Wishbone Documentary: The Real Story Behind Iconic Children’s Show

What’s up everybody? This is Fred Richani. In this interview, we chat about What’s the Story? Wishbone, the official documentary of the iconic series Wishbone, featuring series director Joey Stewart, producer Betty Buckley, and iconic Wishbone voice actor Larry Brantley. Giving children an excitement for reading. It was kids and dogs. The most expressive dog I’ve ever seen on a camera. The dog was an actor. You’re working with another actor. Whole group of people that came together to work on something that they had never really done. It was my first film set. I didn’t know what all these people were doing. I didn’t know anything. I was so naive to go from getting a script to shooting it in one week.

It sounds impossible. It was a fast pace cuz this was unlike anything anybody had done. We all had the same question which was how are we going to do this? Hey Alen, it’s dinner time. The reason we could do what we did was because that dog could perform. What if the dog were the real hero in the story? The goes to wishbone. Wishbone. Wishbone. [screaming and cheering] Why do you feel like this was the right time to tell the story of Wishbone? Mainly because over the last 30 years, Wishbone never went away. You know, the fan base is amazing. It’s always been there. Ever since we wrapped the show, going from project to project and crew members like to talk to each other about what they’ve done in the past.

When they find out I worked on Wishbone, it’s the only thing they wanted to talk to me about. They didn’t care about any other projects. And that goes with all the fans, too. Anytime I met up with people and they realized I worked on the show, the questions just started coming. So, I was on a movie with Betty about 13 years ago and we started talking shop and one idea came up, maybe we try and get the series back up and running, but that became a just a huge overwhelming task. But we have remained friends with the cast and crew over all this time. So, we realized with the 30-year anniversary coming up of the original broadcast and us being filmmakers, we’re the right team and the right time to make the documentary and get all these questions answered.

Amazing. And based on what you said, it sounds like most of the cast and crew still kept in touch. So, was it difficult at all to kind of get everybody back into a room this time to tell the story of the show and its legacy? No, not at all. In fact, I wish we could have gotten more. We got quite a few. And, they came from all over. I mean, Carol Kale, our steel photographer, Brian Tur, one of the trainers, Mary Chris Wall, Angie Hughes, who were cast members on the show, they all came in from Los Angeles. One of our producers came in from New Orleans.

You know, once we reached out, and we reached out to just about everybody we were still in contact with. It was amazing the amount of support and people wanting to be able to share their their part of this bigger story. Yeah. And the only you know regret I have is that we couldn’t have Joy jokes about maybe making a 12-part series. I mean there we had a really big cast and crew. We could have talked to a lot more people but you know we’d have to make one finite movie in a small amount of time. So we did. But are you surprised that the that this also still resonates with the fans after all these years, especially ones like myself who are all grown up?

A little bit, but not really. I mean, it was this experience for me was a little bit like making the show. We were kind of in our bubble thinking there’s an audience. [clears throat] because over the years, people would out of the blue just send me a meme or a you know, there was it was seemed to constantly be floating around pop culture. But it’s been wild to be honest. You know, the reaction and it’s wonderful to find fans like you, Fred. Were there any difficulties on the distribution side of things? Oh, sure. I mean, making movies for 30 years, distribution is always a huge task.

And we talked to a lot of distribution companies. A lot of people were interested in distributing it, but we felt we were the team to do it and make sure it went the right direction and got into the hands of the fans in the right way without being exploited. And so, yes, distribution is always a headache, but we in theory self-released it. We got it out on all the platforms that everybody’s used to seeing it on. So, it was a huge task, but we mainly did it ourselves and nobody will notice the difference between it going through a major distributor or going through ourselves. [clears throat] So, somebody who’s made quite a done a lot of work in the film industry, would you say even though there are still challenges in the market at times a bit oversaturated that it’s easier to release a film these days as opposed to say even like 10 15 years ago?

Oh, absolutely. Because there’s all these different platforms and you know the way that we’re doing it allows us more connection with our audience. It’s just more onetoone and no those things weren’t really available 1015 years ago you know the film hub the bitmax and all that sort of thing. So it’s really giving a lot it things are so changing in this industry constantly but especially now. So we find it I find it personally a wonderful thing in regards to today’s climate. It seems like kind of public television public broadcasting is a bit under attack underfunded. You can make the man’s always been kind of underfunded over over the last few decades and everything.

