Interviews – Michael Hirsh – Animation Nation Takes Over!

Hi, I'm Michael Hirsch. I've had a great career

in animation, making shows like the first Star

Wars cartoons, the Beetlejuice cartoon, Max and

Ruby, and many, many, many more. And you're listening

to me now on Geekcast Radio. You are listening

to another Geekcast Radio Presents interview.

I am one of your hosts, Steve June. Mike with

me, as always, is Steve Megatron. Hello, sir.

Hello. Today, tonight, whenever you find people

listening to this, we are going to be talking

with award -winning television producer, entrepreneur,

and author Michael Hirsch. From A Cosmic Christmas

to The Devil and Daniel Mouse, The Care Bears,

Star Wars, Droids and Ewoks. to Babar, the movie

and more, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, which

I have a story about later, and Johnny Test,

along with Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

Uh -oh, I think I just summoned the demon. Plus

so much more, Michael has led an interesting

life and had an amazing career. Hi, Michael,

how are you? I'm doing great. Really happy to

be here talking to you and your audience tonight.

Absolutely, absolutely. All right, so we have

a lot of questions. We have both read your book,

Animation Nation. It is an excellent book. We

don't want to spoil it for anybody, but some

of the questions might be spoilers. Let's see.

All right, Steve, kick it off. So one of the

things that when I first was reading it through

was the, of course, Lucasfilm moment. Can you

describe a pivotal moment receiving the call

from Lucasfilm? Like, how did you maintain composure

and, you know, project the confidence, even though

Novana was a small company at the time? So the

call came out of the blue. Lucasfilm was working

on the two hour holiday special and George Lucas

had maintained control of the 10 minute cartoon

that he wanted in the special. And he was looking

for an animation company. And George wasn't particularly

a fan of doing things in L .A. He was Marin County,

San Francisco based himself and wanted to work

with people generally outside of L .A. But I

didn't know that at the time. What I did know

was that the call came from out of the blue.

We were busy making our second animated special,

The Devil and Daniel Mouse. And the person on

the other line. uh asked me if we were the company

that had produced a cosmic christmas and a cosmic

christmas was a holiday special that was our

first fully animated show was a you know half

television half hour show and uh lucas had seen

it even though it was a syndicated show not a

network show and so not easy to find not that

well promoted and uh he wanted to meet and talk

about whether we could do this cartoon for him

the 10 -minute cartoon which became The faithful

Wookiee. And so I flew down to L .A. No, I flew

down to San Francisco and rented a car, drove

to Marin County, followed the instructions I'd

been given. I landed in a shopping center in

San Rafael. And I was told that there would be

a telephone booth in the corner because this

is the era before mobile phones, even before

the brick phones. And so I go to the phone booth

and I call the number I was given. Somebody in

a nondescript building in the middle of the parking

lot waved to me and said, come on over. So I

walked over to the building, which had no number

on it and no branding. And I was told to shut

my eyes because I was going to walk through a

shot they were shooting of the Millennium Falcon.

For the Empire Strikes Back, which was still

in production. That's so awesome. So what were

some of the most significant lessons you learned

from George Lucas and his team during your collaboration

on the Star Wars Holiday Special? So to start

off with, George Lucas, obviously because of

the great movies he made. had developed a team

of people around him who were really the best

in the business. So Ben Bird, who did his sound

design, fantastic. He invented the Ewok language,

the Wookiee language, all the alien bar languages,

as well as making great sound effects for those

movies that he worked on. And he's done a lot

of the best movies in Hollywood. so he was somebody

we got to work with and we got to work with people

at every level at lucasfilm and in each case

you're dealing with somebody who's really top

of their game and our team was very young we

were still a young studio we were just doing

our second animated project and our people got

a chance to learn from you know the people at

lucasfilm and george was terrific at sharing

his point of view he was helpful in advising

us when we were looking to do our first animated

feature and uh it really provided some excellent

mentoring which you know has really motivated

me over the years to mentor others very cool

your early love of comics and stories is evident

how did these early influences shape your approach

to storytelling and the animation later on Well,

comic books, as you were saying, is something

I gravitated to very young. And it was an era

where comic books were still reasonably new.

When we think that the first superhero comics,

you know, were 1937, 1938. This is like 1954,

55. And, you know, comics are everywhere. They're

at a very successful stage. But it's, you know,

it's mainly DC and... You know, you've got the

beginning of the Marvel comics before they became

Marvel trying to build up an audience, but not

yet breaking through. So dynamic period. And

at the same time, you still had in that period,

you had EC comics. And, you know, during my career,

I was able to produce the animated version of

Tales from the Crypt, but it was called Tales

from the Crypt Keeper in any case. So these comics

really kept me inspired. And so. At Nelvana,

we did quite a few comic book -based properties.

So we did Tintin based upon Hergé's classic comic

series. I'm sorry? Oh, I just was going, mm -hmm.

Oh, okay. And I'll go double your mm -hmm. Once

I get started, you can't stop. So we did Tintin,

which was a great French movie. comic book property.

When we did the Star Wars cartoon, the first

one, The Faithful Wookiee, we did it in the style

of the French artist Mobius, who did artwork

for what was the French version of heavy metal.

And it had a terrific visual influence on for

many people of my generation. And that was a

look that hadn't really been seen much or at

all in animation. So that was kind of interesting.

And then later we did some Wildcat and Savage

Dragon comics working with Jim Lee at Image.

And then we did Sam and Max, which was a great

cartoon we did for Fox based on a comic book.

