Who Was Walt Disney?

Walt Disney is a symbol of entertainment in America. From his early days of cell animation to his vision for the "city of tomorrow", Walt Disney always dreamed big. But is the vision of Disney today what Walt would have imagined or wanted? In this episode, Alex and Kelly take a look at the life of one of the most famous entertainers in the world and explore how his vision impacted the world yesterday, today and tomorrow!

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:12

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Dirt Nap City. I think I've got a good one for you today. I've got somebody who is interesting and dead. Um, and uh was interesting before they were dead. Oh, that's rare. And interesting after they're dead. And you know, if we hold that uh Dia de los Muertos rule that we have had where somebody uh dies twice, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Uh the first time when they really die, and the second time when people stop talking about them, I think this person is as close to immortality as we can get.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Really? Okay. Well, this that's that's a good sign. That's somebody that I'm interested in hearing about.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

I could never picture a time where people aren't talking about this person.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Okay. Well, dude, let's let's bring it. So, for those of you that don't know the rules, uh Alex picked the topic today. He will be selecting and talking about an interesting dead person. I don't know who that person is. However, you as the listener might know who it is. Probably do, because you clicked on this podcast. Or maybe you just have it on random on Shuffle, Dirt Nap City Shuffle. That's a dance that we like to do, uh, where you listen to every episode in a random order. And if in that case, you don't know who it is. Alex is going to give me some clues. He's a great clue giver, by the way, a much better clue giver than I am, apparently. Um, and he's gonna give them to me until I guess it, or he just gives up on me and he tells me who it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

I'm pretty confident about uh I have one big clue. I've already given you a clue. I've already said this person's as close to immortality as you can get, in that people will always talk and be talking um about this person or saying uh his name.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Uh okay, so so um, you know, there's uh no no no.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

I already told you that's that's arrogant to to to do that in a that's off hour. Yeah, sure. Um George Washington. Let me give you this clue. I would say, other than John Hancock, and maybe even including John Hancock, has the most famous signature out there.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Um well Ben Franklin, he has that big curvy B, you know, on on the thing. More more famous than that. More famous as a signature. Um let me think for a second. So uh and and you kind of took me with John Hancock that he might be a statesman, but uh that that could be unrelated. Okay, that's unrelated.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

It's not he's not a statesman, he has a famous signature. Well, let me tell you, he was born in 1901 in Chicago and died in 1966 in Burbank. So you know what that means. That means we have another 20th century icon. No.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Oh. Uh Sherwood Schwartz?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

I've never seen his signature.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Well, I imagine with the SH and an SH, it was probably pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Okay. Well, Sherwood Schwartz is a good guess, but uh, I'm guessing the Burbank part uh got you on the Sherwood Schwartz, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Yes, yes, actually. Oh, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Uh Bugs Bunny, um the guy who drew Bugs Bunny, he had a signature at the end of his cartoons. Um Chuck. Chuck somebody. It's not Chuck Jones. Chuck Jones. Not Chuck Jones. But good, good that you knew who I was talking about.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Yeah, and uh along those same lines, but even more famous than Chuck Jones. Um uh Walt Disney, it is Walt Disney.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

All right, here's the funny thing. Here's the funny thing about that. Remember, I was talking about having a guest on? Yeah, that was the episode she and I were talking about. Wow, okay, okay, Walt Disney. Well, then uh you snooze, you lose, Emily. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

There's a lot to do here. There's a lot to do. That's a big life. 65 years uh of life, but uh quite a legacy and uh a lot of things to go. So we're gonna talk about some of the movies, some of the techniques, how he got his start. We're gonna talk about the parks, we're gonna talk about some of the IP, um, answer some of those uh rumors uh um and and some of the um more controversial things, but uh and then a couple of uh little surprises that uh that maybe you didn't know about Walt Disney, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Yeah, yeah. No, I'm stoked. This this was on my target list, and so uh you you you you beat me to it, but I'm happy about it because um I've done a little research and I think I I think I'll be able to add some value.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Okay, good. Well, so there's kind of two kinds of people. Um there's the kind of people that think of Walt Disney as just kind of the ultimate in um kind of quality entertainment, wholesome um uh family entertainment. Then there's the kind that kind of reject all that and think of Disney as kind of the example of crass commercialism, um boiling everything down into kind of a saccharine uh way, taking history and kind of uh uh whitewashing it. Um I guess there's a third type of person who gets married at the Disney World uh that's a whole nother where do you fall in this in this spectrum?

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Um so personally, I feel like he's both, you know, obviously a big capitalist, um, made made a lot of money, and but also a visionary. I mean, his vision for Epcot originally was actually a city. It wasn't supposed to be just a tourist attraction, but it was supposed to be a place people lived and it was set up for success, right? It was set up for a minimal need for cars, it was walkable, it was sustainable, it was um one of the first green cities, you know, before a green city was a thing. Um, but at the same time, you know, Disney is definitely, especially with Walt's passing many years ago, because he never even saw Walt Disney World come to fruition, right? He he was around for Disneyland, but um his brother carried on for Disney World and Epcot and all the stuff that became the mega. So I'm divided. You know, I I definitely appreciate his creativity, uh, but I feel like maybe the man was a better person than the company has become.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Maybe, yeah. And I think it's important to remember that he did die in 1966, like you said, before Disney World even opened. So a lot of his his uh vision might he might not have taken the same path to Disney if he had lived. Uh I mean he died pretty young, pretty young. Uh, if he had lived into the 1990s, who knows what Disney would have become. But definitely it's it might not have gone the way it it is uh it is today. So let's get into this a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

So, like a lot of the 20th century people that we talk about, uh he tried to join the army when he was like 16. He and Colonel Sanders. Yeah, it seemed to be a thing, but he got rejected. He tried to join the army in uh 1918. This is World War I. Um, but he forged the date and joined the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. Uh-huh. And then they uh they shipped him to France. Uh I love the idea of this 16, 17-year-old kid shipping him to France as an ambulance driver.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Driving a French a French uh ambulance.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

So um, but he arrived after the the armistice, after the war was over. And but he drew cartoons on the side of the ambulance. He always liked to draw, so he drew cartoons on the side of the ambulance, and his work actually got published in the Stars and Stripes, which is the newspaper, you know, that the uh um the troops would would read.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

And then he came back to the US and got a job as a commercial illustrator at the age of 18 and moved to California at the age of 18 with his brother and started a studio called Disney Brothers Studio with his brother Roy. And they kind of uh got on early with the technology called cell animation. Are you familiar with cell animation? What that is?

