A Message from Movie Mike: Chris Sanders the Creator of Lilo and Stitch and Voice of Stitch on The Origin of the Voice and Original Artwork from the 80’s + + Lou Diamond Phillips on La Bamba and Working at What-a-Burger

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Movie Mike's Movie Podcast. I am your host Movie Mike. I'm gonna be honest with you. I was going to sit down and record an episode today. I had my top ten core movie memories. I was going to review the new Grand Charisma movie, talk about the Good Burger two trailer. I sat down, I did all my prep, I was going to hit record. I just didn't really have it in me. It's been quite the week, the last week at work, with all the projects I do and all the things I have to produce.

00:00:25
Speaker 2: It was a lot.

00:00:26
Speaker 1: And I sat down and did not have the mental capacity to put on the movie Mike persona and do an episode. And I tried to push through it, and I just couldn't really get it out. And I didn't want to give you an episode with my half heart in it. So I decided to do a best of which I rarely rarely do. I always want to give you new content. Even if you look at the weeks we take vacation on the show, I still try to put up new episodes because that is how much I care about you being subscribed to this podcast and listening every single week. And I have just a lot of topics that I want to do that I just do a new episode every single week, and I had it ready to go and I just couldn't get through it. And in that moment, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to and it took a lot of willpower to not sit here and do one and try to crank it out anyway. And then Kelsey told me, Yay, you should probably just take a break. You're about to be burnt out. So I told myself, all right, I'm not going to do one, but I wanted to be as transparent as possible. If you're wondering why there's not a new episode, that is why we're about to be on break from the show, the Big show that is a Bobby Bone show. And I think I'm just gonna take this as a little bit of a break, but I'm taking it as an opportunity to share some interviews with you that are my favorite I've ever done on the podcast. One is with the creator and voice of Leelo and Stitch, which is my favorite Disney movie of all time. And I rarely feel like I nail an interview, like I always go in with so many questions and sometimes I don't get to them, but this is the one interview I felt that I asked every single question I had on my mind, and I felt like Chris Sanders and I really connected. And now seeing that they're making a live action Leelow and Stitch movie is even more reason to share this interview with you. And then I also did an interview with Lou Diamond Phillips back in twenty twenty one, so only like a year and a half into this podcast, I got to interview one of my favorite actors who is in one of my favorite movies, La Bamba, and we'll talk all about that. So no new episode for you this week, but two really great interviews that if you're a new listener maybe you missed, or if you've been around since day one, I greatly appreciate you and hopefully you listen back to these and still enjoy them as well. I will be back next week with a brand new episode, going to be talking about our favorite movies of the summer, and I'll still do that Core Memories movie episode probably after that. Again, thank you for being subscribed, Thank you for listening every single week. Movie Crew, you guys mean everything to me. I hope you enjoy these interviews and now let's talk movies.

00:02:55
Speaker 3: In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man and stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast. A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking IMTV with glasses. From the Nashville Podcast Networks, this is Movie Mike's movie podcast.

00:03:19
Speaker 1: You may not know his name, but you definitely know his work. My guest this week is Chris Sanders, who is the creator of Disney's Lelo and Stitch. He is also the voice of Stitch, and long before he wrote and directed this movie in two thousand and two, he also worked as a story artist on Disney movies like The Rescuers, down Under, Beauty and the Beast, The Aladdin, The Lion King and really got his start when he was the head of the story on Moulan. Working on that movie led to him pitching his idea that he's had since the eighties of Lelo and Stitch. Lelo and Stitch was his first hit as a writer and director, and even after Leelo and Stitch, he went on to write and direct animated movies like How To Train Your Dragon and the Crudes. So he's a super talented guy. If you're a fan of Lilo and Stitch or just a fan of Disney, I think you're gonna love his story. Flet's talk movies with Chris Sanders. I am on now with somebody I'm so excited to talk to. I'm on with Chris Sanders. How are you today?

00:04:19
Speaker 2: Good? How are you?

00:04:20
Speaker 1: I'm doing really good now. A couple of things led me hear to having you on the podcast. Lelo and Stitch has been my favorite Disney movie since I was a kid, and earlier this year, I was scrolling through TikTok and I see you there and I recognized you, and I didn't realize the backstory of Lelo and Stitch and how it came to be, so I knew once it hit that twentieth anniversary, I had to reach out to you to get you on the podcast.

00:04:42
Speaker 2: Cool. Yeah, it's been really nice to do those tiktoks. And that was just a response to I don't remember what it was exactly, but I ran across somebody who really didn't know anything about where the movie came from, and that was that wake up call to me realizing how much time had gone by, and quite a few people didn't know the backstory to it. So it's been really fun to begin that series trys to get some of the material, which a lot of this stuff just with animators and animation, a lot of this stuff ends up in people's garages. You know, there's a lot of stuff in the archives. But I still have the original drawings and the original manuscripts that I used to pitch the project. So that's amongst the stuff that I was digging up and beginning to put up on TikTok so that people could take a look at it.

00:05:27
Speaker 1: And that's so cool to see. And I want to get to the movie, but I kind of want to start back at the beginning. When you were growing up in Colorado, what made you fall in love with animation?

