'The Prince of Egypt', Directors, Simon Wells, Brenda Chapman & Steve Hickner

0:07Jawad MirGood afternoon. This is Jawad, your host of Kingdom of Dreams Podcast. Up until now, you have been seeing all the episodes where I've been speaking to producers, directors, composers, special effects artists, and so on and so forth with the, from the beginning to the end. But from now on, I'm just always gonna have a little bit of an intro and an outro just to kind of give you a bit of a introduction. This year, Prince of Egypt, DreamWorks Animation first film, first traditional animation film and second animated feature, celebrated its 25th anniversary. I had a pleasure of speaking to Simon Wells, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Hickner, again together this time. The first time I spoke to them was the very first episode separately, and this time I had them all together, talking about 25 years to DreamWorks classic, which starred Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes, Patrick Stewart, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jeff Goldblum, Sandra Bullock, Steve Martin Short, and it also had a song that was nominated for an Oscar, When You Believe, by Mariah Carey and late, Whitney Houston.

1:14Jawad MirI had a great time talking to all three of them. Prince of Egypt is one of my personal favorite animated features, if not one of my favorite films of all time. And without further ado, here is the episode with Simon Wells, Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner on DreamWorks Animation's 25th anniversary, The Prince of Egypt. Thank you so much, guys, for coming together on this. This is truly very special. Can you believe it? It's been 25 years, The Prince of Egypt. Well, next week. December 15th.

1:44Guest 2Literally.

1:44Guest 3Yeah.

1:45Guest 1Boy. Yeah, God…

1:46Guest 2It is

1:46Guest 1... It was the 18th, wasn't it? Yeah.

1:49Guest 2Yeah.

1:50Jawad MirHow do you guys feel?

1:51Guest 2Kinda crazy.

1:53Guest 1Old.

1:54Guest 2Yeah.

1:55Jawad MirBesides that.

1:56Guest 2Very old.

1:59Guest 3I, and in some ways it's a little sad that there isn't more 2D out there, because it looks so good. I wish there was more of it out there. We were just talking about The Boy and His Heron and what a beautiful movie that is.

2:13Guest 2Yeah.

2:13Guest 1Yeah.

2:13Guest 2It was beautiful. Yeah. And it is, it's such…

2:17Guest 1I'm gl…

2:17Guest 2... A pleasure to watch 2D. Yeah.

2:20Guest 3Yep.

2:22Jawad MirI'm with you on that too. I mean, I truly enjoy 2D way more than any other format, and I think Spirit Stallion of Cimarron and then Sinbad were probably one of the last few films that came out in 2D, a major animated features, if I'm not mistaken, right?

2:38Guest 3Princess and Frog.

2:38Guest 1Well, there was, Klaus. There was Klaus…

2:40Jawad MirWhich one?

2:40Guest 1... Relatively recently.

2:41Jawad MirOh, Klaus.

2:42Guest 3Klaus.

2:43Jawad MirYeah, Klaus. Yeah, that was great.

2:44Guest 1Yeah. And that was brilliant. I mean, that was…

2:46Jawad MirYeah

2:46Guest 1... Beautifully done, incredibly stylish, really well animated. But yeah, I mean, the problem these days is, like, where are you gonna get in-betweeners from?

2:56Guest 2Exactly.

2:56Guest 1You know, how would you crew up?

3:00Guest 2It's hard.

3:00Guest 3It's, and effects animators. Who?

3:04Guest 1Yeah.

3:05Guest 2Yeah. You can do short films because there so few, but, you know, so few need it, but it's like I saw John Musker's, short, I'm Hip, which is a lot of fun. It's, I mean, it's very inside industry caricatures and all of that, but it's just really fun to see, you know, him pull on the old, you know, old teams that, who…

3:31Jawad MirYeah

3:31Guest 2... Miss doing 2D, and so a lot of people jumped on to help out, so.

3:36Guest 3Yeah, I remember talking…

3:37Guest 2You know, there are some young folk who really... I'm sounding just like my mom now, young folk.

3:45Guest 1They're young, babe.

3:47Guest 2But there's some, there are a lot of students who love 2D and are… ... Trying to learn it. So it's not completely dead, but it's not as, prolific as it used to be.

4:00Guest 1Yeah. My…

4:00Jawad MirYeah

4:01Guest 1... Daughter's actually currently in the, in the room across the way there actually animating on somebody's 2D short. And if she…

4:08Guest 2Ah.

4:08Jawad MirYeah.

4:08Guest 1Yeah, she's…

4:09Guest 2Very cool.

4:11Jawad MirThere is, John Stevenson, who directed Kung Fu Panda.

4:15Guest 1Oh, yeah.

4:15Jawad MirHe made a short that's going through festivals right now. It's called Middle Watch. It's, about a World War II submarine operator. It's actually pretty good. It was done in 2D more or less, but that was really good too. I enjoyed watching that.

4:29Guest 3Did he animate it himself?

4:31Jawad MirThat I don't know. That I don't know. He s…

4:34Guest 3'Cause…

4:34Jawad MirWe spoke about it very briefly because we were talking about, Ro… was that, the Romeo and Juliet? The Sherlock Gnomes. Sorry. Sherlock Gnomes.

4:44Guest 1Sherlock Gnomes. Yeah, the sequel to…

4:45Jawad MirYeah

4:45Guest 1... Romeo and Juliet.

4:46Jawad MirYeah.

4:47Guest 1Yeah.

4:47Jawad MirSo we were talking about that, and that came up, and he was, like, in the festival, path at that time. This was five, six months ago, but, great film.

4:57Guest 1Oh, I actually, I had dinner with him about three months ago, and he didn't mention it, so interesting.

5:03Jawad MirOkay.

5:03Guest 3But John animated his, so.

5:07Guest 2Yeah, in TVPaint, I believe.

5:09Guest 3And so did, Andreas, that 20-minute thing that he did, 20-plus minute thing that he did. He animated most of it himself.

5:18Guest 1Yeah. That's, that's impressive.

5:21Guest 3Yes.

5:21Guest 1That's, I mean, that's a, that's a lot of work to… ... Ju… just the sheer length of time. I mean, back when I was a 2D animator, if you did like four minutes of animation in a year, you were going really fast.

5:34Guest 3Yeah.

5:34Guest 1And the idea of doing 20 minutes is like, that's a huge commitment of time.

5:39Guest 3It was.

5:39Guest 2Yeah.

5:39Guest 3I think it took him multiple years.

5:40Guest 2Yeah, in a year though, it took him a lot longer than that.

5:43Guest 3Yeah.

5:43Guest 2So.

5:43Guest 1Sure, but he'd have been doing it in his spare…

5:44Guest 3I feel like a decade

5:45Guest 1... Yeah, he'd have been doing it in his spare time as well, which, you know, he has been holding down a full-time job as well.

5:54Guest 2Actually, I thought he'd retired.

5:54Jawad MirSo let me ask…

5:55Guest 2Okay.

5:55Jawad MirSorry, go ahead.

5:56Guest 1Oh, is he? Okay.

5:57Guest 2Sorry.

5:57Jawad MirGo ahead. Go ahead, Brenda.

5:59Guest 2No, I thought Andreas said retired, so.

6:02Jawad MirOh, okay.

6:03Guest 3I thought so too.

6:04Guest 1Well, maybe.

6:06Jawad MirI will sta… we'll talk, we'll start with Prince of Egypt. Obviously, that's why we're here. What's each of you, whoever can start first, what's one memorable day, moment, scene in production, post-production, that stands out if it, at this very second if I was to ask you guys separately, what stands out the most and why?

6:34Guest 1Boy. Go on, Brenda, you've got something.

6:38Guest 4No, I don't have something.

6:40Guest 1Well…

6:40Guest 4I think for me, it's the one that got away, which was that voice of God that Nick Fletcher made. I will forever wish that there was some record of that, because I thought it was an absolutely masterful tour de force piece of work he did. Like, it was, unbelievable. I still f… get chills when I think about when we, when we heard that for the first time on…

7:03Guest 1Well, y… you should explain what it is

7:05Guest 4... Well, basically, our thought was at the time is that God would be ma… the voice of God would be comprised of all the people in Moses' life. So we got every actor who was in the movie to record the lines, and then Nick, did a seamless blend of them all, that they went from one to the other, and it was really, as I say, a, for me, a tour de force. Well, let's get your ob… observation.

7:37Guest 1Well, you should also explain why it didn't end up in the movie.

7:40Guest 4Well, you can do that. You can do that. You brought it up.

7:45Guest 1You brought it up. You bring the bad news. And basically it was a religious objection that the, several religious leaders, said the voice of God is God is essentially male, and the idea of having, a female voice or a child's voice be the voice of God, they felt was wrong. And, you know, for all our sort of ambitions and indeed our sort of philosophical support of the idea, we really didn't want to fly in the face of the establishment ideas and, you know, we didn't want people condemning the film for an element like that.

