30 years later, the director of Rasta Rockett reveals the truth about the film
“Maybe I shouldn't have done it back then…” or how the project was turned into a Disney movie along the way.
“Libra man… Cadence man…” Anyone who grew up in the 1990s knows this refrain from Rasta Rocket. THE feel good movie celebrated its 30th anniversary in October 2023 and its director, Jon Turteltaubtook the opportunity to reveal the truth about the production.
We are sharing his words again to wait until the rebroadcast of the family film, this evening on W9.
In an interview with The Independent, he recounts how he was in constant battle with Disney over the characters, with the studio having reservations about the strong Jamaican accent of the film's heroes. Which wasn't a problem at first. Because Rasta Rocket was not originally a Disney film!
And while the script was still about the improbable arrival of the Jamaican national bobsleigh team at the 1988 Winter Olympics, it also featured “full of drugs, talked about racism and the characters had sex a lot“, remembers the actor Rawle D. Lewis. “I was able to see the project transform little by little and become the film that everyone knows today. It was a unique story, one that no one had ever told before: Jamaicans in tights? Suddenly, everyone was wondering what Disney was going to do with it…”
Jon Turteltaub recounts having fought against the executives of Walt Disney Studios over accents. And the actor Just Leon confirms: “They wanted me to look like a black Aladdin! They wanted a slick Disney version. It was hard to take, because I wanted to keep it authentic. But at the same time, I'm a professional and I had to do my job“. His comrade Malik Yoba confirms: “They told us that people in Central America weren't going to understand us. At that time, people had less access to cultural differences and didn't really know what Jamaican was like.”
Turteltaub thus reveals having received a phone call from Jeffrey Katzenberg, then president of Disney. It was 1 a.m. and the studio boss became more scathing:
“He said : 'If you can't bring these accents back to something I can clearly understand, I'll find a director who can…' So, the next day, I said to the actors: 'I'm going to get fired if you all don't sound like Sebastian the Crab The little Mermaid. Please don't get me fired!' We joked about it but they understood. They understood and promised me: 'We're not going to make Sebastian the Crab but we're going to make an Americanized version of the film that people around the world can understand.'“
Would things be different in 2023? Is it that Rasta Rocket could have kept his Jamaican identity until the end?
“Times have changed a lot in 30 years”answers Jon Turteltaub. “There's no way I'm making this movie today. And maybe I shouldn't have done it at the time. I am on the side of those who think that I should not have agreed to direct Rasta Rocket… And yet we ended up making a very good film in the end. So it’s complex.”
Rasta Rockett: Focus on the real Olympic team that inspired the film
