The movie isn’t one story, it’s several Brer Rabbit stories, but what the writer, John Lloyd did was brilliant. He actually arranged the stories in an order that simulate a character arc of a feature film. In the early stories he’s this poor guy that everyone’s trying to eat him. Then you see how good he is at getting away, and then he gets too full of himself, and then everyone turns their back on him, and he realizes, “I’ve got no friends, nobody trusts me because I’ve pulled tricks on everybody.” Then he redeems himself, but right when you think it’s a happy ending, a couple of bad guys team up and the big finish is the tar baby story. We’ll use music, direction and whatnot to make the sequence grimmer — maybe that’s a harsh word, but it’ll seem a more serious threat, even though by nature of the folk tales, every folk tale is basically someone is smart enough to catch him — and dumb enough to be fooled by him.

JS: So it’ll be a happy ending — but no, no spoilers please.

TS: Let’s put it this way, we hope that this is the first of another franchise.

JS: A direct-to-video franchise?

TS: This is a big step for Universal because they’ve never done a direct-to-video that isn’t based on a feature film. It’s a challenge because we don’t have any bigger budget than any of those other ones do, yet we don’t have a feature film to take the model packs, the art direction or the color design from. We basically have to do all that on the fly.

Along with Stones, John Lasseter was one of the “Middle Aged Mob” that preceded the Nine Old Men. Photo courtesy of Disney.

JS: Is it a 2D or a CGI project?

TS: It’s in 2D.

JS: I assume you’re going to make people forget about Song of the South.

TS: We’re more self-conscious about that than anybody else, because when you think about it kids haven’t had a chance to see it at all — it’s been several generations since they’ve released the film. If you’re a collector maybe you have the Japanese laserdisc or the British video. It had some of the nicest, liveliest animation that Disney ever did. Unfortunately, it’s buried under this practically unwatchable movie.

JS: The live-action story does not hold up very well.

TS: — and if it wasn’t for Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah fewer people would know the film; that song really kept it alive. When you look at how much animation is in the movie, it’s surprising how little there is; I doubt if there’s even 15 minutes. There’s like three sequences and they’re not that long.

JS: It also has some combined live-action/animation scenes that puts a lot of their later work to shame in that area. This is going to be a more edgy version?

TS: I wouldn’t say edgy; we’re just staying to the folk tales. Disney basically did their thing with their characters. I can see why they made choices like combining characters or making Brer Bear very, very stupid because he played off Brer Fox better. Our Brer Bear is back to the folk tales: he’s not that dumb; he’s kind of a gentle guy. We obviously can’t copy the Disney film in any way. We put on our hat, go back to the source material — here’s the script you’re given — I didn’t develop the script at all. Let’s make this the most entertaining little thing we can, and as we work with a certain schedule and a certain budget, we go back and put a little extra effort, a little more personality and stuff. It’s something brand new for me.

Personally, the way I like to work, what I really enjoyed back in the prime days of TV animation like the Disney Afternoon, it was great having a staff of talented people you worked with. So I would do a drawing, but then I’m going to hand it off to this guy who is better at that particular kind of drawing. I would add a color note, but, okay, this person colors much better than me.

I was like a kind of renaissance man — I do everything in a mediocre way. My main talent is recognizing talent and encouraging talent. That’s exciting for me to develop them and push them forward. These days when business is done on a project-by-project basis, I don’t get to take the new artists and develop them along. I need somebody who’s going to hit the ground running on this, somebody I trust, who can do this in this amount of time, for this amount of money and out the door.

What’s great about the Universal management is they’re very artist-oriented. They’re very — at least so far — supportive. You make them understand the direction you want to go, you’re clear about it, you discuss it and then it’s like, “great, do your job, thank you.’” They look at rough animation, rough storyboards and they understand what it is. You don’t spend all your time cleaning up, coloring, adding music, doing temporary sound effects, something that’s become very common in the industry. It’s as if everybody’s afraid to make a decision, so they want it as close to the final product as possible so there’s less guesswork involved. But, of course, you’re spending all sorts of money that’s not going to get on the screen, whereas back in the old days you just pointed at pictures on the storyboard, and that was it.