I contacted Jørgen Klubien and did an interview with him to fully understand his creative approach and career. I found that doing the interview I received a lot of answers and was able to better connect parts about his career and and life in the final presentation I did last week. The interview was originally done in Danish but I have translated the text to English below.

• How did your love for the United States develop?

As a boy from Copenhagen in the 60s, pretty much everything that was exciting culturally came into my ears and eyes derived from the USA. (Or at least all I liked was the English language. Both on TV, on records and on film.) At first as a Beatles fan I was preoccupied with England and London, but then later, through my love of Carl Bark’s Donald Duck stories and through that Disney animation’s movies that one could buy on cinefilm, my curiosity about the United States and especially California developed.
But also through the American soul music that I cultivated, it was always the United States that took over the first place in my mind. I was especially preoccupied with Motown and Stevie Wonder. I had a lively imagination and imagined that there was a bridge from Denmark to the USA so you could drive over there. I wanted to go over there and see it, experience it and feel it.
At the age of 16, I was in the US for the first time, alone with a Greyhound Bus card and my cinefilm camera. On the 2 month summer trip, I had the opportunity to visit the Disney Studios through a family acquaintance who knew someone who worked there. “And the rest is history” as they say… for me. The studios exchanged letters with me about getting over there at their film/animation school and as a 19 year old I went to CalArts at the “Character Animation” studio and then I got a permanent job at the Disney Studios.

• Something I really like about e.g. The Little Wooden Boy is that you take a Disney-esque style, but add Danish humor and are not afraid to introduce some naughty elements that will normally be censored away by American media. Have your Danish values been challenged in the encounter with American culture? By this question I am thinking of democracy, Jantelov, working hours and collegial togetherness?

After many years in the industry (mostly at Disney Studios), I had learned that there was a lot of “politics” in committing to a large company with many employees. It was not just about being good, but also about who liked you. From the mid-80s and into the 90s at Disney, the management was pretty femininely oriented. They preferred to make the new films as musicals and decided on how and what stories they thought we should make. Management split from us artists and we didn’t have a voice or a say over what kind of film we made. I was quite frustrated about not sharing the same taste with the management and therefore I applied away from the studio as soon as I had obtained my permanent residence permit and US Citizenship. I guarded up north on and worked on 2 puppet movies (Nightmare Before Christmas and James and The Giant Peach) before heading to Pixar where my old buddy John Lasseter had now become creative director. They were working on their first film (Toy Story) when I joined and I was one of the first cartoonists/story artists but was set to develop their next film A Bugs Life.
But also at Pixar I was unfortunately greeted by a wall, a culture that surrounded John Lasseter, where everyone looked up to him, which he used to isolate himself with… against artists who wanted to advance and even be allowed one day to direct their own movie. I had those ambitions, of course, but it took me a long time to realize that unfortunately there was that wall. That “glass ceiling” that you were not allowed to go through. I tried to come up with original ideas for movies, but was put off on a siding anyway. Even though Pixar (John Lasseter) used my stuff.
The Little Wooden Boy was a break from studio work… I took a year off from Pixar… exhaled and waited to see if John Lasseter would make my movie idea with cars.
That year, I made The Little Wooden Boy, as a commentary on my experiences working for the major animation studios. It was a dream come true, but I also realized now that I had probably been a bit naive. When I got back to Pixar, I started working on CARS with John Lasseter, who then ended up firing me before the movie premiered so he could take all the credit for it.

• You’ve previously been inspired by fairy tales like The Ugly Duckling with The Yellow Car, and Pinocchio by The Little Wooden Boy. Besides fairytales, where do you usually get your inspiration from?

My inspiration comes from a mix of what I have read (Donald Duck), the movies I have seen and the life I live. I pull down from all the shelves as best I can. There is a lot of community between writing stories and songs.

• I read that in your story sequence “Be prepared” from Lion King, you drew inspiration from Leni Riefensthal’s “Triumph of the Will”, which elements of the film inspired you?

It was simple enough, thinking of who in world history had been a power-hungry and fantastically evil egoist with an army of dumb people around him. Hitler’s ideology is so full of powerful designs and stagings (think of how Star Wars is also inspired by it) that it is a good source of “evil”. I remembered Leni Riefensthal’s film and sat down and took notes from it. So I storyboarded the “Be Prepared” song for that idea because the script writers couldn’t come up with anything themselves. Jeff Katzenberg, who was the top creative director of Disney Animation at the time, had himself as a young boy worked in politics in New York for a governor, and was crazy about what I had done. He ordered it to come in the finished film without the director changing anything at my boards. Otherwise they were pretty unsure if it was a good idea… Anyway, it was nice for me and fun to see it on the screen as one of the few times my ideas have been allowed to come out without many other “chefs” having to interfere.

• I think it’s amazing that you try out so many different creative endeavors. What is your driving force, what drives you to constantly work forward and express yourself creatively?

Well, it’s hard to say, but I really think it’s about entertaining myself … in life that has to be lived and filled with something. It’s fun to be creative and do something. I love the same things I did as a boy: movies – music – art – comics – animation. I have been lucky so far to deal with the things that interests me. There have been ups and downs, but such is life and I love it. I want to be a part of it all!
I also basically believe that I am a person who “feels” a lot. And I like to express my feelings… sometimes it can be a problem… one can become too expressive, in a meeting for example… not pay enough attention to the feelings of others… it’s difficult being an artist and having to “conform” to everyone else. But overall, I think I have been lucky to have had more good experiences than bad ones.