'Over the Hedge', Director, Tim Johnson

0:00Jawad MirYou can't tell if it's Bruce Willis. Like, you know, with certain actors you can... And he did a, such a phenomenal job i… i… i… with RJ. And then obviously the rest of the cast, which I'm gonna read, like Steve Carell as Hammy, Gary Shandling as Verne, Wanda Sykes, William Shatner, Nick Nolte, Thomas Haden Church, you know, Eugene Levy, and obviously Catherine O'Hara and Avril Lavigne.

0:24Tim JohnsonRight. Avril Lavigne.

0:25Jawad MirYeah.

0:26Tim JohnsonYeah, we just had incredible embarrassment of riches on the talent. And I'm g…

0:32Jawad MirBut the…

0:32Tim JohnsonI'm glad to hear you say that Bruce Willis sort of, he was more RJ than he was Bruce, and I… I think one of the many reasons I think Bruce took the... And by the way, Jim Carrey was the original casting for RJ.

0:54Jawad MirI, we re-watched the film, I think a couple of months ago after we first chatted, about, Antz.

1:03Tim JohnsonRight.

1:03Jawad MirAnd, I had seen it, you know, I can't believe it's been like 20, almost 20 years.

1:09Tim JohnsonAlmost, or it's 18 years. Hedge was, released in 2006, so yeah, what does that make it? 18 years ago. That's, boggles me. That film for some reason in particular feels like yesterday. That is still sort of fresher in my mind than some other professional, experiences, so.

1:30Jawad MirAnd I agree, it does feel very fresh. A, because, in my mind, I mean, I'm, I could be wrong, obviously the story is very timeless, right? Like, it's, if you look at even human history, forget animals or, you know, people are always fighting for land, right? Like case in point, what's going on in the world. And, Over the Hedge, with such an amazing star cast, was really, beautifully animated, but it was very cute, like a Pic… I don't wanna do a comparison, but just for the sake of argument, like very Pixar.

2:05Jawad MirBut at the same time, it had a very, just like DreamWorks film, like very adult-oriented, elements in there. And it's still timeless. I think Antz and Over the Hedge, we've talked about Sinbad, but those two film of yours are still timeless in terms of what they offer 20 to 25, 26 years later.

2:27Tim JohnsonWell, that's a powerful compliment that I really take to heart. I mean, the challenge, I think, of doing a social satire, and both Antz and Over the Hedge, I think, e… earned that title, the challenge, as you've pointed out, is it… it's easy to be too contemporary and too topical, and be, you know, wry and irreverent and fresh in the way late night comedy takes on the world of politics and social, you know, ideas. But the thing that does, I think, make Over the Hedge work is the two, the two larger social satire issues, which would be, you know, the constant encroachment on natural spaces, number one, and then number two, very different, the addictions of consumer culture.

3:13Tim Johnson... Those two things, they're never going to change or go away. And so that idea to take a group of sort of eccentric, animal personalities, let them, let them mimic the journey of, humans being swept up in consumer culture, I'm, yeah, I'm proud and happy to hear you felt that there was a timeless quality to it.

3:39Jawad MirYeah. And let's, let's go back to the beginning of the film, right? So here you have kinda going back to where we finished last on Sinbad. You finished Sinbad. We talked about, you know, its ups and downs and how from box office standpoint it didn't do, as great. Obviously, we talked about all those things, but that finished, that came out, and then the journey for the next project or projects began. Is, was, did Over the Hedge start while Sinbad was sort of in the wrap-up stage, or right after it, or a while after that?

4:13Tim JohnsonI believe it did actually just slightly overlap. I, for the longest time, I actually wanted to do a daily cartoon strip. Like, in college I did one for the, for the Daily Northwestern, a student newspaper, and I just love the format. It's, amazing to me that in four panels you can fall in love with characters, create punchlines and catharsis and the great strips, whether you wanna cite all the way back to Krazy Kat or contemporary, y… you know, classics like Peanuts and, Calvin and Hobbes, th… they have a rhythm to comedy and character that I always wanted to emulate. And so I got into animation because I was a doodler…

5:03Tim Johnson... Of comic strips, and then through a series of happy accidents, got to do, translate some of my comic strips into some short animation pieces in college. So I was a huge fan of Over the Hedge, and I n… I knew, the producer, Jim Cox, married to Penny Finkelman Cox, who was one of our producers on Antz. So I knew Jim, and the, he had the rights to Over the Hedge, and he had it in development at Fox.

