Original subtitles

The 1990s were a golden era

for The Walt Disney Company.

The Little Mermaid revived the company

from the edge of bankruptcy.

Beauty and the Beast earned a Best Picture nomination.

And The Lion King broke box office records worldwide.

But the reality just miles away was no fairy tale.

In 1992, a state jury acquitted

four LAPD officers on almost all charges

in the beating of Rodney G. King.

The response was anger.

Fire, chaos,

massive citywide destruction.

It was a pivotal moment for Black culture in the '90s.

But it's a little-known fact that another cultural milestone

emerged from that fateful day.

It's a story so unbelievable,

it could only happen in Hollywood.

How did this young, Black, unassuming animator

from East Atlanta wind up

as the CEO of Disney

at the company's most powerful moment in time?

- Okay, rolling. - Speed.

Believe it or not,

we named him after Tom Jones.

♪

Yeah!

His father used to play Tom Jones.

That's how he first courted me.

He would do a little dance and we would laugh.

♪ I got to tell you a story♪

♪ Every man ought to know...♪

Usually, the boys in Ronald's family

was named after their fathers,

but when we had our boy, we knew that

he was gonna be different,

so we had to do something different.

We had to name him Thomas.

T loved cartoons something crazy.

I mean, he was always drawing on his desk, uh,

in, uh, in the margins of his notebook, in the textbooks,

all on the walls, man.

He just drove our teachers crazy.

He was obsessed with this one cat named, um, Blasto Boy?

No, no, no, Astro Boy.

Yeah, yeah, I used to watch it with him,

and I remember thinking...

this is kind of boring.

But Thomas loved it, man.

He drew... he drew that dude everywhere.

One time, he asked me, he said,

"What if Astro Boy came here and saved us?"

I said, "Saved us from what?"

And he just kind of shrugged and said, "Everything."

I mean, what kind of eight-year-old

is thinking like that, you know?

I mean, I think he was scared.

He wasn't no punk, I'm just saying, I don't

think he ever understood why the world was so unfair.

And where we were growing up...

it was, like, unfair unfair, you know?

I mean, you could be sitting at home watching

a program with white folks with nice houses.

We couldn't even ride ours bikes outside,

cause niggas will take it from you.

Straight to your face, they do not care. Crime?

What, so? They will ride your bike in front

of your house the next day.

Yeah, unfair.

The boys picked on him.

He would come home sometimes with pages

torn out of his little sketchbook.

Yeah, we would call him white.

We was just messing with him.

Um, I think he was just trying to fit in,

but he wasn't really like us, you know?

And the kids would call him on it.

I mean, he just wanted to draw,

and he didn't understand why that wasn't "cool," you know?

I mean, niggas will make fun of you for anything,

and I don't think Thomas was built to take it.

I told him, "Son,

one day, ain't none of this gonna even matter."

In 1987, Thomas left East Atlanta to attend

Savannah College of Art and Design, or SCAD.

It was here that Thomas's

creative dreams began to take shape.

We didn't have a lot of Black students in the program then.

Thomas showed a lot of promise.

In his application, he wrote about how he wanted

to work at Disney one day.

We usually laugh at that sort of thing.

Everybody says that, you know?

But with his application, he sent a little flip-book.

Can you see this?

I mean, he had the sensibility

and the wit of a true Disney animator.

Art Babbitt was a big name at Disney Animation for a time.

As an animator in the '30s and '40s,

he racked up a lot of credits,

and enemies,

but he was most well-known for

developing the character of Goofy.

He came to SCAD, and he spoke.

Thomas really gravitated to him.

He became obsessed, and he really glommed

on to Babbitt's article "Analysis of the Goof."

Art describes Goofy.

He says, "Think of the Goof as a composite

"of an everlasting optimist, a gullible Good Samaritan,

"a half-wit, a shiftless,

"good-natured colored boy,

"and a hick.

"He is loose-jointed

"and gangly, but not rubbery.

"He can move fast if he has to, but would rather

"avoid overexertion,

"so he takes what seems the easiest way.

"He is a philosopher of the barber shop variety.

"No matter what happens, he accepts it finally

as being for the best or at least amusing."

Thomas used this text as the center of a piece

of a series he called "Goofy, Please."

After class one day, he showed me some of these pieces,

and I looked at it, and I looked at him,

and I thought,

"This kid is from another universe,

like, a whole nother planet."