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Yeah, sure. Where they're drawing each individual picture onto a cellulite, a piece of um you know clear plastic that is used in the film.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, like a transparency, yeah. But they don't have to draw each individual picture because of the transparency nature, so the background can stay the same. So if you picture like Steamboat Willy, for example, which was like his first movie with Mickey Mouse, he's on the boat, all the the water and the boat and all everything is is one picture. You only have to draw it one time, and then all the stuff that's happening in the foreground, you can change that drawing, but the background stays the same. If you think about pretty much any 2D cartoon from back in the day, they always had kind of this static background that was that was happening.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

And then all the Tom Tom and Jerry, you know, it was always the the mouse hole in the side of the side of the wall.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Right. So if there's a table with a bowl on it or something, you can have that be the background for the whole time. And if you next time you watch a cartoon, just kind of notice how the background never really moves, and there's the foreground that's doing all the the movement. Well, that was a big change in having to uh as opposed to having to draw every single uh frame. So that was the technology back then. Uh now, of course, all animation is done digitally um and looks quite different, but the last cell animation movie was actually Winnie the Pooh in 2011, the last Disney movie, the last Disney movie using Cell animation.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Okay, so they were still doing it old old style, old school there for Winnie the Pooh in 2011.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

You can't really tell the difference too much. Uh, like The Simpsons started with cell animation, now they use digital. I mean, it's it's probably not that perceptible to the naked eye. It probably saves a ton of hours, though.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah, and and ultimately it's probably just a little bit more precise, right? I mean, that background isn't gonna change if it's digital, or unless you want it to.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

And now you can change the background. So yeah, if you think of movies, you know, the more recent Disney movies, uh, you get they're pretty much a lot more complex, right? Um, and then you get into the the real digital, the not the stuff that's not as 2D, like the Pixar kind of things. I mean, that's just a whole nother level.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Yeah. The the and the rendering, you know, the not only the technology, but the computer power required to render a frame of a Pixar movie was unthinkable in the 60s or the 70s or even the 80s, you know, and and then computers caught up, and that's what it's doing. It's just doing a bunch of math to say, all right, this is where this point is in time, this is where this point is as it moves, you know, through frame, frame to frame. So yeah, technology has really enabled a lot more immersive and realistic looking cartoons. For sure, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

And and kind of changed the definition of what animation is, too, right? True. So he developed Mickey Mouse in 1928. So he was like 27 years old, and he developed uh Mickey Mouse. He originally called him Mortimer Mouse, um, but uh his wife thought it was too pompous. Mortimer was too pompous. It is, it sounds like a wizard. And she uh she suggested uh the idea of Mickey. Also the gloves. I don't know if you've ever heard this, but the the the a rat's hands aren't very cute, right? They're just kind of nasty little yeah, but they're kind of gross looking, so that's why he has the gloves because it would be kind of uh more tenable. Yeah, he doesn't yeah, that's the part that would really look like a mouse or a rat or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Oh, I'm sure there's a lot of parts that would actually look like a mouse or a rat if but you know he's he's drawn as a caricature of that.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Pretty amazing though. Almost a hundred years ago, Mickey Mouse uh came out, and Steamboat Willy uh was the first sound cartoon. If you've ever been to uh I think they run it constantly at uh Disney World. Uh there's a theater you can go in and they're c they're playing uh Mickey Mouse, but it was the first sound cartoon, and actually Walt did the voice of Mickey Mouse until 1947, well into his uh like 20 years he did the voice. He started slowly introducing other characters into his uh cartoons, like Pluto was introduced in 1930. That was Mickey's dog, right? The dog, yep. And then Goofy was introduced in 1932. I think the uh uh school's still out on what exactly Goofy uh is.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yeah, I was gonna say Goofy's a dog, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:14

No, I don't know. I don't think so. I think there's uh mixed uh yeah on that. Goofy's just a uh Donald Duck uh was introduced in 1934. Yeah, and there's some really interesting kind of wartime uh uh cartoons that include Donald Duck. Uh so yeah, there's interesting things. But the uh Three Little Pigs came out in 1933, and that was the most successful short animation of all time. It won the Academy Award. Wow. I think they actually started having to invent uh awards for short animations. Um, and at this time, Walt decided uh that he was gonna invest in uh uh he thought the story was as important as anything else. So he invested in a story department of people that would come up with stories, and it was kind of separated from the animators. He wanted animators to just draw and people that knew story to uh to write story. But you know, usually the stories that they came up with weren't original, they were based on fairy tales, um, sometimes popular fairy tales, sometimes kind of obscure fairy tales from other countries, uh, and still do that. I mean, like even um to this day you see cartoons that that usually aren't original. They're even uh I know this wasn't a Disney, but like Shrek was a apparently some some kind of fable from um Scotland, I think.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

And and also the reason that he was smart to invest in storytellers was that the novelty, I think, of just a moving picture had worn off, right? Yeah it back in back in Edison's day and and when you know when they were using these devices that were showing moving pictures, you know, 30-second little snippets, uh, people were fascinated because it was like magic. But that was becoming more commonplace, and so to just see a guy jumping up and down or lifting weights or whatever or a horse running was no longer enough. You had to tell a story along with it, and I think that he was very smart to invest in that. He realized content is king.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Yeah, I think I think that's a good point. He so that well, Three Little Pigs was 1933 in 1934. He decided to come up with a full-length animated movie. Was that uh Snow Snow White? It was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Um, it this took animation to another level. In fact, at the while he was making it, people were making fun of him and calling it Disney's Follies. They're saying there's no way this guy's gonna make any money on this. It was three times over budget, cost a million and a half dollars in 1934. Imagine what that must have sounded like making a cartoon for a million and a half dollars.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Right. And it wasn't even a proven medium to make money, it was it was new.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Exactly. And usually these were things that were probably done before the move. Well, even movies weren't that, you know, hadn't been around that long, and sound movies hadn't been around that long. But this one, he really decided to uh take it up to another level. He brought in animals into the studio so his animators could study the movement of kind of uh you talked about how Thomas Edison, you know, slowed down the frames and they could really study the movement. This was doing that, but drawing replicas of this. So they would bring in animals to the studio, they bring in actors and find and not just how animals would move, but how people moved. Yeah. Um, and um, so the movie was released in 1937, took like almost four years to make this movie. It made six and a half million dollars, cost a million and a half to make. It at the time it was the most successful movie of all time.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Like not just cartoons.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

