The Culture War - Tim Pool - Wokeness Is Dying, Conservatives Are Winning & Taking Back Entertainment w⧸ Tom Bancroft & Seamus Coughlin

00:00:00.000 the culture war rages on and currently whether people realize it or not the landscape is ripe

00:00:17.420 with people attempting to go after your kids so to talk about the media landscape and what

00:00:25.760 children are watching and stuff we have a great panel today we're going to start it off with

00:00:29.580 mr tom bancroft please introduce yourself hey how you doing um i am tom bancroft my background is that

00:00:36.000 i was a disney animator for 12 years all on the bangers of the 80s and 90s so it was uh rescuers

00:00:43.120 down under you don't remember that do you uh being the beast aladdin lion king pocahontas mulan

00:00:49.480 tarzan a bunch of them about eight feature films and i designed mushu the dragon in mulan

00:00:55.000 and then uh since then have started my own company but also worked on superbook for cbn a lot of

00:01:01.700 christian content too uh for kids um and veggie tells and created the larry boy 2d show remember

00:01:09.460 larry boy okay good um i don't know why i'm picking on you just a target uh and then have created my

00:01:17.300 own company and so one of my last films that just came out actually just uh within the last month is

00:01:23.160 the light of the world and uh so i was contracted to direct that film co-direct it with a friend of

00:01:29.200 mine and so that's just been at theaters and it's now about to come out on pvod and and elsewhere um

00:01:36.740 and going is going around the world right now awesome shames coglin is here great to be here by the way

00:01:42.480 very impressive resume and uh i've heard about your work before we even have a mutual friend

00:01:47.760 john weber who needs your prayers by the way he's a good friend of ours he was recently in a motorcycle

00:01:53.540 accident and he's gonna live but he's just got some injuries so if you could storm heaven with

00:01:58.820 prayers for our friend john weber we would really appreciate that my name is shamus coglin i am a

00:02:05.460 cartoonist and animator most known for my web series freedom tunes we've amassed a million subscribers

00:02:10.440 a quarter of a billion views and we have an average view count of 450 000 views per video across over

00:02:18.440 600 videos with zero dollars spent on marketing um i love doing what i do and we are currently

00:02:23.580 expanding out into doing longer form animation so we've launched a crowdfunding campaign for a full

00:02:29.460 length 2d animated show it's an animated anthology series that tries to tackle modern moral issues

00:02:35.340 with comedy and good storytelling instead of lectures and pontificating so if you guys like

00:02:41.700 that and you want to see more entertaining conservative content in the culture war please

00:02:45.500 go to twistedplots.com and support us and if you donate ten dollars you'll get access to our 25 minute

00:02:50.520 pilot right away and with her culture war debut olivia dasovic is here hi guys my name is olivia i'm a

00:02:58.560 member of the community discord mod and generally just a political poster on x

00:03:03.780 brett's here guys yes brett normally i'm doing pop culture crisis monday through friday at 3 p.m

00:03:10.220 eastern standard time but i watch a lot of movies i watch a lot of animated movies so let's get into

00:03:14.200 it all right all right so why don't you go ahead and give us a little outline of your background you

00:03:18.580 mentioned you know you used to work for disney um what was the the the impetus for your departure

00:03:24.260 and and like what was it that led you to start your own uh or branch off on your own so yeah and

00:03:31.240 obviously this is gonna there's gonna be lots of elements of faith in my story um i've already

00:03:35.840 kind of hinted at that but really the reason that i left disney and i'll back up before that and just

00:03:41.720 say i went to california institute the arts i grew up in california and i have a twin brother we were

00:03:47.680 drawing together all the time as kids and uh very much like a cartoonist and i would we would draw

00:03:53.360 comic strips for the high school newspaper together write and draw those and then into junior college and

00:03:59.040 then one day a friend of ours eric stefani this is gwen stefani's brother wow i'm just gonna throw

00:04:05.580 that in there um she's just a girl she yeah come on she they she came to our wedding um not my brother

00:04:14.320 and mine my wife i think we got that instantly started back uh anyway so uh um he had showed us

00:04:23.380 this clay animated thing that he did and this was just out of high school about a year or so out of

00:04:27.720 high school we were amazed we thought because this is back in the like i said this is like mid 80s

00:04:33.400 um and we thought oh my gosh you have to have a huge budget and a production company of hundreds like

00:04:39.940 the the sort of behind the scene making of videos and things like that hadn't really come out yet from

00:04:45.740 the disney's of the world and so there was still a lot of mystery of how animation's even done

00:04:50.420 so he does this stop motion little clay thing and we were just blown away and that's what hooked us

00:04:56.300 we then got together with him and another friend and we made a little clay animated you know music

00:05:02.140 video actually to a song that we really liked and uh you know premiered that it was like a church youth

00:05:07.760 group thing and we we come out everybody else is making like slide shows with just photos and they

00:05:12.820 made their own little music video and we come out with this full-on animated you know epic

00:05:18.260 and kind of blow everybody away um and so you know a little accolades went a long way uh and hearing

00:05:24.820 just clapping was like something i was like i want this again so that just drove us to find out about

00:05:30.600 cal arts uh californians to the arts it was a school in california that was founded by disney he was part of

00:05:36.340 putting that together and a lot of his animators have learned from there uh through the years and uh

00:05:42.480 john weber one yeah awesome guy animation teacher um and so anyway then that got us into disney and so

00:05:50.980 going there for a year and a half uh they came looked at portfolios we both got in uh from there

00:05:56.760 we kind of split up he stayed in california i i was in florida but so most of my career was at the

00:06:01.960 florida disney animation uh area there and it was on tour too i don't know if anybody went as kids

00:06:08.560 to disney mgm studios but i was one of the artists that you come through and see how animation is

00:06:13.880 done but we were actually working on pieces of beauty and the beast they used to do the how-to

00:06:18.740 classes and stuff too right yeah that was a little bit later that was after they shut that down

00:06:23.120 um and yeah if you saw but during that era of the the how to draw mickey classes and things like

00:06:29.160 that that they would do um there was also a video of and this was in california adventure at one

00:06:35.520 point uh the florida uh disney mgm before it became hollywood studios and then in uh paris but

00:06:42.660 there was a video where animators they would mushu would kind of host this thing and talk about how

00:06:48.180 animation's done and i was in that video i'm talking to mushu um and so a younger version of me sat around

00:06:54.880 disney for about 10 years i'd get nobody ever known you know recognized me on the street of like

00:07:00.220 i saw you for 15 years in disney um because i just looked so radically different i lost all my

00:07:06.940 hair right after i shot does mushu still look the same as he get recognized he gets recognized a lot

00:07:11.400 talk to eddie murphy yeah talk to eddie murphy uh what's that talk to eddie murphy i did i met eddie

00:07:16.920 murphy during those days i met eddie murphy a couple times so yeah can i actually ask you

00:07:20.860 before you designed mushu did they already know that they were going to use eddie murphy as the voice

00:07:25.100 actor no okay yeah interesting the long story short on that is we were um i came on very early

00:07:32.920 to i was one of the uh maybe a handful of animators that came on to milan very early while we're still

00:07:38.260 refining the script rewriting and all that and so at one point it was going to be called yin and yang

00:07:43.340 and it was going to be crikey and a dragon and a cricket so crikey became crikey um and mushu would

00:07:50.660 have been yin or yang i'm not sure which um and then uh and then there was a phoenix and mushu

00:07:56.740 at one point and that was another yin and yang version uh and then they narrowed it down to no

00:08:01.780 let's just do the dragon and they threw out the cricket then they brought the cricket back anyway

00:08:05.960 but voice casting wise early on i did an animation test um with joe pesci oh we're looking at joe pesci

00:08:13.440 distinctive voice as any too yeah different kind of wise guy uh i'd say um but yeah they that so

00:08:20.640 that was a path they went down but ultimately it was michael eisner that made the decision because

00:08:25.560 he had a relationship with eddie basically eddie owed him is the way i think you put it um because

00:08:31.500 uh and michael eisner was the president before the bob eiger era yeah yeah and so because uh michael

00:08:39.660 had come from paramount before he was at disney he was the president there that's where he greenlit

00:08:44.580 uh training places and um uh beverly hills cop so two movies that really made eddie's career

00:08:52.140 wow so um anyway he just called him up and eddie wasn't that into it really um he had kids young

00:08:58.380 kids at the time so i think he saw the value of having his kids think he's pretty cool for doing

00:09:03.540 an animated thing but uh other than that he kind of he was a professional that's the that's the way i

00:09:08.940 usually put it that's how the adult actors are now when they go to do superhero movies they're like

00:09:13.100 well my kids liked it so i'm gonna go and well it's funny i think i think even uh trey parker

00:09:18.080 was in one of the despicable me films which is really funny which i imagine probably had something

00:09:22.800 to do with uh a kid but um i think he has a kid but part of what i want to ask you about too is as

00:09:29.180 you were doing those animation tests for his character i mean first of all did you do animation

00:09:33.500 tests before he was cast and then how much of the characterization changed after he came on

00:09:38.660 yeah so they after the joe pesci uh thing and i didn't even totally finish that test they came

00:09:45.820 along and said oh stop that now we're looking at eddie murphy this like it happened almost overnight

00:09:50.680 and they were like what do you think about eddie murphy like like they were really going to do what

00:09:53.720 i wanted but they asked it was very nice uh and so i said well yeah i mean that i couldn't wrap my

00:10:01.680 head around it actually i'm gonna back up and say no i didn't say well yeah i was like wait

00:10:05.580 eddie murphy because i will quit absolutely not you cannot bring any murphy on well we all know

00:10:11.080 what the movie became and we just sort of accepted it by the time it came out but imagine being on the

00:10:16.340 film where every other character is asian cast like they were trying to be very careful about getting

00:10:21.840 actual chinese actors and mushi was the only one that all of a sudden they went boom way over here

00:10:28.820 and said eddie murphy um i mean it just didn't at the time didn't make any sense but then they started

00:10:35.380 rewriting the script and kind of writing it in for him basically and then it all became very clear so

00:10:41.420 it was pretty um it was a pretty great idea actually i'm gonna blame michael eisner i don't know if it

00:10:46.400 started with him but uh so good job on that one michael but he would have been the most recognizable

00:10:51.180 name on the film at the time ming na wen was big but she's bigger now than she was at that time and

00:10:56.480 she wasn't big uh what they did is joy luck club i don't know if you remember that that movie had

00:11:01.780 come out just while we were working on milan but it was just maybe we'll say within the last year of

00:11:07.960 that while we were working on milan and we just raided joy luck club it was just almost if you go

00:11:14.620 through milan and and look at joy luck club a lot of those actors became voices in milan and ming na wen

00:11:21.360 especially was there similar personnel for like behind the scenes like uh like director and writer

00:11:26.420 because i don't like off the top of my head i don't remember who made that movie no uh no there

00:11:31.280 was nothing other than we were all looking and i when i say we i'm meaning more like uh my brother

00:11:37.480 actually co-directed mulan so i'm gonna say my brother and barry cook the other director plus the

00:11:43.360 producers you know the higher ups were all looking for i had my head down i was just trying to design

00:11:48.540 mushu at that time so i was not involved in any of that i was just like just tell me when you got

00:11:53.560 something and i'll do an animation test and so back to your question yeah i did do some animation

00:11:58.920 tests before eddie had signed the contract they were just like we think we want to do it with him

00:12:04.080 so i got a line from trading places it even had an f-bomb in it it was so weird animating at disney

00:12:11.000 with an f-bomb in yeah in the now nobody's gonna see it and nobody has really since um but uh i did a

00:12:18.660 whole animation test of mushu with a train him saying uh no he's like i'm a karate kid you know

00:12:25.220 back up it's when he's in the jail it may not be trading places now that i think of it um what was

00:12:30.400 the one where he did uh where he was like uh the chosen one anybody i don't think i ever saw that

00:12:36.840 it's actually a fun movie um and uh well anyway well i think one thing the audience is hearing that

00:12:43.280 a lot of people might not be aware of and that they're probably learning from the first time hearing

00:12:47.820 you talk about this is how much an animated film changes through the production process

00:12:53.320 and how different the final product is from that initial treatment or even the initial draft of the

00:12:59.060 screenplay now part of this is because artists are mercurial people and want to change things over

00:13:03.520 time but another part is as you're working on any animated project as you're looking over sometimes

00:13:09.520 like it's executives making decisions about what's going to be more marketable but sometimes it's just

00:13:13.560 you're working on it and you're realizing like this i thought this would work but it would be better if

00:13:18.300 we did it this way and i'm curious like how many designs did you go through as you were making mushu

00:13:23.660 how different was what ended up being approved from what initially appeared in your head yeah it's

00:13:29.280 crazy i mean it was hundreds uh you know i just was i would come in for and actually the process of

00:13:35.140 designing him was almost six months which is nuts but um and i got really bored of it after a while i'm

00:13:40.920 just drawing it oh you want more dragons okay i would just do oh now it's a bigger nose now it's a

00:13:46.060 smaller nose you know like and actually we probably refined it down to what 90 of what mushu looks

00:13:52.420 like now probably within the first say four months and then from there it was just little tweaks little

00:13:58.340 tweaks and the disney perfectionism and and then starting to do the model sheets and then doing

00:14:03.720 animation tests was all part of that six months probably but uh and and really once you have a

00:14:09.920 design even when you're like all right we think we got it you know we're about uh 90 percent there

00:14:15.500 we'll say um doing an animation test is really pays off because now you're animating you're doing

00:14:20.700 different expressions you're having them turn in space and he's moving and gesturing and you just

00:14:26.340 have new challenges that come up when you're and bringing a character to life that you don't think

00:14:32.420 about when you're just doing a model sheet you know here's him angry here's him sad here's him

00:14:36.520 whatever you know very basic you get into the subtleties well and before we we move on from

00:14:42.380 the design because this is this is fascinating for me how much of the changes in design that happened

00:14:47.460 towards the end were just creative decisions versus how much of it was disney like testing these things

00:14:53.980 or focus grouping them or asking people or executives what they thought would be more marketable like

00:14:58.540 how much of this was changes made for creative reasons and how much was disney thinking well this is

00:15:04.720 going to get us a larger audience this is going to make us more money you know this was i remember i

00:15:09.620 came on to milan i think some of my oldest drawings versions of mushu early versions are dated 95 so i

00:15:15.840 think it was around 95 ish that i came on and i think it didn't come out till 98 yeah it was 97 98 so

