NARROWSBURG, NY — A review of the 1996 animated version of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” in the Internet Movie Database says, “I grew up watching ‘The Little Mermaid’ and ‘Aladdin.’ When Disney released this movie, which dealt with extremely heavy subject matter in an extremely tasteful manner, I jumped for joy. During the entire movie, I was amazed and spellbound.”

Kirk Wise, one of the two directors of the movie, said, “There’s tremendous amount of affection for it out there; this movie’s got a lot of fans.” Those fans will get a new opportunity to see the film in a theatre when it is screened at the Big Eddy Film Festival on Sunday, September 17 at 2 p.m.

The film tells the story, among other things, of the hunchback, Quasimodo, voiced by Tom Hulce, and his relationship with the gypsy Esmeralda. The talking voice of Esmeralda was handled by Demi Moore, but the singing voice was handled by Heidi Mollenhauer. Both Mollenhauer and Wise, who live in our area, will be available for a question-and-answer session after the screening.

In a phone interview Wise said, “This movie was really a genuine pleasure to work on… There was just a really great spirit behind the production of this movie that lasted from the very beginning all the way to the end of production. And that’s saying a lot, because animation is a long process. The movie took over three years to bring to the screen, and during that entire time, everybody’s passion for the project never waned.”

Wise has directed two other films for Disney, including “Beauty and the Beast,” but, he says, “Hunchback” is his favorite.

He said, “Part of our research for this project was to travel to Paris. We got to tour Notre Dame. They allowed us to sort of crawl all over the cathedral, and we got to see a lot of backstage areas that I think most people don’t get to see. And I remember attending an organ recital inside Notre Dame Cathedral—I remember the goosebumps I felt, hearing the organ music, and seeing the beautiful stained glass windows, and I remember saying to myself ‘the movie needs to feel like this.’”

When Wise and co-director Gary Trousdale went looking for the singing voice of Esmeralda, they auditioned Mollenhauer, who was in New York City at that time, and she ultimately landed the role. She said, “It’s funny, a lot of the producers and the higher-ups would call into the recording session from Los Angeles. I’d have my headset on and [a person connected to the film] would be talking to me.”

Eventually, Wise and Trousdale travelled to New York for one of Mollenhauer’s recording sessions. And now Wise and Mollenhauer are married and living in Narrowsburg.

Mollenhauer said when she and Wise decided they were going to leave Los Angeles, “We spent about a year with discussions and doing research, and just trying to figure out what we wanted the next chapter to look like. And Narrowsburg was one of the places that we researched quite diligently. We were drawn to the area for, obviously, the river, and the area, and the environment, and also the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance was a huge part of what attracted us.” 

Wise said, “We wanted to find a place where we would have access to nature and farm-fresh food, but we also wanted to find a place that had a thriving arts scene, and Narrowsburg kind of ticked off all the boxes for us. We found a beautiful, vintage log-sided home overlooking the Delaware River.”