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During the last few years, we've ventured into a lot of different fields.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
We've had the opportunity to meet and work with a lot of wonderful people.
I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing.
That it was all started by a mouse.
♪ Come along and sing the song And join the jamboree ♪
♪ M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E ♪
[Higginbotham] It's magical to be able to channel
all of your energy at this character…
Mickey!
[Higginbotham] …who we can fill with all of our hopes and dreams
and all of our love and all of the innocence
that we experience and then eventually lose and would like back.
Mickey!
[chuckles]
Hi, Mickey. Hi, Mickey! Mickey!
[no audible dialogue]
[Goldberg] Mickey was everywhere when I was a kid.
He was just, like, part of my DNA.
[fan] He's plastered over every T-shirt, every billboard.
He speaks multiple languages.
- He's everywhere. - Everywhere! [chuckles]
It's overwhelming. Like, leave me alone.
♪ Who's the lead-- ♪
Uh, no. Okay, let's do that again. [laughs]
What is it about Mickey Mouse?
He started as this simple character.
But over time, he gets so big
that he becomes this reflection of who we are.
The good and the bad.
How's that even possible with this... [chuckles] ...little mouse?
[shutter clicks]
[Disney] The life and ventures of Mickey Mouse
have been closely bound up
with my own personal and professional life.
He still speaks for me, and I still speak for him.
[sighs]
Stop it.
Wore that one the other day.
Haven't worn that one in a while.
[Goldberg] When I first got to the studio to do the Genie in Aladdin,
I didn't know what to expect with Mickey.
It felt like he was encased in amber,
where they don't want to do anything with him, you know?
Ah. Here we are. The Hat Building.
[birds chirping]
Sometimes people ask,
"Aren't you unhappy that you're not on one of the features right now?"
I said, "I'm getting to animate Mickey Mouse."
[laughs]
Walt used to say, "Don't forget. It was all started by a mouse."
So, no matter what we're capable of doing now,
Mickey takes us back to our origins.
[whistling]
This process of hand-drawn hasn't really changed for a century.
You know, the process of drawing the characters is exactly the same.
But back when the great Mickey cartoons were being made,
the Disney studio had maybe a hundred animators to do Mickey and his pals.
These days, to do a new hand-drawn Mickey project,
like the one we're starting now, we have three.
Me, Mark Henn and Randy Haycock.
Randy did characters like Clayton in Tarzan.
He did a lot of Pocahontas.
And then Mark Henn is really known as the princess guy.
[birds chirping]
And the list is endless.
We've always wanted to do something
where we see all the different Mickeys together.
That's never really been seen in a film before,
so that's what we're doing on this project.
And we're calling it Mickey in a Minute.
Where he's walking down the hallways of Disney Animation,
and he gets sucked into a whirlwind that sends him through his most iconic moments
until, finally, he gets spit out at the end as Steamboat Willie.
It's going to be a lot of work.
I mean, basically we're gonna be making about 1,500 original drawings of Mickey
for about one minute's worth of screen time.
But trust me.
It'll be worth it. You'll see.
And this is Mickey as he was designed by Walt and Ub Iwerks.
Not exactly the Mickey we recognize today, but our kind of proto-Mickey.
And yes, he still had a tail. Whoop.
There we go.
[birds chirping]
[Disney] It was a beautiful farm in Marceline, Missouri.
Forty-eight acres.
My chore was to keep the horse going around the circle
and then part of it would be feeding the cane in the squeezer, you see?
[Malins] Walt lived here in Marceline for five years.
It was a short amount of time.
But those very few years were Walt's childhood.
His family was poor,
and his father Elias was extremely strict.
And so art for Walt was an escape.
Walt would take his drawing materials and go down to a special tree.
His dreaming tree.
[Whitehead] He would spend hours under that tree just laying in the grass.
A thing that Walt called "Belly Botany."
[Malins] I don't know if you've ever laid in tall grass on a farm,
but there's a lot that's happening around you.
[Whitehead] Whatever happened to run or crawl or fly by,
he would quickly try to sketch.
[bees buzzing]
[Malins] His little sister told me Walt would do a series of drawings for her.
And then he would make a really good story up to go along with it.
I can just see those creative juices happening underneath his tree.
It was that happy place.
It was where that spark happened.
- I love it. Yeah, that looks cool. - [artist] It's cool. I like that.
So, like, all the possibilities of what you would want on your arm,
why'd you choose Mickey Mouse?
I feel like blood, sweat and tears was put into Mickey Mouse by Walt.
You know, he was dirt poor.
Dirt poor with, like, a dream. Just like, "Nope,
- I believe in that mouse." - [artist] Right.
[Uhalley] You get a lot of people coming in here
asking about Disney and stuff?
[artist] Yeah, there's a few.
DJ, correct me if I'm wrong.
This was Walt and Roy's studio in the early '20s?
Yeah. This is the place.
I know way too much about the history of this now, you know?
With Walt and his brother starting the Disney Brothers Studio here.
Walt was chilling right here.
Right here. [chuckles]
And now this little, rad dude
is so imprinted in everybody's brains.
Like, we all got a weird, different feeling about him.
[Uhalley] Mickey Mouse, to me, is light.
There's, like, a lot of dark in the world.
Especially nowadays, things do tend to be getting a little bit darker.
And he's just keeping hope in the world.
Yeah!
[Kern] So, this is the very first, officially licensed
Disney book ever published.
Imaginatively titled, "Mickey Mouse Book."
Uh, what you've got in here are games.
Probably the most interesting, though, is the story of how Mickey meets Walt.
Falling from Mouse Fairy Land, crash-landing on Walt's roof.
Like Santa Claus, Mickey hops down the chimney,
and who does he meet in the house?
None other than Walt Disney himself.
[Cline] Walt loved to tell tall tales of the story about how Mickey came to be.
He told it different versions over the years himself.
[interviewer] Walt, you're a man who's famous for many things,
not the least of which is building a better mouse.
[Disney] Mickey Mouse hopped out of my mind
on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood
at a time when the business fortunes of my brother, Roy, and myself
were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.
[Gerstein] Walt was in trouble.
Before Mickey Mouse, Walt and his studio created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
I'd argue that Oswald is certainly a lucky rabbit,
but the luck isn't always good.
The actual Oswald contract does not give Walt Disney the rights to that character.
And so, Walt Disney was pushed out of the equation.
It's all about that mythological moment when he's on the train.
And he's been told his entire studio has been hired away from him,
that Oswald doesn't belong to him anymore, and it's crushing.
But out of that comes hope.
He said, "Okay, we've lost everything. Let's start again."
[Higginbotham] Over the years,
with the retelling of that story on the train,
over and over again, and the different inflections,
it becomes myth.
This is mythmaking.
Walt realizes the importance of linking himself to that mouse.
They're developing at the same time.
[Goldberg] Legend has it that, on that train,
Walt wanted to call Mickey "Mortimer Mouse,"
but his wife, Lillian, suggested "Mickey Mouse."
I think that's probably one of the most important decisions
anybody ever made for a character.
