#somebody’s gotta promote the comics and I guess that’s me

[bricreative]

🚨Last issue of Forget Me Not is out!! 🚨

The story wraps up in such a sweet way, lotta cute moments with Steph and Alex, and we get to see some familiar faces

[popculturebuffet]

Darkwing Duck: Just Us Justice Ducks

This is it. 7 reviews, 10 episodes, 2 teams,  7 brave heroes, 13 villians but only 5 of which are relevant here. All leading to this. One big final review of one of the most loved, most important and most awesome Darkwing Duck episodes, the ONLY two parter outside of the pilot in the show’s long history. If your just joining us, as hinted at in the opening sentence i’ve been doing reviews of every episode of darkwing duck featuring the first apperances of the Justice Ducks and Fearsome Five. The only exception was Megavolt, but I ended up doing Negaduck instead, so I could cover both Megs and the original version of Negsy in one fell swoop (A great idea and comission from longtime supporter of the blog WeirdKev27). All so I could give this the build up  it deserved and get the background I didn’t have years ago when I wanted to watch this, wanted to see all of the first apperances first.. then just didn’t get around to it, not even finding out the episode order is an utter nightmare.  While i’ve given out about this before, allow me to do so again: Due to prioritzing what got done first over proper order, ALL of the justice ducks first appearances eps were aired after this and while Morgana at least got an episode before this, it was her second appearance. Same with LIquidator and Quackerjack though like Morgana, Quackerjack still got an episode or two before this one. So yeah as a result to most kids it was a bunch of heroes just introduced, up against two new villians and 3 old faviorites. You kinda see the problem. It’s why I watched it in chronlogical order: to have this be a gathering of established heroes against darking’s worst foes... and the debut of the worst of THE worst, the true Negaduck at long last. So with the proper build this deserves and not much else to say, let’s look at this two parter and see if all my effort was worth it and if the hype is real. Let’s, get, dangerous under the cut

We open in St. Canard in Darkwing Duck’s secret HQ over the bridge, where he’s getting ready to go out with Morgana and does... things to his hair. 

Excellently terrible hair do.. seriously I love a good pompadour as much as the next person, probably unheathily more than the next person, but this isa bit much and adding a curl to it is just.. 

I mean Superman’s hair looked better at this point, and for those wondering “Wait superman usually has a pretty good look”.. welll. 

Yeah.. post-ressurection.. he had a mullet. Look there are only 4 people in the world who can pull of a mullet: Brock Sampson, Patrick Swayze (God Rest his soul), Hank Venture and Daniel Cooksy as a teenager. And he ALSO put a curl in it and it still looked okay because that’s one of this things along with being selfless, and idiots calling him bland for you know, being a kind hearted symbol of humanity at it’s best. But man the mullet was just not for you bud. 

Morgana naturally tries to change it while Gosalyn watches and...

Yeah as you can probably guess a LOT has happened.. and all off screen. Morgana is not only fully on the side of good apparently, but she and Darkwing have gone from simply flirting with one another to dating AND Gosalyn has met her and they fought the astro mummies together.. no wait that was the Caballleros yesterday.. but still eveyrthing else is PRETTY important stuff and even with the messed up episode order the kind of thing you’d ASSUME an episode would be made about. I mean this is her meeting darkwing’s kid for fuck’s sake. That’s a big step in any relationship let alone one just starting out. And trust me, I didn’t miss anything: every other morgana ep seems to have them already in a steady relaionship. I DO think it’s stuff like this why some fans aren’t crazy about this relationship. Me I think he’s honestly too good for her. 

But before they can go out for whatever vauge date they were going to have the power goes out and DW notices it’s megavolt and prepares to go after him only for Morgana to question him about their date. 

Morgana.. sweetie.. the entire city is blacked out. Nowhere will be open.  But Gosalyn offers an alternative, Morgana go along with him and while both are reluctant they go with it. So Darkwing confronts Megavolt... and soon finds a bunch of chattering teeth. Yup, it’s Quackerjack as the two have teamed up, and together easily defeat Darkwing, putting him in an electric chair. The two also really get along which makes sense: Both have similar personalities, being kinda nuts indivdiuals with a singular obession , which compliment each other as toys often need electric power after all. THey strap darkwing into an electric chair, that got dark fast and he begs morgana to save him.. only for her to accidently turn him into jello. I mean.. they say pudding but.. their diffrent things. Just because world famous sexual predator Bill Cosby promoted BOTH for the jell-o brand doesn’t mean Jello is magically pudding. If he could magically make one thing 

Point is Darkwing is jello, the villians mock him then set up some kind of device and head off.. while also mentioning a mysterious boss. I wonder who it could be. 

Nah.. too obvious. Darkwing is humilated and of course blames. morgana.. for saving his life.. as while the jello humilated him he’s also you know not dead. 

Anyways Darkwing storms off while Morgana worries he likes her. Morg.. the guy got pissy because you saved his life the wrong way with some bad aim. And before that clearly just wanted you there as a trophy to impress you instead of because he valued you in any way but your looks, because let’s face it he’s shown no intrest so far in any way that isn’t superficial and neither have you in him. You both need to actually try to deepen this or end it.  Anyways enough me ranting at 90′s cartoon characters, it’s time for our next Justice Duck to enter the episode as Stegmutt is selling hot dogs now, but no one stops because they just.. run in terror. Poor guy, good thing he’s too oblivoius to notice. Maybe Dr. Fossil had a point.  Back to the plot and it turns out the next phase in the Fearsome Five’s plan is to take out the police... okay so wait are they the bad guys or not? Questions for later. Point is we get a nice mismatch as Bushroot’s timidity contrasts perfectly with Liquidator’s showman ship and he drowns them out. Darkwing prepares to attack, but gets interrupted by Stegmutt, refuses his help.. and we get the best and most iconic gag of the episodes: Darkwing makes a joke about playing pretend.. and senseing Stegmutt is a dummy have him pretend to “put out the darkwing”.. which equates to pulling a Droopy while saying “put out the darkwing”. So the two villians finsih their job and high five and this is one of the most charming parts of this 2 parter: the camradere between the five minus negaduck. The other four just.. easily bond and enjoy each ohters company, only fighting ONCE, and then being on the same page after that. 

It’s also what makes them so deadly: the go too for ANY superhero team in any medium is to simply get the vilians to fight each other as most vilian teams are built on REALLY shaky ground, a mixture of egos and ambitions that unlike with most superhero teams, can’t really be overcome with the greater good.. because their only in it for what they want. The thing that keeps any of these groups together longterm.. is camradere. I’ts why the Flash’s Rogue’s gallery is easily one of the most dangerous; while there are outliers like the reverse flash, most of them are part of the rouges, and ascribe to their rules and morals.. and thus the camradre and support that comes with it. One guy with a cold gun or a super flamethrower or a weather wand or mirror powers.. is pretty damn tough. All four and more together, willing to bail one another out, having their own tailor and weapons hookups. The four remind me of that: a bunch of guys who have the common goal of beating darkwing but likely just.. hang out when not trying to do crimes. Well except negaduck, hence the four thing. By not being able to just easily turn them on one another, it means you HAVE to take them all at once. Even if you got rid of negaduck as both the comics and the 2017 reboot have shown.. you still have 4 immensley powerful, quackerjack included, supervillians who easily can work together instead of a bunch of angry assholes who tend to work better one at a time and just with a united goal. Point is Darkwing Duck is Darkwing Fucked.  Darkwing once again refuses help and yells at Stegmutt, because he’s been evne douchier than usual, and then makes the mistake of yelling at Neptunia, who promptly has her octopus friend throw him into the distance because .. well he deserves it. So while Darkwing patches up that wound to his pride and his spleen, we finally meet our vilians new boss: NEGADUCK. And... they do not explain why a guy who looks exactly like drake is here, if he has any relation to the other negaduck he was inspired by, or why any of them would trust him. This would bother me more.. if A) it wasn’t too much of a stretch for darkwing to have foes we hadn’t seen given the whole casefiles thing and B).. well okay this isn’t really a logical opinon but since when have that stopped me. 

There’s a damn good reason that Negsy has one of the biggest episode counts of Darkwings villians. The guy is just.. the perfect foil to Darkwing, the Joker to his batman, the reverse flash to his flash, the green goblin to his spider-man, the sabertooth to his wolverine. He’s Drake’s equal and opposite number. While Drake can’t take two steps as Darkwing without wanting some attention, Negsy is happy to avoid having any until the moment strikes. While Drake wants attention as much as he wants to do the right thing, Negsy just simply loves doing what he’s doing. To quote the Spies are Forever song “Somebody’s Gotta Do it” “Can’t you see.. how much I enjoy this, i’d never avoid this, cause buddy i’m a diffrent breed. This is my calling, and though it’s appaling, I love making people bleed.” 

He just LOVES being evil. He’s as comically devoted to being a bad guy as Darkwing is to being a good one. He loves the idea of being able to shoot a bunny, he revels in his villiany and he loves every second. But as I said unlike darkwing he dosen’t let his flaws get in the way of his villiany as much. He still does on occasion, he’s still a version of Darkwing after all, but he has his eyes far more on the prize and is far less prone to distraction. He dosen’t care about toy deals or infamy.. he just wants to watch the world burn and laugh manically over the flames. While his obessions CAN be used against him.. as this episode shows it only lasts for a bout a second and he’s usually ready for it. He’s a Drake with no morals, no connections and few drawbacks. And he’s also every bit as clever, with him winning for most of the two parter. And not because the plot needs him too.. he’s simply THAT good at planning, with his plan here being geninely clever. I’m REALLLY hoping for Frank to lead the reboot because combining ALL of this with his reboot backstory will be divine if he gets to. Negaduck was very much worth the hype. 

So his next plan, itself clever.. is to dress up as Darkwing and inflitrate SHUSH, taking out the next possibly thing that could stop them. And he does so easily, even while Darkwing is there and to show off just how friggin awesome he is predicts what Drake will say. The only thing that trips him up is drake hilarious pointing out a cute bunny, because he and the other Negsy apparently share the same burning hatred, causing him to get out his shotgun. And can I just say how wonderful it is he can use a shotgun?  That’d never pass nowadays, which isn’t the worst thing but i do question why VILLIANS can’t be shown being reckless with fire arms. Their the bad guys, kids aren’t going to see it as a good thing. And they still equate laser guns with guns. They aren’t going to trivilaize gun violence because of Darkwing Duck or Looney Tunes. 

Even being found out Negaduck still acomplishes his goal and floods thing. So now both the cops and shush are down, and things aren’t looking great. Darkwing’s still determined he can do this himself and beat them.. but it’s transparent that not only he CAN’T and won’t admit he’s outnumbered but freely admits he just wants the biggest win of his career by taking them all out 4 to 1. Probablem is.. he’s not spider-man and this isn’t the sinister six. As I said he’s not fighting a villian group whose egos clash so badly , at least whent hey first formed, they have to take turns or in later iterations have some member blackmailed in> Their working in concert. He needs help but as we’ve seen multiple times now Darkwing just can’t accept it. He has to be in the limelight and while he does have to relearn the lesson .. it works better here as personality flaws aren’t the kind of thing that fixes itself overnight. Sometimes never. It feels less like it does sometimes in cartoons, where the character just.. never fucking learns, and more like Darkwing has learned it.. he’s just so very human and thus can’t resist sliding black. Less peter griffin more bojack horseman is what i’m saying. I mean there are still bits of just poor writing, but for the most part his ego is like most of his enimies: he just can’t get it to stay beat. 

So it won’t suprise you that when the national guard and gizmoduck are called he’s not happy. You may recall when I reviewed “Tiff of the Titans” I REALLY hated this verison of Gizmoduck. He was concited as Darkwing but treated like he wasn’t, treating the daring duck of mystery like a criminal for stupid reasons and was generally pretty useless and obnoxious. The fact that hamilton camps gizmoduck voice sounds not like a 20-30 something like Fenton is but like Grandpa Simpson mixed with a dash of dudley doo right dosen’t help. 

It’s not lost on me that Dan Castellaneta’s character is NOT the one that sounds like Abe Simpson either. But while that problem is still around... the rest of them.. aren’t. Gizmoduck’s character development actually stuck from last time, so rather than be a dick to darkwing he’s warm, friendly and happy to accept his help when Darkwing shows up, thinking his old “Buddy” is just volunteering to help instead of screaming at him for doing his job. Not only that but while he still has elements of a standard superman type “Cape” hero parody... their more toned down and actually funny with him giving giant speeches, and that being useda gainst him and being over the top.. but still being the noble, big hearted hero you’d expect from the roll, just wanting to do good not for the Glory he gets anyway, but because people need him. In short.. he’s 100% better thsi go round. Well okay 80.. he still sounds like this. 

Gos also brings Morgana along, because apparently she forgot the entire episode where her father was so obssed with being noticed he tried to upstage his 10-12 year old daughter... and you know the hundred other times Drake put his ego over his job. 

So he naturally wants to shoo her while Gizmo. .warmly welcomes the help because he recognizes that people are counting on them not counting on him.  Just then the villians make their move and activate the electro slave device from earlier which.. does nothing like that’d sound like and just creates a giant electrical wall, cutting off ST. Canard and bringing the plan full circle: The villains have now cut off the town and taken out almost anything that could oppose them. And despite you know everything Darking only gets more pissy when Stegmutt and Neptunia show up., Stegmutt because he still wants to return Darkwing’s change as Darkwing bought a hot dog from him and Stegmutt’s also a really sweet guy and Neptuina because well... .the ocean’s her thing and a bunch of bad guys just put a giant line through it she’s now on the other side of. Gizmo suggests the obvious: It’s a day unlike any other when a threat no one duck, or fish or dino duck, can face alone. It’s time to assemble! And Gos is more than excited about the idea, suggesting the name Justice Ducks which.. is honestly fairly weak in my opinon. Not BAD but very clearly just “Justice League” with Ducks in it. Given how good the series is at names, you think they’d of taken more than five minutes on this one. Maybe it was disney mandate I dunno.  But the concept itself.. is brilliant and I wish it came back in other epiosdes; Taking a bunch of other heroic characters in a setting and making them into a team is always a great idea, it’s why the tmnt unvierses have been using the mutanimals more and more lately, and they do ballance each other out nicely. You have a nice contrast of powers: while multiple have super strength, stegmutt is your bruiser, Gizmo is the tech guy, darkwing’s the strategy, morgana handles magic and Neptuina can swim in anything and is super strong and agile outside and inside water, so as long as she can keep hydrated, she’s useful> Which by the way has ALWAYS been the case for aquaman.. except the superfriends version. 

He really does suck and ruined it for the rest of them till Jason Mamoa and his mighty abs, coupled with Geoff Johns run on the charcter that served as the foundation for that movie, finally rescued the character from a fucking decades old cartoon’s smear campagin.  They have the makings of a great team.. it’s just Darkwing dosen’t want a team and screams at everyone to get out and that he dosen’t need them.. I mean he does try to be softer on Morgana but.. he’s still a dick and she really should dump him. Seriously, their attraction is superficial, at this point at least we’ll see in Feburary if it gets any bettter, he dosen’t respect her as a person, and now he’s having to restrain himself at yelling at her.. for HELPING HIM. When he clearly needs it. Holy shit... I was not prepared for that amount of douche. And this would sink the two parter.. were this not clever setup for one hell of a downfall and not a key part of his character. Like has been said: Ego is a massive part of him, and as Tad Stones has put it his real arch enemy. It’s been the basis for several episodes and as we saw in the pilot was his motivation for getting into crimefighting in the first place. He means well and clearly has a heart.. but this is just as much about thwarting evil as it is the attention. And here it’s used perfectly as in the reverse of the gizmoduck episode, where he wanted attention but for fully understandable reasons and judged Gizmo more on stealing his thunder, which while petty i’ll admit is a bit fair given Gizmo did NOTHING in St. Canard but got the key of the city while Darwing had saved it multiple times at this point. 

Here he’s being petty and selfish.. and he has no good reason. It’s just his own ego wanting the credit for everything when it’s not what he or the city needs. Honestly this feels like an ahead of it’s time parody of how Batman would be written when written poorly sometimes in the years after this episode:  a massive dick who thinks he knows better than everybody else and everything else should be entrusted to him because he’s the goddamn batman, the kind who throws people out as potential parts of his family for petty shit and acts like a controlling ass and okay maybe this is spiralling a bit. But the refusal to see any other way is right? Yeah that defintelyf its darkwing like a glove and eveyrone leaves either bummed or pissed at him. And the most pissed? Launchpad who while agreeing to it, his face and tone clearly mean he’s disapointed in his buddy for acting like this when now is REALLY not the time. 

And I wish.. we got more on this because Launchpad disappears till the ending scene after this. No really. Despite being Darkwing’s best friend and sidekick and despite warranting a spot on the justice ducks and despite having every reason to pitch in. he just vanishes. I mean Ducktales may of gone overboard in not having him around since Let’s Get Dangerous, but at least that’s a valid reason: he has another family, he’s really busy and Scrooge has another talented pilot to do the job for him. Granted he’s clearly still doing it offscreen at times but he was both a major part of an hourlong and will be part of any possible spinoff. And hell even back in season 1 when the character ballance was at it’s worst... Donald and Beakly at least HAD reasons for not being in a whole lot of episodes: Donald HATED his uncle, HATED adventure, and HATED the fact his kids were following in their mothers footsteps as he only saw death at the end of it. While they SHOULD have found ways to include him more and his exclusion was pretty bad... he at least had a reason. Here launchpad just has to go now his home planet needs him. And he’s not the only one Gosalyn gets more, she’s worried about darkwing, we’ll get to why in a second and wants to go but Gizmoduck refuses.. and then ALSO vanishes. Which makes even less sense as when has Gosalyn EVER listned to an authority figure? Especially when her dad might be dead? It’s just grossly out of character for her to agree to sit things out and not just tag along with steggmutt anyway once gizmo can’t stop her. I do get this is about the justice ducks but there’s no reason to neglect the other main characters. At least have Negsy capture them too or something. Cripes. 

