Not Just a Goof (2024)

1. Well, here we are, out on the open road,

2. retracing the steps of my boyhood. And here's Maxie!

3. - Not now, Dad.

4. Why are you doing this to me, Dad?

5. See, my dad's on the stupid father-son kickin'.

6. - Whoa!

7. This is the stupidest vacation!

8. You drive me from home, you jam me in this dumb car,

9. then drive a million miles away!

10. Hey, Max.

11. You know, maybe Max isn't all the things that you think a son should be,

12. but… he loves me.

13. So are you rolling? Uh, no.

14. Okay, I'm gonna play you guys something, okay?

15. Hey! Where did everybody go?

16. You guys remember this?

17. This played on The Goofy Movie VHS tape

18. before the movie started.

19. - It's Dr. Looney's Remedy. - I can't say I recall that.

20. All right, Chris, we're gonna start the movie

21. with you telling us how much The Goofy Movie means to you.

22. All right, I'm slating. - Okay.

23. Chris, can you give me some levels real quick?

24. Yeah. Um…

25. Test one, two. These are levels. I just got so nervous.

26. I don't like being on camera.

27. We're doing it for the fans, and we're fans.

28. I want to tell you a story.

29. It's not a story about mythic quests,

30. legendary heroes, or galaxies far, far away.

31. It's a story about his son and his father.

32. So we're here at my uncle Kevin's house,

33. and he also happens to be the director of a movie that means a lot to us.

34. - I guess.

35. I have a little treat for you. Bring you into my basement, where I keep…

36. all of my movie treasures.

37. Little mementos that have made their way to my house over the years.

38. This is where I keep all of my movie memorabilia.

39. And I have this special box here I want to show you.

40. It's got something very cool inside.

41. Let's take a look.

42. So, these are one-of-a-kind maquettes

43. that were made for A Goofy Movie.

44. These were made in, like, 1993 by Kenny Tompkins for us.

45. We didn't have much money. So, this is what we got. One-of-a-kinds.

46. Here's another special girl here.

47. She's a little bit more beat up, but…

48. still in wonderful condition for being, what is it, 20, 25 years old?

49. Oh, my. How do you define who you are?

50. Kevin Lima is a forever creative person

51. who has been trying his whole life to find ways to play.

52. It's what I've been doing since I was a little kid,

53. what I continue to do today.

54. And what I think I did a pretty good job doing with the Goofy Movie

55. is giving it a sense of that spirit, that playful spirit.

56. I wanted to be a filmmaker from the first time

57. I sat in a movie theater and saw an animated movie.

58. I saw The Jungle Book with my mom.

59. At the beginning, there are all these names that pop up.

60. And my mom said, those are the people who made this movie.

61. And I said, "I'm going to make this movie when I grow up."

62. And that was the moment that it all sort of coalesced to me

63. and made me think "it's possible."

64. I did what most people who wanted to go into Disney at that time did,

65. is I went to CalArts.

66. CalArts was the only school in America at the time

67. where you could actually get a degree in animation.

68. It wasn't a direct path to Disney,

69. and so we all went off and did different things,

70. and I, after a couple of years off in the world, I ended up at Disney.

71. The year was 1984, and Disney was not making

72. financial successes like The Jungle Book anymore.

73. Jeffrey Katzenberg was brought in to run the animation studio

74. and try to turn things around.

75. His first animated project was The Black Cauldron,

76. which was already well into production.

77. Jeffrey Katzenberg was there from the very, very beginning.

78. He was in charge of everything. live action, animation.

79. He knew exactly what he wanted from a movie,

80. and I think he knew how to speak directly to the director

81. and to the producers and to the writers about what that was.

82. He had no animation background,

83. and when he came on set with the editor on Black Cauldron,

84. he asked to see, like B-roll on something.

85. It's like we don't do B-roll on animation.

86. You gotta hand draw all that stuff,

87. so you edit it before you actually make it.

88. But once he understood that, he got up to speed really quickly,

89. and he liked it.

90. When you came to Disney about ten years ago,

91. you didn't believe in animation.

92. In fact, the animators saw you coming and said, we're dead.

93. Yes, there is no question, when I first arrived here,

94. I saw animation as something that I, quote, had to do.

95. It was a responsibility.

96. There is no question that, you know, in the course

97. of doing our "responsibility," I fell in love with animation.

98. Somebody like that in that position, they're gonna have real opinions,

99. and they're gonna make them known.

100. The Black Cauldron would not be the success the studio hoped for,

101. so Katzenberg decided to shake things up

102. and reinvent the animation department.

103. With a fresh perspective and new up-and-coming talent,

104. Katzenberg pushed forward with new projects,

105. Oliver and Company and The Little Mermaid.

106. And so I was hired as an animator on Oliver & Company,

107. but the first thing I really did while I was there

108. is I became a character designer on The Little Mermaid.

109. And I designed all the characters in "Under the Sea."

110. There's all the extra characters in "Kiss the Girl."

111. And I did a whole bunch of design work on Ursula.

112. After years of development,

113. The Little Mermaid was released in the theaters in 1989,

114. to critical acclaim, earning praise for the animation,

115. music, and characters.

116. It also marked the start of the Disney Renaissance,

117. followed by hits like Beauty and the Beast in 1991,

118. and Aladdin in 1992.

119. After years of working in the animation department,

120. Kevin tried to do something different.

121. I always felt like I'm having a real hard time

122. sitting behind my desk eight hours a day.

123. I think what I really want to do is directing, so I asked.

124. I went in and said, I want to be a director.

125. And they said, "Sorry, it ain't going to happen."

126. "There's not enough room."

127. "We've got directors for the next six years. We have it all planned out."

128. After recent studio successes,

129. Disney started developing a movie based on one of their classic characters.

130. The pitch I got from Disney TV animation was, we have a giant amount

131. of international talent that we can bring to bear

132. to maybe make a different kind

133. of Disney animated movie that was more experimental.

134. This first script I saw was the Goofy Movie.

135. I wasn't really sure exactly what I was getting into.

136. Initially, I was brought on to do storyboards,

137. and they had this project. It was a Goof Troop movie.

138. Because Goof Troop was a TV series.

139. They were going through a reboot, and they had brought Jerry Reese on.

140. Jerry had recommended me,

141. and they had me come on and do some exploratory boards.

142. Put Goofy in some situations and locations where he can do a setup,

143. and then disaster happens.

144. They took the Goof Troop thing, they stripped it all away,

145. all these ancillary characters, and just made it Goofy and his son.

146. And we had this big pitch to Jeff Katzenberg.

147. In this meeting, it was either going to get greenlit

148. or it was going to get killed.

149. I go in with the guys, and they've got the beat boards hung up.

150. It was a sequence that was very funny, got big laughs.

151. Some assistant comes in and lines up all these Diet Cokes for Jeffrey,

152. and whether he was going to drink them or throw them, I don't know.

153. And just how nervous and frightened everybody was,

154. "Jeffrey's coming, Jeffrey's coming."

155. He comes in in a big rush, and he's got all these people around him

156. writing down everything he says. He sits down, and he's looking,

157. and I get four panels in, and he goes, "Hang on a second.

158. Is this how this whole thing is going to be?"

159. "What do you mean?" "Is it all going to be gags?"

160. And I said, "Well, Gary Kreisel was the president of it."

161. And he jumps in there, and he goes, "Yeah, well, this was some goofy syndrome."

162. And he cuts him off and says, "Uh, uh! I don't want to see this.

163. Anybody can do this. I don't need to see this."

164. He goes, "I want to see the heart. I want to see the heart."

165. So I'm standing there.

166. Now, I didn't realize it, because I'm showing the board,

167. but he had scanned that entire board

168. in the time it took me to do those four panels.

169. So, he saw where that was going, and he was like, no.

170. So, I was dismissed. I almost killed the Goofy Movie.

171. Right then and there.

172. Thankfully, the film would push on.

173. Katzenberg saw there was more to Goofy than audiences were used to.

174. The studio decided to move forward

175. with the last director they had on their list.

