Cranium Command was an attraction at the Wonders of Life pavilion at Walt Disney World Resort's Epcot theme park. The show was a humorous presentation on the importance of the human brain.
The show's script was written by Jenny Tripp, a staff writer in Disney Feature Animation, and directed by Jerry Rees, who in addition to many other Disney film-based attractions, directed The Brave Little Toaster (1987). The pre-show was the first directing effort of Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, who later directed Disney Animation's Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001).
It premiered on October 19, 1989; as of January 4, 2004 it began to operate seasonally, closing permanently on January 1, 2007. During the 2007 International Food & Wine Festival, the entrance was used as a wine presentation. The pavilion has continued to be used for various Epcot festival events.
Preshow From the entrance at the back of the pavilion, guests walked into a holding room with a digital counter reading the time until the next show. On the walls hung propaganda posters encouraging guests to enlist in the "Cranium Command" (similar signage could be seen advertising the show around the Wonders of Life pavilion). There was also signage including brain teasers and gags and puns, setting the stage for both the concept and tone. Guests were then led into a narrow, tall room with brightly colored carpeted walls. Facing the guests was a movie screen, and closed automatic doors to their left.
The movie screen would soon illuminate showing an animated segment featuring the boisterous and loud General Knowledge (voiced by Corey Burton) briefing his "Cranium Commando" troops on their mission: to pilot human brains and keep the people they are in out of trouble. A bumbling little soldier named Buzzy (Scott Curtis) had been given one of the most difficult missions of all: piloting a twelve-year-old boy. At the end of the preshow, General Knowledge directed guests towards the theater as the automatic doors swung open.
Show The main show was presented in a 200-seat, dimly-lit theater designed to represent the inside of a human head; the outside world seen on rear projection screens where the eyes would be. Buzzy was now presented as an Audio-Animatronic on an articulated seat so that he could move around during the performance. Helping him pilot the twelve-year-old named Bobby (Scott Curtis), via appearances on other screens, were the logical Left Brain (Charles Grodin), the wacky Right Brain (Jon Lovitz), the hungry Stomach (George Wendt), the panicky Bladder who is also referred to as "Elimination" (Jeff Doucette, in an uncredited role), the hyperventilating Lungs (Kevin Meaney, also uncredited), the Adrenal Gland (Bobcat Goldthwait) who was prone to overreacting, and the heart's Right and Left Ventricles (Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon, reprising their Hans and Franz roles from Saturday Night Live). The monotone Hypothalamus (voiced by Kirk Wise), which regulated autonomic bodily functions, was represented via Audio-Animatronics as a robot.
The show took Buzzy's host through a typical day: getting up, skipping breakfast, running to school after missing the bus, becoming infatuated with a new girl in Science class named Annie (Natalie Gregory), protecting her from bullies, getting involved in a food fight at lunch, getting sent to the principal (Kenneth Kimmins), and being thanked by Annie, then kissed after asking her out. At each point in the day, the various organs of the body talked to Buzzy, explained the problems they were facing, and in many cases argued over how Buzzy should deal with the situation. In the end, Buzzy (via help of General Knowledge's advice) eventually learned how to effectively balance the needs of his body crew in order to combat potential stressful situations.
Origins The attraction was the only fully surviving element from the original 1978 plans for EPCOT Center's "Life and Health" pavilion. Titled "The Head Trip", it was to share a theatre space with a dentistry-themed show called "Tooth Follies". Designed by Imagineer Rolly Crump, the stage and concept would be similar to the final incarnation, but with three animatronics dedicated to emotion, intellect and the nervous system. When Disney was unable to find a sponsor to host the pavilion, the construction of Life and Health was delayed indefinitely. However, an expansion pad between the Universe of Energy pavilion and the Horizons pavilion was kept as Disney still planned to build it.
