‘I’d Like You to Meet My Dad’: 15 Trivia Tidbits About ‘A Goofy Movie’
Spun out of the Disney Afternoon series, Goof Troop, and featuring one of Disney’s sauciest furry characters to date, 1995’s A Goofy Movie has left a surprisingly lasting legacy. The film’s fervent fanbase will typically point to the father/son dynamic between Goofy and Max as what really got to them, or they’ll simply declare it to be the greatest movie of all time. While our personal praise won’t hit that high, there is no denying that the one where Goofy gets to have an actual character beyond “just goofing around” has seen its influence spread far and wide, inspiring scenes in series like Gravity Falls, and creatives like Domee Shi, who gave us Turning Red.
Here, then, are some trivia tidbits about the film that finally gave a classic Disney character the chance to become a bona fide movie star…
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Shoutout to a Classic Horror
Director Kevin Lima took a cue from An American Werewolf in London when he set out to create the scene where Max, in a dream, transforms into his dad.
Goofy or Bill Farmer?
Farmer, the voice behind Goofy since 1987, said they had him speak in his own voice when recordings initially kicked off. “And I’m going home thinking, ‘No one wants to hear that (me),” Farmer relayed. “They want to hear Goofy.’” The powers that be eventually agreed, but only after Farmer had recorded all his lines. While a movie like this would normally have been a week’s work for a voice artist like Farmer, he ended up recording a whopping 43 days as the filmmakers did a lot of experimentation with Goofy’s voice.
No Goofy Director
Lima, who first entered the industry with The Brave Little Toaster, scored a job at Disney as a character animator for The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company. He would later do character design on The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under and Beauty and the Beast, along with some storyboarding on Aladdin and serving as head of story on The Lion King.
There Was a Chad
During the film’s 25th-anniversary virtual watch party for Disney’s D23 fan club, the director live-tweeted several revelations, including Max having to originally compete for Roxanne’s affection with a dawg named Chad.
The Lost TV Special
A Goofy Movie originated from Disney’s desire to create a Goof Troop TV special. In the early 1990s, the company was looking to create more feature adaptations of their Disney Afternoon properties in the vein of DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp.
An Emotional Story
From the jump, the plan was to hit folks in the feels in regard to one of Disney’s most oddball characters (whose original conception left much to be desired). “Instead of just keeping Goofy one-dimensional as he’s been in the past,” the director explained, “we wanted to give an emotional side that would add to the emotional arc of the story. We wanted the audience to see his feelings instead of just his antics.”
Goofy’s First Movie
After enjoying 30 shorts and his own TV series, Goofy finally got to star in his first feature film here — even though he still had to share the spotlight with his Goof Troop son. In 2000, Goofy would get to appear in his second and, as of this writing, final movie with the sequel, An Extremely Goofy Movie.
No Reunion of Goofs
Originally, Goofy and Max were going to stop over at a Goofy family reunion on their way to Lake Destiny.
A Director’s Cameo
Lima voiced Lester of Lester’s Possum Park.
Star Power
Powerline, the pop star played by Tevin Campbell, was envisioned as a combination of Michael Jackson, Prince and Bobby Brown. “They just had me do some dance moves (in front of a green screen), and I doubt if they based any of Powerline’s dance moves off of me,” Campbell told Forbes.
Tevin Campbell Never Thought the Movie’s Songs Would Blow Up Like They Did
Campbell/Powerline’s songs “Stand Out” and “I-2-I” became wildly popular among the movie’s fans. “Those songs didn’t really blow up until after,” he explained in the same Forbes interview. “I didn’t take note of the songs’ influence until years after. I remember doing Broadway — I started Broadway in 2005. … I had kids coming up to me, asking me, ‘Are you Powerline?’ I was like, ‘What? How did you know that?’ ‘Because I can tell — your voice is the same.’ So, I never really knew the impact it had because I had this whole other music career.”
Inspiring ‘DuckTales’
Co-producer of the 2017 DuckTales reboot, Frank Angones, gave a lot of credit to A Goofy Movie when he told a fan on Tumblr that “Goofy Movie had a HUGE influence on us early on. We always said we wanted our show to do for Donald what Goofy Movie did for Goofy.”
More of Treeny and Wendell
Lima tweeted that, originally, we would’ve had way more of the duo of Treeny and Wendell…
…but at least Treeny got to make one last cameo in the movie.
Based on A Father-Daughter Relationship
Jeffrey Katzenberg, Disney’s chief at the time, was the one to suggest both the project and the parent-child relationship plot because “like a lot of parents, (Katzenberg) was struggling at the time with his teenage daughter,” Jymn Magon, Goof Troop’s story supervisor and A Goofy Movie co-writer, told Vanity Fair. “He said, ‘I couldn’t figure out how to get through to her. But we ended up taking a car trip together. Somewhere along the way, we bonded. I want a story like that.’ I said, ‘Okay.’”
18
That’s how many takes Farmer had to do to get Goofy’s line “How many cups of sugar does it take to get to the moon?” just right.
