Don Bluth!! Film Foundations Director: An Intro to Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, and Titan AE!!

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Film Foundations, the collaborative
show between weirding Way Media and Someone's Favorite Productions. I
am your co host, Ryan Verel from The disc Connected
and Someone's Favorite Productions.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I'm your co host Chris Stashu from weirding Way
Media and more podcasts than I care to count.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
On this show, we ask an answer four separate questions
about a given topic that is surrounding either an actor, director, franchise,
or a micro genre. Our job is to entice you
to broaden your horizons on film, to encourage you to
travel down film tagents, and for you to sit next
to us as we drive down side roads that you

(00:48):
may never have traveled down before. Otherwise we have no
guest again today it is just the two of us
talking about somebody that is near and dear to my heart. Specifically,
we are covering the animation specifically director even though he's
done a little bit of dabbling in some live action
and a couple of his things. We're talking about mister

(01:09):
Don Bluth. Chris, welcome and Don Bluth in any history
with Don Bluth before I break him down for everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
So, like you mentioned, this is an episode that you
picked the topic on. I picked the topic on one
of the episodes that we did recently, which was the
Alien franchise, And I now, I kind of know how
you felt sitting here, being like, I've seen one thing.
You didn't see just one thing. On the Alien it
was a couple, but on this it's you know, people

(01:40):
are gonna roast me and I can say I've seen two,
but I will I can say I've even seen three,
technically probably even four. But the one that sticks out
to me, the thing that is genuinely the thing when
I think of Don Bluth, and I don't know how
anybody else feels about it. Always Ryan always gets a
kick out of it whenever I tell him what it is.
The Don Bluth directed Rocketdoodle, which is just like it's

(02:04):
if you haven't seen it, it's fucking wild. It's based
off of an Edmund Rosten play and Edward Edmund Rosstand play,
and uh, I won't talk too much about it now
because it's gonna come up later. But it continues with
what I assumed Don Bluth was doing and doing a
little bit of research about him prior to doing this episode.

(02:25):
Rocketdoodle makes perfect sense as to why he did it.
It's kind of within his wheelhouse of the kinds of
things he was doing. But that for me is it.
I wish I could say Land before time. I wish
I could say I kind of wish I could say
literally anything else. Maybe not a troll in Central Park
for a least reasons, but in terms of what I
have seen and can somewhat remember, rock Adoodle is the

(02:49):
first troll in Central Park. I do have an episode
on it on the Culture Cast, so you can go
listen to that. But again, it was like so long ago,
the show was different. I don't really remember. Ty nae
Ae is something that I've seen a couple times. I
don't remember much about it. But then the thing that
I mean again, the thing that will stick out for me,
and I always forget that he's the one who directed it,

(03:09):
and I think it's we'll talk about it a lot
more about Anastasia is the one that really sticks out
for me. So I have a small history with Don Bluth.
I'll take this opportunity to mention I've played more video
games of his stuff than I have watched his movies.
Dragon's Layer in Space Ace are amazing. Are they great?
Video games. No, did it show what video games could
be if you weren't doing the same thing everybody else

(03:32):
is doing. Yes, I mean it's more exciting and interesting
because of what it was, not necessarily how well it
was executed. So I find Don Bluth to be someone
who I would want to and like to watch more
of his films. So I am waiting with open ears
and an open mind to hear all about Don Bluth
because I myself am like the audience on this episode,

(03:54):
which is I am here to learn.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
I'm excited to be the ambassador here. I spent a
long while preparing for this. In twenty twenty three, I
was a guest with my co host of the Incinerator podcast,
mister Billy Ray Bruton, on the Director's Club podcast, and
we covered all of Don Bluth. And I had the

(04:18):
honor and a great fortune of rewatching just about all
of these with my kids for the first time. I
think they had seen one of them prior maybe two.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
But we obviously.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
We watched most of them together this time. I think
there was one or two that I watched while I worked,
but other than that, Yeah, it was great to catch
up with them with my kids and now, Man, there's
so many details that I could easily just sit here
and talk about for a long time, but really the
important things for those that have never watched any of

(04:53):
his movies or what I'm gonna share. So, first off,
Don was born in Texas and he was fascinated with
Disney as a kid. He was from a Mormon family.
His I think his father or grandfather was like big
in the Mormon Church, even so much so I think
one of them is related to Mitt Romney somehow. But

(05:17):
past that, Bluth eventually went to BYU after his family
moved to Utah, and then shortly after that he went
to work for Disney for the first time. He got
hired in nineteen fifty five or fifty seven, I believe
it was, did a little bit of work on a
little movie called Sleeping Beauty. He found it a little
bit boring, funny enough, and then he left and went

(05:39):
on a mission for the church. Of course, he was
gone for two and a half years somewhere, and I
think it was like South America that he went on
this big, like two and a half year mission with.
But he came back after this mission, went to college,
earned a degree from BYU, and then after this he
eventually started working with some other studios, all finally leading

(06:01):
to him coming back full time to Disney around nineteen
seventy nineteen seventy one. From then he started working on
some of their bigger projects like Robin Hood. He worked
on Winnie the Pooh and Tiger two. He worked on
The Rescuers. He was directing animators alongside a whole bunch
of the people that have been with Disney for a
long time. He started working on stuff for Pete's Dragon,

(06:24):
and then in nineteen seventy eight he started to step
away a little bit. He was working on a short
for Disney and on the side kind of working on
his own short. The short is called Banjo the Woodpile Cat.
I believe you can find that online to stream right now.
I watched it last year as part of this. It's
not bad, but it's not great. It's very short and

(06:46):
not a lot happens, and you can catch you can
catch some of the emotion that is found in some
of the blues films in the short. But he clearly
didn't have like his set style yet. So after this,
as he was, you know, starting to pull away a
little bit, he started working on Fox and the Hound
with Disney, and then furthermore started getting kind of fed up,

(07:08):
fed up with the situation that was happening, and went
away from Disney in nineteen seventy nine, I believe it
was seventy nine or eighty. He left and took a
whole bunch of Disney animators with him and they made
Don Bluth Productions his own animation studio, which first off
super ballsy to just steal a bunch of animators from

(07:30):
Disney to go make your own studio when you originally
called working for Disney a boring job. I loved that,
especially because he was fascinated with them as a kid
and just grew up and took on It's this life
of its own. And then he started working on his
own stuff. The first film that they put out is
a big one, of course, nineteen eighty two is the
Secret of Nim. After this, he started spending some time

(07:52):
working with Steven Spielberg. They did some co productions for
An American Tale in the Land Before Time, followed those
two up with All Dogs Go to Heaven in nineteen
eighty nine, and then the nineties were kind of an
interesting time for him. Like they started pretty rough, nothing
new to Rocke Doodle here for you. Ninety one he
put out Rocket Noodle. Nineteen ninety four they put out

(08:16):
both Theumbollina and a Troll in Central Park, follow that
up with the pretty like uneven film, The Pebble and
the Penguin, and then they follow that up with nineteen
ninety seven's Anastasia, which I will say now as we're
talking about this tonight. Anastasia is my favorite of his films.
This movie is a masterpiece, I think. Then he leads

(08:40):
the millennium with titan Ae, which is like a CGI
animated weird sci fi piece voiced by Matt Damon that
doesn't work for me, but a lot of people like it.
I don't know. This one is odd. We'll talk about
that a little bit tonight, I'm sure. But that is

(09:00):
for films from Don Bluth. He has been fairly inactive
on that front since the year two thousand. He's done
some small things. Since then. He worked on a Sister
Scissor Sisters music video, which the animation in it was
pretty dag good. He's done a couple other small things
since then, but nothing that has really been huge other

(09:21):
than you know, he did more video game stuff. He
did Dragon's Layer three D in two thousand and two.
He did Taper World Tour. He was an animator on
that in twenty eleven. A couple other small things like that.
But yeah, that is the Don Bluth story basically. Now,
like he's still He's still out there and kicking. He
shows up at CODs even all the time to sign

(09:43):
random shit. I just I would love to him randomly
come out and release another hand drawn animation film. That
would be crazy, like twenty twenty five. Well, let's see
the return of Don Bluth and some crazy emotional, modern
telly modern storytelling journey that he could take us on again,
because man, is he is great at that for sure.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
Well, and you already mentioned it, And I think it's
really interesting because you know, you talk about the history
of Don Bluth as someone who works at Disney and goes,
this is boring. I could totally see how that would
be the case because I don't think of Disney as
a company that is very open to interpretation of things,
like you're there to do the Disney thing, and the

(10:26):
expectation is the Disney thing is thing enough worth doing,
which I mean at the time we're talking about it
was like Disney was the big thing. So it's funny
to hear him say that. But at the same time, yeah,
I know him for his video game stuff more than
I ever knew him for the movies, because again, dragons
Layer in spaces and that's really what's consumed most of

(10:48):
his time. Dragons Layer was ported three years ago, as
recently as two years ago. Actually, dragons Layer was ported again,
and I think that speaks to him as an animator,
but also him as someone who's able to stay relevant. Yeah,
I mean, yeah, you said it best. Like what, I
love to see a Don Bluth movie in twenty twenty
four or twenty twenty five or anytime in the future. Yeah,

(11:08):
but I'd like to see a David Lynch movie. Like
to see it. I mean, I'd like to see a
lot of directors who are right specific are tours that
have kind of taken a step back. Don Bluth has
taken quite a step back unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Well, to be fair, he's eighty six years old.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Now that's fair, but how old as Hiomia Zaki?