00:05:36
Speaker 2: I loved straw. My dad, I thought was a great artist. He did paintings and he would draw like these buck Rodgers style spaceships, and I remember one day he said, there's a limit to what you can build, but you can draw anything. And that really stuck with me, and so I really I always have a love to a love of drawing. It didn't ocur to me that I could turn that into a career and tell you know. Many years later, I was nearing the end of high school, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, and my grandmother was reading an article in the Denver Post, which was our local newspaper, and she was reading this art article all about how Disney Studios was running low on animators. They were retiring, and they were looking for a way to replenish their ranks. They created an animation program at this school in California called Cal Arts, and I thought, oh, my gosh, that's where I want to go. So I'd always liked animation, I'd enjoyed it, but I'd never thought of it as a possible career path until she told me about that school. And that's the only place I applied.

00:06:38
Speaker 1: How did you know you were? It went from just you just drawing to like, oh, I'm actually pretty good at this, Like this is something I could actually pursue and go to that school.

00:06:46
Speaker 2: You don't know, I was really crossing my fingers that my drawings were good enough. I think a lot of kids at Cal Arts were like some of the local best artists from where they came from. So I was not unusual in that, Like, I did cartoons for my school newspaper, so when they needed cartoons, people would come to me at our Vada High school and you know, when they needed a mascot drawn or a T shirt drawn or something like that. Likewise, a lot of the kids I ended up with in my classic Kyle Art's same kind of thing. And that was really sobering because, like I went from being I thought a person who could draw pretty well to being sobered when I'm sitting next to somebody named Kelly Asbury. Kelly Asbery. He became a good friend of mine, and he just drew so much better than I did. I thought. He just drew amazingly well. And he drew with a pen because he had this confidence, and I always drew with a pencil because I was never really sure. I was like, I want to erase this and move things around. And he took out this ink pen and he would just draw what he wanted and I'm like, oh my gosh, he's so much better than I am. Right, And you know, it's still that way. I think one of the things that's really cool about the animation industry is that if you ever are looking for inspiration, just walk down the hall. There's somebody down that hall that's going to be way better at stuff than you are. And so inspiration to balance.

00:07:59
Speaker 1: I mean in turn that it makes you become better. You see other people just crushing it, and you're like, I want to get to that level. I want to be that good too. I want to creak out my best idea so I can get the better jobs and get the things I want to achieve.

00:08:11
Speaker 2: Right, absolutely, absolutely, because nobody, I mean there's no nobody draws the best. Everybody draws, you know, their own things and their own ways and stuff like that, and it's great. It's that great coming together of all those different artistic styles where you can get these wonderful films and you get these wonderful projects and stuff like that. If I went back in time and changed out one single artist on one of these films, the film would be a little bit different. So they are. They're literally a conglomeration of the talents that were gathered for that particular project.

00:08:39
Speaker 1: So you go out to this school and how long is it until you get your first paid job to where okay, this is turning into my career.

00:08:47
Speaker 2: A lot of people would leave school at that time early. A lot of people graduated on their third year. I didn't. I stuck with it for four years. I was very aware that this was my last chance to go to school before I would go and start work for the rest of my life, so I hung in there for the four years. At the time that I graduated, Oddly enough, Disney Studios was no longer hiring, so the place I was really hoping to go was not an option at that point. So I did find a job at Marvel Productions. Now it wasn't the comic book part of Marvel. It was the animation side of it, and they did Saturday Morning cartoons. I got a job on the Muppet Babies. Now, the funny thing about that is that one of the things they would always tell us in cal Arts is draw, draw, draw, draw every day. Draw things that you see around you. It'll make you a better artist.

00:09:33
Speaker 4: Well.

00:09:33
Speaker 2: I didn't want to draw the things I saw around me. I didn't want to draw shairs, I didn't want to draw tables. I didn't want to draw people's shoes, you know. I wanted to draw the stuff that I wanted to draw. The funny thing is at Marvel Productions. On the Muppet Baby Show, I was in the model department, which meant anything that was going to be in the cartoon had to be drawn first as a turn so that they could color it and model it and send it overseas so that everything would be on model. So the funny thing is my first job was really drawing things that I had avoided drawing in the past. I drew chairs and tables and shoes and dresses and everyday objects, a lot of them, right, And it was amazing training.

00:10:10
Speaker 1: So you're working at Marvel and I saw that you said that you had the first drawing of Stitch in nineteen eighty one. What about that story? What about that sketch made you come back to it years later when you finally get this opportunity to create this story for Disney.

00:10:26
Speaker 2: I had worked a little bit on it in private. I wanted to do a children's book. And what I realized after working on it for a while in private, you know, on my own time, was that the story was too big to fit into a normally formatted children's book. I didn't think I could boil this thing down to say, seventeen pages or thirty two pages, it just seemed too big. So the idea was bigger than my book. So years later, I was in the waning days of the production of Mulan. We made that film at the Florida Studio. So I was out in Florida, and the president of Feature Animation at that time, Tom Schumacher or was out visiting, and he and I and everybody had gone through a lot making this film. It had been quite the adventure. I think that my performance on that film had earned me, had earned me a certain amount of I guess latitude to maybe do my own movie. And Tom was out visiting Florida and he said, is there anything that you would want to do next? And pretty much right there at dinner, I said, no, no, not a well wait a minute, okay, you know, there is this one thing. There was this story, right, and so I was able to think about it for a little bit. And the next time he visited, he said, well, and I was trying to work up a pitch for it, you know, and he said, well, go ahead, just tell me about it. And I said, well, I'm not really ready, and he goes, no, just come on, just do it, you know, And I thought, oh, here it goes my idea. I mean like it's gonna be all over the next like the next three minutes. And I pitched it, just verbally threw it out there, and I really got my very first and biggest note of all, which was the story that I had can call was all about this strange little creature who was living in a forest and he didn't he had come from. He was a mystery to everything around him, but he was also a bit of a mystery to himself, and the story was all about how he was figuring out who he was. And he was frightening looking a bit of a monster, right, And Tom said, I like this story, but I would have a suggestion. The animal world is in a sense already alien to us, so placing this alien being in the animal world doesn't get you the kind of contrast that you might want. I would suggest you place this monster in the human world. Boom, there it was. I thought that was a great idea. So that was the first biggest note that Leloan and Stitch ever got. Now this is before it was lelo and Stitch, before they were in Hawaii. That was when I left and started working on the idea. Once I returned to California, and that's where I got this motel room out in Pulm Springs at this resort, and I locked myself in this room for three days and all I did was draw and write because I wanted to create a bit of a document because it's going to be about an alien. And I thought, you know what, those are the days where people were making a lot of monstery kind of alien movies. And I thought, if you say the word alien in a development meeting or a pitch, a lot of people are going to get this instant idea of what an alien is. And I thought, Okay, if I don't draw this, they're going to get maybe the wrong idea. So if I had draw this whole thing out and they say no to it, at least they're saying no to the idea that was my idea, so it's a legitimate no. So after those three days, what occurred to me was that, in a sense, I had finally created that children's book that I had tried to create so many years before and had abandoned.