So yeah the “thinking he’s dead part”. Darkwing sets out to find the five’s lair and misses the big honking flag Negaduck set up, but finds a crumb, puts two and two together and finds them.. as Negaduck planned. Down to the crumb thing as, in my faviorite line of the episode, he planned on Darkwing missing the flag and focusing on the flimisiit clue instead. Naturally they kick his ass, EASILY, and throw him out a window to his death and in classic bond villian fashion don’t check for proof of death. Krakoa would be ashamed. So part one ends with darkwing duck getting thrown to his possible death...

Only for part 2 to pick up with him landing in a trash truck before exiting. And this.. is what makes the ego parts tolerable.. Darkwing.. earnestly reflects, depressed he let his own ego get in the way of things and shoo off his only hope, and thus let the villians take over the city, with Bushroot’s plants harassing people, quackerjacks teeth running the police, and Megavolt having taken the power company and using it to shake down locals and Liquidator flooding part of the city for a plan we’ll get to in a moment. He’s at his lowest point and tht’s while it work: his hubris DOSEN’T get unpunished, he’s fully sorry for it and while he dosen’t out and out apologize to them, he’s not only genuinely contrite but does work well with them and evenly when he finally does get back to them.. but we’ve got a bit to go before that.  So with Darkwing missing Gizmo takes over as big good and not bein ga prick eagerly takes the others help Neptuina nopes out of helping, which fits her personality, so with only three left because he dosen’t consider children useful  which shame on you. I mean i’ts responsible from a real world standpoint but not from a cartoon show standpoint. But anyways they split up gang: Gizmo will go take the power plant back, Morgana will try and use her spells to find the lair and Stegmutt will find darkwing. I do like despite how they neglect Gosalyn that her friendship with Stegmutt was remembered and used as a plot point here. 

So we then get to a rather repttitive part of the two parter. It’s not lacking in good gags or character moments but it’s basically the same scene repeated 4 times just with a diffrent scenario and gag for each of the justice ducks and the fearsome five member they encounter. They do their respective schicks the hero is defeated.. this is 5 or so minutes of a 20+ minute episode. Not TERRIBLE stuff, iv’e seen worse repttition, but not terribly intresting compared to the rest of the four parter.  So, Neptuina encounters Liquidator, whose scheme is selling rafts to people to not drown in exhange for a millioin dollars.. or whatever they have he’s not picky, and they fight but Liqui ultimately wins, Gizmoduck, in the best of the four sequences, swoops in to stop Megavolt and not only lands on his foot.. but spends so long speechifiing Mega gets him from behind, phrasing. Stegmutt hilariously tries disgusing himself with Groucho glasses and is bested by Quackerjack, and Morgana finds the lair but gets taken out by bushroot, though her pet spider archie escapes to go warn the others. 

So after all that Archie makes it back to darkwing’s hq.. only for launchpad to squish him. “ew a bug!”.. just a great quick laugh. Thankfuly he’s more resilent than the average spider and is fine once Gosalyn scrapes him off and they now know the five are in trouble. Also I was wrong Launchpad does return.. for this one scene. And neither get into action once Darkwing returns and after an overly long bit of him deflecting blame to the point I was screaming. 

That being said it is nice when once Darkwing is aware of the situation he gloats a little.. but still goes to save them without any hint of caring about doing it all himself. He learned his lesson.  So at the Lair of the five, Negsy shows what a sadsitc bastard he is, another great side of him.. from a writing standpoint at least. It shows that like darkwing despite a comedic exterior.. he’s VERY dangerous. And he’s set up speciic tourtures for each of the five he has: He’s hooked up Gizmoducks armor to a device that lets him control it’s power flow, so right now it’s entirely drained.. but he can overload it and electrocute him to death when he flips THE SWITCH. Neptuina is stuck under a heat lamp and will fry when he hits THE SWITCH. Stegmutt is stuck in a weightless enviorment that will also loose air when he hits THE SWITCH and morgana is in a chair that will crush her tod eath when he hits.. THE SWITCH... he really loves THE SWITCH and props to him. A lesser villian would’ve had all the traps have a diffrent trigger which while making it harder on any rescuers is just a time waster asking for the heroes he hasn’t gotten to yet to break free. And while it is based in his sadism he still fully intends to watch the deaths personally. Seriously he’s got all his bases covered.. and would’ve won.. if it wasn’t for the rest of the five.  The rest of the five are fighting over territoiry: Buddies they may be but they all want the pie. Negaduck, in his most badass scene shuts them up by pulling out his signture chainsaw for hte first time and scaring the crap out of htem, then using it to carve up the model of the city: They each get a quarter.. and he gets all the loot. Which they dont’ like but agree to to not die today. Though really... what’s the value of that? They have a full city held hostage, control over a quarter each, and no real way to SPEND the loot without letting someone else, say scrooge mcduck, in to stop them. Just give him the money and let him sit on it Smaug style. You get a quarter of a new york sized city to yourself to live out your dreams. I’d love that... maybe nto become a supervillian for that but still, point is you have carte blanche jsut take the W.  Darkwing meanwhile uses Nega’s scheme against him and plans to be delivering skulls, after flowers only piss nega off, and then knocks the guy out.. though his attempt at playing Nega fails as the Four have wisely decided that since they outnumber him and a four way split of the loot is better than none of it, to kill him. Nega.. is not pleased and just wants them to attack him, and they do, and it seems darkwing’s going to have a front row seat for THE SWITCH. But Darkwing recovers, and we get a great tug of war between him and negsy as the switch is turnd on and off on and off till Darkwing finally wins, and then frees Morgana and apologizes and has her free Gizmo, and so on and so on. So our team is reunited, Darkwing’s finally ready to lead and thus we get our battle cries “Justice Ducks, ASSEMBLE!” “Fearsome Five, GET OVER HERE!” And the two face off

And the battle.. is fantastic. Easily the series best so far as everyone gets a moment to shine. Neptuina takes out both Liquidator and Megavolt, this time beating liquidator by creating a whirlpool inside him and turning him into a watery tornado and crashing him into megavolt before he can get stegmutt. Gizmoduck beats Quackerjack handily by using a drill on the teeth, great gag then giving Jacky some ansteic.. a boxing glove to the face. And Stegmutt takes on bushroot and when unsure of what to do.. we get a truly wonderous callback as Stegmutt.. honestly dosen’t know what to do.. so Darkwing gets some payback and tells him to “put out the bushroot, put out the bushroot” you can guess what happens next

Or if you want the more recent versoin

Point is three down two to go, and we get a call back to the pudding thing with Morgana trying to hit liquidator.. before Darkwing in a show of how much of a team player he is now, offers his help, simply having Morg teleport some instant pudding mix over the guy... I mean at least it’s brown this time even if i’ts still  in a jello mold. And to finish it off he and gizmo awesomely use a mixer on both sides. So our heroes have triumphed.. almost. Negs has the controls for the barrier and runs out planning to destroy st canard if they refuse.. then being Negaduck decides fuck it i’ll do it anyway... but Darkwing stops him and we get a slapstick beatdown as DW uses an anvil a pie and other classics and utterly curbstomps his nemissi in an wesome scne. The day is saved, the generator shut down and the city freed.  So we wrap up with the Justice Ducks celebrating.. with Gos and Launchpad. I have an inlking how that conversation went. 

Darkwing relcutnatnly is forced to eat his own words and admit he both enjoys the team and needed their help, before heading off on that Date with Morgana.. though Gizmoduck tries to make it a group thing. Dude no one likes a third wheel.. not even when i’ts ninja brian. So Darkwing uses the iris out to escape, but Stegmutt does try and give that quarter back first, with Darkwing, in a genuinely sweet moment, telling him to keep it and then going off, having earned his happy ending and grown as a person.  Final Thoughts: This episode was WORTH the build up I gave it. It turns out I really didnt’ need most of the intro epsidoes, as while it enhances the villians the heroes are all given decent enough introductions apart from morgana so tht even without the context of how darkwing knows these people it still works. It’s a thrilling, tightly paced for the most part, hilarious and wonderful two parter that ties a huge chunk of the show together into one hour long masterpice. I had my issues of course and i’ve stated them: Gosalyn and Launchpad doing nothing, the pacing towards the middle of part 2.. but otherwise.. it’s perfect. It’ has a great character arc for darkwing on top of everything, once again having his ego bite him in the ass but in a unique enough way it dosen’t feel like a retread of the pilot, and having him genuinely feel bad about it and grow. a bit smug when he learns he has to rescue them sure but he’s never smug to the heroes themselves. And ironically.. he gets his big moment. While he dosen’t beat the five himself he still infliatrated their hq, beat up their leader, saved his friends and then beat negaduck all by himself AGAIN. It may of not been the big moment he wanted.. but it’s the one he needed.  As for the road to the justice ducks itself.. it was a fun ride. Only one honestly two bad episodes; Tiff otf the Titans and Paint Misbehavin and even those had their moments, paticuarlly Misbehavin’s art sequences. The rest of the episodes ranged from alright to standout and overall it was a hell of a time.. so i’m going to rank all the ones i covered leading up to this review. Just Us Justice Ducks (Both Parts) Negaduck Beauty and the Beat Dry Hard Jurassic Jumble Ghoul of My Dreams Something Fishy Fungus Amongus Whiffle While You Work Paint Misbehavin Tiff of the Titans And i’m proud to say this is the first ongoing project on the blog, the first story arc or what have you, i’ve completed. While I DID do a four parter of catch as cash can, this is the first one i’ve done over several months that i’ve completed and i’m proud of it. Does this mean i’m done with Darkwing?

Next week we’ll be wrapping up some more unfinished buisness with another Darkwing Double Feature, this time covering the short career of Quiverwing Quack and in Feburary, and the reason I spent so much time catching up, we’ll be seeing both Morgana and Negaduck again just in time for Valentine’s day. After that?

We’ll just have to see won’t we? So until there’s another rainbow, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. 

[westallen-world]

Eric Wallace Talks ‘The Flash’ Season 6B: Iris Entering The Mirror Dimension, Crisis Changes, Gorilla Grodd and The Return of Wally West

Eric Wallace has previously written for DC Comics on titles such as ‘Mister Terrific’ and ‘Titans’, as well as several episodes across Seasons 4 and 5 of ‘The Flash’ TV Series. Heading into Season 6 of ‘The Flash’, Eric Wallace was promoted to showrunner after Todd Helbing exited the show to helm ‘Superman and Lois’. Our interviewer Michael Slavin talked to Eric Wallace about what has come so far this season on ‘The Flash’, what to expect following ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’, and what to expect in the remainder of the season.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: To begin the interview, what has your thoughts been on the reactions from fans to The Flash Season 6 so far?

ERIC WALLACE: Uh, what are the reactions to The Flash Season 6 so far? (laughs) I actually really don’t go on the internet.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: Oh really?

ERIC WALLACE: I’m the kinda guy who y’know does the work and I hope folks dig it, and if they don’t that’s okay too. I do believe everybody has the right to their own opinion, and I tell the staff “Don’t tell me anything unless it’s somebody who liked it” as a joke.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: I mean everything I’ve seen has been positive so that’s a good sign I’d say.

ERIC WALLACE: Oh good! I know everybody thought Episode 6×07 “The Last Temptation of Barry Allen Pt 1” was freaky (laughs), y’know with the black goo coming out of their mouths, kind of a very different episode for us. And I think that what was great for me was talking to Grant about that episode in particular and how much he said to me he enjoyed acting in that one and making it, y’know how it challenged him in the best possible way and I think that’s what you see on screen, you just see an actor going for it. The director, Chad Lowe, I thought did a terrific job and I thought Sendhil did such a great job as Barry’s adversary, we got really lucky and blessed with someone as wonderfully talented as Sendhil Ramamurthy in Graphic Novel #1, which people I guess don’t know because we use the graphic novel format for our seasons now but every graphic novel does have a name, I just can’t tell folks until the season’s over because the titles are so spoilery. But that last season, Graphic Novel #1, was titled “Blood and Truth”. That’s the actual name of Graphic Novel #1 and we’re starting now with “Marathon” in 6×10, we’re starting Graphic Novel #2 which also has a name that I cannot reveal because it’s so super spoilery, and very metaphorical, because I loved English and English class when I was in High School a little too much. And very often in the writers room I’m the one calling the “theme police” on us to keep us on it.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: Right, Perfect. So now I just want to pick up from the last episode at the moment. So we saw Iris enter the mirror dimension and I was wondering how this affects her character in the second half of this season?

ERIC WALLACE: Iris will grow in ways she didn’t know she could, and I mean that emotionally. Being sucked into that mirror will push her to the edge and a little bit beyond. It will literally test her sanity, which is really great because it’s given Candice as a performer a wonderful opportunity to just give some of the greatest performances she’s ever given on the show in my opinion and just knock it out of the park. One of the things that was important to me as a storyteller was, we spent a lot of time with Barry’s emotional state leading up to Crisis, while in Graphic Novel #2, which is the second half of this long season, it’s not necessarily all about Barry, we wanted to focus equally on Iris in the back half. And that’s what getting sucked into that mirror believe it or not, is going to allow us to do. Who knows what lies behind that mirror but I guarantee you it’s a different place. It’s a place that will affect her in a way that she will have to examine who she is and what makes up Iris Allen-West in all of it’s different facets and if that’s a good or bad thing.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: It was interesting when I was watching Crisis on Infinite Earths the scenes with Iris were always really interesting because she was tying our perspective back into these superhero characters so it’ll be really interesting to see where you take her next. Obviously you mentioned Crisis on Infinite Earths and it’s still a huge discussion point with the multiverse reset allowing for a blank canvas per se, how has that experience been for a writer in terms of being able to introduce and change major parts of the show and kind of do whatever you want going forward?

ERIC WALLACE: Liberating. That’s the perfect description. The best thing that ever happened to this show was Crisis on Infinite Earths, the crossover, and moving past the end of our pilot. Way back at the end of the pilot of Season 1, we see that newspaper and it’s telling us what we’re driving towards, so in a sense, the first six and a half seasons of this series have been driving towards a predetermined point, and that can be a little limiting from a story point of view, especially from a writing point of view. Now, we fast forward to Graphic Novel 2, our six and a half way point, who knows what’s going to happen now? and that’s the fun part. We can take all of the best of the past, keep it, but we can add in ways. I said to our writers in the writers room, I said “Who are the villains from the past? From previous seasons, 1, 2, 3, 4, whomever. We have the opportunity to tweak them now, just a little bit” and put on a fresh coat of paint. I use that term a lot now to describe our methodology. And you’re going to see that with several villains from past seasons, you might also see that with some heroes too, maybe one or two, who are from the past. And that’s great, it’s very liberating, very exciting, it keeps it fresh for us as writers, and I think when we’re feeling the excitement for the freshness of the stories we’re telling, hopefully that’s translating into what you, the audience, sees. It feels like the best of all worlds, it feels like the show you know and love, that feels familiar, but also maybe it just has a new coat of paint. Specifically it’s painted with a new main title credits. That is something I planned from Day 1 when I took over on the show. I said “When we get to post-crisis, it’s a brand new world. What’s the best way to visualize that for the audience and send them a literal message that says this is the line of demarcation between the previous seasons of the show and the show from this point on going forward? Well… it’s just a card that comes up with some lightning, what happens if we do 15 seconds of awesomeness” which the composer got excited about, Warner Brothers got excited about, who did just a terrific, bang up job on the title for us. And now that is one reaction that might be one of the only times where I was actually curious as to what people thought and thank goodness there seems to have been a real positive response to that and, I know this sounds kind of strange, but in a sense it’s kind of the message that sort of opens the door for everything else, so I’m glad people are kind of seeing that. And they should look for more changes, in the characters growing in ways we haven’t seen them grow before, in the story this season in the back half, not just Iris’ story but Barry’s story too, Killer Frost’s, everybodies kind of on a really wild journey that takes them to new places, and that’s on purpose. There are no rules like there used to be, pre-crisis, for stories.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: So that leads perfectly into my next question, which is what characters and locations can we expect to appear in the back half of the season that have changed or came about following Crisis?

ERIC WALLACE: Oooh, how do I answer that without spoiling anything? That’s a good question… I gotta think about that one because there is one set that goes to crazy town but that’s a spoiler, I cannot say that.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: Can you hint towards it at all or?

ERIC WALLACE: Uh, no. It’s so huge of a spoiler. I will say there is an episode where the West house, not the loft, but the house that Barry and Iris grew up in, there is a scene where that house undergoes a, shall we say transformation of sorts that’s really exciting. Our DP did something really special with that episode in general. The director did something special, it’s actually quite a special episode. That’s an example of how we can look at the same set and they’re a little bit different. Other than that though, other than this one obvious way which I can’t tell you about it because it’s so spoilery, the sets don’t really change. It’s more the characters changing, the villains changing, the scenarios that happen being a little weirder and as an example of that I use, at Comic Con I pitched out to the world what Season 6 was really all about, it was the season of Thrills and Chills. Well, Part 1 ~ Graphic Novel #1, was the chills. Literally we made a horror movie. Now, in the “new” season, Graphic Novel #2, the back-half, this is the Thrills section of the season. This is the section of the season that, and this is great because you’re DiscussingFilm, I’m a film buff. I watched a whole bunch of 1970’s paranoid thrillers to get in the mood to prepare for the back half.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: Is there any one film from that genre you’d say that has directly influenced the rest of the season?

