Wokeness Is Dying, Conservatives Are Winning & Taking Back Entertainment w/ Tom Bancroft & Seamus Coughlin
BUY CAST BREW COFFEE TO SUPPORT THE SHOW - https://castbrew.com/ Become A Member And Protect Our Work at http://www.timcast.com Host: Phil @PhilThatRemains (X) Guests: Tom Bancroft @TomBancroft1 (X) Seamus Coughlin @FreedomToons | http://twistedplots.com/ Brett @PopCultureCrisis (X) Olivia @oliviadasovic (X) Producers: Lisa Elizabeth @LisaElizabeth (X) Kellen Leeson @KellenPDL (X) My Second Channel - https://www.youtube.com/timcastnews Podcast Channel - https://www.youtube.com/TimcastIRL
My background is that I was a Disney animator for 12 years, all on the bangers of the 80s and 90s.
So that was Rescuers Down Under.
You don't remember that, do you?
unidentified
Being the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tarzan, a bunch of them, about eight feature films.
And I designed Mushu the Dragon in Mulan.
And then since then, have started my own company, but also worked on Superbook for CBN. A lot of Christian content too for kids and Veggie Tales and created the Larry Boy TV show.
I am a cartoonist and animator, most known for my web series Freedom Tunes.
We've amassed a million subscribers, a quarter of a billion views, and we have an average view count of 450,000 views per video across over 600 videos with $0 spent on marketing.
unidentified
I love doing what I do, and we are currently expanding out into doing longer form animation.
So we've launched a crowdfunding campaign for a full-length 2D animated show.
We then got together with him and another friend and we made a little clay animated, you know, music video actually to a song that we really liked and premiered that it was like a church youth group thing.
unidentified
And we come out, everybody else is making like slideshows with just photos and they've made their own little music video and we come out with this full-on animated epic and kind of blow everybody away.
And so a little accolades went a long way and hearing just clapping was like something I was like, I want this again.
So that just drove us to find out about CalArts, California Institute of the Arts.
And yeah, if you saw, but during that era of the how to draw Mickey classes and things like that that they would do, there was also a video of, and this was in California Adventure at one point, the Florida Disney MGM before it became Hollywood Studios.
And then in Paris.
But there was a video where animators, Mushu would kind of host this thing and talk about how animation is done.
And I was in that video.
I'm talking to Mushu.
And so a younger version of me sat around Disney for about 10 years.
I'd get, nobody ever recognized me on the street of like, I saw you for 15 years in Disney because I just look so radically different.
During those days, I met Eddie Murphy a couple times.
So yeah, can I actually ask you, before you designed Mushu, did they already know that they were going to use Eddie Murphy as the voice actor?
No.
Okay.
Interesting.
The long story short on that is we were, I came on very early to, I was one of the maybe a handful of animators that came on to Milan very early while we were still refining the script, rewriting and all that.
And so at one point it was going to be called Yin and Yang, and it was going to be Cricky and a dragon and a cricket.
So Cricky became Cricky.
And Mushu would have been Yin or Yang.
I'm not sure which.
And then there was a Phoenix and Mushu at one point.
And that was another yin and yang version.
And then they narrowed it down to no, let's just do the dragon.
And they threw out the cricket.
Then they brought the kicker back.
Anyway, but voice casting-wise, early on, I did an animation test with Joe Pesci.
Oh, they were looking at Joe Pesci.
He's as distinct a voice as any, too.
Yeah, different kind of wise guy, I'd say.
But yeah, they that so that was a path they went down.
That's how the adult actors are now when they go to do superhero movies.
unidentified
They're like, well, my kids liked it, so I'm going to go and.
Well, it's funny.
I think even Trey Parker was in one of the Despicable Me films, which is really funny, which I imagine probably had something to do with a kid.
But I think he has a kid.
But part of what I want to ask you about, too, is as you were doing those animation tests for his character, I mean, first of all, did you do animation tests before he was cast?
And then how much of the characterization changed after he came on?
Yeah, so they after the Joe Pesci thing, and I didn't even totally finish that test.
But he would have been the most recognizable name on the film at the time.
Mingna Wen was big, but she's bigger now than she was at that time.
unidentified
And she wasn't big.
What they did is Joy Luck Club.
I don't know if you remember that.
That movie had come out just while we were working on Milan, but it was just maybe, we'll say within the last year of that while we were working on Milan.
And we just raided Joy Luck Club.
It was just almost, if you go through Milan and look at Joy Luck Club, a lot of those actors became voices in Milan and Ming Nao Wen, especially.
Was there similar personnel for like behind the scenes, like director and writers?
Because I don't like off the top of my head, I don't remember who made that movie.
Well, I think one thing the audience is hearing that a lot of people might not be aware of and that they're probably learning from the first time hearing you talk about this is how much an animated film changes through the production process and how different the final product is from that initial treatment or even the initial draft of the screenplay.
unidentified
Now, part of this is because artists are mercurial people and want to change things over time.
But another part is as you're working on any animated project, as you're looking over, sometimes like it's executives making decisions about what's going to be more marketable, but sometimes it's just you're working on it and you're realizing like this, I thought this would work, but it would be better if we did it this way.
And I'm curious, like, how many designs did you go through as you were making Mushu?
You know, like, and actually we probably refined it down to what 90% of what Mushu looks like now, probably within the first, say, four months.
And then from there, it was just little tweaks, little tweaks, and the Disney perfectionism.
And then starting to do the model sheets and then doing animation tests was all part of that six months, probably.
But, and, and really, once you have a design, even when you're like, all right, we think we got it.
You know, we're about 90% there, we'll say.
Doing an animation test is really pays off because now you're animating, you're doing different expressions, you're having him turn in space and he's moving and gesturing.
And you just have new challenges that come up when you're bringing a character to life that you don't think about when you're just doing a model sheet.
Now here's him angry.
Here's him sad, here's him whatever, you know, very basic.
Well, before we move on from the design, because this is fascinating for me, how much of the changes in design that happened towards the end were just creative decisions versus how much of it was Disney like testing these things or focus grouping them or asking people or executives what they thought would be more marketable?
unidentified
Like how much of this was changes made for creative reasons and how much was Disney thinking, well, this is going to get us a larger audience.
This is going to make us more money.
You know, this was, I remember I came on to Milan.
I think some of my oldest drawings, versions of Mushu, early versions are dated 95.
So I think it was around 95-ish that I came on.
And I think it didn't come out till 98.
Yeah, I think it was 97, 98.
So I was on it for quite a few years there.
But during, that was a while back, right?
That's my point.
And they didn't do as much or they didn't tell us about it, I must admit.
You know, like a lot, I'm sure they were doing the focus groups and things like that.
We would rarely hear about it.
It was very kind of upper and marketing.
It was more on the marketing side.
And we were very kind of separated from all the marketing and things like that.
And so all of a sudden you'd be working on a movie.
Oh, and the title changed.
What?
You know, it would kind of come out of the blue sometimes.
You know, we were the legend of Fa Mulan.
That was the title for the first six to eight months.
And then it became Fa Mulan.
And then it just became Mulan.
And so.
Drop the Fa.
It's cleaner.
Yeah, we actually, I remember when I was in high school reading the original story, or we read like an iteration of it from The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, I think.
But.
Yeah, it's crazy how much, again, these projects change.
Unfortunately, I believe what's happened is, you know, initially we would tell kids stories that did have some frightening elements in them because they were cautionary tales.
unidentified
They were morality tales.
Grimm's tales.
Exactly, exactly.
And, you know, I embellish a bit for the sake of humor by calling them horror stories, but there's frightening things that happen in them because fear, like humor, is an important teaching tool.
And what's happened over the years is Disney and other production companies have pulled back on some of the elements that might make children uncomfortable, even though those elements might be good for the kid to see because it teaches them a lesson.
And they've slipped in other elements that actually aren't good for children.
So they're shielding kids from reality.
And then they're also putting these very perverse realities in front of them that the kid does not need to see at all.
It's completely backwards.
They're shielding them from things they shouldn't see and then showing them things that they also shouldn't see.
I wonder how much of it has to do with what the animators and the storytellers of today grew up with, which is the thing I talk about a lot of the times is like the reason I believe stories suffer today is that the artists in old Hollywood got their stories by reading and the artists of today get their stories by watching.
So they don't have, they're seeing a curated, cut down version of a final product, whereas the stories that were adapted, Olivia was telling me like how much she loved Mulan.
unidentified
And the reason that resonates so much is because it was adapted from something that was a full story and then is pared down in post-production and it gets its flair elements by getting Eddie Murphy when the rest of the cast is of course traditionally Chinese and all of that stuff is done in post.
But now people come from the curated entertainment and they're trying to make facsimiles of that that don't line up because there's none of the soul that came from the original story.
Yeah.
I mean, we went certain directions in the film and the making of that movie especially that were choices being made on the spot creatively, not really influenced by the world around us, honestly.
Oh, what if we brought in Eddie Murphy and he's now this funny, you know, character that basically is trying to help her, but also gets her into more trouble than that.
So, but I do agree with you that, yeah, I think, you know, you guys don't remember this, but I was in film and making films when MTV came out.
unidentified
And there's a, there was a generation of us, I guess you could say, in those days, that were affected by that because we started pacing things faster.
And that's kind of another version of what you're talking about is being affected by how culture is changing and things like that.
MTV made everything cuts faster, faster, faster.
The news being what it is today, and whatever is being as politically correct as it was, you would have had a lot of information coming out.
If you were to cast Eddie Murphy now in that role or cast somebody equivalent to that now, there would be questions about whether it was politically correct to do so, and that would make it back to the executives before they even had a chance to run it through any type of focus group or anything like that.
Because theoretically, the focus group could give you a great response, and that will kind of curb their fear of going a different direction.
But back then, you would have been able to-I mean, I'm assuming you were just able to sit down, work, and whatever came through came through.
I think we were right on the cusp of that because I do know that it was a big discussion about, well, wait, we got to try and do this with Chinese actors first.
unidentified
And by the way, there were, it wasn't just Eddie, there were a couple other non-Chinese actors that were replaced or you know, brought in to replace other Chinese actors.
And it was because we weren't getting the humor.
A lot of those actors had been cast in very serious films.
If you go back, especially in the 80s or even a little bit before that, there weren't great roles for Chinese actors, and they certainly hadn't really gotten into comedy, right?
unidentified
And so it was that time where they were having a real struggle.
They're very much serious actors coming in and doing these voices.
And so, you know, Yao and Ling and Chin Po, Yao was replaced with Harvey Feierstein.
And so he took the spot of the actor that was already there.
And same with Grandmother Fa, the grandmother in the movie.
It was a Chinese actress, but then it became what's her name?