8:27Guest 4There was also the fact that they thought all the voices, signified pantheism, which was in fact the very thing that Prince of Egypt, of Moses was against, which was…

8:40Guest 1Yeah

8:40Guest 4... That there was one God, there wasn't many gods. So there was also that issue too which sunk it, is that when we, when we thought that people might get the sense of pantheism out of it, we knew that was antithetical to the very premise of the movie. Not to mention that it made Moses seem like he was schizophrenic.

9:03Guest 1Well, he is hearing voices.

9:05Guest 4Yeah.

9:06Jawad MirBut as a sound design piece of work…

9:09Guest 4It was beautiful.

9:10Jawad MirWell, that's good. What about you, Brenda?

9:15Guest 4Oh, my gosh, there are so many. I think for me, I remember the day, Simon and Steve came onto the film, 'cause I was so nervous about meeting Simon and how this was all gonna turn out, and then it all worked out. I mean, but it was, it was a... I just remember the day and meeting them. I mean, I'd known Steve before, but, it was, it was a good day.

9:47Guest 1Ooh. As it turned out.

9:49Jawad MirWhy were…

9:49Guest 1Yeah.

9:50Guest 4As it turned out, it was a really good day.

9:52Jawad MirWhy were you nervous?

9:56Guest 1She probably heard stories about me

9:56Guest 4... Because I hadn't done it b… What?

10:00Guest 1You probably heard stories about me. I, back on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, I was an asshole, and,... A… and Jeffrey did not like me, and so, I think Jeffrey was having me on the film very much on, because Steven wanted me, and he was having me u… under sufferance and did, and was afraid I was going to override, you know, just run all over Brenda in particular. And, so I mean, I don't know what Jeffrey had said about me to you, but, no. No, I think…

10:30Guest 4He hadn't, he hadn't really, he hadn't, no. I, you know, I'd, I'd heard stories, but mainly I was just, "Look, here's someone who's done this before and knows what he's about," and I, you know, and I've, I've… it was my own insecurities of never having directed and was kind of the reluctant director of the three. So I was nervous, yeah, that I would... You know, I just wasn't sure how the chemistry would play out. But, it turned out to be a really good team. So I

11:06Jawad MirWas there a particular moment that broke the i… like there was a moment that kind of just took care of everything, or it just happened organically as soon as you guys met each other, the three of you together?

11:15Guest 4I th… I think we were getting to know each other. I remember, I remember the story meeting where I suddenly realized that Simon, with his lovely British accent… ... Knew that he was in a room full of Americans and that everyone... And he could say anything and we'd believe him. Then I realized he was completely BS-ing us in a moment. And I threw a story pad at him. And we, he looked at me and then we laughed, and then from then on it seemed like we were good. I don't know. I r… I don't know if you remember that, Simon.

11:52Guest 1I have no memory of that moment at all. But yeah, the idea that I was maybe bullshitting a room full of people is entirely likely. In fact, I'm most certain, so yeah.

12:03Guest 4It was like, it was just funny. I have no… I don't remember what the story subject was or whatever, but it was just suddenly I went, "Wait a minute."

12:16Jawad MirWhat was the one moment, at any stage when you guys... You know, normally, like, when you have two people working together, like directors, there's opposing views most of the time. Three is a different story altogether. But what was that one moment, if you can remember, where each of you had a different opinion about a diff… a… about a scene that how to execute it, how should we move forward? Like, instead of two against one, it was like one against one against one.

12:43Guest 1No, you know, it…

12:44Guest 3Yeah, I don't…

12:44Guest 1The weird thing is it di… it didn't happen.

12:46Jawad MirIt didn't happen.

12:47Guest 3Yeah, no.

12:47Guest 1I know that sounds absolutely impossible, and, you know, in the whatever it was, three years of making the film, we can't have just, like, carried on happily. You got one?

12:59Guest 2It was four years.

13:00Guest 1Four, yeah, four years of making the film. But no, I mean, it w… it was interesting because, I mean, all of us are fairly good at articulating our thoughts and why we had opinions about stuff. But also, we all got pretty good at listening to other people's opinions. So, I, a… and generally Brenda was right anyway, so, you know. We'd argue and then do what Brenda said, so, you know.

13:28Guest 3We also had that screening where we had tried this, you know, the Disneyfication of Prince of Egypt, and we all saw that version and all came out saying, "Well, those elements aren't right." And I think after that there was no question that we were all on the same page.

13:45Guest 1Yeah. I mean, actually I would say that's probably my mo… single most memorable moment of making of the film was, Jeffrey, bless him, let the three of us watch the first compilation. You build the whole thing in storyboards with sound and music and stuff, and we threw together the first compilation, and we got to watch it without anybody else, just the three of us. And at the end of the movie we all looked at each other and said, "The comedy and the cutesy characters are the thing that's not working, and the stuff that's actually staying really true to the story and the drama is the stuff that's really resonating for all of us."

14:26Guest 1And we came out, the thing I remember is coming out of the, it was a screening room, it was Amblin, which is Spielberg's, headquarters. And Jeffrey was pacing up and down in the hallway like an expectant father, and he came up to us and said, "Okay, so guys."

14:42Guest 3Yeah.

14:42Guest 1"More gags, right?" And we kind of looked at each other and said…

14:46Guest 3Yeah

14:46Guest 1... "No, we think less." And he looked at us kind of like, "Really?" And then the amazing thing is, yeah, he saw the movie, shortly later and turned round and said, "Yeah, you're right." But yeah, there was a nasty moment when the three of us are thinking, "Is he gonna force us to make the version with the cute animals and the comedy characters and the, you know, the sort of wacky Moses movie?" 'Cause that wasn't a movie any of us wanted to make.

15:14Guest 3It was funny. There were some elements of comedy, like, Moses talking to Ramesses. But it was complete character and nuance, and that felt funny. And stuff like the silly sheep things felt obnoxious. It just felt completely wrong. So there w… there was light… a lightheartedness and a levity to it, but it didn't come from where we had expected.

15:39Guest 1Yeah, 'cause the original…

15:39Guest 3At least for me.

15:40Guest 2Yeah

15:40Guest 1... The original idea had been, at least the original pitch that, we'd all sort of said, "Yeah, okay, we'll try that," was that every character would have kind of an animal sidekick. Zipporah would have a little, you know…

15:53Guest 1... A hawk, and…... And Moses had his dogs, and Ramesses had his cats. And so…

16:00Guest 2Bora had a cat. Yeah.

16:02Guest 1Right. And…

16:03Guest 3Oh, yeah

16:03Guest 1... And everything, e… so everything could have, like, this sort of animal commentary on the drama that was going on above. And yeah, any of, any of those elements, they just very quickly disappeared. There is actually, there are I think two shots in the movie that, where Moses' dogs still appear, after the song All I Ever Wanted when he…

16:25Guest 3Yeah

16:25Guest 1... Goes back to his apartments. And that was one of the first sequences that went into production, which is why they're still in it.... And, yeah, and then he settles down and has the hieroglyph nightmare, which,.. So yeah, there's these little echoes of that idea, but, yeah, it went away very early on.

16:49Jawad MirRight.

16:49Guest 3Thankfully there are few echoes of those, that those vestiges are were eliminated early enough…

16:55Guest 1Yeah

16:55Guest 3... That they didn't show up.

16:57Guest 2Right.

16:59Jawad MirBrenda?

17:01Guest 2No, I was just agreeing with Steve. Sorry.

17:04Jawad MirOkay. No, I was just wondering if you have something to add on to that.

17:09Guest 2Yeah, I mean, it was... It even, it even hit some of the human characters in Samut. Or…

17:18Guest 3Oh

17:18Guest 2... Whatever his name was.

17:19Guest 1Samut.

17:19Guest 2Yeah. Yusar.

17:21Guest 3Yus…

17:21Guest 2Yeah. It was…... The character that Steve, that's a good Steve story. He loves that story.

17:27Guest 1He, s… Steve may not be able to tell that story though, 'cause it still makes him laugh so hard. I, one of, one of the greatest joys of working on the movie with Steve was occasionally he would, he would find something so funny that he would, he would be incapable of talking, he'd be laughing so much. I've actually seen him fall on the floor.

17:44Guest 2He's starting to go there now, looks like.

17:46Guest 1So there was a character…

17:49Guest 3It was funny

17:49Guest 1... There was a character who i… who was gonna be, Moses' valet, and he was gonna be like this sort of Shakespearean fool, a guy who, you know, spoke truth to power, and he'd be the guy who'd be able to make observations and tell Moses things that Moses maybe didn't want to face. And so we had this character designed. He actually does show up in the movie. He's, he's there trying to adjust, Moses' wig as they're hurrying to get down to the…

18:14Guest 1... The whatever it was, the big party.

18:18Guest 2The banquet, and…

18:18Guest 1The banquet

18:18Guest 2... Pushing them to go faster as they… Run around

18:21Guest 1... Right. And so he was a main character, and originally we were actually gonna cast... Oh boy, who were we gonna cast?

18:27Guest 3Michael Keaton.

18:27Guest 2We had a couple people. David Hyde Pierce and Michael Keaton.

