WHAT WENT WRONG - The Emperor's New Groove

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

What has two titles, two directors and originally starred… Owen Wilson? Join Lizzie & Chris as they explore the miracle that is The Emperor’s New Groove, a movie that nearly broke Sting’s brain and may have ended the Disney Renaissance in one fell swoop.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast about movies, flops, blockbusters, everything in between. And a special little plug for all of our Patreon subscribers. If you are on Patreon, you can actually see our faces because this is a video episode. So for all you losers that didn't pay for Patreon yet, you don't get to find out that Chris is naked. You don't. But you're not seeing all of it because. It's just from the chest up. But you're seeing the good parts.

And talking about good parts, subscribe to Patreon to hear this month's Ripped from the Headlines episode where Lizzie and I chat about the state of the indie film market. It's Rocky. And we talk about how it's changing for low-budget productions. There are some silver linings. So check that out. So this week, we are talking about our very first wholesome, colorful, drama-free animated film. Is this really our first animated film?

Yeah, we've not covered any animated films yet. Although our stories are often filled with seemingly cartoon characters, but we are diving into the world of Walt Disney animation. And when I said that it's actually wholesome, colorful, and drama-free, what I mean is that it is terrifyingly stressful and completely overwhelming, and that is the actual world of animation. This week's film is The Emperor's New Groo. Lizzie, I'm guessing you saw this movie as a child?

No, I have never seen this. I don't know why, but I think my mom had like a real aversion to this movie or the idea of this movie. So we never watched it. Even though I remember friends, like quoting parts of it, there were sections of this that I remember little kids just like repeating all the time. And I had no idea what the joke was. So that's why I wasn't cool. Well, you weren't. And now you're not because you saw it when you're too old.

But for those of you who have not yet. seen the film. Here is the IMDB log line. Emperor Cusgo, played by David Spade, is turned into a llama by his ex-administrator, Isma, played by the wonderful Eartha Kit, and now must regain his throne with the help of Pacha, voiced by John Goodman, a gentle llama herder. The Emperor's New Groove was produced by Walt Disney feature animation. It was released in 2000 by Walt Disney pictures. It was the studio's 40th animated film. It was directed by Mark Dindal, written by David Reynolds, with a story by Dindal and Chris Williams, and starred David Spade, as I mentioned, John Goodman, Eartha Kitt, and Patrick Warburton as Kronk, the best character in the

whole movie. Yeah. The story was loosely inspired by ancient Peruvian culture, the Incan culture. Very loose. We'll get into that. And it's set in a fictionalized Incan Empire. Now, the Emperor's New Groove will be the first in a series of animated films that we're going to discuss during this podcast. And hopefully it will give you guys a glimpse into how Disney, Pixar, Lika, Dreamworks, and the like, go through hell to bring you the polished, buoyant films that you love year in and year out. So without further ado, let's learn how Disney broke six. Sting's brain.

I mean, what went wrong on the Emperor's New Group? Sting? I just have to say, first reaction to this movie was it needed more Tom Jones and less sting. When it pivots from Tom Jones at the end to sting, it is a hard turn into something I did not enjoy. Well, that happens for a very specific reason that we'll be into. So to understand this movie and its eventual troubles, it's important to know the extent of the Renaissance that Disney was experienced. in the mid-1990s. This period was literally called the Disney Renaissance,

and it was a 10-year stretch that started in 1989 and went until 1999. And this resuscitated Disney's ailing reputation following a number of flops and misfires in the 70s and 80s, and it brought them back to kind of that golden era of animation that they had started. This has got to be Jeffrey Katzenberg, right?

Yeah, well, it started with Katzenberg. Yes. He left in 1984. and that actually relates to this movie. So Disney had been in a slump in the 80s. It had been worsened by the departure of their longtime animator Don Bluth, who left to start a rival production company. And he started kicking their butts with an American tale,

a movie that I loved, which beat out the Great Mouse Detective, which was Disney's mouse-based movie. Never heard of that. It's good. It's good. It's also good. At the box office. And at the same time,

internationally, Hayo Miyazaki and his Japanese productions with Studio Ghibli were starting to make waves internationally. So Disney had competition at home and abroad. But their fortunes changed in 1989 with, do you know which film this is, Lizzie? 89. That's not Little Mermaid, right? It is. Little Mermaid. Very good. Little Mermaid was a smash hit, and more importantly, it beat out Don Bluths, all dogs go to heaven, both critically and commercially. It became the highest grossing animated film to date. It won two Oscars, Best Song for Kiss the Girl.

So good. Great song. And Best Original Score. Disney then ripped off a run of hits like the animation industry had never seen before. So it was followed up with Beauty and the Beast in 1991. It was the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture. It broke Little Mermaid's Box Office Records. That was followed in 1992 by Aladdin, which again became the highest grossing animated film of all time.

And it became the highest grossing film of 1992. It was nominated for five Oscars. Then, of course, the Lion King in 1994, which again became the highest grossing animated film of all time, and was again the highest grossing film of that year and was nominated for four Oscars. Disney then had a little bit of a mid-decade swoon, just a little bit of a dip, with Pocahontas, the hunchback of Notre Dame, and Hercules, none of which were quite as well received, but Disney finished out strong with Moulon and Tarzan.

Tarzan became Disney's most successful film since the Lion King. Interesting. I would not have thought that that would have been the one that broke out of all those. Also, that's like the era that I think, that was like our Disney era where I was conscious and going to see these movies and everything. Mid to late 90s, absolutely. late 90s, really. Lion King I didn't see in theaters. I think Pocahontas was the first Disney movie I saw in theaters animated Disney film.

So speaking of The Lion King, it was directed by Roger Allers. Roger Allers had been a longtime animator at Disney, and he was trying to figure out what he wanted to do next. And he had just made their most successful film ever. Wait, I'm sorry. Chris can see my face right now because I'm confused. I am a fan of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. And I thought that Crystal Kong Minkoff's husband was the director of the Lion King. We'll get in. It had two directors. And Minkoff was kind of the second director with Roger Allers. So if you look it up, they're both their list. And that's not unusual for an animated film. Disney would often put two directors on a project because it's such an unwieldy experience.

He really rides that Lion King train. As he should. It's an amazing movie and they did a great job. And they were both very responsible for it. But we're going to focus on Alers because he ended up not getting the directing credit, but directing the first edition of the Emperor's New Groove. Okay. So Disney had been given a mandate to try to set upcoming films in other cultures. There was some criticism at the time that their films had become formulaic and they seemed to be afraid of that. And so Alers went in to meet with Tom Schumacher. He's going to come up again. He was the executive VP for Walt Disney feature animation at the time. Sorry, so they cast all white people as the Peruvian people.

