'Puss in Boots, The Last Wish', Storyboard Artist, Simon Wells

0:06Jawad MirI'm glad to see you again. It's good to hear your voice, good to see you.

0:10Simon WellsYeah, you too.

0:10Jawad MirAnd

0:11Simon WellsYeah, you too.

0:12Jawad MirYeah. And how have you been? How's been work? Keeping yourself busy?

0:15Simon WellsI, yeah, I can't remember, when did I last talk to you? I, it was like…

0:19Jawad MirOh, it was about a year ago

0:20Simon Wells... A year ago. I worked on about three or four films, I think, since then. I get, I get bounced around from one movie to another a great deal, so, there's a thing which is still fairly deep in development, I don't know if it's actually been announced yet, and then there's, Kung Fu Panda 4, which has been announced, and…

0:40Jawad MirYeah

0:40Simon Wells... I bop between those two films at the moment. But, yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's quite fun. I've got, I've got various possible writing and directing things but, you know, Hollywood is all the, you know, it might happen, and, you know, earlier in my career I spent far too much of my time, waiting for those things to happen and now it's just like, well, if they happen I'll, I'll change my, y… you know, my schedule accordingly, but until it actually does happen, until the, until the check literally hits the bank account, there's no point in believing it's real.

1:16Jawad MirYou know, I 100% agree. I've come to that realization too, and, because even the projects that I am sort of pitching right now, one of them has been sort of sitting there for a year. But it's funny, the ones that I have always, so far in my experience, the ones that I've always sort of initiated myself, like I discovered it, I started, you know, looking into it, they are always, they always take longer to get, funding or to…

1:43Simon WellsFinanced

1:43Jawad Mir... But the ones that just kind of…

1:44Simon Wells'Cause you gotta persuade other people

1:46Jawad Mir... Yeah, the fund that just kind of pop out of nowhere and somebody approaches you, they are the ones that just kinda go through pretty quickly.

1:53Simon WellsYeah. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I kinda hope that's true 'cause there's a couple of projects that, you know, these producers are coming, they're talking to me, and, like, maybe they'll happen. They're not things I... They're not my original stuff, so.

2:05Jawad MirYeah. But like you said, until the, until the check hits the bank, everything is not 100%.

2:11Simon WellsI'll, I'll take a few meetings, but I'm not gonna start doing a lot of work on any of them.

2:14Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. Well, it's good to h… hear that you're working on Kung Fu Panda. I actually spoke to Mark, Osborne and John Stevenson, who directed the first one.

2:21Simon WellsOh, yeah. Wow. How they doing?

2:23Jawad MirHi, Chris.

2:24Simon WellsI saw, I saw John, I actually had dinner with John a few months back. We have a mutual friend who's an actor who reconnected us after many years. Hadn't, hadn't seen John in years and it was really good to catch up with him.

2:39Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. It was, it was great talking to them about Kung Fu Panda. And it was funny, it was around the same time Panda 4 was announced. It was literally the same week, incidentally, it just worked out to be. But great guys. Great talking to them. Very down to earth and, great creative and artists.

2:56Simon WellsYeah. No, they were, it was fun. It was a, it was interesting. It was a difficult project for DreamWorks early on. I think it took a while to kind of find its feet, and part of that may have been that it wasn't a lead character that Jeffrey automatically kind of connected with. You know, he, the joke is always, you know, he liked characters who were basically Tom Cruise, and this was about as far away from that as possible. It's somebody who's radically bad at the thing that they really love. And we'd kind of all got it, but I, it still, it struggled to find its feet as a story for quite a long time. And, yeah, it's, it's strange…

3:37Jawad MirYeah

3:37Simon Wells... You know, you look at it now and it, like, it looks whole and complete and you can't imagine why there was any difficulty, 'cause it's like, well, it's a really clear character.

3:46Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. No, 100%. And it's good to, see Puss in Boots doing really well. I actually, didn't come across it... Well, I knew about it, but I didn't really see it until maybe a month ago, and I was quite surprised by, first of all, the artistic approach to it, the animation style. I think it's called 2.5D stylized animation, at least that's the... I don't know what the word…

4:14Simon WellsThat's the word

4:14Jawad Mir... But it had a…

4:15Simon WellsThe, that painted look. Yeah

4:17Jawad Mir... It had the Spider-Verse feel to it and it was very... And it also, it reminded me quite a bit in some points, like when they're going through the desert, the landscape reminded me a lot about Prince of Egypt.

4:27Simon WellsThere was that feel of it too.

4:29Jawad MirWell, it does have that look as if it has been painted. There's a lot of…

4:32Simon WellsYeah

4:32Jawad Mir... Like brush stroke work and so on, even within the characters themselves. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in that movie, 'cause also there's a lot of the filmmaking style which is lifted from, like, anime and stuff like that, which is where I think you're probably getting this kind of Spider-Verse connection, where there's, you know, very extreme use of perspective and, you know, cutting style and sometimes literally just going into graphic moments and using kind of radiating impact lines and things like that, which, I applaud. I think it's fantastic and it's amazing how well they kind of, they, th… they kind of married it into the overall style of the movie. But yeah, it was funny, it's like it's one of those movies that, you know, nobody was talking about, like for the Oscars, nobody was talking about it because just, "Oh, it's Puss in Boots 2. It's just, it's, it's a sequel to a spin-off film," and everyone's just thinking, "Okay, that's just, you know, that's like Minions 3 or whatever. It's just gonna be another of those movies."

5:28Simon WellsYeah.

5:28Jawad MirAnd it's so much deeper than that. That's the extraordinary…

5:32Simon WellsIt is

5:32Jawad Mir... Thing is it's, like, this movie's really about some stuff. Well, I found it very interesting the way, death was approached, right? Like how his nine lives and it's something that, it was dark, even for kids, but at the same time it was done really artistically and creatively.

5:52Simon WellsIt is.

5:53Jawad MirAnd I really resonated with the film. I was quite surprised myself too that I'm actually liking this film. Not because, not because it's not good, it's because, you know, y… Basically, you come at a point in life where you start liking different things, and, you know, your taste sort of develops. And I did not, and I haven't seen an animation film regularly f… as I used to, the new ones at least. But I actually sat through this. And I didn't even watch it with my kids. I watched it alone, which was, which was, like, normally, it doesn't happen anymore.

6:23Simon WellsI… it's one of those films, it's... You know, I refer to these kind of films as cats in pajamas films. It's like, yeah, it's another talking animal thing. But I feel about it the same way as I felt about, oh, Zootopia, which I literally went to under protest. My kids said, "No, come on, you gotta come and see it." It's like, "Oh, all right." And I loved it. It was like, wow, this movie, it starts off being, like, yeah, a little cutesy little rabbit who wants to be a policeman, and it becomes Chinatown. It's, it's incredible.

6:54Jawad MirYeah.

6:54Simon WellsAnd but yeah, I... The things which Puss in Boots 2 is about, that it's layered. It's this... I read online, somebody made a great description. It's like, it's an old gunslinger who's trying to find his mojo again. It's, it's a contemplation of mortality. It's, you know, what makes a life worth living. It's reuniting lovers that have, you know, fallen out. And, you know, and then it's an unlikely buddy movie with Perrito. I… it's just, it's so many things. And then at the same time, they managed to create kinda secondary characters that, like, oh, the Goldilocks and the three bears, who at one point were in danger of…

7:36Jawad MirI loved that

7:37Simon Wells... They were in danger of taking over the movie because we all recognize, like, holy cow, there's, there's, like, this really big family dynamic thing that's going on with what Goldi really wants and the fact that the bears love her and she doesn't love them back in the same way. Sorry, spoiler alert. But, you know, that was a thing where you could make a whole movie out of that, you know? And

8:03Jawad MirYeah

8:03Simon Wells... And so, yeah, there was, there were times in the making of the movie where I know that Joel and Januel were quite concerned that story wanted to expand and, like, overwhelm a lot of the rest of the movie. And actually, there was a point…

8:17Jawad MirYeah

8:17Simon Wells... In the middle of making it where, okay, Puss got set up really well. You really understood what his issues were. And then we got into the kind of, the story with Kitty Softpaws and Perrito and then the, you know, the bad guys who are chasing. And at one point, I remember there was a screening where somebody kinda said, "We don't seem to have a lot of Puss in Boots in this Puss in Boots movie." Like, he's supposed to be the center of the story, and we kinda lose him in, throughout the middle of the movie.

