at a long table. They ignored our entrance, shuffling through their papers with bored nonchalance, like a team of supermarket checkout girls forming opinions of shoppers based on piles of groceries.

  The PA instructed us to act natural. “Just converse with the person next to you,” he said.

  This was the first stage of the audition: natural movements in a pseudocasual environment. I became dramatic. I gestured grandly and put my hands on my hips. Disney loves big eyes, so I opened my eyes as wide as I could. When I spoke, I enunciated like Bambi learning to speak for the first time.

  The woman who approached me was Mickey height, immaculately dressed with her hair in a dark bun. “After reading over your casting sheet,” she said without looking at me, “we’ve decided that we would like to see you again as Clopin. Please arrive thirty minutes before your callback.”

  I was one of the lucky ones, emerging from the audition with a slip of paper. As I gathered my things, I couldn’t help but glow under the envious looks of the other Cast Members. Of all the people who’d shown up, only I’d been chosen to play the part of Clopin. It wasn’t until I got to the parking lot that it occurred to me I’d missed something. Who the fuck was Clopin?

  According to my callback sheet, he was the narrator of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a gypsy who was “mischievous and flamboyant,” not evil, but not altogether good either. He spoke with a French accent and wore a court jester’s costume, complete with a big, preposterous hat, curly-toed espadrilles, and tights.

  What about Aladdin? I thought to myself. Aladdin didn’t have to wear tights. He was crafty and fun loving, definitely a good guy. Everybody loved Aladdin. Who loved Clopin?

  Maybe, I figured, that was how it worked in the character program. You had to get your foot in the door with a minor character before you could play a major one. Pay your dues. If I really got into the Clopin part and killed it at the callback, I figured, it would b
e easier to transfer to Aladdin. So I rented the Hunchback video and watched the stage show at the Studios. I tried to get a handle on my character, his nuances and motivations, and his raison d’être.

  By the time I arrived for my callback, I despised Clopin. He was frenetic and pompous, a fool in a clown costume. If I had to spend even one minute onstage as Clopin, I knew I would never forgive myself the shame.

  The casting office was a flurry of activity. A dozen Cast Members stood in various character poses, studying scripts and mumbling to themselves. They were perspiring, fidgety with jitters, and terrified that they might have come this far only to be turned away.

  The well-dressed executive from the first audition approached me with a clipboard in her hands. “Clopin,” she said, making a check mark on a piece of paper.

  “Zat’s me,” I said in my ridiculous French accent. “Where do I sign?”

  She studied me like a piece of gum on the bottom of her shoe. “Not so fast. You need to get into hair and makeup. Get your costume on and then come find me.”

  The hair and makeup room was easy to find because it was the central hub of the chaos. There were racks of colorful costumes and rows of wigs on Styrofoam heads. Everywhere I looked, Peter Pans primped and Alices curtsied. Two Mary Poppins were engaged in a desperate tug-of-war for the last umbrella. Within moments, a makeup woman corralled me into an empty chair and was doing her best to put out my eyes with sticks and brushes. Then she turned me over to a dandelion-haired lady wearing a lanyard of safety pins around her neck who looked me up and down.