ERIC WALLACE: Ooh, I can give you three. Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, and All the President’s Men. Those are three examples of literally if someone were to watch those three movies and then go watch all 12 episodes in Graphic Novel #2, they would see some similarities. They are hard to find unless you really study those films, but they’re there. The tone of it, that’s really what we introduce. You guys saw we introduced Joseph Carver, and what’s he up to, right? Well, I can tell you right now it ain’t good, and somebody’s gotta investigate it. And Iris in investigating it has already gotten into a lot of trouble because she got sucked into a mirror. What does that mean for her? So that’s the investigation, I’ll use thee words “paranoid conspiracy”, that’s the kind of world that’s going to be opened up here in this back-half. So it’s The Flash’s version of a sci-fi thriller. Does that make sense?

MICHAEL SLAVIN: Yeah, yeah absolutely. So sort of jumping ahead a little bit, we know that Wally West is going to be returning this season, and it’s obviously highly anticipated, we’re wondering what you can reveal about what his return will bring to this season?

ERIC WALLACE: When Wally comes back it’s not the same old Wally. Being in Tibet will change you if you embrace the tenets of tibet (laughs), he’s going to come back a little older and a little wiser, and this is a spoiler I don’t mind saying, he might just have a new ability or two, and that’s part of the fun. Sometimes abilities don’t have to be crazy and intense, sometimes they can just be darn fun. That’s another thing that Keiynan said to me when we were talking, I don’t know last week or the other week, I was chatting with him and I said “Well you know, how are you feeling?” and he just said “Wow. This is the place I always wanted the character to go, I’m so happy with what we’re doing here, It almost feels like I’m a rebirth a little bit.” And that’s exciting for him, and I literally think this is the best performance of Keiynan on this show. I think when people see this episode they are gonna love it. There’s specifically a truly great Barry and Kid Flash scene, where they really get their act together in a way they haven’t been able to do since I think Keiynan’s first appearance on the show way back in Season 2. So it was really kind of an honor to bring back that special magic between the two of them and explore how their relationship has been changed because y’know Kid Flash… his name might still be Kid Flash but maybe he’s a man now. Maybe he’s grown up a bit, and that’s what’s exciting. So look for that in that episode, I think it comes out in a really unique way that I don’t think the audience is quite going to see coming because it works into the plot and the villain of the week, so it’s really fun but it does bode very well for I think the future of Kid Flash and I’m very hopeful that this isn’t the last time we see Kid Flash. I’m anxious to see what the audience thinks, I hope they enjoy it, we enjoyed writing it and making it.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: Yeah. So you mentioned how Kid Flash sort of ties into the latter half of the season, so what storylines are you excited to explore in the back half of the season?

ERIC WALLACE: Well the main ones I think would be Iris’, you know? What happens to Iris in the mirror? We wanted very specifically to get that out of the way in the opener and I’m not one of those people who like to tortue the audience, I don’t think that’s fair, I like to play fair with them, so you will find out next [episode] what is on the other side of that mirror. We’ll get exploring, you will not have to wait eight episodes and all that stuff. The first three episodes very quickly get into what’s up with Iris and what happened and what will be her journey this season. I’m extremely excited about that. I’m also excited to go exploring more of Team Citizen, which we introduced at the end of last year. It was very important not to just have Team Flash, because that investigates meta crimes and whatnot, it was very important to also have Team Citizen be an equal part of the storytelling. Allegra, Camilla, and Iris as human beings investigating real truths in the world. Let’s face it, I think we live in a time where truth and journalism has never been more important and I want to make sure that gets left even in the smallest way in our fantastical stories.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: Yeah so obviously All the President’s Men that’s a clear influence from what you were saying earlier.

ERIC WALLACE: Correct. Correct. Those thrillers that I mentioned had a influence on me when I watched them in college and I hadn’t seen them in 15 years or something like that and kind of “poach the best” or “pay homage” right? (laughs) So yeah I’m very much looking forward to that, I’m looking forward to Kid Flash’s return and what that’ll mean going forward for the show. I’m very excited about exploring new facets of old villains, I’m kind of obsessed with that. So you will see at least two, I’ll give you a number, at least two old villains from the past in the back half who maybe have changed in the post-crisis world. And that’s gonna be really exciting I think for people.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: So yeah obviously a synopsis was actually released for “Grodd Friended Me”, an old villain, and what can you tell us about that coming episode and what it means having Gorilla City on Earth-Prime?

ERIC WALLACE: How can I answer that without spoiling?

MICHAEL SLAVIN: Ah don’t worry about that just say whatever you want

ERIC WALLACE: Right, sure you want me to do that. Well first of all, not a ton of people know this, everyone around here does, but Gorilla Grodd is my favorite flash villain. And I don’t mean that just in the show, even from the comic books. I am obsessed with Gorilla Grodd and have been since I was probably, y’know, eight years old. I just think that a talking psychic gorilla might just be the coolest thing ever invented. OR maybe I watched too many Planet of the Apes movies. I remember, I think subsciously, there’s an influence of Beneath the Planet of the Apes running through that Grodd story. It’s hard to see, but now that I’m thinking about it, I think that must’ve been in the back of my mind a little bit. I take the movies that I loved as a kid or in college and they go into this crazy mill of The Flash and weird things come out, so they’re not always recognizable. I was a huge planet of the apes fanatic as a kid. So I think for this “Grodd Friended Me”, I’d tell the audience without spoiling anything, look at the title. Look at what it means, I think you should take that title literally. And if we do that, you might see something in Grodd you’ve never seen before. And that’s exciting. So yes you’ve got that old villain coming back but obviously he’s not the only one.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: In Episode 1, there was a slight feature of Godspeed and we were wondering if we’ll see a payoff of that in this season? You’ve been mentioning old villains quite a lot is that what you’re perhaps hinting to or?    

ERIC WALLACE: Let’s just say there will be more Godspeed coming. Who knows when or where but it will come.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: Can we expect any more Barry and Iris team-ups in regards to going on missions and solving mysteries together? You’ve obviously mentioned quite a few times All the President’s Men and will that feature into them sort of sleuthing together?

ERIC WALLACE: Yes, you will literally see that in the very next episode. Without giving any plot stuff away. And it’s one of my favorite episodes. It’s so great getting to see Grant and Candice working together to solve a mystery, it’s one of the joys of this season. I hope the audience enjoys it as much as we do.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: Final question, and thank you so much for your time today by the way

ERIC WALLACE: Sure, sure.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: This question comes from sort of the audience members of DiscussingFilm have asked this quite a lot and most notably asked by sort of a friend of the show named Anthony, who just keeps asking us to ask you, will The Flash’s gold boots from the comics ever make an appearance in the future?

ERIC WALLACE: Yes. They will. Eventually. But not this season. I too am a fan of the gold boots, Grant is a fan of the gold boots, but not this season. We will eventually get there, I would ask for patience.

MICHAEL SLAVIN: Right, so that’s us done, would you like to shout anything out in regards to The Flash or anything else you have going on?

ERIC WALLACE: Ah nah I’m too busy doing this man (laughs) this is sort of an all encompassing hobby as it were, but I do just want to thank all of the fans for their support, for continuing to come back every week, with whatever platform you’re watching on, it’s still greatly appreciated, and we have you in our minds and hearts when we write this episode, we might write them in a vacuum, but literally I tell my writers all the time “If you were watching this show, what would be cool to see this week.” And I hope folks enjoy the cool factor because this is the season of thrills and there will be a few, I think big surprises, that thrilled us and we hope you are thrilled too. So thank you for watching and keep watching.

https://discussingfilm.net/2020/02/11/eric-wallace-talks-the-flash-and-what-to-expect-in-season-6b-workingtitle/

[camimoo]

So, I watched the Heathers episode of Riverdale

K, so I’ve never watched Riverdale before (well like half an episode on tv once) but I heard there was a musical episode themed on Heathers.  

So I watched it…and accidentally started writing a really long play-by-play analysis:

Oh we’re really just gonna turn on a boombox and go. Ok.

Is KJ’s voice that high all the time? is that just the line they gave him? It’s so babie

Tiny girl  :((( so much autotune.

Oh gosh, that “whyyyyyyyyyyy” is too low for him. Otherwise the Kevin guy is probably their best guy singer.

Weird disorganized sometimes-choreography for background peeps. Like this row of desks will move, but the one next to it will be completely still

“Are all of you this miserable”  lol

The hair wooshy noises…this is only for this episode right? That can’t be in the regular run of the show right? It’s so loud

Oh heck, no harmony on Candy Store :( also weird bad cuts

Is veronica’s house always lit with crappy eerie blue lights?

Is every character selling drugs?  Like every single one?

Also is the plot that these kids have to stop their drug dealing moms?

“What are you gonna do?” “ I’m gonna take a bath.” *starts crying* lmao

Co director girl is so over acting.  Is she a regular character on this show?

Aw man lowering the big fun notes :(

Also can the Ram Sweeney guy actually act? Cuz based on what I’m seeing, imma go with No.

So, frequently, a disembodied voice is just singing and matches nobody on screen, like they don’t seem to concerned with getting the right person on screen lip-syncing at the right moment.

Also one of the jock dudes is suuuuper tone deaf

Again terrible edit cuts in the song.

I do appreciate that they are all indeed doing jello shots.

So we have the 3 heathers, and then we have … 3 more dark evil heathers?

Also this sometimes using riverdale-veronica as heathers-veronica but also not is confusing

Doing some Grease hand jive dancing?

There are some ridiculously loud sound effects in this. Archie’s jacket for one

I thought the neon lighting was just for promotional photos of Riverdale. But no. literally every scene is lit in neon red and blue (and maybe some yellow)

Ooh I like the “anything to share veronica”, that matches the musical where she has to blurt something out at the assembly

“my family’s always been unconventional.” Lol yeah your family is unconventional, (from the 5 seconds I’ve seen of them) your mother whose face never changes and she just wafts around, and your gravel-voice dad

Off-brand hostess cupcakes!

“He’s a real class act, that Sweet Pea”  how do y’all deliver any of this dialogue with a straight face when your characters have COMIC BOOK names??

“cuz your parents are splitsville” lol, way to be gentle

“I AM RED” and snaps and two replacement heathers come to back her up.  How many heathers are there in this show? We’re up to like 8

“Faux pink lady”.  So we are intentionally making these Grease references. Got it.

Lol she said Westerberg.

What’s the point of saying the one tiny girl is Veronica if Topaz(?) is gonna sing her songs

All hope is gone. Apparently these are the Highschool lyric changes.  Hmmm

I feel like they are mix and matching characters together willy-nilly.  I pick…you and …you! Yep threesome now.

Nuh uh.  Her name is PEACHES?!

The loud sound effects are killing me.  When you pat your thighs that doesn’t usually echo through a whole auditorium peeps.

Also why are we in the auditorium, you all clearly have neon lit mansions to go home to, why not use a more believable setting for seducing your friends?

So Tony/EvilHeather/Veronica is seeing visions of Cheryl/ActualHeather telling her she’s beautiful???

Oof that was a terrible record scratch noise.  Also whiplash! “Let’s make this beautifuuuul-STOP.”

Lol Fang.

What is ThE GaRgOyLe ChaMbEr?

Finally some harmony, it’s altered but still decent. :) Our love is god.

Are they having a secret gay cult wedding in a dungeon church?

The weird kinda half choreo the background cast does every once in a while.  Also specifically its only like the first row of extras in every case.  The back or outer rows never move..?

Do boxers really punch the air for practice by themselves in empty boxing rings?

k. I kinda hate the tiny girl’s voice,

so everybody is Veronica. Huh. Just takin turns.

I guess that’s just what KJ’s singing voice is. Ok.

Also when making cuts, why still have her say “well whoa you can punch real good.”  Just cut the “well whoa” and it will fit your scenario better.

Ok I actually super like the new harmony at the end of fight for me.

Principals are susceptible to cults. Got it.

Meet me at JUNKYARD STEVE’S??

Red scrunchie!

WAIT- did evil-heather and heather-heather used to be in love?

Wait they found the drug lab that quick?  Is this like a once-an-episode kinda thing? just gotta shut down the daily drug lab and move on

“and serial killer fathers” said in a comforting tone.

What even were those terrible piano chords as an intro to Seventeen?

But actually this song seems like a good fit for these traumatized children.  Help these babies :(

The voices of Cole and lilli (and most of them) sound like they were recorded so separately and in completely different ways, ones more breathy, others are echoey, some have autotune…hmm

Also someone pointed out that when you get to the “your eyes can’t we be seeeventeeeeeeen” line, Cole’s voice changes so drastically it has got to be somebody else.  I totally agree.

Sometimes the background music (not heathers) sounds like a western movie.  Like somebody just got challenged to a show down at high noon.

I want to crack an egg with a tiny egg hammer! And he didn’t even get to eat it.

Her dad sounds like a gravellier version of Misha Collins

She does really good at Lifeboat.

“I thought I was captain” diff lyrics.  Ok.

“drugs…terrible…what a nightmare”  delivered practically deadpan devoid of emotion. wow what quality dialogue.

“what is all over your faces?”  oh that’s just the drugs soot. No worries. Trashing meth labs always leaves me covered in soot.

Oof. “Martha are you free tonight?”  nobody answers. They all kinda glance around awkwardly.  Really? Why leave the name in at all if you aren’t including Martha, just change it.

When you burn down a building, shouldn’t you flee the scene of the crime? No? does being in the snake gang make him immune?

Also the pan out to make sure we saw the gas can in the back seat, cuz yanno I couldn’t’ve pieced that bit together on my own.

Also I’m assuming they’re drinking big gulps right?

Weird music edits

HOLD UP, is Tony dressed as Martha??? Wut.

Also none of their vocal styles go together, the transition from the others to tony is jarring. Tony is all sexy breathy poppy.

Hmm, interesting minimal interpretive dancing choreo

Ack, please blend in the tiny girl’s vocals.  Pls I beg you. At least I think its her.

Everyone else: *taking off clothes and jackets*

Jughead: *putting on his hat*

Hold up, I feel like from seeing the rest of the ep I can guess who most of the audience members are that are getting close ups/reaction shots, but I swear they added a new lady, heavily made up, and not Cole or Veronica’s mom...who…?

Oh and now we get creepy cult flash mob with hypnotizing claps. Ok.

 Overall:  pretty messy. No one really plays a specific character so it’s hard to gain any of the character growth that they get in the actual musical.  No one’s vocal style matches like at all.  The new lyrics and tons of edits were odd. The sound mixing was bad I think, like everything stuck out and didn’t match. This show is hilariously broody and they all have such funny names. Camilla whatshername is a good singer, actually the main 3 girls are p good, and the Kevin guy.  

Huh.

[artificialqueens]

Star Power Over Me - Part Three (Trixya/Vixie) - Pilandok

AN: Heeeeeeeere’s Katya. Oh nice, we have part three up and running right now. No smut this time, but finally some drama, mama (kinda). Ohne thing I forgot to address is the timeline: it’s set about right now, in the current present time, hahahaha, an alternative universe where everything is the same except Trixie and Katya don’t have BFs. Anyway, thank you for reading.

It wasn’t the last night Violet spent at Trixie’s place but they haven’t been booked to the same show since. Mostly because Violet’s gig is for the big boys, as he put it, and Trixie’s was, well, for ages three and up. (“How many six-year-olds must I traumatize before they learn not to take the name literally?”

“Well, six-year-old Jason would have found you hysterical.”

“Yeah but kid-Jason would have already been fucked up.”

“Shut up! My parents were great.”

Trixie didn’t say anything, giving Violet a warm smile. He didn’t realize how Violet interpreted what he said until later, but he enjoyed the extra affection he received that night.)

From the other side of the camera, Trixie’s phone dings. She shoots an apologetic look at the staff before standing up to go to her bag. They wave her off, unbothered, the interview hasn’t begun yet.

“Well I guess some of us,” she hears Katya from across the room, using the voice she does when impersonating white girls, “aren’t ready for the level of professionalism needed for mainstream success.”

“Bitch!” Trixie calls out, rummaging for her phone in her bag. She adopts the same tone, “I’m sorry, it’s just that my dog’s therapist told me to be in touch whenever my miniature schnauzer undergoes guided meditation.” Trixie turns around and sees Katya flailing her arms while laughing noiselessly, entertained by the thought of a tiny dog engaging in therapeutic hypnosis. Then suddenly calming down, Katya lunges forward with her left leg then rests her arm on her knee; she does the same to the other side, stretching. Trixie watches her for a minute, “You do know that we’re just going to be green screen torsos for this interview, right?”

“Always gotta limber up, mama,” Katya replies, slowly descending into a split, “be ready to run.” She reaches for one foot, talking in-between stretches, “disasters abound,” then the other foot, “my horoscope said so.”

Trixie doesn’t hide her baffled amusement for her partner. She turns back to her phone and sees that the message came from Violet. She cranes her neck quickly to take a peek at Katya (who was still busy stretching) before reading the text:  Since you asked so nicely, xoxo. It was followed by a picture of Violet blowing her a kiss with one hand and the other taking the picture through the mirror. She was half in drag, a full face of makeup and only corset on—and the full length of her penis is popping up in the picture. Trixie can’t stop the surprised laugh that escapes her lips.

