The UP Connection

So, as you may know, I am a co host on a radio show at my university called Imagine the Magic. It goes on every Monday at 4pm EST. A segment on the show is the History of the Week, where we talk about all of the history that happened that week related to Disney. This week's history segment let to an epiphany that I had!

I get all my Disney history from an amazing website called This Day in Disney History. For this week's history, there is a post on the 13th about Walt sending a telegram to Roy after they had lost their prize character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to a ruthless producer named Charles Mintz. As I read this, I paused. For some reason, that name sounded familiar and I was not sure why. Then it dawned on me: The villain in Disney/Pixar's Up is named Charles Muntz!! If you look up the Up character, he is described as greedy and paranoid and, when you search for both names, you find out from several articles that this is exactly what the producer intended.

I found this to be very interesting and I was not sure if many people knew about this connection, so I thought I would share. And as a side note, I would like to wish my greatest congratulations to everyone involved with Up for winning the Best Animated Feature award at the Academy Awards last night. It was well deserved!