An American Tail

Well, anyway, uh, the year is 1986.

My mother is in love, and an animator-

[laughs]

... named Don Bluth is deep into his schism with Walt Disney.

See, he used to love Disney.

He grew up obsessed with their cartoons, that he got a job as an assistant on Sleeping Beauty in 1955 when he was a teenager, and he, you know, just never wanted to leave.

Except he had to leave.

He had to leave Disney to go on his Mormon mission in Argentina, then he went to college.

Eventually, Don Bluth comes back to Disney in 1971, where he works on Robin Hood, The Rescuers, Pete's Dragon.

But by the end of that decade, he's disillusioned.

He thinks that Disney has lost its way.

It's not like it was when he was a kid or when he was a teenager even.

Disney in the '70s is getting too corporate.

They're not taking the craft of animation as seriously anymore.

So on his birthday, Don Bluth quits and he forms a new company, Don Bluth Productions, with two other Disney animators, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy.

By the end of the year, he's gonna have 14 ex-Disney employees at his very tiny studio.

Kinda like the pre-Pixar, right? You know, in a way, like they kinda broke off and, and, and made their own thing.

Um, anyway, in 1982, they release their first feature, The Secret of NIMH, and one of its big fans is Steven Spielberg.

I'll also say I am a huge fan of The Secret of NIMH.

I thought that movie was awesome, or scary.

I don't know, it, it holds another special place in my heart.

Now, Spielberg had been wanting his newly formed Amblin Studios to get into animation, too, and his then producer, Kathleen Kennedy, hears a pitch from an artist named David Kirschner about an immigration story inspired by his grandmother's trip from Russia to America, where her little brother got lost on the boat.

And they love this pitch at Amblin, and Spielberg's like, "Oh, my family also came from Russia.

I'm very much on board with doing a movie about this." Spielberg even kinda pulls a Gremlins, where they're like, "Oh, we have to give Spielberg his little nice thing." You know, Spielberg's dog is kinda like the dog in Gremlins.

Here, Spielberg is like, "The little lost mouse, he has to be named for my immigrant grandfather, Fievel."