“Whatcha got there?” Katya asks suddenly, trying to look over Trixie’s shoulder. Trixie puts the phone down too quickly and Katya squints suspiciously at her. Trixie’s heart rate speeds although she wonders if it was anything to hide. Katya then tilts her head back slightly and widens her eyes comically, “I can see you from my house…” she said in her best Coco Montrese voice. Trixie pauses for a second before erupting her screaming laughter, raising her hand like she was going to smack the air around her. Katya looks pleased at the reaction she elicited from her friend. “What is it, though? But I guess if it’s from your new All Stars 3 friends, you don’t have to tell me,” she sighs but is giving Trixie a knowing look. Somebody calls them back to set.

“It’s not that,” Trixie says when they start to walk back to their seats. “Do you know how many unsolicited dick pics I’ve gotten since All I Want For Christmas Is Nudes?”

“Oh mama, those aren’t unsolicited,” Katya begins, “ever since you’ve released that universal gay mating call of a Christmas song, you’ve doomed yourself to pictures of penises for life. For. Life.” Both of them settle on the stools provided for them. “Catch yourself in 2048 with the intercommunication chip implanted in your brain bombarding your corneas with 4D holographic visuals of mechanically augmented cocks.” Trixie opens her mouth as if to say something but closes them again, not really knowing what to she could. Katya continues, “yes, extraterrestrial lifeforms, after decoding your songs, will also participate in the ritual, sending you whatever goopy, tentacle- y, multifunctional version of genitalia they have.”

“Okay,” is the only thing Trixie replies but she’s smiling at Katya who was beaming, proud of the little tirade she went on.

They’re going to start soon, the staff says, and right before the cameras start rolling, Katya leans in to whisper suggestively in Trixie’s ear, “and as for mine, why don’t we just have our own photoshoot in the bathroom later?”

Trixie senses a sudden rush of blood to her cheeks, suddenly self-conscious, then feels even more embarrassed at her own embarrassment. She shifts uncomfortably in her seat and then scolds herself. Why was she acting like a blushing virgin? It’s not like she hasn’t seen it, Katya’s… But that was beside the point. She notices it in herself recently—it isn’t just today—suddenly being conscious of Katya’s touches and innuendos, then feeling a little bit of despair from it afterwards. It’s as if it’s 2015 again, when Trixie and Katya was still a newfound friendship, a duo that only existed for themselves. During those days, Trixie always found herself nothing short of enamored by Katya.

As for the recent influx of consciousness, sentimentality, and melancholy, Trixie blames it on the Christmas season.

“She’s the yin to my yang,” Katya tells the interviewer who hasn’t even asked anything yet, “the wind beneath my wings. She’s my everything. My everything, Kenneth—if she trips in this studio I will be suing this whole building for damages.” The interviewer laughs at this and tries to get a word in but Katya isn’t finished, “and yes, she’s one of the reasons I try to stave off of drugs, and yes one time we almost died in Australia, and yes I helped her make her clothes for All Stars 3,” she says in one breath.

“Oh wow, I guess that’s half of my questions down,” Kenneth says good-naturedly.

“She’s my undonateable kidney!” Katya exclaims, “because in the future I would have already lost my kidney to the plethora of my addictions or to an extra-terrestrial kidnapping. Trixie is the kidney I cannot lose because as you know, human beings need a minimum of one (1) functioning kidney to live a happy life.”

The interviewer looks overwhelmed by all the information unloaded by Katya. He’s seen her previous interviews and knows of her off-tangent rambles and spiraling streams of thoughts but experiencing it first hand was quite something else. Kenneth laughs in amazement and Trixie sees him falling in love with Katya, too—like the rest of the world already has.

“And Trixie, what do you think of Katya?” he asks.

“She’s a’ight,” Trixie shrugs. Katya drops her mouth open and starts flailing her arms at her side.

“You cunt!” Katya screams, smacking Trixie on her thigh, “you putrid, rancid, dirty whore—ahhh!”

Trixie is laughing at their exchange but her mind is racing. It’s the Christmas blues, she thinks, and she hates it. She replays in her head everything that Katya just and feels a wave of love and gratitude for the blonde hit her and she just really loves Katya but then suddenly she’s floating in a sea of desperation and hopelessness because she’s in love with Katya. And really, hasn’t she already settled this before? Now she’s having difficulty concentrating on the interview with Katya beside her, and Trixie finds it ridiculous, they have been on a tour of many a minor news sites to promote their show and she’s in the exact same place as she’s always bee, on the left of the screen.

The worst part is that Katya notices her troubled state and cranks her own energy level up to 150% to make up for what her partner is lacking. She sees that Katya’s been throwing obvious setups for jokes which Trixie can respond with easy punchlines. Trixie’s heart aches.

After the interview, Trixie is in the bathroom de-dragging; Katya usually hangs back for a while, taking a cigarette break and chatting with whoever is there. This time, however, Katya follows her inside a few minutes after.

“Sorry about earlier,” Trixie says as soon as she heard the door open, there was no point in pretending with Katya. The blonde waves her off. “You seem energetic.”

“I’m buzzing,” Katya replies.

“You don’t smell like an ashtray today.”

“Smoker’s breath down, can I have kiss now?”

Trixie rolls her eyes but nonetheless gives Katya a chaste kiss on the lips. Oddly enough, this helps calm Trixie down. Katya situates herself beside Trixie who watches her through the mirror.

“Let’s get something to eat?” Trixie asks hopefully. She sees Katya bite her lip—of course, she’s busy these days, her management is particularly preoccupied during the Christmas season.

“Okay, let’s go!” Katya replies in her chipper voice after thinking.

“Katya—” Trixie starts.

“No no, our friendship doesn’t just exist on screen. This isn’t the MythBusters.”

“What?”

“Yeah, that hurts me, too,” Katya says grimly, a faraway look on her face.

They pack up their things and have early dinner at an Italian restaurant near Trixie’s place. Trixie rejects the waiter’s offer of wine because he tries not to drink when Katya’s around. They talk as they usually do about anything they can think of, spending most of the night laughing in each other’s company. Christmas blues or not, Trixie finds himself happy and relaxed during dinner and this seems to dissipate the tone of worry in Katya’s voice.

Katya has to leave immediately after dinner, having skipped out on an earlier arrangement, and says goodbye to Trixie who insisted on shouldering the bill. Trixie watches him go, already busily texting on his phone. Katya appears to sense eyes on him and turns around to wave Trixie goodbye, smiling brightly, his white teeth dazzling. With Katya out of sight, Trixie slumps against his seat, wondering why these old feelings were resurfacing when it’s been a more than a year since he’s made peace with the whole situation. Why now? It’s as if something is going to happen, as if everything is coming to a head. The image Violet sent him earlier flashes across his mind but he quickly pushes it away. Trixie shakes his head and calls for a waiter. He asks if they have anything stronger than wine.

—

                 Violet doesn’t wonder why those queens were looking at him like that—he’s used to it by now. Some resentful glares thrown his way doesn’t bother him usually, he’s prone to it, and later, after his performance, he’s sure those queens will be looking at him with the begrudging respect he deserves. Today, however, it rubs him the wrong way, and he smiles back sarcastically at the queens. He hears them start whispering. Violet continues his walk to the dressing room wondering why he was in a mood. It started in the morning when he woke up feeling very unpleasant, which continued to build up the rest of the day. Now, he was just about to start feeling awful when he opened the door.

                 “Look at what the rotted, gutted, filthy feral cat dragged in.”

                 Violet looks up at the owner of the voice and drops his things.

                 “Katya!” he shouts, rushing to hug him. “What are you doing here, bitch?”

                 “They needed someone to fill in a spot,” Katya says after pulling away, “Manila called in sick.”

                 “What?” Violet asks incredulously, “How does that make sense? You’re more famous than us.”

                 Katya shrugs, “I guess I really am a filler queen now.”

                 “Bitch! How many times do I have to—” Violet cuts him off seeing Katya’s wide grin and white teeth. He smiles back, glad that the rotten feeling that’s been accumulating in him is easily erased by the presence of his friend. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

                 “I, too, am glad to be here,” Katya replies, “although those queens outside are a little miffed that the club owner kicked them out for the night to make room for us in here.”

                 “Ah,” Violet nods in understanding, feeling sympathetic to the girls’ plight and vexed towards the club owner.

                 “Nothing that can’t be brought to light later on stage,” Katya says innocently.

                 “Would that be a cunt move?” Violet asks with mischief in his voice.

                 “Maybe,” Katya admits, “but I talked to the girls about it. The crowd here loves their local queens and would hate to know they’re being mistreated.”

                 “Can’t wait.” If there’s anything Violet loves doing, it’s calling out assholes who deserve it.

                 The two start working on painting their face, chatting occasionally, updating each other about their lives, but it’s mostly a quiet affair for Violet. He lets Katya take over the conversation who still, somehow, manages to finish first. Katya puts her wig on and starts making poses on her mirror.

                 “Mm, I look scrumptious,” Katya comments. She starts sifting through her bag, “wanna live?”

                 “Sure,” Violet answers, she’s almost done herself.

                 Katya begins rummaging through her bag more aggressively, “fuck I think I left my phone at home. Can I use yours?”

                 “Mhm.” Violet points distractedly at the vague area where her stuff should be. Violet proceeds with the motion of her getting into drag. Putting on the outfit is her favorite part, it makes her feel like a sex goddess, slowly sliding into the lingerie. She almost forgets about Katya, who seems preoccupied figuring out the phone, until she needs help with her corset. She turns to call attention to Katya but she is already looking at her with an incomprehensible look on her face.

                 “Violet, what’s this?” Katya asks her, lifting up the phone. Violet freezes. Katya looks at the screen again “Trixie Mattel snores when he sleeps,” she begins to read, “Trixie Mattel never gets as drunk as she wants to be. She’s slightly ambidextrous. He wakes up in ungodly hours of the night. He listens to Sonic Youth. He…” Katya trails off, looking at Violet desperately. She knows Katya wants an explanation, but that just might be the one thing she doesn’t have.

Violet crosses her arms in front of her defensively, her default reaction to a confrontation.

“Okay,” Katya says and stands up to pace back and forth across the room, “okay, okay, okay, okay.” Katya stops walking, “Are you fucking Trixie?”

The harshness of the word fucking makes Violet wince but she answers plainly, “yes.”

“Okay, mhm,” Katya starts pacing again then sits down on the chair on the far side of the room but then she looks confused at why she sat down and stood up again, “okay, okay, mhm, I see, okay, okay, okay.”

“Katya,” Violet starts but she doesn’t know what she was going to say after that.

“She’s not like us,” Katya says finally, more affectionate than condescending. “She’s… she’s a romantic. And wants to be in love and all that, you know?” Katya pauses and sees that Violet is still standing guarded. Katya softens her voice, “it’s just that, Vi, I don’t want her to get hurt. And, uh–” Katya purses her lips, thinking about how to say things, “she—she goes all in, you know, and while you may not be thinking about this too deeply, she might you know,” she scrunches her eyebrows, “you know?”

Violet has lot of things that she could say.  She could say that she knows they’re best friends or whatever but it isn’t Katya’s business what goes on between her and Trixie. And Trixie is a gown adult with a rational mind capable of making her own decisions, she can take care of herself. And regarding her own feelings about Trixie… well she hasn’t thought about it too deeply, but that wasn’t something for Katya to decide. And it’s you, Katya, you’re the one she’s in love with.  Violet doesn’t say any of those things because she isn’t a talker like them, not like Trixie and Katya. She can’t so articulately explain herself in a loveable way like them. What she does know how to do is to say what she’s thinking, and right now she doesn’t know what to think, her mind is still reeling at the sudden feeling exposure.

“I like,” Violet begins, slow but steady. Katya snaps up to attention. “I like sleeping with Trixie. I mean,” she continues, not really knowing what to say, “it’s great. I don’t know, it’s emotional and whatever, yeah…” Katya doesn’t say anything and Violet adds, almost as an afterthought, “… bitch.”

Katya falls back onto a chair and Violet can hear her labored breathing. Violet moves closer instinctively but she doesn’t know what to do. Katya suddenly grabs Violet’s arm, squeezing tight. She doesn’t pull away because she can feel Katya’s hand shaking. She looks up at Violet, panicked eyes filling with tears.

“Please stop,” Katya says unsteadily. It’s an oddly simple request that is equally insane— and they both know it. Katya keeps talking, “Please not—not Brian please.”

Violet stiffens on the spot, her brain unable to process any command but is strangely aware that this is a very bizarre thing happening right now. She doesn’t even notice the knock on the door calling them until Katya jumps up suddenly.

“I’m coming!” she shouts gaily, betraying no hint of the situation. Katya opens the door and begins chatting with the person on the other side like they’ve been friends for years. She laughs, a laugh that Violet realizes is slightly different from her usual laugh—but not one she hasn’t heard before. “Yeah, we’ll be ready in a sec,” Katya tells the person. She sighs before turning around to meet Violet’s eyes and the door behind her closes with a soft click.

Katya is looking at her like she’s waiting for her next move, but Violet knows that the ball is in neither of their courts. The next move belongs to the one who’s in the center of all this– the one who’s probably flying back from Chicago right now, by both of their calculations. Violet sighs.

“Can you help me with this?” she asks, turning around in her untightened corset. Katya nods slowly, walking over to her, and helps her sister get ready for the show.

[propheticfire]

will u please do me every 3rd question from the clone trooper ask meme?

Bless you Kaz.

3. Favorite friendship?

This one is hard because I’m a free-range cloneshipper, so friendships often turn into romances in my head. If I strictly adhere to canon, without implying any romances, it’s really a tie between Fives & Echo and Waxer & Boil. They’re so wonderful, and they’re not afraid to show they care about each other, all of them.

6. Who has the best hair?

You gotta admire Kix’s dedication, you really do. But Keeli’s takes dedication too, and is asymmetrical. And Edge has this gorgeous white-blond hair, wow.

9. One painful headcanon

I made a post about this once, and since I don’t have a lot of headcanons to begin with, let alone painful ones, I’ll just re-share this one:

The original commander of the 501st was Rex’s batch brother and closest friend, who was captured very early in the war and brutally tortured for information about Anakin and Republic strategy. After he died, Rex was promoted, but he just can’t bring himself to be called the 501st’s commander, because it reminds him of his brother.

12. Most overrated?

I can’t…I don’t…how do you answer this question? They’re all so precious and incredible you can’t overrate a clone trooper. It’s not possible. I guess…I guess maybe Kix? But only because people say he’s the prettiest clone in the GAR, and yeah he’s nice but I don’t think he’s the prettiest, so maybe him. (I’m sorry have you seen Keeli? And Echo’s eyelashes, my god…) But if it’s based off of anything other than the fandom’s reaction to their prettiness, then no, there can’t be an overrated clone trooper.

15. Do you have a clone OC? If so, pick one to describe!

I have four now! They make up the clone unit Phire Brigade. They’re all based off of action figures I have, so they don’t have lots of backstory or anything. My very first one was Peale (pronounced peel). He’s built like a heavy gunner, but he was such a skilled shot that he became a sniper with the Wolfpack instead. He lost most of his hearing in an explosion. He loves to tell jokes and pull pranks and make harmless fun of people, especially since it annoys Commander Wolffe so much, which makes it even more fun.

18. Who would you party with?

I’m not really much of a partier in general, so somebody who could keep it chill but still keep the fun going without it getting awkward or out of control would be ideal. I’m thinking Echo or Sinker or Waxer.

21. If you could ask for any new, canon clone content, what would it be?

Give me a movie about Cody. Just give me more about Cody, please. And a book about Rex. And some cute feel-good animated or comic book shorts about clones getting their names or rescuing some kid’s pet from a tree or some happy shit.

Clone trooper ask meme!

[lookbackmachine]

The Untold Story of Mulan

The Untold Story of Mulan

The height of Disney's animation renaissance was The Lion King, and that film grossed over $312 million in 1994, and then the descent began. Pocahontas did well but not nearly as well as The Lion King. Then came Hunchback of Notre Dame, which made less money than Pocahontas. However, the indisputable evidence of their decline was Hercules in 1997, which had a $35 million advertising budget in an $85 million production budget. In the US, Hercules didn't even break the $100 million mark. Hercules marked the beginning of the end for 2D animation at Disney, which would ultimately reach its conclusion with Home on The Range in 2003. From 1997 to the end, there would be glimmers of hope for 2D animation. One of these glimmers was Mulan. The film broke with the Disney formula in many ways, but perhaps most significantly, it wasn't made in the historic Disney Burbank studio, it was made instead inside of a theme park.

Tony Bancroft: From day one, I was probably three years old, and I knew I was gonna be a cartoonist or an artist of some kind. I have a twin brother, Tom Bancroft, and he and I always loved to draw, we were just artists from day one, just doodlers, and very competitive, too, with it, just like some brothers are competitive with sports like soccer and whatever. For us, it was always drawing. We were looking over each other's shoulders and just iron sharpens iron, so it was actually a really good thing in retrospect. We were both doing comic strips. We wanted to do a twin comic strip, believe it or not [chuckle], and we didn't discover animation until we got into going to a city college, 'cause we were trying to figure out, well, do we even need to go to college if we're gonna do a comic strip and we just need to probably just work and create our comic strips as we were just trying to decide which way to go, and our parents were kind of pushing for college, of course. And this guy, Eric Stefani, he became a good friend of ours, was doing these clay animated videos, we got to know him, and asked us to do a video during the summer together, and we created our first animation. Stop Motion Clay film to a music video.

