Disney Plus-Or-Minus Presents: Touchstone Plus-Or-Minus!

When this column went on hiatus at the beginning of the year, I had a couple of things on my mind. Would I be able to publish a collected version of this in book form? The verdict is still out on that but there definitely appears to be interest, so I’m continuing to look into it. How long did I want to keep going with it? I knew I couldn’t stop before we got to the whole Disney Renaissance but I’m still not sure what’s going to happen when I get more or less caught up to the present. But perhaps the problem I wrestled with the most was what in the world was I going to do about Touchstone Pictures?

Touchstone (and, to a lesser extent, its sibling offshoot, Hollywood) became a major part of the Disney story in the 1980s. I think it’s fair to say that without Touchstone, Disney would have never begun the ascent that led to them becoming the dominant studio in Hollywood. If you had told anyone in, say, 1981 or ’82 that Disney would one day not only control the likes of Marvel¹, Star Wars and Indiana Jones but would be responsible for not just some but most of the highest-grossing movies of all time, they would have quite understandably said you were crazy. That reversal of fortune required a fundamental change in the way the studio approached the industry and it started with Touchstone.

Even so, I was concerned that there wouldn’t be enough interest in a film-by-film look at Touchstone and the like. I mean, does the world really need me to write a 2,400-word essay on Turner & Hooch? (OK, bad example…I think we all know the answer to that one is a resounding yes.) In the end, I decided to stay true to my original stated intent for this column and focus solely on theatrically released feature films from Disney and Disney only. I knew that meant leaving a lot of interesting and significant titles on the table but that was their problem, not mine. If they’d wanted The Nightmare Before Christmas to be a Disney movie, they shoulda released it that way in the first place.

That decision never sat well with me. The thing is we’ve now entered a period, the go-go ‘80s, where movies carrying the Disney logo are few and far between. That’s great if all I’m trying to do here is get to the finish line. Let’s just hit the gas and plow through these suckers. But what I wanted to do was try to figure out how this studio went from making cartoons and some of the goofiest G-rated movies ever made to the multiheaded media hydra it is today. I’m not sure I can do that without looking at Touchstone.

There was another reason I decided not to rock the boat. If I was going to take on all this extra work, then it was long past time that this project started generating some income. I harbor no illusions of getting rich off this thing. If I could bring in enough to cover the cost of my Disney+ subscription, that’d be great. But so far, my meager attempts to monetize this project have been dismal failures.

I thought the creator-support platform Ko-fi seemed promising, at first. I liked the idea that it was sort of a tip-based honor system. If you liked something, send something. If not, fine. Turns out that most people, if left to their own devices, aren’t going to do that. It doesn’t help that I’m absolutely terrible at promoting myself and my work, so after mentioning it maybe once or twice, I just stuck a link at the bottom of each article and hoped for the best. I really, really appreciate those of you who did think enough of this column to chip in a couple bucks. But at this point, it’s clear that Ko-fi is not going to provide anything more than frustration.

Ideally, I wanted to find a platform that dealt in microtransactions, not subscriptions. If you’re interested in a title, you can pay a dollar and read that one. If you don’t care, skip it. And if you find you’re reading enough of these things, then you can subscribe if you want to. This is kind of how magazines and newspapers used to work, kids. Unfortunately, I don’t think that platform exists yet. It seems like an obvious and good idea to me, developers, so feel free to get to work on that and don’t forget where you got the idea, hint hint.

Since I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I activated the “paid subscriptions” option here at Substack but didn’t really do anything with it. The $5 a month minimum seemed a little steep for what I was offering, despite the fact that these columns are frequently (some might say unnecessarily) long. I looked into other options but jumping ship after I’d grown a bit of an audience here seemed like a mistake. So, I just kept everything the way it was. New subscribers got options for paid or free versions of the column, ignored it and chose “free”, and nobody’s missed anything so far.

But if I’m being honest with myself, the biggest reason I didn’t pursue the paid version of the site was fear and self-deprecation. I know this column has been finding an audience. I’d like it to reach an even bigger one but hey, who wouldn’t? The fact is that I am reaching a lot of you and you must be getting something of value out of all this because you keep coming back week after week. Maybe you just came to read about One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (inexplicably one of the most-viewed columns I’ve posted here) but most of you have stuck around. That’s very cool. But what if exactly zero percent of those free subscribers become paid subscribers? My self-esteem is already low enough. I don’t need a mathematical representation of how terrible I am, thanks.

On the other hand, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? This doesn’t seem like a completely terrible idea. If nothing else, I’ll end up with enough material for two books. So before we get too deep into the weeds on Disney In The ‘80s, I’m going to rewind back to 1984 with the launch of Touchstone Plus-Or-Minus!

Next Friday, I’ll kick this off properly with a look at Touchstone’s very first release, Splash. That and all Touchstone, Hollywood or whatever other non-Disney Disney stuff I choose to look at will be for paid subscribers only. This move is not fueled by sheer avarice alone. There’s also an element of protection at work. I’ve tried to keep the Disney columns G-to-PG-rated but once in a blue moon, a reader will call me out for using some mildly salty language. Honestly, this is a fair criticism. I’m not writing these for kids but this has been a column about a studio known for family entertainment. Keeping things clean is a reasonable expectation. But Touchstone crosses the final frontier into R-rated territory, so I don’t want there to be any surprises. I need to know you actually want to be here and a paywall is the best way to accomplish that.

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about all you Mouseketeers who are only interested in the Disney side of things. Disney Plus-Or-Minus will continue to be published on Mondays and it will continue to be free for everyone (although the words “free” and “Disney” are not often used in conjunction with each other). I might slow it down a little if I feel like the Disney side is pulling too far ahead of the Touchstone side but, for now, I intend on publishing two columns a week: Disney on Monday and Touchstone on Friday.

This is going to be an ambitious undertaking. On the one hand, this opens the door to a whole lot of terrific movies I wouldn’t have been writing about otherwise, such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Rocketeer. It also means I’ll be watching a whole mess of Ernest movies, so there’s that. Some of these movies have become beloved classics while others have been forgotten as thoroughly as the most obscure live-action Disney films of the 1960s. But digging around the dusty corners of pop culture’s biggest vault has always been one of my favorite parts of this project. I hope it has been for you, as well, and that you’ll join me on this new adventure.

1. They might have believed you about Marvel. After all, they were cutting deals with Cannon Films and Roger Corman up until the mid-90s.