Ep. 741: Elio's collapse and review; Mary Blair exhibit tech; Jim Henson Co. turns 70
01:04:50 Share

And we've also got a big musical finale from Sam Eagle. Sam, what's it about? It's called A Salute to All Nations, but mostly about marriage. Great. You're listening to Mousetalgia for the week of June 6, 2025. Hang on to them hats and glasses, because this here is the wildest podcast in the wilderness.

This is Mousetalgia. Carpe Kingdom, seize the magic. Welcome to Mousetalgia, your podcast about Disneyland, Disney history, and living the Disney life. That's what we all try to do, I guess. My name is Jeff, and I'm your host for this week. I have a couple special guests coming up. But first, I want to tell you that we are...

Very happy to be sponsored by MEI Mouse Fan Travel. Mouse Fan Travel is a fee-free Disney travel agency, so they really know their stuff. Everything you need to know about Disney, they can help you out with. We just booked a Disney cruise using Mouse Fan Travel. They can give you advice for going to the Disney parks, anywhere around the world, Disney World, Adventures by Disney, whatever you want to do. Go to mousefantravel.com, get yourself a no-obligation quote and see what they can do for you. Mousefantravel.com.

Here you leave today to hear a podcast from the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy. Nostalgia. Carve the magic. All right, so this week we have a few features for you. I'm going to talk briefly about an event that I attended at the Walt Disney Family Museum. We're going to talk about Elio. You know, Elio is getting a lot of attention.

a lot of press right now. You know, it was a catastrophe at the box office and

You know, we're going to review it. And I liked it a lot. I did not have any kind of inside information about Elio. I specifically avoided learning or hearing about Elio as much as I could because it doesn't help me if I can't. You know, it's a rare Disney thing production that I don't know something about. And I tried to kind of stay clear of Elio so that I could get a fresh look at it. So you're going to hear my review of it with my wife in a little bit.

But, you know, there's just a lot of conversation about why did this thing, you know, crash and die? And personally, this is just my personal opinion. But, you know, having watched a lot of movies, you know, experienced a lot of summers. And I feel like, yes, sometimes a movie's quality, of course, affects the final box office. Right. But I feel like that mostly goes in a way of helping build it, not.

crushing it. A lot of times movies opening weekend is what bases the vibe of is this movie a success or not? And opening weekends can be

A lot of things can be going on to cause a film to crash or succeed during an opening weekend. A lot of it is scheduling and a lot of it is what else is playing. And a lot of it is fatigue of the audience. Have they been experiencing too much of something and they just don't need another version of that? It doesn't always mean what's happening with this film.

and that causes it to be a success or a crash and burn failure. And I would even go so far as to say, usually it's probably the circumstances around the release. That's at least that set the vibe, right? So,

Here's an example of some of the navel gazing going on about Elio from the Hollywood Reporter. This just came out last week, a couple of days ago. Here's the headline. Inside Elio's Catastrophic Path, America Ferreira's Exit, Director Change, and Erasure of Queer Themes. So creatives and then subhead, creatives at Pixar who saw the original director's previous cut of Elio tell THR, the Hollywood Reporter, about the movie's challenging production process.

Elio just became about totally nothing. All right.

That's by Ryan Gajewski, writing for The Hollywood Reporter. So here's the opening paragraph of this article. It says, those who worked at Pixar while its latest film release, LAO, was in production were delighted by footage they saw roughly two years ago. Among the moments cited as favorites by those at the animation studio at the time included a sequence in which the titular boy collected trash on the beach and turned it into a homemade apparel that included a pink tank top.

The movie's team would refer to Elio showing this off to Hermit Crab as his trashin' show.

Okay, but if you bought a ticket to Elio and don't remember seeing this, it's not just that you chose the wrong time to refill your soda. According to multiple insiders, Elio was initially portrayed as a queer-coded character, reflecting original director Adrian Molina's identity as an openly gay filmmaker. Other sources say that Molina did not intend the film to be a coming-out story, as the character is 11. But either way, this characterization gradually faded away throughout the production process as Elio became more masculine following feedback from leadership.

Okay, so that's an example of some of the kind of looking at Elio and trying to relate the changes that happened in the film with the box office catastrophe. And I feel like...

A couple of things here. Disney has done queer coded stuff and LGBTQ coded stuff for a long time now. It's not going to cause something to succeed greatly or fail. I don't think I think it's just kind of their decision to be more inclusive in their storytelling. And it's I don't necessarily believe that it really changes an audience's perspective as much as the media kind of wishes it did.

That's my personal opinion. But in this case, I feel like it was named a failure because of the opening weekend box office. And that I just don't think that can be because specifically, you know, the audience dissected this storytelling and, oh, if they could have only been what it was before, uh,

With some queer coding, maybe it would have not been a catastrophe in the box office. I don't know that that's a very solid deduction to pull. But of course, you know, you're going to see all kinds of articles coming out trying to figure out.

You know, what's why did why did Elio not do what it should have done? Like, here's here's another headline from slash film dot com that came out just a couple of days ago. Elio report reveals exactly what went wrong with Pixar's colossal box office flop.

So this one starts by saying it's unfortunate, but it doesn't look like Pixar's Elio will be another elemental and surprise everyone with a shockingly great box office run. Nope. Elio is a flop, which sucks because the movie is actually rather fun. It's got great alien designs and entertaining story and a Carl Sagan quote designed to make you quite emotional about the possibilities and power of science while also just reminding you of one of the most fascinating minds to walk this planet in the last century. And that's true. Like not since I don't think since...

What was the movie with the giant, with the Tyrannosaurus Rex? What's the name of that? Meet the Robinsons. Not since Meet the Robinsons has a Disney animated film ended with a quote. So that ended up with Walt Disney's quote about keep moving forward. And it was chilling. I mean, it was such a beautiful way to end that movie. And Meet the Robinsons remains one of my favorite animated films. This also, Elio ends with a quote from Carl Sagan.

which is really an amazingly good way to wrap this film. So that was really wonderful. I'm going to keep reading a little bit from Slashfilm here because I think it's kind of interesting. It says, Sure, it's easy and not unfair to blame the marketing for the failure of Elio at the box office, combined with the competition from other higher-profile films. Still, that doesn't change the fact that this simply wasn't Pixar's best. Well...

