The Animation Renaissance Part 2 with Disney veteran Dominick Domingo

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Join Language of the Soul host Dominick Domingo and his former student Janna Van Vliet from Amsterdam as they reminisce about the ‘Animation Renaissance.’ We break format in this special 2-part series by giving Janna the opportunity to pick Dominick’s brain for the benefit of listeners—about everything from the lore surrounding this unique pop culture moment to nostalgic, first-hand anecdotes from the trenches of production on Lion King, Pocahontas, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Tarzan, Little Match Girl and One By One. We find ourselves discussing historical controversies surrounding the Disney brand as well as problematic tropes that, when perpetuated, limit potential and capacity. Dominick offers a fresh perspective on mainstream misapprehensions, the mechanics of story-as-social evolution and the true metaphysical meaning behind many of the universal parables Disney has brought to life.  www.dominickdomingo.com

Guest Host BIO:
Janna VanVliet is an energetic visual development artist who loves to create worlds and environments that tell a story - to mentally get into a place and make it speak. She generally is a sucker for heartfelt and emotional story moments. Moments she has to rip out of her heart. You will enjoy having Janna on your team for her organized work, unwavering team spirit and a possible dad joke here and there.
website https://www.creativejanna.nl
The Faraway project Book https://www.creativejanna.nl/s/The_Art_Of_Faraway_compressed

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:46

Hello and welcome to Language of the Soul podcast, where life is story. Thank you so much for joining us today. This is a part B to a segment we did a couple weeks ago on the animation renaissance, so I hope you heard it. But if not, I do want this episode to stand alone, so I'll preface it a little bit by saying you know our podcast. Some of you will know regular listeners will know the podcast is based on my book, language of the Soul, and so we've really found kindred spirits in our guests, people that have either taken great risks to tell their stories in the world or literally had that come to Jesus moment or that dark night of the soul or that kind of existential crisis that put purpose on the front burner. And we're glad to highlight people like that who are on a mission or have a calling or a ministry, and it feels really good to give them a space in which to tell their story. However, we haven't really gotten to my book a whole lot, and I do want to get my jollies as well, so we're going to devote a couple mini episodes to reading excerpts from Language of the Soul, the book. In advance of that, I kind of said this in so many words in part A. You know I was with Disney feature animation for 11 years huge part of my life and of course it led to the other genres and formats in which I've been lucky enough to work, like live action, film and the literary realm. But I'm so nostalgic about it lately, in part because we have had a few animation guests. We had Don Hahn, the producer of Lion King, nothing less than a cultural icon, and then we had Andreas Deja, who is, of course, one of the most legendary Disney animators of all time. Did all the villains Scar, jafar, triton, hercules who's not a villain, but you get the idea and so those were really satisfying to me. But we didn't go too in depth because it was done in the context of a CTN, the largest animation convention in the world. So because that really tapped into some nostalgia, being a Scorpio that I carry with me I just wanted to talk about the animation renaissance. It's never happened again.

Speaker 1 2:54

It was a magical moment in time and another way of prefacing this is. Roger Ehlers, the one of the two directors of Lion King, is a dear friend to this day. We've kept in touch all these years and I just went a couple months ago to his 75th birthday party and, man, it wasn't just like a who's who, it was friends and colleagues and people. I spent so many hours with bonding you know there's not a lot of bonding experiences later in life and we just spent so many hours in the trenches with this shared love of storytelling and Roger and I, just over coffee, we will say, man, the stars aligned. That was a magical moment in time where not just master storytellers but passionate artists with something to say in the world came together and literally changed the face of you fill in the blank pop culture, the noosphere right, the face of social evolution. It was huge. And he pointed out something that I didn't really recognize at 20 when I started the job. But you know, apartheid had just ended in South Africa when we were working on Lion King, so it really keyed into themes that were globally just pervasive at the moment. And I my jaw dropped when he said that I hadn't even processed that.

Speaker 1 4:10

But anyway, more than anything, I'm feeling nostalgic, of course, with my little brush with death that I referenced earlier, that a lot of my guests have had. Uh, of course, legacies on the front burner. I'm feeling my mortality and I'm rarely asked about it. Uber drivers, grown men, will say, oh, lion King was my favorite movie as a kid and I'm like, okay, but you're a grown organism, like it blows my mind. But uh, as I said on the first episode, my 22 nieces and nephews have literally never asked a single thing, even confirm or deny the rumors about the penis on the video cover of the little mermaid or the sex in the clouds on lion king. Even to dispel the urban myths, I'm never asked about it and, as our host, jan van vliet, will say, um, you know, there's not a lot of value to dispelling some of the urban myths and some of the rhetoric around disney and we might touch on that but importantly, the animation renaissance was a pivotal moment that did change the face of pop culture. Just because I have so many memories I could tap into, I think it's worth talking about. I know what I was going to say.

Speaker 1 5:19

Yana is very aware in my teaching I really don't talk about my career. I try to let them know who's up there and you know where my perspectives are coming from the experience that led largely to what I'm trying to impart as an instructor. It feels really good to be able to fall back on tried and true conventional things like, you know, the Chevreul's laws of color theory or the Gestalt studies, something that can back me up, but within reason. My perspective comes from my experience. So I always do a Reader's Digest version of my career and it ends right there and very few people pick my brain. So this is the opportunity to tell my stories.

Speaker 1 5:59

In that spirit, I kind of reached out at one point through CTN, creative Talent Network I kind of referenced them a moment ago, the largest animation convention in the world, and I have been a part of it for 15 plus years since its inception and most recently I think it was toward the tail end of the pandemic, I did teach a class on the premises at Center Stage Gallery, it's called, which is an extension of CTN. We had a couple international students and one of them actually showed up in the classroom and she was a hoot. She was very participatory, very passionate about animation, very immersed in the culture, and I just fell in love with her. So when I reached out blissfully, she responded and said hey, I'll pick your brain for the benefit of your listeners. So again, please do listen to the former episode if you get a chance.

Speaker 1 6:49

But I'm going to reintroduce our host, I'm going to turn everything over to her so she can interview me, and her name is Jana van Vliet. Jana van Vliet is an energetic visual development artist who loves to create worlds and environments that tell a story, to mentally get into a place, that make it speak. She generally is a sucker for heartfelt and emotional story moments, moments she has to rip out of her heart. You will enjoy having Yana on your team for her organized work, unwavering team spirit and a possible dad joke here and there. Welcome, yana Von Vliet.

Speaker 2 7:21

Woo, yay, yay, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. It's such an honor.

Speaker 1 7:29

Of course, we're're lucky, lucky to have you. I so enjoyed our last episode. I can't wait to recreate the magic.

Speaker 1 7:34

No pressure well, it was fun so I'm glad, I'm glad yeah, I always, of course, I hope you get something out of it, but, um, one never knows. We're gonna, of course, put your links in the episode description and maybe get some visibility for your beautiful work. I loved your Christmas card. There's so much spirit, I guess is one way of putting it. Such flair in your work and specifically the intimate interactions, the acting that goes on between your characters. You know I've had students and professionals that say I can't design a character in isolation. I have they have to be interacting with another character to find their core essence. And I see that in your work, especially the little thumbnails that accompanied your Christmas card, your character building as you flesh out those little. I don't want to get too technical yet right, but those story beats.

Speaker 2 8:28

Yes.

Speaker 1 8:30

I hope you get that feedback a lot.

Speaker 2 8:31

I mean, it's not every artist that can do lively characters with an inner life, you know well, in this case, if you ever had pet, or a big dog that thinks he's a lap dog, you're kind of there absolutely well.

Speaker 1 8:46

Yeah, bowie thinks he's a lap dog and he's 60 pounds. That's pretty formidable.

Speaker 2 8:51

That's the idea, right. The bigger the dog, the more that they should be on your lap.

Speaker 1 8:57

Dogs, dogs, dogs. Well, in our pre-interview we were lamenting it's just a strange moment for our listeners, for context, you know, california's on fire, basically. And then the first couple days of the new administration, it's just hell on earth. So we did decide let's talk about puppies and daisies. And what was the other thing we were gonna?

Speaker 2 9:19

well, the animation renaissance and kittens and something with mittens right, let's not sing it again.

Speaker 1 9:26

Please don't make me sing.

Speaker 2 9:32

But you have such a lovely voice, exactly there you go. It could happen.

Speaker 1 9:39

I could break out into song at any time.

Speaker 2 9:42

Did you have puppies or dogs or pets at the studio when you worked there?

Speaker 1 9:47

I'm so glad you asked that Because it's so emblematic of how society has changed. You know, when I started, you must've heard rumors. When I started, the background department had rats, cages upon cages of rats. Don't ask me why, but yeah, there were. I can think of a few people that brought their dog to work every day and it was a non-issue. We weren't litigious back then. Right, I think restaurants had health codes, so we were probably more vigilant than you know some cultures. I would go to paris and go to a brasserie and the owner's dog would sit on your feet while you're eating. So they didn't have the strict health codes that we have here. But for whatever reason, here we did have strict health codes in restaurants, but the workplace, yeah, bring your pets. It was totally an open door policy.

Speaker 1 10:34

And then, of course, that went yeah, we were not under the radar of corporate disney and we were left to our own devices. So, dogs everywhere, rats in the background department, don't know why. In cages, no cages upon cages yeah, and now, all these years later, I do think you have emotional support dogs and service dogs, oh, service dog, yeah and the different requirements for each.

Speaker 1 11:00

But I do think now more than ever you will see dogs in starbucks, for example, and it's a non-issue. So everything's changed all the time. But uh, it kind of went from dogs and you know pets everywhere because we were in these little warehouse buildings kind of again not on the radar of corporate disney, to probably too much legislation around pets in the workplace, and now I think we're back to, you know, this culture of uh support dogs or service dogs, justifying all dogs in restaurants, for example. Anyway, things change all the time and, uh, I love, I miss those days. Yeah, we were in warehouse buildings with exposed plumbing and exposed electrical and then these tiny little cubicles with, like, warm lights around them, but then this spacious, cavernous uh building and just very nostalgic about those days. And once Lion King did so well, they built the building that everybody knows with the Sorcerer's Apprentice Cap. Do you know that building?

Speaker 1 11:58

yes, of course yes yeah, and so we all moved into that and the fun was kind of over. Corporate Disney was right across the street, the main lot, and over time we would notice the subliminal mickeys in the architecture. Like, wait a minute, I'll give you one example. There's three floors and then there are balconies so you can kind of look down to the lower levels. There were like little tables where you could hang out on your break, and some of them had phones on them at the time landlines. Little break areas with circular tables, but only from above, looking down on them from the balcony, could you see they formed a mickey mickey. Those would be the errors. So I'd go home. Subliminal mickeys. And even the host desk in the front had corrugated mickeys, kind of embedded in the paneling, but you had to really look for them. So yeah, I think we were definitely more under the watchful eye of the mouse once we moved into that new building oh, that sounds interesting.

Speaker 2 12:59

That's, uh, what's the? The other, um, the other open space with the cubicle, cubicles, was that more? Were you aware of how inspiring that was, or how free that was? Did you understand that at that moment?

