Epcot at 40 — The EPCOT Film
A look at the film that introduced Walt Disney’s most ambitious project.
On October 1st of this year, Epcot will celebrate its 40th birthday. Formerly E.P.C.O.T., formerly EPCOT Center, formerly Walt Disney’s Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow; the park, through its sheer iconoclasm in rejecting the trappings of any theme park prior — notably, no Disney characters appeared in the park in its early years — represents something wholly unique in themed entertainment, an experience that no purveyor of parks, Disney included, has ever tried to replicate.
We could spend time debating whether or not Epcot ever successfully defined for itself what that experience was, but there is still a widespread nostalgic love for World Showcase’s international pavilions and Future World’s forever-80s science fiction experiences. And today, as the park continues to evolve, to seek out a new 21st-century identity, it maintains its unique position as the one park that has never been imitated or replicated.
On this anniversary, though, I’d like to take a look at Epcot’s origin, its foundational document, The EPCOT Film (aka Project Florida); the film designed to draw corporations and Florida legislators into the dream (and to secure said legislators’ support for the creation of the Reedy Creek Improvement District). While it would be foolish to go too deeply into the original detailed plans for Uncle Walt’s manifesto of urban design when it has already been so well covered — definitively by Sam Gennawey in his classic Walt Disney and the Promise of Progress City — I thought a look at the film itself, shot primarily on October 27th, 1966 would be interesting in this anniversary year.
When this film was made the Florida project has already taken on the name Disney World, though it is fairly clear that the focus is the EPCOT piece; when showing a map of the property part way through the film, the parcel that will become the Magic Kingdom is simply labeled “Theme Park” near the “Ice Rink” and “Roller Dome”. (Please note that I will be following the convention of referring to the prospective city as EPCOT and the later park as Epcot, as per Mr. Gennawey.) We know by this that some of the commercial considerations for building an experimental city had already been factored into the plans and were developing in parallel to the creative and technical vision. In other words, the plan was flirting with a sort of maturity that comes with having faced some of the fiscal realities of the project. In other OTHER words, some reality is intermingling with the dream. The EPCOT Film was going to have to cement both in the viewers’ minds.
As if to establish the Disney company’s bona-fides for taking on a project of this size, the movie begins with some background on Disneyland and the transformative design that it had employed. It refers to Disneyland’s high “standards of performance” and “provocative new ideas.” Then we hear about the founding of WED Enterprises (later Walt Disney Imagineering) and the innovative work they are doing. Disneyland is certainly an impressive resume piece to build upon and it is milked for all it’s worth here with a kinetic array of vignettes showing just how many things are in constant motion.
Finally, to really put a button on the company’s credentials, we hear the famous quote that urban planner and real estate developer James Rouse gave at the 1963 Urban Design Conference at Harvard University.
“I hold a view that may be somewhat shocking to an audience as sophisticated as this: that the greatest piece of urban design in the United States today is Disneyland.
If you think about Disneyland and think of its performance in relationship to its purpose, it’s meaning to people — more than that, it’s meaning to the process of development — you will find it the outstanding piece of urban design in the United States.
It took an area of activity — the amusement park — and lifted it to a standard so high in its performance, in its respect for people, in its functioning for people, that it really does become a brand new thing. It fulfills all its functions it set out to accomplish, un-self-consciously, usefully, and profitably to its owners and developers.
I find more to learn in the standards that have been set and in the goals that have been achieved in the development of Disneyland than in any other piece of physical development in the country.”
After this impressive foundation building, we get to Walt in his last filmed appearance. (He also shot a short, 3 minute, promotional film about The Happiest Millionaire during these sessions.) Walt Disney appears in the film looking happy and collected, but with a sense of barely restrained joy just under the surface. He’s cautious in his promises, letting the viewer know that, “Everything in this room may change time and time again as we move ahead, but the basic philosophy of what we’re planning for Disney World is going to remain very much as it is right now. We know what our goals are. We know what we hope to accomplish. And believe me, it’s the most exciting and challenging assignment that we’ve ever tackled at Walt Disney productions.”
He comes across as a man who has found a new toy and realizes that the toy is likely to form an even more profound legacy than the one he already has. By tying his and his company’s prior achievements to a profound optimism for the future, Walt Disney gives a speech that is energizing as well as deeply comforting. It speaks to the promise of “a great big beautiful tomorrow” and it is hard not to get swept into that tomorrow with him.
Much of the rest of the film is filled with urban planning; introducing the radial city design with zoning rings instead of blocky districts, traversed by foot and WEDWay PeopleMover, with a Monorail for longer distances to the theme and industrial parks. EPCOT, the city, would, according to our narrator, have a domed environment controlled downtown and generous green belt space surrounding the mixed-use commercial/residential zones. The city would promise 100% employment and a constant introduction of new ideas into the schools — we can read these ideas as more a precursor to practical innovation than anything philosophical — and a flow of new products into the homes so that EPCOT, as Walt puts it, “will always be in a state of becoming.”
No Disney vision of progress is complete without discussing transportation, of course, and here much of the discussion ties back to the earlier triumphs at Disneyland; the Monorail and the WEDWay PeopleMover which, the film points out, has cars that are at 5/8ths scale of those that will flood the commuter arteries of EPCOT. “Only electric-powered vehicles will travel above the streets of EPCOT’s central city, “ explains our narrator. There will be ways for gasoline-powered vehicles to travel underground and out of sight in a design that predicts the tunnels that indeed are beneath much of Walt Disney World today.
The city, as promised in this early stage, is a sort of middle-class utopia, but not exactly that; it is intended as a showroom to demonstrate how other cities could be built to the standards of a middle-class utopia. The standards are economically self-limiting — corporate funding is EPCOT’s mantra and there seems to be no available system indicated to get such a place built without it and its attendant obligations — but, as a lot of the ideas here are just barely past the blue sky stage, cynicism is, as yet, perhaps not warranted; at least the propulsion of the message seems to want to push us past it as if traveling through the pitch via PeopleMover vehicles which “never stop moving.”
And then we are back to Walt. Truth be told, he looks a bit more tired than when the film started. We know that his pieces were all shot on the same day and it was probably getting late. Walt was 65 and, though he didn’t know it yet, he was severely ill with lung cancer. He makes his sales pitch and sticks the landing nonetheless. With a smile, he tells us about the influence this project could have. With a collusion of American industry and Disney creativity he is “confident we can create right here in Disney World a showcase to the world of the American free enterprise system.” (Not exactly the World Showcase that Epcot ended up with, but it is an interesting thread of inspiration.) “And with your cooperation, I’m sure this Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow can influence the future of city living for generations to come. It’s an exciting challenge, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for everyone who participates. Speaking for myself and the entire Disney organization, we’re ready to go right now!”
He died 49 days later on December 15th, 1966, and his dreams of redesigning the whole idea of cities died with him. We see elements from this founding document in pieces that made it into what became of Walt Disney World and Epcot, but the last we hear about EPCOT as a functioning city is here, in this film.
Could Walt have done it? The challenges would’ve seemed overwhelming to most. Managing people is one thing when they come to spend a day in your park, but is quite another when they have to live in your idealized world. It would’ve been tricky and the problems arising from the reality of the park treating people’s lives as a sort of diorama in a display case might’ve been unsurmountable. Then again, Walt Disney made a career out of doing things that he was told he couldn’t do; had he lived just a few more years, who knows, the world might be a very different place today.
Watch The EPCOT Film, wonderfully restored by the folks at RetroWDW, right here:
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for the Boardwalk Times