Pixar's Best can't always be the next movie that comes out. Like, Best means something. There's a definition to the word Best. Oh, that's me. Sorry. Back to the article. What's more, reports have surfaced that the movie suffered heavily behind the scenes, undergoing creative changes that resulted in a vastly different film hitting theaters than the one imagined by the project's creator and original director. So...

And it's interesting because it says, "...an article by The Hollywood Reporter highlights the changes ranging from the erasure of its queer elements to the movie's Latino representation being all but removed."

I mean, I didn't feel that way. I mean, it certainly isn't Coco, but I it was very clear to me that Elio was Hispanic or Latino. Maybe that's just because he kind of looks like me when I was his age and I'm Latino. So I just presumed. Well, certainly if if America Ferrera is.

and the director, Adrian Molina, if they were trying to make a film that was trying to speak to a culture, I don't know the story then, but the story now, it would have felt kind of shoehorned to me. Then, yeah, I could say, well, it's not a movie that's trying to speak to a specific culture like Coco, but...

You know, I don't think most Pixar movies have to do that. And then again, they quote Hollywood Reporter saying it's a movie about nothing. I don't think that's true. You'll hear in my review in a few minutes here that it's interesting to me that the story, if it did devolve at all, it starts to echo another bigger film that came out just before it, which I think is the primary reason Elio flopped.

You know, there is a hole for this movie every summer. There's a hole for a couple of these movies every summer. But this one got filled one week before by How to Train Your Dragon. And so that's that. I think that's largely why Elio was a box office flop. I will say one thing. Let me read the last article, the last paragraph of the slash film article. It says, of course,

The queer erasure in Elio isn't entirely new. Just last year, it came to light that Pixar's Disney Plus series win or lose scrapped a transgender storyline at the behest of studio higher-ups.

If Pixar is to save face, regain the trust of audiences, and enjoy success with something other than sequels, then it needs to start letting its creatives, well, create, rather than robbing their art of the very things that make it meaningful. Okay, so this film was declared a flop the second day after it opened. So I'm not certain that I think...

I call it navel-gazing, and that's kind of a derogatory term, and I don't mean it to be about the topics of whether or not LAO was queer or whether or not there was a Latino storyline. I mean, I'm not trying to say those things are navel-gazing, but the whole idea that you look at a film that probably tanked mostly because of its marketing emplacement and then start to say, well, you know, you can say, oh, it was going to be great because it had all these other little sub-

Maybe, but no one knows, right? So that can't be why it was a colossal box office flop. So anyway, Elio did not do well at the box office. You'll see it soon on Disney Plus, and you could be the judge yourself if

of whether or not you think it's a good movie, you know, and the unfortunate thing about these articles, well, they're not unfortunate, like news is news and facts are facts. But what remains is that it will be difficult for people that have a vested interest in messaging through storytelling that doesn't necessarily have to do with the story, right? So, for instance, Coco's story was based in the culture of

That family. Right. So you couldn't really separate the Latino culture from the story because so much of it had to do with, you know, that experience. But Elio's story, it doesn't seem to me that it ever really had a space that it was inherently needed to have this Latino storyline or it wouldn't have worked. Right.

Would it have added to it? I don't know because I didn't see that, right? So I have no idea. So you can be the judge. Go check it out on Disney Plus when it comes out. Or you may still have a hot minute to catch it in the movie theater. It may be there this weekend still.

And some theaters, I'm sure, will hold it for a little while. Maybe give it a shot and see what you think. Let me know. But like I said, we're going to give our official review in a few minutes here. I did want to talk first about an event I just went to at the Walt Disney Family Museum, which was, I thought, pretty fun. It was really cool. It was called 70 Years of the Jim Henson Studio or Celebrating 70 Years of the Jim Henson Studio. Jim Henson, of course, passed away in May 1990.

So it's been quite a while. What is that? 25, 35 years since...

He passed away. So the Jim Henson Studio has been around roughly twice as long as his tenure as the director of his studio. He started in 1955, same year as Disneyland opened. So it's easy to remember with sketches, you know, with his puppets. And so it was a fun event. It was a Walt Disney Family Museum event, but it was held in one of the screening theaters at Lucasfilm because they both exist on the

And this was, I believe, sold out, which is pretty good for a $70 ticket, you know, to celebrate the Muppets.

So the event was hosted by Yvette Nicole Brown, who you might remember from Muppet Haunted Mansion, but she was the moderator. And she was just about the biggest fan in the room. She could not stop kind of being enthralled by the people she was talking to. It was kind of cute, actually. And then the panel existed of Lisa Henson, who is currently the CEO of Henson, the Henson Company.

Alex Rockwell, who has been the head of development since 1986, I believe. Dave Goels, who's been at a number of Walt Disney Family Museum presentations. He, of course, is a Muppeteer, who I believe started in 1973. So a pretty early Muppeteer. Bonnie Erickson, who has worked on costumes. I believe she has pretty much developed some of the characters, some of the Muppets. And then Karen Falk, who is the Jim Henson Company archivist.

So how they decided to handle it was they divided each decade of the Jim Henson Studios into a small presentation. So they would show a quote from Jim Henson that referred to the decade, and then they would show a few images from productions during the decade. And then whichever panelists were on the stage that had some information about that decade would tell a story or speak to it.

So it was pretty interesting. The first was 1955 through 65. And the quote was from Jim Hansen. It was like, it's not a career one aspires to have. So Jim Hansen was not a puppeteer growing up, but he was interested in the media and television, just like Walt Disney. Right. There's some there were some parallels between Jim Hansen and Walt Disney. Of course, most creatives didn't.

And so he saw an ad for puppeteers on television and he said, I can do that. And so he went and he did a job in television while Disney also was very television oriented, television facing. Right.

And he answered that ad. Right. And then a story was begun. 1965 to 75. There's another quote. Beneath it all, we are all family. So that's when he had started to do public television. I think they played some clips from, I think, Sesame Street in the early 70s. The Muppet Show was pitched in the early 70s.

And they talked a lot about him trying to find an audience for his puppets. So the Muppet Show was kind of an adult audience for his puppets because he had started to do these younger audience puppet things with Sesame Street and his Muppets and things. And so he thought, this will appeal to adults as well, and I can prove it. And so he started pitching the Muppets.