Speaker 1 13:16

Well, you may remember, in the last episode I said that my friend Jane Bonnet had given me a tour halfway through Disney. I did get a tour, so I saw the buildings and the hot chocolate and the popcorn and just the really relaxed vibe. And then when I started the job I was in that very same building that she had given me a tour of. So that's all I knew, to be honest. But I did learn over time that that moment, right around the time of Black Cauldron that I mentioned also, where Disney almost did away with feature animation entirely, until they realized, holy crap, you know, 60% of our company's profits still come directly or indirectly from feature animation, they resurrected it and that's when Little Mermaid did so well and the whole Renaissance took off. But they almost did away with it entirely. So I did learn over time. They were actually on the main lot in the Ink and Paint building before I started and then, when things kind of again were taking a turn for the worst, they relegated feature animation to warehouse buildings in Glendale. They're still there.

Speaker 1 14:18

Dreamworks is in the same industrial area, but we had about four or five buildings the Knudsen building, Flower Street building I can't remember the names of them all, but because Lion King was a new production, we were in the Flower Street building. I can't remember the names of them all, but because Lion King was a new production, we were in the Flower Street building, so I loved it. It was very under the radar, very incognito and, like I said, just very charming safe spaces. Again, everything changed when they built that building for us.

Speaker 2 14:42

Yeah, I can imagine. So when you were in the flower building, did you because I heard stories about lavish breakfast and lunches and I don't know refrigerators filled with everything and anything? Did you have that there as well?

Speaker 1 15:02

Well, are you sure you're not talking about DreamWorks, like the free lunches at DreamWorks?

Speaker 2 15:08

I don't know. I thought that DreamWorks had the Haagen-Dazs and Disney had, like, all the cornflakes and other stuff. People.

Speaker 1 15:18

I'll say this Every animation studio has breakfast cereal. Don't know why, it's a tradition, right Little machines that dispense the cereal. It's an animation thing. I do joke, especially tv animation or smaller companies. Nothing remotely healthy. No granola bars, no fruit. They just want to fatten you up. So you can't leave your seat, so you keep working. I'm kind of kidding horrible.

Speaker 1 15:43

Well, maybe it's changed I don't remember what you're talking about. I know, know that DreamWorks because, again, all, basically all my colleagues jumped ship when all the layoffs were happening and I at one point I knew more people at DreamWorks than I did Disney. I got my brother an interview there. I won't say I got him a job, but I did get him the interview. So I'd go over and just have lunch with colleagues or friends or my brother and I knew more people at DreamWorks than I did my own workplace.

Speaker 1 16:08

And yes, they had you probably heard you know free, literally free lunch. And at one point, when they were going to move to Marina Del Rey, they were going to offer helicopter rides for their artists to get them to work. They really rolled up the red carpet, but I don't remember any lavish breakfast, sorry, we would go to the main lot Mainly. You know, know, we didn't even have a cafeteria initially. I guess we did, but it was very limited, so often we would go to the cafeteria on the main lot across the street okay not complaining, no I did maybe I missed out there.

Speaker 1 16:43

I missed out on something. Apparently they didn't tell me about the lavish breakfasts, damn it well, you got to work at disney, though, so can't really complain, yeah right.

Speaker 2 16:58

So when you were working at disney in your flower building, can you walk me through the day like you? You arrived at a certain time, and then what did you do? Where did you go? With whom did you go? What happened?

Speaker 1 17:14

I guess I'll start by saying it was a very lax atmosphere, as you know. So you didn't punch a clock, which was wonderful, and you didn't really have much. You could kind of show up at whatever time you wanted to, as long as you put in your time. So that's awesome for people. You know what I mean. They're married with children and have a household to run, because if you have to get your kids off to school, that's priority. And then you show up at nine, nine, 30, 10, if need be, but as long as you put in your eight hours, there was no clock to punch. So I loved that.

Speaker 1 17:46

There was a lot of trust that you know. There are two kind of archetypes of artists either passionate, dedicated, like we've said, worked hard, or they'll completely fuck off if you let them. Production had both views of artists, you know, but we didn't feel the crack of the whip too much. There was a lot of trust that we were passionate about putting stories out into the world and we would work hard, left to our own devices. So I don't know, I would show up myself, probably 9, 9, 30, what would I do?

Speaker 1 18:18

Well, this might again. I don't want to get too technical this week. But as a background painter, ideally you would be given a layout Monday. Let's say okay, and it could be a what we called a sky card, which is just what it sounds like, maybe a portion of a sky with a little gradation of color. No clouds, just a sky card. That could take you an hour or it could be, for example, I had a background on tarzan at the first time you're seeing gorilla home. Do do you remember when the leopard is basically jumping in the boat and then it kind of crashes down Right when Kala discovers the baby?

Speaker 1 18:58

but the leopard attacks her and she jumps in the boat with the baby and then again it lowers to the ground and she kind of runs off across a dilapidated bridge into what we called Gorilla Home. It was the first time the audience was seeing Gorilla Home, so we had literally, I think, 43 levels of foliage passing the camera as we pushed in to follow Kala. Again, we wanted to really introduce Gorilla Home in a very vivid way, so I had 43 overlays on acetate to paint. That took me a month and a half.

Speaker 1 19:30

So again, a sky card could take you an hour, or the layout you're given monday could last you a month and a half.

Speaker 1 19:38

So the point is, ideally, so you get the layout, you'd start conceiving it maybe there was a color key already or maybe you have to do a color key based on neighboring backgrounds from the same sequence I don't want to get too technical and then you start mixing your paint and you'd go at it.

Speaker 1 19:54

Ideally, the art director would do his or her rounds it's called with your background supervisor and give you his or her thoughts on the background. Again, let's say you've already done a color key. They will chime in and say, oh, that's awesome, but let's have this guy a little more I don't know cooler or warmer, and they would give their notes. So you kind of knew what the goal was and you could systematically execute it during the week. In theory, if it's a background, that took about a week. Your background would then go into an approval meeting on Friday in which the directors and the art directors and the supervisor of the background department would meet and either approve the background, approve it with changes where they don't need to see it again they trust you to do the changes or it would get back to the drawing board and it would go into the next week's meeting, If that makes sense.

Speaker 2 20:43

Okay.

Speaker 1 20:44

That's the framework. Of course, there's all kinds of variations within that. If it's a background that takes you a month and a half, sure, and you just and you just paint, so the rest of my day would be mixing paint now you don't have to do that digitally, but a lot of mixing of paint. And then if you had a really cool office mate, like I did, you just turn the radio on and sing harmony all day and tell jokes and just do what you love.

Speaker 1 21:10

Yeah, and break well, whenever you want. I mean it was so yeah, take breaks as you want. But I think the union did mandate, uh, you know, a clear one hour lunch break and I think two breaks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. But again, no structure. A lot of people played ping pong in the breaks. I'm sure you've heard that.

Speaker 2 21:31

I was going to ask Right.

Speaker 1 21:34

And we had a whole tournament right. Jeffrey Katzenberg would come and participate, or Michael Eisner at one point. Yeah, some people took that very seriously.

Anecdotes and Memories From Animation Studio

Speaker 2 21:43

But not you. Nah, I got good at it at one point, but that quickly lost its luster for me oh so another thing that I picked up on is that apparently, when you have a lot of artists together and they have this black environment, maybe you have a lot of caricatures and maybe other fun pranks and things going on. Did you participate in that stuff?

Speaker 1 22:17

I did. Uh, yeah, you would, you know, one year, let's say, another animator got you right and sometimes it's flattering, sometimes not and then the next year you'd get them back right. So it kind of went on forever and they would hang them in the commissary, as you probably heard, or just hang them around the building. So, yeah, I will say I caricatured Mike Chiamo early on, the art director of Pocahontas, don't know that he loved it, and then some of my background fellow, background painters, but I feel very honored. John Musker Do you know him?

Speaker 2 22:52

Yes, ron, and.

Speaker 1 22:53

John. Yeah, john Musker did one of me that I still have to this day. It's a little tattered on the edges. I need to frame it actually. So, yeah, those are treasured. They're in my retirement trunk for sure.

Speaker 2 23:04

Yeah, I can imagine and pranks.

Speaker 1 23:14

Well can imagine. Uh, and pranks. Well, I don't know why this came to mind. I don't recall any pranks per se, but regarding the kind of anything goes. Again, it was the 80s and 90s, so the world has changed. You have way more active human resources departments. Sexual harassment is a thing. It wasn't back then. You have I keep calling it Title V, but you have diversity and inclusion and a lot of people are really overdoing their jobs.

Speaker 1 23:37

But when you say prank, it reminds me of a photo that I just saw on Facebook. I'm sure you're aware of the. We Worked At Disney animation in the 80s, 90s. Anyway, don Hahn started the Facebook group and literally within one day there was 1500 people that had joined. So again, it's a way to keep in touch with my colleagues.

Speaker 1 23:56

Very nostalgic, but somebody posted a picture I can almost think of who posted it. It was somebody's birthday and it was in one of those warehouse buildings and this dude, this animator again I wish the names would come to me basically in a thong, just delivering the birthday cake with all the candles blazing in a thong, and I mean later we had tarzan, like the costumed version of tarzan, running around in a loincloth, but that was under the guise of approving the costume, but my jaw dropped like, okay, no sexual harassment lawsuits, just everybody having fun and it's very fun to look at. I'm sure you've heard the. On Halloween we would have a gross food competition. What? Why? I don't know why People would bring you know, like olives as eyeballs, or you got to stick your hand in the pasta.

Speaker 2 24:48

Oh right, but all I could could think of.

Speaker 1 24:49

I did a spam sculpture. Oh, maybe it was on emperor's new groove and I did it of a llama. So I sculpted a llama out of spam. Do you know what spam is?

Speaker 2 24:59

yes, I do.

Speaker 1 25:00

That's the mystery meat, right that's scary on its own right, so it suited the theme.

Speaker 2 25:07

I mean a whole llama a out of that. That won't even be pretty, that will probably be gross.

Speaker 1 25:14

It was pretty disturbing and it did not get eaten for the record. Well, that was the thing it was supposed to be edible in theory. I don't think anyone went near the spam llama, unfortunately.

Speaker 2 25:26

Well, still A for effort, Very creative. I mean, what else would you make it out of, like peanut butter?

Speaker 1 25:36

won't hold, so I get it. Yeah, spam it it's. I think in hawaii it's actually oh cuisine, but here it's the bottom of the barrel. Parts is parts. You don't know how many hooves or eyeballs are in that spam.

Speaker 2 25:48

It's a guilty pleasure no, I, I totally get you. But I mean you did, uh, filled a brief well, like gross food, so I think you did great well, thank you.

Cultural Authenticity in Animated Films

Speaker 1 25:59

I mean it's nice to be recognized all these years later. I don't think it won any awards. We did have awards too, and I I don't think the llama got much glory. So thank you.

Speaker 2 26:09

So did you do more of that stuff, like the gross food stuff with Halloween Maybe you just told me about. You went caroling around Christmas.