In terms of box office, yeah, in terms of box office success. Wow. Um, it won an honorary academy award because there was no award for animated. Um, and they actually gave him one Oscar and then seven miniature Oscars.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Oh wow, very, very clever.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Yeah, yeah, I thought I thought that was too. Uh so in uh 1938, immediately started working on Pinocchio and Fantasia. But the thing is, now we're leading up to World War II, and um people have other pursuits, they're not really concerned about going to the movies. So these neither one of those movies did well at the box office. We kind of think of these as classics now, but um did not do well at the box office, and the company went in debt. Um, and by 1941, he was faced with uh having to uh figure out we we gotta go public. Um they were they were had to raise some capital. Yeah, they were losing money. Um so they made Dumbo next, but Dumbo was actually made on the cheap, and it was made in 1941, and actually it did really well. Um, people it made it very cheaply. Um, but they then they started using their other characters, like I said, like Donald Duck to sell war bonds, and then Disney started making propaganda films. You know, I think if you've listened to our other episodes, and just if you've taken history classes, you know that everyone pitched in during World War II. Everybody kind of took what they did and and applied it. And um, there's some really interesting um movies on YouTube. Uh, one in particular that won an Academy Award called uh Der Fuhrer's Face.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Yes. That was also a Spike Jones song, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Yes, yes. This uh this uh movie was really weird. It's about Donald Duck, who's a Nazi, and he's constantly going through doing Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler, and kind of uh uh it kind of you know, they're talking about the master race and all this. And then at the very end, he kind of wakes up. You see, it was a dream the whole time, and he says in his Donald Duck voice, he says, uh, he says, uh, you know, I'm so glad to be waking up as a citizen of the United States of America. He looks on his bedstand and he sees the he he looks out his window and he sees the Statue of Liberty. He's the Statue of Liberty, he's got the flag on the wall, and he says, I'm so glad to be a citizen of the United States of America. It's just but you know, we're very uh very that's that's how Disney was was kind of making up some of the shortfall um by taking some of this government money for propaganda films. Um made Bambi in 1942, and that underperformed also, lost money. And Bank of America, uh, he came to Bank of America and and um he they were in trouble. Disney was in trouble. And the head of Bank of America at the time said, you know, he said to his uh board, he said, this Disney, if you look, he's got a successful movie, and then one that's not successful, and then one that is, then wasn't isn't. He says, but you can't really judge somebody by the least successful things. You have to look at the potential this guy's got, and I believe in him, so let's help him out. Um, that changed everything because they got an infusion of cash, then they got a big loan from um from Bank of America, and then he just started churning out hits. Cinderella came out in 1950, then he started live action movies like Treasure Island came out in 1950, also I remember that. Robin Hood in 1952, Alice in Wonderland, the the animated 1951, and Peter Pan, Lady in the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty. I mean, these were just churning them out. 101 Dalmatians in 1961, Mary Poppins in 1964. I mean, that's a quite a run. As a producer, Walt Disney holds the record for the most Academy Awards in history, and he's also the most nominated individual. He has 22 Oscars and 59 nominations, and then seven little Oscars, and seven little ones, too. Um, I don't know if you've ever uh heard of this place, but um in San Francisco at the Presidio in San Francisco, it's an old military base. Yeah, have you ever seen the Walt Disney Family Museum?

SPEAKER_00 21:37

No, I've been to the Presidio, but I've never seen the Walt Disney Family Museum.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

There's this really cool place, and it's probably hasn't I th I don't I don't know when it was built, but not that long ago. It was probably it's probably less than 20 years old. Um, it's this beautiful place with beautiful views of the Golden Gate Bridge. Um and it kind of is a Disney museum. That's not for kids. I wouldn't take kids there. It's they'd think it was boring, but it kind of has a lot of this history of the man and kind of some of these artifacts that we're talking about. But it's not at all um like an offshoot of it's not a theme park or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

It's just a very cool interesting to know. Uh one of those probably things in San Francisco that is, you know, just like the rest of San Francisco, there's so much to do that uh you'd you'd be like this wouldn't even this would be a big deal in another city, but in San Francisco it's not because there's so many other things.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

But it is cool if you're interested in more information just about the guy. I've I mean I just did 30 years of this guy in like 10 minutes, so um, you know, there's a lot of backstory there, a lot of interesting stuff. Um so I don't know if you've heard of the National Film Registry, but there's uh a group of films um that have kind of been declared as some of the iconic films of all time, and he's got 12 movies, or he Disney has 12 movies on that list. I was wondering if you uh could guess uh see how many of those you can.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Well, it sounds a bit like uh Rainbow Connection was for Jim Henson, right? It was one of these songs that was preserved as part of the nation's history, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:18

So the yeah, these would be 12 movies that if you had to see the history of film and and some of the uh achievements.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

I'll I'll guess uh I'll guess uh Fantasia. I'll guess um Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Yeah, I'll guess um uh trying to think of a lot. Mary Poppins.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

No, actually, no, no, no. Actually, Mary Poppins was the first movie I ever saw, though.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Really?

