June 21, 2022 • 46 mins
Alex and Jordan delve into the infamous animated '90s flick that traumatized a generation of kids with its terrifying (yet oddly sexy) pollution monster, Hexxus. But it's not all nightmare fuel! They'll discuss the 14 hours of improvised dialogue that Robin Williams provided for filmmakers, Disney's ruthless attempts to crush the film before it made it to theaters, and how Elton John, Jimmy Buffett and Tone Loc all got roped into the soundtrack.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio.
Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show
that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating
facts about your favorite TV shows, movies, music, and more.
We are your two mavens of minutia. I'm Alex Heigel
(00:23):
and I'm Jordan. Run Talk Jordan. Today we are talking
about a film that looms large in the annals of
nineties animation, despite the fact that it had nothing to
do with Disney, Pixar or even Studio Ghibli and was
in fact mostly overlooked on its upon its release. We
are talking about Earn Gully, the movie that made a
generation believe a logger could become a tree fairy, a
(00:45):
hideous yet sexy pollution monster could sing show tunes, and
Cheech and Chong could put aside their differences to play
a set of Beatles. I distinctly remember this movie growing up,
mostly because I think, as is very common, I was
terrified of hexas. Yes, the aforementioned sexy pollution monster. Um
(01:06):
let'should be your next DP sexy pollution. So that's the
hashtag for this episode. No, No, we cannot do that.
We will get people tweeting very weird erotica at us.
Oh yeah, we'll get up. We'll touch on that later
metaphorically not literally. Yeah it's bad. He's really, really, really scary.
And I think if I had not seen Who Framed
(01:28):
Roger Rabbit and Judge Doom took up space in my nightmares,
it would have been hexas the same with you. I'm trusting, Yeah,
I mean I probably more so. You know, people say,
oh my god, that movie totally traumatized me as a kid,
than they kind of laugh, like I'm not laughing. I
like that movie scared the hell out of me in
a way that still haunts me. And I think a
(01:49):
lot of it is because I grew up in a
really rural area and the house I lived in was
and so five year old me wasn't able to distinguish
between logging in a rainforest and logging in my own backyard.
So I lived in constant fear that this massive deforesting
machine was just gonna come and try to kill everyone
I know and loved. That thing is creepy. It's like
(02:12):
a panzer machine or something like. It's like it's it's massive. Yeah, yeah,
I mean so, I I actually distinctly remember having a
conversation with my parents about like making a plan if
this word happen, if like this machine helmed satanic glop
of glue showed up, Like this is what we would do, Yeah,
I had. It's like it was a fire escape plan
(02:34):
and there's a what if Hexas comes to our woods plan.
I think Hexas fused with the big tree killing machine
is just one of the most terrifying images of my childhood.
I mean, is everything about this movie was so unsettling.
All those red x is on the trees that looks
like some kind of Blair Witch project hex symbol, that
the ferry was hutch and it was like yeah, yeah.
(02:55):
And then even the sound design, with like the rumble
of the machine in the background and the guys screaming
through the megaphone just kind of echoing off in the distance.
It was just all so threatening. Oh and the creepy
cave painting hand things at the beginning, just oh my god,
I hate all of this. I mean, honestly, my memory
of the details on this movie might be a little
fuzzy because unlike most of the movies well, I mean yeah,
(03:19):
unlike so many of the movies that we discussed on
this episode. I haven't rewatched it. I started watching some
YouTube clips and I couldn't get any further. So I
think it's like, it's not like a particularly good movie,
but it's but people like remember. I really think most
people of our age group remember it because it crossed
(03:40):
so many lines in terms of what's acceptable for kids movie.
I feel like, although I will say, revisiting this movie,
I was shocked by the number of big names who
worked on it. I mean, obviously Robin Williams, I had
no idea, Christian Slater, Elton John, Jimmy Buffett like Raffi Raffy,
I guess is the most predictable um alright. Well, from
(04:02):
the incredible fourteen hours of reportedly improvised dialogue Robin Williams
provided for his role as Batty coda to Jeffrey Catt
friend of the program, Jeffrey Katzenberg's ruthless attempts to crush
the film before he made it to theaters, to the
surprisingly star packed soundtrack, Here is everything you didn't know
about Fern Gully stray up Um. The only good Australians
(04:33):
are A. C. D. C and Nick cave til the
note um Olivia and Sean Uh Distant four. Much like
another beloved animated flick from the nineties, The Rescuers down Under.
Fernley began life down Under off to a great starts, tremendous,
some tremendous riding there great Uh. There's a guy named
(04:54):
Wayne Young settled near the surf community of Byron Bay
in Australia after hopping around with his now ex wife
Diana and their children from mekan Nos to Ibitha, to
the same schells to Bali, and he fell in love
with these stories that Diana would tell their children that
centered around animals and the environment. I don't know what
kind of life he had set up that he could
just hop around to all no ideas, tropical places, no idea.
(05:17):
He does not have a distinctly extensive CV. Well, he
worked on crocodile dundee, so maybe he's got those bucks,
dud bucks. The first major protest to stop the logging
of the last forests happened right here. He told the
Paris Review the continent is nine odd percent in permanent drought,
but this is subtropical. As you mentioned, his producing credits
(05:40):
included crocodile Dundee, which is the film that catapulted Australia
into the national consciousness the entire continent. Yeah, nothing else
had succeeded to evade all of our consciousness but that
movie The Guy with the Knife. People in the eighties,
all these investment bankers were like, guys, have you guys
heard of this Australia, Get me a reservation at dorsea
(06:06):
until a tan man with a knife and a hat. God,
that movie is so weird. A car? What's that car?
Come on? Um? I can't find anything else that Diana
has written before or since. I think she may have
done like business writing or copyrighting. There's like or someone
with her name name did. Anyway, she she wrote a
(06:26):
series of short stories based on her bedtime tales that
would become the screenplay Differ. And so they've been working
on this thing since the late seventies, but they were
ahead of their time. They had to wait until the
zeitgeist caught up. And I'd like you to all journey
with us now to the magical time in the early
nineties when celebrities were first flocking to the cause of
global warming as it was called back then, conservation and
(06:48):
broadly capital t capital e the environment. Ah. This was
an era when Sting posed with an Amazonian tribal chief
on a magazine cover, which must have been traumatic for
that man. Imagine being flown to New York to be
photographed any Lebowitz or someone with this pale, thin englishman
(07:09):
next to you. Um. Kenny Loggins wrote a song called
Conviction of the Heart that he told me Al Gore
once deemed the unofficial anthem of the climate change movement.
Kenny Logans himself told you that I believe, so that
was incredible. He's one of the one of the celebrities
I interviewed once when I was at the Post. His
my absolute favorite quote from a celebrity I ever got,
(07:31):
was like we were talking about this and he just
like sighed heavily and he was like, I don't have
a lot of hope for the species a celebrity. Yeah, exactly,
there's your next hit, Kenny. Um. Madonna had a concert
called Don't Bungle the Jungle. Um. There's apparently a clip
of Tom Cruise telling people to plant a tree in
(07:54):
d C on Earth Day in just like, have you
ever planted a tree? Do it? Uh? I sent you
the rocket Fuel quote right. Yeah. Miles Teller apparently got
like he was inhaling so much of it on the
set of the New Top Gun that he he tested
for it in his blood stream. He was feeling bad
and went to the doctor and the doctor was like, well,
(08:15):
you've got all these like heavy metals in your blood stream.
Have you been around a lot of jet fuel recently?
And he's like yeah, as a matter of fact, yeah,
And you want to go tell Cruise because he was like, yeah, Tom,
I'm like suffering for this movie. And he's just like,
you have an all your mission. Yeah, He's like, Tom,
do you know I have I just tested for having
jet fueled my blood And Tom Cruise said, I was
born with it. Kid Ah. Anyway, So getting back to
(08:41):
fern Golly, unfortunately, as much as I would love to
down and you can talk about anything other than this
traumatic movie, but back to fern Golly, back to the
task at hands. The other big development that allowed fern
Gully to take off was the so called Disney renaissance
of the time, which we talked about on the Beauty
and the Beast episode, which is ironic given what we'll
(09:02):
talk about in a second. But the little Mermaid had
come out and jump started this new era for Disney.
And this is also right around the era when computer
animation starting to pick up steam as a relatively viable
utility for studios and Tron Yeah, relatively speaking. We talked
about this in the Beauty and the Beast episode. How
(09:22):
many months was it? It took the three months to
animate a chicken leg in wire frame chicken leg. Yeah,
so they're still getting the kinks out of it. But
the movie Tron actually paved the way for fern Gully
because there was a guy named Bill Croyer who had
actually worked at Disney before this on The Fox and
the Hound. And then you say he protests quit because
(09:45):
he didn't want to work on the Black Cauldron. Yeah,
it's just like a single line from an interview. He's like,
I quit because I didn't want to work on the
Black Cauldron. I mean that was a pretty famously troubled shoot.
But I just can't imagine hating something that much at
your job that you're just like, no, I quit. Yeah,
it was like extrame. I guess who with it? In
the edit? Catzenburg Jeffrey Katzenberg. That is correct. Catzenberg has
(10:07):
been turning into a recurring villain. He's Are He's Are
Blowfeld in the show. He just keeps cropping up screwing
up movies. But anyway, this guy, Balkroyer, he works on
the movie Tron, and he decides to focus on combining
traditional and computer animation, and he formed his own studio
to do this in and I guess his first and
only directorial credit is Firmali. It was the studio's first project,
(10:31):
and he had a script written by a guy named
Jim Cox, who had also written the script for Oliver
and Company starring my beloved Billy joel Um. And also
I will tell him what he also did, Yes, folks,
you guess did the Rescuers down Under? Right? And I
think he also tinkered with the beauty of the b
script too. So this whole development team won on a
(10:51):
seven week research trip to the Amazon where they were
especially intrigued by the glowing mushrooms. Because they're glowing mushrooms,
I guess they're called ghost mushrooms, which is already this
is starting to freak me out. I don't like mushrooms.
