Hello, I'm Brian Rubin and I am here with Tom and Nina,
and we are going to talk about the weirdest stories that...
Would...
Let's try that one again, start over.
Sorry. Disney.
Didney. Didney, you know? Didney?
Hi, I'm Brian and I'm here with Tom and Nina to talk about the weirdest stories that Disney could
make into a movie next. This was something that I thought a lot about because I'm a big fan of
Disney movies. We're all fans of Disney movies to varying degrees. Disney has adopted some
weird stuff. Everyone kind of thinks about the Disney princesses and the fairytales.
That's where everyone's mind goes first. But they've also adopted some strange things like the
Hunchback of Notre Dame, a story in which the lead characters die. It doesn't happen in the movie.
Pocahontas, which is actual history and did not involve a friendly raccoon and hummingbird pal.
You don't know that.
Involved much more smallpox than that actually.
Much more smallpox, at least 50% more smallpox.
Treasure Planet, that's Treasure Island, but in space. So for my pick-
Never made the connection until just now.
I had two picks. One, I think is a good idea. And the other, I think is a bad idea but I like
the name so much. The first idea is Gulliver's Travels. I think that it would be good for Disney
to adapt Gulliver's Travels, which is a famous novel, I guess like a proto novel in a way,
written by Jonathan Swift, the famous satirist. Basically he uses Gulliver's Travels to
make fun of and point out the flaws in English, Imperial society and things like that. But
there've been adaptations down the road that have had very little to do with that original
satirical intention, like say the Jack Black version of Gulliver's Travels.
That is exactly what I was thinking of, yeah.
Which stars Emily blunt, and she had to turn down Black Widow to
do Gulliver's Travels. So that's why Scarlett Johansson is the Black Widow.
Is that a fact?
As far as I know, that's a fact.
That hurts my heart.
But so, in Gulliver's Travels, you've got this guy, Gulliver and he's just kind of goes around
traveling. He goes to Lilliput and he meets all the teeny tiny Lilliputians. And then he goes to
other places with names that are hard to pronounce so I'm not going to try, but then he sees very,
very big people. And then he goes to a place where people live in the clouds,
and he goes to a place where people are actually horses. And so I feel like Disney could really do
a lot where they just kind of take that framework and do something different with it, right?
Like Treasure Planet is Treasure Island in space. You could do the same thing with Gulliver's
Travels, set it in space, set it in a complete fabricated world that's just a fantasy world with
different places and different characters, that isn't so keyed into those specific
things. But anyway, Gulliver's Travels seems like one of those things that could work.
Would you want it to maintain the kind of satirical tone?
Because we're talking about Jonathan Swift, right?
Right.
Who wrote this book. He also wrote A Modest Proposal
where he advocated for eating babies, which a lot of people-
Which is something I think that maybe we should still consider. But anyway, go on. Yes.
You definitely want that on tape, okay.
That's really more Pixar territory though.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. They've got the pathos for it. No, but
Swift was a biting satirist. And so would you want a Disney adaptation of that to
maintain that in a clever Pixar kind of way? Would you want it to be a little more fun?
I think asking Disney to effectively satire the real world might be asking a lot,
but Wall-E is a pretty good satire of consumerist culture.
Right. Exactly.
It's doable. I don't know how they'd do it and I don't know-
It's got to be the right creative team.
It's got to be... it's a very, it's a tough needle to thread. But I think
that considering if we're talking about Disney wanting to kind of work on something that's
really recognizable and also something that's still very much a blank canvas... no one's
going to go see a Gulliver's Travels movie that Disney puts out in 2025 and be like,
"Hey, where's the horse people?" Nobody's read Gulliver's Travels.
Also, there hasn't been a successful film adaptation. The Jack Black one is-
I don't think so.
... largely forgotten.
There was a TV series with Ted Danson that also no one remembered.
Yeah. So what I'm saying is it's kind of like a
Great Gatsby conundrum where there just hasn't been a good one yet.
But I think-
But that's my own- I think-
... bug but whatever.
Yeah. I think that there's enough that they could do with it that they could stay
satirical but still tell a pretty good Disney style story.
Yeah. I Think I-
That was my-
I would definitely see a Disney Gulliver's Travel.
