RW
It’s also easier to keep some continuity through process with a team that’s that size, especially when you want to make late in the game changes. If I remember correctly in my conversation with Alice she said that it was a while or at least that it was late in the game before the team had fully figured out Slim and the Willies. Do I have that right? Was that difficult?

FINN
Well, he took a long time and he took such a long time that it actually distracted us from some of the other story problems that we only got to later. But it took about half the production length to get this one character right.

RW
Half the production length from the time you came on?

Finn and Sanford nod

RW
So about what, two years? A year and a half?

SANFORD
About a year and a half. Part of it was figuring out his motivation, and part of it was figuring out how much you need and how much is too much and how much is too complex.

FINN
One of the things that was a problem was that there was a mandate early on that we couldn’t invoke anything to do with cattle as potential beef, which meant he couldn’t be stealing cows for beef. So that threw a real monkey wrench into our process for quite a while. We had to roll out all these crazy ideas where we had to know, even if we didn’t deal with it in the plot, we had to know why he was stealing all these cows if is wasn’t for beef. Every story that’s dealt with farm animals deals with how the farm animals, the characters, have to learn at some point that they’re potentially going to be food.

RW
Well sure, ever since "Animal Farm" -

SANFORD
"Animal Farm", and "Babe"

FINN
"Charlotte’s Web" and "Chicken Run" yeah, they all do it. So that door was closed to us

RW
Isn’t that like making 101 DALMATIANS and being told "Cruela can’t mention that she’s going to skin the puppies and make clothes out of them" ?!

FINN
Yeah, well only after we exhausted all options that we came back and said if we don’t tread heavily on it, can it just be that he’s stealing them for beef? And they finally said okay. And it was actually, to his credit, it was Michael Eisner’s idea to have him also be using the money from selling the elite cows to be buying up the farms and ranches which would tie him back to this dairy farm, which was not a cattle ranch. We kind of didn’t get that idea at first but gradually over time, given the obligatory scene at the end where he’s going to come buy the farm from the Widow Pearl, so we had a great conflict scene with the villain and the cows now which we never really had before. It was always just a vague thing - this object they were trying to get for money - but now they not only needed the money to rescue the farm, but they also need to stop him from this other task.

RW
Specifics are the key, aren’t they? Specificity is always what that process is about, it’s getting down to the playable actions and since this is a visual medium you need very animatable actions where you can see something happen and not have to have it explained over and over and over in dialogue.

SANFORD
Right

FINN
And as John said, we had to figure out what the back story of it was. We really made story a big priority, and they gave us a very free hand.

RW
It proves yet again that if you bring artists up through the ranks, not screenwriters, and give them the authority over a project and trust them with it then animation will find its way to something much more exciting and enjoyable.

SANFORD
When you let someone develop something like that you end up with something much more unique because they have a stronger point of view and a stronger vision. Look at "Lilo & Stitch." "Lilo & Stitch" came right out of Chris’s head.

RW
Well that’s the point, isn’t it? Something original and fresh and new.

SANFORD
With HOME ON THE RANGE we just tried to do what made us laugh.

RW
That’s what Alice Dewey said. I asked her this overly esoteric question that I swear I’ll never ask again about audiences and producers and how I wondered if she gave thought to how the product had to be a reflection of what or rather who was in the seats, and was it relevant to them and she said "No, we just wanted to make a cartoon that we liked and that we thought was funny and made us laugh." She said it best when she said "You just can’t second guess it, you just have to go with it." So maybe as an industry animation has been doing too much second guessing.

FINN
Well that’s why I’m really, really glad to be working with John, because John would reminded me of that. I’ve been at this so long, and I’ve been through all the ‘what will this executive buy, and what will that executive buy’ and what will the audience want and spent so much time trying to figure out how to make something palatable. John would always remind me ‘Well, why don’t we just do what we like?" And we’ve always found the same things funny, and the same things interesting and liked the same kinds of books and movies and stuff, and John would say "Well, we like this stuff and if we get behind it the audience will like it too." And sure enough, so far, so good. We’ll see.

RW
How many test audiences or test screenings have you sat through? (sic)

SANFORD
Well, let’s see, there were two kids screenings, one preview

FINN
Three previews. There were two right before the holidays and one more for testing the sound mix, so it’s been about six or seven previews.

RW
What has that been like?

SANFORD
It’s very revealing. You discover how little you have to set something up for an audience. There’s an assumption that I hate to read on animation web sites "Oh audiences are stupid! They don’t get anything!"

People are really sharp, and you have to treat them like they’re sharp or otherwise they will hate your movie and they will check out. On the other hand, audiences, the man on the street audience is going to care about something completely different from a hard-core animation audience, and you kind of have to keep your foot in both camps.

We learned very quickly where we lost people. There were certain things that we thought were really funny where we lost people.

RW
Meaning that they didn’t find it funny or ?

SANFORD
They just checked out. Either we had belabored the point or they didn’t find what we were doing interesting. Which is very upsetting.