8:49Jawad MirIt's interesting, you mention that because, I mean, that's how Puss in Boots spinoff got started, because of the appearance in Shrek, because it was so popular character. And I, and I actually love the Go… Goldilocks and the three bears, their chemistry and their connection with each other, and even the animation of the characters, you know?

9:07Simon WellsOh, yeah. And brilliant voice casting. Florence Pugh's fantastic.

9:11Jawad MirYeah.

9:11Simon WellsBut actually, Ray Winstone, who, you know, Ray Winstone does one thing, but he does it really well, and he's perfect for this. I really like the sort of, "No, baby," and, "You're not well fixed for brains."

9:25Jawad MirYeah.

9:25Simon WellsIt's, it's lovely but a complete put-down. It's, it's... Yeah, he's, he's great.

9:30Jawad MirAnd I think one of the reasons, before I get into the storyboarding and all that, we're, you're talking about how... You used the word finding his mojo again, right? And I, and I feel, now that you mention that, I feel the reason probably I connected with it too is because, you know, y… we all go through, whatever we're doing in life, we're good at it, and then we sort of maybe take a little fall and then disappear and then take... And, you know, reinvent yourself. Like, every filmmaker goes through that. Every writer goes through that. And I think that's, at least for me, now that you mention it, that's probably why I resonated with it, is because of that age thing.

10:02Simon WellsYeah, finding out how to get back up on the horse again and

10:06Jawad MirYeah

10:06Simon Wells... You know, shake off the fear. And that's another thing which is astonishing about the movie. Again, spoiler alert, but the, you know, the panic attack that happens in the middle of the film where…

10:19Jawad MirYeah

10:20Simon Wells... You know, having had a few panic attacks in my career, that's such an astonishingly real moment. I hear that Taylor Motum actually asked for the scene because he'd experienced panic attacks himself, and he said, "I've gotta board that scene. That's, that's, that's my scene. You've gotta give me that scene." And, it was incredible. Even in the storyboards, it was incredibly powerful.

10:46Jawad MirYeah, I bet. I bet. So h… let's get on with your role on the film. I mean, I know you work, continuously at DreamWorks Animation on different projects a… and stuff. But how did Puss in Boots come about to you? Was it just, like, a regular landing of a project, or, was it more to that?

11:06Simon WellsJoel tells me that, when they took over the mo…... 'Cause originally it was being developed, a… at DreamWorks but with a different crew of people. And Joel and Januel had done Croods 2, which I'd, I'd worked with them on Croods 2. I mean, I'd, I'd worked with both of them as story artists before that. But on Croods 2 I did a, I did a lot of work on that film for them. And Joel basically said when he took over the film, "I want Simon on the story crew," because he knew I'd be able to deliver the, kind of the action stuff. And actually it turned out they had some really good action board artists as well. But, it, he said, "You're, you're my security blanket," so which is a very nice thing for him to say. Joel is an incredibly nice guy, by the way. I don't know if you've spoken to him yet, but

11:54Jawad MirI haven't. I would love to eventually.

11:57Simon WellsOne of the, one of the nicest people I've ever actually met in the business. It's, it's one of those things where how can you be a director and not Why are you never getting angry? Why have I never seen you shout at anybody? He just always seems to be cheerful and optimistic and enthusiastic. And even when he's tired, he's still... He's got a joke to tell and, you know, he's still friendly. It's, it's, it... Actually, frankly, it's annoying. You know, as a sometime director…... I don't know how he does it, and, he makes the rest of us look very bad. But anyway, so yeah, he wanted me on the crew. And so yeah, I signed on 'cause yeah, I loved working with Joel and Januel on Croods 2, so there was no question about it. I was happy to be working on the, on the film.

12:45Jawad MirAnd when you're involved as a storyboard artist, like, are you given certain scenes? Or is it,... Like, what's the process behind that? Like, how do, how are, how are you given a certain task of a scene?

12:59Simon WellsIt, well, it varies a great deal as to what you're doing as a storyboard artist, just for starters.

13:04Jawad MirOkay.

13:04Simon WellsBecause…

13:05Jawad MirSure

13:05Simon Wells... Like a live action storyboard artist, essentially you get given a script and you are illustrating the script. You're taking the script and turning it into film language. You know, wide shots, and close-ups, and up shots, and down shots, and tracking shots and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And very often what you're doing is either coming up with ideas that the director can then use when he's shooting. He may not actually shoot it the way you storyboarded it, but it'll give him inspiration for things that he's gonna do on set.

13:33Jawad MirRight.

13:33Simon WellsOr you're there to provide something for, like, visual effects companies to bid on and work out how much it's gonna cost because there are five spaceships in this shot and, you know, so on. And some animation storyboarding does work like that, where basically you're given a script and, "Here, can you just, you know, break this down and turn this into a piece of cinema?" more often than not, particularly with animated features, you are encouraged to, like, delve into the scene, and you may make alterations to what has been, what has been written. There may also be scenes that, haven't really been worked out yet, and it's like, "Well, we kinda know we want this and this and this, but, you know, please take it and build something." I... One of my most extreme experiences doing that was actually on the first Croods where, they'd only written the script up to the point where, Grug threw his family across the impossible canyon, threw them to safety, and now he basically was sacrificing himself to save his family and showed what a good guy he was, having been kind of the villain all the way through the movie.

14:48Simon WellsAnd then, the directors, Kirk and Chris said, "But obviously we don't want Grug to die, so, can you figure out how to get him across the canyon?" And so the whole creating the flying machine, I went back through the film and looked for things that I could assemble, that had kind of been standalone scenes. It ended up making the movie look like it was a whole series of brilliant setups for this culmination.

15:20Jawad MirAh.

15:20Simon WellsWhen in fact it was the other way around. I actually just borrowed bits from the film, and put them together to make the escape machine. And so it can be as extreme as that. Or way back on, Spirit Stallion of the Cimarron, they basically said, "We want, we want this scene where, Spirit is helping haul a train across a mountain. So we need him to arrive at the place we're doing that. We need to somehow attach him to this train, and they're hauling across. And then he's gonna see the tracks on the other side and understand how that's gonna be the end of his kind, his people. And then he's gonna break free, and he's also gonna free all the other horses. And he's gonna start a forest fire because we already have a forest fire sequence, in production."

16:07Jawad MirYeah.

16:07Simon Wells"Oh, and somehow you need to get a chain around his neck because he's got a chain around his neck in the forest fire. Go." So

16:15Jawad MirWow

16:15Simon Wells... Animation for, animation storyboarding can be anything on that continuum from, "We have a very clear idea and we really want the script to be exactly this," and the, and the director may e… even have specific shots. Or indeed you may be going back and doing alterations to a thing that's already been done, where, "We like this bit and we like this bit, but can you kinda glue it together?" right the way through to, "We have nothing. Can you make, a cool piece of cinema out of this?" You know. And write, and write it.

16:46Jawad MirIt al… it almost sound... It almost sounds like editing but backwards. Like, the second example

16:52Simon WellsTotally. I mean, the reason I enjoy doing it is because actually you get to do everything. You get to do the character performance. You very often get to write a lot of the dialogue or rewrite the dialogue. You get to do the cinematography. You get to do the editing. You basically get a little moment where you get to do the film. Now, it gets taken away, and people change it, and... Or they don't accept it, or they have you make changes to it and so on. But for a little while, here you are sitting on your couch drawing your pictures and you can just create the movie the way you want it to be.

17:28Jawad MirAnd how does that feel? Like, I'm sure you're used to it now, by now, but you know, when you create something, right, like whether it's a storyboard, yeah, you're getting paid for it, which is great, but what if it doesn't, when it doesn't make to the cut or when it's completely switched over, how does that feel?

17:43Simon WellsWell, or when it doesn't even happen. I mean, I... There was one year I worked on a film at DreamWorks called, Me and My Shadow, and then that got shut down and abandoned. And I moved on to BOO, which was Bureau of Otherworldly, Operations, and I worked on that for six months. That got shut down and never happened. So an entire year of my life was spent doing stuff and get… You know, reworking it and reworking it and refining it and so on. Doing thousands and thousands of drawings, and neither movie ever made it into production. It, that's, that's actually the most kind of heartbreaking because you always see there's lots of really good bits and stuff, and even, you know, you might like the movie as a whole and, just it, they've abandoned it for one reason or another. But y… yeah, I mean, everything you do as a storyboard artist is automatically on explosive bolts, you know?