00:13:38
Speaker 1: That's really interesting to me because I was rewatching it and I realized how hard it must have been to pitch an idea about this alien creature doesn't really say a whole lot of words. So to hear you say that you took that idea, placed it into Hawaii and suddenly it made sense.

00:13:55
Speaker 2: You know, this is where you've really got to understand how important the producer and the head of a student are to your future. They can make her break an idea, and in this case, Tom Schumacher, he wanted to make this film and he that was the next big thing, was that it's the thing I'm going to put on TikTok really soon, and I'm working on that one right now. He told me after the development department looked at it that they all universally liked the idea, and he said. I walked into off into his office and he said, I will make this film on one condition that it looked like you drew it. And that was very exciting and flattering. But at that point I didn't even know what to do because I thought, well, what do I even draw like? I just draw like everybody else. A girl who was working at the studio, Sue Nichols, who was an amazing artist. She also came from cal Arts. She did a two week analysis of my art style and she created two documents called Surfing the Sanders Style, and it explained how I drew Well. Nobody was more interested to read these than I was, and I was absolutely fascinated. It turns out there were things that were governing my style that existed that I didn't really even realize as I was doing. But she saw them and she had like dissected the whole thing. So that began. And that's one of the reasons that Leland and Stitch is a highly unusual film. It is more unusual than people really, I think may may realize, because it is not only a very Miyazaki style story that is extremely hard to mail down, you know, it's a smaller story, and it's really kind of strange, based very very much on quirky, unusual characters. Really, you know, these personalities are are the whole movie. But also that it's in an individual artist's style, and that's I don't think that's anything that has happened really before or since, at least with an artist inside the studio they've based films on, say like Isaac Isaac Ivan Dural Sleeping Beauty is based very much on Ivan durl for example, but he was an outside creator, so it's one of the reasons that that's such an unusual film.

00:15:57
Speaker 1: So when do you sit down to create what is going to be Lelo and Stitch. You have to create Lilo. When does it get that title, When does it get that final art?

00:16:06
Speaker 2: It was Lelo and Stitch by the time it was in that first pitch book. So when I went away to Palm Springs, by that point I had made the decision to place the film in Hawaii. I had named the characters Leelo and Stitch, and I had no connections to Hawaii at that point. So I pulled Lelo's name off of a roadmap that I had from Hawaii. There's a Lilo Lane and I saw that. So this is one of the strange things. I didn't know what that word meant. It sounded like a name. It turns out it's not a name, but it's the word for lost. So in a really strange way, I found the right word to make that her name. The same with Nannie, I just again I looked around for names on a roadmap. Later on in the making of the film, we did engage as many people as we could from Hawaii because we're talking about it, we're trotting into a culture that we are part of. And if you're going to do that, you really have to connect with people that know what the deal is, that know what they're doing for the music, for the culture, for the dialogue, for your voices as much as you can, and so we did. We met a huge number of people who became our guides to making the film.

00:17:18
Speaker 1: Be respectful going into the start of making this movie, at what point did you become the voice of Stitch? Were you always going to be Stitch or was that a voice that just existed in your head? Where did that come from?

00:17:29
Speaker 2: It's sort of both. It was a voice I had used up to that point to call people on the telephone with and annoy them, and it was actually Dean, my co director. So along the lines of your last question, one of the first things you do is you find a co director that you trust, and I had learned to trust Dean and department and to partner with Dean during the making of Mulan and Dean was extremely smart and amazing a natural when it came to storytelling. He was a natural storyteller and great writer, a wonderful story artist, and he has very good strucktural knowledge and structural instincts, so so I partnered with him immediately. As soon as we decided to do the project, I saw out and we agreed to co direct on the film. Dean suggested that I be the voice of Stitch. One of the main reasons was that we wanted. Originally we didn't want Stitch to even speak. We were like, oh, it's going to be like dumb, but we'll do the whole film and he will just be a character that works in pantomime. Later on, it became obvious that he was going to have to speak, and in fact, he would have some key lines during the film. Well, at that point we thought, okay, we're going to we're going to have to get a voice, but you don't want to necessarily hire somebody like Robert Redford or Danny DeVito and then worry about like, well, how's the studio going to react when they realized this character only says like fifteen things and will they then start to push for like, well, if you know, if we're going to hire Robert Redford, we want it. You know, we want Robert Redford. We want like a lot of lines. And we were afraid that that might begin to really be the tail that wagged the dog as far as the making of the film. So Dean suggested, He's like, you know what, why didn't you just do the voice? You use that voice when you pitch your boards, So why you just do it? And then we'll avoid any problem because you know you're not a real actor, no one's going to ask for more of you. Right. So we did do that, and there came a moment, there was only one moment that I felt a little stressed about it, and that was when we realized that near the very end of the film, Stitch would have this one very important line where he talks about this family that he found and it was little and it was broken, but it was still good and that verged on real acting, and so I thought, I don't know if I can do this. On that day, I came to Dean and I said, today, I'm an actor, and you're going to be the director, the only director, and I'm going to go in that booth and you tell me what to do and I'll do it. And if I can't pull this off, then we'll find somebody else to do the voice. And so we did, Like Dean directed me. I did everything he asked, and before long he said, okay, but I think we got it, And I said, are you sure? He said, yeah, I think we got and it worked.

