In this episode
MAK with Bluey creator Joe Brumm.
Bluey, a show about a young blue heeler and her family, is taking the world by storm for its humour, relatability and the unique way it tackles difficult topics. Joe Brumm is the creator of the popular children’s series. In this episode of Ed Talks WA, Joe shares details of how his children inspired the idea for Bluey and what makes his show unique in the landscape of children’s television.
About Joe Brumm
Joe Brumm is an animator, writer and director and has worked on a number of children’s programs including the award-winning Charlie and Lola and Peppa Pig.
After a stint working in London, Joe returned to his home in Queensland, where he stared Studio Joho and Bluey was born.
Joe is the creative behind Bluey which has currently includes more than 150 episodes over 3 seasons, a video game and an immersive exhibit of the character’s house.
And there is more to come.
In 2023, Joe was recognised as a Queensland Great, an honour recognising outstanding Queenslanders for years of dedication and contribution to the development of the state and helping to strengthen the community.
Transcript
MAK
A warm welcome to Ed Talks WA. I'm Marie-Anne Keefe, but please call me MAK.
It's not only Australia's most beloved children's cartoon, but the popular animation Bluey is America's most watched TV show with over 35 billion minutes viewed and counting.
So how has Joe Brumm, a boy from outback Queensland, turned a show for preschoolers into the best thing on television?
Welcome, Joe.
Joe Brumm
G'day MAK, thank you.
MAK
It's a real treat having you here.
Joe Brumm
Yeah, no, it's been a lovely weekend.
MAK
Well, we've spent some time together, but I do have a bit of a confession because I may be a little bit of a super fan.
Joe Brumm
Okay, so you saved that till now.
MAK
I have.
“I have this little sister Lola. She is small and very funny.”
So you recognise that line?
Joe Brumm
Very, very much so.
MAK
It's probably the line.
So 20 years ago, I'm going to tell you a story to start off, I know you're the storyteller but let me start by telling you a story.
Twenty years ago I had my first child, his name, Charlie. So as a new mum and as a journalist, I'm all into, of course, reading and what can I find that's going to be beautiful for this baby.
And there are plenty of children's books on the market, there are plenty of children's cartoons and honestly, and it's probably too strong a word, but you read the books you look at the cartoons and there's something about many of them, that's the word is probably too strong, but I want to say patronizing because we all know that the smartest people in the room are always the kids. The kids are always the smartest people in the room.
And so I shuffled through so many books, you know, where is the green sheep? And you would know them all. And then all of a sudden one day, I can't even tell you where or when, I find this book and it's Charlie and Lola. And there is something about this book which is unlike anything I've ever seen. There's something about the characters, there's something about their interplay, there's something about the intimacy, the cleverness, just the reflection of everyday life in these characters. And then all of a sudden it pops up on TV as this cartoon. And frankly, the whole household becomes addicted to this cartoon, Charlie, Lola, and everything that happens to them on an average day.
And in fact, that's where your story starts. These two little characters who just do very ordinary things because your extraordinary work is actually just all about the ordinary. Talk to me about that.
Joe Brumm
Yeah well, that show, we wouldn't have Bluey without that show and without my experience working on it. And the books, the initial three I think are written by Lauren Child, and she just she's very, I mean she's obviously very good what she does. She's very stylish so there was a real, it's a really strong art direction to those books and to the projects, but she really captured… What I loved about it was it reminded me of the Charlie Brown and Sally relationship. It had a real…
MAK
Modern day Peanuts feel about it.
Joe Brumm
Yeah. Yeah.
And I don't think this is talking out of turn, but Lauren told me once that, you know, it was very much influenced by a relationship that she was in and Lauren was very much Lola she said she had a very creative sort of mind but would often need sort of reining in a bit with reality and that was Charlie's role.
So it immediately, you know like any good show, you realize when there's something under the hood like that, that that just can't help but take the show to another level beyond patronizing. And so to me, I didn't see any reason why when I made my own kids show that anything needed to be off limits. And I mean my show that I watched growing up was Astro Boy, right?
MAK
Yeah, right.
Joe Brumm
Wasn't really even a kids show.
MAK
No.