18:45Simon WellsIt's it's gonna get jettisoned instantaneously. Actually, I remember, Brenda Chapman telling me about, the Gush and Flush Awards they had, at Disney, which was, 'cause she'd been a story artist at Disney and…

18:59Jawad MirYeah

18:59Simon Wells... Worked on a number of things. She'd been head of story on, Lion King, but had also worked on things like Hunchback. And she said, "What would happen is you'd pitch something," this is back in the days when you'd pin up all the boards on a wall…

19:10Jawad MirRight

19:11Simon Wells... And you'd stand there…

19:12Jawad MirYeah

19:12Simon Wells... And pitch it. And everybody in the room would just love it, and it would go down to editorial, and they'd cut it together, and they'd put it in the movie, and then you'd have a screening, and that entire thing would get cut out you know? And it was just instantly flushed. And so whoever, you know, got the most positive reaction, and then had the quickest having it cut again. I actually had that on Puss in Boots 2. There was a, there was a song sequence that took place, when all of the characters have entered the forest, and they're making their way.

19:46Jawad MirYeah.

19:46Simon WellsAnd they had the idea of having a song where each character kind of expresses their archaic injury, what had happened to them that led them, what, you know, that made them want what they actually want. So Goldi had a verse, and Big…

20:04Jawad MirRight

20:04Simon Wells... Big Jack had a verse, and, Puss and, Kitty had a verse. Actually, Perrito did not have a verse, but it was, it was those characters. And they'd got a rough version of the song that had been created, and I boarded the whole thing out, and, pitched it, pitched it. Actually, I think I even rough cut it. I actually rough cut the panels to the song. Instead of pitching it, I just presented it to them rough cut. They loved it. And about two days before the screening, Joel and Januel called me up and said, "Okay, so Simon, we put the whole movie together, and we were seven minutes over running length, and we're getting close to really, we gotta get right on the running length." And well, the song was four minutes, and it just drops right out of the movie. And it's like, "Yep, okay. Okay." At least I cut it together myself. I got to see it. But it never even made it to a screening.

21:05Jawad MirNow, can you use any of that stuff that is abandoned in the terms of a project or something like this for your own portfolio purposes? Are you allowed to, or?

21:13Simon WellsI don't know. I, one of the strange things is I've never had a portfolio, so I don't know what the rules are… ... About having a portfolio. I don't have a website or anything like that, so I've never dealt with what am I allowed to publish and what am I not allowed to publish. I don't think there's a problem with that. I think DreamWorks…

21:36Jawad MirYeah

21:36Simon Wells... Are okay with that kind of thing of like, yeah, sure, you can, you can put that out. But yeah, I mean, I've, I've done so many of those things. I mean, when I worked on…

21:47Jawad MirMe too

21:47Simon Wells... On Croods 2, originally Croods 2 was actually being developed by, Kirk and Chris, who did Croods 1.

21:56Jawad MirRight.

21:56Simon WellsAnd I boarded, a huge action spectacular third act culmination of the whole story. Like bunch of sequences, sort of like 10-minute section of the film. And then they sh… did a screening and changed the story completely, and so I did a completely different huge 10-minute sequence. And then they had a screening and changed the story completely, and I did a third completely. And these, th… these are enormous things where, like, the two dads spun around so fast they actually caused a whirlwind, which then leapt onto a volcanic vent, sucking lava up into the whirlwind that then leapt into the ocean and, into the path of a tidal wave, sucking all of the water out of the ocean up into the sky. And of course, all the characters are, you know, there's, there's two…

22:52Jawad MirYeah

22:52Simon Wells... Two entire families in Croods 2. So it was that kind of scale of stuff. And then they shut the movie down completely, and that all went away. And then Joel and Januel took over the movie, and I did another third act for them. So, you know, what you are doing is always destined to be thrown away. I mean, even when, you know, some of the shots you did actually make it through layout and get animated, it's not your work that's on screen, it's ideas you had. I, it's a thing I've got very used to, but yes, it's, it is, it is painful, particularly when you're, you're a young storyboard artist.

23:32Jawad MirYeah.

23:32Simon WellsJust getting used to the idea that, like, 95% of what you are going to do will get thrown away. And the remaining 5% will get changed. You are y… you, I mean, sometimes I regard my job is like I take a machete, and the director says, "That way, I think." And I go hack, and I make a pathway, and then we look at the pathway, and the director goes, "No, I think it's this way." And, but un… un… until you've cut that path, until you've tried it out, you don't know. And…

24:11Jawad MirYeah

24:12Simon WellsAnd any amount of discussion, you'd think people would be able to figure it out. But, you know, even when you've got a really great script and everyone thinks, "Wow, this script is killer. We love it." Even then, when you actually put it up on the screen and look at it, you go, "Oh, okay, it's not really f… it's not really saying what I thought it was gonna be saying." so yeah, an awful lot of the thing is, okay, I know this is... Sometimes even I know this is wrong, but I've gotta do the best job I can to make it happen, and make it a piece of cinema that people can look at and go, "Okay, yeah, we don't wanna do that." and it's not because it hasn't been done well. I mean, that's the weird thing about the job is, like, I know I have to do it as well as I possibly can do it in order…

25:02Jawad MirRight

25:02Simon Wells... To prove it's not because it just hasn't been delivered. No, I delivered it. That's your idea. There it is. Now, maybe that's not what we want in the movie. And also…

25:14Jawad MirAnd…

25:14Simon Wells... A… also, you're dealing with a lot of, a lot of executives, at all levels, and, you know, not just story crew, but you've got animation people, and all the people in the crew who are gonna look at stuff. And it's an awful lot easier to really know whether something's working when you're looking at it, you know, with all the panels drawn in, and the nearer it can look to what the movie's actually gonna be, and you can really get a sense of, "Yeah, okay. I see what's working. I see what's not working." And that's the job of the storyboard artist is, yeah, throwing that up on the screen and finding out.

25:51Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, no, I... That sounds very exciting, but at the same time, it can be painful, 100%. And I, and I find that same thing with editing, right? And I think I have sort of come to a point where I have distanced myself from the editing stage, completely, and I'm trying not to align myself too close to some things. And I learned that lesson during COVID because I was editing two feature documentaries, and it was simultaneously, and it became so much that I really started screwing up one of them. And that's when I brought in an editor. I'm like, "You know what? Please take this." And I... It can become cumbersome. And then it was painful to see some of the scenes, some of my favorite scenes being cut out, but it had n… because it wasn't serving the story, right? So.

26:38Simon WellsRight. It's like, "I love that moment," but yes, it's, it's…

26:41Jawad MirYeah

26:41Simon Wells... It's a moment that belongs to, like, a different character that isn't really in this movie anymore, or, yeah. Or it's just, it's a dog leg which you just don't need, or yeah, it's rin… it's putting a wrinkle in the character which is not, yeah, telling the story we wanna tell.

26:57Jawad MirYeah.

26:57Simon WellsI know. It's, I mean, fortunately, I feel like I've got to a point in my career where I can care enough to do a really good job and not care so much that it hurts. I…

27:08Jawad MirYeah

27:09Simon Wells... I'm very comfortable with any of my stuff getting cut out now. I just, I really don't mind. It's okay.

27:17Jawad MirGot it. And how many storyboards work, s… storyboard artists work on a, on a film like Puss in Boots roughly?

27:23Simon WellsYou know, actually, in anticipation of this, interview, I thought, "I better look this up," 'cause I actually don't remember all the people. And actually about, I think there's 27 people who are credited as either storyboard or additional storyboard on the picture. Now, part of that is because, well, people who worked on the previous version, the earlier version…

27:46Jawad MirYeah

27:46Simon Wells... Who m… some of their work is still in the movie, and so they're, they're credited. But I, usually you have a crew that's six to 10 people, something like that.

28:02Jawad MirThat's not bad.

