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Episode 73: Tad Stones
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This week, we sit down to chat with animator, screenwriter, producer, director, Tad Stones! If you grew up watching Disney TV animation in the 90s (Darkwing Duck...Rescue Rangers anyone) then you need to hear the stories Tad shares with us!
DISCLAIMER: We are not an affiliate of the Walt Disney Company nor do we speak for the brand or the company. Any and all Disney-owned audio, characters, and likenesses are their property and theirs alone.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Sharing the Magic'
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Sharing the Magic, the podcast that takes you on a journey through the enchanting worlds of Disney. Each week, we're joined by a special guest, whether they're a magician creating moments of astonishment or a Disney expert sharing the secrets behind the magic of the happiest place on Earth. Together we'll uncover the stories, inspirations, and behind the scenes tales that bring these worlds to life. So, get ready to be spellbound and transported to a place where dreams come true.
Spotlight on Tad Stones
00:00:49
Speaker
yeah
00:00:53
Speaker
Welcome, everyone, to Share in the Magic podcast, where we dive into all things Disney. um Today, we're shining a spotlight on a true animation legend, Tad Stones. And if you've ever cheered for the crime-fighting antics of Darkwing Duck, or you have felt the adventure of Chippendale Rescue Rangers or enjoyed the magical mischief of Aladdin, my favorite one was ah King of Thieves, actually,
00:01:21
Speaker
then you've already experienced some of of Tad's incredible work. ah With a career spanning decades at Disney and beyond, Tad's Stones has been a creative force shaping some of the most iconic animated series of the late 80s and 90s from working alongside ah animation grace, developing beloved characters. Tad's journey and is, ah I think, a fascinating look at the golden age of TV animation and how these timeless stories, I don't know about you all, but they continue to inspire me and and shape my life. So welcome Tad, and we're so happy you're here. And and before we log up Tad's time, I'm gonna introduce our co-hosts. We have James. First of all, James, how you doing? I'm doing great, how are you doing?
00:02:08
Speaker
I'm doing good. How's your week? Uh, it's been good. I, it's been long. I, I got a round of golfing today, so I'm feeling good. Sounds good. Okay. Yeah. We got Don, how are you doing? Nice to meet you. I'm from Houston. Hey, Don. My son just moved to a league city. So okay. Spitting distance from you. Yep. Not too far. Nice to have you today. Thank you. And we got Rachel. Rachel, how are you doing?
00:02:37
Speaker
I'm doing well in Pensacola down here. Um, we just started all the fall family stuff, Halloween stuff going on with the family. We did a zombie walk and food drive yesterday. So that was kind of exciting. up a zombie So doing well, looking forward to our discussion tonight. Yeah.
00:02:55
Speaker
Well, I, I, I did introduce our guests, but, uh, Ted, I don't know if I
Tad Stones' Disney Career Insights
00:03:00
Speaker
did. you I don't know if I did that justice or not, but if you would love to add anything to that description of you and, or just kind of maybe talk about your journey, I know it's a very, it's funny. You called me a Disney legend because that's now an official term. i know you know And in fact,
00:03:18
Speaker
the Disney retirement department, whatever that is called, I realized that from people's comments online. So I say, Oh yeah, I use my free tickets to do this or or whatever. And I'm going, how come on I'm not getting free tickets? I went through and people say, Oh, she called this place. And they say, Oh, that's not like she got to call this place. I got to supposedly the place and they had no record of me working there except for anything I did freelance for Disney within the last,
00:03:48
Speaker
I want to say five years or something. so So they say, well, we, you don't qualify cause you only have, you know, three hours of work or, you know, whatever it was. And it's like, well, I, I was hired in 1974 and I was there for old 30 years, another 10 years in animation. Uh, so I am. And at a certain point they were going to look into it and it was like one person was very,
00:04:13
Speaker
generous in saying, Oh, yeah, well, oh that sounds ridiculous. You know, you should be in there. She went to the higher up was it really we only that's the person who was looking up stats and saying, you know, well we don't have any record and they're gonna get back to us.
00:04:28
Speaker
ah I'm sure, you know, the phone hung up and it was like, oh, some scammer trying to get free tickets. Yeah. You wait till they find out. You just like, wi but you know, you just send them to your Wiki page or something and they'll yeah shut them up. but go so This guy's pretty good. He, he must've faked this with AI because this is a lot to write. ah Um, and, and creating all this fan base and these drawings, what's all this, you know, but we should sue this guy or something.
00:04:55
Speaker
oh dare yeah anyway I got to say I you know grew up with the the Disneyland TV show, The Black and White. I began in Black and White with Walt and the coolest thing was I loved the shows where he went behind the scenes, both in animation and then in Imagineering, which at the time was called The Web.
00:05:14
Speaker
I never thought that when I got to Disney, I thought, well, I'm going to be an animator. That's what I want to do. and And instead I realized, well, gee, I rather figure out what the characters do than necessarily make them do it as much as I enjoyed the process of animation.
00:05:29
Speaker
And then they had me do an educational film. And then suddenly they're saying, we're doing this thing called Epcot. And suddenly I'm over at WED ah working with Tony Baxter and Ward Kimball and, you know, Claude Coates and all these guys I knew from my Bob Thomas book of animation. It's like, those guys are in the background. And then came, consulted on TV. There was about a year and a half where I don't know if Disney knew why they were paying me, but, you know, I kept a low profile.
00:05:57
Speaker
then ended up back toward animation, helping out some people in ah licensing, doing a couple of, you know, because this is before they were in TV, and the only way to sell toys at the level they wanted to, ah because features only came out like once every five years, four years, if you were lucky, but about five years.
00:06:20
Speaker
And then they could sell all the t-shirts and paper plates and banners and coloring books and all that. And then they couldn't just keep doing that. They had to just wait until the next one came. So they knew television was where they wanted to be. And they started at looking for like special ideas. And I came up with a couple of ideas for specials. And I did in a very short amount of time.
00:06:41
Speaker
from the initial brainstorming meeting, I've always written and drawn. So in the second meeting, the writer they had, um had come in with a couple of, you know, had a page, a bunch of log lines, you know, just, here's a premise, here's a premise and all that. And I'd come in with two full storyboards.
00:07:02
Speaker
four by eight feet long, covered in colored drawings where the whole story worked out for Mickey and the Space Pirates and the other thing called Sport Goofy, which they had told me to do, which became, there you go. ah or Ultimately, it went through this weird process through many, many different hands yeah ah to Stockermania. The key thing about that is a year or two later, when the new management chain came,
00:07:31
Speaker
and Michael Eisner, because he had started in Saturday morning television at ABC, he felt like Disney should
Developing Disney TV Animations
00:07:40
Speaker
be everywhere there's animation. He doesn't expect TV animation to look like feature animation, but it should be like the best TV animation that's out there. So in a way, the first Sunday of his first week, he had a meeting at his house of a like 11 of us that they are pulled from different parts of the company and because I think and I don't know this for sure but I'm guessing that because the licensing people had said we really want to get into television and that's one of the things that sparked him to jump on television animation they all remembered me so I was technically on vacation and they said we know you're on vacation but can you come to a meeting at his house on Sunday and you know
00:08:22
Speaker
The only thing I knew about Michael Eisner was what everybody else knew from the newspapers and coverage and, you know, this, like yes, I will go to his house. And so that basically put me in there. I went back to whatever I was doing before.
