Bancroft Brothers / Remembering Disney Florida

 Bancroft Brothers / Remembering Disney Florida with guests Jim Jackson and Aaron Blaise

Bancroft Brothers Animation Podcast

Transcript :

Tom Bancroft  0:03  

And welcome to another Bancroft brothers animation podcast. Yes, yes, yes it is Tom and it is a wonderful, wonderful summer that we're in now tonight's podcast is we have two wonderful sponsors that we'd love to talk about one of them. Ralph Thomas who created the sketch wallet. If you go Tom if you go to sketch wallet calm right now you know you would see, you would see wait. Just There you go. You would see images of all kinds of different sizes of the coolest sketch wallets in the world. What's a sketch wallet you say? And then you see in the pictures, oh my gosh is actually a wallet and you open it up and inside the billfold besides just, you know, pockets and things to put your credit cards and license and everything. There's a number two pencil a little golf sized pencil in there. And a sketchbook a little mini sketchbook is in the middle of the wallet. You could pull that out when you're going to the airport like anybody goes the airport anymore, or when you're going on a trip or you're out The beach like anybody goes to the beach anymore, and you're in France having a baguette pull that out, do some sketches at the cafe whatever. Whenever you come up with an idea Tom boom, you got it right there in your sketch wallet and you're able to pay the bill once you go into the billfold throw down your $3 for your coffee, whoever buys car for $3 anymore or your credit card anyway Tony I think that's a great explanation of that product. Yes, thank you and it comes in different sizes like I said, but also different covers you know, like there's like like they got a leather bound one there's a tweed there's all kinds of different looks so you can get ones for kids now so check out skin sketch wallet comm gets a great present for any of your artists friends. It's not too early for Christmas the other place you can go for with the holidays fast approaching here or summer at least fast approaching is Stuart in G books calm. That's the website you go to for Stuart in books calm and yes, go there and you can find out The best sketchbooks and art of books for video games and animation, of course, pretty much any any kind of form of media that has great visuals and concept development, art, things like that. That's the kind of books that Stewart indie books comm has. Go there, find those. Those are awesome gifts of course, I every time I go there, it's sort of like, I don't know, like Walmart or something, I end up with 100 bucks just for me. I feel like bought stuff for like Indiana Jones going on a crusade to go find some precious gems of knowledge. Yeah, it's just like that, Tony. So you're gonna walk out of there finding at least five things that you want and at least narrow that down to three and buy those Okay, you won't regret it. The other great thing about Stuart enji books and by the way, get on their mailing list. So while you're there, go to that website, click on their with their mailing list. You definitely want to get those emails. That's how Know when the new books are coming in, he is always sending updates about the new books that he just got from this convention or this Comic Con or wherever he's gone in the world. And so you know what the new stuff is. He also will give you updates about hey, I'm having a signing or something like that, like, Tony, you're doing a signing? Did you already do that for the airline line? Yeah, they just did a reprint of the art of Milan. And um, yeah, he invited me to his store. We haven't done it yet. But it's coming up once it gets a shipment in. And it gets shipments all the time. So I'm sure it'll be any week. Go get a nice COVID signature from Tony. That'll be fun. They're worth more than time. Yeah. And let's get into our great podcast tonight. Tony. Yeah, Tommy No, I started we actually talked about this a couple weeks ago, there was actually another podcast that we did and it was with Aaron Blaze, who is chomping at the bit Come on, I'm sure. And Aaron, we were talking to him and we started talking about the Florida studio. This is something that we all have in common is our Love and affinity for were our very first job in animation with the Disney MGM Studios Florida. That's how we all started there. We said we gotta get two guys on this podcast. And those two guys are Aaron Blaze. And Jim Jackson. Let's say, you guys guys bring it in now.

Unknown Speaker  4:26  

Hello. Hi guys. Hey,

Tom Bancroft  4:29  

Jim, where are you? Where are you from? Where you were, where you calling in from right now

Jim Jackson  4:32  

I am in Connecticut. I currently work for Blue Sky Studios. And for the last three months we've been working from home and I actually am a big fan. I like not having to drive an hour to work and an hour back. I just love your

Tom Bancroft  4:46  

tears and your Coronavirus fan. You're like this going? Hey, there's a few more years. Yeah, right. There's a there's a positive. Tim's interesting because he's I've always sensed that, Jim, that you're, you're somebody who's very social. I've always known this stuff. You're, you're a talker, like you do talk, you can lay it down but but at the same time you have a shy side and you kind of like to have your quiet time. I think I can voice my charm really.

Jim Jackson  5:12  

I think the older I get the more I enjoy my own time, but I've always had I've always had that dual side. I like to be with people, but I also like to sort of, you know, take walks by myself because I enjoy the company. It's very ironic.

Tom Bancroft  5:27  

Yeah, well, then Aaron blaze you've been on many times. He is sensitive.

Aaron Blaise  5:32  

I have run. I think it's like my ninth or 10th time or something.

Tom Bancroft  5:36  

Yeah, this is while you're.

You're gonna get a jacket real soon.

So we're here in Florida. Right. What part of Florida Are you in?

Aaron Blaise  5:48  

Sunny DeLand, Florida. It's right near the sea.

I need to land Yeah. DeLand, DeLand,

LA and de la nd delay at

Tom Bancroft  5:59  

a time Okay, now Okay, cuz this is gonna segue into what we're talking about tonight. How close is that to Orlando?

Aaron Blaise  6:05  

35 miles north. I'm actually in next to Orlando so I'm actually about maybe 50 miles from the studio.

Tom Bancroft  6:15  

Oh man, do you go back ever? 

Aaron Blaise  6:18  

Never, Idon't live in the past man.

Tom Bancroft  6:23  

Right now you make some cry. Well and here's what we're gonna lay down for the for the audience's listening tonight. We're going to we're going to talk a little bit about studio that we are very fond of. If you are in animation and have been in animation for a while, you've probably heard legend of the Disney Orlando Florida studio, that where we made features and shorts and things like that. And it's it's been closed down. No spoilers here. Everybody usually knows that to be closed many years ago, but it's where a lot of young artists got their start. And some of the best Disney features were made there. Can we say that? Yes, and but some of You may not know this story, so let's kind of start at the beginning. Right guys? how did how did the Florida studio come about? What was its purpose?

Unknown Speaker  7:10  

While you're rich, okay, let's

Tom Bancroft  7:12  

start with you, Eric. Like, how did you first hear about it and get involved in the Florida studio?

Aaron Blaise  7:18  

Well, it's funny I went I was, I went to school for illustration. I wasn't at an animation school. And I needed a job. I was in my second year at school. And so Disney I found out was coming to Ringling I went to the Ringling College of Art Design they were coming to interview for this big internship that they were doing in California was the first of its kind. First time they've ever gone to non animation schools. They're trying to recruit people that could draw and they wanted to see if they could teach them how to animate and they were doing all of this in preparation for this new studio that was opening in Orlando in 1989. Why did the internship in 1988 I learned how to animate and Lo and behold, by the end of the internship, I was hired, got a job offer. And I went back to school and went to school for another year and then started up the studio in 1989, April 17 of 1989. And we're part

Tom Bancroft  8:15  

of the opening day group. You were one of the first

Aaron Blaise  8:18  

point. Yeah, yep. Yeah, you're there. You You both were there with me. And they reach out if you guys remember the original intent of that studio was for us just to do Mickey Donald goofy featurettes, remember?

Tom Bancroft  8:30  

Yeah, sure. Yeah. That's that whole thing? Yeah. Yeah. And here's a good place, I want to jump in and just give a little background. So in that, they were going to build this place called Disney MGM Studios. It was going to be a new theme park. And Disney had made a deal with MGM. And that's why it was called Disney MGM Studios. They didn't have enough properties at the time, which is funny now looking back because he has a ton of properties and more properties than anybody, but they didn't have enough to really have this sort of legacy. Hollywood style, because also it was going to look like the 40s. Right? And yeah, the theme of the end there was no Disney Studios except for animation. And so they weren't doing live action till much later. And so they had to make that deal with MGM and that's why Wizard of Oz and things like that had a presence at Disney MGM. And so they went to have an animation studio by the way, it was going to look like the Hyperion studio they were going to make it and I don't know why they didn't do that. Seemed like a obvious fit. But they ended up just making a tour that you could go through to see the animators But before that, it wasn't supposed to be that way. And that's that's where Aaron comes in literally is because what it was was it was going while it was being planned by Imagineering. They were pitching animatronics being they're acting like they're animating and they were going to probably have suits on and look like old Knights 40s you know, tour guides here and there. And some tour guides. So sort of say what it was All About, and I and this is a rumor anyway, early on and one of those pitches Michael Eisner was like he was the president of the company at the time. And he said, Well, why are we having animatronics and stuff? Would it be cheaper just to get real people and make actual cartoons and make it a working and they were all like, Oh, no, it's not a working studio. They were pitching it as like no, no, this this pretend thing. And we're just right. Yeah, no, no, he's like, Well, no, make it a real studio. Why would we do that? And to him, he's like, that's a no brainer. And then that what ended up happening was of course, that blew it all up. And that's about the time that Aaron who was in the very first internship to get people to go to the studio to work at it. They were in a mad scramble because here's where we were in history. This was right about when Oliver and company had just come out before Little Mermaid before Who Framed Roger Rabbit even or right around that time. Exactly. And so they just haven't,

Aaron Blaise  10:53  

they're still making. Yeah, there is still making Oliver and company when I was in the in the internship. I'll never bank I guess I remember. Remember sitting in the hallway just listening to Oliver. Oh, Oliver.

