Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Great Mouse Detective with Fran Hoepfner

Episode Date: February 7, 2021

All new, all fun! Blank Check launches a brand new mini series on the animated films of John Musker and Ron Clements. Writer and Ratigan stan, Fran Hoepfner (Bright Wall/Dark Room), joins to discuss the duo’s first project together as co-directors of The Great Mouse Detective. Topics include: the Disney renaissance, Sing-Along Songs VHS tapes, Sherlock Holmes, Steampunk, frozen rats and more! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

Blank Check with Griffin and David Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check Item 96 A heavy tax should be levied against all parasites and sponges, such as the elderly, the infirm, and especially little podcasts. I felt like I had it more for the first three syllables,

and then it got worse the longer it went on. There was also like a siren going by, so like kind of cut the Victorian mood a little bit, but that's okay. I apologize for living in New York City. I am so sorry, David. It's no problem. That I happen to take up residence in a city that never sleeps, David. It doesn't sleep.

It doesn't sleep. It doesn't. The siren's still going on foggy london town no i hear that place sleeps a lot but you wouldn't know anything about that david we were just talking about uh right before this started uh just how completely incompatible my apartment is for recording sound it's so fun to be going on like month 10 of this you know december baby december mid mid december baby and this is posting when february february so february will be 11 months right we're that that will be 11 will be 11 months yes yeah that's right yes yeah Yeah. But hey, a friend of mine's mom just got her vaccine.

Oh. She's a nurse. I don't want to say the name, but she's a nurse. She's been working this whole time and she just got a vaccine. This feels like a great time to announce that I am about to enroll in nursing school. Nurse Griffin sounds, you know, an abc sitcom i would watch maybe ken jong's in there you know he's like your boss oh probably yeah yeah it's it's a soft dr ken reboot exactly i like the idea of like nice gray's anatomy like if gray's anatomy is 22 minutes that's not a bad version of it no no um maybe

I should reboot Scrubs I don't know what that is Scrubs what if there were Scrubs uh America's favorite sitcom Scrubs Scrubs was a niche sitcom for a few years that kind of would like get renewed by the skin of its teeth and then like it's star quit the show and abc was like can we get like two to three more seasons though like can we just like never kill this show wait they kept going after braff yeah i didn't know scrubs was on abc they moved it it was on mbc and then it was moved to abc correct okay okay okay i was really like maybe i don't know what scrubs is for real it was produced by abc and then mbc picked it up and then mbc canceled it and then abc was like we will not let this thing die we'll move it over to our network eight so who was the

star who was the focus the janitor there's a final season what's her name uh jesus eliza coop she was like six people oh i love eliza coop and dave franco was in it oh dave franco from from easy we love easy yes and carrie b shay taryn killam they got all these people the final season ben is almost everyone left and braff is in like four episodes as an advisor. And it's like Scrubs the new class. Right. Ugh. Wow.

It's just like the X-Files. It's this whole thing where they're like, no, what people love is the Scrubs themselves. And it's like, no, no, no. People like the actors from Scrubs. That's what they liked. They got used to those guys. They don't just need anybody in hospital scrubs like that's not gonna keep them on board the other thing that's so weird is that scrubs never had the window where it was a phenomenon like x files it was always like a decent performer that they just wouldn't let die and they ended up doing 182 episodes it was

its peak was yeah like a decent performer it like it went from niche to decent back to like oh that's still on wasn't the other thing i remember season eight having like a hard finale ending like they were like we know this is our last season let's wrap up all the threads they ended they shot the final episode and then abc was like no we're gonna ask you for one more so there's like they had to sort of undo the packaging right the the the finale of scrubs of course everyone remembers the the the episode naming convention was always, uh, my blah, right?

You know, that was the name of every episode. So the, the finale of season eight is called my finale. And JD, Zach Braff, like moves, you know,

he like leaves, uh, the hospital, you know, he moves to some other town. And then season nine, he's like, I'm back,

baby. Like to teach you guys but part time episode right he made like so much money to only be in a couple episodes i'm sorry uh yeah my finale jd intends to leave sacred heart to move closer to his son while he and elliot plan to take their relationship to the next level he had a kid with someone else he had a kid with elizabeth banks god somebody didn't watch scrubs i thought i did he had a kid with elizabeth banks and it is revealed it was one of those end of season reveals where like he's like and everything's going good for me and then she like shows up at his house and she's like an old girlfriend you know she was in old episodes and she's like i'm

pregnant and it's like whoa you know and like then it's like, whoa, you know, and like then so season six, they had to figure it out. And in season six, episode one, they revealed that he got her pregnant without having sex because he like jizzed near her. Oh boy. Okay.

Is that why people thought that in like middle school and high school, there were always all these like, you gotta be careful or like that's how you get pregnant. I just really clearly remember a scene where he describes to turk the best character on scrubs of course now i'll face him that like they were having sex but he got too excited and like finished before they started oh boy turk laughs at him and it's supposed

to be like oh my god jd like you know he can't even get pregnant regular i don't know i'm sorry how many how many cult sitcoms have elizabeth banks get pregnant by one of the leads in the last couple seasons uh i'm sorry your 30 rock is the other one is there a third are you trying to find a trend here i'm trying to find a trend here i mean she was apparently on American Dad. Is there something you could do that maybe? Maybe. I don't know. Apparently she dropped in for seven episodes of Modern Family. Okay.

So, you know, people are always getting pregnant on that show. It's a family show. Well, it's modern. It's very modern. But you can't forget. That family is so modern. We still haven't caught up to them. God, I'm so glad Modern Family's off the air.

I don't want to see like Modern Family confronting COVID. Same with Scrubs. It's so good that some of these like the shows that I, that had a lot of strengths, but could be a little cloying if they wanted to be. The last thing I need is their pandemic takes. You know, Curb Your know kerber enthusiasm is filming again now well that i cannot wait that sounds great yeah that'll be the best but it's it's set post vaccine it's it's set when things are like under control but apparently larry david is just like uh completely paranoid on set at all times about catching it i just i'm i'm somewhat perplexed by the decision to not just wait a year on his part

i don't know what to tell you i don't know what to tell me either um you should probably introduce the show and the new mini series and our guests sure uh this is scrub cast a podcast in which we recap scrubs only from memory and we're kind of hostile to it even though it was a perfectly charming show we're like what's your fucking deal scrubs i truly have not ever seen a single episode. So I would be learning Scrubs from memory. You're the noob. You're the Scrubs noob.

This is like Simpsons play, but for Scrubs. Hey, David, that's a great take. Our podcast is about a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young podcaster stepping into the world of Scrubs for the first time. Overwhelmed, but with a right sense of humor to all the obstacles. Right. They face before them. I don't know. This podcast is called Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin. I'm David. And it's a good podcast. Well, come on. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. But what's that? David, what's that off in the horizon? I don't know, but I think it's getting closer. Oh, it's a cruise ship. It's a big ship. It's a big ship and it has a banner atop it and it's unfurling in the wind.

I can't see it, the fog, all the fog, But it's coming closer. And David, the banner says, new miniseries. Wow. The banner. Best place to put a banner is on a boat. They move so fast. It's one of those mission accomplished banners. Except it's the opposite. It's saying, mission started.

Mission accomplished. Mission started. Yeah, it was great. It was perfect. That was the moment we fixed America, and it's stayed fixed since then. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a podcast of Alphamographies, directors who have massive success early on in their career and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they are unfurled atop a cruise ship baby. And this is a new miniseries on the films of Musker and Clements.

We're talking Disney Renaissance. It's called The Pottle Murcast. Wow. Your voice trembled as you said that. I'm scared. I'm scared of the power of this miniseries title. The raw power it holds. The Pottle Murcast.

The Pottle Murcast. We've finally done it. It's putting consonants together like they haven't been put together before. I honestly think, look, Fran, you need to understand I'm a comedian, okay?

I push boundaries and sometimes i miss but i have to try i have to try to put the pottle mercast together folks we're talking lester clements we're talking disney renaissance we're talking great mouse detective and most of all today we're talking radigan that right. It's a big subject. And in order to commemorate that, we had to bring in a blockbuster guest. Ladies and gentlemen, from the Aliens with a Dollar Sign episode, from the Public Enemies episode, Fran Hoffner is here. Hello. Hi. Also from Life.

From Life. nurse here hello hi also from from from life from life thank you for having me back to talk about one of my favorite presumably tenured professors uh radigan himself yeah professor radigan it was an immediate the second we committed to doing this david said and of course fran is gonna come on to talk about radigan that's right every year I fire off one to three insane tweets about Radigan just to keep him in the mix, you know? Oh God, now I'm going to look. Can we talk about, as we search for these tweets, do you remember your first exposure to Radigan?

How did your relationship with Radigan begin? Is this a movie you saw as a young child? Did it stir the feelings in you immediately um this is a this is a great question and i did research for this because i needed to figure out exactly what the deal was so we had um a handful of vhs disney vhs's but we did not have we had both the full length feature films but we did not have, we had both the full length feature films, but we also had the Disney sing along song compilations. You're familiar with these. Oh, very. Yes.

So we had two or three of those and one, and we had, and I went and looked these up and they have all the track listings. So I was trying to figure out which one we had, but we absolutely had the be our guest one from 1992, which is, you know, predominantly beauty and the beast songs. I loved beauty, beauty and the beast 1992, which is, you know, predominantly Beauty and the Beast songs. I loved Beauty and the Beast, but also had, you know, random one-off songs,

including, you know, Heffalumps and Woozles, but then also The World's Greatest Criminal Mind. So this was something I definitely watched from the ages of, I don't know,

two to seven all the time. And I love Rattigan. I loved him so much. I loved World's Greatest Criminal Mind, which watching as an adult, I'm like, this song is not very good. But I was just obsessed with this sort of like two minute clip. And they obviously sort of cut out the, you know,

the execution of his henchmen from this video. And it was just sort of rats boozing and looking at jewels. And I, I just sort of, I've really loved him. And it probably wasn't until I was seven or eight that I got great mouse detective out from probably the library. We were a library VHS family, not a blockbuster vhs family uh and i was like this is actually too scary for me and i don't like it um because it has forced me to reckon with radigan in the context of himself which is horrifying on his own terms yes

in a sort of edited music video perfect man do you think he's a professor at the University of Evil? Absolutely. Yeah. Yes. Something I wanted to ask. Tenured. Tenured. Easily tenured.

It's an interesting, I mean, memory you're jostling up here, Fran, because the Disney sing-along videos were very formative to me too, but it sort of like underlines this film's weird place in the Disney canon. Because those videos would often be like primarily themed around one of like the canonical movies. Whether it was a classic or whether it was a renaissance, a more modern one. And those were the movies that were just always in the Disney conversation. Like I was a big fucking Disney kid. I was just like on the teeth for whatever they were selling me. But then there were the movies like Grey Mouse Detective where they would sort of ignore them other than when it's like it's time in the seven year re-release cycle was up, you know? And then you'd watch like a single long video and as a kid you'd be like, what is this? Why does get discussed what is this one who's this who's this gentleman rat yeah i mean it was my exposure to a lot of the ones that i

just never really saw also like bed knobs and broomsticks like it just like they slotted in those ones that are not full musicals and to this day like i haven't seen bed knobs and broomsticks i couldn't tell you what happens in it but like i know i saw that song i we also had the one that has um whale of a tale the kirk douglas iteration whatever that sing-along one was so that for a long time that was all i had seen of that film like weird stuff got slotted in there and i so radigan just sort of existed kind of context list for me for a number of years zippity doodah would also always be on those sing-along videos and then you'd be like what is this from and they'd be like nothing it's not from a movie there's no movie i know my i remember my dad was like

i guess we can talk about this but like i remember that that was his way or he was like i mean i guess we have to talk about America's history of racism sometimes. So sure. Zippity do not being on this fucking video is, is the time to bring this up. Um, you know, Zippity do not overrate it.

