DVDizzy Forum

Academy Award, Grammy Award, and Emmy Award-winning documentarian Morgan Neville (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, 20 Feet From Stardom) is producing an untitled Mickey Mouse Documentary for the service. Directed by Jeff Malmberg (Marwencol, Shangri-La), the film will work to decode Mickey’s deeper significance, getting to the core of what his cultural impact says about each of us, and about our world. From Tremolo Productions and Lincoln Square Productions, the film will strive to be the definitive analysis of Mickey as a cultural icon.

Mickey Mouse is one of the most enduring symbols in our history. Those three simple circles take on meaning for virtually everyone on the planet. So ubiquitous in our lives that he can seem invisible, Mickey is something we all share, with unique memories and feelings. Over the course of his nearly century-long history, Mickey functions like a mirror, reflecting our personal and cultural values back at us. "Mickey: The Story of a Mouse" explores Mickey's significance, getting to the core of what Mickey's cultural impact says about each of us and about our world.

Director: Jeff Malmberg
Executive Producer: Caitrin Rogers
Producer: Morgan Neville, Meghan Walsh, Chris Shellen
Cinematographer: Antonio Cisneros
Editor: Jake Hostetter and Aaron Wickenden
Sound Designer: Lawrence Everson
Music: Daniel Wohl
Principal Cast: Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn, Randy Haycock, Floyd Norman, Carmenita Higginbotham, Rebecca Cline, Kevin Kern, Bob Iger
Runtime: 93 mins

When Mickey: The Story of a Mouse is just about animation, it’s wonderful. The product promoted here is a 2022 short called Mickey in a Minute, shown in its entirety toward the end of the documentary. Created by Disney stalwarts Eric Goldberg, Randy Haycock and Mark Henn, the short is a fun vehicle for discussing things like the importance of Mickey’s jubilant movement; little, crucial tweaks like when Mickey’s eyes were given expressive pupils; and the changes to his attitude that precipitated the introduction of Donald and Goofy, and turned Mickey into basically a tiny, domesticated suburban human for much of the 1950s.

Malmberg (“Marwencol”) punctuates his documentary with the creation of a new Mickey short, spearheaded by animators Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn and Randy Haycock. The minute-long short features Mickey walking down a hallway, reminiscing about posters of shorts from his past, before he’s sucked into a vortex and transformed into all the various iterations of himself. It’s a convenient framing device, and Goldberg, adorned with colorful Mickey-patterned button-ups, is a cheerful guide to the iconic creature. His enthusiasm for the project, as well as the remarkable history of Mickey, is infectious.

Q: One of the things you’ve worked on recently is the “Mickey in a Minute” short that appeared as part of the new Mickey Mouse doc coming to Disney+.

Eric Goldberg: I’ve been really lucky the last couple of years. And again, I have to use Amy Astley as one of my champions that way, where opportunities have come up, and she has said, “There’s this Mickey Mouse documentary that they’re making and they might want some animation for it.” We all got together, several of us animation artists and the director, Jeff Malmberg, and various other people. And we just spit-balled various ideas as to what that animation would be. And eventually they went with this idea that I had of Mickey getting sucked into the vortex from “The Little Whirlwind” and going backwards through his greatest hits. And it was so much fun to do because they basically let us do what we wanted to do. It’s not like we didn’t have feedback from people on the lot and people who were in charge of the Mickey franchise and from Jeff who directed it and all that.

But that’s all fine. The fact of the matter is we got to do it the way we wanted to at full production value the way we wanted to. Just being able to make decisions to say, no, the giant from “The Brave Little Tailor” has to have shadows because he had it in the original. Those kinds of things, those are important to us to really make it work. I don’t know if anybody will ever notice, but on the Mickey lariat scene, where I’m trying to imitate John Lounsbery, if you look at the animation that was produced for those segments, it’s got a thicker, black outline and thinner internal outlines and we did the same thing on the Mickey animation, just to get that look right.

These are angels dancing on the head of a pin details. But they feel right. They feel right to get the ink colors right. To get the fact that in “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” Mickey had a color separation over the whites of his eyes that he never had in any other film. And we put that in. Those kinds of things mean a lot to us because it means we’re doing it right. It means we have so much respect for the original things that inspired us. That to be able to take it to that degree. I mean, I studied frame for frame the tornado in “The Band Concert” and reproduced all the effects animation myself for all of that. I analyzed it and figured it out and broke it down into what’s a fanning background. What are the superimposed parts? What’s the debris? It’s challenging, it’s time-consuming. But if you don’t do it right, it’s not worth doing it.

Mickey: The Story of a Mouse features legendary Disney animators Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn and Randy Haycock, as well as animation artist and Disney Legend Floyd Norman. Art historian Carmenita Higginbotham, director of Walt Disney Archives Rebecca Cline and archivist Kevin Kern are also featured in the film. With exclusive archival footage and interviews, the film examines the ongoing artistic and cultural significance — as well as the controversies — surrounding the nearly 100-year-old cartoon mouse. The film features a brand new Walt Disney Animation Studios hand-drawn animated short, “Mickey in a Minute,” and documents its animation process by Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn and Randy Haycock.

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