28:03Simon WellsYeah. And, you know, it's great when you can have a story crew that actually comes together and looks at the stuff and discusses stuff and are actually together when stuff is getting launched or stuff is getting reviewed. Because typically the way that it works is that, the directors and the head of story, in this case, Heidi Jo Gilbert was the head of story on Puss in Boots 2, they'll sit down with you as a story artist, and they'll go through the pages or whatever notes they've got. Or, you know, you look at the previous version that you're gonna be changing and so on. And they'll talk through what they're going for, what the ideas are, what the, you know, what the emotional intent is, all of that kind of stuff. And yeah, it's really good if you can actually have other story crew members there at the launch as well, because very often they'll throw in ideas. And as a story artist, you get to steal their ideas, and then they're your ideas, so you look better. And also when you're reviewing stuff, it's quite good if there's sort of more than just the directors and head of story, you know, looking at the finished result because apart from anything else, you've got an audience.

29:13Simon WellsYou've got people who are actually responding to, you know, the jokes and things like that. It's, it's nice when you have…

29:20Jawad MirYeah

29:20Simon Wells... A number of people because it kinda, it gives you someone to play to.

29:25Jawad MirRight. And the fact that the film came out this past year, right? So I'm imagining all the storyboarding and all the pre-production work, or even production work, was taking place during COVID.

29:36Simon WellsMostly, yes. It was actually, that film was done, on an extraordinarily tight schedule. Joel and Januel took over the movie, I think, 18 months before it came out. Now…

29:51Jawad MirOkay

29:51Simon Wells... Now some of the first act existed, in a s… form pretty similar to, how it ended up. But, yeah, they did a, an extraordinary job of getting the film done in the time. I mean, also, you know, everybody on the film, from story artists through layout and animation and, you know, the people doing the design work and the color and you know, right the way down, people Worked painfully long hours, which is another reason why I'm amazed by Joel because, or Joel and Januel, because people did stupidly long hours. They killed themselves to get the movie done, and still at the end of it they came away saying, "This was one of the best experiences in my career. You know, I had s… so much fun on this movie." It's like, how did he do that? But yeah, they…

30:45Jawad MirYeah

30:45Simon Wells... Delivered that film in, yeah, in a year and a half, which is incredible.

30:50Jawad MirThat's quick, because normally, I mean, for an animation film, like Prince of Egypt or Kung Fu Panda even, like, there's a big gap. It takes good four years.

30:58Simon WellsIt's, it's three to four years. Yeah.

31:01Jawad MirThree to four years? Yeah.

31:02Simon WellsPrince of Egypt we started kind of in earnest in the middle of '95, and it came out, kind of Christmas…

31:11Jawad Mir'98

31:12Simon Wells... '98. Although we'd actually…

31:13Jawad MirYeah

31:13Simon Wells... Finished it, like, September '98, I think. So yeah, that was pretty accurately three years. But yeah, that's, that's twice the time they had to get Puss in Boots. And the story alterations, 'cause one of the things that happens as a storyboard artist is, you know, you do a sequence and then, or several sequences, and you have a screening, and then you start getting notes back and then the directors sit you down and they say, "Okay, we wanna go back into that scene and we wanna make these changes." And I have to say, one of, one of the most extraordinary experiences of this movie was that every change you always saw, "Oh, that's gonna make it a lot better." That's, that's honing in on the story point or it's, it's refining the gags so that the gags all feel like they belong with the characters, and they're not just gags for gags' sake. You know, sometimes you go back in and it's like, "Well, we're just gonna make this a lot funnier." It's like, well, yeah, but is that serving the character and the story?

32:17Simon WellsAnd, I, one of the reasons I would work with Joel and Januel in a heartbeat again is that all the changes, you always felt like, "Oh, damn, I've gotta go back in and draw this again," but it is going to look better when I do it.

32:32Jawad MirYeah. And again, going back to the animation style, I just think that I w… I hope, because what's happening now, right, like I, and again, you know this more than I do, is that I'm just talking about the evolution of animation. Like, when you look at the '40s, '50s, you know, all the way up to the '90s, and then in my memory, and I was talking to Brenda about this when we spoke about Prince of Egypt. She had worked on Rescuers Down Under with, Katzenberg at Disney, and I think even though people give a lot of credit to Lion King for the style of animation, I think it originally started with Rescuers Down Under be… And it wasn't such a popular film as opposed to Lion King, although obviously there were differences. And then there was computer animation, right? Toy Story and then the level of animation, 3D animation. And then with Spider-Verse, I think a lot of things changed. Like, people received it re… people liked that film a lot. Even I…

33:27Simon WellsYeah, I remember I did, I actually did a sequence on Spider-Verse which got enormously cut down but

33:33Jawad MirOh, you did?

33:33Simon WellsOh yeah, I worked on it. I, the fight that happens at Aunt May's house, I boarded.

33:40Jawad MirOh.

33:40Simon WellsAnd originally when I boarded they said, "Well, we've got this fight and we wanna make it out to be like a big kinda, you know, three, four minute long kinda moment." And I thought, that may not be the place in the film where you wanna break out and do a four minute long fight, but okay. So I choreographed this, and they wanted to go out into the environment, and they had a whole street and so on they wanted to use. And so I boarded that and then I brought it in and showed it to them. And they said, "This is great, but we'd like to expand it." So I then had to go in and surgically find moments that I could expand and make bigger moments out of bits within the sequence. And then ultimately the whole thing got way cut down again, but that's okay. But, the reason I tell the story is that I remember going in and seeing one of their first color tests of what the environment was gonna look like with this amazing, you know, like the print, effect. So when things were out of focus the colors were slightly off register, like…

34:37Jawad MirYeah

34:37Simon Wells... Bad comic book printing. And just, you know, there was, I think I had a shot just moving through a subway car, and you looked and it went, I want to watch that. That is incredible. And yeah, and the whole movie ended up being beautiful in that way, that it really, it was like, okay, that whole 3D animation thing. 'Cause everyone's been... Because the tools are basically built to do it, everyone's been going…

35:04Jawad MirYeah

35:04Simon Wells... For more and more realistic, you know, beautiful flowing hair and lovely cloth simulations and so on. Which…

35:11Jawad MirYeah

35:11Simon Wells... I love, by the way. I think it's fantastic. But, you know, no one had been kinda pursuing, well yeah, but why would we want to do that if we're not making a live action film? I mean, it makes sense if you're, you're doing the half of the Avengers which is actually animated. You know, then you've gotta make it look real 'cause it's gotta fit with the bit that isn't animated. But yeah, if you're making an all animation film, why would you not have a design style that is its own thing?

35:42Jawad MirAnd that's what I like about this film, because again, I, and I s… I spoke to you about this and Steve and Brenda when we were doing Prince of Egypt, conversation, is that I really miss the old style of 2D. You know, Spirit Stallion of Simera and Prince of Egypt and Lion King. Like, that, those three films for me are, like, the perfect example of combination of 2D with 3D. And I think, I feel, I hope we're going back to a criss-cross between, you know, 3D and the painting style bec… It looks, it looks beautiful. It looks absolutely beautiful. And I certainly hope that it, that is the next thing now

36:25Simon WellsYeah, and…

36:25Jawad MirWhat do you think?

36:26Simon WellsI, no, I'm, I'm with you. I feel like, not everything has to be the same. I mean, I…

36:33Jawad MirYeah

36:34Simon Wells... I mean, I feel that kind of radically about animation generally. It annoys me enormously that animation is seen as a genre when it's, in fact, it's a technique, you know. And it's the thing which, bless him, Guillermo del Toro's been stamping about a… with the release of Pinocchio. It's like, no.

36:50Jawad MirYeah

36:50Simon WellsAnimation is filmmaking, but it doesn't always have to be, you know, a cutesy little Cats in Pajamas story. It could be, you know, it could be really dark. I was blown away by the TV series Arcane, that recently, it came out like last year, which is based…

37:12Jawad MirOkay. I've heard of it

37:12Simon Wells... Very loosely based on video game, but the, and it was done on a relatively low budget, but it was done by this studio in France, and the style of the thing is breathtaking. It is so good. And it doesn't pretend to be, in any way cute. It is, it's a hard-hitting, brutal, nasty story about people with, really, you know, F'd up lives. And, you know, there's a central character who is so disturbed, it's great. But the thing looks like the most beautifully rendered comic book, and it's all done in 3D, but it looks like every shot looks like a painting. And you look at that and go, "Oh, I wanna see a feature done that way. Please do a feature film."