I mean, I like eating them, but they terrify me.
They're all like part of one super neural network. They're
(11:14):
talking about us. I don't know. It's like a pet.
It's a pet. It's like them in dolphins. Mushrooms are
the dolphins of the lands, smart, smarter than we give
them credit for. They're the true enemy, Fight the real enemy.
A picture of a mushrooms, some shots around mushrooms. Um so,
(11:36):
now we returned to Jeffrey Katzenberg, the villain of eighties
and nineties animation. The biggest single mistake Croyer and company
made was pissing off Jeffrey Katzenberg. Cox apparently smuggled Croyer
into Disney with a fake name tag to point out
some animators that he thought would be good for the project.
I'm not I'm not in the weeds enough to know
(11:56):
about like how animators are contracted to work on projects.
But I don't know if that's illegal or not. It
might have been like contract work. I don't know if
there's a noncompete clause. They're almost surely is these days.
But um anyway, trespassing for violating security, well that's true.
Uh boy, howdy Michael Jordan's meme Jeffrey Katzenberg sang and
I took that personally, UM, I just want to shout
(12:20):
out to queeby Jeff because I hate you. And that
was a massive failure. Uh. Croyer maintains that Katzenberg screwed
them out of the facilities that they were trying to
rent by going behind their back and offering to pay
more to the landlords. And they did he even use
the facilities or is he just buying up every space
(12:40):
for for a possible animation studio all throughout the South
just cartoon villain stuff. Jack Guy is just a motivated
entirely by spite. Yeah. And so they finally landed this
old brewery in the San Fernando Valley and Coyer said
that Disney just tried to buy it out from under them.
But the other factor in here is, as ever, Robin
(13:03):
mother truck and Williams. Yes. Screenwriter Jim Cox saw Robin
Williams at l A Comedy Clubs and at this point
he's relatively fresh off his Oscar nomination for Good Morning Vietnam.
So Cox wrote the part of this escaped science experiment
bat Batty Coda which yea, somebody please tell us that name. Um.
(13:23):
He wrote it specifically for Robin Williams. And Williams signed on,
and then he also signed on to do a Latin which,
as you may recall, was also for Disney, perhaps understandably
not wanting Robin Williams starring in two competing animated projects
at the same time. Jeffrey Katzenberg tried to get him
the back out of Ferm Goaly, but Robert Williams refused
(13:45):
because he really believed in the film's environmental message, and
apparently he said something words of the effect of, where
does this guy get off? It's my voice? Yeah, I
just think it's amazing that I guess Ferm Goali was
his first cartoon, was Robin will first cartoon that he
ever voiced, which I just think is insane that it
took him fifteen years into his career for a guy
(14:06):
was such an elastic, morphable voice that he was an
actual cartoon character, right. I just don't know who, like, like,
why it took so long for someone to make him
an offer, or maybe he just didn't accept the offers. Yeah,
that's weird to me. Yeah, and you know you touched
on this earlier, but this movie is jam packed with stars,
maybe because it was like in vogue in Hollywood to
do like environmental projects at the time. But it's like
(14:27):
the Training Wheels movie for all these people who would
gone to have really like much larger careers in animation
through the nineties. It's Robin Williams first role in animated feature,
as you just mentioned. Obviously, he would go on to
Aladdin and many others. It's Elton John's first song he
ever placed in an animated feature. I literally had no
idea he had anything to do with this until reading
your outline. No clue whatsoever. Yep, and uh, obviously he
(14:51):
goes on to do The Lion King a few years later.
It is composer Alan Silvestri's first animated feature. He's you know,
he's one of those like Arry Goldsmith. Uh, Thomas Newman
Utility Player soundtrack guys in Hollywood. He's done all kinds
of stuff. He would go on to do Leelo and
Stitch and The Polar Express. I think there's our first
Hanks connection sing. Uh. Tim Curry's first animated feature, which
(15:14):
boggles my mind. Another living cartoon character. He would go
on to do Wild thorn Berries and three rug Rats films.
What was he in Rugrats? Yeah? Hell yeah? On buss
of Us Uh, No, I don't remember. I don't remember
what he want. I just saw it on his IMDb um.
And lastly, Tommy Chong's first animated feature, Uh, cheech Marin
(15:35):
had done Yes, Folks Oliver and Company. I believe he
plays a chihuahua, because that's just soft, soft Hollywood racism.
It's really cute. I think that they they this is
the first time they'd worked together for six years. In
six years, Yeah, they had had a falling out in
the mid eighties because I guess cheech Mare thought Tommy
Chong was an egomaniac, and Chong had directed all their
(15:57):
movies and he wanted to be the soul writer. But
I guess the split came when Cheech wanted to record
a parody of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA called
Born in East l A. And Tommy Chong didn't want
to participate because he had nothing to do with that,
and he fell offended that he was just gonna be
relegated to backing vocals. And then I think, and then
I think Cheech Baron actually made a movie without Tommy
(16:21):
Chong about the plot of this song Born in East
l A. Where it was just like a guy's mistaken
for an illegal migrant and constantly trying to outrun deportation,
which is I feel like weirdly relevant from mid eighties movie.
Yeah that was like eight Good Lord, but who knew
he contained so many multitenests. So it's got Cheech and Chong,
(16:42):
but you forgot some other huge names that are in
this that still boggle my mind. Christian Slater is in
this as the alpha fairy pips Christa's I don't know
if they're related or what, but the guy that kind
of is skeptical of the human in their midst. The narrator,
who's also Magi Looney I think is a name went
on to play Sarah Palmer in Twin Peaks, and the
(17:03):
character Ralph who's one of the dopes in the woodcutting Machine.
He's played by a guy named Jeffrey Blake who was
later in Forest Gump. He's Jenny's jerk activist boyfriend who
slaps her and then Forest comes over and and um
and lets him know. Um. And there's Pamela ad Lawn
too's in a bunch of stuff. I knew her mostly
(17:24):
from Louis. Yeah, she's just like an anonymous fairy and
she's I think the voice of Spinelli in Recess and
a bunch of other stuff. She's amazing in Sergeant Bilco
with Steve Martin, one of my favorite names movies. Um,
but you've also neglected to mention, quite shamefully, the voice
of Zach the Woodsman who gets shrunk down to the
size of a ferry, the main guy in this movie.
(17:46):
He's voiced by an actor named Jonathan Ward, who was
the kid in Mac and Me. Do you remember Mac
and Me? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it's this critically
maligned I mean, that's being too kind. This really savage
non off of et from the late eighties, and I
only knew about it because it was this, as you said,
this recurring gag on Conan. Whenever Paul Road would come
(18:07):
on Conan to plug a new movie he was in,
he would set up a clip from obsensively from the
movie that he's promoting, and they would just play the
same clip from Mac and Me of this kid I
think in a wheelchair creating on a clip. Make sure
that movie is like also famous for being the one
of the most naked and early examples of product placement,
(18:28):
because there's a whole bit in it about how the
aliens are obsessed with McDonald's. Well, well yeah, well yeah,
it's called Mac and me. I think that was part
of it. Yeah, I mean I think they saw what
ET did, not only with the aliens, but with the
Reese's pieces product placement, and we're like, oh, let's get
some of that alien marketing dollar goodness. And yeah, no,
I think you're right. It had a profit sharing agreement
(18:50):
with the Ronald McDonald children's charities. That's cute. Well they
got negative got him. We're going to take a quick break,
but we'll be right back with more. Too much information
in just a moment. But yes, God bless Robin Williams.
(19:18):
We can't say that enough. Um, we should really strive
to do this in every episode. But here comes a
quick Robin Williams lightning round. I guess he ran into
George Lucas at Lucas's Skywalker Ranch while he was recording Batty,
and George Lucas asked him when he was up to
Robin said, oh, you wouldn't be interested, George. It's about
the environment, you know. I couldn't find a verification for this,
(19:40):
but the commonly recited bit of trivia from this movie
is that the character of Batty initially only had something
like eight minutes of screen time, and Williams just improvised,
like fourteen hours is the figure I keep reading of
dialogue and just turned that in. Yeah, and they were
just like, well, now we have to make more space
for the bat Uh you mean do that on a
Laddin too, if like is the famous one where they
(20:02):
just turned him loose in the studio. Yeah. Young told
the Paris Review in this aforementioned feature, I find so
funny when Robin started riffing, he would come up with
something that would just be that much funnier, that much
more impactful. I sat in amazement. It worked the same
every scene. He would absorb the shot, do the script,
and then launch into variations. And he talks about in
(20:25):
the same article there's the scene where Battie flies Christian
Slater's character to that horrifying panzer tank forestry machine. And
he said in the recording studio, I told Robin just
do every military charge cliche that you can think of.
He did ten NonStop minutes. Well he did just come
off a good morning Vietnam, So maybe some of them
(20:46):
are already I guess, But Yeah. Screenwriter Jim Cox had
a great line about Robin Williams. He said, writing for
Robin was like writing for a jazz musician. It was
like seeing a virtuosa musicians spin out a solo. It
built in this way that was just a static and
at the end, it was like watching someone go to
the edge of sanity. His voice became tiny and he said,
somebody pulled me back, pulled me back. It was like
(21:08):
he was so far out he didn't know how to
get back to reality. You're not to get like unnecessarily
dark in this episode, but there's that character is grim.
He's terrifying. Young says that was always a part of
Robin's comedy repertoire how stupid and up human beings are,
and Courrier would add that the character is a metaphor
for nature, mistakenly or not mistakenly damaged by human interference.
(21:33):
He is so unbelievably sympathetic. And there was a wounded
animal like Batty inside Williams terrifying. It was an animal
that an experimented on by humans, you know, an electrode
coming out of the side of his head. I mean
it was I know, he's supposed to be the comic
relief of the movie. But Jesus, he was terrifying and
he was loud, and he was unpredictable, and it just
(21:55):
was I found it really uncomfortable to watch. As much
as I love Robin william I don't think my parents
explained that to me when I was a kid, Like,
why does the bat have a thing coming out of
his head? I don't think they Yeah, how would you
explain that? I mean, it's kind of like, let's just hope,
let's just hope it doesn't come up people. Yeah, why
do human beings do that to other living things? Yeah? Uh?