Speaker 1 (11:26):
What is your rewatch with it? Ryan rewatched many of
them last year. But the big thing I had not
seen quite a few of these. Actually, I had like
a handful of heavy hitters when I was younger, so
An American Tale and its sequel, which wasn't directed by
Don Bluth. Those were big for me as a kid.
Land Before Time specifically was a huge one when I
was a kid. I loved all Dogs to go to

(11:47):
Heaven when I was a kid. Rocketdoodle, I liked it
when I was a kid. I only watched it a
few times. Thumbolina okay, but funny enough. I'd never seen
a troll in Central Park. I had never seen the
pebblem the penguin. I had never seen tight Nae. But
maybe the biggest blind spot, I had never seen The
Sacred of Nim until twenty twenty three, and watching that

(12:08):
for the first time was mind blowing because you could
see this is like pre dating all of the other
stuff that I'd loved growing up with animation, but it
has the foundation for what was going to make his
career for the next thirty years or whatever. It was
so like steeped in everything that makes something specifically a

(12:31):
Don Blue film, which I'm sure we're going to talk
about when we answered this very first question, but it's
it's wild to see somebody come and work for Disney,
which Disney clearly they pushed their own style. They have
very specific, like Antia, very specific animating guidelines, and Don
Bluth goes the exact opposite for all of his stuff.

(12:52):
So it is nice to see somebody the moment he
walked away from Disney immediately have his own style instead
of letting some of that lead into what he was doing.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
It's and you said it yourself, like it's very ballsy,
but again also having faith in yourself and knowing that
you can and will nail it when you do, like,
there's nothing wrong with that, Like I actually that's I
respect that a lot because like, forging your own path
is hard. And look, I love Don Blue's animation style.
It is very un Disney. The humans are very un

(13:23):
Disney in their presentation. Disney was presenting human beings. If
they were presenting them at all, they didn't look like this.
And Disney for the longest time wasn't animating humans. They
were animating animals. I mean there are humans in some
of the stuff, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, but I mean when
we think about Disney, I think we think about anthropomorphized
animals more than we think about human characters. So yeah,

(13:46):
Don Blue, that's the thing. Don Blue's style. I resonate
more with his style than I do the style of
those movies at the time.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
That makes sense. I completely get that. And no matter what, like, well,
let's get into it. Why don't we go start talking
about that verse question, because yeah, we really got to
answer what is a Don Blue film and what makes
it specifically a Don Blue film? So I'm all about that.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
So the first question is Ryan, what do you consider
a foundational title for Don Bluth?

Speaker 1 (14:19):
So, as usual, this is this is difficult when you've
seen them all. I completely, completely, really tried to hone
in on what I think could be for everybody. You know,
whether you are somebody with kids, whether you were somebody
that grew up in the eighties and nineties, whether you're
somebody that turned twenty this year or fifteen, whatever. The

(14:42):
big thing I want people to understand that Don Blue
stuff whenever you go into it. Every single one of
these movies, even something like a Troll in Central Park,
is emotional. Every single one of these films has a
deeper meaning, has a adult theme, has this style of

(15:05):
trusting the audience, which Disney never does. There are so
many things in these Don Blue films that will take
you to the edge of understanding, but you have to
cross that line yourself, and that is something that Disney
has never done. They take you to the edge and
then push you over the cliff five times and just

(15:26):
you're gonna get it no matter what. With the Don
Blue films, there is death, there is sadness, there's life.
There's reality in all of these and there's things that
are relevant for everybody. Whether it's loneliness, whether it's isolation,
whether it's broken families, whether it's violence, whether it's danger.
Something in here is something that you are likely going

(15:49):
to be able to resonate with. And I think for
this first one, I landed on two films and I
ended up walking away choosing the Land before Time here.
I chose this one primarily because, first off, it's dinosaurs.
Everybody loves dinosaurs, like that's a fun pick, but it's

(16:11):
such a real, real emotional tell. I mean, there's death,
there's a journey for survival, there's something that everybody can
attached to with young dinosaurs learning how to be alive
and survive and go through difficult situations, but it's one
that also had this long running franchise. Has nothing to

(16:33):
do with the first film really, but it's something that
most people will have understood through the zeitgeist at some point,
and it's a masterpiece. I mean, this movie is so
so well drawn and so well written, and then beyond
that it honestly Don Blue didn't write this one even
but it's directed superbly as an animated film that it's

(16:58):
one that if you've you've never seen any of these movies,
I don't know that you can do better than The
Land Before Time considering what the film is about and
for for anybody that hasn't seen it, it's literally just
a story about a family of dinosaurs that need to
survive and they are trying to go on a journey
to find where they can survive. Essentially, it's herds of

(17:22):
dinosaurs looking for an oasis where there's water, and of
course there's sharp tooths aka t rexes. There's all kinds
of you know, bad things that can happen, and it's
just a harrowing tale of a family trying to survive.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
And there's how many sequels I think.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
We're up to, like twelve or thirteen.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
Holy cow staying power of the franchise. I mean, good lord,
no one does love dinosaurs, like you said.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
Right, exactly.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
And you've not seen this one that you can remember, right.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
No, I've seen this sequels because I've seen the one
that has the little purple t rex in it, right,
But I don't. I mean I've probably seen the first
five minutes of it. But yeah, this this one is
definitely a blind spot for me.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
And then, uh, I guess this is where we throw
out the little bit of trivia. I'm sure you've heard
this one about the the actor that voiced Ducky in
this Have you heard that?

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Do we need to we need to go around that
bend because that here, let's just depress our audience about
this was why not I was beaten to death.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
By her father?

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, all right, So now that that's out of the.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
One Land before Time, everybody.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, since since you haven't seen this one, I get it.
It's just an iconic film. I think that some of
these others are really great, and I don't think you
would be off put by any of them. Well, there's
one or two that you might technically be off put by.
And say I never want to see another of his films,
but uh, maybe we'll discuss that in the In the
next couple questions, I want to hear you talk about, uh,

(18:59):
the fan film.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
For you, so it is not Rocketdoodle, just so we
both know, and it was never it was ever going
to be. And mine's a little bit of a cheap
but I'll say why mine's a cheat. I think that
this is the best best thing that Don Bluth has
ever made, and I actually think it's the best Disney
movie not made by Disney, which I think gives away

(19:21):
what my answer is pretty easily. Anastasia is the movie
I've seen more than any of them. It's a movie
that genuinely scared me when I was a kid. Christopher
Lloyd is pretty scary in that movie. It's very Disney adjacent.
I think it's a little bit more mature than a
Disney movie is. Like you mentioned, Don Bluth kind of
asks something different of his audience that Disney does, but

(19:42):
it's it's it's the most disney esque but done by
someone who bristles at being part of the Disney system,
which he clearly did. He didn't want to be part
of the Disney system. I can't exactly blame him. Yeah,
but Anastasia is for me. I mean that's the pinnacle
of Don Bluth. That's his best movie. It's so good
you would think it's a Disney movie. And Disney movies,

(20:04):
I mean, Disney Princess movies are the pinnacle of those
kinds of movies. Disney made them. Nobody makes them better
than Disney other than the one time Don Bluth did. Yeah,
and the cast kicks ass, I mean yeah, like the
cast is great at John Cusack in there which not
a whole lot of animated movies with John Cusack. I

(20:24):
mean Kelsey Grammer, I mentioned Chris Lloyd, Hanka's Aria, who's
the who does the voice of Anastations Meg Ryan?