Speaker 1 26:24

Yeah, every year we had a little Christmas band and we would perform in the lobby. Then we would kind of take it on the road and kind of tour the building and like, like I said, really people would just glance up from their work and then go right back to animating. So it was more for us than anybody else, but yeah, that was a fond memory this sounds very in dutch, by the way.

Speaker 2 26:51

This is something that that I was wondering about, as I have I've grown up with all the disney movies, and disney movies were um stories or fairy tales. Um called in a certain way, and then at some point they needed to match a culture completely, like john and ron and john went to, uh, hawaii for moana to get the whole culture in there. It's um. I've wondered like, uh, I don't know if you were um know, if you were aware of this change, or if you even recognize what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 27:36

I do, I do.

Speaker 2 27:37

But I have a feeling it became more complicated.

Speaker 1 27:40

Yes, I'd love to speak to that, yeah, so, yeah, I mean, of course we want to honor any culture in which our stories are set for authenticity, right. So we would have teams that would. For Lion King it was to the Savannah, and basically the directors and the art directors and the heads of all the departments would go on field trips and do reconnaissance. It makes sense. There was no internet back then, so as a background painter, I would literally use the photographs that Doug Ball took on the Savannah. And you know, they visited the Maasai Mara and just got to know the entire culture, because, in addition to the wildlife on the Savannah, the music was very much and even if you look at Just Can't Wait to be King it was folk art meets a children's book aesthetic. You've got to get to know the regional folk art and that includes the humans, not just, right, the wildlife on the Savannah. So they spent time with the Maasai Mara and, yeah, I was not invited on that, but I got to use the pictures in my work. So that is logic, right, you've got to do the reconnaissance and it's kind of hard to do a picture if you've never been there.

Speaker 1 28:44

Beyond that, I think what you're hinting at is we started and I guess it was early diversity and inclusion and visibility and representation. But of course we started to do films like Mulan, which that was the most well-loved folktale among a pretty big country right with a huge population, and so you can't drop the ball on that. You've got to honor it and do it justice. You've got to honor it and do it justice Previous to things like Mulan or even Pocahontas, which is the Native American culture, disney, of course, was criticized for being too generic, too homogenous, too white, absolutely. You know we whitewashed everything. And if Disney was going to tell a story, of course it's going to be. You know, let's say, we animated the story of Christ the gospel. You know he's going to be blonde with blue eyes, right, and so there was so much criticism.

Speaker 1 29:35

I do think that there was an effort on the part of who knows corporate Disney, the higher ups, to start telling other stories from other cultures and represent the marginalized and the disenfranchised and those whose stories have not yet been told in Western Judeo-Christian culture. I don't think Michael Eisner would ever have said it that way, nor would Jeffrey Katzenberg, but that's the truth. Jeffrey Katzenberg doing Prince of Egypt, that was a passion project for him, right, because of his heritage, but I think overall it was the beginning of this movement toward telling untold stories of the silenced and erased. But because Disney was for so many decades accused of whitewashing everything and showing us an idealized version, but maybe a limited version that excludes people, right, right, they were like we can't do this wrong. If we do Pocahontas, we got to do our research. If we do Mulan, we've got to do our research. So in my teaching I would often show the Mulan style guide and would have everything from. It was a really, really comprehensive style guide with like do this, don't do that, and you'd see a big.

Speaker 1 30:44

Yeah, you know the circle with the slash, the anti-slash yeah, I love that style guide yeah, it's really almost insulting because it's so like do this, don't do that if you're going to punctuate, you know. And so it goes into like yin and yang and the whole cultural concept of the light and the shadow, and you see it everywhere in that film. It would say it's not about balance, but it's about balance with rhythm. It has movement, it's not static. So when you punctuate I don't know the huns and you've got 90 snow and 10 little huns coming over the hill, you just distribute them in a way that incorporates movement. Even the tiles on a roof, the rice patties had to be, the space had to be broken. Yes, according to the golden mean, with a little offset that intrigued the eye. So it comes from Chinese letter forms, it comes from Chinese watercolors and woodblock prints. The research is there and maybe in China they recognize it, but the rest of the world just feels it.

Speaker 2 31:46

True, okay.

Speaker 1 31:47

I think I hit on what you were hinting at, which is there was a lot of responsibility there. If you're going to tell culturally relative stories, or again the most well-loved folk tale in chinese culture, you got it right.

Speaker 2 32:03

true, true, I, I sometimes, and maybe that is depending on how marginalized the culture is, but for instance, both Lilo and Stitch and have been well. It was a great research trip into how to water, paint watercolor and the techniques and get the foil is right, but maybe culturally less authentic. Maybe yeah.

Speaker 1 32:54

I don't know, I never really thought about it. I, again, I've never been to hawaii, so I wouldn't know. I feel that moana is authentic when I watch it, but again, I, I'm, I'm the last person to ask. What I do know is, you know, chris sanders thumbprint is all over One of the rare cases where an amazing director was able to really use his personal style and it transcended, it made it to the screen. He has a love of that culture and, frankly, island women and you see it in his personal work. So he's coming from a very authentic place. You know, I will say, like on Mulan, we had Hans Bakker, we had people. You know will say, like on mulan, we had hans bacher, we had people. You know, andy gaskell, we had people with that heritage that were kind of a checks and balance system. I can't speak to lilo and stitch because I didn't work on it. Why do you feel it was less than authentic? Out of curiosity, was it disneyfied, in other words?

Speaker 2 33:46

maybe authentic is not the word I was looking for, it's more um. For some I feel that um, there's a very strong wish or will to make it super authentic and in the older movies it could also just be about a story that doesn't necessarily have to be exactly taken place in exactly that plot, generalized, I guess, and I wondered if that whole change in making it super authentic, if that was that necessary, maybe sometimes story you can also speak for itself here's.

Speaker 1 34:32

Here's one response. You can't please all the people all the time. So what I'm talking about, disney, was damned if they did and damned if they didn't. The minute we I should just say we the minute branch out and start telling diverse stories, nobody was ever satisfied. I'm talking on Aladdin.

Speaker 1 34:50

If you went one millimeter too far in one direction or the other in trying to portray an ethnicity, you got in trouble. You know, I don't know how you feel, but you look at Aladdin himself and Jasmine and you could come up with complaints, but at least the effort was made to nail. And this is a long, long conversation Again in my teaching at art center. You get in trouble, you just can't say certain things. So I would do little demonstrations and I would just take a simple happy face. I would move the eyes out toward the right, the outer periphery of the circle, and every week. And then I would take the other one and I would move them closer together and I would say which one is smarter. Of course everybody. The one with the wider set eyes is seen as intelligent, the one with the closer set eyes. So there are archetypes, I'm sorry, and there are formal properties that elicit certain responses. Beyond that. I think you know if you really researched Prince of Egypt problematic to some, just character design to another. But there is a way to portray a Semitic the spacing and the proportion on the sphere is everything in terms of portraying the Semitic tribes. So because he's from the culture, jeffrey Katzenberg, you can get away with it. It's kind of like using the N-word you can use the N word within a culture.

Speaker 1 36:12

I'm part of the LGBTQ community so I don't mind saying fag or gay. But do you know what I mean? You don't get to do that if you're not from the culture. So whatever. But in my teaching, you know, I didn't want to get in trouble, so I was always very careful with my wording. But I would would say you can be offended if you want. You know, some people would say you or japanese. You take the outer corners of the eyes and raise them, and you've got japanese. You lower them in the other direction, you've got chinese. It's called character design. So grow up, be offended if you want. But this is what we do all day, every day, in the trenches of production. It's not sensitive, nobody walks on eggshells. It's called character design. What did you just bring out of me?

Speaker 2 36:59

Well, to be honest, I was going to go because after I think it might have been just after you left, but there was a whole new group, I believe they were called facebook moms, that made a whole thing out of so. But how is it then that all the people from non-white cultures are dressed more sluttier, right? Um, jasmine is oh, yes, yes and um, and then we have the whole thing where beauty and the beast is stockholm syndrome?

Speaker 1 37:35

it's not, but no, look, of course. Of course we're always evolving and old tropes should be retired. There are many problematic things in the disney brand. Of course. Part of it is disney is a product of the culture in which it came up and there's an idealism. There's entire documentaries on the speculated agenda of walt himself. Right, there's entire. There are propaganda films that were done. You've probably seen them, so maybe there's, but I think we always need to parse between complete conspiracy theory, like walt's head is in a vault somewhere frozen and the reality yeah, it's definitely in a vault.

Speaker 1 38:20

So there's always going to be the full gamut of conspiracy theory to really problematic tropes like song of the south. There's a good reason it's no longer in distribution. Those are outdated tropes that do not fly today. So don't you know mishear what I'm saying. I think Disney is as guilty as everybody else of limiting tropes. Did you happen to see the Netflix series Hollywood?

Speaker 2 38:46

No, I don't think so.

Speaker 1 38:47

I'll write it down down well, there's a trend right now toward I call it aspirational storytelling. So there's whitewashing, it's going, probably. It's probably going on in america more than you're aware. But this idea of cleansing the past, do we tear down the statues of people who turned out? Oh oops, he was a slave owner. Why are we celebrating this person with a statue? So you take the good with the bad and I say you don't throw out the baby with the bath water. But it is a culture of canceling. You've heard cancel culture, right. You've heard whitewashing, you've heard revisionist history.

Exploring Diversity and Historical Representation

Speaker 1 39:24

This is a big topic and disney is just as guilty as everybody else, under the guise of idealism, actually. So conservatism not that I'm ever going to defend it, but conservatism is sometimes founded in idealism. So, again in the spirit of this podcast, as we touched on a little bit in the pre-interview, aspiration storytelling does create tropes. It normalizes things right, it creates a model that we can aspire to, but never at the expense of the silenced and erased, if that makes sense. I'm not exonerating Disney for problematic tropes like Song of the South, but they are a product of the culture in which they arose. So I do think people have a lot of time on their hands. Those mothers you're talking about are not wrong.

Speaker 1 40:16

That uh series, hollywood that I mentioned. You're gonna see I'm not gonna get her name right, but anna may wong, I think, is her name the woman who lost out on an oscar because it was given to a white woman. Basically it's the equivalent of blackface, but she was playing an oriental, they would have said back then, using makeup. Mickey Rooney, did you ever see Breakfast at Tiffany's?

Speaker 2 40:40

Is it?

Speaker 1 40:41

You could never do that now. Dustin Hoffman, playing a Native American with red face like you, would never get away with that now and that's called progress. So when you you look at jasmine and you go why is she dressed? Sluttier? Because of the entire history of that, the oriental had to be the dragon lady. Fm fatale there was. It had its own twist to it, but the oriental was always sexualized and seductive and and I'm using the word Oriental facetiously, you get what I'm saying. So Disney's not exempt and that's what they were trying to correct, actually, and making an extra effort to portray the ethnicities in Aladdin without offending anyone. You're never going to please all the people all the time.

