Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Lauren MacMullan Interview!

Episode Date: May 17, 2020

It's a brand new interview with Lauren MacMullan, Designer and Supervising Director of Mission Hill! Available a week early for $5+ subscribers on Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons, we chatted with the Oscar-nominated artist about her decades in animation! Lauren told us about how she defined Mission Hill's look and feel from its creation, and shares some fun behind-the-scenes stories. Plus, we chat about MacMullan's work on The Critic, The Simpsons Movie, Avatar: The Last Airbender, her Oscar-nominated Mickey Mouse short, and so much more! And if you enjoyed this, subscribe at the Patreon to hear over 20 hours worth of our previous interviews with Simpsons luminaries! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

Ah, so this is Mission Hill. Don't get excited. It doesn't have anything you would like. Well, it looks very colorful. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to another Talking Simpsons interview. I am one of your hosts, Bob Bling-Blong-Mackey, and who is here with me today? Henry Gilbert, living that bohemian lifestyle of bugles and today we are talking to one of the i guess unofficial creators of mission hill lauren mcmullen the supervising director of mission hill and she has touched so many of the animated series that we have loved and even covered

on the talking simpsons network yeah it was so cool to get in touch with Laura McMullen to chat about her, her work on all these series. Like if you guys listen to our first episode of Mission Hill that we put on the free feed, the rest of the miniseries is behind the Patreon paywall. But if you listen to that, you know that Laura McMullen is a, you know, incredibly talented animator and artist. She was designer of the show. Bill Oakley said he considers her a co-creator of the show along with him and Josh. After speaking with her in this interview, there's so much of her spirit in the show, I definitely feel. Yeah, we talk about, of course, her work on Mission Hill and The Simpsons and King of the Hill and The Critic and The Simpsons

movie and her entire career. It's a career-spanning interview. Yeah, even, you know, if you're an Avatar fan or a fan of her Disney Mickey Mouse shorts she did or her other Disney work, we chat entire career it's a career spanning interview yeah even uh you know if you're an avatar fan or a fan of her disney mickey mouse shorts she did or her other disney work we chat about that too and we we learned some fun secrets about the creating of mission hill as well so and you know this is hardly our first interview on talking simpsons that is true uh we have only just started putting these on the free feed a week after we put them on the patreon so if you're on the free and listening to this, if you go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and sign up at the $5 level, you'll have access to, I think, between 18 or 19 different interviews. I think it's over 20. Over 20, yeah.

With so many people we've talked to over the years, so many Simpsons people and King of the Hill people and critic people. It's a vast swath of creative talent in television. Yeah, yeah. So you will learn so much from like the people, both animation side and the writing side on Simpsons there. And so I think you should definitely check it out. And I guess without, oh, and I mean, if you like hearing all this stuff about Mission Hill, we're going through the entire series of Mission Hill as our patreon exclusive mini series right now so if you sign up every friday you'll get a new episode of mission hill and the entire back catalog of the previous patreon exclusive limited series we did talking critic talking futurama talk king of the hill tons of cool stuff you will get to hear if you sign up at patreon.com slash talking simpsons so thanks again for supporting us and listening and we'll let you

get to our awesome interview with Lauren McMullen. We wanted to start with a question about like where you got started as an artist. I believe you were a member of the Harvard Lampoon. Were you not? I was. I was. I was. I was actually the second female president after Lisa Hinton. And it was a really hard act to follow because the person before me was Conan.

Wow. So everyone was looking for me to be like, why isn't she more funny? We're going to make that thing. we're going to make that thing. We're going to do that thing. And I was very, you know, basically sort of like a straight shooter as opposed to like, this guy is going to make you laugh every day that you see him. That's a very hard act to follow. Yeah.

Wow. So were you on the staff with a bunch of, you know, the of the other future Simpsons writers at the time? Yes, yes. And they always used to do summer parodies as well. Those were always really, really fun. One was the Forbes Lampoon parody at one point. That was pretty good.

Like a takeoff on Forbes, which I don't even know if Forbes is still there. But yeah, there are actually jokes about Trump in here. Oh, nice. Yeah. He was always a good target. Yeah. He was a silly, silly man then and now. Were you writing and doing comedy stuff with your future co-workers Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein at your time there?