18:30Guest 1Michael Keaton. Right. And… and, yeah, Mi… Michael Keaton hadn't been impressed by the character design at all. But anyway, so yeah, we, this was gonna be like a big major character. And then gradually we found... We just cut him out of scene after scene. He, his number of lines reduced down, and he became a less and less important character. And then there was the point in editing down the banquet scene, which originally the banquet scene was much longer. It was like an eight-minute-long sequence. And we cut it down and cut it down. Steve actually did a massive cut down on it. And there was a point where we realized that, I think it's Ramesses says, "You there, take that slave girl to, Prince Moses." And it was the point at which, okay, the character has now gone from being a named character with, you know, A-list cast to, "You there."

19:22Guest 3There.

19:23Guest 1And s…

19:24Guest 3And that's it for him in the movie.

19:26Guest 1Yeah. And Steve could not talk for five minutes, he was laughing so hard. But I... That, actually that scene was,.. It's interesting. We brought very different things to the movie, and one of the things that Steve, actually, is incredibly good at, he looked at the... 'Cause we had this thing that we were watching the movie, and we were always finding by the point at which S… Moses left Egypt, the movie felt like it was dragging, and we couldn't figure out why. And it certainly wasn't in the kind of, you know, the death of the, of the overseer and Moses running away and the argument with Ramesses. And eventually, Steve said, "Look, I think it's earlier on. I think it's one of the earlier scenes. I think it's the banquet. The banquet's running too long." And we kind of looked at the banquet, and it had all these bits in it that we felt we really needed in the story.

20:18Guest 1And but it was a long sequence. And we tried cutting it down, and we were still at like six minutes or something. And so Steve just said, "Okay, look, how long should it be?" And Brenda and I looked at each other and said, "Probably two and a half minutes in the…... Kind of the balance of the movie." And so he said, "Okay, just give me editorial for the day." And he sat with Nick Fletcher, and they cut the hell out of the sequence. They just, you know, just gave it this buzz cut. And we came in to see what they'd done, and our first reaction was like, "Really?"

20:50Guest 3Oh, my God.

20:51Guest 1Oh, no. All those things, all these, you know, things that we loved. And then the next screening when we watched it, the first act played perfectly. It was, it was just like exactly the right rhythmic thing. So yeah, it's a thing which I've always carried afterwards. It's, it's a realization that... And the thing that Steve had spotted is like no, it's that. It's not the sequence where you're starting to feel it's dragging, it's the sequence that causes the dragging…

21:16Guest 3Before that

21:16Guest 1... Maybe several sequences earlier in the movie.

21:20Guest 3That's actually… ... Something I learned from,... George Lucas, not personally, but…... From Amer… from American Graffiti, is American Graffiti… ... Was a watershed movie in that because the movie, every scene is scored by a Top 40 hit of the day of 1962, all the hits of that day were ni… were two minutes. And so every sequence in American Graffiti is two minutes, and that revolutionized movie making. And, that started scripts being two pages long, and now they're even less than that. But that was like the first one. And so that really struck me. I remembered how good that is.

22:01Guest 1Interesting. Interesting. I'll tell you like my first memories of... And m… I mean, we've talked about this individually before k… about two year, two and a half years ago. The first time I saw the images of Prince of Egypt were, I think it was late summer. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this website. Back in the day it was pretty big. Ain't It Cool News.

22:25Guest 3Oh, yeah.

22:26Guest 1Yeah.

22:26Guest 3Yeah.

22:26Guest 1Yeah.

22:26Guest 3Of course.

22:27Guest 1Yeah. Yeah. So I think he got access, or he was sent by DreamWorks Animation the scene, the Nile, River, like the mother going into… ... Go around the hill, and you see the Nile River, and it was like breathtaking.

22:38Guest 3So nice.

22:38Guest 1I still re… Yeah. I still remember that just captured me. And when the teaser came out with the, you know, River or river, Flow Gently For Me, I mean, that stood out for me more than anything else. What was, what was like working on that scene like? Because that was a very emotional scene.

22:59Guest 2It was,.. It was incredible because I think Rudolf was, animating the mother, and we were pushing that forward. But somehow it wasn't quite emotional enough, and I remember having to get effects to go in and put a tear going down her eyes as the basket went off. And we weren't sure how that was gonna look because it was, you know, r… extreme closeup. And to animate this tear was, w… we weren't sure how that was gonna go. But also, I don't think it was just the visuals, I think it was Ofra Haza's voice.

23:47Guest 1Yeah.

23:47Guest 3Oh, yeah.

23:48Guest 1Yeah.

23:48Guest 3Incredible.

23:49Guest 1For sure.

23:49Guest 2I talked about this recently, but she just brought so much pain, and soul, and love, and j… everything was in that voice. Everything we needed to make that, pretty clear.

24:08Guest 1It was, it was Hans Zimmer who knew…

24:10Guest 2Yeah

24:10Guest 1... Ofra. I mean, Hans Zimmer knows…

24:12Guest 2Yeah

24:12Guest 1... Everybody. And he was, he was the guy who said, "Oh, the voice, the person who ought to be doing it is this." And, you know, we knew nothing of, you know, Middle Eastern music. And so it was like, "Well, okay, let's, let's hear her." And yeah, and you just hear her voice and it's, it's shocking how it encapsulates Yocheved and that whole moment. Yeah.

24:36Guest 2Yeah. And all those

24:37Guest 3I remember how Jeffrey would show that sequence to everybody. I was afraid that there would be no one left on the planet left to see it. He had shown it to…

24:47Guest 1Yeah

24:47Guest 3... So many people to, like, drum up interest in the movie.

24:50Guest 1It was the most watched piece of film, in Hollywood in 1995. Yeah.

24:59Guest 2'Cause that scene does really set up the film, like, really well. Like, it just literally sets the tone of what's to follow afterwards. And obviously the relationship between Rameses and Moses is, you know, another thing we can chat about. But it... That really sets the tone of the entire film. It really did.

25:16Guest 1Yeah. Well, actually, you're right about it. And the interesting thing is, I mean, we tackled that first. I mean, that was literally the first scene that, was storyboarded and the first scene that ended up going into production. And, yeah, it's, it's interesting that there we were trying to make a film a comedy after that when clearly, you know, that opening sequence, which is unbelievably powerful, there isn't a gag in that, you know?

25:41Guest 2Yeah. I think, I think, you know, having worked with Jeffrey at Disney before that on Lion King and that big opening and ending, you know, I think…... We were both very reminis… you know, tr… trying to match

26:00Guest 1Yeah

26:00Guest 2... The power of that. And… And, you know, but it, you know, it had a different tone of it in that, in that there were all these animals l… whooping up and, you know, it was like it just had a different approach.

26:16Guest 1Yeah.

26:16Guest 2So I think Jeffrey was hoping to infuse the film, as we were able to with Lion King, with a lot of humor and fun, but this took it to a different place, I think… ... In the, in the tone and the drama, of the film. So it just... So…

26:36Guest 1You know, start… starting with slavery does sort of tend to, you know…

26:39Guest 2Yeah

26:39Guest 1... Tend to…

26:40Guest 3Or death of the firstborn. You know, killing…

26:42Guest 1Yeah. That…

26:42Guest 3... Inf… infanticide

26:43Guest 1... Yeah. Yeah. That'll tend to change the way you feel about a picture.

26:49Guest 3I feel like I remember Brenda pitching that sequence, like, a million times, and you would always do th… this kind of thing with the, oars. That's my memory of you when you would get to that.

27:01Guest 1Frizzy oars.

27:01Guest 3You would go like that.

27:02Guest 1Yeah.

27:03Guest 3Like, kinda like

27:04Guest 1There you go

27:04Guest 3... We work at Benihana. It's that... But, you know, when you pitch, you physicalize it.

27:11Guest 2Yeah.

27:11Guest 3Or at least to do a good pitch…

27:13Guest 2That's right

27:13Guest 3... You do. Yeah. 'Cause, 'cause you're, you've got these little tiny drawings, and the people are across the room, so you're trying to make it bi… big. But I don't know how many times you pitched that thing to how many different people, but it was a lot.

27:26Guest 2Yeah. I sort of blocked it out I think.

27:32Guest 1I would say it's more like five hundred…

27:33Guest 3'Cause it was really all we had. We…

27:35Guest 2Yeah. We had to sell it, you know? And we were trying to get the voices ahead of time, you know, get all lined up because Jeffrey wanted a package out there. He wanted to show this prologue and then talk about all these amazing people that were gonna be in the film. And so we had to not only sell it to the world, we had to sell it to the actors as well and it…

27:59Guest 3And then…

27:59Guest 2... Wasn't quite there yet. So…

28:01Guest 3And then to all the animators. I know… ... You pitched that a million times because we didn't have a crew to make it.

28:10Guest 2Yeah. It was…

28:11Guest 1Yeah, we were literally a startup studio. It was… ... You know, z… hitting the ground running.

28:20Guest 2What was that…

28:20Guest 3And maybe that was…

28:21Guest 2Go on, Simon

28:22Guest 3... Maybe that was part of the w… way we were able to make a movie like that, which we were talking about that not too, not too long ago, that I'm not sure if it ever could be made again today, if anyone would ever make that movie.

