September 10, 2025 • 34 mins
“Anytime somebody asked me to do something, I always said yes, and then I went to figure it out.”
Episode Highlights
04:17 – Parents encouraged him to pursue an artistic career.
08:04 – Films like The Lion King deep impact on families and children.
10:47 – Animation work is a piece of a larger purpose at Disney.
18:29 – Career reframed as an education, not just a job.
19:42 – Best advice: “Always say yes” and figure it out later.
20:54 – Innovation and patents born from curiosity.
23:17 – Learning manufacturing from scratch through connections.
25:09 – Self-publishing a book and winning awards by asking questions.
Dave Bossert, author and longtime Disney animator, shares how treating his career as an education shaped every step of his journey. From decades of animation work to writing award-winning books, he explains how curiosity, saying yes, and a willingness to learn opened doors and created opportunities far beyond what he imagined.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Foreign
Mayberry show this episode. I'm so happy to
introduce to you Dave Bossert. Dave is
a animator. He spent 32 years with the Walt
Disney Company and now, well, when he was there, he worked
(00:20):
on films like Little Mermaid. Do I even need to go beyond
after saying Little Mermaid? Probably not, but the Lion King and many others.
Now he is an artist, a filmmaker and author of 15
books, including the House of the Future, Remembering
Roy Disney. Dave, it's so good to have you here. Jody,
It's a pleasure to be on the Jody Mayberry podcast.
(00:43):
Yeah, well, Dave and I did a previous
episode together, not for this show, but for the Park Leader
show, because he did a phenomenal book called the national parks in
3D. It was so much fun. We talked about that and I said,
dave, you are so interesting. I've got to have you on the Jody Mayberry show
too. So that's what led us here. And, Dave, we have a lot to talk
(01:05):
about, but as we record this, you just
recently went through quite a personal shift in
your life with your. Your mother dying. I'm so sorry to hear
that. She sounds, though, that she had a wonderful,
long, great life. And I'm a big fan of mothers and
grandmothers. And I was just wondering, just as a tribute to her, would
(01:27):
you share a story about your mother? Well, you know, she
was really a force to be reckoned with, I have to tell you,
Jodi, because, you know, she was born
on New Year's Day, 1931,
and so she grew up during the Great Depression
and during World War II, and, and graduated
(01:50):
high school in 1949 and then went on to
college. And, you know, in the mid-50s,
she went off. You know, I think during that timeframe,
a lot of women, once they got outta high school, they got married
young and, you know, they started having kids, you know,
almost right away. My mother didn't do that. She went off to
(02:12):
college and then she went with a group of her friends
to Europe a couple of times and toured around Europe on
trips. And she eventually got married when she was
28, and she married my father
in 1958 and then had my brother, me
and my sister Caroline, and then about
(02:35):
six years later had my sister Allison.
And she was just somebody who
was tough as nails. I think from her upbringing, she
was a fierce negotiator with anything. If there was
work going to be done on the house and somebody gave an estimate, she always
negotiated with them. And it was kind of funny because
(02:56):
sometimes she'd stare somebody down, she'd say, Well, I
think that's too much. I want to pay you this amount. And then she
clam up and she'd stare at the person and the silence
would be broken by the person capitulating and saying, okay,
I'll do it for that.
So she was really something else. And she was very opinionated.
(03:19):
She always gave advice. You know, I remember she told my
daughters to always try everything at
least once. And it was one of those kind of
funny comments. But my mother, we have a great
picture of her when she was in her mid-80s
coming out of a cannabis store in Venice,
(03:41):
California, where she had just purchased some pot
gummies. And so she was always willing to try
things, and she did. And in her
90s, I tell people this because a lot of people don't believe
it, but in her 90s, she was paying her bills
on an iPad. And I'm, obviously, I'm her
(04:03):
son. I'm still writing checks for a lot of my bills.
Oh, my goodness. Wow. She sounds like. Like she was
a force. And do you feel like she had an
impact on your career? Yeah, you know, I think people's
parents always have an impact on how you
(04:23):
are formed, you know, in your early years.
And I would say yes, because both
my mother and father were supportive of me
going into an artistic career.
And, you know, they absolutely, you know,
I have friends in the business who have told me stories
(04:46):
where, you know, their fathers took them aside and said,
you can't make money as an artist. You need to become a lawyer or
an accountant or something. You need to get a real job. And my parents
weren't like that. My parents encouraged us to do things
that we were passionate about, you know, and so
that's one of the reasons why I left New York and went to California.
(05:09):
I went to the California Institute of the Arts, which is known as
CalArts, which had a animation
training program that was set up by the Disney Studios. And
I went out and I did that, and I wound up getting a job at
Disney. And I had a fortunate
career run where I worked in something I really loved.
(05:32):
And, you know, something Jody. When you do something you love and you get
paid every week, it's not really a job because you're doing what
you love, you know, And I started out drawing. I
was a special effects animator. So I was. I was going to work every
day and I would draw all day long, you know, and I'd have fun doing
it. And, you know, every week early on in my career, they
(05:55):
used to come around and distribute the paychecks. To your office
back when they gave you paper paychecks. And maybe some of your listeners may
not. They may be puzzled by that because everybody gets direct deposit
now. But I used to quip every time they came in and
handed me my check, I'd say, I keep forgetting I get paid for
this. So it was always fun. All right, well, that
(06:18):
actually takes us to your career. Getting to
draw for a living. How fun.
That is such an unlikely outcome,
I think, to end up being a paid animator
anywhere, let alone for the Walt Disney Company. Did
you realize during your 32 year career that
(06:40):
how special and unique and unlikely that was? You
know, something? I think later in my career, I
realized it from the standpoint of how the
films that I was part of, the films that I
worked on with hundreds of other artists, how those
films impacted people, how they touch people's lives.
(07:02):
And that's something that'll be with me for the rest of my life.
Because to hear stories about somebody
who had an autistic child who didn't speak
at all, but once they started watching a Disney animated
film, they started came out of their shell. There was a great
story. The father of an autistic child told me
(07:25):
that his son did not speak. But once he
got to a certain age and was able to start watching the
Disney feature films, he started to
recite lines of dialogue from the
film, but doing it appropriately for
the situation he was in, if that makes sense.
