OK, I take it back. There's every indication that The Haunted Mansion: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies will not suck. Over at DoomBuggies.com, Jeff Baham has interviewed the author, who appears to be a real Mansion trufan who set out to write a comprehensive historical document about the bestest ride the Imagineers ever built.
This book is one of those classic "I really want to read this book so I guess I'll have to write it" situations. That was last summer, and I knew we had the movie coming up in a year-and-a-half, so I figured the timing was as good as it was going to get. I ran the idea by Don Winton, our VP of Creative down here in Florida, and he suggested taking it to Marty Sklar himself. Marty thought it was a great idea and told me to write up a proposal.
So, I wrote a five-page outline that broke the whole story down into three sections: the history of the attraction in all four parks, a scene-by-scene "tour" of the show, and the making of the movie.
The "spine" of the story was the evolution of this idea, from the very first sketch of a "Haunted House" that Harper Goff did back in 1951 to the attraction's transformation into a feature film. I thought it was a fascinating idea, because Imagineering was born of the movie industry. The first Imagineers were all filmmakers from Walt's studio and the attractions gave audiences the opportunity to experience Walt's stories in three dimensions instead of two; so the movie really represents that process in reverse. In a sense, I thought the book would give me the chance to show people how The Haunted Mansion came full circle.
At any rate, Marty helped me tweak the outline a bit and the next thing I knew he told me that Wendy Lefkon, the Editorial Director of Disney Editions, was waiting for my proposal. So I sent the thing off and about two weeks later Wendy called me and told me that everyone at Disney Editions loved the idea and they were going to do it. I think the whole thing was a result of very good timing and having the ability to get the idea directly in front of the decision-maker.
(Thanks, Casey)