And we did a comic strip called Committed. All

in all, you know, it was a period that the comic

books and the comic strips really kind of were

one of the drivers that... made me want to be,

you know, build a career in the animation industry.

Absolutely. That's awesome. How did your immigrant

experience shape your identity and your perspective

on the animation industry, both in Canada and

globally? So I grew up as an immigrant moving

from Belgium to Toronto and eventually from Toronto

to the Bronx. I consider the Bronx the country

unto itself. And then back to Canada. And so

I've moved around and I have a lot of empathy

for people who are immigrants. You know, it's

a large class in our society and, you know, it's

a group that works hard. And my relationship

to it, I think, was largely being very open to

things from other cultures. So I read a lot of

European literature as a kid, which is partly

how we did Babar at Nelvana. And whenever I've

come across an interesting non -English language

or non -US or non -Canada title or an author,

I've been very open to doing that. So at Nelvana,

we adapted Pippi Longstocking, which is the...

leading, you know, children's property from Sweden.

We did Neverending Story, which, you know, was

a top kids property in Germany. We obviously

did Babar and Tintin working with our old partners

at Canal Plus. We did Rupert Bear working with

the Daily Express, who owned it, and with Anne

and Ian Miles, who were British producers and

distributors. So over the years, we did a lot

of these properties that had a global appeal,

but had sort of international connectivity. And

I think my growing up as an immigrant just kept

me open to that, whereas a lot of my colleagues

on the U .S. side and the Canadian side often

weren't drawn to the same properties. Very cool.

Your time in New York, if I can speak clearly,

New York exposed you to a vibrant cultural scene.

So how did that kind of influence and kind of

expose you to different things in your creative

development and kind of things that you were

able to learn and take with you throughout your

career? New York was great. If you think about

turning 13 and you move to New York, you're just

the right age to be jumping on the subway by

yourself, take buses places, you know, get around

the city. And that's what I did. So I would go

to the Museum of Modern Art and hang out on the

weekend, watch movies. They had a great movie

curator. And they showed great movies by Chaplin

and Keaton and some of the silent movies of other

artists. And it just was a quick film education.

And it was through that running around the city

that I cut classes one day with a good friend.

And we went to see underground movies at Hunter

College, which was nearby my high school. And

I fell in love with those experimental underground

films of that era. And they looked like something

I could do. So I immediately thought, I'm going

to make one of these and organize some friends

of mine from high school to play the different

roles and then shot them on 8mm, matched up some

sort of non -synchronized soundtrack on a tape

recorder. And then I started going with my friends

to the open film nights at Filmmakers Co -op

or Eventurium to screening groups that had open

nights. And so I would show my films along with

people who had been doing these films for 20,

30 years. And I just was so young that I couldn't

recognize the difference. But I had the experience

of putting myself out there and exhibiting that

earliest of work. And getting feedback. That's

very cool. And kind of key, getting that feedback.

Yes, feedback is always good. Doesn't matter

what kind of feedback it is. I mean, we don't

really want to see bad feedback, but any feedback

is good. Any answer is better than no answer.

That's right. The worst thing we're seeing in

today's society is ghosting. Yep. I'll say no

more. I'll ghost myself. No. Hey, now. We've

got a lot more questions here. So you returned

to Toronto to attend York University. How did

the Canadian filmmaking scene compare to what

you had experienced in the U .S.? So the Canadian

filmmaking scene, there were some interesting

people working in it and who had broken through.

So Michael Snow was an artist who was part of

that scene. He's a Torontonian. Arthur Lipset

at the National Film Board. And his films were

always being screened by these films. And so

he was an interesting experimental filmmaker

from Canada. But when it came to my peers in

college, there weren't people doing it, at least

in York. I think there were people doing it at

University of Toronto in the same city, but I

didn't deal with those people. And there was

a good group at McMaster. The McMaster group

eventually turned into Ivan Reitman's group,

which included two of his writers from the early

days, Dan Goldberg and Len Bloom. So, you know,

there was a scene, but it took a while to get

into it and figure it out. But at York, there

was no there was no other scene. So I aggregated

a few friends who were interested in making films.

And we started, you know. What we did is we actually

started one of them. One of the friends that

I worked with and did this movie with was actually

my co -director and co -producer, Jack Christie.

And the two of us were at Glendon College, which

was part of York University. And we got on the

same wavelength very quickly. And we decided

we'd make a movie and we called it Assassination

Generation. And I hate to use the word inspired,

but we were. Probably driven by all the assassinations

that were happening in the U .S. at the time.

They were so dramatic and came at a pace and

a volume that we had never heard of before. Yeah,

it was crazy back then. Yep. So I don't know

if I answered your question. You did. Okay. But

the one thing I would add, because I think this

is interesting, is... Because of that early career

in experimental filmmaking, that was something

that we kept that became part of the DNA of Nelvana.

We never stopped experimenting. We were always

pushing the envelope. Now, we might do some shows

that were just ordinary, like, you know, The

Care Bears, right? I think we did a Care Bears

series and a great movie. But, you know, we might

be doing that. We would also do a lot of projects

where we would instill or inject. some experimental

filmmaking. So, for example, we made a movie

called Rock and Rule. And in Rock and Rule, there's

a lot of what was for then very experimental

technique for doing the special effects. And

the movie is well known in animation circles

for its great effects. So we were driven by that.

So we were early users of computer animation

in that movie. Another series that was kind of

interesting was Beetlejuice, where part of our

pitch to Tim Burton was that we wanted to keep

some of the mixed media that he had in Beetlejuice

the movie. And so, again, driven by experimental

sort of efforts and our experience in rock and

roll, we did a one -minute commercial using early

CGI ahead of when it was really commercially

viable. And that was in the early Beetlejuice

cartoons to keep that spirit that Burton is so

great at of mixed media. You've discussed the

financial struggles of Nelvana's early years.