That's the really famous voice actor, like the In the Mel Blanc shoot.
I almost had it.
I should know this.
But anyway, very famous, older.
How has CalArt style changed in the last 10 to 15 years?
It's so funny because when I went to Cal Arts, we didn't have a CalArts style.
And he set up his own shop in a garage and he makes Secret of Nim.
unidentified
If you guys remember the Secret of Nim, and that came out, had a theatrical release and competed with Disney immediately to start a studio in their garage and compete with Disney.
And also, I mean, yeah, he's like a legend in terms of his animation abilities, the fact that he was able to rival Disney.
So I'm curious, when you were at Cal Arts, you mentioned that there was this undercurrent, maybe ideologically is the wrong word because you said it wasn't political, but of people who were sort of pushing back against Disney or who thought that like the independent projects were cooler.
unidentified
How did that affect Disney?
Well, they were, they were really, because I think they left during The Fox and the Hound was the movie.
Yes.
Yeah.
And went off to do Secret of Nim.
And so, yeah, they were really hurt by that.
And emotionally, too.
Like these are friends leaving for, you know, I mean, it was that kind of a crazy, it was like a kind of like a family and this part of your family just leaves.
So I know it was like traumatic and all that.
But yeah, I mean, that's something that, you know, I think anytime you're at sort of the bigger companies, the number one, it's so funny to, I can tell you this, we all start complaining after a while.
And it's kind of sad in a way, but I've seen that happen throughout my years at Disney.
I think our audience really wants to hear about that.
unidentified
But before we jump into that, while I have this thread to tug at, you mentioned a lot of people being really upset about the direction Disney was taking.
And I'm sure some of that was creatively.
I'm sure some of that was administratively.
Like we don't like these working conditions or these hours.
One thing that I've heard from people whose businesses have become very successful is that being on the other side of things makes you understand why companies you used to work for did the things that annoyed you.
And I'm curious, as you have run your own studio, which has been very successful and you're doing theatrical releases, how much of what Disney was doing are things where you go, okay, I understand why they did that now, versus how much of it is stuff where you still go, I don't think that was necessary.
Yeah, it's a really good question because, you know, I was a pretty young man at the time.
I started at Disney when I was 21.
Wow.
And I was just, and I got married very early.
I don't know why I looked at you.
Sorry.
I just wanted to see your reaction.
But, you know, I was 21, newly married, but we, and, but most of the people that had left Disney, California or got trained in interns and all this and were setting up the Florida studio were young because a lot of the old school guys didn't want to leave California.
So they staffed this new Florida studio with a lot of young newbies with just a few masters to sort of train us.
And so it was that kind of a feel.
And so we're all getting married.
We're all having babies together and just becoming a family, honestly, in the Florida studio.
And it was a great time to be there.
You know, but we also were starting to, you know, question, well, is this even some of the movies that I'm making, is this something I would show my kids?
And, but I will say that I kind of towed the line for a long time.
I was in the Southern Baptist Church at the time.
I'd moved from California where I was at a little tiny Baptist church, first Missionary Baptist.
And then I went to Florida and got into a bigger, kind of, what became a mega church, honestly, in Orlando, but it was still a Baptist church.
And as I was at Disney in those pretty early days, I don't know if you guys remember this, but the Baptist church decided to boycott Disney.
unidentified
And I'm now going to church.
What's this?
What year was this?
This was in the, well, I guess it was late 80s.
Yeah, no, no, early 90s, probably.
And so the Baptist Church is boycotting because they felt like, and this is back when also there was a lot of news things coming out of, oh, they're hiding things in the movies to deceive our children.
And so a lot of it was crazy.
And so I must admit, being on the inside, I was like, oh, this is dumb.
And I'm a Christian.
I'm a Baptist on top of that.
So I'm going to church.
I'm hearing how horrible Disney is at church.
And then going to work and loving my job and loving and caring about these films because you just get so into it.
And so my sister, who was also Baptist, was in Arkansas at a tiny little Baptist church, she would call me and she'd say, a lot of my, you know, my friends at church are asking, how can your brothers, because we both worked at Disney, how can your brothers be working on those satanic movies at Disney?
Shouldn't they leave?
And I was like, oh, come on, sis.
You know, you need to just tell them, settle down.
It's not as bad as you think.
And, and honestly, I do.
So this is one thing I would defend is that for many years, I was defending the movies.
And I would say, okay, well, look, Pocahontas, we're making this movie.
I don't want my kids to learn about praying to Mother Nature.
And they certainly had a good point, too.
So I was kind of in the middle and just really kind of like not knowing how to feel about it and really questioning myself for many years while I was there because, well, yeah, we're doing it for these reasons and we're just staying true to these stories and cultures.
But then, and I don't have any say in what movies we make, right?
There's a reason Moana is successful because it embraces aspects of Polynesian culture that people still, you know, they don't have that same hiccup about it that they probably would have had in the early 2000s.
But that's when they stay true to an idea like that, as opposed to the things you guys are talking about more, which is like the stuff that's very, very much parents don't want their kids being around.
You're right that Pocahontas did initially come from a pagan culture, but I think part of what bothers people about Disney films is the representation is lopsided.
And they won't really depict Christian beliefs the way they should.
Though that said, with the way that the ancestors are kind of played for jokes in Mulan and the way she's talking to the Willow Tree and sort of this cartoony in Pocahontas, I wouldn't want Christian beliefs represented that way.
So I can see both sides of it.
And I'm, yeah, I'm curious to hear where you went next or where your thoughts went next with you know respect to initially defending this and then where did you end up?
Yeah, well, I ended up leaving.
And so the story behind that is that, okay, after those years of working on films that, and it felt like one after another went down, like even Hunchback in Notre Dame, you know, that that film had like kind of evil Catholics in it.
Yeah, like the Catholics were the bad guys in that film.
Yeah.
There's one, there's a priest at the beginning, and he's a smaller part, but he's the good guy.
And he's helping Quasi and he takes him in at the beginning of the movie.
So you do see both sides of it, I guess.
But the real leader, whatever he is.
Frolo, I think.
Yeah, Frolo is like a bishop or something.
He is totally in, it's a very adult theme.
I mean, he's in lust with Esmeralda and he basically wants to kill her because she's his sin object.
And I mean, it's, you watch that movie as an adult as opposed to, well, like you, seeing it as a kid.
Yeah.
I'm assuming, because you're going to be, yeah, I would say that.
I just saw that.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know how you felt about that movie.
Go ahead.
I didn't think about it until I saw it again as an adult.
And it was some adult joke that just got thrown in there because they bring their kids.
unidentified
And that still happens, but it was at a lesser extent, I think, at that time.
But I don't ever remember like watching one and thinking anything wrong about it.
Now I watch it and I am an adult now.
So of course I see it, but it's almost too obvious that I'm like, even kids would, and I don't know if it's the kids' exposure to these ideas younger that's also making it more obvious.
Whereas I didn't have that growing up.
That was almost one of the selling points for a lot of Disney movies.
People used to say, oh, you know, it's for kids, but there are even jokes for adults.
And that was something that I remember hearing regularly when I was growing up.
It was like, oh, adults can enjoy it because there are things that are directed at adults, you know, and no one ever thought that it was, at the time, no one thought, oh, this is actually subversion.
You know what I mean?
Well, I mean, and we saw the innocent side of that with Lion King, right?
And so we got so far that Hunchback is very serious and has sin all over it.
Like, I don't know if they say the word sin, but I mean, it's all about sin and this guy struggling with his own sins, but doing it in the worst possible way by wanting to create genocide with all the gypsies, and especially Esmeralda.
Crazy for a Disney.
That's like a crazy thing.
That is like Disney thing.
A genocidal Catholic with lust issues is basically at the heart of that story for the villain.
And you're like, come on, you could not, you could never do that to a non-Christian, right?
I mean, if you haven't seen it in a while, you're going to be shocked about how adult it really is.
unidentified
I mean, he sings a song and it's all and he's looking in the flames and the flames becomes like an Esmeralda dancing naked, you know, like, I mean, crazy.
The way that animated movies from that time period, it's like now it shows you Simba and says 20 minutes after his dad dies, Timon and Pumba are like, hey, have you thought about not effing worrying about it?
And then do a dance number.
But the thing is, if you've never seen the movie, it seems outlandish and ridiculous.
So the things that I might critique about this movie may not bother you.
Or the things that you critique about it, oftentimes I will watch reviews and then I'll watch it like that didn't bother me at all.
Well, I would add something, which is I totally understand what you're saying, but I think that's why people are so concerned is because, I mean, now, firstly, with The Lion King, I think that's a fantastic film.
They give Simba the wrong coping strategy, and you learn that through the course of the film.
But one thing that really talented directors are able to do is get you to buy into a story, even if the main character is doing something wrong, and even if it has a bad moral lesson.
unidentified
I've been mentioning this to people as I've been talking about media critique.
You look at Titanic, which is the highest-grossing romance film of all time.
And it's a film that promotes adultery and fornication.
unidentified
And it's about a woman cheating on her fiancé and acting irresponsibly and actually ultimately getting the man she's cheating with killed because if she just stayed in the lifeboat earlier and then when she's an old lady, she has this giant diamond instead of instead of giving it to her granddaughter who's cared for her her whole life, she drops it off the side of the boat.
Like, he could have lived if he was just able to fend for himself.
But anyway, that's just my point is what we used to do was we would make films because people knew how powerful the medium was.
So they said, it's really important that we're promoting a positive moral message and that we're telling stories that will lead people in the direction of proper morality.
unidentified
And now it's leading people in the direction of bad morality.
And I don't think that these writers and directors are sitting down and going, how do I corrupt the masses?
You know, people tell stories from their heart and what is in their heart will come out on the page without them having to try.
unidentified
And so when you have Hollywood making all of your stories and it's being run by people who don't share our values without even trying, they're going to tell stories that subvert our values and our way of life and that are really damaging for your kids to see, even with children's stories like you're saying.
Well, yeah.
So let me land on the plane.
You asked that question of why I left Disney and I didn't quite get there yet.
I mean, you're exactly right as far as I started to see the story that was out there about, oh, and they're hiding Sex in the Clouds and Lion King.
So if now look at it again, I know there's probably a particle or two they should have deleted at the bottom and it would have been a little more clearly SFX. But anyway, look at it again.
That is the true story.
unidentified
I know the people that did it.
Now, same with the, I'm going to just stay with this for a second in case the audience is interested.
The mermaid thing.
I spoke to, there were two artists that did the Little Mermaid poster art that went on the cover of the VHS that everybody says is suggestive.
Yeah, I've seen it.
It's very suggestive of male units.
And so, but what I saw the original drawing.