37:57Jawad MirYeah. No, I'm just, I was just looking at some stills from Arcane. It looks, it looks beautiful.

38:01Simon WellsOh, yeah.

38:02Jawad MirIt's, it's…

38:02Simon WellsReally well worth watching. It's also, I mean, I watched it and thought, "Holy cow. There's a few of the action sequences here I need to go through, like frame by frame, and study," because I get, I think I need to up my game a bit, you know. There's some stuff they're doing in the, in the storyboarding of this which is so spectacular, and it's such a brilliant kind of, just like the cinematic thinking that's gone into it.

38:27Jawad MirYeah.

38:28Simon WellsIs…

38:29Jawad MirWell…

38:29Simon Wells... Very good.

38:31Jawad MirWell, it just feels like, I feel that with painting, right, and for 2D animation, that I feel texture. Like, I literally feel like I'm touching the screen and feeling the painting or the characters. And you just reminded me, just kind of came to my mind, I don't know if you've ever, you probably were familiar with it, because it was in the early days of DreamWorks. There was a series called Invasion America. Do you remember that? It…

38:59Simon WellsNo. Yeah

38:59Jawad Mir... It wa… it was, I, it came out literally in the very l… late '90s, and I don't know what channel it was on, and it was like anime style. It was basically about a group of aliens trying to invade, you know, America. And I actually bought, it, I don't know what happened to it. I ended up finding it on eBay. Like, just one of those people that recorded on, from TV. And I love the animation of it. You should, you should check it out. It's, I don't know if it's out there somewhere, but, I wish they had done some sort of release with it, because it's, I loved it. I loved the story, I loved the characters, and I loved the animation.

39:38Simon WellsWell, yeah. I mean, pulling this back to Puss in Boots, actually one of the things I really admire is the way in which they liberally stole all these kind of anime style things. There's, there's a brilliant fight at the end of the movie that, I wish I'd boarded. I boarded all the stuff around it, but I didn't get to board the actual fight itself. Oh, it was, Anthony Holden boarded it, which is, where Puss actually does meet and fight with Death. And that is just, like, straight up anime. It's got the whole kind of, y… you know, Naruto running stuff and, like, huge, amazing impacts and kind of, y… you know, kind of graphic bits that are, y… you know, just stylistically added in to give, you know, punch and effect. And I look at that and go, "Wow, they just, they, like, threw that into a mainstream movie," and it's terrific. It's, it's just, it's so fantastically over the top heroic.

40:40Simon WellsAlso, the first meeting with Death in the bar, which starts very quiet, but when they actually fight, there are some extreme, really extreme pieces of momentary animation in there. Like, you know, the super slow mo that suddenly the whole screen goes red.

41:01Jawad MirYeah.

41:01Simon WellsAnd it's just, yeah, they are, they are portraying the emotion on screen, much more than just depicting what is happening. They're, they are expressing it, and I love it. I think it's fantastic.

41:17Jawad MirAnd i… i… it's, it's all about experimentation, right? Like, I find in any kind of, whether it's technique or genre, pe… create, you know, filmmakers or directors or producers are always trying to do whatever is sort of popular. And there's only a handful of people that like to sort of break those, you know, chain of c…, you know, the rules and all that. And I think that's what's happened with Puss in Boots. And while we're talking about Puss in Boots, I wanted to know, what, just give me an example of one scene or one element that you were working on, and you were just not getting through it, like a writer's block type thing, right? Like, and how, what did, what, how did you overcome that? What scene was that? What was the process of, like, that?

42:00Simon WellsI, actually, I, this sounds terribly arrogant, but with storyboarding, I don't, I don't suffer writer's block on this at all. I, part of it is…

42:07Jawad MirNo

42:07Simon Wells... I've been doing this for 30 years now, and, I've worked on so many movies. I, last time I, last time I calculated it, I worked on more than half of the animated features that had come out of DreamWorks, and I've worked on a smattering of other films around as well. But… So no, it, I've just got, I've just such a huge grab bag of ways of dealing with stuff. Now, I mean, I admit there are times when what I do is pretty much like, okay, here's kind of a straightforward breakdown of the scene. I'm not going for a particular cinematic styling thing. I haven't got some thematic idea that I'm basing the whole scene around. I'm just kind of like, okay, this is, this is breaking the scene down into, you know, wide shots and closeups and tracking shots and stuff like that. But, and also I've got used to the idea that, oh, I'm gonna throw it up and it's gonna get changed anyway.

43:08Simon WellsIt's gonna get worked on. It's better that I, rather than beating myself up and trying to make it perfect, it's better that I get it done and then I can p… put it out to everybody. And part of the thing is, I mean, sometimes when I pitch stuff, I'll look at it and as I'm pitching I'll say, "Oh, you know what? Actually, I've thought of a better shot here," or, "I don't think this moment actually... We could really cut this whole section out." Or, you know, that kind of stuff. Because sometimes when you, the moment you actually present it to somebody else, it changes the way that you see it. I remember hearing there was, well, one of the grand old men from Disney, I think it was Freddie Moore, who said, "If you're having difficulty with a drawing, the best thing to do is put it on somebody else's desk."

43:51Jawad MirYeah.

43:51Simon Wells'Cause the moment you do that, you can instantly see it as something that's not yours. It's, it's like, it's like it's their drawing, and you can see what's wrong with it. So even before they say anything, you can take it away and fix it. So I'm very much a believer in no, do your first instinct, put it up there. There's a whole lot of very smart people who are gonna tell you what's working and what's not working. So I tend to just, like, dive into it. Now, I mean, personally, my process in terms of storyboarding, I used to, way back, I used to thumbnail everything as my way of thinking things out. And in the last 10 years or more, I've got to a point where I can kind of envisage it in my head clearly enough that I can write out just a shot list that describes the whole thing. And I can, I can break down a scene kind of in a day. I, you know, if I've got like a, I don't know, five, six page scene, I can, I can work out how I'm gonna, how I'm gonna cover that, in a day, and I know I can present that to the directors, before I bother doing any drawings.

45:03Simon WellsAnd part of that is that I'm incredibly lazy and I don't want to do the drawings if I can avoid it. So it's better to, like, "Here, I'm thinking this idea," and write it out, and they can read it and go, "You know, we don't want the character to bounce on a trampoline and then fall out of a window. We'd rather that he, you know, he rolled off the bed and..." What, you know, just a different piece of business.

45:24Jawad MirRight.

45:24Simon WellsAnd I haven't spent a day drawing this whole thing that they don't want.

45:31Jawad MirSure

45:31Simon Wells... So it's where I try and short-circuit the process because drawing is slow. Drawing is really slow.

45:38Jawad MirYeah.

45:38Simon WellsAnd no matter how fast I get…

45:40Jawad MirNo, and…

45:40Simon Wells... It's still slow

45:40Jawad Mir... When you're doing the storyboarding, right, like you said, you take a, it's a day for you to do it. Is there any kind of... And I am, I'm not familiar with animation storyboarding, so forgive my ignorance. Is it like a coverage thing that you do, or is it just, is it like a lot, lots of different pages that you work on? Like, what's, what's just the process of, you know, let's say a scene like the bar scene. Like, let's say if you were storyboarding it.

46:04Simon WellsJust to, just to, pick up on something you said earlier, I can figure a scene out in a day. It's gonna take me a week to draw it. That's, that's the reason why…

46:13Jawad MirOkay. Okay

46:13Simon Wells... I do the writing is so that I don't…

46:14Jawad MirThat was, that's what I was confused about

46:16Simon Wells... I don't spend a week drawing it.

46:16Jawad MirYou must be really great at it.

46:18Simon WellsNo. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm fast, but I'm not that fast. But no, I, you do... I mean, the way I storyboard, I am literally composing the shots, the camera angles you would see. And I am drawing... I very rarely do fewer than three drawings in a shot, because I always feel like there's a beginning, middle, and end to an action. And, very often it's, it's like a dozen drawings within the shot. I'm kind of animating it. I'm doing, like, key moments. And, you know, so I average, I think I average, about two drawings a second in dialogue, and about three drawings a second, when I'm anim… when I'm storyboarding, action stuff. So typically, yeah, it's in the order of, you know, 90 drawings to the min… something like that. It's, it's a lot of drawings. I'm…

47:17Jawad MirYeah.

