Don: 0:36

I'm back. Is that okay? Is that okay?

Ron: 0:40

Well, I was excited to be back. We said big energy, Doug. We said this is going gonna be some people's podcast moment of the year yeah, I said don't screw it up, yeah, and you came in with two words poltergeist isn't that? They're here.

Doug: 1:02

Poltergeist was so good so good.

Don: 1:05

It's really great yeah the paper mache coming out of that yeah, closet, it's awesome, unbelievable yeah, it really got me as a child my nephew's favorite movie when he was two really strong too.

Ron: 1:17

You must be a cool kid or guide. Now, yeah, grown man, he's a little bit older than two now.

Doug: 1:23

So I've got the green light to introduce my son to Poltergeist at two.

Don: 1:27

Yeah, you bet. Well, it was already his favorite at two, so he was introduced before, so we started at nine months and we did gloss over whether or not this guy developed well.

Doug: 1:36

He's cool, yeah, how's he doing?

Don: 1:38

Yeah, he is relatively well. What's his bank account?

Ron: 1:40

look like.

Doug: 1:46

Are well? His bank account looks like yeah. Are he rolling in?

Don: 1:48

it. Doug needs this info. I'm more interested, is he?

Doug: 1:49

ghost hunting. That's, that's. Yeah, absolutely I like that. I like that congratulations, doug.

Ron: 1:53

It's been a an eventful start of the year for you where you've been, yes, um well, we've been here slaving away on that podcast life.

Doug: 2:02

Yeah, I, I've missed you both uh terribly, but I will say that, um, to have a boy brought into this world on january 1st, quite, quite a new year's experience, and a new year knew everything really uh, for him and and for myself. No one had a new year, quite like you have had a new year I think if somebody else had a child the same day, probably they had a similar.

Don: 2:26

Were you in the labor room during the countdown Ten nine.

Ron: 2:35

Yeah, we're all like doctors and nurses, like flirting with each other, asking attention.

Doug: 2:36

I will say in the labor and delivery. There was a moment that they came in with the 2005 headwear and that was pretty cool. That's great yeah To see a holiday in a hospital it's a unique thing. Uh, but yeah, it was cool, it was cool, but yeah, no, the countdown was definitely more uh, more more focused on my son, and it was two, 13 that day, uh, in the afternoon, when he was born. So, yeah, the countdown had passed.

Ron: 3:04

Well, congratulations. We're very happy for you and your new family and, more importantly, we're happy to have you back in the headphones back in front of the mic it's good to be here Warming us with your voice.

Doug: 3:15

It's good.

Ron: 3:15

And your insight and your mind. Thank you.

Doug: 3:18

Thank you Quite an introduction.

Don: 3:20

I hope I can live up to. Ron is clearly drunk today.

Ron: 3:28

Those Canada dries aren't so dry people Canada wet. That's his new name. This is how I get through the podcast. Now it's taking its toll on me.

Doug: 3:36

Yeah, we are in season three. This is the decline of Ron. We've only experienced my decline over the past two seasons.

Ron: 3:44

First two seasons seasons. You have to be on your best behavior.

Doug: 3:45

You're introducing yourself to the world now, if they're still here, take it or leave it exactly right, this is what I am, yeah but the narrative arc to see me becoming a more responsible father and then to see you go, just like you know down the tank.

Ron: 3:59

It's gonna be really special. I think it's because we're linked right. The twain of us cannot both like be happy or successful at the same time. There's always a gulf between us. Sometimes it's smaller, sometimes it's larger.

Don: 4:11

There's a convergence of the twain, there is, yes, the balance, the balance must always.

Doug: 4:18

It's a cosmic wedding. It really is. That's how I describe us in general.

Ron: 4:24

It is Cos it really is. That's how I describe us in general. It is cosmically bound.

Doug: 4:26

Yes, quite so. Well, gentlemen, I came here today to ask you about Saturday morning cartoons. Tell me about waking up on a Saturday. What were you watching? What were you doing? Tell me about that experience. Did you not watch cartoons? Did you have the experience? Yeah, like we don't watch that filth, I don't know.

Ron: 4:48

Yeah, I'm curious. I know the Saturday cartoons are a thing, but I don't actually remember when the cartoons I watched were on. My only real memory of weekend cartoons, I feel like, was the summers and we would do like swimming lessons and I remember like waking up in the mornings, which I think were on like saturdays, and then just watching, like nick jr um, while my mother had to like lotion, like four of us, and like just cover us in sunscreen and we were like complaining and being oily and it was terrible, but like we would watch, like I don't know, blues clues or, yeah, the busy world of richard scary a big fan yeah, a little bear.

Ron: 5:30

Um, all the old like nick junior shows which I think were on during the weekends and then we would go to swimming lessons, um, but yeah, cartoons were a huge part of growing up. I mean, like I think all of my media was like cartoon based. Yeah, the wonder years was on and I was. I didn't care about the wonder years as a kid, or, like, um, steve Urkel, what's his program.

Ron: 5:50

I, I know like I I knew parents were watching that kind of stuff, but we were like nah, man, give us and I can drawn Um blues clues was a hybrid where Steve was. You're right, he was a real man in a pretend world.

Doug: 6:07

Blue was also very real to me, so let's not get. She was great.

Ron: 6:10

Blue was great. Yeah, um. Do you remember all the rumors about the Steve like getting driven mad?

Doug: 6:16

Yep, absolutely yeah, and when he left the show, what they said on uh, nick Jr Was Steve's going to college. Yeah, he was way past college years. That was really funny, and so, of course, the internet responded and it's like he's clinically depressed yeah, save steve.

Ron: 6:33

Yeah, absolutely, he actually just went to make music. He made a pretty good music did he really yeah, yeah, it's like steve burns and the struggle, I think, is the name of his band which is not what I would associate with his, his brand his band being called the struggle doesn't help his case at all, to say the least.

Doug: 6:48

That's too bad. Um no, that's good. And I can definitely say as a parent, I now see the value in cartoon you do. There's definitely been some days where, yeah, mrs brown is going to take some time to get. You've been a parent for like 12 minutes yes, and in those 12 minutes can he even see color, yet I think black, white and red come off his eyes he's still an amphibian right he really is.

Doug: 7:15

It's, it's insane. Uh, the smiling has begun, but those moments where, yeah, mrs brown needs to get a little bit, a little bit done, will put on Dragon Ball. Oh yeah those are important moments of bonding with dad and son, to say the least. Okay, so Nick Jr, nick Jr, nick Jr was our thing in the mornings.