Don't even put it. Cause they're always like, well, yeah, well, no, they, they,

they get song of the South out of, you know, they, they, they try to ignore it, but except for Zippity do not. And I'm like, why are you so addicted to Zippity do not just get rid get rid of it yeah it's also so fascinating where they're like

look this movie is terrible this movie is awful we can never release it it's a blight in our company's history we have built one of our most famous theme park rides around it zippity-doo-dah will be played at every possible opportunity we will never hesitate to play Zippity-Doo-Dah. And you could just make up new words. Like, they could have just remixed it. Blippity-Doo-Bop. Slow Zippity-Doo-Dah. Blippity-Doo-Dop.

Blippity-Blue-Bop. But they should just fucking... It's kind of the same thing. They should knock down Racist Mountain or whatever world, you know, in Disneyland has to do with this. And they should build Foggy London Town instead. They should have a Great Mouse Detective World. It's time to bring this movie back, I think. That's my opinion.

You know what they're actually doing? I mean, look, I like that and we'll get into that. But you know what they're actually doing? They're replacing Splash Mountain with Tiana. Oh, they are? Oh, that's fun. Right, you told me that. Okay.

That sounds great. That's another movie we're going to cover. That's really exciting. Exactly. That's why I'm bringing it up. But it's wild that it took that long. This movie comes at such an interesting fulcrum point. I mean, I feel like Musker and Clements are different than a lot of the directors we've covered before.

I mean, first of all, they are only the second team we have covered behind the Wachowskis. And also, they span this transition point to, I think, American studio animation being seen of as more of an auteurist thing. But they are very much from the old school where these are sort of collaborative movies. These are not like filmmaker-driven movies in the same sense. If you look at early Disney films, they don't have credited directors, right? And then they get to a point where they have like a ton of directors. This movie has four credit directors. The other two guys don't really direct after this. They remain Disney company men. One of them I think was much older. One of them sort of becomes more of a story

guy. But Muster and Clements did not come up the ranks as a team. They had sort of crossed paths in different areas, different points. Up until this point, they get assigned to this movie as two of four directors. And then this solidifies a thing where they become a team for the rest of their career until they retired fairly recently. But they are a vessel for us to be able to talk about

the Disney Renaissance, which is obviously this very transformative period in uh animation in america um we're gonna talk about these guys and i think they have a great body of work that's going to be really fascinating to discuss but right we are also just talking about a very influential you you know, moment in commercial movie making. Like, you know, they're just also perfectly representative. They're among the most influential directors on general culture that we have covered. Yes.

Along with like Spielberg and James Cameron or whatever. You know what I mean? And they touch a lot of other important collaborators and different movements and things going on. But it is harder to find information centering them in the stories of these movies than it has been with the other directors we've covered up until this point. And I have to imagine that will continue being somewhat of a through line because the stories of these movies tend to be very collaborative when they're retold now but there's there's there's much you know but these look we're going to talk about it but they have a very interesting their partnership has a very interesting genesis and it's it's you know while making this movie the great mouth detective their first movie which they yes they co-directed with dave mitchner who i really know nothing about and bernie mattinson who's like still it did he's like disney's grand old man he's the uh the longest serving employee of walt disney ever did you know

this he's 85 years old wild and he still works there he like worked on ralph breaks the internet you know he's still going yeah um great movie he so he's just like he one of those guys who uh you'll know this term better than i do griff he was he started out as an in-betweener on lady and the tramp and in-betweeners they draw like the boring shit in between the key frames right like they're like they do the sort of grunt shit in between the key frames right like they're like they do the sort of grunt work right right the key frames are the big poses the in-betweeners fill in the gaps to move them from one pose to another um yes it's the grunt work uh of character animation uh to some degree but um we've sort of covered different parts of this in different mini series.

We've gotten to some of this and Roger Rabbit, obviously a lot of this keys into the origins of Brad Bird, who we, uh, we covered on the show, but this is sort of this generation of Cal arts animators who are all in the same class, all part of the same,

uh, sort of wave who are kind of the last guys to be taught hands-on by the kind of classic wise old men Disney animators. And so they're the last guys who are sort of like the giver style passed along the secrets of classic Disney style character animation and then are released out into the world to a Disney studios that

doesn't, is kind of in disarray, doesn't really know what to do with itself anymore. Uh, is in shambles is constantly questioning whether or not they even want to be in the animation business. Uh, Eisner takes over is literally run by a football player.

Yes. Who was the physical inspiration for Radigan? That's right. Excuse me. You know that friend? Yes. Ron Miller. He's based on a jock? He's based on a jock. What? He was CEO of Disney from 83 to 84. Are you telling me someone successful in sports became in charge of a company? Yeah. Unfortunately, yes. He was a former tight end for the LA Rams in the 50s uh and uh and he greenlit this movie and was

the uh and said i want to i want to look like a tenured rat the thing about ron miller griffin is he also greenlit tron and frankenweenie he was like weirdly just and and he greenlit roger rabbit he was like let's try weird shit, right? Like he was the weird innovator before Eisner comes in and sort of, you know, and Katzenberg, you know, they start streamlining back to like, no, Disney should be this beautiful, magical thing. The family's love. Like, you know, it's going to be we're going to make this formula sing, baby. OK, so he was a jock. He became a CEO.

His body inspired a professor. And's weird yeah yeah what the hell oh god this is i'm deep in google images right now he's also on a on a great wikipedia list list of celebrities who own wineries and vineyards. It's a good list to be in. Silverado. It's like him and Cameron Diaz, right? Yeah. Man, what can I say?

Ron Miller. He was the one who taught me it was okay to be weird. Here's the thing about that. I know the phrasing of that is a joke i cannot remember what it is referencing it's been so long you know i don't even remember who said that i don't remember what the origin of it was i just feel like it's any time someone who is very mainstream for being outra dies it's like david bowie wow what can i say i thought bowie was the one that sort of cemented this i think of bowie as the linchpin yeah um ron miller they had

already cast vincent price at that point and were basing it off of a vincent price performance in another movie and had started designing Radigan as being kind of like skinny and wiry and nervy. And then Ron Miller walked in and they were like, oh, that would be interesting if he had that voice in that body. So that was the sort of like meshing of the two, which I think gets to the interesting chemistry of radigan that makes him stick in your mind in your heart yeah and i think what's both terrifying and alluring about him is his general size um and is what is scary about rats in general is that rat like rats are not mice like rats are big um they're too big i They're too big. I agree. Way too big. Eisner and Katzenberg come in. You know, like Katzenberg's a card counter.

Eisner at this point is just like a boss sort of studio chief. And they're like, we gotta crack- He's from Paramount, right? Yes. We gotta crack the formula on this thing. The movie that's in production when they take over is Black Cauldron, which seems headed in the wrong direction, but was too deep to pull the plug. And it's also a movie that Clements and Musker were working on

and stopped working on because they hated how it was going. Yeah. Is it any good? I've, it's hilariously, I've only seen it without sound and the background of a house party. It might be the best way to watch it. It might.

It's kind of cool looking. Yeah. It definitely is like always spoken of as the one that kind of broke disney animation not just in its failure but even just everyone who worked on it kind of either like threw up their hands in frustration or got pushed off of it that's the one that tim burton got fired from because his drawings were too creepy and the movie is notorious for being too creepy right it was it was too dark and everyone was like disney's lost it it's over cartoons are not cool for families anymore right and there's been the run of stuff

before that like fox and the hound and rescuers that were like marginal successes but it was kind of clear like post walt death that that the the magic was a little bit had waned yeah then black cauldron is them trying to sort of evolve the form. They're adapting more modern book series. It's like they moved away from sort of fables and fairy tales. And now you have things like The Rescuers and Black Cauldron, which are all based on somewhat contemporary book series, things that are less hugely iconic. And they were trying to, like, can we make a darker film?

Can we make a big fantasy epic? But none of it's working. And The Great Mouse Detective was based on a book series called Basil of Baker Street, which had been pitched a couple times internally at Disney as being good material for a film.

But they kept on pushing it off because they thought it was too similar to the rescuers. Like we already have a mouse mystery solving series. It is undeniable that this is just a boom time for fucking mice. Like the rescuers, the five old, you know,

movie comes out this year. This, the rats of Nim, like it's a lot of rodents. I know Mickey, you know, the rats of Nim. it's a lot of rodents i know mickey uh you know yeah you know it's it is wild to think that suddenly it was just all mice all the time rodent pr was at an all-time boom yeah in the 80s within within a 10-year span don bluth made

three mouse movies disney made three mouse movies and two of those mouse movies were sequels to other mouse movies and and it's it's it's crazy and none involved mickey mickey meanwhile is just like yeah he's just cleaning up the garbage i guess i don't know what he's doing um but yeah it's like as you say right this this had long been gestating they had done a clements had created a 15 minute sherlock holmes animated short on super eight film that was sort of like floating around that's what got him hired at disney in the first place he was a big sherlock holmes fan but he he gets added to this project blast because they give it the sort of tentative green light. They do the couple years of story development. Then Black Cauldron comes out and eats shit. And they're like, okay, we're teetering on the edge. Do we shut down animation entirely?

Apparently, Eisner at that point was floating the idea like, our re-releases do so well. Every seven years, we're re-releasing classics in theaters. They do so well, and we have enough of them at this point. We could just never make a new animated movie ever again, and we'd be a solvent company just off the re-releases. VHS comes about around this point in time, so that adds some wind to the sails. They throw the VHS into the Disney vault system where they're going to be released and re-released and unreleased every seven years as well,

with Pinocchio being the first of those. So they're a little more cash liquid and they're trying to decide, like, should we still be in this business? And they look at Great Mouse Detective and they go like, this is low risk enough. This feels more classical.

It's lighter. It's sort of more the direction we should be going in away from Black Cauldron. But they go like, OK, we're going to cut your production time in half and we're going to cut your budget. It's lighter. It's sort of more the direction we should be going in, away from Black Cauldron. But they go like, okay, we're going to cut your production time in half, and we're going to cut your budget in half. So it was like a $22 million movie that was supposed to take three years to animate, and then it becomes a year and a half at $10 million. And then they add two extra directors onto it because it becomes an all hands on deck we gotta get this done movie i think a thing i like about this film is it has this energy that i think toy story 2 has as well

which is just like you can tell it's made by people losing their minds you can tell it's made by people who are so overworked and feel like they're fighting for the very survival of the medium they've trained in that the animation is all just loopy like the performances the actual like character animation this movie is loopy this movie yeah that's fair this movie's pretty weird um which i would not say is true of any other movie we're going to cover in this miniseries, right? I got, oh, Charger Planet, that's sort of, you know what I mean? Like, by and large, this movie is just kind of tonally odd.

It's kind of sexy. It's more adult than you want to give it credit for. And there's always those people who are like, the hidden sex hidden sex stuff or like this is more adult than you would think but i think this one genuinely is like hovering in a weird place where like i think when i saw this at full length as a child i was like this is kind of too scary for me um and watching as an adult i'm surprised by the adult stuff in it um you know that that nightclub scene is undeniably adult. The nightclub scene is what... It's hot.

The unhinged part. Really, it's hot. It's hot. It's very hot. I'd like to go there. Yeah, but I think that also, like, you know, it speaks to animation being at this kind of amorphous point in its evolution,

at least in terms of, of like a big studio level. And Don Bluth has decamped like six years before this and is going out making his own film, sort of saying like, Disney's done. I took all the best guys with me. We're going to start the new frontier. Spielberg has bankrolled Bluth.

He's busy making his own mouse films. This movie comes out, overperforms a little bit, just enough to let the axe sort of, you know, to stop the axe from dropping at Disney Animation. And then, of course, stop the axe from dropping at disney animation and then of course like four or five months later uh fievel comes out american tale and grosses twice as much as this movie and it becomes i think the first a the highest grossing non-disney animated film in the states and b i think the first uh disney film to be outgrossed by a rival studio in its given year. Right. It made way more. Right. If the release had been flipped, this movie might have been a death knell.