176. The next thing I know, Disney asked me if I wanted to do it.

177. I was a first-time director.

178. I had a first-time head of story, had a first-time lead editor.

179. We were all pretty new at what we were doing.

180. We all wanted to prove ourselves.

181. We all had this sense of like a ragtag team

182. attempting to make something happen and to show the world that we were worthy.

183. We were just as capable as anyone.

184. This is the shot that Kevin and so many others had been waiting for.

185. Kevin's dreams as a kid of making a Disney film were finally coming true.

186. The success or failure would be on him and the rest of the ragtag team.

187. Each of us wanted it so desperately that we had to prove it.

188. We had to prove to the world that we were worth something.

189. This is the real find. VHS tapes. Hi8 tapes...

190. of behind the scenes.

191. I tell ya, most of this, maybe all of it, I haven't looked at in 30 years.

192. So, you're gonna discover things that are gonna even blow my mind.

193. You're gonna be the first. - They're about to.

194. This studio has been trying to do a contemporary version

195. of a classic character in different formats, in TV, in shorts,

196. and this is probably their first real theatrical,

197. you know, full-length theatrical attempt at it.

198. I felt pretty prepared to take on a feature film.

199. I hadn't done it,

200. but I had certainly done all of the work that I needed to do

201. in order to understand what the steps were going to be.

202. - Are you filming or what? Yes.

203. Well, thanks for nothing. It's a lousy angle.

204. Hello, this is 2020. Get that camera out of here.

205. This is my job, to make sure we get a document of what's going on.

206. This is Kevin Lima, the director of the Goofy Movie.

207. The Goof Troop program, are there the same people

208. involved creatively with both this film and that program?

209. No, actually, it's a much different group of people.

210. I don't want you to hate us, because this is really a…

211. I shouldn't say this. I'm sorry.

212. I'm sorry, Howard. This is just a big issue around here.

213. Yeah, well, let's forget it then. I just didn't know it was…

214. I mean, I can say that it's the same characters.

215. - I can talk about PJ are in this. Let's not bother.

216. But it's been a big issue around here.

217. - Just us being here. Yeah.

218. Being feature people coming into the studio has been…

219. I just thought it might be something that might tie in

220. - because of the… I almost don't, too.

221. Let's, uh, if you have any other questions…

222. Jeffrey was pushing the studio to make cheaper films.

223. Was there a way to make sort of,

224. you know, you had the A unit over at Feature Animation,

225. was there a B unit?

226. They had us all come in and watch DuckTales.

227. You know, the notes were harsh.

228. It's a movie so big, so special, so exciting…

229. - Sha-booey! - …no TV can hold it.

230. DuckTales The Movie.

231. I think it had come out not done well and not critically well received.

232. And I think he was hoping that he could sort of

233. take the next step and goose up the quality

234. so that it sort of kissed what feature animation was doing.

235. I think there was an inherent, you know, protection of the brand.

236. We wanted it to live up to the artistry of a Disney feature animated film.

237. We thought, there's no way that we can compete

238. with those big Disney movies.

239. So how are we going to separate ourselves? How are we going to get noticed?

240. It was important to me to make a movie that spoke to its time.

241. I thought we had the opportunity with this movie to make

242. like a John Hughes movie in animation. That was really what I felt.

243. I felt like, let's make a movie that is about contemporary teenagers,

244. as opposed to what feature animation was doing over there,

245. which was all fairy tales and, you know, talking animal movies,

246. even though these are, kind of, talking animal movies.

247. And we said, is there value in the smaller domestic story?

248. Can that resonate in a way that's just as powerful as The Lion King?

249. It was so low expectations, I think, that you got to try things,

250. and you got to play around, and you weren't worried

251. as much as, like, I think at features,

252. you're worried about this legacy you have to hold on to.

253. It didn't have that pressure.

254. Everybody was used to Goofy from the shorts, pretty one-dimensional.

255. The big challenge for me with Goofy was how do I relate

256. to him on a human level?

257. Is there more to the character than a series of sight gags?

258. An emotional half Max got off track,

259. latte smeared for the nine-yard loss.

260. How is this film different than other classic Disney animation

261. that has come out in the last few years like Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast

262. and Aladdin and so forth?

263. You're gonna see the emotional side of Goofy.

264. You're gonna see how he interacts with other characters,

265. his feelings, as opposed to just the antics.

266. Can we mine something that feels real?

267. I was really looking for ways to make him relatable.

268. How can I relate to him emotionally?

269. The team decided to focus on fatherhood,

270. something that had been present with the character

271. but never pushed beyond Goofy's comedic beginnings.

272. It was something that both Katzenberg and Kevin were connected to.

273. Basically, it's the story of Max, Goofy's son.

274. He's growing up. He doesn't want to be like his dad.

275. He's scared to death that he's going to grow up and be a goof.

276. It's not bad enough that, you know, you're a 14-year-old

277. and your dad is, you know, that you got your dad hanging around.

278. It's even worse. This time your dad is Goofy.

279. I've heard Jeffrey Katzenberg was talking about going on a vacation

280. with his daughter, and they weren't quite getting along.

281. And he thought that might be an interesting subject matter

282. for the continuation of this story of Goofy and Max.

283. He gets scared to death at his kids turning into a juvenile delinquent

284. and decides that the only way to solve it is to bring him

285. on a vacation, cross-country vacation.

286. This story is about the relationship of a father and his son.

287. It's about the evolution of this relationship from the beginning

288. of a father who's worried about his son and where he's going,

289. and the fact that they don't get along, they don't communicate.

290. I was really interested in telling the story of a father and a son

291. and how an experience that they go through brings them closer together.

292. I, um…

293. My dad went away when I was 11, and I didn't meet him again for 25 years.

294. Absolutely no communication.

295. So it was something that I really felt like I could explore in an emotional way.

296. What is it like to have a father?

297. What is my dream of what a father and a son are?

298. That you could actually go through great turmoil and still end up together.

299. And I think I always had that sort of, that fantasy that that could come true.

300. And I think I worked that out to a certain extent in this movie.

301. This is a unique role for Goofy.

302. I think it gives him a much greater depth of character.

303. So he isn't just foolish and isn't just a slapstick kind of humor.

304. He also has the same feelings we all have.

305. You know, I'm sure my son thinks of me as Goofy.

306. The original script when I came on was essentially the same.

307. Father and son not connecting, they go on a road trip,

308. and in the process they connect.

309. But the details of that drastically changed as we evolved it.

310. I ended up sitting by myself in the corner of an empty suite

311. at the Disney building for almost a year, kind of typing away.

312. It's always great when you go to a studio for the first time

313. to feel the vibe, just seeing the boards on the wall and stuff, right?

314. When he broke the story down to me, this felt human.

315. This felt like a real father-son story.

316. We would do a lot of rewriting ourselves, just with the storyboard artists.

317. Whoa, I can't believe it.

318. I like this angle. This is a good angle.

319. This gives you that heroic… the heroic storyboard artist.

320. The upshot makes him look bigger, bigger than life.

321. - Yo. You're the ham of the century.

322. We had a script, but we definitely needed to take it in a new direction.

323. You know there has to be emotional beats, right?

324. Because it's a feature film.

325. But hard to sort of think about how you're going to do that.

326. It was a balancing act of how far could you push Goofy

327. without breaking him, kind of,

328. and without losing the essence of who he was.

329. The first pass, we probably did more cartoon,

330. fun, humor stuff with a little bit of heart.

331. We probably worked on the movie for about a year and a half

332. before we actually went into animation.

333. It was a pretty quick turnaround for an animated movie.

334. It usually took four years to make these things.

335. I believe we made ours in about two and a half years.

336. And in some ways, it was freeing,

337. because you got to make decisions that were implemented immediately.