In 75 through 85, The Muppet Show was in full-blown production. The Dark Crystal was a production that came out before, I think before 1985, at least it was in production. And we looked at some of the Skeksis models.

And I think in the 80s, or at least somewhere in the decade of the 75s, 85s is when his production moved to London. So he moved to England to produce The Muppet Show. And they also started to make a lot of technical innovation in their puppetry during this time. So you would see a lot of the Muppets not just being behind a wall, you know.

you know, with sticks in their hands, but riding bikes and rowing boats and, you know, being walking in things, being doing things that puppets just cannot do. So they started to find some real technical innovation there in the eighties, um, 85 through 95, you could call this the labyrinth generation. I think that came out in 1986 and what the Christmas Carol. So this is when they were really moving full bore into production and filmmaking. And it was a true studio.

In 1990, Jim Henson passed away. Jim Henson's death was not expected and the circumstances are stunning. He died of pneumonia after being admitted to a New York hospital with a massive bacterial infection. As doctors fought the infection for 15 hours, Henson went into cardiac arrest several times and finally succumbed. We begin tonight with his life. NBC's Stan Bernard. Friends said Henson as a child watched Peter Pan fly but always kept his eyes on the strings to see how it was done.

Am I the voice for... For Jim? The man. Uh-huh.

Well, now you're getting very surrealistic. I've never understood the concept of alter ego in the first place. The shy, soft-spoken Henson created characters out of foam rubber and wool and ping pong balls and anything else that struck his fancy and then added personalities and foibles.

Henson went from one extraordinary success to another. His Muppet show, which is produced in England, became the most widely seen program in the world. 100 countries with 235 million viewers. I'm doing shows that I want to see. I'm hoping other people like to see them too. It's not easy being green. They did and they will. But no one but Jim Henson can be Kermit.

Stan Bernard, NBC News, New York. It could be nicer. It was a moment, you know, for everyone to stop and think. And they talked a little bit about how it was daunting to continue. So it's another parallel with Walt Disney. You know, he passed away and people had to stop and kind of look at the situation. And like it was very daunting for the Walt Disney Company to move forward without him. So similar thing with Disney.

Jim passing away, they called him the creative muse. And, you know, he ran the company, so they had a fork in the road, not to be too flip about it, but that they had to kind of get through. Muppet Vision 3D was in production at this time, and that was the last project that Jim Henson actually had to do with.

So Muppet Vision 3D has a very special place in the hearts of the Jim Henson Company employees. It was interesting. You know how we just shut that down at Disney World recently and it's gone now. You know, it's kind of been a minor attraction for Disney Parks for quite a while. Most of us saw it a number of times. Of course, it has its diehard fans who were, you know, ready to jump in front of the bulldozers. Right. So but the Muppeteers and the Jim Henson Company people were a little bit more interested

introspective about it. They did say that they've been talking to Disney and this was interesting. I think it was kind of breaking news that they were going to try to get Disney to allow them to use that attraction as a virtual situation, maybe that you could experience in a headset. They were talking about, I think, trying to put some surroundings to it, like

You could also experience being in the theater. I'm trying to remember how they said it. I might be wrong. Maybe I'm reading my hopes and dreams into this, but they said not much about it, but a little bit. Like they're trying to make some kind of virtual presentation of Muppet Vision 3D. So we'll wait and see if that ever happens, but that could be a really spectacular thing to have. So it's going to be a swell demonstration, and in no time will we be stooping to any cheap 3D tricks. Did you say cheap 3D tricks? Uh...

Okay, then 1995 through 2005. The quote is that we are primarily a company of creative people. And I'm not sure if that was by Jim Hansen still or not.

But they were trying to just demonstrate how they were still trying to push boundaries. Some of the projects they discussed were Muppets Treasure Island. Bear in the Big Blue House came out then and Farscape. So they were starting to move into series and things like that, you know, in television. Right. They wanted to start doing world building on television, not just characters and not just puppetry. Right.

So that's Farscape. Right. And then also that's the time when the Muppets were sold to Disney. Right. So it's like another creative person like George Lucas. They had to kind of go through this process of who's going to take care of our brand. And actually, they first sold it to EMT, which went out of business. And so they bought it back and they sold it to Disney. Right.

And then 2005 to 2015 decade, the quote they take from Jim Henson is, I believe we can use television and film to be an influence for good, that we can help to shape the thoughts of children and adults in a positive way. And so this is the era of Sid the Science Kid, Pajaminals, and also the Henson Company started to do these preschool shows. And Jim himself said,

didn't push the company to do that because he didn't want to get in the way of Sesame Street. Right. So, of course, 2005 to 2015 is the era of millions of cable channels. So that's a different situation than when you had, you know, nine or 12 channels on your television and one of them was PBS. So they

they decided to get into that world and lots of famous shows. And then, um, 2015 to now is the current generation of the Henson company. And the quote that they used was as children, we all live in a world of imagination, fantasy. And for some of us, that world of make-believe continues into adulthood. And they were talking about some of their newer things that they're doing, um, back to Fraggle Rock. They're trying to balance their legacy properties with new productions and

And, you know, they just talked about some of the new things that they're doing now. So it was really an interesting conversation.

It's always fun to hear Dave Goels. He doesn't really do his Muppet voices in public. I don't think any of the talks I've heard him at, he has done that. But just listening to him speak, you know, he sounds like Gonzo the Great, sort of. He just, he doesn't really change his voice that much for his characters. He just kind of exaggerates a little bit, right? So another fun little note. We were in line behind Kevin Lima and Brenda Chapman. So both of them are directors.

Right. So that was cool. And I feel like I would have recognized Kevin Lima if I sat there, but I didn't really have a chance before I even noticed Julia from Pal around podcast. Julia and Tina were there with us. And Julia said, hey, that's Kevin Lima and Brenda Chapman. And I'm where? And they said over there. So they kind of were walking a different direction than us. Then I said, I bet you they're coming to this presentation. And so then we were getting close to the theater and we both kind of converged at the same time and we ended up lining up right behind them.

And it was just kind of fun. We talked to Kevin a little bit about Goofy Movie because he directed the Goofy Movie. Of course, you remember that. And Greta Chapman, of course, directed Goofy.

Yeah.