(22:18):
And they're still doing it. Elon Musk is doing it
to monkeys who go insane and kill themselves. Um. Yeah. Everyone.
Williams and the rest of the cast members worked for
scale because they were also passionate about the film's message,
which is kind of nice. And this is where the
Williams grudge against Disney from the time comes in. He
was working on his sort of ill fated passion project,
(22:39):
which was this Barry Levinson flicked Toys, which I love that.
He was a fairly famous flop um and he feels
so good though, and he didn't want Disney using his
license to sell merch directly telling them I don't want
to sell anything, as in burger king, as in toys,
as in stuff, and stipulated his name and Genie's likeness
could only be used in a maximum of the advertising
(23:02):
materials for Aladdin. Decently promptly went ahead and used the
voice and image of Genie to do exactly that, and
reportedly this is a bunch of l A Times articles
came out about this. They reportedly calculated exactly how to
take up a full quarter of any given promotional materials
ace with the character's likeness, and Williams was so piste
off by this he avowed never to work for Disney again,
(23:25):
and Cassenberg tried to buy forgiveness by sending him a
late period Picasso. I don't know why I said. Picasso
like that Picasso. I like Jeffrey Catsenberg is now the
voice in perpetuity. Is he gets the cigar chomping mogul
voice Williams, He still pissed at me. Send him a
Picasso one of the late ones, though, one of the
(23:48):
news nothing good. Yeah, but yeah, I guess that was
not good enough for Robin. I mean, if he's taken
a stand against presumably like materialism, sending a very expensive
blue Yes, maybe not the way to go about it.
Maybe make a large donation to like the Robal McDonald foundation,
(24:10):
which is still hurting from mac and me demanding that
they covered we will never financially recovered fromage. But in
after Jeffrey Catzenberg was fired from Disney, Joe Roth, his replacement,
apologized to Williams in I think an open letter right
in the L. A. Times, and they got Robin to
(24:31):
come back to do the voice of Genie for the
sequel to Aladdin. But you you say that there's a
flip side to the stary that Robin wasn't just taking
a stand against materialist. Yeah, you know the dirty secret
of half of the Times. When you see an unnamed
source quoted in any major publication, especially in entertainment, it's
someone from the company. It's like a PR person who
(24:51):
doesn't want to be named. So the opposing voice in
all of these L. A. Times things is some company
source who basically positive that Williams was up, that he
worked for low pay on the first Aladdin and was
using this whole kerfuffle as a sort of moralistic excuse
to as leverage for the next one, And it is true.
I don't think he made very much on the first
(25:11):
A Lad and obviously it blew up and he got
something like a million or two million to come back
and do the sequel. Um that even sounds low to me.
I mean not only for you know, Disney money, but
just a success of that size. Well, I don't think.
I think the second one was direct to videos, so
I don't think. I don't know that he could have
gotten points on the on the theatrical for that. Anyway,
(25:33):
to our second favorite person film, Tim Curry, Baby, I'm pissed.
So Shout Factory just put Out is putting out this big,
lavish thirtieth anniversary reissue of this on Blue Rain hasn't
come out yet, so I wasn't able to find like
all the commentary tracks, which is usually where you get
the good dirt. But another thing that I've heard about
(25:53):
this movie is that Tim Curry was so terrifying as
hexas that in test screenings he actually like literally frightened
children to the point where they were like, you got
to redo some of this, man, You're going too hard. Yes,
I mean, I mean if you were one of those
children very much. So I think he'd just come off
(26:15):
when did the um? When did it come out? So
he was in that headspace he had gone show method
to play Pennywise. He couldn't shake it off. Um Yeah.
They also apparently had to cut some of the lyrics
to his big musical show piece, Toxic Love because they
were just too horny. And you gotta do everyone you
(26:37):
know now for our segment, stop pause the podcast and
go google something. Go look up the recording of him
singing this song live, because it is incredible. It is
Frankenfurter or Grade. It's funny. I always thought that watching
this movie as a kid, I always thought it was
David Bowie. I always think because I watched Laborrith a
lot at this time, and I always thought the voice.
(26:58):
And I guess Bowie always kind of slightly resented Tim
Curry for I do not know that the Frank. I mean,
that's maybe I'm reading a little too much into it,
but I think he thought that all the rocky horror stuff,
oh it a lot stood on his shoulders. For all
the gender meaning stuff he was doing with Ziggy so
interesting that I had them confused at the time. Um,
(27:20):
I mean, I'm unable to confirm. Well, now, let me
ask you. I was trying to find the original lyrics
to I don't think they were cut from the film.
I think they were cut from certain releases because there
are people out there who were like depending on which
you know. This is also in the era when Blockbuster
was like the power behind the front of video stuff,
(27:41):
and they would demand different cuts of films with stuff
cut out. So I think depending on which home release
you had at the time, there are less horny lyrics
in it. I found these lyrics that I again haven't
revisited since I was five or six. I'd like, how
I go? If you can, I'm not but give you.
I'll give you. Maybe we can do that. I can
(28:02):
try my Orsen Wells impression, which we're work shopping for
a future episode. The lines are I feel good A
special kind of horny flowers and trees depressed and frankly
bore me. I think I'll spew them all with cyanide saliva,
pour me a puke cocktail, and take me to the driver.
(28:23):
I see the world with all the creatures in it,
I suck them dry and spit them out like Spinach.
Does Horny have a different definition that I don't know about.
I don't know, But that's just the fact that that
made it. You know, small fledgling company definitely didn't have
the infrastructure that Disney did. But the fact that that
landed on somebody's desk at some point and they were like,
(28:44):
this is fine. Um, We've touched on this earlier. Folks,
Do not turn off your safe search results if you're
gonna image search hexas. There are so many pornographic tom
of Finland beefca illustrations of that sludge monster. But I
don't understand how. I mean he's either a puff of
(29:05):
smoke or a puddle of sludge. How is he beefcake?
I think it's the first time he like anthromorphosizes, like
he goes from group to skeleton to like big Jay
Leno Chin beefcake character. And that's the image that people
have glommed onto online for their graphic fan art. Um
Curry talks about this in ten He did an interview
(29:30):
or a panel appearance at fan Expo Canada. Uh and
there's an interview in this when someone asked him about
for Youngali and he says, I was glad to do
it because it was all about being eco friendly. I
was a little unhappy because they drew the character based
on my face and it wasn't at all kind. But yeah.
So one of the people that they did successfully poach
(29:51):
from Disney was a woman named Kathy Zelinsky, who was
the supervising animator for The Little mermaids Ursula, which is
a pretty straight arrow progression you go from Parcela to Hexas.
But Young said that they had to kind of tone
her down. He said, we had to keep Cathy in
a box or she would have scared the hell out
of the parents too. I did not know any of
(30:12):
this about her, but she is a fascinating woman. One
of her formative influences with a Night on Bald Mountain
segment from Fantasia, which is sort of ground zero for
terrifying being in an children's movies. You remember that, I don't. Probably,
I probably was oppressed with that as a kid. She
might be one of the only animators, at least the
only one I know, to have worked on a cult
nineteen eighties horror movie called eight Knight of the Demons,
(30:35):
which is not very good, but she does this beautiful
animated sequence at the beginning of it Um and a
bunch of Disney stuff. She narrowly missed the opportunity to
become the first female animation supervisor at Disney, but um
Zelinski went on to work for Hunchback of Notre Dame.
I believe she did Frollo, which is what is her
thing about fire, so she did follow so she would
(30:56):
have done the hellfire sequence, which is like common cited
is something that also should not belong in a children's movie.
You'll remember. It's when he sings about being super horny
for Esmeralda in like a church and thinking that he's
going to be damned for it. You know, there's like
there's like actual fire flames going in the background. She
worked on a bunch of dreamwork stuff and Frozen that's
(31:18):
not fire. Yeah, say, maybe she mellowed in middle age.
She currently works on The Simpsons, and she can always
rest on the laurels of her horrifying sludge monster being
the ground zero for the sexual awakening for a pretty
significant chunk of the Internet apparently, and the other significant
chunk credits David Bowie and Labyrinth. There you go, Yeah,
(31:39):
the two genders. And having said all that we'll be
right back with more too much information right after this
quick cast rundown and the yes, I mentioned Christian Slater
(32:02):
and Samantha Mathis they played two of the fairies. Uh,
Samantha Mathis, I actually forgot about this until you mentioned.
It was River Phoenix's girlfriend at the time that he died,
and she was with him when he Um died inside
the Viper Room club on Hollywood about a year and
a half after this movie came out. Um, So that's
(32:24):
deeply sad, adding to the deep feelings of sad I
have surrounding this movie. Um. She had also dated Christian
Slater for a time and acted with him in Pump
Up the Volume in nine, and they would act together
again in Broken Arrow in and we're gonna get into
fantasy casting now. I guess to play the role of
(32:47):
the fairy Krista. I don't think we've said her name yet.
Christa lead character in this movie. They considered Winona Ryder
Jack and totally see. Jennifer Connolly starred in Labyrinth, Somebody
Labyrinth Connections, Melanique f f. I can't really see that
Meg Rice. It looks just like Meg Ryan with like
a Brunette, Dedter Hair Brunette, so I can sulily see
that they were all considered for the role of Krista,
(33:09):
but it went to Samantha Mathis. Meg Brian goes on
to do the leading Anastasia, which I think is one
of the last gasps of the Don Bluth studio, which
I believe was also buried by Disney upon its release
and also purveyors of deeply horrifying children's movies. Yeah, blooth
Stus is great. Also. Tone look during that phase in
the early nineties when he was writing The Twins, Peaks
(33:31):
of wild Thing and Funky Cold Medina into Hollywood. You'll
remember him from Ace Ventura, which is basically one of
the co leads on. He plays a lizard. He's playing
a goanna, a Goanna goanna, which is not the same
kind of featured in Yes, folks, you guessed it, The
Rescuers down Under. That is a frill nacked lizard hashtag
(33:53):
not all lizards. Do you know? That was Iva Gabor's
last movie, The Rescuers down Under. No, I didn't realize that,
you know what a note to go out one And
as we mentioned earlier, Chechen Sean Reunited for the first
time in six years to do this movie. Marin told
the St. Louis Dispatch at the time, it was just
like old times, but we only worked for two or
three hours, had a pizza and split It's just like
(34:16):
old times until I got sick of it and we leafed. Uh,
this is kind of nuts. I wasn't able to verify
this with Guinness. It's not in their official listings, but uh,
it's also sort of passed into legend, by which I
mean frequently repeated in listicals that a Spanish voice actor
name Angela dubbed all thirty two characters in this film
(34:37):
for the release in his home country. All thirty two
characters were that one dude in the Spanish dub and
it supposedly got him a world record at the time.