338. All right, guys, let's do this.

339. Places! Chris?

340. You know, the casting process is as it would be with any movie, really.

341. Bill was set. Bill Farmer as Goofy.

342. To adventure!

343. Well, at least in the movie, he has more layers to him.

344. He's a good father.

345. He cares very deeply and loves his son, wants the best for his son.

346. And so we see more of Goofy's emotional side.

347. It's been handed down from Goof to Goof to Goof, and now it's yours.

348. A stick?

349. Because there's a three-year difference in age and Max,

350. I wanted to go for an older voice.

351. They wanted a voice much like mine, not like, you know,

352. a cartoony-type voice or not like a goofity-type voice.

353. Just, it's just basically my voice up a little bit an octave and,

354. you know, a little crack here and there and lots more energy.

355. It's okay, folks. I was just acting.

356. And then across the line, it was a combination

357. of actors who were in Goof Troop and new characters.

358. - We went after people like Wallace Shawn. - How about science slumber parties?

359. - Pauly Shore. - [slurps, clicks tongue] Mm, slurpage.

360. Because they already had a sense

361. of caricature to the way they naturally spoke.

362. The thing I think about when I'm performing Pete is I don't think.

363. I just let it pour out.

364. You know, you just look for the humor in the scene.

365. Because it can't just be just me.

366. Whoo-hoo! Strike-ola! Yes! Thank you, thank you!

367. And the crowd goes wild! High five, son! Psych!

368. PJ is a really hip kid in a very unhip bod.

369. And it's just sort of a genetic predisposition.

370. See? See? I told you our plan would work.

371. These characters are really appealing because they're kind of a comical view

372. of what people are really like.

373. It's really cool because kids can relate to it, I think.

374. I think maybe the hardest piece of the whole thing

375. was being in the booth with actors.

376. I actually had to fight because the way they make television animation

377. is that there is a voice director.

378. And that director goes off and records all the voices for the animated series.

379. So the director of the episode never gets to talk to the actors.

380. And I came from feature animation and said, like,

381. "I don't want to do it that way." So I had to really push my way in.

382. and, you know, make sure that I got my say.

383. Two on mic now, Joe.

384. - How you been? All right, you?

385. - Pretty good. Yeah? What have you been up to?

386. - Lots of Goofy. Lots of Goofy. Lots of Goofy.

387. Tried to record Goofy and Max together as much as possible,

388. since they were in every single solitary scene.

389. I trust you wholeheartedly, Maxie.

390. You get us to like destiny any way you want.

391. Wherever you point, I follow.

392. I knew that we were adding layers to the character,

393. more intimate layers than he'd ever revealed about himself.

394. I had no idea how it would work or how people would accept that.

395. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

396. When I got the role, I was over the moon,

397. because number one, I was like a big Disney fan.

398. And also being a fan, it's like,

399. "Man, you can't get any closer to being part of Disney history

400. than being like the spawn of Goofy."

401. Oh, my name's Max.

402. I think Bill and I recorded on and off for over the course of two years.

403. I knew it was special. I knew it was different.

404. He enjoyed that way too much.

405. But as we recorded, and re-recorded and re-recorded,

406. the movie kind of took shape.

407. - Okay?

408. If you know what I mean, I think you do. All right, here we go.

409. You get the right amount of humor, but the right feel.

410. Here's what I want you to do. On both these lines,

411. both these lines for Max, okay? I want to soften them both up.

412. I want them to seem real sweet on both of them, okay?

413. I was thinking maybe I could wave to you at the end of the last song.

414. Max, this is so incredible.

415. I wouldn't miss our date for anything that wasn't incredible, Roxanne.

416. We were recording the scene where Max and Roxanne have to smooch,

417. and Jamie Thomas, and I remember him saying,

418. I'll never forget this, he's like, "All right, we're all adults here.

419. Do you mind, Kellie, coming over to Jason's mic and maybe try a couple

420. where you're just kissing for real and reacting that way?"

421. And I'm like, yes, and I remember feeling

422. very excited and terrified, and I think that really,

423. it definitely helped the scene because it was exactly what it was.

424. It's probably one of the takes they used,

425. What happened?

426. Well, I, like, leaned in to kiss him,

427. but then I realized that he's supposed to kiss me, so I stopped.

428. And as he pulled back at the last second,

429. Jason, I'm there with you, man. I know what that's like.

430. Way to put it all on me.

431. Max, you know, being a teen, you know, raging hormones, you know,

432. wanting to fit in in school and wanting to have his own life.

433. Goofy thinks, like, well, you know, I want to connect with my son.

434. I know the best thing to do. I'll do something that my dad did to me.

435. I'll take him on a road trip, and I'll take my boy fishing.

436. Hey, got a present for you.

437. No, Dad, stop. I can't go with you. I got things to do.

438. - You look just like I did at your age. - Please don't say that, Dad.

439. Oh, garsh. - Stuff like this, it embarrasses him.

440. But through the course of the movie, he realizes he does love his dad.

441. You know, he's actually pretty cool.

442. There's a story that goes around about Bill…

443. having to do the whole movie in his own voice.

444. We had recorded the entire movie…

445. many, many sessions with Bill as Goofy.

446. And we showed the movie to Jeffrey Katzenberg.

447. At the end of the screening, and he just was like,

448. the voice isn't working for him.

449. And we're like, "What do you mean? It's Goofy."

450. And like, "Yeah, does it have to be?"

451. I think he really found put-on voices insincere.

452. He wanted the character to have a range.

453. And in the beginning, it was just kind of Goofy from the shorts.

454. And he had this great idea.

455. What if Steve Martin were Goofy? Wouldn't that be fabulous?

456. Imagine how you could sell that. That would be great.

457. I think I asked Jeffrey, I said, "So that means you want Steve Martin

458. to do the Goofy voice?" "No, no, no, no, no."

459. "He's going to use his own voice so that we know who he is."

460. And I said to Jeffrey, before you even think about this,

461. let me go back into it with Bill, and we'll record

462. a bunch of the scenes with Bill doing it in his own voice.

463. Because I knew, how can you make A Goofy Movie,

464. or how can you play Goofy with just a regular person's voice?

465. That would be like having Mickey Mouse, right,

466. speak with Cary Grant's voice. It's just incredibly ridiculous.

467. But we had to, because he's the boss, Jeffrey's the boss,

468. we had to go and try something.

469. They came to me and said, well, they think

470. that your voice sounds too cartoony.

471. Jeffrey Katzenberg wants you to do the voice in your voice.

472. And I say, "You don't want me to go...

473. or anything like that?"

474. "Just talk like I'm talking now?" "Yeah."

475. So I brought Bill and Jason in the room, and I said,

476. "Listen, guys, we have to try this." And Bill has a complete meltdown.

477. I went home and I didn't get much sleep those days

478. because I was worried,

479. "Don't they want to hear Goofy when they hear A Goofy Movie?"

480. We have to prove to Jeffrey that it's a bad idea.

481. So we did several days of recording in my voice,

482. more as an experiment, I suppose.

483. And we did it.

484. We showed it to him. I said, "I'm not behind this, Jeffrey."

485. And we didn't do it.

486. Jeffrey said, "I agree with you. We shouldn't do it."

487. This is how the whim of a studio executive can change a movie in a moment

488. if you don't fight back against a bad idea. Bad, bad idea.

489. It helped him and it helped us see the character

490. in a way that we hadn't been looking at him.

491. And when we went back and we started doing the Goofy voice again,

492. we could push the range. Like, remember when you did the scene like that.

493. Bring some of that. Bring some of the warmth to it.

494. Let him get sad. Let us hear a crack in his voice.

495. He brought a lot more subtlety to it, so it got us a much better performance.

496. Animation is a long process.

497. Tries one's patience.

498. You might want to do a close-up of the structure of Bigfoot's head.

499. You can see the cranium up here and the beak or proboscis here.

500. And each tooth is numbered.

501. There's a big space between his middle teeth, Dan.

502. Yeah. That's a sign… that's…

503. Give us a smile. - That's the sign of intelligence.

504. And obviously, we wanted to sort of indicate

505. to everyone that Bigfoot does think.

506. So we used the character model with a tooth like this.

507. Me and David Letterman have the same thing.

508. But it's also historically been thought of as a sign of intelligence,

509. advanced intelligence.