47:18Simon WellsYeah, I mean, live action storyboarding tends to be like, "This is the shot," and maybe there's an arrow to show where the character goes.

47:26Jawad MirYeah.

47:26Simon WellsOr there'll be arrows around to show that the camera's trucking in or something like that. But animation storyboards, you are, you know, like when Taylor did the panic attack scene, he's, you know, he's doing both parts of the…

47:41Jawad MirYeah

47:41Simon Wells... Of the cat, and then he's doing changes in the cat. So there's dozens and dozens of drawings that go into making that moment. And, you know, when the dog comes up and looks at him, and he's, like, doing this, you know, each of those panels, he'll, he'll, he draws each of those panels, as y… When you're watching the animatic of an animated movie, you really can be watching the movie. It feels... I mean, the drawings are very rough compared to how the movie…

48:13Jawad MirYeah

48:13Simon Wells... Is gonna look. But, you know, good storyboards, you're not in any confusion about what you're seeing or what's gonna be happening.

48:22Jawad MirYeah, no, I... And speaking of, like, the drawings and the... I first came t… across that, I think it was In 2001, when Shrek was coming out, and there was a test screening of it in LA, and, Katzenberg was there, and Mike Myers was there, and they had shown the test screening, and all of us... I had no idea, you know, that they were gonna have, like, these 2D sketches in there where the scenes are not completed. And I was like, for like five seconds, I'm like, "What just happened here? Is this the movie?" But, you know, then I realized that obviously these scenes are not completed.

48:56Simon WellsThey… And… They actually took to doing a thing where they'd show, like, "Okay, this is what the finished film's gonna look like, but sometimes you're gonna see stuff that's not fully colored, and sometimes you're gonna just see layout, and sometimes you're even gonna see these horrible scribbly things. These are storyboards, you know." Yeah. And here is the same scene playing out as storyboards, and here it is playing out as... You know, they got into making these little kind of explanatory two or three minute shorts that went before the films to clarify for people what the hell they're looking at. If you actually, if you, if you get the DVD of, Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron. I have it. In the, in the DVD extras, there is the, that scene I talked about earlier, the hauling the trains up the mountain, and you can actually see the finished film running side by side with the storyboards. And so you can see my complete storyboard sequence of that section of the movie is one of the DVD extras.

49:55Jawad MirI think I have seen it, but it's been a long time. I'm gonna check it out again, because I know Spirit is one of my favorite films, and I probably went through the entire DVD several times. But I'll, I'll check it out again. And…

50:07Simon WellsAnd by the way, man, m… m… man, horses are difficult to draw. Horses are so difficult to draw. The weird thing about horses is they're more difficult to draw than people, because almost nobody knows, like, how to draw a horse, but everybody can see when it's wrong. Like, horses, there's very little variation in horses. I mean, yeah, you get cart horses, and you get, like, Shetland ponies, but most horses are exactly the same, and they're so precise that if you make a fetlock a little bit too fat, everyone can look at it and go, "Eh, doesn't really look right, does it?" But actually knowing how to draw horses is almost impossible. Just… And then… You need to know that.

50:48Jawad MirAnd especially when they're not even talking, right? That's another thing that…

50:50Simon WellsOh, yeah

50:51Jawad Mir... Is not as correct. Yeah

50:52Simon WellsWell, yeah, oh, yeah. That was, that was a whole interesting battle because, when I, the first sequence I did was the forest fire sequence, and when I pitched it, I did quite a lot of close-ups on the horse kinda looking at things and reacting, and they're, they're like these close-ups on the horse. And Jeffrey watched the pitch, and at the end of it he said, "Yeah, you know, I like it. I think there's probably too many close-ups on the horse." And I said, "Nope, you're wrong, Jeffrey. There are the right number of close-ups on the horse. You're gonna need it." And then they cut it together in editorial, and Jeffrey saw it and went, "Oh, I see." And from then on, he kept adding close-ups into everything, which was really irritating. It's like, "Maybe we need a close-up of the horse here." "No, we actually don't here. Really. Thanks."

51:38Jawad MirYeah. No, and now, and going back to Puss in Boots, do you feel, like in terms of what you... There's a book out there which I haven't seen. It's called The Art of Puss in Boots, I think. I don't know if you have…

51:51Simon WellsI have it. I don't think I've got it in this room, but, yeah, I have it.

51:54Jawad MirNo, that's fine. But so you have, so you know about it. So is there your work in there that didn't make to the film?

52:00Simon WellsNo. There's some panels that I drew in the, I think it's the Fistful of Characters sequence, where all the characters meet up at one point, and it ends with, Goldi getting the map and leaving. And I boarded several versions of that sequence. I mean, other people did stuff. Gary Graham did some work on it, and a few other people did some bits and pieces on it as well. But some of my boards are there in the book. But not a lot, because hundreds of people worked on the movie, and…

52:33Jawad MirYeah

52:33Simon Wells... You know, it's nice that a lot of people get represented in those books. Do you, do you go through a book like that, like The Art of Prince of Egypt or Art of Puss in Boots, like, even if you didn't do your work on it, just to kind of, you know, maybe learn something about the s… the process or the interviews that you probably didn't know? Generally when you've worked on the film, you've heard most of the stuff by the time it makes it into the book. Yeah, I figured. But it is… Yeah... Yeah. I mean, particularly on something where all I've been is something relatively peripheral like being a storyboard artist, it's kinda nice to see some of the, they often put in some of the early designs on characters that didn't make it and, you know, some of the early paintings, the development paintings that were kinda, "Here's expressing the idea of this scene." and then seeing how it, the scene actually ended up in the movie is kind of fun. So yeah, I always look through those things. I've, I've got, I've got all of the DreamWorks, m… you know, making of books because, well, they give them to us, so, you know, I've got the col… I've got the set.

53:34Simon WellsYeah. But, Exactly. Yeah. What's your favorite scene in the film that either you worked on or didn't work on, and why? Boy. Just as an audience member and as a… Oh... As a creator, storyboarder, artist. The one I worked on I kind of, I think I probably enjoyed the most was the scene that takes place in the, in, like, the Hall of Mirrors. The, it's the Hall of Reflections. Okay. Where it's all the different versions of Puss's personality kinda writ large as, their, they're reflections of his personality. They're not actually him, but they're, they're kind of the worst parts of him in various different directions. And, I love the moment where Puss, says, you know, "You guys are kinda jerks, which is really conflicting for me," you know, because he recognizes this is parts of himself. Yeah. And I, and I love the scene because it's a broad comedy scene that then becomes a very dramatic scene when Death arrives and starts smashing everything.

54:34Simon WellsBut it also… There is a deep psychological underpinning where this is, this is Puss coming to terms with what's actually wrong with his own personality. You know, it is the Hall of Reflections, not because they're reflections of him, but it's him reflecting upon…

54:53Jawad MirYeah

54:53Simon Wells... Who he is. And so, you know, it's great to get... I mean, I didn't come up with that scene. I think it was Paul Fisher who came up with that scene, the writer. But, I love working on a scene like that because it's like, "Oh, I really get this idea," and I enjoy how to try to make that, you know, whatever it is, either in the cinematography or in the performance of the characters, just kind of exemplifying what the idea is. So, I don't know. I, it's difficult to say what scenes I enjoy working on. I, it's, this difficult thing. The actual drawing is painful, so it takes so long, and then... But I always…

55:37Jawad MirI think…

55:37Simon Wells... Enjoy delivering the scene and seeing the joy that…

55:40Jawad MirI think…

55:40Simon Wells... The directors have in getting the scene delivered to them.

55:43Jawad MirI think my question probably didn't come across right. I, what I meant to say was scenes that you may have worked on, but at the same time that you connected as an audience member, for whatever reason that is, right? Like, the mirror scene, it's basically essentially a scene that I think all of us can relate to, the vulnerabilities that we all have and the different type of personas that we carry at certain times, depending on the situation. I was more in that sense, like, what did you connect with more as a, as a, as an audience member, as an individual? And I think you explained one of them already.