Joe Brumm
You know, Tezuka with that show would take, it just took it in the most exciting, adventurous directions that you could imagine. So yeah when it came time for me to make Blue I didn't see any reason why I had to not be as adventurous as those shows with the scripts and as long as it’s always appropriate for the 4 to 6 year old to me nothing was off the table.
So I just, what Charlie and Lola did was it didn't patronize the kids it treated the medium as any other, with all the seriousness I guess of any other art form that it can really inspire and be entertaining at the same time.
So yeah that's, you know you don't need to go to flights of fancy. Bluey is as you say it's about the ordinary day to day but just done, it’s ordinary to us but it's the first time 4 to 6 year olds have had these experiences so there's something, that's what we enjoy as parents right through all the hardship you're really enjoying watching your kids encounter things for the first time it reminds you of what you know when you saw it for the first time. So that's what I tried to do in Bluey it's all ordinary but through the eyes of kids seeing it for the first time.
MAK
That age group, that 4 to 6 age group, there's magic right there. There's something in, what is it in that period for these kids?
Joe Brumm
Well, it's all in this developmental phase. So you know they're babies, they develop their gross motor skills and then their fine motor skills and then it's time for them to develop their social skills.
So that sort of 3-year-old is, is only recently just out of the mindset of ‘my mom is a separate organism to me’.
So when kids turn 4, you know and I'm talking roughly, they're ready to start entering the world and they go from solo play and parallel play to, ‘I want, I want to play a genuine you know, group game with these other kids’. And so of course you hit problems then right because you have to share roles and you have to have discipline and all this.
MAK
And you have to bring your A-game you were saying yesterday you were talking about the fact when you're playing cafe or bakery or whatever the game is, you can't be a passenger in that. You've got to come, you've got to have you know, you've got to know what you want, what you're there for, if you're at the bakery which kind of muffins do you want? Do you want the white icing, the chocolate. What do you want, you have to have buy-in right?
Joe Brumm
You do it's a, every social game like that it's a collective group effort of everyone's individual storylines. That's what I love about it, it's sort of the individual and the collective together and you can't be an empty chair, you have to you got to bring your little part of the narrative that can kick off everyone else's and you have to have the discipline it takes to stay within that role. And the discipline to boil it down to just the essence of what is recognizable, so if you're going to be ‘I’m a doctor’ you have to convince everyone you're a doctor and you have to stay in character so that you need to concentrate and then you need to let other kids put their input in okay that's a big part of it and that's where most of the social learning happens in a play. It's like, yeah it's all well and good I’ve got my story, but you have to create and allow that space for the other kids to have their story.
You know I was talking to the minister earlier and there is a war between schoolification and play at that age group. And she very wisely said, look a lot of the parents come down on the side of schoolification and I fully understand why, you know, we're so scared for our kids, it's a very competitive world. We really want our kids to, we don't want to be left behind right when they finish school, so the way that manifests to us, to a lot of us is, well they need to be able to read, write, you know let's just, let's start that earlier and earlier. And that will mean, you know they'll be even better when they get to Year 12. And the only problem with that is, as far as I've read with all the science, is that it's kind of like kids, they're not mini-adults.
If you start them earlier, they don't get a year ahead. You just crowd out another developmental phase that they're meant to be going through, right? And unfortunately what gets crowded out when you push sight words and academic learning down to 4-year-olds is this process that I'm talking about, which is the socialization of this kid. And my argument, as I said to the minister, I said the argument that can be made is these are pre-academic skills they're learning and in the long run it will actually improve your kids' academic success and their creative problem solving, as well as the socialization, obviously.
But if a kid has the discipline to stay in an imagined environment, like a bakery in a game for 45 minutes every day, then a few years later when you're asking them to imagine what it's like to live in ancient Greece or imagine how indigenous people lived, then all that same muscle has been worked a few years earlier in the game of cafe.
MAK
Well it goes back to the brain neuroplasticity, doesn't it? Using your brain in different ways and your brain then being able to transport you anywhere.
Joe Brumm
A hundred percent, yeah.
MAK
And there's a window here, a very special window, and for you this was the birth of Blue. Very unromantic, 4.30 in the morning, there you are, a good dad doing the right thing, letting mum have a sleep in. With your girls, playing with them, entertaining them. They're captivated by those really ordinary, everyday, mostly boring for us as adults things that they find completely fascinating. And you think when you see this unfold, there's actually something in this and what if I could turn this into something for everyone to sort of, I guess, enjoy or buy into?