510. It's Bigfoot!

511. Could you back up a bit, Mr. Foot? You're out of focus.

512. This sure is A Goofy Movie.

513. How you doing? - How are you?

514. I've been just chewing on my finger. Excuse the moistness.

515. Great. What do we do now?

516. Well, we just have to wait till he goes away.

517. Hi, Paul. And who else may be there watching this.

518. I'm going to start with sequence 16.1.

519. There's a lot of this that we can't put into animation yet

520. because Jeffrey wanted to change a bunch of them.

521. The more intimate scenes were a little out of character,

522. because I hadn't done that before. It was difficult.

523. It was difficult to get there.

524. So when we come back in,

525. a little cigarette lighter has been pressed in and it pops out.

526. Well, nice to know this thing's good for something.

527. And he goes to place it underneath the can

528. to heat the can on the little cigarette lighter.

529. I know it's an impossible thing to do,

530. but maybe in the cartoon, we can sort of get away with it.

531. So we thought we'd play out the silence of the moment of the two of them waiting.

532. And they both turn away.

533. Like they catch each other looking at each other.

534. - What's so funny?

535. - Hi, dad soup. - Huh?

536. Don't tell me you don't remember "Hi, dad soup."

537. And this is a real endearing thing for Goofy.

538. It's a real nice memory.

539. You used to spell things out using letters like, uh, hi, Dad or Maxie or…

540. - Ambidextrous? - Yeah, that's, uh…

541. - No, little words like, uh… - Hasta la vista?

542. - Like bye-bye. - Or I pledge allegiance.

543. And Goofy doesn't catch himself.

544. Or I love you.

545. And he realizes that maybe he's saying

546. the wrong thing at the wrong moment.

547. He and his kid aren't getting along very well right now.

548. At the moment, they're sort of grappling

549. with this whole sort of, I love you thing.

550. - Is it, uh, is it soup yet? - Oh, almost forgot.

551. Whoa, where'd you learn to do that?

552. Your granddad taught me that when we went to Yosemite.

553. - You two did a lot together, huh? - Yup.

554. So it's something that he and his dad shared.

555. Throughout the movie, overall, we're trying

556. to play up all these ideas that Goofy's sharing things that he,

557. uh, learned from his dad.

558. - Dad, listen, I have a… - I also soup…

559. Oh. How's the soup?

560. Not bad. I'm not…

561. Goofy sort of remembering.

562. - What? - Nothing.

563. And I think he feels a little bit of the pain of what's going on

564. between he and Maxie right now.

565. I think one of the biggest things in their relationship

566. is communication, that they really don't have the ability

567. to talk to each other. That…

568. Perhaps, perhaps they've both…

569. They've both grown a little distant.

570. That they're not, that they haven't talked a lot recently.

571. Well, we might as well get some shut eye.

572. I don't think we're going anywhere tonight.

573. Looks down in the cup, kind of, you know, what's left in the bottom of it.

574. The cup comes in. Goofy takes it. He looks into it.

575. And it says, "Hi, Dad" A big step for Max.

576. Hi, Maxie.

577. And then we're out. We see Bigfoot sleeping on the car.

578. You know, he loves his son more than anything in the world.

579. There needs to be a lot of sensitivity in the end of this sequence.

580. This is really the first point that Maxie and Goof have come together.

581. Don't be afraid to be subtle.

582. It isn't a big, huge, Goofy moment, of sort, of flamboyant overacting.

583. So this is really a sincere, subtle…

584. Facial expressions say much more

585. than what they're even saying to each other.

586. There's a whole sort of hidden text of what's going on underneath the scene.

587. We've got to try to get that in the facial expressions.

588. People don't always say what they're thinking.

589. and I think a lot of that's in this scene.

590. They're having their first father-son kind of coming together,

591. learning about each other.

592. He's feeling more for Goofy, and Goofy's feeling for Max,

593. even though there's a Bigfoot outside with underwear on his head.

594. Okay, bye. You know we're gonna do this shot again.

595. With production underway and with a much smaller budget

596. than the big Disney films of the time,

597. A Goofy Movie would not be completed at its headquarters in California.

598. They'd have to find the magic elsewhere.

599. I'm curious, how does animation compare here?

600. They have a high level of craft over there.

601. French cartoonists are extremely proficient.

602. They have tremendous panache and style to their drawing.

603. As you can see, it's a regular working day here in Paris,

604. and there's some bustling activity all about.

605. So the background actually, wraps the car, or is this the direction then?

606. Hi, guys. How are you doing?

607. Hey. Hey, what's up?

608. How much? Where do you guys get those glasses?

609. What do you mean?

610. You can see that we've been working these artists so hard

611. that their eyes are giving out,

612. and they're wearing Coke bottle pipe glasses.

613. They're cool. They look good in them, too.

614. This is the Ernie Kovacs tour of Walt Disney Animation France.

615. All of the studios that took on work were all existing studios.

616. So we had the Paris studio, the Australian studio.

617. We used the studio in Toronto.

618. We were doing freelance in Burbank

619. with all the cleanup people who were working

620. at Disney Feature Animation.

621. They were doing freelance moonlighting for us.

622. We're always looking for where is there

623. a great talent pool, and we felt France had it.

624. Because we had so many animators from so many different countries,

625. I mean, I was…

626. I speak a little tiny bit of French, but I don't really…

627. I couldn't really communicate the intricacies of what I wanted.

628. We had interpreters.

629. We have Goofy and all the little kids running out together,

630. and he's really, really excited, all happy

631. and giddy like a little boy on the first day of Christmas.

632. But I also would do this thing where I would sit down

633. with the storyboards, and I would record myself

634. acting out each of the characters in every single scene,

635. hoping that being able to see what I was doing would be meaningful.

636. The light's blinking, so we're set to go.

637. So I'm making tapes.

638. We're putting them in the mail. We're shipping them off.

639. They're looking at the tapes.

640. They're asking questions over the telephone.

641. Max and Goofy set out on the open road.

642. Goofy is really happy about what lies ahead for them.

643. It's a solution to all their problems.

644. Max doesn't want to be there at all. He wants to be home with Roxanne.

645. Hi, everyone. Let's go through this again.

646. Storybook, 6.1. See that? 6.1.

647. We're talking about where Goofy should put the hat.

648. Hey, there was just one thing that I wanted to bring up.

649. I was thinking about it this weekend.

650. It's mostly about sequence 22, the end in the hot tub.

651. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Don't go away.

652. It's late, but I'm determined to finish this tonight.

653. That was my wife. She's saying, where are you?

654. It's 8:30 on a Friday night. Come home.

655. Okay, you can go now.

656. I promise I'll try not to come back and, like, snort you again, okay?

657. Right? I promise.

658. Au revoir. Au revoir. Au revoir.

659. So, it's a whole different way of making it work,

660. but I find that animators understand visual communication, right?

661. That's what they do.

662. They would just, like, grab a hold of these,

663. you know, these facial expressions or attitudes that I was going through.

664. Slam-cut close-up, kind of the…

665. The fool, close up in the camera, making all of these faces, go, go,

666. you know, just come right up and go… Ga, ga, goo, goo.

667. So it was always the intention to be a musical. I love musicals.

668. It seems like everything I make

669. turns into a musical somehow, even when it's not a musical.

670. Take one.

671. Okay.

672. That should about do it. That was our lovely Brian.

673. I think right from the get-go, we started talking about, like,

674. how would we incorporate songs into it, and what would be the right kind of songs?

675. How would Goofy sing a song that you would want to listen to?

676. When I first came on, "Stand Out" wasn't in the movie.

677. They had already, I think, written "Made in the Shade,"

678. an opening number for the movie,

679. and that song always told from Goofy's point of view.

680. And we decided that we needed a deeper emotional thrust in the film.

681. So we flipped the whole thing and decided to tell it from Max's point of view.

682. I mean, there was a whole other Roxanne song.

683. We played it for Jeffrey, and I thought it was a really good song.

684. If you had told me in the middle of making that that that was not going to be

685. in the movie, I would have said, you're crazy.

686. The storyboard process allows you that.

687. It allows you to go back in and iterate and iterate

688. and iterate again and again.