I found an interview that wasn't Spanish, but I used
to Google auto Translate because I am an ugly American
and do not speak Spanish. It was a holy dug
himself into Um. They asked him, I think he was
riding high on some other voice over hit and uh.
(35:00):
They asked him if he could do batty and he said,
in the arrogance of being twenty seven years old. He said,
I'll only do it if I can do all of them,
and he subsequently did all thirty two characters over four
eight hour days. God love him. Now we move on
to Songs from the Wood, which is an obscure Jethro
Toll reference for all six boomer white men in the audience.
(35:25):
Who will get that moving on? Truly a baffling array
of personalities on this soundtrack. We mentioned Alan Silvestri, who
was then fresh off of Stop or My Mom Will
Shoot did the score. The original songs in this film
are just random Thomas Dolby, who I just learned is
not an actual Dolby of the Dolby Dolby's just want
to keep saying Dolby, good mouth feel on that word.
(35:47):
He did? You remember him from She Blinded Me with Science? Ye?
He composed three of those films songs, including Robin Williams
Batty Rap, which was the same year that he did
Toys with Williams. I guess they were friends or became
friends working together. I interviewed Thomas Dolby for My David
So many David references in this episode. I interviewed him
(36:09):
from My David Bowie biography show because he was in
Bowie's band that he hastily assembled for a live aid.
And he's hilarious. He's like really really funny, Like check
out my interview with him, because he is super funny
and super insightful. But it doesn't forgive this truly horrendous
line from the Batty Rap. You know my name is Battye.
The logic is a erratic doesn't rhyme potato in a jacket.
(36:32):
I don't understand that. Toys in the attic at that
I rock and I ramble. My brain is scrambled rap
like an animal. But I'm a mammal. Mammals are animals.
That's terrible. But despite that line, he's a professor now
and I guess he made like serious money as a
(36:55):
ringtone pioneer for him. No, no, I have no quarrel
with Thomas good dude, good dude. Uh. Jimmy Buffett, folks,
a man who made a billion dollars by singing about
not doing anything nice. Yeah, do you know how much
money Jimmy Buffett has. It's gonna be like McCartney level,
(37:15):
like close to a billion. Yeah, it's wild. He co
wrote the Lizard song that tone Loake sings quote. If
I'm gonna eat someone, it might as well be you
hate Jimmy Buffett and Raffie as we mentioned, which given
his stranglehold on the children's music market, not surprising. And
(37:36):
there's a song in here sung by Sheena Easton of
My Baby Works from nine to five Fame, which is weird.
The song was written by Alan Silvestri and Jimmy Webb
were really one of the greatest pop songwriters of the sixties. Uh.
He wrote McArthur Park, he wrote which to Line Them
by Glenn Campbell, by the Tomic, That the Phoenix, also
(37:57):
by Glenn Campbell and millions of others. That's an insane
trio of people. Sheinna Eastan, el Silvestri and Shimmy Webb. Yeah,
and Elton John next as you mentioned, Uh yeah, he
wrote Some Other World, which is a co write with
a guy named Bruce Roberts, who, as far as I
can tell, is just one of those sort of jobbers.
There's a wrestling term for the wrestlers you put in
(38:19):
matches with um, people who are sort of fast track
to fame so that they can lose matches um and
make the other guy look good. That Guy's biggest hit
was the Donna Summer and Barbera Streisan disco duet No
More Tears, parentheses, enough is Enough and another song on
Bad Girls by Donna Summer, which is a great record. Uh. Yeah, man,
there is not much out here about this soundtrack, despite
(38:42):
having all of these people on it. I was desperately
trying to find, like recording information session stuff. It's just
not out there. So if you or loved one played
on the front call the original soundtrack, please get in
touch with us. I would love to talk about it. Um.
We talked a little bit about how the film was
an important way point in the transition between traditional animation
(39:03):
and computer work. Yeah. They used the what was cutting
edge technology at the time to generate the dense layers
of the rainforests used in all the backgrounds, and they
also did some other slightly smaller animated items like flocks
of birds. They did that through computers, but they still
mostly had to animate most of this movie by hand.
(39:24):
And that's a fairly common knock against this movie that
despite all the environmental themes, it used this traditional animation
style which was extremely wasteful. Uh. There were a hundred
and fifty thousand cells that were created for fereng Gully,
which is a total of thirty eight miles of artwork
if they were laid end to end. And Cryer said
(39:46):
at one point that they used four tons of paint
and produced sixteen tons of finished art just to make
one film. So, in other words, they used a forest
to save the rainforest. I just want to that in
the opening of the movie, with all the cave painting
style handprints, one of them is the logo for body
Gloves swimwear. It's just just a fun little bit of
(40:09):
product placement, which with the body glove Yeah, I mean,
what happened with them? They were everywhere for a while.
I think they're around, but I don't know. Maybe it's
backfired for them, because honestly, to this day when I
see that logo, I the coil and no idea. This
movie was such a sticking point for wow um and yes,
(40:30):
and the moral of this story, as with so many others,
is never bet against the House of mouse Burngali was
coming out at a busy time for animated feature. Its
original release date was November, but it was bumped back
to Apri to coincide with Earth Day because there's another
Dawn Blueth property. I think American Tail five will gooes west. Um,
(40:53):
and uh, Beauty and the Beast were both coming out,
and predictably, Beauty and the Beast destroy it did and
everything else maybe won Oscars and stuff. It's okay, this
is truly wild. USA Today claimed at the time that
the combined box office gross of Ferngali and the five
other non Disney animated films released to ninety two didn't
(41:16):
even equal a third of Beauty and the Beasts gross.
Six films couldn't make a third of how much Beauty
and the Beast made. I buy that, yeah, totally. Unfortunately,
critical reception was also lukewarm um Brotten Tomatoes. The film
has a sixty three based on sixteen reviews, and on Metacritic,
it's got a sixty seven based on a similar number,
so not great. Um it didn't. It did fare better
(41:41):
at home though, in then in theaters according to again
the Paris Review. According to our Ferngali fanatics over at
the Paris Review, it sold uh something like two point
five million copies for about fifty million, which is pretty
good considering I think it only grossed. You could like
just made its budget back. Um, I think because of
(42:04):
a lot of the technology and everything, it was not
a cheap film. It grows to reported thirty two mill
worldwide on an estimated twenty four meal budget, which is
not great. Um. There's also a thing in the wiki
article that Young said that portions of the film's grows
would be donated to Greenpeace, the Rainforest Foundation, and the
Sierra Club. And I'm not sure if that actually ended
(42:25):
up happening, because, uh, if your film only makes eight
mill over budget, not a lot of change to go
around after that. I just love this. Uh. Slam from
the critic of The New York Times called it an
uncertain blend of sanctimonious principles and Saturday Morning carthon aesthetics,
Wolf is that? Who was that? Janet Maslin? Sounds like
(42:46):
a Maslin Maslin disc. I'm not sure. Actually, let's take
a look. Let's go to Jamie. Can you pull that? Yep?
Janet Maslin? Moving on? Uh, Jeffrey Katzenberg, enemy of the program.
Jeffrey Katzenberg for his part, actually he admirably ate some crow,
which is not an ecologically sound I should not have
run with that, Young Young said after Ferngully came out,
(43:10):
Katzenberg called me and said something along the lines of
you made the best non Disney film ever, which is
medium nice. Robin Williams gets a late period Picasso. This
guy whose career he tried to crush, gets a phone
call something along the lines of him, I imagine that
he cut out numerous F bombs sprinkled in between every
(43:32):
yeah and and a pissy tone to I'm sure, yeah,
of course, uh you love Olivia Newton John. Yes, Ferngali
has a distinction of becoming the first film to ever
be screened in the United Nations General Assembly Hall, and
it was introduced by Olivia Newton John my beloved on
Earth Day. Isn't this where we came in? Yeah? I
(43:54):
just love the idea of like KOFE and on sitting
there like why am I doing this? There's a bat
rapping at me. I've got um And we mentioned earlier
this film is getting a thirty anniversary reissue, but I
think prior to this, the last time I heard about
it was as people were dinging Avatar for basically having
the same plot, only with the military subd in for
(44:17):
a private logging company. Though it must be said that
Avatar could also be dgged for lifting the plot of
dances with wolves and or any other number of like, Um,
you know, white guy winds up quote unquote going native
and learned something about himself. Most importantly, he learned about himself,
(44:39):
not himself. Um. I have actually gained a new and
deeper appreciation for this film while doing all this research
and talking about it. I know people are not kind
because of its lack of subtlety, but if you're talking
about the animation slash big budget landscape of the nineties,
it's pretty laudable forgetting that kind of message into theaters
(45:00):
and into the hearts and minds of children. Um, God
saved fern Gully. Yeah, I mean, I know you're right.
Despite my intense hatred for this movie, do the trauma
scars that remain on me to this day, I don't
deny that it instill the sense of environmental responsibility to
a generation of kids. And there was a retrospective piece
of Vanity fair few years back and they called it
(45:22):
a millennial silent Spring, which I feel I love that
very apt So I recognize all the good that fern
Gully has done. Now let us never speak of it again, folks,
thank you for listening. This has been too much information.
