♪♪♪ Young Dion: "April 16, 1980.

Ike, before I say what I have to say, I just want to tell you that this is not an ordinary fan letter or anything like that, as you will soon see.

Another thing is that sometimes, most of the time I should say, this letter might be a bit confusing.

Third thing is some of the things I say might sound a little strange but they aren't meant to be.

There's just no other way to say it.

Last thing is that I just want to make sure you know this isn't a joke.

I'm serious."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ [approaching footsteps] ♪♪♪ Dion Labriola: When I was in junior high, I wrote a book about this kid who gets mysteriously transported to this distant planet with all these crazy creatures, and the story was basically how he got back to Earth.

♪♪♪ Dion: And I'd planned to turn it into an animated movie one day.

♪♪♪ Dion: Ever since I was really young, I loved to draw.

That was my passion.

Carmella Moore: My brother Dion was always a really creative, artistic individual and kind of dorky.

Dion: I was a little bit of a loner as a kid, but I soon realized that being able to draw was a good way to win friends.

♪♪♪ Loren Qualls: I think kids that have a knack for drawing tend to use it to communicate or connect with other people.

Dion: If someone comes up to you and says, "Draw me a spaceship," and you draw a spaceship, it's kind of like a magic trick, almost.

♪♪♪ Dion: My favorite thing to draw was weird creatures, space aliens, whatever I was obsessed with at the moment.

Carmella: He would get obsessed about things and just totally be obsessed for a while and then move on to something else.

It was dinosaurs.

David Zuder: Dinosaurs.

Dion: Super into dinosaurs as a kid.

John DiMascio: Comic books.

David: "Planet of the Apes."

Andy Steinlen: "Star Wars."

Dion: Tolkien.

Carmella: Ike Eisenmann.

David: Ike Eisenmann.

Andy: Ike Eisenmann.

Dion: Ike Eisenmann.

David: Ike Eisenmann was pretty prevalent in our middle school years because Dion was ready to have him star in his movie.

♪♪♪ Dion: That idea started with a series of drawings I did at the beginning of 7th grade.

Young Dion: "One day, I drew this creature in study hall."

Dion: And then the next day, I drew another one.

Young Dion: "And soon, I drew more and more until one day I worked two of them into a story for English.

And that story grew until almost 2 years later it became a whole book."

Dion: So before long, I had a whole collection of these drawings, and I kept them in this three-ring binder.

Loren: He's carrying around 20 books already from class to class, plus this binder.

And the binder went everywhere.

Pat Bishop: Dion would come to the art room every day with a three-ring binder and it was crammed with drawings and he continued to build and build and build and build on that book.

Loren: It was definitely an epic at that point.

I mean, it kept going and going and going.

♪♪♪ Young Dion: "In late 7th grade, I decided to link my stories to my art.

I want to make movies.

I want to be an animator!"

David: But we didn't see people succeeding in things like this around us, and so we had to dream of New York or Los Angeles or these things and, of course, at the time we probably didn't even know what that meant.

♪♪♪ Dion: I grew up in Akron, Ohio, which is a midsize Midwestern town.

It's very working class.

At the time I was there, it was the rubber capital of the world.

I lived in a small house with my mom, was a single mom, and my older sister.

We actually lived in a neighborhood called Firestone Park.

It was built to house all the people who worked in the Firestone plant.

Loren: Definitely it's an industrial town.

The people you knew went straight from high school to the factories or whatever.

Dion: Living in a Midwestern town, making films doesn't seem like an actual profession.

It just seems like this weird magical world, these films just kind of appear.

♪♪♪ Pat: I'd been teaching maybe 6 or 8 years, and I had never had anybody that was that serious about going into animation.

Dion: For me to say that I wanted to be an animator, a moviemaker, people kind of didn't know what to do with me.

A lot of my friends thought it was really cool.

John: I always looked at Dion's expression as talent and not really as a different oddity or anything like that, like some people may have taken it.

David: In middle school, you'll always have the groups and the cliques and the bullies and things like this, and then the nerds.

And clearly, we were a part of the nerd clan.

And we knew that.

But it kind of held us together.

