Two Pursuits of Perfection
Everyone knows the name Walt Disney. I certainly recognize the name after reading Neal Gabler’s biography “Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination.” It’s interesting Gabler chose “triumph of the American Imagination” as the subtitle considering the last line of this six hundred and thirty-three page book says that in death, Walt Disney had “fulfilled his own destiny, too, for which he had striven so mightily and restlessly all his life. He had passed beyond the afflictions of this world. Walt Disney had at last attained perfection.”
Perfection achieved in death is a bleak way to talk about the man who, while alive, made Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Disneyland, and many other creations I bet most of us wish could be the pinnacle of our life’s work. Does “the American Imagination” only triumph in death? Do we spend our entire life pursuing perfection until death stops us?
Disney certainly was a perfectionist in life. And his perfectionism led to a life of falling in love with a medium, doing it better than anyone had done before, but then becoming dissatisfied with it and distancing himself from it to focus on a new love.
Disney pioneered the creation of animated films, built the world’s greatest animation studio to perfect the medium, and then... stopped being very interested in animation. Disney animator Milt Kahl says, “He was interested in a picture until he had all the the problems solved and then he just lost interest.” Then Disney got really into model trains and miniatures. This led to the creation of the theme park and bringing the fantasy of movies into reality with Disneyland. But, as Gabler writes, “Walt had always operated on the principle of renunciation when he felt that something had reached its potential” and soon the happiest place on earth was left behind to focus on CalArts, a university founded to train the next generation of artists in a environment of cross collaboration. But then, as Marc Davis, another animator and one of Disney’s legendary “nine old men,” said, “He was losing interest in a lot of things he’d done before… because he was seeing the new world ahead.” That new world would be the Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow. Not to be confused with the today’s EPCOT ride at Disney World, Walt’s design for EPCOT was an actual city that would solve all of modern humanities problems through science, which unfortunately never came to be following Walt’s death.
Walt loved making things, especially when it meant undertaking a never-before conceived of project. Even after the massive success of Disneyland and Mary Poppins, two never before conceived of projects which could each on their own be his magnum opus, Walt wrote,
As far as I’m concerned, I am just in the middle of my career… I have several years and several projects to go before my life story should be written. I don’t want to be judged on just what I have accomplished up to now for I have many plans for tomorrow and I’m too involved with those future projects to take time to rehash the past.
He was a visionary, but when he made the things he envisioned his perfectionism led to near resentment of his completed works because of their imperfections. He’d do all he could to fix problems, but when he’d made something so well that it couldn’t be made any better, he’d leave the medium behind and move on to a new medium; perhaps this next one he could make perfect.
Not many people know the name Jack Benny. Jack’s successes are more humble than Disney’s. Benny didn’t run a studio or build theme parks or plan cities of the future. He was a comedian and violinist who started in vaudeville after the turn of the last century and went on to great acclaim in radio, television, and film.
And while you may not know Jack, his legacy has been felt to this day in the comedy world. His radio and television show, The Jack Benny Show, brought together comedians and writers who would go on to help the next generation create shows such as The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Carson was such a huge fan of Benny that he wrote his undergraduate senior thesis on Jack Benny. Entitled “How to Write Comedy for Radio,” Carson was so kind as to create an audio recording of his thesis incorporating clips from The Jack Benny Show which the University of Nebraska has been so kind as to make available to the public.
Like Disney, Jack was also a perfectionist. Fred de Cordova, producer of The Jack Benny Show and later producer of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson said of Benny, “He simply balked at appearing before the public unless he could do as good a show as possible… A joke, even if it got a lot of laughs in rehearsal, but didn’t belong in the context of the show, was the first thing to be thrown out.”
In fact, The Jack Benny Show itself was nearly always presented as rehearsal for The Jack Benny Show in a “show within a show” context. Most of the sketches and musical numbers were of Jack and the cast getting ready to put on the actual show. It’s a clever and convenient way to string together acts for a variety show, but in a way it’s saying that a finished show is just what you have to present when you don’t have any more time to rehearse it. Or, as Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels says about his own comedy show, “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.” For a perfectionist like Benny who created over nine-hundred episodes, perhaps this was a way of saying any imperfections in the finished show might have been worked out if only there was more time to rehearse.