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (20:33):
All all great actors, all great actors in their own things,
and all great actors in this and I have not seen.
I was going to ask you if you had seen
Bar Talk the Magnificent, a direct to DVD version starring
Hanka's Area as bar Talk the Magnificent. You see that.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
One I did when I was a child. I remember
very little about it other than oh man, did they
only lean into the comedy for that?

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Well, that's what I was assuming, you know, bar talk
is the is the wi you know Weisenheimer of Anastasia
best I can remember, So I will mention something that
I always forget, and you're gonna laugh here, given that
I know how much you have an affinity for Jurassic Park.
You know what movie I always think is a Don
Bluth movie that's not roll back the Blocks to the

(21:20):
Dawn of Time and sing the song with me baby.
What a wild ass movie that movie is. I don't
know if that'll ever come up in any conversation we're having,
But that's also like not a Don Bluth movie, but
sort of should have been like.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
It, Well it's Spielberg, I think, right, or it's his
production company Hamblin.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, okay, well it was because steel stun Spielberg may
Jorassic Park. They were like, you're the dino guy now right.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Well the hard part, even more so where it blends
is Spielberg produced Land Before Time, an American Tale, with
Don Bluth, and then they separated in Spielberg went, no,
I'm not done with dinosaurs.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Right, I'm gonna go do another dinosaur thing. But we're
back as a movie that is not as well received
as Land Before Time. Not at all, not at all.
And look, I love We're Back.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
I mean it's fun. Yeah, it's a.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
Weird movie, but it's it's maybe too weird for Don Bluth.
I think is maybe like Don Blue Stuff is weird,
but it's very much grounded in, like somewhat a reality,
like that's sci fi and dinosaurs e and stuff that
makes their brain grow.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
It's like all over the place, We're Back feels like
Oliver's Company, but with Dinosaur.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
It's a fucking nutsoeyt ass movie. Like you know, a
guy with screws for eyes who gets eaten by all
of his crows at the end of the movie is
not something that children that were eye aged should be
seeing like it was. That was a lot. I'm just saying.
And to be fair, you know the answer I didn't answer,
but it may be the answer to the next thing.
Like similarly, a movie that's like Surprising is for children,

(22:42):
so almost Don Bluth is like, I'm surprised you made
these movies for kids, because I don't think they're for kids,
like Disney's are for kids. But I think Don Bluth
his expectations are not children are watching his movies if
they are, they're not appreciating them to their fullest right.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
So before we go to the next question, I did
want to talk about anis Station myself for a moment,
and I really want to say why this is not
my choice. So the big thing I mentioned Don Blue's
films are emotional, they are deep and all that stuff.
We really got to talk about the animation itself for
a minute. So the entire time that Don Bluth has

(23:17):
been animating, there are certain key points that set his
animated films apart from anyone else. One is the fact
that he shoots not three D animation, but he shoots
in a way where he takes the camera and swirls
around the subject that he is animating, and so it

(23:39):
looks like somebody's taking literally like a drone shot of something.
And the best examples of this specifically are in Anastasia.
There are so many times where you see just these
magnificent shots of beautiful animation that he it's like he's
standing in front of this animated screen, takes the camera

(24:00):
and says, oh, this is pretty, but wait till you
see this side, and swings it around the other side,
and it is mind blowing. When you're watching this to
have it go from this like really cliche two D
scene to this surreal movement of just something that you
can appreciate so much. And the only thing that I
can compare to it, which you know, spoilers from my

(24:23):
answer to the fourth question, is some of the animation
style here really only jives with me as Aki. There's
not stuff like that in other Disney films here, and
it's just a clear indication of he is thinking so
much further about these films than we get on most
Disney films, which are the most popular animated films. Of course,

(24:45):
a couple other things that I won't talk about as long,
but one of the things that he does really well
with animations is with the colors, but not just the
specific colors. The only way that I can say it
is like in a way that we describe four K
discs in twenty twenty four, and that's the spectral highlights
that he specifically calls out, because if he's got you know,

(25:07):
a in secretive nim When they are going to visit
this great Owl and it's this really dark scene and
there's like a jewel in one corner of the scene,
it shines so bright that it commands your attention on
the screen, and not just because it's overtaking everything, but
because it sparkles and twinkles and calls you in to

(25:30):
look at it. It's so odd because Disney stuff is pretty.
It's yeah, we all grew up on that and stuff.
They never focused on the colors like this. It's never
called out in a way that makes you go, damn,
how did he bring out those specific colors like this?
And he does it in literally almost every single one
of his movies. It's incredible the way he's done that

(25:51):
in Pebble and the Penguin, even which is like, in
my opinion, probably is worst film. It's done a handful
of times.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
And it's saying that with a movie called a Troll
in Central Park and that filmography as well, that's shocking.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
I will stand by it. Pebble and the Penguin is
disjointed beyond belief.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
That's I will agree with you there, But Troll in
Central Park some choices were made there that feel like
hard choices to defend.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Yeah, it's a lord to watch. I get it.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
Well, it's a lort to. It's a lort it's a
lort of a lot. It's in the Charles Nelson Riley
of it all is just I love him too, Like
I don't think kids like Charles Nelson Riley.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
No, no, Yeah, So the spectral highlights are a big thing.
The way that he treats animals, and very specifically, like
he he views certain animals as evil all the time.
Like I mentioned the owl, every time there's an owl
in one of his movies, watch out because that thing
is coming after you.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
Speaking of Rocketdoodle.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah, so there's something just so specific about his animation.
I wanted to call it out, but like I said,
Anastasia is his masterpiece. I don't think it gets any
better than this. I think the voice acting is top notch.
The animation itself has never looked better. Very specifically, if
you've never seen it, when you go watch it, the
train crash scene in Anastesia will blow your damn mind.

(27:16):
If you are not paying attention up to that point,
set everything down, lean forward in your seat, watch that scene,
Rewind it a couple times, and just marvel at the
way that they animate this in a way that I mean,
first off, again, this was made for kids, and they
animated a realistic train crash sequence in a beautiful way.

(27:38):
Like that scene is shockingly good.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
I mean, I haven't seen Anastasia in a while. But
also the ballroom scene has made an impression on me.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
It's great.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yeah, yeah, Anastasia is just it's one of the I
mean again, like I said, it's one of the movies
that Disney wishes it had made because now they can
never make that and they can't have a Russian princess,
not that I think they would at this point given
the climate of the world, but I mean it's interesting
because to your point, like it, it outclasses Disney even right,

(28:09):
I somethink that was enough to sustain because it never
can be unless you're making one thing every five years,
which I mean with animation, it is that not that
slow of a turnaround, but it's not a quick turnaround
by any stretch of the imagination.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
Can be, which is why it's shocking that in one year,
in nineteen ninety four, how do you produce Stumbolina and
a troll in Central Park? Like clearly they were working
on it since Rocket Doodle was done, probably, but to
have them both in one year it feels like a
bit of a misstep, and maybe I mean they're both
kind of not great. Thumbelina is decent, but Trolling Central

(28:42):
Park is a waste, and you really like maybe if
you put a little extra time into it, maybe it
could have been a little bit better. I don't know
what the you know, the pressure was to get it
out whatever, but it's I don't know, that's a weird
time in his career.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Well you said it. Tumbling and Natroll and Central they
look very similar, Yeah, talking about the same thing. They're
kind of you wouldn't be surprised if Lord showed up
in Thumbelina or vice versa, because again, like it feels
a very similar world. And I would tack on there
and it's not a don blue thing, but right there
with like a fur and gully say like it's, you know,
protect the environment, do good to the environment. We should

(29:19):
care about the environment. Like yes, agreed, guy who's born
on Earth Day agrees.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Yes, that was That was a big deal in that
part of the nineties though, so it seemed to be
the message in everything. I mean, that was when we
were all fighting the holes in the ozone layer and
getting rid of aerosol sprays and everything.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
So afora carbons CFCs as they're called. Yeah, yeah, I
mean that's like you said, like that was all the
rage in the nineties, so Don Bluth was really like
leaning into it. But yeah, isn't the pen, the pebble
and the peng would have an environmental message too.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
It's like a slant yeah about the Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Okay, I don't remember, but I vaguely remember there being something.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
It's it's not like the main plot of it, but
it's yeah, there's there's a couple of small parts interesting.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
So uh, onto the next question.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
Onto the next question, and this one we're gonna ask
you first, my friend, and obviously we need to go
to our classic. Could you recommend a lesser known jim
within the ouvra of mister Don Bluth. Remember, this is
something that might not be suitable for a first time watched,
something that could turn somebody away. So now let's hear
you talk about rocket Doodlizer.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Listen here, you don't get to bury the lead like that.
You asked me the question and you answered it, how
dare you? Uh No, my answer one is rocketdoodle And
you're right, like I've alluded to the fact that it
was going to be it is my favorite don blue thing.
I've seen it a million times. Do I think it's
better than Anastasia?