00:08:39
Speaker
And then within nine months, I was thinking of leaving Disney and because I was kind of like not connected to features. I wasn't, I was just doing these consulting things with television. I really swear if somebody had noticed me, I'd probably didnt let go. But I figured like, you know, if I could, if I could storyboard ah freelance you know, around town. And then creatively, I can, you know, write science fiction short stories, or whatever. And I happened to see ah Michael Webster, who was at that time head of president i think is title isn kind ah tv of the new TV animation, one of the people at that meeting,
00:09:23
Speaker
I said, hey, Michael, do you guys have freelance storyboard, guys? Because I knew nothing about TV animation. i And TV storyboarding is totally different from feature storyboarding. And he said, oh, what you don't want to do that. wonder we you know Why don't you come over and see the place? And I thought that was a weird thing, but I was happy to to look at what they had. And at that time, they were already doing gummy bears and wuzzles.
00:09:50
Speaker
They were, they were just getting footage back on the shows. And when he walked me up and down the hall, it was only like one hallway of people. It was a very small team putting this stuff together. And he would introduce me saying, this is Ted Stone. He's thinking of coming over here. And it's like, I am, but you know, luckily I didn't contradict him. I just went. And then, uh, it was like, they made me an offer and I didn't know I could counter the offer.
00:10:18
Speaker
because when I met with ah Gary Kreisel, who really deserves the credit for really creating that department, he was the guy who just went from there to until he left to go to DreamWorks, basically all the years of creating direct-to-videos and getting into syndication and DuckTales and all of that. Really, that was under Gary's executive reign and stuff like that. And he was a creative guy too, but I mean, he had just He'd been a filmmaker in college, then moved on to business. So he should get a lot of credit. He's rarely mentioned. Anyway, in my first talks with him, he named a price. They said, yeah, people in this position make this many dollars a year. And I was like, we're actually like ah way more than I'm making now. And then when they gave me the offer, it was well under what he had quoted. Now, two things I have to say.
00:11:14
Speaker
The first is I was used to just being a Disney guy who has moved wherever they needed me. I tended to get, they'd give me some sort of bump when they moved me to, ah you know, Imagineering and a bump back, you know, but so, but frankly, if they said, oh, we're going to move you to TV animation, I would have said, well, okay, this'll be interesting. I wouldn't even question it, but instead they were making me an offer.
00:11:41
Speaker
the offer was well over what I was making at the time. But the fact that it was so far under what had been mentioned, I just went like, Hey, what's going on? And so again, I was so stupid, I could have countered and gotten even more, but I didn't know how that worked. ah So I find myself in the office with Jeffrey Katzenberg and Jeffrey said,
00:12:04
Speaker
who I had had meetings with him. Again, back then, Disney was very small. um At the very beginning, obviously, it came very big. Jeffrey said, hey, Tad, it doesn't have to be a one-way street, it was. But right now, they think that you could really help them out. They would like, you know, to use you. And I said, okay.
00:12:24
Speaker
So I went over and accepted their the generous wage ah and started my career technically in management as creative manager.
00:12:37
Speaker
And then ah at the third season of Gummies, they ah NBC wanted ah wanted to work with a different story editor. And I was like the guy in the office. And they said, OK, you have to meet meet with Phyllis Tucker Vincent, who is the head of children's programming at NBC at the time. And this is the offer. And you have to take it. That's the offer.
00:13:02
Speaker
Again, I'm not, um whatever. In my head, I'm going like, yeah, but she's already on her way to the restaurant. And you're telling me I have to take the offer no matter what. Obviously, I could have played some hardball, but I didn't. I and know was just like, you know, it was fine as is. ah Anyway, that put me into third season of Gummi, put me back on the creative side.
00:13:26
Speaker
And I became, I was technically just the story editor. And then by the end was called co-producer. And I said, well, if I was co-producer, I would have given different notes. But even as it is, all the storyboards came to me and I, you know, i in pretty much the same kind of creative input. And even before that, I wasn't in an executive in the normal way. It was,
00:13:50
Speaker
met a grey suit guy behind a desk and making phone calls. I suppose I should have been, not the suit part, but I should have been making phone calls to all sorts of writers in the industry, but I didn't know any of those. I didn't even, nobody said, here's a list of agents you should call and let them know that you're the guy. ah We had a Gong show coming up and, uh, with Michael Heizer and Jeffrey and, and, uh, we pitched 20 I want to say 22 shows. Now these are just log lines. So it was like, I remember vaguely one I pitched was Trojan birds and Legionnaire cats. And it was just the idea of kind of a road on a coyote short subject. Thank God they didn't go for this idea because I run out of idea and that it doesn't like the third show, but it was like,
00:14:38
Speaker
you know, the cats were always trying to get into Troy and which were up in trees where these giant trees where the birds live. So is this that kind of log line? So out of 22 ideas,
00:14:51
Speaker
I think I pitched 18, 17, 18. And Jim Magon who did Tailspin and had created Gummy Bears with Art Fatella, he came up with the rest ah because he was doing a show at this time. I'm just coming up with ideas. And at one point management came to me and said, you know, you're supposed to be talking to other people and you don't you shouldn't be doing all this work yourself. And it's like,
00:15:15
Speaker
Okay, they walked out and I said, I have a Gong show on Friday. I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing. Because again, not knowing, basically being a nice guy, not knowing how the industry worked, the idea that somebody would pitch a show to me and I would pitch that to the company And there is no payment involved yet. I would say in theory, I should say, all right, give me a, which is how they do it. now and Can you write up a couple of pages on that? Maybe some ideas. In other words, not too many years later, it was basically getting a freelancer to write a mini Bible ah without paying them. And I just, anyway, I just wasn't or i was a creative guy. so was I couldn't put on my that kind of hat. I didn't even know I was supposed to be wearing that kind of hat. So that's why I had would have had trouble. In fact, I remember a couple of women who came in with the idea of storytime videos to do little short subjects that are basically put kids to bed. And I reacted.
00:16:23
Speaker
like Basically, but you're going to put the kid in front of the TV, maybe you should read the story to the people. It's like, oh, maybe I should have kept that to myself and just, you know, taken the idea and it might've turned into something else. There was somebody else that pitched and I said, you know, if we do this, they're going to take it away from you or whatever. It was like, so I was not cut out for that job. Anyway, Gummy Bears led to Rescue Rangers, to Darkwing Duck, and then because of my feature background and Aladdin had been done by
00:16:55
Speaker
Ron and John, you know, friends of mine, I kind of asked their permission. And they were just saying like, it's Disney, of course, you're gonna, you're gonna do the show. Anyway, and then because of my I had been in features for several years, they had me do the feature spin off. So I went from Aladdin to hercules and buzz light year and and ah somewhere in there was atlantis
Creating Darkwing Duck
00:17:20
Speaker
have cool i'm a huge darkw wing duck fan i saw at some point i want to hear i want to hear i want to hear that story of
00:17:27
Speaker
of of how that came to fruit you know i know and i yeah I totally want to go in my room and get all my Darkwing Duck stuff and show you my stuff. but but ah how So what was that like? you know I know a little bit about it and about how sort of the various forms of Darkwing Duck, how it sort of took shape as far as you know when it was originally kind of conceived, it was it was sort of like a 007. It wasn't sort of. I was ordered to do a You tell her better than I can. So go, go ahead. Here's the thing that i've done but I've learned to say because you'll hear different versions. And I said, or this is how things work. You know, you have rings of knowledge at a company where here's the people who are in the room in the, you know, like Hamilton got to be in the room to take your shot.
00:18:16
Speaker
And those are the decision made. Then there's a ring outside of that where they kind of get it because I and the other people in involved will say, oh, this is what we're up to. This is what we're doing. And then there's people out there still at the studio, but they're making connections because it seems logical. Oh, they're doing that because of this. Basically what fans do, ah you know, they'll say, oh, well, this is this is what led to this because, you know, whatever.