(07:47):
You know, so, you know, if he was in a particular situation with
his parents and there was something going on,
he would use a piece of dialogue from the film that
was appropriate for that moment. And he came out of his
shell and started talking. And it was countless stories
like that that we would hear about. Or, you know, the Lion
(08:10):
King is another one. The studio got letters from
widows who had lost their husbands and they had
young children, so the child lost their father. And
the Lion King helped them through that grieving
period of understanding the death of a parent.
Because that's what the Lion King story deals with.
(08:32):
Mufasa dies and Simba goes on and
follows in his father's footsteps. And so, you
know, it's amazing when some of us sort of step
back for a moment and realize how
these types of films, and it's pop culture
in some respects, but how those films touch
(08:54):
people's lives all around the world, you know, and you, you
mentioned a couple of the films I worked on. You know, some people,
you know, when I sit there, they say, well, what'd you work on? Oh, Little
Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, Pocahontas.
You know, I rattle off a bunch of names, and they just light up and
go, my God, that's my childhood. And you can just see it
(09:16):
in their faces, how the work you're doing with
all your colleagues, how that actually touches somebody's
life. That's got to make it so rewarding. I was lucky
enough as a park ranger to feel that quite a bit,
too. You just realize how much the work you do
adds to other people. And. And we're lucky we got to do that. Dave. Not
(09:39):
everybody feels that way at their job. So we were
good in that way. And I imagine working
as an animator, there is a lot that you learn
about teamwork and how details matter, because
I have no idea what it's like to be an animator, but I was
thinking this through before meeting with you today that
(10:01):
you may work on, like, one small piece of a
big, giant picture. And that is such
a good representation of purpose and role, which I know
is a big thing at Disney. Your role was to work
on this animation, but it's part of this, the
bigger purpose of finishing Little Mermaid or Lion King and
(10:24):
telling this story to people. And I think, gosh, that's such a good
illustration. I didn't even mean to bring in that illustration when
we're talking about animation. But it's such a good illustration
of how it is in every organization except
yours. You can just see how it's tied to a bigger
piece. But all of us have that, no matter what our role is.
(10:47):
Absolutely. I think what's kind of special about the Walt Disney
Company is that when we work on an animated film there,
it's not just that film, because once we finish that film,
we've brought those characters to life, we tell that story
that all of a sudden starts to feed other things at the company.
So the music division will put out a record
(11:09):
of the, you know, the soundtrack of that film.
Parks division may take that film and
those characters and turn it into an attraction at the parks.
You know, the theatrical division may mount
a stage production of that film,
that story. And so you sort of, when you
(11:32):
create these animated films, you're setting a ball in motion
that could go for a very, very long distance.
And that reminds me that Ron Logan, who was the
executive vice president of entertainment for the Walt Disney Company,
it was seeing Beauty and the Beast, the
animated movie, he. He thought that was so well done, such
(11:55):
a beautiful story, that he took that and pitched it to
Michael Eisner. This should be a Broadway show Disney should be in Broadway.
And what you said is just a great example. You're doing the
drawing, it becomes a film. Ron Logan sees it, said,
this has to be Broadway. And your effort
on that led to Disney Theatrical
(12:17):
and Beauty and the Beast is still running all these years later. So
you just never know the detail work you put in. You never know what
it leads to. It's really true, you know, at one
point, and I'm just going to give you the statistic that
came to me from Tom Schumacher, who's the president of
Disney Theatrical that does all the Broadway shows. He told me
(12:39):
at one point a few years ago that the Lion King
is opening at any hour of any
day someplace in the world. There's that many road
companies for the Lion King, and they're constantly
traveling and playing all over the world. And the
Lion King stage production has grossed
(13:02):
more money than all the Star wars
films put together. Oh, my goodness. That is. How's that.
How's that for a statistic, you know, for the
context of how huge a
play like the Lion King can be on a global basis?
Wow. Have you gone and seen any of the Disney
(13:24):
Broadway shows? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I've seen the
Lion King multiple times. I saw Beauty and the Beast when
it first opened. Let's see, I've seen
the Little Mermaid on Broadway. I've seen Mary Poppins
on Broadway. I've seen Aladdin on Broadway.
I actually did work on the Aladdin stage production. I did some
(13:46):
projections for them for that Broadway show.
Yeah, there's been. I did work on a lot
of the ice shows, Disney on
Ice and Winnie the Pooh stage
productions and things like that over the years,
where again, I would get a call from
(14:07):
somebody at Disney Theatrical because they needed some piece of
animation or, you know, something that they were going to project
in the theater. And I was happy to do it because
to me, those are new experiences. So I was very
fortunate that once I kind of moved up the ladder and
sort of put the feature films behind me, I started
(14:29):
heading a special projects group. And so I was helping out our
partners all around the company with creating new animation
and repurposing old animation for various projects
that they were working on. That's an interesting thought, because
I don't feel like the repurposing idea gets
talked about a whole lot, but it's interesting. First, I want to say, though,
(14:52):
Aladdin Broadway show, when he
rubs the lamp, the next six or seven minutes
after that is perhaps the best thing I've ever seen
on a stage. It is just phenomenal. It is great,
isn't it? Yeah, it is. That was so Good. Okay,
so 32 year career at Disney. We wrapped that
(15:14):
up. We summed that up in, my goodness, 15,
16 minutes, which is not nearly enough time.
But I'm fascinated by what you did after
Dave leaves Disney and then Dave becomes a writer. So
an animator becomes a writer. Or did you start before?
Yeah, so I. There was overlap. There was absolutely
(15:37):
some overlap there. And I left the company
in the summer of 2016. But I
had written my first book, which was
Remembering Roy Disney, that was published
in 2013. Okay. So, you
know, and I had signed the book contract for that, like the year
(15:59):
before. So I signed a book contract with Disney
Publishing, you know, in early 2012.
So, you know, I wrote that manuscript, I delivered it,
and when I delivered that book, I then pitched them the
idea of me writing the Dolly and
Disney Destino book, which was the.
