Why the ‘Care Bears’ Movie Still Endures 40 Years Later

Saturday Morning Cartoons United is taking up the charge in celebrating the world of nostalgic childhood television and film to bring people of Los Angeles together and help creatives affected by the wildfires earlier this year. The nonprofit organization and the American Cinematheque recently presented The Care Bears Movie, toasting its 40th anniversary and kicking off a monthly screening series to support fundraising efforts.

At the event, the 1985 film’s director, Arna Selznick (who also worked on the Star Wars: Ewoks and Droids series), and Care Bears fan Eric Bauza (Looney Tunes), the current voice of Bugs Bunny who works closely with SMCU championing animation history, were on hand for a Q&A with Care Bears fans young and young at heart.

io9 caught up with Bauza and Selznick to talk about animation past and present as part of the initiatives to keep films like The Care Bears Movie on screens and pass them down to a new generation.

io9: Eric, what made The Care Bears Movie 40th anniversary the perfect film to kick off the Saturday Morning Cartoons United screening series? And what about it inspired you to take on hosting duties for the series? 

Eric Bauza: It’s kind of a neat thing because it’s popping up in the news now, where people are so bombarded and inundated with screens and their phones. I just saw an article saying that time on our phones and social media time has peaked and plateaued. And if you’re wondering why they’ve been doing a lot of these anniversary screenings of things or pop-ups or just stuff that gets people out of the house, it’s because people are also being kind of slapped in the face with this AI stuff. And it’s almost kind of like having this funny adverse effect of “Can I trust what I’m seeing now?â€

But I think as far as being entertained and having an actual experience, a lot of people are filling up the seats for things like this: “Watch the 40th anniversary of The Care Bears Movie with a room full of people that also love The Care Bears Movie.†So it’s like having an excuse to get cozy in the theater; it’s a good excuse to bring the kids out and introduce them to what Mom and Dad grew up watching, and maybe they’ll catch that same wave.

io9: Arna, what was it like to experience this film back again on the big screen with a crowd?

Arna Selznick: It was actually surprising to me because, you know, I haven’t been watching it at all since probably maybe five years after I made it. So that’s like 35, almost 40 years ago. It was exciting and there were a lot of adults in the audience. I thought there would be more families with kids. There were some families with kids, but it wasn’t really a kid’s audience. It was a fan audience. So it was very different. I think it was cool [hearing] John Sebastian, who wrote several songs, and also Carole King, and the work she did on our opening song and “The Forest of Feelings†song. We were really lucky to get these guys and I think they just enriched the film so much and I still enjoyed hearing those sounds and songs and voices when we had this screening.

Bauza: There was a moment when the Care Bear Cousins song came on and people were clapping along with the song. That never happens. That only happens in church, if you’re in a gospel church. I mean, maybe that’s what we sort of need, church, a cartoon church.

io9: Arna, Could you share some insights into the creative process and challenges involved in bringing The Care Bears Movie to life?

Selznick: I had a lot of fun, but it was also a lot of work to do this show. I’d just come off doing a big feature film called Rock & Rule… it’s sort of a cult animated film that didn’t do all that well in the box office but is still very well appreciated by the fans who know about it. And so all of us were kind of like, “Okay, what do we do next?†And the guy running the studio really needed to get something financially solid to keep our crew going because after Rock & Rule, which was a big production, it kind of ended up being like, “Well, the studio doesn’t have any money for any of your animators and I may not have the crew anymore. We have to start doing more sort of popular work.â€

So we started doing Strawberry Shortcake. I supervised 64 episodes of Inspector Gadget [on] story [and] Star Wars: Ewoks and Droids. So I mean, Care Bears was a way to keep a very talented group of Canadian, mostly Canadian but also international, animation staff employed, and we had a real family sort of there.

io9: Eric and Arna, what would you say it is about the Care Bears’ unique mythology that has made them beloved characters that have resonated with audiences for decades?