56:17Simon WellsYeah, probably the stuff I've, I've found that I connected with most was stuff I hadn't a… I didn't actually work on. You know, I love…

56:26Jawad MirYeah. Makes sense

56:26Simon Wells... I love the panic attack thing. I love the kind of gradual revelation of what's going on with Goldi and her relationship with the family. I think, to me, probably the single thing that gets me the most is the moment where Goldi actually says to her... Sorry, this is a spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet, but…

56:50Jawad MirYeah

56:50Simon Wells... Actually says to her family, "I want a real family. I want a proper family. I don't... You know, you didn't think I was gonna stay, did you?" And clearly, the three bears see their relationship completely differently. And Mama Bear eventually says, "Well, you know, if that's what you really want, love, we'll get that for you. We'll get the star for you. We'll get you that wish."

57:12Jawad MirYeah.

57:12Simon WellsAnd it's partly Olivia Colman is just one of the best actors in the world, and so she delivers this with a heartbreaking level of sincerity. And, you know, I don't know anyone who can see that without being deeply affected by it. You know, it's the kind of, the hurtful things that you say when you're, you know, a teenager or in your early 20s or something like that.

57:35Jawad MirYeah.

57:35Simon WellsAnd the people who you didn't even realize at the time were being much bigger people than you were, you know? They, their hearts were breaking, but they still did the thing that you wanted.

57:48Jawad MirYeah.

57:48Simon WellsI thought that moment was breathtaking. That was, that was one of those things where it elevates this whole film so far above being just a animated movie, and it's like, no, that's, that's really about something. And that's just a secondary character. That's, that's what's amazing about it. But yeah, I think it's…

58:11Jawad MirAnd I think that…

58:11Simon WellsSorry, in terms of storyboarding…

58:12Jawad MirSorry

58:13Simon Wells... I tend to be thrown at the big action complicated scenes that have, you know, lots of strings of things going on, and overlapping and interlocking stuff 'cause I can sort that stuff out. And I, sadly, I don't get to be given those sincere, delicate moments. I wish I did, but, the trouble is if you've got somebody who can, you know, deal with an entire orc army battling on the field of Minas Tirith, that's... If you've got one person who can do that, then you give him the battle scene, you know?

58:52Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. There is, just a couple of more questions, Simon, and then, I will let you, do your thing. I'm sure you have a busy schedule. There is, a... And there was an announcement last week or a week, couple weeks ago of a live action remake of How to Train Your Dragon.

59:14Simon WellsYeah

59:14Jawad Mir... What do you feel about that, and do you feel that is, if... I think if that one is successful in 2025, I think we're gonna see live action remakes of pretty much all the DreamWorks films down the road.

59:29Simon WellsI don't know. I mean, h… here's, here's why I'm excited about Dragon being remade as live action, where I'm honestly not a big fan of all the other remakes that have been done. I…

59:41Jawad MirNeither am I

59:41Simon Wells... They, some of them succeed reasonably well. I thought the Beauty and the Beast one was pretty good. I've gotta be honest, I couldn't make it through, like, The Jungle Book. You know, it was... I, and partly it's just like it's not as entertaining on a moment-by-moment basis as the original animated film.

1:00:04Jawad MirYeah

1:00:04Simon Wells... But the reason why I'm excited about Dragons is because Dean DeBlois, who was…

1:00:11Jawad MirYep

1:00:11Simon Wells... The director of the Dragons franchise, I mean, the first one was him and Chris Sanders. Excuse me, but very much this property is Dean. He wrote them. He directed them. He is, he's a big fan of Game of Thrones. And, you could always feel when he was... 'Cause I worked a little bit on one of the Dragons movies. I can't remember which one. I think it might've been three.

1:00:35Jawad MirI think the first one. Was it the first one? I thought…

1:00:37Simon WellsNo, I loved the first one. I wasn't on the first one at all. I, but…

1:00:39Jawad MirOh, okay

1:00:39Simon Wells... But I think, I think I did some stuff on three. But, Dean's a great guy, and he's a terrific writer. And honestly, the kind of the cartoony stuff isn't really him. He veers much more towards... I mean, he can do cute moments. He can do kind of sweet and silly sweet moments. But the straight up cartoony stuff, he's the last person you should give a Minions movie to, you know?

1:01:07Jawad MirYeah.

1:01:07Simon WellsI actually find myself sympathizing, with Dean a great deal. So the fact they've got Dean making the live action remake to me means, okay, what this will be is less cartoony, and it'll be more, it'll be the Game of Thrones version of How to Train Your Dragon. But I'm excited to see that, and they got the person who actually made the original film, so he really knows the nuts and bolts of why the story works.

1:01:38Jawad MirYeah.

1:01:38Simon WellsWhere sometimes, you know, the live action films, they don't even, they don't even ask the people who worked on the original films.

1:01:48Jawad MirThe original ones, yeah.

1:01:49Simon WellsYou know? And it's like, wow, you know?

1:01:52Jawad MirRight

1:01:52Simon WellsThese guys did a lot of heavy lifting in working out how to make this story actually function, and so it might be worth talking to them. You know…

1:02:01Jawad MirYeah

1:02:01Simon Wells... A… actually even with Beauty and the Beast, they didn't even, they didn't even talk to the guys who made it, you know? The directors…

1:02:09Jawad MirYeah

1:02:09Simon Wells... Or the writers.

1:02:11Jawad MirAnd I found that same thing. I haven't even seen The Lion King live action. I saw the trailer, and that was enough. Like, it just didn't do anything for me in terms of, like, the emotions weren't there. You know, the story, the feel wasn't there. And I think that's what it is about. Maybe because we are connected to these stories from a while back, and we just don't want it to seem messed up. And I think Lion King as it is, that's, that's what it was. That's the best it could be.

1:02:38Simon WellsYeah, I don't know. I don't know if it's, it's... 'cause I never had a deep love of Jungle Book. It's just I can, I can appreciate it from, y… you know, when Mowgli and Baloo are singing Bare Necessities…

1:02:52Jawad MirYeah

1:02:52Simon Wells... There's a whole lot of clever business, and it's entertaining on a, this moment by moment basis where I'm engaged in what's going on. They're not just floating down a river singing a song. And…

1:03:06Jawad MirYeah

1:03:06Simon Wells... Which I'm, I'm... Like, can you do something? Don't just float. Can you do something? Anything, you know?

1:03:13Jawad MirYeah.

1:03:13Simon WellsInteract with something.

1:03:14Jawad MirYeah. M… movement, action.

1:03:15Simon WellsSome business. Yeah.

1:03:17Jawad MirYeah.

1:03:17Simon WellsRight. But no, I'm genuinely, I'm not just saying this for some sort of, you know, DreamWorks rah-rah kind of thing. I'm actually genuinely excited about what Dean will do remaking Dragon because it's like, okay, now you get to do pretty much the thing you wanted to do. 'Cause to a certain extent, Dean and Chris inherited because there'd been two sets of directors who tried to develop Dragons before they got on board.

1:03:42Jawad MirOkay.

1:03:43Simon WellsIt was another of these films where actually they were brought in, and there was not enough time to get it done, and they just dived in and made an amazing movie. A… a… but things like the character design work had, they really inherited most of those dragons and those characters from previous iterations. So, the dragons were a lot cartoonier than I think Dean and Chris would have done in the version of the story they actually ended up doing. So yeah, I think, I think the live action in a weird way will be closer to being the true Dean version…

1:04:23Jawad MirYeah

1:04:23Simon Wells... Of the story.

1:04:24Jawad MirI, and I'm excited about it too because when I read that Dean was actually helming it, and then, you know, it's because it's your baby, right? Like, you're not gonna, you're not gonna…

1:04:33Simon WellsHe's not gonna screw it up, no.

1:04:33Jawad MirYeah, exactly. I mean, you've been living this for 14 years now, so maybe longer I think. But…

1:04:40Simon WellsSo I don't know whether it'll, it'll produce a series of live action remakes of other…

1:04:47Jawad MirI hope not.

1:04:47Simon WellsI mean, you know, I…

1:04:48Jawad MirYeah. No

1:04:49Simon Wells... I kinda can't see the point in doing a live action remake of Shrek. I mean, why, what would, what would you do that would be different, you know? That…

1:05:01Jawad MirYeah

1:05:01Simon Wells... That would make it better? 'Cause it certainly isn't gonna be better having somebody dressed up in a Shrek costume. So…

1:05:06Jawad Mir100%. And I saw Shrek, my kids saw Sh… Shrek for the first time, and we saw it, like, couple of weeks ago. And I just saw it after a long time, and I actually just studied it. Like, not as an audience member, but as a critique if you wanna call it. And it was just so simple. There was nothing complicated about it. They kept the story so simple, the dialogue to the point. It was just phenomenal.