00:15:23.740 i was on it for quite a few years there um and but during that was a while back right is my point and

00:15:30.040 they didn't do as much or they didn't tell us about it i must admit you know like a lot i'm sure

00:15:35.100 they were doing the focus groups and things like that we would rarely hear about it um uh it was very

00:15:41.200 kind of upper and marketing it's more on the marketing side and we were very kind of separated

00:15:47.460 from all the marketing and things like that and so all of a sudden you'd be working on a movie oh and

00:15:52.860 the title changed what you know it would kind of come out of the blue sometimes you know we were the

00:15:58.400 legend of fa milan that was the title for the first six to eight months and then it became

00:16:04.700 uh fa milan and then it just became milan and so drop the fa it's cleaner yeah we we actually i

00:16:12.840 remember when i was in high school reading the uh original story or we read like an iteration of it

00:16:18.300 from uh the woman warrior by maxine hong kingston i think but yeah it's crazy how much again these

00:16:25.400 projects change and then also the kind of adaptation process i like to joke that disney got famous making

00:16:31.700 the kids bop version of these horror stories and that's a lot of what the early stuff is

00:16:37.860 unfortunately i believe what's happened is you know initially we would tell kids stories that did have

00:16:44.520 some frightening elements in them because they were cautionary tales they were morality tales

00:16:49.360 grim's grim's tales and exactly exactly and and um you know i embellish a bit for the sake of humor

00:16:55.980 by calling them horror stories but there's frightening things that happen in them because

00:16:58.780 because fear like humor is an important teaching tool and what's happened over the years

00:17:04.780 is disney and other production companies have pulled back on some of the elements that might make

00:17:11.400 children uncomfortable even though those elements might be good for the kid to see because it teaches

00:17:16.160 them a lesson and they've slipped in other elements that actually aren't good for children so they're

00:17:22.300 shielding kids from reality and then they're also putting these very perverse realities in front of

00:17:29.580 them that the kid does not need to see at all it's completely backwards they're shielding them from

00:17:34.220 things they shouldn't see and then showing them things that they also shouldn't see it's a very strange

00:17:38.220 dynamic i wonder how much of it has to do with what the animators and the storytellers of today

00:17:44.780 grew up with which is the thing i talk about a lot of the times is like the reason i believe stories

00:17:49.760 suffer today is that the artists in old hollywood got their stories by reading and the artists of

00:17:56.380 today get their stories by watching yeah so they don't have they're seeing a curated cut down version

00:18:01.660 of a final product whereas the stories that were adapted um olivia was telling me like how much she

00:18:06.880 loved mulan and the reason that resonates so much is because it was adapted from something that was a full

00:18:11.660 story and then is pared down in post-production and it gets its flair elements by getting eddie murphy

00:18:17.520 when the rest of the cast is of course um traditionally chinese and all of that stuff is done in post but

00:18:23.220 now people come from the curated entertainment and they're trying to make facsimiles of that

00:18:27.780 that don't line up because there's none of the soul that came from the original story

00:18:32.220 yeah i mean we went certain directions in the film and the making of that movie especially

00:18:37.800 that were choices being made on the spot creatively not really influenced by the world around us

00:18:44.620 honestly just we were so entrenched in the story oh what if we brought in eddie murphy and he's now

00:18:50.540 this funny you know character that basically is trying to help her but also gets her into more trouble than

00:18:55.740 and that just but it was story-based right that would be great then she could work off of that and

00:19:02.100 and she has to be the one to fix the problem not you know this dragon that's sent to help her and so

00:19:07.980 that you know it's plot driven so um but i do agree with you that yeah um i think you know you guys

00:19:15.220 don't remember this but i was in film and making films when mtv came out uh and uh there's a there was

00:19:23.120 a generation of us i guess you could say in those days that were affected by that because we started

00:19:28.900 pacing things faster and that's kind of another version of what you're talking about is being

00:19:33.400 affected by how culture is changing and things like that mtv made everything cuts faster faster

00:19:41.060 faster even the news um being what it is today and whatever is being as politically correct as it was

00:19:46.820 you would have had a lot of information coming out if you were to cast eddie murphy now in that role

00:19:52.240 or cast somebody equivalent to that now there would be questions about whether it was politically correct

00:19:57.060 to do so and that would make it back to the executives before they even had a chance to run

00:20:01.460 it through any type of focus group or anything like that because theoretically the focus group

00:20:05.720 could give you a great response and that will kind of curb their fear of going a different direction

00:20:10.520 but back then you would have been able i'm assuming you were just able to sit down work and whatever

00:20:15.080 came through came through definitely more so but you'd be surprised i think we were right on the cusp of

00:20:19.940 that because i do know that it was a big discussion about well wait we got to try and do this

00:20:25.700 with chinese actors first and by the way there were it wasn't just eddie there were a couple other

00:20:30.780 non- chinese actors that were replaced or you know brought in to replace other chinese actors

00:20:36.480 and it was because we weren't getting the humor um a lot of those actors have been cast in very

00:20:42.200 serious films if you go back especially in the 80s or even a little bit before that there weren't great

00:20:48.160 roles for chinese actors and they certainly hadn't really gotten into comedy right and um and so it was

00:20:55.020 uh that time where we were having they were having a real struggle they're very much serious actors

00:21:00.200 coming in yeah and doing these voices and so you know yao and ling and chin po um uh yao was replaced

00:21:08.260 with harvey feierstein um and so he he took the spot of the actor that was already there

00:21:14.840 um and same with grandmother fa the grandmother in the in the movie it was a chinese actress but

00:21:20.940 then it became um what's her name that's the really famous voice actor like the in the melblanc

00:21:27.160 uh um shoot i almost had it i should know this but anyway very famous older uh how has cal arts style

00:21:35.220 changed in the last 10 to 15 years it's so funny because when i went to cal arts we didn't have a cal

00:21:40.440 art style i mean if anything it was weird when i went there was an anti-disney kind of a thing going

00:21:47.120 on it wasn't politically based at all it was artistically based because everybody thought

00:21:52.380 the don bluth company was really cool like uh they're to be fair it was like and they were i mean

00:21:58.080 very talented so don bluth traditionally this is a little bit of a quick story he was a disney

00:22:02.640 animator for many years kind of rising up in the ranks had become a director at disney

00:22:07.780 and um he broke away they weren't he didn't he thought disney was going this if this sounds

00:22:13.500 familiar he thought disney was going in the wrong direction but he's talking about more creatively

00:22:18.240 and story-wise right uh again it wasn't political back then and so he broke off and took about 20

00:22:24.600 people with him and this is back when disney animation was a lot smaller so like they felt that

00:22:30.280 there were maybe 60 people and he took 20 of them or something it's almost that kind of proportion

00:22:35.000 and they all followed him and he set up his own shop in a garage and he makes secret of nim if you

00:22:41.860 guys remember the secret of nim and uh and that came out had a theatrical release and competed with

00:22:48.940 disney and immediately which is incredible that's sort of yeah then someone could just start a studio

00:22:54.160 in their garage to compete with disney and also i mean yeah he's he's he's like a legend in terms of

00:22:59.920 his animation abilities the fact that he was able to rival disney so i'm curious when you were at cal

00:23:05.680 arts you mentioned that there was this undercurrent um maybe ideologically is the wrong word because

00:23:11.140 you said it wasn't political but of people who were sort of pushing back against disney or who thought

00:23:16.220 that like the independent projects were cooler how did that affect disney well they were they were

00:23:22.880 really because i think they left during the fox and the hound was the movie yes yeah and um and went

00:23:29.780 off to do secret of nim um and uh so yeah they were really hurt by that and and emotionally too like

00:23:37.540 these are friends leaving for you know i mean it was that kind of a crazy it was like a kind of a like

00:23:42.780 a family and this part of your family just leaves so um i know it was like traumatic and all that but uh

00:23:50.420 yeah i mean that's something that you know uh i think anytime you're at sort of the the bigger

00:23:56.880 companies of the number one it's so funny i can tell you this we all start complaining after a while

00:24:03.200 and uh it's kind of sad in a way but i've seen that happen throughout my years at disney we would all sit

00:24:09.780 around at lunch and kind of critique why are we doing this and why are we doing that and and you're

00:24:15.500 right it became cultural stuff too and political stuff much later obviously and some of that i was

00:24:20.980 already gone for but it was happening in 2000 i left in 2000 and i left for faith reasons because i

00:24:28.280 did not like where disney was going even back then um and so it was that it was we were starting to kind

00:24:35.380 of get led away from and a lot of people say well walt wouldn't have done that we we heard that even

00:24:40.860 back when i was there in 1989 uh and he had been dead for a little while we were still saying things

00:24:48.180 like would walt have done this would walt have done this and it's crazy how long that lasted for about

00:24:53.900 10 years solid at least you'd hear that in the hallways you know it's like is this his vision

00:25:00.300 before i because i want to ask you um next about you leaving in your faith reasons i'm really excited

00:25:06.920 to get into that i think our audience really wants to hear about that but before we jump into that

00:25:10.660 while i have this thread to tug at you mentioned a lot of people being really upset about the

00:25:14.640 direction disney was taking and i'm sure some of that was creatively i'm sure some of that was

00:25:18.220 administratively like we don't like these working conditions or these hours one thing that i've heard

00:25:23.280 from people whose businesses have become very successful is that being on the other side of

00:25:28.840 things makes you understand why companies you used to work for did the things that annoyed you

00:25:34.420 and i'm curious as you have run your own studio which has been very successful and you're doing

00:25:39.220 theatrical releases how much of what disney was doing are things where you go okay i understand

00:25:45.280 why they did that now versus how much of it is stuff where you still go i don't think that was necessary

00:25:51.340 yeah it's a really good question because you know i was a pretty young man at the time i i started

00:25:57.720 at disney when i was uh 21 wow and i was and i got married very early i don't know why i looked at

00:26:05.280 you sorry um i just wanted to see your reaction um but you know i was 21 newly married but we um

00:26:13.200 and but most of the people that had left disney california or got trained in interns and all this

00:26:19.560 and we're setting up the florida studio we're young because a lot of the old school guys didn't want

00:26:25.040 to leave california so they staffed this new florida studio with a lot of young newbies with just a

00:26:31.540 few masters to sort of train us and so it was that kind of a feel and so we're all getting married

00:26:37.200 we're all having babies together and and just becoming a family honestly in the florida studio

00:26:42.220 um and it was a great time to be there um you know but we also were starting to you know question

00:26:50.620 well is this even some of the movies that i'm making is this something i would show my kids

00:26:55.240 you know and but i will say that i kind of towed the line for a long time my i was in the southern

00:27:02.060 baptist church at the time i'd moved from california and where i was at a little tiny baptist church

00:27:07.320 first missionary baptist and then i went to florida and got into a bigger kind of a what became a mega

00:27:15.500 church honestly uh in orlando but it was still a baptist church and as i was at disney in those pretty

00:27:23.180 early days that i don't know if you guys remember this but the baptist church decided to boycott disney

00:27:28.560 and i'm now going to church what's this what year was this this was in the um well i guess it was

00:27:36.100 late 80s yeah no or no early 90s probably um and so the baptist church is boycotting because they

00:27:44.060 felt like and this is back when also there was a lot of news things coming out of oh there's they're

00:27:49.860 hiding things in the movies to deceive our children and so a lot of it was crazy and so i must admit

00:27:57.040 being on the inside i was like oh this is dumb and i'm a christian i'm a baptist on top of that so i'm

00:28:02.480 going to church i'm hearing how horrible disney is at church and and then going to work and loving my job

00:28:08.880 and and then and loving and caring about these films because you just get so into it um and so my

00:28:15.720 sister who was also baptist in arkansas at a tiny little baptist church she would call me and she'd

00:28:21.180 say a lot of my you know my friends at church are asking how can your brother brothers because we both

00:28:26.700 worked at disney how can your brothers be working on those satanic movies at disney shouldn't they

00:28:32.340 leave and and i was like oh come on sis you know you need to just tell them settle down it's not as

00:28:38.320 bad as you think and and honestly i do so this is one thing i would defend is that for many years i

00:28:44.120 was defending the movies and i would say okay well look pocahontas we're making this movie hadn't come

00:28:49.160 out yet we're making this movie i think some of you guys are not gonna like it but it's all about a

00:28:54.160 real person and we're just staying true to her story and glenn keen who had animated and designed

00:28:59.340 pocahontas at disney that animator glenn he was a believer and he he stood by that i'm just being true

00:29:07.000 to this character who's a real person and part of that culture was that they prayed to mother nature

00:29:13.940 and so they kind of would they threw it in there and she you know her belief system is in there and

00:29:19.020 then they kind of comically show it by her talking to a willow tree right uh grandmother willow and so

00:29:25.520 that's an element of that and so i'm like look it's just that's part of her culture we got to be true to

00:29:30.560 that story and then along comes you know uh other movies and especially mulan well now she's praying

00:29:38.600 the dad at the beginning is praying to his ancestors yeah and she does too and well we're like but but

00:29:44.040 look that's part of their culture and we're just being true to ancient chinese culture because that's

00:29:49.240 where this is set and i'm leading to and so i would defend it defend it and and and she'd go back and

00:29:56.360 she'd tell her and i don't think they cared they were like still i hate it i don't want my kids to

00:30:00.540 to learn about praying to mother nature and it certainly had a good point too so i was kind of

00:30:06.740 in the middle and just really kind of like not knowing how to feel about it and really questioning

00:30:12.200 myself for many years while i was there because well yeah we we're doing it for these reasons and

00:30:19.200 we're just staying true to these stories and cultures but then and i don't have any say in what

00:30:23.960 movies we make right that's all made up stream uh you know so how do i even address that and that's

00:30:30.480 in that idea still works when they do it right there's a reason moana is successful because it

00:30:36.500 embraces aspects of polynesian culture that people still you know they don't have that same hiccup about

00:30:42.360 it that they probably would have had in the early 2000s but that's when they stay true to an idea like

00:30:47.720 that as opposed to the things you guys are talking about more which is like the stuff that's very

00:30:52.380 very much parents don't want their kids being around well and i just want to mention something

00:30:57.460 too you're right that pocahontas did initially come from a pagan culture but i think part of what

00:31:01.940 bothers people about disney films is the representation is lopsided she did convert to christianity and of

00:31:07.760 course the film won't show you that they won't show you her as a christian and they won't really

00:31:13.360 depict christian beliefs the way they should though that said with the way that um the ancestors are kind of