Absolutely. I did some summer parodies, too, because Josh was not at Harvard. He was at Brown, I think. No, that's not right. Stanford, I think. We were shocked to find out he wasn't a Harvard guy when we interviewed him. Yeah. Yes, they were very good friends from a long time ago, and they still are.

So, very nice. Oh, so we have done some research on your career and we found that you were part of a advertising firm called olive jar and i know they made a lot of the ads that we watched growing up on mtv and nickelodeon uh can you name anything you worked on the first one i did i had done a lot of um earlier things with my uh with somebody from Harvard, who was Susan Pitt, she was my mentor there. And so I worked for her for very little money, for a different, but whole bunch of things. And then at one point, I'm like, I, all I have to eat are potatoes. And so I looked around and Olive Jar was right there. So at that time, they were all play, basically, you know, and they didn't do anything, you know, on paper or anything like that. But they were looking for somebody to do that type of thing because none of them, they could like build these great armatures and all this stuff. was Stoppie the Stoplight. It was a food thing.

It was telling you the new, what was it? It was Stoppie the Stoplight that would bounce in, and that was the part that I did. And it would always say, special savings all the way through. And it ran forever. And so whenever I was just like listening to the television or whatever, I could hear like a boing, a boing, a boing, a boing. And I'm like, oh no, they're playing this again.

You know, like something that would duck in your head forever. Maybe you can find it. I don't know. It might be on YouTube. Yeah. So you were working in stop motion animation before traditional animation? No, I just did 2D stuff. But I did do things that were, I used to love to do things where it was 2D and 3D or all of these, where the two can come together.

So basically, sometimes at Olive Jar, even when I was on the West Coast, I would take a piece of whatever I was working on and say, hey, well, why don't I just go back to Olive Jar and do this for you? In The Critic, they had, we did a... Oh, the Nightmare Before Christmas parody? Yeah, yeah. So I went back to Olive Jar to do that. And it was really great. So all of the walls were made of matzo bread

and the dough was sugar. And it was really fun. We didn't do a really great job of it because the armature was very tall and thin, as you remember that guy was like that. So it didn't look super great, but it was funny. Yeah, it's only 15 seconds, but it's an amazing unexpected segment to see in The Critic.

Yeah, it was nice that the critic uh main artist drew it all for me and then then we uh it was it was really fun we could we could ship the the rest of it right and then take our time doing that little piece yeah that uh that section it seems so you know challenging to do this hanukkah Town parody of this major feature film stop motion. You then have to imitate it on a TV budget and time frame. That seems challenging. Well, it seems like if you did it just 2D, people would maybe not quite get it. And was the critic your first work in televised animation?

I guess in the half-hour format, I should say. That was definitely the first of the half-hour things. The only other thing before that was MTV kind of ruled at that point, especially on the East Coast. And they had a contest for World Problems problems world solutions like a storyboard contest and you had to do it in 10 you had to go in a very short amount of time like okay yeah okay that's the amount of time to to fix the world's problems and so i sent one in and it was, I like the old tiny rubber hose stuff, as you could probably guess. And so I did something where it was 2D drawn. In the back, it was 3D.

It was built, right? And so it's like all these little animals running around and there's like little droplets of oil and machinery and stuff like that. All kind of like going to the beats, you know, like those old timey things. Basically, one cow gets out of its car and says, get out of your car. And then everybody gets out of their car and they hop around and then it gets, the air gets clear. But I actually won that. It was great because I was way over budget and I would have been in real trouble had I not

we recently did a podcast series about the entire run of The Critic all 23 episodes and we just remember it from our youth and watching it again it's just such a beautiful show with so many animated flourishes what was your experience with that show did it have a higher budget did you have more time it's just such a gorgeous show. I think it was because the designer was from

Disney, and he did a really lovely job. I came west because of The Critic, because there was The Simpsons, right? And then people who had learned how to do The Simpsons, and so they were doing this new thing, and there weren't enough people who knew how to do The Simpsons. And so they were doing this new thing. And there weren't enough people who knew how to do any of that stuff. And so under other circumstances, they would never have hired me. Like, I talked to Rich Moore. And I had to say, like, you know, I really am like a feral animator. I don't know what these things are. If I did a little thing, I made a little track of two, two, three, repeat, or whatever.

And to my surprise, everybody had already figured all of that out very easily. To tell him that, okay, you're going to have to teach me a lot of stuff of how this works, you know. So it was kind of a, it was a little bit tough of a thing because people were, there weren't enough people to really staff quickly. Of course, no, there was the earthquake. Oh, right. Oh, yeah. Northridge. The Northridge earthquake.