We loved the animation. But you know, to both of us, it was like rocket science. There was some kind of higher math that we couldn't figure out how animation was done [chuckle] and they're messing the math involved, we just knew it, it was some kind of alchemy that we just couldn't figure out, so it wasn't until we actually did that clay animated film that one summer in City College that boom, all of a sudden we're bit by the bug. And we've started researching, like, can we go to school for this and what school would that be? And back then, this was mid 80s, I guess it was, yeah, there was only two schools, probably, in the country, that had really notable animation programs and the biggest one was right near our house, we lived in Orange County, like I said, So CalArts California institute of the Arts is in Valencia, California, and we found out about that, and we were like, "That's it, we gotta go there".

And then we found out how much it cost and we're like, "Oh my gosh, two students? How is my single mother gonna put us through college?" She had just gotten married and we were living by the grace of God, and our stepdad, and kinda barely making it so we worked really hard that summer, and then my mom had some savings put aside and we were able to afford the very first year at CalArts, but for us it was a stepping stone to getting a job, that's all school was for us, really, that it was about getting the training and putting together the portfolio that we needed so that we can actually maybe get into Disney, which was our dream. We made it through a year and a half, and then Disney came calling looking for interns to start with a new internship for the brand new, it was just opening, Disney MGM studios in Orlando, Florida, and Tom and I applied and we got into the internship, we were the only sophomores that were accepted, they were only looking at juniors and seniors. We had to beg our way in.

Well, at the time, Bill Matthews was in charge of the development program and hiring students and helping and nurture them, and the internship program, and Bill was very well known in feature animation. He was like... We used to call him Uncle Bill, or uncle Winky. I don't know why Winky, but we went to Bill and we said, "Look, we're passionate about this and this is our one chance, if you don't let us in to show in our portfolio and don't let us have this opportunity for this internship, we may not be here next year, because we literally have no more money. You may never see us again, or we may never have the opportunity to show our portfolio again to you, 'cause we won't be here anymore". And that touched his heart and he said, "Okay, we'll look it up, no problem, you guys show", They reviewed our portfolio. Bill actually said, "I really can't tell the difference between who's who. So you're both in". [chuckle] It was just like, "You guys, your portfolio is just like you do, they're exactly the same. So you're both in". I've never been so happy as to when I got accepted into Disney, it was a huge, huge day. And then boom. After a nine week internship, Tom and I were working in Orlando, Florida and we were employees, like five and six of the Orlando Florida Studio with only about 30 employees in the beginning. It was awesome, it was a dream come true.

Barry Cook, Director Mulan: I was working at Hanna-Barbera studios to my first job in animation, I was an assistant animator, cleaning up shots for Saturday morning cartoon work and a good friend of mine, Mike Lessa who went on to be a visual effects supervisor for many years at Disney, so Mike gave me a call one day and said, "Hey, they're making this movie over at Disney, and they're looking for assistant animators", and I'm like, "What is it? Is it like a cartoon? Is it a feature animated thing or what is it?" He said, "No, it's just sort of a live action combo. It's called Tron". And I said "Eh, I don't know what that is". He said, "I just signed a contract, so I can't do the film. So, I'm recommending you highly, if you're interested in the job, call this guy Lee Dyer". And so I called him and met with them and he's like, "Mike says you're good, come on over", so it was meant to be a temporary job. In a couple of months time I was promoted to being an animator, doing visual effects, because they just needed all hands on deck they could get. One thing led to another and that six-month job, I ended up staying at Disney 22 and a half years. [chuckle] That's the way it worked. That's the way I got in the door.

We'd opened the studio in Florida, and I worked for Disney in Burbank for about nine or 10 years prior to the studio opening here, in Orlando, in 1989. Yeah, there were seven of us that were sort of considered journeymen and then the rest of the crew was comprised of people who had just gone through the Disney internship and had been hired.

One of these new recruits to Florida was Barry's future co-director, Tony Bancroft, and Tony's brother Tom.

Barry Cook: Oh yeah, he and his brother both, yeah, they were there and we used to harass them, give them a hard time, but they were cool guys, and certainly enthusiastic and very, very talented artists, both of them, and then a crew of seasoned guys, men and women, from people like Rick Sluiter, my favorite art director of all time. So that was sort of the makeup of the studio there.

Tony Bancroft: Here we were working at a new studio. And to tell you the truth, when the Disney MGM studios opened, it was... There was a lot of fanfare, because one, okay, it's a working studio within a theme park, right? Though we weren't employees of the theme park, we were employees of the studio, which was centered in Burbank, California, but we're working all the way in Orlando inside of a theme park. So there was a lot of interesting elements to that, that you don't have just getting a job at an animation studio, like there was a policy at the parks where anybody that worked at the Parks had to have short hair, and they couldn't have facial hair, and there was a dressing policy, and you had to wear a uniform, so they allowed us animation folks to come in, if we had a facial hair when we were working and applying for the job in California, they would let us come in with that, but if we shave before we actually got on the plane to Florida, we had to stay unshaven, that was kind of the deals.

And because of that, the the park people didn't like us very much, as a matter of fact, there was times when we would go out to our cars at night, and we had a special parking lot just for us too, and some people would have their cars keyed or their tires slashed by these... The theme park people that were just so upset at us, because we were just like, the elite and treated differently, that's how they saw us. We weren't trying to be upstarts or anything like that, or make them feel bad about their lot in life. It just, kinda that was just what it was, and we felt bad that we were treated differently, but we weren't asking not to be treated differently either. We had certain expectations too, like Well, we are making animated movies that make a lot of money. We have specially trained gifts and abilities that we're using and skill sets. So we knew that there was a reason that we were being treated differently than somebody that serve popcorn in the parks.

But I don't know, I think it was just a short-term thing, it died down after a while, and people just kinda left us alone, and there was friendships that developed on the other side of the glass, and that's kinda how it was, it was always the other side of the glass, there was us, and then them, kind of the whole time. Yeah, we sat in front of glass all day long, like there was a wall, a glass line wall that went along one side of the building, it was all strategically positioned so that the guests as they came through, they would see the progression of animation by walking through this corridor behind us. It was definitely weird, it was definitely weird at first, being in that environment and having people every 15 minutes, there was a new group of people that would come through the lobby and come by those glass windows, and it was just all day long from the beginning to the end of our shifts. After a while, we called it a moving wall paper and it was definitely guys behind the glass that sometimes they would sit there and they would watch us like all day, and those were the true artists, some of them were just huge fans and wanted to be on the other side of the glass with us. Some of those people became employees of animation later on.

Barry Cook: We were only going to do short films. That was sort of the only promise that the studio could give us. It was gonna start with some Roger Rabbit cartoons and they wanted to do a couple more of those and they wanted to do maybe some more Mickey Mouse cartoons or Goofy shorts, or something that... You know, just some sort of basic ideas for doing short cartoons there. But what happened very quickly as we began taking on parts of different features, what a lot of people don't know is that at the Florida studio, they did about 45 minutes of Beauty and the Beast there, probably 20 minutes of Lion King, they did... Some ink and paint work was the first job they did on finishing up Little Mermaid, Rob Minkoff was there before he directed Lion King, and he was doing Roger Rabbit short Trail Mix-Up, and that was the first one to come in the door. Rob and I would stay there late at night looking at edits and looking at animation tests and trying to time them out to make them visually funnier, just playing with the timing and stuff like that. So we really got along well, and he began to trust me a lot for a lot of stuff, and so he really recommended me to direct the third and last Roger Rabbit short when he was hired away to do Lion King.

That's how I got that job. And I had made an experimental short before then in Florida, called Off His Rockers, but that was a short film that combined a CG character and a hand drawn character.

Tony Bancroft: There was an opportunity that arose on Rescuers Down Under, and at the time there was a lot of us junior cleanup people were all really interested in become... Moving up the ladder and becoming an animator, and in Florida there, because it was so small, they created one opportunity on the next film which was Rescuers Down Under to become an animating assistant, and so that person got to work with Mark Henn and train, and they would actually get scenes on the next feature. There was about eight of us that probably did animation tests to try out for this opportunity, this one position. Aaron Blaise got the position, and I was happy for him, but also bummed for Tom and I, we both really wanted it, and I was told later that I was like number two in line. And I was like so passionate and desiring to be an animator there at Disney and wanting to move up. I knew in California, they had more opportunities, and they were actually looking for four animating assistants instead of one in Florida, it was four openings in Burbank, California.

So I said, "Can you put mine into the running for the position in California? If I get it, I'll leave Florida, and I'll move back. That's how much I wanna do this". I got one of those four positions for Rescuers Down Under. There was a part of me that wanted to be part of the big show. The main studio in Burbank was considered the main studio, the big studio. The Florida studio was the B team. They were always doing parts of the animated features and parts of this, and so they were more like the... Kind of the rookies, they were always looked that way. So I went back to Burbank, California, and got the job and started animating on Rescuers Down Under, and I moved up quite quick. I don't think it's by my own credit and my own, I don't know, make it sound like it's all about me. For some reason I was definitely there at a good time, and God just opened up doors of opportunity for me and I climbed the ladder very quickly, I was with Will Finn who is an absolutely outstanding supervising animator, a good friend of mine, and Will was so kind to me, gave me great scenes on each of the films that we worked on, so I got promoted quickly.

I worked with them as an animating assistant on Beauty and the Beast on Cogsworth, and then he would give me really good like dialogue scenes, which was kind of unheard of, 'cause you start out as an animating assistant, you tend to do like the scenes that Will doesn't wanna do like booger animation, like scenes where Cogsworth and Lumiere and Mrs. Potts are like the size of boogers on the screen, and so they're just like hopping around after Beast. I literally did this scene where like, "Hey come back, wait, wait, Beast", and they're running up the stairs, after Beast, and he's like this big shape going up the stairs in the scene and they are these little guys in the background, but it was Will who gave me some of the scenes that he wouldn't normally do, and because of that, I had a reel of animation to show the review board, so I got promoted on Beauty and the Beast to full-fledged animator half way through, and then Aladdin, I worked with Will again on Iago, the parrot, and then after Aladdin, I went on to supervise, I actually became a supervising animator, on the Lion King, and then it was kind of one thing after another, and I kept getting promoted.

Animators on an animated feature just like actors on a live action feature by a director, they're cast by the director based on their skill sets. Tom Cruise, the hero, okay, he's gonna always do the big hero guy, or there's... Jack Black's always gonna do the comedy guy, or the comedy sidekick, and stuff. I was definitely a comedy guy, and kinda stereotyped as the comedy guy, and doing comedy characters. I'd done Cogsworth and Iago and Frank, the frill neck lizard even before that with Will. So I thought after coming off of Aladdin and doing Iago the parrot that maybe I'll have a chance to do the bird. I heard there was a bird in the Lion King named Zazu, and I thought "Okay, well, I just did a bird. So maybe the directors will see that I can... It's a comedy character and it's a bird, I'm a shoe-in". And I thought, maybe, maybe if I'm lucky, I'm a shoe-in for that. And then they turn around and they gave me Pumbaa, which was already way more than I expected, it was... I didn't even ask for Pumbaa because I knew it was just outside of my stratosphere of possibilities, but that opportunity came to me and even though I was scared to death, I took it.

I'm like, "Okay, I'm gonna just do... Draw the heck out of this warthog, and I'm gonna try and make it my own and hopefully they'll love it". But they did, and Lion King took off and in such a huge way, unexpected and unbeknownst to all of us at the studio at the time. Lion King broke $100 million before the weekend, the first weekend, it was this huge phenomenal success. We know that now, but at the time I was like such a surprise. Because it was such a huge success, my name started to come up more, like everybody is on Lion King. Everybody became successful or were talked about or were celebrated because of that film's success.

Lion King was mammoth, groundbreaking and culture defining. It grossed one billion dollars in merchandise sales, and $312 million at the box office, and was the highest grossing film of the year. Around the same time, Barry Cook was in Florida, and the Florida studio members were growing tired of being seen and treated as Burbank's lackey.

Barry Cook: We were sort of banging our plates on the table saying, "Give us a feature! We wanna do a feature!" And so, Burbank looking down at us like, "I don't know if you guys are ready for that". We're like, "We're ready, we're ready, we wanna do it, we wanna do it", but yeah, I really felt like we can do this. And we all felt like, there was real... Peter Schneider always called it esprit de corps, a group of people with a singular sort of mindset. The Florida Studio was a very, very special place. It was just a place where everyone just shoulder to shoulder, we were moving the same mountain, and we were working together to do it, and everybody respected each other, no matter what part of it they had, and it didn't matter what it was. And I think we had a little bit to prove, maybe because we were sort of little brother underneath the Burbank studio in some ways. Some people might call us the bastard cousin, or something. But I think we felt like we can do this and we know we can do it, and we're gonna do it great, and we're gonna do the best we can do. And it was like Spanky and Alfalfa putting on a show in their barn or something. But it just felt like that, we were just like, "What a great opportunity and what a great moment in time to be in". And so finally they asked me to begin developing on Mulan.

The Development Department at feature animation had acquired the rights to a book, a children's book by Robert San Souci. It was The Legend of Mulan, something like that, it's a small book and it basically sorta outlined she was a kid and she went to war and she tracked the enemy, and they all lived happily ever after, it was just a really short little thing. There was a Chinese opera I think that was the story of Mulan, and I think there's a sort of a poem that was written about her famous poem. There may have been some live action things or smaller TV things or something about her at that point, but none that we knew of, and it were clearly fine at the time. You gotta realize, it was before we had everything on internet, and there wasn't really much to go on. But after the success of Lion King, especially, it's like "Oh, we've done a story that's set in Africa. Now let's do one that's set in another country". The Russian one, which became Frozen, it was originally Snow Queen, a Russian story. Basically, they had this... I don't know if it's a mandate, but just the notion of part of development instead of just the Anglo-European fairy tales like Snow White, and so forth and so on, and even Little Mermaid, and whatever, let's see if we can tap into other countries' cultural stories and present a broader scope of stories around the world.

So that was sort of the big idea that was sort of floating at the time, so this was sort of the most viable Chinese story, I think, that they could find. That's how it happened. Looking back in hindsight, it's remarkable that it's a story about a girl who is not a princess, number one, and I always say that emphatically when I say that to anybody who talks about her in those terms. She's not a princess, she never wanted to be a Princess, she doesn't need a man, she doesn't want a man, although she sort of does begin to fall in love with a man, but it's not her goal like little mermaid, "Oh I just need a man if I can get legs." That's her whole goal in life and this is sort of sad but... So it was way ahead of its time, I thought in the way we were thinking about the story and not to mention that but it takes place during a war and she's in a war. Can you imagine that for a pitch for a Disney animated film, it's a war story, it's not a very likely scenario to be a successful movie. It wasn't something I introduced and said, "Let's do it." it was something that was inherent to the story, but looking back it seems really an odd choice in a way.

So for Disney movie at that time to be set in the time of war, so I do applaud the foresight of Peter Schneider, Tom Schumacher, the executives who were in charge at the time. Even Jeffrey Katzenberg was still at Disney when we began developing it along. He left about... He really gave the green light to start making the movie, and much less it sort of broke away, I thought a lot, and we wanted to break away from the mold of the kind of stories Disney was telling. We were obligated to make it a musical. Disney said it will be a musical. We didn't, Tony and I, really didn't have a choice in that. Yes, there will be a funny side check character, those sort of work. So there were some of those formulaic tropes that were paying off big time, at that time, that we adhered to. But looking back, we were breaking ground that Wonder Woman was breaking a year ago, we were breaking it 20 years ago. And hardly without notice and hardly without fanfare, in some ways.

Tony Bancroft: The story I heard for how I got on to Mulan as a director was that literally Mulan was a story that was germinating for a while. It was tagged as Orlando Florida Studio's very first feature. It already had a director attached to it, Barry Cook who was homegrown from Florida as a visual effects animator and they were already saying, "Well, we want Barry to direct, he's in a good position for that. It's his time to direct a feature and he's a homegrown boy from Orlando, Florida, it makes sense. But who do we have co-direct with him?" Was the big question. And they'd gone through quite a list of people. And it was one night, as Lion King director, Rob Minkoff, was walking to his car at night, going out to the garage, he met up with Tom Schumacher who was then the Vice President of the Development Group. And Tom turns to Rob and says, "You know, we got this film, Fa Mulan, The Legend of Fa Mulan," as it was called back then. "And Barry's on as a director, we're looking for a co-director, I don't know, what do you think, Rob, just throw out a name to me. Who do you think?" And Rob looked at him and he said, "Well, what about Tony Bancroft?"

And I think it took Tom back a bit and I think he was like, "Huh, okay." I think they still looked at me as kind of a kid, a junior animator in some ways, even though I just supervised Pumbaa and all that. But because of the success of Lion King and other things, and I was known to be kind of outgoing, and obviously I talk a lot, so I think they liked that. And he thought about it, and asked around to other people. I heard he asked Don Hahn and other big staff members that were well regarded at the studio at the time, and everybody was positive about my name and about me possibly doing it. So they asked me. I was shocked! It was kind of like the Pumbaa thing. It was that moment where this came out of left field, I didn't expect this. I wanted to direct, but at the time at the Disney Studios it took like 10 years, 15 years to move up the ladder to become known as a director, or have that actually that possibility of becoming a director at Disney.