5:32Tim JohnsonAnd it just sort of stalled out there. And I'm probably gonna get the exact numbers wrong. I think that Fox had, it was either a three or a five-year option on Over the Hedge, and they had spent a year or two and then sort of, i… it just didn't come alive there. So when I moved to Southern California, to work on Sinbad, Jeffrey and I had already talked about, you know, how we thought Over the Hedge had real promise, and if in fact Fox didn't, you know, reawaken their excitement about it, when the option came up, Jeffrey sort of promised me DreamWorks will a… We'll actively pursu… pursue that for you to work on. And I believe the option did expire, and Fox let it go back to, Mike Fry and T. Artman, the, writer and artist who drew the strip. And so Jeffrey fulfilled that promise and pounced on the option, brought it into DreamWorks. And I believe Sinbad wasn't done before we started to think about how to adapt and what kind of story would make this, you know, highly episodic cartoon strip work as a feature.

6:45Jawad MirRight. And was there any pressure on you after Sinbad opened that, you know, you are working on Over the Hedge, is it gonna... Like, and obviously even if not pressure from the management or Jeffrey or just within yourself, right? Like, there's this thing, like, you go into this down pool, and you start feeling, you start losing confidence here and there. And then was, did that ever happen to you, days…

7:10Tim JohnsonIt did

7:11Jawad Mir... Months, weeks?

7:11Tim JohnsonIt did sort of. I mean, in some ways, Sinbad was always like a troubled child. I came onto the show when it was, trying to find its tone.

7:23Jawad MirYeah.

7:23Tim JohnsonAnd, as we discussed, I mean, I'm super proud of the film. But I th… I think I always knew it was going to suffer from a perfect storm of challenges. Most significantly, as early CG movies began to really accelerate at the box office, Sinbad just felt, you know, like it was…

7:45Jawad MirYeah

7:45Tim Johnson... Going to struggle to attract an audience. And I knew it was an old-fashioned story, and one I loved telling, and Patrick Gilmore and I, you know, were super passionate, the, my co-director on the film. But I d… I don't think I was under any illusions we were, going to, going to crush at the box office. That being said, it was staggeringly disappointing.

8:06Jawad MirYeah

8:07Tim Johnson... And we thought with the cast we had and the beauty of the film that we'd find more of an audience. So I definitely, did the soul-searching and sleepless nights. I believe that it helped, though, to have Over the Hedge to... I didn't take, like, a break like I did after Antz. I went st… like, didn't even, I don't even think I took a day off. I went straight, dove headfirst into developing Over the Hedge. And so that was sort of the way to soothe the balm, and maybe frankly, a little bit of defensive posturing on worrying, like, "Are they gonna let me direct again? Well, let me just dive into this next project…"

8:44Jawad MirYeah

8:44Tim Johnson... "keep my head down." but, again, I think everybody felt that Sinbad faced a perfect storm of challenges, and everybody was proud of the film. The, I don't think anybody pointed to the film and said, "Boy, the direction or the writing or anything really failed the promise of it." so in some ways, I'm sure in behind closed doors, there were conversations like, you know, where is Tim as a director, and are there things, you know, we wish he'd done differently on Sinbad? But in general, I didn't face a sort of terrible, "Well, it really was misdirected." That was the core problem.

9:25Jawad MirYeah, it's so good that you dived into Over a Hedge, Over the Hedge right away, not just from anybody, giving anybody an opportunity for the lack of argument, but also for your own mental strength, right? Like, because…

9:38Tim JohnsonYeah

9:38Jawad Mir... It happens to all of us. It doesn't even about, matter if it's film or any other job. You know, when something goes wrong, we sort of, as human beings, sometimes fall into this trap of a never-ending cycle of, you know, this happened and this happened.

9:53Tim JohnsonYeah.

9:53Jawad MirAnd but when you get busy, you know, naturally it just takes that thing out of your head and because you have to focus your brain on something else. So…

10:01Tim JohnsonWell, I'm, I'm gonna misquote this quote, but it's something like, you know, "When you find that you've walked into a really dark place in the forest, keep walking." and that's kind of the attitude, right? It's like you, I definitely had time to think and learn from what I do think might have been mistakes on Sinbad. But in general, I just, yeah, tucked my, wounded baggage, behind me and just kept running as fast as I could. And Over the Hedge was super challenging storytelling-wise. From start to finish, it was really a surprisingly challenging story to tell. So there were thorny problems that kept me v… very busy in sort of happy ways. They were, they were exciting problems. It was super challenging problems. So I found my sleepless nights very quickly went from, "Oh my gosh, I'm so disappointed Sinbad didn't make it into the hearts of audiences," to…

10:59Jawad MirYeah

10:59Tim Johnson... "Oh my gosh, how am I gonna turn an enormous cast of characters, based on four-panel short story gags into a feature film?" So a good problem to have.