Joe Brumm
Yeah, I did. It was, Bluey could have turned into a show that was like a lot of other kids' shows that I'd seen and worked on where the episode was about a trip to the shops or about a trip to the dentist. Whereas Bluey, the difference with Bluey was it takes place after that trip to the shops when the kids all get together and recreate what's happened. And there's something in that for the parents because there's nothing funnier and sometimes it's really enlightening to see your trip to the shops reassembled by a bunch of 4-year-olds and you reassembled.
MAK
Scary, maybe too.
Joe Brumm
Yeah 100%. So I think a lot of the entertainment of Bluey comes from that sort of dynamic.
MAK
Yes, because we get to watch ourselves as adults, I guess.
Joe Brumm
Yeah.
MAK
We get to watch ourselves.
I have a theory, I think Bluey's just all about you, actually. Bluey's like your biography because it's a family affair. How many members of your family are involved in Bluey?
All of them or just most of them?
Joe Brumm
My brother and my mum and several of my aunties and a lot of my friends' kids and a lot of my friends and, yeah it's a bit of a family affair.
MAK
Well and Bandit, if you look at Bandit, first of all is Bandit you? Are you Bandit?
Joe Brumm
All the best bits of me go into Bandit but most of the leftover goes into Stripe.
MAK
Right.
Joe Brumm
I'm probably more striped than Bandit.
MAK
Because Bandit's a very modern dad, isn't he? He sits on a yoga ball at his desk. He does the cooking and the cleaning and he does the school run. Where do I get me one of those?
Joe Brumm
They're everywhere and that's why Bandit's Bandit because I was just looking at my brothers and my mates and we were all, I don't know, we were all full on involved and so that, it's just natural that that came out. I mean, we were all tired and not very good at it and learning on the job and sometimes resentful and you know, probably wished we could be 50s dads, but that's not what I was seeing. And so to me yeah, I think that's the norm these days, you know.
MAK
There's a new breed of dad.
Joe Brumm
Well, that's been my experience. You know, your listeners might have theirs, but I would say more often than not, we're kind of Bandits.
MAK
And so you've got all of these characters who reflect people in your life and you start building these stories. And, you know, all of it was built in your bedroom, basically.
It's a very unromantic start to an extraordinary story where you're literally in your bedroom late at night with this, you described it as an itch on your back. This idea that there was something more in you. Was it always this blue healer or was it a number of things and it just ended up being Bluey.
Was it always this clear to you? Or how do you land there?
Joe Brumm
Yeah well it was, no, it was a feeling I guess. It was like a feeling of, I don't know how to describe it, of potential, I suppose and I always just knew, look if I could get into that position, I think I could write a story, my own stories, and I think I could create a show or a character or something. I really had no idea it would be kids' animation.
So it was just this feeling and it's not a particularly comfortable feeling, it's sort of, I think that phrase don't die with the music inside of you. It's like, it's a double-edged phrase that one, it creates fear, you know cause it's like there's nothing you'll regret more than knowing them for me, knowing I had this in me but couldn't get into the right circumstance to let it out.
So no, it was a weird one. It was never, ‘hey I've you know, I've got this idea for this kid's show’. It was just, it was always opportunistic and when the sort of, I guess, the drive became too much I said ‘I want to get back in that room full of animators again, I have to write my own stuff, I've got these kids around me, I think I'm going to try to make a kid's cartoon’ and maybe once I've got that out of the way then I can do adult animation and this and that. But so then Bluey, it all just came out within a few weeks you know? Started with Bluey and then sister Bandit, Bingo and then we're off to the races within months really and the thing is now that I’ve done it and it's been a success, that itch is fully scratched and the biggest change in my life, someone asked me to say what the biggest change is and it's that, it's I don't, it's not like I've got an assignment due anymore.
It's you know, I've proved to myself and you know, probably more unhealthily proved to the outside world and it's out of me now. And now, now there's another problem of motivation of, well what's, driving you know what I do next? But my day to day is just so much more enjoyable because it's like you've finished the assignment, you've handed it in and you got an A and, you know.
MAK
A plus. I'm going to give you an A plus.
Joe Brumm
Thank you.