It benefited from coming out first, over-performing, and the wheels got turning on the next wave of movies before Fievel came out and sort of made them eat their lunch. Now, let me just, before we talk about the movie more yes i just want to say a few things about ron clements and john musker who are the same age both 67 incredible names they're ron and john got similar names people i feel like often are like is it john clements and ron musker right you know like they flip the first names i did this last episode yes right um or you thought you did it

um but but you actually had done okay who knows you could tell me either way yes ron clements he's from sioux city iowa okay and he's worked as an animator for years and he's been married to his wife tam tam tamara tamara jesus since. That's really all I got on him. He seems just like a nice guy. Yeah, they just look like nice grandpas. Fran, you're going to want to hear this. John Musker. Yes, I'm here.

Hello. He's from Chicago, Illinois. Okay, that's what I like to hear. Can we get a little more specific about where in Chicago, Illinois? No, but I can tell you that he's the second of eight children in an Irish Catholic family. That's right. Okay. That sort of does some geographical settling for me.

Sure. And his dad, Robert Musker, worked for over 40 years at Illinois Bell Telephone. Hey, that's nice. I used to use the phone all the time back in Chicago. I think that's a lot of people don't know that we have those out there and we're using them all the time. That's nice. I used to use the phone all the time back in Chicago. I think that's, a lot of people don't know that we have those out there, and we're using them all the time. That's huge. Thanks.

The thing that's most interesting, and we'll talk about this a little bit next week, but I do think this is the week to talk about, we're setting them up, is that, yes, as you say, they sort of both get, they're both guys who work at Disney, they work on a lot of the projects you would have heard of, you know, Fox and the Hound, Black Cauldron, right? All that stuff.

They're both thrown onto this movie. Obviously, like you say, Clements is actually a Holmes fan, so he's more, right, passionate about this, you know, whatever. But while they're making this movie, Eisner and Katzenberg hold the gong show, right? The famous gong show. this movie eisner and katzenberg hold the gong show right the famous gong show where they're like pitch us your ideas you know and it'll live or die right and the idea was also like anyone at the company can pitch an idea like a janitor can come in and pitch an idea we're so desperate for ideas for our next wave of movies anyone can come in we'll gong them if it sucks, but you could potentially pitch the next Disney animation film. And Clements and Musker.

No, I'm trying, I think it's Clements pitches, I want to get this exactly right. Clements pitches The Little Mermaid. He's like, Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. He gives a little pitch and Katzenberg is like splash just came out you know or no eisner is the one who rejects that like you know splash just came out we can't do a mermaid and clemens pitches treasure planet a sci-fi treasure island movie like which is his deepest passion project yes so these are the two cornerstones of like the the career we'll talk about right little mermaid which brings them success treasure planet which is their lowest

moment right like that's the sort of pillars right both rejected yes yes they had them in in the back pocket already this early yes both rejected right but but it is crazy and that's where they unite like muskers like i like those ideas right there that's where they they're partnership forms katzenberg is like all right maybe work up a little mermaid treatment for me and that's where it all happens it's just it is crazy to think it's like it's really as little as that like dumb gong show thing yeah i mean this movie was just successful enough to let the little mermaid live and it was like you know by a hair the other thing that happens at this point or

roughly around this point is uh they they bring in um why i'm forgetting their names now uh schumacher patrick schumacher and the other guy who I'm forgetting, um, who kind of take over Disney animation directly overseeing it because it was vaguely, uh, Roy Disney's domain, but he admitted that he didn't really have the talent to oversee it. He was just kind of like the connection to the past.

And, uh, Eisner said to him, like you could use a katzenberg right right right uh roy e disney right he's the uh right correct guy who's right yes okay um so just crazy to think without little mermaid disney as we know it does not exist. Modern Disney. No.

Right? Fair to say. I know Beauty and the Beast. Sorry, the guy's names, I just want to give credit here. I apologize. Peter Schneider is the one guy. Thomas Schumacher is the other guy. They come from a theatrical background, and that's when the influence starts coming in on Little Mermaid of sort of the Broadway musical sensibility being brought into these movies.

Sorry, David, what were you saying? Nothing. I mean, no, I was basically done. I know Beauty and the Beast happens somewhat parallel to Little Mermaid, but that was also a movie that was made very quickly. I think Little Mermaid is really the first thing that gets going after this. Yes. And that's why we now have Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. And we should give thanks to the great mouse detective, Basil of Baker Street, for that.

Don't you think? But Peter Schneider comes on, I think think in the early stages of this movie and uh schumacher comes on later and they're sort of tasked with like you gotta fix the culture around here there was a lot of cynicism i think from the animators that like this is going to get shut down any day these people in charge are being counters there's this notorious like all hands on deck meeting they would do like 8 a.m meetings with everybody where uh eisner and katzenberg with no previous experience in animation would sort of chastise them on what they were doing correctly and uh yeah i think eisner especially as a paramount live action guy is like this movie's

boring like you know is right and he's like this is slow you need to jazz this up like as if they could just like go and shoot some new scenes like as if this is not this complicated process to make an animated movie right and like the the um burlesque number which we've already sort of alluded to he wanted madonna to do it he wanted michael jackson to do it and he wanted them to do it after it had already been animated michael jackson is the one that i believe he first pitched and the the like thing i read is like his suggestion was met with an uncomfortable silence eisner withdrew the idea. There's a lot of that shit. Yeah.

So, I mean, Schneider's the guy who comes in who is sort of trying to, like, ease relations, right? Sure. He's kind of the go-between between the two groups, and he comes from a creative background. He's not a bean counter, and he's the one who really starts listening to what the animators want to do and opens up the gates for Little Mermaid to come next um but this is the movie kind of stuck between those two pillars yes there's that movie um waking sleeping beauty that is uh worth watching that has a lot of i feel like some schneider content it's all about the renaissance but this is right if you're talking

about the quote-unquote disney renaissance this often is not even included this is right. If you're talking about the quote unquote Disney Renaissance, this often is not even included. This is the sort of weird bridge movie along with Oliver and Company where it's like kind of the start of it, but it's not, you know, the success isn't quite there yet. It's a bit of a guarantor. I saw this film in 1992 when it was re-released in theaters. And it was a fairly pivotal, I remember it fairly well. Like when I was watching this movie, I was like, oh, I remember like exact frames of this thing. Like, you know, it's just that when you're a kid, that stuff kind of burns in your brain. Did you, you must have been too young though. I'm assuming you did not see it in theaters. You must have been too young, though.

I'm assuming you did not see it in theaters. Well, I mean, my first movie I saw in theaters was The Jungle Book, which I think was 91 or 92 for re-release. I mean, I distinctly remember that, even though you argue that there's no way I could remember that. You were very small. I was very small. I don't think I saw this in theaters. I think I saw this in video, and I think it was one of those movies, sort of like what I was saying to Fran, where I didn't realize it existed for a while. It would feel like only when the re-release came about, they would sort of act like, and yes, The Great Mouse Detective, it's again, you know, just one of those kid memories where you just remember a thing that's on its face mundane.

Like being on the bus, the bus that went down Broadway, the M1 probably, whatever that bus is, going to the movie theater. And my dad trying to explain to me what Sherlock Holmes was to set me up for this movie. This was my question was like, did you have any frame of reference for Sherlock Holmes? If I did, it would probably begin and end with with like it's a man who's a detective like I don't think so like I think he was trying to be like just so you know like he lives on Baker Street he has an assistant called Watson like this movie is referencing all you know he's just the thing of where your parent is just trying to like prime you for some of the world that you're about to enter when you're very small does that make sense yes it does i'm trying to figure out if this was my introduction to

sherlock holmes see i i feel like i probably saw it late enough that i understood who was at least as like a cultural meme but it is interesting how this movie doesn't operate like Robin Hood, say, where it's like, oh, it's a retelling of this classic character with animals. This is very much like a riff on Sherlock Holmes. Like a lot of its potency comes from you understanding the way the real Sherlock Holmes works. Yes, it's jokes for fans. Right. The way Basil is introduced, no one ever really slows down and is like, so here's the deal with this guy and here's why he acts this way.

You just kind of have to be like, right, that's how Sherlock Holmes behaves. He's like rude. He's crazy. His landlady hates him. He's got his violin. I think my introduction to Sherlock Holmes honestly was Wishbone. That's the other thing I'm sort of mapping onto my youth is i feel like i remember wishbone in the detective outfit pre this movie right i mean when you're watching this you are like i mean and this is a the coldest

take possible you're like yeah i mean sherlock holmes it is it's a formula that always works like i can see why they fucking reboot this every five years right like yeah he's bossy the other guys befuddle there's a mystery to solve like this this is clicking like it right away i get it yeah he's mean but then he's kind of nice at the end it always is basically what like all television is right yeah but there's something pointedly more adult about him as a character, which I think we're sort of getting at where it's like you can take a character like Robin Hood and like smooth out the edges and just make him heroic. But there's something kind of more innately hard edged about Holmes, especially the fact that he's dealing with like real crimes. You know, that in order for the character to function, he has to be preventing murder from happening,

you know, or at least trying to find justice for it. He tests bullets that were fired from guns. You know, that's, that's a little real. This movie has like cigarette smoke and shit. Disney would never allow any of that.

This movie makes smoking look so cool. I'll just, i'll say that that's okay though only for animals i wonder if it has the disclaimer on it because like now disney plus it feels like well more often they won't put it before the movie but they'll put it on the page yeah it has like a content you, it's like contains depiction of smoking or whatever, you know, they should say in the smoking looks cool. Yeah. Make, make smoking look rad.

Uh, rad again. Um, rad again. Um, what I was going to say though, I, I don't know if any of you remember this.

I was such a big Looney Tunes kid, but there was like this sub genre of Looney Tunes that were animals that behave like classic comedians or sitcoms or comedy duos like there was like a cat abbott and costello and there was a couple of cartoons that was like the jack benny program with mice this rings a faint bell but it was one it would have been one of those things where i saw it where i was like i don't get what this is like that's what i was gonna equate it to like they were things like and also how peter laurie would be in looney tunes yes yes and you're just like who is this guy and my dad or mom would be like oh that's like an actor who was like famous when this was made like but i can't explain yes these ones were so hyper specific because it would be like, oh, it's a mouse version of the Honeymooners.

And every character dynamic is the same. And it's just mapped onto a small hole in a house, you know, where they all live. The Jack Benny one I remember in particular where it's like watching as a child and going like, these are specific references. There's something I'm supposed to be getting when he's calling for Rochester that is not apparent. And this has the same relationship. I know it's based on a book, but the fact that it literally starts with like, here's the address, here's the silhouette in the window. And then we sort of go down and here in the bottom in the hole is the mouse equivalence of the real characters you're used to usually following like from right even watching as a child you're made very aware that there's some odd like they aren't the real thing there's

some reason they keep on refocusing attention on this guy upstairs who we're not following now i'm really remembering also the p Lorre thing where I had the experience like seeing Casablanca the first time where I'm like that's Peter Lorre from the from Looney Tunes they got the Looney Tunes guy it's the real man right it was so surreal to see it backwards

man Tenet it's a real Tenet moment for me Tenet knock it off I haven't seen it yet look Fran it'll open some of the right doors maybe some of the wrong ones too right i mean look you haven't seen it but another way it's not a matter of have it's a matter of when yeah in certain ways you have seen tenant um so the great mouse detective uh i saw it in 92 i don't think i've seen it since then it's not a movie we owned you know obviously we owned plenty of the disneys this one we didn't

i assume you didn't either griff no i i watching it today i thought to myself i maybe have only seen this once before on video when I was seven. Same. I threw this on and I texted you, Griff, and I was just like, it's obvious, like you say, this movie was made cheaply. It's obvious that it's the cutting corn, right? You know, like they're really just trying to stretch their pennies. You said, your exact wording was,

this is like the cheapest Disney movie ever made and it makes all modern animation look like a toilet. Makes all modern animation look like a toilet. And then you sent a picture of Olivia Flavisham and said, look how cool Olivia Flavisham is. I also got that. I also got fit check on Olivia Flavisham. She looks great. She's fucking serving this eight year old Scottish mouse in a a beret she's just barging in and i'm like this woman is incredible she's the best she's a girl she's so good she's and i loved her as a

kid when i finally saw it i was like radigan move over there's a nice little girl and to read about the production of this movie where they were like that character was almost was a grown-up initially right it was supposed to be a love interest for classic sherlock holmes right you know right she's got a she's a damsel and they were like she should be a kid so that the kids have someone to relate to good note who comes in and is like hey have you noticed there are no child characters in this children's movie like maybe this is going to be a little weird. You've got a doctor who just like came over from Afghanistan. Right. It would be crazy to have a children's movie where it's like a detective,

a surgeon and a professor and be like, get invested in this. But I guess like, I mean, the rescuers is kind of like that. I mean, they'd sort of made this mistake a couple times recently. Did they have the character do cocaine in this movie

and they ended up cutting it out? You know, he injects it right in there. Oh, yeah. Okay, sure. That's what I thought. That's another thing we should mention is this movie is like 72 minutes without credits. They just whittled it down to the bone.

