Trailer-The Bubble: A Documentary about Disney’s Town of Celebration, Florida
I
recently spoke with Philip B. Swift, the Director of “The Bubble” to
discuss his film and the town of Celebration. To attend the upcoming
screening party for “The Bubble,” and for more information on
Celebration and Philip’s other work, see the information listed at the
end of the interview.
UPDATED!!! Kickstarter campaign for Philip's latest Disney project in conjunction with Leonard Kinsey of "Dark Side of Disney" fame!!
To support this project and get an awesome reward CLICK HERE!!
Jeanie: What is your experience with Disney? Did you grow up visiting the parks and become a fan as a child?
Philip: “I
grew up in Akron, OH and wasn’t raised with any sort of religion, but
every year we took the closest thing to a pilgrimage to Mecca that I’ve
ever experienced in my life, which was our annual trip to Walt Disney
World to pray at the alter of the mouse. My dad died 6 months before I
was born, so I feel that my mother thought it was really important that I
had a healthy fantasy life, something that Disney definitely provided.
We would watch all the movies and I was a big fan of the Disney
Afternoon lineup when it was on the air. In fact, I liked that so much
that I had a cassette tape with all the theme songs on it, DuckTales, Chip and Dale, Gummi Bears, etc.
I took that tape with me to summer camp one year, I must have been 11
or 12, and I got made fun of so bad that I threw it away. That’s a
bummer.
As
I got older, the annual trips continued and sometimes we’d bring some
of my friends along with us. That’s when I began to look for more
“alternative” ways of having fun at the park, nothing too extreme,
definitely nothing like what’s in Leonard Kinsey’s book The Dark Side of Disney,
but just goofy teenager shenanigans to mix up the regular activities.
Stupid stuff like asking cast members where the “Parasol of Congress”
was, very clever, right?
The
trips started to peter as I got older, but my mom still has a season
pass and goes to the park 3 or 4 times a year. The last time I went was
in 2005 after my grandmother who helped raise me died. My girlfriend,
who is now my wife, and I went with my mom and snuck a small bag of my
grandmother’s ashes into the Magic Kingdom and discreetly dumped them
into the moat around the castle. We thought we were busted when we
heard someone say, “What are you doing?”. We turned to confront a
grizzled man who may have been an undercover cast member, hesitated for a
moment, and then told him the truth. He furrowed his brow for a
moment, then it relaxed as a huge grin stretched across his face and he
said, “That…is…awesome!”
Jeanie: What does “The Bubble” mean in the context of your film?
Philip: “The Bubble” is actually how the residents of Celebration, FL refer to the town. They
feel like the experience they have living there is so isolated and
pristine that it’s like living under a bubble. A few other things add
to that bubble mystique; all the power and telecommunication lines are
underground, so when there’s a storm like a hurricane that sometimes
blows through Florida, the town is unaffected. Some of the residents
told me that they’ve never had a blackout or loss of phone in the
history of the town, further enhancing the bubble symbolism.
Something
that I considered when making the film, and I believe is discussed in
it, is how a bubble magnifies the things inside of it, the way that
Celebration is constantly scrutinized by the outside world. Yes there
was a murder in the town, but one in almost 20 years is a pretty good
record compared to other places, an event like that just gets magnified
when seen through the bubble.”
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Jeanie: Your
film talks about the original plans for a Disney town. Can you tell us
a bit about Walt’s original concept of a “town created by the Disney
Company/Epcot/city of the future” vs. the town of Celebration?
Philip: “The
original plan for EPCOT was this super futuristic creative, well, Mecca
to use that comparison again, where innovators from all over the world
could converge to collaborate on new, exciting ideas that would shape a
better tomorrow. That plan never came to fruition, partly due to Walt
Disney’s death shortly after the announcement of his plans. Had he
lived, the plan may have happened, but with his death, some of the
dreams died too. When it became more of a business decision for what to
do with the land, the theme park EPCOT Center was built, and while it
still held some of that innovative inspiration, it was a small sliver of
what Walt’s dream was.
When
the Disney Company decided to revisit Walt’s original dream of building
a city, the plan shifted from innovation and creativity, and more to a
normal town inspired by the Americana that Walt Disney grew up in. Some
of the innovation was there, as seen in the aforementioned design of
the power and telecommunications grid, but in general it has nothing to
do with those original plans for EPCOT.”
Jeanie: What is Disney’s current involvement in the town of Celebration?