Oliver. Oh, because I sat outside editorial, and I just heard that over and over

in my dreams Oh, you remember Michael heizer in the early days too, he wanted us to wear a smocks like that was that was it? I did.

Tom Bancroft  11:26  

Yeah, it was gonna be a costume. It's a little berets and look like artists realized slick that way Yeah. So again we'll get to you in just a second but that but so we were at Tony and I were in the second wave of internships and so like Aaron said he was in the first one and that was during all of our ours was during Little Mermaid. And so they're about in the middle of Little Mermaid if I remember right, so we were 19 it was still 19 is beginning in in 1988. I think is about when was it was a nine week internship. It was a big one. I was like what 15 or 20 in our internship and ours was I want to say about it was like 10 Cal Arts and 10 non Cal Arts. So like all the other schools around that, so about 20 and so I think ours was a little bit bigger than Aaron's because and basically it was because they were they were sort of trying to figure it out as they went they like wow, we just did this internship but we didn't get that many people and and so we need more people and I think they heart did they hire most everybody in your internship? Aaron?

Aaron Blaise  12:25  

Yeah, I think they I think they I think there's one or two that they did. I think there's eight or nine in our group. And okay, I know they are internship is only six weeks. And so it was just like went by so fast.

Tom Bancroft  12:37  

Yeah, right. What now we heard about your internship when we got to Disney, and this was during Disney California. Again, while they're making a little mermaid, because they would say yeah, we did this other one and just finished but it was six weeks and really didn't quite work out. There was a little half baked, we had to do a little bit more training and stuff like that after we hired them. Because Dan Gracie was in that group and he ended up doing cleanup on the right The Little Mermaid while you went home and went back to school to finish that up, then Tony and I started in orange. And our answer was it was designed specifically to get higher ease for the Disney MGM Studios, Florida. And they just kept expanding. They didn't say like, at first it was like, we only need eight people out of this 20 and then that we hear rumor halfway through, oh, no, it's 10 or 12. just kept going. And it was very stressful because I don't know about you. But we knew that there was a job on the line when we were in that internship. So ours was a nine week internship. And every week, it was like we were all these other students who we're getting to be friends with and work really closely with. We also know Are they going to get hired or am I going to get hired and who's gonna get

Aaron Blaise  13:47  

like, cuz when we did ours, there was no that no one had ever said anything about a job. They said if we did well enough, they had a 16 week internship that we Could that we could go back and go into and get more refined? Yeah. Interesting. That's that never happened. I think. Yeah, we got. So I was hoping to get the bigger internship. And then at the end of it, I got a job offer. So it was cool.

Tom Bancroft  14:14  

Wow. And going back to Florida for where you were from. So that's great. Now, Jim, you came in. You were much later right was How about 99 1999?

Jim Jackson  14:22  

I actually remember the first wave when Disney was going around to different schools, though, because I went to school with Tony West. So you guys probably remember. And we both illustration majors also. And he was a big Disney fan. And I was just like, I go with them. I go, that sounds fantastic. Go for it. I'm going to be an illustrator because I went to school to be an illustrator.

Tom Bancroft  14:43  

And I saw the animator.

Jim Jackson  14:46  

Yeah, well, I said, Hey, I trained to do this. I'm going to be an illustrator. I'm going to do sports illustrated covers and children's books, and that's what I want to do. And then I did it for nine months, actually actually had illustrations studios where they would send salesmen out and bring jobs back to the artist. And it was an absolutely miserable job. And I thank God for that opportunity. Because if it had been mediocre, I might have stayed there. But it was so bad. I got a phone call from Tony when I was there and he goes, Hey, I just got offered a job and effects and it's so exciting. And I'm challenged every day and I'm thinking, what the heck am I doing? I'm going to broaden my horizons. And I decided right then that I was going to try for the internship. Now the problem I had was my parents had moved at the time from Canton, Ohio, to Flint, Michigan. And you know, when you move you throw things out. So what I had done was thrown all my quick gestural drawings out and just kept my final drawings. So I basically started from scratch and I had like, you know, two or three months to go to the zoo, and I just drew like crazy. So it was it was definitely a challenge, but I put my mind to it. And I started and it was interesting. Hear you guys talk about your experience with the hiring promises and we didn't have a number on ours. We had eight people in our internship and they just said no, there's no guarantees for hiring. That's what they told us. So there was a lot of, you know, competition and we knew not everyone would be hired. And at our end of ours, we had three people hired and eventually of that group of eight, we had six that were hired full time, but there was definitely It was definitely a competitive nature, which made it a little awkward is like, ours is 12 weeks at the time. It was a 12 week job interview, and it was that it was in the Orlando, Florida. I was in the Orlando studio too. So and what I find interesting too, at the time, but I think we had like 60 people there at the time. And I think Tony, you'd already gone to California. Tom, you just got promoted, I think on on being the beast assistant, I remember correctly. But there was also an opportunity for some guys who didn't get that promotion to go out to California. So we lost about 567 guys that went out. They Mosaic, Lou Dela Rosa, Dickie green, they all went left so they were only there briefly. So suddenly, all the interns were had we had desks on the floor. We wanted to fill the floor out. So It was kind of we didn't have the little corner in the back of the of the place. But I felt also because it was such a small place that you knew everyone so fast. And I only been barely been open for a year. So you had people who didn't have a lot of deep roots there, you know, like Aaron was from Berlin, or from Florida at least. But a lot of people were from all over the country. So you you had a really interesting flavor the studio, which was everyone was friends, everybody else. And I remember I'd meet people outside the studio and they go, Hey, we should hang out. And I'm like, No, I don't have room for you because I have my friends already from work. Like, I know, I don't need you. And I actually know going into this podcast, I talked to my wife about you know, sort of Stephanie Stephanie, we know her lovely lady and personal wife of mine. But I asked her what her reflections to do was to and for us as a friend, but it seemed like it wasn't intimate enough.

Aaron Blaise  17:54  

He's my wife of mine.

Jim Jackson  17:57  

But I asked her what her perspective it was and she said You know, the thing was neat for her was they would have like cropping night and the spouses would come in wives would come in and all her friends were like from the studio too. And so it was like, either like, I know, she was friends with your wife, Jen. And she said to Christy Finney, and you know, saw and Teresa and and so it was it was an extension. It was a very interesting place. And I think a lot of that went back to max Howard, because he really incorporated the families into the studio experience. And so you know, we'd have we'd have overtime hours and all the families would come in and they would hang out with you. And it really felt a connection and I didn't realize how unique That was until I've done other places. And example I was at blue sky and my son at the time he was a big dancer, we dance a lot. I like to dance. So I wanted my wife who I love doesn't dance, so I wanted somebody to dance with me. So I bring my son and I went into the person at Blue Sky to covering my son and well How old is he? He's 15. Now he can't go He said he's 15 years old. He has to be over 21 So, but back then you had you know Christmas parties. There were kids. I think everybody Karen had something like kids at the time. So we all had like the blaze kids. And we, there was part of the family. And so they grew up around all these people. And I think that whole idea that everyone moved in, it was an established place. It made a really interesting atmosphere. So beyond just being a working workplace, it really was friendzone. And I'll just tell you one example from a friend of ours, who was a background painter. He He came to my desk one time he had been sick, and he really had to stay home because he was truly sick. And he started feeling better and he said, we had these desks where you'd had like behind you was like, where you could stack of paper and stuff, but it was also a place for your friends to come and sit behind you and talk while you're while you're working. Yeah, man. And he was he started flooding so you know, I, I was sick, but I just wanted to be at work. There's so much more fun at work than being home and like being growing up in school and always wanting to be sick, sick, stay home, like he didn't really want to stay home because all your friends were at work. It was such a great, a great