But they still had a few Oswalds to produce,
so they couldn't necessarily broadcast it far and wide
that they were gonna be working on a new character.
So that very first Mickey Mouse short was made in their garage.
Walt had to turn to the people that he trusted the most.
[Kern] Of course, you have Ub Iwerks, Walt's lead animator.
Walt and Ub complemented each other.
You know, Ub could do things that Walt could not.
First of all, animate like a demon.
It was said he could do 700 drawings a day,
which is unbelievable.
[Gerstein] Ub Iwerks, meanwhile, remembered a different scenario
where Walt came back on the train and said, "We need a new character."
And they tried out various animals and settled on a mouse.
Either way, there's this famous sheet of different designs of Mickey.
And two of them are circled.
[Porter] Does it matter if Mickey was created on a train
or at an animator's desk?
What matters is that hope-from-despair story
that we can all resonate with and go,
"You know what? Yeah, I gotta pick myself back up by my bootstraps
and keep going, because if Walt can do it, I can do it."
[Disney] In so precarious a world of new possibilities
and increased competition,
I'd planned to go all out on sound.
And those plans came very near spelling a major disaster for us.
[Goldberg] Mickey was not an overnight success.
Walt had made two cartoons prior to Steamboat Willie,
Plane Crazy and Gallopin' Gaucho.
And he couldn't find a distributor for them.
Then came a very important breakthrough.
[Goldberg] In 1927, as sound came in,
he set out to make the first sync-sound cartoon this country had ever seen.
[Disney] To launch our picture impressively,
I'd hired a full New York orchestra with a famous director to do the recording.
The upshot was that I had to borrow on my automobile,
and Roy and I had to mortgage our homes as well,
to cover the cost of that first synchronization for Steamboat Willie.
And everybody had to synchronize. Hit that thing right on the button.
And we had-- We had a way of doing it though.
We had a little-- kind of a little beat that worked up and down.
They were all musicians working for me, so they could follow those beats,
and when it came to a certain number of beats, they would go... [yelps]
Or they would go bang!
Or they would go this, or they would pop one of these popguns, you know?
[Disney] And when it was finished,
the picture wouldn't synchronize with the sound.
And we had to do it all over.
Finally, when all of those elements came together,
that put Mickey into the stratosphere.
[whistling]
[Higginbotham] It had to be this thing
that you would never forget the experience of having.
[Disney] It hit. It hit with a bang. It was a hell of a success.
[Higginbotham] And nothing would ever be the same after that.
[Haycock] With Steamboat Willie,
people would probably just be floored by what they saw, you know?
When this movie came out, there was nothing like this ever done.
And once in a while, in our lifetime,
we see a movie like that and it changes everything.
I mean, for me in my childhood, it was, like, Star Wars.
And I think Steamboat Willie probably had a similar impact.
[Goldberg] Mickey became a movie star on the same plane
as Douglas Fairbanks or Charlie Chaplin.
He was somebody they went to the movies to see.
- [sighs] - [cheering]
And as his character developed, he became a rescuer to Minnie Mouse…
Take it easy. You're all right.
[Goldberg] …a hero stacked up against Peg Leg Pete…
and a very resourceful character.
It's no accident that Walt Disney was the first voice of Mickey Mouse.
Yeah. [chuckles] It's me, I guess.
[Norman] The optimist.
The curious kid who never grew up.
The guy who was intrepid, who never let anything stand in his way.
That's Mickey Mouse, but that's also Walt Disney.
[Goldberg] And in a way,
Mickey's earliest cartoons are really from Walt's memories as a farm boy.
[Porter] Walt poured himself into this character,
and the character embodies Walt Disney himself.
So, you cannot separate the two.
[Gerstein] In the early shorts, there was a sense of adventure.
A sense of Walt doing something exciting that somebody else wasn't doing.
Fairbanks and Chaplin were such fans that they both made arrangements
that several of their films be paired with Mickey Mouse shorts at their premieres.
[jazz playing]
♪ What? ♪
♪ No Mickey Mouse ♪
♪ What kind of a party is this? ♪
[Goldberg] "What? No Mickey Mouse?"
was the complaint of people going to a movie theater and realizing,
"They're not showing a Mickey Mouse cartoon. What's wrong with you people?"
[Cline] He really was a sensation,
and the merchandise showed up everywhere.
That was a brand-new thing.
And there were a couple of companies that were on the verge of bankruptcy,
and Mickey Mouse actually saved those companies from disappearing.
What would another culture from another planet think of us
seeing Mickey on everything?
They might say, "Take me to your leader," and it would be Mickey. [laughs]
Let me get this out of the way.
And here it is, folks. Mouse Heaven.
I collect images that embody a life force.
Now, the more abstract they are, the more they're imbued with that life force.
Because often it's just the bare essence.
So you can clothe it in anything your imagination can bring forth.
Which kind of gets us up to Mickey.
Mickey is pure, absolute geometry, made up of nothing but circles.
This total abstraction
is probably the most universal symbol ever created by man or mouse.
Three simple circles, a quarter and two dimes.
And it's recognizable the world over.
What I've collected is simply the history of this phenomenon.
So, I think, if an archaeologist was to find this place
in the far, far distant future,
they would be convinced that this was a shrine to the great god Mickey.
Welcome to Earth.
I have to tell you about this mouse that will change your life.
- He's a mouse. [chuckles] - That wears clothes though.
White gloves, black fur, I guess it would be.
Red pants. Yellow shoes.
Big ears, you know? And he's always smiling.
He has a very particular voice.
Oh, boy! [chuckles]
He has a girlfriend, Minnie.
He likes Minnie. I know that. [chuckles]
I think that they're dating because there's no ring on them.
And then his other friends are Daisy…
Goofy, Donald…
Oh, and he has a dog named Pluto.
Not to be confused with Goofy, because Goofy is also sort of a dog,
but he's more of a dog-man.
Um, and that's just the world we're living in.
Ha-ha, everybody. [chuckles]
[in Spanish]
Mickey Mouse.
[in Spanish]
[in English] Mickey and I just became inseparable.
[fan] We love a mouse. How crazy is that?
That's a little absurd.
Lay down!
Get up!
- Speak! - [barking]
[reporter] In the world's film capital is the studio that stands as a monument
to the great genius of Walt Disney, master of a new form of popular art that…
That extra revenue from the Mickey Mouse merchandise
really allowed the studio to experiment and improve.
[Disney] First thing I did when I got a little money,
we set up our own art school.
Art schools that existed then worked with the static figure.
Now, we were dealing in motion, movement and the flow of movement.
The flow of things, you know? Action. Reaction. All of that.
I put all my artists back in school.
And out of that school would come the artists that now make up my staff here.
And more than that,
the artists that make up most all of the cartoon outfits in Hollywood.
[Kern] Mickey has taken the world by storm.
The great thinkers, the great artists are all stepping back
and acknowledging that this is something otherworldly and important.
What is the power behind this character?
Yoo-hoo!
[Goldberg] I think Mickey appeals for a lot of different reasons.