They asked me at five years. I'd been at the studio for five years only, so I was really junior. There was things that I just didn't know yet, I hadn't learned. My fear was, I don't know a lot about the story process. Or how do I work with script writers, or what about down the road, I've never worked with camera. I've ever worked with Ink and Paint Department and color and production designers. And there was so much that I was just petrified about, I guess. But my mom had always told Tom and I, "You know, if the door of opportunity opens, go through it, what's the worse that can happen?" So I did.

Barry Cook:  For me, I was one of those guys, I'm not saying I am still, but as a younger man, I was highly ambitious. And I just felt like, "Who better? I'm your guy. I can do this. This is what I was born to do." That's what I've always wanted to do since I was a very young child, is to make movies. And I felt like I'm getting into my element. I'm getting into the saddle I've always wanted to be in. This is where I'll thrive, and this is where I'll flourish. It's right here, this is the place for me. There's no better place for me on earth. Right, this is it. Yeah, I didn't have any trepidation.

Tony Bancroft: That was probably the scariest part of being asked to direct a Disney feature is: Yeah, one, there's a lot that I don't know, but, two, really the bigger and a more immediate thing that was staring me in the face was I left the Florida studio as an animating assistant, and I was returning as a director. In Barry Cook's mind I was now his equal, but in everybody else's mind, including my twin brother who stayed at the Florida studio and was now underneath me, I was their boss. When I was considered one of the junior guys, the most junior guys when I left, and just in five years. And they didn't see me go through that transition, they weren't working by my side and seeing me grow into becoming a supervising animator and all that kind of stuff. They saw from a distance what was happening to me, and promotions coming. But I learned very quickly that you don't gain admiration or praise or respect just over night, and it really is something, respect has to be earned. And it's not because of the title that the company gives you. So, I might have been called a director, but it was very hard walking into that position in the Orlando Florida Studio.

You know, I had Barry Cook as my co-director. I looked to him and I tried to kind of go under his wing at first, for sure. We were definitely co-directors. It wasn't like he was my boss, or he was the senior director and I was the junior director. I think maybe they wanted it to be that way, but I think we kind of... Our dynamic was that we were just more equals together. Barry and I went through a lot of ups and downs. It's funny because most of the features during that time in the '90s and stuff, and even coming after that, it was known, and it still is, that Disney prefers the two director model. And there's a reason for that, it's so Herculean amount of effort. There's so many different people and artists to be able to speak to, and to have one person do that is very, very difficult. It's only happened a couple times in the history and canon of Disney features, but I think it was a large part of Barry in the beginning that wanted to direct Mulan by himself. He thought, "Well, this is the Florida Studio feature, it's the first one. Maybe we can do it different here in Florida. Maybe they'll just allow me to direct this myself." So when I was announced coming on to the picture, he knew that it was happening, but maybe not so open to it in the beginning.

Barry Cook: Yeah, it's funny because I wasn't solicited for ideas for a co-director or a partner in the process. So basically, we were assigned together [chuckle] and that's the way it happened, so... When you've got a arranged marriage sort of thing, it takes awhile to fall in love with your partner, I think. And for me, that would be all that it was, probably. It was just like you two guys are together on this movie, for better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and in health, go do it. And that's sort of what it was at first. And to me, it was like, "Gee, I don't know if I like this. And a move that is just personality-wise, it maybe rubbed me the wrong way, that I had no say in it, or whatever, and had already been working on the project for a couple of years. But so I just think it was probably just that, that it was just we had to find a way to work together and play off each other's strengths, and collaborate in a creative and productive way.

And I think probably I don't really remember much, but yeah I'm sure it was awkward at first. And I had been in the animation business for quite a long time too, before then, a lot longer than Tony, just around and in the industry and stuff. And it was maybe just a little hard for me, personally, to take on a partner, no matter who it was. I mean, nothing against Tony at all, but it could have been anybody. But to say this is gonna be your dancing partner, go. That was just probably a little hard for me to swallow off the bat. So yeah, I can imagine sort of being a little rough at the beginning.

Tony Bancroft: And we come from two different worlds. He was a painter, he was a visual effects animator. That's how he... That was his career at Disney. I come from character animation, and cartooning and stuff. And so we saw things differently.

Barry Cook: And a lot of the partnerships happen in different ways, for different movies. Like Ron and John, they were sort of partners coming right out of school. They were sort of doing stuff together and loved working together, and they were sort of a natural partnership. And other partnerships were just put together for different movies. And what the studio felt was strengths and weaknesses, there was a perception that I had a weakness for character animation, and that's where Tony would be very helpful. But I don't think that perception was necessarily true, because I'm not a character animator, but I look for performance and character performance, and telling the story with the emotions of the scene, whether it's a hilarious scene, or whether it's a serious scene. So, I felt like I never had any problems giving animators direction on the scene. I wouldn't give them technical direction, or speak the language of a surgeon, like, "Oh, the arc on that character's elbow should be a little tighter," just those kind of things. 'Cause that really never, still doesn't make any difference to me.

But what are the characters communicating through their body language to their emotional performances, all that matters to me. So that's all I was ever after. Tony's strength, as the studio saw it, was as a character animator, and as a supervising character animator. And one that directors loved working with, and one that did remarkable animation. So, I think that was his strength coming in. I don't think his strength was from a storytelling background. Mine was more. I was on the visual effects originally, but I had begun telling a lot of stories in the short films, and that kind of stuff. And Off His Rockers I wrote, and then Trail Mix-Up, I wrote a lot of it, too. So, I was sort of known for sort of story invention, and known as a sort of natural storyteller, I guess. So I think that was my strength. And also just having a broad understanding of filmmaking process. 'Cause I had worked on Captain EO, Michael Jackson's music video, and I'd work with Michael directly on that for a while doing visual effects, and re-shooting green screen stuff.

I'd had some experience with big stars. And then just the whole process in the visual effects department. You saw all the animation that was done in the film, it always came across your desk, and you worked closely with the camera department. And a lot of times with editorial and layout departments. So in that department, you got great exposure to all the departments in the studio. So I think the people in effects animation were very well-rounded as filmmakers.

Tony Bancroft: There was meetings in the beginning. The first year was really tough, when we were together. And we would... There would be little side jabs and looks and little snotty remarks to each other in meetings with full staff there and lots of people. It was affecting morale and people could see that we were at odds. That's not good, that's not good for anybody. And it was Pam Coats that really said, "Guys, you guys gotta come together on this. And you guys can't be that way with each other." And some of it was just our immaturity, I think, we were both kind of hurt and we were both kinda lashing out at each other a little bit. So there was some of that. But creatively, we both wanted what was best. But at first, I think we both wanted our ideas to be what happened. I know I felt that way in the beginning. That was my immaturity.

You know, directing a Disney film is a roller coaster. People think, "Oh, it's a dream come true." There's so many responsibilities, pressures on you. There's so many days that you feel like just crap sometimes, and people don't like you, or they're upset you viewpoints and your direction and your ideas. And, "You suck." And it really can wear on you. And a lot of times it's your bosses. The ones that should be supporting you, you feel the least supported by oftentimes. And so it's not all the staff, but sometimes it was the staff too, and people underneath us. And I'm like, "I just want the best for the film. And I just want everybody to get along, and for us to do with job." And I tried to be kind of the positive funny guy, the morale guy, and it would just come back at me. There was days that I was just elated and felt like I was really contributing and I was driving the ship. And this movie is gonna be great, and my vision is really lending itself to making it great. And then those other days where I felt like I'm just a glorified approver, and these people have to go through me and I have to stamp it, and I'm just like a piece of the factory; and I just didn't feel like I was really contributing, I just felt like I was almost in the way of people getting their scenes done.

So, there was days like that. But I think every director feels that way, at some time or another, and it's always having to go back inside yourself and say, "Why am I doing this? What do I love about this story?" And bringing that passion back and stirring that passion, and that's what keeps you going. But there was so much that I didn't know about directing that I had to learn along the way. How to share your vision for something, but also let people speak into that vision. It was so many balancing and created balances that I had to learn, and managerial skills. And yeah, there was a point because Barry and I were... We had this friction in the beginning, it was obvious, so it was palatable in the room. And there was a point where there was gonna be a change made or there needed to be a change made. And I was talked to, and I'm sure Barry was talked to at some point too, but I know I was talked to.

And I told my boss one time, if it's better for the movie to fire me, or for me to step out of here, or get out of here, I will. I'll do it right now. I'll leave and I want to, if it means for a better movie, because I care too much about Mulan and this movie, and this studio, to get in the way. So, if I'm getting in the way, you tell me and I'll go. And I don't think that my boss expected that. [chuckle] I think that really... Me kinda throwing myself on the grenade, all of a sudden, when he kinda wanted to be a little threatening, and say, "You better buck up, and go the company way," and whatever, I think that kinda surprised him. And he was just like, "Blah, blah, la, la... " [chuckle] But it was because of that, I think, that they stepped up behind me even more. It was in a way, in that kind of weird corporate way, he appreciated that about me. He appreciated that I was willing to step up for the film and say, "Go ahead, take me out. I'll do it right now. I'll leave, if that's what it means to make this move better."

Barry Cook: Well, I don't know that Tony was ever almost taken off the film. I can't confirm that. I don't know that. Look, every moment that you're doing a movie at Disney you could be taken off the movie. Everybody is replaceable. And everybody in Hollywood's replaceable. That's what the studios in Hollywood have going for them. There is a line of starlets from Hollywood to the East Coast dying to get a break in movies. There's not that many people who wanna do feature animation, but there's still a line of those guys too. And very talented.

So you know at any minute that they can fill your shoes, and that's another reason for two directors. If one gets hit by a bus you can still work tomorrow. No one's indispensable. I mean, when you get to a point, or to a level of recognition, which Disney directors don't get to intentionally, the studio doesn't promote the director, they promote Walt Disney. But if you were someone like a Tim Burton, your work is so signature and the way you do it, you would feel like, "Oh, I'm safe on this movie." But if you're working on one of the big animated feature films, sure you could be replaced at any moment. There comes a moment when the studio does commit to its directors and they say, "Yeah, these are our guys, we're going through it. We're going through the battle." It's just like going on the battlefield, it's like these are our generals, win or lose, these are the guys we're doing it with. So I think the studio does make a decision at some point, "They're safe, we're going forward with... " But, until they're convinced of that, it's tentative every day for everybody. So sure, I was probably pulled off the movie ten times and didn't know it. A hair's breadth away from something like that. But yeah, those are all sort of backroom conference discussions.

Tony Bancroft: I mean, I was pretty shaken by it and later I was very angry for quite a while that people behind my back were talking about me, and thinking that I was an issue, or I was the issue when I felt like there was other issues that should have been talked about, or brought up. I was probably at my all time lowest after that 'cause I felt pretty unappreciated. But that's the great thing about life is that you move past those things and one day you come in and you feel very appreciated, and you feel like we're doing a great thing here, making this movie. And I'm working with an all-star team of some of the best, most wonderful people, personality-wise, but also the greatest artists that I could ever work with in the world.

That's what keeps you going. And it was really starting to understand each other and what each other wanted for the movie. And I started really opening to Barry's point of view of who Mulan was as a character. And it was shared by Chris Sanders and some of the other department heads, and I was like, "Okay, let's go that way, we're doing that. We're doing that, this is where we're going." And that really blossomed things, to a point where, by the second year we were in meetings and totally in agreement with each other. And he could say something, and I would just nod my head, I wouldn't have to add in. Or I could say something, and he would be totally supportive of it. We had departments that we supervised on our own, and we trusted each other and didn't get into each other's business on those departments. It really came together for the benefit of Mulan.

Barry Cook: Yeah, although I... Admittedly, we didn't stay partners after that, we didn't say we have to make films together for the rest of our lives, we're the new Cohen Brothers. We didn't fall in love to that degree. Who knows? We could make a movie together before it's all over with again, but at some point we felt like Yeah, this is working. Like I said, the whole atmosphere in the Florida studio was one of real cooperation and collaboration. We just got into a groove of doing the work and loving the work we were doing, and I think it worked out really good.

Tony Bancroft: I like to say that we really developed the same vision and the same passion for the movie, and really became friends and buddies on the picture. Whereas, that doesn't always happen with directors that are put together, but we did, we fell in love with the movie and therefore each other, and it was that our love and passion for Mulan, the character, that I think brought us together too. It took time but it happened.

What happens I think in any kind of crew, but particularly when you're just starting and you're trying to earn that respect is that they had to see that I cared more about the film than I did my ego than being called a director. I just wanted to be part of the team. So, what I discovered very quickly is, to be a good director is to be a servant to the people that are underneath you. Don't treat them like they're underneath you, they're doing you a service, they're helping you to make the film that you wanna make, to bring your vision to life. I just wanna serve them, get out of their way when I needed to, I wanted to give them a piece of my mind creatively when I needed to, to lift them up, I wanted to push them so that they could do even better work than they ever expected. Not to settle, and to inspire, and to bring them up, and I feel like that's what I came to do. And ultimately, that's how I gained their respect.

When they saw that I loved the film as much, if not more than they did, and I cared about them and their piece of it as much, if not more than they did, I earned their respect. At a point there, after that dark time, we went right into overtime, we went right into heavy deadlines and a lot of extra work and the final push of the film. And when you get into that mode, you're either all in or all out, and you have to be all in to really give the film what it needs. And I just had to, as the director, obviously, you're the number one person that people are looking to for answers and to keep the ball rolling. And so I just had to make a choice to be all in. And Mulan became a real character to us, a real person really, to a lot of us on the film. I used to tell my wife, she became kind of a mistress, I hate to say, but kind of the mistress that I would spend time with late at night because I was working so many hours and that I was putting so much into her and trying to make her successful and be who I thought she could be.

So it was like this weird dichotomy of a lover and father, if you will, to a character that doesn't exist, but in your mind really does. It was her, it was her that kept me going, it was the crew, it was the people, it was the studio. And I'm so glad I did, and I look back at it now and it was the best experience in my life. One of the hardest experiences in my life, probably the best one for sure.

It was actually a really great time when I came on because they had gone through a really tough year, the very first year, trying to crack what the story was gonna be and how to tell it, and they've gone on some real odd directions, not good directions. Chris Sanders had come on as the head of story. Chris is a genius, he's just so creative and so wonderful, we're blessed to have him as our head of story. And when he came on, he started getting in the mix with the writers and conjuring up new and different ideas and with Barry and everybody. And so by the time I came on, they had pretty much scrapped the last version of the film, the script and they had written up a treatment which is only like maybe 11 to 15 pages' long that represented the new direction of the story that they wanted to go in. And I loved it, it was engaging, there was a lot of good elements there, but we still ended up even at that point starting from almost from scratch again, we still reinvented the wheel several times. We cut characters out, we added characters.

There was a lot of changes, but that redrafting of the story when I first came on, it at least had the core of what Mulan's story is about a girl that loved her parents so much, her father particularly, that she would go off to war and maybe even die in his place. That was the emotional core of the story. It still is, but everything else had to be invented.

Barry Cook: It was the moment when reflection had come and Chen-Yi Chang had storyboarded it. The final storyboards for that sequence was done by Dean DeBlois. But Chen-Yi boarded the first version. Well, I actually thumbnailed the first version myself, but Chen-Yi drew a beautiful definitive inspiring version of it. That whole thing was inspired when I was in China. We went to a place where all these bays were set up and these bays are like the stone tablets. They're not gravestones, they're commemoration stones and they have information about ancestors and tributes and honoring ancestors, and they put them up in places like these temples and courtyards, and things like that. I was looking at these things and I was noticing how highly reflected the surfaces were and we could see our reflections in them. She's a girl searching for identity, maybe her image could be distorted in some, skinny in some, fat in some, like a fun house mirror stretched out in some. We never really did that in the film, but that's where the idea started, and then I thumbnailed something when I got back to California. I basically gave it to Chen-Yi as sort of a storyboarding assignment. That scene is the lynchpin.

Jeffrey Katzenberg was leaving Disney because President Michel Eisner had ousted him, and Eisner would refuse to honor part of Katzenberg's contract, which stated that Katzenberg would get a percentage of the profits from each of the films that he worked on. Katzenberg would ultimately prevail in an out of court settlement and in a one-finger salute to Disney, he formed DreamWorks.

Tony Bancroft: Well, it was good and bad because when Jeffrey Katzenberg left, that's right when they restructured the story. The biggest change was we had a different music guy, we had Stephen Schwartz who did all the music for Pocahontas, and Stephen was writing songs for, and he had written like, I don't know, I wanna say two to three at least, but with the story restructure they ended up getting thrown out and on top of it, Jeffrey ended up stealing Stephen from Disney, and he was the main writer for Prince of Egypt, which was DreamWorks SKG's first animated feature. So Jeffrey took Stephen with them, which was at the time pretty crippling for Mulan. Unfortunately, we got David Zippel and Matthew Wilder, two very new guys and fresh faces, they contributed the songs for us ultimately. At first, it was a big, big bump in the timeline for us.

Barry Cook: Jeffrey was more or less the captain of the ship of feature animation. It was funny because I was there the day Jeffrey Katzenberg entered the studio, I was there the day Michael Eisner entered the studio, I was there the day Frank Wells entered the studio, I was already working there. But to see this guy, Jeffrey Katzenberg, absolutely go from, I know nothing about animation to falling in love with the art form, and he really did and you could see it happening. He fell in love with the process that Walt Disney himself had created for developing and making these animated films. That was pretty cool, and he was very much supportive when Chris Sanders and myself, had come up with the core of the story we wanted to tell and we'd pitched it to Jeffrey. Our immediate supervisors, or president of feature animation, maybe they weren't as behind the version we wanted to tell, but Jeffrey really supported us on it. He was sort of tough, sort of a tough, creative boss to have but he would always push you toward the better ideas. And that was part of his strength.