Speaker 2 41:24

True and do you also agree with the storytelling? What's the word Facebook, mom theories, the Stockholm syndrome, that? What's the word? Ariel losing her voice? For her? Oh yeah. Being silenced for a guy? Yeah, to be honest, if you, I think if you watch the movies, all these things are mitigated already. The story is on their own, like, for instance, ariel the little mermaid. I don't think she gets silenced for a guy. I think it's a story about ursula and triton that have a whole big battle and they have the character arcs, and then it's told from the point of view of Ariel, who just really wanted to be a human all along, and then Eric comes by. So it was never for just a guy with well she loves human stuff.

Speaker 2 42:24

Right, that was her already, and with Viewed in a Beast, I think her already. And with viewed in a beast uh, I think uh bell is very focal and clear about that she is not free and that she is not stuck home at all or home syndrome. Um, but now we have all these remakes that overly compensate all those facebook mom theories right and now the stories sort of get messed up, like uh bell now gets falls in love with well quite and dick of a person who's not very nice.

Speaker 1 43:06

Um, okay, I'm gonna jump in, yeah, because yeah, you asked me, so yeah, well, in the spirit of this podcast, there's some valid conversations here, but pretty big and pretty nuanced.

Speaker 1 43:19

What I relate to and what you just said is, for example, yes, I think the most egregious thing Disney has perpetuated, the most egregious trope that Disney has perpetuated with regard to the Disney princesses, is that you're waiting for the prince to come along in a white horse and rescue you, right? And so female characters were never empowered, they were never complete on their own right, and you could analyze the tropes or the archetypes in all of these supposedly universal stories and find them problematic. And so, yes, you suddenly had Mulan, who was a powerful female character with agency. And so we are always trying to correct, we're always trying to create what I was hinting at earlier and never fully got into this idea of aspirational storytelling. When you whitewash and revise history, it's actually irresponsible. So another example I've given and we had a Harvard literature professor on and we went a little more into this, but Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, did you happen to see that?

Speaker 2 44:21

I have, I've seen it. Yes, quentin Tarantino.

Speaker 1 44:24

Yeah. So Tarantino is really good at mimicking genres, whether it's the Grindhouse films or Blaxploitation. He's really good at mimicking genres, whether it's the Grindhouse films or Blaxploitation. He's really good at mimicking genres and they seem actually very authentic to the time period. But he also is really good at wish fulfillment in kind of a sophomoric way.

Speaker 1 44:41

So Django Unchained would be like ooh, the revenge fantasy. And it's kind of the same with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It's a revenge fantasy, a what if, which is a little in hollywood. It's a revenge fantasy, a what if? Which is a little in my opinion just my opinion a little adolescent and sophomoric. What if? And so I'm watching it going oh, it's kind of sacred territory. I mean, sharon tate was murdered with a baby in her belly.

Speaker 1 45:03

Do we get to retell that story or should we honor it and keep it as is? You know, when you get into the holoca? I love springtime and Hitler for Germany, like when somebody that was directly affected by that intergenerational trauma makes Hitler look like an asshole. I love it. It's very cathartic, but when somebody misappropriates and out of ignorance it's problematic. So I love Quentin Tarantino but I find him hit and miss. I love Once Upon a Time in Hollywood because it's the world into which I was born.

Speaker 1 45:37

I'm nostalgic about that time period. I literally live a block away from the LaBianca house where the Manson murders took place. It's part of my Southern California upbringing. I loved watching that film. My Southern California upbringing I loved watching that film.

Spiritual Themes in Disney Films

Speaker 1 45:49

It was uncomfortable for me because when you start to rewrite history in an aspirational way, even if it's a revenge fantasy, it just feels irresponsible. I couldn't see Inglorious Bastards because I thought it's too sacred. We need to reserve the power of those images for what we were talking about earlier, which is, god forbid we forget the horrors of the past lest they repeat themselves. So I'm talking real, general terms. But if we go back to that disney princess waiting to be rescued, thank god we're starting to tell the mulan stories and I I happen to think, like frozen, that's a really strong female protagonist. I think we're seeing the evening of the playing field, aren't we In every way? I don't know what more people want. You know, I think it's the cold and you, you look back and you gotcha. I call it a gotcha society. You look back and you know there's all kinds of problematic things. Take any snippet from Dick Cavett in the sixties, you're going to find things that don't fly today. Just let it go Say it's a product of its era. Thank God we've made progress. Let's move forward and not keep canceling people by going back in history and catching them just speaking the lingo.

Speaker 1 47:04

Okay, as an LGBTQ individual, I was born in 68. I grew up during the height of the sexual revolution. What could be better than that? I grew up knowing San Francisco was the Mecca where all the gays went. I saw Anita Bryant in the news and all the legislation about being gay was still on the APA books as a psychological disorder. You could be fired from any job for being gay. I'm sorry, history is not what it seems when you look back. Yes, the height of the sexual revolution, but a lot of work left to be done. I don't know what my point is, other than my mom was as good as it gets. She went to cosmetology school. She was surrounded by homos. She made sure to expose us to aging by taking us to, you know, a convalescent home where a family friend, mabel, was. She made sure we knew all her gay friends. But you know what Wasn't talked about? God forbid, you say the word.

Speaker 1 47:57

So what does a kid do with all that it says. The silence speaks louder than words. So it goes on and on. Even my mom, as good as it gets, she would have been a hippie if she didn't start having kids and they just started becoming more conservative because they were a family. But she's a hippie. She did pottery and macrame and but even her like in the mid-70s god lover, uh, david bowie came on tv with, you know, heterochromia, two different colored eyes and his hair spiked up and probably very now we would say non-binary. But he was very androgynous back then. And you know, out of her mouth comes, oh, that's every mother's nightmare of a gay son. She's as good as it gets, but I'm taking notes going, okay. Well, hmm, that's how moms feel about gay kids. Okay, noted. So I do not judge my mom for that, of course I don't. It was the seventies, we weren't there yet and we're still not there. How could you judge my mom for just reflecting the world in which we lived?

Speaker 2 49:02

To be honest, I didn't.

Speaker 1 49:05

But you get what I'm saying, right.

Speaker 2 49:06

Yeah, no, no, definitely, definitely.

Speaker 1 49:11

So I feel that way about Disney, like if you have a lot of time on your hands, you're gonna parse and find everything we did wrong. Granted, it was an aspirational form of idealistic storytelling that you could label as conservative. But you know what? Disney was the first one to offer domestic partner benefits to gay couples, long before anybody else. So on that front, I did hint at this before. When I started at Disney, it was at a moment in time where, yes, disney was offering domestic partner benefits for same-sex couples. No corporation had ever done that.

Speaker 1 49:48

So the Southern Baptists were up in arms and they actually boycotted all things Disney the parks, the movies, the merchandising, all of it. I mentioned my brother-in-law. A minister at the time, pretty conservative, wrote an entire article, I think, in the LA Times saying you guys are cutting off your nose to spite your face. Take good entertainment where you can get it. He went classic by classic and pointed out how Disney is the gospel. Right, all of the main themes and all of the Disney classics supported the gospel.

Speaker 1 50:24

So what I? You kind of hinted at this earlier the main themes meant to be imparted in some of these age-old folk tales. Right, some of the archetypes have a message, but if you get hung up on details you're not going to receive the universal message. So I I don't know. Beauty and the beast people miss the mark.

Speaker 1 50:45

Isn't it about redeeming ourselves internally? You have to look at every character as an aspect of the same psyche. So we all have a pure entity. Our essence is pure. We all become the beast through ego that we build up through life, experience, right. And so how do we redeem ourselves? I think the most problematic trope in many of the Disney films, but films in general, is this archetype that you need to, even if it takes tricking somebody into loving you. You're only redeemed if you can get people to love you. You know what the truth is. Love is a verb. The truth is actively loving others instead of seeking to be loved. That where redemption lies. So there's a movie called marvin's room, which is I highly recommend to everybody, and it's about did you ever see marvin's room?

Storytelling Influence on Films

Speaker 1 51:39

no, I don't think so, but I'm writing it down it's meryl streep and somebody, and basically it's about the one daughter that goes off and establishes a career and she's kind of vain, self-absorbed, selfish, seemingly right Really into her own career, and the other one stays home and takes care of the aging parents. I'm kind of going to get it wrong, but at the climax of the film the one that went off and had her career and self-indulged had to come home and really saw wow, my sister has sacrificed for our aging parents and everything she gave up. But she also saw so much love there. I'm gonna get it wrong. But she said something like wow, you have so much love. And I think it was the Meryl Streep character said well, yeah, I'm very lucky. And she said, yes, they love you so much. And she goes no, no, no, I'm lucky because I get to love them.

Speaker 1 52:36

So to me, the most problematic tropes in some of these disney films is a lot of them hinge on you redeem yourself by tricking somebody into loving you or kissing you and then you wake up. Right, you wake up if you get kissed by that prince. That is all a metaphor for spiritual awakening. But you know what? Let's shift that paradigm. Let's retire that trope and let's talk about serving. Let's talk about actively loving others in order to redeem ourselves. People get hung up. I mean, how could you expect the public to understand liturgy or literary criticism? They don't know that it's a very universal parable about our psyches, our souls. Don't get hung up on the details. No, if you do that at some point, like if you find problematic things about these films, you're really trying hard. You have to try really hard to hate it. Yeah, you just have no joy at that point, you have no capacity for joy.

Speaker 2 53:44

Well, I mean, I mean, apparently this came from a concern, uh, that girls stay in the Wendy phase for too long, since, um, we had sort of gender-coded jobs like girls do more of caretaking, guys do more of construction. If, if our girls didn't uh, stay in the wendy face for too long because of disney and they would be construction builders or something. I don't know how they figured this, but, uh, there was something like that today it's totally, totally valid.

Speaker 1 54:24

This is how we progress. This is the whole premise of our podcast, the the stories we tell, whether it's on the micro or the macro, we are a product of the stories we're exposed to. How could it not be? We're socially conditioned, we're socialized through storytelling and nothing else. Didactic persuasion only goes so far. People dig their heels in. When you try to persuade them, they fall back on cherry picking and identity politics. That's called pride and ego. Storytelling changes minds by touching hearts. It's chemical and I don't repeat my entire book or the entire premise. But this is why we do the podcast An awareness that we transform only through storytelling. It's not just emotional catharsis, it's the shifting of paradigms intellectually. This is what the podcast is about. Thank God for those mothers who are up in arms about it and want to start telling new stories. This is how this works.

Speaker 1 55:27

All I was saying a moment ago is like, like let's not get hung up on the past, let's move forward, and thank god for groups like that. We're always assessing right the stories that are shaping our future. I watch netflix seriously. I was without streaming for a long time and I jokingly would say I can't live on planet earth because I can't talk about vampires or dragons or drug runners, like I felt like I couldn't hold a conversation. So then when I finally got Netflix, actually in the hospital my sister left her laptop so I had 18 days to catch up on Santa. I don't know why I started with Santa Clarita diet. Did you ever see that?

Speaker 2 56:06

Yeah, no, I did, but I loved it.