Speaker 1 (30:52):
But this movie is fucking wild.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
By the way, what Rocket Doodle. It's a fucking nuts
You got Chris Plumber playing a giant owl. You have
a child to turn so on top of everything else,
I'm actually surprised you're not as big. You're not bigger
a fan of rocketdool, I goot, I know why you're not.
But there is a there is a Roger Rabbit of
it all to the movie.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah, because it's.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, a little I mean, it's not enough, I think
is the problem. But a small child's house is flooded
by a the by god, let's just put it that way.
But the owl is to blame. And then the owl,
through magic, turns him into a kitten who then goes
on an adventure with This is like, this is like

(31:33):
this is mad libs, like at this point, like and
then they did what and then they did what. So
all of this is predicated on the idea that there
is a singing rooster that also is just like the
most this is our show has already gotten to the
point where one of us is having to explain this
dream with a straight face. Glenn Campbell plays a singing

(31:56):
rooster who also is an eldess impersonator. And so this
little child I believe his name is Edmund Uh, he
has to go to the big city to convince chant
to clear the character played by Glenn Campbell brought a
great name for it, kids kids movie character to sing
again to bring up the sun? Right? Is that it

(32:16):
is that the plots as.

Speaker 1 (32:17):
I read, that's the entire plot. However, you are missing
the giant part of it is that this is the
film that starts live action right.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
Right, Well, that's the thing I mean, like I kind
of mentioned, like there's the Roger Rabbit of it all,
Like the beginning, what ten minutes of the movie are
live action?

Speaker 1 (32:35):
I don't even think it's full ten minutes of probably
like six or seven.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yeah, and then the end of the movie goes back
to live action. It's a very Wizard of Oz. I mean,
imagine if instead of in Wizard of Oz she went
to a land where it's technicolor, the kid goes to
a land where he's animated as a.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Small as a cat, as a small cat.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Yeah, it's and oh, by the way, and not only
have we mentioned obviously Glenn Campbell's in there. Chris Plummer
plays the grand Duke of Owls. Ellen Green is Goldie.
I mean you have Eddie D's and I mean you
have a lot of Charles Nelson Riley. You got plenty
of people who have been in other things doing voices.
But to your point, not the starting place for a
lot of people, because if you can't tell, it's fucking insane,

(33:16):
Like genuinely, it's like, we're back, as far as I'm concerned,
Like who the fuck was on cocaine when they came
up with this? Because it's just like this and this
and then this and this too, and it's like when
did we stop at the Glenn Campbell Elvis the the
Glenn Campbell Elvis singing? Because oh, by the way, the
original play there's nothing to do with Elvis.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Right at all.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Actually, the play as it were, I don't think is
even remotely adapted by the movie. I think the name
of the character in the movie, Chanta Clear, is the
name of that of that play. But it is a
weird movie. It is a scary at times movie. And look,
Chris Plummer doing the voice of an owl is pretty gray.

(34:00):
I mean Glenn Campbell. It's like the only animated thing
I could think he's in, and he's essentially just playing
himself as a rooster, which is again bizarre. You know,
it's such an odd kid's favorite Glenn Campbell. Like again,
and that's why I think I agree with you whole artedly,
Like it's Don Bluth was never for kids, Like no play,
It's gonna be like Chris Plumber and Glenn Campbell, sign

(34:21):
me up, Like yeah right, kids don't give a shit
who voices their characters. They don't even want to meet
the people that voice the characters. They want to meet
the character. That's how this works. Jim Cummings, who's in Chanticleer,
who does some singing on cameo. Right now, you can
be like three hundred dollars and he'll just have a
Winny of the poo stuffed animals sitting there on screen
and he's off camera doing the voice. Like easiest three

(34:42):
hundred bucks this man's ever made. But that's my point,
Like I don't think Glenn Campbell never did anything else
that was animated. If he did, it's not as high
profile as as Similarly, Chris Plumber and that's I mean,
the cast is weird, the subject material is weird. It's
like an Elvis thing too, which is weird. If you're
into weird stuff, particularly things made of a certain time

(35:06):
and place. Rocketdoodle is is Your is your movie because
it is about as weird as Don Bluth will ever get.
As far as I'm concerned, most things Don Blue does
are rather straightforward. This movie is like you said, it's
a lot. It's all over the place, and when it works,
it works, and when it doesn't, it really does.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
It's true. Yeah, this movie is fun to watch. It
is not what I would qualify as a great movie.
This is This is obviously one that sticks out from
his filmography, not only for the live action aspect, but
it's one of two films in his filmography that are

(35:44):
just fucking weird, Like they feel so out of place.
And I'm not against it. I'm fine with the experimentation.
I'm glad he didn't focus on it. But it's it's
a Yeah, it was an odd time in his career
and that's probably what led to that period in the

(36:05):
nineties because with the two like off the Wall batshit movies,
you follow that up with this weird like treading Water
period in the early nineties, and then he comes out
with Anastasia, and so I feel like, I don't know,
I feel like he was building up towards Anastasia for
so long it came out, and then all of his
creative juice was gone, and all I had left was, well,

(36:27):
let's try sci fi with tightan ae and it doesn't work.
But yeah, this is such an odd filmography. But yeah,
this and the one before it just bat shit films.
And that's I mean, we'll get right to it. Since
I'm already alluding to it. My pick is the other
batshit movie in his filmography, which I had, to be honest,

(36:48):
I don't love. I think the reason I'm suggesting this
as the appreciated gem that most people. If you've not
seen this, it probably should not be the first film
you watch. I'm gonna go with the All Dogs Go
to Heaven. So I don't love this movie. Specifically, on
rewatch last year with my kids, it was why are

(37:10):
my kids watching this movie where.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
The dog gets murdered? Is that the film you want
to show your kids?

Speaker 1 (37:17):
So it's wait, it's so much It is so much
worse than the dog gets murdered. So for anybody that
hasn't seen this or has not seen this in a
long time, let me try hits the ladder.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
I'm feeling for most people.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Well, let's try to do this the way Chris just
did for Rocket Noodle. So there is a dog named
Charlie who is at the dog bound. He escapes because
he was gonna be put down, and he escapes with
his friend Itchy and they go back to their casino
riverboat in New Orleans, which Charlie recently was running this

(37:53):
himself with his business partner, Carface, and this already is weird.
So they are trying to save money and not have
Charlie cut in on the profits. Carface is saying that
he is going to have Charlie taken care of, so
he gets him sent to the pound. And then on
top of that, he persuades Charlie to leave town with

(38:14):
his money and just be done with it so that
he can keep making money off of the casino. So weird.
Charlie says, you know what, fine, I'll leave. But that
night he is drunk and during Marti Gras, he is
pushed down a hill and killed by a car because
Carface had his assistant killer kill him. When this happens,

(38:37):
Charlie literally literally goes to heaven and interacts with an
angel where Charlie steals a gold pocket watch that represents
his life winding back, and then he gets sent back
to Earth and gets told if you die again, you
will not come back to Heaven and you will have
to go literally to hell. They go back to Earth

(39:01):
and he finds Itchy again. That's like the first third,
my friend. He gets back to Earth and he finds
his friend Itchy and says, hey, I'm not dead anymore,
look at me. And they find later on that they
find this girl that car faces kidnapped a human girl
because she can talk to animals, and they are using

(39:23):
that because it's helpful when betting on horse races.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Of course, as one does. So they're going going on here.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Charlie and this girl are going to horse horse races
the next day and they end up stealing the wallet
from a family and understand that they are literally just orphans. Essentially,
they're not with anybody. It's a child and two dogs,
one of them named Itchy at a horse race.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
And one of them undead. By the way, the undead
live again. So they're at this horse race.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Somebody, Charlie steals the wallet, and things just start to
go off the rails. Like that wasn't off the rails yet.
The child named Anne Marie. She gets mad at Charlie
for stealing the wallet. She understands that she was being
used for all this, and she grows up very quickly
and starts to fight it. It gets real bad. I'm
not going to go to every single plot point, but

(40:23):
there's literally a hell cinematic in this movie, a lake
of fire hell cinematic in All Dogs Go to Heaven.
And so all of that being said tonight, it is
a singular weird animated movie. By the way, didn't even
mention the cast in this yet are our main character

(40:45):
Charlie is voiced by none other than Burt Reynolds, who
literally sings in this movie. We don't get Charles Nelson Riley,
but we do are sorry. Charles Nelson Riley is in
this smaller part but the bigger one. Don Delawiz plays
a really big part in this one, of.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
Course, and Reynolds, of course with Burt.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Reynolds of course, yeah fits right in. Yeah, this is
an oddly voiced movie. It's an oddly cast movie. The
animation is pretty, but again, not a child's movie in
the least bit. And yet we all watched this when
we were like six years old, and we're like, haha,
the dogs are in hell. Ha, Like that is so
fucking weird first of all, but now let me turn

(41:29):
it a little more sinister and odd. Thinking about this.
In a twenty twenty four lens Don Bluth from a
very Mormon family is telling a heaven and hell story
about animals directed towards kids, kind of like fear mongering
them into making different choices. That feels weird to me.