I am Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan Runtog. We'll catch
you next time. Too much Information was the production of
(45:46):
I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noeld Brown
and Jordan Runtalk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The
show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtalg and
Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the
Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please
subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and
I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(46:08):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio.
Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show
that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating
facts about your favorite TV shows, movies, music, and more.
We are your two mavens of minutia. I'm Alex Heigel
(00:23):
and I'm Jordan. Run Talk Jordan. Today we are talking
about a film that looms large in the annals of
nineties animation, despite the fact that it had nothing to
do with Disney, Pixar or even Studio Ghibli and was
in fact mostly overlooked on its upon its release. We
are talking about Earn Gully, the movie that made a
generation believe a logger could become a tree fairy, a
(00:45):
hideous yet sexy pollution monster could sing show tunes, and
Cheech and Chong could put aside their differences to play
a set of Beatles. I distinctly remember this movie growing up,
mostly because I think, as is very common, I was
terrified of hexas. Yes, the aforementioned sexy pollution monster. Um
(01:06):
let'should be your next DP sexy pollution. So that's the
hashtag for this episode. No, No, we cannot do that.
We will get people tweeting very weird erotica at us.
Oh yeah, we'll get up. We'll touch on that later
metaphorically not literally. Yeah it's bad. He's really, really, really scary.
And I think if I had not seen Who Framed
(01:28):
Roger Rabbit and Judge Doom took up space in my nightmares,
it would have been hexas the same with you. I'm trusting, Yeah,
I mean I probably more so. You know, people say,
oh my god, that movie totally traumatized me as a kid,
than they kind of laugh, like I'm not laughing. I
like that movie scared the hell out of me in
a way that still haunts me. And I think a
(01:49):
lot of it is because I grew up in a
really rural area and the house I lived in was
and so five year old me wasn't able to distinguish
between logging in a rainforest and logging in my own backyard.
So I lived in constant fear that this massive deforesting
machine was just gonna come and try to kill everyone
I know and loved. That thing is creepy. It's like
(02:12):
a panzer machine or something like. It's like it's it's massive. Yeah, yeah,
I mean so, I I actually distinctly remember having a
conversation with my parents about like making a plan if
this word happen, if like this machine helmed satanic glop
of glue showed up, Like this is what we would do, Yeah,
I had. It's like it was a fire escape plan
(02:34):
and there's a what if Hexas comes to our woods plan.
I think Hexas fused with the big tree killing machine
is just one of the most terrifying images of my childhood.
I mean, is everything about this movie was so unsettling.
All those red x is on the trees that looks
like some kind of Blair Witch project hex symbol, that
the ferry was hutch and it was like yeah, yeah.
(02:55):
And then even the sound design, with like the rumble
of the machine in the background and the guys screaming
through the megaphone just kind of echoing off in the distance.
It was just all so threatening. Oh and the creepy
cave painting hand things at the beginning, just oh my god,
I hate all of this. I mean, honestly, my memory
of the details on this movie might be a little
fuzzy because unlike most of the movies well, I mean yeah,
(03:19):
unlike so many of the movies that we discussed on
this episode. I haven't rewatched it. I started watching some
YouTube clips and I couldn't get any further. So I
think it's like, it's not like a particularly good movie,
but it's but people like remember. I really think most
people of our age group remember it because it crossed
(03:40):
so many lines in terms of what's acceptable for kids movie.
I feel like, although I will say, revisiting this movie,
I was shocked by the number of big names who
worked on it. I mean, obviously Robin Williams, I had
no idea, Christian Slater, Elton John, Jimmy Buffett like Raffi Raffy,
I guess is the most predictable um alright. Well, from
(04:02):
the incredible fourteen hours of reportedly improvised dialogue Robin Williams
provided for his role as Batty coda to Jeffrey Catt
friend of the program, Jeffrey Katzenberg's ruthless attempts to crush
the film before he made it to theaters, to the
surprisingly star packed soundtrack, Here is everything you didn't know
about Fern Gully stray up Um. The only good Australians
(04:33):
are A. C. D. C and Nick cave til the
note um Olivia and Sean Uh Distant four. Much like
another beloved animated flick from the nineties, The Rescuers down Under.
Fernley began life down Under off to a great starts, tremendous,
some tremendous riding there great Uh. There's a guy named
(04:54):
Wayne Young settled near the surf community of Byron Bay
in Australia after hopping around with his now ex wife
Diana and their children from mekan Nos to Ibitha, to
the same schells to Bali, and he fell in love
with these stories that Diana would tell their children that
centered around animals and the environment. I don't know what
kind of life he had set up that he could
just hop around to all no ideas, tropical places, no idea.
(05:17):
He does not have a distinctly extensive CV. Well, he
worked on crocodile dundee, so maybe he's got those bucks,
dud bucks. The first major protest to stop the logging
of the last forests happened right here. He told the
Paris Review the continent is nine odd percent in permanent drought,
but this is subtropical. As you mentioned, his producing credits
(05:40):
included crocodile Dundee, which is the film that catapulted Australia
into the national consciousness the entire continent. Yeah, nothing else
had succeeded to evade all of our consciousness but that
movie The Guy with the Knife. People in the eighties,
all these investment bankers were like, guys, have you guys
heard of this Australia, Get me a reservation at dorsea
(06:06):
until a tan man with a knife and a hat. God,
that movie is so weird. A car? What's that car?
Come on? Um? I can't find anything else that Diana
has written before or since. I think she may have
done like business writing or copyrighting. There's like or someone
with her name name did. Anyway, she she wrote a
(06:26):
series of short stories based on her bedtime tales that
would become the screenplay Differ. And so they've been working
on this thing since the late seventies, but they were
ahead of their time. They had to wait until the
zeitgeist caught up. And I'd like you to all journey
with us now to the magical time in the early
nineties when celebrities were first flocking to the cause of
global warming as it was called back then, conservation and
(06:48):
broadly capital t capital e the environment. Ah. This was
an era when Sting posed with an Amazonian tribal chief
on a magazine cover, which must have been traumatic for
that man. Imagine being flown to New York to be
photographed any Lebowitz or someone with this pale, thin englishman
(07:09):
next to you. Um. Kenny Loggins wrote a song called
Conviction of the Heart that he told me Al Gore
once deemed the unofficial anthem of the climate change movement.
Kenny Logans himself told you that I believe, so that
was incredible. He's one of the one of the celebrities
I interviewed once when I was at the Post. His
my absolute favorite quote from a celebrity I ever got,
(07:31):
was like we were talking about this and he just
like sighed heavily and he was like, I don't have
a lot of hope for the species a celebrity. Yeah, exactly,
there's your next hit, Kenny. Um. Madonna had a concert
called Don't Bungle the Jungle. Um. There's apparently a clip
of Tom Cruise telling people to plant a tree in
(07:54):
d C on Earth Day in just like, have you
ever planted a tree? Do it? Uh? I sent you
the rocket Fuel quote right. Yeah. Miles Teller apparently got
like he was inhaling so much of it on the
set of the New Top Gun that he he tested
for it in his blood stream. He was feeling bad
and went to the doctor and the doctor was like, well,
(08:15):
you've got all these like heavy metals in your blood stream.
Have you been around a lot of jet fuel recently?
And he's like yeah, as a matter of fact, yeah,
And you want to go tell Cruise because he was like, yeah, Tom,
I'm like suffering for this movie. And he's just like,
you have an all your mission. Yeah, He's like, Tom,
do you know I have I just tested for having
jet fueled my blood And Tom Cruise said, I was
born with it. Kid Ah. Anyway, So getting back to
(08:41):
fern Golly, unfortunately, as much as I would love to
down and you can talk about anything other than this
traumatic movie, but back to fern Golly, back to the
task at hands. The other big development that allowed fern
Gully to take off was the so called Disney renaissance
of the time, which we talked about on the Beauty
and the Beast episode, which is ironic given what we'll
(09:02):
talk about in a second. But the little Mermaid had
come out and jump started this new era for Disney.
And this is also right around the era when computer
animation starting to pick up steam as a relatively viable
utility for studios and Tron Yeah, relatively speaking. We talked
about this in the Beauty and the Beast episode. How
(09:22):
many months was it? It took the three months to
animate a chicken leg in wire frame chicken leg. Yeah,
so they're still getting the kinks out of it. But
the movie Tron actually paved the way for fern Gully
because there was a guy named Bill Croyer who had
actually worked at Disney before this on The Fox and
the Hound. And then you say he protests quit because
(09:45):
he didn't want to work on the Black Cauldron. Yeah,
it's just like a single line from an interview. He's like,
I quit because I didn't want to work on the
Black Cauldron. I mean that was a pretty famously troubled shoot.
But I just can't imagine hating something that much at
your job that you're just like, no, I quit. Yeah,
it was like extrame. I guess who with it? In
the edit? Catzenburg Jeffrey Katzenberg. That is correct. Catzenberg has
(10:07):
been turning into a recurring villain. He's Are He's Are
Blowfeld in the show. He just keeps cropping up screwing
up movies. But anyway, this guy, Balkroyer, he works on
the movie Tron, and he decides to focus on combining
traditional and computer animation, and he formed his own studio
to do this in and I guess his first and
only directorial credit is Firmali. It was the studio's first project,
(10:31):
and he had a script written by a guy named
Jim Cox, who had also written the script for Oliver
and Company starring my beloved Billy joel Um. And also
I will tell him what he also did, Yes, folks,
you guess did the Rescuers down Under? Right? And I
think he also tinkered with the beauty of the b
script too. So this whole development team won on a
(10:51):
seven week research trip to the Amazon where they were
especially intrigued by the glowing mushrooms. Because they're glowing mushrooms,
I guess they're called ghost mushrooms, which is already this
is starting to freak me out. I don't like mushrooms.
I mean, I like eating them, but they terrify me.
They're all like part of one super neural network. They're
(11:14):
talking about us. I don't know. It's like a pet.
It's a pet. It's like them in dolphins. Mushrooms are
the dolphins of the lands, smart, smarter than we give
them credit for. They're the true enemy, Fight the real enemy.