00:31:22.360 played for jokes in uh mulan and the way she's talking to the willow tree and sort of this

00:31:27.300 cartoon in pocahontas i wouldn't want christian beliefs represented that way so i can see both

00:31:32.560 sides of it yeah and i'm yeah i'm curious to hear where you went next or where your thoughts went next

00:31:38.880 with you know respect to initially defending this and then where did you end up yeah well i ended up

00:31:44.300 leaving and so the story behind that is that okay after those years of working on films that

00:31:50.340 and it felt like one after another went down like even hunchback of notre dame

00:31:54.520 you know that that film had like kind of evil catholics in it yeah like the catholics are the

00:31:59.960 bad guys in that film yeah there's one there's a priest at the beginning and he's a smaller part

00:32:04.260 but he's the good guy and he's helping quasi and he takes them in at the beginning of the movie

00:32:08.820 so you do see both sides of it i guess but the the real leader the the whatever he is rollo i think

00:32:14.980 yeah frollo is like a bishop or something um he is totally in it's a very adult themes i mean

00:32:23.040 true he's in lust with esmeralda and and he basically wants to kill her because she's his

00:32:29.080 sin object and i mean it's you watch that movie as an adult as opposed to well like you seeing it as

00:32:35.260 a kid yeah i'm assuming because you're younger i'm just saying that yeah i mean i don't know how you

00:32:40.320 felt about that movie go ahead i didn't think about it until i saw it again as an adult and i think

00:32:44.520 that's what a lot of disney movies did is and i was talking to brett about this before i said you

00:32:49.140 know i remember watching them and i mean my parents would laugh and i'd be like oh they're

00:32:53.400 laughing at this really silly thing and it was some adult joke that just got thrown in there because

00:32:56.920 they bring their kids and that still happens but it was at a lesser extent i think at that time

00:33:02.400 but i don't ever remember like watching one and thinking anything wrong about it now i watch it

00:33:09.040 and i am an adult now so of course i see it but it's almost too obvious that i'm like even kids

00:33:14.280 and i don't know if it's the kids exposure to these ideas younger yeah that's also making it

00:33:18.340 more obvious whereas i didn't have that growing up the one that was almost one of the selling

00:33:22.720 points for a lot of disney movies they people would used to say oh you know it's it's for kids

00:33:27.500 but there are even jokes for adults yeah and that was something that i remember hearing regularly

00:33:31.280 yeah when i was growing up i was like oh adults can enjoy because there are there are things that

00:33:34.600 are directed at adults you know and and no one ever thought that it was at the time no one thought

00:33:39.760 oh this is actually subversion you know what i mean yeah well i mean and i we saw the innocent

00:33:43.920 side of that with lion king right which was where adults could go and go oh man that father-son

00:33:49.860 relationship is so powerful and i'm that father i'm that mufasa they can see themselves in that and

00:33:56.280 how would i want my kid after i died you know i'd hate to see what he'd have to go through you know

00:34:01.060 what i mean like they're able there's certainly threads there that they could follow that would be

00:34:05.560 on the adult side um it's just not all kids you know like goofy stuff it was serious dramatic

00:34:11.660 themes um and so we we got so far that hunchback is very serious and very has sin all over it like

00:34:20.420 yeah i don't know if they say the word sin but i mean it's all about sin and this guy struggling

00:34:25.300 with his own sins but doing it in the worst possible way by wanting to create genocide with

00:34:30.500 all the gypsies and especially esmeralda crazy for a disney that's like a genocidal catholic with

00:34:38.260 lust issues is basically at the heart of that story for the villain and you're like it is come on you

00:34:43.160 you could not you could never do that to a non-christian right you could never make a disney

00:34:49.120 film where someone of any other religion was depicted that way i think people need to go back

00:34:54.040 and watch that you'd be shocked i mean if you haven't seen it in a while you're gonna be shocked

00:34:57.480 about how how adult it really is i mean he's singing he sings a song and it's all and he's

00:35:03.180 looking in the flames and the flames becomes like a an esmeralda dancing naked you know like i mean

00:35:08.820 crazy yeah it's just a silhouette you know but the music when the when the movies are put together

00:35:15.520 very well the goal the whole point is that the art you know it's able to mask that right like the

00:35:20.440 now that's revealed in meme culture the way that animated movies from that time period it's like now

00:35:26.240 it's it shows you simba and says 20 minutes after his dad dies uh timon and pumbaa are like

00:35:32.280 hey have you thought about not effing worrying about it and then do a dance number like but the

00:35:36.520 thing is if you've never seen the movie it seems outlandish and ridiculous but the point is you're

00:35:41.120 mesmerized by the art you're mesmerized by the music you're taken in in a way and that's one of the

00:35:46.140 actually the issues i have with critique today is a lot of people in this space they're like i don't

00:35:50.920 want to watch these movies i'm gonna pawn off my you know my opinions on it you know what do you

00:35:55.860 think about it because i'm not going to see it anyways i'm like you should go see it yourself

00:35:58.820 because first of all my taste is going to be different than yours and the art has a way of

00:36:03.460 capturing you so the things that i might critique about this movie may not bother you or the things

00:36:08.900 that you critique about it oftentimes i will watch reviews and then i'll watch it like that didn't

00:36:12.160 bother me at all well i i would add something which is i totally understand what you're saying but

00:36:16.500 i think that's why people are so concerned is because i mean now firstly with with the lion king i think

00:36:21.380 that's a fantastic film and timon and pumbaa are shown to be wrong right they give simba the wrong

00:36:27.200 coping strategy and you learn that through the course of the film but one thing that really

00:36:32.380 talented directors are able to do is get you to buy into a story even if the main character is doing

00:36:38.680 something wrong and even if it has a bad moral lesson i've been mentioning this to people as i've

00:36:43.880 been talking about media critique you look at titanic which is the highest grossing romance film

00:36:48.900 of all time and it's a film about a that promotes adultery and fornication and it's about a woman

00:36:54.840 cheating on her fiancee and acting irresponsibly and actually ultimately getting the man she's

00:37:00.800 cheating with killed because if she just stayed in the lifeboat earlier and then when she's an old

00:37:05.100 lady she has this giant diamond instead instead of giving it to her granddaughter who's cared for

00:37:09.700 her her whole life she drops it off the side of the boat but even though on paper even though

00:37:15.120 on paper that's horrible and that's not a good story and that's not a good story arc because she

00:37:19.780 doesn't become a better person she goes from one kind of selfish to another kind of selfish

00:37:23.080 when you watch that film listen i i will want to i'll be the first guy to admit like it draws you in

00:37:28.840 the music is beautiful the special effects are crazy james cameron's a master of his craft but

00:37:33.960 that's also why it's dangerous because these films will put a really bad moral into their story

00:37:40.320 and again like they don't do it by preaching they don't do it by going like this is why adultery is

00:37:46.180 good they just tell you a really compelling story which is executed really well that condones the

00:37:52.500 behavior let's go oh go ahead they romanticize it right exactly you watch titanic you're like look at

00:37:58.340 this love story you forget once you get through the fact there's a fiancee you just forget because i

00:38:02.820 like actually almost forgot about that detail until you just brought it up that she has and then the

00:38:07.340 door she just lets this guy die it's like there was room on the door like even if there wasn't room

00:38:12.520 on the door this is what i like even if there wasn't room on the door wait she should have weighed

00:38:16.420 it down and yeah right and people have made that and i agree with that but she's in a lifeboat

00:38:21.440 yeah and she gets out of it that's the problem like he could have lived if he was just able to fend

00:38:26.160 for himself but anyway that's just my point is what we used to do was we would make films because

00:38:33.120 people knew how powerful the medium was so they said it's really important that we're

00:38:37.220 promoting a positive moral message and that we're telling stories that will lead people in

00:38:41.420 the direction of proper morality and now it's leading people in the direction of bad morality

00:38:47.280 and i don't think that these writers and directors are sitting down and going how do i corrupt the

00:38:51.340 masses you know people tell stories from their heart and what is in their heart will come out on the

00:38:57.360 page without them having to try and so when you have hollywood making all of your stories and it's

00:39:04.420 being run by people who don't share our values without even trying they're going to tell stories

00:39:08.700 that that subvert our values in our way of life and that are really damaging for kids to see even

00:39:12.640 with children's stories like you're saying well yeah so let me land the plane you asked that

00:39:16.660 question of why i left disney and and uh i didn't quite get there yet but i mean you're exactly

00:39:21.560 right as far as i started to see the story that was out there about oh and they're hiding sex in

00:39:29.060 the clouds and lion king do you guys remember that yeah i paused the vhs as a kid because i read that

00:39:33.780 online and i was like it's there like everybody did castle the little mermaid castle right cover

00:39:38.760 remember that one i mean i would love to debunk a few things because i i know both those stories

00:39:44.140 and they are false because it's not sex in the clouds there is something hidden yes and that's what

00:39:49.900 disney would do is they they couldn't say yes we admit it we had something in there and by the way

00:39:55.600 they didn't know it the effects guys that animated all that dust okay so let me since i'm going there

00:40:01.500 uh rafiki right he uh he sees dust flowing in there and he grabs it and that's how he makes the

00:40:08.300 but that dust came from remember uh uh adult uh simba kind of plops down on the ground and dust flies up

00:40:16.560 and i guess because he touched it rafiki's able to grab it i don't remember how that worked but

00:40:21.440 kind of put it in a little potion thing and and realize that he's still alive or something i think

00:40:26.600 that was what we got out of that but as that dust was animated across the screen across a hundred miles

00:40:33.020 who knows um we see it floating through the air that's effects animators that do that yes so i'm just

00:40:39.320 establishing that for the audience and so the effects animators made it form it for like one frame

00:40:46.920 maybe two tops into not sex although it does it's very loose you can barely see it it's it's uh s fx

00:40:55.700 spans which stands for special effects they were just defining their hey we're special effects a little

00:41:02.180 too close there for well and it's all made up of little particles and so they didn't do a great job

00:41:08.480 because they didn't want it to get too noticed right because nobody went to the directors and told

00:41:12.920 them that they did that it was a secret they were doing it as just a little easter egg for themselves

00:41:17.960 it looks like an e to me when i see it i gotta be honest it really looks like if somebody puts e in

00:41:22.760 your head yeah you you see an e right so if now look at it again i know there's probably a particle

00:41:28.700 or two they should have deleted and at the bottom uh and it would have been a little more clearly s fx but

00:41:35.140 uh anyway look at it again that is the true story i know the people that did it now same with the i'm

00:41:41.240 going to just stay with this for a second in case the audience is interested the the mermaid the mermaid

00:41:46.580 thing i spoke to there was two artists that did the little mermaid poster art they went on the cover

00:41:53.200 of the vhs that everybody says is suggestive yeah very suggestive of male uh units um and so but what uh

00:42:04.360 what i saw the original drawing i have the original drawing that was then painted for the cover and so

00:42:10.240 one one one problem out there is that a lot of people don't know who painted which because there

00:42:15.600 was two artists and so the story is is that they gave the assignment to two artists because it was

00:42:21.080 an overnight job they they wanted it right away for whatever reason they waited to the last minute

00:42:27.540 and this doesn't surprise me about disney or any big studio and so these guys had to work all night

00:42:32.460 they each did a cover they each did a back cover and uh but they were all working from the same

00:42:38.360 drawing and so i have the drawing of the cover and yes it still already kind of looked a little phallic

00:42:44.600 yes um but as they were looking at coral and if you look at coral it's very lumpy and well if you're

00:42:53.240 not if you're doing it fast maybe it gets a little veiny um i don't know but um these guys swear both

00:43:00.800 i talked to both of them and the one that actually the cover was used and the one that the other one

00:43:05.260 ended up they used the back cover for his art um and they both swear that no it was just done so

00:43:13.160 fast nobody took a second look at it they were like they were looking at the characters they were

00:43:17.160 so concentrated on the characters and i'm including in the instruct the illustrators too not the only

00:43:22.100 and then the people that were approving it all they cared about was are they smiling are they right

00:43:27.380 because they got and that happens in art in general any artist will tell you i didn't even i just

00:43:32.400 sort of put shapes back there and trees i didn't think the trees looked phallic you know what i

00:43:36.660 mean like you're not thinking about you're just thinking about does that look like ariel is she

00:43:40.440 happy is everybody happy you know i want to get it passed and it's an and it's a fast job i think

00:43:46.460 the one that really freaked people out i can't remember which one it was i know there was a film

00:43:49.780 where there was like a split second frame of a pornographic image in the background that was roger

00:43:54.460 rabbit oh no that's the original rescuers yeah yeah how did that happen and like that's real

00:43:59.660 so the cameraman was uh staying up all night and this is internal disney legend um he was working

00:44:09.300 all night on rescuers down this is back when the the machine they would shoot on you ever see the

00:44:14.260 big down shooters um where the camera's way up high and there's platinums and so the multi-plane

00:44:20.640 process and all that so these camera operators would be in a big room with a super high ceiling

00:44:26.480 and the camera would be up here and they're like doing like hand cranking a pan and so this was a

00:44:32.660 pan where the the seagull is dive bombing down a building and as he's going past all this these

00:44:40.440 windows are blurring by one frame at a time because he's just going down so fast and so as he's like

00:44:46.480 one frame at a time moving the background putting on the next cell hitting a button to hit one frame of

00:44:53.080 a film then taking all that off putting on the next one taking a cranking everything doing another

00:44:59.740 frame like literally that kind of tedious insane yeah insane tediousness all night long because it's

00:45:06.640 in a rush to get out this is one of the last film he you know uh just uh gets on a whim and he's got

00:45:15.000 a playboy near him oh no cuts out a picture of a of a topless lady and he puts it in there for one

00:45:22.180 frame he sticks it in the window so as that window is blurring by um you you could see for one frame

00:45:29.560 now here's the thing this is before vhs nobody knew vhs was going to happen yeah and so this was back

00:45:35.720 when it was film and so he thought nobody's going to see one frame of film but i'll be able to tell

00:45:41.560 the guys you know what i did and and be the be the hero and sure enough it that film the rescuers

00:45:49.000 i think came out in like 77 or something like that it comes out nobody sees it of course not this is a

00:45:55.160 hidden easter egg that nobody knew about for we'll say decades then vhs comes out um still nobody sees

00:46:04.860 it for a while until just some people get into the their cup the technology gets better to where you

00:46:10.280 could frame by frame because even when it first came out you couldn't do that and now people start