Speaker 1 56:10

No, I loved it. I don't know why I started with that one, but I loved it. But over time I very much started to think, wow, this isn't art, writing for streaming, writing an episodic series with a cliffhanger, with that dopamine rush it gets you to come back, so addictive. But I actually started respecting the writing, thinking, wow, it's not art, but it is genius. Then, after too much of it, I started thinking, wow, netflix really has a brand and you know what. It's depressing, like everything is in that uncanny valley of kind of surreal and nobody really acts like that. So I love Ryan Murphy to death. But when I OD'd on Ryan Murphy I thought, hmm, you know what? He does not know how human behavior works. He's like on the spectrum and this is so surreal and the performances are not naturalistic at all. This is not how humans work. It's one brand, but why is it becoming Netflix entire brand? I'm kind of going all over the place here. But here's what what I came to. I started feeling like, wow, my screenplays are not clever enough. They don't have those cliffhangers. Under the guise of being nonlinear and experimental and art films, nobody's going to recognize the value of that. There's no currency at this moment. I'm exaggerating, but other than little independent films, foreign films, low budget films in the lemlies only, the public has zero appetite for what we used to call art or poetry, or nonlinear storytelling or experimental. I'm putting it in extremes, but thanks to Netflix and other things like that, everybody has lost their gauge Right. We're doom scrolling all day, every day, and we've got cultural ADD. Nobody recognizes art except in elitist circles, so we're training the mainstream to just keep scrolling, if it's not tits and ass. Now I'm really preaching. But one of my favorite filmmakers I think it was Quarone did a film on HDTV which he had never done. He had always done 35 millimeter high production values. He, I think, not sold out, but you adapt or die. He allowed it to be a hybrid release. So for the first time he's picturing people watching his film. I think it was Roma. It was like mid pandemic and he knew full well people are going to be filing their nails and making out their shopping list and kind of pay attention, but kind of not. While watching his film it was sad for me to hear him say oh no, this is the new landscape, I'm excited about it. I thought you talked yourself into that, but no, you're better than that. I heard somebody it might've been Quentin Tarantino said yeah, I'm kind of done, I'm retiring because I don't know what a good story is anymore. He had lost his own gauge, and that's how I feel. I don't know what a good story is anymore. He had lost his own gauge and that's how I feel.

Speaker 1 59:12

If my what I have to say has zero currency and it would not be recognized, what is the point? If it doesn't have the tits and ass or you know in, or the titillation, it's simply not going to be recognized. I joke, like on my Instagram. I originally got it because I thought it had the cool filters and then I realized, oh, that's Snapchat. The filters were really limited on Instagram, but then I had no brand.

Speaker 1 59:36

I wasn't trying to build a platform or trying to get likes or get followers. I wasn't. I was just having fun on my dog walks, taking pictures of succulents in my neighborhood and for my own benefit. So I would jokingly say I'm trying to bore my five followers as much as possible.

Speaker 1 59:52

And in my filmmaking I do try to suspend a moment and it's very cinema verite, it's very nouvelle vague, it's very 60s to like. Take a one shot that actually may or may not propel the plot or develop the characters, but it kind of puts you in a space, right, it puts you in the moment. And I like to suspend moments because I'm not going to contribute to cultural add. I do think we know what constitutes entertainment value. Now there's a cinema verite film I'm not going to remember which one, but it's just a guy crossing a courtyard. I think he's carrying a plant. It takes him 10 minutes to cross the effing courtyard. That did not propel the plot. So we've gotten smarter about what does propel the story and actually will keep butts in the seats. What constitutes entertainment value? But there is something I'm going to steer this back to Disney. Actually, there still is something to be said for creating the texture, the ambiance, for transporting people into a space. Right, if you look at Princess and the Frog, did you see that?

Speaker 2 1:01:04

Oh, my God, yes, so many times.

Speaker 1 1:01:05

Okay. So the trend now is again if it doesn't directly contribute to the character development or the escalation of the plot, no room for it. But you may have noticed that was a little bit of a return to the old school feeling. If you watch Pinocchio, for no reason at all, we're going to break into a song and just ignite the imaginations of children and take them on a ride. That had value in and of itself. So I think we've leaned too far. And Disney is known for formula right.

Speaker 1 1:01:34

When Howard Ashman and Alan Menken came along and we started really perfecting the musical theater as animated film, it became a formula for good or bad. And within the industry you've probably heard this we talk about the want song. The want and the need are integral to not just western storytelling structure but to screenwriting. The want in the want and need. That became a song. So when bell sits on a trunk and talks about the great wide open, that's her want. When the little mermaid says I want to be part of their world, that's the want song.

Speaker 1 1:02:09

So it went a little too far in terms of formula. But I think princess and the frog was a return not just to the nostalgia of sort, of the badgering technique, those soft backgrounds with the vignetted edges that almost looks cigar burned and that kind of we call it the pool of light. That feels like a children's book, but it was a return to the non-linear storytelling where you get to depart and take people on a ride and ignite their, especially children, ignite their imaginations in a way that may or may not contribute to the escalation of the plot or the character development.

Speaker 2 1:02:44

I love that film yeah, yeah, me too, and I love the music in it. I'm so in love with the music in it.

Speaker 1 1:02:54

How well did, it do at the box office. It didn't do so well, that's right.

Speaker 2 1:02:59

Unfortunately.

Speaker 1 1:03:07

Yeah, was it because it was 2D? Because people think that that's for children? Well, let me tell you a little story. I had a friend that a literally a td technical director. He's a techie we call it right information technologies, not in the entertainment industry, but he's no dummy, let's put it that way. He's an it.

Speaker 1 1:03:22

We came out of madagascar I'm one of the first like the first madagascar and I, being who I am, I just said, yeah, I liked it. But man, those character designs were kind of all over the place. You know, it seemed like there was no real art direction. No offense to anyone, but I felt like there was a broad range of character designs and they all felt like they came from it in terms of shape, orientation. Of course, that meant nothing to him. When I said the word model, you know, like there were, there were sharp edges in the models. I like that. He goes the what I said. Well, you know that was all the characters were modeled in three dimensional right in maya, or it wasn't maya, whatever it was. Back then he had no idea what I was talking about. So it's story that matters. I'm going to tell another story.

Speaker 1 1:04:08

The public really didn't know. Maybe they're getting smarter. They didn't know. They know what they're comfortable seeing. So, for example, I was brought into Disney Publishing to really help them by talking about the staging that we do in feature animation, a little bit about how we think in feature animation in terms of best supporting the storytelling. Their books were not being approved so for whatever reason at the time it was the up book and the toy story book and one other and they just weren't getting approved. So they wanted me to come in and talk about the staging we incorporate in our films. I really enjoyed doing this visiting artist workshop. I also did some freelance where I just kind of worked back into some of their illustrations and magically they suddenly got approved. And it had to do with staging.

Speaker 1 1:04:57

I won't go on and on, but kind of the pool of light we talked about or the path of action and developing your value structure so that you can find In one case it was, I think, woody pointing out to the lawn and then you see Buzz Lightyear out on the lawn. But you couldn't even find them in all the chaos because there was no cohesive value structure that organized the information and you couldn't see the hand, nor could you see Buzz Lightyear on the lawn. So a lot of it was technical stuff, but in all of it at that moment they were rendering the children's books with full modeling, just like a screenshot from right, a CG film. And I said why would you do that? Like you know, traditionally the children's book field, it was always tactile. You felt like you could reach out and touch the coarse watercolor paper or see the granularity of the pigment settling into that. It was very tactile. Nothing digital flew.

Speaker 1 1:05:52

I used to go to a society of children's book writers every year and see what was being put out by every imprint of every publisher in the children's book or the picture book arena. It was always tactile. It took a long time for even Photoshop or vector-based imagery to be acceptable in children's books. So here I am at Disney Publishing looking at their current line right from their imprint, modeled dimensionally just like screenshots from the film.

Speaker 1 1:06:23

I said why do you do that? They said, oh, because that's what children expect to see. They do yeah, the books would only sell if they were modeled just like what they know from the film, instead of creating a whole new experience in the literary realm, where it's a version of the story they know so well they had to. It had to be familiar to them. So yeah, we're catering to that instead of challenging. That's another way to look at it, right. We're just catering to it, the status quo, instead challenging. Where does the next generation of genius come from if we just deliver what we think is going to make again bank at the box office or the almighty dollar by making the bestseller list?

Challenges in Storytelling Innovation

Speaker 2 1:07:02

Interesting for sure, to be honest, when you just told me that children want to have the same as they saw in the movie. When I was little and I saw the Little Mermaid, I was sold, of course, and I had this little cassette tape that played the whole story and I have listened to that thing on repeat, I think. And I have listened to that thing on repeat, I think, and I know for sure that if the story would have been different from what I've seen, my mermaid right, I don't think I would have liked it Exactly.

Speaker 1 1:07:42

Yeah, I feel bad now, but the thing is we just sought to tell a good story in feature animation. How they then marketed it was up to marketing. I joke, like with Hunchback, how are you going to market a film where there's no real cuddly plush toy? You're going to take the gargoyles. Yep, they took the gargoyles. Are you going to take Quasimodo and put some jelly in the hump like a Stretch Armstrong? They played hell and they actually did not market the film we made. They marketed a less edgy, right, less dark film and that's what they needed to do.

Speaker 1 1:08:17

So I don't think disney is the prime example of challenging and forging new ground. It is a machine with stockholders to please. There always has to be a way to honor the disney legacy while hopefully pushing the envelope in terms of experimental storytelling or even artistry. But it is what it is. I want to go back to this conversation about just continuing to deliver what's familiar for the almighty dollar at art center, for example. It's a cash cow, it's a machine and for a long time I would defend it. You'd hear oh, art center has a brand and I would say there's nepotism. Like people know what they're going to get. An art director knows what they're going to get if they hire a newly graduated art center student. It's called a legacy. They know they're going to get efficiency, they're going to get professional results. Do you know what I mean? That's not not bad or wrong, but separate from that.

Speaker 1 1:09:13

There was a look always in the gallery In the 80s. It was Matt Meheran, greg Spelenka, erisman. It was very much spill your coffee on your illustration, drive over it with your truck. It was very layered and tactile and that was typical of conceptual editorial illustration at that moment. It came from Art Center and made a splash in New York. So that's what every piece in the gallery reflected was the brand. And then it evolves to one outdoor plain air painting evening in Pasadena and kind of a dark brick laden alleys of Pasadena and I saw literally people to look to the instructor and see how they're holding their brush. They would literally put brushes in their mouth and I won't name names, but they would put brushes in their mouth and hold them in their mouth Just like the instructor. They would take 20 minutes to take a stroke and they would look at him and make sure they were literally mimicking his strokes. And so you do have minions and you have some pride and people want to see themselves reflected in the gallery. So the instructors would pick minions and submit the work to the gallery to cement their own legacy. It's all pride based. But at one point a lot of us agreed well, where does the next generation of genius come from If everybody's just thinking? And my students? I was on scholarship committee every term and I would see my students, instead of expressing their own voices, they would conform to the look in the gallery because they knew that's how they would get their scholarship, yeah. And so we had to push back against that and go yeah, we need to leave room for the new voices that don't conform, because that's the next generation of genius.