(41:51):
That being said as a curio piece, this movie has
to be seen to be believed. Like I remembered watching
this many minute times as a kid, and watching this
as an adult when I hadn't seen it in twenty
five plus years was just what the fuck? After? What
the fuck? This movie is insanity?

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yeah, I've never seen it, but it sounds essentially like
rocket Doodle, just like, Hey, we got all this time,
and we got all this money, and we got this
weird fucking idea. Hey, and we who can we get?

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Bur Reynolds, Vic tay Back of all people.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
For fuck's sake, we'll get Burt Reynolds to sing.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
Yeah, I mean victay Bach's in it, Oh God, and
then oh by the way, And I think it kind
of bears repeating, given that we've talked already about movies
made after the Originals come out. There's All Dogs Go
to Heaven two, and you know what they replaced Bur
Reynolds with.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
I don't remember this, Charlie.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Fucking Sheen, which honestly feels like a completely different movie
than now I want to watch as well.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
I mean, that's what's properly cast.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah, boy, it sure is. And not only is it
Charlie Sheen who's recast, but Vic Tayback is recast as well.
His character, the car face character is played by Ernest
Borgnine in the seild, which is it's just so insane.
Don Delawiz does return though for any of you, what,
thank goodness. Yeah, I've never seen it, and I always
get it confused with, uh, the hell's that movie called

(43:16):
Rover Dangerfield, the one where it's just like the dog
Rodney Dingerfield. I know I exist, folks like.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
I know I talk a lot about physical media, but
just a few months ago Rover Dangerfield got announced on
Blu Ray from the Warner Archive collection, and it was
so much fun to see everybody go, oh my god,
I forgot this existed. You just unlocked so many memories.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
I think about that dog, Rodney Dangerfield way more than
I should, especially him adjusting his tie.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
Right, It's just a dog adjusting his tie saying he
gets no respect. And it's like you're literally just animated yourself.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
You're just a dog, but with the eyes and mannerisms
of Rodney Dangerfield. Okay, that's the thing. Like, at least
with Don Blue Stuff. For the most part, the person
voicing the character doesn't get in the way of what
the character looks right, which is a thing from time
to time. I mean, how it doesn't look like Chris Plumber,
Glenn Campbell's Chant de Claire kind of kind of Glenn

(44:14):
Campbell adjacent. But yep, that dog And although I was
going to have it looks nothing like turd Ferguson. Can
you imagine that just like him? Just I mean, what
would it be like to that Burt Reynold's in an
animated movie like Silks are that on? Its Like that
makes me want to watch it now because I didn't
realize Bur Reynolds was the lead in that movie.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Again, the lead, and he sings Burt Reynolds singing in
nineteen eighty nine as a drunk casino owning dog. Think
about that.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
He doesn't even sing in the best little Horrorhouse in Texas, right,
I know what he does it for the dog movie
The Dog. I also love how Charles Nelson Riley is
part of Don Blues like players, like people that he
works with, because that was the other thing I think
longest time thought he was only an troll in Central Park.
That is not the case.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
Nope, he was there for like five or six in
a row.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
I think, yeah, But I mean it's a troll in
Central Park that and and I guess also Don Delawi's right,
because isn't he a voice? Way isn't he the voice
of the troll? And a troll in Central Park? I
think he's the voice of Stanley, the horribly designed troll
in that movie.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
It's pretty bad.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
That hair is just yeah, you know what. I do
want to mention this, like we never we never really
drag stuff on this show, and we shouldn't, but I
want to mention here a troll in Central Park deserves
to be mentioned, and how fucking weird it is If
the title alone isn't enough. It is literally a troll
that literally lives in Central Park, voiced by Dom Delowies.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
Under a bridge of course.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Under yeah, and he's got like just his character design
is awful. That's the only word I could use. It's
just like off putting. This is our hero and he
looks like just awful. It's not it's not great. It's
I mean, I've seen it more recently than I've seen
any other stuff, but still very forget Other than again,
Don Delaize's this hideous to look at Stanley the troll.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
So I don't want to drag my wife here, But
leading up to the Don Bluth watch along last year,
she was excited because I had never seen a troll
in Central Park and she was like, this was my
Don Bluth movie as a kid. I love this. I
put this on and after ten minutes I did the
like full mouth, open teeth bearing looking at her, going

(46:30):
this was your favorite? Uh yeah, that movie not good.
The weird conceits in that movie with like the growing
flowers and god, that movie. Uh, I don't even know
how to man.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
He makes some choice, that's for sure.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Yeah, and that I mean, honestly, that's a really great takeaway.
His stuff is so unique and just it stands alone
from everything else around that time.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
Yeah. There. I have not seen anything like a troll
in Central Park since that movie came out. It is
uniquely its own thing. And we live in a time
now where like hand drawn animation is not really a thing.
It's all it's all CGI. I mean, I don't know
how many Space Chimps movies there are, but there's more
than one. I know that, or Chimps in Space or

(47:18):
whatever the movie's called. But I can't tell you how
many animated movies just come out that have like random,
somewhat big actors in it. It's like a movie about
a snowman in the snowman's voice by like John Heater
or some some weird ass shit like that, like the
Pinocchio movie that has Polly's Shore doing the voice of Pinocchio.

(47:38):
What in God's name? I like, what what did I
stumble into here? But Don Bluth was like ahead of
it as far as I'm concerned. Like Disney, it took
a while for Disney to get like prestige actors doing
voices in their stuff at least like the level of
like a list talent. I mean, I'm not saying people
that did Disney voices weren't, but they're a list in

(47:58):
a different way, like Thorough Raven's all those kinds of people.
Like the voice actors for Disney, they were relatively Paul
Freeze relatively unknown the moment you got Kristen Bell in
Frozen or something like that. Or I mean, we're really
start to Tim Allen and Tom Hanks in Toy Story.
It's like, holy shit, we can make money with just
our voices, and like Forever in Perpetua make money. But

(48:22):
Don Bluth was doing it first. I gotta give him that.
There's another piece of credit that goes to him. It's
like he was doing the celebrities as dogs first, or
you know, whatever the fuck you want to patrol a
dog's partner that kills people. Apparently, fucking nightmare of a movie.
What a nightmare for children that must have been. That's
where we're also fucked up because that was a movie

(48:43):
that our parents were like, you know, there's a movie
you should totally check out dogs in even what's wrong
with that? It's a handmade a movie with dogs.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Oh and don't worry, they also go to Hell.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Oh yeah, well, hey man, I'm game. If you're gonna
show us Heaven, you might as well show us dog
Hell do they show us dog Judas? Though they fire
with like a frozen dog dogs in it? Elas Judas.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
Oh God, there is a lake of fire and there's
like a dragon in the fire. It is worth it
to see this.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
Okay. Interesting? Yeah, I of all the things we've talked
about so far, it's definitely high up on the list
because it sounds just about, if not more batshit than Rocketdoodle.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
For sure it as an adult, it is weirder than Rocketdodle.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Interesting, Okay, I will have to check it out. Then
it's the top of the list.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
I'm excited to hear what you think.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
Yeah me, I'm excited to watch it because it sounds.
What's funny is I just want to share it with
Richard because I know how much of a Breynolds fan
he is, Like, Hey, did you know he was in
All Dogs Go to Heaven. So we've kind of been
dancing around it. But I'll ask you first, Ryan, what
is in your opinion, the biggest influence on pop culture
that Don Bluth has had. I know you were kind

(49:55):
of seeing what you were thinking about your answer might
be here, So I'm very curious. I kind of have
an answer. It's more of an aside than an answer,
but I'm curious to hear what you have to say.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
This one is interesting because you could say, like, this
is other than the ones that are solely made for adults,
like you're Ralph Bakshi's this is this is the animator
for adults of the of the eighties and nineties essentially,
and it's not. It's not even just for adults. Obviously,
these all work for kids at the exact same time.