Hell yeah. That was the other thing. I was like, this thing's going to be over. This is like an episode of a Netflix show that's a little long. You know, this is like when you queue up an episode of fucking Godless and you're like, oh God, this one's over an hour? Like, what the fuck is going on here? Like, is there no quality control on Netflix?

If you read the like Sherlock Holmes books, though, those are also extremely straightforward books. And, like, canonically, those are just, like, very simplistic, very in and out. Here's the premise. They solve it. They move on. Right. Apart from, like, Hound of the Baskervilles, which is longer and not as good, in my opinion. Like, the novel-length, I often don't,

didn't like as much. I liked the stories. Yeah. The little ones are good. And now it's like, now we stretch Sherlock Holmes out into like a two and a half hour, two and a half hour thing. Well, he's gotta be a boxer,

you know. And Nola Holmes is like two hours and 20 minutes. Is it? It's pretty long. I like it though. That's sort of my, that's my crazy take did you see that thing where robert denny jr did an interview recently and they asked him about sherlock holmes 3 and like that movie had been in stasis for a while and then they announced dexter fletcher

and it seemed like it was like getting ready to go soon and he was like covet has given us the opportunity to step back and really examine it and realize there's not an interconnected mystery cinematic universe out there oh there should be a mystery verse a mystery verse dark dark holmes oh god wait wait what studio has sherlock holmes warner brothers tell me yeah warner yeah so I guess you could have a magnifying glass go over the logo I'm trying to think of how you can mess with the logo to to demonstrate the universe but like motherfucker mystery verse what bullshit are you talking about are you telling me that's the franchise the franchise is Sherlock Holmes and he was like we were wondering what

if we could make movies that are mysteries without Sherlock Holmes? No, he just needs to solve a mystery. Why is he making everything so complicated? Robert Downey Jr. is like Steph Curry. It's like he just you give him fucking anything and you're like, oh, my God, this guy is so annoying and charming. Like he can do anything. my god this guy is so annoying and charming like he can do anything and he seems to be like willfully just like how do i make this so difficult for anyone to like me anymore like that's his post-marvel fucking plan is do little like i'm gonna do a welsh accent and i'm gonna make you

know make the movie as dog shit as possible i'm gonna add notes every five seconds. The dragon should fart more, whatever. I'm so mad at him. I think he doesn't want to act anymore. I just get the sense that he's over it. I mean, look, here's the exact quote. At this point, we really feel that there is not a mystery verse built out anywhere, and Conan Doyle is the definitive voice in that arena, I think, to this day.

Who told him first? He's right. He's right. So to me, why do a third movie? He's right. So to me, why do a third movie if you're not going to be able to spin off into some real gems of diversity and other times and elements? Mystery versus cinematic universe.

We think there's an opportunity to build it out more. Spin off characters from a third movie to see what's going on in the television landscape, to see what Warner Media is trying to build out,

things with HBO and HBO Max. That's right. Or, you know, just make a third movie with that character that people like. Why don't they just unite all the various active Holmes and Watson combos? Like rope in elementary, rope in Enola. Like they should like they keep doing the Spider-Man 3 sort of announcements of bringing all those people back.

Bring in all the other, you know, elementary verse to the Sherlock verse. You do a Sherlock voters verse. You bring in Cumberbatch. You bring in Cavill, who I believe, right? It's Henry Cavill. Oh yeah.

And you won't believe what his take on the character is. Soul. I think that's hot and boring. That's right. Oh my God. Henry Cavill. I love boring. That's right. Oh my God. Henry Cavill, I love you. He's good. His take is that Sherlock Holmes is honorable.

Look, I've come around to Henry Cavill. What can I say? Like, I think he's a good actor. This is the world we live in. But Robert Downey Jr. makes a Sherlock Holmes 3. It makes $600 dollars at the worldwide box office boring what if you made a mystery verse movie you pay cumberbatch 20 million you pay cavalton right you know it's jack the bucket budget up on this thing it'll make 800 million

you know like it's like who cares who cares if you made a sherlock holmes movie it would make money people go see it all they want to do is be distracted the world is annoying they just want to go sit down and watch you solve a mystery you jerk also this like mystery verse bullshit it's like we have an opportunity here to corner the market on mysteries and i'm like i feel like that's what ryan johnson has done now just making a mystery movie that people liked like benoit blank is cool but it's not like if they announced he's doing a new mystery movie with a different director people would protest whereas sherlock holmes the only thing going for there is the idea of that guy playing that character right absolutely but that's the whole thing with knives out is ryan johnson's like what if I just did like a movie where there's a mystery and there's a detective and you solve it?

And people are like, I don't know. I mean, this is insane. You're an alchemist. How did you come up with this? And it's like, he did a fucking mystery movie. It was good. It had a mystery. You know, you felt satisfied.

There were suspects. And they're like, no, we we gotta make 10 of these right now you are oh boy we're putting the golden handcuffs on you buddy it's so crazy and i love knives out me too but mystery is one of those uh genres that is pretty budget friendly because you're just like you just need a a good hook you need like a well-written script and a capable cast of actors. It doesn't need set pieces. That's the other thing. The fucking Poirot franchise

is also humming along. Oh, God. What if there was a death on the Nile, Fran? Who has that? Did it already come out? Is it coming out? Disney has it because they bought Fox. It has not come out. They decided not to release two Kenneth Branagh movies to nobody

in the same calendar year. That'd be too weird. That's a shame. It'll come out next September. We're all going to be there. I'm going to rent a fucking boat on the Nile. We're all going to fucking watch that movie on it. And it's going to be great. I would love to watch a movie on a riverboat.

That seems nice. Yes, exactly. You would love to watch a movie like on a riverboat. That seems nice. Yes, exactly. I didn't see the first one. You have big riverboat energy. Can we gamble too before? We have to. The first one is all right. The first one is all right.

I think I would like it. Looks good. I think you would like it. It's pretty good. This is the thing. I would say that movie is probably objectively not that great. And it's very watchable because it's a fun mystery with character. You know, like, this is what I'm saying.

This is foolproof. Who gives a shit? This movie, The Great Mouse Detective, is fucking 72 minutes long. It's great. It just solves a little mystery. Do you think there's a mystery? It's great. It just solves a little mystery.

Do you think there's a mystery? I mean, it's like, you know, figure out how to stop it. Sure. It's not so much a figure out what the plan is movie. I kept wondering what's up with the robot. Because I wasn't sure what the purpose of it was. But we find out eventually. This movie also, right, when we should talk about this and fran and i we were talking about this like right it is also like us like it's like everyone has

a mouse version of themselves oh yes yes yes yeah yes because i think one of the one of the great jokes of the movie and is that you see you know know, human but cartoon Sherlock Holmes and you get a brief glimpse of like human the queen. So, yeah, they're all doubles. Human the queen. We love her. Human cartoon the queen. Right. This is a movie about mouse tethers.

And like when I was a kid, I think my dad's trying to tell me like okay sherlock holmes is a famous detective but if you watch this movie you're like i guess sherlock holmes is a famous violinist like that's all you see of him right playing the violin in the windows yeah right fran i want to roll back the tape for a second when we were talking about uh when we saw this movie for the first time did i hear you say that you think you have only seen it once in full before this podcast yes i mean i was i was trying to think um because our our system of sort of like movie purchasing when i was a kid was we would rent something that i hadn't seen you know before we would commit to buying it and i think

i got this from the library and watched it and was like, I don't really like this outside of the Radigan song. And so therefore never had it in my possession again until this past week. So you have disproportionately watched the Radigan song probably hundreds of times more than you've seen the film at large. Yeah, easily hundreds of times that. I mean seen the film at large. Yeah. Easily hundreds of times that, I mean also just that sing along tape. I think I watched more than the rest of them,

but you know, I would say probably once a month in my adult life, I do watch world's greatest criminal mind on youtube.com. Wow. Okay. And what is it about the song Fran? Oh, I don't even know anymore at this point i think it

you know ticks some kind of comfort box as a kid i think i sort of liked it's like swoopy performativeness i loved all the i i always really liked sort of villain um layers in in the movies and i loved seeing like piles of jewels um and, and I love, and I love, love, love the, the aesthetics of the champagne fountain. And I do have a very, there is some childhood story about me. I must've learned what champagne was through this movie. Cause I was, I'm sure I was like, what is pink and comes out of a fountain. I have to know what this is. And I think my parents are like, that's champagne. Uh, it's what adults drink. And there is a sort of famous story about me bringing a plastic cup to my grandfather and being like, do you want some champagne? Like as a, as like a play thing. And he was like,

why does Francis know what champagne is? And I was like four or five or something like that. So not only am I sort of familiar with the Holmes cannon from this, but also, uh, champagne, the beverage. And I only learned it vincent price probably like five or six years ago despite having seen it probably 200 times by that point a good singer yeah he's great and having this whole separate context for price and then having to like merge them together in my squishy smooth adult brain i want to all right i found the the tape griffin and i'm sure you had this one too i also own some of these tapes. It was the Be Our Guest tape.

Amazing track list. All hits. All songs. Be Our Guest. Good. Spoonful of Sugar. Good. From Mary Poppins.

Little Wooden Head from Pinocchio, which is sort of a weird. Maybe that's a skip. Bella Notte from Lady and the Tramp. Good. Heffalumps and Woozles, as Fran mentioned. Beauty and the Beast title song. World's Greatest Criminal Mind coming in at the seventh slot. Chim Chimory, we're back to Poppins.

Once Upon a Dream from Sleeping Beauty. And then they're going to take us out with a reprise of Be Our Guest. Wow. So good. I also really love once upon a dream that's a that's a beautiful song it's tchaikovsky do you know that that movie is so fantastic it's so good maybe my favorite of all all the anime might be mine too it is kind of a weird thing when you think about it like that you could go out and buy a video of an entire movie like if you're begging your parents

to buy you a new vhs right or you can watch like a 45 minute youtube compilation right yeah right exactly yes it was it was youtube on vhs basically right they had this robust line of VHS super cuts. Like now with a kid, you probably just write, you throw on some YouTube playlist of Disney songs. But I wonder if the organization of these tapes has also completely like ruined how I listen to music and that now I make playlists that are say 70% one album and then just a bunch of other random songs that I don't want to listen to the full album of. album and then just a bunch of other random songs that i don't want to listen to the full album of i really do feel like the sort of layout of these videos was weirdly influential and how i just sort of i don't know listen to music i yeah there's a a sort of fat cutting like all all killer no filler um yes right but anchored with like you want to watch like 50 of this one thing and then we'll throw in some other potpourri for good measure yeah totally well i remember also like when disney plus came out one of my students was like do you have disney plus and i didn't have it yet

at that point and she was like how are you gonna watch mulan every day which is a very weird question but one that i will remember forever and i was like i don't need to watch Mulan every day? Which is a very weird question, but one that I will remember forever. And I was like, I don't need to watch Mulan every day. I can go to, I can go and just watch the one song I want to see. That I've been completely able to like divorce these from the like whole of the motion picture. I think because I watched so many of these like song compilations growing up.