And rehearse Benny did. A long running gag on his show was Benny practicing his violin (he played a Stradivarius, by the way) to the dismay of his violin teacher, Professor LaBlanc, played by Mel Blanc (remembered today as the original voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester, Tweety, Porky Pig… the list goes on and on). As much as Benny rehearsed, over the decades he never got more than a horrifying and hilarious screech out of the instrument.
Despite how he presented himself in his show, in real life Benny was a virtuoso. By fourteen he played violin onstage nightly and throughout his career appeared as a soloist “with nearly every major symphony orchestra in America and Canada, as well as abroad.” But like Disney, Benny frequently focused on the imperfections in his art. He was self deprecating on his show, as if, despite his success, talent, and hard work, there might have been a part of Benny that thought, “I’m not making much more than a silly screech, am I?”
But unlike Disney, Benny stuck to one medium. Close friend and fellow actor Gregory Peck remarked, “Twenty-five years after he had done his first radio show, he was still working as hard as he had been from the beginning. For Jack, comedy was an art. He did it seemingly without effort. Yet behind the scenes, it took years and years of constant work.” The Vaudeville theaters Jack came up in called for performing the same act night after night after night, constantly refining towards perfection.
But like Disney, perfection was never attained. None of this is to speak poorly of Walt Disney, Jack Benny, or their work. They were greatly and rightly appreciated in their time and their legacies live on. At times I’ve felt connections to both of them in my own projects. Once I’ve finished a piece and I stand back to look at it, it’s almost as if I can see all my mistakes begin to ooze out of it and soon all the goodness I spent so long crafting is covered over and I’m embarrassed by what I’m looking at, reading, or listening to. And I feel like Benny, “OK, next time I’m going to make this so much better. Here’s a list of all the ways to improve.” Or I’ll feel like Disney and think, “You know, I’ve worked really hard on this medium for a while, I’ve learned a lot, but honestly, maybe it’s just not the right medium for what I’m envisioning. It’s time to move on.”
The reality is nothing will ever be perfect. Things can always be improved even if we are incapable of improving them. Perfection is a strong driving force. Perfectionists can be aggravating to their collaborators because a lot of times with deadlines and limits, being perfect is a luxury and it takes a great deal of talent and skill to make something close to perfect when you’re fighting against limits. Disney and Benny got close to that line where perfectionism prevented them from doing anything. They made lots of great work, but they pushed it close to the line because they were pursuing perfection.
When examining inevitable imperfections in your work, I think there are times to take after Disney and move on to some other medium. There’s tremendous growth in exploring a new medium and cross training your skills. You can see clear influences of each of his previous projects on each stage of his career. But you shouldn’t abandon a medium you love because you can’t “make it perfect.” That’s when you should think like Benny. He could love his medium even with all its imperfections. It takes courage to be like Disney and take on a new medium with all the unknown problems to be faced. But it also takes courage to keep returning to one thing year after year, fighting the same problems that just can’t seem to be defeated.
But despite their different approaches, and despite the burden the perfectionist carries, it’s clear Walt Disney and Jack Benny understood something author Neil Gaiman called the “best advice I got that I ignored.” In his speech, “Make Good Art” Gaiman said in the midst of his success, he never took time to stop and enjoy what he was doing, he never “let go of some control and enjoy the ride.”
Disney wanted to enjoy the ride so much, be built a park full of rides. And at each phase of his career, many of his collaborators have remarked on how excited and full of life he was. Same with Benny. He spent a career playing with his friends. They may have been their own worst critics, but they were also their first audiences. A perfectionist doesn’t move forward with an idea unless they feel that joyful tingle of “Hey, this is shaping up to be something pretty wonderful. I wonder how far I can take it?” They loved sharing what they made with people they loved.
I think it was a bad idea for Gabler to end his biography of Disney saying in death he had “at last attained perfection.” It’s only a tragedy to be a perfectionist if perfection is your goal, rather than a driving force. Art, communication, and love can all be successful even when imperfect. In fact, that what makes people like Benny and Disney so remarkable. They had vision driven by perfectionism, but created using imperfect materials and imperfect people. If someone makes a perfect thing out of perfect materials, big deal; red paint mixed with red paint makes more red paint. But if like Disney, you can turn imperfect celluloid drawings into lifelike motion or like Benny turn human foibles into laughter, if you can combine the hues into a new color, you’ve done something better than make a perfect thing. You’ve done an act of redemption. Imperfect redemption, sure. But it’s probably better to succeed at imperfect redemption than to toil in vain attempting perfect perfection (if that’s even a thing).