Tom Bancroft  19:55  

place. That was what and that's a great point because I remember those days. And it was the exact same thing I got. I got viral meningitis. Okay. I don't know if you guys remember this, but it was. It was later Tony was long gone. This was kind of leading up to me leaving Disney and my brother were happier. No is john Henry? Okay, so I was working on the short film john Henry. I just come off of Milan and and then I also took on a Roger Rabbit to test and I did a little scene in that and then I was and they called and said, Can you do part of Tarzan and I was doing Tarzan at night and on weekends, so on overtime I was doing Tarzan. During the day I was doing john Henry and I just finished who from the rendre and he got sick. What a surprise. weird. Weird after doing like a year of overtime. I'm mooshu Yeah. And so yeah, I did get sick. I got a sore throat and anyway, I went home and I remember with this sore throat and stuff. I had still got into work that morning because I just love to go into work I couldn't imagine not going. And even though I had this horrible sore throat, I go home. And then of course, Jen, you know, I'm in the dark and My head hurts. And Tony and I, we've said this before on the podcast, Tony, I've never had a headache before. And so this was my first headache ever. And so I had to have the lights off. My wife comes home, and she's like, Why? Why are you in the dark? I'm like, Ah, my head really hurts. I don't know why. And it helps to have the lights off. I think I'm going to take a nap. And it'll be bad. It's like red flag. Red Flag. Yeah. And I'm like, and I'll go back to work after that. Yeah, I was just planning on going back to the nap. And then I was going to go back because I just love being there. And of course, we went to the doctor and it was meningitis, and you almost spread the

Aaron Blaise  21:41  

virus. Studio. That's awesome. Yeah,

Tom Bancroft  21:44  

yeah. Yeah. Give her real. Give her like that. I want to back up. Anyway, I want to back up and just talk a little bit about you mentioned max Howard. Jim. Yeah. And so going back a little bit to the beginning, infancy of the studio. So it turned very quickly from We were always like part attraction, and had to provide a certain thing for as an attraction for the parks. But we were also, and this is where we lived and died. We were a working studio. And we really took that seriously. We did not want to be known as an attraction even though we were but they hired and one of the things that really helped that, I think, is that they hired one of the guys that was like, I'm trying to think of Max Howard what his position was on, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, I think it was like a production manager or something like that. He had just come off a Who Framed Roger Rabbit and ran in England. He was at Richard Williams studio, Richard Williams studio. He ran the London crew out there and people really loved him. He made a good impression on the Disney executives. So they hired this guy from London to come over to Florida, and really run the studio. And you would have thought that max Howard had run, you know, 1020 Studios before he was so polished at it. He was so good at it. He was so good. With the crew, with the artists, he made everybody feel he created a lot of that atmosphere that we're talking about now that family friendly atmosphere, there was parties and, you know, engaging things and things where he was trying to get people to communicate and talk and he would walk the floors and he wound wasn't always locked in his office. You could see him he had a real open door policy. He was a big part of it. And then there was other people too, Paul crossy, who came in who was kind of a training guy ran a lot of the the early internships and things. Frank Gladstone also was a big so they're, they're starting to become this management that wasn't really like management. And I think that's one of the key elements that we had there at the Florida studio. Yeah. Was I've never had a job since that. That was like that. No, no, I mean, I'm friends with it. I

Jim Jackson  23:49  

have a funny story about about maxtow. And I work with Rick's looter who's a guy we worked with in Florida for a lot of years and Rick's a really You know if when Rick was was tense, so whatever he does, if he's gonna learn Spanish to learn Spanish, I'm gonna learn guitar. So he said that kind of person and I always kind of admired that and Rick, but he was telling a story about max because Max is a guy who would cover for us a lot because we were like, literally like, it was like a dorm or Canada we were and we would use like a like, for instance, the Rococo Tony West. Tracy Lee, I think Joe Pepe was in there. They got caught in the great movie ride and taking a picture of the sculpture that Ruben Procopio his dad had just re sculpted of Humphrey Bogart. And like, so also think of his call in and they get called into the office and he's like, Hey guys, I got a call from you know, security. You are in a great mood, right? Don't do that. Again. He would be really soft on certain things. You wouldn't want to cross him again. But Rick, Rick was telling a story about and you're involved in this Tom because we had for a while we started playing street hockey over this. You are working. I think it was pretty sure it was you by your window and he did. Rick was a Canadian and loved hockey. Cuz he was intense about it in a slap shot and it hit the window and I believe you were working Tom and it smashed the first plane of the double plane window. And so max called him into his office and he gets manuals, Rick max can be great. But man, you did not want to cross max because max set aside, like, it's like, like a good parent, like, you know, you could have some leeway. And he said, What? He said something to max about how like, come on, Max, if we were playing cricket, you'd be the first guy out there. And he got in this grill and never brought it up again. Cuz he's like, he had a great way of like, he gave you a lot of freedom. He backed you up to have fun. You'd like we'd have rubberband fights. People will complain the tour and he'd say, hey, you just saw a historical moment. This goes back to the history of animation. Like Yeah, before us. Yeah, but the same time that Tex Avery lost his eye, man, but Rick was say when he did when he pushed him one time too many times. He's like, this is where you stop. And Rick said I never cross

Tom Bancroft  25:56  

max again. Yeah, I mean, raise your hand if you didn't see that side. to max at least once I know I did it and it was during a negotiation because we go in there especially as things got really heated in the animation industry and Jeffrey laughed and around that time I remember going in to negotiate with Max or him a little bit before that so was that the beginning and because eventually he gave that job up give somebody else Mary Kay I think it was and But anyway, I remember negotiating with him and he just got ice cold all of a sudden, and it was like that fun British cute, you know, nice guy.

Aaron Blaise  26:37  

Yeah. little cube inside. There was well, there was a challenge. I'll tell.

Tom Bancroft  26:43  

You could tell that there was a point that somebody in California his one of his bosses had said, you can only go this high. And when I hit that point and I was pushing for further, he was just like, it's not gonna happen. Yeah, you know, and I was just like, oh, okay, this is okay. I'll take less. Yeah.

Jim Jackson  27:04  

After he laughed, he said that he set the course for that studio that it always made. Maintain a bit of Max in it because I think the way out again he had he was a great leader because he knew where to pull the strings and where to let loosen up the grip of time. So I thought that was great.

Tom Bancroft  27:21  

So in the beginning that just to set again, a little bit more of a picture for the audience, when the studio first got set up, there was a certain amount of what they call a kind of gray hair veterans that they took from transported from the the Burbank studio and move them over to be with. Basically the rest of the crew was all very young right out of college like we're talking about that was all of us. We were the right out of an internship, starting to work on features and shorts and things like that and It was this it was set up to do just shorts at first. But as the the Burbank studio got more and more behind on some of their features and Rescuers Down Under being the first one that was happening during that time they decided Well, these guys are actually doing a really good job. We kind of proved ourselves on rollercoaster rabbit which was the very first Roger Rabbit short to be done in the Florida studio. And they liked it so much the quality was there. And they said, well, let's start giving them Let's give him a little piece of Rescuers Down Under and We had guys like when I mentioned the gray hairs that were kind of the mentor figures, the older, more experienced guys that were at the studio. It was Mark and Mark, when was the old time? You know, he was the granddaddy. Right. He was the main guy. And for him I think it was a matter of I want to go and you know, kind of prove them.

Aaron Blaise  28:43  

Become a huge fish in a very tiny pond.

Tom Bancroft  28:45  

Yes, exactly. I was just about to say that because that's I think, and I think we all know that's what he wanted. I mean, I think he was. He was, you know, tired of being there probably. Yeah. I think he wanted to break away from the Burbank studio and have a fresh start and Get sort of an opportunity and he did that. That's what's great about it is that mark got what he wanted for sure. And well does he set

Aaron Blaise  29:09  

the bar for everybody? Yeah, he really, really did. And we all learn so much from them.

Tom Bancroft  29:13  

There isn't one of us and we can times this by 20 that weren't affected by Mark can creatively and artistically in our careers.

Jim Jackson  29:25  

He can when he likes your work, he felt extra good. Like if he got off on it. liked it.

Tom Bancroft  29:34  

It was a great system, wasn't it? I mean, we we were being trained by all these mentor people clean up they had, you know, we had Jane Jane I forget her name to 10 Phil phylo. Barnhart was there in the beginning. And we had Dave Stephen was another mentor an animator very typical that they brought in from the Burbank studio. And these guys have worked on Little Mermaid they've worked on you know, a lot of these, you know, Fox in the hound and they went back to the filmation days even before Disney, many of them and to be able To hear their stories, it really grounded the studio in a tradition that we wouldn't have known otherwise. But then we took that

Aaron Blaise  30:16  

while I was working. I was working at a mark Haussler member Mark house. Oh yeah, this first film was it was yellow submarine.

