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 uh Rescue's Down Under.
You don't remember that, do you?
Uh Be in the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tarzan, uh, a bunch of them, about eight feature films.
And I designed Mushu the Dragon in Mulan.
And then uh since then have started my own company, but also worked on Super Book for CBN, a lot of Christian content too, uh, for kids, um, and uh Veggitales and created the Larry Boy TV show.
Remember Larry Boy?
Okay, good.
Um, I don't know why I'm picking on you.
Just a Target.
Uh, and then have created my own company.
And so one of my last films that I just came out, actually, just uh within the last month is The Light of the World.
And uh, so I was contracted to direct that film, co-direct it with a friend of mine, and so that's just been at theaters and is now about to come out on P V O D and elsewhere um and going is going around the world right now.
We even have a mutual friend, John Weber, who needs your prayers by the way.
He's a good friend of ours.
He was recently in a motorcycle accident, and he's gonna live, but he's just got some injuries.
So if you could storm heaven with prayers for our friend John Weber, we would really appreciate that.
Uh my name's Seamus Coglin.
I am a cartoonist in animator, most known for my web series Freedom Tunes.
We've amassed a million subscribers, uh a quarter of a billion views, and we have an average view count of 450,000 views per video across over 600 videos with zero dollars spent on marketing.
Um, 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.
It's an animated anthology series that tries to tackle modern moral issues with comedy and good storytelling instead of lectures and pontificating.
So if you guys like that and you want to see more entertaining conservative content in the culture war, please go to Twisted Plots.com and support us.
And if you donate $10, you'll get access to our 25-minute pilot right away.
Uh, normally I'm doing pop culture crisis Monday through Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, but I watch a lot of movies, I watch a lot of animated movies.
So yeah, and and obviously this is gonna there's gonna be a lots of elements of faith in my story.
Um I've already kind of hinted at that, but really the reason that I left Disney and and I'll I'll back up before that and just say I went to California Institute of the Arts.
I grew up in Cat in California, and I have a twin brother.
We were drawing together all the time as kids and uh very much like cartoonists, and I would we would draw comic strips for the high school newspaper together, write and draw those, and then into junior college, and then one day a friend of ours, Eric Stefani, this is Gwen Stefani's brother.
Uh anyway, so uh um he had showed us this clay animated thing that he did, and this was just out of high school, about a year or so out of high school.
We were amazed.
We thought, because this is back in the like I said, this is like mid 80s.
Um, and we thought, oh my gosh, you have to have a huge budget and a production company of hundreds, like the the sort of behind the scene making of videos and things like that hadn't really come out yet from the Disneys of the World.
And so there was still a lot of mystery of how animation's even done.
So he does this stop motion little clay thing, and we were just blown away.
And that's what hooked us.
We then got together with him and another friend, and we made a little clay animated, you know, bit music video, actually, to a song that we really liked.
And uh, you know, premiered that it was like a church youth group thing, and we we come out, everybody else is making like slideshows with just photos, and they made their own little music video.
Uh and we come out with this full-on animated, you know, epic and kind of blow everybody away.
Um, and so you know, a little accolades went a long way.
Uh, and hearing just clapping was like something I was like, I want this again.
So that just drove us to find out about CalArts, uh California Institute of the Arts.
It was a school in California that was founded by Disney.
He was part of putting that together, and a lot of his animators have learned from there uh through the years.
That was a little bit later, that was after they shut that down.
Um, and yeah, if you saw, but during that era of the the how to draw Mickey classes and things like that that they would do.
Um, there was also a video of and this was in California Adventure at one point, uh, the Florida uh Disney MGM before it became Hollywood Studios, and then in uh Paris, but there was a video where animators they would Mushu would kind of host this thing and talk about how animation's done, and I was in that video.
I'm talking to Mushu.
Um, and so a younger version of me sat around Disney for about 10 years.
I'd get pe nobody ever known, you know, recognized me on the street of like I saw you for 15 years in Disney.
Um, because I just look so radically different.
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I lost all my hair right after I shot Mushu still look the same as he get recognized.
The long story short on that is we were um I came up very early to, I was one of the uh 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 gonna be called Yin and Yang, and it was gonna be Cricky and a dragon and a cricket.
So Cricky became Cricky.
Um and Mushu would have been Yin or Yang, I'm not sure which.
Um, and then uh and then there was a Phoenix and Mushu at one point, and that was another yin and yang version.
Uh and then they narrowed it down to no, let's just do the dragon, and they threw out the cricket, then they could brought the kicker back.
Anyway, but voice casting-wise, early on I did an animation test um with Joe Pesci.
Oh they were looking at Joe Petchi.
Yeah, different kind of wise guy, uh, I'd say.
Um, but yeah, they that so that was a path they went down.
But uh ultimately it was Michael Eisner that made the decision because he had a relationship with Eddie, basically Eddie owed him, is the way I think you put it.
Um because uh and Michael Eisner was the president of before the Bob Iger era, yeah.
And so uh Michael had come from Paramount before he was at Disney, he was the president there.
That's where he greenlit uh training places and um uh Beverly Hills Cop.