MAK
But how lucky do you feel to have done that because so many people go through their whole lives and they never, ever are able to achieve that. And that's worth more than any money, any fame, any fortune that you'll ever get, that feeling right there.
Joe Brumm
Yeah, it really is.
There's always a question that I could never figure out with CEOs, you know, who are on millions of dollars. I always thought, why would you keep working when you do 5 years and then retire.
But you can't pay for that feeling and that feeling is, with what I've done, it manifests in so many ways. I mean, the main thing you can't pay for is the little gatherings I would get through a season where, from a personal point of view, when we would gather Friday night and I'd show a new animatic and be the first time anyone had seen my this new script and people would you know cheer and still to this day. When I we first showed the episode sleepy time it's, you know one of the standout memories of my life but then other subtler ones of seeing my animators do a really cool scene and we all gather around and have our mind blown at that. Like you, there's nothing you can buy like that you know? You can, money buys you holiday, you know beyond security and everything like that, it buys you holidays and things but those experiences that you can only get to by taking a big risk and getting people together and working hard and I'm convinced that that's why CEOs, you know, stay in their jobs despite not needing to monetarily because the buzz that they get from leading huge organisations and having successes and achievements and the competitive element, like, yeah, it's been so rewarding from that point of view.
MAK
And that's been a surprise to you, hasn't it? The feeling, you've talked about this, I had this feeling in this heart area over here in my chest and that is your heart Joe.
Joe Brumm
I can't tell that. Look, I'm still a Queensland boy and whilst everything is true, just describing feelings in my heart just doesn't, I'm not there yet.
MAK
You came very close.
Joe Brumm
Thank you.
MAK
Very close. The closest you got was this area here in my heart region. But this area here in your heart region was feeling very, very full this particular day when you were walking across the bridge home, when you realised that what you had created is really this whole family of young people who you were working with, mentoring up, skilling up, who in some cases had become better than you. And the sense of fulfilment and pride and happiness that you got from their collective achievement and joy, and that for you was almost more satisfying than anything else that you'd ever done and that surprised you.
Joe Brumm
Easily more satisfying yeah and it still is yeah. Like you really, all of you are right on the edge of what you can do and you know we didn't want anyone in like ‘oh yeah just turn in some c-grade stuff here’ like every, and they will tell you and that's why it was such a hard year, everyone was expected to break their personal bests across every one of our kind of…
MAK
A PB every day.
Joe Brumm
Pretty much yeah.
You know, that was what I was trying to do with my scripts and that's what Ritchie was doing with his direction and what Joff was doing with the music. So we expected that of these young kids and what was so heartening was they were up for it. You know, like once you worked with them through their fear and showed them the tools of it they were right up for it.
And it's, only I know and only say maybe even the leadership in Bluey know just how much all those little contributions have made Bluey a success because when I watch an episode of Bluey, and I can see just a little bush that one of our art directors designed but I also can see how well our background artists cleaned that up, that little bush, and it was their idea because that little bush was in their grandmother's house growing up, you know and there's just like every Bluey ep is like a photo album for me. I know where I was during each scene, largely who animated each scene.
MAK
Snapshots in time.
Joe Brumm
Yeah and that collective of letting everyone contribute to a certain extent makes the show really rich.
MAK
All the fingerprints.
Joe Brumm
Yeah, yeah. It's not mass produced. It's like, it does roll off a conveyor belt for us but every aspect of it has fingerprints all over it.
MAK
So all of that makes you a teacher.
Joe Brumm
Yeah I guess.
Never thought about it like that but one of the first things was we, yeah I mean we had to teach, we had to teach everyone how to learn the software. We had to teach everyone how to behave in a work environment. My animators, the students who are straight out of uni will still remember the day I roused on everyone.
MAK
But this is the guy that recruited them at the pub. So, you know come on it was a fairly low, it was a fairly low base to start from.
Joe Brumm
Okay. The thing is MAK I'm not, and this is nothing against these companies, but I'm not big on the sort of infantilisation thing, right?
MAK
Exactly.
Joe Brumm
We don't have scooters and, you know, like we do have fun in the studio, but it's an incredibly serious job and everyone, you're there to work.
So there was a little bit of a readjustment from the young kids to just know what a working day looks like and because I needed that when I was their age.
MAK
We all needed that. Yeah. Some of us still need that.