What kept you motivated during these challenging

times? So early on, and we haven't touched on

this, and it's not in my book, I don't think,

but I'll share with you. When I was a kid, people

would ask me, what do you want to be when you

grow up? A common question asked of kids. And

I would say I want to be Superman or sometimes

I would say I want to be Mickey Mouse. I wasn't

sure if I wanted to be a comic book. But many

of the cartoons I grew up with were, in fact,

you know, the Warner Brothers, Bugs Bunny, Daffy

Duck cartoons where, you know, the creatures,

you know, our favorite hero characters, Bugs

and Daffy and later the Roadrunner. And the coyote,

as long as they didn't look down, they could

get to the other side. So early on, I had that

comic cartoon approach of defying gravity and

reality and believing that if you want to get

somewhere, you've got to look at where you want

to go to, but don't look down. Because second

-guessing yourself, doubting yourself, really

doesn't add anything. to your ability to achieve

your goal. You really have to remain positive

and enthusiastic about your ability to achieve

what you're setting out to do, or you shouldn't

do it. That's great advice. That's great advice,

but I'll add also, sometimes you have to be really

stubborn to do it. I was incredibly stubborn.

Oh, I am definitely one of those people. I just

recorded and released an episode, the last episode

before this interview here on Geekcast Radio.

with our buddy Mike Powers, and we talked about

why he is an iPhone user. And that episode is

just under two and a half hours. It took me about

six and a half hours to edit it, and I'm just

like, I am powering through this. I'm getting

this done. No matter what. That's right. You've

got to be like that. Otherwise, nothing gets

done. That's right. It's like Kevin Conroy's

Batman said in one of the DC Animated Universe

cartoons. Block it out and power on through.

So how did your... What was that? Sorry. I said

it all right. How did your father's work ethic

and values influence your approach to building

and running Nelvana? So my father was in manufacturing

sports bags at the early part of his working

career. And eventually slippers. And so what

I had the opportunity was to do summer jobs at

the factory that he ran in New York, which was

the slipper factory. And so I was put one summer,

you know, on the assembly line, one summer in

sort of packing goods to go to be shipped, one

summer in shipping and one summer in the finance

department. you know, doing sort of filing and

understanding how they divide up their work and

how they do their business. And so that background

gave, you know, just gave me some work experience

in a variety of the aspects, right, rather than

just one. And when I was working in the packing

group, I was able to spend time with a fairly

significant diversified group. And it taught

me about working with people who weren't like

me, didn't come from the same background. They

had different problems. And how to sort of make

sure that all the conversations were respectful.

That's very cool. What key lessons did you learn

from your early experiences with accountants

and financial management? That was one of the

greatest weaknesses at Nelvana was it took us

a long time to build a finance department that

could really help drive the company. So most

of what I learned, I learned along with my other

partner, Patrick Loubert, and we basically learned

how to... you know, interpret our business, figure

out if we were really making money, you know,

manage our sort of day to day, because as a company

that was bootstrapped with no capital, we had

to always manage the business like with a cash

business. So typically in the film business,

because you do projects that are like, you know,

$8 million, $20 million, $50 million, you know,

big numbers. You basically treat it like making

an apartment building where you learn how to

amortize the costs over some reasonable period

of time, whether it's five years, seven years,

ten years, as dictated by the financial wizards.

You basically create value in the current year

because if you do it on a cash basis, you never

make the profit in the first year. You're making

it over time. So your accounting always looked

not as good when you did cash accounting, but

it was a safer way to run a business that didn't

have capital because it was harder to get into

serious debt. It was harder to get into trouble.

That makes sense. So how did you balance your

personal relationship with your professional

partnership with Elaine? Well, I was guilty of

not spending enough time on my romantic and personal

relationship with my wife, Elaine. And the book

has several stories that sort of will attest

to that. I was so driven about building this

company and then realizing that we have all these

people, you know, writers, directors, animators,

painters, layout artists, editors, et cetera,

and financial people and legal people that they're

depending on you to sort of, you know, keep working,

keep getting a paycheck, et cetera. So you're

driven by your own personal goals and as well,

you're driven by the responsibility of, you know,

doing a good job as a manager for your team and

your staff. And so for those who are interested

in the details, they're going to have to read

the book because I am not going to repeat. No,

absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No,

that's that's a great tease for. Yeah. Read the

book. That's right. Did I say that? What a good

idea. No, we said that. That's called great marketing.

Read the book. That's right. You know, there's

no substitute for reading the book. No, there's

not. It's too bad there isn't an audiobook version

of it. Well, I'll probably get around to that.

Right now. And I'm not sure whether I should

do it. Somebody who's done a lot of voice direction

for all my companies actually thought that I

should record it myself. Do you guys have any

sort of initial thought hearing my voice? Yeah,

I think you could do it. I always love to hear

it directly from the writer just because it's

got that authenticity and you can feel the energy

that kind of went into the thoughts behind it.

Right. Absolutely. I listen to a lot of audio

books and I listen to a lot of autobiographies

for audio books. I listen to the Joe Kenda books.

I've listened to Melissa Joan Hart's book. I've

listened to it. And the reason why I listen to

those books is because I want to hear it from

the person that it had, like reading your book.

And the one time that we tested before we did

the interview, I was like, oh. I can match his

voice now to what I've read, and that works.