So two movies that really made Eddie's career.
So um anyway, he just called him up and Eddie wasn't that into it really.
Um he had kids, young kids at the time.
So I think He saw the value of having his kids think he's pretty cool for doing an animated thing.
But uh other than that, he kind of he was a professional.
I think I think even uh Trey Parker was in one of the Despicable Me films, which is really funny, which I imagine probably had something to do with uh a kid.
But um, I I think he has a kid.
But what 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?
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 rated Joy Luck Club.
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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 Now Win, especially was there similar personnel for like behind the scenes, like uh 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.
Now, part of this is because artists are marcured 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 gonna 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?
How different was what ended up being approved from what initially appeared in your head?
Uh, you know, I just was I would come in for and actually the process of designing him was almost six months, which is nuts.
But um, and I got really bored of it after a while.
I'm just drawing it.
Oh, you want more dragons?
Okay, I would just do oh, now it's a bigger nose, now it's a smaller nose.
You know, like, and actually, we probably refined it down to what 90% of what Mushi 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 uh, 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 uh 90% there, we'll say.
Um doing an animation test is really pays off because now you're animating, you're doing different expressions, you're having them turn in space, and he's moving and gesturing, and you just have new challenges that come up when you're and bringing a character to life that you don't think about when you're just doing a model sheet.
Now here's him him angry, here's him sad, here's him whatever, you know, very basic.
Well, and like that before we we move on from the design, because this is 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, like how much of this was changes made for creative reasons, and how much was Disney thinking, well, this is gonna get us a larger audience, this is gonna make us more money.
Is 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.
Um it was a very kind of upper and marketing, it's 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 uh Fa Mulan, and then it just became Mulan.
Yeah, we we actually I remember when I was in high school reading the uh original story, or we read like an iteration of it from uh The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, I think.
Uh but yeah, it's crazy how much again these projects change, and then also the kind of adaptation process.
I like to joke that Disney got famous making the kids bop version of these horror stories, and that's a lot of what the early stuff is.
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, they were morality tales.
And and um, 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 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 uh 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, um, Olivia was telling me like how much she loved Mulan, 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 um 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.
Just we were so entrenched in the story.
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 and that just but it was story-based, right?
That would be great.
Then she could work off of that, and and she has to be the one that fixed the problem, not you know, this dragon that's sent to help her.
And so that you know, it's plot driven.
So um, but I do agree with you that, yeah.
Um I think you know, you guys don't remember this, but I was in film and making films when MTV came out.
Um, and uh 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.
The MTV made everything the cuts faster, faster, faster.
Even the news um 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'm assuming you were just able to sit down, work in whatever came through, came through.
Because I do know that it was a big discussion about well, wait, we gotta try and do this with Chinese actors first.
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.
Um, 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?
And um, and so it was uh that time where we were having a 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 Poh Yao was replaced with Harvey Feinstein.
Um, and so he he took the spot of the actor that was already there.
Um, and same with grandmother Fa, the grandmother in the in the movie, it was a Chinese actress, but then it became um what's her name?
That's the really famous voice actor, like the in the mail block uh um shoot.
I almost had it.
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I should know this, but anyway, very famous older uh how has Cal Art 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 Cal Art style.
I mean, if anything, it was weird.
When I went, there was an anti-Disney kind of a thing going on.
It wasn't politically based at all, it was artistically based because everybody thought that Don Bluuth company was really cool, like uh they were to be fair, it was like and they were.
That's part of the start a studio in their garage and compete with Disney.
And also, I mean, yeah, he's he's 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 CalArts, you mentioned that there was this undercurrent, um, 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.
Well, they were they were really because I think they left during The Fox and the Hound was the movie.
Yes, yeah, and um, and went off to do Secret of Nim.
Um, and uh, so yeah, they were really hurt by that, and 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 a like a family, and this part of your family just leaves, so um, I know it was like traumatic and all that, but uh yeah, I mean, that's something that you know, uh, I think anytime you're at sort of the the bigger companies of the number one, it's so funny to I can tell you this.
We all start complaining after a while, and uh it's kind of sad in a way, but I've seen that happen throughout my years at Disney.
We would all sit around at lunch and kind of critique why are we doing this and why are we doing that?
And and you're right, it became cultural stuff too and political stuff much later, obviously, and some of that I was already gone for, but it was happening in 2000.
I left in 2000 and I left for a faith reasons because I did not like where Disney was going, even back then.
Um, and so it was that it was we were starting to kind of get led away from, and a lot of people say, Well, Walt wouldn't have done that.
We we heard that even back when I was there in 1989, uh, and he had been dead for a little while.
We were still saying things like, would Walt have done this, would Walt have done this?
And it's crazy how long that lasted for about 10 years, solid at least.
You'd hear that in the hallways, you know, it's like is this his vision?
Before I because I want to ask you um next about you leaving in your faith reasons.
I'm really excited to get into that.
I think our audience really wants to hear about that.
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 I started at Disney when I was uh 21.
Wow, and I was and I got married very early.
I don't know why I looked at you, sorry.
Um I just wanted to see your reaction.