00:18:45
Speaker
So some people think Darkwing Duck was based on 00 Duck ah with Launchpad. And I want to say the midnight, you know, the Masked Mallard in Duck Tales where Scrooge became a superhero. right To this day, I have not seen that episode. But I would shock and, you know,
00:19:04
Speaker
There are people who were there at the time who swear to me, who tell that story. And it's like, I've heard, I get it. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. And that you would look at those things and just assume, and you wouldn't even have to be in that outer ring. You could be somewhere in the middle and just assume that's where it came. But in reality, Jeffrey and Michael both like clever names, what they deemed clever names or catchy names.
00:19:28
Speaker
because they felt it's your job to do a great show that'll hold on to an audience. A catchy name or an intriguing name may bring a bigger audience to try it out and that's, you know, so you'll start with a bigger chunk of people to, you know, attempt to keep. That happened with, in one of our Gong shows, Ken Kuntz and David Wiemers were a writing team who basically brought in the idea of DuckTales and Karl Marx to the company. But aside from that, they pitched Miami Vice. This is when Miami Vice was a huge show.
00:20:03
Speaker
So it's like Miami mice. And, uh, really, I don't even think there was a pitch at the beginning more than that. They love that name somewhere along the line pretty quickly. I don't even think we were told anything by legal. I might've changed it. Just saying, look, sooner or later, they're going to tell us you can't do this. That Miami mice became Metro mice. And this had, I found some old artwork and it's like little mice had guns, not guns with big rubber ducks. And I'm just guns. um Oh, are we thinking?
00:20:32
Speaker
yeah Anyway, that got as far as a script that I worked on with Jim Megan and Carl Gears, which included the, created the character Fat Cat. We quickly felt like trying to base it on a comedic version of Hill Street Blues or some other, you know, cop show like that. You can't have the same, it was like, well, they can't keep preventing theft of jewelry stores and, you know, cheese. Most of those shows are based on murders committed. Now, maybe if we had really gotten into it, you know, there are ways, having done all those episodes of Chip and Dale, it's like, okay, yeah, I could come up with things to do. But whatever, we thought that was a limitation. And so we looked to just broaden it out with a more generic thing. And that finally came up with the name Rescue Rangers.
00:21:27
Speaker
And we had this eclectic group with a lead character called Kit Colby, um a kangaroo rat called Billabong, you know, from Australia, Chirp Singh, a cricket, an Asian cricket, who was basically a character that was based on, oh, I always forget the name of the book that Jim liked, and it was a movie.
00:21:53
Speaker
Whatever. Thankfully, we dodged that bullet. You look at it now and it's very cringy. You know, he's like, you karate and love baseball. In the movie, whatever the name is, it was played by Joel Grey in Asian makeup. So that was even worse what it was based on. Anyway, there was Camille, a chameleon who was kind of like a secretary. She was chameleon. She could do plaid, but it hurt. And then Gadget was there yeah as Gadget yeah and Zipper the Fly.
00:22:21
Speaker
It was also there as is. And Kit Colby was just this put-upon mouse with this aviator's jacket with a fur collar. That got pitched. We did artwork. Will Finn did a bunch of artwork ah that people recently have been putting on the net. I did a painting. Michael and Jeffrey loved the show. But they just, they said, we don't feel the lead character. And I was very, again, third time is when I'm going, yeah how did I last year?
00:22:52
Speaker
that I said, well, maybe I just didn't explain the character enough or something. They said, no, we got those guys in two sentences. Those guys, I always point to the side because the earlier part of the meeting was DuckTales is going to do a second season. ah They felt like they needed some new characters just to hike. So youre you can do advertising that's more than extra episodes of DuckTales. It was like,
00:23:18
Speaker
you know, you you want to have something else to hang some publicity on. And I pitched Robo Duck, who later became Gizmo Duck, and Bubba Duck, who is just a drawing of a caveman kid, you know, and an alien duck. It was either space duck or alien duck. ah They did not like. But Robo Duck, they got. I named him Fenton Crackshell. Yeah. Everything else, aside from this goofy robot suit he had and his name,
00:23:47
Speaker
Really, everything else about that character was developed by Ken Kuntz and David Weemers on DuckTales, because that's where he really turned in personality and had a background that's living with his mother and all of that. Bubba Duck, aside from my drawing the name, it's like going forth multiply or whatever, and they did several episodes. um Anyway, and this is the rambling part I talked about.
00:24:10
Speaker
the ah So obviously they said, you got you communicated those characters. We loved them in a couple of sentences. Kid Colby. was kind of a straight guy surrounded by crazies that didn't intrigue them much. Then we moved on to the third part of the meeting, which, okay, we had this huge hit of DuckTales. We're doing more DuckTales. What other Disney characters of classic characters can we use? And, you know, we had a list. We would just go down. Mickey, from the very first meeting at his house, when I showed some art from Mickey and the Space Pirates that I had, Michael thought that was great, but he said, we cannot do Mickey until we're sure we can do him right.
00:24:49
Speaker
To us at that time, doing things right, including Donald, is like doing them like features did in the short subjects, which we never got that good, which is, that's not how economics work. Anyway, so is like, we're not doing Mickey. Donald, we're kind of doing him in DuckTales. Goofy. Yes, Goofy is an everyman. He can be a detective. He can be whatever. Pitch us a bunch of Goofy stuff.
00:25:15
Speaker
Pluto, no, I'm not going to do a show about the dog. And then we got to Chip and Dale and it was Michael Eisen who said, put those guys in that show. And before Jeffrey and saying like, Ted, no, we love the show. It's just not a home run. And as soon as he said, put those characters in that show, Jeffrey said, home run. And we were off and running by putting in two chipmunks uh, it changes the dynamics. You can only have so many characters, unless you're a Transformer, evidently, where you can have a cast of 76, because you got a lot of toys to sell. Five is the most characters you want in a team, because you got to add on a villain, maybe some henchmen, a victim. For everybody to have dialogue and something to do, the more characters you have, the more there's going to be bystanders. Gadget beloved.
00:26:03
Speaker
Bill Bong mutated into Monterey Jack. yeah ah Zipper became connected to him, you know, and that was, you know, with the two chipmunks, that was a great team. And we, need and you see, if we like ideas, we keep them. So Kit Colby's aviator jacket ended up on chip. Yeah, I don't know whose idea was to put them in the Indiana Jones hats. I worried that it was two on the nose for look Look, it's an adventure show, but ah people liked it. I wanted Dale in just a, ah he had to wear clothes, couldn't have one clothes guy, even though they weren't wearing pants. It's like, they one you once you set out this whole clothes thing, you got to follow it through. And Hawaiian shirt seems silly. They were not as ubiquitous as they are these days.
00:26:51
Speaker
and uh reg was the best color model so when publicity came around i did make the joke that chip was based on indiana johns which was true at least because of the hat uh and dale was thomas magnum pi and i was like no magnum wore red shirt it was just and of course we repeated that because it was just a hook for publicity right so it wasn't like Okay. He lives with a wealthy guy or a wealthy guy's house or, you know, yeah is iss what I know iconic that did not get to drive a Corvette. Yeah. It's funny how, like how iconic the, uh, the Dale shirt is. Cause I'll be, you know, people wear, you know, I'll be out, you know, and I'll be like, Hey, that he's wearing it. They sell that shirt, you know, and people buy. No, I wanted to get one at the premier of the live action movie. I wanted to buy, you know,
00:27:37
Speaker
wear that leather jacket and I couldn't find it. They were all out there. I see people buy them. Anyway, so that gets me to, oh, dark queen duck. Yes. Yes. All right. God. God, how did I get off track? Well, uh, dark queen duck again, basically Jeff. Oh, I know what it was. It was the Jeffrey loving names, titles of shows. He thought Double O Duck was a good name. It was an intriguing title. It told you what the show could be about, what the mix, you know, any but he said it can't star Launchpad McQuack. The whole point was to create a show with new characters. Although we did, I think that in the development, and we threw
00:28:24
Speaker
Maybe this was actually the but first part of the development. I was not very excited about it. I think we threw Gizmo Duck in there. Launchpad was always hanging around as part of that you know James Bond type universe. And we just treat it as a parody. So we threw these people around. I was not excited because I didn't think that a lot of heart to it. It just wasn't clicking with me. This is well before Austin Powers and any of that. Anyway, showed it to Jeffrey.