Philip: “Disney
still has some influence on the board that runs the town, but that
board is primally now made up of residents and employees of Lexin, the
company that bought the management rights to the town from Disney in
2006. Nothing can be built or
changed in the town without Disney’s approval since it’s still
technically on land they own, but Lexin and the residents hold the
controlling power.”
Jeanie: What inspired you to do the film, “The Bubble”?
Philip: “On
one of those many trips to Walt Disney World when I was growing up, it
must have been around 1994, my mom caught wind that they were beginning
to build the town. She was super excited and after sometime driving around she found the construction site. There
wasn’t much to see at the time, a model home was there with others
beginning to be built, but my mom was infatuated with it.
I
didn’t think about that town until many years later when the first
reports started coming out about the murder that happened there in
2010. If that wasn’t intriguing enough, stories started popping up
about the swinger scene in Celebration shortly after that. One resident
was quoted as saying, “I never met so many swingers until I moved to
Celebration”, and that was it. I had the tagline for the film right in
front of me, how could I not go and make a movie about it? Murder.
Sex. Disney. This town has it all.”
Jeanie: Tell us a bit about the film and the types of things viewers can expect to learn about Celebration while watching it.
Philip: “The
easiest way to pitch the film is that it is an oral history of the town
from the residents who live there. I did my absolute best to keep an
objective point of view and just let them tell the story. My favorite
thing about that is by letting the story be told that way, letting the
residents speak for themselves, you get to see how rumors spread in a
small community like Celebration. The Swingers segment of the
film, in particular, is one of my favorite because it’s not really about
swingers, but about the gossip that spreads when people talk.”
Jeanie: When
most people think about “a town built by Disney,” they seem to have the
image of a Norman Rockwell painting of perfection where ‘average’
people can’t go. But, Celebration has no gates and anyone can just
wander in and go to the shops and restaurants and events. How would you
describe the town of Celebration now that you’ve done this movie?
Philip: “The author Naomi Klein in her book No Logo refers
to Celebration as not a town, but a “town museum”. It’s a place where
you can go and experience what a town may have felt like in 1950s
America, a town thriving in a post-war era. The only different thing
about this “museum” and others, is that people actually live in this
one. Those folks are not hired actors pretending to churn butter at
some museums, the residents of Celebration have real lives and all the
baggage that comes with those. That may be one of the sources of
people’s confusion about the town, outsides see it as a museum, while
residents are truly just trying to live their lives while being
constantly scrutinized.
One
of the realizations I had about the town, while making the film, was
how it wasn’t really all that different or special. Sure it was
designed by the Disney Company and it had the is special origin story,
but once they cut that tape and opened the town, most of that magic
disappeared. It’s a town, just like any other.”
Jeanie: Where can people see “The Bubble”?
Philip: “The Bubble is available on VoD and DVD through Amazon. All the details are at www.thebubbledocumentary.com "
Jeanie: Do
you have any other projects that you can tell our readers about, past,
present, future? And how they can find you and follow your work?
Philip: “Continuing the Disney trend, I am working on a Documentary adaptation of Leonard Kinsey’s book, The Dark Side of Disney.
It’s a really exciting collaboration where I’ll be interviewing Leonard
and other people who have decided to find alternative ways to have fun
at the Disney parks, then I’ll be treating the book as a series of
challenges, seeing if me and a colleague of mine can achieve everything
that Leonard lays out in the book.
We’re launching a Kickstarter for it later this month, more info will be available soon on my website www.dearmothman.com .”
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“The Bubble” Documentary Screening Event
Tuesday, April 22, 7-9 PM Free Admission
Atomic Books, 3620 Falls Rd. Baltimore, MD
The
screening of the film will be followed by a book signing and an
announcement of a collaboration between the author, Leonard Kinsey and
the filmmaker, Philip B. Swift on a Documentary adaptation of the
author’s first book The Dark Side of Disney.
The Dark Side of Disney-A Documentary Kickstarter Campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/philipbswift/the-dark-side-of-disney-a-documentary-film
Thank
you to Mr. Philip B. Swift for granting this interview. Check out some
of his other work such as “Fashionable Living Room.” http://dearmothman.com/narrative/
The Dark Side of Disney by Leonard Kinsey: http://bambooforest.storenvy.com/collections/128313-all-products/products/677593-the-dark-side-of-disney-paperback
Celebration, FL website: www.celebration.fl.us/
Film footage provided by and printed with permission by Philip B. Swift.
Find Jeanie on Twitter @PrincessPapers or on her blog ThePrincessPapers.com
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida
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