Um, but you know, I was 21, newly married, but we um 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 and just becoming a family, honestly, in the Florida studio.
Um, and it was a great time to be there.
Um, 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?
You know, and uh but I will say that I kind of towed the line for a long Time.
My I was in the Southern Baptist Church at the time.
I'd moved from California and I 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 a what became a mega church, honestly, uh in Orlando, but it was still a Baptist church.
And as I was at Disney in those pretty early days, the I don't know if you guys remember this, but the Baptist church decided to boycott Disney.
This was in the um, well, I guess it was late 80s.
Yeah, no, or no, early 90s, probably.
Um, 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, there's they're hiding things in the movies to deceive our 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 and then going to work and loving my job and and then and loving and caring about these films because you just get so into it.
Um, 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 brother 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, well, look, Pocahontas, we're making this movie, it hadn't come out yet.
We're making this movie.
I think some of you guys are not gonna like it.
But it's all about a real person, and we're just staying true to her story.
And Glenn Keene, who had animated and designed uh Pocahontas at Disney, that animator, Glenn, he was a believer, and he's he stood by that.
I'm just being true to this character who's a real person, and part of that culture was that they prayed to Mother Nature, and so they kind of would they threw it in there, and she, you know, her belief system is in there, and then they kind of comically show it by her talking to a willow tree, right?
Uh Grandmother Willow.
And so that's an element of that.
And so I'm like, look, it's just that's part of her culture.
We got to be true to that story.
And then along comes, you know, uh other movies, and especially Mulan.
Well, now she's praying.
The dad at the beginning is praying to his ancestors, yeah, and she does too.
And well, we're like, but but look, that's part of their culture, and we're just being true to ancient Chinese culture because that's where this is set.
And I'm leading to, and so I would defend it, defend it.
And and she'd go back and she'd tell her, and I don't think they cared.
They were like, still, I hate it.
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 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?
And that's in that idea still works when they do it 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, yeah.
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.
She did convert to Christianity, and of course, the film won't show you that, they won't show you her as a Christian, yeah, and they won't really uh depict Christian beliefs the way they should, though.
That said, with the way that um the ancestors are kind of played for jokes in uh 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.
Yeah, 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?
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, 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 them in at the beginning of the movie.
So you do see both sides of it, I guess.
But the the real leader, the the whatever he is, I think.
Yeah, Frollo is like a bishop or something.
Um is totally in it's a very adult theme.
So I mean, he's in lust with Esmeralda, and 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.
I didn't think about it until I saw it again as an adult.
And I think that's what a lot of Disney movies did.
Is and I was talking to Brett about this before.
I said, you know, I remember watching them, and I mean, my parents would laugh, and I'd be like, oh, they're laughing at this really silly thing.
And it was some adult that just got thrown in there because they bring their kids, and that still happens, but it was at a lesser extent, I think at that time.
Um, 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.
The one that was almost one of the selling points for a lot of Disney movies.
They people would used to say, Oh, you know, it's it's for kids, but there are even jokes for adults.
Yeah, 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 there are things that are directed at at adults, you know, and 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 I we saw the innocent side of that with Lion King, right?
Which was where adults could go and go, oh man, that father-son relationship is so powerful.
And I'm that father, I'm that Mufasa.
They can see themselves in that.
And how would I want my kid after I died?
You know, I'd hate to see what he'd have to go through.
You know what I mean?
Like they're they're able, there's certainly threads there that they could follow that would be on the adult side.
Um, it's just not all kids, you know, like goofy stuff.
It was serious, dramatic themes.
Um, and so we we got so far that hunchback is very serious and very has sin all over it.
Like, yeah, 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 that is like Disney movie a genocidal Catholic with lust issues is basically at the heart of that story for the villain.
I mean, if you haven't seen it in a while, you're gonna be shocked about how how adult it really is.
I mean, he's singing he sings a song and it's all and he's looking in the flames, and it the flames becomes like a an Esmeralda dancing naked, you know, like I mean crazy.
When the when the movies are put together very well, the goal, the whole point is that the art, you know, it's able to mass that, right?
Like the now that's revealed in meme culture, the way that animated movies from that time period, it's like now it's it shows you Simba and says 20 minutes after his dad dies.
Uh Tamona Pumba are like, hey, have you thought about not effing worrying about it?
And then do a dance number.
Like, but the thing is, if you've never seen the movie, it seems outlandish and ridiculous.
But the point is, you're mesmerized by the art, you're mesmerized by the music, you're taken in in a way, and that's one of the actually the issues I have with critique today is a lot of people in this space, they're like, I don't want to watch these movies.
I'm gonna pawn off my you know, my opinions on it, you know.
What do you think about it?
Because I'm not going to see it anyways.
I'm like, you should go see it yourself.
Because first of all, my taste is gonna be different than yours.
And the art has a way of capturing you to 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.
Well, I 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 with The Lion King, I think that's a fantastic film.
And Tomon and Pumba are shown to be wrong, right?
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.
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 about that promotes adultery and fornication, and it's about a woman cheating on her fiance and acting irresponsibly and actually ultimately getting the man she's cheating with killed.