Ron: 7:34

yeah, yeah.

Doug: 7:35

Don. What did you watch?

Don: 7:37

See, the trouble with Saturday morning cartoons is that they exist in the morning.

Doug: 7:44

Don, what was your 2 am adult swim.

Don: 7:50

Adult swim didn't exist when I was a child.

Ron: 7:53

There must have been something that got played late at night, right?

Don: 7:56

Flintstones on syndication.

Ron: 7:59

I was going to say like bomb shelter tutorials or something.

Don: 8:04

Yeah, I was not an early riser on Saturdays, I liked to sleep. In was my uh, was my activity, but uh, but I did catch um uh, a few things.

Doug: 8:13

So it was space ghost was one of my favorite Coast to coast, or are we talking uh?

Ron: 8:18

like yeah, Okay.

Doug: 8:19

So before it was the ironic uh yeah, Talk show, that's great yeah.

Don: 8:25

Um, super friends, so the justice league and the wonder twins and all those, um, and I actually have the strongest memories of the PSAs that would exist in between the commercials, the the little. So, um, give us an example. Yeah, I'm excited, I'm just a bill, of course. But no, there's another one about, about food. I can't and I don't know what the creature was like. Maybe it was like a cracker or something. It was like trying to encourage you to try new kinds of food.

Doug: 8:53

So was it food pyramid? Like, were we still on that game? No, it just was like just try it, kids yeah, just basically it was broccoli's not bad, yeah, yeah, that's good don't knock it till you try it. Put a little on your plate your mom works hard to make you meals. Yeah, I can see that I like.

Don: 9:14

So yeah, it was not a big saturday morning cartoon like I. I liked that they existed and I wanted to watch them, but they always were finishing up when when I got up.

Doug: 9:23

So okay, fair enough.

Don: 9:25

There is something um to animation I do remember, though, there was another show I used to watch with my grandpa. I don't think it was saturday morning, so I'm trying to think it was always on ktla, okay, uh, channel five, and it was the. It was a popeye. We used to watch popeye all the time and it was, uh, some artist guy kids would send in like a scribble. You could send them a scribble and then he would turn your scribble into a popeye character. Oh wow, in between the episodes of popeye that would launch, yeah well, it's like popeye mania.

Ron: 9:56

The kids are like I gotta get popeye yeah, absolutely so.

Don: 10:00

Yeah, that was cool to watch how?

Doug: 10:02

um, because I'm imagining what I was drawing back in the day and these things were probably looking real rough, to say the least.

Don: 10:10

Yeah, he did a great like you'd send in these. I didn't send one in, but he would get these random scribbles and, yeah, I'll see if I can find his name.

Doug: 10:18

Okay, that's good. Well, you set me up pretty well, because we are going to be discussing the man, the myth, the legend. He's not a myth, he's real. Unlike the Driceratops, absolutely the very real Steve and the very real Max Fleischer that we're going to be discussing today, who was the originator of the animated Popeye. Yeah, there's a lot that we're going to touch on, and I'm curious what he's going to say. His name was Tom Hatton. Tom Hatton.

Don: 10:48

Okay, still at it. I think he's dead. No.

Ron: 10:51

Sorry, Tom. Thank you, Tom. He died in 2019. Oh okay, not too long. Yeah, yeah, he was old.

Doug: 11:05

He was born in 1926, 1995. Animating up a storm, yeah. Making kids' dreams come true, I like that. Well, there was a boy with a dream by the name of Max Fleischer, who immigrated from Poland in 1887 to the great state and city of New York, because it's both a state and a city for our listeners out there, in case we didn't know, he was born in 1883. Yes, we didn't know, he was born in 1883.

Ron: 11:33

And the reason that I wanted to talk about him today is I noticed neither of you brought up Mickey Mouse in your Mickey Mouse cartoons always sucked, wow.

Don: 11:36

Well, they weren't on Saturday mornings, so you had to have the Disney Channel to see a Disney cartoon back when I was a kid.

Ron: 11:42

Yeah, that's true. The Disney Channel was, like, always locked off. Yeah, like I feel like, uh, one of my grandparents had it and the other ones didn't yeah and so, and I remember, whenever we were at the other grandparents, it wasn't even cartoon time, it was like umba, macumba time, what?

Doug: 11:58

do you remember um no, no and uh, I'm gonna go ahead and put my topic away for the day, because we need to know what are you talking about.

Ron: 12:07

It was like a Jack Hanna animal show for kids and I think the character's name was Umba Macumba. He was just a guy in like South Africa or somewhere and he would just like show you clips. Hey let's go check out the you know. Let's go on safari and see what we find today.

Doug: 12:29

And then there'd be a film crew showing you zebras and stuff. So while mr rogers was pulling us around in the train and going to his world, he's out there, I'm a macomba was living, yeah on the serengeti and uh bringing us real stuff but, anyways.

Ron: 12:38

So I always saw like the live action disney cartoons. Okay, there was one I loved, it was Darkwing Duck. Oh yeah, yeah, he was cool. I feel like they got better as I got older. I remember Bonkers. Bonkers was maybe not good actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking Freakazoid Was Freakazoid Disney, maybe not.

Doug: 12:56

I think that was WB yeah.

Don: 12:58

WB you guys are. I know those are not real words.

Ron: 13:02

We grew up on cartoons, man, we can like. Doug, you're unlocking, like a you know, a section of my brain that's been closed off and like molded. For years I used to read this loser.

Don: 13:23

Well, Don had to make the pictures in his head.

Doug: 13:28

We could say that when we had everything illustrated for us. I suppose that offers the difference in our imagination.

Ron: 13:33

So Fleischer is, is he like one of the? He is not Walt Disney right, is he? Like the other end of the. He's not Walt Disney, he's not. Who's the Chuck Jones guy?

Doug: 13:47

he's the looney tunes guy, right oh, uh, I don't know, I don't know, uh, the name of the.

Ron: 13:53

Those to me are like the two, like proto animator, like like pioneer animators.

Doug: 13:57

Right, I'm trying to remember porky pig coming through.

Ron: 14:00

Chuck jones, yeah, chuck jones, okay, um and so you're saying max fleischer, who is a name I've heard, but a man I know very little about.

Don: 14:07

Sure he's the guy that makes the little yeast package when you make rolls oh that doesn't make sense.

Ron: 14:11

No, that's fleischman, oh yeah, yeah, er man, yeah, whatever you need. They probably changed it at ellis island, but um, yes, it's highly possible.