My other pick was adapting Merchant of Venice, but calling it Merchant of Venus,
and they're aliens, and that's it. That's as far as I got with it.
Shakespeare in Space. Love it.
Don't write a single other word. That is...
Yeah.
That came out of the barrel perfect.
Someone write this man a giant check and get this movie greenlit now.
It's mine. I own it. Merchant of Venus.
Coming to a theater near you.
I bet if I Google that, I definitely won't see anyone else who's made that joke before.
No. Absolutely not.
It's my original idea.
So original. Yeah.
Nailed it.
Love it. Merchant of Venus. So anyway-
Out of the gate.
Yeah. So Tom, what about you? What's the weirdest story that you think Disney should adapt next?
Okay. I have three ideas. Because as far as I can tell Disney, they have three separate things that
make the money right now, once you set aside Star Wars and Marvels. In terms
of Disney stories, you can either do a sequel to a cartoon that already made money. Right?
Mm-hmm.
Right.
You can do a quasi respectful appropriation of a cultural story that you have music set to.
Or you can do a live action origin story of a villain a la Wicked. Right?
Mm-hmm.
Okay so my first idea, we could do Hercules two. Or if you'll follow me, Herc-Two-Les.
Love it. Love it. I love it. Not enough movies do that.
Following the-
Not enough movies put the two-
It's really good, right? No, I know.
... or three in the middle of a word. Everybody should be doing it.
It's such a clever gag and-
It's hilarious.
... everybody should be doing it more often.
Slaps every time.
I know what it is. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of night throwing up from how funny it is
when people use a two in the title of their thing.
So Herc-Two-Le's. What I felt we could do is follow the-
You should maybe see a doctor.
I'm not a well man. What happens in Herc-Two-Les is we follow Hercules and he's married to Megara,
and we follow their marriage through the actual mythological story that the original story follows
wherein Hera, Hercules' kind of step-mom I guess, the goddess realizes that she's not
actually Hercules' mom. So she drives him crazy, and then he murders Megara and his children.
That's how you get butts in seats,
Well, I think it could make for some great musical numbers, like bring the
muses back like... oh my God. And then they cry,
and Pain and Panic are there. You've got the Bobcat Goldthwait character and the other guy-
Yeah, he needs to come back.
Max Headroom. They're just... ah.
Look, it's never too early to introduce young
children to devastating Greek myths. That's all I'm saying.
You're not wrong, right?
I'm right. Yeah.
So then we get to follow Hercules through the rest of the story. What's really cool
about this is Hercules is his own bad guy at this
point. So we just kind of cut James Woods out of the equation. And then-
I'm fine with that.
Yeah, I don't need him.
All right rhe end, I don't know if you guys... the way that Hercules dies in
the story is somebody gets tricked into putting a poison shirt on him
and it hurts so bad that he burns himself to death. He throws himself on a pyre-
Classic.
... and then burns himself to death.
That's how most Disney movies should end.
I'm glad that you said that.
My second idea for an original story, an original cartoon would be the Aztec myth, Quetzalcoatl-
Oh Jesus Christ. Okay.
The serpent god of the wind. I've got kind of this whole plan for this that I think
could be kind of fun where he's already a God, but he wants to be a star, right?
Yeah.
This whole Hollywood kind of a situation. Because I don't know if you know this but
in the original story, what happens is that he gets drunk and then hooks up with his sister
and then get so embarrassed that he burns himself to death.
This is a bit of an epidemic. Yeah. The self-
Self-immolation.
Self-immolation. Thank you. Yeah.
Right.
We can kind of ignore a lot of that. Disney stories always change stuff.
So instead, he's a God, he wants to be a star and that's exciting.
And then he kind of goes up against maybe another god that we sort of make up,
like just not be too culturally insensitive but we just kind of create a bad kind-
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
... whole cloth. You know?
Yeah.
And he's like, "You'll never be a star." And then Quetzalcoatl has,
I don't know, I was thinking an Armadillo buddy. I'm not really up
to date on Disney. I don't know how many of the animal friends there have been.
I don't think we've seen an Armadillo so I think we can roll with that was
Was the creature in Raya and the Last Dragon technically an Armadillo? It's kind of a large...
