As I sit in a theater at the Anaheim Convention Center, a tear rolls down my cheek. The creators and voice cast of Bluey have been talking about the Australian animated show that’s famous for its ability to not only make kids laugh, but also parents cry. It turns out that even talking about the show will make a parent cry.
Fresh off revealing the teaser for the highly anticipated movie on Friday night during Disney’s D23 fan convention, Bluey creator Joe Brumm and fellow writer Richard Jeffery showed off the original pilot of Bluey for the first time, as well as exclusive details about the development of the upcoming movie.
The original pilot — shown during a panel hosted by Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, on Saturday morning — shows dad Bandit pushing Bluey on a swing while he focuses on playing a Fruit Ninja-like game on his phone, as Bluey asks to be pushed higher and higher. Rusty and Mackenzie show up and dance as they watch Bluey’s swing fly over the top. The absent-minded Bandit then realizes he can’t see Bluey anymore — until he gets hit from behind by the young pup’s swing coming back around.
The hall was filled with laughter as the Bluey pilot ended. But what Brumm eventually went with for a show that became an instant worldwide phenomenon was a far more present and engaged father — exactly what Millennial parents want to see as we muddle our way through the challenges and privileges of having young kids.
“I didn’t want the show to be preachy,” Brumm said. “It felt more important to present a problem … and say, ‘yeah, I’ve got that problem, too, and it’s tough work, good luck with it.’”
Bluey was designed to draw in all age groups and let parents know they’re not alone. Every episode has a different writing process, but it always comes from observation and the feelings associated with real events, Brumm said.
“The first part is me writing from that feeling, the second part is adding the wider perspective on what you learned,” he explained, adding that when he started writing episodes, he suddenly had producers calling him, crying.
Fan-favorite episode Baby Race came from Brumm observing his wife struggling with adapting to motherhood — he said she found the script he had written and cried for 15 minutes after reading it.
“That’s Bluey — every inch of my life that I’ve been able to pull out of myself,” he said.
Making the show a co-viewable experience for 4-year-olds and 40-year-olds alike meant the scripts are “incredibly difficult to write,” he said. Lessons for all age groups and shared laughter are at the core of every single episode: In Faceytalk, Muffin is learning how to share a tablet with Socks, while their parents, Stripe and Trixie, are learning to share parenting, he said. In Onesies, Bluey is learning she can’t get the cheetah costume she wants, while Aunt Brandy is learning how to cope with infertility.
“I always think it’s an adults’ show that kids like,” said David McCormack, the voice of Bandit.
The Bluey movie: Turning the characters into 3D animations
The most noticeable thing about the very short movie teaser is that the characters have been transformed into 3D CG versions — they’re still definitely Bluey and Bingo, but with more shape and bounce — but Brumm said this was an easy choice to make.
“The first film I ever made was 3D, and then I spent the rest of my career in 2D hand-drawn,” he said. “When it came time to do this movie, it actually wasn’t a hard decision. … We’re always driving to get the beauty of nature into the show, and I wanted every available tool to get every blade of grass in there.
“We wanted the kids to be able to reach through and give these dogs a scratch.”
Some of the trickier parts of adapting Bluey for the big screen were rendering Bandit’s salt-and-pepper hair in 3D, and deciding, once and for all, where every room in the Heeler house actually is.
“The Bluey house is a puzzle; it makes no sense,” said Jeffery. “We had to work that out for the film.”
Amber Naismith, who is producing the movie, said it was almost her duty as an Australian to drop her life in Los Angeles and head to Brisbane to work on the Bluey movie.
“We knew it needed to be cinematic in its scope and scale,” she said on the decision to make it 3D CG. They had to get all the details into the fur and the floorboards, and redesign the characters (she said they’re drawn “like a fridge on legs” in the series), while still staying faithful to the show.
Brumm’s goal for the movie remains the same as the show: to appeal to all age groups. He said he wants rows in the cinema to be filled with 4-year-old kids, their older siblings, their parents, their grandparents and aunts and uncles.
“I want it to be not only their favorite movie, but also their first movie — and the one that sparks their love of movies,” he said.
Bluey was almost Rusty
During the panel, Brumm cited some of his earliest animation inspirations, including Astro Boy, The Simpsons, The Far Side and Peanuts. He worked on Charlie and Lola for the BBC in the UK alongside Jeffery, but had an “unbearable itch” to tell his own story after returning home to raise his family in Australia.
Taking inspiration from Peppa Pig, where each family is a different set of animals, Brumm decided to make the families in his own show different dog breeds. He began drawing all the dogs he’d ever owned, and his favorite was Rusty, the red kelpie — so he decided to make this the title character.
His decision only shifted during development because his eye kept being drawn to the bright blue heeler dog he had drawn, who was “a bit of a pain of a dog, actually.”
Once he found out that blue heelers have recessive genes that make some of them turn out red, he realized he could have a family that wasn’t all blue (“it was hard to tell who was who” when this was the original concept of the Heeler family). And the path was cleared for this to be the central family for the show.
Rusty remains his, Jeffery’s and Naismith’s favorite character, while McCormack chose Unicorse and Melanie Zanetti, the voice of Chilli, chose Calypso.
And as for their favorite episodes? Choices ranged from classics including Cricket and Sleepytime to the 28-minute special The Sign. But McCormack chose Grandad, purely for the emotive pull on parents and grandparents alike in the final scene, where Chilli mentions it’s been a long time since her father took her swimming as a little girl and he tells her: “No, it was yesterday.”
Cue the tear rolling down my cheek.