I have the original drawing that was then painted for the cover.
And so one problem out there is that a lot of people don't know who painted which because there were two artists.
And so the story is that they gave the assignment to two artists because it was an overnight job.
This is back when the machine they would shoot on.
You ever see the big down shooters where the camera's way up high and there's platinums and so the multi-plane process and all that.
So these camera operators would be in a big room with a super high ceiling and the camera would be up here and they're like doing like hand cranking a pan.
And so this was a pan where the seagull is dive bombing down a building.
And as he's going past all this, these windows are blurring by one frame at a time because he's just going down so fast.
And so as he's like one frame at a time, moving the background, putting on the next cell, hitting a button to hit one frame of film, then taking all that off, putting on the next one, cranking everything, doing another frame, like literally that kind of insane, yeah, insane tediousness all night long because it's in a rush to get out.
This is one of the last films.
He, you know, just gets on a whim and he's got a Playboy near him.
Oh, no.
Cuts out a picture of a topless lady and he puts it in there for one frame.
He sticks it in the window.
So as that window is blurring by, you could see for one frame.
This is before VHS. Nobody knew VHS was going to happen.
And so this was back when it was film.
And so he thought, nobody's going to see one frame of film, but I'll be able to tell all the guys, you know, what I did and be the hero.
And sure enough, that film, The Rescuers, I think came out in like 77 or something like that.
It comes out.
Nobody sees it.
Of course not.
This is a hidden Easter egg that nobody knew about for, we'll say decades.
Then VHS comes out.
Still, nobody sees it for a while until just some people get into the technology gets better to where you could frame by frame because even when it first came out, you couldn't do that.
Well, of course, because kids, I mean, you can't have kids see that even for a split second.
It's so horrible that that man did that.
unidentified
It's so horrifying.
That man did.
Yeah.
Well, and I will say Disney had no idea.
It goes to the idea is like people, when you hear those stories, like that frame or the background of those drawings is people are imagining Eisner or Bob Iger going like this.
We're going to corrupt your kids.
Put this in there when what you're seeing is that it's a large company.
It was decentralized and they didn't know this stuff is going on.
Now, that's not giving them the past because we look at what they're putting out now and people.
You get the profits, the buck stops with them.
But the thing is, is people, there's two interpretations of that, right?
say yes the buck does stop with them but the vast majority of the people that care enough to talk about these issues are thinking about disney in a very centralized and evil fashion now there's arguments to be made about that being now with a lot of the stuff they're putting out just simply having really really ham-fisted messages why are you making movies about girls on their period things like that like that that's fine but it goes to show that there's two different views of how people perceive the evils of disney's past behavior well i know and i i do want to speak to that um it it's a
good point this is why i was defending it to my sister i was like i know the backstory i know that no they didn't know about that and blah blah blah or that was just one artist that did that or or even well we're just being true to the culture by showing that and um so those i knew the backstory and so i was defending it and so let me finally get to about myself that i almost started three times finally we start making a film called john henry it's a little short animated film anybody see it you might have seen it when you were young in school or
something on a rainy day they put on john henry but uh you know just like johnny appleseed it's it's a folk tale um uh is is really where what kind of a story it is and so my mentor mark he becomes a director and he's like i want to make this john henry and it'll be kind of completion to you know some of the paul bunyan and and the johnny appleseed some of the other things that they did in the past in the 40s let's make a modern day folk tale and this should be about john henry and the story of john henry
if you guys anybody know it no i don't this is crazy uh okay a little bit over there um it's the story of you know african american man that is uh and it's in the we'll say 20s i'm probably getting my train tracks yeah with that okay i do know this story yeah so yeah it's it's man against machine is the yes and that story but it's also about slavery and people that have just come out of slavery john henry being one of them and this is how they're
trying to this is sort of the next phase of their freedom is they're no longer slaves but now they're working for the railroad company that's is a little bit slavery all over again uh but white and black and and chinese and you know the whole bit um and but they want to they've been told if you put this track across this is all true track all the way across the u.s you're going to get land you'll you'll we'll give you land because the the railroad companies owned land all along the way
and so they were promising that as a gift for uh all these people that would basically die making the railroad um and so john henry it's this is a tale placed in that time in that period is about him taking on a machine they this this could be ai today but uh um you know somebody has created a machine that can put can hammer in the spikes than than 10 men you know and so therefore it's about to take all their jobs
but also rob them from land having land right and and freedom and so he is this you know huge massive guy is the top guy there At just hammering into the spikes.
And so he takes on the machine.
So it's a man versus machine.
In the end, he ends up, you know, sacrificing, but basically dying because from exhaustion.
But he does beat the machine.
Everybody's able, and they throw the machine away.
So everybody's back to normal.
Progress no longer continues.
They just throw away the machine.
But anyway, we're making this short film.
And I'm a supervising animator.
I've just done Mushu in Milan.
This is right after Milan.
And I start working on that film as one of the supervising animators.
I'm going to do Polly.
Polly's the wife of John Henry.
And so it's a small team making this film, but it's also got spiritual elements throughout it and Christian spiritual elements.
So it'd be very clear.
And so this is the first time that Disney really going down that road, not only to illustrate African Americans, honestly, too.
That was pretty new at the time, too.
This is one of the very first Disney black characters, but also that we were going to have Christian faith embedded in it because we all know in that culture coming out of slavery, African Americans got through that through their faith.
You know, gospel music comes from that time, all of that, right?
We don't, it's cemented in it.
So why wouldn't you go back to Pocahontas now?
Remember what I said about Pocahontas, all the other being true to their culture.
We're being true to that time, that place, and that culture by saying, yeah, gospel music's going to be in the background.
They hired Sounds of Blackness, which was a group of gospel singers.
And a lot of the lyrics in there had God mentions and faith mentions.
But it was very light.
If any Christian would probably look at it, oh, it's very light, but yeah, it's there.
There's a cross on the church and stuff like that.
So, long story short, we have a screening with about 10 people in the room, but two of the people are the head of Disney Animation president and the vice president of Disney Animation.
The intention, and it's only storyboards.
We're showing it to say, Can we get the green light to spend more money and make the actual film, animate it?
But it had some animation.
So, anyway, they screen it, and afterwards, there's a you know, a pause where the lights come up.
We're all waiting to hear what the president thinks, and he says, This makes me feel uncomfortable.
What?
And I will never forget that line because that was the moment that I, and I didn't know it at the time, but that was the moment I can trace back to that I'm I half decided I'm leaving because for you six months later, I did leave, but I can trace it back to that moment.
There were other things, like I said, for years I was defending Depending Depending, but finally I heard it from the top.
Somebody has they're throwing in their personal opinions about Christianity.
And I was like, This is the movie.
That's one of the reasons I was so passionate about making it.
I'm like, finally, we get to show some Christian faith in our films.
And it seems so obvious.
It seemed, well, like, of course, you would, especially in this story for all those reasons I stated.
And now I'm hearing from the top, oh, I'm uncomfortable with this.
And I think some things were taken out and watered down.
I think some lyrics were changed.
And it still got all, you know, it still got gospel music in it and stuff like that.
But I'm just saying, all of a sudden, now it became truth to me.
And I literally started contacting Big Idea Productions after that, which makes Veggie Tales.
And I said, Hey, you need a Disney animator?
And they didn't, but they found a place for me.
And I ended up going over there and helping to create some Veggie Tales for a few years until unfortunately they went bankrupt.
What a wake-up call.
I mean, that must have just been such a jarring moment for you to hear an executive say that that made them uncomfortable.
Yeah, I mean, it's not even as if it was telling people to repent and accept the gospel.
That would be great, but it was just including some representation of Christianity.
And that was enough for them.
Did he, do you remember, did he elaborate?
Did he, obviously, we know why he was uncomfortable, but I'm curious if anything specific was said.
Well, yeah, and I don't want to badmouth Disney too much because some of what you're saying over there is that, you know, well, look, it's a company.
You know, we never knew, we never thought that Disney was a Christian faith-based company.
A lot of people during that time, especially in the 90s, were basically feeding that into Disney, that they thought they were pure.
And we all needed to sort of wake up to that, that a company is not a Christian company, especially if they're for-profit, right?
So we just were reading that into it because we were feeding it to our kids for so many years.
And then we started waking up to, oh, wait, they're putting in more adult themes and more adult themes or other faiths, cultures.
And I don't know if I like that anymore.
And so we were destroyed.
You know, this isn't the Disney that Walt created.
And that was the story for so many years of like, Walt would have never done this.
And I think just we needed to, as people, you know, and as parents, you know, police things a little bit more, not have, and that's what we're really talking about is, I, and I still feel strongly about this and some of what you're saying, which is, you know, we do have to police this as parents, but I also want to keep certain things in the house.
I don't want Hollywood telling me my kids certain things.
I don't want them to know about everything.
So back to that story, the big surprise was that right after the president said that, the vice president, who was a gay man, he said, what?
You don't get it?
That's what this is all about.
Of course it's in there.
And so it was equally surprising to see him defend it.
Interesting.
And say, no, that we look, because he's basically saying the same thing.
We did this in Pocahontas.
We did this for all those same reasons.
Why wouldn't we do it here?
It's a very reasonable response to say it was.
And I think that's something that a lot of companies now is they just, reason goes out the window.
It's like, it doesn't have to make sense.
It doesn't, it doesn't matter.
This is what we should push.
And of course, there's that famous clip of that lady saying, my not-so-secret gay agenda.
That's crazy when you're just trying to put in gospel music and someone's like, I'm uncomfortable.
But you also worked on films that had maybe elements you were uncomfortable with, but your job is to animate that.
And as long as it's not something that's overly grotesque, you know, it's like animating something in Milan where he talked to the ancestors.
Or, I mean, Mushu himself is a representation of that.
And so it's interesting to see that the change from common sense, yeah, I'm a gay man, but I, you know, makes sense that we're showing this to now they're kind of pushing these agendas more, not just looking at, well, it's true to the story and it's reasonable.
Did you see that change like as you were about to leave?
Or was that still pretty common to see like more common sense there?
Well, I honestly left right after that.
So literally within six months, I was gone.
And so where it went after that, I totally agree.
Obviously, it's gone much further to where it did become agendas.
You know, I would say that I don't know if I would say that was the president's agenda back then, like, and that other people were sort of, but it, well, it was.
I mean, him just saying that, right?
Because he wasn't talking about the film anymore and all that.
It was more, I feel uncomfortable because of these values.
They're different than mine.
And I don't know if I want, or the company, he's speaking for the company to some degree too, if I want Disney to have, and I'm stretching things, the stink of Christianity on it, right?
Like it might have been what was pushing that in his head.
