Discounting all those generic “Teddys,” Winnie-the-Pooh is arguably the world’s best-loved bear. Created by A.A. Milne in 1926, Pooh has long cavorted in books, plays, radio shows and recordings, but his current celebrity owes much to his Disney incarnation as a sweet, silly old animated character.
Since 1966, the Disney studio has produced an enduringly popular series of Pooh cartoons for theaters, TV and video. And since the start of the new millennium, native St. Louisan Brian Hohlfeld has emerged as Disney’s go-to Pooh guy.
Hohlfeld, 50, grew up near St. Louis Hills, attended both Saint Louis University High and Saint Louis University and worked in local theater during his early professional years. In 1984, he followed a friend and high-school classmate, director Ken Kwapis, into the movie biz and moved to Los Angeles. He has since had a hand in writing two direct-to-video Pooh releases and a pair of theatrical features, Piglet’s Big Movie (2003) and Pooh’s Heffalump Movie (2005).
Now, as a writer, story editor and executive producer on the new Disney Channel series My Friends Tigger & Pooh, Hohlfeld ... er ... bears the responsibility for moving Pooh into the new age of computer animation.
No longer the simple flat figures of old, Pooh and his pals will be rendered with computer graphics that suggest three-dimensional solidity. Perhaps even more disconcerting to the stodgier of Milne’s acolytes, Christopher Robin—the one human in Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood—plays essentially a cameo role. The series instead introduces a 6-year-old girl, Darby, who’s accompanied by another fresh face, the dog Buster. The show adds another new element by occasionally squeezing Tigger and Pooh into homemade sweaters and transforming them into Super Sleuths.
Hohlfeld regularly reassures traditionalist fans that the timeless aspect of Pooh’s world hasn’t been compromised. “Darby is a 6-year-old contemporary American girl,” he says, “but the only way you’d know she’s contemporary is her attitude. The most modern thing we’ve introduced is a scooter. These things will play just as well 20 years from now because there are no modern references, no pop culture impinging. It’s still very much the Hundred Acre Wood.”
Hohlfeld began work on My Friends Tigger & Pooh late in 2005, and the result of that long labor (an episode takes eight months to produce) will finally debut on May 12, with shows airing on Saturday and Sunday.
While putting the finishing touches on the show, Hohlfeld chatted by telephone from Los Angeles:
You’ve become something of a Winnie-the-Pooh specialist. Were you interested in Pooh when you were a kid? Actually, I never heard of Winnie-the-Pooh until I was in college. I was purely a Dr. Seuss guy when I was a kid. My girlfriend in college, Amy Loui [now a well-known St. Louis actress], was a big Winnie-the-Pooh fan, so that’s when I first became familiar with it. When Hunter, my daughter, was born, we ran through the whole Winnie-the-Pooh oeuvre. By 1999, when they first approached me, I was pretty familiar with the characters and the history of the Disney version of them.
What was your reaction when you encountered the characters for the first time in college? Originally I thought, “Well, this is cute,” and I was probably just a little dismissive. But as I started to watch it with Hunter, I think what appealed to me mostly—and what still appeals to me—is the sense of community, the fact that everybody gets along, that it’s a safe environment. I think that’s what’s so appealing to kids about it: It’s this group of friends who all support each other. All of the characters, in essence, make up one personality: They’re all different aspects of one person, which is why they’re so timeless. One day you might wake up and feel like Pooh in the morning, and by the time afternoon comes, you feel like Eeyore. People will invariably walk up and tell me their favorite Pooh character, and it’s always interesting—it’s very revealing of their personality.
So which Pooh character’s your favorite? Call me a purist, but I’d have to go with Pooh. He’s sort of an unflappable Zen master, a cork floating in the water, who nonetheless is very much at ease with himself and enjoys his lot in life. Pooh isn’t a leader and isn’t the life of the party, but somehow he always manages to come up with the right thing to say or the moment of enlightenment. At least that’s how I’d like to think of myself. And wouldn’t we all want to be as well-loved as Pooh? There’s also his greedy, self-serving side and his insatiable appetite, which I can definitely relate to. Second choice: Eeyore, of course.
Did you feel any trepidation about handling these iconic characters? A little. There’s always that history looking over your shoulder as you’re writing. On the other hand, once I get into the specific piece and the theme, I’m not thinking of that; I’m just trying to get into the characters. I still get a kick out of it. It’s very cool knowing that our little group of writers are the only ones making stories up for these guys. It’s fun. And I think in general, Disney has been very respectful of the property—not all the shows might hew exactly to Milne’s stories, but I think in tone they still do.
Have you tracked the reactions of Pooh aficionados to your work? I’ve been very happy and lucky about that. Both of the features were very well received critically. Most people talk about the nice gentle tone of the pictures, which was very close to that of the books. Not only that, but also what a nice antidote it was to these fast-paced animated films that you usually see.
I suppose any future films will depend on how the new show is embraced. Yes. There’s kind of no going back now, once you see Darby in the world.
You mention the frenetic pace of most animated films today. Has the new series attempted to ratchet up the pace of the typical Pooh story? I wouldn’t say the pace as much as the storytelling, with the introduction of Darby and the concept of the Super Sleuths. They ride scooters, and Darby’s climbing trees, and there’s a dog—but the things they’re investigating are things like what happened to the rumbly in Pooh’s tumbly and how do we cheer up Eeyore. It’s still very much the Pooh world; the storytelling is maybe just a little bit quicker, not as pastoral. The fact that we’re CG is the big difference. Seeing the characters like you’ve never seen them is what brings it into the modern era.
What are the advantages of computer graphics? It makes the characters more real—but not in a bad way. It’s lush. The animation is so beautiful, the colors we’re working with ... It really brings the whole Hundred Acre Wood to life. So there will be the gee-whiz factor at first—but once people get used to it, it’ll become as if it were always like that.
You’ve become a specialist in children’s TV and film. would you ever have predicted that? One of my first jobs out of college was working in children’s theater—it was something that fell in my lap, not something I particularly wanted to do at the time, but I enjoyed it, and I became a student of children’s literature. After working on various kids’ projects over the years, I’ve sort of come to grips with it. I think it was what I was meant to do. I just feel that’s where my sensibilities lie, especially with preschool. It’s nice being able to escape into this gentle world of the Hundred Acre Wood every day.
Brian Hohlfeld: The Whole Story
Brian Hohlfeld is by no means lost outside the Hundred Acre Wood. Definitive proof that he has trafficked in more adult fare is offered by one of his Theatre Project Company credits from his St. Louis days: the direction of Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, which bluenoses infamously attempted to shutter in 1983.
During Hohlfeld’s first stint in Hollywood, his writing credits included the TV movie On the 2nd Day of Christmas (with Mary Stuart Masterson and Mark Ruffalo) and the feature He Said, She Said (co-directed by Ken Kwapis and his wife, Marisa Silver).
When Hohlfeld returned to St. Louis in late 1997, he continued to work for Disney and other studios long-distance, but he also wrote and directed the locally shot features Abdul Loves Cleopatra and Another Christmas and the documentary A Magical Life: Circus Flora. He returned to L.A. in 2005 to work on My Friends Tigger & Pooh, but he visits St. Louis frequently.