Doug: 14:21

So he makes popeye this is yes yes, so I was introduced to max fleischer because I was playing a video game game in the late 2010s called Cuphead which, if we're not familiar with, a very small studio made, composed the music for and did everything in the art style where they basically had said. Max Fleischer was our biggest influence. It was Fleischer cartoons. I was enamored by the game because it's a very cool game. It's a very difficult game as well, like very difficult whole game is based around you being this small animated kind of coffee mug looking, head type wire armed guy that's going through and shooting these kind of water pellets, I guess, at all of these different bosses, and it was a really difficult game.

Doug: 15:11

But it kind of took the gaming world by storm at the time because it was such a creative project and they hand animated everything, put it through the process and they said that they took a lot of inspiration from Max Fleischer, which sent me down this rabbit hole. So Max was one of the big competitors with Disney and he beat Disney to the punch on a few things, one of the biggest being attaching sound to cartoons, so voice in cartoon. He was very famous for putting voice to cartoon. In his animation the characters would be voiced. He not only had Popeye in his stock, he was the inventor of Betty Boop, if we're familiar.

Ron: 15:54

Do you?

Doug: 15:55

have a good impression of Betty. I'm Betty. I was hoping for Boop, boop, be Doop.

Ron: 16:05

Did she say Boop, boop, be Doop? I've honestly never seen a Betty Boop cartoon. I feel like I've seen more hours of Betty Boop tattoos on people in my life than I have minutes of actual cartoon footage.

Doug: 16:20

I like thinking of that in hours. You're just staring at a man's arm.

Ron: 16:25

Yeah, you're at jury duty and you're staring at someone's Betty Boop tattoo on their thigh, Absolutely as as we all, and we're getting matching tattoos right after this, uh, in honor of Max.

Doug: 16:39

Um, but yeah, max Max was a competitor with Disney, so where most people would think about the mouse, um, especially, um, cause this takes us back to the 30s, where cartoons were often shown in a reel. Like, you would be going to the movie theater and you might start a film actually in the middle, because it would just be a looping film that was playing at the time and in between this there would be cartoons, there would be newsreels, there would be one of the coolest things that I saw is it was very common for there'd be like a popular folk song or a popular song of the day, and Max was also animating the bouncing ball.

Ron: 17:18

That goes on top of the word. He invented the bouncing ball. I don't know if he was the inventor, but there are several.

Doug: 17:25

He has a character called Coco the Clown, which, if you, if any of you, are at home and can Google this quickly, you probably have seen him before. Um, he would be dancing around the words, but what I found so funny is thinking of the experience of being in a movie theater and just everyone singing a song together.

Doug: 17:43

That would be a very important thing. Um, the uh, the documentary that I was watching on Fleischer's life, apparently like there would be times where they would be yelling at the the person who was playing the reels and saying, like play it again, because people would just want to sing again in a movie hall and I just it's so different now where it's like I've bought my AMC ticket and I've got a seat right here, I'm going to quietly listen to the previews, my movie is scheduled at this time and then I leave. So quite a different culture surrounding what would be in a movie theater, to say the least. It was more like a vaudevillian, very much so, and I think that that's evident in the style of um when you look at Betty Boop or Popeye, for example. Like both of them, like Betty Boop is clearly a flapper girl, um and um.

Doug: 18:31

That's a big difference, I think in his animation style is knowing that he had immigrated from Poland. So much of his cartoon work is clearly in these urban areas that look like you know somewhere in Queens essentially, where you know the doorsteps are there, everything is is very urban, um and kind of set in this way. That's very different from the style of Disney, which is a little bit more wholesome. Obviously, yeah, betty Boop is a very. Are you saying Betty Boop is not wholesome? She is.

Ron: 19:03

But Are you saying like Disney is a more sort of imagined wholesomeness? Sure.

Doug: 19:09

I'm trying to think of, like the early Disney.

Ron: 19:11

They're kind of rural right they're kind of countryside there's like a, a, a cow with a loud personality, yep, chewing something.

Don: 19:19

They're very violent, though, yeah.

Ron: 19:21

Are they? I don't remember the violence in the early. Yeah, they're making this one, it's all it's all.

Doug: 19:32

Face the big, oh, big pete, big pete, yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah, there are definitely disney cartoons where you see somebody being hunted down with a knife.

Ron: 19:36

It's, it's some scary stuff.

Doug: 19:38

There was one I was watching. You know as a contrast, that I saw pluto, who's being put in a uh, an electrified chair, and there's literally a scene where he's being electrocuted. You can see his side of his body and his like rib cage disintegrates and falls to the bottom of his body. You could see his like heart like trying to keep going and I went this is some morbid stuff, to say the least. Um, but no, fly sure was a little bit more risque in that like there were definitely scenes of betty like uh going behind a uh I think there was like a pile of rubbish that she like basically goes behind and she's like throwing off clothes and changing and you can definitely see the uh one of the other characters going hot dog.

Ron: 20:20

The dog says hot dog, I mean well, he was a hot dog.

Doug: 20:24

He's being tantalized by this woman who's changing, you know. So um yeah there's betty had. She was censored uh, are you talking about because you couldn't see anything. Is that what you mean?

Don: 20:37

no, I'm saying the the original. What you're talking about the 1930s. The 1930 version of betty boop was racier than the 1934 version of betty when the haze code started to uh, be more strictly, strictly applied. So a lot of the sexually suggestive jokes like you talked about she was very romantically independent, I guess as an original character, all of that had to be ratcheted down once the Hays Code came in.

Don: 21:05

That's tough. She is a marker of I don't know progress, yes, Regression. She is a marker of I don't know progress, yes, Regression. She is a marker in film history.

Doug: 21:16

She's a marker that the times they are changing. Bob was coming about 30 years later but that's all right.

Ron: 21:22

That's what that song's about Betty. It's all about Betty baby. Did Bob have a Betty Boop?

Doug: 21:27

tattoo. I mean. Think about the fact that you're in jury duty and you can't stop looking at a man's thigh.

Don: 21:32

I mean it says everything it wants to be seen, and so did she. And so did she.

Doug: 21:38

Hot dog but yeah, he's a big innovator in this regard. He worked with his family. Dave was his main partner he famously got into so the family owns a tailoring business. The father of the family, the patriarch, does really well. At first they run into financial troubles but during that time where they are doing well, it affords Max several hours to be able to illustrate and draw. He has some talent with this and his main focus was the things that he was seeing in theaters in the 20s. Um, were very archaic, like he was looking, and they were kind of these glitchy stop motion looking. Um, you know, like where an animation would have somebody at a standstill and the next frame would be their arm extended for a handshake. Um, he said this doesn't look like real life, like those flip books you make in elementary school?