Yeah. I think that's interesting. I listened

to the Bono audiobook, but he didn't do enough

editing of himself. It just went on. Yeah, that's

where the trick is in certain pieces of audio.

Sometimes you get somebody who can talk and talk.

Steve and I have both been talking for almost

4 ,000 episodes in 15 and a half years. Steve's

been going a little longer than I have, but the

network itself, the geek cast radio network has

been online for 15 and a half years and. Oh boy.

It's a lot, but no, you're and I, yeah. Hearing

your, hearing you say your words in your voice

makes sense because you have like. I don't think

putting somebody in there, say like a superstar

voice actor who, you know, insert name here,

whoever you want to put in there reading your

story. I don't think that that's not authentic.

I mean, it's great for some people that have

that done because of whatever, but for your story

specifically, I would want to hear it in your

voice. Okay. Well then I'll probably, that'll

be my next goal in the next month. All right.

Where were we when we were so rudely interrupted?

It's not rude. It's a part of our culture here.

We like to interrupt each other. On radio. That's

right. Yes, yes, yes. So you described several

instances of serendipity and good fortune in

Nelvana's early years. To what extent do you

believe success in the end? animation industry

resulted from luck versus hard work and talent?

It's a good question. Luck plays an important

role, but it's not the whole story. You know,

the talent in our case was we decided that in

order to make it in animation, we had to make

higher quality work than our potential competitors,

like the people who were working professionally

in the field were doing at the time. Because

this was a low point when Nelvana started to

enter the U .S. animation broadcast system. U

.S. animation had fallen on its lowest quality

level ever. And Hanna -Barbera and Filmation

were two studios doing almost all the shows.

So everything had a studio look. There was nothing

that was different. Animation cell count had

probably dropped from maybe originally 12 ,000

to 10 ,000 to 8 ,000 to 6 ,000. Wow. we basically

decided okay we're going to make quality shows

and that's what will help us succeed because

it was not clear that there really was a demand

um but we would grab attention that way and it

did work that's what attracted lucas to a cosmic

christmas uh to then hire us uh was the fact

that we were producing more interesting more

quality work and when i met with him one of the

things that was impressive to him was the fact

that We did all this work in our own studio,

didn't go out elsewhere. And it was all artisanal.

Yeah. And I love the fact that that you talked

about, you know, doing that in the book about

kind of trying to do as much in -house as possible.

Yeah, it was essentially we kind of saw it as

being a soup to nuts kind of operation. Right.

We later on, we learned how to divide up the

work so that we could do a lot more work. But

by then we knew what we were doing and got really

good at it. That wasn't necessarily the case

when we were starting out. But over time, we

developed the skills and got better and better

with each project. Absolutely. What motivated

you to pursue the rights to the Babar books?

So I had deep memories of Babar being one of

the first picture story books that was read to

me. And it wasn't read to me by my parents, but

every Saturday when we were living in Toronto,

I would walk my sister to the public library.

It was a short walk away, but we were little

people and we had to cross one giant boulevard

before the lights changed, which we did. So the

librarian, though, was very good at getting kids

interested in books. And so she had organized

a unique way of reading the book so that you

could be watching the book. She had an alternative

book on the back that she was actually reading

the text from. So it looked like she was really,

you weren't missing anything because you were

seeing the actual pictures. And she would also

put on puppet shows with the story. So I see

Babar in multiple different incarnations. And

then because of my Francophone background, having

been born in Belgium, Babar was something I really

related to. And I was excited at the prospect

of being able to bring Babar to other kids. What

were the biggest challenges in doing that, in

adapting it to television? The biggest challenge

was threefold. Our TV sale that was financing

it in Canada was with the CBC, and they wanted

it as a family show. And it played at 7 o 'clock

at night, which in the U .S. was known as kind

of prime access period. So early evening for

adults. And because they wanted it to play essentially

to the whole family, we had to figure out how

we were going to do the storytelling to bring

parents into it. And so we came up with the idea

of Babar talking to his children. And they've

done something mischievous. They've gotten in

trouble or they're looking for advice from him.

And he says, well, let me tell you about something

that happened to me when I was a kid. So then

you basically are in the present, have a flashback,

which is most of the episode of what happened

to Babar when he was a child growing up. And

then you come back to the current situation where

the kids understand the application of what happened

to their father. and how it applied to the you

know issue that they were facing uh themselves

and that worked that was really good and then

we also added another element to appeal to adults

which was there was a british show called yes

minister that basically made fun of british politicians

and so we thought we'd have fun building up the

court around babar he's king babar of course

So he has to have counselors and he has to have

advisors and, you know, people who are serving

him and, you know, are ministers of the government,

so to speak. And so we played off the relationships

of Yes Minister and got some comedy that, you

know, adults could appeal, could appeal to adults.

Very cool. Very cool. You've mentioned the collaborative

process behind Inspector Gadget. How did the

team dynamics contribute to the show's success?

Well. The show had a really dynamic push because

we came into the show at the last minute. There

was a financier who had fallen out. And I had

met the president of Deke USA, Andy Hayward.

And he had told me that if we could find a TV

sale worth $40 ,000 out of Canada, that we could

co -produce the show with them. So this was going

to be our first series and was. And I was successful

at getting what really was about four to five

times what Canada was worth at the time from

a new pay television broadcaster. And so we became

the producers with Deke. And as it turned out,

we did the storyboards, the scripts, the voices,

the editing for the show. And Deke managed the

animation from storyboard on the show. And they

distributed the show. And, you know, Gadget was

a great character who was funny and was our proof

to the rest of the industry that we could do

a very funny comedy. I loved that cartoon growing

up. I still love the theme. Yes, that was done

by Haim Saban, who was later very successful.