And so, you endure the things that you have to endure.

Carmella: Kids teased him and made fun of him.

Like, how can you live in Ohio and make a movie?

That's not possible.

David: It was more difficult here because not many people understood Milno.

David: Milno was one of the characters in the book that helps the kid get back to Earth.

Dion: He was this funny-looking thing, kind of looked like an owl.

But you find out at the end of the book that he's actually a powerful wizard and he ends up saving the day.

Dion: One weekend, my dad took us to the mall.

He gave us some money.

I wandered into Spencers Gifts.

They had this section where you could have your own T-shirts made with these iron-on letters.

And I decided to make a Milno shirt.

Carmella: "Milno lives," and he wore it all the time.

Dion: And wore it proudly.

And some people thought I was nuts.

"Milno lives," what's that?

Some people just considered it another geeky thing I did.

My sister didn't think it was a very good idea.

Carmella: I just thought, "Dion, if you go around talking about this movie, you're going to further alienate yourself and become even dorkier than you already are.

Stop talking about Milno."

Dion: But, at the end of the year, everybody knew Milno.

Loren: So, what's Milno up to nowadays?

Carmella: Anybody who came into contact with him would hear about Milno and this world that he created.

He would even assign people voices.

Dion: And it wasn't like these were kids that had acting talent that I knew of or did funny voices or anything.

It was just the people I liked, but it was a way, I think, to make it seem more real to myself and to anybody else, you know, they asked, well, I've cast the role of Milno already.

Milno's gonna be my friend John.

♪♪♪ John: Milno, to me, would sound, with his character having a beak of a bird, I thought he would sound more like an owl or a screechy bird kind of thing.

I didn't have a deep voice like that or anything, it was just going to be a-- you want me to really do a Milno voice, like I practice?

"All right, he was going to talk like this, a little more nasal, as a bird."

But I would take many years of voice training to get to that point.

Dion: So, John was going to be Milno, my friend Elizabeth was gonna be another wizard.

There were a lot of wizards in this film, a whole series of wizards.

One of which was this character named Simon-Oe.

Young Dion: "Now, here's where you come in.

One day, in the beginning of summer, after 8th grade, I saw that Doublemint commercial."

♪ But the singlemost favorite Double ♪ ♪ in the world is Double-good ♪ ♪ double-good Doublemint Gum ♪♪ male announcer: Double your pleasure.

Young Dion: "When I saw you on it, something inside me just seemed to click.

I knew you had to be in one of my movies."

Dion: I hadn't seen him in a while, but I remembered him from this movie that I was obsessed with as a kid, called "Escape to Witch Mountain," where he plays this kid who has magical powers.

In one of the early scenes in the movie, he actually flies and when I saw that I was sold.

This was the coolest kid in the world.

He could actually fly.

Ike Eisenmann: Doing "Witch Mountain" was more fun than you should be allowed to have as a kid, period.

It was this endless playground of real magic.

Young Dion: "When the 'Witch Mountain' movies came out, my eyes about turned green, because I've always wanted to be magic too."

Andy: What outcast kid didn't dream about having magic powers?

Dion: At that age, I didn't really make a distinction between reality and what was on the screen.

To me, he could fly so he was a magic kid.

He was the coolest actor I'd ever seen.

Andy: And it seems like every time I talk to somebody, especially the people who remember being a misfit in school, remember feeling like an outcast, they really kind of light up when you talk about "Escape to Witch Mountain."

Ike: Over the course of years, people start to talk about how they related to the idea of being outcasts or not belonging or knowing they were from another planet but nobody believed them.

And that was very powerful for me because I was going through the same thing.

I was one of those weirdo outcast kids myself.

I was this odd object of "Oh, that's that movie star kid."

And that's enough for children to alienate you.

And that's when I started to learn why it touched so many people.

Dion: And then, several years later, he's in this Doublemint Gum commercial, grown up a little bit.

It was kind of like seeing an old friend, and I was like, "That kid should be in my movie."

Obviously, the next step would be to contact him, write him a letter.

But I didn't know his name.

So, that became a mission unto itself.

I would go to the library and look through any book about movies I could find.