Family photo in front of the Yoda statue, which was fun. So we had a great afternoon. Always fun to hang out with the Pal around crew. I don't know if they did an episode about the Muppet presentation or not. Maybe they did. I'm not sure. Check it out. Pal around.

out pal around podcast. Um, if you want to hear that. So that's the 70 years of the Jim Henson company panel. It was really fun. And of course the Walt Disney family museum, if you're a local to the Bay area is always, um, a place worth keeping your eye on. If you're a Disney fan to find out what you can learn and what you can hear about related to the history or ongoing efforts of the Disney company. And, um, one of the ongoing things happening over there, uh,

currently is the Mary Blair exhibition that we've been talking about on the show. It's called Mary Blair, Mid-Century Magic.

And it's currently on display downstairs at the museum through September 7. Right. So we're getting close to the halfway point here. So make sure you make an effort to get over there to the Walt Disney Family Museum and see this amazing display of Mary Blair art taken from their big major exhibition a few years back. But it's been repackaged and kind of refocused. And to that end,

And I am pleased today to have a special guest. We're going to talk to Kurt Pfeiffer. So some of you know Kristen Pfeiffer. She was my co-host for many, many years and still occasionally pops in on the show. But she's not popping in this week. Instead, her amazing husband is because he worked with the Walt Disney Family Museum on some of the technical aspects of their current Mary Blair exhibition. So without any further ado, let's talk to Kurt a little bit about his work on this exhibition.

Hola! Hello! Well, first of all, welcome back to Mousetalgia. Thank you. Hey, good to be here. Long time no see. Yeah, absolutely. It's good to see you again. And Kurt, let me just tell you, if I say some things that you feel, no, no, too much information, because this is kind of your milieu, this is your occupation, so just tell me like, no, no, no, we don't talk about that. But you are married to Kristen, I think I can say that. Yeah, we can't talk about that. So Kristen... Sorry.

Yes, yes. Some of you may know Nostalgia Kristen from many, many years of Nostalgia. And I was kind of the, I don't know, the Yoko of the band, maybe? I love it. The Yoko, the Yoko of the band. So I am glad to have you back on Nostalgia, specifically for your own detailed information here that even Kristen couldn't answer. So we're going to talk about the Mary Blair exhibition at the Walt Disney Family Museum.

That we discussed. So last week I just, I reviewed with Julia and Tina, the D23 Grand Prix.

premiere tea slash event thing that they hosted but we didn't really talk at all about um the details of the exhibition or the um specifically the interactive details of the exhibition so i want to talk to you about that because i know you had a very um integral part in this so my first question for you is for you is just can you tell us

about the exhibition and and your your role in it and then maybe the museum's goals like what were their overreaching goals for the uh exhibition yeah um and you have the the whole summer to get there um it's sort of a revamp of 2014 they had a magic color flare the world of Mary Blair so this is

It's similar, but it is definitely new works. So they have, they've pulled together more pieces to show and they have, I believe I'm trying to find the number, but yeah, nearly 150 artworks and historical photographs exploring her role and shaping the look of the animated films and the theme park experiences. And maybe more, I look again, haven't been there on site yet. Going to go in about a month, I think to go say hi to everybody that I've worked with remotely. But,

But it's the weirdest thing. Like, I see things in pictures, but I haven't touched it either. Yeah. It's downstairs in the theater area down in the basement floor thing. Yeah. Let me ask you, you remember the original Mary Blair exhibition? I presume did you get you did get here to see that?

Yeah, I did. Because I think Chris and I were married by then. That was 2013, 2014. So we did check it out. I remember getting a few things and I thought it was really neat that they had that thing set up. I'm glad they decided to bring it back. I feel like she's picking up popularity as time goes on even. So a whole bunch of new fans that never saw the first exhibition have a chance to see this new one, I think. Yeah. So it's kind of easy to figure out why the museum would have launched the giant John Canemaker thing.

Color magic, color flair. Yeah. So do you. So for the smaller exhibition, how would you describe the goals of the museum, at least as they've put it out to you? Like, is it for people that already appreciate Mary Blair? Is it for newcomers? Like, what is your impression here?

I, you know, it's a really good question. I think at the time, you're right, it was the John K. Meeker book had come out. And I think they're kind of saying, hey, this time's well with this. Let's let's talk about it. And they'd had that Tokyo exhibit previously, which I never made it to because it's in Tokyo. Yeah. Yeah. I hadn't always been jealous of that. So I was glad to see some

I think it wasn't the full thing, but I think it was a fair chunk of the Tokyo exhibit got brought over. I got reached out to this sort of mid-process. They were already running and gunning, getting this thing pulled together for the late spring release. They may just have realized that a lot of people didn't get a chance to see it, or there's a bunch of people growing up now that would love to learn more about it. Yeah. Or that were too young then. Okay. So tell us...

some of the things that you specifically did. And I assume that your role was helping them connect people to the exhibition using technology. So tell us about that. Yeah, so this is something I've done a lot over the years. I started working at our local science center, just volunteering or sometimes just doing paid gigs, making interactives for exhibits that would come through. The scientists would present exhibits

a topic that they're going to bring for three months to the Science Center. And I worked with them and the PhDs to say, well, how do we make this fun instead of just bombarding kids with a wall of text that they're going to walk away from? How do you make it interesting and fairly accurate? Accurate enough so that

kids get the message and the PhDs don't go away angry because you've made up stuff that's completely nonsense. So it was always working with that. I did about a dozen of those there. And I hadn't done one in a while. And I really missed, especially now that, you know, Cal is 10. She's of this age that

She can try the things out that I work on. She was way too young when I worked at the Science Center. And so I saw Bree from the museum last year at an event. And I said, "You know, hey, I used to work on this stuff. If you guys ever want to do some sort of a technological thing, VR, AR, whatever, give me a shout. I'd just like to be part of it." Because ever since they built the museum, I thought it was super cool. Like, I saw the technology they're using. I'm like, "I want to do this!" But of course, I'm in Seattle.