He became really the most successful animation

producer of that era with the success of Mighty

Morphin Power Rangers. And now he's a major philanthropist.

Oh, yeah. He's a great definitely, definitely

good. Yeah, definitely a force for good. So what

were some of the biggest creative challenges

in designing and inspector gadgets, like kind

of iconic gadgets and gizmos? And kind of how

did how did that work with the show's humor and

tone evolution? Yeah. So essentially, when you

think about producing 65 half hours, you got

to come up with a lot of gadgets. right and so

the pressure was on the writers and the storyboard

artists and the designers to you know come up

with those and because we were doing the 64 or

65 half hours in the time period and half the

time period you might normally do it in because

we started working on it together in january

and we were on the air by september You know,

you basically had a very, very tight situation.

So people didn't have the luxury of second -guessing.

They had to be funny right off the top. So it

really spoke to, you know, the individual writers,

storyboard artists, creative people on the show,

and the leadership that Jean Chalapet, who was

the showrunner on the Deke side, had for the

show. And some of the... terrific writers and

storyboard artists that we had on the show, like

Pete Sodder and Ray Jaflas, to name a couple.

Yeah, it was definitely evident the fun and creativity

that is in that show, and it still holds up in

my opinion today. So Nelvana is known for its

diverse and memorable characters. So how do you

approach character development and ensure they

resonate with the audience? So in many of the

shows we did at Nelvana, if that's what we're

focused on, The designs, when there was a book

and there were illustrations, we were highly

driven to stay as close to the popular look that

everybody knew. So being faithful to the underlying

work was our Bible, basically, and our direction.

And I think that that made those shows successful

because we weren't trying to make them into something

they weren't. We basically were working to bring

them to life in a way that would give pleasure

to the people who loved the underlying properties

and appeal to people who had never seen them.

So that was our goal. Very nice, very nice. Can

you share some insights into the creation of

specific characters like Babar, Franklin, and

the Care Bears? So Babar was created by Jean

de Brunhoff back in 1933 in France. Laurent de

Brunhoff, his son, continued it afterwards. And

Laurent always gave credit to his mother, Cecile,

as being the one who originally came up with

the idea for Babar and told the story. And then

when she told it to Jean, he wrote it into a

book and he did the illustrations. And while

he wanted to put her name on the book, she declined.

So interestingly enough, that's the origin of

Babar. In the case of Franklin, You had a great

writer named Paulette Bourgeois who came up with

the idea for Franklin the Turtle. And she partnered

with an illustrator, Brenda Clark, who is also

a great illustrator. And they came up with a

look and a feel for those books that has resulted

in over 60 million books being sold. So, you

know, that's been a very successful team. So

often it is a combination of somebody who comes

up with. you know the text and somebody else

who comes up with the look and the feel there

was a third property you mentioned but i can't

remember which one it was air bears so care bears

was a corporate creation at american greetings

the card company out of cleveland and they were

partnered at the time with kenner toys and kenner

was doing strawberry shortcake with them and

uh american greetings showed bernie loomis who

was the head of what was called mad marketing

and design at kenner toys and they showed him

care bears and he fell in love with it and they

partnered that project as their next project

after strawberry shortcake so they had two big

hits in a row and then we got asked to do the

animation for some of the specials and eventually

the movie and basically the movie really kicked

the property off beautifully it was again like

Inspector Gadget was made in about nine months,

which was an incredibly short time for a feature

film. It is pretty short. But essentially, we

were basically introducing new toys that were

coming to the market, and it was destined when

they were going to come to the market, so we

had to come to the market around the same time.

So, you know, it's interesting that sometimes

you do great work under that time pressure, right?

And that's what I think you see with both Inspector

Gadget and Care Bears. And so Care Bears, the

personality developed over a lot of different

people. But one of the drivers for the Care Bears

personalities as characters was Peter Sautter,

who wrote the movie and who wrote who was the

story editor on the series. And, you know, he

really got the Care Bears and did a fantastic

job. Very cool. Very cool. So Nelvana kind of.

You went through a lot of different changes between

financial difficulties in the 80s and changing

landscapes in the animation industry and then

kind of hitting the stride in the early 90s.

What were some of the key driving factors in

that? When you're building an animation studio,

particularly doing it in a city like Toronto

that didn't have an industry, you had to build

up the talent pool to be able to do additional

projects. You had to, you know, fly to visit

the network. The network wasn't just down the

street. And you basically spent I spent a lot

of time on the road building those relationships

so that we could sell shows. I had some great

executives working for me in L .A. as well. But

in those financial troubles, sometimes they were

caused by not selling enough shows, new shows.

And you have this fixed overhead in animation

that, you know, basically makes it important

to keep growing the business. And the other thing

that would happen is we had one of the biggest

sort of crises we faced was when we were producing

a live action series called TNT that was syndicated

in the USA and starred Mr. T. And our distributor

that was a U .S. company called Hal Broach. They

were actually owned by an Australian resort company,

and that Australian resort company went bankrupt,

which made Hal Roach Studios go bankrupt, which

caused us to have to deal with the bankruptcy

courts to get our show out of bankruptcy courts

so that we could sell it to somebody else and

keep on producing in the middle of a production

cycle. So that was actually a pretty tough thing.

And all the key people at Nelvana had to work

on making that happen. Yeah, it definitely sounded

like a roller coaster. And there's obviously

a lot more details in your book that explain

all of that. So read the book. I found it very

interesting. I'm loving the teasing we're getting

to do here, though. Absolutely. We should just

have an audio clip of him saying, read the book,

read the book, read the book, read the book.

