'The Nightmare Before Christmas', Animator, Anthony Scott

0:00Jawad MirWhat was it about that kind of motivated you, motivated you to ask Henry, like, "Can I do this?" Was there some sort of a connection and resonance that you felt with that line and that scene?

0:09Anthony ScottI was involved with a church, and I was going through this,.. I went through a program trying to change my sexuality, trying to be straight and go from gay to straight. That was back in 1990. So I was trying to do a similar thing. I was trying to be something I wasn't. But I really wanted to. I really put everything into it. But after that program, I realized, "Nah, I'm just gonna, I'm, I'm going to embrace who I am." But I had to go through that whole thing. Just like Jack, I had to go through this whole thing to make sure that, just to, just to prove to myself that, basically it was okay. It was okay to be gay. It was okay to embrace it and to move on from there. That's why when I read that, I just thought, "This is where I'm at in my life," or was in my life. Yeah, I definitely connected with Jack on that level.

1:08Jawad MirWelcome back, everyone, to another episode of Kingdom of Dreams podcast, The Making of Stories. I'm your host, Jawad Mir. Today my guest is stop-motion animator Anthony Scott, who worked on the 1993 hit film, no, not Jurassic Park, The Nightmare Before Christmas, widely known as Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, but it's actually directed by Henry Selick, who is responsible for James and the Giant Peach and Caroline. Anthony and I had a great conversation about the technicalities of the film, about the scene that he worked on, about working with Henry, as well as, his personal journey and some of the past, stories that he shared about his life and how it was connected to Nightmare Before Christmas. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. And also, this is the last episode of 2025. I wish everyone happy holidays, a great new year, and thank you for supporting, and I hope you guys continue to support Kingdom of Dreams podcast. Thank you. Lovely to see you again. I know we met last month, or was it the month before that? I can't remember.

2:07Anthony ScottIt was in October in Pasadena.

2:10Jawad MirRight, yes. And great to see you again.

2:12Anthony ScottAt Lightbox.

2:13Jawad MirYeah.

2:13Anthony ScottMe too.

2:13Jawad MirAnd you were obviously at the panel with Carlos, and for The Corpse Bride, so that was really cool to witness. It was very fun to watch that.

2:24Anthony ScottYeah. Yeah, that was a blast to see, Carlos and Ian again. It's been a long time. So, and to see the, puppet they brought. Ian brought the actual puppet with him. I hadn't seen one of those in a long time.

2:39Jawad MirThat's awesome. Listen, I remember watching Nightmare Before Christmas when it first came out, and I can't believe it's been 33 years almost. No. 20... It's 29 years.

2:52Anthony Scott30…

2:53Jawad MirIs that…

2:53Anthony ScottI think you're right. 32.

2:54Jawad Mir33. 33.

2:56Anthony ScottYeah, 33.

2:56Jawad Mir'93. And, I…

2:58Anthony ScottIt came out in '93, yeah.

3:00Jawad MirSo it came just before, I think a year before Lion King and Toy Story, maybe two years before. Around that time. Beauty and the Beast and, you know, all that…

3:10Anthony ScottYeah

3:10Jawad Mir... Fun stuff, when the animation world was sort of taking a shift completely. And I enjoyed it then, and I very much enjoy, enjoyed it this morning when I watched it after a long time.

3:22Anthony ScottNice.

3:22Jawad MirWhat a, what a great piece of cinema and, you know, way ahead of its time, even today, I think, in some degree. Tim Burton producing it and you guys working on it. So just wanted to extend that, first of all, to begin the conversation with.

3:37Anthony ScottYeah. Thanks. Yeah.

3:39Jawad MirTell me about your involvement in the film. What was your role working on The Nightmare Before Christmas?

3:46Anthony ScottSo I was one of, you know, several animators. There were about, I don't know the exact number, 12 or 15 to start with. And I worked on the film for almost two years, and I knew Henry Selick, the director.

4:05Anthony ScottI had worked with him previously on some commercials for MTV and also Pillsbury Doughboy commercials. But Nightmare Before Christmas was my first feature film. So it was the first feature film for a lot of us. A lot of us came up from, the Gumby TV series in 1987, '88. Art Clokey hired a lot of us, and that was our first job. So a lot of the animators from that show, you know, started working with Henry on his smaller projects and then were brought in for Nightmare Before Christmas, and I was one of them.