Tom Bancroft  30:26  

No way. Wonder if he remembers

on the consumer side when we knew him,

Jim Jackson  30:34  

the converse side of the of the old gray beard of Mark was Mark was probably 32. At the time we thought he was old but he was he was in the middle. But the point about Aaron that's how I became friends with Aaron during my internship because I always felt like he was less threatening than anybody else because he was like, seemed like he was two years younger than me. And he was great, but I was like, I didn't feel like I go, Hey, Aaron, I would feel you know, cuz I feel sorry temple or, you know Cooper Schmitz a great guy but if you're not, you're not ready for coopersmith you can throw you off a little bit like what's so Aaron was one of his guys just like he didn't really seem like an animal because he was younger than me. I mean, but it was so funny because like I could talk to him. It was like, it was approachable and I think you would you were you K you were just working on feeding the beast stuff at the time. I first got it I was gonna say we worked on before our office rockers was the very first production work I ever had. And then hold on to being the beast after that

Aaron Blaise  31:32  

was funny it was just it's off topic, a little bit of just thinking about all these times that we're Talking about it feels like yeah, it was a long time ago but doesn't feel that long ago. Yeah. But I sit here with my son now and I do these live streams twice a week and my son's 30. And, and Dustin was just born when Jim and I met Yeah, I mean, like he was a month before.

Jim Jackson  31:58  

Yeah, I got there in September of 19. born August,

Aaron Blaise  32:02  

September. No he's born September 16.

Jim Jackson  32:05  

So he's born a week before I got there.

Tom Bancroft  32:08  

You guys have been friends for like 15 years. Well

yeah Cuz you don't like each other last 15 years yeah. Oh my God,

Jim Jackson  32:21  

love. You known each other for 30

Tom Bancroft  32:22  

years that was like 15

Jim Jackson  32:25  

or 15 and you had to

Tom Bancroft  32:26  

set it up the right time. You gotta get people to latch on. I did I just I

Jim Jackson  32:30  

like the pie. I just figured artists didn't have good math skills.

Tom Bancroft  32:32  

All right. So I want to I want to jump in and give this a little bit of direction again and just to say that for the listeners, yes. So the here's the here's the chronological chronology of the film's so we the very first thing we did was rollercoaster rabbit that Roger Rabbit short, we immediately got into features and doing little bits or pieces, not too little but little pieces of the films and so we did some pressures down under Then we went on to help me out why am I forgetting Aladdin feeding the beast is the beast. Oh beat NB sorry, the beast. chunk of that. And Mark did a lot about and so a lot of Belle was came out of Florida and then Aladdin and we did a big chunk of that and as we went we were doing bigger and bigger chunks. More important versus like two minutes. I was three minutes and five minutes then a whole sequence line. Then we went up to lunch. Lion King was the big one where we did all of we had our own sequence. It was kind of our trial to kind of see well, wow, they're doing good stuff. Let's see him do something all by themselves. And that was the characters are. Oh, yeah, yeah. And so yeah, you're right and we because starting with Mark we we get a whole character you know like Did all Jasmine I'm trying to think of the first one Jasmine I guess. Yeah, he did all Bell and likewise Aaron did Raja the tiger and so between mark and Aaron especially, we started getting into where yeah characters were the whole character would be at down in Florida. And so a lot of the sequences were built around that that we would get. And then Lion King we got cat went to be a king and so then art direction was more involved and that's where Rick Sluiter I think right he was pretty heavily involved with Chris and works with Ricky. It's Chris Sanders. And so that started kind of test us out. And then finally we get to our own feature film, which was Milan It was our first film that we did completely out of the studio. Oh and I skipped Pocahontas. Sorry we did Pocahontas. Yeah. And then we did move on and that was start to finish out of Florida. Pretty much. Some of the Story was done in California. And then you skipped trail trail mix up right. Another Roger Rabbit show there was a trail mix up short. You're a rollercoaster rabbit. I mean, office rockers was another short so there was a couple shots in there too. A couple of shorts. And then let's see it were up to Milan. And they love Tarzan. Very little done. I think I was an animator that worked on

okay. cleanup right? Yeah,

Jim Jackson  35:05  

I did. I did those characters. I was working on it too, right. But I was working on Emperor's New Groove when it was called Tim in the sun and shelved. And then because I was shell was I was was working with Ruben Aquino on that. And then they put a few of us on on Tarzan.

Tom Bancroft  35:25  

So by the way, I skipped over to somewhere in there is Fantasia continued. That's right and I always forget that all our Russian friends We're working. Working on that, right? Yeah. On what was the well sequence the flying wells? I can't remember.

Aaron Blaise  35:40  

Yeah. Sergei.

Tom Bancroft  35:41  

Sergei was working on that femicide. Oh yeah. Oh no, I'm Rocco and Darko I think Sasha did and anyway I thought so yeah, I think it was all four of them and anyway

and then finally yeah so then we got Milan after Milan then we were on our own track and and then did what's up to that Brother Bear

Unknown Speaker  36:04  

corner so we look Lilo and Stitch

Tom Bancroft  36:07  

Milan stitch. I wasn't here for that I left really low instead,

Unknown Speaker  36:09  

which I was glad because I got your character.

Tom Bancroft  36:13  

Thank you. I was gonna supervise a character and Jim ended up doing it. Yeah. And then and then the last one was Brother Bear. And Aaron directed Brother Bear. How can we forget that? Oh, you didn't mention me from Milan. Thanks, Tom. Oh, sorry. Back when we did Milan, let me back up again. Tony direct

Aaron Blaise  36:31  

only paved the way.

Tom Bancroft  36:34  

So Wow. Yeah, so that's like the girth of all the film. We're talking about 1909 the opening of the studio all the way to what 2004 is when it closed, right, right. So all that production after that time, 15 years the studio is open, and we became that studio became one of the most productive and really art artistically high quality studio of all the Disney Studios because that there got to be a point when the you know, Florida studio was like the first studio. This is worth mentioning too. When we first did the Opening Day ceremony, they did a whole ribbon cutting. There was a lot of press there. They invited The surviving nine old man at the time plus a couple other old gray haired guys from waltz day, were there five of them. Yeah, it was more than that. I think if you count like Jimmy McDonald, the sound effects guy and some of those guys out there Kenny work, you know an honor Yeah 5590 man plus five of the nine old men plus a few. Yeah, anyway, there was like seven old guys. And they, they did that. They did the ribbon cutting, they put their hands in the you know, and they they kind of were there to bless the studio to this younger generation because that studio represented like the very first Disney Studios Be open since the Burbank facility open. I think it was something like 50 years before that. So Disney hadn't had another studio for like 50 years until the Disney MGM Studios Orlando, Florida studio open. And then after that they got so because Lion King came out and it was a mega hit. They started opening. They had a studio in Paris, Paris, France. They had one in Australia that started doing some some work here and there. They had a Tokyo studio. They had the It started to really branch out. But then as times changed in animation, they started closing those studios and in 2004 it was that computer Tony, it was that darn computer. They closed down Orlando, Florida. To do

Aaron Blaise  38:29  

a big part of it was we negotiated ourselves right out of jobs to Yes, we really did become commodities and those paychecks got higher and higher. And one of the problems was and this is what happened our studio is that if you didn't have any content to go on to, you're just burning money and downtime and I know that when I know when we were making I don't know what it was like for you, Tony. A few Access to the books but they gave us access to the books on further bear. And when we were at our peak, we were burning about $900,000 a week in salaries. Oh, I'm sure we had everybody on. Oh yeah. And so yeah, so if you don't have the content You're You know, you're just you're basically building a building burning a million bucks a week for nothing. And so and that's what was happening was that the they were they were running out of they couldn't feed the beast

Tom Bancroft  39:24  

yeah Yeah, and I remember that remember we had some major gaps. It's funny that we did so much work and worked on so many features and so many shorts right? Over only 15 years yet Do you guys remember there was like a year where some people had no word? Yeah. Oh yeah Jeanette I It wasn't me. I think it was right before Milan if I remember right it was it between Pocahontas and

Jim Jackson  39:48  

when we weren't working on a character or I got I was always good on special projects. Excited to work on something for Tokyo Disneyland or Sega Genesis. I think you guys worked on that. I just worked on it. There's those kind of fill the gaps, fill the gap jobs. Those are kind of fun. But yeah, like I remember working on when you left and I was working on the grand council woman and she totally changed from a young princess to a old elderly lady. So I would be drawing all day long and outside my home in the in the area that guys are playing games and it's just like,

Tom Bancroft  40:19  

yeah there's tournaments.