We'll just insert it randomly. That's right.

I read the book and I survived. It's an awesome

clip. Technically, you wrote the book and survived.

Well, I did that first, but after writing the

book, I had to read it to know what I wrote.

That's very true. Proofreading is everything.

So the big sale, selling Nirvana. Wow. Wow, I

almost said Nirvana. Wow, geez. Wasn't that what

was supposed to happen? Well, it happened more

than once in the history of Nirvana. And in fact,

funnily enough, we had to give permission to

the band Nirvana to get a trademark because...

Nilvana and Nirvana are too close for them to

get it without us approving it. Oh, wow. That's

funny. That's crazy. And we never regretted it.

Never. There you go. So selling the company to

Chorus Entertainment was a major decision. Can

you walk us through the factors that led to this

decision? Sure. So by this time, we were the

leading independent production company in the

world. We were doing over 20 different series.

We had... The first ever weekend blocks on PBS.

So we had six shows on PBS. We had the Saturday

morning schedule at CBS that we were programming

and producing for. And that was three hours,

too. And we had blocks on Nickelodeon and Cartoon

Network. And so we were really riding high. And

in order to keep on growing, which is what a

public company has to do. We felt the only way

to achieve that would be to have a broadcaster

that was the largest broadcaster in Canada who

could basically commission as many shows as they

could from us, and that would add to our growth.

So that was one of the drivers. The second driver

was that we were kind of in a corner being just

in the production business when our best competitors

were integrated companies like Disney and Hanna

-Barbera. If we could integrate with the largest

kids' broadcaster, albeit in Canada, that would

basically give us strength in the market. And

Chorus was Canada's leading network broadcaster

of kids' shows. And they bought us. And they

bought us with the intent of launching what was

then going to be the first preschool channel

in the U .S. before Noggin. Because of the tech

meltdown after they bought us, like months after

they bought us, the financing for launching the

channel disappeared. And so they never did. And

so one of their main purposes in buying us just

was never achieved because of the crisis caused

by the tech meltdown of 2000. Followed by...

9 -11 and its impact on the economy. Yeah, absolutely.

So I actually didn't answer why we wanted to

sell. You can read the book for that part, folks.

I am with you. Just read the book. I'm too lazy

to tell you the story. No, he's not, folks. No,

he's not. So going from Nelvana to life in the

cookie jar, how did you navigate the dynamics

of working within a larger corporate structure?

Well, I'm not sure we were a larger corporate

structure. Maybe we were. I don't know if I would

exactly agree with that. I'd have to think about

it. But the cookie jar was interesting because

we bought essentially two divisions. The company

SINAR had fallen on hard economic times because

their CEOs and their CFO had made $134 million

disappear into the Bahamas. And so they were

basically asked to leave the company while the

company sorted out what really happened. So I

was able to buy it with a private equity group,

Birch Hill. You know, it took us several years

of due diligence to sort of, and working with

the courts because there were all these court

cases, to sort of get through the process and

be able to complete the acquisition. So I had

private equity partners, you know, as my board

and my partners. And there was a second division

besides the SINAR group. There was Carson DeLosa,

which was a supplementary educational business

out of North Carolina, Greensboro, to be specific.

And, you know, so essentially we had to organize

how we were going to manage the multiple businesses.

And then we also owned 20 % of Canada's all animation

service at the time, Teletoon. So it was kind

of an interesting organizational effort. But

because there were so many moving pieces in this

company, it was very helpful to have a hands

-on private equity group to partner with. That

sounds like a lot. That sounds like a lot of

stress. It really wasn't stressful. You know,

it just was a lot. It was a lot to sort out.

Because what's interesting is when you acquire

a company versus building it up, like when I

built up Nelvana, you know, we did it moment

by moment, month by month, year by year, etc.

And each thing you do is incremental knowledge

and you have the history all in your mind, right?

But when you acquire a company, you don't have

that sense of the history of the company. You

might have read a few pages. but you don't you

didn't live it so you don't really understand

what you've got till you've been with it a while

and you also don't know who in the team is actually

going to perform in a way that you would approve

of until you've worked with them a bit because

you're inheriting the whole cast and you have

to understand everybody's relationships and also

you don't have the history and you need the people

with the history so all of this uh you know gives

you a lot to sort through yeah i mean i I don't

want to oversimplify it, but it's kind of like

when a new comic book, like when a comic book,

like when Batman starts, goes from one story

arc to the next story arc, and maybe it's a different

writer for each story arc. It's like you have

to figure out what the history is and then create

your own history going forward. Right. So when

I read the book and when I looked you up and

did all the research for the interview and everything

else, the one thing that popped out to me at

Cookie Jar was. Johnny Test. Right. So number

one, Johnny Test will be 20 years old next year.

Wow. 2005 to 2025. Okay. Number two, we've actually

interviewed Hugh Test, Mr. Ian James Corlett,

a couple of times. Hey, this is Ian James Corlett,

and you're listening to the Geekcast Radio Network.

So we love... We love Johnny Test. What was it

like working on that show? First of all, it was

a lot of fun because they had already produced

a season. So this is a show that was developed

at Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers put it on

the WB, which was their network. And then I think

there were subsequent runs on Cartoon Network.

After one season of producing Johnny Test, the

WB or Warner Brothers itself, the parent company,

changed their strategy and didn't want to do

properties that weren't classic Warner properties.

So Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, that kind of thing,

Roadrunner or Superman, Batman, etc. So if it

wasn't part of that canon of classic Warner's

characters, they were asked to stop investing

in these shows. The Warners animation group,

run by a guy named Sander Schwartz at the time,

put Johnny Test and a few other things up for

auction. And we wanted Johnny Test and went after

Johnny Test and won it. And then we started producing

it, working with Scott Fellows, and continued

on the production path that had been set up.

But did it, whereas they did one season, I think

we ended up doing about eight or nine seasons.

So it was one of the best things in the cookie

jar catalog. and it helped us sell a lot of other

library with it and was really instrumental in

building our relationship with netflix because

when netflix was starting out they were having

trouble getting more than just a few shows from

a nickelodeon or a cartoon it was before those

groups were selling them a lot and um basically

uh we were able to take a cartoon show because

of The fact that we had a Warner Brothers -style

contract that we stepped into, we had the rights

to put it on streaming if we wanted to. And so

we were able to have it on Cartoon Network and

Netflix at the same time in an era when that

wasn't being done. Yeah, that was very original

to do that. Oh, yeah, totally. Again, you talk

about in the book, and again, folks, read the

book, but he talks about... The changing landscape,

and we often hear at the Geekast Radio Network

talking about that when it comes to how we consume

media, whether it's movies, TV, music, whatever.

Everything has changed and evolved, and it's

all different now, and sometimes you can go back,

sometimes you can't. Nobody wants to go back

to Betamax. Nobody wants to go back. The only

thing people seem to sometimes want on a very

limited basis is back to vinyl. Yeah. Yeah, vinyl.

And even now, with all of the craze of the, I

don't want to say upscaling, but the new transfers,

the new 4K, I'm getting back into physical media

again. I am buying, because I have a 4K television,

I have a 4K Blu -ray player, I am buying so many

4K DVD releases. It's crazy. Because at the end

of the day, folks, if the internet goes away,

the only thing you're going to have is your electricity,

which means you're going to need physical media.

You're listening to Geek Cast Radio. That's right.

How does WOW Unlimited Media fit into the evolving

landscape of the animation industry? The thesis

for WOW, which we started in about 2016, 2017,

was we had two companies that were in trouble.

One was Mainframe in Vancouver, which was producing

the Barbie animated specials. and the barbie

animated series and had done a lot of the sony

made for tv versions of some of their successful

movies in animation and they were a leading cgi

studio and in addition to them we put them together

with frederator which was a great company started

by fred sybert at frederator we had two divisions

again one the animation group which did castlevania

while i was there running being ceo or being

chairman whatever i was and also bravest warriors

which had started on youtube as shorts as well

as being puppycat which had started on youtube

as shorts and developed into a full -blown netflix

series so you had that part of federator which

was a production side making really interesting

cutting -edge shows and uh you also had a federator

multi -channel network an mcn which did the job

of helping creators grow their channels on youtube

and monetize them and those were the two businesses

that we had combined with mainframe as a cgi

studio and what we did is we've basically fixed

both companies grew the production slate dramatically

at mainframe and because the interest in our

kind of company which was public at the time

in canada was not great we decided to merge with

a U .S. company now called Cartoon Studios, then

called Genius Brands. They were public in the

U .S. and they acquired us. And so I was able

to sort of take my investors out and make them

some profit and bring the company into the U

.S. public markets where I hoped it would enjoy

more acceptance. But unfortunately, that hasn't

yet been the case. See, we're familiar with mainframe.

in the 90s with like Reboot and War Planets and

Beast Wars. Yeah, so when I was there, we rebooted

Reboot and did a new Reboot series that went

on Netflix. Yeah, I remember when that, I think

vaguely, that was like, what, five years ago

or something? Yeah, roughly. No, probably even

seven years ago, six, seven years ago. Wow, that's

hard to believe. Time goes by so quickly. Oh,

it does. And you're listening to Geek Cast Radio.

Yes, you are. So as you reflect on your career,

what are some of the most significant changes

you've witnessed in the animation industry? I

would say the most interesting thing that I've

seen is threefold. One, there's been a dramatic

increase in animation quality. That's number

one. So from the time that I referred to earlier

on in our conversation when animation cell count

had really dropped and it was very, very limited,

because of... What happened in the 80s with us

and with Spielberg and Lucas doing his cartoons

and Tim Burton doing Beetlejuice with us, you

had a growing demand for high quality animation.

And that has just been exponentially driven by

the move to streaming because streaming is all

about premium television. So that's one of the

changes. The second change is the digitization

of the work. which didn't reduce our headcounts

ever, but it made us more efficient, able to

do more projects and to do them with greater

and greater quality. So those are two big changes.

And the third that I would identify is that we've

seen a dramatic change in who the broadcasters

are. So in the beginning of my career, if you

were a kid watching cartoons, you were mainly

watching saturday morning for four hours on three

networks nbc abc and cbs your local station might

or might not have syndicated shows on during

the morning or the afternoon or maybe both but

they were often not recently made cartoons and

reruns of old cartoons or the import of some

international material so you know the nature

of the content has changed from that time when

there was limited animation to the advent of

Nickelodeon and Disney and Cartoon Network, where

all of a sudden there was 24 hours a day, seven

days a week of cartoons or children's shows.

And so more was being produced, greater quantum.

You had home video demanding and paying for shows.

So you had multiple media at different levels

of exposure and distribution that increased the

demand for animation. And finally, we've seen

with streaming that it's killed the legacy business

and streaming is the whole business that's left.

So in a way, we may have more than three channels

to sell to, like we did in the early days of

my career. But I think we're going to see consolidation

and potentially have the, say, seven global streamers

that exist shrink down to four, perhaps. But

at the same time... These channels have unlimited

shelf space, can play a lot of shows, and have

the biggest audiences on a global basis than

anybody has ever had. So all of this is great.