Speaker 1 1:10:58

So in film one example I took a loch ness cg feature that I had written and at the moment you didn't have a treatment, anatomy, or you certainly didn't have a screenplay. You had a treatment that was prose and you can Google them. Anyone that's listening can go online and see the Lion King treatment as it originally was written and then, as it evolved with the visual development and the story development, the treatment gets revisited, but it's certainly not in screenplay format. Anyway, I chose to write a screenplay for my CG feature. I was working with a creative exec at Buena Vista another tangent but I kind of was a finalist in the ABC DGA Film Fellowship. So one of the parts was I got to work with a creative executive and he said, actually at Buena Vista Pictures, we're going down that road, we're actually starting to conceive CG films with an intact screenplay. It was perfect timing on my part. So, anyway, I had an agent at the time. He was also the lawyer for Tunes India, so he had access to a lot of production facilities that could champion it and anyway. So we started pitching it around and I think it was New Line Cinema, which used to be Orion. I don't remember which acquisitions person it was, but we got to know.

Speaker 1 1:12:17

But the guy was, you know, nice enough in quotes to give us feedback and he said well, it's uncomfortable that the protagonist grows up. We need to keep our G audience by keeping the protagonist identifiable, meaning in the same age range. And I didn't say it in the meeting because I didn't want to defend, but I told my lawyer later like wait a minute. When I was a kid I couldn't wait to be my older brothers and sisters. You aspired to be cool and older. So I don't buy that. But more than that, I said okay, there was bambi, in which there's a montage, you know, in which Bambi grows up. There is a Lion King montage in which Simba grows up.

Speaker 1 1:12:58

I started rattling off all the films in which it's a coming-of-age story. Why would you not show the character growing up? It hinges on that. The answer was those are 2D films and it was over five minutes ago. So nevermind universal templates for storytelling, right? Nevermind the Shakespearean templates, nevermind the Greek tragedies and this whole subtle. Nope, it was over five minutes ago. It's not what kids are used to seeing, so they go with the trends again instead of thinking about the future. Where's the next form of storytelling come from?

Speaker 2 1:13:34

interesting. So, since you are all over, story um, you have been since, well, basically your whole life since I got that typewriter. Yes, this is a typewriter.

Speaker 1 1:13:53

I certainly had a love of it. I don't know if I was a born storyteller, but I, like you, I had a love of it, right.

Speaker 2 1:14:00

Well, but you, you seem to talk about it a little differently than I have ever thought about it. So, um, what I was wondering about is that you told me that in the Disney Studios you apparently got to hang or hear or see how the stories were made. Uh, with Jeffrey Katzenberg, with the board?

Speaker 1 1:14:28

right.

Production Process in Animation Studios

Speaker 2 1:14:28

Right and I was wondering who were you that you were allowed to be there? Or was just everybody there, like how did you what I know different times, but how did this come to be?

Speaker 1 1:14:42

Well, I was just a peon, to answer your question. I was a 20 year old trainee, you're not wrong, I was just a new kid on the block. But yeah, very. The answer is Lion King was a tiny production. Everybody was on Aladdin already and we were in that. I think it was 1420 flower initially, but tiny crew, and so they just gathered everybody around in this warehouse building when Elton John came to pitch the songs and I don't know. I was lucky, it was a tiny crew and I think for that people came from the other buildings, from aladdin, from all the other, not all the other one other production and that was more of an event. But basically, uh, it was just a tiny crew.

Speaker 1 1:15:25

So when this is something the public may not know, but, uh, the entire film is not greenlit at one moment for good or bad, it seems counterintuitive to me. But one act can be greenlit and you just start working on production, with you in act three still being a mystery and being subject to market research and test screenings, and all of that it's approved to act at a time. So from that point on, basically every sequence and again, terminology for listeners, we use the word scene a lot when referring to stage plays and films. But a scene in animation is what we think of as a shot in live action film. So there's scenes, sequences and acts. Every act is broken down into a sequence, which is then broken down into a scene, and in animation a scene is the equivalent of a shot. It doesn't matter, it's just how we label, you know the layout packets and actually track the production. But anyway, every sequence, let's call it, whether it's an action adventure sequence or a romance sequence or kind of exposition, world building, whatever it is, it's, uh, of course, boarded by an individual. There's a supervisor to the story department that largely answers to the director, but anyway it's.

Speaker 1 1:16:45

It's actually, I like to say, you know, in animation the lead animator keeps the juiciest scenes for themselves and then delegates the boring ones to everybody else. I'm sure it's the same in story Point being. Every single panel of that storyboard is pinned back in the day, pinned to a corkboard, and then they actually have to pitch it to Jeffrey Katzenberg, sometimes it's Michael Eisner, whoever the powers that be are at that moment you have to be a little bit of an actor, because you get out that pointer, you walk them through it, you sell them on it. So even in my teaching, if I had a really interior artist and a lot of artists can be right, very awkward introverted I'd say you gotta be a little bit of a performer if you want to be a story artist, and I prepare them for that anyway.

Speaker 1 1:17:34

How did I get to sit on them? Well, it was a tiny production. So I did hear every single pitch of every board on Lion King to Jeffrey Katzenberg at the time and I heard every bit of feedback he disseminated. So that is largely where I learned my western storytelling structure and then later working with a creative exec on one of my own pitches. Have you heard about the gong show?

Speaker 2 1:17:56

I have um this is where, uh, the little mermaid came right and pocahontas.

Speaker 1 1:18:03

Have you heard that kind of myth?

Speaker 2 1:18:05

um, no, no, no, tell me about. Well, I I've never heard.

Speaker 1 1:18:08

We're kind of jumping all over, but I never heard Michael Gabriel say it himself. But the lore is Pocahontas evolved, of course, but it started out with literally just a stunning piece of artwork and the title Pocahontas, very little else. And yes, that was at a gong show. So about eight years in I realized, well, I've never done the gong show, I I should. I've got ideas and so I put a pitch together and they have you work with a creative executive for about a week and ostensibly it's so that you don't waste Tom and Peter's time that was our president and vice president at the time, so they just coach you on your pitch.

Speaker 1 1:18:43

And, um, yeah, I learned a lot there too, listening to the feedback from Tom and Peter on some of the pitches. And I did carry that forward later when I started writing my own screenplays and directing as an auteur. And then of course there's different rules in the literary realm, but it was kind of a steady arc of learning the western storytelling structure. That I'm not, I don't want to get technical, but you know the want and the need and how that results in the main theme and everybody knows we all learned it in elementary school the overall story arc. So a character arc is very different than the overall story arc. I guess I'm going into it a little bit, but the character arc is they start out blank and they end up blank, right.

Speaker 1 1:19:26

they start out ignorant, they end up enlightened. They start out prejudiced, they end up tolerant. That's start out prejudiced, they end up tolerant. That's the character arc. The overall story arc is the one we all recognize the inciting incident, the escalation of the conflict, or some call it rising action, the climax, then the denouement or the falling out. You hear all these different interchangeable terms the falling action or the resolution or the denouement. Everybody knows that from elementary school but anyway it really got ingrained in me and I carried it forward and I very much value that so you got to be present.

Speaker 2 1:20:00

You were sorry. The thing that I cannot really fathom is that apparently you say it's a small production, and sure, the lion king must have been, but um, still, you, as a background painter, uh, were there and got to see the story, um, with the cork and the story beat and pitch the pitch, yeah, the pitch. And then you also got to be at the gong show. Um, it sounds so free, it sounds so, it sounds so the sky's the limit type. Feel well, I don't know, it sounds like you're.

Speaker 1 1:20:42

You're referring a little bit to like a hierarchy maybe it was very democratic.

Speaker 1 1:20:48

I mean, nobody was better than anybody else, and one way of putting that is like I am spoiled again. I've hinted last, the last episode very different cultures in TV animation, very different cultures at different studios. I was spoiled because, yes, you felt respected, you didn't feel there was a hierarchy and it was just. Everybody was nice to each other, not in a phony way, just nice all the time. Because we were in heaven, we were working. We were in heaven, surrounded by amazing artists that we respected and worked on films. We were in heaven, we were working. We were in heaven, surrounded by amazing artists that we respected and worked on films we were proud of.

Speaker 1 1:21:21

But on a maybe slightly more negative note, like it was politics, right, and everybody was being diplomatic, because on one film you're working alongside a fellow background painter. They could be your supervisor on the next film. That's a really good reason to be on your best behavior right there. So that's, that's the truth. One person could suddenly become your art director or your director. Most directors come out of the story department and art directors tend to come out of the background department. But, yeah, there was no hierarchy. Again, your fellow background painter could be your supervisor on your next film.

Speaker 2 1:21:59

So that's a little different now right.

Speaker 1 1:22:01

Well, I don't know. It makes for a really interesting form of politics, but it makes for a very pleasant workplace. I do think it changed. I mean, one thing I will say is a friend, actually a roommate who was a part of the not the IT but the operations department at Disney. I went back for his services and, yeah, it was a very different climate and it was very soon after John Lasseter took over. Do you, do you remember when John Lasseter became head of all creative? They called it at Disney.

Speaker 2 1:22:34

No.

Speaker 1 1:22:35

There was a myth that, ooh, he's so open to everybody, can pitch. I don't know if you remember that, but more democratic than ever, he's very open to ideas, very open to pitches. I went back and it just felt so different than my days at Disney. Nobody held the door open for you, no eye contact, no hello or goodbye. It actually seemed like everyone was terrorized. They were fearful for their jobs. The climate has changed. So you were referring to the gong show, I think, or the democratic feeling that there was no hierarchy. And then you said has that changed? I don't know, I've only gotten glimpses when I go in for things like that. I do know it wasn't the Disney that I'm nostalgic about. Maybe it is the litigious nature and the fact that HR plays a bigger role and just the world has changed. But everybody seemed scared when I went back.

Speaker 2 1:23:29

Oh, that's, so interesting Okay.

Speaker 1 1:23:32

Think of it what you will. The world has changed.

Speaker 2 1:23:36

Let's stay in the happy renaissance.

Speaker 1 1:23:38

Right.

Speaker 2 1:23:40

So, with all your democratic involvement, the hard work you put in, then came the fun stuff. Like the rep parties right.

Speaker 1 1:23:51

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 1:23:52

How were those and what was the most fun one?

Speaker 1 1:23:57

Well, hmm story the Central. Have you ever heard about the Pocahontas opening in Central Park?

Speaker 2 1:24:03

No, only a little bit from you, so please give me the whole story.

Speaker 1 1:24:08

Well, it was the first time Central Park, from what I understand may or may not be true, but the lore is such that it was the first time new yorkers had ever ever had their park closed by a mouse right. So disney has the power to shut down central park and, um, they actually stacked a couple railway cars and draped linen over it to create the screen. So it was a very fun kind of communal experience in theory just a bunch of people watching magic in the middle of Central Park. Sadly, it rained the minute the film started. So I brought my parents actually, my mom had never been to New York and I brought them and then we picked up a cousin of mine from Joy-Z and yeah, that was pretty memorable. And uh, yeah, that was pretty memorable.