Jim Jackson  40:21  

Yeah. going on. So crazy. For one time ball. Yeah one time. Remember for text ball. That's only our game. We only we know. But I've been one time walking in after it was before trail trail mix up started and we were in downtime and mosey on in late and Tama bath comes right down the hallway and goes we're going to typhoon, typhoon lagoon to test it out or Blizzard beach right? All day. Yeah, I did a pass I got my bathing suit. I spent the whole day in Blizzard beach. I was my day. We got paid. I got paid. So it was like yeah Well, we weren't getting paid much then they probably didn't care. But you're right when the salaries went up, then suddenly that all that

Aaron Blaise  41:01  

all changed after Lion King. Yeah,

Tom Bancroft  41:03  

it did. It got a lot more serious. And I think we got more serious too because the the competition level went up, right we, I think as a group, we were all competing with each other a little bit more. And of course, we all were getting lawyers and so we were trying to negotiate and now you're starting to go well, this guy in California is making this and I so I think I should be making that too. And it was like I was in California at that. Time and I remember being in the middle of that in California, it was no different. Everybody was talking about what you know, Joe over here is so and so's

Aaron Blaise  41:36  

make a cake and Glen and

Tom Bancroft  41:40  

it's a real names. Sorry. Yeah.

There was a lot of talk. Let's just say it was like, you know, lunchtime fodder, but but Let's go back a little bit because I you know, there's that's not the nostalgic stuff. That's not the stuff that we really loved about the Florida studio. What we really loved about it was that it was a family and I remember some of the parties. Now Jim, you've always you've done a great job of documenting a A lot of the history of the Florida studio you created like a little website for, for just for employees, right just for people who were part of it to access photos from parties and things like that, like the Florida studio had the best Halloween parties didn't they? Everybody got into it. I mean, I remember some years where, you know, and these kinds of, you know, we're all creative types and there was, you know, men, women artists like Chris was thrown into it. Oh my god, what's

Jim Jackson  42:33  

a Halloween party? Sure, right because When I got there in 1990 they weren't these like stores that would pop up for Halloween and you can go get any outfit you want and like literally there there weren't a lot of adult Halloween parties it wasn't very common thing so we would go to Universal Studios in the backline and we did and Tom you were in this one with me We did the village people right you were the Native American and I was the sailor we A lot of us went to like Universal Studios go Can we rent something from wasn't a costume shop we just it was like the last few We put these things together and

Tom Bancroft  43:04  

I was the last one to join the YMCA for that because I you couldn't find somebody dropped out i think is what it was. They never asked you to be part of Yeah, it was like the day before so I didn't know the dance. You guys had rehearsed it Remember you guys showing up with this amazing headdress because I thought you were just like, oh, let's just find something that looks like an Indian. I was gonna have like a feather it was gonna be like really stupid. And then all at the last minute you have this professional headdress that like went the length of my body. Always. Way down and practically all these feathers and stuff. It was amazing.

Jim Jackson  43:39  

I also put on some spray tan to kind of darken up to make it more authentic. I did and it was really blotchy I remember very blotchy with results here in orange Guess it was not a very good look for you

Tom Bancroft  43:50  

know spray tan really wasn't a science quite yet

Jim Jackson  43:52  

but it was so that was it that was kind of before now it's like really common thing you have these adult costume parties but that was not but that but the whole thing you were given Added late but the funny one was, the way it started was we were throwing ideas out because it was like the day or two before Halloween. And there's a guy named Jeff Dutton. And Jeff Dutton was a guy who was a machine. He was part robot. Yeah, right. He could just crank through work and so he was in effects and they started talking about doing something and he just perked up and wanted to do it. And so he was like, well, so Jeff when Jeff energy came up with a guy who would never want to do something like that, we all kind of do. just joined in. And another guy like that was very temple because very temple loved Halloween and one time Aaron and I went as Hooters girls remember that era that was in that and then we had this great idea. We had this great. We had the We had a festival first thing in the morning to come in and your costumes and we said let's go to

Unknown Speaker  44:45  

Hooters girls.

Jim Jackson  44:48  

And we all went in the car we had our wigs on and Tom Labatt sister worked at Universal and so she had a costume shop. She had Big wigs and we you know I had this like

Aaron Blaise  44:58  

we had the stocking I had the worst. I had the worst I had. I had the worst it looked like it looked like Carol.

Jim Jackson  45:04  

Carol Channing. Diamonds are girl's best. Fran anyway, so we get there we're driving to Hooters it was it was only one Hooters in Orlando on Kirkman road. And remember parking the car and I remember turning to Aaron going like, this seemed like a much better idea on the way here. You Same thing so we walked in as the Hooters girls, every guy in the restaurant in our guts but every girl's like, Oh, this is so great. We got a shot with all the waitresses. And that was all because we A very conservative user, very temple was really into that and he was like he's pretty mild mannered guy. Yeah, he came once as Michael Jackson with with merit. He would always

Tom Bancroft  45:44  

Yeah, yeah, he really woke up When you put a costume on that's very, very quiet animator. Yeah. You put up a character and he just the actor in him came out. It was amazing.

Jim Jackson  45:57  

He's been when berry cook came as the 10th old man, and he stayed for the whole day.

Tom Bancroft  46:01  

Yes. Oh great. That was awesome. Not tenfold. I got a bitter animator like basically you kids don't know what you're doing. That's right. We used to we used to do it on sharpen our pencils with our mouths.

Jim Jackson  46:15  

You would not you try all you could but he would not drop out of character and one of

Tom Bancroft  46:18  

the one of the best stores i think is about Our good buddy Bruce Johnson, who one year came as the beast was that was that in Burbank? California

Aaron Blaise  46:28  

it wasn't like he didn't California and Florida

Tom Bancroft  46:31  

okay that's right but he when he came he made this costume handmade this costume of bees from beating the beasts and the first time he did it was after beating the bees came out so that Halloween and and the thing that you have to know about various that he doesn't have any legs Bruce Bruce, Bruce Bruce, Bruce Johnson as that he doesn't have any legs and so he He's able to create these like animal you know, the the animal legs that kind of go back the wrong way and stuff like that, you know, like Yeah, what do you

Unknown Speaker  46:58  

area?

Tom Bancroft  46:59  

Okay like yeah legs. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you cannot figure it out. Look at him and you're like How's he doing that?

Aaron Blaise  47:06  

Yeah, yeah what's his because Bruce Oh is he wasn't in a wheelchair he had artificial legs and he had wear long pants. Yeah, so a lot of the people for years, you know, he walked with a cane just thought he had, you know, maybe a back problem. And, you know, that was it. They had no idea that he was missing, you know, his legs. And so when he came with those dog legs, they could figure that out. And oh, yeah, I remember

Tom Bancroft  47:34  

seeing it and I knew I knew Bruce and I still couldn't figure it out. I'm like, What the heck

he was brilliant. Great. animator never knew that the guy didn't have legs. It was

Jim Jackson  47:47  

I also remember one time when Bruce was in Florida and he is he had to have worked on his legs, artificial legs and he had been in his wheelchair which is so odd. And no one said a thing to him. This act like it was totally normal until Aaron walked in and goes, forget something today, Bruce, the only person who could come in here every day with a wheelchair. To the thing, but you made an offhanded comment to him and he was like, you're the only person who mentioned the fact that I don't have my legs today.

Aaron Blaise  48:14  

I used to I asked him, I asked him if his legs are in the shop

Jim Jackson  48:19  

or something like that, but you mentioned

Tom Bancroft  48:21  

story better. Yeah, yeah. He used to call it Call it getting small you know you take your legs off and because that's where his kids looked at it they like daddy small now and then he would literally crawl his hands yeah that's how it's played with his kids on the rug and stuff like yeah and there Yeah, yeah. And they were like kids small daddy so they could play. Well it so yeah, I want to get to some funny stories and stuff So get queued up on that, guys, but I will say that Yeah, there's never been and that's why there's so many people that worked at the Florida studio that have such fond memories. There's no doubt about it that it was like the highlight of our lives. Yeah. Anybody that worked there, I can't think of one person that wouldn't say that. Because it was a family. Literally, we had like Tony said we had some some people from California that were they experienced kind of older crowd That, that became our mentors. They really were the people that were there to train us and also spew out some amazing work to inspire us to especially Mark Ken. And but then Alex Cooper Schmidt did the same and Barry temple and we had some really strong people and then Aaron soon became part of that crew For many of us, and so, but then meanwhile we're all right out of school for all young we all a lot of us were just had girlfriends or just getting married. There was so many weddings, yeah, within those first say five years, and then so many births in the next say three to five years. And so all of our kids grew up together. Yeah, and I still Yeah, remember and this was unfortunately before they started doing like at the end of the Disney and Pixar I guess started it right where they'd say, film babies or what do they call production?