Thomas would be like, "Hey, come on,

you know Goofy's a [bleep]."

: And we would just laugh, man.

We just thought that was so funny.

It was clear that Thomas was very talented.

For his thesis,

he made this incredible short film.

♪ Well, I'd like to visit the moon♪

♪ On a rocket ship high in the air...♪

He had little screenings;

teachers would come, and students.

The film felt so deep.

I-I think it was somehow connected to him

losing his father in freshman year.

♪ I would miss all the places and...♪

Uncle Ronnie dying changed him, man.

Thomas was in his freshman year at SCAD,

and I didn't think he was going to make it, but, uh,

once we buried my Uncle Ronnie, man,

he, uh-- it's like his brain exploded.

Depending on who saw it and when they saw it,

it was either the funniest thing,

or the saddest thing you'd ever seen.

That short was what got him into Disney.

No question.

Washington comes to Disney

right out of college, fresh from SCAD.

You know, he's there, the company's doing pretty well,

they've just had their hit with The Little Mermaid.

One of the things that-that I'm glad that I was

able to be part of was that, um,

Disney instituted this diversity program.

We knew that we needed to bring in younger voices

from a diversified point of view,

and that would actually, uh,

strengthen our company.

And Thomas was one of the first of those.

Thomas started out at Disney as an assistant animator

on DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp.

It wasn't necessarily creative work,

but things are fine, you know.

It's not really moving as fast as he wants things

to be moving, but he's doing all right.

And then the uprisings happened.

When the shooting happened,

and then the riots,

Thomas was working in L.A.

He called me and he said, "Mama,

I just want to go down there."

And I told him,

"Son, you need to riot

with that pen and paper."

He was shook.

I could see it in him, he was shook.

He actually called me one time and was like,

"If I ever get the chance to do a movie around here,

I'm not holding back."

While South Central Los Angeles

was engulfed in flames,

15 miles north in Burbank, another fire was about to erup.

What happened next is one of the most unlikely

and unprecedented events in the history of corporate America.

After the success of Beauty and the Beast,

Michael Eisner put Dennis Stephenson in charge

while he went on a sabbatical.

But two weeks into the job,

Stephenson had a health emergency

and passed shortly thereafter...

...leaving the job open once more.

We all voted for this guy

named Tom Washington.

But we didn't realize

that Tom's first name

was actually Thompson, not Thomas.

Thomas Washington was an animator.

People were pretty upset when they found out

they voted for the wrong man.

It felt like an honest mistake that we

could sweep under the rug, but

after Beauty and the Beast,

there were a lot of eyes on us.

We tried to handle it smoothly,

but Thomas held our feet to the fire.

So, because of this, you know, "behind closed door,

boys' club" handshake,

Disney is now in radical

new territory but entirely by default.

So you have this young animato,

this young, Black animator

who comes into this company, all of a sudden has a ton

of power at a hugely culturally significant moment,

and he wants to do something with it.

He wants to prove himself.

This cat was on my line

with some foolishness,

talking about he's the CEO of Disney.

I was, I was crying laughing.

And then, you know, he took me to his office

and people was, like, greeting him.

First day, he took us all into a room

that we call the stock room, which is where everybody

hangs out before we get to work.

And he shows us a frame of animation

of Goofy in Mickey's trailer, and, uh,

Mickey has Pluto on a leash.

And it gets real quiet,

and, uh, Washington goes,

"Why is Goofy letting Mickey do that?"

He's a very fine dog, sir.

And, you know, we're all confused, we're just looking

at each other, and Charlie goes, "What do you mean, sir?"

And Washington goes, "Goofy's a dog,

"and Pluto's a dog, so why is he letting Mickey

do that to one of his own?"

Yeah, T had them running scared from day one.

I was, uh, fresh-faced and wild-eyed.

I was an inbetweener for about three years,

didn't see much movement.

An inbetweener was usually for animators just starting ou.

So, say a character slaps somebody across the face.

They would get a senior artist to do the fun part,

drawing the first and the last frame that define the movement.

The inbetweener draws all the many little frames in between.

I was stuck as an inbetweener

for years and years,

but as soon as Thomas came in, he said,

"I want you to be lead director on this."

And I said, "On what?" And he said,

"The Blackest movie of all time."

-♪ Check, check, uh♪ -♪ Get it, get, get...♪

He said he wanted to make a movie about Black fatherhood.

