Hey, Clark. How are you?
Good, Scott, how are you doing?
I'm very well, thank you, I'm very well.
Congratulations on your latest film.
Thank you so much.
You've been with Disney for a long while now, so I was curious
what in the time that you've been there, what do you think is yours
or the studio's kind of greatest accomplishment in that time?
What have you done
new that maybe has kind of changed the game for you in some ways?
You know, you're right.
I've been with Disney for 30 years, so I've been through many different,
you know, evolutions of this company and of the studio of Disney Animation.
And for me, I think one of the incredible things about where we are today is
Encanto is the 60th animated feature from Disney Animation,
and we're two years away from our 100th anniversary.
So for me, I look and see, where are we as a studio?
What are we currently creating?
What are the stories and the characters that we're putting out there?
And how are we doing it through the art form of animation?
And I just see the evolution of it all.
I think that the storytelling has become bigger.
The themes have become more universal.
I think that there's a deeper level of the emotion in the films.
I think what we can create visually on the screen has gone to places
I never could have imagined that we'd actually be able to be.
When you look at this film and the complexity within it,
whether it's the visual
or the storytelling, it's something really to be deeply proud of
because we're continually pushing that boundary of where we can go.
And then on the company side, I feel like, you know, Disney+ has given us
this incredible place to continue to tell our stories, right?
We can we can take Zootopia and create Zootopia
Plus we're going to have Big Hero six and create Baymax.
We can go back to Tiana and Moana's characters,
so I think it's a really exciting time to be at the company.
Let's talk about Encanto that wonderful, wonderful
story about, about family, about community.
So much going on in this.
I can imagine it wasn't a difficult decision
to make this one, but as of these things, it takes a little while.
You must be delighted with the end result that you've that you've got now.
You know, I'm very proud of the film, and to your point,
it can take five or six years to create these stories in these worlds,
which is pretty incredible when you think about that amount of time, 650 artists.
But what it does is it starts with just the germ of an idea.
And it really started way back after Zootopia, when Byron Howard and
Gerard Bush, the directors, decided to team up with Lin-Manuel Miranda.
And they wanted to do a musical and they wanted to set it in Latin America.
And then through some deep research, they discovered
that Columbia is really the crossroads of Latin America, and it's
it has diversity within its people, within its culture, within
its music is probably one of the most biodiverse parts of the world.
It's stunningly beautiful.
It brings so much within the story because we were inspired so much by it,
but that's all. It just starts with that.
And then over the course of the five years you start to figure out, Well, what's
the story? You're going to tell a story about family?
What is that story going to be like if we discover magical realism?
It gets infused in the film we we start to talk about,
do we really know our families literally
sitting down and saying, Do we know our families, our parents
and our grandparents?
And so through that, you start to build these films.
And I think to me, when we get to the end part of the process, it can feel like,
well, that was obvious. Why wouldn't this be this story?
Why wouldn't those be the songs?
Why wouldn't that be where you'd set it?
But it all happens because of people coming together
and having conversations and then having to build
that over the course of those five years.
Yeah, and you've got some amazing talent
working on this, you know, animated all that kind of stuff.
I have to ask you about Lin-Manuel because the guy is kind of talented.
He's got a bit of talent, that guy.
But when you get someone like him on board because he's done some stuff before,
but obviously people have seen his his talent can you can
you see just why people love him so much and why he is such a unique talent
in modern musicals and theater and all that kind of stuff?
You definitely can - yeah..
The crazy thing is, it all started here in London, to be honest with you.
We met with a Lin-Manuel Miranda here in London,
when he was doing Mary Poppins and started talking about the story.
So kind of the origins became, you know, started right here in the UK.
I think the thing about Lin is he truly is a music genius,
and it's not just the music side of it, but listen to the lyrics.
I mean, his storytelling within lyrics is incredible.
And then one of the big parts of this film from the beginning that the directors
and Lin wanted to do was create the music,
write, create each of these songs and then have the very last song the film
have the themes from all of the other seven songs.
Now that is a gargantuan challenge, and Lin was excited about it,
but we talked about how hard that was going to be.
That meant the first seven songs had to get written first,
and then he would be able to do the last one.
But he achieved that side of it.
And then you go to the opposite extreme and you realize he had to figure out
a song that opens this film that introduces twelve characters.
So, you know, the twelve characters, what is each of the magical gifts
of those twelve characters,
and how do those twelve characters think about each other ?
That is not an easy accomplishment and was the very first thing, he wrote.
Family Madrigal and he did it in such a brilliant way,
and when you see that come to life when he delivers you that demo.
Which is Lin singing the song with the piano, that's what the demo is.
And you feel it.
You just realize how lucky you are and how gifted he is as a songwriter.
Absolutely.
I love it. Totally. Thanks so much for your time.
I wish you all the best for the film.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Take care.
Bye bye.