A Minute with Eric Goldberg

From the start, Goldberg knew what Genie's personality should be. "We always picked takes, [directors] Ron Clements, John Musker and myself, that always had a bit of warmth to them. We always wanted to. Robin gave us enough variations of a very sarcastic Genie to Aladdin, but we didn't pick any of those takes." That friendship between Genie and Aladdin became a backbone of the film itself. "I always looked at it as one of Disney's first buddy pictures," he says.

While Goldberg did not work on the Aladdin sequels, he laughed contentedly when discussing the true-to-form Genie in Aladdin and the King of Thieves.

"It's very humbling to think that you had a hand in a character that can live without you, that the personality of the character and his initial appearance is so strong, everybody gets it and can carry on with it."

Speaking of working on other people's characters, I asked him about the utility of 2D and 3D with classic cartoon icons. After all, Goldberg directed the 2D Warner characters for the movie Looney Tunes: Back in Action, as well as the Disneyland spots in which the classic characters are CG.

"Joe Dante directed the movie, and he felt very, very, very strongly that the characters should be hand-drawn. I certainly wasn't going to argue, because I agree with him. And we certainly did our best to do those characters justice. As far as the Disneyland commercials go, the characters are CG. That's an assignment. Although many people will argue that the characters should never be taken from one [medium] to the other, I disagree. And actually I think it's the same issue with Back in Action, whether it's hand drawn or not. What you're really talking about is the integrity of the characters."