But also, I mean, I do think like we're, you know, we're currently living in the great depression, right? The time before there are 10 different TV shows based on every single character on Disney plus when they still have a pretty finite amount of content on there, right? Like so much of, I feel like the discourse around the wild success of disney plus in terms of all the new streaming services and how good their subscriber numbers have been relative to how little they have on there uh how much more shallow their catalog is um it is just i think that exact thing fran

of just like i'm gonna pay my dis Disney Plus tax every month because I want to know like a security blanket that I can watch Mulan every day. The Mushu is there for me. Right. Like when I open up like a Netflix or Hulu, I'm going like, hmm, what do I want to see? What haven't I gone around to? When I open up Disney Plus, it's very specifically like I'm in a mood or it's three o'clock in the morning and i can't sleep and i'm looking for sort of like the serotonin rush i used to get from putting on one of those vhs's for the hundredth time yes totally totally and this like is it's somewhat odd to watch this movie and kind of uh focus on it just as its own thing and not as not its function in that kind of way like there's there's something so calming about

putting this movie on just because it still has that like classic Disney feeling and it triggers some sense of like watching a VHS while your parents are eating dinner or something. Absolutely. Right. It's just a tape they put on and then it's bedtime or bath time or whatever. And they turn it off. Yeah. Even though you're like 35 minutes in,

right? Like just that, that, that, that's a real childhood thing that i sort of weirdly miss and like maybe just my my eyes are not smart enough to sort of i mean i think now i can recognize cheap animation or something more thrown together than something else but i was like this is beautiful this looks great oh that's the thing i mean it's it's it's not cheap animation it's like this is very much a last stand movie

where they're trying to uh cut the budget as much as possible and these animators are fighting to make the film look as robust as they can and there are certain sheets they do in individual moments to work around it but a lot of the budget cuts were just this movie being trim like and and fast you know and and zero fat um and it also is just like i think they made up for the budget cuts in just sort of sweat and blood and tears and there's so much personality and feeling in the animation at every moment they're like cramming as many little behavioral gags as they can there's the early one with the gun where he's like looking at the gun and he throws it over and then they like there's this weird back and forth with the gun that that isn't has nothing to do with the dialogue and i just got the sense of like these

animators being assigned individual scenes and going like i know my job is just to animate a two mouse conversation but i'm going to try to fit as much into every second on screen as i possibly can like what pieces of business can i come up with how much can i have them interact with in their environment these guys are wondering if they're ever going to get to work on a movie ever again, to some degree. I got to say that whole opening sequence, which is the start of the movie, The Gray Mouse Detective, is my favorite part.

The Rattigan stuff is obviously sort of great and kind of stands on its own. And it's kind of the classic Disney thing of, oh, the villain is more exciting than the hero is a lot, right? You know, the villain is more exciting than the hero is a lot. Right. You know, like villain song is always good. Right. All that. But this is sort of credited as being the start of the villain song thing, that this was the first time where they were like, the villain's really popping. The villain songs are the ones that people like. And that starts the recentering, which you see like from Little Mermaid. They understand the power of ursula right villain villain needs a big song big arc onto themselves and that these characters can be fun not just

scary but there can also they can be comedic resources you know yeah and that they could find love even with someone with someone like me another another professor, you know? Could be easy. So, and you know, I mean, thinking of the holiday, thinking of past Fran episodes, Jack Black could play Radigan now if he did a, you know, remake. It's a different thing. He's so gentle.

Yeah, your tweet, Fran, was Tom Hardy. I always say Hardy because that feels like the live-action Disney sort of Mad Libs that they would do. You're right. It seems like such an obvious Hardy type to me. You're totally right. I mean, they should just do Walt Disney Presents the Peaky blinders, like with mice or whatever. I would go wild for that. I was, when you were saying like,

when you log on to, um, Disney plus as sort of like a comfort thing, I was like, Oh, well, like when I log onto Netflix, all of my still watchings are sort of like half watched Peaky blinders

episodes where I just want to rewatch like Tom Hardy only compilations. So that's maybe my sort of use of Netflix. He plays a rabbi, correct? Yeah. He's a, I think he's an Orthodox Jewish mobster. He's making rum and bread.

His name is Alfie Solomons. If you've ever wanted to hear Tom Hardy say Shalom so many times, Peaky Blinders seasons two through four are the ones for you uh can i throw something out quickly please uh squeaky blinders hey i would really love this blinders oh my god so but as a The opening sequence Foggy London town Cobblestones Little Olivia Flavisham How do you know that

They say it right Don't they say like 97 or 95 They do say there's even a narrator Right there's Watson Whatever his name is Dawson is narrating is. Dawson is narrating, right? Correct. Dawson is narrating.

He's like, it's the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. He's doing a whole thing. And the kidnapping of Olivia's father, obviously. But the whole early sequence where both she and Dawson are meeting Basil at the same time. And he's doing all his business and he's firing the gun he's being chaotic as we would say in modern parlance

and figuring out where they're all from and the landlady is flustered and all this stuff is what I love about this kind of animation it's so alive it's just wall to wall gags it's wall alive it's just wall-to-wall gags yeah it's wall-to-wall gags

it's wall-to-wall like kind of behavioral fun there's also something to this is that tail end of animation being shot on film and i do think there's some weird psychological effect to because like by the time you get to beauty and the beast it's it's caps it's all being done on computers they you know they draft it by hand but then they scan it in and it's all kind of painted and colored on computer and it looks uh just kind of incredibly clean whereas watching this you can still tell the the kind of um there's the tactility of the layers that like the background is painted an entirely different style from the characters who are cell animated uh there's a distance between the two frames you have shots

with the multi-plane camera which is when they do that sort of trick to make it look like there's depth of the animation by having a couple different layers of background so the camera can like move through a space and shit like that um and it makes you so much more aware of the magic act of like this is unbelievable like how is it possible that you can draw a bunch of shit and trick the brain into thinking it's moving um but i also think you talk about all that business at the beginning. They're showing off all the things they can do. The more he moves, the more the fabric is moving around them, right? All the objects in their space.

And in hand-drawn animation, you don't have physics simulators. I mean, at this point, like Pixar can animate something and the character is wearing a scarf and the scarf essentially has artificial intelligence. Right. The scarf knows how to follow the movement of whatever is going on. And then you can finesse it a little bit. It's been programmed to understand what it is as a scarf and what the environment is and all that.

Right. But when you're seeing like Basil running back and forth, doing all this business, moving around and his bathrobe is flapping all over the place you know or his uh his nightgown or whatever it is uh it does it's it's show-off shit that is just kind of still stunning to watch um it all rules i i like Basil I think he's fun I know Rattigan is the secret star of this movie but I think Basil's a cool dude I like Basil Basil's just great

played by Barry Ingram I like the Watson character whatever the hell his name is he's good I like when he's wearing a crop top at the club yeah that's nice pirate vibe though too well i i thought he looked like smee my uh a lot of my queer friends and i are very obsessed with smee core and when we sort of accidentally dress up like smee uh and that to

me was a very Smee core outfit. Just based on someone, someone in an outfit being like, do I look cute tonight? And being like, you look like Smee, but okay. Sometimes you look like Smee. Smee is a wild character when you think about it. What's wild about him?

Well, it's like, you know, Peter Pan has this hated enemy, Captain Hook. He's a murderous pirate with a hook hand. He captains a ship filled with murderous pirates who are bad. Also, there's this kind of fun old guy who's harmless. It's Disney Smee in particular who's weird because I feel like other depictions of Smee make him more of like a complicit right hand man even if he's funny and Disney Smee is like an innocent in Disney in the Disney one he is

fully an innocent whereas right usually he's just an idiot like he's a nincompoop but he is an incompetent villain right yes I mean Hoskins as Smee for you know the hook has its flaws but Hoskins as Smee, you know, the hook has its flaws, but Hoskins as Smee is just absolutely

fucking murdering it. God, Hoskins as Smee. The basic setup of this movie is Olivia Flowersham's father, who is a toy maker, is kidnapped so that he can make a replica queen so that Rattigan can displace the queen and take over as the ruler of of mouse london correct correct yes that it's there's there's

sort of two things going on one he wants to rule mouse them in london england whatever i guess i don't know how far her kingdom reigns. Queen Mastoria. Yeah. Right. Two, he is insistent that he is a mouse, despite obviously being a rat and literally being called rat again. Yeah.

And we never dig into the details of like why mice and rats are not common citizens. Like what's so terrible about being a rat, except I guess just that they're big and different, but he doesn't want to be a rat except I guess just that they're big and different but he doesn't want to be a rat I'm sure he had to fight that reputation as he worked his way up in academia you know

it can be a really sore point for a lot of a lot of creatures is there a mouse version of you David oh yeah the movie would imply yeah there's a little mouse version of me and he had to move to England when I moved to England he had to move to england when i moved to england he had to move back right like you know he's uprooting his whole fucking life

yeah you do want to dig into the fact like when uh dawson talks about uh being in afghanistan you're like was there a little mouse war that was running parallel to the big human war that's what i want to know he's he's done surgery that's crazy he's done surgery but i guess a mouse could do surgery why not they're nimble yeah they got little hands they carry over almost nothing from the book like almost everything was changed from the original book aside from the character names um and radigan was in the book series a mouse who is misidentified as a rat and then they decide to flip it to he's a rat who desperately wants to be seen as a mouse which works much better as like a comic disney villain sort of like uh um stem you know yeah a lot of the disney villains are sort of like trying to belong in

their own you know fucked up way right the fundamental rejection of what they are this sort of emperor's new clothes i demand that i remake myself and be seen as this yeah absolutely all this stuff gets set up incredibly quickly and then you're mostly just watching this fun trio uh of olivia and dawson and basil and then uh shortly they get teamed up as well with sherlock holmes dog which is another odd aspect of it like you have this one character who's kind of passing back and forth between the two ambassador between the worlds toby much like the dog in toy story he he is in both worlds i thought a lot about toy story 4 during the big set piece at the at the toy are they at a toy store in this that's where that's where fidget's stealing stealing the uniforms it reminded me a lot of that big sort of toy story 4 ending fidget's bad but he's great come on yeah i was really sure i was so sure that

your zoom background was going to be fidget ben well fidget is very bad but ben went right you went for another thing that you like i went for i just like the big cat because the big cat is just like a fun device she rocks sort of girl boss vibes yeah absolutely fidget's kind of like a bad dude right but he's got a great voice and he's i like his vibe candy candido that's the guy who plays fidget right he's it's yeah classic voice actor it's funny Fidget is kind of entirely terrifying. He's just scary, it's true. He's kind of fucked up. Yeah, but it's kind of a flip on the usual dynamic these things have,

where it's like, okay, the main villain is a little more straight evil, and then they have a funny henchman sidekick. And here, Radigan is a little more buffoonish, you know? And Fidget is just straight up terrifying. Fidget also looks so similar to Bartok from Anastasia. Yes. So similar to Bartok. But Bartok is a friendly fellow.

Yes. He's the one who's always like, hey, look, you look you know Rasputin I know we live in hell but uh you know why do you got to be so mean you know like he's always trying to chill Rasputin out I was trying to find it maybe I just failed but I was trying to find some sort of bridge between the two projects if there was some animator on this who went on to Anastasia and ran the lead on that. But the design also has a fun bat. Fun bat is similar to mouse or whatever. Like, I guess they just think bats are cool.

I'm bats are cool. Yeah, sure. Bats are cool. His voice is so crazy. His voice is insane. They like, they were modulating him,

right? No, no. That seems like one of those classic, just guys who can do a guy. A guy who can do that? Yeah. That's so wild. But like it's also, it's not just, he's just got a lot going on.