But if I had to pick one, it's the way he moves.
It's how he does things that make him compelling to watch.
He has a spirit to him, dating all the way back to Steamboat Willie,
that is playful, inventive, resourceful and fun.
But his imperfections are as much a part of his character as anything else.
Mickey wasn't perfect,
but he would always find a resourceful way to get out of situations.
[screaming]
Minnie!
[Goldberg] His movement is defining who he is.
And that is what the Disney Studio has specialized in ever since.
You're not just creating movement for movement's sake.
You're creating movement that defines that individual's personality.
-♪ Mickey ♪ -♪ Minnie ♪
-♪ La, la, la, la, la, la ♪ -♪ La, la, la, la, la, la ♪
[crying]
[Cline] People tend to forget that Mickey Mouse started in the Roaring '20s.
But almost immediately, the Depression fell on the United States.
[reporter] America, the land of shattered dreams.
A place of deep despair and real fear.
Millions of Americans homeless, hungry, and without hope.
[bell clanging]
Because of the crisis, the majority of kids
were spending their time without parents.
They were left free to do what they wanted during the day.
And movies were the cheapest entertainment you could get for a child.
So if you're a kid,
the one thing you could be guaranteed of was a Saturday matinee.
It was the highlight of your week.
Yoo-hoo, Mickey!
Yoo-hoo!
[Sendak] I fell in love with Mickey
because I went to the movies almost every day with my sister and brother.
And you had a double feature and a cartoon in the middle,
so you were there for hours out of the hands of your parents.
And there's the cartoon, and when I saw that cartoon--
First the big head would appear with radiant lights coming out of it.
I remember my sister saying,
"We knew it was coming, and Jackie would grab you by one arm,
and I would grab you by the other arm, and you went into a frenzy."
[Henn] Wow. I get the goose bumps every time.
Mickey becomes the icon of how to truly survive the Great Depression.
The American dream has suffered.
But Mickey is able to bring that back.
He's able to return us to a sense of perseverance.
[Kern] There was no other character having that grip on a mass conscience.
That popularity spins out into things like the Mickey Mouse clubs,
where kids could get together
and watch Mickey cartoons together and laugh together.
[laughter]
[announcer] And now they're all waiting for Mickey himself.
Here he comes!
[chattering]
Mickey weathers the Depression, but he's got to change and transform.
Because America and Mickey, they change together.
[footsteps approaching]
[Carney] There's almost a hundred years
of Disney Animation history within this building.
We have approximately 65 million pieces of art in our collection.
And every box holds a spark of creativity.
So, here you've got Steamboat Willie.
[Deja] Ah. That's a nice one.
[Carney] Mickey as he's falling in the soap bucket.
Yeah, and it's so, so simple.
You look at the hands--
They almost look like just little pinwheels.
- And just-- - [Deja] Yeah.
It's the spirit of Mickey, just really simplified to an essence.
[Carney] You'll be able to see an evolution of Mickey here.
- So, we've gone five years later. - Mm-hmm.
[Deja] Oh, yeah.
[Carney] You can see there's a little bit more to him.
It's the same character, but you can tell that a different animator did this.
[Carney] Mm-hmm.
[Deja] The hands, for example. They added the white gloves.
[Goldberg] And this Mickey is just that much more
three-dimensional and organic.
You would take an animator's drawing of Mickey,
put it on your light box, and then improve it.
Whoop.
Improve it by making that pose stronger, making that line of action more defined.
But there's still something personal in it that you're bringing to the table.
The very first animation I did here at the studio back in 19-- [stammers]
We won't talk about that. It was a long time ago.
But the very first animation I did was Mickey Mouse.
I felt it then, and I feel it now with this short.
And we're able to keep him alive,
and we're doing it in the way that Mickey should be done.
I don't know if I can flip this 'cause the papers are kind of thin.
The character of Mickey, the personality of Mickey--
Being hand-drawn is part of who he is.
And if people recognize that, you know,
there will always be a reason for us to keep drawing him.
[whirring]
And those early animators, as crude as it was,
they were discovering the language of animation.
[interviewer] Well, Walt,
how is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs coming along?
[Disney] Oh, it's come along very well.
Going to run for one hour and a half.
No cartoon production has ever run that long before.
That's why we feel justified in putting one million dollars into it.
[Kaufman] In terms of animation,
Mickey opened a lot of doors for Walt,
and Walt was always looking for new doors.
[interviewer] You know, it makes me dizzy to think of the millions of drawings
necessary for a production of this kind.
[Nilsen] Disney needs to expand hugely.
And so, the studio goes from a small group to 300 people.
And that change really transforms the studio.
No longer can Walt be involved in every Mickey short.
His entire focus shifts over to Snow White.
[Kaufman] Snow White was not taking place in the same universe that Mickey lived in.
[barking]
But at the same time, Mickey never goes away.
He's always right there by Walt's side whenever he takes on a new enthusiasm.
[Pelayo] Mickey Mouse is probably the most difficult character to ink
because of all the curves.
That's the most difficult part of inking is inking circles.
And Mickey Mouse is full of circles.
Your job as an inker is translating the animator's work onto the cel.
You don't have any room to go outside of that.
Because if you do that, you change their intention.
You change their work.
They say it takes about 15 years of consistent inking--
eight hours a day, five times a week, for 15 years-- to become a master inker.
There's only a few of us in the Ink and Paint department now,
but it used to be hundreds, and for a long time, it was all women.
[reporter] The thousands of pencil drawings
go to the inking department.
Here, hundreds of pretty girls cover the drawings
with sheets of transparent celluloid.
Then they painstakingly trace every line of every drawing in ink,
following exactly, in every detail, the original animation drawing.
[Johnson] The role of the inkers and painters gets glossed over
into this log-line of pretty girls who traced and colored.
When what they were accomplishing was mind-blowing.
These women were artists in their own right.
[reporter] In the studio paint laboratory,
all colors used are made up from secret formulas.
Expert chemists developed more than 1500 different shades of color
for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
[Johnson] Color forever transforms the world of Mickey Mouse.
[Pelayo] Pastel is his flesh. His tongue.
Marigold, his shoes. Lobster, his pants.
We are not really brushing.
It's actually dropping a glob of paint, and then we just push it to the edges,
because we wanna make the paint look as opaque as possible.
When I'm inking or painting Mickey Mouse,
it just takes me back to when Walt first created Mickey.
So now that we're done with it, this is what it looks like from the front.
All ready, Uncle Mickey?
Okay, let's go.
[snoring]
[Nilsen] Once Mickey becomes an international children's star,
there's certain things he cannot do.
[Gerstein] Parents of Mickey's younger viewers
wanted Mickey to clean up his act and not be as bad an influence.
[high-pitched babbling]
[Nilsen] He can't be a bully. He can't punch people.
He can't behave in any way that would be considered bad behavior.
[Gerstein] It pushed Mickey into a straight man role,
where almost any kind of flaw
is seen as out of character.
[applause]
And so, Donald Duck appears.
[Donald Duck cackling]
Aw, phooey!