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Yeah. You remember it? Were you old enough to remember it? I do, I do, because then I I really liked it after that. I I really enjoyed that movie. It was probably it'd probably been out for ten years by the time I saw it.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

What were the others that uh that are on this registry? So Bambi. Oh yeah, Beauty and the Beast from 1991.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Oh, that's a great film. Cinderella dressed in yellow, Dumbo, The Lion King from 1994.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Oh, another great one.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

The Little Mermaid from 1989, which started what people call the second Disney Renaissance, right? So um it's interesting that he didn't after he died, they kind of got out of the animation game, and they didn't make an animated movie from um I mean, if you could call Mary Poppins, was somewhat and some of it was animated, but they didn't make another one until 1989, the The Little Mermaid. So it was wow, it was a good 25 years before they but they made a lot of those live action movies when we were kids, like uh the movies with Dean Jones and Kurt Ross.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Almost like almost like after school specials.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Shaggy, the Shaggy Dog, the Shaggy DA. Shaggy DA, I mean, yeah, Shaggy D. A, the Herbie movie, Herbie the Love Bug. Those were the kind of Disney movies they were making when we were kids. They didn't make cartoons when we were kids.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Yeah, some of those were okay, but not always.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Dean Jones had a pretty good career about that.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Was Goody's uh a Disney movie?

SPEAKER_01 25:19

No, I don't think so. No. Okay. But uh the other one I remember when uh we were kids was the incredible Mr. Limpet. You remember that with the Don Knott's oh goodness, Don Knotts. Uh Pinocchio's on that list, uh, Sleeping Beauty, uh Toy Story 1995, and uh the only one from this century, the only Disney movie from this century you want to guess?

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Uh would it be uh Star Wars? Something like that Wally Wally, oh sci-fi. What have you seen Wally? That's a great film. 2008. That's a great film. I didn't love Wally, to tell you the truth. It it was very slow, but it's really beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Yeah, yeah. I I maybe I could use a rewatch of that.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Um my my kids and I watched it for some reason like two years ago, and and uh I liked it better that time than I did the first time.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

I was gonna say when it came out, I probably I had a four-year-old, and it was probably too slow for for him, you know, at the time. Um, I know he didn't like it at the time. So if he didn't like it, I didn't like it. Right. Um, so let's talk, those are the movies. Let's talk about the parks. Um, of course, one of the big Disney legacies is the parks, and uh uh what do they call it, the happiest place on earth, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Um so Disneyland was open in 1955 in Anaheim. He decided he wanted a place for people to go, and um, they could just kind of have the adventure that they enjoyed as children. Um, I don't think that he necessarily thought of building a place for kids to go, but for place to place for people to go to be kids again. It just so happened that you know kids liked it too. But I don't think he designed a place for children to go and and and play. But you know, if you think about it, they've got the four different lands there. They've got mainstream USA and Adventureland, Frontierland, I guess five, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. Okay, and this idea of you know enjoying the the Tom, the the Treasure Island part of the adventure and the this the trains and then the futuristic things and just that whole thing about being a kid again. They had the opening ceremony to Disneyland was broadcast on ABC, and 70 million people tuned in to watch the opening ceremony to that.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

In 1955, that's like 1955.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

That's like Super Bowl numbers. Yeah, you know, that everybody was I mean, granted, there was only like three networks.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Yeah, there wasn't a lot else to watch, but a lot of people tuned in. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

And three and a half million people visited Disneyland um the first year, and of course, uh Anaheim, there was kind of nothing going on in that part of Southern California back then. So it really kind of re-re-energized that uh that part of California. They had a railroad connecting all those different lands, and like I said, it was a place where you could kind of go and and be a kid again. Then uh ABC said, well, as part of our support, we want you to have a we want you to have a presence on on our network. So they came up with a daily TV show called the Mickey Mouse Club. And people from our parents' generation really love the Mickey Mouse Club, and that was a uh place where they had uh like kids like uh kind of uh uh teenage kids um doing uh you know the you can kind of wanted whole very wholesome stuff.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

Davy Crockett, they play different shows every every day, um, but kind of they had a rotating group of like a studio audience or an audience of these kids, a group of them. I mean, I haven't seen it that often, but I remember black and white, they're all wearing their ears, their mocketeer ears, and then they're kind of sitting on these risers in a semicircle, and maybe there's an adult that's talking to them and they all have lines they give.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

Um kind of kind of cheesy, but and then they would intersperse that with actual content with things like Davy Crockett that were were shows that they produce and they it was like an early Dave Chappelle show. Yeah, it was like a variety show for kids, but it was on every day. Yeah uh for kids when they came home from and weren't weren't there weren't there some famous people that yeah, and and Matt Funichello, I think, was the the most famous one who later came to to do kind of the beach beach movies, yeah. Um Frankie and Anna Frankie Avalanche, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, as we've talked about before, this this was these kids that were watching this, these were the baby boomers. And this was kind of the first generation where teenager was a demographic. Um, so it was very influential to uh boomers uh to the boomer generation in 1964. Uh we had the World's Fair. World's Fair used to be a bigger deal than it is now, but they used to have World's Fairs, and that used to World's Fair would kind of be uh celebrate the the country. It was in New York. In fact, if you go to where the Mets play or where the the US Open is in New York, you'll see some of the remnants of that World's Fair, and he contributed four uh exhibits to that. Uh one It's a Small World.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Uh the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, the carousel of progress, and the magic skyway. And they all after the World's Fair got uh installed at uh at Disneyland.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

They moved him to Disney, okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Yeah, so it's a small world, that's where it got uh it started. Great moments with Mr. Lincoln turned into the Hall of Presidents. Um it was an animatronic uh Abe Lincoln that would talk about some of his achievements and then the carousel progress. I don't know if you've ever seen this, but this is I never even heard of that one. Oh my gosh. Uh, if you go to Disney World, this still exists, and it's this it's this uh ride that you take with this family. I mean, you go through their living room and it goes from back when there was like just radio, and then you kind of go through there that and then the family kind of evolves into the future. And I think when I first went there, it was you know the year 2000, whereas they were trying to imagine what the year 2000 was like. So I think it's funny because if you go today, well, the whole idea when you go to Disney today, that whole tomorrow land, it still kind of reeks of a 1960s version of what the future is gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Yeah, yeah. It there is a certain there, you know, that's a that's almost its own genre of movie. This this uh this I guess forward-looking past or yes retro future, yeah, yeah, like the Jetsons, yeah, all that kind of and I eat that stuff up.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

I love it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

It's it's got this cool uh kind of groovy vibe, you know. You imagine space cocktails and like uh jazz music and um that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Well, you know, when you think about it back then, when you thought about the future, you thought of endless possibilities, and you thought of us living on other planets and living underwater.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

I remember when I was now we think of global warming, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Like everything is do and AI taking over the world and nothing good. It's never like when somebody says, Tell me about the future, you almost brace yourself.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Yeah, it's like where where are our flying cars? Where are our jetpacks? Where's my uh teleporter?