Yeah, we're going to... They're set in other cultures. They're not actually featuring the people of other cultures. Okay. So they... Alers was in Tom Schumacher's office. There were a few photos on the wall. One of them was of Machu Picchu,

and he decided he wanted to do something around ink and culture. And so the story that came to him came in three parts. And only one of these will really seem relevant to the final film. Two of the parts were derivative, one original. First, he was fascinated by the Incan creation myth of Viracocha. I'm probably butchering that pronunciation. But that is the story of a god who brings light to the world by throwing a rope around a star and bringing it to Earth, a la Jimmy Stewart. And second, he likes the idea of adapting Prisoner of Zenda, a story about a prince and his cousin who are lookalikes that switch places, published in 1894 by Anthony Hope.

It's very similar to the Mark Twain novel, The Prince and the Pauper, or the Prince switches places with someone who looks like him. And third, he had come up with this character of Isma, a high priestess who wants to take over the kingdom and regain her youth. And that's obviously the element that carries through to the final film that you watched. According to Disney insider Jim Hill, who may or may not be a reliable source, but seems to know what he's talking about as he's been writing about Disney for a long time on his blog,

there was doubt within Disney animation offices as to whether or not this story was too familiar to modern audiences, a claim that I find interesting because all they've ever done is adaptations of pre-existing works and characters. Yeah, famously, the Lion King is Hamlet. Yeah. There's many other examples. What's funny is Disney claims that the Lion King

was their first original animated feature, even though it's just Hamlet. It's like aggressively Hamlet. Yeah. But what is true is that by this point, Allers had achieved kind of a mythic status at Disney because he had saved the Lion King, which had undergone a multi-year, arduous development and rewrite process,

and it had apparently the most story problems of any Disney film since Pinocchio, which was made in the 40s. And then, of course, it emerged to become their most successful film ever. So he took chicken shit and turned it into chicken salad or chicken gold, as they say. We'll be covering the Lion King on a later episode. I'm not going to go into the details. So the studio was confident that Alers could turn this into a hit, and the story was not called the Emperor's New Groove.

It was called Kingdom of the Sun. Okay. Which made more sense based on the original story, which I will pitch to you now. This was the original story as I've been able to piece together. Manco, a handsome, greedy, and selfish prince, is bored with his life in the palace. One day he meets,

it might have been poncho, it might have been pacha. We'll say Pacha, a llama herder, who is his exact doppelganger? Manko convinces Pacha to trade places with him for a day. He wants to parent trap, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, the swap was witnessed by the evil court sorceress Isma, who then turns Manko after he swapped places into a llama. She then blackmails Pacha into silence,

saying that if he reveals he's not the prince, he'll be beheaded. and then she forces him to help her summon Supe, the god of death, who is going to destroy the sun and plunge the world into eternal darkness because the sun has given her wrinkles, and she's convinced that if she destroys the sun, it will make her young again. Meanwhile, Pacha falls in love with the princess, the emperor's fiancé, Nina, who thinks he's still the emperor and has become a better man, and also, meanwhile, the emperor, who is now a llama, learns, humility and falls in love with a female llama herder. I thought you were going to say a female llama.

Yeah, no llama. The emperor llama and his llama herder lover work together to foil the witch's plans and the movie climaxes with Pacha lassoing the sun, like the Vita Kocha, pulling it back to earth, bringing lightness back to the world, defeating Supay the end. So it's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot of movie. And it's sweeping and cinematic and somewhat serious.

It's thematic. It's like the Lion King. And it is very much not the quippy, sarcastic, slapsticky, final film that we, as audiences got to see. Now, many of the elements that made it into the final film were in place under Allers. David Spade was cast as Manco. It's very similar to the Kusko character, but he was not the lead. Pacha was considered the protagonist. Eartha Kitt was obviously perfectly slated to play Isma.

Yes. Although apparently Michael Eisner, the CEO of Disney at the time, pushed for Barbara Streisand. And they went so far as meeting with her, but then they cast Eartha Kitt. I mean, I don't, like, could Babs do this? Sure, she's terrifying. But Eartha Kitt was way more fun. Could you give our audience, Lizzie, just like a little bit of Earth, like, who Eartha Kitt is? I'm not going to be able to get a ton right off the top of my head.

She's, well, first of all, she's an amazing singer. She has a very distinctive voice, which you obviously will hear when you watch this movie. If you've ever heard, I think Smoke gets in your eyes is a famous Eartha Kit song, I believe. But she also was Catwoman, not the first Catwoman, right? But she was an early one. She was an early Catwoman. I can't remember if she was the first. I think she was the second.

And actually it was... I think that's right. After Julian Numar. Yeah, my understanding, it's really horrible. But they didn't want Catwoman and Batman to see. like they could ever have a romantic interest because she was a villain. And so they cast an African-American woman because then they thought, oh, no white man would fall in love with her, which is awful. But she was incredible and she's a unique talent, a triple threat dancer,

actress, singer. And so she's remarkable. She's great. She's wonderful. She's an icon. Go look her up. She's also like super, super hot and just clearly having a blast in this. So I love her. Absolutely. So, Barbara Streisand. They didn't go to her. We just did a quick rewrite. It's on video.

The role of Pacha went to the then relatively unknown, not John Goodman. Give me a hint. Give me a hint. I'm so bad at these games, but I want to play. He'd just been in Wes Anderson's first movie.

Well, not Jason Schwartzman. That makes no sense. That was Wes Anderson's second movie. Well, what's West Anderson's first movie? Bottle Rocket. Owen Wilson? Owen Wilson. I got one.

As Pacha, hot off of bottle rocket. And rounding out the cast, Manko's love interest, female llama herder, Mata, was to be voiced by Laura, is it prepon, prepon of that 70 show, prepon? Yeah. And Carla Gugino was going to play Nina, the princess. Okay. And that rounded out to cast. So Mark Dindal, who had just directed Cats Don't Dance, an animated film from Warner Brothers that I've never seen. No, that's not a movie.

It's a real movie, apparently. He was brought in a couple years into the development process to co-direct under Roger Allers, which, as I mentioned, that's normal for Disney to have a couple of directors on these movies. Randy Fulmer became the producer, master animator Andreas Deja, who famously had done a number of Disney villains, including Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, Jafar from Aladdin and Scar from the Lion King, was brought in to do his first female villain, Isma. Did he do, um, is it cross? as well?

He did not do cronk. There was a different animator that was assigned to Crank. Interesting, because Crank is very Gastonny, although he is sharper in places. Yeah, there was a big discussion around the size of Crank's chin in their development phase,

and I'm glad they went as big as they did. I think it's super fun. Later down the line, Allers would bring in the post-police sting to provide the original music for the movie just like Elton John had done for the Lion King.

Sting is not Elton. and John. He's... He's great. He's great. Sting's great. He's very talented. He's wonderful.