689. I remember there was a song when Max was sent

690. to the principal's office about him being a juvenile delinquent.

691. Sorry.

692. So we tried a lot of things that didn't necessarily work.

693. - Oh, Dad, you ruined it. - Sorry about that.

694. Who was he, anyway?

695. It's only Powerline, Dad, the biggest rock star on the planet.

696. There's a character named Powerline in the movie who's a rock star

697. in this cartoon dog world that Max, the son of Goofy, it's his hero.

698. I remember when the guys were showing me

699. just some of the initial sketches on Powerline.

700. He breathed hipness and coolness.

701. Remember, we were in the era of the '90s,

702. and you had all these great individual R&B artists.

703. You had the Bobby Browns, Michael Jackson.

704. Giving these characters that hip edge, that's when I knew,

705. okay, this is cool.

706. If I'm remembering correctly,

707. Tevin happened because we were looking for a music producer first.

708. And we found David Z.

709. There was a kid named Tevin Campbell that Prince was working with.

710. David Z said, I think this kid would be great.

711. Goofy's one of my favorite Disney characters.

712. I mean, when I watched him as a little kid, he would make me laugh.

713. And then I came out here to Sunset Sound.

714. We had the Waters as background singers.

715. We had Rosie Gaines, who was one of Prince's singers.

716. We approached those songs as regular R&B pop hits.

717. We were trying to make amazing music.

718. The songs had meaning. The songs were indicative of growing up.

719. And when we heard it, we were all just like blown away.

720. Til you notice me.

721. Holy, I don't even think he took more than two takes.

722. He sang it all the way through and didn't make a mistake.

723. The paths to getting to things

724. are sometimes not what you expect them to be.

725. They're not direct.

726. And sometimes you end up with something better

727. than you ever thought you could have.

728. And it's definitely, it's really cool, especially…

729. - kinda— - Getting to see yourself.

730. Having your voice come out of someone else.

731. It just looks… it looks cool.

732. It's definitely fun. It's definitely an experience.

733. I want to take it further maybe one day.

734. Hardest sequence to pull together was probably "I2I."

735. Just because of the number of effects,

736. all the lighting, it was incredibly complex.

737. We had live action reference.

738. So, we choreographed this whole "I2I" thing,

739. and we were on this little sound stage in Burbank.

740. We got a video camera guy, and he's gonna tape

741. this small group of dancers doing the Powerline sequence.

742. We couldn't have done what we did in the animation without it.

743. It's just like a white background and it's got a grid on the ground

744. so the animators, when they see the footage,

745. they can get a sense of the space.

746. And he had these dancers and we had a video camera operator guy

747. who was running around setting up all the angles and he was matching

748. shot for shot the animatic.

749. So, all of that had to come together.

750. And we did multiple, multiple passes each time we got a new element.

751. So, we had a guy who was Powerline. He was the choreographer it was parallel.

752. And he was the one who was doing all the slick moves.

753. Max?

754. And then we had another guy who was doing those same moves,

755. But as Goofy would do it.

756. Hey, hey, dad! Dad, do the perfect cast.

757. He's putting a little more flap in the arms and all this, and...

758. And then we had the shorter guy doing it as Max would.

759. So, he's doing it as a teenage boy version of Goofy doing Powerline.

760. And you see the footage, and you've seen the footage, and it…

761. it worked.

762. To see the three of them dancing together was like,

763. holy crap, these guys are brilliant.

764. It's kind of extraordinary.

765. - Yay!

766. All right, was that cool? Like Mary J. Blige says, "Am I finished?"

767. But I'll tell you, the whole movie was difficult.

768. We were just holding it together with scotch tape, right?

769. Trying to figure out how to get through it on our budget.

770. It was difficult.

771. I know there were production challenges.

772. When we started on Goofy Movie,

773. even in Burbank, we were doing it in a reduced sort of capacity.

774. We were expected to deliver, but with a much lower budget.

775. What is this movie about?

776. Well, 15 million dollars.

777. He's been on this movie for, oh, a year and a half now.

778. He's got another year to go. I don't think he's gonna make it.

779. I can remember a lot of times we would be there working really late

780. in the editing room with Greg and staying up till two in the morning,

781. you know, trying to get things done.

782. From now on, you're gonna see a new Goof.

783. And you'll see a new Max.

784. We'll be a team, son. Like Lewis and Clark.

785. - Like, uh, the professor and Marianne? - Yeah, like spaghetti and meatballs.

786. Like liver and… Dad?

787. - Liver and the dad? That's a new one. - No, Dad, look!

788. A waterfall.

789. A waterfall!

790. There were little speed bumps all along the way.

791. While we were finishing the movie in France, in Paris,

792. Disney Feature Animation takes over Disney France.

793. They move us out of our studio down to a few floors down

794. because they wanted to remodel.

795. And as you go through here, you can see that it's international sign

796. for medical assistance.

797. So, we're trying to finish our movie,

798. on like, pieces of plywood.

799. And we were just like, we couldn't believe it.

800. We felt so demoralized.

801. It was so hard that only two people survived till the end.

802. We're gonna have to finish the film up.

803. You think we can get this movie then?

804. - I don't want to finish this movie.

805. But it looks dubious for the Goofy Movie here in France.

806. That's encouraging.

807. Let's make our way back through our screening room.

808. That's how we watch movies in France.

809. Voila. Let the cartoons begin.

810. Sequences have to be approved

811. before they can move forward into their next iteration of production,

812. and then it can go into animation.

813. Boy, I would say we had those…

814. at least for those kinds of approvals, once a month,

815. for maybe every six weeks or something like that.

816. We were showing reels to Jeffrey all the time.

817. Often at seven o'clock in the morning,

818. he'd come in and we'd have to show—

819. imagine watching A Goofy Movie at seven o'clock in the morning.

820. That's not an easy task.

821. And so what that meant is that you would have to get there

822. at least by 6:00 in order to lay it all out for the projectionist.

823. I always know that by the end of it, my hands…

824. …almost felt like they have arthritis.

825. I mean, they were just killing me, because I was so tense leaning forward.

826. And then I would listen to the comments that Jeffrey would give Kevin.

827. I think I even a number of times, like looked over,

828. and he was sound asleep.

829. He was watching the movie completely, like, with his eyes closed.

830. And then we'd go back and talk about the movie afterwards,

831. and he'd give all these notes. And after Jeffrey left,

832. I'd say, like, "He was asleep through a half hour of the movie."

833. Of course, he doesn't know.

834. He doesn't know how these two things connect

835. because he was asleep.

836. And then we would run away and bullet point the notes.

837. And then this note is this much money. This note is this much money.

838. It was sort of like a menu for him.

839. Then that would be sort of like now approved into our budget.

840. We just had a Jeffrey screening. We got it okayed.

841. So, here we go.

842. It's kind of crazy to make a movie that way,

843. but that's how we fit into his schedule, I think.

844. We were a B priority, so we had to squeeze into these little spaces

845. that he had in his day.

846. Yeah, and he was busy with other big things,

847. like big movies, you know?

848. Six hundred people are rushing to finish this movie.

849. Wow, that's great.

850. And then there was a brand new studio chief,

851. Jeffrey Katzenberg, with a reputation for efficiency.

852. And you hear Mufasa, I mean, you hear…

853. He drives us crazy, and he comes over and has sometimes suggestions

854. that are out of left field, but what he's usually saying is,

855. "I don't know the solution, but it's not firing off,

856. it's not working, do better."

857. Is it great? - It's gotta be.

858. Lion King released in June of 1994,

859. it would go on to cement itself

860. as the highest-grossing animated film at the time,

861. all under the leadership of Jeffrey Katzenberg.

862. We ended up with some problems in getting our movie finished.

863. It became especially problematic towards the end when we realized

864. we were having a really difficult time

865. getting proper color footage, finished color footage.

866. The way it worked is that the images were composited digitally,

867. put up in a frame,

868. and it was literally a film camera aiming down.