Because honestly, we were, I'm going to say this for just Baptists in general, but because I was a Baptist, I wasn't totally happy about everything that they were saying either.
We were kind of in an embarrassing moment in the faith where we were like pointing fingers to things that were like, I knew the truth.
I'm like, that's not sex in the clouds.
So, you know, you guys are running with something.
You're not even looking for the answer.
You're just making up your own answer.
I know we do that now too, obviously.
I'm speaking to the now too.
Is that journalism was starting to get thrown out.
People weren't really researching anything.
They were just saying what they thought.
And we went there first, honestly.
The Baptist church in this example.
But, I mean, were we part right?
I found out we were part right.
And that was why I left because I was like, okay, I can't, I can't go to Disney and have it babysit my kids anymore.
And I think that was the awakening at that moment was that through those couple of, we'll say five to eight years in the late 80s to early 90s, they were starting to go in areas that honestly, I didn't want them to go in.
I didn't want them to tell my kids about, you know, questioning your sexuality and things like that.
That's not what I think kids should be seeing in cartoons.
I still strongly feel this.
And I don't think I'm crazy for thinking.
That's insane.
Are you out of your mind?
Right.
I sound old-fashioned.
But this is the thing.
People will call that old-fashioned.
That's how the vast majority of people feel about these things, even if they won't say it.
People don't want their kids seeing that.
And most of the people defending it aren't parents.
Most of the people defending it don't even have kids.
It seems like for most people, it seems that the idea of teaching sexuality to children is something that should be left to the parents.
And the people, like Seamus was saying, the people that are most vocally saying, oh, well, no, it shouldn't be.
Like, they're not parents.
Or at the very least, they're not really in a position to make decisions for other people's kids.
I mean, the idea that the government should do it or what have you is offensive enough, which, you know, people argue about whether or not there should be sex education in schools.
And, you know, I'm not a young guy or anything.
When I was going to school, it was whether or not there should be sex education.
Now it's a given that there should be.
And it's about actually what the sex education should be.
And it's gone way beyond anything, anyone that was making the argument 30 years ago when I was in school, you know, what it should have been.
Well, you know, sex ed when I was a kid and I had to sign the form.
Your parent had to sign the form and give you permission to go to that one class.
And there was a lot of giggling and stuff like that.
And the girls would go.
It was more like biology, though.
That's what I'm going to say, is it was it was part of the biology class or science, whatever, that you were taking at the time.
We're going to go into this subject for a day.
And that's all it was.
And we're going to, so we need to kind of get extra permission here because we're going to go in an area that's going to be, basically, we're going to tell you about the birds and the bees.
And honestly, a lot of parents are bad at that.
We're still bad at that, right?
I have four daughters.
I could totally attest that I did not tell my girls about the bird and the bees.
My wife did, thankfully, but I didn't want to go there.
It's very awkward, right?
Hard.
But we, so they, they did step in and say that, but you had to sign a form.
And if, and a lot of people sign, wouldn't sign it.
And they said, no, I didn't.
And those poor kids would then sit out and they'd be ostracized that, oh, your mom didn't sign it.
You know, they were actually outcasts for that.
But I understood what it was because, again, it was just the biology of this is how a baby's made.
You need to know this.
This is how you could prevent it.
They did go there.
But they wouldn't get into, and here's what all the other forms of sex are.
Yeah.
To that point, one of the, we've got a video about that kind of, you know, is touching on this topic here.
And this is actually from Disney, right?
So I believe.
So if you want to pull that up there, Carter.
That's big cure of sex.
Volumes off.
is he muted uh excuse me Which of these products would you recommend?
Oh, um, well, these are the tampons I usually use.
Thank you.
I prefer pads.
They're more comfortable for me.
Thank you.
I always get the ones with wings.
Thank you.
Get them scented and bleach-free if you can.
Thank you.
Yo, my daughter loves these.
And keys might be easier if it's her first period.
These are really environmentally friendly.
You notice the trans flag on the shirt.
I saw that right away.
I mean, no, wait, now that's not from the movie.
I think it's characters from the movie.
It's a short probably that came out after.
And look, I've never seen it.
And look, I can see the humor or the intent, intended humor, which is, oh, look, so many people are so helpful about something that you don't need all these.
And he comes back.
Like, I get it.
But, you know, again, that's not something that I don't see why any parent would want their children to be watching that.
Yeah, like I see the humor in South Park, but I wouldn't want the kids seeing that.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
I mean, not to sound like a 1950s dad, but I know I'm going to.
I didn't know why that guy said anything.
Why was there a guy that said, I like this?
My daughter likes this.
It's weird.
Well, no, the daughter was the last guy, and that made sense.
But there was a guy that said, this is the one I like the wings or whatever.
Even then, my dad would never be like, my daughter likes this one.
My dad would never jump in that conversation.
He would just like walk away.
Well, I don't even know if he'd be in that aisle because why would he be in that aisle?
And if a father, and if that would have been a funny joke, have one guy kind of sleek away.
Like, that's the other thing, too.
It's like, if a father did know that, he actually would be failing to protect his daughter by revealing private information about her.
Like, what, what a girl wants a bunch of people to know about something so private about herself.
Like, that's really wrong.
Or to like be like, I love these ones loudly.
Like, that's not, as a woman, that is not something we would just like, we'd quietly kind of be like, if they asked us a question, be like, oh, I like, you know, that one.
But, you know, you wouldn't be like screaming it.
But then also going back to the conversation we were just having about sex ed, I was in, I think, fifth grade when we did it.
And we still had to get a permission slip from a parent signing it saying you can go and do this.
And my dad loved my dad.
He checked in after.
And I was raised primarily by my dad.
And he asked at, he's like uncomfortable, but he's like, so it's good.
I'm like, yep, all went good.
It was fine.
But because I couldn't have that conversation with my mom as much, at the time it was helpful.
So I see the, you know, like why they do it because some parents don't know how to talk to kids.
Some parents don't have one parent in the household.
It's important.
But we learned about the very basic things.
Like we learned about pets and tampons because we were girls.
The guys, I don't think the boys learned about that.
And the boys were separate from us.
So we never talked about that in the same room as each other.
And then I remember going back in, and we had a female teacher.
They had a male teacher.
And I remember coming back into the classroom after, and it was awkward because it's supposed to be awkward after you have that conversation and you see like a boy for the first time after that.
They're like, you.
To that point, like, it's, it's, it's fine.
Like, boys don't need to know that stuff.
Right.
It's fine if a boy hears that stuff, right?
There's nothing wrong with that.
But that also, like, that isn't knowledge that a boy needs, right?
Like, yeah, not at all.
There should be some mystery about the opposite sex when you're young, especially.
And another reason I was always very skeptical of those programs is because the way they treated abstinence education, they said you're teaching religion if you tell kids to be abstinent, which is so bizarre because it's not like only religious parents don't want their kids to make that mistake and do something like that outside of marriage.
My dad, actually, in the late 80s, early 90s, he wrote an abstinence-only sex education guide that was used in a number of schools.
And the ACLU funded a lawyer to sue them to get the curriculums out of the schools because they said it was teaching religion.
Even though there was no mention of God, there was no mention of religion.
And so what my dad would do is he would give conferences to educators about this.
And he would ask the entire room of people, how many people in this room believe that the high schoolers at your school should be having sex?
No one would raise their hand.
How many think they shouldn't?
They would all raise their hands.
If we all believe they shouldn't, then why can't we tell them not to?
And so it becomes clear that the whole agenda behind these programs was to normalize it, to spread the state's values about this kind of behavior instead of the parents' values.
And I get why that popped up because we, and that was kind of, you know, the other side saying, well, wait, you've been teaching about other sexes and other forms of sex.
Let's put it that way.
And now we want to say the other one, which is not having sex.
And you guys aren't talking about that.
And so that's where that came from, just to be clear, because, you know, you got to remember back, this was after years of being, you know, having sex ed and sex ed and then getting to the point where, oh, no, you were being judged if you didn't let your kid just have that sex ed talk.
Just to play devil's advocate a little bit here.
If the child is not having sex, or if the argument is to not have sex, then that's kind of where the sex education ends, right?
Like if it's like, oh, yeah, you know, we should be telling kids to abstain, then there isn't anything further that you would be telling in schools at least.
This is an important point, though.
The purpose of sex education on all levels is actually to tell kids what not to do.
Because when someone gets married, like they'll figure it out.
But what sex education programs now do is they still tell you, don't have sex without this form of artificial contraceptive, right?
It's still done in a way where you're telling people what the limits are and what not to do.
Abstinence-only sex ed just says don't have sex outside of marriage, which we know is the most conducive to human flourishing.
You're less likely to get divorced if you don't have sex outside of marriage.
You're less likely to get STDs.
You're less likely to have a child outside of wedlock.
Like it's not even just for religious reasons.
By all measurable life outcomes, it's better advice, but we don't give it to kids.
Well, and I think a big problem is they just say, well, but if you get pregnant, don't worry.
You can just get rid of it.
Like that's another problem.
And it's in me.
That is what came from that idea.
Right.
And so I think like the idea wasn't even me growing up.
It's like, well, if you have sex, you get pregnant.
Here did I. You know, it was one of those things that I don't get pregnant.
And, you know, you're so scared.
You're like, well, I can't take care of a kid.
That scared you into not doing it because you're like, I can't, I'm 17.
I'm 16, whatever.
I can't take care of a child.
Well, nowadays, you know, women go or young girls go to, young women go to, you know, the kind of colleges for their, you know, first checkup.
And the first thing they would do is try and put them onto birth control right away.
So, I mean, that actually take, if you're on birth control, that does take away that concern of, you know, oh, I might get pregnant.
You know, reality team.
Sure, sure.
But not all.
Listen, no, I understand that, but the point, the general kind of feeling that people have is I can't because I'm on, right?
It's not about whether or not it'll fail.
It's just that, and so they behave as if they cannot.
And even then, they see abortion as like a, I don't know, I hate saying it this way, but they see it as like a get out of jail free card.
They're like, I can just go abort the kid.
And like, and then when you dare to say, we should defund those clinics or we shouldn't be doing, we shouldn't support this, then you're the bad guy for like wanting people to have kids and start families and maybe not kill the baby.
That's like, it's insane.
It's absolutely insane.
Well, I don't know if you know, but we're just having way too many kids in America.
Apparently, the really big problem is like we're way above the replacement rate.
People have, their families are too large now.
So we have to be very concerned.
Pull back to entertainment.
So most of what I've seen cartoons, please.
Yeah, yeah, sorry.
Pull back to entertainment.
And all of that is valid.
But the point is, is like most of what I've seen in television and movies is that they would treat the idea of like teenagers having sex as inevitable, therefore tell the reality of the story, right?
