A Peek Behind The Curtain: The Beginning
Perhaps they did parallel the fall of Fleischer after all...
With the release of Behind the Curtain finally behind me, I’ve finally got some time to reflect on how it all came to be. While the general awareness of this new “Bendy” game percolated up in 2017 around the time of its release, the story of Behind the Curtain started in earnest at Al Udeid Air Force Base (قاعدة العديد الجوية) in the Qatari desert back in 2018. I had the opportunity to spend a large chunk of time doing my Targeteer work on land, which was a nice break from ship life, and gave me a 9-5 schedule to enjoy! I did a little dune bashing and swam in the inland sea, but when I wasn’t out and about in Doha and the surrounding desert, I finally had some time to give that game “Bendy & The Ink Machine” a play.
It had been in the peripherals of my feeds since it’s release the previous year, and I had taken some interest in it based off of some of the resulting fanart. From what I could gather, story about an animator returning to his old studio only to find self-inflicted supernatural horror in its place. Now plenty of you guys already know I’m something of a historian myself, and one of my favorite subjects is the soft war that raged between Max Fleischer and Walt Disney from 1929-1942, ending with Paramount Studios acquiring Fleischer due to a massive amount of unpaid advances the former had extended the latter. Didn’t help that one of the Fleischer brothers was having a very obvious affair with his secretary, morale at that place must’ve been rock-bottom for years, which was reflected in their work, and eventually destroyed the company from the inside out.
Parallel that drama, Disney had just moved to California in 1923 to be near his convalescing brother, and ended up working with producer Charles Mintz on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Alice’s Wonderland only to end up back at square one within 5 years due to Mintz having sold Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to Universal and scalped most of the animators from right under Disney’s nose. Mintz gave Disney an ultimatum: accept his terms or hit the bricks. Disney hit the bricks with Ub Iwerks, and the rest is history.
There was so much during this brief time of cultural WWI fall out and burgeoning cinematic technology to be inspired by, I was excited at the prospect of a game that would integrate the culture clash of the time into it’s narrative.
Now here I assumed the crew at Kindly Beast/Joey Drew Studios had already known all this historical background regarding Paramount, Fleischer, Disney, and the multitude of smaller studios all vying for supremacy back then, and that’s what had inspired the game in the first place. After playing through the first 4 chapters of the game, I immediately realized -
While the whisper of a good narrative was in the wind, the actual game’s story and character interactions were not my bag at all. All the things I had been expecting to play out disappeared quietly, or never even came up, and I found myself waiting for pieces of lore to coalesce that never existed in the first place. I didn’t bother finishing the game after chapter 4, and moved on… Until a while later when a chat with Hailey reminded me of the spark that was now hiding within my inner history nerd.
After monologuing about the drama with Fleischer and Disney’s studios in the 1920’s, I threw out the story I had been hoping to see in Bendy and The Ink Machine, and had lamented when it was clear the game was rocketing in the total opposite direction. It was only recently I discovered the creators didn’t even HAVE a story planned. And worse, they were actually taking FAN’S ideas and incorporating those into the game, among other things.
But that’s the beauty of stories: You can make your own.
Picture this: A young talented entrepreneurial duo launch an animation studio after years of working together on odd jobs. The company struggles along for a while on the brink of bankruptcy until the more talented artist of the founders comes up with the big one! The golden goose! The brilliant character that hits just right and rockets the studio to success! Our star animator has to step down from his executive duties to take over the new IP as lead animator and storyman, while his former, business-minded partner remains in the director’s office. While the cartoons are hitting big, the gulf between the Storyman and the Director slowly grows. After a time, the rift becomes big enough between them that the usual professional spars and bumps turn into an actual fight. Regrettable things are said, hostile actions are taken, and the Storyman quits and storms out, while the Director remains and accelerates full speed into hellish impotence and tyranny (read: micro-management). The now studio-less Storyman welcomes an Army draft notice; it’s the perfect excuse to avoid the issue altogether and escape the consequences of his actions. Then, after many years, he receives a letter from his old partner, and…
After Hailey and I threw the ball back and forth on this burgeoning tale of Max Fleischer and Walt Disney teaming up during the disastrous years of backstabbing, animator scalping, and quiet backroom sales of intellectual property, I asked her if she had any big projects planned. She didn’t, to which I then noted that her smash hit 3-D animated Bendy music video Welcome Home showed she still had a lot of people interested in this type of story. While Hailey wasn’t interested in anything directly related to where the Bendy franchise had been going, we both agreed that our story was itching to be told. 48 hrs after our brainstorming session, she DM’d me a song draft and we shortly leapt into storyboarding.
We wanted Behind the Curtain to evoke a sense of dread and eventual acceptance; the husband finally returning home after leaving to get milk 30+ years ago, the man who abdicated responsibility when his friends needed him most, the guy who screwed up royally, but finally came back to attempt to do the right thing. Adding the anima element of The Angel along with three increasingly dangerous threats to overcome (Sam , Ub, and our Big Bad) rounded out a pleasantly simple and familiar plot.
Going into the entirety of this 30+ month project’s planning and execution would take a lot more time to cover than I’d like to in today’s update, but suffice to say, this was an adventure. Look forward to more details in the coming newsletters, and I’d like to offer a hearty and sincere welcome to those of you who decided to peek behind the curtain.