On November 27, ABC, Disney Channel, Disney XD, and Disney Junior will all debut the new stop-motion holiday special Mickey Saves Christmas. We had a chance to speak with the director David H. Brooks about his career and working with Mickey and the gang. Among his other acclaimed stop-motion work is SNL’s “Christmastime for the Jew” and AMC’s Ultra City Smiths.
Ben Breitbart:
How did you get involved in stop-motion animation?
David H Brooks:
Great question. Well, I lived in Chicago right after film school, the early 2000s, and I was just looking for a job in production. I found this stop-motion animation studio in Chicago called Bix Pix Entertainment. They're out here in Los Angeles now, but at the time they were in Chicago. I just knocked on the door and resume in hand and I studied film, I didn't study animation. They took me in, like a lost puppy, and I loved what they were making. They were doing some work for Disney at the time, and they were just making really cool stuff. Stop-motion as far as animation goes, seems the closest to live action to me. You're on a little set and you got a camera and lights, and a lens and I just went, "Okay, I can understand this." And thus was born my 20 plus year career in stop-motion.
Ben Breitbart:
Well, and you've done a lot of great work for a guy who wasn't trying to get a start in animation. You're now working with the most iconic animated character, let alone character in history, what was it like to get to work with Mickey and the gang?
David H Brooks:
Oh my gosh. Honestly, man, such a dream come true. I've loved Mickey Mouse since I was a little kid. I think we all have that feeling of nostalgia and going to Disney World with my family. Just knowing this character my whole life, it was really kind of surreal to see. We'd never seen Mickey in stop-motion before, right? And then to see it come to life in a special that is so holiday, stop-motion screams holidays, it really is just kind of surreal. And really a perfect little project to work on.
Ben Breitbart:
Can I ask you a nerdy technical question? One of the things that we know about Mickey Mouse is his ears are always circles. It's one thing to do that on paper and pencil, but you even made that happen in stop-motion without it looking weird. Was that a technical challenge for you to have just working with the ears?
David H Brooks:
Absolutely. And super important to us to make sure that we were true to the Mickey ears moving. In creating the stop-motion puppet, if this was a normal thing and Mickey didn't do that, we would've fixed the ears to the top of his head. But we had to find a way to have that smooth head as he has, and then to be able to shift those ears around, have the animator shift the ears. We came up with this system where there's little magnets inside the ears. When we created the head of the stop-motion puppet, we embedded some iron shavings into the paint and into the head itself, so the animator can pull that ear off, and shift it to wherever they need on Mickey's head. That was a challenge, but I think we came up with a pretty effective system.
Ben Breitbart:
That's fascinating. Another thing I noticed about this special is it's got a lot ot a lot of neat Disney touches in it, throwbacks to classic animation, classic Mickey cartoons from Walt's era. Was it important to you to do those little touches to pay tribute to Mickey's legacy?
David H Brooks:
Absolutely. Look, we wanted this to feel contemporary and we wanted it to feel accessible and familiar to everybody, but we still wanted it to honor the legacy of Mickey Mouse. And the look of Christmas specials past and holiday specials from the past. I'm glad that you responded that way, that you felt like, "Wow, okay, they're really paying attention. They're really wanting to give the audience that feeling that this is truly a Disney production."
Ben Breitbart:
To me, what was nice about it is it kind of combines the two classic things of Christmas, right? Those stop-motion animation specials that the Rankin/Bass sort of thing. But also Mickey has a long association with Christmas, and internationally even more so Donald,. Bringing those two things together was a neat combination. What do you hope people take away from the special? Because it's going to be on ABC, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Disney Channel, then next day on Disney+. This is going to have perhaps one of the widest rollouts that Mickey's had in decades.
David H Brooks:
Look, I hope they feel this nostalgic warm, fuzzy feeling that we get during the holidays when we're watching these old classics, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and some others. I hope we've achieved that. Even though this is brand new, I hope we get that audience to have that same feeling that those holiday classics gave all of us and still do. But I also hope that the story itself, it's a story of friendship. It's a story of family. It's a story of Mickey taking stock of what's important to him during the holidays. There's a moment in the film that I think every time I watch it, I tear up. I know it sounds silly, I've read the script probably 100 times. I've seen the finished product dozens of times. I still get this real warm, fuzzy feeling when Mickey has his big moment of realization. I'm hoping audiences respond to that. And they feel just a little bit of extra joy during the holidays.
Ben Breitbart:
I know sometimes when you're working on a project like this you're in it, you're not really thinking about the big picture of it. But did you ever have a personal moment where you realized you're creating a Disney Mickey holiday special?
David H Brooks:
There was a moment when we were shooting and we were trying to fill the shelves in Santa's workshop with toys and stuff that would look like Santa might have in his workshop. The Elves might have finished up some toys. I realized that I have, I think it was my seventh birthday, my grandmother gave me a Mickey Mouse watch. My art director said, "Hey, man, do you have anything personal you want to throw in here?" I'm thinking like, "No, nothing." And then I realized, "Oh my gosh, I have the watch. It's in a box in my cabinet at home. I have to bring that thing in." When we placed that in there, it really hit me that Mickey's kind of been with me for such a long time. A lot of people are going to see this and love that we brought Mickey Mouse to life in stop-motion for the holidays.
Ben Breitbart:
Well, congratulations. It's a wonderful special that'll be enjoyed for decades to come, and will become an annual tradition. I got to ask you, in Mickey’s cabin there is a calendar from 1985. Is there any significance to that?
David H Brooks:
I'm glad you brought that up. I'm just going to look this up real quick. In 2019, we create a little interstitial called Mickey Mouse in the Magical Snowy Holiday. It was a little minute and a half, two minute short, that was produced with Disney. It's just a fun little short that ended up online. A guy named Harry Chaskin directed that, and Harry's a good friend of mine. He's a wiz with stop-motion. He is just a very talented guy. Since he directed that, it was his turn to throw something personal to him up on the wall. I believe he was born in 1985. When this came along and I signed on to direct it, I wanted to honor Harry by leaving that up in the cabin. He's such a great guy, and he's such a talent that it was important for me that we nodded to Harry very silently, right? But I'm also from Chicago, and that was the year that the Bears won the Super Bowl. Maybe we can just say it's one or the other.
Ben Breitbart:
Well, sounds good. It's a great short that builds upon the Disney stop-motion legacy. It goes back to Bill Justice and X. Atencio and all those folks. Thanks so much for the time. I hope you enjoy the holidays as much as the joy you brought us with the episode.
David H Brooks:
Oh, thanks so much, man. I appreciate that.
"Mickey Saves Christmas" premieres as a simulcast-on ABC, Disney Channel, Disney Junior and Disney XD on November 27 and will be available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu on November 28.