But, like, this feels like a Spider-Man turn-off the dark situation where they hire you two to do a Broadway musical. Like, Sting plus, like, Disney musical, I don't know if it really makes sense. Well, I would say this.

On paper, this is a dream team. Great voice cast, great directors, great animators, a great musician, and the biggest best animation studio in the world backing them. So the question becomes, what the hell went wrong? because the movie I just described is completely different than the movie that you saw.

And that's a complicated question. But it starts with the way the animated films are made, which is iteratively. To explain, I'd like to play a clip from Michael Arndt, who is the screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3, and The Force Awakens. Here is Michael Arndt describing how Pixar movies were made throughout the 90s and all the way until he did Toy Story 3. this is not going to be identical to the way that Disney movies are made, but it's very similar. So what happens at Pixar is step one is you write the script and you do a couple of drafts just to get the basics of the story into place.

But then pretty quickly, step two is that script gets turned into what's called a set of reels, which is a very rough version of the movie using hand-drawn sketches and temp music and temp dialogue. And when the first set of reels is finished, step three is you go into the main theater at Pixar and you screen it for the so-called brain trust of Pixar writers and directors. And then you go into a conference room called West Side One and you have your story meeting. Step four. And for me, those story meetings were just incredibly great because at their best, they're like this total creative free for all where like everybody is helping you out.

And some of the smartest storytellers on the planet are just sitting around and telling you how to make your story better. So you have your story meeting and you get all these ideas about what's working in your story, what's not working. And then you have to go back to your office and write a new draft. And then the artists and the editors turn that new draft into a new set of reels and the process repeats itself. You do a draft reels meeting, draft reels meeting. So the stories at Pixar are like cathedrals. They're really the expression of a whole community rather than just a single individual. Okay, so with Toy Story 3, we made seven sets of reels,

which means we basically made the entire film from start to finish seven times before it went to final animation. Wow. So that's not unusual. That's a pretty normal number for a Pixar movie to go through. famously, Turning Red actually was the fastest developed Pixar movie ever in terms of its speed from original pitch to final delivery because usually it takes years and years of writing and rewriting to get these movies right.

And if you'd like to hear more, you can go to Michael Arndt, A-R-N-D-T, check out his YouTube channel where he just so generously walks you through everything that they did wrong on Toy Story 3, and you can see the original reels for earlier versions, of the movie. Oh, that's cool. And it's really cool. So definitely check that out.

Now, Disney's process is not identical to this, but it is very similar in that after the development process, the director and the animators move into an extended production phase. The movie's written. Voice actors are brought in to perform the scenes. The animators create these story reels, animatics showing rough depictions of the action. These rough versions are then given sound design and music, and then they're screened for both executives and eventually test audiences. Then, based on the feedback, the movie is rewritten.

re-recorded, reanimated, rinse, and repeat. That's crazy. Yeah, and they do, they do do it. It's not necessarily always the whole movie through. There are instances in researching this where it was clear they just screened the new Act 1, for example, for the executive. So they do take it in pieces sometimes. Now, Michael Arndt describes the story meetings after the screenings very lovingly.

However, Rob Mincough, the co-director of Lion King, famously described the screening process as, quote, as if someone chops off your hands in front of a crowd, then pulls your pants down, and you're forced to stand there with bleeding stumps unable to pull your pants up, which I did think was very funny. I already liked him from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,

and now I like him more. He's very nice to his wife. And he's just a very straightforward guy, it seems like. So to be clear, these movies aren't good at first. The first, second, third, sixth time you watch them through, they might not be working. There's a book by Ed Catmill, one of the founders of Pixar called Creativity Inc.

That talks about the nitty-gritty of Pixar's process. You can learn more there. The point is it's not unusual for a project to start out in a very rough place. But the hope is that by the fourth, fifth, sixth iteration, you feel like you're getting traction and moving in the right direction. So it seems like for the first stretch of development and production on Kingdom of the Sun, Allers was more or less left alone to make the major decisions and shape the movie in the way that he saw fit. This may have been partly because the studio was fighting a larger battle at the time.

Lizzie, you mentioned Jeffrey Katzenberg. So in 1994, Jeffrey Kastenberg left Disney to start a little company. Do you know what it's called? DreamWorks, Quibi? DreamWorks, SKG, the precursor to Quivvy, with Stephen Spielberg and David Geffen. If you didn't know, the SKG is for Spielberg, Katzenberg, Geffen. I did not know that. Yeah, quick aside, Katzenberg literally wanted to destroy Disney.

at this point because he hated Michael Eisner. He hated Michael Eisner. Michael Eisner was the CEO at the time who famously never put a succession plan in, repeating history with Bob Igarotini bit. Katzenberg felt he was owed the number two position. Eisner eventually passed over him. Katzenberg left the company.

He was owed $60 million in severance pay. Eisner basically refused to pay him. Katsenberg sued Disney and was awarded $280 million in court. Yeah. By the same time... Fun fact, Lord Farquod and Shrek is allegedly based on Michael Eisner because Jeffrey Katzenberg is a petty bitch and I love it. That's funny.

Pixar at the time was also ramping into a powerhouse following the success of Toy Story and Disney was losing artists to these rivals while Roy Disney and Michael Eisner apparently at the time were at odds about the overall direction of the company. So there's a lot going on in the world around Disney. Now, to his credit, Allers made it clear from the beginning that he really wanted to make a movie that captured ink and culture and mythology. There was a lot of that in his original story. He and his team visited Machu Picchu. They drew their design inspiration from textiles and stonework that they photographed there and they brought back.

And apparently this all just kind of changed and fell apart when they screened the story reels. for Pete Schneider and Tom Schumacher, the heads of Walt Disney animation. What was quickly apparent was that despite Aler's best efforts and his dedication to telling this story that was meaningful and true to Incan culture, the movie just wasn't working. And despite multiple iterations, it continued to not work.

It's just a lot. It's a lot for kids to try and digest. That's exactly right. So there's a wonderful oral history on the making of the Emperor's New Groove that Vulture published two years ago. And here's a quote, from producer Randy Fulmer on what the problem was with the movie.

Quote, with Kingdom of the Sun, it seemed so promising at first. There were so many elements, all of them, which were fun and good. Ismo was terrific. Sting was doing fantastic music. You can listen to a lot of Sting's music. Some of it was published on the soundtrack for the movie, even though it didn't make it into the film, and some of it's available on YouTube.

It's great. It's very reminiscent of what Phil Collins ended up doing in Tarzan. It sounds very similar. Sting probably did a beautiful job. I think he did a good job. I don't think it ultimately. fit the movie they ended up making, but I could see how it could fit a more emotional movie. Sure.