He has a purple sweater. He has a peg leg. Like he's a very like busy character. Like beyond just already being a bat. He's kind of like a pirate almost a little bit. In his own way. Oh yeah. Sorry, I'm looking at candy candido here candido's distinctive four octave speaking voice became familiar to radio listeners and moviegoers speaking his lines in his normal tenor he would suddenly adopt a high

squeaky soprano and just as suddenly plunge into a gruff bass wow cool his catchphrase was i'm feeling mighty low which he would say on jimmy duranty's radio show yeah there's a better time for america probably and he's like one of those guys you like the fucking picture they have of him he looks like like robert de niro like look at him from like the 40s. Look at this daguerreotype they have on Wikipedia. He looks like Rupert Bumpkin. Yes, he does. That's right. He looks like De Niro in The King of Comedy.

Yes. Yeah. He's got the exact same energy. Wow. Great Mouse Detective. Right. So, right. Act one is them doing the mis-

So, the whole toy shop sequence in my head another formative thing for me at this age was the tv adaptation of the children's book corduroy i don't know if you guys remember oh yeah the live action corduroy i remember the character i didn't know there was a live action tv thing it's not very good i i it's on youtube and i like checked it out because I realized because they're both set in toy shops,

obviously, because Corduroy is a bear that comes to life in a toy shop. And I realized that I had just completely like bonded these two things

in my mind. I must have seen them right at the same time because like when they break into the toy shop, they like go through the window. I was like, no, Corduroy does that. And I'm like, no, no, he like no no he doesn't corduroy yeah anyway it doesn't matter very weird uh observation by me not important no no i think there is that kind

of thing though like as a kid where there's something eerie about a toy shop at night because it both feels like that's my fantasy and also it feels illicit like to some degree you're like oh it'd be so cool if i could sneak into a toy shop at night when there are no adults and i could play with whatever i wanted and to another degree it just feels off-putting well and it's in that time period also where every toy is so scary looking the like yes oi mr you me dad dolls are all sort of like crashing down on them and they're like jack in the box all that stuff oy mr you me dad is one of those click holes that just you're like i can't believe this one clung on but it really did oh all right um uh yeah So there's the toy shop sequence. There's also, well,

there's Radigan song, which we talked about, but if people want to talk about it anymore, it's not like any other animated crush I ever had. Again, he really sort of stands alone. My crushes in, in the Disney sphere were never sort of like the leads.

It was always some weird side character. And this sort of started that off, It was always some weird side character. Uh, and this sort of started that off, but the rest are all like, well, the other big one that I talk about all the time is, uh, the Bonnie hunt voice spider and bugs life was huge for me.

She is so fucking hot. She's so hot. And she's so nice. I could not agree with that more. Bonnie hunt. Also just a huge crush crush a plus plus great hobby exactly Fran I think that's a very underrated character

I also always choke up when she says you did it kid at the end of the movie and then she starts the slow clap Bugs Life rules that's another one of those movies I haven't seen since like I really like Bugs Life Griff I feel like you and I sort of align on some of the like more

forgotten Disney ones because we're also both big Lilo and Stitch guys huge huge yeah Nani from Lily and Stitch is also big for me I also yeah I was re-watching Lilo and Stitch with my with my poet neighbors and we all had a meltdown about the hammerhead shark looking commander being really hot. We were like, is this guy sort of, you know, himbo icon? Interesting.

Fran used to live near some poets, and I always used to love hearing about the poets. I used to live around the corner from four or five, depending on the time of year, poets who were five to six years younger than me which influenced the entire way in which i view the world now oh boy a bug's life yeah no no please i'm not gonna stop you from saying something about a bug's life what were you gonna say no i i i have i have no i want to watch it i i guess we can't do Lasseter anytime soon.

No, we absolutely can't. So I guess I should just watch it for my own personal education. Yes. She's such a beautiful spider. She's so beautiful. Madeline Kahn also in that movie. I mean, Madeline Kahn in general is one of my all-time movie crushes. So her as Gypsy the Moth, by extension.

The spider in James and and the giant peach also very beautiful i feel but doesn't have the bonnie hunt effect that's a good call i mean she's sarandon and she's french so she's a little more standoffish that's that's me knowing as a child that that's going to be a bigger obstacle for me you know i'm like that's too tough that's too tough i gotta i gotta go more and sort of in my line of sight i just realized the julia louis dreyfus's character is also kind of hot in bugs life like all the bugs are kind of hot hot bugs because that was the thing ants was very much like these bugs are not going to be hot but bugs life didn't worry about that right because you got like sharon stone and uh jennifer lopez but they just look like very sharon stone is an ants i never saw dude

ants it's woody allen sharon stone jennifer lopez i think i just always stop reading after alan and then i didn't realize hackman the cast is so weird christopheren Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd Play a couple of wasps But they're wasps The bit is that they're wasps But they're wasps They're called Chip and Muffy And Paul Mazursky

Of course plays Woody Allen's aunt psychiatrist Oh of course But that's not We can't talk about that Because we now have to talk about the scene in the great mouse detective where they go to a nightclub and a mouse performs a sexy song a burlesque number yeah yeah whole number right with costume changes also a character gets roofied roofie yes and also i mean as you know you love the cat characters are fed to cats there's

death in this like all over the place disturbing truly i love the cat but it's it's it's intense it's heavy and and the cat is based on blofeld's cat from bond right that's this whole other weird element right right but it's sort of the same breed. I mean, it does get into the weird shape of this movie that, like, Rattigan has two songs. Then there's a song, an extended burlesque number.

It's a Disney animated movie without real hero songs. They don't sing at all. And it's Henry Mancini. This is his first animated film. It's got a very different vibe. The songs feel more adult, but you don't have any I want song. You don't have any hero like love songs. The songs are all at the weird corners of the story they're not sort of the emotional linchpins of uh audience uh uh surrogacy and i think i feel like oliver and company which comes next year has a little the songs are a little more plotty but there's no consistency right because it's like there's a huey lewis

song there's a billy joel song right like there's that's the whole thing right that's right it's what eisner wanted he was like get me me Bette Midler. Get me Billy Joel. Right. Right. Make them all feel modern. There's one that I have no memory of Oliver and Company. I don't know that I've seen it in full. I'm learning in real time that there's a Billy Joel song.

Billy Joel plays the artful Dodger. He is the voice of the character. He's the second lead of the movie. He's got the best song in the movie called Why Should I Worry? That movie is co-written by James Mangold. Uh-huh. I like it. Maybe I'm gonna

watch it. It's also, it's another one of those Disney movies that's fucking 70 minutes long. Yeah. Yeah, that's so nice. It was also just kind of nice this weird wilderness period where they just all sort of shrugged and went like, I don't know if we know what a Disney movie is anymore. Like maybe it's a bunch of street dogs in New York City or maybe it's mice in London solving mysteries. Right.

But they do know that, look, kids are going to see this thing. If there isn't a fucking song after 20 minutes, they're going to lose their minds. Like we need something to just kind of break it up for little kids. So there are songs. The nightclub song is even at, even as vague as it is, I would say is like too adult for most children, but that song is a banger. That song is amazing.

It's a good song. And I almost wish more of these just had songs that were songs for song's sake, you know? Melissa Manchester, the performer of that song. Right. So Mancini wrote the song originally. Then Eisner was like, can we get Jackson? Can we get Madonna? And then they brought in Melissa Manchester because Melissa Manchester had become the first person to get nominated twice in one year best song at the academy awards

so she performed two two at least oh okay but did she not write them as well am i wrong about that i don't think i mean i mean i didn't see any oscar number it doesn't matter carry on carry on but she did the two songs so he thought oh if we hire her it'll be a crossover success that was his weird thing was eis was like, we need to have these songs chart on like the pop charts. And shortly after this, not immediately, but there was that weird Disney tradition of there was always the end credits version of the main song sung by like adult contemporary people. Right. That's more poppy. Right. Right. Right. Totally. I'm like,

is this song streaming? I want to listen to it. Oh, it might be. It's fine. Yeah. Oh, it's on there.

Let me, it's crazy that a kids movie has a song called, let me be good to you. Let me be good to you. That's nuts. I'm sorry. Melissa Manchester did write the song, David. Mancini wrote one that was thrown out.

There are only three songs in the movie. I know. She wrote this song. She did not, however, write the two songs that were nominated for Oscars. Those songs were just, she performed two different songs at the Oscars. The Ice Castle song. I'll Never Say Goodbye from The Promise and Through the Eyes of love theme song from ice castles yeah which is a good a good memory of like sometimes even back in the day when cinema was thriving the oscars had shit song years but anyway uh we should talk about the um the big ben sequence uh right briefly before then can we talk about how

radigan basically sets a jigsaw style style like saw puzzle for oh yeah i was like is he jigsaw yes he wants to execute them through a rube goldberg machine he's he's a little steampunky a rube goldberg machine he's he's a little steampunky yeah he kidnaps an inventor he still kind of has a steampunk thing going on it's interesting that he yeah that he can do one but not the other but i think it speaks to his sort of academic mind that he's like what's the most complicated way i can execute uh these two guys and it's putting them in a mousetrap with that with a record that spins that's tied to a string that you know lets a ball yada yada yada but they were supposed to get shot his own record by the way for yeah his single he pressed his own record that's a huge flex i was

sort of like i wonder what song he'll play and then when it immediately went to him i was like why did i think it would just be a known song uh Am I misremembering or does he not go like, I thought of like the eight different ways I could kill you. And then I realized I'll do all of them at once. Like there's the overkill too. He's Jigsaw. Yeah. He's Jigsaw.

He is Jigsaw. Right. He's got some. Jigsaw went to grad school. Yeah. Which is kind of Moriarty's vibe too, I think. Because he's always like, I can outthink you, Sherlock. Like, you know, Moriarty's not just going to go and walk up to Sherlock Holmes and like hit him over the head with a crowbar.

Like he wants to, you know, defeat his mind. So I guess, you know, that's what's going on here. But he doesn't feel like as much of a mastermind as Moriarty. He does have a little bit more of the Bond villain thing in him. Like, he feels like a combination of three or four different sorts of theatrical British villain archetypes. Right. I mean, like you say, he's much more self-conscious and, you know, he's got a lot of image issues. He's worried about being a rat. And, you know, he's got a lot of image issues. He's worried about being a rat.

And, right, rather than design his own clockwork Queen Victoria, he just kidnaps a guy to do it for him. A little lazy. And also he's so big that his physicality is part of it. I think the physicality is a big part of why he's not sort of intellectual type. He's too henchman-y. He looks like a gangster, which is why it would be hardy you know he does he does look like al capone on top of everything else that we're talking about it's a lot going on griffin there's a lot going on uh should we should we talk about big ben because i mean yes of course yeah big ben this was like

it was their big marketing hook for this movie was we got cgi like black cauldron had used a little bit but it was i mean pointedly designed because at this point eisner still thought is cgi a way to make animation cheaper and, which it didn't really end up being the case. But he wanted to forefront it. And so they have this sequence, which is entirely inspired by The Count of Cogliostro. Hell yeah, man. Look, I mean, maybe it's derivative or whatever.

I love just, and I think the CGI is cool. It looks so good. It looks great. I got so excited when it switched over because kind of thrilling right yeah it's kind of thrilling it feels a little bit like a like a wizard of oz like everything going into color moment and it also kind of makes you feel frustrated at um how quickly cgi became its own thing and overtook the idea of the two mediums being able to blend together because it is so effective i mean that whole i think it's two minutes in total um and they talked a lot about how they were doing a lot of it like in the dark i mean it was sort of you'd have to eyeball it Sully style and hope that the two elements would line up together.

Sully style. Look, you got to eyeball it. No, I understand. I just, I still always default to Monsters, Inc. Oh, sure. Which is really annoying for me anytime I want Sully gifts and I get 80 fucking John Goodman monsters. But Griffin, I don't know if you know this, but do you know when this film came out? 1986?