SPEAKER_01 32:50

And maybe that's because we grew up at kind of the end of the century, and it was this promise of a new century that was coming up. But I remember uh taking out a book in the library when I was in elementary school, and it talked about how you know by the year two 2010 we'll uh half the people would be living underwater, and it had all these pictures of of these cities underwater, and I just love that stuff. Yeah. So as you mentioned before, uh his big vision was um Epcot and um this idea that he would have this uh you know what Epcot stands for, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:25

It's something something city of tomorrow, experimental prototype city of tomorrow. Uh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

I knew it was something, something city of tomorrow. The idea that you could like reimagine cities using technology and using kind of what people want safety, security, and you could design a city that people would want to live. Uh, so he he had this vision and he was gonna use land that was really cheap, swamp land in Florida.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

In Florida, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

So before they DeSantis got in the way. So, so before he uh was able to do that, they decided well, in order to get the capital for this, let's build a replica of Disneyland in in Florida, and let's like it make it even bigger and let's call it Magic Kingdom.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

They were sort of landlocked in Anaheim, I think. You know, they bought they bought that piece of land and then stuff grew up around it, and all of a sudden they couldn't expand, really. But Florida was like endless possibilities as far as their space they could, you know, they could take over.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Yeah, because it's unlike the rest of Florida, it's not on the coast, it's like the only thing in Florida that's in the middle of the state, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Uh, so it's all just swampland that was cheap. Um, so in 1965, they started development of what we now know as Disney World. They called it the Magic Kingdom, and it was gonna have this new city, Epcot. Well, Epcot, he died before Disney World was open. He died before Epcot was finished. Epcot was finally finished in 1982.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Um I went there in '84, actually.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

I think I went there in '82 or '83. I was there right at the beginning, also, and I loved it. I thought I did too.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

Actually, my my grandparents, we spent uh Christmas '84. Uh my grandparents had moved to Florida from Kansas, and they took us to Disneyland or Disney World Magic Kingdom on Christmas Day, and then I think the day after we went to Epcot, you know, and I I preferred Epcot. I thought Epcot was just so cool.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Oh, I've never heard anybody say I agree with you. I thought it was so cool, but um people don't feel like that today. I think a lot of people uh uh make fun of Epcot, but I think it's cool, and I still like Epcot.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Well, again, it's it you know, in the 80s, I think the I you know, you know, I remember this is really silly, but my favorite thing, the thing that made the most biggest impression of me on Epcot. Um, I loved going around to all the different pavilions from different countries, right? So going to Germany and Japan and Australia and you know, just these cultures and food. We we did that a lot and had a little snack in each place. But uh this is like the most sort of simple thing that just blew my mind. We were walking through a part of it or waiting in line or something to get on a ride, and they had these fountains and they had jets of water underground, and the water would spray up, and it was kind of like uh the Palacio in Las Vegas, like it was this little water show, but the water would go in a perfect um it was like almost like a snake jumping through the air, and it would go from fountain to fountain, like and you could put your hand up and block it if you wanted to, you'd get wet. But I thought that was just I had never seen water move like that. And I remember just thinking that was the coolest thing ever.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

Those are called the dancing fountains, the dancing fountains, those were all made by people that are called imagineers, yeah. And imagineers design all that stuff, and they're just engineers that are creative that look to do cool stuff, to have a cool experience. You know, I was actually uh fortunate um a number of years ago to do a behind the scenes um tour of uh Disney at a conference that I went to, and I saw a lot of the kind of the I went under under the ground to the tunnels.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

Oh yeah. No, I've heard that it's like you can pop up in pretty much anywhere in the park, right? That's how the characters move around.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Yeah, and because you don't want to see people from Adventureland in Tomorrowland walk into their car. So you'd have so you can people, the workers there are you'll only see them in their habitat. They're in their Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

You don't you don't see them smoking the cigarette behind behind building six.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Yeah, but I learned a lot of cool things about that. The one that's one of the ones that sticks out the most for me was that back in the day they used to well, they they realized that uh the smell, there's two smells that make people buy food. The smell of do you know what those smells might be? Uh-huh. They make people want to buy food.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

I'm gonna say something frying, you know, like like uh French fries or that's a good guess.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

The smell of popcorn and the smell of mustard. Something about the smell of mustard makes you want a hot dog, right? Or a pretzel or something.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

So if you put mustard on a pump on popcorn, imagine what that would be like.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

Yeah. So what they did was they they originally started by just popping popcorn as early in the day as they could, so people would start getting that smell. But it's hard to make mustard smell unless you like dump a bunch of mustard on the ground. So they used they had these devices that were um they were bags that would be filled with the scent of mustard, and then they would use it, it was pretty primitive, but they would use like um they were like uh no, what are those things?

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Bellows.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

Yeah, and they would use the sticks to waft the smell of of mustard and popcorn into the air. And by 9 a.m. they're selling hot dogs, they're selling popcorn, just because people are that's the kind of manipulative stuff that yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

So so you could be like you your job could be chief mustard waffer.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Yeah, they said that they still do that, but they do it digitally now. I mean, just like everything else, of course they do.

SPEAKER_00 39:18

There's not no actual smell, it's just a chip in your brain that makes you think you're smelling it.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

Exactly. So you so it sounds like you've been to Disney a few times.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

Um no, just that once, 84. I I went to Disneyland uh one time when I was going to school at USC, just went there for the day just because I was there and it was fun, and then went to Disney World in '84 with my grandparents.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

And you never brought your kids there?