Joe Brumm
But in terms of being a teacher, yeah, myself and my team, leadership team, we had to do a hell of a lot of teaching. And that just was constant. It's because it is a craft at the end of the day and yeah, the newbies were so responsive to it. And then what was really satisfying was some of them becoming leads and seeing them teaching some of the new animators and I don't know, it's like before you know it your heart's full MAK.
MAK
Your heart, this area over here in your chest, over here and this heart area over here is full.
The really challenging part for you now is that the reality is that our little girl, Bluey, is growing up.
Now, there's a timeline on Bluey, isn't there? There's a timeframe on this. Bluey isn't trapped in time forever.
All the characters, all the beautiful children that have been involved, they're all growing up. Bluey's growing up. How do you deal with your baby Blue Heeler growing up? What do you do with that, Joe?
Joe Brumm
Well for me, I mean it was very simple from the beginning. I always, the one thing I said was I can't work on a season of the show that I knew wouldn't be as good as the previous season.
So that's, that's always my guiding thing with everything and that, that was the same with shows I worked on. If I, if it suddenly started feeling like it wasn't a new challenge to me then I knew that was time to move on.
So it'll be no different with Bluey. You know, if I'm not convinced that I can't top the previous season and a season as a whole, you know, then there's no point in me doing, like if you knew what the reason I got into this was and what I wanted to create, the big aspect, the main aspect of that is that you get all these great people in a really cool place and you make a really great project.
If one of them slips then it's not enjoyable day to day so if I'm convinced that the project isn't worth making then it just that's one leg of that tripod just falls and it all goes over. So it's kind of like, even if I wanted to I couldn't do it you know? So yeah that's just how I've always worked.
MAK
So you've got your 2 daughters and then you've got your third daughter which is Bluey, how do you get your head around perhaps saying goodbye to your fur baby?
Joe Brumm
Well I mean we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Kind of just like I said, if I know that it's not going to be the same show, then that makes it easier to say, well, I have to say goodbye to it you know, because I think it takes a lot of guts and it takes a lot of sort of self-reflection to know, you know, well potentially this won't be as good as the previous ep/season.
But yeah, it's I mean, it's such, I'm the bluey guy, right? Like when I meet people it's like, I remember meeting someone in New York for this thing and they go ‘this is Joe Brumm’, we're all filmmakers, it's Joe Brumm, da, da, da. And then someone said ‘it's the Bluey guy’ and then they were exploded.
MAK
Right. Oh, the Bluey guy.
Joe Brumm
Yeah, the Bluey guy.
So yeah it's been a massive part of my life. But you know it's, you can't hang on, it's just like the kids as they get older you can't hang on to them when they're that 4-year-old. I really miss that 4 to 6-year-old phase, right? But it's not how life works. You've got to keep letting go and opening room for new experiences and I don't think I'll ever work on anything as successful as Bluey. I mean, it's a bit of a tough act to follow.
MAK
You've peaked early. You've peaked early, Joe.
Joe Brumm
But my goal with Bluey wasn't this. Obviously, I want it to be successful. Yes. I really wanted to enjoy my day-to-day again and be around animators.
MAK
And this doesn't feel like work. This just feels like living your best life.
Joe Brumm
Yeah. It definitely felt like work. I mean, even you know, if you're an animator out there and you want to, and I can only encourage you to be, but even animation, which on the surface should be, you know, the funnest job, it's still a job and it's still 90% drudge isn't the right word, but 90% uncertainty and bad decisions. And am I good enough? Why did I put the arm there and not there? You know, it's still it's a hell of a lot of work but there's a little quick time at the end of the day that you watch that completely revivifies you and gets you ready for the next day so, it's a magic career and I’ve always enjoyed it and to be in a room full of everyone creating a little quick time you know, there is a buzz and they make you feel young animators so.
That's you know, just being in that environment again and working on a project and solving those problems, I just have to remind myself that's, I love that day-to-day of it and whatever it does from a success point of view, you've got to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
MAK
There's so much more to come though, Bluey's World. So this is like an adventure park, a pop-up almost adventure park because it's going to travel Australia.
Joe Brumm
I believe so, yeah. It'll stay in Brizzy for a while.
MAK
Yes. Then you need to get it to WA, Joe.