So it's a little tricky, but they were super open to it and reached out early this year and said, we've got this thing we're working on for Mary Blair. And of course, Kristen's favorite artist is Mary Blair. So I was like, this is perfect. So I said, well, okay, let me come back to you in about a week or two with a couple of ideas. So I brainstormed.

came back with about five possibilities to do. They have a sort of a touchscreen computer that they've used in previous exhibits. And that's what I'd worked with before at the Sinus Center. So I was like, okay, this is in my wheelhouse. So I said, we could do any of these things. What do you think? They picked a couple. I worked with a few folks and they said, how about this? And then, so we came down with two games. We were trying to figure out, should we put it in two different places? And part of the problem is I'm not there. I can't physically see the layout. So it was a lot of like,

description to each other, like, "Okay, so there's a space here..." and I'm like, "Wait, this space or that space?" And they'd show me pictures and I kind of got the hang of it.

we realized there's like one good space for a touch table or touchscreen interactive pc that we could put two games on and so i went to work designing something that would be fun and kind of give you a taste of the creativity involved uh that she was part of like one of the apps is called paint like mary um and you literally you start out the whole thing starts out in this cute little art studio 3d art studio the camera flies through

You touch the screen and you go up and you choose which game you want to play. The Paint Like Mary one pivots over to an art easel and a little blank white canvas appears with sort of a coloring page layout, sort of like black outlines, no color in the spaces. And there's an artist palette to your left with a bunch of blobs of color. So these colors were the palette that I pulled from one of her pieces, the Queen of Hearts, from one of her concepts for Alice in Wonderland.

And so the idea is use your finger and touch the palette, the little blob of paint you want to color with, and then touch the canvas. And it'll kind of do like and fill in like you're painting with a paintbrush. And so it'll just fill in bits like you would do in a coloring book until you... And it's up to you. You don't have to follow because I don't show you the original piece. That's part of the surprise. You kind of pick the colors you'd like from her palette and do the way you want. And when you manage to fill in all the little tiny bits and pieces of the painting, you

it does a little end game show and reveals the original painting. So you can kind of see like, well, this was mine and this was hers. So it gives you a taste of working with her unique color scheme. I thought it was a fun way to express it. The other one is called Mary's Shapes and it takes one of the concept pieces she did for a small world. And it's very monochrome and gold, like a lot of white and gold pieces.

And so what you do there is the camera pans over to a blueprint that's sort of a blueprint representation of the final work and a pile of pieces. So it's kind of like a jigsaw puzzle where you have these pieces from her artwork that are cut out, you drag them into the right place, and then once you get them all lined up and build her piece back together again,

all the thing comes to life and kind of does a little song and dance and makes it very cute and just a little payoff. So it just gives you those two experiences to kind of get a feel for, I don't know, some of the work that she did. Oh, and...

unrelated, but that's sort of related. Keep an eye out for Easter egg paintings on the wall. When you zoom up to the initial scene. Oh, there's, there's one in particular, there's a bunch of key pictures that I conjured up sort of in her style. And there's one that you make may recognize a certain co-host and her daughter. If you look closely, that's super cool. Pays to know people in special high places. So this actually that's,

That's great. And this leads me into a broader philosophical question I want to ask you. So your wheelhouse here is obviously you're a programmer and you work with kind of emerging technologies and interactivity. I'm an artist. I teach art and I

have done art direction for my whole life. So, so approaching how these things mix and moving into the future is interesting to me. So this is not directly related to the Mary Blair exhibition necessarily, although maybe your experience here informs it a little bit. So let's see, how do I ask this? So it seems to me that this might be kind of the, the way of the future for museums in particular, and then another organization's like maybe smaller organizations,

spaces, but more involvement, as opposed to, like you said, standing there. Now, we do have, you know, lots of museums in the Bay Area where, of course, you want to stand there and look at Monet's water lilies, right? Nothing's going to improve that experience. But everywhere in the world, you don't have these giant spaces left, you know, to become museums. So,

I don't know, like everyone has a smartphone now, like the way of connecting to people is kind of now solved. Right. So can you generally talk about what you see as maybe pluses or minuses to communicating artwork through digital means? Yeah, it's a really good point because what was interesting is like, this is not the main gallery, right? This is the downstairs area, which is sort of rotated through different exhibits and

And it is a smaller space compared to the rest of the place. But I've seen more of that, especially in small galleries, because you can augment what's there. You've got your physical paintings and sketches and information. But if you add a little bit of digital elements here and there, not only is it fun if you've got kids, you know, it definitely kind of livens them up. They're like, ooh, something to poke. You know, that's fun. But it does help add...

add to it in a different way that sometimes you can get some burnout from just staring at the wall long enough. You'll see, okay, there's another painting. Yeah, that's cool. Another painting. Huh? Yeah. But if you take a break and do some interaction and it kind of gets your brain woken up in a different way, but you still learn along the way, I think that's pretty valuable information.

And I think tangentially there is another exhibit there, not an exhibit, but interactive that I didn't work on. But there is, I believe, don't hold me responsible, but I believe there's an AR thing there that you can do with your phone when you go there. So you scan a code on the wall and it brings more information up. So again, they're reusing the space.

but kind of getting more information in there this way, which is a kind of nice use. And I think it's a, I think there's a danger of that. I've been to a few places where it goes overboard and it's like, look how clever we are. We've got technology everywhere. And it's like, yeah, but I kind of wanted to see physical art. I mean, that's you and I and Kristen, we love the history of things. We want to see the real deal up front. And that's the beauty of this museum is it has the real things right there and

So I think there's a danger if you go too far the other way. But this is a nice blend, I feel like. I mean, they've got a lot of pieces on display. And these interactives are fun to sort of bring a new element to it. I don't know. Who knows where it's going to go? You're right. I mean, 10 years from now, we may have AR glasses where you can walk in and it'll scan the room and stuff will just start popping out of the walls and doing things. Yeah.

Again, I think it depends on the audience. A lot of people don't want that. So it's kind of up to like, I know that they're exploring a lot of things every gallery I talk to.