28:37Guest 1No, I…

28:37Guest 2Yeah, which is what I was gonna say that…

28:40Guest 1Go ahead.

28:41Guest 2No. Please, Simon, go ahead.

28:43Guest 1No. I'm just agreeing with Steve that, y… you know, in the economics of studios, you make films... These films cost an enormous amount of money. They cost $80, $100 million to make, and you have to be making your money back. And, you know, it's a business proposition. And so, yeah, I think the fact that DreamWorks was a startup studio and DreamWorks Animation was trying to show itself as being, you know, the not Disney, I think that empowered us to go to a place that, yeah, you would not be allowed to do now. There's no studio would put the money in to make a film like that now. DreamWorks wanted to make a statement with that movie, so want… wanted to say, "Yeah, we're not, we're not like the competition. We're, we're making a piece of art here." And that was, that was a big part of selling it to the various artists we were trying to attract to the studio is, you know, this studio is an artist-friendly studio, not just a soulless corporation.

29:46Guest 2Hm. And at, it, you know, to that point, that's what I was saying, that had it not been a startup like the way DreamWorks was or even if The Prince of Egypt concept came maybe 10 years into DreamWorks Animation…

29:59Guest 1Oh, yeah

29:59Guest 2... It probably wouldn't have worked because I think the first five, six years were the time when DreamWorks took a lot of chances, the animation and the live production. And then, and they paid off. But after that, it, you know, obviously corporation and all that stuff kinda kicks in. But…

30:16Guest 3And also, when Shrek was done, that defined the studio.

30:20Guest 2Yeah.

30:20Guest 3That became the identity of DreamWorks. And so…

30:24Guest 2That's true

30:25Guest 3... It would be very hard to do Prince of Egypt.

30:28Guest 2As a follow-up to Shrek.

30:29Guest 3Yeah.

30:29Guest 2Yeah.

30:33Guest 1Yes, that would've been a very different, very different, picture if, it had come after Shrek.

30:41Guest 2It would have been the wacky races movie, yeah.

30:42Guest 1Yeah.

30:43Guest 3Ha. It would have been.

30:45Guest 1And the interesting thing is actually Shrek was going on at the same time as Prince of Egypt. Remember there was, there was a bunch of guys up in the, like, second floor of the building…

30:56Guest 2Oh, yeah

30:56Guest 1... Yeah, trying to develop Shrek as a... And it went through, went through a lot of directors and producers before it finally ended up with Andrew and Vicky.

31:06Guest 3And one of the, original people in the propeller heads was no, less than JJ Abrams.

31:14Guest 1Yeah. Before JJ Abrams was JJ Abrams…

31:18Guest 3Yeah

31:18Guest 1... He was, he was kicked out of DreamWorks, yeah.

31:22Jawad MirReally?

31:25Guest 3Yeah.

31:25Jawad MirI know he wrote, I know he wrote regarding Henry in the early '90s with Harrison Ford. I think that was one of his early projects, and then after that it was whatever came up. I think it was Cloverfield that came out in the early 2000s. Interesting, huh?

31:39Guest 3Maybe A… Alias was real, I think his thing.

31:42Jawad MirAlias, yes. Alias and Lost. Alias and Lost, yeah. You're right, you're right. Speaking of Shrek, somebody actually posted this two weeks ago. It showed up on my timeline. The original 1995 Shrek test footage. Like, it's…

31:54Guest 3I saw that

31:55Jawad Mir... It's crazy how Shrek looked originally. And they had this whole sequence animated and everything. It's, it's quite interesting. It's about 38 seconds long. I don't know if you guys wanna check it out.

32:05Guest 1Yeah.

32:05Jawad MirJust go YouTube it next time.

32:07Guest 1But yeah, Shrek went through a lot of struggles and it seemed to be, I mean, the, it seemed to be the doomed project. I remember when, they were searching for who was gonna be the right voice that really encapsulated the kind of, you know, the angry, standoffishness of Shrek, but also had a kind of approachability and loving, l… you know, sort of a lovabil… a lovability. And then they did this recording session. I remember them coming back from the recording session and being like, "Oh my God, we found it. We recorded Chris Farley."

32:40Jawad MirYeah.

32:41Guest 1"It was so great." And it was on a Friday, and on Sunday he died. And it was like…

32:46Jawad MirWow

32:46Guest 1... The…

32:46Jawad MirThat quick

32:47Guest 1... That every single thing went wrong for that film. And it took forever, and then when it finally, when they finally made it was such a brilliant film. But, yeah, it went through unbelievable trials to get there.

33:04Jawad MirYeah. One of the things…

33:05Guest 2Well, remember we even had Mel Brooks

33:07Jawad Mir... Sorry, go ahead.

33:07Guest 2I mean, as far as…

33:08Jawad MirYep

33:08Guest 2... You know, voices and, thi… I'm sorry, I totally shifted a little bit, but…

33:15Jawad MirThat's fine. That's fine.

33:16Guest 3No

33:16Jawad Mir... You're back on subject.

33:17Guest 3You're back on point though.

33:18Guest 2But as far as…

33:18Jawad MirWe're talking about Prince of Egypt, right?

33:20Guest 2Yeah, back to Prince of Egypt.

33:21Jawad MirYou're talking,.. Got it. Got it.

33:23Guest 2We were... Mel Brooks was going to be Jethro, you know? It was like... And he…

33:27Jawad MirReally?

33:27Guest 2... Came in and saw what we were doing, and he was like, "I don't think I'm the right person for this." He…

33:34Guest 1Yeah, bless him.

33:34Jawad MirThat's interesting.

33:35Guest 1Yes. Gosh, I'd forgotten that.

33:36Guest 2Yeah. He was…

33:36Guest 1Yeah

33:36Guest 2... He even saw what the tone of the film was and said, "I can't bring my usual thing to this. You need, you need something, someone different." So that, you know, it just as far as tone and not being able to follow a Shrek, that's for sure. You know, we... Even people we brought in were starting to see what it was. Sorry.

34:03Jawad MirYeah.

34:03Guest 2I totally shifted…

34:05Jawad MirYeah. No, I…

34:06Guest 2The subject, but it just sort of popped in

34:07Guest 3No, you brought us back. I, but I think…

34:11Jawad Mir100%

34:11Guest 3... Tone is one of the most important things when you're starting a movie, and it's because if you don't have it right, you're going off in all different kinds of directions, and you can burn through resources like crazy. I think that was one of the difficulties with Shrek. They didn't quite have it. We were lucky…

34:29Guest 2Yeah

34:29Guest 3... That we did not wander, too long.

34:32Guest 2Too far. Yeah. I still... Do you guys remember the first time we showed the prologue, to Steven, I think, or someone? And we still, we were almost done and, but we just needed to do some tweaks and whatever. And Jeffrey was, after Steven left the room, he was like, "You know, guys, this is the most expensive prologue ever done in animation."

35:00Guest 3Yeah.

35:01Guest 2You know, it was like…

35:01Guest 1It was like the most expensive four minutes of film, yeah.

35:04Guest 2Yeah. It was like he was just he was, like, kind of beside himself, but I feel like he eventually got what he wanted, so, but I remember him being a little nervous about it. About it.

35:19Guest 3Yeah.

35:19Jawad MirYeah. I mean, the first…

35:20Guest 2But

35:20Jawad Mir... Fir… first film and such a big, a serious animated film, I, you know, nobody had done that up until then. Like, it wasn't, other than that, just like Japanese animes, which are, like, a completely different, you know, universe at that time. Nobody in the West…

35:34Guest 2Yeah

35:34Jawad Mir... Used to watch them. Very small percentage of people. But, you know, I think…

35:37Guest 3It's not like a lot of people…

35:38Guest 2And it's…

35:38Guest 3... Have done it since either

35:39Jawad MirThat's true too

35:40Guest 2But that's, I mean, but to go to that's kind of what we were aiming for in a lot of ways, is trying to, like the Japanese, we were kind of envious of how the Japanese looked at animation as just a, another form of filmmaking.

35:56Guest 2You know? Every age watched and still do. They watch animation as film, not just for kids, you know? And…

36:06Jawad MirYeah

36:07Guest 2... So that's kind of what we were trying to do, for DreamWorks and for animation, you know, is to try to up the, up the watcher,.. Open their minds to what it could be. I mean, we didn't…

36:25Guest 1Yes, it doesn't all have to be…

36:25Guest 2... We didn't quite succeed, but I think…

36:29Guest 1Yeah

36:29Guest 2... I think, we made a good go of it, but…

36:33Guest 1And it's interesting. I mean, it's, it's becoming more mainstream. You see things like, and I'm watching Blue Eye Samurai at the moment or…

36:42Jawad MirYes

36:42Guest 1... Or, oh, Arcane

36:46Jawad MirArcane

36:46Guest 1... That series Arcane, both of which are aggressively not, you know, cartoon in the sense of being cutesy. And they're, they're both fantastic TV series.

37:00Jawad MirLove and Robots too. I would put in there

37:01Guest 1... Love and Robots as well, yes.

