October 19th, 2020 
Jackson Murphy 
In 2018, legendary Disney animator Glen Keane won an Academy Award with the late Kobe Bryant for their animated short film Dear Basketball. Now Keane makes his feature film directorial debut with the animated musical adventure Over the Moon, which debuts Friday on Netflix. And it could send him to the Oscars yet again. Keane discusses all aspects of the movie and the influence of his superstar friend.
Jackson Murphy: We’re in a time right now when so many people are wondering, ‘Do animated movies need to be seen on a BIG screen?’ And you’ve made this epic animated movie that you knew for years was going to be on Netflix and a lot of people would watch on their TVs and phones. So did you really think about screen size during the process of this film?
Glen Keane: I crossed that barrier when I left Disney, and the first thing that I did was work for Google and did this little [short] film Duet, which was on your phone and you could watch it in 360 degrees. And I thought, ‘How is this gonna be? It’s so small?’ But then I realized this is really a window to an infinite world. That helped me kind of get over that. But something more: recently a friend of mine asked me, “Glen, do you think you love people through your drawing – through your animation?” I said, “I don’t think so. When I’m animating, I’m so obsessed about it that I have to push that away in order to spend time with my family – people I love.”
And he said, “I think you should rethink that because I think you do touch people and you connect, and that’s how you love other people.” And when I started thinking about Netflix and particularly Over the Moon, it’s a story that is so intimate, so personal… and to have it take place in people’s living rooms on their couch where people live in real-life, this is so much about the authenticity of healing. And it feels like this is the right place to have this movie play.
JM: So many families will be able to see this. There are some big musical numbers that kick-off the film. And as I was watching them, I was thinking, ‘This could end-up being a stage show’ – hopefully when they come back. Do you picture this being a stage show in maybe five to ten years?
GK: Wow! You are running further down the path than I have. But I guess I probably should’ve thought of that because so many of the [films] I’ve done in animation have become that. I think it’s because animated movies are animated because they often take you beyond where reality can go. And that experience in a theater – you’re talking about a Broadway kind of show – is so stunning when you are actually sitting in a real theater and suddenly you’re transported to the dark side of the Moon. Knowing Cathy [Ang] and Phillipa [Soo], man, they would be perfect for that.
JM: Beauty and the Beast was the first Broadway show I attended, and I still remember the experience of seeing the characters and the costumes and the sets, and it just blew me away.
GK: Yeah. It’s a great idea.
JM: Cool. Now, Audrey Wells wrote the screenplay for the film, and she passed away a couple years ago, right before her very good film The Hate U Give opened in theaters. When you were making [Over the Moon] in the last couple years… because she had so much in the script already, if you felt like you needed to make a change for the better of the film, was that tricky because you didn’t wanna change what Audrey had done?
GK: There was never any sense that I wanted to change what Audrey had done. In reading the script, Audrey was still alive the first time I read through it and for the next year working closely with her. Even just two months before she passed away, she was still working with me on changing some of the characters. She was very, very open to flexing and writing dialogue so that they would fit into the story. It was such an important labor of love for her as a message of healing for her daughter. I never felt that I wanted to ever stray too far from her. Whenever I’d kind of get lost… even after she was gone I’d think, ‘What was Audrey really trying to say here? I wanna stay on that path.’ Movies always go through phases where you’re getting a little bit lost, and I’d always listen for her voice to help me through those times.
JM: It’s a story that honors her very nicely. And you have quite a cast. One of the members I want to point out is Ken Jeong, who voices Gobi. His character appears about midway into the movie. And I didn’t know that Ken Jeong could sing until Gobi has his song in the movie. Did you know that Ken Jeong could sing before you gave this character this song?
GK: The script was not written as a musical. When I was reading it… the influence of Howard Ashman has been really big in my life. I couldn’t help but think of him reading this script and the way that he would advance the story. I was reading the script on an airplane flying to China, it just hit me that we need songs in these important moments. And there was one moment where Gobi is on these Moon Frogs and he sings this song… it was the hardest song to really figure out how we were going to do that.
I saw on YouTube The Masked Singer and Ken Jeong singing “Creep”, and when I heard it I was like, ‘This guy’s got an incredible voice.’ I knew he would be able to deliver it. So that was part of the casting for Ken: because he could sing and because he has such a whimsical, unique sense of humor that this character had to carry. A freshness to him. As unique as Robin Williams was to the Genie, Ken Jeong is to Gobi.
