Bonus Video! How One Disney Executive Nearly Ruined The Little Mermaid

So I'm going back over the bonus videos I've missed out on, and honestly, I am floored that "Part of Your World" almost didn't make it into "The Little Mermaid"! I was the kid who would sing that song at the top of their lungs and could not get the idea of being this girl out of their head. I'm now an out and proud trans woman, so obviously my early identification with Ariel is pretty obvious, looking back. I absolutely wanted to be this beautiful girl with the long, gorgeous hair, swimming in the sea, singing with this absolutely beautiful voice. Trying to imagine my childhood without this song is just impossible. It's so much a part of me that I don't think I would be quite the same person without it, and the film would not have touched me nearly so much without it.

Cutting an I want song from a musical seems like a very dumb decision smh. Glad they kept the song in. Also I love the little mermaid but I squirm during it too cause I got adhd so could be the same case here.

Oh, I only needed to read the title and I knew which story you were going to tell... Just one of the many horror stories of Katzenburg trying to ruin movies. He stopped production of Aladdin after animation had already started to redesign the title character (you can still catch glimpses of that younger Aladdin during 'Friend Like Me'), he tried to recast Goofy in A Goofy Movie, and worst of all he forced Aardman to make Flushed Away in CG because that was the only way to get it into theatres before Ratatouille, which he was determined to do. I remember from bts stuff of Beauty and the Beast, people talking about how Katzenburg didn't understand that animation took longer than live action, so he was always rushing them. I think he also cut 'When Love is Gone' from the theatrical cut of Muppet Christmas Carol, which Brian Henson talked about in an anniversary panel recently. In Lindsay Ellis's video about Robin Williams in Aladdin, she also tells a story about Katzenburg making life difficult for the production of Ferngully because he hated that they also had Robin Williams in their cast... not to mention the whole 'quibi' fiasco. Guy seems like the genuine worst.

Thanks Matthew :-)

Ugh Katzenberg killed Black Cauldron in the same way a few years earlier 🙄

Cutting "Part of Your World" sounds close to the story the execs wanted to cut "Over the Rainbow" from "The Wizard of Oz" because they thought it dragged down the pace of the movie.

Love you😘

My mom used to say how rough the city was. Her and my dad when they were dating in the mid 70s went there for musicals. They had seen, Lorelei and grease and I forget what else. But I remember going on school bus trips there in the early 90s and when the bus let us off it was near all the porn theaters. The teachers would be like....okay have one giggle and move on...

I wonder if the little boy squirmed because he had to pee and it had nothing to do with the movie. Did Katzenberg even ask the boy why he was squirming or was he just so eager to make cuts that the slightest twitch would send him into an editing fury?