Selznick: I think there are a lot of reasons. I think, first of all, they were already very popular toys. Let’s face it. So we started with something that had a lot of momentum. And there were people; I mean, I remember the Care Bears being kind of like, “If you got one, you were lucky,†because they sold out really fast and then they’d have to make more. And I think even the company, the American Greetings Company and those characters from Cleveland that produced the Care Bears got a little surprised that they went—they just took off like a rocket.

So, yeah, so they were already flying off the shelves and to get a Care Bear was really actually, you know, people were going, “Yeah, I got one.†So it was a bit of a mania for a while. We brought the film out during the momentum. So our film got a lot of eyes on it just because of the toys. And then we felt that we had to, you know, follow through with a good story so it wasn’t just an advertisement for toys.

Bauza: You know, what’s so funny is that I have this weird story about moving into my house. I lived in downtown Toronto with my mom, my dad, and my brother in a tiny apartment, and then we moved to the suburb of Scarborough. And I remember living in this childhood home and moving to a different one, not really wanting to move.

But when I moved to the new house, when running up and down the stairs into the basement, whoever lived there before me left this gigantic Care Bears sign on the wall. It was like a cutout of Tenderheart sitting on the heart that said Care Bears, like the logo. I loved Care Bears growing up as a kid. I had Tenderheart. And just the idea of these magical bears that live in the clouds

I just remember not even just questioning, like, where do their powers come from when they do the stare? I mean, it’s so serious and it’s just the innocence of being a child. You don’t question [it]. They take their star beams and they aim them wherever they want. But in the movie, we learned that sometimes it’s not enough. They needed to introduce new characters to finish the job. It’s still something that we want our kids to know. And that is, you know, sharing is caring, and caring toward one another. And you know that those lessons and those good people and those good characters and those good vibes that they give should win at the end of the day over a possessed talking book you find in an amusement park.

Selznick: Pete Sotter was our screenwriter and he developed the story and we tried to make it about the characters in the story. And when we got the list of the bears, they were basically just emotions. They didn’t have more than that. So, you know, a grumpy bear obviously was a grumpy guy, [and the rest are] all of these sort of interesting kinds of slight variations on positive emotions. But when we got ahold of them, I think we really had to kind of start from scratch and build up a mythology.

So you know, the idea of Care-a-Lot, the way the Care Bears looked towards the Earth in a very protective manner, used a telescope to see what was going on and how kids were feeling—all of that came out of the scriptwriting, and we also had to develop a story that highlighted how they felt and how they related to the audience. So that was something that I think we felt responsible for—to make something that was a story that would really bring to life these characters that were like, you know, cute little fluffies that [kids] cherished. But what are they and who are they? The story was really a fantasy that maybe the kids could tell each other as they played with their toys.

io9: What was the screening itself like in the theater? LA is known for being such a hub of revival screenings as part of film preservation and has such a love for physical media. So many folks my age were first introduced to The Care Bears Movie on VHS so I imagine it was really neat to see it in a crowd.

Bauza: So we worked with Park Circus, the distributor for MGM. And it was a newly restored 4K restored version that had—I don’t think it’s been theatrically shown. Everybody at Cloudco [the current name of what was once American Greetings Entertainment] was very impressed at how good it looked. And Arna also remarked on how amazing the print that we had looked, because it was so clean and vibrant. There was no strobing or anything.

Selznick: Yeah, it was a really beautiful screen version. I mean, we didn’t do widescreen then and I regret that it wasn’t a big widescreen so we had to have the curtains closed to the format but it still was, I think, very immediate. How can I describe it? I was just watching other people reacting and listening to how many times people laughed and most of the laughs were very warm and friendly and occasionally because it is an older film and our humor has moved on.

I appreciated all of the reactions; they were all very genuine and like I said to you, the singing and the clapping were really surprising because we had quite a few songs, like we had “Nobody Cares Like a Bear,†which is one of my favorite songs by John Sebastian and people were clapping along and it was fun to feel like you’re in the theater. I didn’t have to worry about all the shots and how they fit together anymore; I could just sort of sit back and watch it with the audience and enjoy it.

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