Doug: 22:34

Yes, as if you were turning the pages instead of flipping.

Ron: 22:36

That's what it's looking like, yeah.

Doug: 22:38

Good, good comparison.

Ron: 22:40

I think everyone's experimented with animation at some point. Right, Like you, you realize the magic of it and like, oh, if I just it depends on, like how lazy you are, far or like you know how determined you are.

Don: 22:50

That's something that kids these days are going to miss out on right. Yeah, we used to draw them in our textbooks right, right, right, yes, in the little corner, and then you can flip through.

Ron: 22:57

Yeah, yep now they're just going to have an. Ai do it for them. Probably ai make me a betty boop yeah, ai boop you know, that's not gonna look as good on a cab.

Doug: 23:07

I'll tell you that, yeah, that's not going to look as good on a cab. I'll tell you that, yeah, that's true. So, um, yeah, he was inspired. He, he was very inspired to make something that was better, and so the technique that he is most famous for is he invents something called a rotoscope, in which, um, a background can be generated, so you can have a moving background or a placement of a background that's fully painted, and he would put a transparent sheet over the top and would animate over the top of this. But what this also lends itself to is you could put film in the back of this, and so he would have his brother move around or dance or do different things, and so coco the clown was actually him, frame by frame, with film illustrating over the top of his brother moving around in a three-dimensional space, and this is how he got a much smoother animation style in that cheating. What do you think? Is it cheating? It's a good question.

Don: 24:09

It's a great question yeah, walt disney's out there, you know, drawing the mouse from by hand, frame by frame. And then, even though this guy's just just wanted to do that, just drawing over pictures like it's not animation, that's just that.

Ron: 24:25

Just paint by numbers life inspires art that's exactly what I was gonna say, but also really wow, we're really on it though um, but it seems like um, if this was like an important step to get them to the place where they felt confident doing more realistic or smoother animation. Right, it sounds like that's kind of what it is right otherwise. Otherwise it requires like a lot of study, right Like and who?

Don: 24:52

has time for that Like study.

Ron: 24:54

But I mean you're trying to make a buck in 1935, right? So like I can kind of see I mean I don't know Like I've seen the behind the scenes of like animating Beauty and the Beast or whatever, and I wanted to be an animator as a kid actually- I liked, okay, so much, and I liked drawing until I started watching these like behind the scenes and I was like, oh my god, this is, yeah, just repetitive, right, doing the same lines over and over for however many frames, and it's like it's really like seriously labor intensive.

Don: 25:23

So I I think I can understand in animation like any tool that helps save or cut down that labor right to bring it to a a cooler end product, right but so if leonardo da vinci had taken a photograph of of lisa right and, and just projected it on the wall and then, like traced over it, would we say, oh my gosh, what a great artist no, yeah, she wouldn't be the mona lisa, that's for sure.

Doug: 25:49

She's a copy Lisa, that's right.

Ron: 25:53

But I mean he essentially did that right with a model. He just didn't have a camera. So he is still doing a form of tracing, just without actually being able to trace. It's not like he envisioned the Mona Lisa from his imagination and created this thing. Even he was using some form of aid, Wouldn't we say? The sit-in model is an aid Well is that pretty mean he's just drawing it.

Don: 26:15

I mean that's not right. That's he's drawing from by hand what his eyes are seeing.

Ron: 26:21

That's not the same as tracing over something that no, it's definitely not the same, but I mean it is.

Doug: 26:26

It is still a form of assistance to have the model to begin with, I look at it in a similar regard, as like sampling within music, like the fact that you can take a piece of something and then create something else out of it, because Coco the Clown I mean it's not. So. The example I can give you is the big breakthrough that they had is they had a series called Out of the Inkwell in which you see david I don't remember if it's dave or max sitting at the table, but they dip their pen into the ink that's at the table. It's like him sitting and getting ready to animate and as he draws the pen from the inkwell, coco pops out out from the inkwell pops, coco the clown.

Doug: 27:09

A little song is there, okay, so I didn't know this is why I need you guys you know, you got all this fun stuff in the background here, but just before we move on real quick.

Don: 27:20

Yeah, because it might be a topic we talk about later, but there is a suggestion that painters did actually use tools like this well before fleischer, like so vermeer, uh, who would be dutch, but like 16th century, is that right, uh?

Don: 27:37

I don't know my touch girl the pearly ring and the milkman that he used like a camera obscura to actually project the image onto his um canvas and then painted over top of that image. So yeah, it's and, and it hasn't been proven and he hasn't. He didn't leave behind diaries, but it's been suggested that that's how he got the light to work the way that it does in some of his images.

Ron: 27:58

So it so this idea is I'm I'm bringing it up to be provocative, but but it no, but it's not new it is interesting to talk about because I think the way you react to that question kind of helps you find out. What do you expect or desire from art, right?

Doug: 28:16

Correct.

Ron: 28:16

If art's purpose is to mirror reality as closely, with as much fidelity as possible, then you are probably going to be less impressed by someone tracing reality right.

Doug: 28:27

Right, yeah.

Ron: 28:28

Or if its job is to be additive to that reality in some way, then you're kind of like, oh, OK.

Doug: 28:32

Right.

Ron: 28:32

Because, like right, ideally the idea of trace making a painting and then tracing the forms is that you're now going to add some sort of color, value or something perspective to it that was not capturable in real life.

Doug: 28:46

And maybe it's the choice of what you do decide to give the fidelity of life. Like for Max max it was. Obviously I want this to be a smoother production that imitates life. Yeah, but then the things he's creating, like coco the clown is such an exaggerated example of what a clown would actually be, or you know that, like betty boo, popeye the sailor, they're all caricatures, right, of what life is. It's like so far removed. It's very surreal looking I mean popeye's forearms. I think if he actually had those proportions.

Ron: 29:16

I'd be worried about him being able to walk correctly through a door.

