…During the production of the animated sequence for the movie, Xanadu, we worked in my house and we had a lady who cooked for us. This lady kept talking about "the call of the wild." She talked about that while she was washing dishes -- singing and talking about "the call of the wild." Little did I know that she was attracted to me. I had no clue that was what was going on, but she kept talking about "the call of the wild." And it got worse and worse.

Then there was one of the young animators, who went around saying he loved pretty girls. "They're pretty." And his little phrase was: "I have to find Miss Right. I've got to find Miss Right." He went around saying that, and the other lady was always saying "call of the wild." We thought both of those were pretty funny, so we put them together and we had a crow that was looking for "Miss Right" and "feeling the call of the wild."

Dom, of course, hooked right into that train of thought. But Dom would bring things to the table like: "Excusemepardonme." That wasn't in the script. He said, "We're doing a lot of that around our house right now. We're all saying, 'Excusemepardonme.'"

Gary Goldman: It became one word.

Don Bluth: So Dom brought stuff that was in his household and put it in the personality of the crow.

Gary Goldman: I think that's where you connect with an audience -- where you're doing normal things. With each of these characters, you're trying to create a personality that your audience can relate to, not up here somewhere (motions above his head). Hopefully, your story is up here somewhere, so people are reaching up to it, and you're not talking down to the audience.

Don Bluth: Talking down to the audience was something we tried to avoid from the beginning, because that was our problem at Disney. At that time that we were there, they were making pabulum -- babysitting material -- and not willing to take risks with a project, because they couldn't afford to.

Gary Goldman: Gotta keep that stock up. Strange, but back when Walt started the company, he took a lot of risks. Maybe that is why he stated that he regretted ever going "public" with the company.

Crescent Blues: Getting back to the discussion about journeys, you made a physical journey -- to Ireland. Why did you move your company to Ireland, and why did you come home?

Gary Goldman: It was economics to start with, because in 1984-85, animation was suffering. Not only was it in the doldrums, there was a lot of unsuccessful animated films. When [Steven] Spielberg saw The Secret of N.I.M.H. in 1982 at the request of Jerry Goldsmith, the composer, [Spielberg] fell in love with it. He said, "I can't believe you can still do this. I thought this quality died with Walt Disney." He said, "I want to work with you guys."

And we went: "Oh, we've got 10 or 12 projects we want to do."

"Nah, nah, I'll set the project." It was two years before he came back to us with a

Don Bluth at his production company's booth at Dragoncon2001.

project. During those two years -- at least14 months of those two years -- we produced the three video games: Dragon's Lair, Space Ace and Dragon's Lair II. Then we went into a period where we had to do commercials, anything we could do to keep our crew together and stay alive. Then, all of a sudden, in December 1984, Steven came back and said, "I found a project." It was An American Tail.

But our budget showed that a movie of this scale in the United States would cost about $11 million, whereas Universal [Studios] only wanted to put up $5.5 or $6 million, because they'd never worked in animation before. They knew [animation] was sort of in a dip at this point, and they weren't willing to risk the kind of money that it was going to take to make the picture.

As we went into this picture, our senior business advisor, Morris Sullivan, said, "We don't know how long this perspective on animation is going to exist. We need to look into a way to reduce the cost."

So we started looking into going off-shore. We looked into the benefits of going to Australia, Mexico, Canada and Spain. When suddenly, the Irish government poked its head in and said, "Come look and see what we've got to offer. We've got a lot of artists over here, and we've got a great economic program and tax provisions for you, if you bring your company here."

We didn't leave America; we took America with us. We took 87 artists, their families, 17 dogs and cats, and moved everybody to Ireland, where we proceeded to teach the talented Irish artists how to deal with what we do. Within a year and a half, we were 400 strong. We were the largest animation studio in Europe.

We did five pictures in Ireland. We did The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go To Heaven, Rock-a-Doodle, A Troll in Central Park and Thumbelina in the Irish facility. We were working on a picture called The Pebble and the Penguin, which the two of us did not finish. MGM/United Artists stepped in and started changing our story. We said, "Hey, wait a minute!" -- but, they had the right to do so, according to the way the distribution contract was structured.

Twentieth Century Fox brought us back to America. Actually, they asked us if we would help them create an animation studio. We suggested that they let us produce for them in Ireland, but they insisted that we needed to be located close to their main offices in southern California. So in 1994, we returned. We had lived in Ireland almost eight years.

Crescent Blues: What about East of the Sun and West of the Moon?

Don Bluth: East of the Sun and West of the Moon is a delightful story. It's a great fairy tale about a girl who gets lost and loses her true love and is overcome by curiosity. She meets this bear and finds out it's an enchanted bear. Actually, he's an enchanted prince, and he comes back into human form at night. He tells her, "You must never look upon me at night, or our relationship will be doomed."

Well, she can't stand that, so in the middle of the night, she sneaks in, lights a candle and sees him, falls madly in love. But what happens is that he's whisked away someplace east of the sun and west of the moon. Then she must journey to find him and undo what she has done.

Crescent Blues: And she'll have to wear out seven pairs of iron shoes and seven iron staffs before she can find him. It was one of my favorite fairy tales.