11:11Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. What was that kind of... I mean, it's everybody's dream, right? Like, to, every filmmaker's dream, I should say. That to be able to work on something that you grew up or that inspired you to become…

11:27Tim JohnsonYeah

11:28Jawad Mir... Who you are. And the process of that, I mean, you already told me how you got it, but the process of that, working on that film, with your team, with the cast, with your co-director, with everybody, how much fun, like, did... I m… I know you guys did have fun, but obviously there were some sleepless nights. But I just wanna get that feeling from a fan's perspective that, you know, like a little child getting a gift on his lap that he always wanted.

11:54Tim JohnsonIt was fun. I mean, again, super chall… challenging story to turn something…

12:00Jawad MirRight

12:00Tim Johnson... So episodic into the bigger story. But we've pretty quickly happened upon two guiding principles that were both enormously helpful and necessary to get momentum on the story, but then also proved to be a little bit of the stone soup. You know, you, the classic story of the fox tricks all the animals by saying, "I'll, let's make soup together. I'll provide the stone for stone soup," and then everybody else brings lovely ingredients and, you know, good things happen, and the stone is discarded. So with Over the Hedge, the two big ideas that were in play was, first, let's tell an origin story, which was never told in the strip. How did this, con man raccoon, sharp-talking, you know, creature of his own id, meet this cautious and reserved turtle? And so deciding to do the origin story opened up, obviously, just it's a bigger story. And then the second thing, which was the stone soup part of it, is we,..

13:03Tim JohnsonJeffrey Katzenger… Katzenberg and I talked about The Music Man as a paradigm even before Over the Hedge. Like, we both love the story of The Music Man, the con man who comes into a town full of rubes and ends up falling for the town, and kind of reforms his con-man heart. And so those were the two things, a, an origin story to the friendship, and a paradigm about a con man that comes into a town full of rubes. Now, I mention the stone soup of it because it turned out the biggest struggle in the story was, how do you ever forgive the con man? Because we were deep into the story and struggling with making, RJ a likable character and a delightful character, and the problem is that in The Music Man, he's taking a little bit of money to sell them instruments he has no idea how to help them play. And so when he leaves town, they've all lost a little money, and they've been taken advantage of.

14:04Tim JohnsonThe problem with RJ is he's taking their food, and they will starve to death. And so the stakes were appropriately big. I mean, you want big stakes in a movie, but they were unforgivably big when it came to RJ. And so w… when we kept kind of diving deeper under the hood of The Music Man, it was finally, I think, Karey Kirkpatrick joining the show as a writer and my co-director who, he really summed it up and said, like, "I think we gotta stop beating the drum of The Music Man." I mean, it's in the DNA of the show. It's going to be there, but, he and I and another writer, by imposing this overarching story of a bear that RJ has a long history with, Vincent, we found a way to make a bigger villain than RJ, create a life-and-death threat to RJ that allowed us to forgive him, and we went on, like, that ride of building the story.

15:07Tim JohnsonAnd yet that still wasn't enough to really forgive him and really love him. It was only when we added this sort of prologue beat where RJ is trying to get snack food out of a vending machine… ... That you really bonded with the character. Suddenly he became the universal victim, that many of us, if not all of us, have, you know, wrestled with a machine bent on taking our coins and giving us nothing in return. And so these big storytelling both guides and principles and ultimately obstacles were part of the actually sort of joyous discovery of the film.

15:48Jawad MirThat's beautiful. And y… you know, you talk about RJ. I had forgotten about the c… the cast. Like, I knew the cast was really big, but when I re-watched it, you can't tell if it's Bruce Willis. Like, you know, with certain actors you can, and he did a such a phenomenal job i… i… with RJ, and then obviously the rest of the cast, which I'm gonna read, like Steve Carell as Hammy, Gary Shandling as Verne, Wanda Sykes, William Shatner, Nick Nolte, Thomas Haden Church. You know, Eugene Levy, and obviously Catherine O'Hara and Avril Lavigne.

16:22Tim JohnsonAvril Lavigne.

16:23Jawad MirYeah.

16:24Tim JohnsonYeah, we just had incredible embarrassment of riches on the talent. And I'm g… I'm glad…

16:30Jawad MirBut the…

16:30Tim Johnson... To hear you say that Bruce Willis sort of, he was more RJ than he was Bruce, and I think one of the many reasons I think Bruce took the g…... And by the way, Jim Carrey was the original casting for RJ.

16:44Jawad MirReally?