4:43Jawad MirRight. I mean, Henry, as we know, has directed James and the Giant Peach, Caroline. And, you know, I always remember when I, first five, seven years after Nightmare Before Christmas, I always thought Tim Burton directed it, because they…

4:57Anthony ScottYeah

4:57Jawad Mir... Marketed as Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas. And, you know, this was, like, I think right after Batman Returns, he produced a project, if my memory serves me right. And before that, it was Batman, and before that it was Beetlejuice. And there was a lot of similarities I found. Now, I noticed it now in terms of certain characters and certain style that reminded me of Beetlejuice quite a bit. Obviously, it's a similar, you know, the whole concept of dark and death and Christmas and scary and all that stuff. I really, yeah, I really resonated with it in many levels. And, you know, "I am the Pumpkin King." What a great line.

5:35Anthony ScottAnd I got to animate that line, actually.

5:37Jawad MirDid you?

5:38Anthony ScottYeah. Yeah, at the e… near the end of the film where he crashes into the cemetery, and he's unconscious in the arms of this angel, and his dog, Zero, comes in and wakes him up.

5:51Jawad MirYeah.

5:52Anthony ScottBrings his jaw and puts him back together. He wakes up. He starts singing. Yeah, I read that in the script initially, and, It was my favorite part in the film, and I asked Henry if I could animate it. So, yeah. He gave me the,... I spent six months animating the entire sequence. And, you know, then he jumps off the angel, starts running around the, cemetery, rips off the clothes and says, "I am the Pumpkin King." So I got to animate that line.

6:26Jawad MirThat is so cool. It is, obviously it became very popular after the film beca… you know, came out. It became one of those lines… ... That, "May the force be with you," or, "Welcome to Jurassic Park." But when you're reading the script and you hadn't obviously seen anything, you've envisioned it, do you remember, and I know it's been a long time, what was it about that kind of motivated you, motivated you to ask Henry, like, "Can I do this?" Was there some sort of a connection and resonance that you felt with that line and that scene, it personally?

6:58Anthony ScottYeah, I mean, I,... You know, Henry came to me, like probably eight months before I got the script and brought a maquette of Jack. And Eric Leighton was with him, the animation supervisor.

7:13Jawad MirOh.

7:13Anthony ScottAnd they, asked me to work on the film, and I said, "Is there a script?" And he said, "Oh, no, there's not a script yet." There were songs. They were writing the songs, and that's basically what they had. They had a treatment, maybe like a page and a half outline or a…

7:29Anthony Scott... Short version. It didn't have any of the main characters in it, such as Sally. It had Jack stealing Christmas. That was the general idea. And then, yeah, so I read that, but I really wanted to read the script. So when they finally got me the script eight months later, I was able to, you know, really soak it in, and I was r… I really gravitated towards the scene where, you know, I was talking about, the poor Jack sequence. And, you know, this is where Jack turns around and he reali… he kind of wakes up. He realizes, "Wait, I'm not, I'm not Santa Claus. I don't need to do this. I'm... " And then he realizes who he really is, the Pumpkin King. So yeah, that resonated with me personally. I was going through a lot of personal things around that time anyway. I mean, I don't know how detailed you wanna get on this podcast, but...

8:25Jawad MirYou, hey, if you wanna get detailed…... You're more than welcome to. I don't wanna push anything that's personal. But if you want to, go for it.

8:33Anthony ScottI mean, I was going through, a, I was involved with a church, and I was going through this, you know, they were trying... I went through a program trying to change my sexuality, trying to be straight and go from gay to straight, and that was back in 1990. So I was trying to do a similar thing. I was trying to be something I wasn't, but I really wanted to. I really put everything into it. But after that program, I realized, "Nah, I'm just gonna, I'm, I'm going to embrace who I am," and, but I had to go through that whole thing. Just like Jack, I had to go through this whole thing to make sure that, just to, just to prove to myself that, basically it was okay. It was okay to be gay. It was okay to embrace it and to move on from there. And so that's why when I read that, I just thought, "This is where I'm at in my life," or I was in my life, or it was, it was a process.

9:34Anthony ScottIt was around that same time, though. It was like a, just a year or two before that. So, yeah, I definitely connected with Jack on that level.

9:44Jawad MirSo when you... So thank you so much for sharing that, first of all. I know personally…... It's very difficult to share, especially for the world to hear and see. But when you, approached Henry to do that scene, did you tell him the reason at the time? Or it may have been a little bit difficult at the time.

9:59Anthony ScottI didn't tell... No. I didn't tell anybody. It…

10:03Jawad MirRight.

10:03Anthony ScottYeah. Maybe a couple of friends, but, no, it was pretty personal and I didn't really talk about it for a few years after that. But, yeah, no. Nobody knew at the time.

10:16Jawad MirRight. Gotcha. No, thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it.

10:19Anthony ScottSure.

10:20Jawad MirI, you know, I can, I'm, my conversations are sort of all over the place because I'm excited about films, and so please just kind of go along with that. I just wanna make sure…

10:30Anthony ScottOkay

10:30Jawad Mir... That I covered all the points.

