A REFLECTION ON THOMAS M. DISCH

My animated adaptation of Thomas Disch’s novella The Brave Little Toaster has often been labeled “dark”. Even terrifying.

It’s no coincidence that most of Thomas’s sci-fi novels and poetry wear the same dark label.

Stephen King wrote that Thomas’s style, “conjures menace out of the most mundane surroundings".

Yes, his stories were often infused with wit, but a wicked sort that pokes at weighty human issues as inherently silly in the grand scheme of things.

It is said that he took a detour from the dark side while writing a couple kids’ stories.

But even that so-called detour was infused with sophisticated wordsmithing that seemed to appeal not so much to kids as to the inner-kids within adults who were already readers of his dark novels.

On February 21, 2026, while re-reading The Brave Little Toaster novella for the first time since 1985, I had to look up 4 words in one chapter that purposely flaunted knowledge that 99.9% of kids and their parents wouldn’t know - before reading the part where the love-stricken flower pleaded with the Toaster to tear its roots from the soil so that it could die in the embrace of its own reflection, mistakenly perceived as a beloved companion.

Not for kids. At least not typical kids.

That’s what made me fall in love with Thomas’s story back in 1985. I didn’t want to make a kids’ film.

While completing my CG work on the original TRON, I teamed up with my CalArts classmate and dear friend Brad Bird in an effort to create a boldly film noir animated feature. Will Eisner granted us legal rights to adapt his dark, cinematic, character-driven comic The Spirit. Our angel investor was none other than Gary Kurtz, who was on a box office and critical winning streak as producer of American Graffiti, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. We seemed poised for success.

Our dream was for The Spirit to be the industry-wide disrupter for our generation that Snow White had been for Walt’s.

In cinema history, we wanted The Spirit to belong in the company of Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Having the producer of Star Wars on our team took our passion past pipe dream to a plausible, if not sure thing.

But our plans fell from white-hot promise to fading dream in a five-year marathon that collided with fatal industry biases.

One-by-one, major movie studios professed effusive love for our original script. But when they found out it was going to be an animated feature, they recoiled, saying that animation was only for kids.

History disproves that. Walt’s victory on the fateful night of Snow White’s premiere was to make a theater packed with the era’s adult elites of cinema weep. No kids.

Our mentors, Walt’s “Nine Old Men” told us bluntly that they never made kids’ films. They made films. Films that appealed to seniors, adults, teens, kids and the inner child in every grownup. Mainstream films, meant to reach the broadest audience.

We meant to do that again, and do it with the muscle of a Star Wars producer. When that effort died, the dream didn’t. I still wanted it.

So, when I received an urgent call to jump on a plane and reunite with my TRON-era producer Tom Wilhite, my dream stirred with new glimmers of life.

The glimmers were extinguished when, at an LA restaurant, he slid a book across the table that screamed kids’ movie – The Brave Little Toaster.

Tom told me that John Lasseter had hoped to adapt the book as CGI at Disney, building off the innovations that Bill Kroyer and I had pioneered on TRON.

But Disney had fired Lasseter.

Tom then bought the novella rights and took it outside of Disney to be an indie animated feature.

But people warned Tom that the novella was destined to become a short - not a feature. Here’s where Tom’s pitch turned personal.

He believed that The Brave Little Toaster’s story could be expanded to make it a worthy feature - and he thought I was the right person to do it.

He knew the feature would need a witty script - and he thought I was the perfect person to write it.

He needed a director he could trust - me.

He knew that for years, I’d been trying to launch The Spirit, and now I was truly starving to create.

So - he couldn’t offer me much money, but he could offer me the chance to develop, write and direct an animated feature. Now. Not sometime off in the future.

And he needed my answer now. But I could read the novella first. If I did it by tomorrow.

I read it.

It wasn’t a kids’ book.

It was the clever creation of a sci-fi author, speaking to the inner child in adults who tip-toed to the edge of darkness with him in his novels.

It was charming, silly, thoughtful, poignant and twisted. I could work with that.

But to work as a full feature it needed more character definition, more story expansion and more emotional flow, with higher highs and lower lows - just what Wilhite was hiring me to do.

In re-reading it now, I find common ground, like the vacuum needing to be prevented from chewing his own cord. And differences, like the appliances never being reunited with their owner, or surviving an electromagnet and crusher in a graveyard junkyard.

But in a bigger way, I feel the dark wit of Thomas Disch waving in invitation, signaling to me that it was safe to dive in. And I take special note of the long novella sequence in which two squirrels saw themselves reflecting back from the Toaster’s chrome as the flower did. I saw myself reflecting back from that chrome too - the twenty-something who was starving for the freedom to make “Bam Cinema” - cinema to hit the emotions hard for audiences of all ages. Cinema vividly reflecting the emotional highs and lows of my own life. My crew saw themselves reflecting back too, I know. We’ve compared notes in the years since, and believe that The Brave Little Toaster gave us all the most creative freedom we’ve ever had.

Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Toaster. And thank you, Thomas M. Disch.

I mourn your sad passing in 2008, but would like it stated for history that you live on in all of us who jumped into your imaginative story.

And I proudly reflect you back to you:

“You are my friend; I see in you


An object sturdy, staunch and true;


 A fellow mettlesome and trim;


 A brightness that the years can’t dim.”

Jerry Rees

March 2, 2026