00:28:51
Speaker
And I realized just a few years ago how lucky I was. Cause normally when you have a presentation that goes really bad, they'll say, we'll get somebody else on this. And instead he said, do it over. And so I did. And this time I had to take it seriously and find a kind of new way ah because most of our writers are not most, but we had our key writers and story editors and potential story editors.
00:29:18
Speaker
on term contracts as opposed to just being hired for a specific show like they are now, it meant you could call people into brainstorm. And so I basically called in the guys that I wanted to work with on the show.
00:29:29
Speaker
And we had some artwork generated that you've probably seen around the net that was basically a Donald Duck, generic duck, and a white tuxedo, and a bandana mask, a small hat, and a cape. And basically the mask and all that got on him because what helped sell the show is that, and it wouldn't have sold without her, was the idea that he had a daughter. And he was going to try to living in a neighborhood, a suburban neighborhood,
00:29:59
Speaker
So you couldn't, you know, Clark Kent can put on glasses and you'll go basically buy it. But in a cartoon, it just seemed like, no, we needed more. So he's going to need a mask, even though he's a special agent. Anyway, at that brainstorming meeting, it was Dwayne Capizzi who've done Transformers, Alf, um Men in Black. He's worked ever since. So I only, I only know this earlier credit, it's like Jackie Chan adventures.
00:30:25
Speaker
Anyway, Duane looked at the tuxedo guy with a mask and a cape. He said, this looks less like a spy. I'm more like an old pulp hero, a radio hero. And I love that stuff. I mean, I was not as old as I am. I'm not that old. But I knew that stuff because I was in comic fandom and that overlapped with old radio fandom and pul science fiction and all that. And Duane said this he's more like the green hornet or the shadow. and I was going to say the shadow. Exactly.
00:30:55
Speaker
Exactly. So that's, that's what light bulb got me excited. And it gave a different template for this fight group. Cause I went to doc Savage who had an eccentric group of characters and he had a bunch of specialists. There was a chemist and an engineer and a communications guy and a transportation guy. And he all had quirky personalities. Like one guy looked like an ape and the other guy was a prissy Englishman and they always squabbled, but you know, would die for each other.
00:31:24
Speaker
It was like, oh, great, great. And then again, how many people do we need in this? And suddenly it was like, wait, the ah what sold the show is the whole father-daughter thing. And these guys are all going to be a headquarters. And we kept winnowing it down, winnowing it down.
00:31:41
Speaker
until we got to the trio of Sprank and Gowness, who co-produced and edited the new DuckTales. He said, oh, Ted, we know what Dark McDuck is. It's the story of a father and a daughter in a launchpad. And that's what we had. That's what we pitched. It went very well at that point. And the only thing is, I'm sure you guys all know the story, is Disney took out like double-page ads in the Hollywood trades you know coming new from the people who brought you DuckTales. Double-O Duck.
00:32:11
Speaker
and which got a call from Cubby Broccoli who produced the James Bond movies and owned all the rights to the James Bond books and he said and I guess they didn't bother with single episodes because everybody had done a James Bond parody, you know, they didn't bother with that. But the idea that jew Disney was putting out double page ads, and we'd have a big show that could have a huge hit like DuckTales was, while they're trying to reinvigorate the James Bond fla franchise, they weren't having that. So they said you can't use the name. Once you live with the name, whether you like it or not, it's hard to start wrap your head around
00:32:49
Speaker
you know, something else. Gary Kreisel, one of the cheaper executives I've known, which is part of part of why they loved him at Disney, ah actually opened up the, you know, the Disney Wallet and said, we'll have a contest, prizes $500, which if you adjust for inflation, it's a nice chunk of change. Anyway, we got all sorts of name, you know, Danger Duck,
00:33:16
Speaker
Daredevil duck, you know, diet duck, dead eye duck, whatever, every bit of alliteration. And it was Alan Burnett, who then went on left Disney to go to Warner Brothers and became the lead on lead writer on ah the adventures, the animated adventures of Batman. He came up with Darkwing. I love that immediately.
00:33:39
Speaker
The whole Nightwing never occurred to me, but Darkwing was perfect. And I said, that's what the character thinks he is, but we got to add on Duck because that sounds sillier and that's closest to what we had. So um having that name released us from, although we kept the spy element kind of without making a big deal out of it, it's like, well, obviously there's bankrolling, his wonderful gadgets.
00:34:06
Speaker
Anyway, we got into what I grew up with, which was the silver age of comics and all this silliness that was part of that. And we just leaned in that really hard. So and that's the story. And I there's a lot that I didn't know. So you heard it here, folks, for the first time.
Chip and Dale Movie Reaction
00:34:23
Speaker
This is right from the source. So, i'll you know, they oh I'm just I can't I mere half an hour. of but one I love it. No, no, it's great. I'm like, I'm I love, I love Darkwing Duck. And now, you know, I had a question that came out of that, too. OK, go. Sure. So I want to go fast forward a little bit to the the Chip and Del Rescue Rangers movie that came out. Is that where the the Double O Dale joke came from in that movie? Yes. OK, yes. That makes sense. Yeah. The guys who made that movie, I mean, they loved the shows originally. They knew all the backstories and all the, you know, fan stuff, you know,
00:35:02
Speaker
When we did that show, the internet didn't really exist. It's certainly not visually. ah Somewhere in Darkwing, the internet finally got the ability to transmit pictures as opposed to just being text-based. But they're aware of of all of that. and And you can tell from every inside joke that's practically in every frame of that movie, including the ship being named the Zazlov Stones. It's the cargo ship, if you look really close. and And I even got to play myself, basically, in the movie when I play the voice of an executive a Disney executive who calls him up and offers them a show. Cool. I had that one line there. I need to rewatch it because now... Yeah. Cool.
00:35:47
Speaker
it's um I enjoyed the movie. Fans were very upset. I loved some i like it. there was always It was like it's not trying to be the show. Get that over your head. This is just saying, hey, what if this we're going to make this funny thing? And I thought it was great. And and there was this uproar online when the trailers came out. That was the end of the world. And people just assumed I would hate it too. And I said,
00:36:11
Speaker
It looks hilarious. What are you talking about? This is funny. This is great. And I said, look this is yeah, i I think this is fantastic. And because I was online just basically trying to get people to have another spin on the trailer, I wasn't campaigning heavily, but I was just being positive. yeah You know, the guys at Disney saw that and they said,
00:36:36
Speaker
And, uh, I got to talk to, you know, Keith, the director and, and, uh, recorded the lines. Yeah. Yeah. It was good. That's awesome. Also, lastly, how much Tex Henson, um, did you take into rescue Rangers? Cause I know, you know, he had to have had a huge impact being Chip and Dale, you know, creator and all. Um, how did that affect how you guys drew? Like the character, who, who, what was it? Tex Henson, right? Tex Henson.