Joe Brumm
I'd love to get it to WA.
MAK
We've told you that, we desperately want it here.
Joe Brumm
Yeah, yeah.
MAK
So there's that. I know that you've signed with a Hollywood agent.
Joe Brumm
Right. Yeah, yeah.
MAK
So that's pretty exciting.
Joe Brumm
Yeah, yeah it was a few years back. So, yeah I mean, nothing much has happened because I've been in Bluey for so long and it takes precedence over everything. But yeah, that's been interesting getting to understand how Hollywood works because because in a sense, Bluey, it's so UK and Australian-based. Like obviously we have Disney as the distributors, but the BBC studios are who we deal with day to day and the ABC.
So it's such a, it's over that side of the Atlantic you know. But yeah, slightly getting to know people in Hollywood has been really educational because they've got such a different industry, right? There's no government grants over there. Like over here, Bluey is three-quarter taxpayer funded, right? So over there, everything's private enterprise, you know, so it requires a different, it's so much more can-do, I suppose, but it does come with some downsides as well.
So, yeah really, really fascinating, those two worlds.
MAK
And Bluey's all over the silver screen but tell you what I reckon Bluey would be brilliant on a very big screen like a movie screen. What are your thoughts about that?
Joe Brumm
Yeah I mean I'd love to.
I think movies are always where I've wanted to head. I love the dark room and the big screen and the no distractions, and the challenge of that because it's saying to the viewer ‘I've made something worth you not getting up and taking a phone call or whatever for 2 hours’. I'm going to lock you in this room and hopefully you're going to walk out feeling like I've felt when I've walked out of movies. You know where you walk out and feel like, I felt like it's made me feel I want to make a movie, and there's no for me there's no better success than a film can have then you walk out going ‘god damn I want to make one of those’.
So yeah I'd love to head there it's an amazing like risky challenge to do that but the, I don't know it's also such a different pace to TV.
MAK
It's completely different.
Joe Brumm
Yeah, you can really spend a crazy amount of time on 90 minutes rather than not very much time on 500 minutes.
MAK
Yes. So that's the dream? One day, Joe.
Joe Brumm
One of them, yeah, yeah.
MAK
That's just one of them. Any others?
Joe Brumm
I'd like to get my handicap down.
MAK
Right.
Joe Brumm
Ideally, but from an animation point of view, I don't know what's beyond film really.
MAK
Yeah.
Joe Brumm
You know what I mean? It feels like that's more films.
MAK
More films.
Joe Brumm
Yeah.
MAK
I know that you have a host of people lining up, a host of A-listers that line up wanting to voice your characters. Out of all of those people that you've had, is there anyone that's been your favourite or anyone that you would love to take on one of the characters or to voice that hasn't done it yet?
Joe Brumm
Well, the one I was sort of most nervous, well I don't really get nervous but I did get nervous was with Mick Molloy.
MAK
Really? Mick Molloy?
Joe Brumm
Yeah, so I grew up…
MAK
But he's like you. He's cool. He's chill. Why Mick Molloy?
Joe Brumm
We were young teenagers when The Late Show came out.
MAK
Yes. He was a hero.
Joe Brumm
He was. That whole cast and Working Dog and Rob Sitch and all these guys.
MAK
Yeah, yeah.
Joe Brumm
They were our, we grew up, they were the funniest people that you know, my brothers and all our mates at school, that was, that was our sense of humour.
So, and Mick Malloy was you know he was kind of the, we just loved Shit Scared and you know in particular. So yeah, meeting him, it was a really odd one. It was like, wow, this is someone we've sort of looked up to for years.
MAK
So I've made it, I've made it. I've got Mick Malloy voicing one of my characters.
Joe Brumm
Yeah, yeah. It was, it was incredible.
So look anyone, Frontline is probably my favourite TV show of all time. So to get anyone from Working Dog would be amazing.
MAK
Right. So we can put the call out to them.
I'm a voiceover artist and in the past I've voiced 2 characters and both of them being cats.
One was Betty the Cat and the other one was, do you know who Fat Cat is?
Joe Brumm
Yeah, yeah.
MAK
So I was Fat Cat's mother, right?
Joe Brumm
Did you have a suit?