Yeah, but do you know the month? Do I know the month? Did they do it in July? They did this one in July, Griffin. I just wanted to point that out. They eyeballed it, and guess what? They fucking did it in July. I was just going to say that the end of this whole sequence

where Rattigan has gotten trapped in the gears and then his clothes are shredded and he's on all four legs like running wild rabbits. He's going rap mode. It's rules. Yeah, he goes, it's true. He goes rap mode.

He's so scary. It's thrilling. It's crazy that I used to be attracted to one and now I'm so afraid of them. Yeah, well, I mean, it it's like this is the kind of rat if you saw a rad dress like this in your apartment you might be less scared a dapper a dapper little gent yeah he's got a long cigarette holder he's like hello all right yeah i mean i would like that i would like that that would be a much different year with rodents than I've had.

Yeah. I've been having so many mouse and rat nightmares. I don't know about you. Oh, really? I've had a lot of rodent issues in past apartments. I haven't had one in this apartment. I keep on waking up from a nightmare where I found a mouse or a rat. Are you in real life?

Are you that alarmed by them? Or like, have, or are they, are you growing more fearful of them in your dreams? I don't know if I'm that alarmed by them. There's always just that sort of like paranoia when you see that kind of infestation in your home and then you're just constantly on guard,

you know, like, are they going to pop out at any moment this is what happened to me this summer and it like ruined my life yeah the tip of the iceberg thing where you see one and you're like are there 10 like are there 100 like well because then when you talk to people about how you have one someone is always like well it's never just one it's never just right they love to say that did you guys, did you have a friend like who had a snake who would feed mice to it?

Yes. Yes. Growing up? Yes. That was always crazy to watch and disturbing, but educational too. It just taught you about life.

Ben, you may not know this or you may have forgotten but I had a roommate who had a seven foot boa constrictor Griffin slept in his room once learned um and uh and he fed it rats and the rats would be in the freezer and I would constantly open the freezer and take one out and then realize what it was wait what did you think it was like a frozen hot dog it would just be one of those things where i'm like in the freezer i'm like wait okay you know we got you know ice cream we've got frozen dinner what's this thing oh it's the rat like that's not a burrito that's a rat sure okay got it what's this like paper towel like wrapped around something what is

it um but yeah you would have to take it out of the freezer and let it get to room temperature because otherwise the snake would be like that thing's dead wow do you folks know the title thing with this movie um i know that oh you mean the sarcastic memo yeah yes please yes okay so they want to call the movie Basil Baker Street after the books. And then the Adventures of Young Sherlock Holmes came out and underperformed. And Eisner was convinced it was because the movie was too British and American kids didn't like British shit. So he threatened to redub the entire movie with American voices, which he ultimately was talked out of. But they said, like,

we got to give it a different title that feels more generic. So they retitled it The Great Mouse Detective. And then when it was re-released, excuse me, it was retitled The Adventures of the Great Mouse Detective. It was, which is bananas.

Like, we get it. I mean, he's a great mouse detective. I assume he's not just going to sit on his ass. There'll be adventures. Now, the Disney story people hated this. They were like, this is the worst, lowest common denominator bullshit. That title is so generic. It has no character. We're Disney. We're classy. Right. We don't need to do that. So, still anonymous. They never offered up who it was, but someone, or I guess, no, Ed Gombert is the name I'm seeing here. Yes. Because Peter Schneider was the one who came, what were you going to say, David? Yes. No, no, I was going to say Schneider is mentioned. Yes.

Schneider was the one who came up with the retitling, and that was like an early tension point between him and the animation team. And then he worked hard to sort of get on their good side after this. And that's where things really started working. But Ed Gombert put together a fake memo pretending to be Peter Schneider saying that they were going to retitle the Disney classics for re-release in the new style of the Great Mouse Detective. So here was the list of titles on the memo. Seven Little Men Help a Girl. We know what that is.

Straightforward. The Wonderful Elephant Who Could Really Fly. Okay. The Little Deer Who Grew Up. That one's, yeah, it's true. This one I really like the girl with the see-through shoes absolutely absolutely sure uh two dogs fall in love that that's my favorite oh the next one's actually my favorite this is my favorite puppies taken away imagine disney being like kids come see our new fun movie puppies and then the last one was a boy a bear and a big black cat uh but those that's jungle book right

yeah they leaked out and the la times ran them in a piece about like all attention at disney animation and then later that was a category on jeopardy where those were the answers and people had to reverse engineer. Yeah. That's funny. That is funny. I think here's my maybe hot. I think the great mouse detective is an all right title.

I think so too. I think it's kind of fun. I think it's okay that it's not called Basil of Baker Street. Basil of Baker Street really does run into that issue of you being like, I don't know who that's supposed to be. You know? Yeah. It's less,

it's less of vocative. It's also weird. Cause it's like, he's named Basil because of Basil Rathbone. Who's the actor who played the guy. So when you call a movie, Basil of Baker Street, you're like, is it a Basil Rathbone biopic? I'm like, who's the actor who played the guy. So when you call a movie Basil of Baker Street,

you're like, is it a Basil Rathbone biopic? I'm like, of course Americans know Sherlock Holmes, but how many of them do know that he's on Baker Street? That's a genuine question. It reads as Basil on Baker Street, and you're just like, what is this, a cooking movie? What is this about? Ratatouille.

What is this herb movie? I don't want to see some damn pesto movie when you were talking about that scene where um dawson and olivia meet basil you're like it's so neat they don't have to explain what his deal is and part of that is because the movie's just already called the great mouse detective so you don't have to sit down and be like okay so his job is that he's a detective. Like it's in the title. I also, I, the word great does a lot for me. If it was called the mouse detective, I would think it sucks. But the great mouse detective, I like this movie's announcing to me, this isn't your run of the mill mouse detective. This guy rules at his job.

He is great mouse detective. He's got a home chemistry set like i love that he fires guns into pillows i always loved in the in the disney animated movie when they would do like little potions and chemical stuff and how it would change colors i hated learning real chemistry it's not like that you're not supposed to do it at home either right these are things you learn later in life i just want to point out the poster for this movie is just like white background all the characters lined up on it and basil is swinging across the center of the poster and he's wearing a suit but not his like uh trench coat deerstalker right right because they pointedly were like disassociate

from sherlock holmes less british less british um but the tagline for the movie is just all new all fun like the selling point for this movie was just could be any not a re-release yeah it's just it's a new thing all new all fun the disney movies were so few and far between at that point i guess right they are actually like hey this is a new one guys just fyi the only movies they'd released it's 86 and they've only released fox and the hound and black cauldron in the 80s total and they only released oliver and company and little mermaid after this yeah i think 101 dalmatians was the re-release right before this and it was the highest grossing re-release they had had up until that point like the re-release numbers just grew and

grew and grew so it really seemed like maybe there's no need to ever make a new movie again but yeah this movie does just well enough especially because the budget was slashed um and it wins the public perception battle because it comes out before Fievel. People like Ebert write glowing reviews and goes like, you know, this feels like the most classical Disney movie in a while. This has that quality of animation and feeling and artistry. I think it's the best Disney movie since, I guess, Robin Hood,

which is, Robin Hood is not a movie I've actually ever loved. But I appreciate its sort of weirdness and it's it matters to people like, you know, it's cool. I haven't seen it a long time. See, Robin Hood and Jungle Book are my number two and number one, respectively. I do like the Jungle Book. I like that weird hippie hangout yeah right that yeah that that little period of um jungle aristocats jungle book right aristocats jungle book sword in the stone yeah right they're fun they're wolfgang ratherman yes who was the director

and uh those movies are a lot cheaper and they have this weird scratchy animation style and also like they reuse animation from other movies literally just Xeroxed. Which is why Little John in Robin Hood is just Baloo. Right. Like if we did Rytherman it's I want to get this right. 101 Dalmatians, Sword in the Stone, Jungle Book, Aristocats,

Robin Hood, Winnie the Pooh, and The Rescuers. That's his run. Wolfgang, baby. I've maybe only seen one in that run. Really? I've seen Dalmatians, obviously. Sure. You've never seen the Jungle Book?

No, I never saw jungle book i think because i had the songs on the compilation and i was like and i just never got around to it i was also weirdly sort of i i feel like afraid of jungle adventure movies when i was a kid because the big animals really freaked me out i was like small animals only quicksand yeah yeah quicksand fucks me very scary quicksand yeah yeah quicksand fucks me very scary it's so scary and prominent in the live action one which i have seen and i was sort of like no no none of this for me you'd like slow sand yeah slow sand only i i think you would like the sword in the stone fran you have merlin energy from that movie oh another tortured academic oh thank you so much that's that's me to a t yeah so uh yeah no anyway we've said everything we need to say about this movie the the big ben climax rules um right olivia's so cute i feel like we just can't say this enough i love her but her

little she she's voiced by a kid a real kid she's got that little Scottish brogue it's so sweet I really you were you were saying that there were like

images or stills from this movie that like stuck with you as a kid that if re-watching as an adult and for whatever reason I feel like the two things

I always remember from this movie are the Rattigan song and her in that green glass bottle is always just a very striking image to me from this film and I was just song and her in that green glass bottle um is always just a very striking image to me from this film uh and i was just sort of like all i remember about her is they put her in the bottle yeah it's scary i don't want to be in a bottle no you don't want to get

bottled up no i don't want to get bottled up uh david you said the box office game for this one was wild well it's more that it more that we clearly just keep hitting movies that are right around here. Was this the weekend? Also 1986? It is. It is another 86 movie. What were you saying, Griff? I'm sorry. No, that was going to be my exact question.

Is this like the weekend after Aliens? No, this is the weekend after Running Scared, my friend. This movie came out Julyuly 4th weekend 1986 which also means that like everything uh the top five like is sort of like holdovers and stuff like this movie's opening number nine and a bunch of other shit is opening and bombing so psycho three opens this weekend about last night under the cherry moon and big trouble in little china all outside the top 10 wow man so either all gonna get forgotten or all growers you know obviously i know ben you

you love carpenter we'll do them one day and running scared is number six but griffin we i just feel like we've talked so the aliens might be one of them i feel like we must have done another movie recently because a lot of these are popping for me but number one at the box office is a big sequel to a gigantic hit movie is it rambo 2 no it is not Rambo 2. It is a kid's movie. It's a kid's movie. It's a family movie. It's a number two. It's not a Disney.

No, it's a Columbia picture. Hmm. Hmm. 1906 Columbia picture. Is it the Karate Kid Part 2? It's the Karate Kid Part 2. Now, didn't we guess that one recently Griffin We did I don't remember why it came up

Okay I don't either but whatever Okay alright number 2 Okay This one is from Disney But it's from I assume Touchstone It's an adult comedy With a curious star of the 80s

that we have enjoyed dissecting his above-the-line career. Hmm. Curious. A curious star of the 80s. It's like, oh, this guy, right, like 10 years, 15 years in, becomes an A-list movie star. DeVito?

DeVito. Is it Ruthless People? It's Ruthless People. That's the big one for him. That's sort of the one that turns it, I would argue. Is it a children's movie? No. But it's Disney?

It's Touchstone. It's Touchstone. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah. I understand. First wave of adult movies being greenlit by Eisner at Disney. Gotcha. I've never heard of this movie.

It's fun. Yeah. The Zucker Brothers, but doing a non-spoof movie, like a sort of inept criminals movie. Right. DeVito, Bette Midler, Judge Reinhold, Bill Pullman. Great. Perfect. Yeah, perfect yeah come on uh we could do zaz as well we could totally do zaz we've talked about this that's a great that's a great

blank check yeah i think the way we'd have to do it is we only do the films that all three of them did together right so that way we don't have to do like American Carol and shit. Might be fun though. Might be fun to do American Carol, Griffin. It just gets unwieldy if you follow all three of them into their separate careers. Yeah. But like, but you kind of want to talk about ghosts. You want to talk

about some of these crazy hits. First Night. Jane Austen's Mafia. First Night's a weird one. Yeah. Alright, number three. And again, this is a movie that comes up all the time for us.en's Mafia. First Night's a weird one. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Number three. And again, this is a movie that comes up all the time for us. It's a comedy. It's a big comedy star.

