Kiki's Delivery Service: Setting the Record Straight about the English Language Script

I happened to be on the official DISNEY D23 site a few minutes ago, and I browsed to a section called "Ask Dave." It was originally a place where the late Disney archivist, David Shepard, would answer obscure Disney history questions submitted by users. I have no idea who's running it now after Shepard's death a few years ago. Anyway, a question was asked about Disney's English-language dubs of Hayao Miyazaki's brilliant Japanese animated feature film classics. Astonishingly, the answer to the question given on the site is 100% WRONG!!! It implies that John Lassiter was responsible for getting Disney to acquire Miyazaki's masterpieces and that he supervised the dubbing. It specifically mentions "KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE" as being one of the films supervised by Lassiter. All of this is TOTAL B.S! How do I know? Because I'M THE ONE who wrote the English-language dialogue script for "KIKI" (and another Miyazaki film, "LAPUTA"), and I can assure you John Lassiter was nowhere in sight when these films were dubbed. In fact, my memory is that Disney's acquisition of Miyazaki's animated films and the decision to dub them was made YEARS BEFORE Disney acquired Pixar and installed Lassiter in his lofty position. And Lassiter had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with me being hired to write the scripts for those films or with the actual dubbing of the films with which I was involved. NOTHING!!! I do get tired of the film industry's natural inclination to bend and distort history in favor of bloated egos of overgrown babies like Lassiter. But the fact is that while Lassiter (allegedly and reportedly) was off making unwanted sexual advances to female animators against their wishes at the company he was running, I was busy writing scripts of which I am supremely proud for a master filmmaker whom I admire greatly.





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