Toward the very end of the show being done, the building that we were all in, we were on the fourth floor. And had it happened during the day, people would have died on that floor. Wow. Because a lot of air conditioners went through the roof and hit people's desks and stuff. It was crazy. And that was the first time you worked with Rich Moore, right? You've worked with him quite a lot since then.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely definitely off and on and and he's a wonderful play he's a really wonderful person to work with always funny yeah did uh did you learn a lot did you use later as a supervising director yourself yeah definitely definitely i can never really match his bravado and his way of bringing everybody in, or at least making them laugh. You know, it's a fair art, actually. I did want to ask, in the second season of The Critic, there was sort of a visual reboot of the series in that all the characters were redesigned to make them look cuter and more appealing. Did you have a preference? And what was your take on that when it happened behind the scenes? I don't remember that that well. I do realize, I do think that it wasn't particularly beloved by the people who were watching it. I mean, my grandmother hated it. She was like, oh, that jay's german he's disgusting

i yeah it was a very interesting mix of styles because i believe you mentioned one of the disney guys who created the characters or the designs was david cutler but uh david david silverman designed jay and then everett peck did some design so it was a mix of very different styles sort of clashing together a very visually interesting show not always like a pretty show with like attractive characters yeah i'm not sure i'm not sure if i was there for the second round oh you uh you directed on the cisco and ebert episode uh correct oh yeah oh definitely we were all scrambling to get that one. Really, because that's the funniest thing that is with the critics. You know, it's like it was like the one like, oh, come on.

And that sounds like a really a lot of fun, you know. And like, oh, yeah, you can have like the booze and those tiny little airplane bottles, you know. And they have a fight with those little broken little bottles now i noticed your episodes like especially in the siskel and ebert ones they have these like great giant musical numbers and also like these huge fight scenes too like and even like a giant blue whale falling out of the sky like there's you had such fantastic like imagery in yours did you guys did you feel you and your team were particularly good at that stuff i like things to be interesting you know like if you're you know it's like okay if you're on a an airplane

yeah there's the what do you what do you have around you You have those little bottles, you know. And that was very action heavy, which was also pretty lovely. So how soon after The Critic did you transition to King of the Hill? And what was it like to work on a much more restrained show? I learned a whole lot from Wes. He was really lovely to work with in a whole different way than, say, Ritt. He would just sort of go very softly and sort of come into your office and say, like, this one thing, you know, like, maybe you could just do this. And then he would sort of drift away. And sometimes you'd be like, but he never really said like, oh, man, that was fantastic.

The most that he ever did was he came into my office and he put down this little roll of paper and then he left. Or maybe he left when I wasn't there. And I unrolled this tiny little thing of paper. And in the middle of it, it said he had written, good job. That's very sweet that's uh because i think i think i like i i wanted somebody to say hey this this episode was really good and uh and so that was his way of very quietly saying good job so wes is like hank hill he's a he's a texan man doesn't like to show his emotions quiet Quiet Texan. Sure, sure. Yeah, on King of the Hill, you directed the third season premiere,

which was like part two of a two-parter where the megalomart explodes like that. I mean, that's a big responsibility, the big premiere like that. Was that a particular challenge? Oh, I loved that one. I thought that was really great. Because like something, something really, really happened. You know, what I remember best, this sort of joke, I think it might be the, is it the one where they have the funeral? Oh, that was the other one that I went back to Olive Jar to do or i did it with another person it's the one where like there's it looks like a chinese painting oh right yes khan is telling this parable about a strawberry

yeah yeah i and a good friend of mine we did it all ourselves so just so it seemed you know if you're going to tell a long story you don't want to just to see everybody standing there you know at this grave site so it seemed like a good idea to do where you you're getting sort of more uh out of the art of it um the other part of the other part of it that i really liked is who is the young girl aloe and okay is it the later one where she shaves her head? Yes. I think her hair burns off in your episode. Okay.

And she's very sad about her boyfriend. And my favorite shot was having, she's starting to say something about Buckley. And she has to do it with these puppets. And you don't see the puppet until he sort of slowly comes into frame. And it's hilarious. I always thought that was really funny to see that. It's a very dark episode. But when you have something that's out of the ordinary or what you would see might think is depressing or very different from other things it gives you a lot of room to do things because you you can go from one emotion to another and those kinds of types of scripts are always always great yeah like some of the, oh, the Simpsons episodes always had something where the best ones always seem to be where you've got one character who's very, very different from the other one.