10:32Anthony ScottSure.

10:32Jawad MirYou know, for me, stop motion came, I began understanding stop motion I think when Chicken Run came out. Which was, the year 2000 by DreamWorks. And I did not know what stop motion was until after, but until before, until after that. But I didn't know P… Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach were stop motion.

10:53Jawad MirI had no idea. So after that, when I realized, what stop motion is and the amount of time and effort that goes into it, you know, you change the appreciation of that completely to another level. You take it to the next level. What was it for you in life that attracted you to stop motion versus at the time 2D or, you know, the beginning of 3D animation?

11:18Anthony ScottYeah. I, you know, I started animating when I was a kid. I was 11 years old. I grew up in Michigan, Flint, Michigan, and, I was drawn to the arts. I was drawn to, cartoons, you know, like a lot of kids are, and I created my own, little cast of characters, and I would write stories. I would make comic books. And the next step was like, how do I bring these characters to life? So I actually found a book in the library. So this is back in the '70s. There's no internet. There's no... There are hardly any books. But I found two books. One was a book about Ray Harryhausen and, All his amazing creatures. And there wasn't a lot of like how-to information, but it was enough to inspire me. But I did find another book, and it was about kids making their own movies, so using clay or cutout animation, making their own puppets.

12:24Anthony ScottVery simple, but stuff that I knew I could do. So I knew I needed a camera, I knew I needed a tripod, I needed to, get some lights, but it was really basic. I was able to get a Super 8 movie camera. My parents got me one when I was 11 for Christmas.

12:41Jawad MirRight.

12:41Anthony ScottAnd then I just took o… I just took off. And so, I started experimenting. I started, experimenting with toys and clay and cutout animation. I thought maybe I sh… I could draw everything, you know, like 2D animation on cel animation, it's called, on acetate. I experimented with that, but it's a lot of drawing. So I kept going, coming back to stop-motion. And, the older I got and I saw more, films, King Kong was a big influence as well, the 1933 version of King Kong, 'cause it's stop-motion and live action. And all the tricks they used in that as well, you know, with the rear projection, the front projection…

13:26Jawad MirRight

13:26Anthony Scott... The multiple exposures, you know, to comp the humans in with the puppets and the miniature sets. And we did so much of that same kind of thing in Nightmare Before Christmas actually, which made Nightmare kinda stand,.. I… it kind of stands alone. All the stuff we do today, there's a lot of digital, there's a lot of blue screen, there's a lot of, rig removal and CG stuff added, but Nightmare is kind of pure in that way. It's got,.. It us… utilizes all those old tricks. So I was really glad I was able to work on that film to have the chance to try front projection or these beam splitters. Do you know what that is? Where you actually have a, like a half silvered mirror in front of the lens, and so off to the side you can have like a ghost flying around.

14:17Jawad MirOh, I see. Okay.

14:18Anthony ScottAnd it just... Yeah, so that's, that's one of the tricks we used to have, make, to make it look like Zero was in the frame with Jack, but also transparent. We would do things like that, or we would,.. Let's see. What else did we do? There's just like all these old tricks. And, so, I was really, gra… I gravitated towards that too as well, like working on a, in a miniature world on a stage, with a crew. Yeah. So I think that's why I chose stop-motion over everything else. And even today, or even, I did try s… working in, on the computer for a while. I went to Pixar for two and a half years. I worked at Tippett Studio as well on the computer, and I thought I'd give it a try. And, you know, I learned it, I learned how to do it, but it didn't have the same, pull that, stop-motion has for me. I got pulled back into it. I just missed it. And, yeah, I'm still, I'm still working in stop-motion today.

15:22Jawad MirYou know, stop-motion, I'm, I'm a huge animation fan. I always have been. Growing up in the '80s with Heckle and Jeckle. I don't know if you remember Heckle and Jeckle.

15:32Anthony ScottOh, yeah.

15:33Jawad MirYeah. And, you know, Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny…

15:36Anthony ScottYeah

15:36Jawad Mir... Mickey Mouse, and all that, all that stuff. And I remember watching Watership Down at the age of 12, which was a pretty violent f…

15:45Anthony ScottYes

15:45Jawad Mir... Pretty violent film, but it's, it's a great piece of cinema. But there's something about stop-motion that I really enjoy watching because, you know, in the back of my mind as an audience, I know the amount of effort that goes into, yes, but at the same time, there's that texture that you feel on the celluloid that you can experience the connection with the characters. You don't necessarily get that all the time in 2D and 3D films. You do get them sometime, but not all the time. But with stop-motion you, at least for me, I've gotten it all the time. You know, whether it's Chicken Run, James and the Giant Peach, Corpse Bride, Nightmare Before Christmas. I mean, there's so many films. And it's just, there's some… and it's, it's kind of sad that stop-motion is not as popular. I mean, it is, but studios…

16:31Anthony ScottRight

16:31Jawad Mir... Don't really wanna back that up as much, right? Because of financial reasons. I hope it revives because it's, it's one of the most beautiful mediums that, we can experience as an audience member.