00:37:03
Speaker
that I don't know if Tex answered. Yeah, he I think he was the first ah person who drew Chip and Dale, I believe. i I have to honestly say I have never heard that name before. I thought you were saying, do you mean Tex Avery? And it's like, of course, he never did this. No, no, no, no. So. Hey, Don. Hey, Don, do you have a question?
00:37:23
Speaker
I'm sitting here quietly and oh to the very, very back of the whole interview. So as a woman will do, right, point out something from way long ago, I still remember. um So going back, I think it's comical how um and a lot of people can relate um that maybe when you're first.
00:37:44
Speaker
getting into something like you said with Disney Animation, and you could have asked for more money and you had no idea. And so you brought up a great point is don't be afraid to ask for something. But nowadays, if you only had a manager, now all these people have managers, right? And that that are direct.
00:38:03
Speaker
and volleying for the highest bid, and of course you pay the manager. But I can imagine back in 1974, correct, when this took place, when you went to the NIH? No, this would have been, I graduated in 74, I started at Disney three days after my graduation, but then I was at Features for several years. And I was at WED until two years before Epcot opened.
00:38:30
Speaker
one year before, whatever. um And then I had some around time. So I couldn't actually give you a date of, I'm sure some quick Googling i will tell you when TV animation started. But you have but some time again quite some time ago compared to how you think. And then the but get and and just to interrupt real quick, to get inside the mind of you, like when you went to college, did you already have a natural drawing animation ability? Was it a hobby? Did you ah did you know that you were going to do that?
00:38:59
Speaker
I thought it wasn't a possibility because I loved animation when I was a kid. um My dad had wanted to be a cartoonist, like comic strip cartoonist, actually an editorial cartoonist. But he graduated right in the depression. So it was a more about, as I've said, feeding your face instead of feeding your dreams, you know, and and then later on, he was once he had kids, it was that whole, when am I supposed to come up with ideas and you work on on comic strips in my spare time?
00:39:35
Speaker
But what I did get from him are not only a whole bunch of art books, but ah famous artist cartooning books. And when we went to Disneyland, he worked for Carnation Company, and Carnation Company from day one has been a part of Disneyland. And that meant the company Picnic was at Disneyland every year.
00:39:55
Speaker
which I think is funny now because we would, there used to be, Bright Work Pirates Caribbean is used to be a park, like mowed grass and benches and stuff like that. They would pitch a tent and the Golden Horseshoe Review came out and did a show in the, you know, it's a huge tent with the stage and all that, did a show and then they played bingo. And it was just like, I was a little kid, you know, I was born in 52 and that would have been mid fifties. It never occurred to me like to say like,
00:40:24
Speaker
Disneyland is right over there. It's like, it's literally right over there. Can we, can we go, you know, and after Bingo and the show and all that, it's like, oh, we're going to open the back gates. Now you get to go to Disneyland.
00:40:38
Speaker
That's great. we did go Yeah, we got to go. So I had a connection there and they used to have an Art of Animation exhibit. And ah my dad bought me the Bob Thomas book on the Art of Animation, which was all the behind the scenes. I also had the Walter Foster series book ah by Preston Blair, which when I got to Disney, like every animator had it, um which showed you about designing characters and walk cycles and all that. I loved all that stuff.
00:41:06
Speaker
But as I was in high school, I felt like the only place worth animating at is Disney because they're the only ones doing full animation and they got their guys, which was at the time that was true about the time I went to college. So in like.
00:41:26
Speaker
I was my first year was in 1970. I think in 69 or maybe it wasn't 70. Disney said, hey, Robin Hood made a lot of money. You know, we should do maybe we should do more cartoons. And the animators thought they were going to shut things down because Roy Disney senior wanted to shut down feature animation after like seven films because he said, well, just or fewer than that. But as they would say, we can just rerelease these every seven years because there'd be a new audience coming in.
00:41:56
Speaker
And Walt was not having any of that. Then when Walt got into Disneyland and animatronics and all of that, it was like, you know, these films are very expensive. Sleeping Beauty did not do that well. And you know, Walt was thinking of moving on, but it was like what I've been told anyway. It's like, Hey, these guys started a company with me. Let's keep it going. And then thankfully the Xerox process came in, which greatly reduced the cost of doing a feature fill. So
00:42:29
Speaker
features got a new lease on life. But still, the animators all had this thing in their head and saying like, Oh, we're just sooner or later, they're going to call it quits on us. And so it was a shock when management came to them and said, What are you doing to train new people?
00:42:42
Speaker
And they started a training program around 70 or something like that. And that was just, the training program was just Eric Larson, one of the nine old men sitting in his office and you'd go in and talk to him and he'd teach you about animation while you had four weeks to do an animated test. So if you didn't have some basic knowledge of animation, you were, you know, had a higher hill decline than the rest of us.
00:43:06
Speaker
I found out about the training program in my senior year of college because the my girlfriend at the time, her suite mate was Toria Tencio daughter who became a ah designer at WED or at Imagineering. Her father's ex-Tencio, who was the board Kimball, was a layout man, story man, went and helped design all the great rides you know of the parks.
00:43:32
Speaker
And she she said, well, there's this, you know, we so from her, she said, I wasn't even an art major at the time, but I was pulling out some old portfolio pieces. And she said, Hey, why don't you apply to the Disney train? Cause I was also doing cartooning all through college. Just pamphlets, flyers, you know posters, for whatever event going on. Why don't you apply to their training program? I went, what training program? Because again, I'm thinking Disney has their guys. that's There's no point in going to animation. Marvel Comics had started up when I was like 11 or something like that and was like, maybe I can be a comics book artist.
00:44:10
Speaker
Anyway, she knew the the guy to call. I called just for information. He said, okay, you can come in like next Thursday. We want to see this kind of portfolio. and Again, me not being the guy to question something. I said, oh, I guess I need to put together a portfolio.
00:44:27
Speaker
because I hadn't been an art major since freshman year, ah because my English teachers wanted me to go into English for my writing, and they came up with this major called Humanities, which sounded like I could do writing and art, and it didn't turn out that way. I ended up taking a bunch of old English courses, never took a writing course, and all my art courses were like sculpture, jewelry, metalwork. I never got back into drawing and painting and all that. Well, yeah, this takes me down a path.
00:44:55
Speaker
um a different ramble of how I got in there in that, okay, I found out the training program, I needed to create a portfolio within a week. Uh, and they mostly wanted life drawings and quick sketches. Luckily I was in my ceramics class, I had become the TA of the, to the teacher and the teacher had just taken over the art department because the head of the art department was on sabbatical and he was a huge Disney fan. He demonstrated that he could do the goofy yell.
00:45:27
Speaker
ah which echoed nicely in the lab. ah And he saw a to it that I could sit in on live drawing classes and, you know, get some drawings in ah and all of that. I made the, at least I had something to show to Disney. I had some comic strips I tried and one guy said, well, we could send them over to that department if he doesn't work out. And the other person said, no, no, we want to, you know, let's focus on this. And these look pretty good, but we need more action sketches.
00:45:57
Speaker
And I thought later i I learned that guys would show portfolios and six months later would go back for a second meeting. I thought they meant it immediately. Maybe they did. All I know is that like the review board is meeting the next week, I had a weekend and I, not really a sports guy, but, but, uh, watched, you know, basketball games, uh, all through the weekend, sketching off the screen, cheating by borrowing my friends' copies of Sports Illustrated going, Oh, that's a good pose. I'll do a quick check for that pose.
00:46:31
Speaker
which worked to my benefit because I came in with a stack of, they wanted messy sketches. They didn't need clean things. ah That really made both the fact that I created a bunch of sketches in a short amount of time. They had action to them. They had life to them. Some of that was very exaggerated from the knowledge I got from my dad's art books from the famous cartoonist course.