Like you were saying earlier, there's like, if we tell the kids in the show about teenagers to just not have sex and none of them have sex, then the story's kind of over and there's nothing to tell.
And that's the Trojan horse they use to make that.
Very rarely do they end up going into the story about the character that does have to have an abortion.
When they do, they're not going to show it as the painful experience that it is.
And that has been done in the past.
Like in my generation of like TV shows about teenagers growing up, there was usually those episodes.
But those are the ones that tended to feel like they got out of entertainment and went into edutainment and you felt like you were being preached to.
So it wasn't even done in a tactful manner that was able to communicate, you know, just how painful and awful something like abortion is in a way that didn't feel like you were being preached to by whoever was making it at the time.
And the thing that I always say is like well-told stories makes the propaganda go down easier.
And it would be nice if they could actually do that with something you want to show, like the horrors of abortion.
Whereas most of the time when they were telling those stories, you ended up turning it off or going to something else because you're like, eh, like, I get it.
It's bad.
Whereas the other stuff, the propaganda that's to tell you all of the generically modern liberal talking points were made really, really well at that time period.
So you end up kind of imbuing with those ideas without realizing it because it was made so well.
But the stuff that you needed to actually convey well wasn't.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a slippery slope that we've been on.
And that's the point, which is, you know, I grew up in a poor area.
And I must admit, I'm a little bit on the pro, the biological sex in the schools talk.
And that's where it started, I think was a good thing.
I think being in a poor area, I didn't have a dad growing up.
I didn't, so I didn't know about any of that stuff.
I wasn't, my mom wasn't telling me.
And she certainly didn't know probably a few of the guy versions of the story.
I don't know.
She did have kids.
So maybe she did.
But like, certainly I kind of needed that talk, I'll be honest.
And all my friends didn't have dads.
Like, none of us did.
There's a huge lack of dads in this horror area that I'm.
Sorry to hear that.
That's rough.
It was rough.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, I took what, you know, we had a like a, they used to do these things too.
I'm on a tangent, but they used to do these things at schools where you'd have father-daughter nights and they'd come and have a dinner and I don't know, do something.
So we did something in second grade.
It's actually a very wholesome story.
Yeah.
I'm sure my dad will end up watching this.
But there was a kid whose dad hadn't been around.
And I grew up in a nice suburban area.
And there was a kid whose dad didn't show up for second grade.
Was like a fathers come in and have breakfast with the kids.
And my dad just was like, Come here, you're ours now.
And I can still, I don't, I haven't talked to this kid in probably a decade or so, but I can still remember that story.
It had such an impact on me.
My dad was like, Your dad's not around?
Okay, cool.
Well, now you have me.
Like, yeah.
And it ended up being my brother was friends with his brother, and it all kind of worked out really well.
I think your point of like, there's no one to have that conversation sometimes.
That's why parents can opt out.
If a parent's like, I want to have that conversation with my kid, you can opt out.
Yeah.
And that's fair.
And for some kids, it's necessary because they don't have a father or a mother around.
I honestly needed that talk.
And I can honestly say that from being a kid that didn't know anything about that.
Right.
And yeah, it was yucky and icky and embarrassing.
But I mean, and I know, you know, later on, I got a pretty good education about women because I have four daughters.
But and I was that guy going to get tampons at the grocery store for many years.
But, you know, I will say, we've started as a society, I think, with really good intentions, honestly.
And the schools had very good intentions.
But those good intentions have gone so far to build, but this person now feels like an outcast, or this person feels left out.
This person feels out that we've now gone so far, like, why couldn't we just had a counselor that that certain group that didn't feel like they're represented in the bigger group?
They could go talk to that person.
I don't know.
There's probably just other ways around it.
And I think we've just, but now we don't have the father-daughter night.
Yeah.
We don't have some of the good stuff that we had.
And I was going to say, my version of that was like, you know, my mom brought me to Father's Son night.
There was a father's son night.
And my mom brought me.
And there were a lot of moms there that night representing the dad.
And it was embarrassing a little bit and stuff like that.
But you also like, I love my mom.
Yeah, of course.
She was amazing.
She filled that gap.
And I didn't feel like I missed out too much.
And did she raise you Christian or did you convert later?
We were raised actually Catholic at the very beginning, but we always had faith, but she did drop away.
She had a lot of troubles with the church.
And a lot of it had to do with being left behind and alcoholic father that I had.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, no, it was hard for her.
And so she struggled with her faith for sure.
But she always felt like it was important for us to be exposed to it, honestly.
And that would be the way she would probably put it.
And so we found faith just being going to church in a fairly irregular, but then later on, more regular as she kind of came back to the church.
So yeah, I would say, yes, we were brought up Christian.
Wow.
Well, I guess to sort of segue back to what we were talking about, I want to mention one more interesting and haunting stat I learned about media consumption.
In households where television is watched more often, teenage pregnancy rates are higher, which is jarring to know that that's actually been quantified and that we do know that certainly, but I don't know that anyone's shocked by that based on the kinds of things we see on television.
We know the kind of media people consume does influence their behavior.
I was speaking, I want to say about two years ago on a podcast with Dr. George Barna, and he did a study on this specifically about where children get their values.
And what he found is that what children saw in media had much more of an effect than what they heard at church or what their parents taught them or what they heard in school.
So it's so important for people with good values to be making media.
And that's sort of why I want to segue back to what you were talking about with your studio.
If you want to talk a little bit, A, about going to big idea studios and B, then starting your own venture and beginning to make your own films.
Yeah, well, immediately when I went to Big Idea and I started working on VeggieTales and it had been going for a while.
was kind of at it during its heyday.
The very first video I did was Esther.
I learned computer animation, which was hard enough to do that big switch from 2D animation to hand-drawn 2D to now I'm using a mouse and animating.
It was so hard.
That must have been really hard.
Fortunately, they didn't have arms and legs.
It was a good way to start into CG animation.
It was like, you know, kind of pretty basic.
But, you know, learning that, but then at the same time.
Now I'm going to meetings where we pray in the beginning of the meeting.
I had left Disney where even back in the late 90s and now 2000, when I left, I would get talked to by HR if I was talking about my, what I learned in church, you know, with a friend and somebody else overheard it and felt awkward.
And so they report it.
Reported your mama's array.
They would do it very gently back then.
You know, you weren't going to get fired, anything crazy, but you were just going to be like, hey, can you keep that in your office?
You know, somebody felt awkward, you know, hearing that.
And so, but the shock was still very evident when I went to now what was, they didn't call themselves a Christian company because legally there's, they weren't non-for-profit.
They were a for-profit and blah, blah, blah.
But most of the people there were Christians.
And so they would out, but they would say, you have to agree that if you're going to work here, that you're okay with Christianity, basically, was the way they put it because we are going to pray in the beginning of meetings and things like that.
And so it was such an eye-opener.
And I was already a believer and a Christian.
That's the whole reason I was there.
But to see this new culture where you could bring it to work, I could be 100% me at work.
And I never felt that way.
And it wasn't until I left it that I even realized I was missing the other part of me.
And now I'm actually feeding it into the content too.
I'm actually talking about things I learned in the Bible that we can maybe put in here into the content.
And so that was just such a game changer for me and an eye-opener.
And then doing it with humor and all that and finding new ways to tell these stories that I think people were really responding to back in those days too.
That led me to then, after they went bankrupt and things like that, I started my own company, but then we helped create the Superbook show for CBN. And that went for like good five or six seasons.
And I was with them for many years, just as a contractor, but basically helping them create and develop.
And I even directed the pilot episode of Superbook.
Then to, you know, many other little, little smaller children's books and things like that that I was involved in.
Finally, starting my own company, Pencilish Animation Studios.
And that was in 2020, right?
As everybody was going into COVID and I'd heard about this Reg CF. So I did a crowd invested company.
And so I got about $3 million from about almost 5,000 people and started Pencilish.
And we create edifying content.
It's not all Christian content.
I would just make that clear because I have investors that are not believers.
But they wanted to, they knew me.
And they knew, so some people think, oh, it's all going to be Christian content because they knew I was a believer.
And I'm on Instagram.
I have a good following and stuff like that.
So I had a lot of people that were coming in that just knew who I was already.
But most of them just love 2D animation too.
And they knew I stood for that.
That was something I was going to try and keep going.
And so they all were kind of coming for different reasons.
Oh, he's a former Disney guy.
He's going to create new IPs that, oh, I smell money.
You know, he might make the next Mickey Mouse and I can own a piece of that.
That would be pretty cool.
There is a desire for the return of 2D animation, anyways.
I know Disney was already talking about trying to like, they wanted to resurrect 2D animation at Disney.
Like, crap, we don't have anybody who can actually do it anymore.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, well, and that's kind of what led to then a couple years later after creating my own content.
And you could see it on my Pencilish Studios YouTube channel.
We created some TV style shows and pilots.
Then to then getting approached by a nonprofit that was trying to make a 2D animated feature film called Light of the World.
And so my good friend from my Superbook days was the director and he asked me to come on and be his directing partner.
And so that's John Schaefer.
And so me and John then launched into, and I brought in my producer from Pencilish.
So we were those dinosaurs that knew 2D animation and they needed that because they decided they wanted to make a 2D feature film about the life of Christ.
And I never thought I'd hear all those words in one sentence.
And I was just like, I'm in, hardcore, let's go.
And so that movie just came out, Light of the World.
It was just in theaters just a few weeks ago.
It's left now, but it'll be on VOD, on Amazon and Apple.
You'll be able to rent it and buy it there.
And of course, it's still going, it's being distributed in Latin America right now.
Great.
Well, could you walk us through some of the differences between making a 2D animated film in 1995 through 1998 when you're working on Mulan versus making a 2D animated film today with all the computer aid?
You know, yeah, so more on a technical side, I guess.
And also just, you know, company culture, how large versus small the team is able to be with all the technology, just the differences in general.
I'm really curious to hear.
And I'm also curious to hear about what Brett was saying from your perspective, where it's harder to find people who can do good 2D animation and if it was harder for you guys to find a team.
Yeah, yeah.
So I'm just curious about all of that.
Well, honestly, yeah, you have to find a staff to do 2D animation has become very hard.
Fortunately, TV animation is still largely 2D animation.
That's true.
It's a production process, though, that is now more vector-based and more, you could say, a little less hand-drawn.
It's sort of like computer animation and hand-drawn kind of came together.
And that's Tomb Boom Harmony style animation, which used to be sort of like flash animation back in the 90s.
So it's more like rigged 2D drawings that you're manipulating.
And that can look very, very cheap and more TV style.
Or now there are studios that have taken that really, really far and they do hybrids.