That had been what they'd done. Continuing full with Fulmer's quote, but I think Roger tried to hang on to too many elements. I met a very nice woman on a plane once coming back from New York where we'd recorded with Sting, and she was like, oh, you work at Disney? What are you doing? Blah, blah, blah. Oh my, so what's the movie about? I feel like I talked until we got to Los Angeles trying to explain it all.

And I realized, okay, this is not good. There's too much here. Yeah. And the craziest thing, Lizzie, I've buried the lead, is that all of this was captured on camera because Trudy Stiler, Sting's wife, has been directing a documentary about the making of this movie the entire time since they brought him on. Uh-oh. This documentary is called The Sweatbox, and Disney bought it, and you can't find it, but I found it, and I watched it. Is it called the sweatbox because this was so horrible? It's called the sweatbox because that's what they call the room above the animation screening

room where you go in with the executives and they tell you what they thought about the story reels. That's what they call the sweatbox. So roughly a year into the development process, Roger Allers has the idea to bring Sting to do the music. Why Sting? Back to the vulture oral history, according to Allers. Quote, on one of his albums, he had something that was Latin American sounding, end quote. Trudy Stiler approached Disney and said, can I make a documentary about my husband

making this soundtrack for the movie? And Disney animation executive Tom Schumacher was terrified because this animation process takes so long that he was like, oh my God, he's going to leave the project before we finish. And so he told her, sure, come on in,

make this documentary, hoping that it would keep sting along for the entire ride, not ever thinking that the film was going to go through anything disastrous. and oh my God, the footage is amazing. She films in all of these meetings where the executives are tearing the movie apart. She's recording with the director after the fact.

I mean, she gets everything. And I don't know how Disney gave her this access, but after premiering at, I think it was the Tribeca Film Festival, Disney quickly bought the rights and vaulted it. So I don't know if they're going to release it at any point. It's been in the vault for 20 years. You can still find it on YouTube. if you search really hard.

Trudy Dunn leaked it. You know she did that. Yeah, I think she did. Now, due to Disney's litigious nature, I'm not going to play any clips from it here, but I will be reading some quotes. So, after this screening with the executives, I couldn't figure out exactly which screening this was.

The team assembles and Tom Schumacher, again, head of Walt Disney animation, does not mince words when it's describing his experience watching the film. Quote, for me, so much of the, movie isn't working. I just don't know who I'm supposed to care about, what I'm watching, the pace seems really, really wacky, like just so leaden, and I'm not having much fun. And again, this is all on camera. He then pivots and says that he's relieved that the two things

that are working in the movie are the love song and the llama song, and then you cut wide to reveal that Sting is sitting in the room at the table with them. And it's pretty funny because Sting says that he actually really liked the movie. And they're just like, yeah, we don't, we don't care. And so the most brutal aspect of this is that then Roger Allers immediately had to leave the meeting and do an interview with Trudy about how it felt to have his movie crushed in front of him. And to his credit, he's very forthright but upbeat.

And he's like, you know, you get steamrolled a little bit and then you shake yourself out. And that's just the process. And there's also an interview shortly after with Sting where he realizes, because he thought he was kind of done at this point when they just screened the movie once and he realizes that he's going to be on this project a lot longer than he expected and it's really funny. It's kind of like Job

in Arrested Development, like I made a horrible mistake. Well, there is already a blues in this story so I was waiting for that. Exactly. So there's some conflicting information between the documentary and the Vulture oral history in terms of specific order of events, but I've done my best to merge

the two going forward. So according to Story Super Steve Anderson. It was after the fourth screening that the studio stepped in, and they said, we're making a change. So the entire animation and story team assembles. They then kick everyone out of the room, except for Roger Allers and Mark Dindall, the two directors of the film. They basically said, you know, Roger, if this wasn't you, we would have pulled the plug on this movie already. And they've spent, I believe, $25 million up to this point in just getting this far.

This is when Schumacher and Schneider did something kind of unprecedented. They split the story team into two factions. So they gave half of the animators and story supervisors to Allers and they gave the other half to Dindal and they said,

each of you come up with what you think the best version of this movie is going forward. And basically it seemed like there were two camps. There was the camp that was kind of committed to Alers' vision. And Alers kind of felt like the movie was working. He just disagreed with the executives. And it doesn't seem like Dindal disagreed with him. They just, he was the other directors. They were like, you just go crazy. Come up with anything.

Something new. We need a new direction for this movie. So to be clear, there was, there's sometimes a rumor that, like, people mutinied on Allers. That's not the case. It seems like everyone just loved working for him. And he seemed like a really wonderful man. And it was just the executives that did this bake-off. And so apparently this became a pretty common practice at Disney in the mid-2000s, and a lot of ex-Disney employees kind of blame the subsequent lull in their films that kind of lasted through 2005 to the management's inability to make a decision. And they say, like, Katzenberg was kind of a pain. But when he said, Pocahontas, it's dances with wolves meets Romeo and Julia. That's what we're doing. It just gave everyone a clear direction to Rowan so they could at least make a coherent movie. So the point is

this is becoming extremely stressful for everyone involved. They've taken this harmonious team and pitted them against one another, trying to get them to develop two different versions of this movie. So according to Allers in the documentary, it was Chris Williams, who got one of the story credits for the movie, who was a storyward artist at the time, who ultimately came up with the idea that became the Emperor's New Groove, the simplified version.

And so basically after three or four weeks, They had six new outlines for the movie, and there are these rumors that the employees, the rumors are flying throughout Walt Disney animation. Here are some quotes from the documentary. Quote, I heard it's set in Jamaica now, and we have to add dreadlocks to all the characters. Next quote, I heard it's set in Nebraska and the llamas are sheep. Next quote, I heard Sting backed out because he's too busy with his album. And more terrifyingly, a lot of these animators have been, they're actually assigned to individual characters,

and their characters may no longer exist. in the movie, meaning they're off the project and they have to go find other work. Yeah, that's horrible. This is not a conducive environment to like. No, and you can tell people are just so scared at this point. Yeah. And so basically, after a month, everyone comes back together and Roger gets up first to pitch Tom and Pete, and who, by the way, seem like also lovely men.

Like, they're very funny, these two executives. I don't think it comes from a bad place, but, like, I have to say this thing of, this thing of not having the guts to like make an executive decision when you are in an executive position. It's hard, but I feel like I've seen that that can go so wrong. I think they did eventually. I think this was the unique example. They do make an executive decision in just a moment here. I think they literally, no one could figure this thing out.