37:03Jawad MirYeah.

37:06Guest 1So it's happening. It's getting there. You know, it's the next generation that's, that's picking up on it and wanna watch it. But, yeah, I mean, like my kids who are both in their mid-20s now, they both watch animation, a lot of animation, both TV and film animation. They don't have this kind of, "Oh, it's, it's cutesy little bunny rabbits," kind of, opinion…

37:32Guest 1... About animation. Which is a thing which, you know, back in our day we were… ... We were screaming that from the rooftops, but people didn't listen.

37:43Jawad MirIt, you know, in terms of the anime thing, Brenda, you were talking about mimicking that, a… and I think I talked to you guys separately about this. I may not have. In 1998, an animation se… animated series came out by DreamWorks Animation called Invasion America.

37:59Jawad MirIt was... Have you guys heard of it, or no?

38:01Guest 3I have.

38:03Jawad MirYeah. It was…

38:03Guest 3'Cause I worked in the TV department after…

38:06Jawad MirOkay

38:06Guest 3... Prince of Egypt. I did that, Joseph thing, so yeah.

38:08Guest 1Has anyone else seen this thing happening? I'm, I'm getting a…

38:10Guest 3Yes

38:10Guest 1... What is that?

38:12Guest 3I've, I figured out it happens sometimes with students from school. If you do a gesture like a thumbs up, the bubble there's a AI thing that does it. So try that again. Do this and see if it does it. Let's see.

38:28Guest 1Ooh.

38:28Guest 3It doesn't seem to be. Well, so much for that theory.

38:31Jawad MirIt didn't work.

38:33Guest 3So much for that theory.

38:35Guest 1Okay. So, anyway, sorry. You were, you were making a serious point…

38:37Jawad MirNo

38:37Guest 1... And I completely derailed it.

38:38Jawad MirNo. I was just talking about Invasion America. It was, basically about, you know, hu… aliens, coming to Earth. And I remember when it came out, it played on WB, and then it got canceled, and I was so much into that. I remember I, it attach… it was they showed, like, just the pilot episode in Canada, that I went on eBay and I somehow found, like, the bootleg CDs, and I still have them. And it was such a great series that got canceled, and the animation was exactly like what Brenda was saying. You know, the Japanese anime. At the time was sad to see that go away, and now it's like a normal thing, like, you know, Blue Eye Samurai. Obviously another level, but it's just, it's good to see those things popping up.

39:21Guest 1But yeah, there's also... Was it,.. Hang on. There's a couple other series. Invincible is a pretty serious non-cute, anime, animation series, and there's also, Scavengers Reign. I... Not terribly keen on the graphic styles of either of them, but they're both, you know, they're both just serious adventure, series. As I say, my kids are into this stuff, so

39:49Jawad MirYeah. Back to Prince of Egypt. W… so it had a vast cast, right? Like, it had a huge number of characters. If you, if you look at a trailer or if you go through the press kits, like, you'll see all these big names, and sometimes the problem with that kind of number of characters becomes that the focus shifts. Like, you don't know... You know, the audience doesn't really connect to the characters because there's so many of them. That happens even now. But with Prince of Egypt, there was just something about keeping those characters very limited because wherever they moved the story forward, but the focus was so well done on Ramesses and Moses, and that's the only reason among... I mean, animation wise it's different. Story wise, that it totally worked, that you guys remained focused on those two and their relationship. Was there ever a time when you guys were sort of thinking about bringing other characters in a little bit more or more less than they already are?

40:46Guest 1There were times when, I mean, we had, for instance, a scene, after the burning bush, where Moses goes back and talks with Zipporah, and there was actually a very emotional, full dialogue scene that, bless him, Rodolphe Guenoden actually had, at least rough animated almost all of by the time we realized that it was actually dragging the movie down. Because we, n… what we were seeing was people talking about things we'd already seen.

41:15Guest 1And so it was essentially boring for the audience even though it was superbly acted, brilliantly animated. It was, it was information that was redundant. And so we then, and I think it actually, I think it was Steve who came up with the idea of doing the whole thing from a distance. So we see Moses run in and we s… we in... What we're doing is interpreting what, Zipporah's reaction is by her body language, and he's raving about this thing, and we can kinda see he's talking about the things that we've already seen, but we don't hear any of the dialogue.

41:50Guest 3We're focused on Zipporah's reaction.

41:53Guest 1Yeah.

41:53Guest 3You know? It's just... Yeah.

41:55Guest 1And, a… a… and it became a very strong scene as a result. So, and, yeah, it... So would Zipporah have been a more major character? Possibly, but no, I think we were always kind of... We were always aware that this was the central part of this story was the relationship between the two brothers. That's the thing that... Wow.

42:19Guest 3There it goes. You just did this, Simon.

42:22Guest 1Oh, all right.

42:23Guest 3You just did that, and that's what did it.

42:25Guest 1Okay. But anyway, the, The central thing w… is the, is the relationship between those two brothers, and that's the thing that humanizes this huge story and makes it personal. And so we always just kept on coming back to that. That was, y… you know, the time when Moses is away from Egypt, yeah, he's having a life and so on, but it's, it's always kind of… He's gonna get back to his brother. We're gonna rejoin that relationship. So…

42:59Guest 2This is the person…

43:00Guest 1Go ahead

43:01Guest 2... Yeah, person he became. You know, so it was, it was... We were, we were building up to get that confrontation with his brother, but, that... But I just wanted to also mention that James Baxter animated that beautiful scene.

43:16Guest 1Yes.

43:17Guest 2He did both characters of Moses and Zipporah in that scene and it was just... We were, we were… I can remember, we were just a… we just stood... I did anyway. I was…

43:32Guest 1Yeah

43:32Guest 2... My mouth was open while I was watching it. It was…

43:35Jawad Mir'Cause it's all one take. It's…

43:38Guest 2It's all one take.

43:38Jawad MirYeah. It's, it's…

43:40Guest 1And…

43:41Jawad MirSimon had boarded it and had a lot of that in, and then, James Baxter was the gift from El Dorado not being ready for us.

43:51Guest 1Oh, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, James…

43:54Jawad MirIs that…

43:54Guest 1James is one of the all-time greatest animators, not just, not just greatest living animators, but he's one of the best that's ever been. He's extraordinary.

44:03Jawad MirYeah. And the great thing about that scene also was, aside from what we just talked about, before that obviously was burning bush, so the score in the burning bush went from s… you know, low, and it just kinda went explosively loud, like, you know, when God gets…

44:20Jawad Mir... Really upset. And then the music timids. And then he comes down the mountain, and then it just slowly picks up, and that music, that theme, when it kicks in when he's explaining, what has just happened, that does something special too. You know, that score of Hans Zimmer was... Again, we've talked about this, and I think I... I don't know if I talked to y… Steve and Brenda about this. If you guys ever get a chance, Google 13th Hour, the first track, by Lorne Balfe. It's…

44:50Jawad Mir... Literally note to note Prince of Egypt theme. Just listen to that. Do you agree?

44:56Guest 1Well, yeah, I mean, you know, the score for The Mummy is awfully close too. Y… that happens, you know, that…

45:04Jawad MirOh, no, I know, I know. I just thought it was cool

45:05Guest 1... A lot of p… people are referencing the same, you know, the same influences and stuff like that, but…

45:10Jawad Mir100%. I wasn't saying it in a negative way. I thought it was really cool, because it brought a smile on my face when I first heard it. I thought it was really cool.

45:20Guest 1Yeah.

45:20Jawad MirAt one point, the movie ended at when they, when Moses delivered the children of Israel. That was it.

45:29Guest 1Yeah, at the end of the Red Sea…

45:30Jawad MirAnd Steven…

45:30Guest 1... Basically, yeah

45:31Jawad Mir... Steven said, "You can't end it like that. You have to show the Ten Commandments because," and I remember this quote from him, he said, "So the Ten Commandments are God's promise to the children of Israel, and so you have to have that."

45:44Guest 1I also recall him saying, "To not show it would be a sin."

45:48Guest 2Sin.

45:48Guest 1Yeah, it's like, "Oh."

45:50Guest 2That's what I remember.

45:50Jawad MirThat's correct.

45:51Guest 2Sin.

45:51Jawad MirI remember that.

45:52Guest 1Well

45:53Guest 2And there was no arguing with that.

45:55Guest 1I guess we're showing the, yeah, the... Yeah.

45:59Guest 2Because I remember it was…

46:00Jawad MirI remember that phrase

46:00Guest 2... I remember we were concerned because, you know, The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston, the middle version, it felt like, oh, it, a whole other movie started happening, then he had to go up and get the Ten Commandments and the…

46:14Jawad MirYou're right

46:15Guest 2... You know, the, that whole thing. And it just, it... And then the whole he came down and they were worshiping, you know…

46:25Guest 1The golden calf…

46:26Jawad MirYeah

46:26Guest 2... The calf

46:26Guest 1... And then he destroyed the golden calf.

46:28Guest 2It was just like this, like…

46:28Guest 1He goes up and gets another set of tablets…

46:30Guest 2... Another

46:31Guest 1... And, yeah.