Speaker 1 1:24:58

But uh, I think the story you were prompting here is uh, I did bring my cousin Veronica I'll give her a shout out from Jersey. She's a California girl, but she really settled into the Jersey thing and her hair got bigger over you know, two decades I hadn't seen her actually. So just think, uh, no offense, offense to anyone, but think the nanny, whatever that is and uh, so she didn't get out much, so I brought her through the lincoln tunnel to go to the dinner at the rainbow room. So again, it's not just the premiere, there's a whole weekend around it. And the same was true of the hunchback uh premiere in new orleans. There were a lot of events surrounding it so it became a full weekend Anyway. So I brought her to and the Rainbow Room by the way, for those who don't know, it's in 30 Rock. Some of you might have seen 30 Rock, the series. It's an NBC, mostly NBC building with the Ed Sullivan Theater, I believe, and a lot of iconic things where a lot of very, you know, famous things were shot. But it's also kind of frou-frou.

Speaker 1 1:25:55

Disney was very down to earth, we were behind the camera, so nothing was particularly glamorous, but they did try to make these events special. So we had an evening dinner in the Rainbow Room, left my parents in the hotel and brought my cousin as my date and it was buffet style, very high end but still a buffet and my cousin filled her plate and plops down next to royal disney and patty, not having any idea who they were, and he's kind of he doesn't have a lot of power in the corporation, he kind of fights for the disney legacy. In some ways, even in the climate of um, you know mike leisner, he really represented the old school and the old legacy of Disney and had some power. You know, he could pull strings and kind of cut through red tape, but he wasn't that involved creatively but he was really the remaining family member of the Disney legacy.

Speaker 1 1:26:49

Anyway, she had no idea who he was. So she plops down and all the tables were filling up. So it was logic. But anyway, I sat down next to her, introduced myself to roy and patty and then I mentioned him earlier um peter schneider came up behind me and kind of pats my shoulder and have you met roy and patty? And I said yeah, we just met. And he's basically patting my shoulder like be good, be on your best behavior anyway, but they were so down to earth.

Speaker 1 1:27:16

My cousin and patty were like, ah, don't you hate dressing up for these events, don't you hate pantyhose? And started talking about how you can use nail polish to fix a run in your pantyhose and I thought we are good. So sadly I didn't get a picture with them, but veronica went home with a nice lovely picture of her and the disease and it it remained on her fridge for about a decade. Wow, that was really, to be honest, that it was just fun sharing with people. I was never impressed with much.

Speaker 1 1:27:45

You know, when my name was in the credits in lion king, I remember I did bring family members to the el capitan.

Speaker 1 1:27:51

It was a special evening and actually my niece was a toddler.

European Travels and Artistic Collaboration

Speaker 1 1:27:56

She's grown and married and living in london now, but she was a toddler and I remember because they brought her out to the lobby for the will to be stampede lest she be traumatized, uh so, but I remember, you know, my aunt stood up when she saw my name in the credits and was clapping and I thought, oh, okay, like I didn't think much about the glamour you know know what I mean or the glory of having my name in lights. None of it mattered to me. I was a little teary eyed when the sun you know when the sun rises and you hear, because we worked so hard on it, it was fun to see it finally reaching an audience. But you know, I just wasn't invested in seeing my name in the credits. But it meant a lot to other people. So I did feel very lucky that I could bring my mom to New York for a premiere, for example, or later I brought them to Paris when I was working at the Paris studio. Those were the rewarding moments.

Speaker 2 1:28:49

So you worked in Paris? For how long?

Speaker 1 1:28:53

I say three and a half months, but I don't know how accurate that is. It could have been four. And yeah, that was on, strangely, tarzan. I painted notre dame for 18 months on hunchback, but then, and actually going later, I I wasn't. I had gone to europe in the early 90s. This was my second time there. But you know, working there you get to spend more time experiencing the local color and just absorbing the culture. So I do remember I looked at the interior of Notre Dame and I thought, wow, I just painted that for 18 months. We got it right, man, we took the time to get it right, but it was strangely, it was on Tarzan that I worked there.

Speaker 2 1:29:34

Oh, that must be so surreal. It was on Tarzan that I worked there. Oh, that must be so surreal. If you have like, studied it, painted it and then you walk into it for realsies it was amazing, but also when it burned.

Speaker 1 1:29:44

You remember that, yes, that broke my heart just because you've developed a relationship with it. It did break my heart well, as it does, though, when anything iconic, you know like. I don't want to get political, but you know when, when you have a regression and one regime takes over another, the first thing they do is destroy art, and so that's hard for me to watch, like taking sledgehammers to statues breaks my heart, thank god. No, it's back to its full glory, thankfully yeah, they did a great job.

Speaker 2 1:30:15

I'm very, very, very happy. I mean we got to visit this kid oh school, because the netherlands and paris is uh like a overnight trip by bus and then you stay there and then go back again, uh, so it was weird to see it burning heartbreaking on the news.

Speaker 1 1:30:35

So, and this city was your home for four months yeah, I had been there one other time, but again, living there, I had a speaking of traveling, uh, from amsterdam to paris in one night. You know you can take the train, you can take an overnight train to venice, and so both times I've been to europe I did kind of of the same circuit Paris, venice, rome. And I had a Uriel pass when I was working there, but I didn't use it. I very much settled in. I had a gym, a block from the Louvre, and had my little routine. I would drink my morning coffee in front of that pyramid every morning before going to my little gym between L'Opéra and the Louvre. So I just felt like a citizen and I did not use my Ural pass. I just would rather drink my café creme in front of the pyramid and kind of absorb the local color and learn the language.

Speaker 2 1:31:26

Yeah, I was going to ask because I know you learned French from within Disney. What was the story? Again, you learned the language. You speak French.

Speaker 1 1:31:38

Did you?

Speaker 2 1:31:39

do that when you were there.

Speaker 1 1:31:41

I started taking lessons, you know, in our building at Disney. So basically because of Euro Disney, a woman who's still a very dear friend, Marie, I'll give her a shout out Marie Martine Bessot was hired to teach mostly at Imagineering, but to teach the artists and the engineers French so they could interface during the building of Euro Disney. Well, they kept her on and it was really just a fun thing for us animators. You know, you could walk down the hall and have something fun to do at lunch. I don't know why they kept her on, but for a good 11 years, and so it was right down the hall.

Speaker 1 1:32:15

I had never learned a language in school. I don't know how. It's a crime, but in, you know, the public school system here in Southern California, you had a lot of oars. You could take home an economics or poli sci. You know political science and you are not required to learn a language. Didn't happen, and so I grew up into that. I'm inclined toward language. I'm a writer, I love language. I think I might be inclined to do this. So, actually, roger Ehlers, the director of Lion King, whom I mentioned earlier, we both took this class and so I learned just enough to be dangerous whilst drinking your coffee pyramid so nice that must be to me.

Speaker 2 1:32:58

Um, when I saw those research strips like on the making of movies, I thought that was like the coolest thing ever and have to travel for work like I was gonna say yeah, I think anytime you can travel for work it's a gift, it's a blessing. Yeah yeah, did you? By the way, did you get to do any other trip then for production?

Speaker 1 1:33:28

yeah, well, not at disney, but I did later, as you, I think. No, I worked for animation lab in israel. So definitely life-changing. Yeah, I'm so lucky. Well, the three times that I traveled for work really were, uh, jerusalem, paris, and then I worked in new york for blue sky for about four months as well and got to.

Speaker 1 1:33:50

I tried everything. I lived in white plains, right near the studio at one point. Then I it's a long story, but at one point they wanted to move, uh, the studio to manhattan, but all the higher-ups, the executives, lived out in connecticut it's kind of the tri-state area, they call it, so they lived in really beautiful areas and but all the artists ended up having to commute. So I tried everything. I lived in white plains. Then I lived in on a friend's couch in Brooklyn for a while and had to take three trains to get there. Then I lived near Union Station in New York. Still, I wrote actually Nameless Prince 2 on the train. I had so much time commuting that I wrote an entire novel and that's why I didn't end up taking a permanent position it. It was too logistically complicated, but yeah, I value that.

Speaker 1 1:34:39

I got to, I felt like a New Yorker for three and a half months for work.

Speaker 2 1:34:45

So which one is your favorite? New York, Paris, Jerusalem.

Speaker 1 1:34:50

All so different. But I will say I'm so glad that I was able to visit Jerusalem because at the time it was a quote unquote war-torn country with a lot of terrorism and people thought I was crazy for doing it. But I said, you know, perhaps naively I said it's you know, in Ireland even all the IRA bombings over the years, you learn when you see it in the news it seems very catastrophic. But it's not all day. Every day people still live their lives. So I naively said that about Jerusalem. Like life goes on, I don't think it's all the time everywhere. And then actually while I was there, hamas shot up a rabbinical school. They had never actually entered a sacred space and shot it up, but that happened while I was there. And then there were demonstrations and it was pretty tense. But considering you know what's been going on the past year, I feel so lucky that I was able to spend time there before things got too out of hand and, yeah, life-changing wow, that's something.

Speaker 2 1:35:51

Since you worked at disney and you got to travel and you worked on all the beautiful projects, you must have had great colleagues or people that maybe you still count as your friends, or I know you worked with Andreas Deja as well. How, how was that? How was to work with such talented artists and have them as your colleague, like your colleague and like normal to have as your colleague? Yeah, okay, they're big now. Maybe they weren't as big then, but still well, yeah, some of them were.

Speaker 1 1:36:31

You know, I think there was a that transition period we talked about, where Black Cauldron came out and a few others that were, you know, great mouse detective, and I think the future of animation was pretty uncertain. It wasn't again. The Renaissance hadn't happened yet, nor had we recognized it as such. Right.

Speaker 1 1:36:48

Exactly, but I do think there were. There was a moment I mean I'm not answering your question, but there was a moment where they say, right, that there was no real storytelling sense, because you did have animators like Glen Keane and Andreas who were coming up, but then the nine old men had already moved on or passed away, right, and so there was nobody at the helm with a real storytelling sense. So if you watch Black Cauldron, there's some really beautiful animated sequences that are really lively. There's even some really beautiful animated sequences that are really lively, there's even some really beautiful backgrounds, but again, without a solid story it's kind of wasted energy.

Speaker 1 1:37:23

And so I do think these people were known, but it was a transition period. They weren't superstars like they are now, that's for sure. You know, everybody knows Brad Bird, for example, right, and so I think the general public is more aware post-Renaissance. But to answer your question, the answer is one word how was it working with creative geniuses and master storytellers all day, every day? It was heaven. Oh, yeah, yeah, and you kind of said last time, has it ever happened again? And I said nope.

Speaker 2 1:37:54

How is that? Is that sad, of course. How is that?

Speaker 1 1:37:57

isn't that? Is that sad, or is that? Of course? But no, there's well, it's disillusioning by definition, right. So working for other cultures and other studios, it's only down from there.

Artistic Community and Political Satire

Speaker 1 1:38:06

So very disillusioning, and I've had a learning curve about not expecting, you know, lowering my expectations. You know, you mentioned andreas a moment ago and I think your initial question was how was it working with such formidable artists and storytellers I'm not don't mean to put words in your mouth and have you kept in touch with them? So what I should have said is, yes, I've got lifelong friends out of it. I think I told you, roger, and I regularly reminisce about what a magic moment in time that was, and andreas has remained a good friend. So, to bring it full circle, when I said earlier, a big fringe benefit of working there was just being able to share the magic with friends and family Again, taking my parents to New York or Paris.