16:45Tim JohnsonAnd we recorded Jim about six times. And ultimately, it never gelled. It really was the problem that Jim Carrey was so Jim Carrey that RJ never emerged as a character. And I think Jim found it incredibly, frustrating to not be in control of the physicality of the character. You know, other actors, many actors are sort of nervous. It's like, you know, my face, my gestures, my posture, those are part of my toolkit, and you're taking all that away from me and leaving just the voice, and even stranger, other people are gonna provide that to my performance. And so I found that most actors ultimately find that collaboration to be charming and rewarding. I w… I would say for Jim Carrey, it was n… it was always threatening to him. He never liked the idea that there would be a co-actor that would take his voice and then decide independent of him how to move.

17:49Tim JohnsonSo when we sort of a… we sort of agreed to walk away 'cause just nothing... He wasn't having fun. We weren't finding the character. And Jeffrey was like, "Well, let's put together a dream list," and Bruce Willis was, not surprisingly, on top of that list. And I have to say, Bruce Willis was from the start a great partner. Like, we pitched him the idea, and he's like "Wow, you're asking me to become, David." I forget David's last name from Moonlighting, but the character that he played, David. And, "You're asking me to go back to that guy, and nobody's asked me to do that for a while." He'd played tough guys and action heroes. He'd played, you know, moody, introspective guys, like The Sixth Sense, but nobody had asked him to be funny in quite a while, and he loved the idea of returning to that. And he had done animated voices or, Look Who's Talking.

18:46Tim JohnsonSo he was definitely comfortable with the microphone. But one of the things I loved about him is we met him, we pitched him the story. He said, "I love this." He goes, "Listen, let's..." And he knew, we didn't really talk specifically, but he knew we had done this dance with Jim Carrey, and it hadn't worked out. So he said, "I'd like to audition for it. I know you're giving it to me, but let's just go into a recording session and find out, together if this is right." And so sure enough, he made himself available almost immediately after the pitch, like, days later, and within minutes of the first session, everybody was laughing. I mean, dying laughing, include, including Bruce. And we just knew, "Here's RJ. Yeah, we're, we're gonna do this ride and discover this character."

19:28Jawad MirWow, that's an incredible story. You know, Bruce Willis, I mean, yeah, when you mention the name, when you mention the name Bruce Willis, the first thing that comes to people minds is Die Hard, right?

19:37Tim JohnsonYeah.

19:37Jawad MirLike, that's what he's known for. But even in those, even in those films, I mean, they weren't comedy, but there were elements of, you know, humor here and there, witty dialogue here and there. But I think one movie... Well, Sixth Sense obviously changed. If, I am not an expert on his film, filmography, but I think Sixth Sense changed s… his direction in a way, or w… that he was looking for that direction, and then Unbreakable. But I think one film that is one of his really underrated, now I don't remember if it came out before…

20:08Jawad Mir... Over the Hedge or after, The Kid by Disney.

20:12Tim JohnsonYeah.

20:12Jawad MirWhere he, where he meets his younger version, and that was pretty fun to watch, too. I mean, he is a pretty funny guy. But the thing with RJ was it wasn't that he was trying to be comical. It was just the character. He completely lost himself into it, and you cannot help believe that this is just…

20:32Tim JohnsonYeah

20:32Jawad Mir... A raccoon with a voice, right? So, well, incredible.

20:35Tim JohnsonAnd, you know, Bruce has a big personality. Like…

20:38Jawad MirYeah

20:38Tim Johnson... I… if he wants to, and he often does, he is the m… most charismatic, powerful force in the room. He walks into the room, and he's the life of the party. And touring, working with him, that was obvious, and we, and we really wanted RJ to have that kind of instant charisma. But then touring to promote the film afterwards, watching how he could, he could charm a room of 100 of the most jaded, seen-it-all-before entertainment journalists, in, at the just drop of a hat. He was really stunning to watch him work a crowd. And so, like, how perfect. That's exactly what... RJ needed to meet these group of naive animals, completely blow them away with the power of his forceful salesman personality. And s… and yeah, we were just incredibly fortunate to have Bruce at this moment in his career where he was so excited to dive into that aspect of what he could bring.

21:33Jawad MirThat's beautiful. No, it's, it's definitely one of the most underrated animated, and DreamWorks' animated films, which sort of brings me to the next point. I was reading this on somewhere, and now I don't know if this is accurate, please correct me, that there were plans to make a sequel, but like wh…

21:52Tim JohnsonThere was. We…

21:53Jawad MirYeah.

21:54Tim JohnsonYeah. We had a script that I just loved where, the premise was great. It was winter is coming, and the animals are all like, "Oh, we're, we're all gonna get ready to hibernate." And RJ's like…

22:03Jawad MirYeah

22:03Tim Johnson... "What? Like, winter, I'm not sleeping for five months." And so he, RJ engineered a way for all animals to sneak into a shopping mall and live in the shopping mall, during the winter. So it was a, it was another con game with, and, our Verminator, Terminator, character, was now the shopping mall cop. And so we had a really funny premise for it. But a bunch of things c… sort of, sort of killed it. There were just l… we were before the era that DreamWorks was actively making, television programs.