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Never did. Hmm. And kind of getting back to your original question, that's never been a that's never been a high priority. I I think I would have a problem a little bit. I mean, I realize it's designed to be manufactured happiness, right? It's designed to be everything is perfect. I like for me, the odd the lack of authenticity of that and the sort of fakeness of that, just like Las Vegas, it's it's a little bit of a turnoff.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

Yeah. And that's where I uh and and that's a legitimate uh take. And I think uh one that a lot of people share. Is there a fine line between um kind of uh brilliant and stupid making a sterile, guaranteed fun environment and making it so artificial that it's a a turnoff to the the the parents.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

One one other thing that sticks in my mind, you mentioned the World's Fair earlier, and this is a little bit of a an aside. I think it might have been might have been 84 as well. We might have done a lot of traveling around that time, 82, 84, uh, 1980, the World's Fair was in New Orleans. Do you remember what year that was?

SPEAKER_01 40:51

I think that was it was either 82, I think it was 86. Was it could that have been that that late? It could have been, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

Yeah, actually, actually it could have been because because I think we drove to Houston, or sorry, we drove to New Orleans from Houston with my family, and I remember I did part of the driving that year. Like I was I had my permit or something. So yeah, um, so the thing I remember from that World's Fair, the one thing that stuck in my mind is my dad went to buy us all soft drinks, the four of us, and I remember it was like $14 for four soft drinks, and I remember just being like totally shocked. Like, like that was a you know, that was one of those dad moments, like $14 for four, that's ridiculous, you know. Which is it is ridiculous. Even today, it's still ridiculous. Oh, but but I think it could be $14 for one soft drink today, you know. I mean, it it's uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

Well, if you've ever been in Knoxville, Tennessee, you see the remnant of the 19, I think, '82 World's Fair. They still have the the kind of uh the structure up there, the ball. And uh there's a great Simpsons episode too, about uh where they'd go to Knoxville and see the the uh I think it was it became uh something a hat, uh hat store or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 42:08

Uh habadashery.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

Yeah, something like that. So yeah, so uh I've been to Disney a few times. Um, you know, I I uh did you go as a parent? I did. I did. How was that Disney World and I've been to Disneyland as a parent. Um, you know, it was it was kind of like I mentioned that that Walt wanted. I mean, it kind of took me back to being a kid. I was much more into that than kind of um making sure that my kid had a good time, I guess. But um you're like you're on your own. But you know, but here's here's the thing that I do remember about that, and this is kind of speaks to the how the the quality part of Disney is that um I was never a big roller coaster fan. I always I'm just not into that. But whenever I rode like Space Mountain at Disney, I always felt like, well, this is gonna be safe because they wouldn't do something that's put me at risk. And I found that my son was the same way. He also didn't like roller coasters too much, but we'd be in live for roller coaster, and I'd look over and he'd be like saying to himself, in Walt we trust, and Walt we trust, and this idea that as long as it's Disney, you know it's not gonna break that. It's not like some carnival that's that's in the a parking lot of the you know, grocery store. Right.

SPEAKER_00 43:35

It's not it's you're not writing the crusty the crown crusty the clown uh roller coaster.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

Yeah, and there I think there's something to that that that that even a uh a little kid or maybe especially a little kid sees something about quality. You know, most of these Disney movies, other than the the ones that we were talking about, the Dean Jones type movies, right? They're pretty high quality. They don't they don't churn out a lot of of junk. If you like that genre. And if you don't like the genre, then you know, then there's no point in talking about it. But as far as the genres go, it's pretty high quality stuff. And they have a pretty they demand a certain level of uh of quality.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

And now Disney, of course, owns um, you know, the Star Wars franchise, and that's a whole other ball of wax because actually, I have to say, I have felt for the most part that a lot, so we have Disney Plus, right, on our TV. I felt that a lot of the content on Disney Plus, Star Wars-related content, is not very good. Um, it it they are definitely churning out as much as they can, you know, trying to figure out every single uh story about all these obscure characters that you may or may not care about. You know, if you're a if you're a a a casual Star Wars fan like I am, I mean I I'd consider myself a probably I'm sitting within the view of like two or three Star Wars toys on my desk right now. And so I'm probably a bigger Star Wars fan than most people. I was seven when the original came out and went to see it with my grandparents in the in the theater, and you know, it had a big impact on my life. But now I turn on like the Kenobi series that was on Disney Plus, was terrible. It was it was just the acting was really bad and it was just not fun to watch. Now I will say that Andor, I don't know if you've seen Andor, but that was actually really good. Best Disney um Disney Star Wars thing I've seen in a long time. But it just it's just become almost too too Disney, you know, like Star Wars, Star Wars and Disney makes it because Star Wars had a little bit of a dark edge to it before, and it doesn't seem to as much anymore. But I'll say that's the difference with Andor. If if if anybody is listening and they're a Star Wars fan and they don't like what Disney's done to it, watch Andor and I think you'll see a little bit of that dark Empire Strikes Back kind of vibe again.

SPEAKER_01 45:55

Yeah, it's amazing what their assets include now. I mean, not only now they own Pixar and Marvel and the Lucas thing, and they um they bought uh the aforementioned Muppets a long time ago, and um now they own 20th century Fox and Searchlight and ABC and ESPN and Nat Geo and History Channel and Lifetime and AE and Hulu and it's like it's oversaturation, man.