Speaker 1 1:38:49

I took my sister one year to Andreas's pretty famous Christmas party. He's known for, yes, kind of lavish, but, more importantly, you'll get the idea if I tell the story. So my sister is a singer, songwriter and a vocal coach and, you know, has been immersed in musical theater, among other things, for years and we walk into the Christmas party and there's the Sherman, one of the Sherman brothers I think one had already passed, but basically they did everything from Chitty, chitty, bang Bang to literally it's a Small World, the song you hear on the ride and you know he sits down to the piano and plays. It's a Small World, the way it was originally written, much slower in tempo, a lot more poetic. And then you look around the room oh, there's the voice of Tinkerbell, there's the voice of Sleeping Beauty and for me the topper was the voice of Mowgli. I am a huge fan of both Rudyard Kipling's the Jungle Book and the Disney version of it. I saw Jungle Book at the 10-year mark in the theaters because I was just the right age to catch it at the 10 mark. And there's the voice and he's not an old man, not a single gray hair on his head, he's just a dude, just a cool guy. So that was a little bit of stardust that I was able to share with my sister.

Speaker 1 1:40:05

And it's not about the glamour, it's just about the legacy. You know we have what was called the animation research library and they were responsible for pretty much documenting and archiving everything. But they didn't go to nearly the lengths to interview everybody who's still alive, as Andreas and his partner Roger. So I would say, to this day, andreas is the real hub Anybody that's remotely attached to the Disney legacy who's still alive. Andreas is in touch with them and kind of holds it all together, especially at this Christmas party. It's pretty amazing. Andreas is in touch with them and kind of holds it all together at, especially at this Christmas party. It's pretty amazing. So, yeah, that was a really fun moment that I was able to share with my sister. Those are pretty rare characters and I was very fortunate to be surrounded by and I was hinting at spiritual people, remember. Yeah, they're not just visionary artists that inspire me, but frankly, they have substance. And I use the word spiritual pretty loosely and to me it doesn't need to trigger anybody.

Speaker 1 1:41:06

So not okay to use that word, but I just mean everything that's not your body of course yeah yeah, so people that have a clue about emotional maturation and, you know, spiritual evolution, which just means it has nothing to do with religion, put it that way. So, yeah, having the podcast, I've had Greg Spelanka back on and people like Andreas, whom I have kept in touch with, don Hahn, whom I have kept in touch with. I mentioned Roger, one of the two directors of Lion King, so there was Roger Ehlers and Rob Minkoff. I've kept in touch with Roger and, as I was saying, we do reminisce, we do thank the Lord that we were part of that pivotal moment in time that actually changed the face of you name it pop culture or the noosphere, our trajectory, our march toward human potential and I'm sounding a little bit like I'm exaggerating, but I don't think it's anything less than that. So, yes, I feel so lucky and but I've mainly gotten back in touch with it by doing the podcast and realizing, even though there may be a shortage of people with substance in my world, even though I do view us as more consumerist than ever and maybe more superficial than ever, I've been lucky enough to have some pretty formidable people in my life as mentors, as influences, as friends, and I'm just very grateful for that. I don't know if that answers the question, but I try to focus on those luminaries right. It's easy to get down days and I think what you put your attention on grows. So the podcast has been a wonderful opportunity to put my focus on the people that are making a difference in the world and the ways I recognize and then bolstering that sort of interconnectivity.

Speaker 1 1:42:48

And I think we all, especially the next four years in this country, we are going to need to band together and, for example, like even political satire, facebook people are posting things right and left about this crucial moment and I saw a friend had posted I forget exactly what it was, but it kind of poked fun at the inauguration ceremony and it was very funny. I'm not going to remember what it was, but it's very funny. And then I saw in the comments probably a conservative right-wing friend of his chimed in and said this is not funny, no place for humor. And I found myself I rarely get engaged but I wanted to support him, so in the comments I didn't respond to her she's a stranger. But I said to my friend Mark, keep it up.

Speaker 1 1:43:31

You know, we're going to need not just art to redeem us the next four years or, arguably, our entire fascist oligarchy future, once free and fair elections have gone by the wayside. We're going to need not just art, we're going to need, specifically, political satire. In the face of fascism, political satire has been the only way to forge social evolution, right, so everywhere. From Aristotle, where he fought for the Greek tragedies because they provided catharsis, through the French Revolution, those pamphlets that were distributed that resulted in the French Revolution and, frankly, the American Revolution. If you didn't have people actually dragging Marie Antoinette through the mud in these little pamphlets equivalent of political cartoons, now, right, or even cartoons that might appear in a newspaper we wouldn't have had those revolutions.

Speaker 1 1:44:28

As we said last time, right, we don't need heads on stakes, but we do need people that are passionate and that want to preserve our humanity. And I would say the same, you know, in the face of World War II, you had your propaganda on the side of the fascists, but you also had subversive movements that were the only reason we were able to get past that in our dialectic. So sorry for the tangent, but I am banding together with kindred spirits. Right now, it's more important than ever that we artists understand why we do what we do, why we storytellers do what we do.

Speaker 2 1:45:02

Well, that sounds like it sounds like you could be like a great spearhead for that. I might misread that, but I mean you are a very great storyteller and story has been throughout your life. Thank you for saying that. I mean you are a very great storyteller and story has been throughout your life.

Speaker 1 1:45:19

Thank you for saying that. I mean, I think we're all taking a minute to figure out what our strategy is going to be. I was paralyzed, you know once.

Speaker 1 1:45:27

Here we are at the inauguration but, after the results of the election came out, I think we were all deers in the headlights. How the hell did we get here? It's all surreal. And then we have to. A lot of people are saying we need to lick our wounds, then rebound, then figure out our strategy. Actually, talk about pushing my buttons.

Speaker 1 1:45:47

A friend online basically said that we all need to just what's it called Like recharge and then band together and then figure out what we're going to do. And I let her have it in the comments. I said because she's pretty well to do, you know, and pretty comfortable, meaning has money, and so, you know, it's really easy to get complacent and just live your life without contributing. And so I let her have it. I said you mean, do what I've been doing and now you're suddenly listening because you're. I didn't say that, I was a little nicer, but I thought now that you're immediately affected and you're worried about your future, suddenly you care to contribute to collective humanity. What do you think my podcast is about? Well, you know, some of us have been doing it to deaf ears yeah, here's the link.

Speaker 2 1:46:35

Yeah, so I don't.

Speaker 1 1:46:36

I don't have any answers and I'm just as futile. My hands are thrown in the air, like everybody else. But I do know, I do have, you know, one property that's political satire by definition, that not just pokes fun at this administration but is anti-fascism, and I will be pounding the pavement and trying to get it made. So that's the one thing I'm looking forward to in all of this interesting and you're doing that whilst you're keeping the amazing friends.

Speaker 1 1:47:04

You're back to the friends. I love it. Well, I am choosing again. We choose what to give airtime to right and what you put your attention on grows. So I don't get involved in the complaining online. I'm just choosing to surround myself with kindred spirits, and it doesn't mean living in a bubble right or engaging in confirmation bias or any of those things, but it does mean maybe surrounding yourself with inspiring people and so, yeah, feel pretty blessed. I think we artists do need to remind each other why we do what we do.

Speaker 2 1:47:38

Thank you. Thank you for letting me pick your brain, thank you for letting me be the one that got to do this.

Speaker 1 1:47:45

You put in so much time. I so appreciate your valuable time. Thank you so much, mostly for the opportunity to reminisce. I am so nostalgic and I hope we hit on some of the magic of that period of time and maybe it'll make a comeback. We hope.

Speaker 2 1:48:01

Oh my God, that will be so nice. I mean, I was six years old when I saw the making of the Lion King, the lions in the studio, and I saw all these men with the big boards and they were laughing with each other. I mean there was lions there, but they were laughing with each other.

Speaker 2 1:48:17

I mean there was lions there but they're laughing with each other right, right and with the boards and doing the drawing, and go like, oh, and I was sick and I did not get what was going on there, but I just knew these are my people, I need to be here, wow, because in the netherlands, uh, we don't know what animation is and we only do the perpetuating of the starving artists. Uh, I had nowhere to go. Basically, like my uncle would tease me, like, oh, if you want to work for disney, can you paint or can you draw the same thingy twice? Oh, no, then you know you're gonna go there I want to tell all these yeah but there's a lot of misconceptions too.

Speaker 1 1:49:01

I will say you know, there's a at my gym. My friend in the neighborhood, basically, is a great artist, but he works at a gym. You know, for years he's worked at the gym and we talk creative things here and there. But at one point he said, yeah, I just couldn't do it. I was offered a job in animation and just couldn't do those 24 frames per second, all the repetitiveness. And he actually was offered a job as a background painter. And I thought, well, the joke's on him, because you paint the background once. Yeah, and so it's a completely different job guys, so that sometimes things can be tedious.

Speaker 1 1:49:37

On production, absolutely, but you know so many departments and so many cogs in that machine. But I do want to say you know, with regards to not really having access, where you grew up, do you know Klaus Tovig, the producer of Song of the Sea? Yeah, he's the producer and he's. I can hook you up with him on LinkedIn, but you know there is a lot of production going on. Sorry for my ignorance, but certainly in Scandinavia maybe not in Amsterdam or the Netherlands, but all over Scandinavia, and he's always hiring.

Speaker 2 1:50:11

Always give my name.

Speaker 1 1:50:12

Yeah, I'll make an introduction. I just think actually european animation is way more experimental and more interesting to me, but of course it's hard to get work that is you know, sometimes they have to yeah I want and all of that well, we hear the whole um island culture get perpetuated or, I don't know, encouraged.

Speaker 2 1:50:37

So they want to have people with deep, meaningful projects and then ask for budget and then they can do that thing on their own and they will do the backgrounds themselves, they will do the whatever themselves. It's islands. We don't have the commercial part where you can just, you know, go and paint backgrounds all day and then you know, come back and go there again and do that's not, that's not a thing. Here, like, we all are very deep and very artistic and very boring.

Speaker 1 1:51:10

Oh, my god. Well, I think too there's a model of I mean, more and more things get farmed out so you might have packages that are created. You know like the intellectual property gets developed to a point and then it's just simply farmed out, so it becomes like a machine. I think it's really great when it's all done under one roof. You know disney would farm things out here and there, but it was pretty much under one roof anyway. Thank you again, I really appreciate it. Any final words of wisdom or anything else you want to talk about?

Speaker 2 1:51:43

words of wisdom from me. You're the one here. Well, we'll have you on as a guest. We're gonna have you on as a guest really, and that's gonna be fun, that will be fun. Uh, yes, you go to you and have your day thank you, okay, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 1:51:59

And hugs from afar. Okay, and to our listeners, remember life is story and we can get our hands in the clay, individually and collectively. We can write a new story. See you next time.