Because if she she just stayed in the lifeboat earlier, uh, 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.
But even though on paper, even though on paper, that's horrible.
And that's not a good story, and that's not a good story arc because she hasn't become a better person.
She goes from one kind of selfish to another kind of selfish.
When you watch that film, listen, I I will one, I'll be the first guy to admit, like it draws you in.
The music is beautiful, the special effects are crazy.
James Cameron's a master of his craft, but that's also why it's dangerous.
Because these films will put a really bad moral into their story.
And again, like they don't do it by preaching, they don't do it by going like this is why adultery is good.
They just tell you a really compelling story, which is executed really well that condones the behavior.
Like, well, and even if there wasn't room on the door, this is what I like.
Even if there wasn't room on the door, wait, she would have weighed it down.
Yeah, right.
And people have made that art, and I I agree with that, but she's in a lifeboat, yes, and she gets out of it.
That's the problem.
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.
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.
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 gonna tell stories that that subvert our values in our way of life and that are really damaging for kids to see, even with children's stories like you're saying.
I mean, I would love to debunk a few things because I've I know both those stories, and they are false because it's not sex in the clouds.
There is something hidden, yes.
And that's what Disney would do is they they couldn't say yes, we admit it, we had something in there.
And by the way, they didn't know it.
The effects guys that animated all that dust.
Okay, so let me, since I'm going there, uh Rafiki, right?
He uh he sees dust flowing in there and he grabs it, and that's how he makes the but that desk came from remember uh uh adult uh Simba kind of plops down on the ground and des flies up, and I guess because he touched it, Rafiki's able to grab it.
I don't remember how that worked, but kind of put it in a little potion thing and and realize that he's still alive or something.
I think that was what we got out of that.
But as that dust was animated across the screen across a hundred miles, who knows.
I gotta be honest, it really looks like an E. If somebody puts E in your head, yeah, you you see an E. Right.
So if now look at it again.
I know there's probably a particle or two they should have deleted and at the bottom.
Uh and it would have been a little more clearly SFX.
But uh anyway, look at it again.
That is the true story.
I know the people that did it.
Now, same with the I'm gonna just stay with this for a second in case the audience is interested.
The the mermaid, the mermaid thing.
I spoke to there was two artists that did the Little Mermaid poster art that went on the cover of the VHS that everybody says is it is suggestive, yeah.
I've seen it very suggested of Mel uh units.
Um and so, but what uh I what I 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 was two artists, and so the story is is that they gave the assignment to two artists because it was an overnight job.
They they wanted it right away.
I for whatever reason, they waited to the last minute, and this doesn't surprise me about Disney or any big studio.
And so these guys had to work all night.
They each did a cover, they each did a back cover, and uh, but they were all working from the same drawing.
And so I have the drawing of the cover, and yes, it still already kind of looked a little phallic, yes.
Um, but as they were looking at coral, and if you look at coral, it's very lumpy and well, if you're not if you're doing it fast, maybe it gets a little veiny.
Um, I don't know, but um these guys swear both I talked to both of them, and the one that actually the cover was used, and the one that the other one ended up they used the back cover for his art.
Um, and they both swear that no, it was just done so fast.
Nobody took a second look at it.
They were like, they were looking at the characters, they were so concentrated on the characters, and I'm including in the instruct the illustrators too.
Not the only, and then the people that were approving it, all they cared about was are they smiling?
Are they right?
Because they got and that happens in art in general.
Any artist will tell you, I didn't even, I just sort of put shapes back there and trees.
I didn't think the trees looked phallic, you know what I mean?
Like you're not thinking about, you're just thinking about does that look like Ariel?
Is she happy?
Is everybody happy?
You know, I want to get it past, and it's an and it's a fast job.
So the cameraman was uh staying up all night, and this is internal Disney legend.
Um he was working all night on rescuers down.
This is back when the the machine they would shoot on.
You ever see the big down shooters um 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 uh 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 a film, then taking all that off, putting on the next one, taking uh cranking everything, doing another frame, like literally that kind of tedious, yeah, insane tediousness all night long because it's in a rush to get out.
This is one of the last film.
He you know, uh just uh uh gets on a whim and he's got a Playboy near him.
Oh no, cuts out a picture of a of a topless lady and he puts it in there for one frame, he sticks it in the window.
So as that window's blurring by, um you could see for one frame.
This is a hidden Easter egg that nobody knew about for we'll say decades.
Then VHS comes out.
Um still nobody sees it for a while until just some people get into the their cup the technology gets better to where you could frame by frame, because even when it first came out, you couldn't do that.
And now people start discovering it.
And then at one point it gets blown up.
And so they they Disney takes back all the VHS copies, they have to replace them all.
It was a big deal at the time.
They lost millions of dollars for sure, um, just to get that one uh frame out of there.
It's it goes to the 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 that's not giving them the past because we look at what they're putting out now, and people the buck stops with them.
Um but but the thing is is people that there's two interpretations of that, right?
So 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.
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 is really where it what kind of a story it is.
And so my mentor, Mark Hen, 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 it should be about John Henry.
