The Art of Going Unreasonably Deep

Whether it's Australian cattle dogs or favorite client projects, sometimes the most delightful art is found in the distance you're willing to go.

May 01, 2024

I went semi-viral last week on Twitter with this observation from the recent Bluey episode entitled “The Sign.”

31,300 views is more than I’ve ever gotten on any piece of writing.

But I was talking about the genius of Bluey, the best ~~kids~~ show ever.

In just 7-minute chunks, Bluey packs in more insight into parenthood, more pathos, more humor, and more emotionally resonant storytelling than the entirety of the DCEU.

It’s a world-class show and it’s not just for kids. You don’t have to be parent, though it probably helps. You will ugly cry a few times. If you have love in your heart and have ever met (or been) a child, you’ll love it.

Here’s my entire Twitter thread:

Genius-Level Storytelling

Reflecting on the genius storytelling of Bluey's "The Sign" (minor spoilers).

Here's one small element from the new 28-minute episode that proves how great Bluey truly is.

We learn a seemingly minor detail during kindergarten class: Winton (the English Bulldog) shares that his parents have separated.

His mom left, and now his dad is lonely. One of the Terriers responds, "Our mom likes your dad." It's a quick laugh, and the scene moves on.

A few episodes earlier, in "TV Shop" (S3E45), we saw the two parents meet in the BACKGROUND of in-store security footage.

The dad (the Bulldog) was clearly into the Terrier mom (he does the breath spray move), but we don't know anything else at this point.

Again, this wasn’t the main action of the story. It was in the background.

At the very end of "TV Shop," we see the Heelers load into their car in the parking lot.

Hold up. Did you notice the cars?

Check out the license plates:

2MNYKIDS - the Poodle family car; in a prior episode, we learned Coco has eight siblings(!)
419 HLR - the Heeler car
TERRIER - the Terrier car
LVLYJBLY - the Bulldog car; this is a payoff to the “Markets” episode way back in SEASON ONE(!)

But look closer.

Check out the car decals:

The Terrier car has one parent and three kids.
The bulldog car has one kid, one parent, and...
One parent partially scraped away.

A detail that didn't pay off until the latest episode.

What’s more, this entire storyline pays off in a big way by the end of “The Sign,” when we learn that the Bulldog dad and son are moving OUT of their house to move in with the Terrier mom. (We see them hug from a distance; I can only hope that he followed Beyonce’s advice first.)

This is Shakespeare.

Animated, Australian Shakespeare.

What’s reasonable?

The storytellers and animators didn’t need to put in this level of foreshadowing detail.

We didn’t even notice it.

We wouldn’t even think about it until weeks later.

(A confession: it was my middle daughter who connected these dots, not me.)

It would have been reasonable to simply tell the story straightforwardly. We still would have enjoyed the story as it was presented.

But the artists and animators behind Bluey are not reasonable.

They did extra credit. They didn’t have to. But they did.

And therein lies the lesson.

Sometimes the very act of going deeper than is reasonable is the art.

Mike and Sulley and Me

People often ask me, “what is your favorite project you ever worked on?”

My answer is easy: Disney / Pixar’s 2013 film Monsters University.

I told this story during a test interview a year ago—so you can either read below or listen to it in my OWN VOICE!

Lucky you!

It was 2012.

My agency, McBeard, was still in growth mode—we worked exclusively with movie studios, running social media campaigns for 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Lionsgate, and more.

We were working with Disney on a project—Muppets Most Wanted, I believe—when our client Samantha Rosenberg called to ask:

"We have an unusual project, and we’re not sure if you’d want this, but… do you know anything about college websites?"

Ahem.

From 2001-2006, I worked at Pepperdine University, running digital marketing programs, writing copy, and yes, thinking about college websites.

The universe sometimes colludes.

John Lasseter, the genius behind so much of Pixar’s early success, had an idea:

“What if MU had a website? And we treated it completely real. No ads. No ‘click to buy’ movie tickets. Like it was for a real university.”

That was the only detail we received. That was the entire assignment.

We went deep. We wrote hundreds of pages of copy. Little inside jokes. Easter eggs.

We took liberties. We made up professors’ names. We provided lists of suggested reading for courses.

We created departments. We invented student-athletes. We wrote up a blotter of incidents that public safety officers had responded to.

We went deeper than was reasonable to go.

And it was a blast.

The funny thing Pixar does after meetings

When the first website wireframes were done, we were asked to show off our work to some of the filmmakers at Pixar headquarters in Emeryville, CA.

Alan, Samantha, and I flew up from Los Angeles for the day, and arrived at the legendary campus.

Remember that Steve Jobs himself helped design the buildings, organized in such a way to spur creativity and “happy, accidental meetings” in the walkways and gathering spaces.

This was sacred ground.

We checked in with security and were escorted to the meeting room.

We kept going deeper and deeper into the building. Ascending staircases.

We arrived in the Pixar executive boardroom. In the center of the room was a long meeting table, featuring clear glass over hundreds of character toys from the Cars movies.

Pretty impressive, we thought, to meet in the boardroom.

Then the team filed in. When I say “team,” I mean 50 people. This was a packed house.

We had to put on a show.

We shared our background research.

We looked at Stanford’s website.

We fielded questions.

We shared drafts of our writing for public critique.

We waited while small groups debated some of our choices against details that had just been added into the movie.

We presented for three hours. And it was hard.

And when the meeting was done, all the Pixar people did a strange thing.

They stood up and applauded.

They weren’t applauding us.

They were applauding the process.

The hard process of pushing the craft to the limit.

Of not cowering to reasonability.

The Pixar culture applauds this as hard, difficult, important work.

They applaud unreasonability.

The Launch

In October 2012, the MU website went live.

There was no marketing. There was no announcement.

Pixar leadership simply emailed the link to its employees.

Within 48 hours, 13 million people had visited the website.

The original URL (MonstersUniversity.com/edu) no longer exists, but someone saved the files and hosts most of the original site here: check it out.

The reviews and comments began to trickle in:

The best comments mentioned not only how creative the site was, but how UNREASONABLY DEEP it was.

“Pixar could have made just a home page and we’d still be in.”

“This is why Pixar is the BEST.”

I helped do that.

If I had more time…

You know the quote.

“If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter.”
—Not Mark Twain, I learned

Sometimes, the craft is to be short and concise. Cut away everything.

Sometimes, you have to go unreasonably deep.

Let the work and passion show.

Delight someone.

This is the lesson I try to remember.

Go unreasonably deep.

Thanks for following along. Whew! This was a long one.

What’s one of your favorite projects from your career?