But it's sort of up to people. Like, what do they want? And if you just throw stuff at them that they're not interested in, it'll kind of turn them away. So I think they're putting their toes in the water. And this is all fun stuff. And you do learn from it. It's not just blasting aliens or something like that. It's not that kind of a video game-ish experience. But it's helpful. And I think people like it. And in small doses, I think it's really neat. And actually, when I go down there,

I want to look at the area because I had a few ideas, but there's like, I don't know where you would hide the cameras and stuff to do this kind of game thing I had in mind to interact with the wall or something like that. So it's a fun exploration. Like, how do we use this space to get the most information to people and the most fun possible? So speaking from the artist perspective,

I wonder if technology will fill in some gaps. So I remember the first time you showed me some VR early earlier, it was not super early in the days, but kind of early in the days. And we put on some goggles and fought Darth Vader and your, and your officer. And it's like, come a long way, baby. Right. So, uh,

And so, and like, so for instance, I'm going to stick with this example I have. So we have the Legion of Honor here in San Francisco where you could see Monet, Manet, Renoir, like all the masters of art. And you can walk up and be six inches away from Monet and look at like the thick paint on the canvas. And you can say like, I know Water Lilies is on every mouse pad notebook, you know, art book ever, but.

It's different to see the paint that Monet stroked onto this canvas. And you really, at this point in time, most museum exhibits, the way I see it, are either, like you said, a touchscreen or your phone, right? You're looking at stuff. So I'm wondering if there's going to be a time when, like you said, you put on something and you can walk up to it and you can actually imagine or believe that you're seeing something.

as close to being the real thing as possible. Maybe we're not there yet, but I wonder if that's on the way. It's getting there in different ways. And I don't want to go down rabbit holes too much, but there's been some neat work that Meta showed off last year for, they call it Gaussian splats. It's a way to represent a scene using teeny tiny blobs of color gathered with many, many photographs of a room and video, just basically scanning everything up close in detail.

And the difference is between a normal VR scene like you and I saw is limited in resolution. You get up close and you can see it gets blurry fast. There's only so much texture memory. Using this format-- and it's something I'm trying to experiment with too. It's very CPU heavy right now. It makes the machine work very, very hard.

But you can get right up close to the tiniest of detail and it's a complete focus and all that detail is captured depending on how you photographed it. But it's all there at any angle. It's not like, here's a nice picture. You can't move anywhere, but you can look at it. You can get your face up in this stuff and look at it. So,

There are changes coming. And I think what's nice about it is it'll allow those of us who aren't next to the museum to go kind of visit it in a way. Yeah. But it's, it's never the same. Like I think you're kind of in the same boat that there's something about being in the presence of the real thing and, you know, and where these people worked on it, this was their stuff. And that's why I love that museum because there's just stuff everywhere. Like this is legit stuff from Carolwood and wherever, um,

Yeah, so it depends. I think it's great. I think it serves a really good purpose. But I think there'll be nothing that ever replaces being in a real gallery with real artwork. It's just an additional tool and it depends on how it's used like any other tool.

But yeah, I do think it's exciting times coming. And like when I was talking about those glasses, yes, those headsets we tried on are kind of bulky and nobody really wants to try on the headset that somebody just wore 30 seconds ago because it feels like ew. Yeah. So, but there is a time coming when down the road, I think people will have glasses that have projectors in them so you can augment stuff that's in front of your face without lugging this giant technology around on your head. But it's a ways off.

In the meantime, there are these little cute things that people are exploring to make kind of fun...

additions, not replacements for the artwork, but just something that brings out new life to it or new understanding to it, which is, I think, kind of nice. Yeah, absolutely. So I'll leave you with this one last question. So and maybe you have a favorite Mary Blair piece of art. Maybe there's something about Mary Blair's art that appeals to you. Particularly, how has the work of Mary Blair inspired you personally?

Woof. I wish you'd told me this one in advance. I would say, I mean, boy, I've seen a lot of pieces. We have a teeny tiny little Mary Blair original from those three Santas, little triangle headed Santas. And it's just neat to have that again. It's like, this is a real thing she worked on.

I think that's my favorite because we own it. But I don't know. I have special memories from Lemonade Girl and Watermelon Boy because those were there. We picked up two prints of those when we were at that first exhibit in 2013 or 14. And we still have them on our wall. In fact, we had them in Kala's room up until recently, until she got...

grown up and was like, no, I'm older now. I'm like, so we're moving them. But, but we've put them in the kitchen to mirror what Kristen, the story that Kristen always told me about Alice's kitchen, how Alice Davis had these things hanging in her kitchen, just gathering grease from the cooking nearby and stuff. And like, there's such a charm to that story that I just sort of look at those every time we, I go down to the kitchen. I'm like, it just feels neat. It's like part of our life now. So I think those are my favorites just because of that. I

I love all her work. I love... I think what I kind of take away in general with her stuff is that

I like to be whimsical and I like to be goofy. And sometimes as I've gotten older, it's not okay to do that, it feels like. And I'm like, nah, Mary Blair just went nuts. She was just like, I'm going to use these crazy colors. I'm going to do these fun looking things to bring joy to people's hearts. I'm like, yeah, okay, we need to do that more probably. Instead of feeling like, no, no, no, we have to be too cool for this. We can't do that. So I think I take away...

more inspiration from her attitude, really. And the fact that she was just a pioneer back then and a woman doing this work mostly men were doing, sadly, but she had such skills. I don't know. There's just so much to take away from her as a person that I really, I just kind of try to remember who she was and the kind of

didn't care about what role she was supposed to play in society back then. She just said, no, this is what I want to make. So I try to remember Mary every day I'm making something. Wow, that's amazing. All right. Well, the exhibition is called Mary Blair Mid-Century Magic. It runs now, as Kurt just mentioned, through the beginning of September, September 2nd.

Two, did you say? September 7th. Probably right around. September 7th. Go back to school. All right. So you have the whole summer to see it at the Walt Disney Family Museum located in the Presidio National Park in San Francisco. Kurt, thank you so much for joining me and explaining all this. It really did help me get a perspective on what the museum's trying to shoot for here. So thank you, Kurt. Yeah, you bet. Thanks for having me. It's nice to hang out with you again. Yeah, absolutely. You're listening to Mouth Dolja. Carpe Kingdom. Seize the magic.

♪♪♪

Okay, next we are going to talk about Disney's most, or Pixar, Disney Pixar's most recent release, Elio. And if the sound quality changed a little bit, it's because I welcomed into the studio my wonderful wife, Julia. Thanks for joining me, Julia. Well, hello. Well, hello. Imagine meeting you here. So we're going to talk about Elio for a moment. We took our family on opening day, I think. Yeah, I think so. So we were excited to see this. Now, Julia had a...

a vested interest in wanting to see it again. And can you explain that?

