After around ten years of production, Disney Legend Andreas Deja‘s gorgeous new featurette Mushka premiered at San Diego Comic-Con this year and is now making rounds on the film festival circuit.

After the screening, producer/director/supervising animator Andreas Deja, along with producer Roger Viloria, key animator Courtney DiPaola, and composer Fabrizio Mancinelli, gathered at a press conference to talk about the long journey they took to bring Mushka to life.

On starting with Mushka:

DiPaola:  “I was at NYU for live-action film originally, and I was about to take a class with John Canemaker, who heads up the animation department at NYU and is an incredible film historian and animator himself.  I was excited to take this class so I took out a bunch of his books from the library, including his book on the Nine Old Men, and it was like just one of those stereotypical lightning bolt moments where I hadn’t considered hand-drawn animation up until that point, especially character animation, but it was just like Nine Old Men tunnel vision after that.  I was just was so obsessed and ended up learning about Andreas through the Nine Old Men, because he’s one of the biggest supporters out there too.”

Viloria:  “I think my passion started from when I saw Snow White.  I was seven years old, so it kept me going and studying animation and all.  Then animation shifted to CG when I was in school and then  I was like, what do I do now?  So I literally switched to live action and in that process of doing that, Andreas was getting ready to start on this project and I’m like, you know what, I don’t think I have the skills now to animate, because that takes a lot of practice–and I can draw and all that, but I just wasn’t ready–but, I said I can take over all the post-production.  So literally wear all the hats.  I mean every day, I was editing sound design, scanning the drawings…whatever you can even imagine.  And I really enjoy that.  It was like getting all the elements together and whatever you see on the screen is how it came out from my computer and I just really loved that.

“So the beginning was basically storytelling–you know, passion.  I think we had a lot of passion to do this and we were also, so like…we got to finish this.  Because I see a lot of people that just start a project that just never goes anywhere you know.  They give up.  It’s all about money–maybe they don’t have the money, or they just don’t have the passion anymore.  We kept it going and here we are.”

Mancinelli on working with Richard Sherman:  “So I had the luck of working not only with one of my idols, Andreas Deja, but also with Richard Sherman, who was like one of the all-time idols of so many of you.  Sitting down at the piano with him, listening to his song, and figuring out how to incorporate it not only in the end credits, but in the montage sequence and other few sequences…and writing my themes around him in a way that didn’t sound too much of just my voice or his voice, and keeping them separate but united at the same time.  That was the challenge.  But I can say that Richard liked it, liked what I did, for sure.  We saw him last week at the screening and he seems to be pretty happy.  It was like having a mentor but a colleague I admire.  So like walking with giants, like he and his brother did with Walt Disney from a different point, I was walking with real giants.”

On other dream collaborations:  “I would love to work one day with Alan Menken, with one of my all-time idols, but like, I admire Lin-Manuel Miranda, but they are also songwriters, so they’re very individualistic.  So I know that it’s sometimes a long shot.

“You know, Andreas and Richard, they took a leap of faith on me…Right now, the only purpose I have is trying to do better and better, you know, to have the privilege at least to see them as older colleagues or like, more accomplished colleagues I admire, and maybe someday collaborate with the next generation because maybe they look up to me.  That’s the ultimate goal:  Give back what I’m getting now.  I hope at some point I can hold somebody else’s hands like a Disney legend, Alice Davis did.  She was like an American adopted grandmother to me.  She was like family to me.  She just passed away last November, but she always told me ‘pay it forward’ and that’s the goal in life.  Do it so well that I can pay it forward.”

On Alice Davis:  “She’s been one of the most influential people in my life.  I called her Nonna Alice.  Grandma Alice.  She welcomed me into her life when I moved here as a student.  I didn’t ask anything of her, but I had many Sundays talking to her on her patio, learning about life.  I didn’t have my family here before meeting my wife, and she and Andreas?  They were all I had here.  The thing that mostly I hate about Mushka coming out now, is that it’s too late to show her. 

“But she got a glimpse of me writing music and my first big film and score came out the very day she passed away…I always feel that she’s with me in her teaching and in what I tell my daughter before bed every night because I mention her.  We need those role models in life.  She was one of the strongest human beings I’ve ever met in my life.  A role model for everyone.  We talk about how we need female role models–she’s been one when it was not fashionable when nobody talked about it.  She just took her life and lived it and she’s a role model for any kind of human being…I miss her.”

Deja on leaving Disney: “If I wanted to stay at Disney I would have to do computer animation because they basically stopped drawing their films.  And I took a class in computer animation and found out how that works and what that would be like and I decided I need to stay with drawing and express myself graphically because that’s just in my DNA and I said let me now focus maybe on my own project…”

On dedicating the film to Eric Larson:  “Well my whole career really couldn’t have happened, and wouldn’t have happened, if it wasn’t for Eric Lawson because he was a Disney animator who I contacted first because I found out, growing up in Germany, that Disney had an animation training program going in the 1970s and Eric Larson was head of that.  And I thought I need to write to Eric and find out what I can do as a kid or a young teenager to prepare myself for a job with Disney.  So I wrote to Eric and eventually, this is 10 years later, I had the courage to send him some samples of my artwork–live drawings,  animal drawings, and all of that–and he wrote back and he said ‘I think you’ve got what it takes.’  So he said ‘finish school, you have a few more months left, and then come on over into the training program’ and he gave me a chance.”

On developing a tone for Mushka:  “I think in recent years people explore a lot of their life experiences in their film and often those are not nice so they’ve been tough.  I think it’s a good thing to process that through filmmaking but there are also funny things and funny films coming out here and there.  We’re sort of in the middle where it’s melancholic and heartfelt, but there’s hope at the end of the film…”

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Mushka will make its Italian premiere at the VIEW Conference in Torino Italy, October 16, 2023.