A biography for John Henchhasn’t been written yet.
“I have wanted to be a fine artist painter, and I reached the point in art schools were I'd like to understand more about images and how images communicate information to people. And I was not getting very far in that from my professors.”
“We've achieved this feeling, for instance, with the colors. The colors in the park are harmonious with each other, not like in big cities where they don't.”
“Mickey is one of the prime examples: Mickey has never been suspected of being an American export. It was deja vu. They gave him a local name and he's been accepted everywhere he goes.”
“The show is being changed right now, by the way. Jeff Burke is doing it for the Magic Kingdom. And I think it will be better, with new birds, master of ceremonies, etc.”
“Walt understood all of those things, and even common things about people. For instance: Usually you get your idea of what kind of day it is by looking at the horizon, because the horizon is your eye level. So what Walt did is to eliminate the horizon.”
“In live action movies, you just hope that everything works. Because the actor may had a bad morning and doesn't play good, or accidents happen continuously. Many things contradict what you are trying to say. But in cartoons, nothing contradict what you want to say.”
“Because, you know, it's never a hard work when you enjoy yourself. Look, I've been here since 57 years, and I don't have to explain why I've stayed so long. I always enjoyed it.”
“There were no jewelry hidden. Walt wanted this atmosphere: They were supposed to live here, they've been outside somewhere, but they could come back at any minute and catch us.”
“Walt put everything he knew about communication with images into the park, so it was very familiar.”
“What happen to the pirates we are supposed to see? Then we go down the chutes, and it's where the pirates were. But they're all gone. There is nothing but skeletons down here!”
“Walt had a marvelous intuition. And because he understood people very well, liked them and had great respect for people, there was nothing cynical about Walt.”
“But Walt and him shared the same kind of optimism. Walt believed in himself, and he was optimistic about what he wanted to do. He just knew it will be okay, and Dali was the same way. They had a great deal in common that way.”
“For instance, some early ideas for Florida were done only recently. The idea of a little village was there from the beginning and now we have this 'Celebration' village. Same thing for the Disney Institute. Walt talked about this idea in the very first.”
“Then, you were supposed to discover the city, where they were. But because somebody like skeletons. And that they discovered that they were at a cheap price, we used too many skeletons all over the place, and the public got the wrong message.”