♪ Get, get, get it...♪

Man, he wanted to tackle everything in this movie.

Segregation, single parenting,

low-income career trajectories,

fear of gang violence, incarceration,

the amount of cheese in African-American diets.

He wanted to make a movie that covered all this and more...

and he said he knew the perfect character to do it.

♪ Swingin' while I'm singin'♪

♪ Hey!♪

Thomas, man, he knew that people thought

Goofy was dumb, but he wanted to show

the systemic factors that Goofy was dealing with.

A shitty job, angry kid,

and embarrassed by his lack of influence.

Man, it was wild how deep he leaned in to all this,

'cause, uh, as far as I knew,

Thomas had a really solid homelife.

It's a vacation with me and my best buddy.

Oh, Donald Duck?

No, silly, with you!

Thomas and I, we were married young.

We didn't have much,

and, um, you know what, he nevr

let that get in the way of us, though.

If there was something we couldn't afford,

he would just draw it.

You know, you'd wake up and I would

see anything from a coffee makr to a solid-gold jet

on the refrigerator in the morning.

That was Thomas.

We-we had our son Maxwell pretty early.

He and Thomas, they were inseparable.

He did everything for that boy.

Oh, my God, look at this...

Oh, look at this!

Thomas kept saying that

A Goofy Movie was for him.

He'd say, "If I'm not here, you can show him this."

I was too scared to ask him what he meant by that.

To give you a little context, when A Goofy Movie came out,

Black masculinity in the media was in a really weird place.

- Hello, I'm Blaine Edwards. - And I'm Antoine Merriweather!

And welcome to Men on Films.

The show that looks at movies..

...from a male point of view.

So on one hand, you've got men doing, kind of

"faux queer" comedy, and on the other end

of the spectrum, you've got these hypermasculine portrayals.

Am I my brother's keeper?

Yes, I am.

And, by contrast, Goofy

is a nuanced portrayal of a Black man

whose priority is his family.

- What? - Nothin'.

Goofy really put forward the philosophy that...

just love your children for who they are and accept them,

and deal with the pain that the world

is not going to love them like you do.

I think in the movie, Dad laid in a lot of things.

I-I notice it more now than I did then.

♪ If I could make you stop and take a look♪

♪ At me instead of just...♪

In the beginning, Max sings a song,

dunks a basketball, and then is cheered on by his peers.

I think my dad was making a comment

on Black exceptionalism

and how some people believe

that performative assimilation is the best way to get by.

My dad wanted to prove those limitations were just that,

limits put on us by outsiders.

That's why he made it a fishing trip.

It's the same one we used to take. [chuckles]

The trip was supposed to start out

as sort of like a freedom ride.

And the map, which is central to the plot

of the film and also representd Goofy's trust in his son Max,

was supposed to remind the viewer

of the Green Book and how Black travelers

had to use it to advance their way

through the Jim Crow South during the '30s and the '40s.

A lot of the film had deeper meanings, and word

got around that it meant a lot more in Thomas's eyes.

Dad wanted every Black person in America to feel like

they were just a road trip away from being part of a movement.

Even if their kids didn't understand the stakes.

It was about destiny and how our children,

our future, get to draw our path.

I want to get us to doing something

we've never done before.

We have never truly drawn

authentically Black characters, characters that act...

Now, see, this is what I'm talking about.

This is what I'm talking about.

In order to draw authentically Black characters,

one has to know Black people.

Okay? Now, Tom went out on assignment.

Researched, hung out, went to a couple Black cookouts.

Said the wrong thing, got his ass beat, but now, now?

He's more aware, he's more knowledgeable

of how to draw. Okay?

Thomas tried to pull back and be more

subtle with his message, uh, when the complaints started,

and we were getting complaints from everywhere.

But there was nothing subtle about Thomas.

At one point, he said he didn't want Mickey in the movie.

And, um, I kept saying,

"But it's Disney. What are you talking about?"

I can remember Thomas ranting in his office,

"They're trying to make me put this white boy in my movie."

And I'm thinking, "He's a mouse."

He told me from the beginning,

"I'm not here for a long time, I'm here for a good time."

Uh, he knew he was going to get fired,

but the "when" of it was fun for him.

It was like a game.

We had 15, 16, sometimes 18-hour days.

And, uh, he would be screaming, "We don't dance like that."

And he would bring his friend's kids in

and, uh, they would moonwalk and,

and, you know, do all, like, you know, this stuff, you know?