A picture of a mushrooms, some shots around mushrooms. Um so,
(11:36):
now we returned to Jeffrey Katzenberg, the villain of eighties
and nineties animation. The biggest single mistake Croyer and company
made was pissing off Jeffrey Katzenberg. Cox apparently smuggled Croyer
into Disney with a fake name tag to point out
some animators that he thought would be good for the project.
I'm not I'm not in the weeds enough to know
(11:56):
about like how animators are contracted to work on projects.
But I don't know if that's illegal or not. It
might have been like contract work. I don't know if
there's a noncompete clause. They're almost surely is these days.
But um anyway, trespassing for violating security, well that's true.
Uh boy, howdy Michael Jordan's meme Jeffrey Katzenberg sang and
I took that personally, UM, I just want to shout
(12:20):
out to queeby Jeff because I hate you. And that
was a massive failure. Uh. Croyer maintains that Katzenberg screwed
them out of the facilities that they were trying to
rent by going behind their back and offering to pay
more to the landlords. And they did he even use
the facilities or is he just buying up every space
(12:40):
for for a possible animation studio all throughout the South
just cartoon villain stuff. Jack Guy is just a motivated
entirely by spite. Yeah. And so they finally landed this
old brewery in the San Fernando Valley and Coyer said
that Disney just tried to buy it out from under them.
But the other factor in here is, as ever, Robin
(13:03):
mother truck and Williams. Yes. Screenwriter Jim Cox saw Robin
Williams at l A Comedy Clubs and at this point
he's relatively fresh off his Oscar nomination for Good Morning Vietnam.
So Cox wrote the part of this escaped science experiment
bat Batty Coda which yea, somebody please tell us that name. Um.
(13:23):
He wrote it specifically for Robin Williams. And Williams signed on,
and then he also signed on to do a Latin which,
as you may recall, was also for Disney, perhaps understandably
not wanting Robin Williams starring in two competing animated projects
at the same time. Jeffrey Katzenberg tried to get him
the back out of Ferm Goaly, but Robert Williams refused
(13:45):
because he really believed in the film's environmental message, and
apparently he said something words of the effect of, where
does this guy get off? It's my voice? Yeah, I
just think it's amazing that I guess Ferm Goali was
his first cartoon, was Robin will first cartoon that he
ever voiced, which I just think is insane that it
took him fifteen years into his career for a guy
(14:06):
was such an elastic, morphable voice that he was an
actual cartoon character, right. I just don't know who, like, like,
why it took so long for someone to make him
an offer, or maybe he just didn't accept the offers. Yeah,
that's weird to me. Yeah, and you know you touched
on this earlier, but this movie is jam packed with stars,
maybe because it was like in vogue in Hollywood to
do like environmental projects at the time. But it's like
(14:27):
the Training Wheels movie for all these people who would
gone to have really like much larger careers in animation
through the nineties. It's Robin Williams first role in animated feature,
as you just mentioned. Obviously, he would go on to
Aladdin and many others. It's Elton John's first song he
ever placed in an animated feature. I literally had no
idea he had anything to do with this until reading
your outline. No clue whatsoever. Yep, and uh, obviously he
(14:51):
goes on to do The Lion King a few years later.
It is composer Alan Silvestri's first animated feature. He's you know,
he's one of those like Arry Goldsmith. Uh, Thomas Newman
Utility Player soundtrack guys in Hollywood. He's done all kinds
of stuff. He would go on to do Leelo and
Stitch and The Polar Express. I think there's our first
Hanks connection sing. Uh. Tim Curry's first animated feature, which
(15:14):
boggles my mind. Another living cartoon character. He would go
on to do Wild thorn Berries and three rug Rats films.
What was he in Rugrats? Yeah? Hell yeah? On buss
of Us Uh, No, I don't remember. I don't remember
what he want. I just saw it on his IMDb um.
And lastly, Tommy Chong's first animated feature, Uh, cheech Marin
(15:35):
had done Yes, Folks Oliver and Company. I believe he
plays a chihuahua, because that's just soft, soft Hollywood racism.
It's really cute. I think that they they this is
the first time they'd worked together for six years. In
six years, Yeah, they had had a falling out in
the mid eighties because I guess cheech Mare thought Tommy
Chong was an egomaniac, and Chong had directed all their
(15:57):
movies and he wanted to be the soul writer. But
I guess the split came when Cheech wanted to record
a parody of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA called
Born in East l A. And Tommy Chong didn't want
to participate because he had nothing to do with that,
and he fell offended that he was just gonna be
relegated to backing vocals. And then I think, and then
I think Cheech Baron actually made a movie without Tommy
(16:21):
Chong about the plot of this song Born in East
l A. Where it was just like a guy's mistaken
for an illegal migrant and constantly trying to outrun deportation,
which is I feel like weirdly relevant from mid eighties movie.
Yeah that was like eight Good Lord, but who knew
he contained so many multitenests. So it's got Cheech and Chong,
(16:42):
but you forgot some other huge names that are in
this that still boggle my mind. Christian Slater is in
this as the alpha fairy pips Christa's I don't know
if they're related or what, but the guy that kind
of is skeptical of the human in their midst. The narrator,
who's also Magi Looney I think is a name went
on to play Sarah Palmer in Twin Peaks, and the
(17:03):
character Ralph who's one of the dopes in the woodcutting Machine.
He's played by a guy named Jeffrey Blake who was
later in Forest Gump. He's Jenny's jerk activist boyfriend who
slaps her and then Forest comes over and and um
and lets him know. Um. And there's Pamela ad Lawn
too's in a bunch of stuff. I knew her mostly
(17:24):
from Louis. Yeah, she's just like an anonymous fairy and
she's I think the voice of Spinelli in Recess and
a bunch of other stuff. She's amazing in Sergeant Bilco
with Steve Martin, one of my favorite names movies. Um,
but you've also neglected to mention, quite shamefully, the voice
of Zach the Woodsman who gets shrunk down to the
size of a ferry, the main guy in this movie.
(17:46):
He's voiced by an actor named Jonathan Ward, who was
the kid in Mac and Me. Do you remember Mac
and Me? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it's this critically
maligned I mean, that's being too kind. This really savage
non off of et from the late eighties, and I
only knew about it because it was this, as you said,
this recurring gag on Conan. Whenever Paul Road would come
(18:07):
on Conan to plug a new movie he was in,
he would set up a clip from obsensively from the
movie that he's promoting, and they would just play the
same clip from Mac and Me of this kid I
think in a wheelchair creating on a clip. Make sure
that movie is like also famous for being the one
of the most naked and early examples of product placement,
(18:28):
because there's a whole bit in it about how the
aliens are obsessed with McDonald's. Well, well yeah, well yeah,
it's called Mac and me. I think that was part
of it. Yeah, I mean I think they saw what
ET did, not only with the aliens, but with the
Reese's pieces product placement, and we're like, oh, let's get
some of that alien marketing dollar goodness. And yeah, no,
I think you're right. It had a profit sharing agreement
(18:50):
with the Ronald McDonald children's charities. That's cute. Well they
got negative got him. We're going to take a quick break,
but we'll be right back with more. Too much information
in just a moment. But yes, God bless Robin Williams.
(19:18):
We can't say that enough. Um, we should really strive
to do this in every episode. But here comes a
quick Robin Williams lightning round. I guess he ran into
George Lucas at Lucas's Skywalker Ranch while he was recording Batty,
and George Lucas asked him when he was up to
Robin said, oh, you wouldn't be interested, George. It's about
the environment, you know. I couldn't find a verification for this,
(19:40):
but the commonly recited bit of trivia from this movie
is that the character of Batty initially only had something
like eight minutes of screen time, and Williams just improvised,
like fourteen hours is the figure I keep reading of
dialogue and just turned that in. Yeah, and they were
just like, well, now we have to make more space
for the bat Uh you mean do that on a
Laddin too, if like is the famous one where they
(20:02):
just turned him loose in the studio. Yeah. Young told
the Paris Review in this aforementioned feature, I find so
funny when Robin started riffing, he would come up with
something that would just be that much funnier, that much
more impactful. I sat in amazement. It worked the same
every scene. He would absorb the shot, do the script,
and then launch into variations. And he talks about in
(20:25):
the same article there's the scene where Battie flies Christian
Slater's character to that horrifying panzer tank forestry machine. And
he said in the recording studio, I told Robin just
do every military charge cliche that you can think of.
He did ten NonStop minutes. Well he did just come
off a good morning Vietnam, So maybe some of them
(20:46):
are already I guess, But Yeah. Screenwriter Jim Cox had
a great line about Robin Williams. He said, writing for
Robin was like writing for a jazz musician. It was
like seeing a virtuosa musicians spin out a solo. It
built in this way that was just a static and
at the end, it was like watching someone go to
the edge of sanity. His voice became tiny and he said,
somebody pulled me back, pulled me back. It was like
(21:08):
he was so far out he didn't know how to
get back to reality. You're not to get like unnecessarily
dark in this episode, but there's that character is grim.
He's terrifying. Young says that was always a part of
Robin's comedy repertoire how stupid and up human beings are,
and Courrier would add that the character is a metaphor
for nature, mistakenly or not mistakenly damaged by human interference.
(21:33):
He is so unbelievably sympathetic. And there was a wounded
animal like Batty inside Williams terrifying. It was an animal
that an experimented on by humans, you know, an electrode
coming out of the side of his head. I mean
it was I know, he's supposed to be the comic
relief of the movie. But Jesus, he was terrifying and
he was loud, and he was unpredictable, and it just
(21:55):
was I found it really uncomfortable to watch. As much
as I love Robin william I don't think my parents
explained that to me when I was a kid, Like,
why does the bat have a thing coming out of
his head? I don't think they Yeah, how would you
explain that? I mean, it's kind of like, let's just hope,
let's just hope it doesn't come up people. Yeah, why
do human beings do that to other living things? Yeah? Uh?
(22:18):
And they're still doing it. Elon Musk is doing it
to monkeys who go insane and kill themselves. Um. Yeah. Everyone.