SPEAKER_00 46:23

Well, and and and it's it's a lack of diversity, right? It just has become if it's just one company, uh and I don't mean diversity as in you know racial or ethnic or whatever, I'm talking diversity like just coming from different sources. You know, if it's all coming from the same big vat of goop, it's all gonna taste the same.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

I think there's something to that. Yeah, I think I think that's true. I think that um they just want to buy up everything that has to do with kids and um Entertainment. There's probably yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

And I just think and honestly, you know, people our age, babe baby boomers who still think this is you know the coolest spaceship ever built. And that's I held up a um a snow speeder for those of you listening. And uh, you know, it's ultimately the our nostalgia connected with our kids. Because one of my favorite things to do with my son is to uh watch the Harry Potter series together or to watch Star Wars, you know, the the original three movies together. We we'll do that and we both enjoy it, you know, and it's it's something that appeals to our generation plus our kids' generation.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

Well, let me tell you a couple of other maybe lesser-known stories about um Disney. Uh, have you ever heard of the Lily Bell? The Lily Bell? Was it a ship? It was a train. A train, okay. Named after his wife. His wife was uh named uh Lily. And uh so he was really into trains, as you could uh tell with the the different parks and having the trains uh at all the parks. It was really that was part of his boyhood. His dad's cousin uh was a train conductor, and even Wallet was uh what they called a news butcher. I guess that's the guy that just sells like candy and newspapers on the train.

SPEAKER_00 48:09

Well that's what that's what Edison did on the train for a while, too.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

Thomas Edison? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Uh so then when he got rich, uh he had five acres of land and a big house. He called the house Yensid Valley. Yensid is Disney spelled backwards. Um, and he uh built a backyard railroad with a tunnel in it with real with a real train that went was like a half a mile long with 11 different switches and overpasses and all this. And he had his imagineers build a steam engine and he uh like from like 1870s and called it the Lily Bell. And it could he'd invite all these celebrities over to his house. He was kind of like uh Michael Jackson's Neverland before. Right, right, right, right, yeah. So people could come over, and this trains would hold up to 12 people, have like four or five different cars in it. Celebrities would come to parties, and this is like the early 1950s. But in 1953, he let one of his guests drive the train, and the train took a turn too fast. The train derailed, damaged the train, it expelled, it was a steam engine, right? So it extel expelled a jet of hot stream and it burned a five-year-old girl.

SPEAKER_00 49:23

Oh goodness.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

And after that, he closed the train down for good. You can still see that train that at that San Francisco Museum that I that I mentioned. Oh, they have the they have the train engine, they have the train, and then the track is rebuilt somewhere in in California. They they have the the track, but and then they have replicas of that train at the different Disney parks. But you know, there's an example of you know, you just think nothing could go wrong when and then all of a sudden you got a friend that drives a train off the tracks, you know.

SPEAKER_00 49:52

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I I would be quite annoyed at that person. But you know, kind of shame on Disney for letting the guy drive it. And I'll bet there was a little drinking involved.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

Yeah. I didn't even think you could derail a train like purposely, like I'm sure it wasn't on purpose, but hold my breath.

SPEAKER_00 50:11

I mean, if you you think about if there's a sharp turn and it's going really fast, you know, it's just momentum's just gonna tip it over.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

Here's an interesting fact about a Disney uh so back in the uh 50s when D Disneyland first opened, they had a Mexican restaurant there called Casa de Fritos. And as you can imagine, it was sponsored by Frito Ley, right? And uh so and they would give you free Fritos at every meal. Um, but unlike today, um, you know, it wasn't, I mean, Mexican food was a lot more exotic than it is, you know, today.

SPEAKER_00 50:46

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 50:46

Uh so uh one of the salespeople uh at Disney he noticed that the staff was throwing away tortillas at the end of the day, and he was like, No, you you shouldn't throw that's just lost food. Uh instead, why don't you fry them and make tortilla chips out of them? And so they started doing that, and then they were so popular, people wanted those chips, and they started making them in larger quantities, and they started bagging them and selling them in Southern California.

SPEAKER_00 51:16

Doritos.

SPEAKER_01 51:17

Eventually they had expanded and it became Doritos.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

You're exactly sorry to sorry to steal your thunder, but I I thought that was where you were going.

SPEAKER_01 51:25

It's where I was going. So that's so Doritos weren't invented by Disney, but they were invented at Disneyland. Yeah, isn't that crazy? Wow, yeah. Um I don't know if you've heard of the Banksy uh spoof of uh Disneyland. Have you ever heard of that uh called Dismaland?

SPEAKER_00 51:43

Is Banksy an artist?

SPEAKER_01 51:45

You know Banksy, right? Yeah, the artist, the anonymous artist that causes trouble everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 51:51

I've heard of Banksy, yes.

SPEAKER_01 51:52

Yeah, so he has a place in England. Uh I don't think it's around anymore, although some of it I think is still around in Bristol, England, called Dismaland. Okay, and this is kind of for the it's an art, it's art, but you know, it's a statement. And it's speaking about some of the things you were talking about before, crash commercialism. He called it a amusement park. Oh goodness, and it was really super dark, like you would not want to take your kids to this place. It would have like a um a pumpkin carriage like Cinderella, but it would be crashed, kind of like Princess Die, and it would have a lifeless body of Cinderella in the in the carriage. Dismaland.

SPEAKER_00 52:33

Yeah, Dismaland. That sounds like it'd be a great Halloween-themed thing, dude.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

And not only here's the most Halloween-ish thing. There's a carousel like there is at Disneyland, you know, with the horses, and then there's a a guy sitting on the carousel, an actor who's dressed up like a butcher, and he's got bag uh boxes next to him that say lasagna, and he's got a knife with blood on it, and over his head are one of the carousel horses hanging, like you'd see hanging in a butcher's oh uh like he's making lasagna out of the carousel horses. Uh but kids can still ride the whole like I was watched a YouTube video, and there's kids still riding on this carousel, like it's a regular carousel at that Dismaland. And then this butcher is there with a bloody knife, uh that having just made yeah, so it's a very subversive, kind of anti-Disney place. So if you're not quite into Disney, maybe check out Dismaland.

SPEAKER_00 53:37

Yes, yes. Hey, honey, you you you tell the family you're going to Dismaland and they hear Disney and then and then you arrive.

SPEAKER_01 53:44

And it's very like you uh it looks very much it looks like kind of a post-apocalyptic Disneyland, like it has the castle, but it's super creepy looking and yeah, kind of falling down. Everything is in disrepair, but that's kind of how it was designed, and the logo looked exactly like Disneyland.

SPEAKER_00 54:04

I don't know how was there any sort of cease and desist?