Those are all really great. Like the one that I did that I loved so much was with the littlest kid and the most repugnant guy. Oh, yes. Was that Moe Baby Blues on The Simpsons? Yes. That was my absolute favorite. It was so great. That's a beloved episode.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was fantastic. From the very beginning, when I read it, I'm like, oh, we're going to set this up in the baby's room so that it can dissolve to the mobsters. You've got the most repugnant man and the sweetest little girl and she likes him anyway. I mean, that, that's pretty great. Do you remember when Bill and Josh approached you with their idea for the show that would become Mission Hill?

It was pretty much, I think it was after the one little bit of working for Wes. You know, we all knew each other very well. I was working at home. I did all the design. And it took quite a while because I'm not a very natural person to do all of that stuff. But we were all kind of basing the main character about someone we know knew from college oh okay oh we want names no kidding well just basically i don't know if you say this but he he's he was not actually a slacker. You know, like the main character he did when the tower fell. In New York, when the tower fell, he slept through it.

That does sound like an Andy French kind of thing on Mission Hill. And he was very close to where it happened. Wow. Like anybody would be like, how could you have just sleep slept through it and all three of us really loved that guy so i've heard bill uh oakley mentioned you as like a co-creator of the show so i was curious like how long how long did it take to really nail down the artistic style i i heard you mention you love, like, you know, the rubber hose kind of characters. I totally feel that in the style of Mission Hill.

Yeah, I like to, there is a lot of, in Mission Hill, there are a lot of places where, you know, somebody's doing something with posture or like if they're being electrocuted, like part of them are wiggling and not. And, you know, they can stretch and sway or have a particular dance style, which is always fun. I mean, like when you're that age, you're like, that guy dances crazy. I guess I would say people were on the fence about a couple of things. And one is the vibrant colors. They really stand out. I love the color palette of it. They still look

good to me. And then the other things that people said that were somewhat negative was the sort of round ball around their booty. But it was an easy way, it was having that ball in there, it was an easy way to not have to have something that's very, very hard to do for different people. Well, unfortunately, most of the show wasn't really seen on the WB, and two years later, it would get a new audience on Adult Swim, the programming block. Did that surprise you, to just two years later, suddenly people are watching the show you worked on? Yes, very nice, but kind of bittersweetweet because we were just getting going i mean we had a couple of there were a couple of things that were

in the works or like almost done that nobody ever saw you know they had like we had a road trip one and it's so good it's really great uh i i am looking at the board of it right now. Oh, nice. Amazing. Wow. And you kept all that stuff handy, eh? No, I only have bits and pieces, you know. I've got a lot of stickers. I can send you some stickers if you want. We'll take stickers. We'll give you our address off the air. I'll give you the stuff, yeah. Awesome. Thank you. I also wanted to ask you lauren that uh mission hill was one of

the last traditionally cell animated shows right and what was it like to be at the end of that era and do you miss it or are you just you know way into the the you know tools you have with digital animation well there's a lot of there's a lot of great stuff that people are doing now that you couldn't do that other way. But I love ink, and I love, you know, paper, and I like flipping through things. It's the easiest way for me to go from one thing to another. And I love cells. I love the way cells look when the colors are painted on the back. You know, it's kind of slippery and delightful. Yeah, as a viewer, it's just fun to see, watching Mission Hill,

seeing the texture of the paint and the shadow of the cell on top of the background. I miss all of those touches of the human element of the animation process. Right, right. Yes, and another thing that kind of got lost with Mission Hill was the music. The WB just said, we couldn't use this, this, this, this, and this.

And it wasn't as cool as the music that we picked out or I picked out a lot of them, like what I was listening to at the time, you know, because I thought it was cool. We were just re-watching it and looking up what the, you know the music was in it. I don't think I in 1999 saw any show that used pavement for example. Right. I think they had Burning Flies

was one of my favorites. That's the great one that's over the first Andy's first walk through the Mission that's right hill that glorious pan right yeah yeah and you know because it was uh basically paper in my loft at that time i did that whole long piece oh wow you know wow dog kept stepping on it you know it literally was how much far it It was very, very long.