00:46:15.540 discovering it and then at one point it gets blown up and so they they disney takes back all the vhs

00:46:22.040 copies they have to replace them all it was a big deal at the time they lost millions of dollars for

00:46:28.120 sure um just to get that one uh frame out of there well of course because kids i mean you can't have

00:46:35.840 kids see that even for a split second it's so horrible that that man did that it's so horrifying

00:46:40.480 that man did that well and and i will say disney had no idea it's it goes to the the ideas like

00:46:46.180 people when you hear those stories like that frame or the background of those drawings is people are

00:46:51.940 imagining eisner or bob eiger going like this we're going to corrupt your kids put this in there when

00:46:58.600 what you're seeing is that it's a large company it was decentralized and they didn't know this stuff

00:47:03.620 is going on now that's that's not giving them the past because we look at what they're putting out

00:47:08.000 now and people have plenty of the buck stops with them um and but the thing is is people that there's

00:47:13.380 two interpretations of that right so yes the buck does stop with them but the vast majority of the

00:47:17.740 people that care enough to talk about these issues are thinking about disney in a very centralized and

00:47:23.060 evil fashion now there's arguments to be made about that being now with a lot of the stuff they're

00:47:26.860 putting out just simply having really really ham-fisted messages why are you making movies about girls on

00:47:32.540 their period things like that like that that's fine but it goes to show that there's two different

00:47:37.480 views of how people perceive the evils of disney's past behavior well i think and i do want to speak

00:47:42.800 to that um it it's a good point this is why i was defending it to my sister i was like i know the

00:47:48.680 backstory i know that no they didn't know about that and blah blah or that was just one artist that did

00:47:53.660 that or or even well we're just being true to the culture by showing that and um so those i knew the

00:48:00.560 backstory and so i was defending it and so let me finally get to that yeah about my story that i almost

00:48:06.120 started three times finally we start making a film called john henry it's a little short animated

00:48:11.480 film anybody see it you might have saw it when you were young in school or something on a rainy day

00:48:16.280 they put on john henry but uh you know just like johnny appleseed it's it's a folk tale um uh is is

00:48:23.440 really where it what kind of a story it is and so my mentor mark hen he becomes a director and he's

00:48:29.520 like i want to make this john henry and it'll be kind of completion to you know some of the paul

00:48:34.500 bunyan and and the johnny appleseed some of the other things that they did in the past in the 40s

00:48:39.800 let's make a modern day folk tale and this should be about john henry and the story of john henry if

00:48:45.440 you guys anybody know it no i don't know this is crazy uh okay a little bit over there um it's the

00:48:53.400 story of you know african-american man that is uh and it's in the we'll say 20s i'm probably getting

00:49:00.360 was it the train tracks yeah yes okay i do know this story yeah so yeah it's it's man against

00:49:05.240 machine is the yes story but it's also about slavery and people that have just come out of

00:49:11.680 slavery john henry being one of them and this is how they're trying to this is sort of the next phase

00:49:17.320 of their freedom is they're no longer slaves but now they're working for the railroad company that

00:49:21.460 is a little bit slavery all over again uh but white and black and and chinese and you know the

00:49:28.520 whole bit um and but they want to they've been told if you put this track this is all true track

00:49:36.500 all the way across the u.s you're going to get land you'll you'll we'll give you land because the

00:49:41.940 the railroad companies owned land all along the way and so they were promising that as a gift for

00:49:48.380 uh all these people that would basically die making the railroad um and so john henry it's this

00:49:56.120 is a tell placed in that time in that period is about him taking on a machine they this this could

00:50:02.900 be ai today but uh uh you know somebody's created a machine that can put can hammer in the spikes

00:50:10.020 faster than than 10 men you know and so therefore it's about to take all their jobs but also rob them

00:50:17.340 from the land having land right and and freedom and so he is this you know huge massive guy he's the

00:50:25.440 top guy there uh at just hammering into the spikes and so he takes on the machine so it's a man versus

00:50:31.740 machine in the end he ends up you know sacrificing but basically dying because uh from exhaustion uh but

00:50:39.180 he does beat the machine everybody's able and they throw the machine away so everybody's back to

00:50:44.040 normal progress no longer continues they just throw away the machine but uh anyway we're making this

00:50:52.260 short film and i'm a supervising animator i just done mushu in milan this is right after milan

00:50:57.320 and i start working on that film as one of the supervising animators i'm going to do polly polly's

00:51:03.320 the wife of john henry and so it's a small team making this film but it's also got spiritual elements

00:51:11.420 throughout it and christian spiritual elements so to be very clear and so this is the first time that

00:51:16.920 disney really going down that road not only to to illustrate african americans honestly too that was

00:51:22.780 pretty new at the time too this is one of the very first uh disney black characters um but also that

00:51:30.480 we were gonna have christian faith embedded in it because we all know in that culture coming out of

00:51:37.060 slavery african americans were got through that through their faith you know gospel music comes

00:51:43.680 from that time all of that right we don't it's cemented in it so why wouldn't you go back to

00:51:48.400 pocahontas now remember what i said about pocahontas all these being true to their culture we're being true

00:51:54.180 to that time that place and that culture by saying yeah gospel music's going to be in the background

00:51:59.000 we they hired sounds of blackness was a group of gospel singers and a lot of the lyrics in there

00:52:04.800 had god mentions and faith mentions uh but it was very light if any christian would probably look at

00:52:10.560 it oh it's very light but yeah it's there there's a there's a cross on the on the church and stuff

00:52:15.740 like that so long story short we have a screening um with about 10 people in the room but two of the

00:52:22.600 people are the head of disney animation president and the vice president of disney animation the

00:52:28.380 intention and it's only storyboards we're getting we're showing it to say can we get the green light

00:52:33.120 to spend more money and make the actual film animated um but it had some animation and so

00:52:38.920 anyway they they screen it and and afterwards there's a you know a pause where the lights come

00:52:45.920 up we're all waiting to hear what the president thinks and he says this makes me feel uncomfortable

00:52:52.640 what and i will never forget that line because that was the moment that i and i didn't know it at the

00:53:01.440 time but that was the moment i can trace back to that i'm i half decided i'm leaving because

00:53:08.120 for you six months later i did leave but i can trace it back to that moment there were other things

00:53:13.500 like i said for years i was defending depending depending but finally i heard it from the top

00:53:18.740 somebody has they're throwing in their personal opinions about christianity and i was like this is

00:53:26.980 the movie that's one of the reasons i was so passionate about making i'm like finally we get a show

00:53:31.200 some christian faith in our films and it seems so obvious it seems well like well of course you

00:53:37.720 would especially in this story for all those reasons i stated and now i'm hearing from the top

00:53:43.340 oh i'm uncomfortable with this and i think some things were taken out and watered down i think some

00:53:48.820 lyrics were changed um and it still got all you know it still got gospel music in it and stuff like

00:53:56.800 that but i'm just saying all of a sudden now it became truth to me and i literally started contacting

00:54:04.820 big idea productions after that which makes veggie tells and i said hey you need a disney animator

00:54:11.640 and they didn't but they found a place for me um and i ended up going over there and helping to

00:54:19.240 create some veggie tells uh for a few years until unfortunately they went bankrupt what a wake-up call i mean

00:54:25.040 that must have just been such a jarring moment for you to hear an executive say that that made them

00:54:30.680 uncomfortable when you know yeah i mean and it's not even as if it was telling people to repent and

00:54:38.400 accept the gospel uh that would be great but it was just including some representation of christianity

00:54:45.860 yeah and that was enough for them did he do you remember did he elaborate did he obviously we know why

00:54:51.260 he was uncomfortable i'm curious if anything specific was said well uh yeah and i don't want

00:54:57.600 to badmouth disney too much because some of what you're saying over there is that you know well look

00:55:03.060 it's a company you know it we never knew we never thought that disney was a christian

00:55:08.260 faith-based company a lot of people during that time especially in the 90s were basically feeding that

00:55:15.520 into disney that they thought they were pure and we all needed to sort of wake up to that that a

00:55:20.980 company is not a christian company especially if they're for profit right there so we just were

00:55:29.500 reading that into it because we were feeding it to our kids for so many years and and then we started

00:55:34.660 waking up to oh wait they're putting in more adult themes and more adult themes or other faith

00:55:39.460 cultures and i don't know if i like that anymore and so we were destroyed you know this isn't the

00:55:45.920 disney that walt created and that was the story for so many years of like walt would have never done

00:55:51.040 this and and i think just we needed to as people you know uh and as parents you know police things a

00:55:59.740 little bit more not have and and that's what we're really talking about is i and i still feel

00:56:05.480 strongly about this and some of what you're saying which is you know we do have to police this as as

00:56:11.040 parents but i also want to keep certain things in the house i don't want hollywood telling me my kids

00:56:17.080 certain things i don't want them to know about everything so back to that story this the big surprise

00:56:24.140 was is that the right after the president said that the vice president who was a gay man uh he said

00:56:31.500 what you don't get it that's what this is all about of course it's in there and so it was equally

00:56:39.660 surprising to see him defend it interesting um and say no that we look because he's basically saying

00:56:45.680 the same thing we did this in pocahontas we did this for all those same reasons why wouldn't we do

00:56:50.500 it here that's what this response to to say it was and i think that's something that a lot of

00:56:55.560 companies now is they just reason goes out the window it's like it doesn't have to make sense it

00:56:59.920 doesn't it doesn't matter this is what we should push and of course there's that famous clip of

00:57:03.900 that lady saying my not so secret gay agenda that's crazy when you're just trying to put in

00:57:08.960 gospel music and someone's like i'm uncomfortable but you also worked on films that had maybe elements

00:57:14.620 you were uncomfortable with but your job is to animate that and as long as it's not something that's

00:57:19.880 overly grotesque you know it's it's like animating something in milan where he talked to the

00:57:26.060 ancestors or i mean mushu himself is a representation of that and so it's interesting to see that

00:57:32.300 the change from common sense yeah i'm a gay man but i you know make sense that we're showing this to now

00:57:40.020 they're kind of pushing these agendas more not just looking at well it's true to the story and it's

00:57:44.540 reasonable um did you see that change like as you were about to leave or was that still pretty common

00:57:50.800 to see like more common sense there well i honestly left right after that so uh literally within six

00:57:56.500 months i was gone and so where it went after that i totally agree obviously it's gone much further

00:58:02.580 to where it did become agendas you know i would say that i don't know if i would say that was the

00:58:09.780 president's agenda back then like and that other people were sort of but it well it was i mean him just

00:58:17.300 saying that right because he wasn't talking about the film anymore and all that it was more i feel

00:58:22.100 uncomfortable because of these values they're different than mine and i don't know if i want

00:58:27.500 or the company that he's speaking for the company to some degree too if i want disney to have

00:58:32.840 and i'm stretching things the stink of christianity on it right like it might have been what was pushing

00:58:39.460 that in his head because honestly we were i'm going to say this for just baptists in general but

00:58:46.660 because i was a baptist i wasn't totally happy about everything that they were saying either

00:58:51.580 we were kind of in an embarrassing moment in in the faith uh where um we were like pointing fingers

00:59:00.240 to things that were like i knew the truth i'm like that's not sex in the clouds so you know you guys are

00:59:06.840 running with something you're not even looking for the answer you're just making up your own answer

00:59:10.740 i know we do that now too obviously i'm speaking to the now too is that journalism was starting to get

00:59:18.280 thrown out people weren't really researching anything they were just saying what they thought and

00:59:23.720 we went there first honestly uh the the baptist church in this example um but i mean were we part right

00:59:34.380 i found out we were part right and that was why i left because i was like okay i can't i can't sit go

00:59:42.260 to disney and have it babysit my kids anymore and i think that was the awakening at that moment

00:59:47.520 was that through those couple uh we'll say five to eight years in the late 80s to early 90s

00:59:55.900 they were starting to go in areas that honestly i didn't want them to go in i didn't want them to

01:00:02.340 to tell my kids about you know questioning your sexuality and things like that that's not what i

01:00:09.200 think kids should be seeing in cartoons i still strongly feel this um and i don't think i'm crazy

01:00:14.320 for thinking that's insane are you out of your mind right i sound old-fashioned i mean but this is

01:00:20.360 the thing people will call that old-fashioned that's how the vast majority of people feel about

01:00:24.400 these things even if they won't say it people don't want their kids seeing that and most of the

01:00:28.140 people defending it like aren't parents most of the people defending it don't even have kids it seems

01:00:32.880 like for for most people it seems that the idea of of teaching sexuality to children is something

01:00:40.160 that should be left to the parents and the people like like seamus was saying the people that are most

01:00:44.960 vocally saying oh well no it shouldn't be like they're they're not parents or at the very least

01:00:49.960 they're not really in a position to make decisions for other people's kids yeah i mean the idea that

01:00:55.560 that the government should do it or or what have you is offensive enough which you know people

01:01:01.740 argue about whether or not there should be sex education in schools and you know i'm i'm not a

01:01:07.080 young guy or anything when i was going to school it was whether or not there should be sex education

01:01:10.740 now it's a given that there should be and it's about actually what the sex education should be

01:01:16.420 and it's gone way beyond anything anyone that was making the argument 30 years ago when i was in school

01:01:22.640 you know what what what it should have been you know well you know sex ed when i was a kid and i

01:01:28.780 had to sign the form your parent had to sign the form and give you permission to go to that one class

01:01:33.800 and there was a lot of giggling and stuff like that and the girls would go it was more like biology

01:01:38.480 though that's what i'm gonna say is it was a it was part of the biology class or science whatever

01:01:44.460 that you were taking at the time we're gonna go into this subject for a day and let's that's all it

01:01:50.500 was and we're gonna so we need to kind of get extra permission here because we're gonna go in

01:01:55.800 an area that's gonna be basically we're gonna tell you about the birds and the bees and honestly a lot

01:02:01.520 of parents are bad at that we're still bad at that right i have four daughters i can totally attest that

01:02:06.720 i did not tell my girls about the bird and the bees my wife did thankfully but i didn't want to go

01:02:12.260 there it's very awkward right hard but um we so they they did step in and say that but you had to

01:02:19.260 sign a form and if and a lot of people sign wouldn't sign it and they said no i didn't and those poor

01:02:24.980 kids would then sit out and they'd be ostracized that oh your mom didn't sign it you know they were

01:02:31.120 actually outcasts for that but i understood what it was because again it was just the bio biology of

01:02:37.220 this is how a baby's made you need to know this this is how you could prevent it they did go there