869. We were shooting, basically shooting with a movie camera,

870. frame by frame off a monitor. It wasn't totally digital in that sense.

871. We also didn't project our dailies.

872. So, when we finished a scene, we didn't project anything.

873. So, I remember once we thought,

874. we have to go in and look at this on the big screen

875. and just make sure we're okay. And it was during one of those screenings

876. - that someone noticed a missing pixel. - [♪ dramatic music playing]

877. There was a little black dot.

878. We were shooting the movie off a monitor, and one of the pixels was burned out.

879. At that point, someone went back and checked the whole movie,

880. checked all the negative, and there was a missing dot

881. - on the entire film.

882. We were almost done with the movie, I think.

883. So, we had to go back and get a new monitor.

884. I'm sure that monitor screen was really expensive.

885. It was so discouraging.

886. We went back to the studio and said, "Hey, we have a problem."

887. So, we had to go back and reshoot the entire movie again,

888. which pushed us.

889. And then you can't trust anything that you've watched.

890. And then it becomes like a game, a very unpleasant game,

891. where you have to sit and scrutinize shot after shot.

892. I remember doing that a lot.

893. It was so labor-intensive, so time-intensive, right,

894. - that it just bumped us. - [♪ suspenseful music playing]

895. You know? Who would have thought

896. that it would take us shooting a whole movie before we realized,

897. "Oh, great, now we have to go back and start completely over."

898. I think as a team,

899. missing our first release date was a relief…

900. …to be quite honest with you,

901. because we truly didn't know how we were going to finish.

902. Oh, we were thrilled that we were gonna get more time.

903. That little black dot saved our butts.

904. You know, trying to do a feature animation

905. in a TV pipeline environment,

906. I kind of felt the burden of all of this impossible journey we were on.

907. You know, one hand I had to ask people to do more

908. with a lot less all the time.

909. And the other side, you know, I got beat up

910. at a finance meeting every week.

911. There was, you know, people in the studio came

912. and went through, you know,

913. how much I was spending and how far we were on the show.

914. There's no new rock animation here,

915. but it might be a good idea to have a little sneak peek

916. of what it looks like.

917. With The Lion King released,

918. Katzenberg's primary focus became A Goofy Movie.

919. As animation was being finished in Paris,

920. the final assembly was taking place back in California.

921. Because they're there, we're here.

922. - There's a lot of extra work and stuff. - [♪ gentle music playing]

923. I wish I could be there. I wish I could be part of…

924. Sometimes I feel like I'm not really part of making this movie.

925. Here I am in a room talking to a camera.

926. We're trying to get things done.

927. It looks like next week we'll have the song done.

928. We're gonna show Jeffrey 6.1 this week.

929. On the tenth of February, I think we're gonna show him the whole movie,

930. so let's keep our fingers crossed and hopefully that'll go well.

931. You know, he always has something to say,

932. so we'll decide how we're gonna deal with that then.

933. We were Jeffrey's pet project, so he was totally invested in the film.

934. Up until he got let go, he got fired.

935. There was a big fight between he and Michael Eisner.

936. Jeffrey was out, and we were just finishing our movie.

937. The company announced the resignation

938. of Disney Studios chief Jeffrey Katzenberg.

939. While rumors run rampant about where Katzenberg will end up,

940. Disney chairman Michael Eisner

941. said today the company will likely produce fewer films.

942. Everyone was concerned that they had lost sort of their champion.

943. He could be a really difficult taskmaster.

944. It was not always easy chasing what he was attempting to grab.

945. But on the other hand,

946. when he supported you, he was a 100% there.

947. - [♪ gentle music playing] - More chaotic, I think, probably.

948. When Jeffrey left,

949. We all knew that we were in trouble

950. as far as even whether or not we'd get a release.

951. We were Jeffrey, attempting to discover if he could make

952. an animated feature that could compete with feature animation

953. on a much smaller budget.

954. There just wasn't a big expectation for it.

955. Because it was such a small movie and it was contemporary,

956. it just felt different.

957. All the Disney films have always been, you know,

958. some villain, some good person going about their life,

959. and some villain stopping them.

960. And we just had Goofy and Max. And I honestly think

961. Disney left their head scratching a little bit

962. what to do with it, 'cause it was so different.

963. And at that moment, I watched all the support disappear

964. from the movie. I, you know, I don't know if it was intentional.

965. I mean, because, of course,

966. why would feature animation want a movie that— coming out,

967. that could possibly make money

968. when they're spending so much more to make their films, right?

969. They'd want to crush their competition.

970. Oh, well, let me show you something.

971. In the L.A. Times, in the back,

972. we didn't get as much coverage as Lion King.

973. See, Lion King gets their own little feature.

974. You see that?

975. But they get a… color picture.

976. And we're down in…

977. On page 16, The Goofy Movie, it says here.

978. "Goofy stars in his first feature film."

979. Seems like it's starting, so we'll see what they do.

980. Hopefully they'll sell this thing pretty well.

981. Everything about the movie downsized.

982. We were no longer going into the same number of theaters.

983. There was lots of merchandise discussed,

984. which never got made and ended up on shelves.

985. There was a premiere that was supposed to happen in town, in L.A.,

986. that got moved to Disney World.

987. So, we were moved as far away from, like, journalists as possible.

988. And I think we all realized,

989. "Oh, okay, Jeffrey was really our guardian angel."

990. But I think that they just looked at releasing A Goofy Movie

991. as an obligation at that point.

992. Thanks a lot. I just want to thank you all for…

993. for I mean, I know, I don't thank you enough and…

994. I really do feel, you know grateful that um,

995. what you guys have done for this film,

996. I don't think it would have ever been half as good

997. had you guys not, you know, put your all into doing this.

998. Thank you guys for doing everything you're doing on this film.

999. Just thanks a lot. That's it for now. I'll talk to you later. Bye.

1000. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Extra.

1001. - I'm Dave Niemann. - And I'm Arthel Neville.

1002. Now, check out this Goofy Movie.

1003. The star is one-dimensional, and the acting is, well, cartoonish.

1004. Still, its premiere drew the roadrunner and quite a crowd

1005. for today's Celebrity Traffic Report.

1006. You know, going to the premiere was still a huge joy

1007. to see the movie on the big screen with an audience that so appreciated it.

1008. It was wonderful to celebrate with everyone.

1009. It was unusual to do a press tour for anything we'd done prior

1010. to A Goofy Movie. This was a movie tour.

1011. For 63 years or so,

1012. a certain celebrity has been star of stage, screen, and theme park photos.

1013. Goofy has been doing cartoons for Walt Disney since the 1930s.

1014. - He looks great. - Attaining leading man

1015. or dog status in his first full-length motion picture.

1016. A Goofy Movie.

1017. And they actually put me on camera, which was rare in those days.

1018. They generally like to preserve the Disney magic.

1019. Hey, Bill, come on in here. Look at this guy.

1020. How you doing? Now, what in the world could you be…

1021. Why would you be involved in A Goofy Movie?

1022. What do you have to do with it?

1023. I've been kind of helping Goofy out with his dialogue

1024. - for about the past eight years. - His dialogue, huh?

1025. - Yes, yes. - So, you're his writer?

1026. Garsh, I'm not sure.

1027. I had a lot of fun on the tour. We went to Orlando.

1028. We went to New York.

1029. I remember in a restaurant, I got to meet Regis Philbin sitting there.

1030. No one knows who I am. Everyone knows who Goofy is.

1031. - Well, Bill, good luck. - Thank you very much.

1032. Congratulations on your success, and good luck with the movie.

1033. I don't remember feeling like we had big expectations,

1034. although deep down we probably were hoping for it.

1035. When I watched the movie for the first time,

1036. I was really blown away. I felt great. I felt like, "Wow, I'm so proud of this."

1037. Like, I'm so proud to be part of something so unique.

1038. I think that's what made it, you know stand out.

1039. Above the crowd, even you have to shout out loud.

1040. That was gonna happen eventually.

1041. From Walt Disney Pictures, Max is the most popular kid in school.

1042. Max! Max!

1043. His girlfriend's a babe. - Call you later.

1044. - Okay? His best bud is cool.