In the mid-1980s, then Disney CEO Michael Eisner finally secured MetLife to sponsor the Life and Health pavilion, now renamed "Wonders of Life" and restarted development. Imagineer Steve Kirk replaced Crump on the project, and worked with Barry Braveman to flesh out the idea of "The Head Trip" into its own full attraction. Partially inspired by the 1943 Walt Disney-produced animated propaganda film Reason and Emotion, they explored the idea of transforming the concept into a parody of the Star Trek franchise. The human head was to be represented as a bridge on a spaceship much like the Starship Enterprise. Kirk explained: "...there was one character with a supporting cast on film for different parts of the body. Originally there was a captain, a Mr. Spock type, several ensigns at each of the senses, there was an officer for reason, there was an officer for emotion... so there was a little cast of these little characters about, maybe, 2 feet tall in this pretty big theatre that was a pretty involved bridge of a ship, which was, again, inside the human head." Eventually, the budget was reduced to only one audio-animatronic figure and a robot, eventually becoming the Hypothalamus. Kirk hoped that the show would have been reprogrammed over the years to include different versions of the show in order to discuss a variety of health-related topics, but that idea never came to be.WDW Radio interview with Steve Kirk http://www.wdwradio.com/2008/02/interview-with-former-disney-imagineer-steve-kirk/
Production With the budget reduction also came a new take on the concept along with its final name. Now titled "Cranium Command", the show featured a military theme wherein "brain pilots" take control of a mechanized human head. The main audio-animatronic character was dubbed "Captain Cortex" and ran the body, now that of a young boy, much like one would a military craft. He reports under his commanding officer "General Knowledge", who lectured the audience during the pre-show and then to Cortex in the main show. With time and resources running low, Imagineering outsourced production of the animated and live-action film portions to Colossal Pictures. However, halfway into production Disney executives scrapped this version of the project to have it retooled by their own Feature Animation department. Animator Steve Moore, who worked on both versions, recalled, "They were doing more of a Fred Crippen, Roger Ramjet style, which was fun, but not winning points with the clients. Storytelling was Colossal's Achilles heel ...they took the story given to them by Imagineering and followed it, thinking they were giving their client what they wanted. Unfortunately, it was written like an educational film from the '40s - very dry and condescending. No amount of style could make up for the lack of substance. And even though Colossal was executing Imagineering's story, their inability to interpret the story into something workable sunk them."
In May 1989, director Jerry Rees was approached by Peter Schneider, then-president of Walt Disney Feature Animation, to speak with several Disney brass members including Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Marty Sklar and Tom Fitzgerald. They all unanimously loathed Colossal Pictures' take on "Cranium Command" and sought him out to fix it. After a brief review, Rees cited the various issues and recommended that the project be rewritten from scratch. The executives gave Rees full creative freedom aside from needing to keep General Knowledge and the overall stress-management theme, per the sponsor's request. They had five months to complete the project, as they had to reach the October deadline.
Animation Rees rounded up as many animators from Feature Animation as he could, including Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise and Tom Sito. The latter three along with Rees crafted an entirely new storyline in under a week with Jenny Tripp penning the script. One of the largest changes was the personality of General Knowledge, now based on R. Lee Ermey's character from Full Metal Jacket. Per Wise, "We thought it would be funny if the character who was supposed to teach you how to manage your stress screamed at you incessantly like a psychotic drill sergeant." They also changed the pilot's name from Captain Cortex to Buzzy, a bumbling young recruit. Rob Minkoff was slated to direct the animated preshow as Rees needed to focus on the live-action heavy main show, but dropped out to take over the Roger Rabbit short "Roller Coaster Rabbit". Schneider asked Trousdale and Wise duo to step in as directors. Wise said, "Saying 'yes' turned out to be the smartest thing Gary and I ever did." In addition, the pre-show of "Cranium Command" was the very last project at Disney Feature Animation to be traditionally inked and painted on cels.
Filming While work on the animation commenced at the newly built animation wing at Disney-MGM Studios, Rees flew to Los Angeles to begin filming the live-action main show elements. Eventually he would end up directing nearly all of the show elements, per him: “Everything that you see and hear from the 8 screens, 2 Audio-Animatronic figures, and the 10 discreet channels of sound." The complexity of creating the seemingly uncut point-of-view (POV) shots which had to interact with several other pieces of media was a "wild" task for the ambitious director. Without optical or digital assistance, he used camera tricks and matching blur frames to stitch together the POV footage to seem like one continuous shot. In addition, Rees took the cinematographer and camera operators to the filming locations prior to shooting. When there, they would do tests to figure out how to make the camera express behavior and emotion such as shyness, love, anger, fear, panic and worry. This was essential to the intended immersion that you were inside a boy's head, looking out his eyes as he experienced life and reacted to it.
After the POV filming was complete, Rees took to a soundstage to film the live-action scenes involving the "body crew". He cast various famous comedians of the time to play the roles in unusual sets. The project's complexities continued to dominate, as Rees had to put one eye on the filming and one eye on a monitor playing the POV video in order to cue up the footage accordingly. Finally, he reached post-production by first mocking the eight screens of the theatre in Los Angeles and editing all the various film items together along with the animatronic dialogue, which bewildered executives such as Katzenberg when reviewing the production.
Programming the Animatronics