Briefly, without blowing any confidentiality agreements you may have signed. Sure. So, let's see. Myself, Nathaniel, and Camille had the opportunity to do an advanced screening of Elio. We didn't know that it was Elio when we went into it. I knew it was going to be Elio. We were hoping, but we didn't know. It was pretty clear. For sure. And that was a long time. When was that? It was in the fall, but I can't remember. Last year. Exactly when. So, we...

We got to see, effectively, the whole movie. There was a lot of...

there were parts where you just, there was a line drawing and maybe the audio was going, but the visual wasn't totally done and things like that. So they were very clear. This is not the final version, but they wanted to get input, especially from families with younger kids. Um, so it was a, it was a pretty cool experience. We, you know, no previews or anything. You put your phone and everything away before you go in and

Um, they had you separated throughout the theater. Like there were kind of chunks of people in different areas and they blocked off certain rows and you knew there were executives and important people. Like I, I saw Pete doctor walk out at the end. Yeah. Um, so you knew they were in there somewhere, but you didn't know whom. And then some folks they selected to do kind of like a, a panel or whatever afterwards where they would ask them more questions, but they did have everyone in attendance fell out, uh,

a questionnaire. And so all three of us had different questionnaires. Mine was for adults. Nathaniel's was for children. And then could

Camille's was for teenagers. Yeah. So let me ask you, which theater was this that you saw it in? In Hacienda in Pleasanton. Yeah, in Pleasanton. So it's interesting. Hacienda is one of the larger multi-screen theaters here in the Tri-County, which isn't far from... Where's Chevy's? Emeryville. Emeryville isn't far from Emeryville, where Pixar is located. So I only bring that up because...

The Pixar executives themselves were there. They do do these screenings throughout the country, I believe. I mean, I'm sure it depends on the production. But this was one of the ones where Pixar was there trying to gauge the crowd reaction. So, Julie was able to take part in that. I'm not going to ask you to talk any more about that because I'm sure, even though the movie's out, we don't want her to break any agreements she signed. But...

Having said that, I guess I should say this. So you have a special perspective that I don't have. You can see a little bit of how they made this movie. Like, here's where they came to six months ago and or eight months ago. And we've been, you know, two thirds of a year later and they finally released it.

Do you feel like you have some kind of insight now into, oh, maybe some feedback helped make this choice or this decision? Yeah, I think end to end, the overall story didn't change, but I understood it a lot better this time around. So I do think that they heard us saying, we don't understand why this is happening or that area is confusing or whatever the case may be. Yeah.

We definitely had more background now going into the storyline. And so, yeah, I think there were gaps that were kind of filled in, not because they weren't

done well, but I think that part of the storyline maybe hadn't been... Could be enhanced a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's just talk about the movie. I think we both liked it a lot. Is that fair to say? Yeah. This one, to me, brought to mind WALL-E quite a bit, perhaps. I mean, not that the soundtrack had anything in common with WALL-E, but I think the pacing or it felt laid back to me, the pacing of this movie. Yeah.

Like a slow burn. And I felt like WALL-E was that way, too. What did you think? Like longer stretches without dialogue? Well, just the whole movie felt to me... Maybe, yeah. Where they just kind of explore what's happening here without really...

pushing the story i'm not sure what did you think of the pacing i thought it was good i thought it moved along being that this was the second viewing i think some of it felt a tiny bit slow to me but i think that's also because i knew what was coming yeah um

So that was a little hard to tell. Okay. So talk about what you liked about the movie. I appreciate the main character and the relationship with his caretaker and watching that dynamic develop and change. And then also the friendships that he makes, you know, you don't see that coming. And I thought that was a lot of fun, the connection that those two make.

Yeah, I guess I'd say I appreciated the relationships they developed throughout the story. And I think there just were some fun characters in there, too, especially in the space creatures. Yeah. It's interesting to see studios throughout history of film approach the idea of the alien, outer space alien. Right? And it's weird how sometimes a certain...

will kind of take root and then it becomes kind of a, everyone bases their ideas from this little nugget. For a while, it was the like Steven Spielberg style, big head, big eye thing. Roswell style alien. Sigourney Weaver's alien was a brand new thing, but then that kind of, or I should, I should say Giger's alien was a brand new thing, but then it kind of,

a lot of different alien life forms. This one had, it did have some creativity in the aliens, I feel like. You know, it was trying to stay

friendly and cute so a lot of their aliens i thought monsters inc it's another alien movie basically and i thought it was had some similarities in terms of the character designs not that they were the same but the feel um of a lot of the characters i thought had some things in common perhaps with monsters inc and maybe that's more of a pixar language um very colorful yeah very colorful um

I think the thing that I take away the most is the soundtrack. I really liked the music. I thought it was...

Well done in terms of trying to set up a kind of an atmosphere. And the composer's name is Rob Simonson. So I was listening to other podcasts. He did a podcast with Dolby, of course, because they recorded the soundtrack in Dolby Atmos. I will say this about Dolby Atmos. This is a little sidebar, but Julie and I went to see F1 last week at our local...

Alamo Drafthouse, which has a new screen. What's it called? The Big Show? The Big Show. The Big Show is what they call their premium screen, which is large, and it's Dolby Atmos in there. And I have never heard – I don't think I've ever heard a Dolby Atmos –

promo like the one that they put before their films. So, and then it made me look around and the Dolby Atmos speakers and maybe I feel like most movie theaters, premium sound, the speakers still are an array around the sides, but Dolby Atmos goes right over your head and you can see them if you look up like, cause I did because of the

The promo, you know, the little Dolby Atmos promo they show before every film. And the sound goes right over your head and you can see the speakers on top of you. So I don't know how many speakers are involved. I don't know a lot about Dolby Atmos. I stopped kind of once digital soundtracks and surround sound became, you know, once we got past Dolby Atmos.

I don't know, five, one. What was that back in the 80s? I kind of just stopped, you know, it just make it great. I just want them to make it great. But maybe now I'll start paying attention to the science of this because it was really interesting. And he had mentioned on this podcast that he, you know, his recording engineer and mixer said, like, we're going to record this in Atmos. So I think they have a specific way of recording the orchestra and everything to get this, you know, these effects. And he said, I don't want to do that.