22:45Tim JohnsonWhich I would argue would be an even better venue where the large cast could be, you know, like Cheers or Friends. Like, TV comedies can live in a wonderful space with that large cast, and it could return to its more episodic roots, if it was a TV show. But I got involved with a couple of other f… films right away developing at DreamWorks. The box office was good, but not quite great. I think Jeffrey just kinda struggled with, he'd always thought of it as a one-off and not a franchise. And so it just never quite had that spark of let's, let's… get right on the sequel.

23:25Jawad MirIt would've been really co… I think that's a cool concept. And I mean, box office-wise, obviously, I don't know the numbers that they had to meet, you guys had to meet for it to be, for it to work. Like 340 million worldwide, almost.

23:37Tim JohnsonYeah, it did great, and it did really well on DVD as well, like, really well. So, I think it was just sort of a... You know, I think Carrie moved on to another show. I was developing some other things. I think honestly, if I had really forcefully championed it, if I'd…

23:56Jawad MirYeah

23:56Tim Johnson... You know, if I'd ever felt like, oh wow, this story really clicked. But while we had a good premise, you know, we worked with Carrie and, a great writer, Chris Poche, for a bit, and it was moving along, but there were some other things moving even faster, and, all of a sudden it just, like…

24:15Jawad MirYeah

24:15Tim Johnson... It was too late. Yeah.

24:17Jawad MirWould you, Ever like to revisit it as a series if the opportunity came now?

24:24Tim JohnsonYeah, I would. I think those characters in some ways, have been like fine wine. The strength of their personalities hasn't diminished. I'd love to revisit, Stella. I'd love to, like, revisit Ozzie, you know? Sadly of course, we lost Garry Shandling…

24:44Jawad MirYeah

24:45Tim Johnson... A good eight years ago or so, and even more tragically to hear that Bruce Willis has, had this, you know, struggle with…

24:52Jawad MirYeah

24:53Tim Johnson... Memory and…

24:54Jawad MirI think…

24:55Tim Johnson... Dementia. It's just heartbreaking that our two leads, would not be available to work on a sequel or a TV show.

25:04Jawad MirYeah. He actually, I think he officially retired too, if I'm not mistaken, because... And it's, it's, you know, it's so strange. I'm kind of going a little off-topic here. It's, you know, as, when you grow up, I d… I'm sure you do have this feeling too, and please tell me if you do, because I don't wanna think I'm the only crazy one. You know, when you're growing up, right, like, you grow up with, you grow up with your family, you grow up with your friends, right? But you're growing up with these, this popular culture, right?

25:30Tim JohnsonYeah.

25:30Jawad MirLike, you know, Bruce Willis, Schwarzenegger. I'm just, you know, throwing out names. Martin Scorsese, Spielberg. And then you realize after, like, holy crap, you know, time is short for everyone. I mean…

25:46Tim JohnsonYeah

25:47Jawad Mir... You look, I mean, you look, I just realize because I've been watching these people over time. Like, you know, when you see your friends over time, you don't notice the difference af… unless you see them after a long time. Like, I saw a picture of Spielberg or an interview of Spielberg. I'm like, holy crap, he's old. You know, when did that happen, right?

26:02Tim JohnsonYeah.

26:02Jawad MirSo he…

26:03Tim JohnsonI hear you

26:03Jawad Mir... To see someone like Bruce Willis. Yeah.

26:06Tim JohnsonYou know, I turned 62. I'll be 63 this summer.

26:10Jawad MirNo way.

26:12Tim JohnsonAnd all of a sudden, I mean, you're just, when you're in your 60s, life sobers you up pretty quick because you have friends your age that experience genuine health crises. You may even have a few people your age. I mean, I went to college with the, with Steve Albini, the famous producer of Nirvana and

26:32Tim Johnson... The Pixies. He just died at the age of 61 of a heart attack. And so I'm, I'm face to face with the sobering realities of mortality. And then also, like you know, Scorsese is about 80. Clint Eastwood is in his late…

26:50Jawad Mir90s

26:51Tim Johnson... 90s.

26:52Jawad MirYeah

26:52Tim Johnson... Heroes I grew up with are now, at the end of their careers and maybe at the end of their life, and all, and you look at the world very differently with the vulnerability of great art not necessarily lasting forever. No one gets to keep making movies, unless you're Martin Scorsese. So yeah, I feel like, it's, it's part and parcel with the lovely compliment you said that Over the Hedge has kind of stood the test of time, and that is that strange beauty as we artists do get older and more vulnerable and make less work or retire or pass away, we have this beautiful thing that you can look at that you've put into the world that might actually be timeless. And so we humans age, but if we've been lucky enough to make a few, successful pieces of art, they get to do the impossible and become slightly immortal.