[Disney] The duck came along as a result of too many taboos put onto Mickey Mouse.
People didn't feel that Mickey could blow his top like the duck.
He had to maintain a certain dignity.
So, in order to give ourselves a latitude,
we created this terrible-tempered Mr. Duck.
[grunting]
♪ Who gets stuck with all the bad luck? ♪
♪ No one but Donald Duck ♪
[grunts]
Get out of here! Get out of here!
[Gerstein] Story after story was rejected for Mickey
because he was perceived as being a little bit too silly in them.
[Deja] They found out Mickey is probably best paired with Donald and Goofy.
[laughs] A moose!
A moose!
And have this little trio.
Hot dog! Now do your stuff. I'll take care of the rest.
[Deja] There are many great ones that include the three of them
that work well 'cause their personalities rub off against each other.
Lend a hand, me hearties!
[both] Aye, aye, Captain!
[screams] What's the big idea?
[Kaufman] But it became evident that Donald is getting Mickey's anger
and Goofy gets Mickey's silly side.
And if Mickey is the responsible one, he pretty much has to take a back seat.
But then where does that leave Mickey?
[Haycock] This part of the short that I'm animating
is from the Brave Little Tailor.
[whistles]
[grunting]
He's trying to get his arm out of his sleeve.
Can't get it.
And then that's when Mickey comes in to his arm right here.
Then I gotta get all that done in 297 frames.
So I've only got a hundred frames to get the rest of it. [chuckles]
I think I was here 25 years before I actually animated Mickey.
And it seems a shame because, you know, if you work at Disney,
you should be animating Mickey all the time, I'd think.
When Eric gave me the sections that I was gonna do, I got really excited
because that was my favorite Mickey that made me wanna be an animator.
They came at me from the right. Then the left. Right, left, left, right!
[Haycock] So that was exciting and intimidating all at the same time.
[Henn] As Mickey evolved, what used to be his eye,
when you get to Fantasia, just became this little thing here
and so you would end up with the pupils.
[Haycock] Fantasia Mickey's important
because with the whites of his eyes like this,
it made him a lot more expressive.
And I'm gonna stretch his ears a little more here
because he just became a little more pliable from this point on.
We wouldn't have a Fantasia if it weren't for Walt's concern for Mickey Mouse.
He was worried that Donald and Goofy were overtaking Mickey's popularity,
and he wanted a vehicle to bring Mickey back in the limelight again.
And so originally, Fantasia was just going to be The Sorcerer's Apprentice short,
and it then blossomed into an entire innovative feature film
that's still never been equaled.
[Kern] Fantasia is something that was a huge gamble.
You have so many different styles.
It's something that, in theory, shouldn't work.
[reporter] The greatest thrill of his acting career happened
on the night of November 13th, 1940
at the same theater where he made his first appearance as a ragged,
shoeless mouse almost ten years before.
[Deja] Some of the old animators said that when they heard that Walt wanted Mickey
to be on this rock conducting the universe,
they thought he'd gotten kinda crazy
'cause Mickey Mouse, after all, is a cartoon character.
You don't conduct the universe.
Mickey conducting the universe you can translate
to Walt conducting his own universe 'cause by that time his company had grown,
and thousands and thousands of people were working at the studio.
So I think Walt became Mickey then.
[Goldberg] There's some scenes in Sorcerer's Apprentice
where he knows he's screwed up in front of the sorcerer.
The subtlety that they get on his face,
I think that's where the character hit his absolute peak of perfection.
[Kaufman] Artistically, Walt achieved everything he wanted to with Fantasia.
But when the movie came out, it was a failure.
Artistic success, financial failure, you know?
[interviewer] Certainly an artistic success. It was a magnificent--
Well, there's-- Some people would, uh, would question that too.
[Birnkrant] Fantasia was Mickey's culmination and his termination.
That sorcerer swatted him with the broom, and he scurried off of the stage,
and he never quite came back again.
[Mickey] Well, so long! I'll be seeing ya!
[Norman] The story of Walt and Mickey
wasn't just one continual success after success.
It was stumble after stumble, failure after failure.
But Walt believed that if he worked hard enough, he could overcome every obstacle.
[Kaufman] There are two main animators
who were really, really important in Mickey's life,
Ub Iwerks and Fred Moore.
It was Moore who redesigned the mouse more than once,
and after Fantasia, the studio is talking in terms of a comeback.
[Goldberg] From Fantasia, Freddie Moore took him even further
for even more fluidity
and more character.
[Kaufman] They gave him a loose, rangy kind of movement,
and they had him deliberately clowning around.
Everything's kind of working to this S curve here.
I'll clean up your yard. [chuckles]
All right. But no more clowning.
They were trying to make Mickey funny again.
You know? Let him play a clown once in a while,
like when he's doing his goofy dance in Mickey's Birthday Party,
or when he's raking up leaves in The Little Whirlwind, you know?
It's okay for him to make mistakes or act foolish once in a while in that year.
The movement, the organic qualities,
the fluidity of the animation was never better.
They could do with Mickey… anything.
[Kaufman] This new Mickey seemed to hold the promise of
freeing him from that role of being the serious, responsible one all the time.
[flute playing]
[Goldberg] But that version of Mickey didn't last long.
♪ Heigh-ho Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-ho ♪
♪ Heigh-ho We all must help, you know? ♪
♪ We'll win the war with five for four Heigh-ho ♪
♪ Heigh-ho We all must help, you know? ♪
♪ We'll win the war with five for four Heigh-ho ♪
[narrator 1] The whole world is aflame.
All the peoples of the United Nations are fighting the savage enemies of freedom.
[narrator 2] In Hollywood, Walt Disney has turned over
almost the entire facilities of his studio
for the production of Army and Navy instructional films.
Four, eight, sequence one. Let her roll.
[Kern] Walt, being the patriot that he was,
supported whatever the government and the military wanted…
[narrator 3] Don't throw away that bacon grease.
Fats make glycerin and glycerin makes explosives.
[Kern] …whether that was creating shorts for home front or propaganda purposes…
[narrator 4] Will our own cities and homes be bombed?
[Kern] …or training films and educational films for the military.
[narrator 5] If the bolt is pulled back, the magazine's free…
[Kern] They were designing insignia
for different military and auxiliary units around the world.
Over twelve hundred were made.
You have groups writing to the studio, saying,
"We want Mickey to help get us through this."
[Nilsen] Before the war, Hitler liked Mickey,
Mussolini loved Mickey, Hirohito loved Mickey.
But when America enters war, Mickey ends up banned.
[Disney] The little fellow's grin was too infectious for Nazism.
Hitler thunderingly forbade his people
to wear the then-popular Mickey Mouse button in place of the swastika.
[Nilsen] Hitler understood what Mickey symbolized.
Independence, liberty, freedom.
America is Mickey.
[officer] Commando Duck, here are your orders.
You'll parachute at position D-4.
[slide whistle plays]
[Nilsen] But with the wartime shorts that are produced to create morale,
almost all of those are done by Donald Duck.