01:02:42.440 yeah um but they wouldn't get into and here's what all the other forms of sex are yeah to that point

01:02:49.020 like one of the we got a video um about that kind of you know is is touching on this topic here and

01:02:55.760 this is actually from disney right so i believe so if you want to pull that up there um

01:03:00.940 carter that's big cure sex volume's off

01:03:07.320 is he muted

01:03:10.320 excuse me which of these products would you recommend

01:03:20.740 oh um well these are the tampons i usually use thank you i prefer pads they're more comfortable

01:03:31.040 for me thank you i always get the ones with wings thank you get unscented and bleach free if you can

01:03:35.700 thank you yo my daughter loves these thank you these might be easier if it's her first period

01:03:40.020 these are really environmentally friendly

01:03:42.000 you notice the trans flag on the yeah i saw that right away and i mean no wait now that's not from

01:03:53.700 the movie that's not from it's characters from the movie it's a it's a short probably that came out

01:03:58.580 after and look i've never seen it and i look i can i can see the humor or the intent intended humor

01:04:04.300 which is oh look so many people are so helpful about something that you don't need all these and he

01:04:08.980 like i get it but you know again that's not something that i i don't see why any parent would

01:04:15.720 want their children to be watching then yeah like i see the humor in south park but i wouldn't want

01:04:20.220 a kid seeing that yeah yeah enough i mean not to sound like a 1950s dad but i i know i'm going to

01:04:25.760 i didn't know why that guy said anything why was there a guy that said i like this my daughter likes

01:04:31.140 this it's it's weird no the daughter was the last guy and that made sense but there was a guy that

01:04:35.820 said this is the one i like the wings or whatever even then my dad would never be like my daughter

01:04:39.920 likes this one my dad would never jump in that conversation he would just like walk away i don't

01:04:44.160 even know if he'd be in that aisle because why would he be and if a father and if that would have

01:04:48.140 been a funny joke have one guy kind of slink away like that's the other thing too is like if a father

01:04:54.340 did know that he actually would be failing to protect his daughter by revealing private information

01:04:59.160 about her like what what a girl wants a bunch of people to know about something so private

01:05:04.960 about herself like that's really wrong or to like be like i love these ones yeah loudly like that's

01:05:11.100 not as a woman that is not something we would just like we'd quietly kind of be like if they asked us

01:05:15.580 a question be like oh i like you know that one but you know you wouldn't be like screaming it but then

01:05:20.940 also going back to the conversation we were just having about sex ed i was in i think fifth grade when

01:05:25.460 we did it and we still had to get a permission slip from a parent signing it saying you can go and do

01:05:30.800 this and my dad love my dad he checked in after and i was raised primarily by my dad and he asked

01:05:38.180 that he's like uncomfortable but he's like so it was good i'm like yep all went good it was fine but

01:05:43.380 because i couldn't have that conversation with my mom as much at the time it was helpful so i see the

01:05:48.300 you know like why they do it because yeah some parents don't know how to talk to kids some parents

01:05:53.140 don't have one parent in the household it's important but we learned about the very basic

01:05:58.200 things like we learned about pads and tampons because we were girls the guys i don't think

01:06:03.300 the boys learned about that and the boys were separate from us so we never talked about that

01:06:07.660 in the same room as each other and then i remember going back in and we had a female teacher they had

01:06:11.800 a male teacher and i remember coming back into the classroom after and it was awkward because it's

01:06:15.580 supposed to be awkward after you have that conversation and you see like a boy for the first time

01:06:18.880 after that you're like yeah to that point like it's it's it's fine like boys don't need to know

01:06:27.740 that stuff right it's fine if if a boy hears that stuff right there's nothing wrong with that

01:06:32.400 but that also like that isn't knowledge that a that a boy needs right like yeah not at all there

01:06:38.800 should be some mystery about the the opposite sex when you're young especially and the another reason i

01:06:44.360 was always very skeptical of those programs is because the way they treated abstinence education they

01:06:48.760 said you're teaching religion if you tell kids to be abstinent which is so bizarre because it's not

01:06:54.400 like only religious parents don't want their kids to make that mistake and do something like that

01:07:00.800 outside of marriage my dad actually in the late 80s early 90s he wrote an abstinence only sex education

01:07:06.400 guide that was used in a number of schools and the aclu funded a lawyer to sue them to get the

01:07:11.740 curriculums out of the schools because they said it was teaching religion even though there was no

01:07:14.940 mention of god there was no mention of religion and so what my dad would do is he would give

01:07:19.940 conferences to educators about this and he would ask the entire room of people how many people in

01:07:26.100 this room believe that the high schoolers at your school should be having sex no one to raise their

01:07:31.920 hand how many think they shouldn't they would all raise their hands if we all believe they shouldn't

01:07:36.080 then why can't we tell them not to and so it becomes clear that the whole agenda behind these

01:07:42.260 programs was to normalize it to spread the state's values about this kind of behavior instead of the

01:07:48.620 parents values well and i and i get why that popped up because we and that was a kind of you know the

01:07:55.520 other side saying well wait you've been teaching about other sexes and other forms of sex let's put

01:08:02.100 it that way and now we want to say the the other one which is not having sex and you guys aren't

01:08:08.540 talking about that and so that's where that came from uh just to be clear because you know you got

01:08:14.660 to remember back this was after years of being you know having sex ed and sex ed and then getting to

01:08:21.580 the point where oh no you you were being judged if you didn't let your kid just have that sex ed talk

01:08:27.580 just just to play devil's advocate a little bit here if if the child is not having sex or if the if the

01:08:34.220 argument is to not have have sex then that's kind of where the sex education ends right like if if

01:08:39.720 it's like oh yeah you know we we should we should we should be telling kids to abstain then there isn't

01:08:45.580 anything further that you would be telling in schools at least this is an important point though

01:08:50.360 the purpose of sex education on all levels is actually to tell kids what not to do because when

01:08:57.020 someone gets married like they'll figure it out but what sex education programs now do is they still

01:09:02.460 tell you don't have sex without this form of artificial contraceptive right they it's still

01:09:07.660 done in a way where you're telling people what the limits are and what not to do abstinence only sex

01:09:13.440 that just says don't have sex outside of marriage which we know is the most conducive to human

01:09:17.320 flourishing you're less likely to get divorced if you don't have sex outside of marriage you're less

01:09:20.660 likely to get stds you're less likely to have a child outside of wedlock like it's not even just for

01:09:24.500 religious reasons by all measurable life outcomes it's better advice but we don't give it to kids

01:09:29.700 well and i think a big problem is they just say well but if you get pregnant don't worry

01:09:33.700 you can just just get rid of it like that's another problem is that's and it's in me that is what came

01:09:38.720 from that idea right and so i think like the idea wasn't even me growing up it's like well if you have

01:09:43.320 sex you get pregnant you're gonna die you know it was one of those things i don't get pregnant you know

01:09:47.320 you're so scared you're like well i can't take care of a kid that scared you into not doing it because

01:09:52.220 you're like i can't i'm 17 i'm 16 whatever i can't take care of a child like nowadays you know women

01:09:58.360 or young girls go to young women go to you know the gynecologist for their their you know first

01:10:03.860 checkup and the first thing they would do is try and put them onto birth control yeah you know right

01:10:07.080 away yeah so i mean that actually take if you're on birth control that does take away that that

01:10:13.000 concern of of you know oh i might get pregnant you know in reality tv sure sure but listen no i

01:10:19.480 understand that but the point the general p the general kind of feeling that people have is i can't

01:10:25.780 because i'm on right it's not about whether or not it'll fail it's just that the and so they

01:10:30.340 behave as if they cannot well and even then they see i think you're right they see abortion as like

01:10:34.420 i don't know i hate saying it this way but they see it as like a get out of jail free card they're

01:10:37.700 like i can just go abort the kid and like and then when you dare to say we should defund those clinics

01:10:43.740 or we shouldn't be doing we shouldn't support this then you're the bad guy for like wanting people

01:10:48.180 to have kids and start families and maybe not kill the baby that's like it's insane it's absolutely

01:10:54.160 i don't know if you know but we're just having way too many kids in america apparently a really

01:10:57.700 big problem is like we're way above the replacement right yeah people have their families are too large

01:11:02.860 now so we have to be very concerned pull pull back to entertainment so most of what i've seen

01:11:07.800 let's talk about cartoons please yeah yeah sorry pull back to entertainment but in all that is valid

01:11:12.840 but the point is is like most of what i've seen in television and movies is that they would treat

01:11:17.940 the idea of t like teenagers having sex as inevitable therefore tell the reality of the

01:11:24.700 story right like you were saying earlier there's like if we tell the kids in the in the show about

01:11:28.880 teenagers to just not have sex and none of them have sex then the story's kind of over and there's

01:11:33.480 nothing to tell and that's the trojan horse they use to make that did the very rarely do they end up

01:11:38.680 going into the story about the character that does have to have an abortion when they do uh they're not

01:11:43.860 going to show it as the painful experience that it is and that has been done in the past

01:11:48.000 like in my generation of like tv shows about teenagers growing up there was usually those

01:11:53.960 episodes but those are the ones that tended to feel like they got out of entertainment and went

01:11:59.100 into edutainment and you felt like you were being preached to so it wasn't even done in a like a tactful

01:12:04.720 manner that was able to communicate you know just how painful and awful something like abortion is

01:12:10.680 in a way that didn't feel like you were being preached to by whoever's making at the time

01:12:14.960 and the thing that i always say is like well told stories makes the propaganda go down easier and it

01:12:20.400 would be nice if they could actually do that with something you want to show like the horrors of

01:12:24.820 abortion whereas most of the time when they were telling those stories you ended up turning it off

01:12:29.360 or going to something else because like and like i get it it's bad whereas the other stuff the

01:12:34.720 propaganda that's to tell you all of the the generically modern liberal talking points are

01:12:41.120 made were made really really well at that at that time period so you end up kind of imbuing with those

01:12:47.000 ideas without realizing it because it was made so well but the stuff that you needed to actually convey

01:12:53.020 well wasn't yeah i mean it's it's a slippery slope yeah that we've been on and that's that's the point

01:12:59.020 which is you know i i grew up in a poor area and i must admit i'm a little bit on the pro

01:13:05.780 the biological sex in the schools talk and that's where it started i think was a good thing i think

01:13:14.420 i being in a poor area i didn't have a dad growing up i didn't so i didn't know about any of that stuff

01:13:21.520 i wasn't my mom wasn't telling me and she certainly didn't know probably a few of the the guy versions of

01:13:27.960 the story i don't know she didn't have kids so maybe she did um but but like certainly i kind

01:13:34.300 of needed that talk i'll be honest and all my friends didn't have dads like none of us did there

01:13:39.680 was there's a huge lack of dads in this poor area that i'm sorry to hear that that's rough it was

01:13:44.560 rough yeah i mean you know um i i took what you know we had a like a they used to do these things

01:13:51.020 too i'm on a tangent but they used to do these things at schools where you'd have father-daughter

01:13:55.520 nights and they'd come and have a dinner and i don't do something so we did something in second

01:14:00.620 grade it's actually a very wholesome story yeah i'm sure my dad will end up watching this but um

01:14:05.320 there was a kid whose dad hadn't been around and i grew up in a you know nice suburban area and there

01:14:11.380 was a kid whose dad didn't show up for second grade it was like a father's come in and have

01:14:16.760 breakfast with the kids and my dad just was like come here you're ours now and i can say i don't i

01:14:22.100 haven't talked to this kid in probably a decade or so but i can still remember that story had such

01:14:26.180 an impact on me my dad was like your dad's not around okay cool well now you have me like yeah

01:14:31.540 and it ended up being my brother was friends with his brother and it all kind of worked out really

01:14:35.660 well i think your point of like there's no one to have that conversation sometimes that's why

01:14:40.640 parents can opt out if a parent's like i want to have that conversation with my kid you can opt

01:14:44.300 out yeah and that's fair and for some kids it's necessary because they don't have a father or

01:14:48.900 i honestly needed that talk and i can i can honestly say that from being a kid that didn't

01:14:54.380 know anything about that right and yeah it was yucky and icky and embarrassing but i mean and and i

01:14:59.880 know you know later on i got a pretty good education about women because i have four daughters but uh and

01:15:05.700 i was that guy going to get tampons at the grocery store for many years but you know i will say we've

01:15:12.160 started as a society i think with really good intentions honestly and the schools had very good

01:15:17.480 intentions but those good intentions have gone so far to build but but this person now feels like

01:15:24.680 an outcast or this person feels left out this person feels out that we've now have gone so far

01:15:29.700 like why couldn't we just had a counselor that that certain group that what didn't feel like they're

01:15:35.220 represented in the bigger group they could go talk to that person i don't know there's probably just

01:15:41.640 other ways around it and i think we've just but now we don't have the father-daughter night

01:15:46.520 yeah we don't have some of the good stuff that we had and i was going to say my version of that was

01:15:51.140 like the you know my mom brought me to father-son night there was a father-son night and my mom

01:15:57.440 brought me and there were a lot of moms there that night representing the dad and it was embarrassing a

01:16:04.240 little bit and stuff like that but you also like i love my mom yeah of course she was amazing she

01:16:10.840 filled that gap and i didn't feel like i missed out too much and did she raise you christian or did

01:16:16.540 you convert later we were raised actually catholic at the very beginning uh but we always had faith

01:16:22.080 but she did drop away she had a lot of trouble troubles with the church um and a lot of it had to do

01:16:27.420 with being left behind and alcoholic father that i had i'm sorry i hear it yeah no it was just it was

01:16:33.260 hard for her and and so she struggled with her faith for sure but she always felt like it was

01:16:38.540 important to for us to be exposed to it honestly uh and that would be the way she would probably put

01:16:43.500 it and so we found faith just being going to going to church in a fairly irregular but then later on

01:16:50.800 more regular as she kind of came back to the church so yeah i would say yes we were brought up

01:16:56.100 christian wow well i i guess to sort of segue back to what we were talking about i want to mention one

01:17:02.220 more interesting and haunting stat i learned about media consumption in households where television is

01:17:08.960 watched more often teenage pregnancy rates are higher which is is jarring to know that that's

01:17:15.840 actually been quantified and that we do know that certainly but i don't know that anyone's shocked by

01:17:19.720 that based on the kinds of things we see on television we know the kind of media people consume

01:17:24.460 does influence their behavior i was uh speaking i want to say about two years ago on a podcast with