16:43Anthony ScottYeah. They don't tend to do huge box office, so…

16:46Jawad MirYeah

16:46Anthony Scott... I think studios, that's the main reason they s… they shy away from it.

16:50Jawad MirOf course. It's all about the business, right, too.

16:51Anthony ScottYeah. But thankfully, you know, some directors insist on it. You know, Guillermo del Toro with

16:58Jawad MirYeah

16:58Anthony Scott... Pinocchio, and, Wes Anderson, Tim Burton, you know, Henry Selick. They're, they stick with it and they push it. They've really helped to push it further. So I'm really grateful. Definitely grateful for Tim coming along and wanting to do s… Nightmare in, s… stop-motion. And, he was, you know, he was definitely involved on the film, but he wasn't really at the studio very much. He, would pop in once in a while. I only, I think I only saw him once myself 'cause I was, you know, animating. But, he was working on, Edward and Batman Returns during the entire time we were working on Nightmare.

17:40Jawad MirYeah, I think Edward is one of my favorite film of his just because of the story.

17:43Anthony ScottYeah, me too.

17:44Jawad MirIt's, I love the fact that how the world's worst filmmaker, you know? It's, it's got such confidence to be the most amazing one. But I'm glad you brought Tim Burton up. So, you know, he, as a producer from a marketing standpoint, his name is attached to the film, but there is just something about, and nothing to take away from Henry, right? Henry has his own vision in the film for sure. But that darkness and that… Feeling of death and sadness and dark humor and dark tones certainly is, in my view, the domain of Tim Burton for the longest time. That's pretty much what he has done throughout the years. Well, how was that sort of translated to, you know, Henry's vision, or was Henry sort of, kind of taking it into his own direction? I'm just trying to… I would love to know if there's something that you know about that, in how that was tackled.

18:40Anthony ScottYeah, that's hard to answer for Henry. I mean, he, you know, Henry definitely credits, you know, Tim with the idea and the design and the story. But Henry was there every day making the decisions on, you know, how we were gonna tell the story and, you know, the storyboards, everything. So, you know, he was there day-to-day. So I don't know. I don't, I don't really know how to answer that exactly.

19:07Jawad MirMaybe I didn't ask the question right. May… my… I think what I'm trying to sort of understand is that was... And I, and I think it's evident, it's definitely evident, but a lot of people, including myself, always, I've always had this misconception that it's Tim Burton's film, just because, again, that's the way it was marketed, right?

19:26Anthony ScottRight.

19:26Jawad MirAnd for Henry to be able to have his own… When you were working with him in, on the film, let's, let's let me rephrase that. Like, in his vision of how he wanted to tackle it, if you can share maybe a story or two, from maybe working on a scene or just a general meeting that you guys may have had. What was that like working with Henry in translating his vision that he had for Nightmare Before Christmas?

19:54Anthony ScottI mean, we worked… Animators would work with Henry directly, like in editorial. We would go in there. We would shoot a test on the s… on the stage, you know, basically block the shot out, bring it back to Henry, and he'd go through everything. We'd, we'd take notes. I mean, he definitely had his ideas about how the scene was gonna play out and the shot, each shot. So, you know, just for example, the Poor Jack sequence. I, took a, back then, a VHS video camera…

20:26Anthony Scott... And acted the shot out, the entire sequence out, and we went through the whole thing, picking out different poses, you know, that he liked, that he thought would work, you know, in the sequence. And he also decided to th… the camera goes around the angel, so it's a circular path, slow. Because otherwise, it's just kind of a very, there's not much going on. It's just Jack singing, so they wanted to make it more dynamic by having this slow camera move. So those are the kinds of decisions I think that Henry would make, along with, Pete Kozachik, who was the DP, to try to make the film more dynamic. There's a lot of, you know, motion control, a lot of camera movement in this film. So I think it's just those kind of decisions. You know, H… Henry knows stop motion so well, and that's why he was chosen to be the director. So all those little details, yeah. I hope that answered your question.

21:24Jawad MirNo, it does. It does.

21:26Anthony ScottOkay.

