Advent Calendar House: The Small One
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Day 13: Part 2 of our Christmas donkey double feature takes a deep dive into Don Bluth’s last Disney project, The Small One, a short film released in front of the 1978 re-release of Pinocchio.
On this episode
- Mike Westfall (@fallwestmike), a scrawny, undernourished little beast.
- Lindy Kempe (@ieatvideogames), a friendly face who’s gentle and true.
- Brandon Medley (@brandmed), good enough to be in a king’s stable.
Topics and tangents
- Like so many Disney movies, it’s based on a book — The Small One: A Story for Those Who Like Christmas and Small Donkeys.
- It’s directed by Don Bluth, so of course we get talking about Dragon’s Lair.
- The Land Before Time toys from Pizza Hut.
- Mouse in Transition: When Everyone Left Disney, Chapter 7 of Steve Hulett’s inside look at Disney Feature Animation deals with Don Bluth’s exit from the company after working on The Small One.
- Don Bluth Returns to Walt Disney Animation Studios after 40 Years.
- Assistant director Richard Rich went on to direct all 8 movies in The Swan Princess franchise. I’m sorry to have just informed you that there are 8 Swan Princess movies.
- The Small One’s Wikipedia entry includes a very strange line about the other donkeys in Small One’s stable.
- One piece of silver, Small One’s selling price, may be about $5 or $6 in 2018 money, if I did the math right.
- Edits on home video, including the Merchants’ song,and the Star of Bethlehem getting extra rays of light to look less cross-shaped. To avoid too much foreshadowing, I guess.
- Gordon Jump, the voice of Joseph, went on to guest star in a very special episode of Diff’rent Strokes. Yeah. Sorry.
- Somehow we end up talking about Pixar movies, including Cars 3, a.k.a. Rocky IV, but with Cars.
Previous episodes of this podcast mentioned
You can visit the Advent Calendar House on the web at adventcalendar.house and on Twitter @adventcalhouse.
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