George Banks and all he stands for will be saved. Maybe not in life, but in imagination. Because that’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.
It’s all right, Mrs. Travers. It’s alright. Mr. Banks is going to be all right. I promise.
It’s not the children she comes to save. It’s their father. It’s YOUR father, Travers Goff.
I’ve fought this battle from her side. Pat Powers, he wanted the mouse and I didn’t have a bean back then. He was this big terrifying New York producer and I was just a kid from Missouri with a sketch of Mickey, but it would’ve killed me to give him up. Honest to God, killed me. That mouse, he’s family.
Have you ever been to Kansas City, Mrs. Travers? Do you know Missouri at all?
Well, it’s mighty cold there in the winters. Bitter cold. And my dad, Elias Disney, he owned a newspaper delivery route there. A thousand papers, twice daily; a morning and an evening edition. And dad was a tough businessman. He was a “save a penny any way you can” type of fella, so he wouldn’t employ delivery boys. No, no, no… he used me and my big brother Roy. I was eight back then, just eight years old. And, like I said, winters are harsh, and Old Elias, he didn’t believe in new shoes until the old ones were worn through. And honestly, Mrs. Travers, the snowdrifts, sometimes they were up over my head and we’d push through that snow like it was molasses. The cold and wet seeping through our clothes and our shoes. Skin peeling from our faces. Sometimes I’d find myself sunk down in the snow, just waking up because I must have passed out or something, I don’t know. And then it was time for school and I was too cold and wet to figure out equations and things. And then it was back out in the snow again to get home just before dark. Mother would feed us dinner and then it was time to go right back out and do it again for the evening edition. “You’d best be quick there, Walt. You’d better get those newspapers up on that porch and under that storm door. Poppa’s gonna lose his temper again and show you the buckle end of his belt, boy.”
I don’t tell you this to make you sad, Mrs. Travers. I don’t. I love my life, I think it’s a miracle. And I loved my dad. He was a wonderful man. But rare is the day when I don’t think about that eight-year-old boy delivering newspapers in the snow and old Elias Disney with that strap in his fist. And I am just so tired, Mrs. Travers. I’m tired of remembering it *that* way. Aren’t you tired, too, Mrs. Travers? Now we all have our sad tales, buy don’t you want to finish the story? Let it all go and have a life that isn’t dictated by the past? It’s not the children she comes to save. It’s their father. It’s *your* father… Travers Goff.
You must have loved and admired him a lot to take his name. It’s him this is all about, isn’t it? All of it, everything. Forgiveness, Mrs. Travers, it’s what I learned from your books.
You look at me and you see some kind of Hollywood King Midas. You think I’ve built an empire and I want your Mary Poppins as just another brick in my kingdom.
Now, if that’s all it was, would I have suckered up to a stubborn, cranky dame like you for twenty years? No, I’d have saved myself an ulcer.
I think life disappoints you, Ms. Travers. I think it’s done that a lot. And maybe Mary Poppins is the only person in your life who hasn’t.
That’s not true. She was as real as can be to my daughters, and to thousands of other children – adults too. She’s been a nighttime comfort to a heck of a lot of people.
We can’t make the picture without the color red. The film is set in London, for Pete’s sake!
Well, there’s buses and mailboxes and guard’s uniforms and things – Heck, the English flag!
Is this a test, Pamela? Are you requiring proof as to how much I want to make you happy so we can create this beautiful thing together?
Pam, a man cannot break a promise he’s made to his kids, no matter how long it takes for him to make it come true. Now, you kept me dangling all this time. But now, I gotcha.
Don’t you want to finish the story?