00:20:01
Speaker 1: Okay, you brought up my favorite scene in the entire movie. I think it's because of that. It's that moment in the movie where everything kind of hits me emotionally, and I remember watching it as a kid and having that same kind of feeling of Stitch, of being that person who was filled with rage in a place that he didn't understand, didn't understand himself, but all of a sudden he had this family. Now, I think that's the most perfect scene in any Disney movie I've seen. So it's cool how that came together. And now you had to go dig out your acting abilities in that.

00:20:29
Speaker 2: I did my best. I really tried hard that day. I still remember that day.

00:20:33
Speaker 4: This is my family. I found it all on my own. That's little and broken, but still good. Yeah, still great.

00:20:46
Speaker 1: So when people find out you're the voice of Stitch, do they immediately ask you to do it?

00:20:50
Speaker 2: I do get asked to do it a lot. I had some surgery out of my neck at one point period of time, about a year I couldn't do it, but then I got back to doing it, and I still do it. I get called up about at least once a month to come in and do I do voices for toys and for like parades, things for cruise ships, all Disney stuff. It's fun.

00:21:10
Speaker 1: I told myself if I ever had you on the podcast, I would show you my voice. And it's actually that scene that I do. So I would like to let you hear this and then judge my abilities afterwards and let me know how I can make it better.

00:21:21
Speaker 2: All right, okay, all right, So it's that scene.

00:21:23
Speaker 1: This's my family. I found it all on my own.

00:21:29
Speaker 2: It's little.

00:21:30
Speaker 1: I'm broken, but still good.

00:21:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, still good. How's that? That's really good? That's very nice.

00:21:39
Speaker 1: How do you get the laugh though, because I've been trying this impression for a while, but that laugh is and like it's hard to do.

00:21:44
Speaker 2: The big laugh is painful. That is when if you're doing a recording session, you save that for the very end, like, Okay, we'll save all the screaming and the laughs for the end, and then we'll do We'll do. Then you can just take it to the wall and if you blow your voice out, You're fine.

00:22:02
Speaker 1: The fact that it being the twentieth anniversary of the movie. When you go back, what moment sticks out to you as being the most fun part of the entire process.

00:22:10
Speaker 2: I mean, the part of the process that I've always loved is music. Dean and I and Leo, It's just was a big part of this have really I've always loved music, and I listened to music. I have never written a scene in a movie without listening to music while I worked on that scene. I have also boarded pieces of movies to music, and there are still there are still pieces of music that if you play them while you watch a piece of a Disney movie, it lines up pretty much exactly like if you go to the soundtrack for a movie called The Mission, there's a there's a track from that. I believe it. I believe the track is The Mission. And if you listen to that while you watch the scene where Moufast's ghost speaks to Simba, it works really really well because that's the that's the music I listened to when I boarded the scene, and I pitched that scene to the directors with that music. There are scenes Beauty and the Beast I can show you the music that those were done too, so anyway, so same with Lelon Stitch. I would listen to music because I write these scenes. And nothing was more exciting to us than we would when we would partner with somebody like Alan Silvestri who is going to be writing the score. And one of the things that Leland Stitch was made for a lower budget than movies were being made for at the time. We felt we could buy our story freedom by lowering the budget, which is exactly what happened. But one of the things that both you and I told the producers and asked the studio carve off enough money to buy the best score money can buy, and we will make the film for whatever is left over. And that's exactly what they did. So we got Alan Silvestri and there was this really important day where we were looking at the boards and Alan Silvester was looking at the whole film on board and looking at the outline, and he said, I really liked this movie, and he had a few suggestions, but he said, there's one thing I didn't see. I didn't see the moment where Stitch turns from bad to good, because which is a villain that becomes a hero and that was what the base, That was really the basis of the whole story. He's the first and I think at this point still the only Disney villain who then becomes the hero of the story. And Allan was like, well, where does that happen? And both Dean and I at that point were like, oh, well, yeah, we tried to write it. We couldn't really figure it out, and it sort of happens here kind of between these two shots, and suddenly both Dean and I think were confronted with the reality that we hadn't really been able to put it up there on the boards. And I'll never forget what Alan said. We basically told Alan we didn't know how to do it, and he said, put it on screen and I'll do it. And I guess we were saying we couldn't, we didn't know how to say it, and he said, put it on screen and I'll say it, and he said it with music. And so there's a moment where Nannie realizes that they can't retrieve le Lo, and she's crying and Stitch's watching her, and if you listen, there's a subtle change in the music and Stitch walks up to her and he speaks to her, and that's the moment of change. And what we realized at that point was that music does the heaviest lifting of all when it comes to story, and music is unassailable. No one's going to laugh at music. You can, you can throw an awkward line in or an awkward shot and it gets an inadvertent laugh and you've kind of blown it. But nobody laughs at music. And so Alan just like taught us such an incredibly important lesson that day, and we really took that to heart. So later on, when Diana and I were working on How to Train Your Dragon, one of the first things we do now is we carve out a house for music in different places in the film. So in How to Train Your Dragon, in that scene where Hiccup is going to bond and and and he's going to cross this divide and form a connection to this dragon, no dialogue, it's all music, and we just know the characters shut up. All the characters shut up, and music takes over. And that's just something that Diana and I really believe in now. And we learned that on Leland Stitch.