Yeah. The funny thing about the streaming stuff

is when we first started talking about streaming,

I don't know, 2010, 2011, 2012. It was Netflix

or Hulu. Those were the only two that were really

there. And then every company, from Disney to

Warner's to everything, they all have their own

streaming services now. So I don't know how that's

going to shrink unless Disney and Warner's buys

everything else. Yeah, no, I think it'll be business

combinations. So, for example, nobody knows,

but the general wisdom, I think, is that when

Skydance finishes buying Paramount, They'll shut

Paramount Plus down or they'll merge it in with

somebody else, one or the other. And then there'll

be a supplier to everybody rather than just supplying

their own channel. Because I think that was the

step or the bridge too far was when you were

making everything for your own network and not

selling to others, you were losing a lot of income

stream. And that resulted in the investment cost

for building these services to be higher than

anybody had contemplated. I got to say, that

hurts my heart, the fact that Skydance is going

to buy Paramount. Oh, God. That company has such

a legacy. Oh, boy. All right. Hey, look, it's

been run by some nimcom poops for the last 20

years. I don't disagree with that. I don't disagree.

That's why they had to split CBS and Paramount

and then re -merge them again. What advice would

you give to aspiring animators and filmmakers

entering the industry today? My advice to young,

new talent wanting to enter animation today is

twofold. One is the industry at the moment is

overheated. the streamers are ordering less the

legacy companies are dying and not ordering much

if anything and so uh you need to find another

avenue you may not be somebody that people rush

to hire for the next two years until the industry

comes back to its full strength and so you have

this great opportunity in youtube which we haven't

really discussed that much about today where

there is no curator you can make a show that

interests you your favorite character, the character

that you've been dreaming of since you were a

kid. And you can put out a cartoon every day

or every few days or once a week, but on a regular

basis. And it can be a short cartoon. It can

be one minute or it could be five minutes or

it could be 10. It could be whatever length you

want. It could be pencil drawings or fully painted

or done on CGI. You have your choice of how you

do it. You're doing it for yourself. And you

can begin at a very, very low level where it's

you doing all the work. And then if you're successful

in building an audience who watches it and therefore

monetizes it, you can start to spend some of

the money you're making on building your crew,

improving the quality, and eventually building

the brand to be an important, strong brand. And

if you do that, not only can you continue to

live off YouTube, but... Apple, Netflix, Amazon,

they'll all come calling because they all have

enjoyed a hit that was a big hit on YouTube.

Whether it's Cocomilla on Netflix has been Hotel

on Amazon or Bee and Puppycat on Netflix again,

it doesn't really matter. The point is that properties

can become big on YouTube and then transfer over

and have another life in. Another distribution

platform. Yeah, I mean, the biggest one I can

think of off the top of my head is Cobra Kai.

That started as a YouTube Red series, and then

it eventually went to Netflix. That's exactly

it. So essentially, young people today have the

choice of doing it yourself. And so I can relate

to this as somebody who started off in experimental

film, where I made these films. Take them to

an open screen night and put myself out there

and meet the audience. Right. In the case of,

you know, doing YouTube, you basically start

to hear from your audience. You build your profile

and social media and your audience is very communicative

back to you when they like something. So it's

really a much better time to be launching that

type of career. than ever before. Very cool,

very cool. All right, final question. What do

you see as the future of animation and how do

you envision your role in shaping that future?

So I think the future of animation will be that

we will see the evolution of streaming and how.

So currently, and when Netflix started running

cartoons, they weren't sure that they needed

cartoons. So they came around and they were offering

us a few hundred dollars an episode. And we were

sure that cartoons would work for them because

once kids saw a cartoon that they liked, we knew

they wanted to see it over and over again. And

so it'd be hard to drop once you start. And in

fact, what we learned from Netflix and the other

streamers is that having animation for kids helps

reduce the churn. And churn is people turning

off a service, canceling the service. So it has

a real function for them. They don't think that

anybody buys the service necessarily because

of the animation, but they think it keeps them

on as a customer longer. So that's the critical

thinking there within the YouTube universe and

the streaming universe. And what we need to do

as an industry is, I think once there's been

consolidation, we've got to figure out how to

bring back. dedicated kid channels like nickelodeon

or cartoon or disney that are niche subscription

vod offerings and that you know speak more to

the kid and give the kid more volume than the

other streamers are prepared to do so that's

my thinking and i think it doesn't happen until

we see the consolidation and the kind of a mature

stage for the other streamers That is awesome.

Is there anything else you would like to say

before I run through the closing, sir? This has

been a blast. And it's been a blast on Geekcast

Radio. That's right. No, I'm feeling fully spoken

out. I have no more thoughts. I have no more

answers. I have no more questions. We broke his

brain, folks. You know, it wasn't hard. Oh, boy.

Yes, folks. Animation Nation by Michael Hirsch.

Go check it out today. Hopefully he'll talk to

Audible and get that audio book going at some

point. But because the audio version is going

to be awesome when and if it happens, hopefully.

Thank you for joining us here on this episode

of Geekcast Radio Network Presents. And Steve,

thank you for being here as always. Mm -hmm.

And thank you to our guest, Michael Hirsch. Thank

you, sir, so much. Be sure to check out his book

at the link in the episode's post. So until next

time, unleash the geek in you. Beetlejuice? Beetlejuice?

Beetlejuice? You've just listened to Geekcast

Radio on the Geekcast Radio Network. There are

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