Oh, man, I must have drawn a pair

of gloves dapping, I don't know, over 5,000 times?

I just kept hearing, "That's not a dap, that's not a dap.

Where's the snap?"

You see my knees?

You see this, see this angle of these knees?

Draw-- Draw this! Get this down, okay?

One time, I just couldn't take it--

my fingers were just bleeding-- so I went up to talk to him,

and he was up there drinking whiskey with Robert Townsend,

and Janet Jackson, uh, Sinbad and Adina Howard.

Well, when I poked my head in, Thomas went,

"Who ordered the white rice?"

And they all just laughed,

and, uh, I just didn't get it.

BRIAN McKNIGHT: Everybody used to be up there.

Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, Kadeem Hardison,

Harrison Ford, it was crazy. The parties were insane.

Imagine Disney after The Lion King.

You got this smooth-looking brother at the helm.

It was crazy he even had that office.

Everyone would go up there and just hang

as we plotted our overthrow of Hollywood.

You couldn't tell us nothing.

They had a big musical number planned

with Bryan Adams in the movie.

And one day, Thomas asked me to come by

and see what he's working on.

And we're walking through, and he stops in one

of the rooms and plays me some of the music.

And I'm like, "Yeah, you know, pop ballad.

"You know, same old, same old.

You know, it's-it's good, it's-it's cool."

But he asks me, "Who do you like right now?"

I'm like, "You know, I-I've been listening

to this Tevin Campbell."

And from then on, it just had to be Tevin Campbell.

♪ Last night I, I saw you♪

♪ Standing♪

♪ And I started♪

♪ Started pretending♪

Most of the cats around there didn't

even know who Tevin Campbell was.

For three months, a lot of them were saying Kevin Campbell.

♪ Can we talk, baby, can we talk for a minute?♪

♪ Girl, I want to know your name♪

♪ I want to know your name♪

Thomas was a cool cat.

But the brother definitely had a chip on his shoulder.

He didn't like it if you challenged his Blackness.

I think there was a part of Thomas

that kind of felt that being an animator

wasn't innately Black, you know?

And he wanted to make it Black,

he wanted to make it cool.

He wanted to-to carve out his own space and not feel

that he was divorced from his own culture, you know.

He was loading his culture into this stuff that

we were doing so that it just seemed normal

and would seem normal to the rest of us.

He had a lot of pressure, man-- the culture, the job itself,

what-what he was trying to live up to that I'm not even sure

that he knew that he could live up to it.

And, uh, it had to take a huge toll on him.

One morning I walk in the studio, I got my coffee,

I'm ready to sit down, get to busi-- business.

And Thomas like, "Psst! Psst! Come here, come here!"

So I go over there and, uh, he's in his cubicle,

he got this briefcase, he opens it up,

there's a gun inside!

I'm like, "Dude, what-what is this?

What's it for?"

And he's like, "This is to remind me that

they don't know who the fuck I am."

Dad kind of started to lose it.

He would stay up all night, talk to hisself.

After a while, Mom... she had had enough.

After a while, Mom couldn't take it anymore.

He had just gotten too mean.

We had so much fun.

But then, it wasn't fun anymor.

He had been fooling around, yeah.

And drinking a lot, and he got pretty mean.

He would say some mean, nasty things to me,

which he never, he had never done that before.

I remember at one time, Maxwell tried to step in

between his dad and I,

and Thomas...

was not kind. He kind of...

He kind of raised his, um...

he raised his fist...

at Maxwell.

That wasn't cool, because they-they

had always been so close.

He was a...

he was a really good father.

I mean, at least he tried to be a good father.

I kept saying, "Thomas,

"you're going to lose him,

you're going to lose your son."

But all he kept saying is...

"But this is for him."

I knew things were going downhill when

Thomas's wife left him.

Sh-She had been there from the beginning.

And he started sleeping in his office.

And, um, one day, there was a board meeting.

All the Disney heads were ther, and they started talking

about the budget was going a bit high on Goofy.

And one of the guys asked Thomas, he said, uh,

"Are you in control of the budget?"

And Thomas said, "Of course I am.

I'm Goofy."

And then,

he did this this chilling laug. Like...

You know, l-like Goofy, but broken.

: And it-it was terrifying, man.

I almost started crying.

He really thought he was Goofy.

The company knew he had to go,

but legally, he was still the CEO.