I would go to old bookstores and look through old magazines, old science fiction magazines, old "Teen Beats" and "16s."

It was a little weird for me to be looking through the "16" magazines but I had a mission so it was okay.

And one day I was in this old bookstore in downtown Akron and there was one "16" magazine and I was just flipping through it as fast as I could, looking for a picture of this kid, and I turned a page and there he was.

"Oh-so-likeable Ike Eisenmann."

So I finally had a name.

♪♪♪ Dion: In 5th grade, one of our assignments was to pick a celebrity and we all wrote to them in care of The Screen Actors Guild, because they would forward the letters to whatever actor you chose.

For some reason I chose Robert Blake of "Baretta" fame.

So, I knew that I could write to Ike in care of The Screen Actors Guild, so I wrote him this letter, explained how I wanted to make a movie, and how I wanted him to be in it.

Young Dion: "I went through my pictures and picked out a character.

His name is Simon-Oe, a wizard.

My books are all science fiction/fantasy."

Dion: And I expected to hear from him right away.

Seemed like a perfectly fantastic idea to me, and I was sure that he would think it was a fantastic idea, too, and write me right back.

I expected to get a letter within days.

♪♪♪ Dion: So then it became this, "Well, I have to find a different address for him."

Young Dion: "I thought finding your address would be easy-- Ha Ha.

I've tried everything.

I've written to Action Line in my newspaper, some TV reporters, CBS, ABC, NBC."

Dion: I'd go to the library and look through phone books.

Maybe he might be listed.

Carmella: I'd find him rummaging through my "16" and "Tiger Beat" magazines, just looking for articles about Ike or how to contact Ike.

Dion: My sister was really into Shaun Cassidy and the Bay City Rollers, so she had stacks of these magazines.

Young Dion: "I was looking for your address in an old '16' magazine my sister had.

I found that 'Come Home With Me' article."

Dion: "Come Home With Me," by Ike Eisenmann.

A whole page just about Ike Eisenmann.

Young Dion: "'Hi.

My name's Ike--'" Dion: "--though you might know me better as 'Scott,' from the TV show 'The Fantastic Journey.'

I've loved being on that show.

I've been an actor since I was eight and that's a long time."

Young Dion: "'But I didn't start hearing from so many of you until "Fantastic Journey" came along--'" Dion: "--and your letters have been, well, fantastic!

Now, I'd like to share some of my private life with you, so why don't you just come on over to my house and meet the family."

I was definitely ready to meet the family.

"We live in a rustic, one family house in San Fernando Valley--that's a suburb of Los Angeles, but we didn't always live here.

I was born in Houston."

Ike: I was born in Houston, Texas, and my father was, at the time, hosting, producing, his own live-action children's show called "The Cadet Don Show."

It was local to the Houston area, but was extremely successful.

From the day I was born, I watched my father on live TV every morning and by the time I was 2 years old I got to be on the show.

That was essentially my introduction into being a part of media, period.

Dion: "We didn't move here until my dad--who's an actor and producer--decided it would be good for his career."

Ike: My father was a-- everyone's a struggling working actor, but he was a working actor at the time.

Dion: "My dad used the professional name, Albert Able.

It was definitely rough."

Ike: He wanted me to do well.

I wanted him to do well.

I was doing well.

Duffy Moon: My cosmic awareness will take care of everything.

male: You can do it.

male: You're impossible.

male: Do you wanna come with us?

Erich Schiller: Oh, I'd like to but I promised my father I'd get home and help him.

Charlie Barry: Get out of my room and forget all about this.

female: What's the matter with the two of you?

Mr. Roarke: Welcome to Fantasy Island.

♪♪♪ Ike: He was not doing well, and when it was hard on him, it kind of became hard on the family.

Andy: Kids in Hollywood often come from families who are actors, and sometimes the kids become more successful than the parents.

And it can be a problem.

Dion: There was a picture of him with his mom and his dad, and a picture of him with his brother.

And in the next frame there was a picture of him with his Mickey Mouse collection.

Young Dion: "'Actually, I just love anything created by Disney and since Mickey Mouse is his most famous character, I started a collection.'"