With Katzenberg gone, Michael Eisner was spending more and more time in feature animation giving notes.

Tony Bancroft: Unfortunately, yes, he did. And Eisner, being across the street, did wanna see the reels from time to time, and it wasn't as much as Jeffrey was involved, but he did wanna see it and he definitely had his reactions. Jeffrey was definitely the better executive to show a creative piece too, because his ideas were very constructive, they really made sense, he really thought about his notes and things like that, but he also was a creative mind that could contribute ideas. He wouldn't just say, "This is a funny guy, he's making funny air." I mean, sometimes he would, but he would also come up with areas and ideas of what could make it funny or what could make a stronger dynamic or a relationship work, or something? And they really made sense. He was good at that, he was good at story. Whereas, Eisner, if you had just listened to his overall overarching note, it was good, and you can really get something from that.

The problem with him and executives like Eisner is that they often try and instead of just giving you a general note, they try and give you a specific note with an idea of how to fix it. An example of that is, early on, he saw our storyboard animatic of the whole feature, and one of his very first comments was, "I think... I think Shan Yu need a song. Yeah, he should just in the beginning, he should just break out with a song where he's talking about, 'I'm gonna kill the Emperor, I'm gonna take over China.' Let's figure out what he's doing, let's have a real villain song in the beginning." And we just looked at each other, Barry and I and the rest and Chris Sanders and the producer, we were just aghast. We were like, "Oh, my gosh, Eisner wants Shan Yu to have... " We didn't see Shan Yu that way. There was no way we were ever... We were trying to make Shan Yu into this kind of a real visceral, scary, intense, real villain not a cartoony, over-the-top guest on, or something like that, or even Scar. We wanted him to be vicious and mean, and cool and intense. Miguel Ferrer was doing his voice for goodness' sakes. We couldn't think of him seeing ever.

So, when we went away and after we picked our jaws off up off the ground, we talked about, "What is he really asking for? The meat of what he's saying is, he wants to know who Shan Yu is and what he wants. Okay, that's something we could deal with. Put the song idea away, the specific element of making that a song and let's write a sequence that is that." And that was a good note, that was something that we needed to hear, that was something that we could connect with, and that was something we can work from. So we created the sequence that's in there based on that bogus note from Michael Eisner. We made a joke song that I think was played at the rap party. One of the story guys, I think it was, did a rush storyboard of some crazy Shan Yu song, and it was only played at dailies or at the rap party, I can't remember which, and it was never seen again.

Instead Shan Yu would become one of Disney's most treacherous and real villains.

Tony Bancroft: The scene with the flag where he... It cuts to black but you know he sticks a burning flag through the guy on the gate on the Great Wall. We wanted to set that tone for him, but he was a very real threat, he was almost like a super villain, he was so powerful and so strong and so determined but also smart. You see him as a real thinker, like when they get the doll. "Oh, this doll comes... " He ask his troops first like a quiz, like, "What do you see?" And they're sniffing it, and there's this powder and there's this, and they're given him. And then he summarizes for him, "This doll came from the Bojong mountains and then... " He's like detective quality smart, he could put a story together, he knows what's going on, he's got a mission and he's got a goal, but he's also this unstoppable force of nature, he's this typhoon that nothing can stop from him getting to the point where he's gonna take on that Emperor except for, and this is the dynamic that is so important to the story.

Except for there's this little girl in this little province of China and how is she gonna affect that bigger story? And that's what we tried to do with it is, if you open up with this bigger than life story, the world is on fire and everything's going to heck, and then there's this huge dragon, how does the little cobbler work into that story and have an effect? That's what we wanted to do with Mulan in the beginning of the story and so Shan Yu had to play that part.

Barry Cook: We worked very hard and we actually fought very hard creatively to tell the story that we ended up telling. When once we gotta set in our head, we were sort of like pit bulls, we really wanted to happen. The same thing happened with Ming-Na Wen's voice. I had heard her opening their ration in the movie Joy Luck Club, I said, "Wow! What a voice. I wonder who that is." I said, "Wow! That's a cool voice. Wow!" And so we found out and I said, "You know, I think this is our person. I think this is our girl. This is the voice of Mulan." And top studio brass that I should not mention by name, said, "Oh, we should get somebody famous. She's not famous. We should get somebody well known, and besides, I don't know if I really like her voice anyway. They're really gotta be good, I don't know." So I fought, and I fought, and I fought for Ming-Na Wen. And fortunately, she's our voice of Mulan in the English-speaking versions of the movie.

Tony Bancroft: Well, I'll back up and say we had a mandate put on us by the studio, Michael Eisner, all the big executives and stuff to cast a 100% Asian. Now, when I say Asian, we do have Japanese, Korean, they're not all Chinese. But at the time in the late '90s when we made this, there was not a big pool of Asian-American actors to go to. Certainly, ones that had a name or any kind of marquee value was hardly at all, that's why we have Sulu from Star Trek in there and then Pat Morita. At the time, those were some of the bigger names that you could go to. So we had a first screening of the film that had 100% Asian actors in it except for Eddie Murphy's Mushu because he's a magical dragon, because he's from another world, it lended a creative freedom to us where we could go any direction we wanted to. We had a kind of a Brooklyn-ie Timon-type actors in there before we tried some other things. It was actually Michael Eisner's idea to go after Eddie Murphy and we loved that idea 'cause it was just so diametrically opposed to Mulan and this little Chinese girl.

But that very first screening that we did for Michael Eisner and for the rest of the crew, we had everybody but Eddie Murphy Mushu was Asian, and it fell flat, all the comedy was not playing. We had several comedy characters in there that we were trying to get jokes out of, Grandmother Fa was not funny. You know, Yao. And after that screening, that mandate was lifted and Eisner and everybody said, "Well, maybe you can recast some of these." And so, we looked at it really deeply and decided, "Let's get a new actor in for Yao. Let's recast grandmother." And that's when we got Harvey Fierstein and then June Foray came in for grandmother. We did have an Asian actor for Shan Yu and it just was not menacing, it just wasn't big enough, and it was our casting director that recommended Miguel Ferrer, and I loved it. I mean, I'd seen RoboCop and stuff that he was in that and I just loved his deep voice, and when he came in it just knocked us on our butts. We were just so impressed with the delivery that he gave us.

Barry and I both have daughters, and at the time, I think we had one each at least. We did wanna make an impactful Disney female hero that was strong, that didn't need a man to help her, that was a big deal to us. We wanted her to be able to stand on her own two feet, to be passionate, to be so driven by what she knew was right and what she knew that she could do, that there weren't any limits. She has this limitless kind of strength within her. Personally, I wanted that for my daughters, I wanted them to see and have a Disney heroine that they could look up to for the next generation and generations to come and say, "That's the hero for me. That's the girl that I wanna be. I can do anything if I set my mind to it."

Well, yeah, and so many of the Disney features before that, one of the parents who would be gone or both of the parents would be gone, and it was about an orphan story like Aladdin. And we had this kind of commitment that we wanted to make a film where both parents were alive, they lasted the whole story, and we did that and a grandmother to boot. So, we felt like a big success there in the Disney canon of films. It's important to Chinese culture too the feeling of filial piety, about family and you do things for the legacy of your family, for the respect of your family, to bring them honor and glory, That's a huge part of Chinese culture, and it's also therefore, a big part of Mulan story.

We had to fight for the parents so as many times that an executive or somebody would say, "Well, if we just get rid of the father or maybe the mom. Do we really need the mom? What do we need her for? Make it just about the dad and we'll save some footage and some line mileage or whatever." But we just felt strongly that, "No, we're gonna make the first Disney film with two parents."

Barry Cook: The night where she leaves home, it's no dialogue, it's all just silent movie sort of stuff, just visual story telling. And we knew that sequence had to happen for the story to happen. She had to leave home. There's no way around it. You know that scene's gonna be in the movie in one shape, form, or the other. The scene where she leaves home was sort of the lynchpin. We knew we had a movie when we had those two things storyboarded. We really felt like, "Yeah, it's this... This is gonna be great."

In 1997, Eddie Murphy's films were dropping like flies, he was also stopped by police in 1997 for having a transsexual prostitute in his car in West Hollywood. Culture has changed since then, and the shock of this is far less than in 1997, but it didn't help that Eddie was also married at the time. Eddie's behavior was completely antithetical to the wholesome historic Disney image, which even in 2018, led to the firing of Director James Gunn for off-colored tweets. However, back then, the image was swept under the rug so that they could get a falling star to be their wannabe guardian dragon.

Tony Bancroft: I remember when we first started working with Eddie and he was cast as Mushu, there was concerns in the studio about his career kinda tanking. That every movie he was doing wasn't very successful, it was like Metro and The Holy Man, and some movies around that time that were not doing too well. He was kind of sinking in the box office and not as popular as he used to be. We wanted the Axel Foley guy, and that kind of success and that energy, but we got him at kind of a low point. I do remember that he was filming and it came out before us, The Nutty Professor, and that was a big point in his career. That brought him back into the limelight 'cause that did really well, and it was very funny and well regarded.

So that came out right before us, I think, and Eddie Murphy was great. A consummate professional, I'll say that upfront. But it's funny, I think most people think that he improved a lot of his lines. I've had a lot of people ask me that over the years, and he really didn't. We knew we had Eddie Murphy coming into it, so our writers, or script writers, and all the dialogue that we did, the storyboard artists, we worked towards Eddie Murphy. And we had this Axel Foley type in our mind, so clearly because of what he had done in the past, that we start to work towards that. I think he surpassed that in a lot of ways, and he tried to be more unique and do something different. Like there was one time, I know we mistakenly... And this is one of the things that new directors do, they're not always so smart and wise. We asked Eddie Murphy, "Okay, in the scene, maybe after you say the line, you could do that, that Eddie Murphy laugh. We want the trademark Eddie Murphy laugh in this, can you do that?" He just got really serious and looked us in the eyes, like, "That's Axel Foley. That's not Eddie Murphy laugh, that's not me. That's that character. Don't ask me to do another character in your movie. What's the Mushu laugh? That's what we should be figuring out." And we're like, "Okay, Uh... "

And the funny thing is that we would just say, "Hey can you put a little laugh in at the end, or... " And you would still hear the Eddie Murphy laugh. The thing that we were looking for, still came out, but if we asked for it specifically, he would not give it to us. I always describe it as, we were like the plumbers coming into his house 'cause we did record mostly at his house, wherever he was, is where we went. And he had in his contract that we would come to him. But he never came out to LA, he and he lived at the time, in New Jersey, in this big mansion where he had a recording studio in his basement. He fancied himself a pop singer. You know, "My girl wants to party all the time, party all the time, party all the time." That was his big hit in the early '90s I guess it was. Because of that, we would go there and we would set up our equipment, with his equipment. We would be there for hours setting up and then he would just walk in, do his thing, and then take off. And he was cordial and nice and stuff, but there was no hanging out. There was no like, "Let's shoot some pool. I'd love to meet the kids. And hey, can I do a drawing for your little nephew there," or something like that. It was just, he did a job and then he left. Then we had to pack up our stuff and leave out the back.

The very first time that we met him, he came down in his bath robe, and he was just like, "Oh man, I can't believe it, I smell like a Blimpie. Do you smell my hands? Do they smell like Blimpie? I'm so sorry I smell like Blimpie. I just had a Blimpie upstairs. I got vinegar and olive oil all over me. I smell like a Blimpie." That's the first thing he ever told us. We're like, "Great, thank you."

Eddie Murphy telling Tony his hands smelled like a Blimpie sandwich wasn't the only awkwardness that Tony faced with Mushu. Tony would also be directing his own brother for the first time, and Tom wanted to animate Mushu more than anything.

Tony Bancroft: My brother was actually a part of Mulan before I came onto it, because he was in the Orlando Florida Studio working there still. And he was actually doing development on some of the characters and he really wanted to do Mushu. That was a big part, and so I wasn't sure if he could do it. There was a lot of people that weren't sure, but they were waiting to cast all the characters until the second director came on, basically me, who they knew would have more of an animation background. So, I was a big deciding vote in who got what part for all the supervising animator roles. And so I basically cast the film alongside Barry. And it was hard, because you don't want to show any kind of preferential treatment to your twin brother. And it was that whole, "What are people gonna think if I give him one of the starring roles in the film, Mushu, particularly?" But he did some tests, and he earned that part, he really did. He did some animation tests, it was a couple of guys that did animation tests for Mushu. Both Barry and I fortunately agreed that Tom should get the role.

The difficulty, as we went through, was I would be joking around, or I'd talk to him like a brother. "Oh, you knucklehead," and that kind of stuff. In the very next moment, I would have to turn around and say something as a director, "Make sure you get that scene done." Or, "Oh, on this next thing I wanted to tell you about this, this is really important." And he would have to do that switch in his mind, when his to speaking to me as his brother, when is he talking to me as my boss? And he did a great job, I give him a lot of credit for that 'cause I didn't, I had so much on my plate, I couldn't worry about Tom and his emotions and how he was doing with all this, so he had cope with a lot of things on his own, but he really did. We got through it and we had a great relationship. And when I was not directing and on the weekends and stuff, I was over Tom's house and we were hanging out. We had our special relationship as twins, as brothers, but also when at work, that's when it was serious and I had to be his boss.

Barry Cook: There was a moment in the film that's a transition in the story, but I felt like sort of coming up with that idea, the nut of that idea, to me, I felt like yes, I know what I'm doing here. And the moment where we had the transition from, is really making a very, very sad moment where Captain Shang puts up the little makeshift memorial to his father, with his sword and the helmet, and Mulan adds a little doll. And the snow to me, the snow is so important, I said, "It should start snowing here." Everybody's like, "Why?" I said, "I don't know, but it just needs something. Something needs to change. Something needs to be changing the air." Something's changed in all the characters, right? For them, they were like, "Oh this is serious now. We're not just training and belly-aching about not having any girls around, missing our favorite dinners at home, and joking around by the lake skinny-dipping. This is serious now, we're going into a war.

How do we transition the characters? And I think maybe it was along the same point where I really felt like we're making a significant film here. We're not making a film that's gonna be seen this year and never thought about. This film is gonna last. And this film is gonna have staying power through generations, I think. And I thought at that point, this is something that's not just the next movie coming out, it has some gravity to it. But I think working in that moment of the story and working that transition, and coming out of that transition and doing the comic relief of Mushu accidentally setting off a rocket, right before the big battle, just giving the audience that laugh. We've been so heavy for the last five minutes or ten minutes. The film had been so heavy and so series, and so like a live action dramatic film, that breaking it with a comedic relief, but then also, that being the trigger that notified the enemy.

They're in the valley, time to attack. Everyone's hair goes up on the back of their neck, and here comes Shan Yu and his troops over the ridge. That part of the story, it's a big transition in the movie. But also for me in the making of the film, I feel like it was a big transition, maybe in my confidence. But I just also felt for the sake of the movie I felt very confident that wow, we've got something now that's more than a lynchpin, but something that's like a core to this movie, has so much weight and foundation to it, that it's gonna work. It's gonna work well. It's gonna work well for the audience.

Tony Bancroft: I just thought of something too that was kind of a defining moment for me as a director on the film. It didn't come until the end of the movie, but I really felt like one of my most defining moments where I really stood up for myself as a director, and for the movie specifically was working with Jerry Goldsmith. Jerry Goldsmith was our score composer, he was very famous for doing Star Trek theme, and Rudy, and he won Oscars and stuff like that, and Emmys. So Jerry came on the picture and he was just kind of a force of nature. But there was a sequence that we had that we had fallen in love with the temp track that we had storyboarded too, and it was a Randy Edelman piece, I forget from what. But it's the sequence where Mulan goes in to her father's, or parents' room, grabs the conscription notice, cuts her hair, takes the uniform and the horse and rides off. And it starts with her sitting outside her parents window, and it's raining and it was almost like cutting a music video, that sequence was one of the very first sequences that was boarded. It went through a lot of different iterations. And back in the day of Stephen Schwartz there was a song there and we took the song out, and just found this score. Dean DeBlois, who's now a big time director at DreamWorks, had done How To Train Your Dragon, he was the one that storyboarded that sequence, or at least the final version of it. And he picked the score. We cut it to it. It was the very first sequence that became the tent post of what this movie was. We would show it to people all the time and everybody loved it. So, come to the end of the movie, after it's animated and Jerry is scoring stuff, and he gets to scoring that sequence, we told him, "Well, it has to have this beat to it." And we tried to explain it to him, without showing him or letting him hear the scratch track, 'cause that can be insulting. That can be insulting to an artist so creative.

So, we just talked through it, we talked through what we wanted for the sequence. The beat the kind of more the music feel as opposed to a scored-over sequence. He went away, and he sent us a synthesized version of it, and it was everything we didn't want. It was just scored over and had all these emotional things but the music was changing from scene to scene and it was all over the place.