It went from A to ZZ or something like that. I had heard that the loft in the show was based on an apartment you had lived in at one time. Is that true? Well, not really. But I think Bill and Josh thought I was cool because it wasn't a day I think they thought I was a little bit cool because I lived in a dangerous area in a in a warehouse so it's pretty cool yeah and then actually actually when I was in that place I found a dog that looked a lot like Stogie oh wow yeah yeah he was a great but I didn't get him until after after the show was done

also i i love the designs of just all the residents of mission hill like these just you know background characters that have like tell such a story like uh that you must have put a you and your team must have put a lot of work into just designing the specific residents of the city. Sure. We had so much fun. I mean, what was the one, Republican Vampire? Yeah, it's a great design. Not that you would really see somebody like that, I think, but he was pretty good.

Yeah, we would kind of look around and say like, what kind of person would be this, would, you know, could this be? And sometimes like they would have later on they might have a little thing that they might say or something like that like we went we designed like things on the walls and billboards um bill and josh did most of them we we we kept going back and forth and saying how about this how about this? How about this? And the best one that I contributed, I think, was hard apport to freshness. It was a cola, I think, I believe.

I think it was boat cola. Yeah, that's right. A sailor, I believe. That was the one that I said, hey, can we do this? And they're like, hmm, that's okay. We'll use that. Are there any other little touches in Mission Hill that you think have mostly gone unnoticed that you contributed to the show? Well, I guess a lot of the animation sort of came from me,

and the way it works, you know, it can be up or down, or this happens, but you're not having people moving all the time it's very i don't know how to explain it but uh there's a crispness to it at its best i uh i some of the little touches i love are like the the kind of fleischer-y like the dotted lines on eyes or the uh yeah the cloud fights yeah the cloud fights so So funny. Yeah, definitely. That had a lovely... Because it's like, it makes you remember that it's ink.

And, you know... Yeah, I love seeing those moments for such a show that's so grounded in this slacker lifestyle that then all of a sudden a character's face just turns bright red or steam shoots out of their ears. It's so fun. Right. sudden a character's face just turns bright red or steam shoots out of their ears like it's it's so fun right and and it sort of helped you realize that this uh comedy and but it's also it's not real life and and somebody drew it we drew it and so it looks like somebody drew it and it sort of lives in a world of paper you know one of one of the, everybody's favorite Mission Hill, I think, or one of people's favorites is the second unemployment episode,

which that's such a great one. Like perfect observation was like to be a certain type of unemployed. And that was directed by Michael DiMartino. And I believe the AD on it was Brian Konietzko, right? Yeah, they did a whole bunch. And yeah, they did a whole bunch.

And yeah, they did some great episodes. Did you see the potential in their future of going on to be the creators of such a popular thing as Avatar The Last Airbender? I think maybe they saw this show as like, we like mystery. We like a whole different world, you know, and it was pretty amazing that they got that they went to the place that where did they, where did they go to? I actually worked on it as well, but that they pitched it and somebody said, Okay, and then they, then they basically because no one was really looking for something like that, I think. And they really made a great choice to go overseas to get the people to say, this is how we draw it. And then we all tried to draw like those guys because they were really beautiful. Yeah, this is skipping ahead a little bit.

Yeah, you directed many episodes of The Last Airbender. Was it a big transition to go from, you know, working on all that, the sitcom stuff for adults to then work on this, you know, all ages action show? Was that an interesting transition? For me, it was a bit difficult just because everybody could draw so well, really well. But, you know, with any type of animation, you want the dark and the light. And that is a good example of, you know, somebody can die in Avatar,

but then there's a lot of humor. There's a lot of humor in that. I actually directed the first one, I believe, or whichever one they go to the castle for the first time, and they're all together. And then I think it's the southern, maybe it's the second or third one, but they go to the southern temple, and they're all together. And they get the little guy, the little monkey guy, one of the first ones that they did, where they're all together for the first time and they're leaving and they're leaving. And it's the last shot.