And the story of John Henry, if you guys anybody know it.
So yeah, it's it's man against machine is the definite 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 US, you're gonna 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 tell placed in that time in that period is about him taking on a machine.
They this could be AI today, but uh uh you know that somebody's created a machine that can put can hammer in the spikes faster than than 10 men, you know, and so therefore it's about to take all their jobs, but also rob them from the land, having land, right?
And and freedom.
And so he is this, you know, huge, massive guy, he's the top guy there uh 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 uh from exhaustion, uh, 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 uh anyway, we're making this short film, and I'm a supervising animator.
I 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 gonna 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 to illustrate African Americans, honestly, too.
That was pretty new at the time, too.
This is one of the very first uh Disney black characters.
Um, but also that we were gonna uh have Christian faith uh embedded in it because we all know in that culture coming out of slavery, African Americans were 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 Pochonis, 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 gonna be in the background.
We they hired Sounds of Blackness was a group of gospel singers, and a lot of the lyrics in there had God mentions and faith mentions.
Uh, but it was very light.
If any Christian would probably look at it, oh, it's very light, but uh, yeah, it's there.
There's a there's a cross on the on the church and stuff like that.
So long story short, we have a screening um 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 getting, we're showing it to say, can we get the green light to spend more money and make the actual film animate it?
Um, but it had some animation.
And so anyway, they they screen it, and uh 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.
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 six months later I did leave.
But it 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.
I 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 well, 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.
Um, and it still got all, you know, it's 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 uh big idea productions after that, which makes veggie tells.
And I said, Hey, you need a Disney animator.
And they didn't, but they found a place for me.
Um, and I ended up going over there and helping to create some veggie tells uh for a few years until unfortunately they went bankrupt.
I mean, that must have just been such a jarring moment for you to hear an executive say that that made them uncomfortable.
When it, you know, yeah.
I mean, and it's not even as if it was telling people to repent and accept the gospel, uh, that would be great, but it was just including some representation of Christianity.
Well, uh, yeah, and I 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.
It there 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 uh 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?
There, so we just were reading that into it because we were feeding it to our kids for so many years.
Uh and and then we started waking up to, oh, wait, they're putting in more adult themes and more adult themes or other faith 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 then that was the story for so many years of like Walt would have never done this.
And and I think just we needed uh, as people, you know, uh, and as parents, you know, police things a little bit more, not have and 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.
This the big surprise was is that the right after the president said that the vice president, who was a gay man, uh, 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.
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 it's like animating something in Milan where you talk 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.
Um, 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?
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 gonna 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, uh, where um we were like pointing fingers to things that were like uh 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.
Uh the the Baptist church in this example.
Um, 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 sit 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 uh 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.
Um, and I don't think I'm crazy for thinking that's insane.
Well, I mean, but then I mean that but that 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.
Like people don't want their kids seeing that, and most of the people defending it like aren't parents, most of the people defending it don't have even have kids.
It seems like for for most people, it seems that the idea of of teaching sexuality to children is something that should be left to the parents and the people like like Seamus was saying, the people that are most vocally saying, Oh, well, no, it shouldn't be like they're they're not parents, or at the very least, they're not really in a position to make decisions for other people's kids.
Yeah, I mean, uh the the idea that that the government should do it or or what have you is offensive enough, uh which you know, people argue about whether or not there should be sex educ education in schools, and you know, I'm 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 what it should have been, you know.
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.
That's what I'm gonna say, is it was a it was part of the biology class or or science, whatever that you were taking at the time.
We're gonna go into this subject for a day, and let's that's all it was, and we're gonna so we need to kind of get extra permission here because we're gonna go in an area that's gonna be basically we're gonna 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 um 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, yeah.
Um, but they wouldn't get into, and here's what all the other forms of sex are.
And I just look, I I can 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 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.
Like, yeah, the that's the other thing too is 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 uh girl wants a bunch of people to know about something so private uh about herself?
Or to like be like, I love these ones like 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 our parent signing it, saying you can go and do this.
And my dad, love my dad.
He checked in after, and I was um raised primarily by my dad.
And he asked, 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 pads 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, you're like, you to that point, like it's it's it's fine, like boys don't need to know that stuff.
There should be some mystery about the the opposite sex when you're young, especially.
And the 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 uh 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.
Well, I and I get why that popped up because we and that was a 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 the the other one, which is not having sex.
And you guys aren't talking about that.
And so that's where that came from.
Uh, just to be clear, because you know, you gotta remember back this was after years of being uh, you know, having sex ed and sex ed and then getting to the point where, oh no, you you were being judged if you didn't let your kid just have that sex ed talk.
Just to just to play devil's advocate a little bit here.
If you if the child is not having sex, or if the if the argument is to not have it have sex, then that's kind of where the sex education ends, right?
Like if if it's like, oh yeah, you know, we the we should we should we should be telling kids to abstain, then there isn't anything further that you would be telling us.
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?
They they it's still done in a way where you're telling people what the limits are and what not to do.
Abstinence only sex 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.
Like, well, nowadays, you know, women go or young girls go to young women go to, you know, the gynecologist for their their, you know, first checkup, and the first thing they would do is try and put them onto birth control.