01:17:29.780 dr george barna and he did a study on this specifically about where children get their values

01:17:37.440 and what he found is that what children saw in media had much more of an effect than what they heard

01:17:43.600 at church or what their parents taught them or what they heard in school so it's so important for

01:17:48.440 people with good values to be making media and that's sort of why i want to segue back to what

01:17:52.080 you were talking about with your studio um if if you want to talk a little bit a about going to big

01:17:57.880 idea studios and b then starting your own venture and beginning to make your own films yeah well

01:18:05.240 immediately when i went to big idea and we started i started working on veggie tells um and it had been

01:18:11.080 going for a while it was kind of at it during its heyday the very first video i did was ester i'd learned

01:18:15.920 computer animation which was hard enough to do that big switch from 2d animation to to hand-drawn

01:18:22.060 2d to now i'm using a mouse and animating it was so hard it must have been really hard fortunately

01:18:27.440 they didn't have arms and legs you know it was a good way to start into cg animation it was like you

01:18:34.780 know kind of uh pretty basic but you know learning that but then at the same time now i'm going to

01:18:40.920 meetings where we pray in the beginning of the meeting i had left disney where even back in the

01:18:46.340 late 90s and now 2000 uh when i left i would get talked to by hr if i was talking about my what i

01:18:55.440 learned in church you know with a friend um and somebody else overheard it and felt awkward and so

01:19:01.400 they report it reported and they would do it very gently back then you know you weren't going to get

01:19:07.820 fired anything crazy but you were just going to be like hey can you keep that in your office you

01:19:12.840 know somebody felt awkward you know hearing that um and so but the shock was still very evident when

01:19:20.780 i went to now what was they didn't call themselves a christian company because legally there's they

01:19:26.440 weren't not for they were a for profit and blah blah but most of the people there were christians

01:19:32.080 and so they would out but they would say you have to agree that if you're going to work here

01:19:37.800 that you're okay with christianity basically it was the way they put it because we are going to pray

01:19:43.220 in in beginning of meetings and things like that and so it was such an eye-opener and i was already a

01:19:50.000 believer and a christian that's the whole reason i was there but to see this new culture where you

01:19:54.080 could bring it to work i could be a hundred percent me that's all at work and i never felt that way

01:20:00.480 and it wasn't until i left it that i even realized i was missing the other part of me and now i'm

01:20:06.220 actually feeding it into the content too i'm actually talking about things i learned in the

01:20:10.560 bible that we can maybe put in here uh into the content and so that was just such a game changer for

01:20:16.500 me and an eye-opener and uh and then do it with humor and all that and finding new ways to tell these

01:20:21.660 stories that i think people were really responding to back in those days too uh that led me to then

01:20:28.580 after they went bankrupt and things like that i i um i started my own company but then we we helped

01:20:34.580 create the super book show for cbn and that went for like good five or six seasons and i was with

01:20:40.680 them for many years just as a contractor but basically helping them create and develop and i

01:20:46.140 even directed the pilot episode of super book um then to you know uh any uh many other little

01:20:53.860 little smaller children's books and things like that that i was involved in and finally starting my

01:20:58.240 own company pencilish animation studios and that was in 2020 right as everybody was uh going into

01:21:05.600 covid and and uh i'd heard about this reg cf so i did a crowd invested company um and uh so i got

01:21:14.140 about three million dollars from about almost five thousand people and started pencilish and we we

01:21:20.400 we create edifying content it's not all christian content i want to just make that clear because i have

01:21:26.040 investors that are not believers but they wanted to they knew me and they knew so some people think

01:21:32.740 oh it's all going to be christian content because they knew i was a believer and i'm on instagram i

01:21:37.920 have a good following and stuff like that so i had a lot of people that were coming in that just knew

01:21:41.980 who i was already and but most of them just love 2d animation too and they knew i stood for that

01:21:48.400 that was something i was going to try and keep going um and so they all were kind of coming for

01:21:53.240 different reasons oh he's a former disney guy he's going to create new ips that oh i smell money

01:21:58.120 and you know he might make the next mickey mouse and i can own a piece of that that would be pretty

01:22:02.360 cool there is a desire for the return of 2d animation anyways i know disney was already

01:22:07.300 talking about trying to like they wanted to resurrect 2d animation at disney like crap we don't have

01:22:11.900 anybody who can actually do it anymore yeah yeah i mean well and that's kind of what led to then

01:22:17.780 um a couple years later after creating some of my own content and you could see it on my pencil

01:22:23.200 studios youtube channel we created some tv style shows and pilots um then to then getting approached

01:22:31.020 by a non-profit that was trying to make a 2d animated feature film called light of the world

01:22:35.760 and so my good friend from my superbook days was was the director and he asked me to come on and be

01:22:42.900 uh his directing partner and so that's john schaefer and so me and john then launched into and i brought

01:22:49.720 in my producer from pencilish so we were those dinosaurs that knew 2d animation and they needed

01:22:55.540 that because they decided they wanted to make a 2d feature film about the life of christ and i never

01:23:01.760 thought i'd hear all those words in one sentence and i was just like i'm in hardcore let's go and so

01:23:09.340 that movie just came out light of the world um it was just in theaters uh just a few weeks ago it's

01:23:15.520 it's left now but it'll be on you know vod um on you know uh amazon and and apple uh you'll be able

01:23:24.200 to rent it buy it there and of course it's still going it's being distributed in latin america right

01:23:28.900 now right well could you walk us through some of the differences between making a 2d animated film

01:23:33.760 in 1995 through 1998 when you're working on mulan versus making a 2d animated film today with all the

01:23:40.480 computer aid you know yeah so oh more on a technical side i guess oh and also just you know company

01:23:47.720 culture how large versus small the team is able to be with all the technology just the differences

01:23:52.720 in general i'm really curious to hear and i'm also curious um to hear about what brett was saying

01:23:58.680 from your perspective where it's harder to find people who can do good 2d animation and if it was

01:24:04.040 harder for you guys to find a team um yeah yeah so i'm just curious about all of that well honestly

01:24:10.580 yeah you have to find a staff to do 2d animation has become very hard um fortunately uh tv animation

01:24:18.520 is still largely 2d animation that's true it's a it's a production process though that is now more

01:24:24.700 vector based and more um you could say a little less hand drawn it's sort of like computer animation

01:24:31.440 and hand drawn kind of came together and that's tomb boom harmony yeah uh style animation uh which

01:24:38.020 used to be sort of like flash animation back in the 90s so it's more like rigged 2d drawings

01:24:46.660 that you're manipulating and that can look very very cheap and more tv style or there now there are

01:24:54.060 studios that have taken that really really far and they do hybrids we found that studio that could

01:24:59.440 do a hybrid of rigged animation that can look a little more mechanical although they've gotten

01:25:04.800 really good at it where it doesn't and then they also add drawings and that's what you need really

01:25:10.100 to make it look good is that um to get to a closer to a disney level yeah it was really pencil and

01:25:16.600 paper back in the day when i was doing it um to now being able to manipulate things on the

01:25:22.040 in the computer um and you still need drawing ability you still need to feed that in there

01:25:26.600 to make it look good and come to life honestly that's the difference rather than just moving

01:25:31.000 kind of very mechanically that's that's you know the lower end right but if you get to the point where

01:25:37.360 you get a studio that really knows traditional 2d animation and all the 12 principles that the

01:25:43.260 night old man made from disney you know all that kind that's what we found in ireland and so it was

01:25:48.660 it's a studio called lighthouse studios that we worked with so to back to your question the big

01:25:55.600 difference is we were completely virtual and so we're doing meetings all day on zoom uh or google

01:26:02.920 meets and it was just back to back to back now we're talking to the background department now we're

01:26:07.620 talking to the character designers now we're talking to storyboard artists and and reviewing things

01:26:13.660 that way but it's all one meaning after another and because we got people in ireland we got people

01:26:19.360 in spain we got people so back to your question and about finding people yeah it was a worldwide

01:26:26.240 search nowadays um and fortunately we have instagram so i already follow a bunch of 2d animators that are

01:26:33.220 all around the world that did klaus and things like that klaus was made it was a netflix movie that was

01:26:38.720 a very popular that one did really really well there very high end yeah animation was beautiful

01:26:42.660 on that yeah that was more disney or more level right i would agree with 2d animation that was done

01:26:48.380 in spain and so we hired a lot of those people that had worked on klaus we hired a lot of people that

01:26:53.460 worked in ireland too is another hot spot for 2d animation because of cartoon saloon who did

01:26:59.480 uh song of the sea and and secret of kells that real stylized 2d non-union uh yeah non-union

01:27:07.060 what was it like directing with your animators across the ocean yeah i mean even our directors

01:27:14.280 were in two different places so you know i'm i'm in nashville area and then he's out in uh wisconsin

01:27:19.920 and uh so none of us and then our producer one was in in cincinnati one was over in in orlando

01:27:28.240 and so the one we worked with constantly was orlando so um and the only one was my twin brother we hired

01:27:34.680 him yes i was his boss just to make that clear which one of you is older which one came out

01:27:40.340 first i know i'm older i'm three minutes older but he was my boss on milan he was the director so

01:27:47.120 oh your younger brother that's brutal yeah i just we we tag each other all the time because finally

01:27:51.380 he was i was his boss but anyway he became our animation director and so he was in nashville

01:27:56.480 so fortunately but we still were you know half hour apart so we're still not driving in together

01:28:02.080 and there's no studio to go to um so that that yeah it was a wild challenge and to build that

01:28:09.720 fairly quickly because we only had like two and a half years to make a movie when wow you'll do it

01:28:14.740 in four or five six years honestly depending on how far back you go from idea it's at least six if not

01:28:21.220 eight um that they'll be in development for years before they actually go into production

01:28:26.440 so we're making it we're sprinting to make this movie yeah so i really want people to see it

01:28:32.880 especially those i gotta stop here and tell a story from chris chris is one of you guys is

01:28:38.720 that works here yeah what's his last name chris car chris car okay he drove me from the hotel to get

01:28:45.880 here today and he's a good talker he said i want to be on uh he should be on this podcast because uh he

01:28:54.060 told me this great story he said you know uh because it involves light of the world the film

01:28:59.200 that i made but actually the one that came out before us in april and easter was another jesus

01:29:04.780 movie and it was animated but it was computer animated and it was called the king of kings

01:29:09.980 and so at first he was confused he's like wait did i see your movie was it the king of the king no

01:29:15.340 we did the other one the light of the world that came out in september and nobody saw because they

01:29:19.680 were all back to school it was bad timing but the easter one king of kings he said his kids

01:29:25.780 didn't really know and this is true of a lot of families today i don't i'm not really a christian

01:29:32.120 i'm not really a believer but i think my kids need to be exposed to it and that's kind of how we put

01:29:36.780 it nowadays a lot of and and but but god bless those parents that are saying i think it's important

01:29:43.240 enough that at least they get to make their own decision and and i need to expose them to it

01:29:48.020 and they had a family like that i guess his wife was um you know uh jewish and and had not was

01:29:55.220 involved in that church either and then him i think he was sort of not going to church but like

01:30:00.980 let's just say a light christian and and i think that was how he put it and he said so we would we

01:30:06.980 had both kind of had sort of problems with the church and we weren't really going and yet we had

01:30:11.760 these young young two boys and so they said they went they made a decision we should go see king of

01:30:18.540 kings all right and so now i'm advertising a whole nother movie but they went because you believe in

01:30:23.820 the message i mean that's no but yeah really believes to the subject uh but yes uh so they

01:30:29.080 went and saw king of kings and her bringing up brought up jewish but also not really being involved

01:30:35.480 in the faith side of that um and pulling away from it she'd never heard this story before she said

01:30:42.040 the the boys were a little antsy and stuff they weren't seeing light of the world that's why

01:30:45.740 but they were a little antsy it's not as good uh but uh but they you know were into it and they

01:30:52.780 actually had to leave before the whole crucifixion um but uh but the the mom his wife was entranced she

01:31:00.580 was like i want to see how this turns out she didn't know what was coming and you almost forget

01:31:06.320 that there's people in the u.s especially that have that experience of not really knowing the

01:31:12.080 complete story now i can't wait i was pushing hard on them watching light of the world now because

01:31:17.220 they now go to church but because of that animated film they've decided and she became a

01:31:24.000 believer she's a christian now it's amazing it was an amazing story and i'm dropping my job because

01:31:29.700 i'm like this is everything it's not my movie but this is everything that i'm doing right now and i

01:31:36.180 care about and i'm hearing it played out for this small family that really need it now the boys are

01:31:42.480 loving church and going every week and they're seeing the influences of that faith in their lives

01:31:48.580 the chosen has done this for a lot of people too 100 for adults obviously not for kids but you know

01:31:54.160 there's a a lot of great storytelling in there that you know makes you forget if you went to church

01:31:59.280 when you were a kid and the stories didn't interest you just because you're like you said you're young

01:32:02.760 you're antsy you don't really want to sit through what is being said because it's the weekend and you

01:32:07.460 want to go and be out with your friends but when you get into adulthood and you're like how did you

01:32:11.460 eat all those fish in the boat like yeah yeah no i mean and so now i'm going to sell a little bit

01:32:16.860 um we when we worked on light of the world they they came to me with saying yes we're going to make a

01:32:23.260 story of jesus with 2d animation i'm like i'm hooked they said it's fully financed oh okay

01:32:29.140 now i'm really listening it never happens um and by the way it was the founder of this non-profit

01:32:35.260 the salvation poem foundation is is the company behind it um he financed it himself it was a hundred

01:32:42.340 percent 20 million dollar film that wow his own money into that's crazy there's people out there i

01:32:47.960 don't know if you've heard this term reverse tither i just want to introduce reverse type i want more

01:32:53.180 people to do this i can't do it only certain people can do this where uh you know the bible

01:32:58.780 says you should tie 10 percent of of what you have oh so he ties 90 he ties 90 lives off the 10 god

01:33:05.980 bless him and so all that night and now you have to be rich to be able to do this right we all know

01:33:10.900 that he's very rich he's had a couple very successful companies um and i don't bless him but

01:33:17.080 yeah i mean like remarkably generous how many rich people give their money that freely i mean

01:33:21.820 you have to be a billionaire to give a million right yeah but he's giving more than that

01:33:28.120 proportionately to what he owns and has um and he's so it's not just i finance this he's doing

01:33:34.880 other ministries too he's a lot of different things that he uh and i know you would hate it that i'm

01:33:39.840 talking about this right now i just want the world to know these people are out there they're very few