And I remember thinking, wait a minute, wait a minute. In any other show, you'd have some joke at the end or whatever. And here, they're just all together. They didn't quite get what they got. They don't know what they're just all together they didn't quite get what they got they don't know what there is they don't know what they're going to do and they look back or ang looks back and they and they're lost the end of the episode is just them kind of on a downbeat like what is going to happen and i remember that moment where i talked to them and I'm like, hey, you know what? We don't have to have like a button on this. You guys have the power to have it be, this is really serious,

or this is really sad. And you don't really get that in a cartoon very well. Especially in Avatar, you've got a lot of dark and a lot of light, and both help the other work. I think we're about to enter an Avatar the Last Airbender renaissance, because in a few weeks, as of this recording, it's all going to be on Netflix. And people are watching a lot of TV these days, for obvious reasons. So I think we're going to see a lot more conversations about that show in May, for sure. Sure. There's a lot of, there's some people who've approached me about different things. And they're like, and that's what they all say. They're like, oh, we want it for like kids and the people.

And, you know, for the whole family and that kind of thing. Because one thing about Avatar we didn't even know for a long time is that kids and their parents did watch them together. A lot of them, which was kind of new thing, a new thing, really, for TV. So after Mission Hill, you moved pretty straight to The Simpsons after that. How did it happen, you going from working on the show to the movie? Like, The Simpsons movie had been in the works for such a long time like when when did you join as as a sequence director on that well i knew i knew all those guys you know like claudia and every all the rough draft guys because they they did everybody

so we were the one half of there was the regular the regular Simpson people and then the rough draft people. And I think we all kind of liked it to be where we were. So we started out with like basically four directors, two there and two here, like me and Rich. And then it became like a free-for-all of like, you know, because it just, it took so long to do. It was a very, it was a very it was a very very difficult thing yeah based on interviews and commentaries it sounds like there were just frequent changes to the story and lots of scenes were cut can you talk about anything that you personally worked on that was uh you like that was cut from the movie oh i'll give you one oh cool oh boy okay i did a lot of stuff when they

were in the snow basically they all had run away and and i got some really great moments in that like where where she leaves and he's he's looking at uh something on the tv and crying it's a really great moment and if you look above the bed I did the little painting on the top. Because it would be like, so Marge had a lot of time on her hands. And so she painted that. Which is weird because we're kind of in that world right now. Lots of new hobbies are emerging. Where she floats down on the ice floe is very lovely. We had actual animators in-house

and some of them were really good. They had gone to like Disney or this kind of thing and they put a lot of heart into a lot of things. So this one guy labored for a month to do, it was a, when you're drilling into the earth,

you know, you've got those pylon things that go around and around, right? And it was powered by walruses pumping around right okay so in adamantians it goes something to go slowly in a circle and these are like eight walruses right wow right that's so complicated. This guy, this guy, he did a great job. And he finally finished it. And I went over to him and he said, I'm done. And I'm like, oh, my God, that's fantastic.

And later in the afternoon or perhaps the next day, we got reams of cuts, right, every day. And it was that. It was the walruses. And I'm like, oh, my God. And so I got on the horse and I'm like, please, every day. And it was that. It was the walruses. And I'm like, oh my God. And so I got on the board and I'm like, please, can you just look at it? And they didn't. What a shame.

It would work out fine without it, but it was pretty beautiful. It would have been a better movie with the walruses, I think. I don't know. People might have been a better movie with the walruses, I think. I don't know. People might have been like, God, that was a downer. You know, they're just humping around in a circle forever.

Was it interesting to change over from, you know, television to theatrical? It was interesting. It was a lot. There were really good things about it. To see stuff on a big screen is great. To see that ratio is fantastic. I did have to take off and go slowly driving across the country when it was done. And I couldn't watch it until the middle of the country. Wow. And then I drove home to my old, where my parents were. Yeah. Just to get it all out.

Sounds like a fun road trip. Yeah. It was great. Lots of healing. So what was it like to transition from 2D to 3D? You did that very well in the short Get a Horse, which we love. Oh, thank you. The Get a Horse thing just sort of popped out of nowhere.

I mean, again, you know, Rich and Jim as well. There was a little stint in there up north a little bit, but when we went to Disney, it was really an interesting time at Disney because there were a lot of people who had been there forever and ever and ever. And while we were working on Wreck-It Ralph, which were a lot of people who had been there forever and ever and ever. And while we were working on Wreck-It Ralph, which was a lot of fun. And at the same time, they were looking for something for something to do with Mickey. And they had no idea what they wanted. And I'm like, you know, the only Mickey I really like in any way, shape or form is the really early one. I love that.