[trumpets playing]
[Kern] Mickey's presence in World War II tended to rely on the home front.
You see him on support posters,
getting people to carpool,
rationing, selling war bonds,
supporting the war effort not from the front line but at home.
If you were a child at that point in time or a family,
who better to look to than Mickey Mouse for that sense of comfort?
[Nilsen] But you, as a creator,
don't control what happens to your products.
You don't control what happens to your characters.
And so, when wartime came, Mickey was already there.
There was a village in Poland in which the entire village was destroyed by the Nazis.
And there are images left from that village
that create a collection of the life of the village before the horror.
And in one of the photographs is Mickey.
And it's a shocking image within the Holocaust museum
to see this-- this being, Mickey Mouse, creating pleasure for this community
right on the cusp of the war.
Children in the camps were dressed up in Mickey Mouse costume,
staging Mickey Mouse plays, drawing images of Mickey Mouse.
There was actually a comic strip written by someone in the camps,
which covered the daily life through the perspective of Mickey Mouse.
And at the end, he erases Mickey and says, "Mickey's gone back to America."
And the person who drew the comic strip was then killed.
Mickey was in the Holocaust because Mickey represented the possibility of escape,
of joy, of happiness.
And those dictators understood very well that was not what they were offering.
[snare drum playing]
[Kern] We kind of have to think of Mickey as, like, before World War II
and then after World War II.
It's two very different careers.
- Well, here we are, Pluto. - [barks]
Boy, what a dream place.
Come on, Your Highness. [chuckles] Utopia is yours.
[barking]
[birds chirping]
[narrator] This migration to the suburbs,
variously estimated as from 40 to 80 million people.
[Nilsen] Many people complain about the post-war Mickeys
being domesticated, but Walt Disney is a very different person.
Walt has a suburban house, has a very set, conservative life, really.
And he's a person now who's gone through nervous breakdowns,
possibilities of financial ruin, a strike.
He gets involved in HUAC
and that changes the Mickey we know.
It makes him a much more contained character than he was in the early years.
And America is moving in that direction too.
We don't want chaos.
We wanna feel safe. We wanna feel familiar and protected.
Okay, Pluto. Let's get our tree.
[bells tinkling]
- [seagulls squawking] - [Henn] 1953 was his last short,
and I've heard him described as just being a little-- little man.
[Goldberg] He acquired a decent house and a mortgage,
and he just became your suburban mouse next door.
[narrator 1] There is a continuing trend to more time off,
which means more time to consume.
[narrator 2] It's a completely new idea in automobiles.
The daring, dazzling 1955 Rambler.
Come on, Pluto, old boy. We're going to see the 1955 Nash.
[Goldberg] When I first saw these,
I did a complete double take that Mickey was even drawn this way.
[narrator 2] The new 1955 Rambler offers complete year-round air conditioning.
[Goldberg] They're sending the signals that Mickey and Minnie are married
and they're driving in the front of the Nash Rambler,
and there are their two kids sitting in the back. And it's like, "Wait a minute!"
Live a little.
Drive a Rambler.
Apparently, they had made a few commercials before Walt saw them.
What had happened was, a fan had written to him saying,
"Dear Walt, what did you do with Mickey?"
[laughs]
And he found these commercials and looked at them and just went, "Stop!
That's not Mickey. We're not doing that anymore."
[laughs]
[Norman] Walt was getting so busy
that he didn't always have time to stop what he was doing
and go to the soundstage and record Mickey's voice.
And doing that falsetto voice of Mickey was becoming harder.
He actually had to go to a doctor for the vocal strain.
[Iwan as Mickey] ♪ Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go ♪
[clears throat]
- [Goldberg] Hi. - [normal] How are you?
- Nice to meet ya. - Nice to meet you.
Yeah. I'm excited to work on this.
You know, you could-- you could do this for a living. You sound just like him.
- I would hope to. Thanks. Thanks. - [laughs]
[Goldberg] So, you've read the script.
It's kind of a fanciful trip through Mickey's career.
Uh, it starts with him walking through the halls of the animation studio
and he's looking at his past glories on posters.
So, why don't you go through it, and we'll see what we get.
- [Iwan] All right. - Okay.
[sound engineer] One. Take one.
[as Mickey] Aw, there's Pluto.
It's Minnie.
[chuckles] Pete.
[Goldberg] Try another one where you're just a little more casual,
- a little slower. - Okay.
[as Mickey] Hmm, hmm.
Oh, I remember that.
[Goldberg] Those are great. Try one more that's just a, "Hmm."
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
[normal] The responsibility is huge,
because I'm just playing a part in continuing this legacy
that started with Walt back in 1928.
[as Mickey] Hey, Pluto. Here she comes.
- [chuckles] Hi, folks. - Hi, folks!
- This is Mickey. - I'm Mickey too.
- You are? - I thought so.
[Iwan] Jimmy Macdonald, the second voice of Mickey, told Wayne,
"Remember, kid, you're only filling in for the boss." And that's how I look at it.
[as Mickey] Come on. We gotta hurry.
Come on. We gotta hurry.
[laughs] Ah, gosh.
[as Mickey] Gosh! Oh, gosh!
[normal] I will never forget that, essentially,
I'm emulating Walt's performance as Mickey.
Hot dog! Hot dog!
Hot dog!
- [as Mickey] Hot dog! - [Goldberg] That last one.
Yeah, nice.
You know, the coal is floating around him like asteroids,
- so he's trying to grab for them. - [Iwan] Uh-huh.
[grunts as Mickey]
Gotcha!
Great.
I'm sitting there and I'm listening to Bret doing the voice, and I'm thinking,
"Oh, man. He's nailed it. [chuckling] He's really got him."
And I hope that as well as Bret nails the voice, we nail the visuals. [laughs]
Working on this short is kind of Mickey heaven
because you get to play with all these different styles,
as do the other animators who are working on it.
So in this particular case, this is a Mickey from the 1950s.
And this sequence was animated by John Lounsbery.
And to be honest,
this is the first time I've drawn a 1950s Johnny Lounsbery Mickey.
[chuckling] So, you know, I'm learning as I go.
[whoops]
-Hi, partners! - [children] Hi, Mickey!
[chuckles]
Well, this here's our roundup day, so, uh, you all pretty nigh ready?
- [children] Sure enough! -Sure enough.
Then let's get on with it.
[Kaufman] Most Hollywood producers were terrified of television.
[announcer] Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse present
The Mickey Mouse Club.
Walt goes in the opposite direction and embraces television.
♪ ...K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E ♪
♪ Mickey Mouse ♪
He relished the idea of getting into a new field like that.
Hi, Mouseketeers.
[all] Hi, Roy!
What would you like to have me draw?
Mickey Mouse.
[Kaufman] It made it a lot easier to have this audience identification
with a character that they had known for all those years
and had become a part of their lives.
♪ M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E ♪
Once again, Mickey provided the momentum that made all of that possible.
[Mouseketeers] Yay, Mickey! Yay, Mickey!
Yay, Mickey Mouse Club!