21:26Jawad MirAnd my apologies. I wasn't trying to ask, you know, what Henry felt of Tim Burton. I just probably pa… paraphrased that question wrong. But moving on to the next part. You know, there's always… It's a long and tedious process. It's like couple of years, you know, stop motion…

21:43Anthony ScottYeah

21:44Jawad Mir... Essentially, plus the planning. So if there was a particular scene that you worked on that you had the most challenge on, working from a technical standpoint or story, if you can remember, if you remember about how you went about dealing with it or you and your team and maybe Henry collaborating with each other.

22:05Anthony ScottI think, the ch… the most challenging shots were the beginning because I was trying to figure out who the characters were, and they gave me a few shots with Jack in the beginning, and I didn't know the character. I didn't know how to move him. I didn't know. I wasn't experienced animating him. And, you know, over time, you get to learn. You learn, like, what poses look best, like, and that's the main thing. Like, you find the character, and it takes a bit of time to find the character. When I started the film, they gave me a shot with Jack looking through the window. The song What's This?, he's peeking in through the window looking at the elves and everyone celebrating Christmas. And they gave me this shot, and I didn't have any time to test it or anything. They just said, "Just shoot it. It's real simple." So I shot it a couple of times, and, they picked one to put in the movie. And then they gave me these other shots with Jack, like walking down the hill and pretty challenging.

23:07Anthony ScottYou know…

23:07Jawad MirYeah

23:07Anthony Scott... This puppet is seven… seventeen inches tall. I never walked him before. There was no time to test ahead of time, like a full walk test. So I was kinda learning as I was going. So I think in the beginning on any film, the most challenging shots can be the very beginning because, the first shots because you don't have that confidence built in yet, the experience with the character. You know, on projects after that, like on Coraline and Corpse Bride, I was the animation supervisor on those, and we built in time for the animators to actually have a couple of weeks before they even had to shoot any real shots, just to test the puppets. To s… And so I could tell, and the director could tell, like, which, characters they might, excel in, just so they have some kind of experience with it before they actually shoot some real shots. But as far as challenging shots themselves, probably, in Poor Jack's, costume is all torn, and there's all these pieces hanging, and all those little pieces had to be animated by hand.

24:15Anthony ScottSo I was moving Jack, and then I would have these... Pieces of fabric reacting to his movement. So if an arm suddenly moves out, then those pieces have to react to that. If he jumps off, they have to react. So it was a lot of overlapping animation. So, you know, I got into a groove with that. But at first it was like, "Okay, where, how do, how do I do this?" it's a lot to animate. He had, like, 20 pieces hanging off of him. So I think probably the first couple shots in that was a, was a challenge. But, yeah. Yeah.

24:52Jawad MirYeah.

24:52Anthony ScottSome shots can be super complex. You can have like 25 characters in a shot, and that's, that's its own level of complexity, too.

25:00Jawad MirYeah. No, it's, it takes... I mean, I, even Jack, like, the way his design is, he's so skinny, right? And I'm sure you guys had multiple versions of him because things probably went wrong many times, especially in the beginning, and depending on the scene of the film.

25:20Anthony ScottYeah, we had different scales as well. We had, he was 17 inches tall. There was a half scale version of him for some of the wider shots, like when he's, on the s… in his sleigh with the reindeer. There was a half scale…

25:32Jawad MirYeah

25:33Anthony Scott... Puppet built for that. He had multiple heads that would just pop off. The entire head would come off, and a different expression, you could put a new one on, different eye expression, different mouth expression. We had different kits for that, and they would just kinda lock in with a magnet. So, but yeah, he was very spindly. Like his, he had, he had an amazing armature. Tiny ankle joints held the entire thing together. Yeah. He, yeah, he was, definitely at that point, that was the tallest puppet I'd ever animated.

26:09Jawad MirYou know, I, when I was watching it this morning again, the scene came and I remember it from the trailer, and it's such a, it's such a, if you want, if I wanna use the word historical scene. You know, where…

26:21Jawad Mir... The parent, when, the first time he goes d… down the chimney and he gives the gi… the Christmas gift to this boy.

26:28Anthony ScottYeah.

26:28Jawad MirAnd then the parents ask, "What did you get, what did he get you?" And he just, you know, takes it. And the look on his face…... And the camera angle. I mean, it just gets you all the time. And then anytime you... And that, the whole montage of the kids getting the presents. It's kind of, you know, mean thing to say, but you actually enjoy them getting all these terrible presents.

26:49Anthony ScottYeah.

26:49Jawad MirBecause you're having a good time and you're laughing. I th… I thought that was, it's such a weird thing that how that scene plays. And you know, you don't, obviously music has to do with it. There's the way they scream, the execution. It's just a funny scene.

