After a very successful decade-long run, Disney’s Mickey Mouse shorts under “The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse” brand are coming to a close. Finale short “Steamboat Silly” premieres this Friday July 28th on Disney+. Mickey and pals go through some old home movies, including a certain adventure that started it all for the Mouse 95 years ago, which comes to life in the most surprising ways. Executive Producer / Supervising Director Paul Rudish shares details on putting this short together and what Mickey and this franchise have meant to him. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: How does it feel that this [chapter] is coming to an end?

Paul Rudish: It’s been a great ride. It’s been a dream project — so fun to play with the classic characters and to build a team that loves it as much as my entire team does. To have that confluence of creativity from so many people… on the same page about the product. It’s been 10 years but it never got old because of the inclusion of new directors and designers… and constantly keeping it fresh. The collaboration itself was always great. I’m very proud of everything we made, and I’m very proud of the process that we were able to build.

JM: Every year when I watch the Annie Awards, it seems like you guys are up on stage. These shorts are so fun, energetic and sweet. And we even got a theme park attraction out of this [“Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway”]!

PR: That was a dream come true as well. I always wanted to grow up to be Marc Davis. (laughs) To be able to make cartoons and then shift over to making Disneyland?! That’s one of the coolest stories ever. A dream come true to go play in Imagineering.

JM: Was there ever a thought in your mind of, “If I get to do a finale short, I want it to be centered around ‘Steamboat Willie'”?

PR: No, it wasn’t that premeditated. Definitely the essence of inspiration came from those early black and white cartoons. The vibe and sensibilities of those cartoons are the bedrock and foundation of what we were trying to do. A request came from on high. We were wrapping up the last episodes of our season. And then the request came… to have us do something to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the company. We looked at, “What is a Mickey story that takes a look at Mickey’s history? How do we come-up with a story that can celebrate the evolution of Mickey from his early beginnings to where he is today?”

JM: When [“Steamboat Willie”] is playing and the gang is watching it in the house and they’re whistling along to it, I think it will give a lot of Disney fans chills. It’s a cool moment with it all coming together.

PR: Yeah that was really fun… to play with all that. It was fun to go to the Archives to do our research and find old clips. We were able to repurpose old animation dance cycles that we found in old cartoons. We literally pulled them out of there and repurposed them so that we could keep it as accurate to the source material as we could. It was a fun collage. We got to pick out our favorite Mickey things and sprinkle them into the story — that kind of cut and paste, blurring reality.

JM: There are some amazing visual moments in this. How difficult was the process of the Mickey copies we see come out of the projector? It looks pretty ambitious.

PR: It was. Our animation team at Mercury was great. We did try to design things in a way that could be more economical. Even though there may be 30 or more Steamboat Willie Mickeys on screen at a time, there’s a lot of recycled animation — a lot of cycles they could move through. We were conscious of that — to try to find ways of doing big crowd scenes in an economical way. We had talks with our animation director at Mercury. We came-up with a plan and were able to streamline it so it wasn’t too much of a headache. (laughs)

JM: I love how music ties into the end of this short. How have you seen the significance of the correlation between Mickey and music over the past 95 years?

PR: Well certainly the novelty of being the first sound cartoon ever. And music was always important to Walt and his cartoons. I think it naturally… found itself reflecting in the story as well. Very often you have Mickey and Minnie just playing the piano together. A lot of the cartoons have a musical theme to the story on purpose. That’s tied Mickey to various songs throughout his history. From his inception, he was a musical guy. It’s a natural thing for him to continue to be performing in that way. And people like it!

JM: How do you feel, first-hand, that the world is a wonderful, better place because this character — this mouse — exists?

PR: A character that’s this positive is always a good thing. Someone could come-off as annoying, but Mickey doesn’t. He’s positive but he still has flaws and a full range of emotions. And that’s relatable. People want to see an underdog come up and become a winner. Mickey has always embodied that. And also… it’s very autobiographical with Walt. Walt was a poor kid from the country who had big dreams, and he wanted to go to the big, big city and show everybody what was in his imagination and make something out of himself. The earliest Mickey cartoons are that. Mickey’s just a kid on a farm who wants to fly an airplane. He can’t get an airplane, so he’s going to make one out of a milk crate and some turkey feathers. Just make his own airplane. That “go get ’em spirit”. He embodies the American Dream.

JM: What is your biggest takeaway of what you’ve learned from the character, and where would you like to see Mickey go from here?

PR: I’m impressed with his endurance. He doesn’t get old. The positivity that he embodies continues to have legs. I think he can just keep going and going. There isn’t bold new territory that needs to change the shape of Mickey. I think that what he is is so enduring that it can stand the test of time and continue to inspire new generations.