We found that studio that could do a hybrid of rigged animation that can look a little more mechanical, although they've gotten really good at it where it doesn't.
And then they also add drawings.
And that's what you need really to make it look good is that to get to a closer to a Disney level that was really pencil and paper back in the day when I was doing it to now being able to manipulate things in the computer.
And you still need drawing ability.
You still need to feed that in there to make it look good and come to life, honestly.
That's the difference rather than just moving kind of very mechanically.
That's that's the lower end, right?
But if you get to the point where you get a studio that really knows traditional 2D animation and all the 12 principles that the night old man made from Disney, you know, all that kind, that's what we found in Ireland.
And so it's a studio called Lighthouse Studios that we worked with.
So back to your question, the big difference is we were completely virtual.
And so we're doing meetings all day on Zoom or Google Meets.
And it was just back to back to back.
Now we're talking to the background department.
Now we're talking to the character designers.
Now we're talking to storyboard artists and reviewing things that way.
But it's all one meaning after another.
And because we got people in Ireland, we got people in Spain.
We got people.
So back to your question and about finding people.
Yeah, it was a worldwide search nowadays.
And fortunately, we have Instagram.
So I already follow a bunch of 2D animators that are all around the world that did Klaus and things like that.
Klaus was made.
It was a Netflix movie.
That was a very popular.
That one did really, really well there.
Very high-end.
Yeah.
Animation was beautiful on that.
Yeah.
That was more Disney or more level, right?
I would create 2D animation.
That was done in Spain.
And so we hired a lot of those people that had worked on Klaus.
We hired a lot of people that worked in Ireland, too, is another hot spot for 2D animation because of Cartoon Saloon who did Song of the Sea and Secret of Kells, that real stylized 2D. Non-union?
Yeah, non-union.
What was it like directing with your animators across the ocean?
Yeah, I mean, even our directors were in two different places.
You know, I'm in the Nashville area and then he's out in Wisconsin.
And so none of us, and then our producer, one was in Cincinnati, one was over in Orlando.
And so the one we worked with constantly was Orlando.
So, and the only one was my twin brother.
We hired him.
Yes, I was his boss, just to make that clear.
Which one of you is older?
Which one came out first?
No, I'm older.
I'm three minutes older.
But he was my boss on Mulan.
He was the director.
Oh, your younger brother.
That's brutal.
Yeah, I just, we tag each other all the time because finally he was, I was his boss.
But anyway, he became our animation director.
And so he was in Nashville.
So fortunately, but we still were, you know, half hour apart.
So we're still not driving in together and there's no studio to go to.
So that, that, yeah, it was a wild challenge.
And to build that fairly quickly, because we only had like two and a half years to make a movie when you'll do it in four, five, six years, honestly, depending on how far back you go from idea, it's at least six, if not eight, that it'll be in development for years before they actually go into production.
So we're making it, we're sprinting to make this movie.
So I really want people to see it, especially those.
I got to stop here and tell a story from Chris.
Chris is one of you guys that works here.
What's his last name?
Chris Carr.
Chris Carr.
Okay.
He drove me from the hotel to get here today.
And he's a good talker.
He said, I want to be on.
He should be on this podcast because he told me this great story.
He said, you know, because it involves Light of the World, the film that I made.
But actually, the one that came out before us in April in Easter was another Jesus movie.
And it was animated, but it was computer animated.
And it was called The King of Kings.
And so at first he was confused.
He's like, wait, did I see your movie?
Was it The King of the King?
No, we did the other one, The Light of the World, that came out in September, and nobody saw it because they were all back to school.
It was bad timing.
But the Easter one, King of Kings, he said his kids didn't really know.
And this is true of a lot of families today.
I'm not really a Christian.
I'm not really a believer, but I think my kids need to be exposed to it.
And that's kind of how we put it nowadays.
But God bless those parents that are saying, I think it's important enough that at least they get to make their own decision.
And I need to expose them to it.
And they had a family like that.
I guess his wife was, you know, Jewish and had not was involved in that church either.
And then him, I think he was sort of not going to church, but like, we'll say a light Christian.
And I think that was how he put it.
And he said, so we would, we had both kind of had sort of problems with the church and we weren't really going.
And yet we had these young, young two boys.
And so they said they went.
They made a decision.
We should go see King of Kings.
Right.
And so now I'm advertising a whole nother movie.
But they went.
It's because you believe in the message.
I mean, that's the subject.
But yes.
So they went and saw King of Kings.
And her being brought up Jewish, but also not really.
being involved in the faith side of that and pulling away from it.
She'd never heard this story before.
She said that the boys were a little antsy and stuff.
They weren't seeing Light of the World.
That's why.
They were a little antsy.
It's not as good.
But they, you know, were into it.
And they actually had to leave before the whole crucifixion.
But the mom, his wife, was entranced.
She was like, I want to see how this turns out.
She didn't know what was coming.
And you almost forget that there's people in the U.S., especially that have that experience of not really knowing the complete story.
Now, I can't wait.
I was pushing hard on them watching Light of the World now because they now go to church.
But because of that animated film, they've decided, and she became a believer.
She's a Christian.
It's amazing.
It's amazing.
It was an amazing story.
And I'm dropping my job because I'm like, this is everything.
It's not my movie, but this is everything that I'm doing right now and I care about.
And I'm hearing it played out for this small family that really need it.
Now the boys are loving church and going every week.
And they're seeing the influences of that faith in their lives.
The chosen has done this for a lot of people too.
100%.
More for adults, obviously, and not for kids.
But, you know, there's a lot of great storytelling in there that makes you forget if you went to church when you were a kid and the stories didn't interest you just because you're like you said you're young you're antsy you don't really want to sit through what is being said because it's the weekend and you want to go and be out with your friends but when you get into adulthood and you're like how did he eat all those fish in the boat like yeah yeah no i mean and so now i'm gonna sell a little bit um we when we worked on light of the world they they came to me was saying yes we're gonna make a story
of jesus with 2d animation i'm like i'm hooked they said it's fully financed oh okay now i'm really listening never happens um and by the way it was the founder of this nonprofit the salvation poem foundation is is the company behind it um he financed it himself it was a hundred percent twenty million dollar film that he put his own money into that's crazy there's people out there i don't know if you've heard this term reverse tither i just want to introduce reverse tithe i want more people to do this i
can't do it only certain people can do this where uh you know the bible says you should tithe 10 of of what you have oh so he tithes 90 he ties 90 lives off the 10 god bless him and so all that nine now you have to be rich to be able to do this right we all know that he's very rich he's had a couple very successful companies um and i bless him but yeah I mean, like, remarkably generous.
How many rich people give their money that freely?
I mean, you have to be a billionaire to have a million, right?
Yeah.
But he's giving more than that proportionately to what he owns and has.
And he's, so it's not just I finance this.
He's doing other ministries too.
He's a lot of different things that he, and I know you would hate it that I'm talking about this right now.
I just want the world to know these people are out there.
They're very few, but these are people that are living what they believe.
God bless it.
100%.
Well, and it's so important because so much art historically is, you know, through European history and so much of the most beautiful, iconic art was Christian art because the church was financing good art.
And it's so important for Christians to be involved in the production, but also the financing of art because there's a lot of non-Christians involved in financing art.
And as we've demonstrated here, I think, through this conversation, the art we consume comes to define our beliefs.
Yes.
And you have to like, you know, you guys are talking, the culture war.
That's right.
That's what we're talking about, right?
And you guys talk about all the time.
100%.
Are we investing in our families and our faith, or are we just talking about it?
And so this is the ultimate of that.
This is a man that now has said, I'm not just going to talk.
I'm going to give 90% of my wealth to my faith, to my belief that I want people to hear about the gospel.
And man, how can you question that guy?
How can you, anybody look at that and go, he's the problem with the world?
No, of course he's not.
He's what we need more of in this world.
Well, and it's also really important because we were talking earlier about Disney and a lot of the changes that might have to be made for commercial purposes.
But when something is financed by people who really believe in the project and the concern becomes less about generating a profit and more about saving souls or spreading an important message, you are much more free to keep that as the motivation behind the project without having to sugarcoat too much, without having to change too much.
It's really a beautiful thing.
God bless him for doing that.
That's extremely important.
And to go a step further, part of the plan, we weren't going to have a theatrical release because honestly, they were like, well, do we want to spend that money or could we just make another movie?
And how best to use that money?
Because he put another $10 million.
Now he's up to $30 million just to market it to get it out to theaters.
God bless him.
As an independent.
And we didn't go through the major Lionsgates or any of the other distributors because one, they didn't want it.
They didn't want to touch it.
Angel is the one that did King of Kings, and they are a faith-based entertainment company.
And that's why they released it.
And they do a great job at marketing and all that.
They did an awesome job at getting that out there.
And that's why also a lot of people didn't hear about Light of the World.
Yeah.
It was independently distributed.
Even proportionally, with as good as Angel Studios is doing, they're still small compared to most of these other studios.
And you're not going to get the retail space in these theaters that the other ones are getting.
It's just they're still considered an independent film.
Yeah, they aren't.
Well, no, they just went public.
They did recently.
A lot of people don't realize this, especially when you talk about some of the numbers surrounding animation.
People go, well, where does this money go?
How can it be this expensive?
The average Disney film costs $100 million, probably more at this point.
They were making films for $100 million, like $1,500.
It's probably $200 million out at this point.
They're closer to $200 than $100, yeah.
Yeah.
So it's insane.
And people are like, well, how can it be this expensive?
Well, A, like you mentioned, really hard to find people who can still do this stuff well for 2D animation.
For 3D animation, you need a giant studio.
Like you said, six to eight years to make a film.
Imagine financing a project for six to eight years that has, in some cases, hundreds of people working on it throughout the course of that time.
It is really, really expensive.
I mean, it's tremendously expensive.
It is hundreds.
And reiterations, they redo it, they remake stuff all the time.
I mean, that's one of the things that makes Marvel so bloated and is expensive is because they end up shooting nine versions of a scene.
They go to an animator, they have them shoot in a green screen room, and then they go to these VFX studios and they say, I want six versions of this scene, and it just costs a fortune.
Well, and I can speak to that because I was there.
I saw the waste at Disney.
Yep.
And some of it I loved, I must admit it.
I liked being able to play video games for half the day and when I didn't have a lot going on, I must admit.
But there was that's a small example.
But you could see, yes, all the iterations and changes.
Well, if you would have just made that decision, and a lot of times we'd come back to the original idea, right?
So like if you just made a decision there and felt confident in it and just pushed forward.
And that's the difference between filmmaking that way with a huge studio and huge budgets.
And honestly, they need that overhead.
I'm having discussions with people that were talking to the presidents of Disney in those days.