(16:22):
The short film. Destino was a collaboration between Salvador
Dali and Walt Disney. And so when I
pitched that to them, they said, oh, yeah, we want to do that book. And
I was like, wow, okay, I got another book contract. And so I
started and I was writing those books at night while I was working at the
studio. And when I got that book finished,
(16:43):
I pitched another book and they said, yep, we want to do that. And at
that point, I got a literary agent. And, you know, and I just kind
of moved along. And on the third
book, I decided, you know, I really. I need to
not just say I'm a writer. I need to really be
a writer. And I enrolled in the UCLA
(17:05):
Writers Program. And so at night, I was taking
these courses down at UCLA's campus in
Westwood, California. Westwood, Los Angeles. And I wound
up getting a certificate in creative writing, and I got a certificate in
fiction writing. So over the course of about three and a half
years, going at night, four quarters a year.
(17:28):
And it was very gratifying because I learned a lot.
And to me, that's what my career has always been about,
is learning something new. I was always somebody who,
you know, once I was doing something, I always wanted
to say, what's the next thing I can learn? What can I do
next? And so I was always
(17:50):
learning and trying new things, and
the writing just kind of came naturally to some
degree. And then I polished my skills going
through the writers program at ucla. I like this
idea of your career is an education.
That's fascinating because so many people show up for work.
(18:13):
I just got to get through the week. But you approached. Now
you did have a really fun job. That probably helps. But you approach your
career as an education. What changes
about your career if you view it as an education and
not a job? Well, I think that for me,
and the thing I've tried to impart with, you know, students when they
(18:35):
go out to talk at schools and things like that, is the fact
that I'm always curious. I'm
always hungry to learn something new. And the
real fact of just wanting to learn something new
and being curious about things is something
that's going to propel you in your career because people take
(18:58):
note of that. One of the best pieces of advice I got
was from an old timer I worked with at the studio.
And when I knew this guy, he had been there
for over 40 years, he had met Walt
Disney. And I said to him one day, I said, john,
what do you attribute your success to? And he looked at me
(19:21):
with sort of a little devilish twinkle in his eye and he
smiled and he says, I always said yes. And I said, well, what do you
mean by that? He says, well, anytime somebody came into my office
and said, john, can you do X, Y or Z?
I'd always say yes. And he goes, and when they left my office,
I go, oh my God, I don't know how to do that. I got to
(19:42):
go figure that out. And he would, and he would, he would
go find a way to do what he was asked to do
just by going out and finding the right people to ask the questions to,
you know, and so that piece of advice has always
stuck with me. And so no matter what I'm
working on, I'm always curious, I'm always asking the questions, well,
(20:04):
why? What if we were to do this? Or how could we do this if
we try that thing? You know, and it just,
you get people inspired, you get people excited, and
you're learning things as you're going and you're at a
company like Disney, you have the opportunity to innovate,
to create new things that don't exist. And you
(20:27):
know, and I, I have a couple of patents because of it. And you
don't set out to say, I'm going to do something to get a patent.
You set out to say, I want to do something that hasn't been done before.
I want to try something new. Could we do this?
And so I had, I had an idea of
what I wanted to do for a project and I ran into somebody
(20:50):
in the hallway and I had a five minute conversation and explained to him what
I wanted to do. And he says, oh, he goes, you know, this guy
Brian and this other guy, they're writing some software
that I think they might be able to help you. And we got
together and I explained my concept, and these guys wrote some
software. A year later, they came into my office
(21:12):
and said, the studio is getting a patent on this.
And so I've got two US Patents because of
a five minute conversation in the hallway. Wow.
And, you know, to me, those things only happen
if you're curious, if you're excited, if you're
enthusiastic about what you're doing, if you are
(21:35):
just always curious and wanting to learn.
You know, my whole career has been nothing but learning,
and I'm constantly learning how to do things.
And nowadays it is so easy, Jody, for
people to learn how to do something. Right? Because if
you don't know how to do something, you could probably find a
(21:57):
YouTube video that'll explain how to do something
from the simplest thing to something even more complex.
You'll be able to find it. If you want to learn about
something, there are plenty of websites out there that offer
courses on things, public speaking,
doing presentations, you know, how to start a
(22:20):
podcast, all of those kinds of things. It's at
your fingertips, and all you have to do is look for
it. What is the most recent
thing that you've learned how to do that you didn't previously know how?
Well, I would say having something
manufactured in China. Really? Yes.
(22:43):
So I had zero. I
started at zero. Okay, Zero knowledge.
How would I have something manufactured in China?
And I talked to a friend and they
said, oh, there's a guy that works for me. His
son is in the manufacturing business and
(23:07):
doing toy manufacturing out of China. You should
talk to him. So then I talked to that guy and I said,
oh, this is what I want to do. Do you know a
manufacturer that could make this for me? And he says,
yeah, I've got a couple different people I can go talk to. And
I said, great. Here's all the reference images of what I
(23:30):
want to make. And do you think they can build a prototype for
me? Yes, absolutely. It'll cost a few hundred bucks, but they'll
do the prototype for you, and then we can spec it out and figure
out how much the unit costs are. I'm like, okay, that's great.
How would it be shipped? You know, it's all the logistics that go
into these things. And I learned on the job,
(23:52):
so to speak, how this is all going to work and
what the impact of some of the tariffs are going to be. Right.
You know, the same goes with writing books. You know, my
books, you know, I wasn't just writing the books. I was helping to
design the books because I'm an artist. So I got a
sort of a wide berth, if you will, from Disney
(24:15):
Publishing because normally they don't let the writers have a say in how
the book will be laid out. But being an artist and
having some provenance allowed me to understand
and speak with the book designers and have input. Well,
that in and of itself was a learning experience on how books
get put together and what you can do and what the process
(24:37):
is. Right. So then you fast forward. After I
had about a half a dozen books published, I pitched a book
project. And they said, we really like this project,
but it's really niche and it's too small. We don't think we'll sell
enough copies. And I thought to myself, okay, well, I
understand that you're a big corporation. You have big overhead and everything.