46:31Guest 2Yeah.

46:31Guest 1Right.

46:32Guest 2So we, that's why we really felt... And having Moses say, "Goodbye, brother," and turn around, it just felt like that was where to end it, you know? It was like, that's the end of our theme. And, you know, the... But then, okay, so what I was relieved about with Steven was that he understood those things and the concerns, and just the fact that we were able to make it a, an epilogue as opposed to a whole…

47:07Guest 1Yeah

47:07Guest 2... Other, you know, story issue that we had to go through all those things, that we just... You know, we can, we can say this was after the golden calf, or we can say it was before the golden calf, but…

47:19Guest 1Don't have to get into that

47:19Guest 2... He came down the mountain with the tablets, you know?

47:22Guest 1Got the tablets, there we go, children of Israel. He's, he's saved the whole lot of them. Fantastic. No, but it's actually nice that we could do that in a single shot. It… ... Basically just said, "Look, there they are. They're free." And it gave Hans an opportunity to make some tremendous crescendo and sort of completion to the score. So yeah, it... I think it was actually a really good thing to add on to the end of the movie.

47:48Jawad MirAbsolutely.

47:49Guest 1It did give a sense of a kind of a bow on the end of the story rather than... 'Cause I, the sort of goodbye brother is incredibly touching, and it is the completion of the, of the character story arc, but it leaves you on a sad note. Whereas the epilogue, the tablets epil… epilogue lets you have this sort of triumphant ending.

48:11Jawad MirAnd in fact, you know, structurally, if I look back at it now, those are great bookends, the deliver us to the Ten Commandments.

48:19Guest 2Yeah.

48:19Jawad MirThat's the whole story, and to have not done that, I think Steven was right. It…

48:25Guest 2Yeah

48:25Jawad Mir... You need two grand moments.

48:27Guest 1Yeah, I mean, just from a filmmaking point of view, quite apart from the sin aspect of it.

48:32Jawad MirYes. Was there ever a particular scene when you guys were doing test screenings and stuff, because you had to sort of... I mean, now it's another totally different world now, you know, compared to even 25 years ago, where you have to make sure that the religious scholars from three major religions… approved what… whatever was in the story or certain elements historically w… was accurate. Was there a particular scene where the reaction was not so positive and you guys had to swap things a lot, or change it up, or adjust things, tweak them?

49:14Guest 1I don't think there was ever…

49:16Guest 2We would…

49:16Guest 1Go ahead

49:16Guest 2... W… we, I don't remember a full screening, in that sense. But we would show bits and pieces. We would show sequences, and I, and I remember, the one that stands out to me was the killing of the guard and, how we had said, that it was Miriam that was being beaten. And to connect it to Moses more as a character and, you know, connecting to his sister and all of that. And I still remember, I think there were three rabbis in the room, this is not a joke, but it was… they all agreed

49:59Guest 1... These three rabbis came to see Prince of Egypt.

50:01Guest 2Yeah.

50:02Guest 1Oh, yeah, which never happens. You never get three rabbis to agree.

50:05Guest 2Yeah, they were sort of, because they were on very different aspects of their Jewish, Jewishness. They, but they all agreed that it could not be, someone Moses knew, that it had to be…

50:20Guest 1It had to be someone anonymous, yeah

50:22Guest 2... It had to be his compassion for a human being, a fellow human being, and not his sister, you know? It had to be, for his people. And to his first connection to his people and why he kills the guard. So that…

50:39Guest 1But that, I don't know, that probably wasn't a screening, that was probably when it was still pitching boards, wasn't it? Did we actually have a…

50:45Guest 2No, it was a, it was a…

50:46Guest 1Was a screening?

50:47Guest 2It was a story reel.

50:51Guest 1Oh, right. Okay.

50:51Guest 2Sure. Yeah.

50:52Guest 1Yeah. I, the only screening I remember is I, sorry, a little personal story, I went to, w… with Jeffrey to show the, to show the movie to the Inquisition. Quite seriously, the Inquisition has continued. It's become the, Papal Coun… Papal Council for Communication, but it is literally the same body, that, was, you know, the Papal Inquisition. And, they have a chapel that's been converted into a cinema in the Vatican. It's only the Vatican and communist Russia that have turned chapels into cinemas. And so we screened the film for this array of, like, bishops and archbishops and all this, you know, just all purple, and they're all sitting there. And, their sounds, they had some bizarre sound, like Dolby in, you know, has a coding, encoding on the audio, and whatever their system was, our audio was coming over like it was bubbling up through a fish tank.

52:02Guest 1And so we stopped the film and said, "Look, we're really sorry, we can't show the film like that." And almost to a man, all these bishops said, "But we want to know what happens next." Guys, it's, it's, it's in the book. Anyway, but, yes, we, sadly we did not get to show it to the Pope himself, but, yeah, we did take it to the Inquisition.

52:28Jawad MirInteresting.

52:29Guest 3Well, nobody expects the Inquisition.

52:31Guest 2Yeah, I think, I think we had, we had done most of, f… for the, for the religious groups, we had shown, we had been very, and the producers Sandy and Penny were the, were the leaders of that, they went through and kept bringing in religious leaders and to show them bits and pieces to get their feedback before we went to some place like the Vatican. I mean, that was a…

52:56Guest 1That was very much a sort of end, yeah, after…

52:59Guest 2Yeah

52:59Guest 1... After final production, after, you know, finishing. Yeah.

53:03Guest 2So that we wouldn't make the mistakes like we did with Miriam and the, and the slave being beaten, that was... So I don't, I don't think we ever got too nailed… ... As far as an official screening. As far as once it was out there in the world, I'm sure, I don't remember 'cause I didn't read reviews, so.

53:27Guest 1But yeah, I do remember, yeah, Jeffrey and, Jeffrey and Penny Finkelman Cox in particular, they met with hundreds of religious leaders. I mean, it was exhaustive. So they, the, there was a tremendous effort to, yeah, to solicit the thoughts and opinions of, just a very wide range of, you know, going from real fundamentalist stuff to very sort of reform and liberal, offshoots of the various religions. So yeah, it was... And I am so grateful that we did not have to do all of that work, ourselves, and we just got to get, make the movie and hear the results of this. We still met with quite a few religious people, but, we did not have to do just that level of kind of exhaustive research.

54:21Guest 2Yeah. Sandy, Penny, and Jeffrey would come to us when they would hit a wall with someone, and then we would sit in to listen to what their concerns were and see what we could do, you know… ... Story-wise.

54:36Guest 3I do rem… I do remember on, at one point, maybe it was when I was working on Joseph later, Mel Gibson came out with The Passion of Christ, which could not have been more controversial, and opened through the roof, made $360 million, and Jeffrey said, "I wonder if a little controversy might have been useful to us." Is that, you know, who knows?

55:02Jawad MirYeah. It's interesting because…

55:04Guest 3'Cause we didn't get a peep, as in my recollection, from any religious, corner when the movie came out, and that's very... I never remember reading anything. Although I wasn't, not like I was looking for that. Go ahead.

55:20Jawad MirBecause from, for me, you know, like if I'm looking f… if I'm making something, and like it has happened with me too, like if somebody would not be pleased, which is fine, but it's okay to get opinions of certain culture and stuff because you want to be understanding that what they're coming from. But at the same time, I don't know how you guys pulled off so many religious scholars, not you guys personally, but, Jeffrey and Penny, because when you have so many opinions, then it just messes up your storytelling. But you guys weren't able to let that happen, or maybe their opinions weren't that strong in a sense to change a lot of stuff in Prince of Egypt.

55:58Guest 1I think the point was that, Penny and Jeffrey were only reporting to us when there was actually a real sticking point. You know…

56:05Jawad MirThat's it

56:06Guest 1... There were, there were kind of differences of opinion about… ... Kind of what a moment means one way or the other. But, it, when there are things which like you absolutely can't do that or that is a thing…

56:18Guest 1... Which is gonna be offensive or that really flies in the face of what everybody feels this moment is about, then they'd report it to us. But, yeah, a lot of the kind of y… yeah, the lower level, I don't know if it's really that. You know, that they didn't…

56:37Guest 1... They didn't even bring that stuff to us because, it would've just got in the way. Yeah.

56:43Jawad MirYeah.

56:43Guest 1And, yeah, I have to say, you know, Jeffrey was a kind of an extraordinary partner on this movie because he was so supportive of us as creative artists, and indeed all of the people who were on the show. And h… h… h… you know, Jeffrey has a varied reputation in Hollywood. He's a very dynamic and forceful character. And yet on this movie he was, extraordinarily supportive. And, I think we were, we were extremely fortunate because again at the start of DreamWorks. But yeah, as directors, I don't know that we could've been supported better than we were.