Doug: 29:20

But so there's a certain amount of that. That it's like, yeah, what do you exaggerate and what do you retain? It makes it interesting, certainly. But that series is interesting because you're looking at the live animation, um, or the, the live film that's mixed with the animation. So you're seeing him running up and down the staircase being chased by a bunch of Coco the clowns, um, and then going back down Um and I, I would assume for its time, cause this is, uh, the series ran from 1918 to 1929. They're putting out episodes of this and, uh, I imagine that was so innovative at the time to see something like that, because I mean, it hadn't been done before. Um, betty boop and, uh, popeye follow after this and it moves further away from the live film aspects and they, they also developed Don, we were talking about this a little bit beforehand. It was the stereo, it was not the rotoscope, it was Stereoptics, stereoptics and he invented the setback camera, yeah, so we're looking at entire sets that were developed.

Doug: 30:25

There's a very cool scene of Popeye going through an actual 3D developed neighborhood that they had built this entire set, and then there's this transparent layer where it looks like he's pushing a baby in a stroller and, uh, the the animation is simply him going around a corner and they're you know um, shrinking Popeye and the carriage to make it look like the depth perception is going further away, even though the set itself is actually physically moving. They have, like, uh, operators that are moving and they're even still looking at it and it's very cool Cause you can generally YouTube. Almost all of these are public domain now, but we have the option now to look at things in like 4k, 120 frames, 60 frames, where it's like very clean and it's presentation. It's not being presented in a 1930s theater and they still look incredible, like it's. It's wild to kind of see what they made to sometimes make a seven minute cartoon, um, so the innovation is just off the chart, um, and I think that that's that's kind of where I want to take it today is like looking at the necessity being the mother of invention, or like the innovative um characteristics that are there, because we have this entire family that's working on these set pieces and these animation. He's hiring tons of people to work in his studio and this leads to some very interesting places, to say the least.

Doug: 31:45

He, as he, continues to gain success. So, out of the inkwell. Then we have Betty, then we have Popeye, and what's interesting is, um, they're kind of introduced in sequence, like when Betty Boop really takes off. Popeye is introduced as a character in Betty Boop and they do this in comics a lot. I noticed this where it's like you'll have a character that's introduced as a side character in a comic to see what the audience response is and depending on how well something sells which I'm curious and I don't know the answer to this Like how do you gauge the reaction of if, if these things are being played in theaters? You know, like what? How do you decide that Popeye is the one.

Ron: 32:22

You got a theater plant right, or you go and pull the theater kids.

Don: 32:25

at the end you go, you listen.

Ron: 32:27

Did they like that racist caricature? Oh, they did. We're going to win World War II now, boys.

Doug: 32:35

That's exactly right. But, yeah, these things that he puts into perspective, it really makes him a contender, even though we would probably look at Disney and Looney Tunes for their time as being the two biggest production um companies and like probably the most remembered names. Um, in animation, there was a lot of innovation that was happening with max that I think is worth talking about here. Um, where fleischer, I think, started to um decline is he was at his peak following popeye. They're doing really well. The two things that are often looked at as his big decline is. Disney, of course, comes out with the fully animated feature film Snow White. He competes by saying, okay, I want to start chasing this, and I think that this might be where things start to change. He creates the Gulliver's Travels film.

Ron: 33:33

Oh, yeah, have you ever seen that?

Doug: 33:34

That one's great.

Ron: 33:35

It's really good that's the one with Jack Black.

Doug: 33:40

He came back and did one last dance. That's right, not very much animation in that one. A lot of CGI though, but yeah, came up with the Gulliver's Travels film in 1939, following Snow White's success in 1937.

Don: 33:57

So all of the feature films in the 1930s really wanted to focus on diminutive people.

Ron: 34:02

Yes, it's cheaper to animate Absolutely Not as much to draw.

Don: 34:06

They're just little.

Doug: 34:07

Gulliver's Travels, the Lilliputians Is that their name? Yeah, absolutely Coming around. But yeah, it's interesting, it did not have the same level of success that Snow White did, and the problem that they were running into is where you're making a seven minute cartoon and so the amount of labor is still very intensive for that. You go into full motion pictures and the business side and the amount of loans that they took out were not managed quite as well. And so, as they run into financial troubles, um, they actually got into uh issues with their animators uh going on strike.

Doug: 34:45

There was a famous um sign that went up that said $14 a week is not enough to uh to feed your family, uh, for the animation studio. And so they made a big shift to move to Miami, because at that time Miami was much cheaper, weather was nice, they were able to afford homes and bring a lot of the animators down there, where the wages that they were being paid was kind of fair to the cost of living versus New York, which was very destructive to the overall process. So that was like one of the the big um first things is just the overextension on getting a bunch of loans doing something that's I don't know.

Doug: 35:21

I mean at least 10 times the amount of work and, uh, quality control and everything that was in there. At one point I think his studio had up to 400 people that were working over time and just looking through quality control, like, is every single frame matching up to where it should be? And I think some of that overextension starts to really wear them down. The other thing that happened is they took on which was at the time the biggest payday for um a short um serial. They took on Superman, um, and so the first animated Superman that we ever get, um, is from the Fleischer brothers.

Doug: 36:05

They got through either eight or nine episodes of the original animations of Superman, which this is a very big deal because comics were really not brought into the animated sphere in the same way, and this still to this day. There are people that say it's one of the best interpretations of the original Superman from action comics, because this is innovative in that, yeah, like two to three years after the comic comes out, we're already animating. Where're now? And I never got to my saturday morning cartoon, but my, my, I don't think this was even a saturday thing, but I was just constantly looping batman, the animated series that was like my staple, uh, to say this.

Ron: 36:43

So art deco is forever burning in my brain.

Doug: 36:46

Like I will I will always love art deco, but yeah, the idea of a superhero animation was not. Yeah, it was completely new at the time.

Ron: 36:56

I'm surprised they didn't think it would be like a competition with the comic right. It would be like why would we want them to watch it when I want them to buy the?

Doug: 37:05

book. Opposite effect, actually that because the animations were being played, um, people were buying the comics. It was introducing a whole new market of people that maybe, oh, you know, comics are those kids stuff that they buy for, you know, like a couple of pennies. Um, I would never get into something like that. This brought a whole new audience, um, so they were getting paid a pretty good amount in order to do it. But when you look at the animation, especially in the Superman episodes, the game has been stepped up significantly, just in terms of the attention to color, detail, shadows, animation everything is just beautiful.