(24:59):
I still want to do this book. I went ahead and did that book on
my own, and I learned the entire publishing process
as I was going along, okay. And I
published a book. It was called Kem Weber Mid
Century Furniture Designs for the Disney Studios. And
that book went on to win six book awards. And
(25:21):
it's now not only a hardcover, but it's also in
paperback, and it's a perennial seller. So the
idea that it wouldn't sell enough. It has sold a
lot since it went out. And the thing about
it was that I learned the entire book
publishing process from the ground up just
(25:42):
by asking questions and reaching out to people and
cold emailing people, you know, asking
somebody. I went to a conference, I met somebody I didn't know,
and I asked that person, you know, do you know somebody
who's a print rep for an overseas printer? Yes.
Let me put you in touch with that person. I met that guy
(26:05):
over the phone, and I talked to him and I said, well, this is what
I'm looking to do. He says, well, I work with a printer in
Korea, you know, and this is what. And he was
just, you know, I find, Jody, most
people are generous with helping folks
out. It's all you have to do is ask. You just
(26:27):
have to simply ask the question, do you know somebody who can help me
with this? And just go from there. It's like
breadcrumbs, you know, you follow the breadcrumbs because
that person will tell you, oh, talk to my friend Joe, and
Joe will have a conversation with you, and he'll be generous with his time
and he'll Say, you know what? I have my friend Tim
(26:50):
is the guy that you really should talk to because he's doing this
type of thing that you want to do, and he'll help you out, you know,
and that's what it boils down to. And more often than
not, people are generous with helping you and talking to you,
whereas every once in a while, there'll be somebody who doesn't want to give you
the time of day, you know? But that's okay. That's just part of
(27:12):
life. Yeah, I think you're right. Most people are willing
to help other people. Good people also want to connect
other good people with each other. That's how Dave and I got connected.
Bob Weiss just thought we should know each other, and here we are. That's right.
Yeah, exactly. And you were invaluable because
you were a park ranger. You knew the ins and outs of national
(27:34):
parks, and you gave me some good information about
how do I get my 3D National Parks book into the gift stores.
I thought all the national parks had a gift shop, and it was all
run by the national parks group. You were like, you burst that
bubble. You told me, no, that's not. No, no. Each
park has a. Like a charitable organization that's running
(27:57):
their information, you know, bookstore,
gift shop. And I. I didn't know that. So I thought, wow,
okay, well, that. That makes you then say, okay, how do I
get in touch with, like, the people that are running the biggest ones,
you know, Yellowstone, Yosemite, you know what I mean? That kind of thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that is just a good example of
(28:20):
good people making connections, people willing to help other people. I have one more thing
that I'm. I'm really curious about. You've become,
I would almost say better known as an author than an animator. Now,
after 15 books, how did being an
animator help you be an author? What
contributed After 32 years of animating, has that made
(28:42):
you a good author? That's a great question, because
I think it has from the standpoint that the
subject matter I'm writing about is in some
way, shape or form connected to
animation or Disney or theme
parks. And I worked at Disney for all those years
(29:04):
in animation, but I also did tons of projects for the
theme parks, for consumer products, for
the music group and theatrical. So
I had this very eclectic career where I
learned a lot about a lot of different divisions
of the company, and I was able to help connect dots between
(29:27):
some of those divisions where they could work together. And
for me, I think that having that knowledge
allows me to write very authoritatively about
the subject matter that I'm picking. So if you take, for
example, my Nightmare Before Christmas book that I
wrote, Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas visual companion,
(29:50):
it's essentially a making of that movie in book
form. And so what allowed me to
do a deep dive on that particular film was
A, I worked on the film, I had a very small
role in that movie when it was made, and B,
I knew most of the artists who worked on that film.
(30:12):
So I knew the animation process. I'm an artist.
So I could go talk to these filmmakers and these artists
and ask them questions that somebody who is just a
writer, who is maybe assigned to do a book like this,
might not ask those people, you know, so it's funny, when you
write Jodi, one of the sayings is, write what you know.
(30:35):
And so I'm just writing what I know. And I
know the artists, I know the artistic process.
I know the questions I want to ask the artist
that a novice or somebody on the outside
who's just writing might not know to ask.
If that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, it really does.
(30:57):
And I do think that to tie that in
to what I do, it has helped even with the Park
Leader show. Having been a park ranger, I can talk to park
people in a way that you may not be able to, Dave, just like you
can talk to animators like I can. That's exactly
right. That is such a great example, because, look,
(31:20):
I wouldn't really know what kinds of
questions to ask somebody who's intimately
involved in the national park system. You were a park
ranger for years. You know those questions. You
know, how to get somebody to open up, you know, and
so I think it's very important for people
(31:41):
to, you know, to pursue things. It's always great to
learn something new, but also play to your
strengths. Right? Play to your strengths. So that's
what I'm doing with my book writing, because every one of my books is
connected to entertainment in some way,
animation or theme parks. And even, like I would
(32:03):
argue, my 3D National Parks book is an
example of me wanting to create an immersive experience
in a book form. You know, by putting on those glasses
and looking at these images, they come to life off the
page. And a lot of kids today are so tied
up in looking at their devices and playing video
(32:26):
games and stuff. This is a low tech,
immersive experience. And I know you showed it to your
kids and they. They were wowed by it. Yeah, it is. It's a
very fun book. When we talked about it on the Park
Leader show, I know I told you that, too, that I
expected it to be interesting. I expected it to be historical.
(32:48):
Was surprised that it's also fun. Yeah. All
right, Dave, I have thoroughly enjoyed talking with you. If someone
would like to maybe get in touch or just find out what you're up
to, how can they keep up with you? Well, I have a weekly
podcast like you do, Jody. It's called the Skull Rock
Podcast. It's available on all the podcasting platforms.
(33:10):
And every week I'm interviewing animation and
entertainment professionals and how they got into the business
and they're telling their stories. So that drops every Monday.
If anybody's interested in getting one of my books, a signed
copy of one of my books, they can go to theoldmillpress.com
you can also go on to Amazon and just type my name,
(33:34):
David A. Bossert, into the browser and all my
books will come up. You'll find me. And also I have
a website, davidbossert.com and
I've got a lot of free content for people. If they're interested in
reading about animation and animation history and
entertainment and film history, they can check that out. I
(33:56):
also have some little documentaries, one minute
documentaries about the various topics. And there's
links in there to all my books. And if somebody has one of my
books, they go to that website. There's a tab called Free
Stuff. They can send away for a signed book plate and that
won't cost them anything. It's free stuff, so.
