I just saw the delightful movie Saving Mr. Banks last night, and while it's fun, it may be more fictionalized than we think. Yes, in this movie, Walt Disney bends over backwards to convince a difficult and surly P.L. Travers to approve a movie version of her story: Mary Poppins. But she is very demanding about what she insists must not be included in the film: the apparently not classic enough Dick Van Dyke, the garish color red, and not any animation whatsoever. And after much wrangling and such, she finally agrees to permit all the stuff she doesn't want into the movie adaptation of her book.
Oh, but is this really so realistic? Why would someone completely drop all opposition to things they are so indignant about all of a sudden? I smell a Rickey Rat! Isn't it just possible that some other occurrence is more likely?
Yes, how do we know Walt Disney didn't have P.L. Travers bumped-off and replaced with a lookalike actress who then agreed to everything for the movie? After all, Hollywood is the dream factory filled with illusions, so if anyone could pull this sort of thing off, it would be them. And then, after dispensing with our author's objections, our hero could have all the red, Dick Van Dykes and cartoon penguins he wanted. And to keep anyone from suspecting, Disney could have his writing team write further books under her name. Then all her fans would be none the wiser.
Or, maybe what really happened is that Disney had the author cryogenically frozen while he was making the movie, provided an actress to pose as her at the premiere, and thawed her out later when it was too late to stop him from making the movie the way he wanted, and after the film was a big hit so she couldn't complain too much. Then, if she tried to accuse him of the dastardly plot, he could simply say: "Oh, she's just mad that we froze her out of the creative process once she signed over the rights, so she's exaggerating what happened. But she has no experience in motion pictures, so what else could we do?" And the plot would have done double duty by testing the cryogenic process to make sure it worked safely before Walt Disney used it on himself, as we all know he did.
(BTW: This is all just a joke! So please don't get Elsa, Queen of Arendelle, to cryogenically freeze me, Mr. Disney!)