00:26:00
Speaker 1: Is the love for Elvis music always a part of the story. Or did that come along when you were trying to find the music.

00:26:06
Speaker 2: I was a big Elvis fan, so I simply gave that. I imprinted that only low. And it was really cool because we actually had to engage with the Elvis estate. We had done three things that you were not allowed to do without permission. We had shown an image of Elvis, we had used his lyrics, and we had also used his music, and you can't do any of those things without permission. So so there came a day when we had we had to approach the Elvis of State and they sent what we call the Memphis Mafia down to look at the movie. And all these people from the Elvis of State traveled to California and they came into the theater one day, and I'll never forget most of them were wearing dark glasses. They were wearing sunglasses even in the movie theater. As they watched the movie. It was exactly as you think it would be. And they watched the movie and they came out and they said, we're stoked, we love this movie. We're going to approve all the stuff you want want to do. And one of the cool things we actually got a party at the Elvis estate after the movie was done, and Dean and I received a key to the city of the City of Memphis, and we got a private tour of the Elvis of the state and we even got a trip to one of their archive buildings where they have all of Elvis's actual stuff. There are four archive buildings. They are in tornado proof structures. One of them is on the property and that's the one that we were able to go into. And we were there, you know, all these amongst all these shelves that had all these archival boxes, and we were like, so, what's in all of these? And they're like, well, a lot of stuff, And we said what do we look at and they said, well, I don't know, just pick a box, and so Dean Dean picked a box and they opened it up and they said, oh, these are all the things that were on Elvis's countertop in his bathroom when he died. And we simply packed them all up. And they had a bottle of his high karate aftershavee that he had used, and they opened it up and led us mellet and so we saw we saw some of his jumpsuits, we saw a pair of boxing gloves that Muhammad Ali had given him. It was amazing. Anyway, They were amazing. They were so kind and so generous, and it was just such a great thing that we partnered with them anyway, one of those great lucky things.

00:28:17
Speaker 1: One of my other favorite parts of the movie is how Leelo is like a five six year old girl but sometimes has like these really dark, almost much older thoughts than her. How is that writing in things of like leave me alone here to die? Like, how do you kind of approach that to make it kind of alievable that it's a kid saying this?

00:28:35
Speaker 2: You know? That was Dean's line in Dean's scene. Dean also did the he invented the whole my friends need to be punished and she's ticking those spoons in the in the pickle jar. That was just Dean in my sensibility. But one of the things we had we did was we our voice actor was a girl named Devey Chase, and we we we auditioned a lot of young actors to try to find the voice. It was one of those you'll know it when you know it, And when Dveke came in, she had this really very interesting way of delivering her lines. She had a little bit of this sort of deadpan kind of delivery, and we were like, that's Lelo, that's her, And so it's one of those things that, like, you write it and then you meet the voice, and hearing the voice helps you write it. So it's this kind of a snowball effect. But I must credit Deem for that really great scene that was entirely his. He wrote it and he even storyboarded it.

00:29:28
Speaker 1: So we've seen sequel Lelo and Stitch, You've seen the TV series, but now with Disney Plus, will there ever be any other installment of Lelo and Stitch.

00:29:36
Speaker 2: I think there will be.

00:29:37
Speaker 5: I think.

00:29:38
Speaker 2: I mean, he's a very very popular character. One of the things that has been very amazing is that I always hoped to pitch and create a movie that had a character that really endured. And one of the things that I absolutely am delighted with is whenever I go to Disney properties. I can go to Disney World or I can go to Disneyland, and you'll walk into stores and there are not just Stitch products. Sometimes there are entire sections of the store that are literally devoted just to him. And that is just mind blowing and I am so so proud of that. And it's so weird too, because I'm like, I drew him one day in Palm Springs. I have the first drawing of him, and now he's been reproduced millions of times and he'll a a lot of times. There'll be like a product it'll have mihat Donald and Stitch and it's like, oh my God, like he's really like he's there right. So yeah, I've been writing little things because I thought, you know, he's part of the Disney universe now. And just a really quick side note, the whole ad campaign that we introduced the movie with was an ad campaign that Dean and I thought up.

00:30:44
Speaker 1: With him placing in other like movie posters.

