Doug Moe's column in the Wisconsin State Journal of Sunday, 
12 December 2010 
 
The studio head and the screenwriter squeezed into a booth at the
Laurel Tavern on Monroe Street late Wednesday afternoon, and after
a little scuffle about who would pay for the beers, the only
question was who would speak first.

Actually, there was no question. The screenwriter was John Roach.
Roach was raising a glass with Peter Schneider, who is more
accurately an ex-studio head. A decade ago, Schneider was chairman
of Walt Disney Studios.

Two movies had brought these two Madison natives  Roach is an
Edgewood grad, Schneider went to West High  together at the Laurel.
In the late 1990s, Schneider was the Disney executive who gave the
approval for the studio to distribute The Straight Story, the
acclaimed David Lynch film co-written by Roach and another Madison
native, Mary Sweeney.

On its release in 1999, The Straight Story made several prestigious
best films of the year lists, and brought its star, Richard
Farnsworth, an Academy Award nomination for best actor.
Until Wednesday, Schneider and Roach had never met. As it happens,
another film was the catalyst.

Schneider was in Madison to visit his parents, Hans and Miriam
Schneider, and also to speak to a UW-Madison class, Entrepreneurship
in Society, about Hollywood, money, the creative process and the
making of a new documentary, Waking Sleeping Beauty, which details
the astonishing revival of animation at Disney from 1984-1994 (when
the studio produced colossal hits like The Little Mermaid and Beauty
and the Beast), a renaissance Schneider helped engineer.

The documentary, which Schneider produced, was released Nov. 30 on
DVD. He said he made it because he felt the story of Disney
animations rebirth had never been told correctly.
Roach, who runs a video production company in Madison, showed up to
hear Schneider speak. The two were introduced before the class
began.

When he began to speak, Schneider, a youthful 60  he was dressed in
blue jeans and a long-sleeved, untucked white shirt over a blue
T-shirt  almost immediately called out to Roach.

I'm going to pick on John Roach, Schneider said. John wrote The Straight
Story. John, how much did the movie make?
Six to eight million, Roach said. That's nothing in Hollywood, Schneider said.
But he went on to explain he had agreed to release the movie not
only because he liked it very much, but also because it was
relatively inexpensive and would make a statement about the kind of
films Disney's live action unit  as opposed to animation  could
distribute.    

This came during a discussion of what Schneider called the idea.
During his talk he offered several steps to a successful
production, including the uniqueness,the inspiration and the rules.
Of the latter, Schneider said, If you're going to break the rules, you'd
better know them first.

On uniqueness, Schneider  with help from a clip from Waking Sleeping
Beauty talked about the gifted lyricist Howard Ashman's push to make
Sebastian, the crab in Little Mermaid, Jamaican  a touch that assured
a memorable character.

As he spoke, Schneider revealed snippets of a fascinating life,
including his rapid rise at Disney and his abrupt departure from
the company in 2001. In the years since, Schneider has directed
theater productions both large and small, and traveled, to Italy in
particular.

He told the class a story of walking into a restaurant in Florence,
and how a discussion of the propriety of ordering wine before food
led not only to an extraordinary 11 course meal, but, after dinner,
to a trip across the street and a theater where he met the
performance artist Maria Cassi. Schneider is now directing a
production, My Life with Men  and Other Animals, starring Cassi.    
Walk into any room, anywhere in the world, Schneider told the
students, and the idea might be there.

Later, at the Laurel, the screenwriter and the ex-studio head
sipped their beers and traded Straight Story lore. Schneider told a
funny story about seeing the film for the first time at Lynch's home
in the Hollywood hills. Roach recalled how Farnsworth knew he was
fatally ill while the movie was being filmed.

Schneider offered a free DVD of Waking Sleeping Beauty. Roach wanted
to pay for it, but Schneider insisted. Walking out, John said it
might have been the first time a Roach failed to buy at the Laurel.