(50:25):
It just works on a different plane. So I could
have ran with that, But I think the more important
thing here that really hit pop culture, and I don't
think he gets enough credit for this is Don Bluth
left Disney in nineteen seventy nine or seventy eight or
eighty or whatever that was and stepped away and did
his own thing, and from nineteen seventy nine through nineteen

(50:48):
eighty eight he absolutely killed it. With the Secret of
Nim An American Tale, and The Land Before Time, he
had three back to back to back bona fide incredible
hit films. These movies were astonishingly well made, great stories,
had a positive reaction, and all that this time for
Disney was not so great. I think the biggest impact

(51:12):
on pop culture is I think Don Bluth led to
Disney going into their golden period, which started in nineteen
eighty nine with The Little Mermaid, and then, of course
after The Little Mermaid, which was incredible, we follow that
up with The Big Ones, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin,
the Lion King, Pocahontas. They started going in with Toy Story,

(51:33):
of course, Hunchback and Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan Tarzan. This
whole era of the nineties and the late eighties for
Disney will be looked on as probably the greatest decade
of animated films from one production company ever, and they
deserve it. Have a hand drawn animation, for sure, they

(51:54):
deserve it. It's looked back on as a very specific era
of Disney animation. Without Don Bluth walking away and kicking
them and the ass by doing great on his own,
I don't know that we get the quality that we
get from them in the late eighties and nineties. These
movies are foundational films on their own. I mean, any

(52:17):
of those you can take away and say, in its moment,
it was the biggest movie in the world. More people
had seen it than anything else forms to come after
it comes out. There are literally millions of kids that
will look back on that and be able to recite
it twenty years later, every single thing, word for word,
no matter which of those movies you're talking about. And

(52:39):
it is just it is so hard to even accurately
explain how big the animated Disney films of the nineties
affected everything else.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
Is it? Though we can look to the fact that
Lion King just toured in the city I live, like
That's what I'm saying, But that's fuck it, Like I
think that to your point, like that is a proof
positive of those right of how important like Beauty and
the Beast, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, and Lion King like Disney.
If Disney made nothing else, those four movies like alone

(53:15):
make the nineties for them in a way that, like
you said, it's very hard for anybody now to understand.
It's like, imagine if Frozen two came out like this,
like within a year of Frozen one, and it because
those movies were mentally successful. But like, it's hard to
fathom in this day and age something like that happening
because the tandron thing is just not a thing, but

(53:36):
the level of which they were operating is just insane.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
Yeah, it's it's insanity to look back on that period
of animation and say, without Don Bluth leaving, what would
Disney have done? And it's obviously it's weird to say
somebody leaving that company made that company do something better
because he wasn't holding them back necessarily. But it's like

(54:01):
we talk about in every other sector, competition breeds a
better output for the consumer. And all I can say is, man,
fans of Disney in the nineties were eaten.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Well, yeah, my answer is similar to yours, I am,
if not more or less the same. I would say
you pretty much touted the old You know, neither one
of us are Bible thumpers. But iron sharpens iron, right,
that's the idea. Yeah, at least for me, I think again,
I agree with everything you said. My answer is building

(54:33):
on your answer a little bit more, which is Don
Bluth gave Disney somebody to chase, Yeah, and they did,
and they chased after him. And he ended up stopping,
and they they continued and accelerated and flew right into
the air and kept going. I mean Don Bluth did.
And Don Bluth kind of stopped. And there are probably
numerous reasons as to why. Again, we've talked about the

(54:54):
fact that he's older now, I mean even twenty years ago,
he would have been an older guy then. But at
the same time, like it's just one guy in his
production company, Disney has the resources of Disney. I mean, yo,
imagine if we could have a conversation with ourselves in
the nineties about what Disney is now like to call like, yeah,

(55:15):
Disney's just a thing. Now Disney is Marvel and Fox
and we could name all the things, right. But Don
Bluth gave that Disney that was the animation company and
the theme park folks. He gave them something to chase,
which was somebody who actually made movies as good as
their movies, if not an Anastasia's case, I think better.

(55:35):
I think he did the Princess thing better, one little
tick better, which is actually giving us a villain that
matters in those movies. And yeah, I mean Don Bluth
made Disney better by giving them a set of films,
a set of ideas and a work ethic that Disney
had to match and exceed to create again modern film masterpieces.

(55:57):
I mean, Beauty of the Beast is. I don't know
if anybody's seen it recently, but it's kind of a
perfect movie. And Little Mermaid is too. And look, I'm
not even I don't actually like Lion King. You know
why because I've seen it a million fucking times. That's why.
Because for some of us it was as ubiquitous as
breathing in the nineties to hear Lion King, or play

(56:18):
the Lion King video game, or go see the Lion
King on stage or and it was like Don Bluth
similarly the I mean like fifl Fifel Goes West is
the sequel. There's sequels, so a lot of Don Blues movies.
We've alluded to it already. All Dogs go to Heaven two,
there's a there's a sequel to Secrets and Nim Isn't
there like a director you think? So to direct direct

(56:40):
to video. I mean a lot of these are direct
to video that have very little Don Bluth involvement. All
Dogs Go to Heaven Too, I believe is in that camp.
But yeah, when you're upstaging the company, you're doing something right.
So I'm with you. That's the that I think is
not only the correct answer, I think it's an answer
that's like nobody's gonna get Disney's goat like that anymore. Right,

(57:03):
DC tried with the Marvel stuff, copying that. We saw
how well that worked. At one point, Disney was the
underdog punching from beneath, which is hard to think about now.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
I'm confused by that, sun as DC tried with the
Marvel stuff.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
Yeah, they DC tried to do what Marvel did with
the Connected Universe. Oh and that's like the most recent
guy idea of like chasing the success of another franchise
that I might think of the same way that Disney
was doing that with Don Bluth in the nineties because
they had to because he was making stuff that Disney
was not even thinking about, like serious emotional films. I'm

(57:39):
not saying Disney wasn't, but you mentioned it, like the
eighties with animation for Disney was kind of a wasteland.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
Right, but funny enough. Like one thing that we could
say here is Don Bluth probably inspired a lot of
Pixar that we've already talked about in one of these episodes,
and then Disney said, oh shit, and we're buying Pixar,
And now Disney Pixar is a thing, and that the
only way Disney was going to get that in their camp.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
They had to pivot. And that's the thing. Like you mentioned,
the nineties were the golden the second golden age of
Disney animated. I'm sure somebody who knows more about the
fifties and sixties of Disney would say, oh, what about
the fifties and sixties, So I'll put that caveat in there.
But at the same time, then Disney stops doing animated movies,
they do see the three D animated Toy Story because

(58:24):
again that's what people when. When people saw Toy Story
and realized that could be a thing, that's all anybody wanted.
And I don't blame them, but yeah, like Don Bluth's
style was never translated to three D outside of like
Dragon's Layer, and I been some stuff in Titany tiny.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
Is all three D CGI and it's uh, we should
probably talk about that for just a second, because you've
not seen this one.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
You said, I saw it a really long time ago.
So like I remember bits and pieces. I don't remember
it being heavy cgi.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
It is, it's fairly it's it's not good. It's not
a good movie. Like I understand the fact that he
was kind of like pushing boundaries the entirety of his
career and so seeing that this was on the horizon
and he wanted to lean into it, it was a
great shot. Unfortunately it failed tremendously for him, so he

(59:16):
didn't have anything in the tank after that. But it
has some decent ideas. It just it's not a Don
Blue movie. It doesn't feel like it. There's a couple
things that you can see like, oh yeah, I could
see how that could be related to what he used
to do, but it's not the same. The voice acting
is weird, like Matt Damon. Matt Damon is not a

(59:37):
good voice actor for an animated movie like Tima Madison World.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
POLASI did pretty good.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
Yeah, because he played himself just to a hyper degree.
But right, he's got no charisma in titany. It is
the most like milk toast person you could think to
do something like this, and it's I don't know. I
mean that alone probably could have caused a lot of
the problems with this. If they chose a different voice actor,
this might have been a very different movie.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
I was about to say, Man, the right voice actor
in the lead can make or break here in right movie.

