RW
One last question. Both films that you have produced here are unique or at least not so much the norm compared to other films produced in the same period, in that they have been directed by their writers. Before the second golden age the tradition at Disney was that story was the responsibility of the story department – artists whose job it was to develop the story, not screenwriters. Even the very first “screenplay�? per se - 101 DALMATIANS – was written by possibly the greatest story artist who every lived, Bill Peet. Then in the 1980’s the then new administration here at Disney introduced a process that they brought from their experience in live action, which was screenwriters drafting a treatment and then a screenplay which then was boarded. Do you see any advantage to having animators or story artists as the primary writers on a project?

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I’ve worked both ways, and I think both ways can work. In this particular case Will and John really had a clear idea. And since both of them had been heads of story they bring a tremendous talent to this process. They were able to really hone out the structure, the major beats. But to say that our story artists didn’t have a great hand in it…of course they did. The idea itself came from one of our story artists – Michael LaBash who pitched this idea of three dairy cows who become bounty hunters – which is such a great sentence. You so get this movie in a nutshell because his idea is so fresh and original. So Michael had quite a lot to do with it, and quite a few of our story artists like Mark Kennedy and Sam Levine...huge, huge effect. I mean Sam Levine almost single handedly did Slim and the Willies, which took us quite a while to figure out or villain, that was a tough one. And Mark Kennedy did so much on the farm. These are really big, big people that worked on it. And then we had a writer, Shirley Pierce, who did a lot of the dialogue polish and punch up and has a great sense of how to write comedy for Rosanne, and a little more poetically for Judy Dench, and energetically for Cuba, and she really has a lot to do with flavor of our dialogue as well. So it’s hard to pinpoint which person brought it to the forefront, but the directors certainly had a clear structure idea and a clear idea of how to make the characters and the voices become as successful as they are. Particularly Buck. When they came on to the project we were a little bit lost with Buck and they wrote to Cuba’s strength and I really credit them with finding that. And then casting Rosanne was another huge, huge day for us and really kept it in the contemporary world and they were very smart about then pulling Rosanne’s character as the outsider, which was something that happened very late in the game. Originally the three cows started off on the farm together and by having Rosanne’s character become this outsider character it really gave us some fun comedic tension to play with. So the directors obviously had an enormous impact. But when we work with writers we typically don’t work from a clean script anyway. It goes through the whole story process and they sit in the room with us and beat things up and so it can work either way.

What I want to really to celebrate with this movie is this beautifully animated show, with great art direction that David Cutler did, and Joe Moshier – a huge talent – designs that are so appealing and so animatable. And a great animator named Sandro He’s like a young Dale Baer. He’s a Brazilian guy and this is the first show he’s led and he did our Sherrif and Jeb, and just a real great talent. And he did a lot of drawings for people before they went into production, over their characters. But I think those three guys had a lot to do with it. Dave Cutler also can design characters and had a lot to say about the look and his color sense is just brilliant. Because he was an animator, and because he loves these stories he knows how to take these designs and support the story telling. He doesn’t just do his western, he did this western. At the beginning of the movie we’re pretty tight in, as the animals are on the farm and things feel safe and secure, and as we go out into the west, and especially toward the third act, he’s way back with the camera and the cows look really vulnerable out there in the plains, so he’s real supportive not only with color, but with design and camera work as well. So….let’s hope April 2 is a good day for us. We’re all really excited.

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