A boy in 1940s El Paso rode a horse into town to watch Walt Disney films and went home to copy every Disney comic he could find. That boy, Don Bluth, grew up to lead a walkout from the Walt Disney Company that nearly toppled its animation empire. This episode traces his path from in-betweening on Sleeping Beauty in 1955, a mission in Argentina, a musical theater in Culver City and an English degree, to his second Disney stint animating Robin Hood and directing animation on Pete’s Dragon.

The conversation examines why he resigned on his 42nd birthday in 1979 with Gary Goldman, John Pomeroy and nine other animators, the industry’s first profit-sharing contract on The Secret of NIMH, two bankruptcies, and the laserdisc ingenuity of Dragon’s Lair. It follows the move to Dublin that birthed the Irish animation industry, the Spielberg partnership behind An American Tail and The Land Before Time, the 1990s slump, the triumph of Anastasia, the failure of Titan A.E., and his later crowdfunding, YouTube and children’s book projects.

• Why entry-level in-betweening at Disney bored a creative talent like Bluth
• How a laserdisc player inside an arcade cabinet let players direct a movie in real time
• The cancelled 1984 Beauty and the Beast project and other lost ideas
• Whether Bluth’s darker instincts needed a populist producer like Spielberg to reach mass audiences
• How the shift to computer animation ended the 2D era and Bluth’s theatrical directing career