Not quite an armadillo. Don't worry about it. Don't worry.
Okay. Well, was it voiced by a slightly out of work 90s comedian?
No.
Because that was a big part of the plan too. If we can get Andy Dick to come in and voice that.
He's due for a comeback. It's never going to happen-
He's due for a Disney movie. Yeah.
I think that'd be really fun. So there's hurdles and there's barriers to his success. But in the
end, Quetzalcoatl gets drunk and hooks up with his sister, and burns himself to death. That's my...
Great.
My final idea. Okay. And this one's really quick and I apologize because I've been talking for a
while. But my last idea for a Disney movie, I know that we've been doing all of these live action
villain origin stories. We did Maleficent and we did Cruella,
but I feel like we don't have enough of those for young men who are maybe feeling a little bit
alienated from society and stuff. So I actually, I do have a vision for this
one and I'm just going to send that to you right quick. Just let me know what you think of this.
Oh, I like it.
This way we could really tell the origin story of this character who eventually burned to death.
Good, good. All right, so Nina.
Oh wow. I don't have time to get into that, into that origin story.
We can skip my whole thing.
No, I love it.
Let's give this one to Nina.
So there's some Disney movies about a young girl wanting to marry a handsome prince.
Brian, as you mentioned, there are some Disney stories based on real historical lore. And I
want to combine those two inspired by a recent, actual musical that I actually do want to see
that is currently playing in both London and soon to be New York. And I want to bring the story of
Henry VIII and all six of his wives to a Disney animated film. I think most people are familiar
with Henry VII and the fact that he really... so a lot of people are like, "He loved killing his
wives." He only killed two of them, and there were six. So that's only a third.
I learned a rhyme. Do you know the rhyme?
Of course I do. Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.
Yay.
Yeah. I may have gotten that as a Quizzo answer multiple times in my life. So I,
I really love the Tudors because they were just stinky hot messes who slept around and were really
gross. And they were all wildly self-important and especially Henry... His father at the end
of the War of the Roses just kind of showed up and was like, "I'll be king," and was pretty
unpopular as a result. And then Henry wasn't supposed to be king because his older brother,
Arthur was supposed to be king. And then Arthur died. So all of a sudden Henry was like, "Well,
no one liked my father. My brother died." And he became king. He first married Catherine of Aragon
and that was a political marriage, but they were together a long time. He probably did like her.
And then he stopped liking her when she got old and couldn't have kids anymore because
it was a really fun time to be a woman. So he started trying to seduce Anne Boleyn,
who would eventually become his second wife, my favorite. And I'm sure that the commenters will
come from me or they won't because no one cares about Henry VII's wives but me.
No one watching this cares at all about Anne Boleyn, Catherine of Aragon,
Anne of Green Gables, any of the wives.
Well, there were two Anne's. You're close.
So yeah. So Anne Boleyn shows up and he's like, "Oh, be my mistress," and she's like, "No,
I must protect my virtue." Smart move. And he pursues her for like seven plus years while
he goes through A, the world's longest divorce and B, starts a new church just so he can get
divorced because Catherine of Aragon refuses to let him leave. Do you have a question Tom?
Yeah. Do we have a voice cast in mind?
Well, not Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I've been burned by that before.
Yeah, you don't need that.
I don't know. Maybe we can get like a Paul Giamatti to put on a British accent and be Henry.
Oh, man.
Paul Giamatti would be fun.
Because the thing is there's no one alive who can do the full Henry performance because Thomas,
I think you're aware, Henry gets enor- he starts out as a pretty handsome prince, and then he gets
enormously obese. He has a leg wound that won't heal from a jousting accident and he just stinks-
Crashes his horse. Yeah.
He's drunk all the time.
So what you're saying is this is fun for the whole family?
Yeah, and it only gets better. So he marries Anne
Boleyn. Within three months, he's like, "I hate her too,"
and he kills her and he chops her head off. He accuses her of all sorts of demented crimes.
Let's rapid fire the other four wives.
Yeah. Jane Seymour was the smartest wife because she died before she could piss him off, so she was
his favorite. He is buried next to her because she gave him a son and immediately peaced out.
Smart. Anne of Cleves, the second smartest because when he decided that she was an
uggo and he didn't like her and tried to get the marriage annulled, she said, "Okay." And he paid
her handsomely and she ended up outliving him. Catherine Howard was 15 years old and saddled
with a husband three times her age who smelled and maybe wasn't exactly virile anymore. So she
cheated on him with one of his courtiers and he cut her head off too. Catherine Parr almost got
executed because she was reading some books he didn't like, but luckily he died first.
Was it the toilet guy that she cheated on him with? Was it the toilet guy?
Well, it might've been the officer with the bed chamber-
I thought it was his toilet guy.
... or something who took his-
What's a toilet guy, Tom?
Well, he had a servant.
They used to have guys just for toilet.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Imagine you're a giant man with a puss-y, disgusting leg and everything-
I'm imagining it.
... smells like old ham.
Yes, I'm there.
And then you go to the bathroom. When I say bathroom,
I'm being very generous. It's a hole in a different room.
Yeah. It's either that or it's a pot
in your room. It's just like hanging out there, waiting for you to use it. Yeah.
There you go.
It was one of his officers of the bed chamber. You are correct.
What did the guy do?
You got to bro down.
He- To his wife?
The toilet guy.
Because-
No. What did the toilet guy do in the toilet?
By the way, his name was Thomas Culpeper. He has a name.
What did Thomas Culpeper do in-
I prefer toilet-
... with, or around the toilet?
He emptied chamber pots, I believe. Am I correct? I think he also helped,
I think they were responsible for helping the king.
Because listen-
It's a lot of fragrance.
Listen, we're talking about Renaissance medieval, right? One of those periods in England.
Yeah. We're talking about Disney movies, but somehow...
Well, when you say toilet guy and especially when it comes
to a Disney movie, let's not forget Beast's Enchanted Castle, I'm saying-
That's Paul Giamatti.
... he might be a guy into whom Henry uses the toilet. I don't know.
Oh, you're talking about a Beauty and the Beast situation?
Yes.
Oh, you mean he's an anthropomorphic toilets? I can live with that.
That's why I need to know. What's a toilet guy? Who's the-
Well, and that's what makes it-
... toilet guy?
Can you imagine?
That makes it even better when he has an affair with the queen. That he's an actual toilet man.
I'm just imagining a Henry VII,
a court where all of the furniture is alive and sentient and it's all just quiet and they're
all just staring at the ground because of the things that they've seen. They're all horrified.
And also, if one of them says a word out of turn,
he just throws it right out of the window and destroys it and murders that too.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How do you cut the head off of a teapot? Yeah.
He'll figure it out. He'll figure it out.
He was a crafty dude. Yeah.
This sounds like a great Disney movie.
Look, I think it would be just absolutely unhinged.
I am the only person asking for this, but I'm humbly asking for it.
You are.
Nina-
Tom.
Can you pitch three Disney songs based on the life, and also who writes... are we doing
like Alan Menken or do we want to do like a later days Disney thing where we bring in?
No, I totally want Alan Menken. Thank you for bringing his name into it. I love him. Maybe
I want Stephen Sondheim to consult because maybe we need that edge and all those dissonant notes.
But we're not doing Sting or-
Yeah. ... Phil Collins or anything.
I think Anne of Cleves would be like, "I'm not
that ugly," but written mostly by Stephen Sondheim. "I'm not that ugly. I promise."
That's really pretty. I can already hear it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Catherine Parr, "Thank God"-
Cleves me alone.
"Thank God he died," wife number six.
Great.
Yeah. And Anne Boleyn, "It's not my fault I couldn't have a son, you weirdo." Yeah.
That's really nice. Those are great.
Thank you. Anyway.
Good job.
Those are my songs. That's my pitch. I expect
a call from someone with the last name Disney within the hour.
Can I loop back briefly to Tom's and to say that-
Oh, I thought you were going to say toilet guy. But yeah.
Well, we can talk more about toilet guy. I was just going to say, after
Her-Two-Les, it's Hercu-Three's.
Oh, there's the next one.
Goodnight. Bye. Thanks for watching.
Please hit like and subscribe so you don't miss a single video.