00:30:47
Speaker 2: Yes, because as the movie was coming close to release and we were thinking about how we were going to market it, we were sitting around one day talking about this whole thing and I said, out loud, isn't it weird? This little character that we started all by ourselves is going is about to invade the Disney universe and from now on, when they do a lineup of Disney characters, Stitch will always have to be in there with them. And the idea, like the idea of like, oh, him invading the Disney universe. We all, well, wouldn't it be funny if we did the whole opening the Lion King when they helped the whole cub up. It wasn't the cub but it was Stitch and everybody just ran away, and the whole idea just made us laugh. So we boarded that out and we went to this meeting with Dick Cook, who was on the main lot and he was in charge of these things and he was an executive there, and we pitched it and it got a big laugh. Dick Cook said, I like this, and then they said, can we do more? And so we started kicking around the ideas of having him show up in the Little Mermaid in Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast, and which means we had to go back and re record those actors with new lines. And that was really funny because none of them were super stoked about it like they I think it was the idea of it wasn't like we didn't want to do it. They were very professional and they were very very generous, and he did a great job. I think it was more the idea of, like, what's this thing doing in my movie? And the funniest one was when we recorded Bell. She was on speakerphone and she was in New York, so we were recording her remotely. And the funny thing was, because she was just on speakerphone, it was impossible not to imagine that the actual Bell was at the other end of the line talking to you because you couldn't see her. So in my mind, it's Bell, it's the cartoon character. And I remember we said, okay, this this is the idea. She's going to show up and he's going to ruin your special dance with Beast, and then you're going to say I'll be in my room and you're and you're upset, and then there was a there was a beat, and she said, so I'm mad at him. They said, well, you're disappointed, right, and she'd go okay, and so she would do the line and she say I'll be in my room and she had this really sort of upbeat delivery, and we said, well, I think you're more disappointed than that, right. So we eventually got to the place where she felt very, very upset, but it was just so sweet and so cute because she was like, wait a minute, it was just it was so it was great and they were what again, it was so cool because I got to meet those actors. I never thought i'd meet them, but that was so cool.

00:33:13
Speaker 1: I mean, you created an iconic character, got to work with people who are also iconic characters. It's amazing to see that all come together. And I can't wait to see what comes next, and hopefully I'll get to talk to you again once that comes around. I really appreciate the time absolutely.

00:33:29
Speaker 2: If you ever wanted to do a follow up, I'm so sorry we were late on this because time zones mixed up, but yeah, let's do that. That would be fantastic. I really enjoyed chatting with you so much.

00:33:37
Speaker 1: Oh thanks, Churris.

00:33:37
Speaker 2: Have a good day, you two. I'll talk to you soon.

00:33:43
Speaker 1: Blue Diamond Phillips is in a brand new movie called Adverse and really just an actor that I looked up to for a very long time for his roles in LaBamba Stand and Deliver Young Guns because really, for one of the first times ever as a kid, I looked up at the screen and saw somebody who looked like me. So we'll get into that. And if you don't know about Lou Diamond Phillips, well where have we been all these years. So before we get into the interview, here's just a little highlight reel that I put together.

00:34:08
Speaker 2: I got the test ahead of time. I passed thro out to everyone else. How did you get the test? No, man, I strangled in his buddies, decomposing in my locker. I don't see what's wrong with some of those takes. Man, that's the way I sing. It's got to be clean, Richie. Each take has to be identical, why so that we can edit later. Look, look, this is in Mexico? Who said it was?

00:34:28
Speaker 1: I lived there.

00:34:28
Speaker 2: I understand the tradition of the song. They're always changing the lyrics. Look, man, I've never even been to Mexico. My music is my music. Huh tell him?

00:34:36
Speaker 1: There's a bit of a rattlesnake long now with lou Diamond Phillips. I gotta say, it's a pleasure to be talking to you. I feel like you're an actor. I've been looking up for a long time now.

00:34:56
Speaker 5: A lot of violence.

00:34:57
Speaker 1: So you grew up in Corpus Christie, Texas?

00:34:59
Speaker 2: Right?

00:35:00
Speaker 5: Yes? I did? Yeah?

00:35:01
Speaker 1: And did you actually work at Waterburger?

00:35:03
Speaker 5: That was one of my first jobs. My very first job was as a cook's assistant on the Navy base. My dad was in the Navy, and I got me a job when I was like sixteen there. But yeah, shortly thereafter I worked at Waterburger for quite a while. I was like the crew chief and employee of the month and all that. I mean, I slipped some burgers.

00:35:23
Speaker 1: Man, I love Waterburger. I grew up in Texas too, and I was wondering, like, if while you're working there, is it a thing that you tell your coworkers that you wanted to be an actor? Was that like not in your plans at that time?

00:35:35
Speaker 5: Oh? No, no, no, no, no, no, it was. It was fairly well known throughout high school that you know, I wanted to become an actor. I mean I was doing a high school theater. You know, in Texas we had the UIL, the university interscholastically, and so I was part of the drama club and I was, you know, competing a lot and unfortunately winning awards and so a lot of positive reinforcement. I think everybody knew by my aspirations were at that time.

00:36:03
Speaker 1: So you've been in movies since the eighties. I just wonder, at this point does acting kind of come second nature to you, or does it still like a like a muscle that you have to flex.

00:36:12
Speaker 5: I mean, if you're anowledging yourself, it's always a muscle you have to pless. You always have to work out. I mean, you know, uh, if you start phoning it in, man, it shows you know, people can see if you're uninspired. And I try not to do roles that don't matter to me, you know what I mean. I have to be excited about something anytime I'm going to do it. The work is too hard otherwise, you know. Uh. And and even when I'm you know, doing something that would be as seemingly as uh, you know, familiar, as as the role I'm playing on Prodigal Sun, there's you know, there's there's new stuff to it all the time. I mean, uh uh, the layers of you know, relationships and history and bag and I mean it's it's it's always a blessing. It's always fun. And the uh, you know, the the other actors that you work with many they really inspire you to bring your best game all the time, you know. And I also try to snk it up. I mean, like this movie Adverse that I have out that is a little independent film you know that Thomas and Nichols put together. I said yes because, well, first of all, Thomas is a friend, and so is Sean. Aston was already a part of the cast, you know, but then Mickey or joined the tell A Van Miller and so let's do something a little different. Let's you know, let's get edgy, let's not get too comfortable with it. And you know, it's always it's always fun to join a an ensemble like that where you know it's not about the money, it's not about the luxury, but it's about you know, independent film and an up and coming director like Brian Metcalf and and you know, you keep it fresh for yourself.

