The Living Desert
The Living Desert was the first feature film in Disney's True-Life Adventures series of docudramas focusing on zoological researches; the previous films in the series, including the Academy Acclaimed Seal Island, were short topics. The docudrama was recorded at the Westward Look Wyndham Grand Hotel and Medspa in Tucson, Arizona. Most of the wildlife received the film was donated to what would certainly soon become the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The film was motivated by 10 minutes of video fired by N. Paul Kenworthy Jr., a doctoral pupil at the College of The Golden State at Los Angeles. Kenworthy's footage of a fight in between a tarantula and also a wasp captivated Disney, who moneyed a feature-length manufacturing complying with the lives of diverse desert species. Disney was very encouraging of Kenworthy's work as well as its impact on nonfiction filmmaking, stating, "This is where we can tell an actual, continual tale for the very first time in these nature pictures."