Aaron Blaise  50:05  

production babies? Yeah. And

Tom Bancroft  50:07  

they would list all the babies and unfortunately they didn't do it back then. Because I've you know, my girls sail missed out on that, unfortunately, because we should have done it on Milan, but I guess it started right after Yeah, probably with Toy Story I'm not sure. But anyway, that's made that cemented so we're all going through the same things and life at the same time.

Jim Jackson  50:30  

I'll add one thing to that because I think it was unique to and I and I didn't really experience this and someone mentioned it about the difference between say the California studio and the Florida studio and I'd be curious if If Tony was even in later years felt the same way but what I didn't I never wanted to have building I go out to when I would go i was i was like flowers trick I think was called flowers, whatever, whatever it was me. So you had that and those were kind of basically warehouses right and you had like the building. I was in Before Pocahontas I went out for a couple weeks to kind of prep before the thing went on. And it was all a building all animators you might have a few key assistance like a was named Berg. They put out the guy who was to work with Glenn all day so gave birthday birth, so he was there. Bill Berg whenever he was there, some that will burn, Bill Berg. Anyway, I met him once. But anyway, it was mostly animators, right and so everyone's demarcated and You go to Florida, and you'd go out on the porch to eat lunch, you'd have a guy who was a PA from effects. And you'd have Barry cook and you'd have a guy from effects and Mary kooser was from Chuck barbers and back so you had all this cross pollination of departments. Yeah. So So you'd go out there and like, like, say Tom lebeouf would be at story. He's been months out there. He said he commented a lot. So Florida because I think was partly because we all grew as an internship together. And you'd all do the same program. But then like Chuck bomberos say I want to be a background painter. So he would go a different direction but we were still friends. And so you had this that made that dynamic even more so that

Aaron Blaise  51:57  

so that made it even tighter. Exactly, no departmental boundaries whatsoever. And And then the plus the fact that we all came from the same place this internship with the exception of about 5% of the studio. And

Tom Bancroft  52:12  

we're friends with ink and paint people I mean in California that's across the street and you never, ever saw People right I mean, yeah, but that's that was just a walk around the corner right. And I

Jim Jackson  52:23  

think when internships would come to all interns are coming like we have more people to play with or something. It's crazy. It's like, we can go to volleyball night or whatever.

Tom Bancroft  52:33  

Yeah Let's really freak them out and have fun. They were the rookie

Aaron Blaise  52:37  

for Tracy Lee used to send them across the entire property. Yes, good stuff.

Jim Jackson  52:43  

W 6464 mt yet come over to you today be running over there because on the other one they used to do teams they would they would do a thing I think it was happened to Elliot and I don't happen to Tony West but they would. You'd be on the glass and they will Do you were part of like you're saying as part of a it was traction, and especially early on, they would they would open it up till 11 o'clock at night. So if you're working overtime, there's people walking through Through by your desk if you were a desk, desk, desk by the glass until you went home to 11 o'clock, it was crazy. But they would do this thing where you would hide a sign on a desk. And so like, one I remember particularly was Elliott, who would look young anyway. And they put a sign by his desk and it said something like, Hey, I'm only 17 years old. I'm the youngest animator ever to start at Disney. I'm really nervous. Could you please knock on the window and give me some encouragement?

kind of look up in a wave and like, Hey, what's going on? Yeah. And then finally, there's a sign next to his glass and he finds it like, you know, it happened there was like the

Tom Bancroft  53:39  

reflection in the glass. Yeah. So as pointed toward the audience, and away from Ella, so He couldn't see it. But it probably saw reflected eventually. And I don't know if we really said that for the audience. But that's that was a big part of the the Florida studio was that it was a tour a working tour. And people would come in groups of, I don't know, 15 or so every 20 minutes or so every half hour or so, and they would walk through and they're they're up a little bit higher than us. We were a subset a little bit lower than the tour. And there was big glass walls if you can imagine floor to ceiling glass walls, and we were on display as they would walk by those glass walls in big groups every once in a while and in the beginning When we were, this is kind of a terrible, sexist story, I'm sure but when we were younger there was this whole thing about you guys remember we got what I'm going to say. Though there would always be a pretty girl. And one of the groups right you know because this sir Lando especially during the hot summer there weren't sure it was a lot of young young single guy there was a lot of young single guys and so they would there would be like Like, I don't know, a noise or something that they would say one of them and it would start in layout You know what it was right? Are you saying you don't remember you don't want to say I was trying to say it but yeah, it was, you know, it's like what comes from a movie? Oh yeah. From wanes the swing weight Yeah. Anyway Oh, they would make this noise and it would come from Lay out and then it would work its way down all the different departments as the tour went down as a way of like letting all the young single Guys, no girls out there. It would not happen in 2020 I know studio to work No we yeah and you know what most of the time those girls could tell something was out.

Jim Jackson  55:22  

Well you guys sorry about that because we On the Tracy Lee Tracy was a guy from South Carolina and he was a he was he was a funny guy, his character in himself and He was there one night with me and I work as I think was was we're going to Lion King or something I don't remember but it would clear out and then what would happen as you You're talking about like Tony mentioned how these tours would come through every 20 minutes, but while the tours were gone, the tour hosts were still there. Yeah, and sometimes they were attractive young ladies too. So, Tracy walks up to my desk and you know, this is before we had Like, why a lot of phones and stuff and whatever, no cell phones when a CEO walks up to me He's like, we're no problem. There's a girl. There's pretty and I go The girl next to her is prettier. So then you send these gestures over to Tracy because obviously we were talking about them and she's like, call and they had like a phone in the of the tour. Yeah. So all I remember is this now. This is Just backstory for me I was engaged at the time to get married. So yeah,

Tom Bancroft  56:17  

we're staying away good. I

Jim Jackson  56:18  

was just I was observing the physical attributes. I thought this was pretty earnest mentioned it. So the girl On the phone, and this is all I hear. I hear like, hello.

Well, my friend thinks your friends cute. That's what he said.

Next thing I know is like the next day it was her day off and she's this girl came in she sat because there was a little bit of a bunch of geeky artists. They were sort of a star thing for being animated. That's true. Yeah, yeah if I you know, we were on show Had if you had no game that helped to be an artist at Disney, but she actually came and sat above my desk. Now this just lined up to the time my fiance was coming down to visit. Oh boy. It was over spring break and Aaron had found out what her name was. Remember this Aaron. And so you came up you go. Hey Jim, her name's casandra

Unknown Speaker  57:06  

Ah, you Yes,

Tom Bancroft  57:10  

it was right when

Jim Jackson  57:11  

he could have ruined my spot. So it all started cuz Tracy didn't own up the fact that he was checking out the girl who called him put it on Friday. She can't afford it and Aaron almost ruined my wedding.

Tom Bancroft  57:27  

Yours right? Yeah

Jim Jackson  57:27  

kasana was pretty, but I was I was good. My wife I just

Tom Bancroft  57:32  

Yeah, good job job. So yeah. And what Steph didn't walk up to you and go casandra who who

Jim Jackson  57:39  

didn't? She trusted me go I was a sort of horrible, horrible flirt with her. She knew I had no game so she can tell me why. The other thing was happening

Tom Bancroft  57:49  

too is that there was the Disney MGM Studios attracted a lot of like, B list and sometimes a list movie stars to come and be their stars. The week it was a it was a real that was part of the excitement for the guests that would come to the to the park is they would have a star of the week and put have a putting their hands in the name of them a tray and yeah, we'd come down the main street on a car and stuff and have a parade and, and but yeah, we would oftentimes the stars would come and want to take a tour of certain elements of the park behind The scenes and so we had a lot of big stars so that let's say that So guys, look who's who was the highlight who was the one. I know.

Aaron Blaise  58:30  

There's one. Well, there's one if there's anybody that Jim should have given a tour to. It was Michael Jackson, Michael

Tom Bancroft  58:37  

Jackson. I knew it. Yeah.

Aaron Blaise  58:40  

And I got to give Michael Jackson

Tom Bancroft  58:43  

gave the tour.

Jim Jackson  58:45  

I was told by Max Hauer prior to him coming, which I wouldn't have done It goes, Hey, no Michael Jackson impersonations wise here like I was gonna get up and start Hey Michael, you know, just do it Michael Jackson dance. That's the joke.