SPEAKER_01 54:07

But the thing is, Banksy's anonymous. So who do you even well?

SPEAKER_00 54:11

I mean, how can Banksy be truly anonymous if this is a place, right? I mean, like like like it feels like it'd be hard to it just propped up. If you're doing Wow, all right. So you can see YouTube videos of people at Dismal Land, huh?

SPEAKER_01 54:28

Yeah, yeah, it's really I if if you're if that at all interests you, I'd check it out. If it sounds revolting to you, do not check it out. Okay. Um, so he died a pretty young man, you know. He was a big smoker and drinker and big smoker, yeah, and he smoked with no filters. Uh cigarettes with no filters.

SPEAKER_00 54:48

That's how men did it back then.

SPEAKER_01 54:50

That's yeah, and he was diagnosed with lung cancer in November of '66 and died in December. Wow. Um over his life, he made 81 films. Um, you know, he opened up uh Epcot opened after he uh six years or 16 years after he died, it finally opened, but it wasn't the city that he thought it was gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 55:08

It was a matter of fact, I I heard that you know Roy and the board of Disney took it in a totally different direction than what he had what Walt had originally wanted, but in a way that made it commercially viable.

SPEAKER_01 55:21

Yeah, it's a theme park, you know, as we talked about before. So I guess the kind of the unpleasant legacy is uh there's a lot of kind of uh looking back and saying, was he a racist? Um well I think uh you know, you could say that with a about a lot of people that were born in 1901. If you look at some of his work, it definitely uh uh doesn't do him any favors, you know. And the Three Little Pigs, the original Three Little Pigs, the wolf, was uh portrayed as a Jewish peddler. Um there was a lot of kind of anti-Semitism that was coming out. He he even gave the the Nazi filmmaker Lenny Riefenstahl, he gave him a tour of his studios, and that was after uh Kristalnach. So I mean this was uh now he wasn't an ardent kind of going out there and publicly supporting Nazis or anything, but just kind of the uh the um the vibe uh was was kind of anti-Semitic. He was involved with this thing called the Motion Picture Alliance that was kind of an anti-union and uh anti-Semitic uh group. Um if you look at Dumbo, there's uh some characters, the the the black crows that are in Dumbo are considered to be pretty racist. The Song of the South, you can't even find that movie out anymore. It's so um and and unless we think that was a product of the times, even at the time it was pretty racist. The NAACP wanted to meet with him before he released the film, and he kind of um blew off their meeting, didn't meet with them, and then released the movie anyways. Yeah. Um, just this week, I think, is the end of the ride called Splash Mountain, which was based on the song of the South. So I think this week is the last ride ever. They're gonna repurpose that ride and make it uh something else. But he also kind of had an unwillingness to hire minorities at Disneyland. Um, so it doesn't look great on his behalf if we look back and uh look at kind of his his uh his racist attitudes. Um and then the big one that did people ask about Disney um the rumor is that he's frozen somewhere, right?

SPEAKER_00 57:38

That he's uh along with Geronimo and Einstein.

SPEAKER_01 57:44

Uh that's not true. His ashes are actually in um in Glendale where he's buried. Um he did have some interest in that. Like he looked into it, I think, or he people came to him with that. I mean, I think if you have that business, you're gonna come to people like him uh that have that are kind of interested in the future that have a lot of money and and might might actually believe in something like that. Oh, I guarantee I could make you a list of all the people that have been contacted in our time right now, you know, and uh we'd probably come up with a pretty good list of people that have been contacted about having I have not been contacted, you know. I have to so he's not frozen. Um, but in a way, like I mentioned at the very beginning, kind of coming full circle, he kind of doesn't need to be frozen because if there's anybody that is gonna come close to immortality from the kind of Mexican um Dia de los Muertos uh perspective view of immortality, I think it would be this guy. I mean, I can't imagine a time where people aren't consuming Disney IP at some point. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:51

No, it's it's gonna it's gonna go, well, I mean, it it will eventually everything shifts, but but for the foreseeable future for our lifetime, for our children's lifetime, and probably their children's lifetime, he's gonna be synonymous with uh all the things that Disney is synonymous with today.

SPEAKER_01 59:09

Well, if I guess I was thinking if they buy all the IP that exists, then by definition, oh true, true.

SPEAKER_00 59:15

Yeah, eventually, eventually we're gonna be uh in the great state of Disney.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

Right, and Dirtnap City will be a Disney production. We gotta get this one out before we become part of the the company.

SPEAKER_00 59:25

Right, right. Yeah, well, you know, if they they want to offer enough cash and enough Doritos, I'm I'm in.

SPEAKER_01 59:30

Then well, this will be the first episode that we delete.

SPEAKER_00 59:34

Right, right. This will be censored. Sorry. Uh the Disney family has some issues with what you said.

SPEAKER_01 59:40

Well, that was that that was Walt Disney, Kelly. Uh, and I going back to the beginning, I think he's got one of the the most iconic autographs. When you just see when you see that signature, it just does something to you. He either brings you back to childhood or it revolts you. But you definitely will have a reaction to that signature they had. Probably because he was an animator, it was cool looking. Yeah, man. I love I love that signature.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:07

Lots of flourishes. Well, and and uh Chuck Jones. It's funny that I thought of Chuck Jones before I thought of Disney, you know. But but uh remember Chuck Jones at the end of the Looney Tunes cartoons? Uh but yeah, no, that was that was amazing, and certainly a lot of things, uh a lot of little tidbits I didn't know about as far as his life goes. Um, I do have to apologize, like I said, to Emily, because she she was wanting to be a guest on a show we talked about Disney, but you it would have been funny too, because Disney was on my list, and it would have been funny if we had both done it again today.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:40

Sorry, Emily.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:42

That's all right. She she knows other stuff too. Um well, Alex, thank you. Uh, I feel a lot more readily armed to watch Disney programming and to visit Disney parks and to do all the things Disney uh with a little bit more knowledge and backstory about Mr. Walt.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:59

All right. Well, thank you for listening, Kelly. Thank you for listening, everybody, and join us again next week for another exciting episode of Dark Knap City. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:09

Later.