27:03Anthony ScottYeah. It's kinda, the whole movie's kinda building to that moment, too, 'cause they're preparing for Christmas and they're making all the toys, and now here comes the delivery to the real world, and that's the reaction that they're not happy with the, their presents and they shoot him out of the sky.

27:22Jawad MirYeah. Do you remember when the film was done and whether it was an earlier screening, a premiere, a test screening, or just watching it with your friends or family in a public viewing? The reaction that people had and how that sort of…

27:40Jawad Mir... Had an impact on you as a human being, as an animator. Plus kinda connecting the story that you told earlier about the church and all that.

27:52Anthony ScottSo you know, we had the crew screening, the wrap party in San Francisco. That was amazing. And I think the film opened in New York and LA first. I think the f… like a week ahead of, you know, its national release.

28:11Anthony ScottSo I went down to LA. I went to the El Capitan to see it.

28:14Jawad MirNice.

28:15Anthony ScottAnd it, I went, my sister was with me and my brother, so we all, the three of us went to see it. We sat, I think we were in the back row. The whole thing, the whole place was packed. And that was, that was an exciting moment for me, being able to watch the film with my siblings, my first film I'd ever worked on. And my brother and my sister, who I had put in my films 'cause I'd experimented with live action when I was a kid, too. So it was kinda fun to go to the movie with them. So that was a pretty special moment. And then just like two weeks ago, we had a screening here in Portland at the, at the, Hollywood Theater, and it was a sold out show. So people still love this movie. And I did a Q&A afterwards. But it's amazing to me that this film has endured and it just keeps, it keeps enduring. It's just, it's a classic. Every Christmas it comes up again.

29:15Anthony ScottThere's Nightmare Before Christmas, events and screenings and, you know, Disneyland with the Haunted Mansion Holiday…

29:25Jawad MirYeah

29:25Anthony Scott... That they do. And merchandising everywhere. Didn't expect any of this. So it's a, it's a constant reminder of, how popular the film is and how it has touched people over the years. So it's, it feels good to be part of something like that.

29:40Jawad MirWhich surprises me, and not that I want to see it, but considering how Hollywood works and Disney works, there's always a sequel.

29:47Anthony ScottRight.

29:47Jawad MirRight?

29:47Anthony ScottYeah, right.

29:48Jawad MirAnd they never made one. Was there ever a chat ever that you heard, like even down the road way after the film was released?

29:57Anthony ScottI don't know of anything legitimate, but I've heard... Yeah, over the years I've heard, you know, people talk about having a sequel or, but then what would that sequel be?

30:07Jawad MirExactly.

30:08Anthony ScottSo.

30:08Jawad MirBut yeah. Yeah.

30:10Anthony ScottI know there's been…

30:10Jawad MirWhich is why I said

30:12Anthony ScottThere's like books that have been written. I've never writ… read any of these books, but I've, I've read about the, there was something about Sally. You know, they, the fans, you know, they wanna know what happens with the characters. But as far as a feature film

30:29Jawad MirYeah, no, I wouldn't wanna see it. I honestly would not wanna see it. And similarly, ET, like, you know, there was a book written, ET and the Green Planet or something along those lines, and, he, Spielberg never wants to make a sequel. Because I think this whole thing about it, you said is people wanna know what happened to Sally. I mean, I feel as much as I would love to know…

30:50Jawad Mir... The better part of me would want not to know what happened, use my imagination, and that's it. Leave it at that.

30:56Anthony ScottYeah. There's something nice about that, isn't there? Just to kind of leave it alone. Just…

30:59Jawad MirYeah

31:00Anthony Scott... It is.

31:00Jawad MirYeah.

31:01Anthony ScottThis is it. This is all you're gonna get.

31:04Jawad Mir100%. I didn't realize you were in Portland. It's one of my favorite cities, man. I love Portland.

31:08Anthony ScottOh, nice.

31:08Jawad MirI've been there a couple of times and absolutely love it. Goonies was shot there in Astoria, of course, and that's another reason.

31:15Anthony ScottYeah.

31:16Jawad MirBut a beautiful place. Just wanted to point that out.

31:20Anthony ScottYeah. Yeah. I, it's, it's now my home. I, you know, I was living in California for 20 years or so.

31:27Jawad MirYeah.

31:28Anthony ScottThat's where we did Nightmare, and James, and Monkeybone, and Pixar's down there. But when Coraline, Henry got Coraline with Laika up here.

31:36Jawad MirYeah.

31:36Anthony ScottI moved up here. I worked on ParaNorman after that, and, I left for a while. I went to Montreal to work on The Little Prince with Mark Osborne, and after that, Wendell & Wild brought me back up here to Portland. So I worked on that for a few years and then Pinocchio, and I'm here, so.

