The year is 1989 and I want to be where the podcasts are.

The movie The Little Mermaid.

Hello everyone and welcome to

A Spoolde

I am Paul Sheer, a beloved film and I love to talk about film with my co-host who is a critic

who writes for the New York Times Amy Nicholson, Amy, so excited to chat with you about this movie today.

Oh Paul, you've been a part of my world for so long.

And now here we go enriching our bond one more episode by one more episode.

And I got to say not dragging your feet here because I know how you feel about Disney and animated films,

but this is, you know, I feel like you're coming into our conversation about Little Mermaid with an

open mind because The Little Mermaid is a stepping stone, a big stepping stone for Disney,

and I think revolutionizes the model of the animated film.

You know, I try to act all cool and intellectual and blah, blah, blah on this podcast.

I do a very bad job of it.

And here I may as well just say when I was a kid, I had a McDonald's toy set of Little Mermaid and

yeah, it was in my bathtub. What am I going to do? I can't be cool. I love it. I love it. And I'll

say this as well. What I really like about our discussion today is the deeper reading that we're

giving to this movie. I think a lot of people look at this movie on a surface level and we go a

little bit deeper in our conversation and talk about the gay panic that was going on at the time

and how that kind of informs this movie and it's a lot more subversive than you would actually think.

You know, Amy, I got gadgets, I got gizmos, and I got this thing over here that you know what it does?

It unspools it.

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