(34:19):
So that's how you can get in touch with me. All right, wonderful. Dave,
thank you so much. It's been great talking with you. Jody, it's been a
pleasure. I really appreciate you having me on the Jody Mayberry show.
And thank you for listening to the Jody Mayberry.
(34:40):
He looks like a stunned mullet. It's Sugar
Jack.
Foreign
Mayberry show this episode. I'm so happy to
introduce to you Dave Bossert. Dave is
a animator. He spent 32 years with the Walt
Disney Company and now, well, when he was there, he worked
(00:20):
on films like Little Mermaid. Do I even need to go beyond
after saying Little Mermaid? Probably not, but the Lion King and many others.
Now he is an artist, a filmmaker and author of 15
books, including the House of the Future, Remembering
Roy Disney. Dave, it's so good to have you here. Jody,
It's a pleasure to be on the Jody Mayberry podcast.
(00:43):
Yeah, well, Dave and I did a previous
episode together, not for this show, but for the Park Leader
show, because he did a phenomenal book called the national parks in
3D. It was so much fun. We talked about that and I said,
dave, you are so interesting. I've got to have you on the Jody Mayberry show
too. So that's what led us here. And, Dave, we have a lot to talk
(01:05):
about, but as we record this, you just
recently went through quite a personal shift in
your life with your. Your mother dying. I'm so sorry to hear
that. She sounds, though, that she had a wonderful,
long, great life. And I'm a big fan of mothers and
grandmothers. And I was just wondering, just as a tribute to her, would
(01:27):
you share a story about your mother? Well, you know, she
was really a force to be reckoned with, I have to tell you,
Jodi, because, you know, she was born
on New Year's Day, 1931,
and so she grew up during the Great Depression
and during World War II, and, and graduated
(01:50):
high school in 1949 and then went on to
college. And, you know, in the mid-50s,
she went off. You know, I think during that timeframe,
a lot of women, once they got outta high school, they got married
young and, you know, they started having kids, you know,
almost right away. My mother didn't do that. She went off to
(02:12):
college and then she went with a group of her friends
to Europe a couple of times and toured around Europe on
trips. And she eventually got married when she was
28, and she married my father
in 1958 and then had my brother, me
and my sister Caroline, and then about
(02:35):
six years later had my sister Allison.
And she was just somebody who
was tough as nails. I think from her upbringing, she
was a fierce negotiator with anything. If there was
work going to be done on the house and somebody gave an estimate, she always
negotiated with them. And it was kind of funny because
(02:56):
sometimes she'd stare somebody down, she'd say, Well, I
think that's too much. I want to pay you this amount. And then she
clam up and she'd stare at the person and the silence
would be broken by the person capitulating and saying, okay,
I'll do it for that.
So she was really something else. And she was very opinionated.
(03:19):
She always gave advice. You know, I remember she told my
daughters to always try everything at
least once. And it was one of those kind of
funny comments. But my mother, we have a great
picture of her when she was in her mid-80s
coming out of a cannabis store in Venice,
(03:41):
California, where she had just purchased some pot
gummies. And so she was always willing to try
things, and she did. And in her
90s, I tell people this because a lot of people don't believe
it, but in her 90s, she was paying her bills
on an iPad. And I'm, obviously, I'm her
(04:03):
son. I'm still writing checks for a lot of my bills.
Oh, my goodness. Wow. She sounds like. Like she was
a force. And do you feel like she had an
impact on your career? Yeah, you know, I think people's
parents always have an impact on how you
(04:23):
are formed, you know, in your early years.
And I would say yes, because both
my mother and father were supportive of me
going into an artistic career.
And, you know, they absolutely, you know,
I have friends in the business who have told me stories
(04:46):
where, you know, their fathers took them aside and said,
you can't make money as an artist. You need to become a lawyer or
an accountant or something. You need to get a real job. And my parents
weren't like that. My parents encouraged us to do things
that we were passionate about, you know, and so
that's one of the reasons why I left New York and went to California.
(05:09):
I went to the California Institute of the Arts, which is known as
CalArts, which had a animation
training program that was set up by the Disney Studios. And
I went out and I did that, and I wound up getting a job at
Disney. And I had a fortunate
career run where I worked in something I really loved.
(05:32):
And, you know, something Jody. When you do something you love and you get
paid every week, it's not really a job because you're doing what
you love, you know, And I started out drawing. I
was a special effects animator. So I was. I was going to work every
day and I would draw all day long, you know, and I'd have fun doing
it. And, you know, every week early on in my career, they
(05:55):
used to come around and distribute the paychecks. To your office
back when they gave you paper paychecks. And maybe some of your listeners may
not. They may be puzzled by that because everybody gets direct deposit
now. But I used to quip every time they came in and
handed me my check, I'd say, I keep forgetting I get paid for
this. So it was always fun. All right, well, that
(06:18):
actually takes us to your career. Getting to
draw for a living. How fun.
That is such an unlikely outcome,
I think, to end up being a paid animator
anywhere, let alone for the Walt Disney Company. Did
you realize during your 32 year career that
(06:40):
how special and unique and unlikely that was? You
know, something? I think later in my career, I
realized it from the standpoint of how the
films that I was part of, the films that I
worked on with hundreds of other artists, how those
films impacted people, how they touch people's lives.
(07:02):
And that's something that'll be with me for the rest of my life.
Because to hear stories about somebody
who had an autistic child who didn't speak
at all, but once they started watching a Disney animated
film, they started came out of their shell. There was a great
story. The father of an autistic child told me
(07:25):
that his son did not speak. But once he
got to a certain age and was able to start watching the
Disney feature films, he started to
recite lines of dialogue from the
film, but doing it appropriately for
the situation he was in, if that makes sense.
(07:47):
You know, so, you know, if he was in a particular situation with
his parents and there was something going on,
he would use a piece of dialogue from the film that
was appropriate for that moment. And he came out of his
shell and started talking. And it was countless stories
like that that we would hear about. Or, you know, the Lion
(08:10):
King is another one. The studio got letters from
widows who had lost their husbands and they had
young children, so the child lost their father. And
the Lion King helped them through that grieving
period of understanding the death of a parent.