32:01Jawad MirWell, you didn't go much far from where I am. I'm in Toronto, so seven-hour drive, but just to let you know…

32:06Anthony ScottNice

32:06Jawad Mir... One of my earlier guests were the two directors of Kung Fu Panda, one of them being Mark Osborne.

32:14Anthony ScottMark.

32:14Jawad MirYeah.

32:14Anthony ScottNice.

32:15Jawad MirYeah.

32:15Anthony ScottGreat. Yeah, he's a great guy.

32:16Jawad MirYeah, he's…

32:16Anthony ScottReally enjoyed working with him.

32:18Jawad MirYeah. He's a fun guy to talk to. What's cooking for you now, if there's a project or y… that you are able to talk about that I would, you know, you wanted to share with the audience?

32:31Anthony ScottYeah. It's been pretty quiet the last couple of years, so just a few small projects. And last year I worked on a short film called The Littles, with, director writer Andrew Duplessi, and he just contacted me. I di… didn't know him, and he contacted me online, and we started talking about creating a short film. It was live action, and he needed a few shots, some animated shots in stop motion. So, I spent about three months between, getting the puppets ready, shooting some tests, and then shooting a few animated shots. So that film is wrapped back in January this year, and it is currently, in making its rounds in the festival circuit. But it also recently was announced that it was picked up for development by Paramount, so for a feature.

33:31Anthony ScottSo there's a… ... Chance that I'll be working on that if the stars align and, you know, I'm not a fa… I'm not working on something else at the time. I'd really like to work on this, project, and I do love the idea of working on another project in, where there's live action integrated with, stop motion integrated with live action. I've always liked the idea of it. Probably goes back to King Kong and, Ray Harryhausen's films.

33:58Jawad MirYeah.

33:59Anthony ScottSo that's…

33:59Jawad MirThat would be really cool to see.

34:02Anthony ScottYeah. So that's, that's out there. But, other than that, I don't, I don't have anything lined up currently.

34:10Jawad MirYeah. It's a, it's a very weird time in the industry, right? I mean… ... There's been the strikes after strikes, COVID, AI, if you wanna include that in the whole list and stuff, and

34:23Anthony ScottYeah

34:23Jawad Mir... Expensive production costs in California. So it's, it's a very bizarre time. I wonder, it, I would love to know, you know, you being an animator and you see all this AI stuff popping out everywhere.

34:36Jawad MirNot that, I mean, even in live action, I'm in live action world, so even in that, but your take. I probably have shifted my view in the last four or five months about AI. But I would love to know what you think if it's something that is going to have a massive implications on VFX or animation for that matter.

34:58Anthony ScottGosh, it's really hard to know really because it is just sort of crept up so quickly and gotten so good so fast. So it's definitely gonna impact everybody in one way or another, not just in the film business, just…

35:15Jawad MirEverywhere, yeah

35:15Anthony Scott... All the jobs out there. And, you know, there's probably some, you know, a mixture of good and bad. But I also think as far as filmmaking, you know, I think the audience, they don't like to keep looking at the same kinds of things. So that's why I think stop motion kinda stands out. Although they can try to replicate it in AI as well if they... I've seen…

35:41Jawad MirYeah

35:41Anthony Scott... I've seen some things out there, but I don't think directors really wanna work with that. I think they wanna work with real, you know... We're all actors. The animators are actors, and it's a performance, and it's collaborating with people on a set. I think the experience of making a film, that's why I do it. I don't really do it to sit there and watch the films I work on. I enjoy making them.

36:03Jawad MirOf course.

36:03Anthony ScottI have lot, lots of friends like that. They all wanna make these cool projects, and I tend to work with a lot of the same people over the years, you know. I may not see somebody for five years, and then they pop up on the movie I'm working on. So it's a very small tight-knit group when you think about it, especially stop motion.

36:22Jawad MirYeah. I think, you know, it's, it's funny because I've had a little bit of shift in my view on AI. I still feel it's gonna Change a lot of things, it already has. You know…

36:32Anthony ScottYeah

36:33Jawad Mir... Just to kind… I remember the very first year when ChatGPT came out, transcribing business went out the window. Like, you know, people who did closed captioning and stuff…

36:41Anthony ScottYeah

36:41Jawad Mir... Now you can just do a click of a button in a software and boom, you got your entire…

36:45Anthony ScottYeah

36:45Jawad Mir... Thing closed captioned. But I also feel that there, I think Ben Affleck is something that I agree with. He said that we're gonna be living in a place where people would be able to license, let's say, Ben Affleck avatar and Matt Damon avatar, and make their own film, and then the actors get, you know, royalties from that. But that's just gonna be a small fraction of work that is going to cert… serve a certain demographic, you know? Like…

37:16Anthony ScottYeah. Yeah

37:16Jawad Mir... You can call it social media or whatnot. And then the…

37:19Anthony ScottYeah

37:19Jawad Mir... Films will continue to make. I think that AI will certainly be used as tools in films, 100%. I use it. But to completely…

37:27Anthony ScottSure

37:28Jawad Mir... Replace, I used to think that maybe six months ago. I don't see that now, because like you said, it's just not the same. I don't think that story factor will ever get replaced. That's just my way of thinking based on what I've seen.