00:46:53
Speaker
And that got me in front of the review board. They saw it and they said, okay, you know, you're in. So I started like five or six months after Ron Clemens. And then three months before Glen came to mention two famous names of animation. So it was pure luck that I found out about the training program. And so I did love that stuff. I had done flip books. I had, you know,
00:47:17
Speaker
tried a little animated thing in high school in art class, but that was, you know, right place. Oh, and the girlfriend became my wife. So that worked out too. And that's the consolation. ah sly i saw there i yeah i would noting I would never call her the consolation prize.
00:47:35
Speaker
yeah but you yeah Maybe the Disney job was. cons yeah ah hey Okay. i Fast forwarding now, since we know the background and where I'm assuming you had the talent from your dad's side.
00:47:49
Speaker
And then now currently, what are you working on at the moment? So ah we know about the the Disney and the meat in the middle, so to speak. But what are you creatively doing at the moment?
00:48:02
Speaker
at the moment I started at Disney or now? Oh, no, now. Right now. Oh, well, I've been retired since 2017. Well, no, we just mean in your everyday life, you know. we Well, I'm doing a lot of, I'm actually doing a lot of cleaning out the garage.
Post-Retirement Adventures
00:48:19
Speaker
That's what we want to know. That's both which that the that we're...
00:48:23
Speaker
Which is a lot of Disney memorabilia stuff I thought. If I had the energy for eBay, I'd know what to do with this stuff. Instead, I hope we're going to a local con that I can just strive to and say, hey, you want to buy this? Hey, hey if you're in North Carolina, come my way.
00:48:42
Speaker
For the Disney Family Museum, I'm sure they would appreciate it. Yeah. Well, yeah, there's I mean, it depends on ah the stuff. The Family Museum is more feature oriented and obviously historically oriented.
00:48:55
Speaker
But creatively, basically before the pandemic, right when I retired, I went to my first comic convention as a guest where they fly you out and give you a table and you you just appear on some panels and I had nothing to put on that table. So I had to create original art. I couldn't make.
00:49:14
Speaker
Maybe I could get away with it, but I felt like I can't produce, mass produce pieces of art with Disney characters. I would just, and frankly, Disney owns, obviously the rights to all the Disney characters, all the Star Wars stuff, all the Marvel stuff. If they wanted to, legally, they could march into any convention and shut it down. They choose not to. They just, if you ask for permission, they have to say no, because people said, well, we'll pay, what they should do some sort of,
00:49:44
Speaker
Because licensing a Disney product like Darkwing Duck currently is a comic book series. In fact, there's three comic book series at Dynamite Comics, which I did some covers for to answer i have the creative of thing I've done. um Anyway, the so and that costs a lot. And people are saying, well, there should be a level for you know convention vendors like that or amateurs. And it's like, no, you don't get how that business works. know I always quote Lily Tomlin in character one said, nobody calls it show art. ah That you can't, ah how do you tell Mattel that you have to pay this price and this person gets to do it for next to nothing. So it's like, no, they just
00:50:31
Speaker
don't look at it unless you become too big or you're turning out art prints and stuff like that, something that gets a little too much publicity or something they know, then they could come after you. And generally people at that level, like a huge company whose job is putting out prints, get licenses.
00:50:47
Speaker
But again, legally, when you take away Star Wars, Marvel and Disney out of a convention, you know, everything would shrink way down and would give Disney a lot of bad publicity. So, you know, that's how things work. Anyway, I couldn't do any prints. So I just started doing original art, which I started drawing better. And so my old crew, because again, my talent was hiring people much more talented than I am to do my shows.
00:51:12
Speaker
They said, wow, you've really gotten better. And I said, oh, yeah, I probably should have done this when I was actually doing the show. um and Anyway, of so I was doing original art to appear at conventions. I would do several a year and my last big one was actually in Moscow, Russia, ah wow ah where Darkwing was huge, much bigger than in the United States. Really? I had no idea. Wow. it's It's because they really didn't have animation series ah while it was still the USSR. They had some animation, but
00:51:48
Speaker
The animation wasn't the thing. They were like Russian folktales. They were probably like what we would call a miniseries or something. um So, the when the Iron Curtain fell, the first cartoons they got were DuckTales, Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I believe. ah And these became, it was explained to me there, it's like kids, who they were part of them, they didn't have the Disney afternoon, but they had the Disney Club, which was on the weekends. And then people would tape off the air and sell those tapes in kiosks, in like, Red Square or whatever. Yeah. ah It was huge. I had lunch with a guy a few months ago from Azerbaijan, if I'm pronouncing that right, ah who wanted me to come to the convention. And it's like, you know, you're next door to Iran and you're buying this. Maybe i he goes.
00:52:37
Speaker
We can do Zoom. ah but Anyway, their point was ah suddenly imagine never seeing cartoons and suddenly here comes these series of these crazy ducks and they have a whole world and they're having these big adventures, all that. It just every member of that generation saw those shows and loved those shows for the most part. While I was in Russia, a couple of cops came up to the desk, the guys got nervous and they said, no, no, no, no, we just won an autograph.
00:53:07
Speaker
And they took a picture with me and it's like, I should have handed I wish I had. So everybody saw those things. What I then toward the end of the convention, I also found out that I got credit for all the ideas that we parodied from the Twilight Zone and Silver Age comics. And they hadn't had that kind of pop culture, goofy view of science fiction. So especially the twisted stories and all that. I mean, they had science fiction literature. There's famous science fiction ah writers from Russia.
00:53:43
Speaker
But it just was like, as they said to me, he said, Ted, we didn't know it was a parody. ah we didn't We didn't have superheroes. So this is it. It was just this funny guy. And they said, interesting. One of the guys said um it was this guy who just was always against the bigger guy and he would never give up, which I thought was interesting because new ducktails guys they out the new dictas that's exactly They actually when I heard that when they it became a thing, you know, never give up. It was something that we had never thought of consciously. I mean, that was never I, I came up with let's get dangerous. and I ordered the guys to put it in every show. I said, otherwise, it's not a slogan. You know, it's, it's, you know, it's his catchphrase has to be there. And I think it's in every episode, except for three. Anyway, the
00:54:35
Speaker
you know, it's that, that kind of, um, scenario of everybody seeing the same thing, you know, was, was huge. and It was a big cultural thing. There's sometimes called the ranger generation because rescue ranges was huge. So that was fun. It was a fun convention. And then after the pandemic, uh, I took a couple of years to get more comfortable and then started asking around and, you know, to get that going again. So creatively,
00:55:05
Speaker
to answer that question. I'll do artwork every once in a while. I tend not to do commissions because I feel too much pressure if someone says, oh, draw me this and this and this. And then it's like, I just worry about that. Oh, I didn't quite mean that. So instead, every once in a while I will do, I'll do some artwork and just put it out online. And so basically, this is what you would get. I will send it to you if you pay me this.
00:55:35
Speaker
And then anyway, ah Dynamite Comics, I've done some covers for them. I did a lot of podcasts for them for their Kickstarter on the Darkwing.com series collection.
00:55:46
Speaker
ah which looks great because they collect ah yeah they'll have all the Darkwing Duck comics, all the Justice Ducks comics, which I think are actually the funniest of the three, and then all the Negaduck issues will all be collected, including the original Darkwing Duck comics from 1991. Also, a set of Darkwing comics I didn't know existed. I guess there were 10 issues done at Marvel Comics,
00:56:13
Speaker
And I'm told there's three issues where he's in a human world. It's like someone didn't get that. I mean, we had them in the human world a couple of times, but it was specific to the story where he traveled into an alternate universe, but they, I don't know. Maybe someone didn't get the go track those down. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Anyway, it's part of their Kickstarter thing. Um, so that'll eventually be, you know, the volumes when they finally come out. So anyway, I did some artwork for them. And and so that was actually, you know, and then there's a secret project.