He's doing something. And it's the title of the movie. He's doing something? The title is his job? It's not his job. It's what he's doing. Taking care of business every day no it is he is not taking care of business he's going somewhere

he's going somewhere does it have the word going in the title or is it no but think of it as like he's going blank. And the blank is the title. Going blank? Overboard? These are good suggestions, but no. Here's what he's doing on the poster. One thumb is up and another is holding something. And he's going.

Is it the landlord? No, because no, that doesn't fit into the hints you get in. I know that's come up a couple times. Or the super, whatever that movie's called, the Joe Pesci super. It's not the super. I believe in the super Pesci. Yes, go ahead. Is he hitchhiking? No.

It's a he. He's not hitchhiking. Oh, I see. Okay. The thumbs up is almost a non-sequitur, I guess. It doesn't really matter. It's just funny that he's doing it. The thumbs up is almost a non-sequitur, I guess. It doesn't really matter. It's just funny that he's doing it.

Griffin, he's an older comedian. Is it back to school? It's back to school. Yeah, this one also came up recently. We covered some adjacent weekend very recently. Yes. I'm going to have to hunt around to find out what it was. And I got similarly stumped on it. It's hard to set around to find out. And I got similarly stumped on it. I got,

I always get stumped on Rodney. Yeah. I will say aliens is a few weeks from now, but I feel like it's before we got to go before. Uh, God, where is it? I don't know.

Um, all right. Number four, uh, at the box office is the biggest, one of the biggest hits of the year of 1986 yeah one of the biggest hits of the year yeah what genre action military is it rambo is it rambo first blood part two no it's not oh boy is it platoon

No. It's not. Oh, boy. Is it Platoon? No. I'll tell you what. The star of this movie was recently captured on audio having a go at some of his coworkers on set. Is it Born on the Fourth of July?

It's not. Biggest hit of the year. Military. But it's a cruise military. Oh, it's Top Gun. Is it's a cruise military. Oh, it's Top Gun. Is it not Top Gun? Yeah. Top Gun.

I don't think of Top Gun being military, but you're right, it is. I mean, they are in the armed forces. Yeah, no, I just think of it being a plane movie. Well, you know, they're at the place. They're at the place. Zoom, zoom. It's just about two guys.

Now, this next one, it is just a bunch of guys. This next one. I gotta say, if I were on that set and I heard that cruise tirade, I would so comfortable it's true right you're like jesus this goes all the way to the top this intensity no but i'm also like i'm just so terrified at the idea of being on a set right now because of people taking safety protocols flippantly the idea of someone

yelling that much i'd be like okay i mean i know there's going to be no oversight here right yes right exactly he's afraid to die he's afraid to die and we should all be afraid to die as am i just like me as am i um but yeah what if cruz is like this is the one thing that could get me like he's he's like i've gone to i'm going to space i don't give a shit he knows a covid could get him um so for number five this is a movie you'd think from the title it was about things that fly but it's not it's not no you'd think from the title it was about things that fly but it's not. No. You'd think from the title, it was about things that fly. But it is not.

This feels like a Sphinx riddle. Does it have birds or something like that in the title? It has a bird in the title. It's not the Nick Cage one that came up recently, right? I don't think so. The Firebirds or whatever that's called no it's a major movie star uh great poster in which he and two female leads are just on a desk leaning and sitting and oh it's legal eagles it's legal eagles have i ever read the tagline to legal eagles

no please do it's so long it's three whole lines okay here we go i'm gonna need to fucking take a breath tom logan has a law partner who put a dog on the witness stand a client who can't enter a court uh enter a room without a crime being committed and a case that could turn out to be the murder of the year period his yeah it His. It's like an essay. You got to like stop in the movie, in the lobby and like look at that for an hour. Well, that would just be a mini series now. There'd be like, there's three things going on with him.

That's a TV show. Legal Eagles. Those are the top five movies. Griff, I'm just seeing the the aliens is very soon after this so maybe we've just done aliens twice because we've i think i remember top gun being in box office game when we did aliens yeah i think you're right and i think it's because we did it on the patreon recently too can i throw out a final thought yeah i feel like uh you know recently disney investor day happened that national bank holiday where we all sit wrapped around the fireplace for four hours and listening to uncharismatic businessmen outline four years of incoming IP brand refreshers.

But they did that thing where they were like, hey, we're announcing six new TV shows. They're just six recent disney animated films right we're doing moana the series and zootopia plus and the adventures of mater and whatever the fuck right they're doing a zootopia series but it's just about like the sanitation guys yeah it's really municipal like they're really getting into the inner workings. It's called Zootopia Plus, which my friend Max was like losing his mind over the other night where he was just like, is the show about a fictional streaming service in the world of Zootopia?

It's about, it's about this startup. There's a whole sequence with a pitch deck. Studio 60 for the Zootopia world that would be good i wish the weird thing to me about zootopia plus is that it then introduces children to the idea of a sort of like something plus way earlier than i would have learned about something plus and what that means for an object or a site do you know what i mean yes yes sure i also i mean Yes. Yes. Sure. I also, I mean, go ahead. No,

no. What are you gonna say, David? Just that Nick wild has Matt Albee energy. I don't know. I just felt that I should say that watching this movie. I felt like, Oh,

this is a kind of thing. I would watch Disney plus make into a TV show to just do a half-hour Great Mouse Detective show where it's these three and they solve a new mystery every episode. But it feels like whereas it used to be, oh, the things that are really, really valuable, we keep those on like a pedestal. We don't want to diminish the brand of something like, you know, whatever. My brain is short-circuiting. Do series and spinoffs and sequels of like the lower status stuff. Now they only want to like refresh the huge things.

But this feels like a property that is ideal for doing some sort of new modern version. Do a little mystery verse with mice. I would love that. Mice, radigan, clockwork things, mysteries. This is just like Downey, where it's just like, just

fucking do it. Do one of these every three years. Like, what is stopping you? Yeah, and what works about this is how straightforward it is. They could just keep doing the straightforward thing and it would work every time, like it typically does with the Holmes adaptation. Yep. Right.

Just do it. Now, can I say a new story I just read? Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O have already been hospitalized two days into shooting Jackass 4. Those men are not young. Or COVID or what? Oh, God. That should be their big stunt just be like hi I'm Johnny Knoxville

and this is trying to film a movie during a pandemic and then the stunt is just them sitting in chairs speaking until one of them gets sick Ben I have to tell you what hospitalized them because I think you're going to enjoy this are you ready

I'm ready apparently they got hurt by quote jumping on a full speed treadmill with band equipment and by band equipment he means quote a fucking tuba that sounds great it sounds funny honestly i love how they're four movies in and they're like have we ever run on a treadmill with a tuba I'm checking I don't think we have and they're like great this thing's gonna be easy

movies are back baby rumors of their death are greatly exaggerated the cinema is back big screen big movie big movie Fran thank you so much for coming is back. Big screen, big movie. Big movie. Fran, thank you so much for coming on and talking. My gosh, thank you so much for

having me back. This has been such a treat to process deep-rooted feelings. I'm glad we could start the process. What'd you say, David? Amazing to have you back. Just amazing to have you back. I said your name. That's right name We're friends

It's true Yeah, this is going to be a good miniseries, Griffin I think it's going to be fun and loose And a nice Start to 2021 Right? It's going to be good All tunes I can't wait to hear you guys talk about prince ali

the banger of bangers prince ali is so fucking good it's so good oh god i know you don't like aladdin as much as me griffin and i'm sure no i'm look i'm i don't even like it that much but i love that song yeah i mean i I think the songs are great. Friend Like Me is the one that I feel like jumps out to me as the real banger in that soundtrack. But I'm just considering the Prince Ali take. Friend Like Me rules, obviously. Robin Williams, lots of fun.

But Prince Ali has the... It's so good. That is so good. I had a friend once while sort of DJing while I was driving. And I was like, you know, take the phone, play whatever you want. And we had been listening to, I would argue, regular music. And then they were like, hang on. I want to put something on and put on Prince Ali.

It's like maybe one of the craziest experiences. And it rocked. It was so funny. It's always good. We need that kind of boldness these days we do we need that kind of bold thinking to get our country turned around that's what i'm thinking if only we had someone in charge of this country with the energy of let me put on prince ali at three o'clock in the morning at this party do you remember when biden like played a song from his phone? I can't remember what it was, right?

It was like a Cardi B song or whatever. What if he played Prince Ali and he'd been like, a lot of good ideas in this one. You really gotta listen. That would've been good. That's what might be able to finally bring the dirtbag left over to Biden.

Maybe I'll vote for him. Prince Holly. Hey, you know, it's a weird thing. I just remember we're going to talk about. What? What? That the fucking Proud Boys movement comes out of Aladdin. Can we just now say that we've talked about it and that's the end of that? Can we?

Can that be it? Okay. Also, the song was Despacito. It was Despacito. Biden played Despacito? It was Despacito. Biden played Despacito? He sure did. Wow, I have no recollection of this. The remix or the original?

I think the original. I think the original. Okay, because the version that's popular is a remix. I feel like I just want to have that on the record. Yeah, but I mean, come on, Biden. Biden. I know. I know.

I'm just saying. Oh, God. I just have one thing to say. He comes out and just says, I have one thing to say. Hang on here. He's looking at his phone. He just plays it. Oh, God. I don't't know i almost respect it is it just him saying

like look this is a normal thing i do very often on my phone it's right there at the ready for me to play because i do this all the time for fun i just feel like right no one is like hey joe uh come on and people just don't buy that you're the kind of guy who you know goes home and throws on despacito no one thinks he's doing no one needs joe biden to listen to despacito no i think he listens to like the charleston on a victrola that he winds up by hand that makes me relate to him that's the most connected it's our thing griffin it's that you know our generation will always think of old people as listening to victrol like biden probably grew up listening

to the beatles or whatever but we're just like that guy's so old he listened to the charleston also just victrolers are funny you just imagine biden like like the rCA dog tilting his head up to listen to the horn. Oh, God, I'm sorry. That's a good goofy start. That's, of course, our episode on the Great Mouse Detective. Fran, people should follow you on Twitter for Rattigan tweets once or twice a year. Yeah, yeah, I'm on Twitter. I'm on letterboxd um my buddy caroline simons and i

do a podcast about jude law called law school we record whatever we want there's no regularity so don't get comfortable is what we say uh what else uh he's daddy though oh he's daddy he's daddy to be sure we can talk about this later, but I wonder who will play Smee in the live action remake of Peter Pan. Peter Pan. What else? We do great stuff at Brightwell Darkroom all the time. I don't know if I'll have anything up there

by the time this airs, but someone else will have something better, probably. But that's it. I'm not doing a ton these days other than posting tweets about Radigan and then maybe deleting them if they're too weird. that's the way to be doing it right now honestly this deep into a pandemic that's all that's all you i'm having a lot of fun with tweeting and deleting and it's like you gotta you see it or you don't i might my fun these days is pre-deleting sometimes

i tweet and then delete it within 30 seconds, but sometimes I just draft it out and then just never send it. If I have a tweet, it goes to Joey Sims usually. If it's a tweet that I'm not going to tweet, it just goes right to Joey Sims. I test a lot of tweets by David, I will say. Yeah, I appreciate it. He's a good soundboard

in that way. Yeah. Folks, thank you all for listening. remember to rate review and subscribe and thanks to lane montgomery for our theme song and joe bowen and pat reynolds for our artwork and go to our shopify page where uh the uh talk in the walk 2020 shirt is uh uh shipping out and if you want to be a little Basil of Baker Street yourself, hopefully at this point someone has cracked the code for where the

mystery surprise secret episode is. Right? With our listeners, someone's probably figured it out at this point. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Tune in next week for The Little Mermaid, an obscure animated film of the 1980s that changed the entire industry and perhaps broke Hollywood forever.

Multiverse of madness, baby. Multiverse of madness. And as always, Rattigan is an absolute unit. Look at the size of that man. Yeah, he's a chungus