Barry Cook: Yeah, it was really funny, because here's Jerry Goldsmith, the greatest composer, arguably, even to this day, probably one of the greatest film composers ever, right? He's up there with Maurice Jarre and John Williams. He's just one of the great composers, right? So, basically we said, "Well, we still don't like that cue. It's not really working out the way we thought it would." "Well if you guys really don't like it, you're gonna have to talk to Jerry about it." I think that was the word that came down from Peter Schneider or Tom Schumacher. Okay, so we made an appointment to go see him at his home on a Saturday morning. A maid, who was like a live-in maid, opened the door, "We're here to see Mr. Goldsmith." "Oh yes, he's expecting you. Just go back past the swimming pool, and that little house back there, go upstairs and wait for him upstairs." And so we went up there and waited. We were sitting up there. It's this little... It's his little creative studio space. He's got a keyboard, and he's got some of the electronic recording equipment and things. He's got a couple of chairs in there.

And we're waiting, we're on pins and needles. 'Cause we don't... I play bluegrass fiddle, that's my ability, so I'm not really that musically inclined. And Tony, I don't think Tony could carry a tune in a bucket. So, we're not musical guys, really, right? And we've already done the movie with Jerry and everything's worked out pretty good, excellent, really. Except for this one cue, we just didn't like. And it's the cue where Mulan's leaving home, and it's something we gotta tell him. So we're sitting there in chairs waiting. And in two chairs, two identical chairs, side by side. And I sort of look on my shoulder 'cause I didn't notice. And right between us, on a shelf above our heads was an Oscar. It's like going to the mountain to tell Muhammad that something was not right… I don't know, it was just comical. The situation was comical. It didn't have a comedic end, necessarily. We worked with Jerry, he was very cross that day. And "Okay, guys, I'll try to, I know what you're talking about, okay, I'll try to make it more rhythmic and more like a music video, or more like a tune carrying it."

Tony Bancroft: We went through that two or three times. Finally, he just threw his hands up and said, "Just let me listen to the darn scratch, alright? Let me just hear it!" And so we played it for him, and... It had this build to it and everything, and this beat. And he's like, "Oh, okay, I get, I get, I got it." He didn't even finish the whole thing. "I got it. No, I got it. All right, I know what you're going for." He goes off again. By this point, we're actually starting to record on the stage some of the other score we have. The movie's paying for all this money for orchestra to come out. We got a stage. And he starting to compose the music, but we still haven't heard this final one. So, he invites us over to his house, Barry and I, and we're sitting on these chairs, and he's like, "Okay guys, I got it. I think I know what you want. This is it." And he plays it for us.

[music]

It's still not quite there. This is probably the fourth iteration by this point. And he's at his wit's end. And he is upset at us. We're first-time directors and all this kind of stuff, and there's that feeling in the air. But we talk to him again, and we just take a slow. Well Jerry, it still doesn't and that beat, and it's got to have that driving thing. And we cut to these beads, and animation is done, it's gotta really fit in there. And so it's, "All right, all right, all right. All right, I'll get it right. No problem. I've never done this before, but I'll do it again." He goes away, and here he rewrites the score again. But this time, we don't hear it until we're on the stage. So he's got a full 80 piece, or a 120 piece, I forget what it was, orchestra of musicians there. This is the most expensive time on a movie is during this kind of moment where you're paying for engineers and the recording space, and all the orchestra.

And everybody is in the sound engineering booth, there's the the head of animation and the vice president of animation, the music supervisor, Pam Coats the Producer, and then Barry and I, and probably 12 other people and assistants too. So, he had scored some pieces, everything was going well that day. Everybody's in a good mood, and he goes, "Okay, so here's this sequence. I'm gonna go out. I'm gonna play it for you. We're gonna record one. We'll just lay one down for you guys. But you know what, you're gonna love it. It's gonna be great, you're gonna love it.

[music]

And it's better. It's better. It's still not quite there, and I'm... As Jerry's out there in the room with the orchestra, I'm looking around at everybody else trying to get a temperature of the room, and the engineering booth with all the executives, and mostly Barry, my partner. Like, "We... Do you think?" We're all kind of shaking our heads. No, it's not quite there. I feel like we have some agreement. Jerry ends with the orchestra, he walks into the sound booth and he was like, "Ha! What do you guys think, ah? Great, right? We got it, we nailed it!" All of a sudden, there's just crickets. There's just nobody says a word. And I'm looking around, going, "I know we were just talking about this, we were just... " And I'm looking at Barry, and he's... And Pam, and the executives in the background they're all mum. So finally, I decided out of my youthful bliss, I guess, and confidence of... I'm gonna support this film, and I know it can be better.

I stand up and I said, "Well, Jerry, if it just... " And I couldn't even get the rest of the sentence out and a volcano of expletives and shouts and yells came my way. It was like one of those Tom and Jerry cartoons where his hair is going back, as Jerry's blowing in my face. And just cursing like a sailor, all this stuff about, "What do you know! You don't know! And you're just a junior director!" All this, blah, blah, blah. "I've been working on this... I've never had this in... " And so, all this kind of righteous indignation comes out of him. I take it, I just sit there and take it. And I finally just say, "But Jerry, it could be better." And luckily, fortunately, I had a very specific idea. You can't stand up against Jerry Goldsmith, and just say, "Well, it could be better." I just said, "Jerry if there's this speed here, and there's this instrument, if we could just bring that out more and this and that. I suggested a couple tweaks. Luckily, the music supervisor then finally got up out of his seat and supported me. "Yeah, Jerry, that might be good, let's try that."

And he calmed down enough, and he said, "Fine. All right." And he goes back in, does it with the orchestra, right there. And it was the take that's in the movie, it was perfect. But it was that moment that I really felt like a director in a weird way, because I stood up to somebody that was a big bear of a man and had this strength of will, and yet I had to come up above that and say, "But that's not what's right for the movie." I know I had heard what was right. I knew that there was something better that could be in that moment and that's what I was fighting for. I wasn't fighting Jerry Goldsmith, I was fighting for what could be better. The potential of that sequence was so important to me. That's what I was fighting for. And finally, I feel like Jerry got there. And the rest is history.

Barry Cook: And I'm still not happy with the cue and I don't think Tony is either, but it's just a way that goes sometimes. But all in all, I'd say that Jerry Goldsmith was one of the true highlights of my career, to be able work with him.

When you start on a movie, you think, "Oh, here's the way this movie should be." But there's a certain point that happens in every single project, where the project begins telling you what it needs. It's like Audrey II, "Feed me." And it really tells you very specifically, "No, no, no, I don't need that, I need this." Oh, it really starts demanding its own way. If you listen to it. If you refuse to listen to it, you refuse to see what it's turning into and how it's coming to life, then you can miss the boat on it. But I think at some point, it had established itself as a story, as a look, as a tone, everything else that did probably the last half of production, it was telling us what it needed at every turn.

And it's funny because Ron and John, I remember one time they told a group of us, I think they were doing a little lecture on directing. And they said, "You're trying to get the movie made, you're trying to make a movie, you're trying to make a movie, you're trying to make a movie, you're trying to make a movie, and then this day comes; you're trying to finish this movie." [chuckle] So, it becomes from trying to make it, to trying to finish it. It's like turning over a page, or something, it suddenly is upon you. Oh, now we gotta get it finished. And then it's just really tender loving care and making sure that it doesn't get harmed on its way out of the cradle, or whatever that is.

Tony Bancroft: To paint the picture for you, we were this little studio, the little engine that could, that was out in Orlando, Florida. We had never made our own feature together, we probably had one of the greenest crews of any Disney feature going back to, maybe, Snow White. Our crew was mostly all animators and clean-up people and artists that came from art schools directly to that studio in Orlando, Florida. Never worked with a lot of the senior guys and got that kind of discipleship and mentorship and here we were making our own feature and nobody expected Mulan to be good. They wanted it to be good, obviously, but nobody had that high expectation of us. And because of that, it kind of put a chip on our shoulder of wanting to prove ourselves as a studio.

And people on that film bonded like crazy. Our crew was like a family. We cared and we were so passionate about that movie and everybody on it. I tell people all the time that Mulan could not have been made anywhere else in the world and come out as good as it did I think, and it was really because of this green, green crew that just were like a family that worked so hard into the night, that gave their all and sacrificed it all and left it on the art table for Mulan. It was awesome, but we didn't have that expectation that we were gonna be big, or successful. We felt like we were making our own little backyard film. You know what I mean? It wasn't like we were making a Disney Feature, we didn't feel that way the whole time, it felt like we're just making our own little backyard film. Maybe, I hope people come and see it, and like it.

The defining moment was every couple of years, the studio would do like a whole studio-wide meeting, where the executives and the directors would talk about the next five years of projects that are coming up. The very first day of that, they wanted to screen Mulan in its entirety. And it was not all animated, there were story boards in it. Some animation, some color. So it was at that kind of a stage, and we screened it for the whole studio. There was this feeling like, "Man, that films are just going down, they're not doing as well." And there was a sense of anxiousness about their jobs and where animation is going and they could see that Lion King was well behind, and the success of Lion King was well behind us, and now that films are just going down, down, down in the box office. Pixar was having huge success, and our movies were not doing well. And there was an uneasiness. And so we screened the film and people were reacting, they were laughing and they were into it. But, you know, when it's the crew and it's other animators, when it's professionals, they don't laugh as much as a regular audience, they're very critical. So they tend to hold their cards pretty close to their chests, and that kind of thing.

But when it ended, it was quiet. We didn't really know what people thought, and then all of the sudden it was this huge gush of clapping and cheering and as the lights went on, people stood up and there was a standing ovation. These were from executives, these were from story people, animators, all of our peers in the Burbank California Studio. They all stood up and started cheering us. And unfortunately, the whole crew that mainly was back in Orlando, Florida; they didn't get to experience this moment. But Barry and I, and Pam and Chris Sanders, and some of the heads of departments were there, and they literally wouldn't stop clapping until we stood up and took a bow. And to me that was the most special moment of Mulan. Everything after that, I didn't care about. I really didn't care about how it came out in the theater. For me, that moment of getting the adoration of our peers in California meant that the Florida studio got it right, and they were encouraged, it made them feel better about where the company was going, and that this movie's coming out, maybe it will be success, maybe they won't lose their jobs. It was all that mixed in there. But more than anything, it was that feeling that Orlando, Florida got it right. Our little studio did it.

Because Hercules was a disappointment at the box office, Disney cut costs and only gave half of Hercules' advertising budget to Mulan.

Tony Bancroft: And it explained so much to me as to why Mulan didn't do as well as I wanted it to or thought it might. All the reviews were great. People were loving it and liking it and all this, and yet it didn't make as much as some of the movies that had come out even just a couple of years before. And so hearing that 20 years later that they had a short changed us on our marketing because of Hercules and stuff, all of a sudden made sense. In a way, it kind of made me feel a little better I guess about things too, 'cause I wanted it so badly to be a bigger success than it was. But knowing that they kinda shortchanged us on the marketing explained a lot.

Barry Cook: From the day I started on it, to the day we walked out of Technicolor when the released print was color timed, was about five years to the day that I had started on it. And it's funny because after Mulan came out and it was pretty successful and it was a good movie, a great story and well told. And Jeffrey Katzenberg, he invited me over to DreamWorks, and it's just sort of like... You wanna come over and work for a while? And I didn't, but he thanked me, he said, "I just wanna thank you for Mulan," he says, "because you know I have 2% of the profits on that movie." [chuckle] And you're like, "Thanks Jeffrey, wish I had that."

Tony Bancroft: It was known to be a success. Not regarded as a huge success, like Lion King or anything, but they thought of it as success. A little blip on the world of money coming into Disney, I guess. But it was a different time. When I came out of Mulan, I started to see pretty quickly that times were changing. Pixar was doing extremely well, right around the corner was talk about not doing anymore 2D animation. The world, things were shifting, and I didn't have a crystal ball, or anything, but I started becoming restless too. After coming off the Mulan, they had me in development for six months. And I had an opportunity to develop a bunch of movies. I pitched several different movies. I wanna do an Irish parable, and I pitched this giant movie, and now they're working on a giant thing, or they were recently. I pitched a superhero movie, and then they did the Incredibles years later.

I pitched a Puss in Boots idea and concept, and then DreamWorks did Shrek with Puss in Boots. I kept pushing these ideas that I felt like were new and original that weren't being done, they were all getting pushed aside, they were all being rejected. And I started realizing that something is going on here, and I'm not getting connected to another project. Even some other projects that were in development, there was a lot of directors and projects on the runway to take off, so I could tell that even if I got on to a project, it would not be in production probably for five to seven years because of how many they already had lined up. And I'm like, "Ah!" I couldn't wait, I didn't wanna do that. So I went back in animation, I missed drawing and anime, and I animated Kronk in Emperor's New Groove. And then right after that, I started really feeling like I wanted to start my own animation company and feeling like that was time to leave. And so I did, I left and I started my own a company called Toonacious Family Entertainment with a couple buddies from my church.

While Tony was on his way out, Barry was busy developing another film for the Florida studio.

Barry Cook: It's called My Peoples. I had been developing it for about two years, and we had a green light for production. My Peoples was a hybrid film, 2D and CG together. And that was sort of a tougher film to make, but we felt pretty confident we could do it in Florida, since we had a lot of people training in CG, we had also a lot of experiences 2D animators. But the vision I had for the movie, the look of the movie sort of depended on that hybrid. Dolly Parton was doing a voice. We had great bluegrass musicians doing a lot of music because O Brother, Where Art Thou? Became famous, became the top selling soundtrack album a couple years before. That was the only reason I even got their attention with this idea, because that had been such a successful movie.

Well, the basic pitch was... The foundational part was sort of Hatfields and McCoys. Two families that had never gotten along. That set in the Appalachian Mountains, and the two young people in the family who'd fallen in love with each other. And one of them was a folk artist. He was a guy who made these, for lack of a better term, these dolls, these wooden dolls that were crafted out of metal. And some were made of old lawnmower engines and different parts, and stuff like that. But they all represented relatives that he knew in the past, or people from his side of the family. And one was a little angel that really represented his mom. And he made this little angel as a gift for the girl he loved. But magically, when this angel was brought to life, she wasn't about to go down and woo this girl to become part of their family. She still had a great prejudice against that other family. So it's basically about an angel who doesn't want do her job. And that was the Dolly Parton part.

Mulan producer, Pam Coats, was integral to the film success. But when she was promoted to Executive VP of Creative Development, it came with an unfortunate task.

Barry Cook: Pam Coats was a fantastic producer, and she was... The success of the movie, I think, owes so much to her. But it's funny because she was the actual person who told me that the studio was closing, and then my movie wasn't gonna get made and that I no longer had a job at feature animation. It was sort of ironic in that regard. But we remained friends, and we see each other whenever we can. And she's, you know, she's great.

David Stainton, President of Walt Disney Feature Animation sent out an email to the studio to explain why My Peoples had been shut down, which read, "The fundamental idea is not strong enough or universally appealing enough to support the kind of performance our movies must have today." After Mulan, Lilo & Stitch and Brother Bear, My Peoples would have been the fourth Disney feature made in Florida.

Barry Cook: But I do think, and I'm pretty sure that just the whole 9-11 thing in 2001, a lot of companies all around the world just began contracting, in terms of what they were willing to spend, and what they were willing to do, and what the future held and everything else. When Disney began closing their studio... They had a TV studio in Sydney, Australia, they closed that. They had one in Tokyo, Japan, and they closed it. Their Paris studio, which did parts of features, they closed that. So we sort of knew we were next on the list, you know. My project came down to, it was either my project or Mark Dindal's project, Chicken Little. And I think the big decision was Chicken Little was already in Burbank, and Chicken Little was all CG. So in some ways, Chicken Little was sort of the easier pill to swallow for the studio for its first CG feature.

And in the end, Michael Eisner, he didn't tell me personally, but what was told to me, was the reason they weren't gonna make the film, it was too colloquial. It was too specific to a region of the United States. And they didn't feel like it would have universal appeal as a story. And I would disagree highly with that, because if you look to movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, or something like that, that are culturally specific but have... The human condition is the same no matter where you go. And relationships and everything else, no matter what culture you're in, no matter what situation. So, that was sort of his official line to me why they decided not to make the move. And it's all Disney's property because they paid me to develop it, and with the agreement that it would be theirs regardless of what happened, whether it got made or not. I knew I couldn't get it made in my own necessarily, but to... So yeah, that's still sitting over there in their ARL, animation research library. But everybody in feature animation sort of knows about the project and knows of it and thinks it would have been a really... A very, very unique film at the time, maybe. And a very, I don't know, just something really fresh. Something really different, but yeah, I guess it wasn't meant to be, but...

On January 12th 2004, CNN reported that Disney would close the animation studio in Florida and cut 260 jobs.

It was terrible. I don't know how else to describe it. It's horrible. It was just absolutely heartbreaking. Walt Disney World kept calling me saying, "We found a box with your name on it in a warehouse, 87, over here. Can you come can pick up?" So I was picking up boxes out of various warehouses all over Disney property for the next six months. It was crazy. [chuckle] And so it was... I'm thankful for 22 years at Disney, 22 plus years at Disney. You look back right now and say, "Well yes, it's been great." Whenever it was, studio closed 2004, it's been 14 years. It's been a great 14 years. Some lean times. Some good times. Some fat times, but some really interesting work and things. So, yeah, I...

But the studio closing, and that whole group of talent breaking up and basically being blown to the four corners. Well, it was heartbreaking. I don't know how else you'd put it. It was just absolutely... It was like your house burning down. Everybody got out alive, but barely. But everything you loved sort of burned to the ground.

For more behind the scenes stories from animation, check out the Bancroft Brother's Podcast, hosted by Tony Bancroft and his brother Tom Bancroft, on iTunes.