RW

It makes a lot of sense. I always see the influences in this film from George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart’s “You Can’t Take It With You�? – whether it’s intentional or unintentional.

SA

Definitely.

RW

And I point to that similarity for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Dr. Kunklehorn bears a passing resemblance to Kitty Carlisle Hart.

SA

(laughing) I never thought of that! Yeah!

RW

“You Can’t Take It With You�? marks the place in American Theatre and Film where the notion of the loveable and interesting dysfunctional family was worth watching over and over. It’s the grandfather of all sit-coms. Even movie families like the Klumps owe so much to “You Can’t Take It With You.�? And that quirky family unit is a gold mind for story telling, so it makes sense. Done with integrity it could be such a delight to return to.

SA

Yeah, I think so. And as a story artist, in the past, a lot of times the movies you work on, you feel like you don’t really feel the life of the characters beyond the last frame of the movie is. You tend to work with characters in the context of the story you’re telling. It doesn’t feel organic and you can’t really imagine what these characters would be like out of these situations. Now maybe this movie’s different because I’m in a different role on this one, but I tell you as we’ve been making this movie it feels organic and I start seeing moments and relationships and I start seeing ways to piece this stuff together and create a whole timeline for these characters and this family. It’s pretty cool to me, and it says something that have something with a lot more weight because of that, because there’s kind of a natural life to these characters, at least for me as a film maker, I feel like there’s something there, there’s more story to tell.

RW

You said something very, very insightful there. Back in 1988 John Canemaker ran a story panel at the Walter Lantz Conference on Animation. Bill Peet was on the panel (along with the late Joe Ranft, “Back to Neverland�? and “Brave Little Toaster�? director Jerry Rees, and then newly appointed Feature Animation president Peter Schneider) and Canemaker asked him in the opening question “Is the story the important thing?�? and Peet responded “The first thing you have to have is a set of characters that can carry you through the story once they’re established. That’s the most important part. It’s like a train leaving the station without the passengers: if you don’t have characters from the word go, you don’t have the story really started.�? So obviously if, as in your case, you have specific characters – and I always believe the more specific the better – that audience like to watch and that they connect with on some level, then the possibilities are indeed endless.

SA

Yeah, and the thing that I really proud about with this film is that characters are our strongest point. I think we were able to create characters with a lot of richness to them, a lot of ‘appeal’, a lot of heart, even the Bowler Hat Guy, he’s human, you see vulnerabilities, you see weaknesses. Like all good Disney characters, you really see the human side of these characters. I’m really proud of that, and for me what has me most excited about this film is to see if the rest of the world will embrace these characters like I’ve embraced them. Yeah, that’s really the cornerstone. I totally agree with that, that’s the cornerstone of not just movies in general but Disney movies in particular: that’s what people remember about Disney movies, that’s what you go to the theme parks, to the Disney stores, you get the DVD’s – you want to keep these characters a part of your life. It’s the characters you really connect with.

RW

You really have to invest in - for some reason I really trust John Lasseter and Ed Catmull on this – you have to have the integrity to commit to the truth of the character before you capitalize off of them as just another graphic franchise. We’ve all seen too many really great characters suffer from being over-franchised without any attention being paid to exactly who they are.

SA

It’s really easy for that to happen. I’ve seen it just on our movie, some of the side things that we’ve discussed that have been developed for various marketing campaigns and such – all of which ultimately didn’t come to fruition – but you see how people generalize about the characters, they make generalizations about who they are, and they really miss the boat. You miss the specificity of those characters. It’s so important to keep those characters because when they’re not right people really feel it. There’s just something that’s not quite there because, I think like you said, they’re making a generalization about the character or they’re just looking at the one-dimensional aspect of the character and not the full thing. The specific voice – Bill Peet was talking about it – the speech patterns of a character are so important and something we really worked hard on this movie to make sure that everyone has a distinct voice, different rhythms. They don’t just sound like the people who are writing them.