Julie Taymor: Spider-Man, The Lion King and life on the creative edge

I start with the notion of the ideograph. An ideograph is like a brush painting, a Japanese brush painting.Three strokes, you get the whole bamboo forest. I go to the concept of "The Lion King" and I say, "What is the essence of it? What is the abstraction? If I were to reduce this entire story into one image, what would it be?"