Acquired
00:11:14 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:11:14] S0: There are so many protagonists that we study on acquired who started their career as newspaper boys. [00:11:20] S1: I was gonna say, just like Jack Bogle from Vanguard delivering papers in his youth and having to get up at four in the morning and falling asleep at school because he has to work so hard, like, this is quite the reversal here for Walt Yep. From Marceline. But he never stops drawing, and he never stops making money from it. In Kansas City, he would draw frames for the local barbershop who would pay him either a nickel or a free haircut for each. And that would, you know, be Walt's spending money growing up that he would earn from his art. Yep. So later, when Walt enters high school, Elias moves the family back to Chicago again, this time for the jelly factory, which ends up failing, where Walt becomes the cartoonist for his high school newspaper. But he's not there long before he leaves high school to go join the Red Cross and get shipped off to France as an ambulance driver during World War one, where unfortunately, he would acquire a chain smoking habit that he would keep up for the rest of his life and eventually would kill him way too young. Yep. But Walt's not in France for long before the war ends. And in the fall of nineteen nineteen, he lands back in Kansas City where Roy Disney, his older brother who is, I think, eight years his senior? [00:12:34] S0: Nine years maybe? [00:12:35] S1: Eight, nine years older. [00:12:36] S0: Yeah. Much older.
00:12:36 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:12:36] S0: Yeah. Much older. [00:12:37] S1: Yep. Is living. And Walt has a plan that he's gonna seek his fortune finally as a true professional cartoonist. So through Roy, he gets introduced to an advertising art shop that's looking for apprentices to help draw, like, flyers for the upcoming holiday rush. And Walt works there for six weeks through Christmas time and then gets unceremoniously laid off. But he gets two things out of this brief experience as an employee. One, he gets a credential. He can now say that he is a professional artist. [00:13:10] S0: All you have to do is get paid to do something, and then you become a professional. [00:13:13] S1: Exactly. Exactly. And you get something else, a cofounder, another young apprentice from the art shop named Ub Eyeworks. [00:13:25] S0: I sort of think of Ub as the Steve Wozniak of Disney. [00:13:29] S1: Yes. Absolutely. Walt is like the original Steve Jobs, and I think you can definitely make the case that Ub is the Steve Wozniak. [00:13:37] S0: Although I think Walt was more hands on. Yes. Walt was also an animator. Ub was just a better animator, and Walt was a camera operator. And Walt was building stuff, doing things with his hand, and he was in the primary technology and artistic trade that his business was in. After the two of them
00:13:37 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:13:37] S0: Although I think Walt was more hands on. Yes. Walt was also an animator. Ub was just a better animator, and Walt was a camera operator. And Walt was building stuff, doing things with his hand, and he was in the primary technology and artistic trade that his business was in. After the two of them [00:13:58] S1: get laid off, Walt suggests that rather than go look for jobs again, they should just start their own studio together. I mean, hey. They're professional artists. Like, why not? So they create iWorks Disney Commercial Artists Incorporated, supposedly in that naming order so that it didn't sound like a optometrist shop like Disney iWorks. How [00:14:19] S0: amazing is this? In the first iWorks and Disney partnership, in Walt Disney's first business, he was not the main name on the door, or at least he was not the first one.
00:14:19 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:14:19] S0: amazing is this? In the first iWorks and Disney partnership, in Walt Disney's first business, he was not the main name on the door, or at least he was not the first one. [00:14:28] S1: Yes. Not the main name on the door, but he is the driving force Yep. Behind the business. So he goes out to pitch prospective clients around Kansas City for the services of this new iWorks Disney commercial artist firm. And one of the clients that he goes to pitch is a up and coming company called the Kansas City Slide Company, which happens to have become the country's largest producer of advertising slides and short commercials that would get shown in movie theaters before feature films. And the Slide Co has so much work at this point in time as films and movie theaters are are taking off around the country that they say, hey. You guys seem talented. We don't wanna just contract with you. Why don't you come work here full time? So Walt and Nubb's first entrepreneurial venture quickly comes to an end, they go join the slide company. Now the reason that they specifically wanted Walt and Ub is that they have a relatively new business line at the Slide Co, which is producing animated commercials to run-in movie theaters before films. And this is what Walt and Ub end up getting put to work doing. And they both just fall in love with this new art form of animation. It's like everything that Walt and UpTo loves about drawing, but it's more than
00:14:28 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:14:28] S1: Yes. Not the main name on the door, but he is the driving force Yep. Behind the business. So he goes out to pitch prospective clients around Kansas City for the services of this new iWorks Disney commercial artist firm. And one of the clients that he goes to pitch is a up and coming company called the Kansas City Slide Company, which happens to have become the country's largest producer of advertising slides and short commercials that would get shown in movie theaters before feature films. And the Slide Co has so much work at this point in time as films and movie theaters are are taking off around the country that they say, hey. You guys seem talented. We don't wanna just contract with you. Why don't you come work here full time? So Walt and Nubb's first entrepreneurial venture quickly comes to an end, they go join the slide company. Now the reason that they specifically wanted Walt and Ub is that they have a relatively new business line at the Slide Co, which is producing animated commercials to run-in movie theaters before films. And this is what Walt and Ub end up getting put to work doing. And they both just fall in love with this new art form of animation. It's like everything that Walt and UpTo loves about drawing, but it's more than [00:15:58] S0: just art. It's technology. You You need cameras. You need film. You need all these new inventions to make animation happen. Yep. And at this point, animation was really primarily used in advertising. Right? There wasn't really a successful thriving industry yet as entertainment of its own based on animation.
00:15:58 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:15:58] S0: just art. It's technology. You You need cameras. You need film. You need all these new inventions to make animation happen. Yep. And at this point, animation was really primarily used in advertising. Right? There wasn't really a successful thriving industry yet as entertainment of its own based on animation. [00:16:19] S1: It was, like, very, very early. And to the extent that it did exist as entertainment and shorts, short films, cartoons on its own, it was all based in New York, like, not in Kansas City. Right. But the whole industry is only, like, barely twenty years old at this point in time because you couldn't produce animation on any sort of scale until you had widespread commercially available film cameras and film projectors. Like, this whole art form is brand new. It it couldn't exist before the technological innovation of film. Yep. Exactly right. So part of the reason that cartoons are working well in advertising right now for the Slideco is that it's this novelty, you know, almost gimmick. It captures people's attention. Yep. Even though they have no color, no sound, no story, it's just a series of, like, visual novelties. [00:17:12] S0: It's something they've never seen before. Of course, it's interesting.