Williams and the rest of the cast members worked for
scale because they were also passionate about the film's message,
which is kind of nice. And this is where the
Williams grudge against Disney from the time comes in. He
was working on his sort of ill fated passion project,
(22:39):
which was this Barry Levinson flicked Toys, which I love that.
He was a fairly famous flop um and he feels
so good though, and he didn't want Disney using his
license to sell merch directly telling them I don't want
to sell anything, as in burger king, as in toys,
as in stuff, and stipulated his name and Genie's likeness
could only be used in a maximum of the advertising
(23:02):
materials for Aladdin. Decently promptly went ahead and used the
voice and image of Genie to do exactly that, and
reportedly this is a bunch of l A Times articles
came out about this. They reportedly calculated exactly how to
take up a full quarter of any given promotional materials
ace with the character's likeness, and Williams was so piste
off by this he avowed never to work for Disney again,
(23:25):
and Cassenberg tried to buy forgiveness by sending him a
late period Picasso. I don't know why I said. Picasso
like that Picasso. I like Jeffrey Catsenberg is now the
voice in perpetuity. Is he gets the cigar chomping mogul
voice Williams, He still pissed at me. Send him a
Picasso one of the late ones, though, one of the
(23:48):
news nothing good. Yeah, but yeah, I guess that was
not good enough for Robin. I mean, if he's taken
a stand against presumably like materialism, sending a very expensive
blue Yes, maybe not the way to go about it.
Maybe make a large donation to like the Robal McDonald foundation,
(24:10):
which is still hurting from mac and me demanding that
they covered we will never financially recovered fromage. But in
after Jeffrey Catzenberg was fired from Disney, Joe Roth, his replacement,
apologized to Williams in I think an open letter right
in the L. A. Times, and they got Robin to
(24:31):
come back to do the voice of Genie for the
sequel to Aladdin. But you you say that there's a
flip side to the stary that Robin wasn't just taking
a stand against materialist. Yeah, you know the dirty secret
of half of the Times. When you see an unnamed
source quoted in any major publication, especially in entertainment, it's
someone from the company. It's like a PR person who
(24:51):
doesn't want to be named. So the opposing voice in
all of these L. A. Times things is some company
source who basically positive that Williams was up, that he
worked for low pay on the first Aladdin and was
using this whole kerfuffle as a sort of moralistic excuse
to as leverage for the next one, And it is true.
I don't think he made very much on the first
(25:11):
A Lad and obviously it blew up and he got
something like a million or two million to come back
and do the sequel. Um that even sounds low to me.
I mean not only for you know, Disney money, but
just a success of that size. Well, I don't think.
I think the second one was direct to videos, so
I don't think. I don't know that he could have
gotten points on the on the theatrical for that. Anyway,
(25:33):
to our second favorite person film, Tim Curry, Baby, I'm pissed.
So Shout Factory just put Out is putting out this big,
lavish thirtieth anniversary reissue of this on Blue Rain hasn't
come out yet, so I wasn't able to find like
all the commentary tracks, which is usually where you get
the good dirt. But another thing that I've heard about
(25:53):
this movie is that Tim Curry was so terrifying as
hexas that in test screenings he actually like literally frightened
children to the point where they were like, you got
to redo some of this, man, You're going too hard. Yes,
I mean, I mean if you were one of those
children very much. So I think he'd just come off
(26:15):
when did the um? When did it come out? So
he was in that headspace he had gone show method
to play Pennywise. He couldn't shake it off. Um Yeah.
They also apparently had to cut some of the lyrics
to his big musical show piece, Toxic Love because they
were just too horny. And you gotta do everyone you
(26:37):
know now for our segment, stop pause the podcast and
go google something. Go look up the recording of him
singing this song live, because it is incredible. It is
Frankenfurter or Grade. It's funny. I always thought that watching
this movie as a kid, I always thought it was
David Bowie. I always think because I watched Laborrith a
lot at this time, and I always thought the voice.
(26:58):
And I guess Bowie always kind of slightly resented Tim
Curry for I do not know that the Frank. I mean,
that's maybe I'm reading a little too much into it,
but I think he thought that all the rocky horror stuff,
oh it a lot stood on his shoulders. For all
the gender meaning stuff he was doing with Ziggy so
interesting that I had them confused at the time. Um,
(27:20):
I mean, I'm unable to confirm. Well, now, let me
ask you. I was trying to find the original lyrics
to I don't think they were cut from the film.
I think they were cut from certain releases because there
are people out there who were like depending on which
you know. This is also in the era when Blockbuster
was like the power behind the front of video stuff,
(27:41):
and they would demand different cuts of films with stuff
cut out. So I think depending on which home release
you had at the time, there are less horny lyrics
in it. I found these lyrics that I again haven't
revisited since I was five or six. I'd like, how
I go? If you can, I'm not but give you.
I'll give you. Maybe we can do that. I can
(28:02):
try my Orsen Wells impression, which we're work shopping for
a future episode. The lines are I feel good A
special kind of horny flowers and trees depressed and frankly
bore me. I think I'll spew them all with cyanide saliva,
pour me a puke cocktail, and take me to the driver.
(28:23):
I see the world with all the creatures in it,
I suck them dry and spit them out like Spinach.
Does Horny have a different definition that I don't know about.
I don't know, But that's just the fact that that
made it. You know, small fledgling company definitely didn't have
the infrastructure that Disney did. But the fact that that
landed on somebody's desk at some point and they were like,
(28:44):
this is fine. Um, We've touched on this earlier. Folks,
Do not turn off your safe search results if you're
gonna image search hexas. There are so many pornographic tom
of Finland beefca illustrations of that sludge monster. But I
don't understand how. I mean he's either a puff of
(29:05):
smoke or a puddle of sludge. How is he beefcake?
I think it's the first time he like anthromorphosizes, like
he goes from group to skeleton to like big Jay
Leno Chin beefcake character. And that's the image that people
have glommed onto online for their graphic fan art. Um
Curry talks about this in ten He did an interview
(29:30):
or a panel appearance at fan Expo Canada. Uh and
there's an interview in this when someone asked him about
for Youngali and he says, I was glad to do
it because it was all about being eco friendly. I
was a little unhappy because they drew the character based
on my face and it wasn't at all kind. But yeah.
So one of the people that they did successfully poach
(29:51):
from Disney was a woman named Kathy Zelinsky, who was
the supervising animator for The Little mermaids Ursula, which is
a pretty straight arrow progression you go from Parcela to Hexas.
But Young said that they had to kind of tone
her down. He said, we had to keep Cathy in
a box or she would have scared the hell out
of the parents too. I did not know any of
(30:12):
this about her, but she is a fascinating woman. One
of her formative influences with a Night on Bald Mountain
segment from Fantasia, which is sort of ground zero for
terrifying being in an children's movies. You remember that, I don't. Probably,
I probably was oppressed with that as a kid. She
might be one of the only animators, at least the
only one I know, to have worked on a cult
nineteen eighties horror movie called eight Knight of the Demons,
(30:35):
which is not very good, but she does this beautiful
animated sequence at the beginning of it Um and a
bunch of Disney stuff. She narrowly missed the opportunity to
become the first female animation supervisor at Disney, but um
Zelinski went on to work for Hunchback of Notre Dame.
I believe she did Frollo, which is what is her
thing about fire, so she did follow so she would
(30:56):
have done the hellfire sequence, which is like common cited
is something that also should not belong in a children's movie.
You'll remember. It's when he sings about being super horny
for Esmeralda in like a church and thinking that he's
going to be damned for it. You know, there's like
there's like actual fire flames going in the background. She
worked on a bunch of dreamwork stuff and Frozen that's
(31:18):
not fire. Yeah, say, maybe she mellowed in middle age.
She currently works on The Simpsons, and she can always
rest on the laurels of her horrifying sludge monster being
the ground zero for the sexual awakening for a pretty
significant chunk of the Internet apparently, and the other significant
chunk credits David Bowie and Labyrinth. There you go, Yeah,
(31:39):
the two genders. And having said all that we'll be
right back with more too much information right after this
quick cast rundown and the yes, I mentioned Christian Slater
(32:02):
and Samantha Mathis they played two of the fairies. Uh,
Samantha Mathis, I actually forgot about this until you mentioned.
It was River Phoenix's girlfriend at the time that he died,
and she was with him when he Um died inside
the Viper Room club on Hollywood about a year and
a half after this movie came out. Um, So that's
(32:24):
deeply sad, adding to the deep feelings of sad I
have surrounding this movie. Um. She had also dated Christian
Slater for a time and acted with him in Pump
Up the Volume in nine, and they would act together
again in Broken Arrow in and we're gonna get into
fantasy casting now. I guess to play the role of
(32:47):
the fairy Krista. I don't think we've said her name yet.
Christa lead character in this movie. They considered Winona Ryder
Jack and totally see. Jennifer Connolly starred in Labyrinth, Somebody
Labyrinth Connections, Melanique f f. I can't really see that
Meg Rice. It looks just like Meg Ryan with like
a Brunette, Dedter Hair Brunette, so I can sulily see
that they were all considered for the role of Krista,
(33:09):
but it went to Samantha Mathis. Meg Brian goes on
to do the leading Anastasia, which I think is one
of the last gasps of the Don Bluth studio, which
I believe was also buried by Disney upon its release
and also purveyors of deeply horrifying children's movies. Yeah, blooth
Stus is great. Also. Tone look during that phase in
the early nineties when he was writing The Twins, Peaks
(33:31):
of wild Thing and Funky Cold Medina into Hollywood. You'll
remember him from Ace Ventura, which is basically one of
the co leads on. He plays a lizard. He's playing
a goanna, a Goanna goanna, which is not the same
kind of featured in Yes, folks, you guessed it, The
Rescuers down Under. That is a frill nacked lizard hashtag
(33:53):
not all lizards. Do you know? That was Iva Gabor's
last movie, The Rescuers down Under. No, I didn't realize that,
you know what a note to go out one And
as we mentioned earlier, Chechen Sean Reunited for the first
time in six years to do this movie. Marin told
the St. Louis Dispatch at the time, it was just
like old times, but we only worked for two or
three hours, had a pizza and split It's just like
(34:16):
old times until I got sick of it and we leafed. Uh,
this is kind of nuts. I wasn't able to verify
this with Guinness. It's not in their official listings, but uh,
it's also sort of passed into legend, by which I
mean frequently repeated in listicals that a Spanish voice actor
name Angela dubbed all thirty two characters in this film
(34:37):
for the release in his home country. All thirty two
characters were that one dude in the Spanish dub and
it supposedly got him a world record at the time.
I found an interview that wasn't Spanish, but I used
to Google auto Translate because I am an ugly American
and do not speak Spanish. It was a holy dug
himself into Um. They asked him, I think he was
riding high on some other voice over hit and uh.
(35:00):
They asked him if he could do batty and he said,
in the arrogance of being twenty seven years old. He said,
I'll only do it if I can do all of them,
and he subsequently did all thirty two characters over four
eight hour days. God love him. Now we move on
to Songs from the Wood, which is an obscure Jethro
Toll reference for all six boomer white men in the audience.
(35:25):
Who will get that moving on? Truly a baffling array
of personalities on this soundtrack. We mentioned Alan Silvestri, who
was then fresh off of Stop or My Mom Will
Shoot did the score. The original songs in this film
are just random Thomas Dolby, who I just learned is
not an actual Dolby of the Dolby Dolby's just want
to keep saying Dolby, good mouth feel on that word.
(35:47):
He did? You remember him from She Blinded Me with Science? Ye?
He composed three of those films songs, including Robin Williams
Batty Rap, which was the same year that he did
Toys with Williams. I guess they were friends or became
friends working together. I interviewed Thomas Dolby for My David
So many David references in this episode. I interviewed him
(36:09):
from My David Bowie biography show because he was in
Bowie's band that he hastily assembled for a live aid.
And he's hilarious. He's like really really funny, Like check
out my interview with him, because he is super funny
and super insightful. But it doesn't forgive this truly horrendous
line from the Batty Rap. You know my name is Battye.
The logic is a erratic doesn't rhyme potato in a jacket.
(36:32):
I don't understand that. Toys in the attic at that
I rock and I ramble. My brain is scrambled rap
like an animal. But I'm a mammal. Mammals are animals.
That's terrible. But despite that line, he's a professor now
and I guess he made like serious money as a
(36:55):
ringtone pioneer for him. No, no, I have no quarrel
with Thomas good dude, good dude. Uh. Jimmy Buffett, folks,
a man who made a billion dollars by singing about
not doing anything nice. Yeah, do you know how much
money Jimmy Buffett has. It's gonna be like McCartney level,
(37:15):
like close to a billion. Yeah, it's wild. He co
wrote the Lizard song that tone Loake sings quote. If
I'm gonna eat someone, it might as well be you
hate Jimmy Buffett and Raffie as we mentioned, which given
his stranglehold on the children's music market, not surprising. And
(37:36):
there's a song in here sung by Sheena Easton of
My Baby Works from nine to five Fame, which is weird.
The song was written by Alan Silvestri and Jimmy Webb
were really one of the greatest pop songwriters of the sixties. Uh.
He wrote McArthur Park, he wrote which to Line Them
by Glenn Campbell, by the Tomic, That the Phoenix, also
(37:57):
by Glenn Campbell and millions of others. That's an insane
trio of people. Sheinna Eastan, el Silvestri and Shimmy Webb. Yeah,
and Elton John next as you mentioned, Uh yeah, he
wrote Some Other World, which is a co write with
a guy named Bruce Roberts, who, as far as I
can tell, is just one of those sort of jobbers.
There's a wrestling term for the wrestlers you put in
(38:19):
matches with um, people who are sort of fast track
to fame so that they can lose matches um and
make the other guy look good. That Guy's biggest hit
was the Donna Summer and Barbera Streisan disco duet No
More Tears, parentheses, enough is Enough and another song on
Bad Girls by Donna Summer, which is a great record. Uh. Yeah, man,
there is not much out here about this soundtrack, despite
(38:42):
having all of these people on it. I was desperately
trying to find, like recording information session stuff. It's just
not out there. So if you or loved one played
on the front call the original soundtrack, please get in
touch with us. I would love to talk about it. Um.
We talked a little bit about how the film was
an important way point in the transition between traditional animation
(39:03):
and computer work. Yeah. They used the what was cutting
edge technology at the time to generate the dense layers
of the rainforests used in all the backgrounds, and they
also did some other slightly smaller animated items like flocks
of birds. They did that through computers, but they still
mostly had to animate most of this movie by hand.
(39:24):
And that's a fairly common knock against this movie that
despite all the environmental themes, it used this traditional animation
style which was extremely wasteful. Uh. There were a hundred
and fifty thousand cells that were created for fereng Gully,
which is a total of thirty eight miles of artwork
if they were laid end to end. And Cryer said
(39:46):
at one point that they used four tons of paint
and produced sixteen tons of finished art just to make
one film. So, in other words, they used a forest
to save the rainforest. I just want to that in
the opening of the movie, with all the cave painting
style handprints, one of them is the logo for body
Gloves swimwear. It's just just a fun little bit of
(40:09):
product placement, which with the body glove Yeah, I mean,
what happened with them? They were everywhere for a while.
I think they're around, but I don't know. Maybe it's
backfired for them, because honestly, to this day when I
see that logo, I the coil and no idea. This
movie was such a sticking point for wow um and yes,
(40:30):
and the moral of this story, as with so many others,
is never bet against the House of mouse Burngali was
coming out at a busy time for animated feature. Its
original release date was November, but it was bumped back
to Apri to coincide with Earth Day because there's another
Dawn Blueth property. I think American Tail five will gooes west. Um,
(40:53):
and uh, Beauty and the Beast were both coming out,
and predictably, Beauty and the Beast destroy it did and
everything else maybe won Oscars and stuff. It's okay, this
is truly wild. USA Today claimed at the time that
the combined box office gross of Ferngali and the five
other non Disney animated films released to ninety two didn't
(41:16):
even equal a third of Beauty and the Beasts gross.
Six films couldn't make a third of how much Beauty
and the Beast made. I buy that, yeah, totally. Unfortunately,
critical reception was also lukewarm um Brotten Tomatoes. The film
has a sixty three based on sixteen reviews, and on Metacritic,
it's got a sixty seven based on a similar number,
so not great. Um it didn't. It did fare better
(41:41):
at home though, in then in theaters according to again
the Paris Review. According to our Ferngali fanatics over at
the Paris Review, it sold uh something like two point
five million copies for about fifty million, which is pretty
good considering I think it only grossed. You could like
just made its budget back. Um, I think because of
(42:04):
a lot of the technology and everything, it was not
a cheap film. It grows to reported thirty two mill
worldwide on an estimated twenty four meal budget, which is
not great. Um. There's also a thing in the wiki
article that Young said that portions of the film's grows
would be donated to Greenpeace, the Rainforest Foundation, and the
Sierra Club. And I'm not sure if that actually ended
(42:25):
up happening, because, uh, if your film only makes eight
mill over budget, not a lot of change to go
around after that. I just love this. Uh. Slam from
the critic of The New York Times called it an
uncertain blend of sanctimonious principles and Saturday Morning carthon aesthetics,
Wolf is that? Who was that? Janet Maslin? Sounds like
(42:46):
a Maslin Maslin disc. I'm not sure. Actually, let's take
a look. Let's go to Jamie. Can you pull that? Yep?
Janet Maslin? Moving on? Uh, Jeffrey Katzenberg, enemy of the program.
Jeffrey Katzenberg for his part, actually he admirably ate some crow,
which is not an ecologically sound I should not have
run with that, Young Young said after Ferngully came out,
(43:10):
Katzenberg called me and said something along the lines of
you made the best non Disney film ever, which is
medium nice. Robin Williams gets a late period Picasso. This
guy whose career he tried to crush, gets a phone
call something along the lines of him, I imagine that
he cut out numerous F bombs sprinkled in between every
(43:32):
yeah and and a pissy tone to I'm sure, yeah,
of course, uh you love Olivia Newton John. Yes, Ferngali
has a distinction of becoming the first film to ever
be screened in the United Nations General Assembly Hall, and
it was introduced by Olivia Newton John my beloved on
Earth Day. Isn't this where we came in? Yeah? I
(43:54):
just love the idea of like KOFE and on sitting
there like why am I doing this? There's a bat
rapping at me. I've got um And we mentioned earlier
this film is getting a thirty anniversary reissue, but I
think prior to this, the last time I heard about
it was as people were dinging Avatar for basically having
the same plot, only with the military subd in for
(44:17):
a private logging company. Though it must be said that
Avatar could also be dgged for lifting the plot of
dances with wolves and or any other number of like, Um,
you know, white guy winds up quote unquote going native
and learned something about himself. Most importantly, he learned about himself,
(44:39):
not himself. Um. I have actually gained a new and
deeper appreciation for this film while doing all this research
and talking about it. I know people are not kind
because of its lack of subtlety, but if you're talking
about the animation slash big budget landscape of the nineties,
it's pretty laudable forgetting that kind of message into theaters
(45:00):
and into the hearts and minds of children. Um, God
saved fern Gully. Yeah, I mean, I know you're right.
Despite my intense hatred for this movie, do the trauma
scars that remain on me to this day, I don't
deny that it instill the sense of environmental responsibility to
a generation of kids. And there was a retrospective piece
of Vanity fair few years back and they called it
(45:22):
a millennial silent Spring, which I feel I love that
very apt So I recognize all the good that fern
Gully has done. Now let us never speak of it again, folks,
thank you for listening. This has been too much information.
I am Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan Runtog. We'll catch
you next time. Too much Information was the production of
(45:46):
I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noeld Brown
and Jordan Runtalk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The
show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtalg and
Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the
Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please
subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and
I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(46:08):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Jordan Runtagh
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