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
[Kern] You know, Walt, I think, very quickly realized
that the power of his creations had life beyond the walls of the studio.
And he would get fan mail.
People would ask, "How can I meet Mickey and Minnie?"
Welcome.
I guess you all know this little fella here.
It's an old partnership.
Mickey and I started out the first time many, many years ago.
We've had a lot of our dreams come true.
Now we want you to share with us our latest and greatest dream.
That's it right here.
Disneyland.
[helicopter whirring]
[crickets chirping]
[Higginbotham] As soon as Walt starts on another path
and focuses his interests on Disneyland,
Mickey goes through a major transformation as well.
He has to become the kind of icon that Walt is becoming.
[Disney] Disneyland is your land.
Here, age relives fond memories of the past,
and here, youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future.
[Higginbotham] There is something very personal
about this whole quest that Walt is on.
Returning to his own sense of being a child.
And that Mickey Mouse, the character that existed in his head
and then on paper, that existed on the big screen,
could now be as close to every visitor at the park as it was to him.
[narrator 1] That's Mickey Mouse, the inimitable little character
that started this whole story with Walt Disney 25 years ago.
[train whistle blows]
[narrator 2] The real star of it is Mickey Mouse.
[Smith] I think there's an aura of magic
around Mickey Mouse that makes you feel safe.
And I think within that bubble, you are safe.
[Porter] Mickey connects generations.
He connects our childhood memories to our adult memories.
And so when you encounter Mickey in the park, you are not just you.
You are six-year-old you,
and you are 80-year-old you in the future.
And you are with your grandmother, and you are with your grandchildren,
and you are participating in a timeless moment.
Mickey is the walking embodiment of Walt's philosophies.
And you can meet him, still, in the persona of Mickey.
[fan] I do remember, like, driving up to it
and having that feeling that, like, this is where Mickey lives.
Oh, this is a sacred space.
It's like he made Disneyland.
It's like he used magic to, like--
[imitates magical sound]
At that time, I'm thinking he's like John Wayne
or he's like a real, true movie star.
He spent his money.
He bought this so people could come visit him.
And I actually got to meet him.
- When I was five years old-- - Five years old.
Maybe ten?
When I saw him in Tokyo Disneyland, I really believe it's him.
He's right down here.
And actually, I think the sweetest one is me and Minnie down here.
It's kind of a big deal when I see Mickey.
My husband literally pushed me out of the way--
Pushed her out of the way so I could get to Mickey first.
[laughs]
Really happy when I got Mickey Mouse's signature.
Thank you for all the times you were there for me.
And you've always been my best friend.
[fan] I resonate with Mickey so well
because there's an undeniable piece of Walt's heart in Mickey Mouse.
[interviewer] Can you still make a noise like Mickey Mouse?
[as Mickey] Well, uh, Mickey used to talk something like this, you know?
It's kind of a falsetto.
Of course, he's an old mouse now and the falsetto's getting a little old.
[normal] Yeah.
[Norman] Working with Walt, nobody had any idea he was ill.
Certainly not to the extent he was.
We simply didn't see it coming. We never saw it coming.
After Walt's death, his wife, Lillian, said that
it was difficult for her to watch or listen to Mickey Mouse
because there was so much of Walt in him.
After his passing, they pretty much closed up the office.
They'd go in and dust and-- and things like that,
but it-- it looks just the way it did.
We've tried to keep it as close to Walt as possible.
[Norman] You know, with the passing of Walt,
the studio honestly did not know what to do with Mickey.
And for me as a Disney storyteller, it was kind of eye-opening.
It almost seemed that they wanted to put the lid on Mickey.
Because Walt's values, Walt's ideas would be frozen in time.
The world changed. The culture changed.
And Mickey hadn't really changed with it.
[reporter 1] Even Mickey Mouse has troubles these days.
A band of yippies threatened trouble in the park all day yesterday.
[reporter 2] The yippies said they have come to liberate Mickey Mouse.
[Norman] Mickey Mouse was still very much alive outside the Disney studio.
[laughing] You know, you could not escape him.
[Glenn] Just like America splits in the '60s,
Mickey Mouse splits as well.
There's kind of a surface meaning to him.
But the more you look into him, the more you think about it,
the more levels there are to this symbol.
So there are two Mickeys now.
Mainstream Mickey and counterculture Mickey.
And those coexist in this one character.
["Life on Mars?" playing]
♪ It's on America's tortured brow ♪
♪ That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow ♪
♪ Now the workers have struck for fame… ♪
[Glenn] Mickey becomes this irresistible symbol
to the counterculture.
So if you have an issue with your parents, with authority, with America in general,
Mickey Mouse is your guy.
What Mickey provided was inspiration.
People were starting to use Mickey
to reflect life around them in all sorts of different ways.
And that really starts to deepen the character of Mickey Mouse.
[Glaser] I don't know why things persist in people's minds and memories.
Some things stick, some things don't.
I forgot I did that.
That was Mickey Mouse by Leonardo da Vinci.
All significant art represents an attempt to understand reality.
I was against the Vietnam War,
and I thought we could do a little film on Mickey Mouse in Vietnam.
I was looking for a symbol that would represent every man.
And Mickey was sort of universal.
And so much a part of the American ethos.
Part of the factor was his innocence.
By that point, Mickey really had become an emblem of what America stood for.
[chattering]
But America is changing during that time, and in that short film,
Mickey somehow manages to be the perfect symbol for that change.
Of innocence lost during that war.
By that point, we're so identified with Mickey,
Mickey is so close to us, that there's no other character or symbol
that could sell that message so effectively.
♪ Boys and girls from far and near You're welcome as can be ♪
♪ M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E ♪
-♪ Mickey Mouse ♪ -♪ Mickey Mouse ♪
Every version of Mickey is a version of all of us.
It's a version of the society that we have all come from.
[protestors singing]
And in the 1960s, America began to ask questions about itself,
questions that many had ignored, and that included Mickey Mouse.
Just like Mickey's shorts in the '30s where Mickey's performing in blackface,
popular forms of entertainment show
America has been divided since the founding of this country.
But it's difficult to see Mickey part of that conversation.
It's a disconnection that happens as a viewer when I'm faced with that…
[war whoops]
…and those sorts of presentations.
And then, of course, you have Minnie.
[Nilsen] It's hard to watch those Mickey shorts with our eyes today.
- But the last thing we wanna do… - Don't do that!
…is to ignore, to hide,
to somehow imagine those elements of our identity don't exist.
That version of Mickey does exist.
He speaks to the racism within our own society.
[Higginbotham] It's easy to say, "It is what it is."
It's easy to say that was just Walt being the man he was at the time.
But given the cultural power that Walt had,
some of the images he put out there with Mickey did damage.
Mickey's supposed to love everybody.
Clearly, in these moments, he's not loving all of us.
He's not loving all of us.
And here is Mickey's official 50th anniversary portrait.
He's a little taller now. More grown-up. And, at the temples, just a touch of gray.