MAK
No, Fat Cat has a suit, clearly. But no I didn't have a suit. It was just my voice because very cleverly, I don't know if you probably wouldn't have seen this, but at 7 o'clock every night the Fat Cat Good Night comes on television. And every parent in Western Australia loves this moment because Fat Cat gets put to bed and then that gives them the perfect opportunity to put all their children to bed.
So for many years, probably about 6 or 7 years, I was the voice of Fat Cat's mother putting Fat Cat to bed.
Anyway, that's another story.
However, I think those skills are transferable so if you're looking for a washed-up feline at any point that could perhaps, you know, enter into one of your episodes, I'm here for you Joe okay?
I'm here for you.
Joe Brumm
Get your card afterwards, MAK, it would be great.
MAK
I ask this to everyone that I speak to and you seem like someone, when you talk about dreams come true or things that you wish for, you actually seem like someone who has ticked pretty much most of those boxes apart from maybe one day making a movie.
You seem pretty content with your life but if you did have one wish, if I could say to you, here you go Joe here it is. Anything that you want, you've got one wish, what would that be?
Joe Brumm
Wow okay.
Well, I mean from a career point of view, yeah I'd love to work on movies and stuff.
From a personal point of view, yeah just, I think my goal always is to stay as present as possible and do everything that assists with that, I should say. So that's probably the hardest thing.
I try everything. I love surfing and golf and soccer and footy and I'm a very jack of all trades with that. But you know, trying to stay in the present moment is definitely the hardest thing which I've ever tried and so, yeah that's a constant journey and it's a big part of the reason, you know, I was able to even haul Bluey off, you know what I mean?
So, yeah it's not so much a dream but it's just something I'm always reflecting on how badly I'm doing at it and it's always sort of there in my background, I suppose.
MAK
Do you mean present as a dad, as a person?
Joe Brumm
No, no, just physically present in the current moment as just being here and not being lost in thought.
My job is very, I get paid to be lost in thought and to be coming up with different ideas and all that.
And there's a time and a place for it. It tends to then spill out into my day-to-day life and I'm always happiest when I can park that sort of thought stream, I suppose.
That's probably a bit more of a bizarre answer than you're after. But I've got such a low base, especially having a bit of sickness early on with the kids. It's given me the lowest bar for contentment. It is way low and I know like Bluey is crazy and I have all these, you know cool stuff and I get invited to a lot of things and to go overseas and all this. But I love boring and I am, you know, if I wake up and the kids are healthy and my wife's healthy, then everything else is a bonus. And you only really get to that point by, you know, going, you can't pretend your way to that point.
You have to arrive at that point through a certain path and there's definitely stuff I want to do. You know, I want to go traveling and do this and that, but none of it is a, none of it is like an itch anymore. I should put it that way.
Nothing annoys me, ‘god, I've got to get and see this country’, there's nothing like that anymore which is probably the most enjoyable aspect of life at the moment. Does any of that make sense?
MAK
It makes complete sense because you are the most authentic, real, humble star that I've ever come across. There is something different about you, Joe. Your feet are on the ground. You are firmly in the moment and in reality, and there's a humility about you, which is extremely rare, and you've just explained what's behind that.
Joe Brumm
It was all through raising kids MAK. I was not this person before I had kids.
MAK
You were not this person?
Joe Brumm
No, I was way more immature and way more self-focused, I guess, and way more harder to be happy. And, you know, the process of having kids and having to put everything that you want to one side has been really good for me and I can recognise that.
MAK
Well, we are so grateful to you for coming to Western Australia for your first trip, for sharing your time and your story with us.
I know when you spoke with our teachers that every single person in the room took something different away from that.
You have an incredible ability to connect with people. That is about authenticity and that is about humility and it is about seeing yourself as just another person who would like to tell some stories and that's actually who you are right? You're just you're a storyteller Joe and we're very grateful to you for being here we wish you all the success and most particularly with Bluey the movie which I know is your aspiration. I hope that dream comes true for you as well.
Joe Brumm
Beautiful. Thanks MAK.
No it’s been lovely meeting you and all the teachers who are under your wing. It's been really eye-opening 18 hours. Thank you.
MAK
Joe Brumm, thank you very much.
This podcast has been recorded on Whadjuk Noongar land. We pay respect to the traditional owners and to elders past, present and future.
Notes
Access the official Bluey website here.