But a lot of other I understand that, but the point the I get what you're general pe the general kind of feeling that people have is I can't because I'm on, right?
It's not about whether or not they'll fail.
It's just that the and so they behave as if they cannot be able to do that.
Well, and even then they see they see abortion as like a I don't know if I hate saying it this way, but they say it's like I 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, well, 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.
Pull back to entertainment, but in all 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 tea 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 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 the the very rarely did they end up going into the story about the character that does have to have an abortion.
When they do, uh, they're not going to show it as the painful experience that it is.
And that has been done in the past.
Uh 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 like 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 is making it 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 the generically modern liberal talking points are made were made really, really well at that 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.
I mean, it's it's a slippery slope that we've been on, and that's that's the point, which is you know, I I I grew up in a poor area, and I I must admit I 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 I 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 the guy versions of that the story.
I don't know.
She did have kids, so maybe she did.
Um, but 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 was there's a huge lack of dads in this poor area that I'm sorry to hear that.
I mean, you know, um, I I took what you know, we had a like a uh they used to do these things too.
I'm at a tangent, but they used to do these things at schools where you'd have father-daughter night and they'd come and have a dinner and I don't know, do something like that.
But um, there was a kid whose dad hadn't been around, and I grew up in a you know, nice suburban area.
And there was a kid whose dad didn't show up for it's second grade.
It 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.
But I mean, and and I know, you know, later on I got a pretty good education about women because I had four daughters, but uh, 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 but this person now feels uh like an outcast or this person feels left out.
This person feels out that we've now have gone so far, like, why couldn't we just had a counselor that that certain group that what didn't feel like they're represented in the bigger group?
They could go talk to that person.
I don't know.
It 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 gonna say my version of that was like the, you know, my mom brought me to father son night.
There was a father-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 seeing stuff like that.
But she always felt like it was important to for us to be exposed to it, honestly.
Uh, And that would be the way she would probably put it.
And so we found faith just being going to 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.
Well, I 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 uh speaking, I want to say about two years ago on a podcast with uh Dr. George Barna, and he did a study on this uh 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.
Um if 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 we started I started working on Veggie Tales.
Um, and it had been going for a while.
It 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 to hand drawn 2D to now I'm uh using a mouse and animating.
Uh you know, it was a good way to start into CG animation.
It was like, you know, kind of uh 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, uh, 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, um, and somebody else overheard it and felt awkward, and so they report it.
You weren't gonna get fired or anything crazy, but you were just gonna be like, hey, can you keep that in your office?
You know, somebody felt awkward, you know, hearing that.
Um, 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-pro they were a prop 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 gonna work here, that you're okay with Christianity, basically was the the way they put it, because we are gonna pray in the beginning of meetings and things like that.
And so it was such an eye-opener, and uh I was already a believer in a Christian.
That's the whole reason I was there, but to see this new culture where you can bring it to work.
I could be a hundred percent me that's awesome at work, uh, 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 uh into the content.
And so that was just such a game changer for me and an eye-opener, and uh, 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.
Uh that led me to then after they went bankrupt and things like that.
I I started my own company, but then we 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 Super Book.
Um, then to you know, uh any uh many other little little smaller children's books and things like that that I was involved in, and finally starting my own company, Pencilish Animation Studios, and that was in 2020, right?
As everybody was uh going into COVID and and uh I'd heard about this reg CF.
So I did a crowd-invested company.
Um, and uh so I got about three million dollars from about almost 5,000 people and started Pencilish.
And we we where we create edifying content.
I 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 gonna be Christian content because they knew I was a believer.
And I 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, and but most of them just love 2D animation too, and they knew I stood for that.
That was something I was gonna try and keep going.
Um, and so they all were kind of coming for different reasons.
Oh, he's a former Disney guy, he's gonna 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.
There is a desire for uh the return of 2D animation, anyways.
I know Disney was already talking about trying to like they they wanted to resurrect 2D animation at Disney, like crap, we don't have anybody who can actually do it anymore.
I mean, well, and that's kind of what led to then um a couple years later, after creating some of my own content, and you could see it on my Penciler Studios YouTube channel.
We created some TV style shows and pilots.
Um 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 was the director, and he asked me to come on and be uh 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.
Um, it was just in theaters uh uh just a few weeks ago.
It's it's left now, but it'll be on the you know, VOD, um, on you know uh Amazon and and Apple.
Uh 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.
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?
Oh, 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 um 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, uh yeah, yeah.
It's a it's a production process though that is now more vector-based and more um 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 Toon Boom Harmony style animation, uh, 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 T T V style, or they're 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 um to get to a closer to a Disney level that was really pencil and paper back in the day when I was doing it, um, to now being able to manipulate things on the in the computer.
Um 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 you know 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 men made from Disney, you know, all that kind.
That's what we found in Ireland.
And so it was a it's a studio um called uh Lighthouse Studios that we worked with.
So back to your question, the big difference is we were completely virtual, and so we're uh doing meetings all day on Zoom uh 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 and reviewing things that way, but it's all one meeting 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.