27:53Jawad MirYeah. That's so true. I was watching this on Instagram somewhere. I don't know who said this, but it was like, you know, people need to realize that, you know, when you worry about the c… smallest things, like, you know, don't sweat the sm… sweat the small stuff, and once you're gone, even the loved ones of yours will probably remember you for a limited time. Not that they will forget you forever, but, you know, obviously their life has to move on. They'll remember you here and there. So you're, y… if you think you, your worries are big things, even you don't matter, so stop worrying about the, you know, the small things. Just enjoy and just move on. Yeah. It's, it's amazing how life changes perspective as you grow older. With Over the Hedge, which character would you identify or relate to the most? That if I was to say, "Who is Tim in Over the Hedge?"

28:51Tim JohnsonI think that if you asked me that question when the movie came out, I would've said…

28:58Jawad MirYeah

28:58Tim Johnson... I would've said, Verne, because I at that point had two young boys. Yeah. So when it came out, Booker was, s… six and Gage was four, and I felt that overprotective parent, feeling and wondering about things like popular culture and junk food and, like... And so I, and I adored Garry Shandling. I mean, hi… the fact that he's no longer, on this earth with us is just such a tragedy, 'cause what a comic genius he was. What a delight to work with he was. What a partner he was. And so I would've said Verne. Now, though, when you ask me, I th… my parental vibe is still there, but I, it's Ozzie I bound wi… bond with now. The one with the teenage kid that wants his kid to understand him and wants his…

29:54Tim Johnson... His kid's admiration and wants his kid to take on the possum business when he's gone. And so, I think that's one of the joys of that movie is, throughout the almost 20 years since it came out, I might actually have given you s… two or three different responses as to who I bond with the most.

30:17Jawad MirYeah. That's, that's true. That's true. I think even if you're not involved in any film or book and you read it You know, you relate to a certain character at a certain age, as opposed to back then and now. You know, in your career, Tim, and I do genuinely mean this, you know, not everybody gets to acquire a name like Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese, right? Not everybody's a household name. But having said that, I do... How, h… when you look back at your career, what... You know, you're, if you're, l… let's say if you're sitting on a plane or if you're just at the beach, reflect, you know, sometimes those thoughts come to your head. Like, what do you, what do you think about the most in terms of your career in the last 20 odd, you know, 25 years or so, from where you were to your journey…

31:14Tim JohnsonI think

31:14Jawad Mir... To where you are?

31:15Tim JohnsonI think, I think I've been thinking about that a lot as I am sort of, I'm pitching new ideas out there in a world that isn't really receptive to new ideas right now, in this contemporary challenging space we're in Hollywood. So I'm sort of semi-retired, and that is a time to sort of reflect. I'm, profoundly grateful for the crazy good fortune I had along the entire journey. And I do believe that you make your own luck, but I'm sort of staggered that I, on a rainy day in Chicago, I was a hand-drawn animator, and I got in a cab with a guy who had just bought the very first Alias computer animation system, the first one in the world. Like, Post Effects in Chicago bought what became Maya and Autodesk, and is still kind of the industry. And I shared a cab with a guy I'd never met before, and he was buying a computer animation system.

32:16Tim JohnsonAnd I had majored in both English literature and physics, so I had done programming. I knew my way around a computer. I was the first person in line to buy a Mac in 1984. And so here I am, having been lucky enough to get in a cab, having animation skills, but also having a significant toe in the waters of computers and computer programming and technology, and he offered me this job to be the first animator on this system he had just bought. How much more lucky could I get than that? And then to be there from making my first, you know, shiny metal, you know, logo animation, to getting the first Pillsbury Doughboy in CG, or to do Homer Simpson in 3D, all as preparatory work to graduating into features. The fact that I did study English literature and I knew writing and storytelling and story structure, and Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, and so I could put together story pitches that did eventually introduce me to Jeffrey Katzenberg.

33:17Tim JohnsonSo that even as we were creating great technology rises with computer animation so that it could, that it could physically do the computer animation of 90 minutes, there was also the creatively accomplished part that I had just enough sort of background in with storytelling to be available to that opportunity when it came. The fact that Jeffrey Katzenberg was just starting DreamWorks, and was in a incredible growing, driving engine of, you know, let's do great things in animation. So hitching my wagon to him and being lucky enough to be in his good favor, just one, you know, amazing lucky thing after another. And I do look back at every moment, at DreamWorks. I'll say this, I think I never took DreamWorks for granted. I think every time I drove through that front gate, I reminded myself that front gate is a talent filter, and everybody that gets through that front gate has an incredible amount of talent, and I'm lucky enough to drive through with them and work with them.