1:05:29Simon WellsIt's, it is actually, it is a filmmaking 101 study…

1:05:33Jawad MirYeah

1:05:33Simon Wells... In how to create a character that drives a story and has... I mean, Shrek is a sort of, the perfect character whose want and need are in direct opposition. What he says he wants is in fact the opposite to the thing he actually needs.

1:05:49Jawad MirRight.

1:05:50Simon WellsAnd, you know, 'cause he needs companionship, but because of an archaic wound in that he, you know, and, he was always rejected before he got the chance for people to actually get to know him. And so as a result, he rejects everybody before they get the chance to reject him. So he wants, "I want my swamp back. I want to be left alone," is the thing that he has convinced himself that his life is aiming for, and what he discovers is that's the exact opposite of what he really wants, which is love and companionship.

1:06:22Jawad MirYeah.

1:06:22Simon WellsAnd it's, yeah, it's a perfect, it's a perfectly structured movie in that way. And yeah, there's, there's really nothing that happens in the story. He goes and gets a princess and brings her back, and then realizes that…

1:06:33Jawad MirYeah. That's it

1:06:33Simon Wells... He's in love with her. And that's all it is.

1:06:36Jawad MirYeah.

1:06:36Simon WellsYeah. But, you know, it, you know, we forget now, but it changed the book on animated features. It was so radically different From any animated feature…

1:06:47Jawad MirYeah

1:06:47Simon Wells... That had come before it. Not least because of, like, the needle drop of, you know, all these songs, that are used to illustrate without characters actually singing them on the screen. And the level of irony which it sort of viewed, essentially, its own storytelling. And i… it kinda did what The Princess Bride did in both living in and making fun of the world that it was occupying.

1:07:14Jawad MirYeah. It did remind me of Princess Bride a lot when I, and I watched it again. You know, when that came out in the '80s. But yeah, no. And just lastly, Simon, whatever you can tell us, that you're allowed to say, what are you working on right now in terms of at DreamWorks or independently?

1:07:34Simon WellsWell, as I say, Kung Fu Panda 4

1:07:37Jawad MirYeah

1:07:37Simon Wells... Which is, you know, it's another iteration in the Kung Fu Panda world. I… you know, it's a, it's the next development for Po. It, so there's, there's a whole, there's a whole mentor student story that goes on through that. But, you know, Mike My… Mike My… Mike Mitchell, beg pardon. Talking about Shrek. Mike Mitchell is directing it. He directed, Shrek Forever After.

1:08:07Jawad MirYeah.

1:08:07Simon WellsAnd whole bunch of movies. Wonderfully experienced director. Really cool, calm head, just kind of steering this thing along. And yeah, it's, it's got lots of fun action and, you know, sincere character relationship moments and all these things. It's, it's, it's a fun movie to work on. I think I've, I've actually worked on all of the Kung Fu Panda movies, 'cause I actually even…

1:08:32Jawad MirOkay

1:08:32Simon Wells... Did a sequence on Kung Fu Panda 2 even though I was direct… writing and directing, Mars Needs Mums at the time. I did actually do a sequence for Jen Yuh Nelson, storyboarded a sequence. I actually don't even remember what it was, but she remembered.

1:08:50Jawad MirIt's funny you mention Moms Needs Mom, Mars Needs Mom. We, I had s… two people reached out to me, after they saw your interview, your conversation about The Prince of Egypt, and they're like, "We need to get Simon to talk about Time Machine and Moms Need… Mars Needs Moms o… on the podcast." So if you're ever down for it, would love to talk to you about Ti… Time Machine.

1:09:13Simon WellsThat, th… they were... It's interesting, they were very different experiences for a whole lot of reasons. And not least that my wife and I wrote Mars Needs Moms, versus Time Machine, where I was very much a director for hire on the show.

1:09:29Jawad MirYeah.

1:09:29Simon WellsSo yeah, no, I'd, I'd, I'd be up for that.

1:09:33Jawad MirSounds great. Anything else you wanna share, Simon? Anything… ... Just the last piece of a tidbit?

1:09:38Simon WellsApart from, honestly, go and see the movie, any… anybody and everybody. I… it actually is a really interesting thing because th… the movie, Puss in Boots 2, has been, like, huge online. My kids, who are in their early 20s, keep showing me stuff where people have taken bits of movie and re-edited it, or they've, they've used it…

1:09:58Jawad MirOh, really?

1:09:59Simon WellsYeah, and used it in memes and all kinds of stuff. And I saw a thing just the other day where someone had actually built Death's sickle, hinging sickle thing. They made a full-sized prop of it. So it's like…

1:10:11Jawad MirWow

1:10:11Simon Wells... "Holy cow, it looks great." And so I've been passing a lot of these things on to the directors. But I w… I had lunch with Joel and Januel a week or two ago and, they said they'd been talking to the publicity people and saying, "You know, this film's actually really connecting with an older crowd. It's like older teens and college-age kids are going to see this movie." And he said, "Well, let me look into that." And so they went back and they actually talked to the exhibitors, the actual cinemas themselves.

1:10:40Jawad MirGreat.

1:10:41Simon WellsAnd although they don't, obviously, they don't know what ages are buying tickets, what they can look at is say, "Oh, okay, we have a whole lot of block tickets. That's obviously a family buying a block of four or five tickets at a time. But the vast majority of tickets are actually single purchase tickets for this movie," which is very unusual for an animated movie, because most animated movies…

1:11:03Jawad MirYeah

1:11:03Simon Wells... Are family movies. And not that this fam… this isn't, isn't a family movie, but an enormous number of individuals, which means, you know, people going out on dates together or people just going as a group of... And it tends to belie an older age group. And yeah, I saw something online where this guy, had been dragged to see this movie by his adult friends, and it's like, "Why are we going to see an animated movie?" And then he just did this paragraph where he listed all the things that were great about the movie and said, you know, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but..." And, it's, it is, it's genuinely a feature film. It's, it's a real full-ass feature film versus a lot of animated features are kind of a collection of gags and a pretty thin story at best.

1:11:54Jawad MirYeah.

1:11:54Simon WellsAnd are that sort of predictable believe in yourself kind of, you know, homily.

1:12:00Jawad MirStory, yeah.

1:12:01Simon WellsAnd this has some real humanity in it, some real stuff that goes on in these characters. So I'm recommending it to everybody, people, particularly people who don't go and see animated movies, because this is a whole different animal.

1:12:21Jawad MirAnd to that note, I will say it actually reminded me, I don't know if you've ever seen Better Call Saul, the spinoff of Breaking Bad.

1:12:29Simon WellsI've never watched that actually, no.

1:12:31Jawad MirYou haven't seen Breaking Bad?

1:12:32Simon WellsNo. I, no. I watched the first season of Breaking Bad and I kinda like, "Okay, I've got enough of this." And I, and I never watched Saul, so I probably should.

1:12:41Jawad MirWell, Better Call Saul is, the protagonist reminded me, the, Puss in Boots reminded me of the protagonist in Better Call Saul a lot in the part, in the Part 2 film. But on that note, I saw Breaking Bad's two episodes, and I had the same feeling as you did. I'd never... And then I went back to it during COVID, and I have seen both Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad while I'm traveling twice the entire series. It's the amazing…

1:13:10Simon WellsOkay

1:13:10Jawad Mir... Amazing form of storytelling. It's, you would love it. Like, it's a…

1:13:15Simon WellsOkay

1:13:15Jawad Mir... Perfect scripts, dialogue, arcs. It's amazing. I can't recommend it enough.

1:13:22Simon WellsOkay. I will take that recommendation. I'll try and watch it. Yeah. All right.

1:13:26Jawad MirGreat. Thanks, Simon, for, again, joining us, and, I hope to speak to you again about Time Machine and for sure more of your projects in the future.

1:13:34Simon WellsAll righty. Okay. Good to talk to you. All right.

1:13:37Jawad MirLikewise. Take care, Simon.

1:13:38Simon WellsSee you.

1:13:38Jawad MirBye-bye.