Malcolm Gladwell

I love Angus.

I think Angus is a genius.

Angus has been featured on more revisionist history episodes than anyone else.

Our three-part rewrite of The Little Mermaid, In Defense of Paw Patrol, and, and this is relevant to the story I'm about to tell you, we did a series of episodes a few years back called Development Hell.

where we interviewed screenwriters about their best idea that never made it to the screen.

And Angus came on to talk about an absolutely bananas sci-fi project he worked on with a good friend of his, the Hollywood screenwriter Gary Goldman.

And during that episode, I concluded that not only is Angus a genius, but Gary is a genius too.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand.

Gary Goldman grew up in the South.

He was a protege of the novelist Walker Percy, went to Brandeis, spent some time working in a hospital in Israel during the Yom Kippur War, ended up in Hollywood, and has worked with everyone.

Paul Verhoeven, James Cameron, Ridley Scott, David Fincher, Steven Spielberg.

Here, Angus is referring to the first Zootopia film, which came out in 2016, featuring a rabbit named Judy Hopps and a con artist fox named Nick Wilde, who live in a world inhabited entirely by animals and who have to work together to solve a mystery involving the disappearance of predators.

It's very good.

Zootopia did very well.

It grossed a zillion dollars and won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

Gary watched all this success closely.

Why was this such a big deal for Gary?

Here's what he told Angus.

Wait, okay, so many things to pick up on.

Gary, take me back to the beginning about the origins of this idea of a movie called Zootopia.