And then someone played him some Atmos files. And he said, this is a quote. He said, I'm not being paid to say this. I was literally blown away and it gave me chills. I'm not sure what witchcraft is going on to make it kind of as amazing as it is, but I was really sold. So I don't know if it's, I don't even know if we saw it in a Dolby Atmos theater. I think we saw it in a standard one. So now that makes me want to go back. Go back and watch it in one of these other theaters. Yeah. Um, now that we know the orchestra was recorded that way because, um,

The soundtrack was what probably hit me the most, which is not to try to denigrate the movie or downplay it in my mind. I am probably not the ultimate animated film reviewer, even though I've done it on Mousetage dozens of times. But it's not the genre that appeals to me the most, modern animation. So, you know, digital animation. But I still look for the stories, right? I didn't.

Which I often will do at Pixar movies. So there's that. Although my daughter cried all the way through. Erin says Camille cried all the way through. And that was her second viewing. And that was her second viewing. But she has a soft heart. I teared up a little bit, but I didn't cry the whole way through. So I wouldn't say it was as emotionally engaging as some Pixar films have been, which of course is a reflection of the storytelling. But I'm okay with that.

I know. Every one of them doesn't have to wreck you. Make me fall, right? Yeah. Sometimes it can be just, wow, that was a really, really fun, good movie. And also, How to Train Your Dragons, theoretical live action and digital version, came out the same weekend or a weekend before, right? So the storylines, and I don't think this is too much of a spoiler, have a lot in common, right? You would agree with me? Yeah.

In terms of the sense of belonging or while the child tried to prove something. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, you know, I don't know if maybe that took away some of the impact of the story because maybe a lot of people had seen both. Um, and also, you know, it's a shame. Elio, of course, you've probably all heard opened tragically tragic opening. Um, it just got stomped, absolutely stomped in the box office. Um,

You know, and a lot of people were saying, I didn't even know there was a new movie coming out. I feel like Pixar did about the same amount of marketing for this as they have done before, wouldn't you say? That's a good question. I'm not sure. I mean, we've certainly seen it in the theater for, you know, on the walls for quite a while. And I knew about it. But, of course, you went.

Well, we knew about it probably because of the expo, right? So we are the D23 ultimate Disney fan event presented by Visa. So I don't know. I don't know how, if maybe it was less promoted than usual. It was on my radar because I was having done the preview. I was waiting for this to come out. Yeah. Yeah. So same. Like when you got those, when we saw the survey come through about a screening, it

a mystery movie from Disney, I knew exactly it was going to be obviously Elio. And so...

You know, so anyways. So, yeah, it's a good movie. I know most of you will probably see it on Disney Plus when it comes out. I mean, probably very soon. But, you know, if you have a chance to go see it in a theater, and especially an Atmos theater, now that we know that, maybe we should quick see if there's... Before it disappears, if it hasn't already. They had it there at the Draft House. Yeah, I know. They had it at the Draft House. So, see if we can catch it in a...

Because I really felt like, you know, and I'm trying to remember the themes. You know, the themes were nothing like the themes from WALL-E. It was very different. Like, it's a different composer, different everything. But I did feel like something about it, you know, while they were in outer space, of course you felt like there were some similarities. Well, maybe I'm getting distracted by the fact that they were both outer space films. But something about it felt similar to me in a good way. Because WALL-E is, of course, a

Right. I would say this is good for a little bit younger audience than I think a lot of things that have come out lately. Yeah.

So that was kind of refreshing. Yeah, yeah. You could tell – and maybe that's the point we should have started with. You could tell it was designed to be more of a family summer film. Sometimes Pixar films are a little bit more heady or intellectual-based storytelling, I guess. I mean, it's –

You know, I don't know if that's a good way to say that, but this one is more approachable for all ages, right? It did give me a little bit more of like an 80s summer flick vibe, like E.T.-ish in terms of the adventure. The way he was trying to communicate with outer space had a very Elliot vibe to it, right? Like a very, like he was just trying to...

Use his tools, whatever he could come across. So, yeah, I think it did have kind of that Spielberg-esque kind of feeling to it in some ways. So, Elio, pretty good film. Sorry my review is so late. Most of you have probably either seen it or your theater has left it behind or you were already planning to just wait until Disney+. But whatever you do, it's really worth your time. Good film.

Yeah. Well, let's give it some reviews here or some, as Nostalgia does, we give things ratings. So let's rate it in galaxies. So how many galaxies? One to five galaxies. Let's say one to ten. No, no, no. Let's say one to a million galaxies because this is, we're talking about solar systems galore. Right. One to a million. What do you give it? 972,000. Okay. That's pretty good.

So if I could do the math quick, that's 9.7 out of 10.

That's about 4.8 out of 5, right? That's pretty good. That is pretty good. That's a lot of galaxies. I'm going to give it a good 950,000 galaxies. I agree with you. Very good movie. Very worth your time, especially if you have a family. So have a family night. You don't have to worry about it. You don't have to worry about previewing it or anything like that. Beautiful movie.

Entertaining family fun. So, Nostalgia recommendation. Go see it. All right. Well, that is going to do it for this episode of Nostalgia. We have a stunning Disneyland 70 episode coming up for you, the week of Disneyland's 70th anniversary. I really wanted to bring you something you have not heard before, and I think I did it. We're going to talk to a Disneyland 55er, which means someone that was working there at the very beginning.

We're going to hear a little bit about her story, and we're also going to talk about someone instrumental in some of the development of audio-animatronic technology who you haven't heard about before. There's a lot of names that have bubbled up to the top of audio.

people that have worked for Walt Disney. And we're going to tell you a story of someone who worked for Walt Disney that you probably haven't heard before. So I'm just trying to get to some of the nitty gritty of what makes Disneyland the magical place that it is and has been for 70 years. So you don't want to miss that. So I'm coming up really soon in just a couple of weeks, we'll have another episode for you, but that's all for right now. So if you want to get in touch with me, just go to your favorite email. Yeah.

email client and type in comments at nostalgia.com comments at nostalgia.com and drop me a note, or you can just, you can just record yourself and attach a voice message if you want. Um,

I would love to hear from you. If you want to help support the show, just go to mouse dodger plus.com and you'll find our Patreon account. Really appreciate those of you that helped there. And other than that, I think that's it for this week. So I look forward to talking to you again really soon. And so until then, Carpe Kingdom, go seize the magic. Bye everybody. Bye.

so