And so they were like, we need to outsource it a little bit and get some fresh ideas in the room. So apparently Roger went first. He stood up and he pitched a bunch of new ideas on how to adjust the existing story. And then Chris Williams says, quote, then we got up and pitched, even more than probably pitching a story or new characters, we were pitching a tone. We were suggesting a radically different tone than what kingdom of the sun had been. A lot of what was funny about it was just how preposterous it was. And I'd never heard Tom and Peter laugh before. They were almost literally on the floor laughing. And you felt which way the wind was blowing. And Roger was incredibly gracious. He stepped in and

said, I can feel which way this is going. And I totally understand. I appreciate what's good about what they're doing. So he made it easier on Tom and Peter. He made it easier on all of us. And after working for a very long time on this other movie, rather than thinking about himself, he thought about everybody else in the room. And so after four years of development, and by the way, this pitch meeting was the day after he dropped his eldest child off at college. Oh no. So after four years of development, over 30 minutes of fully completed animation and $25 million spent, Roger Allers resigned from the film. And he handed the reins to Mark Dindal. And apparently with no resentment or ill will. He was very supportive. He probably wanted to be off this job at this point.

Yeah. I heard Michael Eisner was apparently very pissed off that he left, but honestly, I can't imagine staying on it. And there's just some great moments from the documentary, very office-esque. There's a moment where Peter Schneider is trying to justify the change in direction, and he just doesn't get his words right. And the quote is, yes, we've made a change, but it's not like we've killed people. It's not as though, well, we have devastated them for the moment, but they're still part of the family. It's true, but it's very funny. And then they smash cut to Roger Allers watching a sunset alone on the beach. And it's very funny.

Wow, Trudy. Yeah, Trudy had some funny moments. And speaking of, quick update on Sting, Randy Fulmer then calls Sting. He's like, this is on camera, hey, buddy. So none of the music you've written is going to be used. But we'd still love for you to finish the movie because you signed that contract. And he's clearly so nervous and uncomfortable just calling Sting up being like, we need you to keep doing this.

So at this point, we're well into 1998, and the studio has a mid-2000 release date that can't be moved because they have licensing deals with McDonald's for Kingdom of the Sun Happy Meals. And if they don't deliver a movie and make good on that deal, they're going to pay a hell of a fine

for breaking their contract. So they have 18 months to write, animate, mix, master, and deliver a feature film. They did push the release date six months replacing the original release date with Dinosaur. So it was supposed to release kind of like early summer. And then they pushed to release...

What the hell is Dinosaur? You know, I don't care. Look it up. It's a 3D animated. It was their first, I think, 3D animated Disney movie. No. It's not great. So this pushed to December.

But still, they have 18 months to write, voice record, and animate an entire feature film, something you usually do over a period of five years. Yeah. Okay. So now they bring in the heavy hitters. David Reynolds, he would go on to write Finding Nemo. He's brought in. He had been...

a writer on, I think Letterman. He's a studio writer. He was writing on Tarzan, a Bugs Life, Atlantis, Toy Story 2. He comes in, and they form this new writer's room. And the advantage of this writer's room is that no one feels beholden to the original ideas behind this movie. They're just in survival mode. Like, anything can go in this movie.

And so as Don Han, an executive producer on the film, described it, it was probably the funniest writer's room you could possibly have a table of people who had nothing to lose. And there are some hilarious moments of them pitching ideas to each other in this documentary. like the whole gag about the trampoline salesman. They're like, Isma turns into a kitten and she's falling from the sky.

She can't die. And then the one of the guys is like, trampoline salesman at the bottom. Like, you're going to tell me you don't need these trampolines now? And like they just come up with all this stuff on the spot. Yeah, you can tell. There's some things in this where you're like,

did they just cut a whole sequence? Yeah, exactly. Like that thing where they don't explain how they got back to at the end, how Isma and Gronk, uh, cronk get back. Yeah, he's like, that would be a plot hole.

And then they just move on. Yeah. So good. It was funny, but I was like... It's very meta, the whole movie. So they're under the gun, and they're trying to figure out

what of any elements of the original film are working. And it seems to be there are two things that people agree. Eartha Kit, as Isma, everyone loves. Clearly. They know she's electric.

And everybody really liked David Spade as Manko, like the supporting character that they thought he was very funny. So they throw out both love stories. Carla Jijino and Laura Priepon are cut from the film, and they cut Owen Wilson's Pacha

They ditched the entire Prince and the Popper idea. And instead, they decided to make Pacha the opposite of David Spade's Cusco, this big, lumbering, genuine family man who's selfless. They designed the character. And then they're all sitting around a table and they're like, okay, so he's kind of Cusco's father figure he never had. Who would you want to be your dad? John Goodman.

And everyone looks at each other and they go, John Goodman. And so Goodman apparently took the job, excited at the opportunity to work with both David Spade and Eartha Kit, not realizing that he would actually never be in a voice session with either of them. so he never met or interacted with either of them throughout the entire process, which was very sad. I mean, this is where David Spade thrives is when you have a good foil for him, a la, obviously, Chris Farley, or in this case, John Goodman. Yep.

So David Spain's Manco was turned into the film's protagonist, called now Kusko, and so he's, and he's now the lead. David Spade, in the documentary, addresses the change of name, saying they changed the name from Manco because, quote, I think it means pussy in Japanese. that's not what bothered them. It means bad movie in Turkish, and they didn't want that. So David Spade was taking this very seriously.

I love David Spade. It was very funny. They decided to push everything to be as comedic as possible, which meant Isma's character went from being a more serious, classical Disney villain into being, like, the hyperbolic villain that she is now. And apparently, like, even the decision to, like, change her lab to call it the secret lab,

and they, like, go down in the lab coats and goggles. And apparently they were just like, can we do this? And they were like, we don't know. So they brought her to the kid in and they started pitching her the sequence. And then she just started reading the dialogue off the bottom of the storyboards. And they were like, oh, this is great. It's going to work perfectly. Like she can make anything work.

It's true. She is so funny. And at this point, she was in her early 70s at this point. And apparently she had more energy than anybody else. And there's video footage of her doing her voice sessions. She's amazing. And she would do these stretches where she would pull her leg up behind her head while she was, like, recording. She's incredible.

She's an absolute force to be reckoned with. But one of the costs of changing Isma's character is that Andreas Deja, the famous animator, decided to leave the project. He wasn't interested in this new version of Isma, so he went to work on Lilo and Stitch instead. So they did lose some animators. They also then removed all of the story's mythological elements.

They pulled out the origin story of the sun. And as a result, there's this imbalance between the Cusco-Pacha storyline and the Isma storyline. Yeah. And so enter my... favorite character from the movie, Cronk. Yes.

Incredible. It's voiced by Patrick Warburton. Puddy from Seinfeld. Yep. And he is the most beloved character from this movie. There are a bunch of memes of him now. Like, he's lived on in the zeitgeist.