Because that's what the Lion King story deals with.
(08:32):
Mufasa dies and Simba goes on and
follows in his father's footsteps. And so, you
know, it's amazing when some of us sort of step
back for a moment and realize how
these types of films, and it's pop culture
in some respects, but how those films touch
(08:54):
people's lives all around the world, you know, and you, you
mentioned a couple of the films I worked on. You know, some people,
you know, when I sit there, they say, well, what'd you work on? Oh, Little
Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, Pocahontas.
You know, I rattle off a bunch of names, and they just light up and
go, my God, that's my childhood. And you can just see it
(09:16):
in their faces, how the work you're doing with
all your colleagues, how that actually touches somebody's
life. That's got to make it so rewarding. I was lucky
enough as a park ranger to feel that quite a bit,
too. You just realize how much the work you do
adds to other people. And. And we're lucky we got to do that. Dave. Not
(09:39):
everybody feels that way at their job. So we were
good in that way. And I imagine working
as an animator, there is a lot that you learn
about teamwork and how details matter, because
I have no idea what it's like to be an animator, but I was
thinking this through before meeting with you today that
(10:01):
you may work on, like, one small piece of a
big, giant picture. And that is such
a good representation of purpose and role, which I know
is a big thing at Disney. Your role was to work
on this animation, but it's part of this, the
bigger purpose of finishing Little Mermaid or Lion King and
(10:24):
telling this story to people. And I think, gosh, that's such a good
illustration. I didn't even mean to bring in that illustration when
we're talking about animation. But it's such a good illustration
of how it is in every organization except
yours. You can just see how it's tied to a bigger
piece. But all of us have that, no matter what our role is.
(10:47):
Absolutely. I think what's kind of special about the Walt Disney
Company is that when we work on an animated film there,
it's not just that film, because once we finish that film,
we've brought those characters to life, we tell that story
that all of a sudden starts to feed other things at the company.
So the music division will put out a record
(11:09):
of the, you know, the soundtrack of that film.
Parks division may take that film and
those characters and turn it into an attraction at the parks.
You know, the theatrical division may mount
a stage production of that film,
that story. And so you sort of, when you
(11:32):
create these animated films, you're setting a ball in motion
that could go for a very, very long distance.
And that reminds me that Ron Logan, who was the
executive vice president of entertainment for the Walt Disney Company,
it was seeing Beauty and the Beast, the
animated movie, he. He thought that was so well done, such
(11:55):
a beautiful story, that he took that and pitched it to
Michael Eisner. This should be a Broadway show Disney should be in Broadway.
And what you said is just a great example. You're doing the
drawing, it becomes a film. Ron Logan sees it, said,
this has to be Broadway. And your effort
on that led to Disney Theatrical
(12:17):
and Beauty and the Beast is still running all these years later. So
you just never know the detail work you put in. You never know what
it leads to. It's really true, you know, at one
point, and I'm just going to give you the statistic that
came to me from Tom Schumacher, who's the president of
Disney Theatrical that does all the Broadway shows. He told me
(12:39):
at one point a few years ago that the Lion King
is opening at any hour of any
day someplace in the world. There's that many road
companies for the Lion King, and they're constantly
traveling and playing all over the world. And the
Lion King stage production has grossed
(13:02):
more money than all the Star wars
films put together. Oh, my goodness. That is. How's that.
How's that for a statistic, you know, for the
context of how huge a
play like the Lion King can be on a global basis?
Wow. Have you gone and seen any of the Disney
(13:24):
Broadway shows? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I've seen the
Lion King multiple times. I saw Beauty and the Beast when
it first opened. Let's see, I've seen
the Little Mermaid on Broadway. I've seen Mary Poppins
on Broadway. I've seen Aladdin on Broadway.
I actually did work on the Aladdin stage production. I did some
(13:46):
projections for them for that Broadway show.
Yeah, there's been. I did work on a lot
of the ice shows, Disney on
Ice and Winnie the Pooh stage
productions and things like that over the years,
where again, I would get a call from
(14:07):
somebody at Disney Theatrical because they needed some piece of
animation or, you know, something that they were going to project
in the theater. And I was happy to do it because
to me, those are new experiences. So I was very
fortunate that once I kind of moved up the ladder and
sort of put the feature films behind me, I started
(14:29):
heading a special projects group. And so I was helping out our
partners all around the company with creating new animation
and repurposing old animation for various projects
that they were working on. That's an interesting thought, because
I don't feel like the repurposing idea gets
talked about a whole lot, but it's interesting. First, I want to say, though,
(14:52):
Aladdin Broadway show, when he
rubs the lamp, the next six or seven minutes
after that is perhaps the best thing I've ever seen
on a stage. It is just phenomenal. It is great,
isn't it? Yeah, it is. That was so Good. Okay,
so 32 year career at Disney. We wrapped that
(15:14):
up. We summed that up in, my goodness, 15,
16 minutes, which is not nearly enough time.
But I'm fascinated by what you did after
Dave leaves Disney and then Dave becomes a writer. So
an animator becomes a writer. Or did you start before?
Yeah, so I. There was overlap. There was absolutely
(15:37):
some overlap there. And I left the company
in the summer of 2016. But I
had written my first book, which was
Remembering Roy Disney, that was published
in 2013. Okay. So, you
know, and I had signed the book contract for that, like the year
(15:59):
before. So I signed a book contract with Disney
Publishing, you know, in early 2012.
So, you know, I wrote that manuscript, I delivered it,
and when I delivered that book, I then pitched them the
idea of me writing the Dolly and
Disney Destino book, which was the.
(16:22):
The short film. Destino was a collaboration between Salvador
Dali and Walt Disney. And so when I
pitched that to them, they said, oh, yeah, we want to do that book. And
I was like, wow, okay, I got another book contract. And so I
started and I was writing those books at night while I was working at the
studio. And when I got that book finished,
(16:43):
I pitched another book and they said, yep, we want to do that. And at
that point, I got a literary agent. And, you know, and I just kind
of moved along. And on the third
book, I decided, you know, I really. I need to
not just say I'm a writer. I need to really be
a writer. And I enrolled in the UCLA
(17:05):
Writers Program. And so at night, I was taking
these courses down at UCLA's campus in
Westwood, California. Westwood, Los Angeles. And I wound
up getting a certificate in creative writing, and I got a certificate in
fiction writing. So over the course of about three and a half
years, going at night, four quarters a year.