57:32Guest 2Right. He was, as I often said, he was the kinder, gentler Jeffrey on Prince of Egypt because I'd seen the powerhouse at Disney and, you know, what the force to be reckoned with. But I think the whole shifting and creating DreamWorks and how he was let go of Disney…

57:53Guest 2... I think it kind of humbled him a little bit. And I think there was… ... A lot of gratitude with how Steven, and David Geffen came in to, you know, help him create this company, and I just felt like he, there was... And I think he was very grateful to, some of us who had sort of defected from Disney to come over and help him start it, and, also then Steven bringing in his Amblimation along with Simon and Steve. So I think there was a lot of,.. I think he, I think he was a little humbled l… and there was a lot of gratitude. And so he just... But then after that he became sort of Jeffrey again.

58:39Guest 1Oh, no, I mean, he still drive… He still drove us like a, you know, you go to the gym…

58:44Guest 2Oh, yeah

58:44Guest 1... And you have a trainer…

58:46Guest 2But…

58:46Guest 1... Who's like, "Do three more reps," you know?

58:48Guest 2Yeah. But he listened, and he was…

58:51Guest 1Yeah

58:51Guest 2... He was more, it was more of a back and forth and less dictatorial on a lot of levels. So

58:58Jawad MirI've seen some of his,.. I think at some universities he was like a speaker and he was being interviewed and he talked about DreamWorks Animation. And he was looking at a lot of things. Like this is like four or five years ago. Like he was sort of talking about it as if i… it was a hindsight experience, but he was saying a lot of things that he should have, he could have, he would have, but at the same time he was really happy with the way things sort of moved forward at DreamWorks. Yes, they screwed up. There were mistakes made and everything down the road, but it was certainly one of the most amazing experiences of his at, you know, that's, that's what he said in the interview. Just being at DreamWorks and making DreamWorks Animation and the rest of it.

59:39Guest 1Yeah. It was, it was an amazing place to be. The sense of just kind of creative enthusiasm, the artists who were there because they wanted to make art, they wanted to do the very best thing they possibly can. You know, it's a, it's a business. It's a job we clock on to make money to pay our mortgages, but this was still kind of like, yeah, a lot of people had left things that they had been doing before, in order to come to DreamWorks to do something special at that mo… at that theater, sorry, at that studio. And, so yeah, it did have a really, amazing, atmosphere in those early years. I mean, you know, it's still a, it's still a very nice place to work. I still do a lot of work for DreamWorks, so I still have an office there. So

1:00:38Guest 3The same office probably.

1:00:40Guest 1I… in fact, the same office, yeah. But

1:00:43Jawad MirWow

1:00:43Guest 1... Not the one that we were doing Prince of Egypt in. We did Prince of Egypt in a building that was on…

1:00:47Jawad MirOffsite, yeah

1:00:47Guest 1... The corner of, Barham Boulevard on the, on the edge of the Universal lot. And they built the entire DreamWorks campus while we were making Prince of Egypt, in fact in rather less time than it took us to make Prince of Egypt…

1:01:00Jawad MirYeah

1:01:01Guest 1... Which is a little galling.

1:01:05Jawad MirYou know what's, what's crazy about, aside from us all, you know, getting old in th… the last 25 years, I look at Prince of Egypt in a way that went... So in 1998, Godfather had been 26 years old or 27 years old.

1:01:22Guest 1Wow.

1:01:22Jawad MirAnd it's almost the same amount of time now…

1:01:25Guest 3Wow

1:01:25Jawad Mir... With Prince of Egypt. And you look at, like for me, I'm strictly talk… I know I've said this so many times, for me Prince of Egypt holds such a special place. I don't know why, because I was doing a website at the time or I was just learning about movies, how they're marketed and everything. It's holds sp… such a special place, and to think that it's been 25 years is crazy, and to me it just seems like it was yesterday that I saw it in the movie theater, and I feel, I remember that experience that I went through watching that. So, you know, thank you guys for making it. I, one of the most beautiful films ever made ever.

1:02:03Guest 1Well, it, I gotta say, it, thank you, but in retrospect it was a privilege to get to make it. And I think in a way the further we get away from it, the more we realize how extraordinary it was, both the process of making it and the film that we ended up with. So yeah, it's, it's funny 'cause when the movie came out it performed okay, but it wasn't great, and we all felt like, "well, there's that," and, you know, move on, let's get on with making another movie. And now you look back and go, "No, that was, that was weird. That was, unusual in so many ways."

1:02:43Guest 1And, you know, not least that th… th… this trio of directors managed to work together for four years and never had a serious bust up. In fact, I don't even remember having even fairly mild arguments. And, I think Steve, you did an analysis of, director teams…

1:03:02Guest 3Yeah

1:03:02Guest 1... And like less than half of the director teams in animation make it from one end of the movie to the other intact. They always kill somebody or bring somebody else in or, you know. In the case of Shrek they got through about eight directors before they got to the ones that finally made the movie.

1:03:20Guest 3At the time that I did that analysis, it was 80%. 80% of…

1:03:26Guest 1It's…

1:03:26Guest 3... Directing teams that start a movie will not finish. And I'll bet if you look at most studios, it's, it's less than a 50% finishing.

1:03:37Guest 1Yeah. Yeah.

1:03:38Guest 3Yeah.

1:03:39Jawad MirI was looking at IMDb on Spider-Verse, I don't know if it was the first one or second one, I think second one, five directors.

1:03:46Guest 1Oh, yeah.

1:03:46Jawad MirIt had five directors.

1:03:47Guest 1Oh, th… th…

1:03:47Jawad MirSo I don't know if the…

1:03:48Guest 1Those movies were punishing. I know a number of the people who worked… ... I boarded a sequence for the first one, all of, almost all of which got cut out again. They worked so damn hard on that.

1:04:00Jawad MirI bet

1:04:01Guest 1... I saw Bob Persh… Persichetti just after the first one came out, and he'd, he'd left Sony 'cause he just... I, he said, "I haven't seen my children in like 10 months. I want to just spend some time at home."

1:04:16Jawad MirWow.

1:04:16Guest 3I heard the script was, 300 pages.

1:04:19Guest 1Yeah.

1:04:20Guest 3For Spider-Verse.

1:04:21Guest 1Yeah, it was insane.

1:04:22Jawad MirThe first one or the second one?

1:04:23Guest 1Yeah. The f…

1:04:24Guest 3... Probably each.

1:04:26Jawad MirEach.

1:04:27Guest 1Yeah.

1:04:27Guest 3That in terms of rewriting, and the amount of stuff they had re… that they did and threw out, I, is enormous. And when you figure that movie's two hours and 40 minutes, or two hours and 20 minutes, sorry, it's, imagine how they were worked. They had 1,000 animators on it.

1:04:46Guest 1Yeah. Well, as I say, I boarded an eight-minute sequence, none of which is in the movie, so.

1:04:52Guest 3Now it's a masterpiece. I think it's…

1:04:54Guest 1No, it's a fantastic movie. I…

1:04:55Guest 3Spider-Verse is fantastic

1:04:56Guest 1... I am, I am in…

1:04:57Jawad MirYeah

1:04:57Guest 1... Awe of it. But yes, people had to die to make it.

1:05:01Guest 3Yeah.

1:05:04Jawad MirJust to close up, guys…

1:05:04Guest 3It was the Panama Canal. It was like that. You know…

1:05:09Jawad MirJust, go ahead. Sorry

1:05:11Guest 3... Thinking back on y… your question about the religion thing, to me the religion thing was always secondary, and I, and I won't speak for Brendan and Simon, but I think it, they'd agree, is that it was always about the brother story to…

1:05:25Guest 3... To us. That's what we really cared about in the movie. And so whether it was so and so or this or that detail mattered less to us than the brother story, 'cause that was the thing that made, I think, our telling of the 10 Commandments different than everybody else's.

1:05:44Jawad Mir100%.

1:05:44Guest 3Is that we told it about the brothers.

1:05:46Guest 1Yeah, it became a personal story rather than a…

1:05:48Guest 2Found the human side of it, yeah

1:05:49Guest 1... Yeah, rather than just being an epic tale, rather than being a biblical movie as such. Yeah. Yeah, so y… yes, to your point that if there were particularly strong opinions about some religious details, like I don't care.

1:06:02Guest 3Yeah.

1:06:02Guest 1I really don't mind. It's, you know, whatever makes people happy about that, so long as the characters remain true to who they are inside and their motivations. Yeah.

1:06:13Guest 3Like as long as we get the scene where Ramesses is up on the thing and Moses comes in, that was more important to me than…

1:06:20Guest 1Oh, well, yes

1:06:20Guest 3... 'cause that's the heart and soul of the movie to me, those kinds of moments.

1:06:24Guest 1Yeah.

1:06:25Guest 2Yeah.

1:06:25Guest 1That was, that was one…

1:06:26Guest 2Him being in the lap of his father, the statue.

1:06:28Guest 3Yeah.

1:06:29Guest 1Yeah.

1:06:29Guest 2Yes.

1:06:29Guest 1It was a drawing by Ronnie del Carmen. Ronnie del Carmen, brilliant story artist who's now a very good director. He did the, what was it? Inside Out he directed. And, yeah, he did this marvelous sketch which was Ramesses, the young Ramesses hiding up in the lap of a statue of his father. And we, just all three of us looked at this sketch and went, "That explains everything about what's wrong with Ramesses." You know, that is his psychosis…

1:06:59Guest 1... In one drawing. It's such an incredible piece of storytelling.