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
And just like you were alluding to earlier, this is
one where they chose him because he was the big
ip boy at the minute with Goodwill hunting and a
few other things that he did.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Yeah, so it makes sense. I mean, it makes sense
why it was made the way that it was. But yeah,
that Don Bluth magic seemingly ran out. I want to
watch tight A now, just just just to watch it.
But at the same time, like I really it as
someone who I mean again, we were recording video right now.
We've done a lot of stuff in video. I'm more
comfortable doing stuff on video now, But as someone who

(01:00:37):
spent a lot of time doing audio stuff, when I
watched stuff with bad at like audio now I'm talking
like the quality of the audio I'm talking about the
voice acting is bad. Shit that drags me out of
the movie immediately, like you're you're phoneing it in. We
recently watched on the Chasing Chevy Chase podcast. Oh Heavenly Dog,
it's not an animated movie. But chevy Chase is doing

(01:00:58):
the monologue for the dog. And I don't know if
chevy Chase was ever on set after the fact when
his character died, but it seemed like he was phoning
it in. Possibly literally it's like, oh, I am a
dog now. It's like man like. You can't phone it in,
like voy. Real voice actors don't phone it in, like

(01:01:18):
Jim Cummings does not phone it in. John DiMaggio, the
guy who does the voice of Bender, doesn't. I mean,
think about all the actors on The Simpsons, They've never
really phoned it in, which is why they're continuing to
be employed. But like we've talked about with other things,
just because you're an actor doesn't mean you can sing.
Just because you're an actor doesn't mean you can dance.

(01:01:39):
Just because you're an actor doesn't mean you can do
any voice other than your own. Those are things that
you can learn to broaden your abilities. But like you
mentioned Matt Damon, I don't think he's gonna do that.
I mean, Matt Damon has the things to be in
front of the camera, the good looks, the charm. Putting
him as a voice actor kind of takes away what
the appeal of Matt Damon is intrinsic to begin with,

(01:02:00):
especially bad Damon of like what early two thousands peak
peak good looking young Matt Damon.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Yeah, not a great period, No, especially not for voice acting. Again,
I think almost anybody else could have made this better.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
I always think about Ronda Rousey doing the voice of
Sonya Cage in the most recent video game, Mortal Kombat.
Oh my god, what are you thinking? Or Megan Fox
being cast again? Like why just or I mean again,
I don't know how you felt about this, but to
bring this section to a close again or maybe to
be this the bridge to the next question, but I

(01:02:40):
think it's more of a thing that stays here. Don
Bluth is effectively you could make the case he's the
reason Chris Pratt plays Mario. I mean again, why did
they cast Chris Pratt to play Mario? But not because
Chris Pratt is Italian, not because he does a good Mario,
but not that he's played Mario a dan his life.
I'm not sure he has goombahs, but he's Chris Pratt,

(01:03:05):
and Chris Pratt doing Mario is fucking something I want
to see. I didn't know I ever wanted to see it,
say with mad Damon, same with bur Reynolds, like there
is a novelty to it that Don Bluth clearly understood,
and that is and that is a good thing. And
maybe it wasn't the novelty. Maybe he's like, look, these
are movies just like anything else, So of course I'm
going to cast actors who are working, not necessarily just

(01:03:25):
voice actors.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
So true that I guess that leads to our fourth question. Then,
my friend, what's the cinematic bridge to Don Bluth that
somebody might want to be walking across? And I'll throw
mine out there because I alluded to it earlier. I
think the closest thing to Don Bluth is Miyazaki films.
The animation style is there, but the bigger thing. They're

(01:03:48):
emotional adult stories that are delivered in a way that
can also be delivered for children. They trust the viewer
to connect things that you're not going to connect always.
They trust you to be able to make decisions about
their characters without being force fed motivations. For some of
those characters, they're still fantastical and supernatural and scary and

(01:04:15):
well drawn and all of that, but they are deeper
than a princess chasing a boyd types toeer stories.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Right, I mean, I think my answer is very similar
in kind of a different direction. I would say, if
you are a fan of Ralph Bakshi and the wild
movies that he makes, Don Bluth is like Ralph actually light.
He doesn't embrace the kind of subversive politicalness of the genre.

(01:04:44):
He doesn't. I'm not saying Don Bluth doesn't have something
to say, but I think Don Blue says it better
than Bakshi and a lot of his stuff, because back
she just goes for it to say it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
At least.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
I love Ralph Bakshi's the interpretations of the Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings. Those are a lot of fun,
and I would say that if you're a fan of
those things, Don Bluth might be something you want to
check out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
Do.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
I would wager similarly to Miyazaki, like I feel like
if you've seen Miyazaki, you have seen Don Bluth.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
The hard part is Miyazaki most of it has come
after Don Bluth was out of his golden period, So
it is quite possible that if you've seen all of Miyazaki,
you haven't seen any Don Bluth. On the other hand,
if you've seen Bakshi, you've probably seen Don Bluth.

Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
And to be fair, I would say that the Miyazaki
thing is also a great comparison because I would contest
Miyazaki movies dubbed in English are a fucking travesty. Specifically
Ponyo talk about people that are believe Matt Damon's in
that movie, I believe who plays the father, and Tina

(01:05:51):
Faye plays the mom. Howe's moving castle as Christian Bale
doing the voice, He's awful. He's terrible. It's just like
the worst casting possible. He's so stilted and boring. And
I think of what I think of these weird novelty
casting decisions. Miyazaki's English dubbed versions have that in spades,

(01:06:13):
like they again, they were casting really big names to
be in those movies because of the prestige of the
Miyazaki films, and dot Bluth was kind of at the
forefront of that, saying like, real actors need to be
in my movies. I want real well known visual like
well known actors that you have seen, not necessarily well
known voice actors. Because you know, we could go back

(01:06:34):
and forth. I don't know how many voices we'd get
to with people that work in voice acting, Jim Cummings,
Billy West, I mean plenty of people. I mean JK.
Simmons for the longest time was a voice actor. He
does the voice of the Yellow Eminem still, which is
still a nutzoid thing to me. But that idea of
like animation is not just for voice actors. It's also

(01:06:55):
for actor actors, I think is important. I don't know
if it's ever. I don't know if we've gotten to
the point where it really meshes as well as we
want it to, because, like even something like across the
Spider Verse, a lot of those actors aren't necessarily actor actors.
They're kind of a little bit of both. They are
known for several different things. And I think that that

(01:07:17):
is kind of where we're finally at the point where
we know how to do this, which is, don't cast
big name actors to carry your movie. Cast them to
be in it like a Nick Cage, like a Jake Johnson.
They're not the main characters in those Spider Verse movies,
but they're there and they add some color and some flavor.
And I think that that was what Don Bluth was
trying to figure out and I think that he like

(01:07:38):
other movies, you could come into it and see, well,
this is where this kind of came from. But other
people have done it I think a little bit better,
but it's still a very hard hill to climb well.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
And I mean that's exactly when you compare the Disney
animation of the seventies and eighties to the Don Bluth
animation of the eighties and the voice acting, specifically Jim
Cumming can do Winnie the Pooh, he can't emote, and
the actors that are your Don Delauiz and your Charles
Nelson Riley, they are playing these roles because you can

(01:08:10):
hear them get riled up. You can hear when they're
smiling while saying a line. You can hear while they
are upset. You can hear that they are embodying not
just the character itself, but the emotions behind them. And
so for many of these like for those of us
that love films, you've probably seen many of these videos
of them doing the voice acting and seeing them literally

(01:08:32):
portraying emotions with their hands, with their bodies and moving
in a way that you can see, yeah, they're literally
acting the part. Even though it's just an animated film.
They're only required to do the voice they're giving it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
They're all, yeah, and I'm not saying voice actors don't
do that, but voice actors have a different expectation for
what they're doing, right, Yeah, And you know, I totally agree.
I think Miyazaki's a good choice. I think Ralph Backschley's
a good choice different ends of a similar spectrum. I
think Don Bluth is.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
For sure enter there. Yeah, time wise too.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
Do you ever think there'll be another Don Bluth? Is
there so like a current person doing this? Like Miyazaki,
we we kind of alluded to he's retired and that
unretired animations is kind of weird now, right, Like it's
I would say, it's almost like an owl, like a
like what was that called Centaur World? Like animation is

(01:09:24):
more on Animation doesn't necessarily exist anymore on film, it
exists on television. Like when I think of animated things
that I've really enjoyed in the last couple of years,
that Harley Quinn show on DC, Right, like Centaur World,
which is way more endearing and like, uh like heartwarming
of a show than I thought it would be when

(01:09:45):
I started watching it. But like what's really sad is
like animation is seemingly like not the thing it used
to be anymore, which is such a shame. It's like
really relegated to television and short form.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
I hate to say it, but I think a decent
pick here for who is a modern version of that
is probably John Lassiter. Yeah, or you don't need to
go down that path. Brad Bird is close. He's done.
I mean, he's done some masterpieces. What he did with
Radatuey is stupid, Like it should not have been that good.
Both of the Incredibles movies are are pretty good. But

(01:10:21):
that's that's what he's done. He hasn't done a ton yet,
but last year, man, he had. He's got quite a
few of those Pixar titles.