Doug: 37:42

And so they run into huge debt problems where they've overextended to the point that they're not making payments and Dave and Max have a huge falling out about what needs its name on it. It's interesting the documentary that I'm pulling a lot of this from. They talk about that not much of whatever happened in the family business was discussed, other than the big dispute became it wasn't about money, it was. My name needs to be on that. Your name's off of this. I was the one who worked on this, and that really divided them, um, to where they weren't even able to reconcile up until both of them, uh, passed away. They weren't able to reconcile um, and so this takes them out of the sphere that they've got this 25 to 30 year run where they're just constantly innovating, disney's trying to catch up. And then there's this moment at the end in the in the last five years, where they flip and decide I want to start chasing Disney, let's go with the feature film, let's do this incredibly innovative thing with Superman. They finally just kind of um hit hit, hit a uh a wall financially. Um, once that happens, paramount, paramount buys them out and takes them away. There's another group of people that take over the Superman cartoons.

Doug: 38:59

World War II hits um its peak of recruitment, and so they become very focused on, like you know, kind of American propaganda, where almost all the episodes are, um, you know, superman fighting the Japanese or Hitler, and that's really where things start to fall away and fall apart. But the thing that I find, I guess, most interesting within this through line is thinking about where is the moment because there is a certain amount of capital within art that you need, especially as a production company, which is really what they are there's this moment where they're at the peak of innovation. They want to do things the way that they see it, and to go back to what you said, ron, like life imitating art or art imitating life, like where that through line goes in, and then they just get into deep when it comes to the economics. And now the names that really stand out are, yeah, it would definitely be Disney and Looney Tunes. And so you know, I guess I'm interested because here I am playing this video game and you know, the late 2010s and I stumble upon of it would be money, but yeah, where that starts to run dry and creativity become, you can be as creative as you want, but then that capital runs out and I don't know out and I don't know.

Ron: 40:46

Yeah, it seems like the story you spelled out for us is like a fairly common one in like, uh, you know, like hollywood, right, like someone has a creative impetus, right, they want to make something, they have a talent for it or they develop that talent or the people they surround themselves with, like are able to facilitate that vision, and then you know they're in competition with someone, right?

Ron: 41:05

Maybe there's a bit of ego there, the desire to further innovate and to put your name down as, like, I'm the best one in this field, right, I feel like that's a pretty common sort of narrative. And then, yeah, it's always like, unclear, right, like I'm slightly more familiar with, like Walt Disney as a person, right, and you know, I feel like there's been a lot of like retrospective biographies on like who was Walt Disney? Right, like, clearly was this animator, but like, was he always a sort of one step ahead, thinking about, you know, the future of his business and the corporation and the giant monolith that the Disney Corporation has since become, and the giant monolith that the Disney Corporation has since become, right?

Ron: 41:44

Like how much of that was planned or desirous, you know, and how much was like his desire to just sort of create cool art. I don't know. I think it's one of those tricky. We could go all the way back to Leonardo, right. Like I mean, that dude was dependent on the capital of patrons, right, to facilitate his artworks and to push boundaries. Right, the great sculptors were also, like, needed to be paid in order to make those sorts of innovations, right, I think it.

Ron: 42:14

Yeah, it's like one of those interesting things because, like, clearly, you need money to do what you want to do, especially if you're doing you know, something that is like entertainment based, right, it's not's not a necessity, like people don't really need it in their lives, but they definitely want it, they want to seek it out and they want to spend money on it. And it takes, like you said, it's very laborious to make seven minutes of animation, right, and you need a team of people and those people aren't just going to donate their time to make one phenomenal Betty Boop cartoon.

Doug: 42:44

Get her out here, that's right.

Ron: 42:45

So then you need investment right, and then that investment expects returns, and then they start falling into it. It reminds me of, like Francis Ford Coppola, right, and his big thing was like he made a couple of successful movies Godfather and stuff and then like felt like the Hollywood studio system was constraining him or required so much, like you know, for producers producers to fund his projects.

Ron: 43:12

they wanted so much more input into the project or had like it needed to be this kind of a thing so that it would make the kind of money that they wanted to see, and he felt like he couldn't do like more. You know, essentially less commercial artsy things. Uh, george lucas always went on about this too, like I'm never allowed to make the cool art stuff in my head because I have to make star wars and blah, blah, blah, right. And so then, like francis ford coppola makes his own studio called american zoetrope and he makes just a couple of like really bomb films, like and is like unable to keep that company like solvent for a while. Like is really struggling, I think in the 90s. He pulls it back around with like brom stoker's dracula, like does pretty well or something which is one of don's favorite films, by the way. Don you love dracula?

Doug: 44:01

um, I read the book I'm just kidding we don and I disagree because I love that, yeah, I love it. He does not love it.

Don: 44:12

I struggle to stay awake yeah he hates it I went actually went to midnight showing the day it came out to well maybe that's why you struggle.

Doug: 44:19

Come on, man, I know you like to sleep in, but pick some regular hours I think I'm in the middle of both of you.

Ron: 44:25

Like I neither love it nor hate it. There are parts of it I think are so cool, such a politician. Yeah, that's right.

Doug: 44:33

And to be fair, Robert Eggers just released Nosferatu. Nosferatu, that kind of just swept away, but anyway this is not our film review podcast.

Ron: 44:43

I don't know. The point is like I I feel like you hear this a lot from creators right, like they want to divorce themselves from the, the money that allows them to pursue and do what they want to do. Right, and very few of them manage to actually like obtain that independence.

Doug: 44:58

Yeah, um don has a face. Hang on, no, go ahead. Oh, there's no face here. Okay, man don doesn't have a face now I'm scared um, yeah, I I think about it because they.

Doug: 45:15

So one of the things that, um, I skipped over in the beginning of their life is, while max is working at a newspaper by day, he's spending all of his evenings on refining his craft. And I think that that's also a very common story is had the day job and then just put all of my nights and free time into the thing that I really wanted to do and then eventually that became the job, and ultimately, I think that's not because of the riches and fame that are there, but it's the love of the craft. And can I actually carve this out as being the thing that I do with my life and giving the time, because I think that that's where the value is a lot of, I think, as a perception. But then I also am kind of torn, too on the conversation of art and content. I'm kind of torn too on the conversation of art and content because it's also interesting, because when I bring up cartoons, like if we're thinking of classical art, for example, like you just brought up Leonardo da Vinci, I don't think that I'm putting Max Fleischer up there with Leo, you know, like maybe an animator would.

Doug: 46:18

Yeah, but it's also interesting because I'm fairly certain, if we're constructing full sets, if we're inventing technology to best express our animation, I'm sure he felt that way, I'm sure that he looked at it as this piece of art, but then there also needs to be not only the patrons, but then the audience for it too. So does it hit that point in these theaters and I don't have an answer for this necessarily that people are screaming because they're like playye again we don't even want to watch the movie like play popeye again, because that's, that's the thing that's capturing everything about us um, I mean, it's almost like 100 years old and I feel like popeye is still a household name right like betty boot, probably a little bit less.