Tom Bancroft  58:56  

Here's the inside joke for the listeners is is. Jim is his wife but he always wanted to be Michael Jackson and he could do it Really good Michael Jackson. He's a dancer. So yeah,

Jim Jackson  59:08  

well, I also made a total dork of myself and I hadn't really thought of it. So Aaron made sure he brought into my desk. So my name is Jim Jackson, you know, so I don't know. We're like BAM and I I shook his hand I go Hey, nice name. I pointed to my names. I know where that came from. And he goes Oh, yeah, okay. Oh 3000 billion Jackson's and that's fine. I said But

never Princess Diana.

Tom Bancroft  59:37  

can suck her up.

Jim Jackson  59:38  

Yeah, yeah. But the interesting thing about that was the it was Harry and William at the time were a little young princess. Yeah. And they were out with Sherry Sinclair. Had a pet rat. And they were they were obsessed with all the checkout the rat. So marks in there showing Princess Diana how to draw Simba and they're obsessed with these little rats. That girl has by her. Yeah.

Tom Bancroft  59:57  

Now we've told this. We just recently told this story On our podcast, so hopefully people already know that one but yeah, the princess did not want the kids to touch the rat right there. I really was scared to death because you know they had the black plague not that you know. That's it Forget

Jim Jackson  1:00:16  

your max Howard was English so he gave us the proper protocol. You don't he's still oil.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:21  

Yeah, still Is he still is he really still is actually. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So anyway,

Jim Jackson  1:00:29  

but he told us you know, you don't address the royalty dress you can't dress them. And she walked by us all and she looked at us and she nodded. And then we had

Greg man wearing Yo man wearing, oh boy.

And so Greg man said his name had a fiance. Greg's a great guy.

Aaron Blaise  1:00:46  

It's great that Greg said, Well, he claims you know said this is where he never said Oh, he's

Tom Bancroft  1:00:52  

partially god you guys are I'm partially that you're telling this because we told this story also, we did not name the name. But no it's spective though your viewpoint?

Jim Jackson  1:01:02  

Yeah, go ahead cuz I have an editor right we can cut that out. Yes

Tom Bancroft  1:01:05  

sir. We do. Go ahead

Jim Jackson  1:01:07  

But we don't. Greg's Greg, what after you die and he talked about his fiance was from England and having a connection with her. She was very pleased.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:16  

What do you remember what he said?

Aaron Blaise  1:01:18  

I say I remember it is yo princess die. I used to live in England,

Unknown Speaker  1:01:22  

or something like that, but

Tom Bancroft  1:01:25  

I'll say and I heard about it, buddy. Yo, everybody knows everybody remembers the yo purchase guy. Yeah.

Jim Jackson  1:01:31  

Greg says he didn't say that. But Greg always said Yo, so

Unknown Speaker  1:01:36  

say Yo,

Tom Bancroft  1:01:36  

yeah, the thing is that we all know this story and it always starts with yo. So there it had to happen.

Jim Jackson  1:01:45  

Yeah, every every sentence Greg said started with Yo, so that's probably happened and I remember it is

Tom Bancroft  1:01:49  

yo lady die. That's it. I remember. Yeah, Princess die. Well, you weren't there, Tony. So you're here. Yeah, I heard about it in Burbank. So that's how far it went.

Jim Jackson  1:02:00  

What I also thought was interesting how certain stars were Come in, and certain stars were completely relaxed. They were kind of they would kind of merge in, like, Mark Hamill one sock ammo. And he was a big innovative sound. Yeah, he's the one They're like, Who's the guy that Cosworth David Goggins tires, David. Yeah, he would come in a couple times just kind of hanging out because he loved animation. But then there are some people who just wanted to get some photos with themselves by the animation desks and

Aaron Blaise  1:02:28  

yeah and that was it. They thought So I was sitting, I was sitting at my animation desk. And we were doing a we were doing some test animation for a hair in my suit, which was a Roger Rabbit cartoon that we're developing

Jim Jackson  1:02:42  

Join me by the way. Yeah, I'm here in my soup.

Aaron Blaise  1:02:47  

Okay, go ahead. And I this guy comes up behind me. He goes, Aaron, it's time to go to lunch. I turned around It was Robin Williams. Oh,

Jim Jackson  1:02:56  

my honeymoon. I missed that. I was on my honeymoon

Tom Bancroft  1:03:00  

for him to come on.

Yeah, do you remember he ended up because everybody thought you know now Okay, so a little backstory, Aaron Robin Williams. His voice and An animated version of him was a part of the tour for many years. Yes. As like the what was playing on the screens was this whole thing was called back to Neverland or something. Yeah, him and Walter Cronkite were in it And anyway, so we knew we knew Robin from that for four years. So, I remember when he came in because we thought, Okay, he's not gonna. He's not gonna play it up or anything. Do you remember he was like running around the studio and like

Aaron Blaise  1:03:38  

Robin Williams?

Tom Bancroft  1:03:40  

Yeah, I remember he was

Aaron Blaise  1:03:43  

all the people behind the glass and it was an audience and he just started performing and it was awesome. It was oh,

Jim Jackson  1:03:50  

well, I missed it because I was on my honeymoon with my wife. There were two things I missed on my honeymoon. One was Robin Williams. Jumping And the last and the other one was Chuck bomer getting blood and he was Chuck Vollmer was a very good guy, and I missed this too.

Aaron Blaise  1:04:04  

Well, I will I tell that story and knowledge of that. So Chuck volver I used to we used to give black blood every time the bloodmobile was there. And so Chuck was with me and I said, Come on, man. Let's go get blood you have given blood before he goes, No, it was a little bit nervous I said Come on. Let's go give some blood. Well Chuck, you can see Chuck so thin you can see us food digest. It's just

Yeah,

Jim Jackson  1:04:30  

yeah, he's like 612 and he's about a buck 12

Aaron Blaise  1:04:33  

Yeah. And so we go give blood and

so we go back and we had to shoot so get some scenes shot. And so we're at the lion lamb under the glass and we're shooting and we're just talking about our experiences giving blood and now Chuck had never done it and and so I started talking about passing out and you know, have you ever passed out Before I was giving my experiences of passing out and as I'm telling the story about passing out check goes I feel so good. I was like haha funny. I know yeah this fastest, his eyes just rolled back and he fell back against the column and just slid down the column and then its head just to smack the floor. Oh Like convulsing, he starts convulsing on the floor is this on tour for the, this is all in front of the audience. This is all the audience. But, but if you remember, during the tour, there's the TVs that were set up and it was Robin Williams talking on the TV. So in Look when when Chuck went down, I looked up at the audience and they're all looking at the TV they didn't see real grip so so we have grabbed Chuck a drag the behind the desk

Unknown Speaker  1:05:53  

resuscitate him

Jim Jackson  1:05:57  

That was the last one, I'm sure

Tom Bancroft  1:06:01  

The show must go on and I and I do remember just to back up to the Robin Williams is I remember the tour coming through and they thought Robin was a part of it. Cuz he's on the screen and then they see him running around. And I remember that was the joke is that they probably think every tour comes through Robins downs. Right, right it was like part of the show how lucky they were. I mean that was kind of the pros and cons of working at a, you know a theme park. was a lot of pros and cons but working at a theme park but also being an animation studio. There was always this kind of a bit of a fight between Are we a legitimate animation studio at Disney studio or are we You know an amusement park tour. You know, but you kind of had fun with that. I remember a lot of times When we talked about having lunch on the balcony, or the The behind the animation bill They had tables and stuff. That's when we were definitely out. The theme park more even though we're behind scenes If as you as it was called, but you would hear like when they had tower that Tower of Terror, you guys remember that you'd be having lunch. And every I don't know what was it every seven minutes you'd hear people go

Jim Jackson  1:07:12  

about being in a theme park was every day Aaron would come by my desk and go Okay, so Park walk I really can't do it today, man. I really I'm really busy. I can't do it you Come on parkwalk and I was a caveman with the loss. And we'd walk around the park and we didn't do any rides in

Tom Bancroft  1:07:27  

the summer heat of the summer. Yes. Do parkwalk stand

Jim Jackson  1:07:30  

here's here's where my ego was definitely crushed for a good reason. I kept thinking I always bought a glass because they told me I had to do one tour of duty and I won't say who this was but someone had like emotional meltdown being on the glass. I like put back for beauty the beast and Aladdin is on the glass. And I was had this thought initially when I do a park walks in the park and someone's gonna go hey Are you the guy behind the glass? I'm like, please Yes, but I'm on my break. No one ever wants Are you the guy behind the glass so nobody was not that notice. I was very forgettable

Tom Bancroft  1:08:02  

you got recognized they just didn't want Yeah,

Jim Jackson  1:08:04  

right. Right. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:08:08  

Now that it was

Tom Bancroft  1:08:09  

boys that made a big deal, though, I mean, well that that's what I wanted to talk about. So there was a real so here's the thing when we first got there, especially that first year oh my gosh, they didn't know what to do with us. Okay, so we were Disney World employees When it first started remember that we became it was Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida Inc. Like I don't know, maybe after five years I can't remember when that often was. Yeah. But so For the first a few years, we were literally paid by Walt Disney World So, and the rumor was was that we actually paid our ways we didn't have to work because apparently because we were part of a show That's when I would hear it was like a lost leader it would made money. Yeah, well yeah We didn't even have to be doing anything really and they were fine and happy because you know, people were coming back to see us now when we got larger, and we're feature films of course, but when we were first started, they were like, Oh yeah, and and but the they were is a real dichotomy between us and how we were treated the animators. And that included cleanup include everybody in the studio and everybody else in the theme park. Right? And so we didn't like literally there were people that had our animators that got their keys in your car keyed. Right. Yeah, employees like Disney World, flattened tires. I think we were

Aaron Blaise  1:09:30  

definitely the spoiled kids. We were

Tom Bancroft  1:09:33  

Yeah, we were.