(17:28):
And it was very gratifying because I learned a lot.
And to me, that's what my career has always been about,
is learning something new. I was always somebody who,
you know, once I was doing something, I always wanted
to say, what's the next thing I can learn? What can I do
next? And so I was always
(17:50):
learning and trying new things, and
the writing just kind of came naturally to some
degree. And then I polished my skills going
through the writers program at ucla. I like this
idea of your career is an education.
That's fascinating because so many people show up for work.
(18:13):
I just got to get through the week. But you approached. Now
you did have a really fun job. That probably helps. But you approach your
career as an education. What changes
about your career if you view it as an education and
not a job? Well, I think that for me,
and the thing I've tried to impart with, you know, students when they
(18:35):
go out to talk at schools and things like that, is the fact
that I'm always curious. I'm
always hungry to learn something new. And the
real fact of just wanting to learn something new
and being curious about things is something
that's going to propel you in your career because people take
(18:58):
note of that. One of the best pieces of advice I got
was from an old timer I worked with at the studio.
And when I knew this guy, he had been there
for over 40 years, he had met Walt
Disney. And I said to him one day, I said, john,
what do you attribute your success to? And he looked at me
(19:21):
with sort of a little devilish twinkle in his eye and he
smiled and he says, I always said yes. And I said, well, what do you
mean by that? He says, well, anytime somebody came into my office
and said, john, can you do X, Y or Z?
I'd always say yes. And he goes, and when they left my office,
I go, oh my God, I don't know how to do that. I got to
(19:42):
go figure that out. And he would, and he would, he would
go find a way to do what he was asked to do
just by going out and finding the right people to ask the questions to,
you know, and so that piece of advice has always
stuck with me. And so no matter what I'm
working on, I'm always curious, I'm always asking the questions, well,
(20:04):
why? What if we were to do this? Or how could we do this if
we try that thing? You know, and it just,
you get people inspired, you get people excited, and
you're learning things as you're going and you're at a
company like Disney, you have the opportunity to innovate,
to create new things that don't exist. And you
(20:27):
know, and I, I have a couple of patents because of it. And you
don't set out to say, I'm going to do something to get a patent.
You set out to say, I want to do something that hasn't been done before.
I want to try something new. Could we do this?
And so I had, I had an idea of
what I wanted to do for a project and I ran into somebody
(20:50):
in the hallway and I had a five minute conversation and explained to him what
I wanted to do. And he says, oh, he goes, you know, this guy
Brian and this other guy, they're writing some software
that I think they might be able to help you. And we got
together and I explained my concept, and these guys wrote some
software. A year later, they came into my office
(21:12):
and said, the studio is getting a patent on this.
And so I've got two US Patents because of
a five minute conversation in the hallway. Wow.
And, you know, to me, those things only happen
if you're curious, if you're excited, if you're
enthusiastic about what you're doing, if you are
(21:35):
just always curious and wanting to learn.
You know, my whole career has been nothing but learning,
and I'm constantly learning how to do things.
And nowadays it is so easy, Jody, for
people to learn how to do something. Right? Because if
you don't know how to do something, you could probably find a
(21:57):
YouTube video that'll explain how to do something
from the simplest thing to something even more complex.
You'll be able to find it. If you want to learn about
something, there are plenty of websites out there that offer
courses on things, public speaking,
doing presentations, you know, how to start a
(22:20):
podcast, all of those kinds of things. It's at
your fingertips, and all you have to do is look for
it. What is the most recent
thing that you've learned how to do that you didn't previously know how?
Well, I would say having something
manufactured in China. Really? Yes.
(22:43):
So I had zero. I
started at zero. Okay, Zero knowledge.
How would I have something manufactured in China?
And I talked to a friend and they
said, oh, there's a guy that works for me. His
son is in the manufacturing business and
(23:07):
doing toy manufacturing out of China. You should
talk to him. So then I talked to that guy and I said,
oh, this is what I want to do. Do you know a
manufacturer that could make this for me? And he says,
yeah, I've got a couple different people I can go talk to. And
I said, great. Here's all the reference images of what I
(23:30):
want to make. And do you think they can build a prototype for
me? Yes, absolutely. It'll cost a few hundred bucks, but they'll
do the prototype for you, and then we can spec it out and figure
out how much the unit costs are. I'm like, okay, that's great.
How would it be shipped? You know, it's all the logistics that go
into these things. And I learned on the job,
(23:52):
so to speak, how this is all going to work and
what the impact of some of the tariffs are going to be. Right.
You know, the same goes with writing books. You know, my
books, you know, I wasn't just writing the books. I was helping to
design the books because I'm an artist. So I got a
sort of a wide berth, if you will, from Disney
(24:15):
Publishing because normally they don't let the writers have a say in how
the book will be laid out. But being an artist and
having some provenance allowed me to understand
and speak with the book designers and have input. Well,
that in and of itself was a learning experience on how books
get put together and what you can do and what the process
(24:37):
is. Right. So then you fast forward. After I
had about a half a dozen books published, I pitched a book
project. And they said, we really like this project,
but it's really niche and it's too small. We don't think we'll sell
enough copies. And I thought to myself, okay, well, I
understand that you're a big corporation. You have big overhead and everything.
(24:59):
I still want to do this book. I went ahead and did that book on
my own, and I learned the entire publishing process
as I was going along, okay. And I
published a book. It was called Kem Weber Mid
Century Furniture Designs for the Disney Studios. And
that book went on to win six book awards. And
(25:21):
it's now not only a hardcover, but it's also in
paperback, and it's a perennial seller. So the
idea that it wouldn't sell enough. It has sold a
lot since it went out. And the thing about
it was that I learned the entire book
publishing process from the ground up just
(25:42):
by asking questions and reaching out to people and
cold emailing people, you know, asking
somebody. I went to a conference, I met somebody I didn't know,
and I asked that person, you know, do you know somebody
who's a print rep for an overseas printer? Yes.