Ron: 47:00

I don't know if we went and but.

Don: 47:02

But when's the last time you saw a popeye cartoon?

Ron: 47:05

right, oh like never.

Don: 47:07

I mean, you've never seen a pop no, I think I remember seeing them.

Ron: 47:10

I don't know where I would have, but I've definitely seen some popeye cartoons have you seen the popeye live action movie?

Don: 47:15

I was just gonna. Yes, I have the robin williams one.

Ron: 47:17

Yeah, that was pretty great, yeah um but like, even if you haven't seen it, you like, like it still survives somehow, like you know, like it. It had enough impact that it filtered into the culture.

Don: 47:28

In a strange way actually, and that's so. And Betty Boop fits this one too, Although I understand I haven't seen, but there's a new Betty Boop musical in New York right now Um so just kind of having a moment, but both of those two characters are locked in their time period and they don't evolve the way some of these other characters do, that You're talking like Superman.

Doug: 47:49

Right, right, right so.

Don: 47:50

Superman was the. Was the the Patriot? Yeah, uh, person, a wartime Patriot in world war two, and then, through the fifties and sixties, he's the alien outsider, and then, like we get the reboot with what was the dean kane, one that was on tv and so anyways updated to the 1980s, 90s, and then we get a smallville again. So another update to the early 2000s, like it's a character that keeps being reset in time.

Don: 48:19

We can't do that with popeye, like you can't like if we had a popeye in 2025, that was a sailor that like you know, lived in the dogs and he's like in the U S Navy eight canned vegetables bigger than ever punched, punched, you know, punched all of his problems away and it just it wouldn't work the same way that that Superman does when you re-update it, because it it can fit in that new time period and Betty Boop same thing like a 2025 betty boop isn't doesn't work.

Doug: 48:49

no, yeah, and I think this is uh I'm gonna be very cautious not to take us over here because this is something that I've contended that, um, comics are essentially our american mythology, like I've always looked at our mythological, you know stories where we don't have hercules, although, it's funny, we do Hercules Marvel, actually has the rights to Hercules and comic book.

Doug: 49:10

They stole it all Exactly. I think that they continue to evolve because it's the American mythos that we're always able to kind of continue to reinvent within the concept of a superhero and super villains. But they're agreed. Yeah, Like Popeye and Betty Boop, I think 1930s immediately. I definitely do.

Ron: 49:32

But I I think all of those kind of older cartoon characters kind of don't evolve Right. It's just like how willing, how much money is there to force them down our throats? So take like, for instance, like Mickey mouse. The reason I said likekey mouse cartoons suck is because, like, who really wants to watch mickey mouse the character? Do anything with his like, weird like, and they have right.

Don: 49:53

There's mickey's christmas and mickey's purchases them all, or there's mickey's playhouse now yeah, right like it, so it does keep resetting to a new audience.

Ron: 50:05

I feel like that's just Disney being like. We got to be using Mickey. He's synonymous with our brand. We're sitting on this Mickey. Who really wants to watch Mickey? What are Mickey's personality traits? What's funny about Mickey?

Doug: 50:18

You obviously didn't like the new Mickey ride in.

Ron: 50:20

Toontown. That's too bad. No, I haven't set foot in Toontown in years. Wow, you're really max fleischer guy or the same with like the looney tunes. Right, like I think the looney tunes work because they're like funny. You can continue to like making but they have to.

Doug: 50:34

They do evolve like space jam not successfully are you saying space wasn't a success I mean, it was definitely a success, but, but I mean like, critically, artistically, did we need to see Mickey Mouse?

Ron: 50:49

you know shooting hoops, or, sorry, bugs Bunny shooting hoops.

Doug: 50:53

I definitely needed to see our man, bill Murray, show up on that basketball team.

Ron: 50:58

I think like if there was a Fleischer amusement park I could go to, I feel like there would be an updated Popeye that came out in the last eight years. Right, and it's you know, like I think I think you can make it happen if someone, if that's someone's IP and they want to churn money out of it. You know what I?

Doug: 51:17

mean, and the reason we don't have an answer is because of financial ruin.

Doug: 51:21

You know it's like they could not continue to do what they they did. The people who you know were the driving force and kind of heart and soul of that were taken out of that because of finance. I mean that that is a way, because it's very clear, obviously, considering the success of everything disney now and the fact that it's gone so far beyond walt disney, I think that he did set something up that you know from a business. He at least had that figured out.

Don: 51:46

And I think Mickey is different because Mickey is a brand.

Doug: 51:49

Yeah, the way.

Ron: 51:51

Bugs.

Don: 51:51

Bunny is a character, Betty Boop's a character. Yeah, Popeye is a character, but the but Mickey Mouse is the brand.

Ron: 51:59

Right, yeah, so it's yeah he doesn't have to do anything or be interesting, he doesn't need to represent the company, so all the other IPs get attached to his face.

Doug: 52:09

It's true. I think I had a VHS tape from the early nineties that was by the lead singer of the cars. It was called, like Matt Rick Ocasek, yeah, rick Ocasek, matt about the mouse, and it was all of these pop stars like redoing songs and like kind of focusing in on all these Disney type things. I watched it so many times though.

Don: 52:31

I still know, yeah, we'll watch it right after this.

Ron: 52:34

That's going to be the next podcast Follow up. Is the listener Go to bad about them?

Doug: 52:39

Yeah, but Rick was tearing it up, um, but you're, but you're right. Like that doesn't exist without mickey being a brand like that, even the title mad about the mouse. It's like it doesn't even have to be about mickey necessarily, it just needs to be like do you understand the concept of brand, which is a whole, whole rabbit hole?

Don: 52:58

um, but the ride you're talking about mickey and minnie's runaway railway is the first Mickey Mouse ride in Disney parks, and it.

Doug: 53:07

Oh really, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, and it is a good ride.

Don: 53:10

And it opened here in California, what, like two years ago yeah, it's like five years ago in in Florida. So it's, it wasn't a, it wasn't a thing. See, people are clamoring for Mickey.

Ron: 53:22

Yeah, and I think maybe, like also what I'm, that's why Disney is failing now. Yeah.

Doug: 53:28

There's no list to be on to get a pass.