Well because they made it Rule remember about anybody that I think the rule was anybody that came from California, like Mark can or some of these guys that we were talking about. They could keep their facial hair. It was called the grandfathered in face. So if you started and you already had a beard and some guys drew grew a beard, I don't know if you did this errand, but some guys grew a beard or a mustache, knowing they were going to start because if you started with that, you could keep it and as until you shaved off. You could keep it but if you shaved it off, then the policy was at least in the beginning, then you had to keep it to stay on. We had to stick with it because that was the thing. I was the dress code. I never had a beard or mustache, but it was the weirdest like they couldn't wrap their heads around that and Walt Disney All the cast members Yeah, they would see people walk around behind the stage with little buttons that were supposed to wear nice tags to and none of us did that. But if you had a name tag on and you had a mustache or something, then we just have a meltdown.

Aaron Blaise  1:10:33  

Yeah, that just didn't complete it got even worse. If you remember when they They finally did lift the grooming policy from us. You know, I had hair down to my butt and a beard and Yep, you know, and it's And everybody had crazy long hair and they just it drove them nuts. It's absolutely

Tom Bancroft  1:10:53  

well we looked a lot like the people that were on the other side of the glass taking the tour. A lot of us were like, you know, 10 hours and short. We can wear whatever we wanted and we look like we just and we got stopped a lot. You remember that too. You'd go on a park walk where you go, you know beyond behind the scenes and then into the park area and then you're supposed to have a name tag on and stuff like, Oh no, we had to take our name tags off. That's right. So when we went into the park to do a park Walker even go out we could go on a ride during our lunch hour or go to one of the restaurants. We had to take our name tags off and then we could walk around out in the park but you know There was people that would stop us, you know, like,

Hey, are you supposed to be back here? You know,

we I would get stuck all the time. People were always like, Yeah, why

does this guy look like you and are you guys supposed Be back here. Well,

yeah, it was just a really sticky and what made it worse was Mark max Howard who we all love is that That would get rifled to him like he would get emails and phone calls answered a lot everybody in the parks all these other supervisors and other departments as well. Disney World with these complaints about your animators, and mostly because their people were complaining to them just basically because they hated us and they just were like, didn't under Damn it are so john. So what ended up happening is that max then would just yell at these people like From what I remember, he would just give it to them and go, No, this is why they're special and blah blah blah. If your people that are making this mount can't do that, you know it can't take it. Well these people are in Especially trying to blah blah and he would really defend us but like he started getting mad about it, I think Because he came from theater so he worked with artists and he knew artists yeah the creative environment and so he that's what he was protecting. He was protecting that. We are artists. Yeah, but what ended up happening was

Aaron Blaise  1:12:43  

that the spoiled child

Tom Bancroft  1:12:46  

Yeah, he did it. He created this. Such a hate for For us because so many people have gotten reprimanded through the years that this Mystique went around us whenever We would walk take a park walk, they would like practically get out of our way.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:59  

Yeah, well I remember we played roller hockey

Jim Jackson  1:13:02  

Like after max kicked us out because a slap shot into your glass window and we played behind what was Blizzard beach or where it was dolphin the swan and it's like it's like no one had helmets on. No one had half the pads on and the security guards would pull up. What do you guys do in here and we go From animation they go alright be safe may leave they kind of like move. Not very Yeah.

Tom Bancroft  1:13:22  

Howard after us.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:23  

No,

Tom Bancroft  1:13:24  

no worries after a while. That's all you'd have to say to a security guard like we'd be at midnight. Parks already shut down. Remember nighttime Park was during overtime. Oh yeah we'd stayed on midnight stay on Lion King. And and the park is completely shut down. It was the best time and during the summer to was it

Aaron Blaise  1:13:42  

into the great movie ride. we crawl rats.

Tom Bancroft  1:13:44  

We thought we'd walk in there. We

just walk through it. And yeah, and then the And of course we get caught almost every time by some security guard either. After a while, they just listen to it. You're just like, Oh, hey, yeah, animation, and they'd be like, Uh huh, go ahead. That's right.

Jim Jackson  1:14:02  

So we're playing wiffle ball out by the old commissary. There was a grass area we were playing baseball out there and then the one we started this we were I thought I thought Disney Animation Florida was really good at dumb games we would we would we just Start off with darts and then maybe it's too big darts. So, another guy that we always played Aaron and I would all play dumb game. Was Trey Finney and there was these these things that came out they were a little nerf footballs and they had these little like tails on and they're supposed to throw big spirals. I don't know how we started This game, but it was like if you've ever played frisbee golf, we would play frisbee golf sort of with these vortex things. And they were building tower tear at the time. And so that property is Disney Imagineering property at that point you got to know You're not supposed to be there, but it was a good hole. So we wanted to use like further for a golf course. So one time we have this ball and Aaron threw it up in this nice point senatore or something like a really I mean Magnolia maybe Yeah, really beautiful like

Aaron Blaise  1:15:00  

Magnolia

Jim Jackson  1:15:00  

magnolia tree and it was like, I mean it was

Aaron Blaise  1:15:03  

just planning it like, yeah, just planted it.

Jim Jackson  1:15:06  

And here's Aaron's little ball was stuck up in the tree. So he's trying to get the ball. He's shaking this thing. Like it's like, Man or something. And this guy trailer, he's got a yellow like workman's hat on he starts screaming an errand and all members a train icon. We had our balls. So we kind of walk in way sheepishly you

Aaron Blaise  1:15:23  

guys, you guys just you guys straight away

Jim Jackson  1:15:29  

He was the real construction worker. He wasn't from the village people. He was a real one. And he was yelling at you and you just

yell back on the

Aaron Blaise  1:15:35  

ball and

I'm in animation and I'm

Jim Jackson  1:15:41  

shaking the tree and then the ball comes out and

Unknown Speaker  1:15:44  

he keeps yelling at him because he was here was Just now I'm leaving. I'm like,

Jim Jackson  1:15:49  

Well, that was kind of really, that escalated quickly.

Aaron Blaise  1:15:53  

But it was it was a dumb Yeah. establish yourself, man.

Jim Jackson  1:15:58  

Yeah, we had these we had these like, darts became a big thing in Florida. And so one guy, Mike Benet came with the idea that we would have this dark tournament and so everyone took a team from the NFL. And so every NFL team played that week. You'd have to find that person in the studio and it was their home game like it was To save Arizona Cardinals, they could pick the board they wanted to play on. But it got so intense My heart was pounding your nerves we get we go around you find your thing and it became this big like Super Bowl Championship game but everything like that became so like, I think is much better. kids

Tom Bancroft  1:16:31  

who were competitive kids. I mean, that's what it was.

Jim Jackson  1:16:36  

I remember playing hockey, and we had a lot of Canadians there. And so then they said, We should just this is when we started getting more money at the time. You know, hundred Lion King, we should start playing ice hockey and a lot of them are played so we went all out for a weekend. But ice equipment started running out face time on the thing but it was like those kind of people You go let's play ice hockey. Sure. I've never played before. So it was the energy was really amazing. Thank you guys for joining us. And yeah, we will have to do this again, Aaron and Jim. This has been a real honor having you

Aaron Blaise  1:17:08  

absolutely. No it's been It was awesome bringing back all these great memories. Thanks

Tom Bancroft  1:17:12  

We'll definitely have to post it on the Florida Facebook page or something like that because We did an okay job name dropping quite a few people there but not nearly enough. And we just want to thank everybody that we worked with at the Florida studio over the year. And everybody that contributed to our lives and who we love so dearly. Thank you to all you guys the staff and everybody that worked in Florida. Thank you. And thank you all for listening and Tom as we always say,

and a man me from the heart