♪ Happy Birthday, dear Mickey ♪
[presenter] Mickey's physical appearance has changed somewhat
since Walt Disney created the mouse back in 1928.
And over the years, Mickey's tastes have changed as well.
But Mickey Mouse seems to stay up with the times, and in the area of music,
it is only natural that Mickey Mouse would eventually go disco.
♪ Let the dancing fever move him ♪
♪ And he'll always bring down the house ♪
♪ Disco Mickey Mouse ♪
Mickey is truly iconic in the sense that he cannot be beaten.
So, yes, he's gonna have a disco album that's horrible
and that comes two or three years after disco's peak.
But it's still gonna be really popular and successful.
[fan] I loved the Mickey Mouse Disco when I was younger.
And I would just, like, dance in my living room.
♪ Watch out, watch out for Goofy Watch out for Goofy ♪
That's cute.
[music ends]
[Glenn] But then on the other side, we see the punk appropriation of Mickey.
♪ Mickey Mouse is dead Got kicked in the head ♪
♪ 'Cause people got too serious They planned out what they said… ♪
And we see the Ramones wearing Mickey Mouse T-shirts.
What are they doing?
I, myself, and my friends, when we were into punk and skateboarding,
would wear Mickey Mouse T-shirts.
It was a mixture of, "I am making fun of something,
and I am also expressing admiration for something,
and my parents don't get that."
So it became kind of a secret language.
A lot of artists began to incorporate Mickey as a way of saying,
"If you're gonna flood the culture with this kind of imagery,
then it becomes ours at some point."
He becomes the super symbol.
[reporter] Mickey Mouse, we are told,
is one of the top three icons of the 20th century.
A distinction he shares with Adolf Hitler and the Coca-Cola bottle.
Andy Warhol lifted the image straight
as part of a series of screen prints entitled Myths.
Mickey Mouse is my favorite, uh, image
because, uh, Walt Disney is my favorite artist.
[music ends]
- [child 1] I'm Mickey Mouse. - [child 2] I'm Minnie Mouse.
[child 3] I'm Donald Duck.
[chattering]
[Norman] By the 1980s,
things were getting weird for Mickey Mouse,
because he had become almost this divine figure that you didn't mess with.
[reporter 1] Recently, The Walt Disney Company
heard about the painted characters at this day care center
and two others in Hallandale, Florida.
[reporter 2] Disney now demanding the removal of all its characters.
The company charging unauthorized infringement of its rights
under the US Copyright Act.
[reporter 3] Do you know what they're going to do to Mickey Mouse?
- What? - They're gonna take him away.
[reporter 4] Despite their objections, the day care centers say
they'll have to paint over the cartoon characters
because they can't fight the power of the corporate mouse.
Our legal protection of Mickey has inevitably led
to some uncomfortable situations over the course of the company's history.
I wouldn't say that we've handled every situation perfectly,
but there's really no precedent for a creation like this
when it comes to copyright.
Mickey's one of the most popular characters in the world,
and there's really no question that we've had to learn as we go.
Disney's been very protective of Mickey,
and it's interesting to think about how Walt's own experience
of losing Oswald early on helps to define the trajectory of the studio.
You signed this contract. See this signature there? Walt Disney.
Right here it says that we own Oswald the Rabbit.
[chuckles]
[Cline] Disney as a company was created out of tremendous loss,
and I think that will give some context to why the company
has defended Mickey so carefully over the years.
And we understand that copyright is a part of the Mickey Mouse story.
The challenging thing is that from a practical perspective,
your copyright is only as good as your ability to enforce it.
It's a balance and one that we continually work to get right.
I am wholeheartedly against the infringement of copyright.
So much so, that I had that phrase trademarked,
and then I had it emblazoned on a Mickey Mouse doll.
[audience laughing, cheering]
Where does something this big and this important to society
become just owned by society?
There is a level of Mickey that, you know, we all own.
Disney the company was very strict about copyright and legal issues,
but I never personally associated it with Mickey himself.
There's the ambassador-of-the-company Mickey,
and then there is that little more rambunctious nature of Mickey.
There are two Mickeys, 'cause like anybody else would,
Mickey has to act a little bit differently in different environments.
And how do you not love Mickey's Christmas Carol?
You know that-- that--
The soul of Mickey in that movie is still the pure soul of the film.
[narrator] Walt Disney Studios.
Home to characters and stories spun from pure cinematic magic.
But up until 1983,
the Disney character who started the whole enchanted operation
hadn't made a movie in 30 years.
[squawks]
[Mattinson] When we created the picture,
there was, amongst us, a sense that we-- we were gonna be able to bring him back.
[stammers] G-g-g-good morning, Mr. Scrooge.
[Gerstein] Mickey's Christmas Carol was heralded as Mickey's great comeback.
But it's really a Scrooge McDuck cartoon.
What are you doing?
[chuckles] I was just trying to keep my hands warm, sir.
[Henn] Some of the top people that used to work here have done Mickey
and, uh, you know, things were pretty well established
as far as what kind of a character, you know, he is.
There was a sense that there was a little bit of a fear, I think,
that the studio had with Mickey
'cause they didn't want to do something that failed.
[applause]
He was our corporate symbol.
So it would've been really difficult if Mickey's a flop.
[narrator] Like Walt always said, it all started with a mouse.
[Henn] So they kind of became very careful
about what projects Mickey was involved with.
[scatting]
Oh! Huh.
Aw, Minnie and I…
[Goldberg] It's both an honor and a challenge
to animate Mickey in the present day.
Hey!
You've got this big weight on your shoulders… [laughing]
…like, "I'd better not louse it up."
But, you know, I just look at it as a continuum.
I mean, here we are almost a hundred years later,
and we're in the final week of animating this new short.
You know, we're still drawing him, we're still talking about him.
After all the things that Mickey has been through…
he's still here.
[reporter 1] The Disney name evoked
some of the happiest and most endearing memories
in entertainment, but in recent years, some of that luster has dimmed.
Even with that legacy and with those assets,
everyone would acknowledge something was wrong.
[reporter 2] What do you think about Mickey Mouse?
He's okay, but…
I like Goofy. And Minnie and Goofy.
[Higginbotham] In attempting to interact with as many people as possible,
Mickey seems lost.
He's hollow. There's-- There's nothing there.
[reporter] Look in the dictionary. What a definition!
"Unimportant. Trivial. Irritatingly petty."
Let Fredo take care of some Mickey Mouse nightclub somewhere!
[Birnkrant] Do I like new Mickey Mouse?
Would I sing the Mouseketeer Club song?
No. No, I'm not a fan of Mickey.
[Kimball] This is the Mickey that you see today.
He has nice puffed-out cheeks.
In other words, all the kids think he looks cute.
[anchor] Guess who's moving to Japan?
America's best-known mouse, Mickey.
[reporter] Not only was Mickey mobbed
but so was the store selling his ears.
Fresh supplies had to be flown in after the hats sold out.
[Kimball] Mickey stands for Disneyland
the place where they can go and have all this fun.
And spend money.
[announcer] We don't just sell Disney.
We are Disney.