That gentleman's show of hands was, uh,

surprisingly hard to go back o.

You know, they even tried to buy him out of his contract.

Yeah, they offered him, like $75,000.

No, no.

We offered him $75 million,

paid out over ten years.

Um, that's how... that's how serious it was for us.

I mean, he didn't take it.

But, uh, maybe he should have taken it, you know?

He started getting really paranoid.

He'd say he was afraid for his life,

but he'd never say from whom.

Suddenly, there were a bunch of guys in bow ties

hanging around the office.

He introduced us to one of them saying,

"I want you to meet my new head of security,

Al Shaheim X."

The thing not a lot of people knew about,

was Thomas had been going around town

letting a lot of people know how huge this was going to be,

and he had a lot of different Black empowerment groups,

radical movements, and just straight-up gangs all wanting

as much influence and subtle shout-outs as the other.

You know, I think that he had made

way too many deals at one poin.

At least, that's what... that's what I heard.

Truthfully, it all came down to the end of the movie.

Really.

Oh, man, the end of the movie.

I heard he wanted Goofy and Max to get pulled over

early on and, uh, you know...

Wh-Why would he do that? That makes no sense.

That Powerline concert at the end,

it wasn't supposed to be all hunky-dory, dancing-dancing.

Nah, it wasn't supposed to be like that at all.

I heard Goofy was supposed to get shot at the concert.

You know, a Black man runs onstage

like that at a major venue? Come on, man.

There's something wrong here.

Thomas was trying to make a statement.

Do you, uh, think his death was an accident?

Next question, man.

No, I don't.

I-I've never thought it was an accident.

Why not?

Um, well...

...partly because of his-his mood at the end,

but, um, you know, there was also the tape.

What tape?

♪ For the first time ever♪

♪ Seeing it eye to eye♪

Oh, I'm so sorry.

Oh, man, I...

Ooh, I'm close, I'm-I'm close...

I'm so close.

I got to finish this.

: I got to finish it.

Back then, mental health wasn't something that we talked about.

I didn't even know what to characterize

what I saw him going through, what it... what it was.

I just knew he was going through something, um,

something that was very, very difficult for him to deal with.

This is a little hard for me right now.

I-I don't know why.

When the news finally broke that Dad was officially out,

they let him back on the lot for one final screening

of what they were able to piece together behind his back.

He didn't know they had been working

on the movie without him...

changing and corrupting his original vision.

He-he didn't take the news well.

I was at that last screening.

It was the Bigfoot stuff that put him over the edge.

They'd added it without his knowledge.

He'd wanted Goofy and Max

to wander into a thrift store

and discover Huey Newton's rattan throne.

And once they sat in it, Max would finally understand

what Goofy had been fighting

to make him understand all along.

Instead, they took out the thrift store and the throne

and put in that Bigfoot bit.

It's like they were saying, "What you were after,

"your message, it's a fantasy as elusive

and unreal as Bigfoot."

You're going to see...

you're going to be proud of me...

I'm doing this for you.

I'm doing this for all of us.

Oh, man.

I could feel him get up and leave

and I-I heard the door close and I went out after him,

and by the time I got to the parking lot, he was gone.

Something... I don't know, there was a look in his eye.

He-he just got in the car and he took off...

...and didn't come back.

They, um...

they never found his body.

I think that was... especially hard for Mom.

Dad!

We actually watch...

we watch the movies a lot.

Uh, I couldn't for a while.

But... but once I did, I couldn't stop.

It's like, um,

it was like having him around,

you know, in a fun way.

Yeah.

You know that, uh, "Damn, you live like this?" meme?

It's so funny to me because the essence of it

is those drawings he did in college.

Black folks living their lives, being funny,

being free, being real.

He would've been really proud that

he became part of the culture.

I think that's what he wanted in the end,

to just be part of the family.

And along the way...

...he made the Blackest movie of all time.

♪ Yeah, yeah♪

♪ Got myself a notion♪

♪ One I know that you'll understand♪

♪ To set the world in motion♪

♪ By reaching out for each other's hands♪

♪ Maybe we'll discover What we should have known all along♪

♪ Yeah♪

♪ One way or another♪

♪ Together's where we both belong♪

♪ If we listen to each other's heart♪

♪ Oh, yeah♪

♪ We'll find we're never too far apart♪

♪ And maybe love is the reason why♪

♪ For the first time ever, we're seeing it eye to eye.♪

Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH