Where is "The Sweatbox," Disney?

     Watching the wonderful "How to Train Your Dragon" again on dvd reminded me that animation careers are in some ways much more turbulent and bloodier than regular filmmaking. It's rare that directors are fired months into production of a regular film but this happens regularly with animation. What does this have to do with "Dragon?" It's simple - "Dragon" would not have become the movie it was if it wasn't for Disney/Pixar.
     The writer/directors of "Dragon," Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, were at Dreamworks because Sanders clashed with then-newly installed Disney/Pixar animation head, John Lassiter. Sanders had written and directed "Lilo and Stitch" with DeBlois at Disney, a film Disney was initially unsure about. Once the film became a success, Sanders was going to make "An American Dog," but Sanders was fired from the production when he rejected Lassiter's "suggestions" for reworking the film. The film was eventually retooled as "Bolt" and Sanders went with his friend DeBlois to Dreamworks.
     The reason I've gone into this is that things like this happen mostly behind the scenes and are never documented on camera, except that one time, they were...
     In the late Nineties, hot off his success as the director of "The Lion King," writer/director Roger Allers was set to make an Aztec-based epic called "Kingdom of the Sun." As part of the deal to have singer/songwriter Sting do the music, Sting's wife, Trudie Styler. was allowed to film the production for a documentary. Like "Lost in La Mancha," what was supposed to be a warm and fuzzy feel-good film about the creation of a new Disney masterpiece, instead turned into a documentary about the nightmare of a creator losing control of his production because his company had lost faith in him. Brutally captured on film, "The Sweatbox," named after the ritual public criticism that all Disney films are subjected to while in production, showed how Allers attempted to save his movie, was fired, then showed how Disney scrambled to save their investment by retooling the film into something that could be released. "The Emperor's New Clothes" did come out and was somewhat successful; but "The Sweatbox" was shown at the Toronto Film Festival, then released for one week to one theater at the Beverly Center Theaters as Disney was contractually obligated to, and that was it. Disney owns the film, which has many fascinating glimpses into the film that never was, but has never released the documentary and presumably has no plans to.
     Like "Frankenweenie," which Disney also buried until director Tim Burton became too successful to ignore and disinterring his early film became one of the conditions of his return to Disney, "The Sweatbox" is a glimpse of a side of Disney that the studio tries to keep hidden from the public; the side that tries to bury things it considers "mistakes." If any of you ever want to wipe the benign smile off John Lassiter, just ask him when is Disney going to release "The Sweatbox" and see how quickly the flowers wilt on his Hawaiian shirts...