01:33:44.900 but these are people that are living what they believe god bless it hundred percent it will and

01:33:51.140 it's so important because so much art historically is you know through european history and so much

01:33:56.640 of the most beautiful iconic art was christian art because the church was financing good art and it's

01:34:02.680 so important for christians to be involved like in the production but also the financing of art because

01:34:08.020 there's a lot of non-christians involved in financing art and as we've demonstrated here i think

01:34:12.740 through this conversation the art we consume comes to define our beliefs yes and and you have to like

01:34:19.440 you know you guys are talking the culture war that's right that's that's what we're talking about right

01:34:23.980 and you guys talk about all the time a hundred percent are we investing in our families and our faith

01:34:30.060 or are we just talking about it and so this is the ultimate of that this is a man that now has said

01:34:36.860 i'm not just going to talk i'm going to give 90 percent of my wealth to my faith to my belief that

01:34:43.860 i want people to hear about the gospel and man how can you question that guy how can you anybody look

01:34:50.540 at that and go he's the problem with the world yeah of course he's not he's what we need more of

01:34:56.620 in this world well and it's it's also really important because we were talking earlier about disney

01:35:01.960 and a lot of the changes that might have to be made for commercial purposes but when something

01:35:05.720 is financed by people who really believe in the project and the concern becomes less about

01:35:11.380 generating a profit and more about saving souls or spreading an important message yes you are much

01:35:17.840 more free to keep that as the motivation behind the project without having to sugarcoat too much

01:35:24.240 without having to change too much it's really a beautiful thing god bless him for doing that that's

01:35:29.200 extremely important and to go a step further part of the plan we weren't going to have a theatrical

01:35:33.720 release because honestly they were like well do we want to spend that money or could we just make

01:35:38.340 another movie and how best to use that money because he put another 10 million dollars now he's up to 30

01:35:44.720 million dollars wow just to market it to get it out to theaters god bless him as an independent and we

01:35:50.800 didn't go through the major lion's gates or any of the other distributors because one they didn't want

01:35:56.280 you didn't want to touch it angel is the one that did king of kings and uh and they are a faith-based

01:36:04.560 entertainment company and that's why they released it and they do a great job at marketing and all

01:36:09.920 that they did an awesome job at getting that out there and that's why also a lot of people didn't

01:36:14.300 hear about light of the world yeah it was independently uh distributed even proportionally the with as good

01:36:20.940 as angel studios is doing they're still small compared to uh you know most of these other

01:36:26.300 studios and you're just you're not going to get the retail space in these theaters that the other

01:36:30.720 ones are getting it's just it's they're still considered independent yes yeah they honestly well

01:36:35.680 no they just went they just went public they did they did recently a lot of people don't realize this

01:36:40.700 especially when you talk about some of the numbers surrounding animation people go well where does this

01:36:44.120 money go how can it be this expensive the average disney film costs 100 million dollars probably more at

01:36:50.460 this point they were making films for 100 million dollars like 15 years ago it's probably 200 million

01:36:54.880 now at this point they're closer to 200 than 100 yeah yeah so it's it's insane and people like well how

01:37:00.920 can it be this expensive well a like you mentioned really hard to find people who can still do this

01:37:05.740 stuff well for 2d animation for 3d animation you need a giant studio like you said six to eight years

01:37:12.500 to make a film imagine financing a project for six to eight years that has in some cases hundreds of

01:37:19.120 people working on it throughout the course of that time it is really really expensive it's

01:37:23.500 tremendously expensive it is hundreds and reiterations they redo it they remake stuff all the time i mean

01:37:29.120 that's one of the things that makes marvel so bloated as expensive is because they end up shooting

01:37:33.780 nine versions of a scene they they go to an animator they have them shoot in a green screen room and then

01:37:38.980 they go to these you know vfx studios and they say i want six versions of this scene

01:37:43.760 and um and just cost a fortune well and i can speak to that because i was there i saw the waste

01:37:49.460 at disney yep and some of it i loved i must admit i liked being able to play video games for half the

01:37:55.840 day and when i didn't have a lot going on i must admit but um there was that's a small example but

01:38:03.720 you could see yes all the iterations and changes well if you would have just made that and a lot of times

01:38:08.480 we'd come back to the original idea right so like if you just made a decision there and felt confident

01:38:14.000 in it and just pushed forward and that's the difference between filmmaking that way with a

01:38:19.680 huge studio and huge budgets and honestly they need that overhead i'm having discussions with people that

01:38:26.300 were talking to the presidents of disney in those days and they were like we know there's a cheaper way

01:38:32.740 to do it that's not our that's not our boat we have a cruise ship you want to you want a speedboat

01:38:38.380 go buy a speedboat we're a cruise ship if there's if we're the titanic and there's something in front

01:38:44.360 of us we're going to go through it or require it that's what they do because they're big enough to do

01:38:49.440 that they don't turn on a dime i've i built with pencilish we're a little speedboat yeah we're going

01:38:55.980 to dodge around and we're going to go off and make these things faster make decisions because we have to

01:39:01.100 love that but you have but you can get some great art out of that i i really want our crowd that's

01:39:06.560 listening right now go see light of the world when you get that opportunity it's not out yet because

01:39:10.760 it just left theaters but it'll be on pbod like the apples and the that'll be i mean that's and that's

01:39:16.340 the way that those movies make their money anyways like that's how that's how if you know i obviously

01:39:20.380 his point isn't to make a profit here that was a it was an investment for him because of his faith but

01:39:25.720 yeah he's buying eyeballs the um back in the day when you had your mid-budget movies they didn't

01:39:30.860 make their money back at the theaters they made it on dvd and sales after the fact so yeah yeah and

01:39:37.040 some of those revenue streams are really dying off and not some of them they're they're basically gone

01:39:42.040 now most of them yeah i mean we're kind of in the movie version of what music has gone through

01:39:46.940 10 years or more yeah right yeah when when they just started well let's just give it away for free

01:39:52.500 how's that the one thing that people don't realize when it comes to music like

01:39:57.580 they are giving it away for almost free right streaming services have been have become the

01:40:03.180 place where everyone went right but basically from like 2000 until spotify really broke onto the

01:40:10.420 scene spotify started in 2006 but they didn't really get popular until apps started going into

01:40:15.100 your phones which was probably 2010 or so right was you can actually start downloading apps on your

01:40:20.020 iphone um for the for that decade though 95 percent of music that people got was was off of like

01:40:27.760 limeware or or pirated piracy stopped largely not because people don't want to pay get a free get

01:40:36.900 stuff for free but because it was more difficult and risky for piracy than it was to get spotify right so

01:40:44.140 like what happened was they made it so easy and inexpensive to get basically any music you want that the

01:40:49.920 10 bucks was worth it you know 10 bucks or whatever per month it used to be i'm not sure what it costs

01:40:55.800 now probably 15 or something like that but that that fee was worth it so that way you didn't have to

01:41:00.980 worry about if you're going to download a crappy copy download something with a uh a virus that messes

01:41:06.500 up your computer or or just makes your computer work poorly so it was it wasn't that it wasn't that

01:41:11.960 people you know were like oh i definitely don't want to pay it's just they basically don't want to pay

01:41:17.900 more than you know they they want that convenience and that ease more than they want to to worry about

01:41:24.240 the issues that come with i mean and i totally agree that and and we have the opposite of that

01:41:28.460 right now with film going to a theater is so expensive now yeah yeah that yeah you're gonna turn

01:41:34.720 to well i could see that on the internet for free illegally and we all know that's happening a lot

01:41:40.960 i love the theater experience still i do too i don't i'm a purist i i can't i it's like maybe

01:41:47.340 just because i have such a short my attention span is so horrible and at home i'm just going to be

01:41:51.900 looking at my phone but i find the theater experience to just be i know it's so worth it

01:41:56.800 but you have to be selective now you're i'm sure you're seeing a lot less yeah i when we when i was

01:42:02.320 first married we would go and we'd watch everything at the theater what not at the same night but you

01:42:07.560 know yeah we would we would go multiple times a week and pretty and have to wait for the next week

01:42:12.960 oh what's coming out now because we need something new uh we were seeing everything at the theater

01:42:17.320 almost yeah well and this this kind of speaks a little bit to what phil was talking about in the

01:42:21.900 music industry obviously it's become more difficult for artists to make money because of a lot of these

01:42:27.740 streaming services because of itunes initially selling these songs for so cheap but there are still

01:42:34.700 bands that are able to go on tour and have these massive audiences in large stadiums and i would say

01:42:39.500 the cinematic equivalent of that is the theater and it's so sad to see theaters dying out and to see

01:42:45.900 that happen less often it is true that there are you know band like live music is still where people

01:42:50.600 most most artists will make most the lion's share of their money but that is a in the grand scheme of

01:42:56.660 things that really is a small oh yeah that actually want to go see live music there's a lot like

01:43:02.100 they're very committed some people even you know travel around to follow bands and stuff um but

01:43:07.600 getting people out of their house nowadays is really hard because now you're it's not that it used to

01:43:14.160 be where if a band was in town that might be the only thing that they had to do that night right the

01:43:18.300 only option but that 20 or 30 years ago when i started but like nowadays if there's if there's a

01:43:23.660 band in town you're still competing with netflix with with xbox with just sitting at home the internet

01:43:29.440 and the cost of going in going out to see a band now it's expensive well and now you can just see

01:43:34.980 clips of it so you're like you know i'm not there so everyone knows i like taylor swift i didn't go

01:43:40.260 to her tour because i don't got money for that um but like i could see clips of it so like a lot of

01:43:46.260 people think like it's funny because brett has mentioned like oh i'll just watch the the clips

01:43:50.580 tomorrow i'll just watch this clip later and i didn't go to the movies for i don't know how long

01:43:56.080 before i met brett and then all of a sudden he's like well we're doing a movie review so we're gonna

01:44:00.780 go here we're gonna do this are you guys together yeah i didn't know that just got married last month

01:44:07.260 yeah oh congratulations thank you um what's the secret to making it last a month i know i don't

01:44:11.920 know i was gonna do like my first this culture it's my first post on x after we got married

01:44:15.920 like been married a week uh i know everything ask me whatever you want um but like okay so

01:44:21.460 for instance here's here's an interesting fact brad pitt's best performing movie of all time

01:44:26.360 happened this year it was f1 really it was an apple release and it was my favorite movie of the

01:44:30.320 year the one genre that hasn't been tainted sports movies like they're fewer and far in between but in

01:44:36.720 the last couple of years f1 and gran turismo and are both of my favorite movies from those respective

01:44:42.080 years and that's because they stick to the formula of understanding you know stories of perseverance

01:44:47.840 stories of uh you know a veteran getting a second chance those are largely you know assuming that

01:44:53.860 it's not made with some type of agenda beforehand those types of movies are still made in the way

01:44:59.120 that they were before well it's it's funny because that's my wife's favorite films are our inspirational

01:45:05.440 sports stories and she married an artist so i don't watch sports or anything but i've gotten into

01:45:11.560 i've seen them all you know remember you still understand the story the type of story the idea of

01:45:16.280 somebody overcoming something is universal yeah it's just the sports or the vehicle i don't have

01:45:20.800 to know the rules of football most mostly when i can like rudy it doesn't feel forced when you're

01:45:25.520 watching those movies where like now it's like they want to hit quotas or inclusive or whatever like

01:45:29.320 it didn't feel forced watching f1 the kid he was mentoring was a was a black eyed i didn't think

01:45:34.360 anything of it but now i'm watching so like there's so i'm big fan of blue bloods and they're coming

01:45:39.340 out with a new iteration of it it's boston blue i believe is what it's called and now the partner of

01:45:45.180 this main character danny is going to be like a black woman police officer and this i don't know

01:45:50.920 what it was about it because i don't really care about that stuff most of that but i knew it was

01:45:54.840 because she was a black female that she was given this role whereas in blue bloods it never felt

01:46:00.280 forced he had like a she was hispanic female and but she felt like she could be a police officer and

01:46:05.720 it felt like that was authentic like her character was very authentic but now i see stuff like that and my

01:46:11.280 first thought is like it has to be inclusive like media has gone so far down that rabbit hole in

01:46:16.440 entertainment where i can see something and i immediately see the politics in it yeah unfortunately

01:46:22.020 you can't unsee that too yeah it's really i mean you see like a family tv animated tv show and somehow

01:46:29.920 there's a chinese son and a african-american girl yeah wait how does that work and they were well

01:46:35.760 they're this is an uncle and like they have to go out of their way to sort of remake the family so

01:46:41.240 that every it has everybody right and also looks like it's always an idiot the dad is always an

01:46:46.480 idiot well yeah i'm okay with that no but it's like or like you know i don't know like the dad's always

01:46:51.920 like soft he's not super masculine and it's not and my father is someone who i grew up and he had a

01:46:58.000 softer side to him and i respected him a lot because he had that soft side but he also was our dad

01:47:03.300 and like it's funny my dad's maybe the nicest person i've ever met and and you know jimbo is

01:47:07.320 the nicest person literally but he's also scary because you know that if you you know upset him

01:47:11.880 or he goes to there yeah exactly and so there's something about you know the loss of masculinity

01:47:17.020 that's a whole nother discussion that could be had but in entertainment when we're talking about

01:47:20.740 taking entertainment back i think having those traditionally masculine roles where there's the

01:47:25.500 father who's the head of the household and the mother who takes care of the children and

01:47:29.480 and the kids are you know sometimes they don't listen and they do what kids do but they still

01:47:34.220 respect their parents there's a lot of like no respect for parents in entertainment now or

01:47:38.340 romanticizing like kids getting away with really bad behaviors um and we kind of talked about it

01:47:45.260 earlier with like sex ed now kids are getting that in those conversations like in those um shows they

01:47:50.480 have those conversations about you know like their friends or whatever and now your kids watch that

01:47:54.340 and i know you're gonna have a kid very soon phil and it has to be kind of scary because you don't

01:47:59.380 know what you can turn on for your kid now whereas before yeah like my parents were like oh there's

01:48:03.980 dragon tails have a good day like yeah see you later here's powerpuff girls watch that yeah and they

01:48:08.440 didn't have to worry about it corrupting me yeah and now you have to worry about whether it's because

01:48:12.980 you think cartoons would be safe you would think that because they're kids right well not anymore

01:48:17.480 and that's 100 of my career honestly i got into animation everything i do is for kids you know i've

01:48:23.600 done comic books i've done you know video game design uh you know and and tv and feature films