Don Bluth: We wanted to do it very badly, and we started doing it. But because of an animation union strike in late 1982, our funding got very shy and pulled away. We felt kind of abandoned and lost, and we hunted around for other work. Then the game idea came up. We still had an in, as Gary explained, with Spielberg, but that was two years away. So we did the games.

We managed to stay alive. We knew we weren't going to just leave the business. But we had such high expectations for The Secret of N.I.M.H. We thought when we went out and made this film that, for sure, the world would beat a path to our door, and everything would be great. All the crew thought it was going to happen. So when they showed it to the press at MGM, I went down and rode around on my bicycle just to see if I could hear what anybody was saying, because they wouldn't let us go to the press screening. I got nothing.

But the press loved it. The press came out with all kinds of really nice accolades about it, but the studio did not promote it.

There's a big story about what happened at the studio. Our contract was with United Artists. United Artists got sold to MGM, because of a movie called Heaven's Gate. So our movie went with the purchase to MGM and it became the poor stepchild or the unwanted bastard child. It was the head of MGM/UA, David Begelman, who said, "I don't like animation. We're not going to put any money into distributing that movie. When their advertising funds are spent, no MGM/UA funds will go into the marketing of this film."

After that, it didn't look like we were going to get funds to make another picture, although we had high hopes. We headed into East of the Sun and West of the Moon, but it never materialized. The film is the property of Aurora Productions. So when we became free and independent again, we couldn't go back and retrieve it. It wasn't ours.

Gary Goldman: We have asked Aurora about it. They have no interest in funding it today, and they would want an ownership position and a return of the money spent on the development of it back in 1982, if we were to try to do the film now. They're investment people. They had raised about $7 or $8 million of the $11 million they needed to fund that project. It was the 1982 union strike that pulled it all apart. The union was demanding a 12 or 15 percent raise each year, and the investment group felt, gosh, if [the union wins] this debate, it could increase your labor cost by as much as 45 percent over three years. Actually, more like 54 percent. And they got very nervous about where the budget was going to go, and they asked us to abort it.

It was a long union strike. It went on for 72 days. It was pretty scary.

Don Bluth: Another thing -- when we made An American Tail, Universal wanted to make it for not too much money. We wound up making it for about $9.5 million. But to get that picture made, we had to go to our crew and say, "Look, we have to freeze all of our salaries to make it for what they (Universal) want. The crew is not going to get any pay raises during the time we're making this. Are we all willing to do this?"

The crew all got together and said, "Yes, we'll agree to freeze our salaries." So we did it. So when we were almost done making An American Tail, Steven Spielberg said, "Why don't you guys come with me and George Lucas, and let's make our dinosaur movie. We've been trying to get that off the ground for a long time." We said, OK, that's great. But he suggested that we try to do it for the same budget as An American Tail.

We went back to the crew, and they just wouldn't do that again. So we wound up saying: "There must be somewhere else we can go, which will give us a way to pull this off, economically and still give the crew their correct wages." That's when the off-shore search started.

Even when we knew we were going to go to Ireland, Universal would not give us what is called "pay or play," which means "green light" -- a written commitment to do the movie. So we kept waiting. As I recall, it was about four months that we waited and waited and waited, and we couldn't get ready. You know you have to sell or rent your houses and make preparations. You have to get to Ireland, and Ireland has to know you're coming.

All of this takes a lot of work, but they wouldn't give us a "pay or play" contract. And we didn't want to wind up with all these people in Ireland and have [Universal] pull the plug and say, "We're not going to make [the film]." We needed "pay or play" to be able to move everybody that far away.

Gary Goldman: Going to Ireland did get raises for the American staff in that budget. I think that budget was almost…not double, I think it was $13-14 million for the second picture (Land Before Time). But what was interesting was that Universal demanded that the Irish government grants be applied in the budget. So our efforts to go to another country to provide security for the employees and the company actually ended up going into that budget.

Don Bluth: Our money went into the movie. These things happen all the time. Anytime I'm in some of these rooms talking to people who want to be filmmakers -- these kids keep coming up, and I say, "Gee, if you only knew." The journey is a difficult one, and you have to be kind of resilient. When you're in the middle of all this business stuff, you have to be sure you don't get angry or embittered or anything like that, because that will stop your art. You have to be flexible. You have to give and take and make it happen.

We're not wealthy -- Gary and me -- by any means, and I've had to sign away every character I've ever designed to a studio, except for --

Gary Goldman: The games…

Don Bluth: The video games and Banjo [Banjo the Woodpile Cat]. So we don't own the rights to any of the characters from the feature films.

Crescent Blues: Even Secret of N.I.M.H.?

Don Bluth: Even Secret of N.I.M.H. For the right to make those 11 movies we made, we had to sign away all those rights. It's a trade-off. If you get really stubborn about it and say, "No, I want the rights to all my characters." The movies may have never happened. Once you have built up a trained crew and you want to protect that investment of time and energy -- plus the friendships, it is difficult to play hard ball in negations. You have to be able to walk away from a bad deal. If you are alone, that's easy to do. With a group it is very difficult.

Gary Goldman: You may not get your chance to make a film. It's a bit ugly. No picture, no budget, no money to pay the crew.

Crescent Blues: Have you thought about television?

Don Bluth and Gary Goldman- Continued