00:37:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I want to talk about that movie. You played doctor Cruz in it, and you mentioned how it had to be something that you wanted to kind of still test yourself with. So when you get that script for that movie, what's your like creative process to kind of find your character in that? Like, do you have a creative process to know like who you're gonna be going into sept from when you get the script to when you show up Actually the.

00:37:58
Speaker 5: Film, Well, it's because it kind of came about because I was doing a lot of conventions, you know, before the pandemic hit, and I was running into Thomas a lot and you know, I had you known him, uh you know uh in and around Hollywood for a while and he said, Hey, I'm doing this independent film. You know, you want to see the scriptures? And yeah, sure, you know, And like I said, Sean was already in Buddy and he was already attached. And you know, you look at the role and you go, can is there something that I can break to this? Is there something that you know I can illuminate you know if you will, you know, as part of the character. And at this point in my life and career, there's a couple of reasons why I do something, you know, and I'm excited about the role, I'm excited about who I'm working with. And this this was both you know, uh, the end of a certain age, you know, playing a role of it is you know, uh supportive or is authoritative you know that that tries to keep somebody on the on the straight and narrow, you know, and I felt like, you know, being a father you know as well this there was a lot about this role that I could tap into, you know, just just what comes to me, you know naturally. Uh, kind of the same thing with the Gila Royal on Prodigal Son. You know, he's the boss, but he's very you know, fatherly toward not only his team, but you know Malcolm Bright, who was the lead profiler. So there there's something about you know, my history, about the life that I've lived that lends itself to you know, to to bringing some some experience to the role without having to you know, hit it over the head. It's just part of who you are now. So uh, you know that that that speaks to me in most of the things that I've done recently.

00:39:40
Speaker 1: And I was recently talking to Michael Penya and we were talking about some of the actors who inspired us because I'm Mexican American and he is as well. And what two of the actors he named were Edward James almost in you and I'm sure you kind of get that a lot now, like people who are like, oh it was kind of seeing you on screen for the first time. I was like, Hey, there somebody who actually kind of looks like me for the first time.

00:40:03
Speaker 5: You know, it's interesting, man, because you know, you just kind of you do what you do, and then you're following your own path and then eventually you start going, wow, I guess I am carrying a flag here. I guess I am representative of you know, people who need to be represented. And one of the first times that I remember experiencing that was I spoke at NYU, you know, at the film school here in New York, and a young Puerto Rican actress you know, has said, you know, about standing Deliver, that she finally looked up and saw people that looked like her on screen and that's why she decided to pursue acting, you know. And it's interesting when I look back a lot of the guys that were inspirational to me in the seventies, you know, with the swarthy guys, you know, DeNiro and Paccino and Austin, It's like, Okay, not everybody has to be Robert Redford. You know, maybe I can actually you know, have a have a career at this. And then I wrote a film, you know, in the early nineties called a Fish Or I actually played Filipino American and Sisilia Peck was my leading lady and I got to have dinner with her father, Gregory Peck, at a certain point and he said, uh, you know who you remind me of my old friend Tony. And I thought, well he was gray, that I was kind of on his path man, that I was kind of carrying the torch that he started. That is, you know, representing so many different communities, you know, not just what I am, you know, blood wise, but you know, the Latino community and the Native American community and just you know, I mean I've played Indi with, I've played Asian, you know, like in mckeam on Broadway, and and that's what it's about. It's representing each of these communities with you know, with dignity and with respect. And that's really become kind of a you know, a touchstone of my career.

00:41:46
Speaker 1: And your breakout role was LaBamba, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. And I think because it's not only the story of Richie Vallen's, but ultimately it's like the story about brothers, which I think why it still resonates now. But I feel like it's hard to find any kind of footage of Richie Vallens and the way his kind of memory lives on is because of your portrayal in that movie. Like at what point, did you realize that you weren't just taking on another role when you were doing that?

00:42:12
Speaker 5: From the second I read the scripts, you know, I mean I got cast out of Dallas, Texas. Uh And you know, I had no idea why this Hollywood film company was doing this national you know, talent search. It was ridiculous. I really could not believe that I even had the opportunity to audition for this. And I read the script and I just went I knew it was the chance of a lifetime. And even my acting coach said, you're never going to get this role, but hopefully you're going to do a great job and they'll give you something smaller, you know, like the drummer or something, you know. And so it was it was really lgging in a bottle when I got the role. And and then you know, working with Luis Valbez and becoming close with the family, which was you know, I did throwing into the deep end of the pool. You know, I met Bob us at this at the screen test, you know, on the on the on the Warner Brothers lot. I mean, it was it was crazy. Uh. So I knew I knew it was a big deal from the beginning. Uh and and uh, you know even even beyond that, so I I felt, you know, very fortunate.

00:43:16
Speaker 2: Uh.

00:43:16
Speaker 5: And it's funny because you're right. I mean there there literally is only a two I think film cuss of Ritchie, one from American Bandstand and one from a movie called Go, Johnny Go, where he seems come on, Let's go. So you know, there wasn't a whole lot to hang my hat on performance wise. I really relied, you know, on the family to kind of fill in the blanks for me.

00:43:39
Speaker 1: What is that like talking to the real life Bob when you're going to play his brother? Like does he start to like see his brother and you like, how does that relationship work?