Mickey in one word? Uh…
Consumerism.
I'm the mascot of an evil corporation. [laughs]
[Mickey] Take the good with the bad.
Think of all the laughs I've given you.
You're supposed to be funny?
- [laughter] - Yeah.
I think we confused people.
So that, in 2005, when you asked people, uh, who Mickey Mouse was,
they typically would say
he's a corporate symbol of The Walt Disney Company.
I'm not sure people really knew who Mickey was or what Mickey was
because Mickey had been so many different things
and not necessarily all good.
- [Mickey] What's that? You want some more? - [children] Hey!
[Mickey] Who's the mouse that's got the groove?
[Iger] He was looked upon, I think, as commerce versus art.
Not quite heartless,
but he didn't have enough of the identity that Walt created for him originally.
[Mickey whistling]
The last thing Walt would've wanted would've been for Mickey
to remain as he was or to be stuck in some museum case.
So, we began a process to bring Mickey forward.
Most people, when they thought of Mickey,
besides being a corporate icon, felt that Mickey was old.
We asked people, "How old do you think Mickey is?"
And everybody said, "Well, he's over sixty-five."
And there had been very little content made
with Mickey in it for quite some time.
We prevented anyone innovating with the character
or anyone even trying to return Mickey to his former self.
We thought we owed it to ourselves and to the character
to engage with all sectors of the company.
And that led to what we called a bake-off.
We let each of the entities present to us
a fresh version of Mickey Mouse that everybody could love again.
At first, I was like, "Well, gosh. It sure would be cool
to just make Mickey Mouse shorts, but they're not gonna let me do that."
It was a very interesting time. For me, it was like,
"He doesn't need to be a shill.
He can go back to the time when he was really active and happy."
But I felt like Mickey himself had forgotten his roots.
Forgotten where he came from.
[Rudish] Disney had this bible of what Mickey is and isn't,
the dos and don'ts, and they decided not to show me that.
[Spector] I wanted to remind him that he wasn't just a corporate symbol,
that he wasn't just a greeter in the parks,
that he was a cartoon character too.
[Green] The bake-off ultimately led to
a whole new era of storytelling with Mickey.
[as Mickey] Hang on, pal. Here we go.
Holy moly! It's Mickey Mouse!
[chattering]
[trumpets blaring]
[Iger] They wanted to restore Mickey to his glory and make sure,
because Mickey didn't take himself too seriously,
we weren't taking Mickey so seriously.
[humming]
[whoops]
[fan] The new shorts actually, that version of Mickey, to me,
is the first time I've seen that kind of truest version of him in a long time.
I'm coming, Minnie!
Fire, fire, fire!
He's, like, coming into his personality.
He's not holding back. The sky is the limit for him.
[Rudish] He's still allowed to be a goober
and still allowed to be sad and happy and angry. All of it.
[slow music playing on radio]
Get back here!
It's been fun to see kids going, "Wow! These are actually funny!"
[chuckles]
[Iger] How do you balance the heritage that created the character,
that created the company, with the need to be innovative and modern?
The trick is to respect the past but not revere it.
Hello.
[screams]
Oh, my gosh. Red!
[MacMullan] There's only really one Mickey I want to see.
And that's that old-time Mickey.
- Mickey! - Minnie!
When he came out of the screen, we didn't want him to feel like,
"Oh, he's the new Mickey." We wanted him to feel like,
"This is Mickey, just outside of his black-and-white screen."
There was a moment on the film when we were like,
"Wait. So, all the characters are running in and out of the screen from 2D to CG,
and they loop, like, six or seven times?"
And Lauren's like, "Yeah!"
And we're like…
"Okay." [laughs]
I think that's something that Walt established early on
where you just-- You never say no.
You always push boundaries. You're always innovating.
[all scream]
He would've had us in hologram animation by now.
[Goldberg] In the same way that the parks
and the walk-arounds keep the characters alive,
new animation helps keep them alive.
And pencil to paper is the way that Mickey started.
And, in many cases, it's the way he looks the best.
Well, I just got the short back.
[birds chirping]
The thing that I'm really happiest about in this piece is
that when you see it all cut together--
you know, all the Mickeys, all in one short film--
it really does feel like the Mickey that we all love.
- Good to see you guys! - Good to see you.
Good to see you.
This is gonna be cool.
[Haycock] Everything looks better in this theater.
- [all laughing] - [Goldberg] Yeah, I think it does.
You know, if Walt and Ub are watching,
I'd like to think we did our darndest to honor them and honor their creation.
[birds chirping]
[scatting]
Oh! Huh.
Mm-hmm.
Oh. [chuckles] And there's Pluto.
Aw, Minnie and I.
Wow. That one sure gave me a workout.
Hey!
[orchestral music playing]
♪ M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U... ♪
[shouts]
Whoo! Whoo!
[groaning]
Oh! Gosh. [chuckles]
[music ends]
[grunts]
Well… [chuckles] …what do you know?
Okay, roll it!
Whoa!
[Haycock] Yeah, that's it.
[Henn] All right.
[Goldberg] You guys did a great job.
- Absolutely great. - Thank you. It was fun. A lot of fun.
Walt would be proud.
- I hope so. - [laughs]
Can we run it again?
[technician] Yeah.
[wind howling]
[Iger] Everybody used to say, "What would Walt think?"
I actually think about that a lot.
Walt would say, "Never lose sight of the fact
that it was all started with a mouse."
But before Mickey Mouse, it all started with Walt Disney.
[birds chirping]
[Malins] One thing that Walt kept in his office right until the end
was a hand-drawn map of the farm here in Marceline.
And I-- I really like the idea that even at the end of his life,
Walt was still thinking about that tree where he first felt that spark.
[chattering]
[Spector] Mickey is a thing we all share.
There aren't many of those around.
[cheering]
[laughing]
He's grown into a necessary character for us.
♪ Who's the leader of the club ♪
♪ That's made for you and me? ♪
Whenever I did chemo, I had to have my Mickey Mouse shorts.
And this dark and dreary moment that I was in--
I found a little hope, you know?
And I feel like that's who Mickey Mouse is.
When I was 13, I was granted a Make-A-Wish.
Then seeing Mickey, he just brought, like, this, um, happiness out of me,
and, like, made me, uh, remember that I was still a child.
[chattering]
[laughing]
[Norman] That magical spark…
I felt it and never forgot it.
[child] Bye, Mickey!
[Norman] At this point, I think Mickey is us.
[laughs]
So, wherever we're headed next, he's coming with us.
[fan 1] I love that Disney hides Mickey Mouses everywhere.
[fan 2] All over the park or any sort of property.
[Norman] It's a little secret way of saying,
"Thank you, Mickey. You still belong here."
[fan 1] And the cool thing about it is, it doesn't stop there.
You'll leave, and then in real life,
you'll just notice Mickey heads everywhere.
It's like, "Oh, my gosh.
Okay, wait a minute. Mickey, are you-- are you speaking to me?
Are you communicating to me? What is happening here?
Why am I seeing you everywhere?"
[laughs]