You know, I love the stamp. You know, he wasn't fettered, you know, with like, like, okay, this short's going to be about a little wind blowing around and he can't rake it all. So it's because it seemed like the animators at Disney grew up with Mickey. And then, you know, what was an interesting thing for them is like, okay, that's, you know, in that, in the little whirlwind, you can see it's Burbank, you know. And like the only thing that is bothering them is that one little leaf. I can't get it.

Yeah, Get a Horse goes back to like the classic Pete kidnaps Minnie, and it's a battle between Mickey and Pete. It's great. Yeah. I mean, that early Mickey is so interesting, because all you have is black and white and ink. And what's really great is there isn't, you white you are black you are this you're just a mouse and you know he's so vibrant and so basically i i said i had one piece of art show them because

everyone was showing what they were going to do and i had really nothing i had a big card that was black and my whole thing was I took the black thing down and then you see Mickey on a stage where he's sticking out his foot through the thing and you can see that he's pushed through the screen. And the weirdest thing happens, which I don't think will ever happen again for me, but both the heads of Disney, after everyone had left, they called me in and said, we're going to do your thing. And then I had to tell them who I was. Because they had no idea who I was at all. Well, after you got nominated for an Oscar, I think they knew who you were then. Hope so.

Yeah, yeah. It was kind of bittersweet because because frozen did really well but and here's my little sad sack thing is that won the oscar but if you look at all of the reviews at the end they're like oh yeah and the mickey short was better you you did mention being up north like like me and Bob, we live in the Bay Area. So I guess you were up here doing something at Pixar that ended up getting shelved, right? Yeah, yeah. It was like watching a big tower go slowly down to earth, you know, like falling.

Yeah, it was interesting. It would have been a very hard movie to make. But for me, I was just trying to do stuff in 3D and like draw more better. So that was helpful. Yeah, I mean, it's very strange when something kind of crumbles, you know. It's like a sort of death that isn't a real death. That's right.

Sorry to bring up that memory. Ending on a sour note, sorry. Well, you did mention Wreck-It Ralph. I love that movie and the sequel and Zootopia. You have credits on all of those. What were some of your favorite jokes or things you added to those movies? I'm sure there are some. I generally got kind of, get some tentpole places where early on we all decide,

because it's not like TV where it's sort of like from A to Z. Movies shift in different ways as you're making them. You know, it could have been Act 1 could have been fantastic, and then you change to Act 2, and it actually changes to Act 1, which is very weird. But I got to do a whole bunch of tentpole things where, okay, everybody's like, okay, we are going to keep this race where she gets in her car and she gets to go racing or knowing that you're going to go to ebay because everybody has to have to go to ebay you know so they a lot of times very nicely they said hey figure this out

it was really also great to have all the all the minds going with all of that, you know, like Riff and Jim Reardon and Phil Johnson. Also, so funny, all of these people. Yeah, I was gonna ask Jim Reardon. He's a Simpsons legend. And you worked a lot with him too on those Disney projects. Yeah. Yeah. He came back from up north with me. It was great to see them all together. I don't know how long they knew each other, but I think it was all the way from CalArts.

I think so. Oh, yeah. And I think they're both together. It's a Sony, isn't it? Yeah, I think so. Nice. So, Lauren, we've reached the end of our interview time. Do you have anything that you're working on you can tease

or anything you might want to talk about that maybe people don't know too much about something you've worked on? Well, I'm not really at the point where anything is really firmed up. Okay. So things are in the works. Hopefully. We'll see. Best of luck.

My dog has a long time. He's never going to get over the fact that I've been home for quite some time. All of our pets are adjusting right now. Yes. so thanks again to lauren mcmullen for her time unfortunately she's not on twitter but i'm sure there's some way you can thank her just shout out your window thank you lauren mcmullen every night at 7 p.m say to the world you think lauren mcmullen is great such an amazing artist but yeah it's all it's unfortunate she is like made the the correct choice for mental health to not be on twitter

to be unreachable but we reached her yes yeah and we we super appreciate she's so nice so giving with her time like i'm so happy we chatted with her so i hope you guys enjoy this and remember we have a ton more exclusive to patreon interviews we've done in the past. And you should look forward to more cool interviews coming your way, both on the Patreon and a week later on the free feed. So thanks again for listening. And we'll see you sometime soon for another Talking Simpsons interview. See you then. My friend Andy's a cartoonist.

What do you think? Maybe the milk should be glowing pink so it looks more like space juice to go with the space cookies. Space juice it is!