Wow, um, 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.
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 uh Cartoon Saloon who did uh Song of the Sea and Secret of Kells, that real stylized 2D non-union, uh yeah, non-union.
Yeah, I mean, uh, even our directors were in two different places, you know.
I'm I'm in Nashville area, and then he's out in uh Wisconsin, and uh so none of us, and then our producer one was in Cincinnati, one was over in in Orlando, and so the one we worked with constantly was Orlando.
So um, and then the only one was my twin brother.
We hired him, I yes, I was his boss, just to make that clear.
Yeah, I I just we we tag each other all the time because finally he was uh 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.
Um 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 Disney will do it in four or five, six years, honestly, depending on how far back you go from idea.
It's at least six, if not eight.
Um, that they'll 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 I gotta stop here and tell tell a story from Chris.
He drove me from the hotel to get here today, and he's a good talker.
He said, I want to be on.
Uh he should be on this podcast.
Because uh he told me this great story.
He said, you know, uh, because it it involves light of the world, the film that I made, but actually the one that came out before us in April and 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?
Uh was it the King of the Kings?
No, we did the other one, the light of the world.
It 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, uh, and this is true of a lot of families today.
I don't, 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.
A lot of and and but but God bless those parents that are saying I think it's important enough that at least they get a make their own decision, and and I need to expose them to it.
And they had a family like that.
I guess his wife was um, you know, uh Jewish and and had it not was involved in that church either.
And then him, I think he was sort of not going to Church, but like we'll just say a light Christian, and 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.
Um, but yes, uh, so they went and saw King of Kings, and her being up brought up Jewish, but also not really being involved in the faith side of that, um, 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.
Um, but they were a little antsy, it's not as good.
Um, but uh but they you know were into it, and they actually had to leave before the whole crucifixion.
Um, but uh, but the 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 US, 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 blue believer.
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.
More for adults, obviously, and not for kids, but you know, there's a a lot of great storytelling in there that you know 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 in 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?
It will 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, like in the production,
but also the financing of art because there's a lot of non-Christians involved in financing art, and and as we've demonstrated here, I think, through this conversation, the art we consume comes to define our beliefs, yes, and and you have to like you know, you guys are talking the culture war.
Are we investing in our families and our faith, Or are we just talking about it?
And so uh this is the ultimate of that.
This is a man that now has said, I'm not just gonna talk, I'm gonna give 90% of my wealth to my faith, to my belief that I want people to hear about the gospel.
Well, and it's 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, yes, 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.
And to go a step further, part of the plan, we weren't gonna 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 you he put another 10 million dollars.
Now he's up to 30 million dollars.
Wow, just to market it to get it out to theaters.
God bless him as an independent.
And we didn't go through the major Lions Gates or any of the other distributors because one, they didn't want it.
Yeah, they didn't want to touch it.
Angel is the one that did King of Kings, and uh and they are a uh 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.
Even proportionally, the with as good as Angel Studios is doing, they're still small compared to uh you know, most of these other studios, and you're just you're not going to get the retail space in these theaters that the other ones are getting.
They did 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 dollars, probably more at this point.
They were making films for 100 million dollars, like 15 million.
It's way it's probably 200 million out at this point.
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 as expensive, is because they end up shooting nine versions of a scene.
They they go to an animator, they have them shoot in a green screen room, and then they go to these uh you know, VFX studios and they say, I want six versions of this scene, um, and it just costs a fortune.
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 um 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, and a lot of times we come back to the original idea, right?
So, like if you would just made a decision there and felt confident in it and just pushed forward, and that's the difference to 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 that's not our boat.
We're we have a cruise ship.
You want to you want a uh speed boat, go buy a speed boat.
We're a cruise ship.
If there's that if we're the Titanic and there's a something in front of us, we're gonna 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'm I built with pencilish, we're a little speedboat.
Yeah, we're gonna dodge around and we're gonna go off and make these things faster, make decisions Because we have to.
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.
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.
Um for though for that decade though, 95% of music that people got was was off of like lime wire or 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 it used to be.
Not sure what it costs now, probably 15 or something like that.
But that that fee was worth it so that way you didn't have to worry about if you're gonna download a crappy copy, download something with a uh a virus that messes up your computer or or just makes your computer work poorly.
So it was it wasn't that 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 you know, they they want that convenience and that ease more than they want to worry about the the issues that come with.
I guess I'm a purist, but I I can't I it's like maybe just because I have such a short my attention span is so horrible and at home I'm just gonna be looking at my phone, but I find the theater experience to just be I know it's so worth it.
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 uh of iTunes initially selling these songs for so cheap, but there's still bands that are able to go on tour and have these massive audiences and 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 of the 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.
Um, 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 if there's a band in town, you're still competing with Netflix with with Xbox, with just sitting at home, the internet and the cost of going in going out to see a band now.
I didn't go to her tour because I don't got money for that.
Um, 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 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 gonna go here, we're gonna do this.
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 they're fewer and far in between.
But in the last couple of years, F1 and Gran Turismo and uh 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 uh, you know, a veteran getting a second chance.