01:48:30.400 in animation and i always thought i'm safe i'm not gonna have to you would think yeah down a job or

01:48:37.400 something like that and it's happened many times i've had to i turned down a barbie thing years ago

01:48:43.720 this is back when it was like the brats movement yeah and i had four daughters and i was like i don't

01:48:49.080 want them buying brats i don't want them to buy this new version of barbie that's kind of

01:48:53.080 it was like sex in this city this is how it was pitched to me i was gonna i was gonna direct this

01:48:58.420 they wanted me to direct this i had left disney and this was one of the first gigs that came my

01:49:02.140 way i was independent and so they'd come to my way and said we'd like you to direct this thing

01:49:06.580 it's a new series we're gonna do sex in the city with barbie and kind of ish you know i mean you're

01:49:12.880 like what what kind of a pitch is that and the pitch was like okay i think i'm out but continue

01:49:18.840 i'm intrigued i just want to hear how this is going to land and it was because of brats and

01:49:24.740 things like that they'd just gone well barbie's not that young so we can't do the brats thing what's

01:49:30.640 the equivalent of the brats thing with a little bit more of an adult character oh it's sex in the city

01:49:35.120 my mom would like change so they were it was barbie and her friends they were going to be in new york

01:49:38.820 and it was going to be a lot of fashion of course too just like sex in the city doesn't have that

01:49:43.540 yeah um but it was gonna be more mature they were gonna have really like dating relationship kind of

01:49:50.660 stuff and i was like this is not for me good i'm glad you turned that down as well like that i was

01:49:56.720 still at disney i think this is well before the whole john henry story i told before but uh oh no this

01:50:02.020 was just after that sorry i just left and so because of what i'd gone through i was starting to see oh

01:50:08.180 wait this is happening oh not just at disney this is mattel right um and i just went i i got it had

01:50:15.980 made a rule that if i can't show my my young daughters what i'm working on i'm not going to

01:50:20.800 work on it good for you smart good for you it became my sort of mantra for at least while they

01:50:26.420 were young uh because now they watch everything we need more people like that in the industry because

01:50:31.280 i think people you're not even trying to like force a message you're just what's friendly for kids

01:50:36.360 what's something that i can put my kids in front of and i don't have to worry about the messaging

01:50:40.020 we need more people that are doing that because now you have to worry about you know we've talked

01:50:45.080 about having kids and i'm like man i don't even know we're gonna show them like it's have to be

01:50:48.040 old stuff that i watched because i know that's safe i mean i turned out relatively okay so obviously

01:50:53.880 it's you know got to be kind of safe um but it's it's kind of scary to know and then to hear about

01:50:59.760 they say i'm uncomfortable by this christian theme like what is so i mean i'm uncomfortable

01:51:05.180 by some of the things they put in media now i don't cry about it to get it changed and that's

01:51:09.440 another thing is people are really soft and they just oh i'm uncomfortable my feelings well that

01:51:15.640 doesn't change the fact that christianity is the biggest you know religion in this country and yeah

01:51:21.120 i mean it's sad because we're such a device we're all we're divided as a as a country obviously yeah but

01:51:27.420 now our entertainment has to be yeah like you have to go to angel to see something that i feel safe

01:51:32.960 about my kids watching because it has christian values and there's and then bluey i guess we can

01:51:39.700 say is somewhere down the middle right that i think i think is so far been very safe probably for

01:51:44.820 everybody i would guess yeah there's very few and and people say oh blue is a hit and by the way i go

01:51:50.280 to kids screen i go to these markets where people are buying and selling animated products right they're

01:51:55.540 trying to find the next big bluey honestly and that's the thing they point to now and i'm told to make

01:52:01.880 purpley or whatever it's gonna go and be the next big hit um and i don't want to do that i want to

01:52:09.260 make my own thing exactly i want to make an original ip that yes hits all the fun of bluey hopefully but

01:52:15.600 let's not copy that right that's what holly wants to do is just copy whatever is the hit

01:52:20.360 okay but why can't we do that and that's what pencilish is all about my company is we're trying to

01:52:26.840 say why can't we create things that are pure and good and and appealing at the same time still look

01:52:35.240 good quality wise hopefully and but edify and edify is a sliding scale yes edifying is light of the

01:52:42.880 world also a very christian film it's about jesus that'd be all the way to the right of that scale

01:52:48.000 to the left is spongebob right i mean like it's still edifying it's fun it's not gonna be somewhere

01:52:54.760 and and probably hopefully safe that's gonna be an element of it it's something that doesn't get

01:53:00.100 into really faith at all i mean i don't think they've ever talked about any kind of faith element

01:53:05.180 and so okay that's edifying but it's not it's not showing you know any kind of faith but it is

01:53:13.040 establishing that life is on earth and that this is just a fun place to be yeah under the sea well

01:53:18.420 and also even when you get into media that isn't for children there's a scale of other something's

01:53:24.080 edifying like you obviously wouldn't show a little kid something like band of brothers or saving

01:53:28.700 private ryan but like those are very beautiful films with good stories and a good message i think

01:53:34.820 one of the really tragic things that's happened to our culture is adult has become a euphemism for

01:53:39.960 pornographic um when of course there's nothing adult about that kind of it's not mature that's not

01:53:45.080 like something mature people want to make or be involved with it's like it's it's disgusting and

01:53:50.040 depraved what adult should mean is like takes the audience seriously respects the audience

01:53:56.340 and has some subject matter that children can't watch sometimes you want to make a film that explores

01:54:01.500 a theme that a little kid isn't ready for but that doesn't mean it has to be full of lewd imagery

01:54:08.120 and bad morals and you know evil characters who are portrayed as good that's another tragic part of

01:54:15.700 this is adult films now are almost universally uh filled with horrific content well i like the term

01:54:25.680 mature themes right yeah that makes sense you could say lion king has mature themes um you know you gotta

01:54:33.160 you're gonna end up talking to your kid about death probably and walk out of there because that

01:54:37.740 might have been and a lot of people i hear this online that's where i heard i first learned about death

01:54:43.400 basically i was a young kid and saw this father die and it was traumatic and i saw the kid crying over

01:54:49.560 the body i mean it's that's a mature theme yes um i love that adult you're right i think should be

01:54:56.780 reserved for really you know sexually oriented and things like that themes um i you know here's a good

01:55:04.980 example of that a really good movie came out recently from angel uh sketch i don't know if you guys saw

01:55:10.540 this movie a lot of people haven't seen it uh it came out theatrically uh and i don't think it was

01:55:16.320 the timing i think it was how they sold it so because it was from angel everybody thought okay well

01:55:21.860 only angel only makes christian content and hopefully less cheesy than some of the other areas usually um

01:55:29.860 and but have made some real good hits that are christian themed okay then they released sketch and i know

01:55:35.880 the director and the writer of and the producer of this film out of nashville and it's it's a fun

01:55:42.680 family film that talks about some mature themes which is the the mom in the in the movie the mom has

01:55:50.640 just died and it's a dad raising these two kids and it's soon after the mom has died and the little

01:55:58.100 girl is going to her sketchbook now and drawing very dark dark drawings meaning like bloody sure like this

01:56:05.100 is my my the kid at school that i don't like and he's being attacked by this this you know demon

01:56:11.000 type character that's stabbing him through the heart and like and they play it for humor they do a

01:56:16.340 really good job at this um because i just made it sound really horrible but and it is dark but we all

01:56:23.260 know that we've all seen kids and and it's a little girl we see boys go through this a lot right when

01:56:29.060 they're very young and it's usually war things like this is tanks and here's all the bloody and they

01:56:34.200 liked war and some boys get really entranced in that and but oftentimes there there's there is

01:56:40.920 some thread of where's that coming from right and so this is talking about that this is a little girl

01:56:45.700 that this is how she's dealing with the loss of her mom she goes really dark and uh and the dad it and

01:56:52.840 uh it's the guy from arrested development uh just bateman or the director no no the actor in it the

01:56:59.680 lead actor jason bateman right no no that's the star of arrested development will something

01:57:05.260 the bald one tony hale oh sorry tony hale um so some people will recognize that name some people

01:57:11.760 won't i think this is one of and he's done voices and inside out and things like that for pixar

01:57:16.120 this is one of his best best pieces i think he's a great actor in this he plays the dad anyway long

01:57:23.240 story short they they they show this and then magically there's like this pond they don't

01:57:29.220 explain it very well her sketchbook falls in this pond and the creatures start coming to life and so

01:57:34.960 it's very much a goonies or gremlins kind of a style which also if you go back to those movies

01:57:40.020 they had mature themes like there were people dying they didn't show it outright but you knew that lady

01:57:44.680 that got catapulted out of the house she's dead you know exactly you can put it together they didn't show

01:57:50.520 it but you know you know she didn't land lightly she died um and so that's kind of what they're

01:57:55.580 doing here but even a little bit pulled back but because the audiences were sold uh well it's from

01:58:02.620 angel we trust them this is a little bit of what disney went through back in the 70s and 80s as they

01:58:07.580 transitioned to again more adult themes i guess you could say um we thought we could trust them i took

01:58:14.440 my young kids and there's been a lot of backlash from angel for sketch because they also the trailers

01:58:21.640 they created oh it's fun but they didn't show any of the really dark stuff of these creatures that came

01:58:27.360 out of that sketchbook and at the end now it has a wonderful landing i mean they bring it around in a

01:58:33.380 really nice way that i do think parents are gonna want their kids to see this movie and it's very

01:58:39.460 funny and entertaining it's got all the stuff but again it's gremlins and they were selling it more

01:58:44.800 like it was you know aladdin yeah well you know i mean sometimes you have these really serious

01:58:51.220 marketing issues that hurt an otherwise good film this famously happened with iron giant um i had a

01:58:56.580 professor who worked on that he gave this whole presentation on how ridiculous the marketing was for

01:59:03.800 that film and it's like this heartfelt introspective beautiful film and the ads are like heavy metal

01:59:09.380 big robots so cool crushing things instead of the the real subject matter so it's it's sad to see

01:59:16.220 that happen it's sad to see a good story get damaged by bad marketing campaigns good stories sell better

01:59:21.380 through word of mouth than through the advertising campaigns i mean that's like um if you ever saw

01:59:25.900 jennifer's body with uh with um uh megan fox the point was that was you're talking about i haven't seen it

01:59:32.260 the point was is that it was sold a certain way because of megan fox but the movie was nothing like that

01:59:37.160 at all because the marketing departments have their marching orders to go down a certain right

01:59:41.940 you know that's obviously it's very different than what we're talking about here but the point

01:59:45.200 is is the marketing is some of the hardest stuff to do for a lot of the films that don't have like a

01:59:49.720 through line like a big budget blockbuster movie or something like that right so very hard they don't

01:59:54.500 want to give away they don't talk about it we got a hard out today so uh um tom if you want to go

02:00:00.300 ahead and tell people where they can find you and find your work yeah i'm working on another feature film

02:00:05.520 and it's called my hero amazing has all those things and i'll i'll probably eventually uh if

02:00:10.800 we don't have time to see it here i'll post it later somewhere on my instagram or something you

02:00:15.680 can find me at tom bancroft one the number one on uh and on instagram um and on tiktok actually

02:00:22.940 um and then uh pencilish.com is a great place to go to see some of the content that we're creating

02:00:29.100 and uh and of course go see light of the world when you get a chance when it comes to

02:00:33.360 pvod and netflix or something down the road we can we can totally play this for you yeah let's

02:00:38.660 definitely oh yeah yeah so the setup is this is about a girl that discovers her old her grandmother's

02:00:45.060 old secret decoder ring from the 1940s and she's able to bring forth a superhero from the 1940s this

02:00:52.060 is all glorious hand-drawn 2d animation

02:00:54.560 what major dynamo

02:00:59.960 all right cat that should about do it i might need to be caught up on all that's happened since you

02:01:27.500 last summon what no wait who are you no don't take that off

02:01:33.100 that's beautiful dude that animation is insane that is really something thank you yeah we so that

02:01:50.740 was like four months and 18 people and all that we're trying to get the group down smaller and all

02:01:55.140 that to make this whole feature film we think we can do it at a low budget even lower than light of

02:01:59.680 the world but and it does have some faith elements it certainly is going to speak to

02:02:05.680 grace and forgiveness awesome i think those are things we don't hear about we didn't talk about this

02:02:10.960 but honestly we're talking most of the messages uh in hollywood from pixar and disney and things

02:02:17.000 like that are about oh accepting yourself and and they're very and they're they're meaningful in

02:02:23.580 some directions but they take it to the point where it just becomes selfish yeah yeah this is

02:02:28.000 about self-sacrifice that's beautiful man my name is seamus coghlin i create animated cartoons at a

02:02:34.200 youtube channel called freedom tunes i'm currently raising money for an animated anthology series that

02:02:39.840 i'm creating it's probably more like pg pg-13 depending on the episode but we're trying to explore

02:02:46.500 moral issues in the culture through a christian framework basically but done in a way where it

02:02:53.360 all comes out through the story and the jokes and not heavy-handed preaching so we already have the 25

02:02:58.120 minute pilot finished um we're really on a tight uh we're budgeting very effectively the way i try to

02:03:04.940 explain this to people is we're going to be able to produce our whole first season which four more

02:03:10.260 episodes need to be produced for the inflation adjusted cost of what one south park episode cost in

02:03:15.440 1997 so if you guys go over to twisted plots.com and become a member at the ten dollar level

02:03:21.680 you will get access to our pilot and you can see for yourself thank you so much and god bless you

02:03:27.120 all right yeah guys you can find me at olivia dasovic on instagram and on x and you should join

02:03:33.420 the timcast discord we do some really cool stuff there i'm hanging out there i know sometimes brett

02:03:37.680 hangs out there you'll see us popping in and out it's really cool so become a member at timcast.com

02:03:42.020 join the discord and become part of our community guys if you want to follow me i am on instagram and

02:03:48.580 x at brett dasovic on both of those platforms and you should watch pop culture crisis we are live

02:03:53.900 monday through friday 3 p.m eastern standard time noon pacific we'll see you there guys we will be back

02:03:59.260 tonight for timcast irl and we will have clips all weekend so we will see you there

02:04:05.700 spike 1 p.m news and so we'll see you there we have clips...

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The Culture War - Tim Pool - October 17, 2025

Wokeness Is Dying, Conservatives Are Winning & Taking Back Entertainment w⧸ Tom Bancroft & Seamus Coughlin

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