34:24Tim JohnsonSo I look back with kind of a stunned, starry-eyed amazement and have zero regrets, including when I left, which was the right timing for me, and the last projects I did, I'm s… I'm just as proud of as the first projects. So thanks for asking the question, because it's like be, to be able to shout thank you to the universe with the passion I have for my gratitude is, I'm just really fortunate.

34:53Jawad MirThat's so great to hear. And you know, just to kind of give you icing on the cake, so on social media, on Facebook, there's a lot of groups on different topics, different films. Just to s… like, it's just like message boards the way it used to be. You know, like fan message board, now there's like Facebook groups. And there's a whole bunch of DreamWorks ones, DreamWorks Animation one. And there's one, I don't know, I can send you the link if you're interested, where we post, you know, whether we speak about Prince of Egypt, or Antz, or Sinbad, or Kung Fu Panda, and we post it, and it turns out, I didn't even know this, majority of the people that will make a comment here and there, they used to work at DreamWorks…

35:32Tim JohnsonHuh

35:32Jawad Mir... In some capacity, right? Like whether it was a office job or a production job or post. And they, some of, some of them will say like, "I remember working on this film as such and such." So the reason I'm telling you this, because I mean, DreamWorks was a big part of you, right? I didn't even freaking work at DreamWorks and I felt almost like I worked there, because I was so heavily invested into that. And reading all those things, to me, it gives me goosebumps, right? Because I didn't even officially work there, but at the same time I had a connection. But I could only imagine, you know, having those kind of things, those feelings, and looking back at it. Like, you may even remember somebody from that. You know? Like, you may even have worked with these individuals. It's, it's, it's a cool thing. I just thought I should mention it. I think it's a really cool thing that people sometimes look back at their life, not as in like dreading it or wishing their life was better now, but just as a memory, just to put a smile on their face.

36:31Tim JohnsonYeah, it was like a, I mean, working at DreamWorks for, you know, I mean, if you… for me, starting at PDI in 1988, and then partnering with DreamWorks to make Antz, and then being acquired by DreamWorks officially and merging, it, to me, I was a dream. It felt like one continuous employment from 1988 to 2019, 31 years.

36:54Jawad MirWow.

36:55Tim JohnsonAnd that's such a rarity in any world, but especially in the entertainment world. And so to feel like I was one of the many voices that helped DreamWorks, a part of that brain trust of watching everybody's films and giving notes, and just the staggering amount I learned about storytelling and about myself through the rollercoaster ride of all those years, yeah, it's just, nothing but pride looking back at it.

37:26Jawad MirLet's, let's kind of conclude this, with what's ahead, right? Like, you know, if you were, you were telling me earlier that you pitch like everybody else does. Like, you know, we pitch, and we pitch, and sometimes things work, and sometimes things don't. And also, I think in the world that we live in, especially in Hollywood, unfortunately, age kind of becomes an issue unless, you know, unless you're a house… household name, right? Like, you know, h… what do you know? Even though age is, like, such an experience, like you t… learn so much experience because of age, right? And how, what's, what's ahead for you? Like, are you looking, you want to make one more film, direct one more film, or are you pretty much, "That's it, you know, I'm done"?

38:10Tim JohnsonYou know, I think the, I think my ambition now is very, it's, it's sort of a looser ambition than I want to direct one more film. I think what I crave is to be a significant part of a team to tell a great story.

38:32Tim JohnsonAnd so that, in today's world, that might be an executive producer, or it might be a director. ... But I do see,.. I am so grateful for the mentorship I got from the folks that helped me learn how to direct, and counseled, and guided, and forgave, and were patient. And I do feel like I would love to have, my last professional steps be in helping young filmmakers through the same growth curve that people helped me through. So if I can mentor, new artists and be a part of a team that tells another great story, that would be phenomenal.

39:22Jawad MirThat's beautiful. Pay b… pay, payback, right?

39:26Tim JohnsonAbsolutely. I mean, I can't believe the patience and mentorship I got from Sandy Rabins, Penny Finkelman Cox, from Bonnie Radford, from especially Jeffrey Katzenberg, from the writers I worked with. Everybody, wanted everybody else to be successful, and the lack of a strange, you know, lack of competitiveness and sense of we, the rising tide floats all our boats, that was such a profound tone, at DreamWorks, that, it really would be lovely to offer that tone in a, in a Hollywood that is, I think, deeply scarred right now. I do fear that the streaming business unsettled a very predictable world, and it did so in bad ways and maybe in good ways. COVID unsettled a business model of theatrical distribution that was already under pressure from streaming.

