WE DON'T KNOW JACK.
The day finally came when the big pitch and the red carpet were to be rolled out for Jack Nicholson. I believe it happened in one of the buildings on Flower Street (I think it was the Royce Building – see post of April 10 for location). That day, Nicholson brought along his grandkids. Knowing this, the directors catered to the young tots with all sorts of goodies and give-a-ways. It was said that when they asked him what he thought of the idea of play...ing Hades, he took out a lighter, lit it, held it up to his face and flashed one of his trademark smiles.
A day or two later, the news came that he had turned down the role.
The news sent shock waves throughout the production. All of a sudden, Eric Goldberg wasn’t that interested in animating Hades anymore. At the same time, Chris Buck announced his decision to leave the studio to go work for Warner Brothers, I think. This left the character of Phil unsupervised. Eric jumped at the chance to animated Phil. In his words, “it was a perfect fit. I look more like Phil than Hades anyway”. This left the character of Hades without a supervisor.
John and Ron approached me to fill that void. At that time, the character was in limbo. I had no idea what it would eventually become. But that made no difference to me. This was my chance to supervise a Disney villain and I wasn’t about to pass that up. The next month or so was a mélange of character designs and voice auditions. The best thing was, John and Ron included me in on the casting process. I went to several voice auditions and was actually asked my opinion. In those days, the supervisor’s opinion was listened to and considered in the final decisions. You really felt a part of the process.
Here are some initial drawings from Eric of Phil.