1045. It's the Leaning Tower of Cheesa.

1046. There's only one problem, his dad's Goofy.

1047. I can remember going to one screening and it all clicked together.

1048. Oh, this is going to be good. This is actually going to be good.

1049. The hottest ticket at the box office over the weekend

1050. featured two of TV's brightest stars.

1051. Martin Lawrence and Will Smith combined comedy and action adventure

1052. to climb all the way to the top of the box office chart.

1053. Their film Bad Boys earned an estimated 15.6 million dollars

1054. in its debut weekend.

1055. That's more than double the ticket sales

1056. for Goofy, which came in at number two, with Tommy Boy very close behind.

1057. - I think I'm gonna be sick. - [♪ gentle music playing]

1058. When the film was released, it was a critical disaster.

1059. It was so disheartening because I could not,

1060. for the life of me, find like a wonderful review.

1061. It's a very different kind of movie.

1062. You know I didn't… When we started seeing the reviews, because those would come in,

1063. Um, I didn't really know how it was going to land.

1064. The Los Angeles Times asked, "Why dampen the goofiness?"

1065. While the San Francisco Chronicle called the film "an incoherent mess."

1066. I think we thought it was going to do better than it did.

1067. I think that it being classic character,

1068. me attempting to strive for something deeper

1069. with Goofy to see if he could have an emotional side.

1070. I mean, some of my friends were angry with me

1071. for what I had done to Goofy.

1072. How dare I turn him into a character with emotions?

1073. Um, because he wasn't traditionally that character.

1074. With movies coming out that you star in,

1075. you're gonna have to get used to critics, well, critiquing your work.

1076. I remember one story. Roger Ebert went and saw the movie.

1077. People are always asking movie critics

1078. what the difference is between Goofy and Pluto.

1079. Well, Bill Farmer, who was the voice of Goofy,

1080. once told me that Pluto was definitely a dog,

1081. but that Goofy was the missing link between dog and man.

1082. Well, by the same token, A Goofy Movie

1083. is the missing link between six-minute cartoons

1084. and the more ambitious Disney animated features

1085. like The Lion King.

1086. Goofy Movie is not aiming at the same level of artistry and ambition

1087. as the heavy-duty Disney features like Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin.

1088. Fans of movie cartoons will find some milestones

1089. in this movie which reflect the fact that it was made

1090. in the 1990s and not in a more innocent time.

1091. For example, this is the first time I can remember

1092. where when cartoon characters get out of their cars, they lock 'em.

1093. So, you're hoping for someone to say something

1094. sort of supportive, but it really just didn't happen.

1095. I thought it was taking pedestrian, uh, 1990s stuff,

1096. rock concert stuff, ah, sort of a Prince figure,

1097. but recycled and softened all up, and sticking him with Goofy,

1098. which I associate with the 40s and all that.

1099. With poor box office performance,

1100. mediocre reviews, and limited studio support,

1101. the theatrical life of the film was shortened.

1102. The film made about 37 and a half million dollars.

1103. The film cost 18 million dollars to make.

1104. No, it was really twenty-eight-ish.

1105. Oh, yeah, easy, I think. I'd have to go look.

1106. I don't have those in my budgets anymore,

1107. but off the top of my head, I would say it was more like 28.

1108. I thought that it would be invisible.

1109. I truly thought, "Okay, this is one that's just going to go away."

1110. Because Disney didn't really value it, they made it available.

1111. Like, it was on the Disney Channel all the time.

1112. The Goofy Movie was cheaper to buy than The Lion King.

1113. Disney didn't know what they had, is my feeling.

1114. They didn't know that it was as good as it was.

1115. It was the little film that could.

1116. It was not until 20 years later that I realized

1117. what kind of a groundswell was happening in that moment in time.

1118. I realized, oh, this is much bigger than I ever thought it would be.

1119. There was a panel at D23.

1120. I had heard that they put it in one of the smallest rooms,

1121. in that ultimately they had to turn away about a 1000 people.

1122. It was standing room only.

1123. It wasn't even one of the top ten recommended panels to see that year.

1124. Thank you so much. Who's having a good time at D23 today?

1125. All these fans there, and they're selling tickets,

1126. and Don Hahn is doing the introductions.

1127. You guys have chosen wisely, because you are here for,

1128. I guarantee, the coolest and best panel

1129. of the entire weekend about The Goofy Movie.

1130. We're here tonight

1131. with some incredible people that were part of the making of the movie.

1132. We felt like the Beatles. It felt like that.

1133. - We felt like the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. - It was unreal.

1134. And I'm so thankful that all of you care for this movie.

1135. And obviously, by you being here…

1136. …it's, garsh, it is a little gem after all.

1137. I think we talked about this a few times.

1138. I didn't know the depth of love for this film.

1139. - It's absolutely astonishing.

1140. It became the number one audience favorite at that D23.

1141. And that's when I thought, "Oh, wait a minute."

1142. There's something going on here.

1143. - I want to talk about A Goofy Movie. - [♪ gentle music playing]

1144. A Goofy Movie is my favorite movie of all time,

1145. and it's been severely slept on.

1146. A time capsule of amazingness.

1147. - It totally holds up. - It really did.

1148. It's just so much better than it has any right to be.

1149. Beautifully written, beautifully acted.

1150. I was not expecting all the feels that there were in that.

1151. Such a classic movie.

1152. - A Goofy Movie is fantastic. - One of the best.

1153. One of my all-time favorite Disney animated films.

1154. - I really enjoy this movie. - It's fantastic.

1155. So, I would watch that movie over and over and I'd sing the songs.

1156. - And yeah, just a feel-good movie. - This is a childhood favorite.

1157. It really is a special movie.

1158. This is a movie I love so much because it grabs you and pulls you in.

1159. Is it cliché to call it the voice of a generation?

1160. I'm gonna say it. It was the voice of a generation.

1161. So, heartwarming, the relationship between Goofy and Max

1162. is really beautifully animated and well-written.

1163. Hitting the mark with both generations.

1164. And that's a quality of a good movie, I think.

1165. It's actually a very complex movie for like, 75 minutes.

1166. But it's about father and son relationships

1167. and traveling and growing.

1168. But that core father-son relationship is really freaking good.

1169. And it's written so well.

1170. It's very much the journey of them compromising both of their viewpoints,

1171. but realizing that things change.

1172. I was right at that tween age where everything your parents do

1173. is embarrassing.

1174. The story between Max and his dad definitely was so impactful for me.

1175. You can relate as a kid or you can relate as a parent as you get older.

1176. These two characters only have each other.

1177. They don't have a wife. They don't have a mom.

1178. They only have each other.

1179. Growing up, my dad and I were never super close.

1180. Watching the movie together really brought us closer together.

1181. I lost my mom when I was a kid.

1182. This old movie that I had on VHS that I still watched

1183. from time to time became something that I played constantly.

1184. It means so much to me.

1185. We watched it in the movies, and then I got it on VHS.

1186. And by the time my little sister was like three or four,

1187. we were just watching it all the time.

1188. I rewatch this a lot because I have a son, and I just love this movie.

1189. This was like the exact movie I needed in my life.

1190. That's just in time to identify with this. This is the first Black Disney movie.

1191. I was quite shocked when I had discovered

1192. that the African-American community had embraced this movie.

1193. Looking back at it, it lives in its DNA.

1194. I can tell you the exact day I watched The Goofy Movie,

1195. and for the first time watching a Disney movie, I saw myself.

1196. There was this episode about Atlanta, a whole episode dedicated

1197. to a fake documentary about The Goofy Movie.

1198. You know, Donald Glover, he was a '90s kid.

1199. Many millennials relate to A Goofy Movie in multiple ways.

1200. This is my life.

1201. I was just making a contemporary movie

1202. with contemporary characters that spoke to its time.

1203. Yes. I love this movie.

1204. I don't know if you guys have seen it, but someone made

1205. a shot-for-shot replication of one of the songs in the movie.