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. No, you're right, I am. I
am thankful that someone else has carried the torch. I
just wish it had been hand drawn animation. You know,
it's unfortunate. It's like the switch from practical to CGI.
I mean, you love the thing that has a little
bit more warmth and reality to it, but you saw
this coming from a mile away that it was going

(01:10:49):
to change, and it had to change so.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
Unfortunately. And I get that it's cost effective and all
that fun stuff, But I mean, for those of us
that love hand drawn animation, like the fact that you
can go buy a cell of animation from your favorite
film fucking cool. You can't do that with a Pixar
film from twenty seventeen. Nope.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
I can buy seals from the original teenage bed Ninja
Turtles TV show, which I've thought about doing plenty of times,
and because it's one of my favorite things. So I
get it, like there is something more tangible about hand
drawn than there is cgi Pixar, which, again not drying
away from it. I read all like a baby at
the end of Toy Story three, just like every other
millennial does. But something about hand drawn animation just smacks different.

(01:11:35):
As they would say, HiT's different.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
Fully agree, I now that we're kind of wrapping up,
I did want to throw out I know we haven't
said a whole lot about the Secret of Nim or
An American Tale. Both of those movies are also masterpieces,
top tier Don Bluth Secret to Nim specifically is mind
blowing that that's his first feature as a director. It
is so high quality, the story is great. The animation

(01:12:02):
is perfect, it's emotional, It's an important story. I mean,
the fact that Nim actually stands for something and you
learn that throughout the story and all that. It's an adaptation,
of course, but it's tough. It's told in a way
that is very meaningful and works super well as a film.
An American tale, I think kind of gets overshadowed because

(01:12:23):
the sequel is so iconic. Favlo Goes West is it
was a big, big deal, And this first movie is
really great, super well drawn, maybe even better animation than
Secret and Nim tells a really important story, tells a
really great story about somebody being outcast and othered and
isolated from their family and finding that journey back home.

(01:12:46):
It is a fantastic watch in twenty twenty four holds
up very well, I think, but they I don't know.
I think a lot of his stuff was ahead of
its time, and then after a while some of the
other stuff was behind the times, and Don Bluth just
didn't hit things at that right time very often. I

(01:13:08):
think maybe the only one that really hit at the
right time was The Land Before Time. I just said
the word time like thirty times. Now it's not a word,
but yeah, everything else was like he was too innovative
and then took that weird break to do a couple
of experimental films and then just slept in the early
nineties and it gets super odd. But either way, he

(01:13:30):
is an American pioneer of animation. I absolutely love his output.
I think every single one of his films are worth watching, Yes,
even as Roll in Central Park, and I think that
I love Don Bluth. He's an incredible director.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
My last bit on all of this is, like you've mentioned,
like the amount of influence that he has had on things.
We go from Spielberg and Don Bluth making American Tail,
Spielberg leaves forms Amblamation, makes three movies, and then do
you know where all the people from Amblamation go? They
all go to DreamWorks. They're all hired by DreamWorks yep,

(01:14:10):
when Amblamation is dissolved. So like that for me is
like and then DreamWorks is the company that Disney is
chasing with their movies in the two thousands, because I
would concede that dream like and we haven't done that
episode yet, and that would be a fun one to
do some DreamWorks animation because boy talk about Big Dick
Swinging in the two thousands. I mean, there's one movie

(01:14:32):
in particular that is, yes, it's a meme now, but
you cannot overstate how important Shrek was when it came out,
like I mean, and it still holds up to this trect.

Speaker 1 (01:14:42):
The first Shrek movie is a five out of five film.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
Is a perfect movie for sure, and it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:48):
Is only one other DreamWorks movie that I would put
up in that tier right now.

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
Interesting, Yeah, I mean that's I think that that might
be a next logical step if we want to continue
kind of how animation is changed and where it goes,
and if we want to have more discussions about it,
because in a lot of ways, Don Bluth leads directly
into DreamWorks, and DreamWorks takes the mantle of what Don
Bluth was doing and runs with it with computer generated stuff,
which is, we need to give Disney somebody to chase.

(01:15:14):
And I don't know of any movie bigger than fucking
Minions because Minions is a DreamWorks thing and God just
stickable me ten now or whatever we're on, Like I
mean again, like there you go, right, Like Don Bluth
did the thing and then other people did the thing too,
which is stand up to Disney, which at one point

(01:15:36):
it's not as big of a deal as it is now.
Let's just put it that way. Now, anybody willing to
do it is a big deal. But in the nineties
it was like, holy shit, this guy's doing the Disney
thing better. All right, can anybody else do it?

Speaker 1 (01:15:47):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:15:47):
These guys who made Balto can Okay, Amblemation made three movies.
Think about that. On top of everything else. They made
Balto Fifel goes West and we're back the movie we've
talked about a couple times. Now.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Well, uh, before we end this, I will say we've
done Pixar, We've done Don Bluth. Uh you mentioned Despicable
Me is a DreamWorks title. It's not. It's actually an
Illumination title.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
So is that not dream Well, that's it's universal right,
Oh right, So then it actually goes Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks
Disney again for a little bit, and now Illumination.

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
Wow. So I think now we have to do an
Illumination episode, a DreamWorks episode, a Bakshi episode, and then
we probably should do a different episode for each of
the eras of Disney Animation.

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
Yeah, I don't. I was going to say, like I
don't think there's any way to cover Disney in one episode.
And given and given, like we've already kind of alluded to,
they really have specific styles compartmentalized within the decades. Like yeah,
that's that's a big that's like five or six episodes worth.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
But at least i'd be a game that Yeah, and
now these are all going on the list and will
happen eventually.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
I know someday we'll be like, remember we did that
episode on Don Bluth, like in the first month of this.

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
Show, Remember the Pixar episode that led to all of this.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
Kind of barely remember the Pixar episode we just recorded this.
I think for me, like I'm where I'm left here
with Don Bluth is I'm so excited to go and
watch some of the things that I clearly missed, because
I don't know how I missed. All Dogs Go to
Heaven like I've never I've never seen it, which is
kind of surprising to me because like I grew up
with dogs, Like it wouldn't it wouldn't seem outwardly like

(01:17:37):
a not a kid's movie, given all the advertisement and
posters make it look like a kid's movie.

Speaker 1 (01:17:42):
So I mean, you were born after it came out, obviously,
but it was. It was very popular from eighty nine
to ninety four issue I believe it. Yeah, all right,
now that we've covered Don Bluth, Chris, what what do
you got going on? Tell the people what you do?

Speaker 2 (01:18:02):
What do I do? I sit here and run my
mouth for a living. So you can find all the
things that I do at weirdingwaymedia dot com where the
projection booth is found, eightestv ladies is found, twisted and
on corks found and guess what, I'm on none of them.
So if you don't like me, go listen to them.
If you do like me, a culture cast, uh, ranking
on bass, ranking on bond, which is a Patreon exclusive.

(01:18:23):
Those are all things you can also listen to too,
and you should be liking, rating, reviewing any of those
shows that you watch wherever you get them, which is
probably iTunes. So that's where you can go to find me,
and that's where you should do if you do find me.
I mean, if you want to try to kill me
and find me a real life, go ahead, but just
try to find me online. That's the preferred path of
finding me. Let's just put it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
If if you want to find them, I'll get you
the dress.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
Right, yeah, you'll tell you. We'll just be like you want,
what are you doing it? And go kill them? Okay, fine?
Uh what about you?

Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
Ryan?

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
Work? People find the things that you work.

Speaker 1 (01:18:52):
On everywhere under the Disconnected in Someone's Favorite Productions, just
like Chris, there's a podcast network out there called the
Someone's Feet Favorite Productions podcast Network. There's a lot of
great shows on it. I hope you go subscribe to
all of them, especially if you're a fan of physical media.
A lot of the shows fall into that type of focus.
Beyond that, you can find some Someone's Favorite Productions extras

(01:19:14):
on some recently announced films for physical media. I hope
you check those out. And Man, great interview coming up
on the YouTube channel for Disconnected next Monday. Go check
it out. And I think that's all we got for
this episode and for the next one. We hope you
check out our next episode and that you continue to
push the boundaries of your interest. Some of these were

(01:19:35):
not man

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
M M

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