And they were like, we know there's a cheaper way to do it.
That's not our boat.
We have a cruise ship.
You want a speedboat?
Go buy a speedboat.
We're a cruise ship.
If we're the Titanic and there's something in front of us, we're going to go through it or acquire it.
That's what they do because they're big enough to do that.
They don't turn on a dime.
I built with Pencil-ish, we're a little speedboat.
We're going to dodge around and we're going to go off and make these things faster, make decisions because we have to.
Love that.
But you can get some great art out of that.
I really want our crowd that's listening right now to go see Light of the World when you get that opportunity.
It's not out yet because it just left theaters, but it'll be on PVOD, like the apples and the that'll be.
I mean, that's and that's the way that those movies make their money, anyways.
Like that's how that's how if you know, obviously his point isn't to make a profit here.
That was a, it was an investment for him because of his faith, but you know, he's buying eyeballs.
The um back in the day when you had your mid-budget movies, they didn't make their money back at the theaters, they made it on DVD and sales after the fact.
So, yeah, and some of those revenue streams are really dying off and not some of them basically gone now, most of them, yeah.
I mean, we're kind of in the movie version of what music has gone through 10 years or more, right?
When they just started, well, let's just give it away for free.
Well, the one thing that people don't realize when it comes to music, like they are giving it away for almost free, right?
Streaming services have been have become the place where everyone went.
But basically, from like 2000 until Spotify really broke onto the scene, Spotify started in 2006, but they didn't really get popular until apps started going into your phones, which was probably 2010 or so, right?
Was you can actually start downloading apps on your iPhone.
For that decade, though, 95% of music that people got was off of like Limewire or pirated.
Piracy stopped largely, not because people don't want to pay, get a free, get stuff for free, but because it was more difficult and risky for piracy than it was to get Spotify.
So like what happened was they made it so easy and inexpensive to get basically any music you want that the 10 bucks was worth it, you know, 10 bucks or whatever per month it used to be.
I'm not sure what it costs now, probably 15 or something like that.
But that fee was worth it so that way you didn't have to worry about if you're going to download a crappy copy, download something with a virus that messes up your computer or just makes your computer work poorly.
So It wasn't that people, you know, were like, oh, I definitely don't want to pay.
It's just they basically don't want to pay more than they want that convenience and that ease more than they want to worry about the issues that come with it.
I mean, and I totally agree that, and we have the opposite of that right now with film.
Going to a theater is so expensive now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That, yeah, you're going to turn to, well, I could see that on the internet for free illegally.
And we all know that's happening a lot.
I love the theater experience still.
I do too.
I don't know.
I'm a purist.
I can't.
It's like maybe just because I have such a short, my attention span is so horrible.
And at home, I'm just going to be looking at my phone.
But I find the theater experience to just be so worth it.
But you have to be selective.
Now I'm sure you're seeing a lot less.
Yeah.
When I was first married, we would go and we'd watch everything at the theater.
Not at the same night, but you know, we would go multiple times a week and pretty and have to wait for the next week.
Oh, what's coming out now?
Because we need something new.
We were seeing everything at the theater almost.
Yeah.
Well, and this is this kind of speaks a little bit to what Phil was talking about in the music industry.
Obviously, it's become more difficult for artists to make money because of a lot of these streaming services, because of iTunes initially selling these songs for so cheap.
But there are still bands that are able to go on tour and have these massive audiences in large stadiums.
And I would say the cinematic equivalent of that is the theater.
And it's so sad to see theaters dying out and to see that happen less often.
It is true that there are, you know, band, like live music is still where people, most, most artists will make most lion's share of their money.
But that is a, in the grand scheme of things, that really is a small group of people that actually want to go see live music.
There's a lot, like they're very committed.
Some people even, you know, travel around to follow bands and stuff.
But getting people out of their house nowadays is really hard because now you're, it's not that it used to be where if a band was in town, that might be the only thing that they had to do that night, right?
The only option.
But that was 20 or 30 years ago when I started.
But like nowadays, if there's a band in town, you're still competing with Netflix, with Xbox, with just sitting at home, the internet, and the cost of going out to see a band now.
It's expensive.
Well, and now you can just see clips of it.
So you're like, you know, I'm not there.
So everyone knows I like Taylor Swift.
I didn't go to her tour because I don't want money for that.
But like, I could see clips of it.
So like a lot of people think like it's funny because Brett has mentioned like, oh, I'll just watch the clips tomorrow.
I'll just watch this clip later.
And I didn't go to the movies for, I don't know how long before I met Brett.
And then all of a sudden he's like, well, we're doing a movie review.
So we're going to go here.
We're going to do this.
Are you guys together?
Yeah.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
Just got married last month.
Yeah.
Oh, congratulations.
Thank you.
What's the secret to making it last a month?
Yeah, I know.
I don't know.
I was going to do like my first culture.
It's my first post on X after we got married.
I was like, I've been married a week.
I know everything.
Ask me whatever you want.
But like, okay, so for instance, here's an interesting fact.
Brad Pitt's best performing movie of all time happened this year.
It was F1. Really?
It was an Apple release, and it was my favorite movie of the year.
The one genre that hasn't been tainted, sports movies.
Like they're fewer and far in between.
But in the last couple of years, F1 and Gran Turismo are both of my favorite movies from those respective years.
And that's because they stick to the formula of understanding, you know, stories of perseverance, stories of a veteran getting a second chance.
Those are largely, you know, assuming that it's not made with some type of agenda beforehand, those types of movies are still made in the way that they were before.
It's funny because that's my wife's favorite films are inspirational sports stories.
It's awesome.
And she married an artist, so I don't watch sports or anything.
But I've gotten into it.
I've seen them all.
You still understand the story, the type of story, the idea of somebody overcoming something is universal.
Yeah, the sports are the vehicle.
I don't have to know the rules of football mostly when I can't do it.
Like, it doesn't feel forced when you're watching those movies where like now it's like they want to hit quotas or inclusivity or whatever.
Like it didn't feel forced watching F1, the kid he was mentoring, was a black guy.
I didn't think anything of it.
But now I'm watching.
So like they're so I'm a big fan of Blue Bloods and they're coming out with a new iteration of it.
It's Boston Blue, I believe, is what it's called.
And now the partner of this main character, Danny, is going to be like a black woman police officer.
And I don't know what it was about it because I don't really care about that stuff most of that, but I knew it was because she was a black female that she was given this role.
Whereas in Blue Bloods, it never felt forced.
He had like a, she was Hispanic female, but she felt like she could be a police officer and it felt like that was authentic.
Like her character was very authentic.
But now I see stuff like that.
And my first thought is like, it has to be inclusive.
Like media has gone so far down that rabbit hole in entertainment where I can see something and I immediately see the politics in it.
Unfortunately, you can't unsee that.
It's very noticeable now.
It's really like a family TV, animated TV show, and somehow there's a Chinese son and a African-American girl.
Wait, how does that work?
And they were, well, this is an uncle.
And they have to go out of their way to sort of remake the family so that it has everybody represented.
And also looks like he's always an idiot.
The dad is always an idiot.
I'm okay with that.
But it's like, or like, you know, I don't know, like the dad's always like soft.
He's not super masculine.
And it's not, and my father is someone who I grew up and he had a softer side to him and I respected him a lot because he had that soft side, but he also was our dad.
And like, it's funny, my dad's maybe the nicest person I've ever met.
And, you know, he is literally, but he's also scary because you know that if you, you know, upset him or he goes to there.
Exactly.
And so there's something about, you know, the loss of masculinity.
And that's a whole nother discussion that could be had.
But in entertainment, when we're talking about taking entertainment back, I think having those traditionally masculine roles where there's the father who's the head of the household and the mother who takes care of the children.
And the kids are, you know, sometimes they don't listen and they do what kids do, but they still respect their parents.
There's a lot of like no respect for parents in entertainment now or romanticizing like kids getting away with really bad behaviors.
And we kind of talked about it earlier with like sex ed.
Now kids are getting that in those conversations, like in those shows.
They have those conversations about, you know, like their friends or whatever.
And now your kids watch that.
And I know you're going to have a kid very soon, Phil.
And it has to be kind of scary because you don't know what you can turn on for your kid now.
Whereas before, like my parents were like, oh, there's Dragon Tales.
Have a good day.
Like, you'll see you later.
Here's Powerpuff Girls.
Watch that.
And they didn't have to worry about it corrupting me.
And now you have to worry about whether it's, because you think cartoons would be safe.
You would think that because they're kids, right?
Well, not anymore.
And that's 100% of my career, honestly.
I got into animation.
Everything I do is for kids.
You know, I've done comic books.
I've done video game design, you know, and TV and feature films in animation.
And I always thought, I'm safe.
I'm not going to have to turn down a job or something like that.
And it's happened many times.
I turned down a Barbie thing years ago.
This is back when it was like the Bratz movement.
Yeah, yeah.
And I had four daughters.
And I was like, I don't want them buying brats.
I don't want them to buy this new version of Barbie that's kind of, it was like sex in the city.
This is how it was pitched to me.
I was going to, I was going to direct this.
They wanted me to direct this.
I had left Disney, and so this is one of the first gigs that came my way.
I was independent.
And so they'd come to my way and said, we'd like you to direct this thing.
It's a new series.
We're going to do sex in the city with Barbie and kind of ish, you know.
I mean, you're like, what?
What kind of a pitch is that?
And the pitch was like, okay, I think I'm out, but continue.
I'm intrigued.
I just want to hear how this is going to land.
And it was because of brats and things like that.
They'd just gone, well, Barbie's not that young.
So we can't do the brats thing.
What's the equivalent of the brats thing with a little bit more of an adult character?
Oh, it's sex in the city.
My mom would like change.
So they were.
It was Barbie and her friends.
They were going to be in New York and New York.
And it was going to be a lot of fashion, of course, too, just like Sex in the City does have that.
Yeah.
But it was going to be more mature.
They were going to have really like dating relationship kind of stuff.
And I was like, this is not for me.
I'm glad you turned that down.
And this, I was still at Disney.
I think this is well before the whole John Henry story I told before.
But, oh, no, this is just after that.
Sorry, I just left.
And so because of what I'd gone through, I was starting to see, oh, wait, this is happening not just at Disney.
This is Mattel, right?
And I just went, I got it.
I had to make a rule that if I can't show my young daughters what I'm working on, I'm not going to work on it.
Good for you.
Good for you.
It became my sort of mantra for at least while they were young because now they watch everything.
We need more people like that in the industry because I think people, you're not even trying to like force a message.
You're just what's friendly for kids?
What's something that I can put my kids in front of and I don't have to worry about the messaging?