1206. I just couldn't believe how cool that was.

1207. We made, after today, just making it with our friends.

1208. We were just wanting to do something big,

1209. and now we are making another scene from it.

1210. Hey, everyone. I'm back with another costume video.

1211. Yep, so here it is. My whole cosplay of Powerline.

1212. How did you feel the first time you saw people cosplaying as characters?

1213. If you love something enough to emulate it,

1214. and they always say imitation is the most sincerest form of flattery.

1215. Hey, yo, Stacy!

1216. Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me, baby!

1217. So, many memorable moments.

1218. Cheddar! Oh, Cheddar West!

1219. Who's your favorite possum? Lester!

1220. There's so many good moments.

1221. Y'all know I can't talk about Goofy Movie without talking about this guy.

1222. A Goofy Movie, this is "I2I",

1223. and they eventually end up on stage with Powerline.

1224. Using the perfect cast as a dance?

1225. There has never been a more hype moment in Disney history.

1226. That's a breakout cult character.

1227. In today's episode of the best songs from our childhood.

1228. This movie changed my life,

1229. and I've never been so passionate about a movie.

1230. Seriously, right now, the merchandise for A Goofy Movie is pretty insane

1231. t-shirts, lunch boxes, collectibles, Funko Pops.

1232. This next one is the Powerline shock sauce.

1233. I mean, come on, some of these reviews are just ridiculous.

1234. "Emotionally diffused, small fry only, insipid songs,

1235. dampening the goofiness," and my all-time favorite,

1236. "an incoherent mess." Maybe you're an incoherent mess.

1237. The popularity of the movie has just steadily increased.

1238. It's kind of like a fine wine. It just gets better with age.

1239. I'm surprised at some of the folks who come to me

1240. and say that this is by far their favorite movie

1241. that they've ever seen.

1242. And that's a remarkable thing when you get to be a part of that.

1243. I didn't expect to start crying when making this video.

1244. It's a very special movie.

1245. To me, A Goofy Movie has earned its cult classic name.

1246. One of the all-time great '90s cult classic movies.

1247. It's truly just one of Disney's biggest cult classics.

1248. I think it is a film that's important to the Disney Renaissance

1249. and to Disney as an entire brand.

1250. Nostalgia is super powerful, but it stands the test of time.

1251. Okay, so I didn't know how to read this next part as narration,

1252. so I reworked it and rewrote it so it's more of a letter now.

1253. Okay.

1254. To the cast and crew of A Goofy Movie, it's hard to explain how much

1255. of an impact this film has had on me, but I'm going to try.

1256. - [♪ gentle music playing] - I want to tell you a story.

1257. It's not a story about mythic quests,

1258. legendary heroes, or galaxies far, far away.

1259. It's a story about a son and his father.

1260. Since I can remember,

1261. one of my favorite things to do is watching movies with my dad.

1262. Growing up, he'd introduced me to films he watched with his father.

1263. When I was five, my parents separated for two and a half years.

1264. I was confused why my dad had to leave, but he did.

1265. Watching movies with him became more and more infrequent.

1266. Instead of watching them with my dad, films became my escape.

1267. I watched everything I could get my hands on.

1268. Then, one day,

1269. my mom brought home a VHS tape that changed my life forever.

1270. A movie about a father who just wanted to spend time with his son.

1271. I'm not giving up on you, son. Together, we're gonna work this out.

1272. I watched it on repeat.

1273. Day after day, A Goofy Movie became a comfort,

1274. each viewing giving me a better understanding of how

1275. and why my parents were dealing with their own struggles.

1276. It was the story I needed at the time I needed it.

1277. This film connected me to my father in ways

1278. that I couldn't have predicted.

1279. Sometimes a character as silly as Goofy can mean so much more.

1280. - That's it. - [♪ music concludes]

1281. The story I hear the most

1282. is really about how the movie has done exactly what it set out to do.

1283. both parents and kids talk about how in watching this movie

1284. with my dad it gave us the ability to actually speak to each other,

1285. to find some equal ground that we watched this movie together,

1286. and my dad suddenly was asking me questions about who I was

1287. and things that he had never asked me before.

1288. And I think from the other side it also happens that kids are able to see

1289. that there's another side of the story.

1290. "Oh, I gained sort of complete understanding

1291. that my dad's dealing with a lot of things in his life."

1292. 'And there's a whole other side to who he is

1293. that I had never seen before."

1294. Those are the stories that I find the most rewarding,

1295. because that's what lives in the thematic of the movie.

1296. Yeah, this is crazy.

1297. We're here making a documentary about

1298. one of the greatest father and son stories ever

1299. with somebody that I look to like a father.

1300. Kevin's my uncle,

1301. but… he's always been there for me when I needed it.

1302. And he helped give my life purpose.

1303. We shared similar histories and relationships with our father.

1304. So, if it wasn't for Kevin, I wouldn't be a filmmaker.

1305. Yeah, this is crazy.

1306. If you watch the beginning of the movie, you never think that

1307. by the end, you know, they're gonna come together the way that they do.

1308. They do that through acceptance of each other,

1309. learning about themselves and about the other.

1310. I was only trying to take my boy fishing, okay?

1311. I'm not your little boy anymore, Dad. I've grown up.

1312. - I've got my own life now.

1313. I know that. I just wanted to be part of it.

1314. You're my son, Max.

1315. No matter how big you get, you'll always be my son.

1316. Through art, you get beauty, and without it,

1317. you would just have math and logic and reason.

1318. And it's something that transcends speech and logic,

1319. and it's purely emotional.

1320. And we're all emotional beings.

1321. I certainly would not be sitting here where I am today

1322. if I had not seen The Jungle Book when I was five years old.

1323. And I think that expression, an inspiring expression,

1324. in kids and adults is incredibly important in our society.

1325. Some people don't have the ability to express themselves any other way.

1326. I can only hope that someone sees A Goofy Movie

1327. and is inspired to be a filmmaker or an artist.

1328. That The Goofy Movie does for someone now what The Jungle Book

1329. did for me when I was five, is cement purpose.

1330. Art gave me purpose in life.

1331. I would love to have them laugh and cry at Goofy.

1332. I would love to get both of those things out of this movie.

1333. More than the laughing, I would love to have them be moved by who Goofy is

1334. and by how he relates to his son in that relationship.

1335. The best thing these movies can do is to confront real life

1336. through this make-believe world.

1337. It was just sort of innocent phase in our careers.

1338. You know? It was fun to make, and you were working with friends.

1339. And the general nostalgic feeling I have

1340. for the whole part was just having fun doing it.

1341. You know, at the time, it could seem really difficult,

1342. but when you look back in time at it, there is something,

1343. you know, pretty magical about the whole thing.

1344. What I hope people take away from the movie is expressed

1345. within its last song.

1346. It's a plea for us all to be able to see eye to eye.

1347. There's a hope that whether or not you're two different communities

1348. or a father and a son,

1349. that you can find a way to see each other for who you truly are

1350. and accept each other for what you have to give.

1351. You know, the magic trick of animation

1352. is making somebody believe

1353. this inanimate thing is alive and thinking and feeling,

1354. and not only that, but getting you to feel for it.

1355. I mean, I think the great thing about any kind of art

1356. is that you can touch somebody and touch their lives,

1357. make them laugh, make them cry, make them feel seen.

1358. And you don't always know it. Once you put it out into the world,

1359. you don't know what it's going to become of it.

1360. There is that universal connection that people end up having.

1361. And I think you can't ask for more than that.

1362. I hear it all the time out in the world.

1363. It's so underappreciated. A Goofy Movie isn't appreciated.

1364. It deserves to be a Disney classic.

1365. That exists within the audience. They've decided.

1366. They've made it a Disney classic.

1367. If they didn't think it was a classic film,

1368. we wouldn't be sitting here talking about A Goofy Movie.

1369. There wouldn't be this groundswell.

1370. It's touched them. To them, it's a Disney classic.

1371. They voted.

1372. Yup.

1373. No.

1374. You know, I've thought a little bit about that it would be cool to make,

1375. like, a Powerline documentary.

1376. Um, I've thought about that.