00:56:46
Speaker
that I'm going to be working with another famous Disney writer on that I can say no more about. ah but That will be for for dynamite comics. So dynamite comics and sooner or later, they'll announce it. We'll keep we'll keep an ear out. let See, you're not just cleaning out your garage. i know ah Well, actually, I gotta say doing the covers, and I did those all digitally. um It was yeah a lot of, out of the, they assured me, I'd set it to the editor who wanted me to do a few more. I said, no, I i just, out of the, out of all this number I did, there's maybe a handful that I thought were okay. oh They were all great. What are you talking about? But it was just,
00:57:34
Speaker
you know, I put myself under a lot of pressure and you know, the bad things about doing things digital is the undo button. It's it's wonderful. Unless you're that guy who you know, makes a drawing and then looks at the next day and you go, Oh God, what did I do? That is my life. My life as a drawing that I go, Oh gosh, Frank Thomas, again, one of the nine old men used to call those five o'clock drawings. He said you you do a drawing, you And at the end of the day, you see, well, that looks really good. You want that one on the front of your animation desk and people come by and they'll see it and all that. And he says, it's invariably coming the next morning. You go, whoa, geez, and cover it up. That's so, that's so true. I had an art not unique to me. It was like, everyone hates their own art, you know, that's how it is.
Epcot's Imagination Pavilion Contributions
00:58:22
Speaker
So the idea that it's not a, just a single piece of art that, you know, maybe someone will scan and put online, but
00:58:31
Speaker
In general, it's going to live in their house. That's and one level of pressure. But the idea that it's going to be on the cover of a comic that's published and collected. It was like a little other thing. Yeah. Well, it keeps me in my garage. Yes. Yeah. Go ahead. i' Go ahead, Jeff. Well, I was going to Rachel. I was making sure I know Rachel hasn't asked a question. So we did we leave no one behind. So I was just going to check in on her and see if if she's going to. I do have a question. i'll ask I, you know, I grew up with the gummy bears and rescue Rangers. I i actually miss Darkwing. I'm sorry. But I do have some kids who would probably love to start watching that. I would love to know more about your experience at Epcot. And I know you were at Retro Magic last year and just actually I wasn't. I was supposed to be. I had a death in the family and and ah that that was
00:59:29
Speaker
Sadly, my chance to reconnect with Tony Baxter and and the guys I work with, Tom Morris and the the other guys who work because I did the imagination pavilion with those guys. Um, so I may pop up there in the future, but yeah I was sad to i might miss that. Yeah, my time. in Yeah. What you did it up. Yeah. Basically I went over there and, um, again, I was sent over by the head of the company, Ron Miller. Um,
00:59:59
Speaker
Again, it for people today, they cannot comprehend how small Disney was. When I was in feature animation, when I first got there, I believe there were 55 people in the department. That's why it took, that's not counting in campaign, I think, ah but that's why it took five years to put out a movie because, and they worked much slower than they did just ah a few years later, as far as the footage they were supposed to put out every week.
01:00:28
Speaker
um Very tiny place. um They had a lot full of sound stages. And I remember that at lunch times, like,
01:00:40
Speaker
Ron Clemens and I, Randy Cartwright and Gombert, these guys who went on to do great things, both in features and outside and outside of Disney. We like went up to the catwalks of the sound stages and threw Superballs off to see how far they bounced because the stages were just being used to store 16 millimeter educational films. It's like the company didn't even think about Maybe you should rent out a soundstage and make a little money having productions come through. So it was very small. i would
01:01:15
Speaker
a couple of times we'd visit with Ron Miller to talk about whatever and we'd end up talking like 15 minutes about this and that. ah As opposed to that meeting I had with Jeffrey about my career, it was like very short meeting. ah He took two calls, made major decisions while I was there, and was like boom, boom, boom, boom, and then I was out the door. I'm going, oh,
01:01:39
Speaker
that's kind of what an executive is supposed to do. where You're supposed to actually be getting stuff done. um So anyway, I went over, Ron sent me over there and funny again, after the fact, I found out that they thought, Oh, he's this special golden boy or somebody who's, you know, Ron's going, because I was, you know, young at the time. um Anyway, went over, kind of met um a small group and then got assigned to the transportation pavilion and work with Claude Coates, but mostly with Ward and Kimball. So there was a ah room that about eight by 12 that I shared with Ward and Kimball for nine months. And I wish I had kept the diary then, because it was like living with a time machine, both for Disney stuff and for transportation stuff that Ward
01:02:32
Speaker
He said, oh yeah, this is how we used to make go-karts. We'd wrap ah the rope around this way and then you could steer with a steering wheel, you know, to actually saying, well, this is what the ice cart used to have. They used to have this kind of lantern and all that. So that was super fun. And then as it got to the fun part of, toward the end of that, because normally you follow it all the way through until the ride's built. So, you know, if I had stayed and stayed on one project, I would have ended up shining the bumpers of cars in Florida, you know, of the transportation. of the yeah That ride, of course, doesn't exist anymore. That was the world of motion yeah back then. Then for a short while, I was on the space pavilion. You'll notice in Epcot, there is no space pavilion. It was sold by, this is where I learned the term eye wash, which is you do a great painting. It's inspiring. It gets everybody excited. And then people go, once you've sold it,
01:03:34
Speaker
we can't build this. What are you talking? Because they had this giant spear, which they said was going to rotate like the, you know, and the engineers said, like, much like the America Sings pavilion in Disneyland, where the whole place rotates, well, they say, well, this will be a giant spear, multi stories high. And the engineer said, like,
01:03:59
Speaker
It will take eight minutes to just get the thing moving. And it's supposed to be over by that time. So we spent the bulk of our time unselling this piece of artwork that everybody was enamored with and with that got to meet ah George Lucas. Luckily, Tim Delaney, who was on the it was he and I were on the project.
01:04:22
Speaker
took a shuttle back from San Francisco, happened to sit next to George Lucas, and basically loaded him up with, this is our problems going on, so George could echo them when he came to the meeting. um Anyway, the the ultimately the problem with the Space Pavilion is Disney had made, unlike Disneyland, where you have like fantasy land, and then there's a bunch of separate rides that can be uh funded by all sorts of bank america has always done in small world for instance and you know whoever does teacups or you know whatever uh they said no we're gonna do this pavilion and we need a company that will sponsor the whole pavilion well that's suddenly x's out most companies period you got to be in the top of the fortune 500 and you have to be willing to again
01:05:16
Speaker
I've never adjusted for aflation inflation, but I think at the time they had to put in $35 million dollars plus a million dollars to go toward these documentaries, which never got done that I was in charge of. um And they had to be big enough that they could throw away $35 million dollars on kind of advertising marketability you know for tie-ins to Epcot.
01:05:39
Speaker
that wasn't going anywhere. And then I ended up an imagination pavilion and was right there. Figment had already been designed. um And then I started doing drawings and and writing for Figment and brainstorming ideas. And the original figment had a film set at the end where he, you went in and you saw films going on with a puppet figment, you know, on blue screen kind of stuff all around. ah And that was fun. That was super. And Tony was fantastic. I wear Tony and Barry Braverman was in charge of the hands on part of the pavilion.