Those are largely uh, 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 doesn't feel forced when you're watching those movies where like now it's like they want to hit quotas or inclusive or whatever.
Like it didn't feel forced watching F1, the kid he was mentoring was a was a black guy.
I didn't think anything of it, but now I'm watching, so like there's so I'm 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 gonna be like a black woman police officer.
And this I don't know what it was about it because I don't really care about that stuff most of the time, 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 choose Hispanic female, and it 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.
I mean, you see like a family TV animated TV show, and somehow there's a Chinese son and a uh African-American girl.
You're waiting how does that work?
And they were well, they're this is an uncle, and like they have to go out of their way to sort of remake the family so that every it has everybody represented.
No, 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 and you know, Jimbo is the nicest person that's gonna be like, literally, but he's also scary because you know that if you you know upset him or he goes to there, yeah.
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 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 um romanticizing like kids getting away with really bad behaviors.
Um and we kind of talked about it earlier with like sex ed.
Now kids are getting that in those conversations, like in those um shows, they have those conversations about you know, like their friends or whatever, and now your kids watch that.
And I know you're gonna 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, yeah, like my parents were like, Oh, there's Dragon Tales, have a good day, like see you later.
Here's Powerpuff Girls, watch that.
Yeah, and it they didn't have to worry about it corrupting me.
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 gonna I was gonna 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 gonna do sex in the city with Barbie, and kind of ish, you know.
It was Barbie and her friends, they were gonna be in New York and New York, and it was gonna be a lot of fashion, of course, too, just like sex and city does have that.
Yeah, um, but it was gonna be more mature, they were gonna have really like dating relationship kind of stuff.
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 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, gotta be kind of safe.
Um, 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.
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, is 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 and appealing at the same time, still look good quality-wise, hopefully.
And 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 gonna be somewhere, and and probably hopefully safe.
That's gonna 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.
And so, okay, that's edifying, but it's not it's not showing you know any kind of faith, but it is establishing that life is on earth and that this is just a fun place to be.
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.
Um, of course, there's nothing adult about that kind of it's not mature, that's not like something mature people want to make or be involved with.
It's like it's 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 you know, evil characters who are portrayed as good.
That's another tragic part of this is adult films now are almost universally uh filled with horrific content.
Um you know, you gotta you're gonna end up talking to your kid about death, probably walk out of there because that might have been, and a lot of people I hear this online.
That's where I heard I first learned about death, basically.
I was a young kid and saw this father die, and it was traumatic.
I saw the kid crying over the body.
I mean, it's that's a mature theme.
Yes, um, I love that.
Adult, you're right.
I think should be reserved for really, you know, sexually oriented and things like that themes.
Um I you know, here's a good example of that.
A really good movie came out recently from Angel, uh, Sketch.
I don't know if you guys saw this movie.
A lot of people haven't seen it.
Uh, it came out theatrically, uh, 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, it only angel only makes Christian content and uh hopefully less cheesy than some of the other areas, usually, um, and but have made some real good hits that are Christian themed.
Okay, then they release sketch, and I know the director and the writer of and the producer of this film uh out of Nashville, and it's it's a fun family film that talks about some mature themes, which is the the mom in the in the movie,
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 my my the kid at school that I don't like, and he's being attacked by this 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.
Um, because I just made it sound really horrible, but and and it is dark, but we all know that we've all seen kids, and and it's a little girl.
We see a 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 entranced in that.
And but oftentimes there there's 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 uh, and the dad, it and uh it's the guy from Arrested Development, uh just Bateman?
They didn't show it, but you know, you know, she didn't land lightly, she died.
Um, and so that's kind of what they're doing here, but even a little bit pulled back.
But because the audiences were sold, uh, well, it's from Angel.
We we trust them.
And this is a little bit of what Disney went through back in the 70s and 80s as they transitioned to uh again more adult themes, I guess you could say.
Um 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 part 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 gonna want their kids to see this movie, and it's very funny and entertaining.
It's got all the stuff, and 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 in otherwise good film.
This famously happened with Iron Giant.
Um, 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 robot, so cool, crushing things instead of the the real subject matter.
So it's it's sad to see that happen.
It's sad to see a good story get damaged by bad marketing campaigns.
The point was is 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.
Has all those things, and I'll I'll probably eventually uh if we don't have time to see it here, I'll I'll post it later somewhere on my Instagram or something.
You can find me at Tom Bancroft One, the number one on uh and on Instagram um and on TikTok, actually.
Um and then uh Pencilish.com is a great place to go to see some of the content that we're creating, and uh, and it's of course go see light of the world when you get a chance when it comes to P V O D and the Netflix or something down the road.
So the setup is this is about uh a girl that discovers her old her grandmother's old secret decoder ring from the 1940s, and she's uh able to bring forth a superhero from the 1940s.
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 gonna 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 uh in Hollywood from Pixar and Disney and things like that are about oh, accepting yourself.
And and they're very and they're they're meaningful in some directions, but they take it to the point where it just becomes selfish.
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.
Um, we're really on a tight uh we're we're budgeting very effectively.
The way I try to explain this to people is we're gonna 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.