Ron: 53:31

They had to buy all the other cool stuff. They had to go buy X-Men and they had to buy the Star Wars, and. But part of what I think I was saying is like, um, part of it, like the survivability of a character speaks to, like how well made that character was to begin with. Right, superman is a very well-designed character. You can apply him. He captures something about this sort of like American cultural spirit or ideology that people will always find interesting Fear of aliens, like we talked about yeah, that's right.

Ron: 54:01

And I think like Bugs Bunny is the same too, Like Bugs Bunny is like a is a really great sort of like archetypal character that you can kind of plug in anywhere. You can put them on a basketball court, you can put them in a normal court and like he's going to be funny, Right.

Doug: 54:15

I really want to know what normal court is.

Don: 54:19

Because he is self-aware and ironic and and yeah, and knows all of those placements that happen in the fluidity of his context and just wants to be chaotic and ruin someone else's day, and that's a spirit, that's the kind of character everyone, every generation.

Ron: 54:37

That's just a personality you probably had at one point in your life. You also have been sardonic and mad at people. Authority. He's a real first punk actually bugs bugs big time. Yeah, I think, and so maybe popeye and betty boop aren't, because they're also just sort of like, like you're saying, don they're historically reflective of the period that created them and that's all they really were, and that's well, because that's all they ever really do, right like so.

Don: 55:06

I mean, I was making a joke before, but literally popeye only punches his problems like that's the, that's the gag in every single episode and you know, eventually the can of spinach comes out and he's gonna take. Yeah, the problem gets solved yeah, um, but that doesn't work. When you move to the late 20th century, the early 21st century, like those, that type of masculinity isn't appreciated the same way that it was in the past.

Ron: 55:33

So maybe Max was like he had the technical ability, he had the technical vision, but maybe he lacked that sort of like storytelling core or something. Yeah, but so did Disney. I mean he just stole fairy tales like a lot of times and then changed all the endings.

Doug: 55:48

That's true, of course yeah, although there is something also to be said about the fact like, if you just say 1930s, I'm probably eventually like and it's like word association, 1930s go. I probably am going to eventually say betty boop, I probably would. I think it would be in there. So there's also something about capturing the zeitgeist that that is there, um, but yeah, there's a lot. I suppose there is a lot to unpack with that. But to give.

Don: 56:15

So what? What's max's lasting contribution? Just the, the, the technical rotoscoping and stereoptics? Or is there something else here that we're missing?

Doug: 56:30

Obviously within the animation spectrum. I think he's there to be studied, of course. But then I would think about contributions of art and I go back to this video game that I played, that I'm. I'm sitting there watching these hand animated panels that are being used for my enjoyment as I'm playing a video game and going this is so far beyond what I'm used to within like a video game context, because it feels to me so original and different from everything else that's out. But what's funny about me saying that is it's very much inspired.

Doug: 57:04

And then to go back to our original conversation about, isn't this just copying? You look at the eye shapes and the patterns and the way things are animated and it's like it could have just been Max's, you know, like kind of copy paste ideas that were like from one of his notebooks. But to me it becomes this incredibly innovative thing that shows up in this new medium format. And so I think that the the thing that is interesting is the intangible kind of credit to if there's just something great about your art, if there's that passion there, and then you can very effectively communicate it. It still kind of retains its beauty in a sense, and that maybe, if Betty Boop and Popeye are stuck. It's stuck in this era. There's something still to be refined out of it that shows up in culture again all of a sudden and I think that that would be the example is go play cuphead, and that is a reappropriate like. That is our, our modern version. It does very much look like the 30s. The entire soundtrack is big band jazz, so it's like it's very much throwing you there, but then it's done in this very refined new way that is absolutely stunning and gorgeous.

Doug: 58:09

Um, so I think that there's something to be mined out of the fact that, even if something goes away or dies, it's, you know, much like fashion or these things that we've we've kind of touched on before. Here we are back again and seeing something that's pulled from, you know, the past and is done new again. That's absolutely beautiful. And then what would that have been had the financial success continued? There might be a whole different landscape of of animation and cartoon that we're looking at today. Um, because, yeah, disney takes a lot of that and, like the the fact that he was often, even though he beat him to the punch with the feature film, and Snow White is looked at as one of the biggest successes. He really yeah, there's a lot that can be said for kind of the unsung heroes of their eras.

Ron: 58:57

Thank you, max. Someone had to do it, absolutely. Someone had to become financially insolvent to take that.

Don: 59:08

I like the way. I like what you said about capturing the zeitgeist, because that's. You know, these aren't characters that are as common. I agree with you. They're still in the cultural awareness, but they're not like if I were to go talk to my I don't know 10 year old niece or nephew, they might not know who Betty Boop is. Yeah, they might not have.

Don: 59:33

If I showed a picture, they'd say oh, yeah, but if I just said the name they probably might not know Popeye probably, but I don't know that they. I don't know for sure that they would Right, but but for me they are. They are memories of what we were, yeah.

Doug: 59:50

Yeah, and that's also an incredibly important part of art.

Don: 59:53

It's a different type of documentation, that's a feeling you know, because we didn't talk about some of the more problematic issues of animation that happened around both of these characters and all that coming from from, uh, from Max, but not not all of it. I mean, like Disney did the same thing like especially during the war.

Don: 1:00:08

Yes, um, but uh, but it's that I don't know, it's that it's almost like I feel bad watching some of them sometimes because I know the the, the things that they include that we don't include anymore, right, right, but it's uh well, we've talked before about my Lone Ranger listening. Right, it's the same thing. It's that it's that moment in history where those stories were told in such a way that is so offensive to listen to today, but it still captures that.

Ron: 1:00:40

What that moment was yeah, and maybe that's like a enough to for an artist to achieve right, to have captured their moment right. We were kind of saying earlier like oh, these characters aren't as cool as superman or blah, blah, blah. It's like maybe that's like an extra super rare achievement to create something so iconic, you know, for so many decades. But yeah, it's enough just to have been like a, a, a good reporter, um, of whatever the core of your, your time or moment was right good and bad yeah.

Doug: 1:01:13

So, ron, has this inspired you to get back into it? Will we see your papa?

Ron: 1:01:16

hell, no, it sounds like all the good stuff's been done, all of the stories have been told. It's all Minecraft movies from here on out. That's right.

Doug: 1:01:30

Light your fireworks in the theater people.

Don: 1:01:32

That's right.

Doug: 1:01:33

Exactly Beautiful. Well, thank you guys.

Ron: 1:01:37

Thank you, doug, yeah, very fun stuff.

Don: 1:01:40

For sure, thanks Doug, thank you.