01:06:17
Speaker
But in general, ah the climate at WED was just fantastic, you know, working next to the model shop where all the creative stuff happened, you know, again, people from the various books about Disney, and the thing I have a souvenir I got out of the, oh, this won't be good for the audio part. No, we'll describe it. Don't worry. We'll describe it. were We're a pro at this. We get people all the time that are like, okay, then for audio, I'm like, I'm on it. likeator We have to, you have to imagine that you're in an attic with a trunk
01:06:51
Speaker
That opens up and this comes up. Oh, um it so it is a horror. It's a mask of oh, it's yeah. it's This is actually was a test casting of one of the heads that pop up in the attic of the haunted mansion. That's a mansion. I'm a former mansion cast member, so that's right up my alley. There you go. There you go. That was worth it. That actually got me, caught me off guard. I just realized, oh, this is one of those things that How long do I keep this before I just hand it out to somebody as a gift? or Don't give it away. Keep your eBay. That's so scary. I don't even know if I'd want it in my house.
01:07:32
Speaker
um i would hang out Anyway, it was just it was oh, go ahead. I was gonna say I'd hang it in my office somewhere. Yeah, I know you would. I was perched on top of a skeleton then with a Bob's Burgers bunny ears on top of it. so Man, we got to have you back. We really do because we you just mentioned Bob's Burger. Like we can talk about that for 20 minutes. Oh my gosh, you have so much. and and we Well, that was the thing that I went to obviously had a great time, of you know, the highlight of my career on, you know, on ah TV animation, basically. ah But because I was there so long, and I would be getting
01:08:09
Speaker
I didn't have an agent, but I would just ask for a little more money. Or at one point I was smart enough to say, you're not going to give me more money, but I'm going to ask for an extra week of vacation, yeah which was lifesaving in a way in that my boss would almost never let me take a vacation. Cause it's like, no, no, we can't spare you at this time and all that. And I noticed.
01:08:29
Speaker
you get to take vacations. You go to Europe all the time. You go here, how come I'm not? But when I was shown the door in 2003, that basically up to a point, all that vacation time was sitting there and then the company made, ah said you can't hold more than two years of vacation or whatever whatever it is, you know, or six weeks of vacation time.
01:08:57
Speaker
But anybody who had it up to that point, that was grandfathered in. So basically, my year after Disney, when I was trying to figure out what my career was going to be, or find someone to hire me, all that saved up vacation pay kept us you know going. so um And that was the thing, I just kept incrementally making more money and then was let go just at the end of my contract actually extended it, because I had pitched a show that they really liked. um But they had just bought a similar show. And I said, was that show except it was like, my show was basically a show featured a little girl who about about 12 or so. So it's like at the age when most girls are worrying about acne,
01:09:52
Speaker
emmerin broke out in wings because she woke up and she's got fairy wings And she ends up finding out she's half fairy. And she's this kid who's like kind of a goth kid wearing a black leather jacket all the time and all that kind of sullen. And then it turns out her father was, who she's never met, was technically royalty, which technically made her not only a fairy, but a fairy princess. um Anyway, that was something I pitched. But at the same time, they had pitched a show called American Dragon about a kid who finds out he's a dragon. And he said, those things are too much to like, but they really liked mine. And I said, well, is that a for sure thing to go? He said, Oh, no, no, no. I said, well, why can't we both develop and major? Oh, no. It was like, yeah they're too similar or whatever.
01:10:44
Speaker
So that got me extended, but then I was, you know, facing out the door. Meanwhile, that other show finally got on the air, but it was like, had the roughest development time of basically it was the executive who in charge of that show who really fought. And you know, people say, wow, she, she willed that thing into being, um,
01:11:04
Speaker
Anyway, and then I had about 10 years after Disney where I, my first big project, an ex-Disney executive, Tom Rosica, hired me at Universal to do the new Adventures of Brer Rabbit. um That was a directed video. And in fact, there's a sequence there that I actually storyboarded um and art directed and, you know, a song sequence that was my tribute to Pink Elephant Song Parade. ah That was fun. And then like,
01:11:35
Speaker
got to work with Stan Winston of, you know, Jurassic park fame, Terminator fame, and came up with ideas for him. Um, the, at a stint at Bob's burgers, actually a season of, uh, the neighbors from hell, hell, the hell next door. I forget the title of the show. Anyway, the same group then went on to ultimately do Bob's burgers. I was there for like three seasons and that was like, not a great fit for me that, um,
01:12:06
Speaker
ah Actually, and I forget, my second favorite project next to Darkwing was I did two Hellboy animated movies, cool which I really enjoyed because they were for entirely different reasons than Darkwing. And sadly, ever since leaving Disney, every project I did got a smaller budget and a shorter schedule. yeah So it was just frustrating when I got these things. But the Hellboy things went out there.
01:12:33
Speaker
and uh really enjoyed those and ultimate my last show was for um uh netflix which was um a show about frogs in australia basically the mythical thing of of uh culipari an army of frogs and then they had a second season that i was already gone for yeah because my financial guy said well i was I basically retired a year early because he said financially it makes more sense to retire now than later because you're waiting for this little incremental gain in social security and if you retire now they start paying you now. This is your economics part of the show. ah They'll start paying you now and I'm going yeah but and he goes and basically that difference to make up for that it would be like
01:13:26
Speaker
waiting 13 years to make, to get that same amount. And it's like, okay, then I guess I'm retiring. And that was when I got my first invitation to a Comic Con. Cool. Yeah. And that's great hearing that artwork for that.
Conclusion and Social Connections
01:13:39
Speaker
So Tad, where um i well we're probably wrapping up because I have about, in full disclosure, I have like 5% battery left and I don't have my charger. I feel such like i feel so embarrassed. Well then I'm sensing you were going to ask, where can people find me? and Yeah, that's what I was going to do. why la jobss and i left Twitter X because it was turning into hellscape. Yeah. And all the people stay on it and complain about it. It's like as long as you hand them money, they're going to keep being healthy. But I'm on Facebook. Okay. the I just sent you a friend request, by the way.
01:14:16
Speaker
All right. And then ah on blue sky, which is a wonderful place in that you there's no algorithm, you basically follow people. So I followed a bunch of comic book artists, writers and animation people. And the sad thing about that right now, the animation industry is since the pandemic is super contracted. So it's a lot of people looking for work. yeah um And of course, it's so weird.
01:14:44
Speaker
all the people hate the idea of AI because they're up against the AI that creates quote art or writing and all that. ah Whereas you leave that bubble and on the world people using AI and every comic cleanser with the new AI bubbles, you know, or, you know, it was like AI is the catchphrase used to sell your product. That's right. That's right.
01:15:10
Speaker
So those are the only two places I, uh, post and, uh, yeah, all the listeners go. That's yeah. Follow, follow tab. that's it Well, it's been great talking to you guys. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And you've been just a pleasure to talk to. We got to have you back. We got to have you back for sure. All right.
01:15:27
Speaker
I know you got you got this time you have to come up with questions because I can like only ramble so much. Oh, we just let you we just let you out of your cage, man. This has been yeah wonderful. and And we've learned that we find that's the best is when, you know, like we we talked about before we hit record when when you get to talk about what you want to talk about. That's where the good stuff comes out. So we just wonderful having you and hope you ah hope you enjoy your dinner. I know you got to make dinner. all right but kitchen ah right a thanks guys thank you bye ae
01:16:00
Speaker
Thank you for joining us for another enchanting episode of sharing the magic. We are the thinking fans podcast, an entertainment show where education and entertainment collide each week. We bring you whimsical interviews with Disney guests who share their magical experiences and reveal how they are woven into the Disney fabric. Don't forget to hit that follow button to stay updated on our latest episodes.
01:16:22
Speaker
Spread the word and let your friends know they can tune in wherever they enjoy their favorite podcasts. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and ex, formerly Twitter, at at sharing the magic pod. Until next time, keep sharing the magic.