00:43:49
Speaker 2: You know?

00:43:49
Speaker 5: I mean they were they were still kind of me from the beginning. I mean literally Bob uh said later, you know, the when he laid eyes on me and then saw the audition because he knew that I was going to get the job, which was really sweet. But you know Connie and Irma, I mean all all of his siblings, a little Mario it was only a baby at the time. Uh, and his mom, you know Connie, she was around, so they were there every single day, and Uh, it would always be like, well would Richie do this? Or what would Richie do in this situation? You know, they they were able to tell me these things. And it wasn't just about Richie. The rock Star was about Richie a human being, you know, the seventeen year old kick uh and and so that you know that was really uh I think was fleshed out the character and and and helped him, you know, be more than just you know an Indians.

00:44:37
Speaker 1: If you will, I wonder now, if you're ever out in public and you hear the song sleep Walk by Santo and Johnny, do you immediately have like flashbacks to filming that movie?

00:44:46
Speaker 5: Always? Man, always, and what I always go to because it's what that's what it's playing over in the film. Is that that hillside. Yeah, it made me I run up that like twelve times. Man. By the time I was over, I thought I was going to drop dead. I mean, my my legs were on fire. I don't know what he was looking for when we ran up the hill so many times.

00:45:05
Speaker 1: Man, after that movie came out where people just yelling ritchy at you all the time in public, they still really they still did. Did you get to keep anything cool from the movie.

00:45:16
Speaker 5: I still have the green guitar, but it's it's in California right now in my house there. I'm in New York City where I'm filming Prodigal Son, and when the pandemic hit, you know, the rock got kind of pulled out from under it. So I was not not able to go home, and so we my family, Yvonne and my thirteen year oldaughter. I've been looking here in New York City for you know, for a year and a half. I mean, you know that it is what it is. But yeah, I kept the green guitar.

00:45:41
Speaker 1: And what was that technique you learned? Because you didn't learn to play guitar for the movie, you just kind of learned, like the fingering style. Is that what it was?

00:45:47
Speaker 4: Yeah?

00:45:48
Speaker 5: I know I learned. I still don't play the guitar. I had to learn all of the singering just for you know, just for the for the film, and it was stuping me. I didn't I didn't pick it up. I should have picked it up that, but I didn't move on to other things.

00:46:01
Speaker 1: So the following year, in a nineteen eighty eight standing Deliver comes out, and that movie has just such a large cast. I wonder, like, when you're filming that, how hard is it to kind of wrangle everybody in to do a scene that typical?

00:46:12
Speaker 5: Man? I mean, you know, it's like we've got a pretty massive ensemble cash for Prodigal Sun as well and for the movie adverts that I just did. It was literally just one day of shooting all my scenes with Thomas E and Nichols, So that becomes easy. I mean, that's it's not like, you know, putting together an amateur show. In the uncle's barn. There's an entire army of people who are doing scheduling and doing wrangling of the actors and whatnot. So it seems that he's as a professional. You're there when you're supposed to be there, and you know, you do what's required to do that day.

00:46:49
Speaker 1: I wonder when you're doing that movie. The line that always sticks out to me is your line when you're like, I strangled him in his body is decomposing in my locker. Like, how hard is that to say with the straight face with everybody there?

00:46:59
Speaker 5: No you look forward to, man, I mean, but that's once again, that's just part of the acting. I mean, it's you know, there there were lines in Longmire, and there were lines continue to be in lines in Prodigal Son, especially when I'm working with Kecko againa uh where you know, you get tickled, you just get you know, and thank goodness, there's always take too if you if you crack up, you know. But yeah, that particular line I knew was going to go down in history.

00:47:26
Speaker 1: Was that a genuine reaction in the movie, Like the laughter seems just so genuine after that.

00:47:31
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was. It was, you know, I mean, the entire and you know, the entire cast, you know, got into it. So you know, especially Cloth say it was a wonderful, wonderful guy. So yeah, I mean, I think quite often the the warmth and the chemistry and the happiness that you see on screen is the real deal. You know, it's hard to hard to manufacture that.

00:47:50
Speaker 1: Well, I really appreciate the time everybody. Go check out the new movie Adverse, check out lou and Prodigal Son. And it's been really great getting to talk to you. I just wanted to really like, you know, like how much your work has kind of affected my life, and you know, just being able to see somebody like looks different and.

00:48:06
Speaker 5: Kind of represent the story for me and wave the fly bro. You know we got to represent right. Yeah, I appreciate that.

00:48:12
Speaker 1: And uh, I'll send you a nice water Burger care package where you are right now. I mean, I what's your favorite thing to get from there? Do you get sick? Did you get sick of that food while you're working there?

00:48:22
Speaker 5: No, not at all. I mean, man, you know you because of the an employee you got. You know, you got the employee uh employee meals and you know they kind of had a little coupons that you would turn in. But h yeah, man, I think I eat Waterburger every day. It was It was fantastic. And not only that, I got to make myself so you know, I mean it just like I wanted it.

00:48:41
Speaker 1: Well, appreciate the time. I'll talk to you later.

00:48:43
Speaker 5: Thanks, Mike, have a good one.

00:48:45
Speaker 1: And that's gonna do it for us this week. Thanks again for being subscribed and listening every single week. I will be back next week with a brand new episode. Kelsey and I will be sharing our top movies of the summer and our worst movies of the summer. There were a few that's snuck in there, and then we'll follow that up on another episode and I will do my ten core movie memory moments of all time. Hope you have a great rest of your week and until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later