Exclusive: Ron Clements & John Musker Rendezvous at LightBox Expo

Disney’s iconic directors Ron Clements and John Musker have been entertaining animation fans for decades with instant classics such as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, Treasure Planet, The Princess and the Frog and Moana. The talented, Oscar-nominated duo will be sharing stories about their multi-faceted careers at the studio and offering storytelling tips at a special panel hosted by writer-producer Pietro Schito at the LightBox Expo in Pasadena, California on October 26 at 11:30 a.m.

In advance of this special event, Clements and Musker spoke to Animation Magazine about what we can expect to learn at this wonderful story masterclass.

Animation Magazine: Gentlemen, thank you so much for taking the time to give us a sneak peek of your informative masterclass at LightBox.

John Musker: Ron has been so busy lately, so to find time in his busy schedule has been a minor miracle. One of the things we will talk about on the panel is that Ron has written a memoir about all his years in animation.

Ron Clements: The book [Making Disney Magic: From a Mermaid to Moana] will be published next year, and sort of compiles stories about the 45 years that I worked at Disney, most of which were working with John. John wrote the foreword to the book, and some of this caricatures (some ruthless ones of me) are also included.

John: Ron is back at the studio mentoring young writers and directors over at Disney. I’m actually teaching/ mentoring at Chapman University. I am working on a couple of short films. I enjoy doing that. I can talk a little about that and the writing process and our work together at the studio as well.

Ron: John’s been mentoring/teaching for a number of years. I just started back at Disney, consulting on a part time basis. They asked me to come back, although I have very much enjoyed retirement, it was something I really wanted to do.

John: Ron used his retirement to learn how to play the piano, so I am hoping we’ll have a piano on stage [at LightBox].

Ron: I’ve also been working on my singing. Maybe we shouldn’t talk about our collaborations — we should just do musical medley.

John: In a slightly serious fashion, I do think part of our panel is going to talk about music. We’ll discuss how we worked with various composers, how it differed, how music is part of the storytelling process, and how it shouldn’t be a separate thing. I think we have a lot of experience in that area. I think we’re also going to be talking about the value of these research trips in writing — John Lasseter was a big proponent of them. For example, neither of us had been to New Orleans before we did Princess and the Frog. That was so valuable, all the things we learned there, and the same for Moana and the South Pacific. The value of diving into the source material, pre-existing things, how to use those things to tell a story and learn in the process. For Moana, Ron read a book about the Lapita people and migrations. That became part of the backbone of that project.

Ron: I read that book before we actually visited the islands. We kind of came late to the whole idea of actual traveling and doing a lot of that research. I remember back when we were working on The Great Mouse Detective, we wanted to go to London. We wanted to see what the inside of Big Ben would look like, but they would not pay for something like that at that time. Things were different back then.

John: We’ll talk about our process too, and obviously how we collaborated on these scripts. I do think there’s a tradition of these Hollywood writing teams. Someone like Billy Wilder who wrote with Itzek Diamond or Charles Brackett. You play different roles.

Ron: Certainly at Disney, multiple directors has been quite common, but in terms of choosing to work together, that hasn’t been very common. A lot of times, people were kind of put together whether they wanted it or not. We actually chose to work together.

John: Yes, our marriage was self-inflicted, yes, the most painful kind, I know. But it was our choice, and it was a good marriage.

You have to tell us about how you met at Disney.

Ron: I actually came to the studio a couple of years or so before John started there. I was part of the very early talent development program that the studio had started in in the early 1970s after Walt had passed. As a lot of the older veterans were getting older, they were actually looking to recruit new people and bring in new talent. I was part of that, working with Eric Larson as part of that program. That was before CalArts, before the character animation program started a couple years later, so I was with a group that included Don Bluth, Glen Keane, Randy Cartwright and Andy Gaskill. Then, once CalArts started its character animation program, that became the primary source of bringing in new talent.

Our background is similar in that we were both animators at Disney, and then, we both moved into storyboarding, and John became a director, long before I did. Then, the weird thing about Disney at that time was that scripts were not part of things, as the story was worked up on the boards. But on The Little Mermaid, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg wanted to see a script. Nothing was going to happen on that movie until we had a script, so that was the first script writing collaboration for the two of us, even before we directed the film. They were allowing us to write the screenplay before we did anything else. That’s what really began our partnership.

John: One of the other popular topics that we might delve into (which has no end of interesting anecdotes that we can tell at other people’s expense) is dealing with executive notes. When you trying to hold on to a story and you’re getting notes, some could be very helpful and constructive. Of course, there are others that can be destructive! We’ll talk about some of the notes we’ve gotten over the years, and how we either tried to talk them out of it, or we had to find a way to deal with them so they didn’t undermine the movie — or they really helped the movie. On every film, we had to deal with this in greater or lesser forms, with teams or bosses you interfaced with.

What are some of the most important shifts you’ve seen in the industry over your careers?

John: Another topic we’ll probably talk about [at LightBox] is the current state of animation. Sony Pictures Animation has been on quite a roll these days, with KPop Demon Hunters and Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, and even before that with the Spider-Verse movies and The Mitchells vs. the Machines. And of course, a movie like Flow — Gints Zilbalodis’ picture was in many ways a gamechanger last year. I talked to the director when the movie came out and got his point of view a little bit. It is an intriguing concept to think about, that there’s the possible democratization of writing and producing animation that could emerge from something like that.

AI is a delicate subject. We are both old guys and we don’t know a lot about that, except that it’s a horrendous existential threat. Another thing we may want to discuss is what draws us to a particular story when we’re trying to develop a film. What is it that made a certain story, a character, an arena … what are those elements, how we can exploit the fact that this is an animated film and not a live-action film, and how to tell a story that uses the tools that are particular to that medium.

You’ve both faced fans at animation and industry events many times through the years. What are some of the most common questions you always get from attendees at Comic-Con, D23 or LightBox?

Ron: One thing that we get asked a lot from young people or students is how to break into the industry, which is a hard question to answer because things have changed so much since we started out in animation. The industry has evolved and changed so much since we started. I mean in some ways it’s easier now because there’s so much more going on. When we began, there was very little happening in terms of animated features. There was Disney, and that was about it. There are a lot of more people who want to work in the industry today, and it’s more competitive today.

John: Another question that we always get asked — and I always sidestep — is, what was your favorite film and who was your favorite character? We both have answers for that, but I give the analogy of picking my favorite child. with our own those tends to be a bit of a sidestep because I don’t like to I do the analogy of my children you know picking your favorite child and the others get mad

Of course, you’re probably going to be asked about the current state of things at Disney, right?

John: Well, Ron is going to give you the inside skinny on that.

Ron: I can’t because I’ve signed an NDA (laughs). One thing I’ve noticed since I came back is that there’s a lot security than it used to be. All the films in development have these mock titles these days. I remember we had a mock title on Moana — it was Waka, we never used that. But they are very strict about things that haven’t been announced or talked about publicly.

John: Speaking of titles, one of the things we may talk about is Basil of Baker Street, which was the original title for The Great Mouse Detective. There is an amusing anecdote about how that title change came about.

Ron: There was one single film at Paramount that really helped us with the movie, and then hurt us. We can thank it and blame it at the same time. It was the Steven Spielberg-Barry Levinson movie The Young Sherlock Holmes. It was a movie that Michael [Eisner] and Jeffrey [Katzenberg] were very high on.

It was one of the first movies that featured a big CG-animated character!

John: Yes, it was actually John Lasseter who had a big part in animating that stained-glass knight in a church window that comes to life [as part of Lucasfilms’ Graphic Group]. That was a precursor of where things were heading toward.

Ron: The Great Mouse Detective also had a big climactic CGI clockwork sequence, even before Young Sherlock Holmes. So, in a way, both movies with Sherlock Holmes connections had a big impact in computer animation. We never thought about that connection until just about now.

Learn more about the highlights of the 2025 LightBox Expo in Animation Magazine‘s interview with organizers Bobby Chiu and Jim Demonakos here. For the complete program and to purchase tickets, visit lightboxexpo.com.