37:44Anthony ScottYeah. It's, it's a very interesting time, and it really, it is changing things, and, it could be a helpful tool for sure. I mean…

37:52Jawad MirOh, sure, 100%.

37:54Anthony ScottYeah, like rig removal, all the tedious stuff that nobody really wants to do, just, you know, feed it in there and it'll clean everything up. That's fine. That's, I'm fine with that kind of thing.

38:06Jawad MirYeah. I agree. I remember my first doc that I directed, I had, hired somebody to transcribe all the interviews. It was this thick of a folder. It took five months, and…

38:18Anthony ScottWow

38:19Jawad Mir... Probably paid couple of grand. This was, like, 10 years ago. And to do that right now is, like, you don't even need to, and it doesn't even take that long. So it's just times have changed so much, right? So...

38:32Anthony ScottCan you imagine actually doing it? Like, I tried to sit down and do it once, and it was, I could, it was so tedious.

38:39Jawad MirToo much. It is so tedious. It is. It is. But kudos to those who used to do it, but now it's actually…

38:46Anthony ScottYeah, for sure

38:46Jawad Mir... They're, they're not doing it, and the AI is doing it.

38:50Anthony ScottYeah.

38:51Jawad MirAwesome. Well, thank you so much, Anthony. I really appreciate your time, man. I know we kind of went segues through something else, but before I just wrap up one little time, I just wanna go back to Nightmare Before Christmas.

39:05Jawad Mir... You know, what aside, you talked about your personal experience, and it's your connection with… If there was one thing that you could take away from Nightmare Before Christmas, whether it's professional or personal, what would that be that you learned something from that film, both at a personal and professional level?

39:28Anthony Scott.. This is tough. You're gonna have to cut this part out 'cause I can't think of anything right away.

39:52Jawad MirIt's okay. Take your time. I'll take it out.

39:57Anthony ScottOkay. Yeah. Well, I think on this film, and because of all the things I was going through personally, I mean, that's probably one of the reasons I didn't say yes to the film at first until I got the script, because I was still, I still had one foot in the church. I still had, I was still hanging onto a little bit of it there. And when I said yes to the film, when I got the project, I was starting to let go of that life in the church and embracing my life in the f… in the film business and putting all my energy into this film, like everything I had, all my creative energy, everything. I hadn't fully embraced my sexuality yet, but I was starting to leave that belief system, which is scary when you're raised that way and that's all you know, and you're stepping out, away from it.

41:12Anthony ScottBut I knew I was stepping into something that I really believed in as well. You know, I believe in, collaborating with friends, making, doing animation, creating art. That's such a big part of my life and so important to me, and so that's something I knew that was true for myself. So I was leaving something that I was taught to transition into something I knew that I was born to do. And then from there, I, you know, over the next, I'd say, two or three years, I started to embrace my sexuality and accept it completely. So Nightmare Before Christmas was sort of the bridge, you know, in my life personally from that transition from an old belief system into embracing, you know, who I was, who I am.

42:18Anthony ScottSo...

42:18Jawad MirFair enough. Yeah. I truly believe that, whether we are audience members or the people who work on the film, writers, directors, even, a spot boy, whatever he or she may be, we always pick on these films. So like, I mean, sometimes it's obviously, you know, money. You have to pay the rent. But…

42:40Anthony ScottYeah

42:40Jawad Mir... Most of the time, if not all the time, there's always a layer of something that is attracting you towards this project, something that you… ... Connect to. Some people are able to figure out what that connection is. Some people don't, and they probably don't for another 10, 15 years. But there's always a reason we all become part of a film or a project because it…

43:02Jawad Mir... Somehow resonates with us at a very personal level. So thank you for sharing that.

43:08Anthony ScottYou're welcome. Yeah.

43:10Jawad MirPerfect. Thank you so much, Anthony. I appreciate your time, man. Wishing you the best of the holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year, if you celebrate it. And, we will talk in the new year with The Corpse's Bride.

43:24Anthony ScottGreat. Great. Yeah. Happy holidays. I'll see you soon.

43:27Jawad MirAll right. Take care. Bye.

43:29Anthony ScottAll right. You too. Bye.