Jackson Murphy (left) / Glen Keane (right)
JM: Bungee is such an expressive character. You’ve drawn so many expressive animated characters over several decades. But Bungee doesn’t talk. Any difference this time because Bungee doesn’t speak?
GK: Characters that don’t speak are really, really important because it’s in their eyes that they’re gonna communicate. Fei Fei was experiencing her world turning upside down, and she needed somebody there to share this with. Bungee was the perfect character – also the most difficult character to figure out in animation because she had to be super soft and puffy. The puff is added after the animation. So you’re looking at… like if you hosed down, you have to imagine this is gonna look good when all that puffy fur is added to it.
Anytime we needed somebody to reflect how Fei Fei was feeling or a little bit concerned, Bungee could look over at Fei Fei or even at the audience. Bungee was such an important character. The closer Fei Fei is to Bungee, the more powerful, wonderful dramatic tension you have between those two characters. I feel like in directing a movie, anytime you know what the audience is feeling, now you’ve got power. You can play against it and you can threaten it. That’s really a wonderful power.
JM: A few months ago, you were a part of a series of presentations Netflix had for the film. And in one of the packages, you said that while working at the studio in March when COVID hit, within an hour the studio was empty. And the way you said it has had a lasting impression on me. What was going through your mind in that hour?
GK: At first, I was thinking, ‘How in the world are we gonna get this movie done?’ before we heard anything about COVID. We were 120 animators all working at full, top speed, just really pushing hard on the most difficult moments in the movie. And then Gennie Rim, our producer, came in and said, “Um… we have to all leave.” And within a half hour, that whole studio was empty. And I hadn’t been back for months and months. I had to go back for a quick thing. And there were still the coffee cups sitting there with coffee in them. People’s coats sitting on chairs. It was like The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Instantly, everybody went home, and yet we had deadlines that Friday. I think we left on Thursday. We had deadlines the following week we had to meet, and that never let up. And we never missed those deadlines, either. It was just the trust that we had developed with the crew that we could actually keep moving. I felt really thankful that I was in a medium that could keep working. So many people couldn’t, and I was blessed.
JM: It’s amazing through these last several months that animation has kept going. I’ve been following animation throughout my life, but you’ve been in the animation biz much longer than I have. It’s gotta be a good feeling but also an interesting feeling to look at how this has not stopped at all through this. Animation has persevered.
GK: Especially a movie like this that is so much about embracing change. About loss – the difficulties that you go through. The pandemic has just been another one of those changes in life that our crew has experienced all the way through this film. People losing loved ones. I really feel like this movie is coming out at the right time. And with Netflix, it’s translated into 30 different languages around the world. It’s very much a universal story because it’s a universal problem. We all lose the people we love at some point.
JM: Right. People all over the world will get so much out of this. Speaking of someone close to you who we lost earlier this year: Kobe Bryant. Dear Basketball won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film a few years ago. You and Kobe up on stage was quite a moment. What from your friendship with Kobe Bryant is inserted in this movie?
GK: That whole experience with Kobe was incredible because I had no idea that I was animating, really, a swan song for him. I thought it was about basketball, but it really became a message of his life for everybody he left here. He didn’t know that. But I remember animating the final shot of that where he goes into the shadows and leaves the basketball court. And I thought, ‘This isn’t right. Something’s not right. You shouldn’t be going into shadows. He shouldn’t be going into the dark. He needs to be walking into the light at the end.’ So he goes into the tunnel and there’s a light that gets brighter and brighter and it overtakes him.
And I thought, ‘Wow. This really feels like Kobe’s dying. I hope he doesn’t mind I’m visually describing Kobe moving onto another life.’ And I thought about that when Kobe passed away. And Kobe was kind of the trigger that launched 2020 as the most unbelievable, crazy year possible. We all gathered in the studio working on Over the Moon and shared stories… and tears. This became kind of a repeated thing that we would get together and share difficult times that we were going through as a little family – a team that we were together with.
Kobe had visited our team. He and I talked often on the phone. We had plans of future ideas together. It just kind of hit me… the things that we do are much bigger than we know. The best things in life are a gift. Things that we don’t necessarily work for, but they’re given to us and you have the opportunity to work on it. And you through your whole heart and soul into it.
Kobe didn’t know what he was writing when he wrote it as a swan song. And Audrey did. She knew everything about what was going to happen. She would not live to see the end of this movie, but as a message to her daughter to help her deal with the grief and love somebody new. We took that very seriously.
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