40:28Tim JohnsonLarge mergers and acquisitions of studios have made the increase in a stock's price seemingly more important than the release of a movie.

40:39Jawad MirYeah.

40:39Tim JohnsonAnd, you know, when we see something like Coyote vs. Acme yanked from the ability to be seen by people, I mean, that's a finished movie, and it will never be seen. I feel like that and the coming storm of AI has put incredible pressures on our business. The foreign tax credits offered as close by as Vancouver and as far away as the Philippines to encourage production to leave the United States and come there, another pressure. So I'm out there pitching and working on, story ideas, but I see our industry has sort of left the familiar shores, and we've lost sight of that coast. We've, we're too far out to sea, but we haven't yet glimpsed the next continent. I know we're going to get there, but we're at a very unsettled time where nobody quite knows where this boat is going and what the business model is. That being said, animation is still the most amazing way to tell a story.

41:42Tim JohnsonIt is still the place where all ages, all people can sit together, laugh and cry, and talk about something on the way home. It's still the greatest medium for, encouraging, young filmmakers. And so I have nothing but confidence that we're gonna be continuing to see great animated films, and maybe AI will democratize it and put tools in the hands of lesser budgets and younger filmmakers. Maybe streaming will continue to offer, more animation production at smaller budgets, and more films will get made than the huge studio system was doing. So I'm trying to be optimistic, but I am fearful that right now it's just a little bit of a scary time to try to get an animated original story off the ground.

42:33Jawad MirYeah, and I, and I think it's also true for live action because... And it's not just in Hollywood. Like, if you look at the world around us, everything is a business, right? Education, pharmaceutical, film.

42:48Tim JohnsonYeah.

42:48Jawad MirEvery… everything has become about dollars. And in doing so, the focus on those sectors that I mentioned has kind of been lost because money comes... Even journalism, right? The, because money comes first. That being said, the hope that I have, and I think AI, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's at uncertain times right now where a lot of people are getting affected by it.

43:14Tim JohnsonYeah.

43:14Jawad MirBut I do think one hope that I have, I don't know if you've watched films by A24, like Whale or Civil War.

43:23Tim JohnsonYeah.

43:23Jawad MirAnd they have this upco… upcoming film called Tuesday with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. She plays a mother of a dying daughter. It looks powerful.

43:30Tim JohnsonI've seen the trailer. It looks…

43:32Jawad MirYeah

43:32Tim Johnson... Oh, well. Yeah.

43:33Jawad MirYeah. And I just hope, my hope is what in early '90s, mid…'90s Miramax and DreamWorks did for independent cinema before all the studios started acquiring, like, you know, New Line Cinema was acquired by Warner Media and Miramax was acquired by Disney. I th… I hope that there's another studio out there or company that starts making similar stuff like A24 and then the trend sets. And because I do feel those are the stories, not taking away with any other kind of cinema, not animation, not superhero, but at the deep core, people want something, films like that. I do. I don't know about... I certainly do. And I hope that starts a trend because that's, I think that's the main ingredient missing from the soup.

44:21Tim JohnsonYeah, Jawad, I hope from your, from your mouth to the, to the, you know, creative, world's ears. I think there's, there is reason to be optimistic that the capability on a relatively low budget to create a great production value is increasing every year.

44:42Jawad MirYep.

44:42Tim JohnsonAnd if AI becomes a tool that allows filmmakers like yourself to tell a story that previously might have cost 50 million but now is gonna cost 5 million, that would be an amazing future for filmmaking. Because I do agree, we use stories as tools for living, not just as a distraction. And…

45:04Jawad MirYeah

45:04Tim Johnson... And the power of those tools, are life-changing. Movies change lives.

45:11Jawad MirAnd they do.

45:12Tim JohnsonAnd they do so when they're original, and they take chances, and they're honest in their emotional journeys. And so let's both cross our fingers that whatever confusion Hollywood is having right now, it won't diminish the powerful need, hunger, and filmmaking drive to tell great stories. And hopefully, the tool set and the business models will accommodate more fresher voices with powerful stories at reasonable budgets.

45:41Jawad MirI hope so, too. Thank you so much, Tim, again for a wonderful conversation. I wish I could chat you for, with you for hours. Obviously, we don't have time for that. But I would love to continue chatting. Obviously, there's Home and maybe some other projects we can chat. And I should be in LA sometime this summer if you're around. Would love to grab lunch or dinner with you.

46:02Tim JohnsonLet's make that happen. That would be great.

46:05Jawad MirPerfect. Thank you again, Tim, for your time.

46:06Tim JohnsonThanks, Jawad. We'll talk again real soon.