“Because of my dad’s career as a Disney animator, animation has always been a part of my life,” says Max Keane, son of Glen Keane, and the director and writer of the new Netflix TV series, Trash Truck. Born in California, Max and his family moved to Paris when he was 14. He stayed in Europe after graduating from the American School, studying animation in Ireland for a year. Upon returning to the US and studying at CalArts, he pursued live action productions but realized he missed animation and in 2013 he joined forces with his dad to create an interactive short with Google called Duet. “I was the production designer on that and also helped direct the interactive team,” he says. “It felt good to be using all my skillsets for something that was a more personal story that I could be a part of. That was the start of Glen Keane Productions.” The father-son team collaborated on Dear Basketball and have released Over the Moon and Trash Truck this year. Here, we learn more about Max’s inspiration behind his new preschool show.
What inspired the concept of Trash Truck?
When my son Henry was about 1 1/2, one of the first words he said was “Trash.” He was obsessed with garbage trucks, which he always referred to as trash trucks. He would shout out “TRASH TRUCK!” whenever we saw one on the street. For nap time, I would usually have to drive him around to get him to sleep, and he would wake up in his car seat and sit upright and say “TRASH!” His obsession for these big trucks consumed our family, and soon my wife Megan and daughter, Olive, and I would rush to the window to see the trash truck drive up to the house. We would watch YouTube videos of trash trucks, read books about them, and play with toy trash trucks in the house. I never quite understood it, until this one morning…
It was a cool foggy morning in Los Angeles. I was standing on the curb holding Henry in his pajamas. At the end of the street, we could see the flashing lights from the trash truck approaching. The truck drove towards us through the foggy morning air. It was as if it were a large creature coming to visit. As it pulled up in front of us, I looked up at all the interesting shapes, lights, and welded metal. There were grimy hydraulic hoses and levers. Then it reached its big arm out, and with a loud clunk, it grabbed the trash can and emptied it into the hopper, then slammed it back down with a plastic thud. That’s when I saw what my son had been seeing all along…I thought, “Wow Henry, I see it. This thing is amazing!” Then with an air brake hiss and a rumble, the truck drove away, and as it did, the driver honked a couple happy truck honks. HONK! HONK! Henry leaned out of my arms and waved to the trash truck and said, “Bye, trash truck.” I remember thinking, “Ah man, I wish that big truck knew how much this little boy loved him.” That night, I told him a bedtime story about a little boy whose best friend was a garbage truck named…Trash Truck. I loved the idea of this friendship between a little boy and his hero trash truck, while to everyone else… it’s just a garbage truck. That was the initial inspiration for the show. Then, over the course of several years and some help from Glen Keane, Gennie Rim, and Angie Sun, it turned into a kids show.
You have obviously grown up around animation. How did that experience inform the way you approached this project and the visual interpretation?
Growing up around animation and watching my dad [Glen Keane] work was always fun to see. But I probably took a lot of it for granted. Though I think something that has informed the way I approached Trash Truck was when I was growing up I watched my dad believe in the characters he was creating and the worlds that they inhabited. There is a deep sense of belief he has in what he’s making. I think that was something I could relate to even as a kid. It was the same place I would crawl into in my mind when I played with my toys or did a drawing. I was living those little moments. I wanted to find that experience again through this show and relate that to Hank and his world. If it weren’t for having grown up around a dad who put value on that, I don’t know if it’s something I would have valued myself. But it was an approach that I wanted to take with me when creating Trash Truck.
Also, visually I wanted the show to have a similar captivating draw to the audience. The world of Trash Truck is tactile and realistic, but is also playful and has a slight feeling that a kid has imagined it. I wasn’t sure how we were going to make this seemingly unremarkable world look fresh and interesting.
This is your first show as a showrunner. What are some of your lessons learned from the experience and what advice would you give other first time creators?
Well, as a first time showrunner working on the first season of my first show, everything was new. For me this meant I was defining everything as I went, and that can be a little scary. But I was truly lucky and had an incredible group of people on this project with me from the production to the story team to directors and art directors, editorial to music and sound design….they were all so understanding of the process and were ok to try out ideas and let me search creatively. And sometimes we would go back to the original idea, or we would find something new that was better. I also had a great creative support with me, Angie Sun, who was the story editor and creative producer. I couldn’t have done it without her help. I really needed someone to be on this journey with. So I think if I were to give any advice to a first time showrunner it would be these two things. 1. Listen to your gut. Sometimes following that voice inside can be hard but it’s usually “right” and if it’s “wrong”… that’s ok you’ll find something better 2. Work with someone that understands what you are trying to make. Two heads can be better than one.
This is a CG show. Can you talk a bit about the choice to go CG versus 2D?
I love both mediums. It was hard to choose. But one of the first things I did when developing this show was to sit and build a cardboard trash truck. From then on, I knew I wanted the show to have a similar tactile and grounded quality, like you could reach out and put your hands around it. I thought CG or even stop-motion could be a good medium for that, but CG felt like it would give us the most flexibility for animation when working on a tight series timeline. So we decided to go with CG, but I was interested to see if we could push the quality bar a little more than what is typically seen in kids shows. That can be a hard thing to articulate verbally, so we decided to do a CG proof-of-concept test. It wasn’t the final look of the show but it gave us a level of quality and tone that I knew I wanted to shoot for. I’m really happy with the choice to go with CG, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been done in 2D. I just think it would have to had a slightly different tone in 2D. But now saying that, I kind of want to try and do it in 2D, HA! Maybe for another project.
What was your favorite part of the creative process?
That’s a tough question. There are so many stages of this creative process, and they each require a different skill set. I enjoyed aspects of each part. I particularly enjoyed writing. But my favorite part of this project would have to be the recording sessions with the cast. It was a once in a lifetime experience. Brian Baumgartner (The Office) voices Walter, Lucas Neff (Raising Hope) voices Donny, and Jackie Loeb voices Ms. Mona. Aside from being incredibly talented and funny, they were all just really good people that I looked forward to spending time with every week. Then what’s more, Glen my dad played Trash Truck and that was a lot of fun watching him create a voice for a truck that only speaks in honks and motor revs. I think he blew out his voice a couple times, ha! Also my wife Megan (who is an actor under the name Megan Paul) voiced the Mom character, so I would get to record her and make her repeat one word lines 63 times. But she’s a pro and rolled with it. And the greatest part of all was that my two kids Henry and Olive played Hank and his sister Olive. They stole the show. They were so perfect and authentic. I’m incredibly proud of them and forever grateful to have gotten this experience to be able to make this show with my family. I’ll remember those days for the rest of my life.
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