Let me put you in touch with that person. I met that guy
(26:05):
over the phone, and I talked to him and I said, well, this is what
I'm looking to do. He says, well, I work with a printer in
Korea, you know, and this is what. And he was
just, you know, I find, Jody, most
people are generous with helping folks
out. It's all you have to do is ask. You just
(26:27):
have to simply ask the question, do you know somebody who can help me
with this? And just go from there. It's like
breadcrumbs, you know, you follow the breadcrumbs because
that person will tell you, oh, talk to my friend Joe, and
Joe will have a conversation with you, and he'll be generous with his time
and he'll Say, you know what? I have my friend Tim
(26:50):
is the guy that you really should talk to because he's doing this
type of thing that you want to do, and he'll help you out, you know,
and that's what it boils down to. And more often than
not, people are generous with helping you and talking to you,
whereas every once in a while, there'll be somebody who doesn't want to give you
the time of day, you know? But that's okay. That's just part of
(27:12):
life. Yeah, I think you're right. Most people are willing
to help other people. Good people also want to connect
other good people with each other. That's how Dave and I got connected.
Bob Weiss just thought we should know each other, and here we are. That's right.
Yeah, exactly. And you were invaluable because
you were a park ranger. You knew the ins and outs of national
(27:34):
parks, and you gave me some good information about
how do I get my 3D National Parks book into the gift stores.
I thought all the national parks had a gift shop, and it was all
run by the national parks group. You were like, you burst that
bubble. You told me, no, that's not. No, no. Each
park has a. Like a charitable organization that's running
(27:57):
their information, you know, bookstore,
gift shop. And I. I didn't know that. So I thought, wow,
okay, well, that. That makes you then say, okay, how do I
get in touch with, like, the people that are running the biggest ones,
you know, Yellowstone, Yosemite, you know what I mean? That kind of thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that is just a good example of
(28:20):
good people making connections, people willing to help other people. I have one more thing
that I'm. I'm really curious about. You've become,
I would almost say better known as an author than an animator. Now,
after 15 books, how did being an
animator help you be an author? What
contributed After 32 years of animating, has that made
(28:42):
you a good author? That's a great question, because
I think it has from the standpoint that the
subject matter I'm writing about is in some
way, shape or form connected to
animation or Disney or theme
parks. And I worked at Disney for all those years
(29:04):
in animation, but I also did tons of projects for the
theme parks, for consumer products, for
the music group and theatrical. So
I had this very eclectic career where I
learned a lot about a lot of different divisions
of the company, and I was able to help connect dots between
(29:27):
some of those divisions where they could work together. And
for me, I think that having that knowledge
allows me to write very authoritatively about
the subject matter that I'm picking. So if you take, for
example, my Nightmare Before Christmas book that I
wrote, Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas visual companion,
(29:50):
it's essentially a making of that movie in book
form. And so what allowed me to
do a deep dive on that particular film was
A, I worked on the film, I had a very small
role in that movie when it was made, and B,
I knew most of the artists who worked on that film.
(30:12):
So I knew the animation process. I'm an artist.
So I could go talk to these filmmakers and these artists
and ask them questions that somebody who is just a
writer, who is maybe assigned to do a book like this,
might not ask those people, you know, so it's funny, when you
write Jodi, one of the sayings is, write what you know.
(30:35):
And so I'm just writing what I know. And I
know the artists, I know the artistic process.
I know the questions I want to ask the artist
that a novice or somebody on the outside
who's just writing might not know to ask.
If that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, it really does.
(30:57):
And I do think that to tie that in
to what I do, it has helped even with the Park
Leader show. Having been a park ranger, I can talk to park
people in a way that you may not be able to, Dave, just like you
can talk to animators like I can. That's exactly
right. That is such a great example, because, look,
(31:20):
I wouldn't really know what kinds of
questions to ask somebody who's intimately
involved in the national park system. You were a park
ranger for years. You know those questions. You
know, how to get somebody to open up, you know, and
so I think it's very important for people
(31:41):
to, you know, to pursue things. It's always great to
learn something new, but also play to your
strengths. Right? Play to your strengths. So that's
what I'm doing with my book writing, because every one of my books is
connected to entertainment in some way,
animation or theme parks. And even, like I would
(32:03):
argue, my 3D National Parks book is an
example of me wanting to create an immersive experience
in a book form. You know, by putting on those glasses
and looking at these images, they come to life off the
page. And a lot of kids today are so tied
up in looking at their devices and playing video
(32:26):
games and stuff. This is a low tech,
immersive experience. And I know you showed it to your
kids and they. They were wowed by it. Yeah, it is. It's a
very fun book. When we talked about it on the Park
Leader show, I know I told you that, too, that I
expected it to be interesting. I expected it to be historical.
(32:48):
Was surprised that it's also fun. Yeah. All
right, Dave, I have thoroughly enjoyed talking with you. If someone
would like to maybe get in touch or just find out what you're up
to, how can they keep up with you? Well, I have a weekly
podcast like you do, Jody. It's called the Skull Rock
Podcast. It's available on all the podcasting platforms.
(33:10):
And every week I'm interviewing animation and
entertainment professionals and how they got into the business
and they're telling their stories. So that drops every Monday.
If anybody's interested in getting one of my books, a signed
copy of one of my books, they can go to theoldmillpress.com
you can also go on to Amazon and just type my name,
(33:34):
David A. Bossert, into the browser and all my
books will come up. You'll find me. And also I have
a website, davidbossert.com and
I've got a lot of free content for people. If they're interested in
reading about animation and animation history and
entertainment and film history, they can check that out. I
(33:56):
also have some little documentaries, one minute
documentaries about the various topics. And there's
links in there to all my books. And if somebody has one of my
books, they go to that website. There's a tab called Free
Stuff. They can send away for a signed book plate and that
won't cost them anything. It's free stuff, so.
(34:19):
So that's how you can get in touch with me. All right, wonderful. Dave,
thank you so much. It's been great talking with you. Jody, it's been a
pleasure. I really appreciate you having me on the Jody Mayberry show.
And thank you for listening to the Jody Mayberry.
(34:40):
He looks like a stunned mullet. It's Sugar
Jack.
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