1:07:03Guest 2And wasn't, wasn't Moses at the bottom of that…

1:07:05Guest 3Yeah

1:07:05Guest 2... Leaning up against it? Yeah, in a, so it sort of also…

1:07:08Guest 1Yeah, in a casual way. Yeah.

1:07:09Guest 2In a very casual way, so it also gave you… Their relationship as well. So it was, it was just a brilliant sketch, you're right, and that's... Yeah, we were all like, "Yep, that's the movie right there."

1:07:23Guest 3Yeah. But that's what made the movie, so different to me. It's like, it's why, to be honest, I've never seen the movie The Robe or The King of Kings. Never seen any of these. I, and I see a lot of movies, but I've never seen any of those. But Prince of Egypt is different 'cause it's on… it's really about the brothers…

1:07:44Jawad MirYeah

1:07:44Guest 3... At its core.

1:07:47Jawad MirYeah. Yep, 100%. Just lastly, guys, and we'll close it up, is that what is one thing that y… it, again, this is not, I'm talking as if the movie's made today, but let's assume that it is, or back in 1998. What is one thing that you wanted people to walk away with Prince of Egypt in terms of story? Not the animation, nothing else, just story strictly.

1:08:14Guest 1Well, I think that comes back to that personal story. I…

1:08:17Jawad MirBrothers

1:08:18Guest 1... I wanted people to feel that. You know, and that was the thing that mattered to me. I, there are people I've, I've met who've said, you know, they had a religious experience as a result of watching that movie, and it's like, well, I'm, I'm, I'm happy for you, but it, that wasn't something we were aiming for. What…

1:08:37Jawad MirYeah

1:08:37Guest 1... What we wanted to tell was, you know, at the end of the day you wanna make, you wanna make a really good movie. You wanna make a movie you sit in the theaters and you're glued to all the way through, and you don't go out to get popcorn because you don't wanna miss anything. It, that I think was, speaking personally, but I think probably all of us, just the most important thing is making something that is super engaging and has you locked in. You know, we didn't have... I don't think we had a message we were trying to put out there, particularly. It, you know, it... We, and we're certainly not proselytizing for one religion or another.

1:09:18Guest 1So it was, yeah, just, "Boy, I hope we can make a movie people wanna watch."

1:09:27Jawad MirYou guys, same thing?

1:09:29Guest 2Yeah. I think Simon said it quite well. I don't know how to add to that because it…

1:09:34Jawad MirRight

1:09:34Guest 2... It really was about the human…

1:09:36Guest 3I'll, I'll add one, I'll add one thing because it was something that happened at CTN, that Simon was there but Brenda wasn't. The 20th anniversary. I don't know if you remember this, Simon. A girl came up to us while we were signing posters, and she said The Prince of Egypt changed her life. Do you remember this moment? She said, "When I..." She said, "When I was a little girl, my father used to beat up my m… mother and be abusive." And she said, "One day after a fight, the mother grabbed my sister and I and took us to the movies to see Prince of Egypt." And she said, "After the movie, the mother came out, and she said, 'I'm not going back. We're not going back into that household again.'"

1:10:24Jawad MirWow.

1:10:24Guest 3And she said, "That movie gave my mother the strength to do that." And she said, "We never went back." She said, "I never saw my father again. It changed the trajectory of our… my childhood and my whole life." And she goes, "That's what Prince of Egypt did." And I think we could not have asked for any more than that.

1:10:46Jawad MirYeah.

1:10:46Guest 3It's one of the most life-affirming, incredible stories I've ever heard in my life. And to think that something we would work on could do that, is amazing. That's the legacy of something we could do. It makes you, well, it makes you weep. It's so it's so moving.

1:11:04Guest 2I hadn't heard that story. I didn't know that. Wow.

1:11:07Guest 3It's incredible, isn't it?

1:11:09Guest 1Yeah.

1:11:10Guest 2Sorry. Wow.

1:11:11Guest 3But, yeah, I mean…

1:11:12Jawad MirNo. It's okay.

1:11:12Guest 3... It w… do you remem… do you remember that moment, Simon, when she said that?

1:11:16Guest 1Yeah. It's just, it, yeah, it's, it's kind of amazing that you've, we made a film that has that much effect on anybody. But yeah, to literally save somebody's life like that, yeah, it, that's sort of weirdly humbling. It's the realization that…

1:11:32Guest 3Yeah

1:11:32Guest 1... 'cause, you know, mostly movies are just a piece of fluff. They're a piece of fun. You go and eat your popcorn, watch a movie. And you forget that sometimes these things really affect people. They, you know, and it's, it's really gratifying when you discover that they do, when you make a movie with a good heart and it actually connects with people and

1:11:55Guest 3Yeah

1:11:55Guest 1... But yeah, very rarely does it connect with people and have that big an effect. That's extraordinary.

1:12:01Guest 2Yeah.

1:12:01Guest 3It's the single greatest moment of my career, and I will remember it for always.

1:12:06Guest 2Wow.

1:12:06Guest 3And to imagine that you could have that effect is the power of cinema.

1:12:12Jawad MirYeah.

1:12:12Guest 3And the book, the story.

1:12:15Jawad MirAnd, you know, that reminds me of, I was talking to Lorna Cook, the co-director of, Spirit: Stallion of Cimarron. She had a similar story where, some kid, well, not a kid anymore, he came up to her five, six years ago and he said, "I watched that movie, and I was, I was suicidal, and I watched that movie and that completely changed my life."

1:12:38Guest 3Wow.

1:12:38Jawad MirYou know? And that's when I was saying to her that it's incr… it's weird. Even mo… not movies like Spirit or Lion King or Prince of Egypt, it could be, you know, not such a great movie. Like, it just could be, you know, fluff, like Simon said. But it could, depending on who's going through what in life, and if they end up…

1:12:56Jawad Mir... Seeing something in that moment and that just does something to them…

1:13:00Guest 2Yeah

1:13:00Jawad Mir... That's it. That's cinema. The power of cinema. And for me, Prince of Egypt, aside from many things, I think the one thing that really I've, I've been listening to the song ever since then, When You Believe. Like, it has such a powerful message, and it's not even about any religion. It's just about not freaking giving up. Like, just gotta keep going. And…

1:13:20Jawad Mir... You know, and that to me has resonated in almost like if I am having any kind of day where I'm a little bit, you know, not so... Happy or not so, like, things are not working out. You listen to that song. Boom, back in the mood, let's go. So it has a huge impact on people's lives. I mean, I'm sure there are many other stories. Many others, 100%. So you guys should be very proud of yourselves. You've definitely…

1:13:48Guest 1Oh, well, thank you.

1:13:50Jawad Mir... Had an impact on a lot of people. No, I'm being honest.

1:13:53Guest 3We were lucky to get the chance.

1:13:54Guest 1Yeah.

1:13:55Jawad MirNo.

1:13:55Guest 1Yeah.

1:13:56Jawad MirBut you created a great story.

1:13:57Guest 2And we were lucky to have so many amazing people working on the film. I mean…

1:14:02Jawad MirYeah

1:14:02Guest 2... The amount of talent that gravitated towards DreamWorks at that time was, incredible. So we were very fortunate to be leading such an A-plus team as well.

1:14:16Jawad MirIf there was one thing I wish I could have done in that, in those years, was working at DreamWorks, truly. I truly feel like I wish I was working there. But, you know, life moves on. But that's, I was still connected to it. But thank you so much, guys. Appreciate it. If there's anything you wanna add, feel free to. Otherwise, we'll, we'll move on.

1:14:36Guest 3Okay. I've spent my best story. That's the best I got.

1:14:41Jawad MirBrenda, anything? Any closing remarks?

1:14:44Guest 2Oh, I just, I'm still sort of in awe that it's remembered so fondly so many years later. It's just, it's such an honor to have worked on the film, and with these guys. I kind of, wish that we had, continued on in the vein of Ron and John and kept making movies together. I…

1:15:12Guest 1Why wasn't there a Prince of Egypt II?

1:15:15Jawad MirWell, there was. It's called Joseph: Kings of Dreams. I think Steve worked on it.

1:15:19Guest 3That's hardly the sequel, but.

1:15:20Guest 2Steve worked on it.

1:15:21Jawad MirI know, I know. I'm just saying.

1:15:24Guest 1But yeah…

1:15:24Guest 3All right, guys

1:15:24Guest 1... It would, it would've been really fun to get the whole band back together again. Yeah.

1:15:28Guest 2Yeah. Yeah.

1:15:30Jawad MirYeah. Well, thank you, guys. Appreciate it again. I hope you have a great day.

1:15:35Guest 3Okay.

1:15:35Guest 1Thank you.

1:15:35Guest 3Bye.

1:15:37Guest 1All right, take care.

1:15:37Jawad MirTake care.

1:15:38Guest 2Bye guys.

1:15:38Jawad MirTake care. Bye. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for watching and listening. Don't forget to subscribe, like, share, and comment. And do come back for another episode. Until then, have a great day.