There’s kind of a lack of third spaces these days for kids to just be kids. Hypothetically speaking, if there was an opportunity to bring back Wishbone or some incarnation of Wishbone, do you think that there is a space for it in this current climate as far as platforms and just getting funding and all that? I personally do, but you know, like I said, the you know, the whole film television landscape is just constantly evolving. And it’s basically about getting getting the rights and then, you know, setting it up, getting the money, making the deal, that kind of thing. The thing about public television and public media that I’m personally really passionate about is, well, I mean, I was the parent of someone like your age when I was.

So, it’s the it was it’s the number one safe destination for parents still today for their children. And I believe and hope and pray that it will have long life despite everything that’s happening. I certainly see that with my local area. Austin PBS is very prolific in our community and commissions a lot of programming. So I just hope that continues across the country. What surprised you more, finding the perfect voice actor or finding the perfect dog? Or do they kind of go hand in hand? Oh wow. Well, that you don’t have one without the other. So, finding the dog was just fabulous and sort of like everything with this show, I mean, just serendipitous and it fell together.

And finding Larry was fun. It was hilarious because he well, it’s in the movie. You’ve seen it. But he just was himself, you know, and he showed his a little bit of his personality into finding us Wishbone’s personality and yeah, and then their our character was born. So he was on the page, but it really came to life that way. And so yeah, it was it had to go together. As someone who’s still very much active in this industry, Larry, how does it feel to still be recognized all these years later? And do you feel like Wishbone is still the project you get asked most about these days?

It 100% is you know I’ve moved on in my career. I’ve done a lot of other really great stuff but you know Wishbones started my career such as it is and it’s still the thing that people want to talk the most about when I travel around the country I do cons and stuff like that and that is the first thing. What was really interesting to me was the first con I ever did you know you’ve got your banner hung up and whatever. It was an anime con. And these two like 10, 12 year old kids came up. They wanted to talk about anime. Their parents saw that I was also the voice of Wishbone and they just sort of gently pushed their children out of the way so that they could talk to me about a show that they loved as kids.

And that happens everywhere I go. So [clears throat] it is a bit surprising to me that the show has had the longevity that it does. I think there’s lots of reasons for that. First and foremost, I think that no one had ever even attempted to do anything like this show before. And to the best of my knowledge, no one has since. You know, we’re shooting on 16 millimeter film. We’re basically making a movie every week with an original cast, an original score, the very beginnings of what we now know as CG, lots of physical effects on set. And the technical and logistical challenges were daunting to say the least.

But I think the reason it holds up is probably the same reason why kids are rediscovering vinyl. There’s something honest about knowing how hard it was and difficult it was to make. And we didn’t have a lot of technology to make things easier. And honestly, if the show were going to be remade today, I can’t see us making it any differently than we did back then. We would choose to go the hard route because it was the honest route and because it’s real honest to goodness filmm certainly and I think too as an uncle of two young boys as well I it actually educates you right it’s not the quote unquote brain route like you do learn something as well so from a filmmaking standpoint you can appreciate it and then of course just from a content standpoint you’re really learning a lot watching it in a small episode everything you just said yeah yeah I mean one of the things really fun is you know, things would happen that would be by accident, like wishbone, I mean, soccer would scratch or something and then Larry would react to that and that would be really funny, you know, and then there were all this kind of stuff that wasn’t really planned.

And that’s what made it to me really magical and special that you can’t necessarily if you’re perfectly planned, you know, it was real. It was real. Is there anything in the making of the documentary that you learned about Wishbone or about yourselves in the process of it? Anything that maybe gave you perspective or something you uncovered? It just brought back memories of the task at the time, which was which we didn’t realize at the time was as big as it was. At the time, we were just young and trying to make it work and going running on Instinct and whatever we could do to make a great show.

And I had kind of forgotten that. And when I went back and put all the archival material together and got these interviews together, I kind of that’s what it reminded me of. Honestly, I kind of look back and go, “Wow, we really did that.” You know, because what Joey was saying, you know, and talking to people, I realized we all got these jobs and we were all like, “Oh my god, we got to work really.” And so, we just put our heads down and we were working so hard that you didn’t really think about it, if that makes sense. So yeah, it’s the perspective has been really fun to look back at.

Amazing. Well, we’ll get you on a high note frame, but that hasn’t already been convinced. Why should people check out What’s the Story? Wishbone. I think after 30 years of the fans have a chance to actually get excited about, you know, pulling back the curtain and seeing how the sausage was made, watching soccer do his tricks day in day out, see how he did it, see how the movie was made. It’s kind of like, you know, if you were a fan of Star Wars growing up, but just now the documentary came out to tell you all about it. So that’s how I hope it resonates with the fans and it’s a really wonderful time way for us and for you to revisit a really joyful wonderful time.