So funny. And of course, he's not been mentioned until this point because he did not exist until this point. So storyboard artist Chris Williams had created an Ophish Guard character who showed up in a couple of scenes, and he was obsessed with his own

physical fitness. That was his one, like, redeeming trait. And apparently every time they worked him into a scene, like, everybody really loved him. And so then the screenwriter, David Reynolds, was really loved him. And one day, it was just like, oh, my God, I know who Kronk is. It's putty from Seinfeld. And he was like, we got to get Patrick Warburton to come in and play this character. But apparently Tom Schumacher, the executive, was like, we just spent four months eliminating characters. We can't add characters back into this movie. And so Dave Reynolds, was like, I have to save Kronk. And so he wrote the dinner scene

where Kronk is more invested in the dinner and she's more invested in the poisoning. It's so good. It's so good. He wrote this scene. And then Chris Williams storyboarded it and added the bit about coffee and dessert at the end. And they came in and they pitched it to Peter Schneider

and Tom Schumacher, Hubell's like, we're in tears again over it. And they said, okay, fine, you can keep Kronk. So Kronk barely made it into the movie. And then they bring Warburton in. They wrote it for him. they bring him in, and it was like this match, he's so good in these vocal sessions. And so, for example, Mark Dindal, the director was like, what if Kronk sings his own theme music,

like, as he's like getting Kusko out of the palace? And Warburton's like, and they're like, do you want us to write? We can have Sting, write you something. And Warburton's like, I don't know, I got you. And he just improvised his own theme song and they just animated over it. And this is where apparently the movie becomes this big departure from every animated film that Disney had done until this point because they basically just said, we're going to embrace improvisation.

And that's where a lot of these weird off-the-wall jokes came from. Dave Reynolds, who was a writer for a late-night TV show, had a microphone that connected to the director Mark Dindal's ear, and he would just pitch him jokes during the vocal sessions. Obviously, David Spade would do a lot of riffing, and they said they could not use, like, 95% of it, because it was either wildly inappropriate or extremely topical. And they're like, it's a Disney film, it's timeless.

Like, nobody's going to understand this, George Bush reference that you're like doing right now. Also, I did think this was funny. Apparently, David Spade was very low energy in the booth unless he was being filmed, which they noticed, like, went on days the documentary who was there. He was high energy and on days they weren't there, he was really low energy. So they just started setting up a camera that wasn't recording to like be in front of him in the booth so that he thought he was being filmed at all times.

So basically, what you can really see in the documentary is that like once everybody started understanding the tone of the movie that they were making, it just started clicking behind the scenes. And so I mentioned the trampoline salesman joke. They redesigned the Incan City around Cusco's personality, hence the Las Vegas vibes at the beginning of the movie. They're like, what about a Vegas Machu Picchu? And apparently they all simultaneously had the idea to have Tom Jones sing the opening number like a Las Vegas set piece. Which hits you like a slap in the face. When that started, I was like, is that Tom Jones? It is. And there's a great footage. of him singing it in the studio and all the execs are like dancing and having a grand old time.

Super fun. According to David Reynolds, Randy Fulmer, producer, came in one day and told them that Disney ESPN was going to cover the world double-dutch jump roping championships and Disney wanted to know if they could add double-dutch into the story. And they were like, no problem. Three minutes later, cronks double-dutching with the kids. And there were these insane sequences that they animated that never even made it into the movie. So they wanted to give Adam West, who played Batman, obviously.

back in the day, a cameo. So there was apparently this whole sequence where Pacha takes Cusco into his village, tells the villagers that this llama thinks he's the emperor just go along with it. But one character, Adam West's like weird old man character, actually believes that he's the emperor. And he's like, Cusco, me and the rebels

are going to help you escape. Except it turns out that he's just insane and his army's just a bunch of scarecrows that he like bring into the village. Why did that get cut? That sounds great. Yeah, I think it was just for time at a certain point. But apparently the executive

are still feeling the heat. Tom Schumacher and Pete Schneider are getting a lot of heat from Eisner, and they came into Fulmer's office at one point, and they were like, I'm not going to go across the street and tell Eisner that we spent $40 million and don't have anything to show for it, so you better not screw this up, basically. So this all culminates in another screening for Schumacher and Schneider. They show the new act one to executives, and they love it. And they say after the meeting that they had extremely low expectations. It's very funny. And then but that they're thrilled with the humor and excited at the direction, so keep going. But there was one person who was not excited about this new direction.

Do you have any guesses? This is who that was, Susie? It's got to be sting. It's got to be sting. So Sting. Poor Sting. What's his song? What's his sort of sad, slow fields of barley or something?

Fields of gold. Yeah. South the fields of barley. Did they listen to that before they hired? No, just the Latin thing. Okay. So he had signed up for a two-year job writing beautiful songs for an epic animated film and now had spent four years writing a David Spade Buddy comedy.

It's very, very different. So Sting sent a letter of resignation to the studio and Randy Fulmer had to call him and convince him to stay. Apparently, they say he quit five times. Randy Fulmer had to wrangle him back every single time. I think mostly because Trudy Stuyler was still shooting this documentary. They kept working through kind of the. remaining story problems. They struggled a lot on how much to incorporate Pach's family. Apparently, there's an interview with the poor animator who animated Potch's wife that's so funny where he's just

like, well, Mark just told me she's dead. And then it's like, and then the next day, it's like, no, she's back. And then the next day, it's like, there's even more of her than before. And then Mark pulled me aside. He's like, we had to kill her again. And it's just this like back and forth thing. And so they finish this story real version of the full movie. And it's time to screen it for Michael Eisner, CEO of Walt Disney Pictures. of Disney. Lord Farquod. Lord Farquod. And Eisner is apparently very nervous about this movie. And to him, he's nervous because it seems like it's similar to Hercules, which also had a lot of humor and was not like a classic Disney film. And it had opened to a much lower box office than Pocahontas, the hunchback of Notre Dame, the Lion King.

However, working in the production's favor was the fact that Eisner didn't have the capital, literally, to pull the plug on a movie that was $40 million deep. and had a licensing deal with McDonald's. So not only had Eisner and Disney just had to pay out $280 million to Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Eisner had also suffered a big reputational blow when he had brought CIA co-founder Michael Ovitz in to be the president of Walt Disney Pictures, despite some hesitations from the board

that Michael Ovitz only lasted like less than 18 months at the company before it was clear it wasn't a good fit, and he basically got almost $150 million in payout and stock options. Dude, we've got to get fired by a major studio. I know, I know, I know. Like, that's all I want. If all I have to do is show up and do a bad job for 18 months, I can do that. I know.