We need more people that are doing that because now you have to worry about, you know, we've talked about having kids and I'm like, man, I don't even know where to show them.
Like, it's going to have to be old stuff that I watched because I know that's safe.
I mean, I turned out relatively okay.
So obviously it's, you know, got to be kind of safe.
But it's, it's kind of scary to know.
And then to hear about, they say, I'm uncomfortable by this Christian theme.
Like, what is so, I mean, I'm uncomfortable by some of the things they put in media now.
I don't cry about it to get it changed.
And that's another thing is people are really soft and they just, oh, I'm uncomfortable.
My feelings.
Well, that doesn't change the fact that Christianity is the biggest, you know, religion in this country.
Yeah, I mean, it's sad because we're such a divide, we're all divided as a country, obviously.
Yeah.
But now our entertainment has to be.
Yeah.
Like you have to go to Angel to see something that I feel safe about for my kids watching because it has Christian values.
And there's, and then Bluey, I guess we can say, is somewhere down the middle, right?
That I think, I think, has so far been very safe, probably for everybody, I would guess.
Yeah.
But there's very few.
And people say, oh, Bluey's a hit.
And by the way, I go to Kids Screen.
I go to these markets where people are buying and selling animated products, right?
They're trying to find the next big Bluey, honestly.
And that's the thing they point to now.
And I'm told to make Purpley or whatever.
It's going to go and be the next big hit.
And I don't want to do that.
I want to make my own thing.
Exactly.
I want to make an original IP that, yes, hits all the fun of Bluey, hopefully, but let's not copy that, right?
That's what Holly wants to do: just copy whatever's the hit.
Okay, but why can't we do that?
And that's what Pencilish is all about, my company, is we're trying to say, why can't we create things that are pure and good and appealing at the same time, still look good quality-wise, hopefully.
But Edify.
And Edify is a sliding scale.
Yes, Edifying is light of the world, also.
A very Christian film.
It's about Jesus.
That'd be all the way to the right of that scale.
To the left is SpongeBob, right?
I mean, like, that's still edifying.
It's fun.
It's not going to be somewhere and probably hopefully safe.
That's going to be an element of it.
It's something that doesn't get into really faith at all.
I mean, I don't think they've ever talked about any kind of faith element in Spongebob.
So, okay, that's edifying, but it's not, it's not showing any kind of faith.
But it is establishing that life is on earth and this is just a fun place to be.
Yeah.
Under the sea.
Well, and also, even when you get into media that isn't for children, there's a scale of other something's edifying.
Like, you obviously wouldn't show a little kid something like Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan, but like, those are very beautiful films with good stories and a good message.
I think one of the really tragic things that's happened to our culture is adult has become a euphemism for pornographic.
When, of course, there's nothing adult about that kind of thing.
It's not mature.
That's not like something mature people want to make or be involved with.
It's like it's disgusting and depraved.
What adult should mean is like takes the audience seriously, respects the audience, and has some subject matter that children can't watch.
Sometimes you want to make a film that explores a theme that a little kid isn't ready for, but that doesn't mean it has to be full of lewd imagery and bad morals and evil characters who are portrayed as good.
That's another tragic part of this is adult films now are almost universally filled with horrific content.
Well, I like the term mature themes, right?
Yeah.
Because that makes sense.
You could say Lion King has mature themes.
You know, you gotta, you're gonna end up talking to your kid about death probably and walk out of there because that might have been, and a lot of people, I hear this online, that's where I first learned about death, basically.
I was a young kid and saw this father die and it was traumatic.
And I saw the kid crying over the body.
I mean, it's that's a mature theme.
Yes.
I love that.
Adult, you're right, I think should be reserved for really, you know, sexually oriented and things like that themes.
You know, here's a good example of that.
A really good movie came out recently from Angel, Sketch.
I don't know if you guys saw this movie.
A lot of people haven't seen it.
It came out theatrically.
And I don't think it was the timing.
I think it was how they sold it.
So because it was from Angel, everybody thought, okay, well, Angel only makes Christian content and hopefully less cheesy than some of the other areas, usually, but have made some real good hits that are Christian themed.
Okay, then they release Sketch.
And I know the director and the writer and the producer of this film out of Nashville.
And it's a fun family film that talks about some mature themes, which is the moment, the mom has just died, and it's a dad raising these two kids.
And it's soon after the mom has died.
And the little girl is going to her sketchbook now and drawing very dark, dark drawings, meaning like bloody.
Sure.
Like this is the kid at school that I don't like, and he's being attacked by this, you know, demon-type character that's stabbing him through the heart.
And like, and they play it for humor.
They do a really good job at this because I just made it sound really horrible.
But, and it is dark.
But we all know that we've all seen kids.
And it's a little girl.
We see boys go through this a lot, right?
When they're very young.
And it's usually war things.
Like, this is tanks, and here's all the bloody.
And they liked war.
And some boys get really entrenched in that.
And, but oftentimes, there is some thread of where's that coming from?
Right.
And so this is talking about that.
This is a little girl that this is how she's dealing with the loss of her mom.
She goes really dark.
And the dad, and it's the guy from Arrested Development.
Bateman?
Or do you mean the director?
No, no, the actor in it, the lead actor.
Jason Bateman, right?
No, no, that's the star of Arrested Development.
Will something?
The bald one.
Tony Hale.
Oh, okay.
Sorry.
Tony Hill.
So some people will recognize that name.
Some people won't.
I think this is one of, and he's done voices and inside out and things like that for Pixar.
This is one of his best pieces.
I think he's a great actor in this.
He plays the dad.
Anyway, long story short, they show this, and then magically, there's like this pond.
They don't explain it very well.
Her sketchbook falls in this pond, and the creatures start coming to life.
And so it's very much a goonies or gremlins kind of a style, which also, if you go back to those movies, they had mature themes.
Like there are people dying.
They didn't show it outright, but you knew that lady that got catapulted out of the house, she's dead.
Yeah, exactly.
You can put it together.
They didn't show it, but she didn't land lightly.
She died.
And so that's kind of what they're doing here, but even a little bit pulled back.
But because the audiences were sold, well, it's from Angel.
We trust them.
And this is a little bit of what Disney went through back in the 70s and 80s as they transitioned to, again, more adult themes, I guess you could say.
We thought we could trust them.
I took my young kids, and there's been a lot of backlash from Angel for Sketch because they also the trailers they created, oh, it's fun, blah, blah, blah.
They didn't show any of the really dark stuff of these creatures that came out of that sketchbook.
And at the end, now it has a wonderful landing.
I mean, they bring it around in a really nice way that I do think parents are going to want their kids to see this movie.
And it's very funny and entertaining.
It's got all the stuff.
But again, it's gremlins and they were selling it more like it was, you know, Aladdin.
Yeah, well, you know, I mean, sometimes you have these really serious marketing issues that hurt an otherwise good film.
This famously happened with Iron Giant.
I had a professor who worked on that, and he gave this whole presentation on how ridiculous the marketing was for that film.
And it's like this heartfelt, introspective, beautiful film.
And the ads are like, heavy metal, big robots, so cool, crushing things instead of the real subject matter.
So it's sad to see that happen.
It's sad to see a good story get damaged by a bad marketing campaign.
Good stories sell better through word of mouth than through the advertising campaigns.
I mean, that's like if you ever saw Jennifer's Body with Megan Fox, the point was that the point was that it was sold a certain way because of Megan Fox, but the movie was nothing like that at all because the marketing departments have their marching orders to go down a certain route.
You know, that's obviously it's very different than what we're talking about here.
But the point is, is the marketing is some of the hardest stuff to do for a lot of the films that don't have like a through line, like a big budget blockbuster movie or something like that.
So very hard to make.
They don't want to give away.
They don't talk about it.
We got a hard out today.
So Tom, if you want to go ahead and tell people where they can find you and find your work.
Yeah.
I'm working on another feature film and it's called My Hero.
Amazing.
It has all those things.
And I'll probably eventually, if we don't have time to see it here, I'll post it later somewhere on my Instagram or something.
You can find me at TomBancroft1, the number one, on Instagram and on TikTok, actually.
And then pencilish.com is a great place to go to see some of the content that we're creating.
And of course, go see Light of the World when you get a chance when it comes to PBOD and Netflix or something down the road.
We can totally play this for you.
Yeah, let's definitely play this.
Oh, yeah.
So the setup is, this is about a girl that discovers her grandmother's old secret decoder ring from the 1940s, and she's able to bring forth a superhero from the 1940s.
This is all glorious, hand-drawn 2D animation.
What?
It's enjoyable!
All right, cat, that should about do it.
I might need to be caught up on all that's happened since you last summoned me, wait, who are you?
No, don't take that off.
That's beautiful, dude.
That animation is insane.
That is really something.
Thank you.
Yeah, we so that was like four months and 18 people and all that.
We're trying to get the group down smaller and all that to make this whole feature film.
We think we can do it at a low budget, even lower than Light of the World.
But, and it does have some faith elements.
It certainly is going to speak to grace and forgiveness.
I think those are things we don't hear about.
We didn't talk about this, but honestly, we're talking most of the messages in Hollywood from Pixar and Disney and things like that are about, oh, accepting yourself.
And they're very, and they're meaningful in some directions, but they take it to the point where it just becomes selfish.
Yeah.
This is about self-sacrifice.
That's beautiful, Matt.
My name is Seamus Coughlin.
I create animated cartoons at a YouTube channel called Freedom Tunes.
I'm currently raising money for an animated anthology series that I'm creating.
It's probably more like PG, PG-13, depending on the episode, but we're trying to explore moral issues in the culture through a Christian framework, basically, but done in a way where it all comes out through the story and the jokes and not heavy-handed preaching.
So we already have the 25-minute pilot finished.
We're really on a tight, we're budgeting very effectively.
The way I try to explain this to people is we're going to be able to produce our whole first season, which four more episodes need to be produced for the inflation-adjusted cost of what one South Park episode cost in 1997.
So if you guys go over to twistedplots.com and become a member at the $10 level, you will get access to our pilot and you can see for yourself.
Thank you so much and God bless you.
Olivia?
All right.
Yeah, guys, you can find me at Olivia Dasovic on Instagram and on X. And you should join the Timcast Discord.
We do some really cool stuff there.
I'm hanging out there.
I know sometimes Brett hangs out there.
You'll see us popping in and out.
It's really cool.
So become a member at Timcast.com, join the Discord and become part of our community.
Guys, if you want to follow me, I am on Instagram and X at Brett Dasovic on both of those platforms.
And you should watch Pop Culture Crisis.
We are live Monday through Friday, 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, noon Pacific.
We'll see you there, guys.
We will be back tonight for Timcast IRL, and we will have clips all weekend.