I'll make it six months. What are we doing? It can be cheaper. It can be cheaper. With over $400 million lost in a couple of bad executive exits, he needed to make sure that the Disney machine kept printing money. And so writing off the Emperor's New Groove wouldn't be a great look, especially considering that the movie had been announced at a shareholders meeting

a couple of years prior, Kingdom of the Sun, to be directed by Lion King, Christ figure, Roger Allers. So explaining what happened to that movie would not be great. However, after the screening, it wasn't Eisner that got everyone nervous. It was Sting, who wrote another letter, quote, gentlemen, when you've achieved genuine human values, you don't need a theme park or a water slide. That's my Australian, Sting. I've been aware for a while now that my vision of the world

and Disney's may be at odds. I can only be candid that there's something intrinsically faulty with this film and I find it very difficult to continue working on something that goes against my beliefs. I offer my views humbly

and I look forward to your response. So Sting... I understand. Sting hates the water slides in this movie. The original ending was that Cusco doesn't build his water slide on Pacha's property. He builds his theme park

on the hill next to it. That's still where it ends. Well, he builds a... a shack there. He doesn't build a theme park. He builds a waterslide explicitly. Also, this just tells me Sting hates fun. Sting's basically like, you guys have like stripped all the culture from this movie. You're basically just using ink and. Yeah, he makes a couple of good points. But the production basically takes it as like, Sting doesn't like the theme park. Let's just cut the theme park.

And like they're very funny in the dock because Sting's wife's filming them. So Roy Disney's like, you know, when I saw that theme park, I had the same thought. That's does not belong in a Disney film. The owner of Disney theme parks is like, this theme bark rubbed me the wrong. That's not what Disney's about. So anyway, let's keep moving on. They then changed the movie's name to the Emperor's New Groove.

They drove to Sting's House, showed him the finished film. It's really awkward. They watched it with him together, and they videotaped it. And it's just incredible. And again, they changed the ending to appease him, and he agreed to stay on the project for the same. sixth time. Really quick thing.

Mark Schaman was brought on to write the score for the film. He was an accomplished composer. When Harry met Sally, City Slickers, Adam Family, a few good men, Sleepless in Seattle. They then tested the nearly fully animated film with a real audience, and it didn't perform very well. But at this point, they couldn't change anything except for the score. So they fired Mark Schaman,

and they brought John Debney in to rescore the movie and to focus more on the humor of the movie. and I listened to the original Mark Schaman score in the documentary, and I think that it wasn't quite right, and if he'd been given more time, I'm sure he would have been able to get there, but they were just under the gun. And it's just,

I want to mention it because it happens all the time, where you get to the final product, and David always tells me this story. I don't remember which composer it was, basically saying that a director was telling him, like, the music needs to be faster, and the composer realized what the director was actually saying, was this actor needs to run faster,

but he could no longer give that direction. So, in the end, And over 400 artists, 300 technicians and production personnel worked on the film. There were another 120 cleanup artists, and they would take the animator's first drawings, put paper over it, trace a new cleaner drawing. I mean, how much more is that than a normal animated movie? No, I don't think it's not more. They cycled through more people as a result of how long it went, but I don't think this is necessarily that unusual. the number of drawings they did was unusually high

because they effectively animated two different movies at the end. Now, in the end, Disney marketing, the problem was they had this weird, very funny movie and they had no idea how to market it because it doesn't really have any sort of traditional story at this point. They didn't want to lean on the llama angle because it was like it's a movie about a llama.

We don't really get it. And they didn't want to lean on the ink and culture angle because DreamWorks had just released the Road to Eldorado, If you remember that animated film from 2000, not a lot of people saw it, and it's rumored that Katzenberg based El Dorado on the early work that Kingdom of the Sun had done at Disney,

and he was trying to beat Disney out at the box office as a result. Well, it couldn't be on that one. However, in the end, Disney basically treated the Emperor's New Groove like a sacrificial lamb because they had another movie set to premiere that Thanksgiving, which was the live action 102 Dalmatians. And so they put most, of their marketing dollars behind 102 Dalmatians, and then Emperor's New Groove was released

two or three weeks later on December 10th to a very quiet $9 million at the box office. It came in fourth behind, and I love this lineup, what women want, dude wears my car, and how the Grinch stole Christmas. Wow, that was a nightmare time. It was tough. That was bizarre a world. It was tough. However, despite this disastrously slow start, so an opening weekend of $9 million, you think

you're screwed. Yeah. The movie actually had really good word of mouth. And so it eventually pulled in $90 million in the United States, which is a 10x multiplier from its first weekend, which just never happens. That's insane. I think it was a record at the time. And it made $80 million internationally for a total haul of $170 million.

Hell yeah. So it still lost money in its initial box. office run, but it was not nearly the bomb that people feared it was going to be. Wait, how did it lose money? Oh, its budget was $75 million? No. I think by the end, it came close to $100 million in its budget. Yeah, but include, maybe it was a little less, but just with how much time and man hours it went into it. Got it. Now, despite positive reviews overall, 86% I believe on Rotten Tomatoes, it was the least successful film that Disney had released since the 1980s, not including Fantasia 2000, which released a few months prior. And a lot of people say that Emperor's New

Groove is the movie that heralded the end of the Disney Renaissance. It did go on to become a beloved VHS title. It was very successful on VHS. And it actually became an internet phenomenon generating a surprising number of memes, including the image of Isma working on her potions. And that one actually popped up during the pandemic, which was like me working from home during the pandemic like, and then it's a photo of Isma in her lab. Pach's just right gesture is often compared to the Drake just right meme. And Cronk's wonderful, oh yeah, it's all coming together moment when he like figures out the mystery is also used in a number of memes.

I'm surprised that squeak, squeaky, squeak is not generating more memes. It's not a meme, but it's a great moment when he speaks squirrel. Yeah, it's very funny. Disney also later produced a direct-to-video sequel, Cronk's new groove, which proves how successful it was in its VHS form. And there was an animated series in the Disney Channel called Emperor's New School. And that was in, I think, 2006 and 7. And Eartha Kit, John Goodman, and Patrick Warburton all reprised their roles for that show, which I thought was great. Sting did receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song, for my funny friend and me, the song that plays over the credits

that Lizzie did not like. It's so weird. Bless his heart. He tried his best. He did. It doesn't really work in the tone of the movie. It's just, they did him zero favors by bringing Tom Jones back to come right in at the end. The perfect world reprise. Yeah, so it's, you know, Tom, Tom Jones being, it's not unusual. And then all of a sudden it's like the most depressing Sting songs to come in with no buffer. It's tough. Sting lost to Bob Dylan for things have changed from Wonder Boys.

Michael Douglas and Tofer Grace movie about prodigious authors. It's fine from the early 2000s. In the end, only three of his songs, kind of like two and a half, made it into the film.

Perfect World. Perfect World Reprise, performed by Tom Jones, and my funny friend and me, which sings over the credits, as I mentioned, a number of the songs that he wrote were released as part of the film's soundtrack, including Snuff Out the Light, performed by Eartha Kit.

It's really fun. And apparently they had fully animated it, and it was like a really fun sequence, but it got cut. I have not been able to find that animated sequence, but you can find the song. Walk the Lama Lama, performed by the Rascal Flats.

Oh. And One Day She'll Love Me, performed by Sting and Sean Colvin. Those are all available to listen to on Spotify or major music streamer. Listeners that are, are not of the same age group as us. I hope that this is very informative as to how we developed the way that we did.

Yes. Disney animation, as I mentioned, entered a bit of a dark period. As Pixar and DreamWorks dominated them at the box office for the next half decade to decade, as did Blue Sky Studios with the underrated Ice Age series. Loved Ice Age. It was super fun.

They lost $100 million Disney on Fantasia 2000, and then they had a string of, subpar performers with Atlantis, the Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, and Home on the Range. I've never heard of these. I saw Lost Empire and Treasure Planet in theaters. I liked them both. I did not see Home on the Range. Although Lilo and Stitch was a bright spot in this stretch, and I stand by that movie.

Orana means family. It's very good. Roger Allers went on to work on Lilo and Stitch as a story supervisor. However, he didn't ever direct another film for Disney. He did go on to direct open season co-direct for Sony in 2006, which is a 3D animated film that I never saw. And then he directed the independently produced The Prophet with Salma Hayek in 2014, which is an adaptation of a Lebanese novel, I believe. Randy Folmer, producer, went on to produce Chicken Little, but that left him so scarred. He left the animation industry to start his own custom-based guitar company.

which I did think was very cool. Mark Dindal, who is the credited director on the Emperor's New Groove, was actually originally set to direct Chicken Little. However, he was removed from the project when Disney came under the control, Disney feature animation came under the control of David Stanton, ending the reign of Tom Schumacher and Pete Schneider. He then had a number of projects that came close to happening or going into production only to shut down.

So Mark Dindal actually hasn't directed in another movie since the Emperor's New Groove, however, it has been reported that he is directing a Garfield adaptation starring Chris Pratt set to be released by Sony Pictures in February of 2024. Lizzie don't make that face. I want Mark to do well. I like him. I want him to do well, too, but I don't want that. It's fine.

Bertha Kitt passed away in 2008, just shy of her 82nd birthday of colon cancer. She was truly a wonderful talent and a force to be reckoned with and deserves more than just her own episode on this podcast. Patrick Warburton has gone on to star in innumerable projects and is amazing in all of them. He also had acted with Eartha Kitt into like black exploitation films shot in South Africa in like the 1980s and 15 years later was doing voiceover with her and he was just like art imitates life. What a weird choice for black exploitation movies in South Africa. Patrick Warden. He played like a hunky slave and she was like one of the women like fawning over him, I think, or something.

It was very weird. I'll post the title. And then David Spade's comment in the documentary that I love is that the Emperor's New Groove was the only time critics ever loved him. And it's true. It is one of only two pot fresh movies on Rotten Tomatoes across this entire career. The other one better be Tommy Boy. Tommy Boy is like 28%.

It's like a horribly review. Are you kidding me? I mean, it's super fun, but it's a terrible movie. That's not true. It's an amazing film. I don't care what anyone says. I love that movie. You and David Spade.

Emperor's New Groove remains his best-reviewed film by a mile. So that takes us to the end of the Emperor's New Groove, which began as Kingdom of the Sun and existed as many things in between. And I hope it gave you a little bit of an insight into how the sausage is made when it comes to animation. It is not smooth sailing and they have as much drama as any of the live action folks. So, Lizzie, having heard all of that, Would you like to lead us in discussing what went right? Sure.

I mean, it's obvious. It's obvious. Earth a kid. Yeah. The second I heard, I mean, we watched this with David and literally the first word out of her mouth, I was like, is that Earth a kid? Like, how did they get her? She's so good. Her voice is so distinctive.

And just every scene she was in, she is so funny. And it was just really fun to get to watch her for a whole movie. I didn't, I'm not going to lie. The first half of this movie, I was a little. I was pretty bored. I mean, maybe just because, like, it really is for kids. I think it's because the movie is, like, doesn't... It's unclear of what it is for a lot of it.

You know what I mean? That's true. It picks up big time when it comes back to Kusko, you know, two-thirds of the way through the movie. It comes back to where it begins in a very sort of meta moment. And from there forward, it's a blast and really fun. But up until then, it was a little boring, except for her to get.

Every time she showed up, I was like, this is great. The Kronk dinner scene is so good. And when Eartha Kahn is also great. When Isma is hitting the broccoli together, made me laugh very hard. For me, I mean, I love all the performers, but Earth Kunt's amazing in the fact that she stuck with the project. She could have left it.

They rewrote her character a number of times, but she gave it her all. And these vocal sessions, she's amazing. You guys can watch some of them on YouTube. I have to say the idea to make Kronk a character. That, David Reynolds, and Chris Williams, brilliant, and to get Patrick Warburton to do it. What a great character.

What a fun take on the hunk. We hadn't really seen it before. He's the original Hymbo in Walt Disney Animation, which I think is great. And I just thought that was a really wonderful, wonderful little twist of fate that he ended up in this movie. And I would have been so sad if he did not exist. So thank you guys for Kronk. I will squeakety squeak, squeakers, squeakish squeakers, squeak to squeak. Which, you know, those of you who know, no.

So that brings us to the end of this week's episode of what went wrong. Lizzie, do we have any announcements that we should say now that people are going to click out? A reviewer has finally given you what you have so not subtly been asking for for a very long time. This is from, well, it's spelled H-O-0-D-R-4-T, which of course reads as hood rat, which I did enjoy. And it says, first of all, I stopped listening to podcasts regularly. a long time ago, until I discovered this one. Now I'm always eagerly waiting for a new episode to drop. So, technically, I guess you could say that this is now my favorite podcast, period, full stop. That's what we like to hear. And remember that if you're super sad that there's only an episode

every two weeks, there's more than that on the Patreon. There is a bonus episode every month. So three episodes. And video. And we also just wrapped up our very first Patreon poll, our first audience selected episode is going to be the mummy! Lasers in the mummy! We will be announcing our next Patreon poll very soon. So please head on over to Instagram and send us suggestions for films that you'd like us to include on the poll or feel free to send us messages through Patreon if you

are a Patreon subscriber. Again, that poll is going to go up next month. So send us your suggestions, ASAP. And we also have to say a big, big thank you to our full stop supporters, Solman Cheyani and Tom Kristen. Thank you both so much. You are crazy to spend this much money on us, but we really appreciate it. Guys, thanks so much for listening. As always, we'll be back in two weeks. If you're interested, check out our Patreon. If not, you're dead to us. As always, I'm Chris Winterbauer. I'm Lizzie Bassett. Thanks so much.

We'll talk to you in two weeks. Bye. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, video content, and more. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman with cover art from Euthonio.