Ike: Yeah, still love him to this day.

Young Dion: "'One of the big reasons I like Disney is that I'm an artist.'"

Ike: I have always been an artist.

Actually, I drew before I could walk.

Young Dion: "'My specialty is cartooning and one day I'd like to be an animator and work for that studio.'

I cracked!"

Dion: At that point, everything changed.

It was an earth-shifting moment for me.

To see that someone else in the world wanted to be an animator as this serious idea.

Ike: It was something I wanted to do.

I loved creating characters.

Dion: I mean, he was in California, he was in the movie business.

Ike: And here I had this connection to the studio.

Ike: Here I was on a studio lot.

There was the animation building, and the animators going to lunch and they were working and it was all happening in the building right there where I was working.

Dion: It made me feel like I was less alone, like, this crazy idea that everybody told me was just a pipe dream, actually might have a chance of happening.

Ike: That's what I thought I wanted to build upon for a career and a life.

Dion: So now, I really had to get in touch with him.

Luckily, a little farther down in the article: "Well, that's about it for my family--what about yours?

Why not write and tell me all about yourself?

I promise I'll read each and every letter--" Young Dion: "'--and I'll try and answer too.

Here's the place to write:'" Dion: There was an address.

So what more could I ask for?

I had a new reason to write to Ike, and I had a new address.

And obviously, it was gonna work 'cause it was right there in an article about him.

So, I started another letter, told him all about the book and the movie and the characters, the character I wanted him to play.

Young Dion: "One reason I'd like you to be Simon-Oe is that I think you're a darn good actor!

And you look like a nice kid-- a lot better than some teen actors."

Dion: Then I brought up the idea that maybe he could work on the movie.

Young Dion: "I assure you this will go down in history as one of the best, if not THE BEST, animated movies of all time."

Dion: "I hope you aren't laughing because these are my goals in life and I know I can do them."

Young Dion: "So when you write back, I hope you do, tell me what you think about Simon-Oe and my movies and if you have any ideas about my second book, tell me and I might use them.

And I've always wondered-- how tall are you?"

Ike: I am 5 feet, 4 inches tall.

Dion: So I sent that letter out to that new address, sure that he would get it, that he would be, like, "Oh my God, yes, I'm always looking for fellow animators," and write right back and the deal would be done.

Dion: But just never heard anything back.

That was really disappointing because I thought that was a sure thing, with the address that was right in the article, but that didn't work either.

So once again, I can't get a hold of him.

But now, it's more important than ever that I get hold of him.

Carmella: Of course, he had to get in contact with him to make this movie.

Just very insistent upon it and just didn't give up.

Loren: He was beyond committed.

I mean, this was church.

Young Dion: "June 23, 1980.

Mom mailed Ike's letter!

I can't wait for it to get back."

Dion: My mom was cool with it.

She would actually take the letters and she would mail them, sometimes she would type them up and I would just be mortified that she would actually read the contents of the letters.

She wasn't supposed to do that.

She wasn't supposed to know all the details.

Young Dion: "A lot of people don't think I'll ever make my movies or have you as a partner, but nothing can stand in my way.

I just need a little help."

Dion: At this point, I was in 9th grade.

Other kids my age are starting to date and starting to talk about, you know, they kissed this person and that, and being a gay kid back in the '70s and early '80s, it wasn't like it is today.

Pat: In the '80s, kids that were perhaps gay, they didn't feel comfortable enough to express themselves if they didn't feel that accepted and I think they were afraid of the scorn that might come along with that.

Andy: When I was growing up, growing up gay was a challenge.

There were no role models, there was nobody to talk to.

Dion: You didn't talk about your feelings.

I didn't tell anyone I was gay.

Andy: And we didn't get to participate in the same way that our classmates were participating.

Dion: We didn't get to go on dates like other teenagers do.

Andy: We miss out on a lot.

Dion: All those crazy feelings that you have as a teenager, you have no outlet for them.

Andy: That's a lot of pent-up energy that's gotta go somewhere.

And most people will channel that energy into something else.

For me, that was acting.

That is what saved my life.

Dion: For me, it was my obsession with Ike and my plans.

Young Dion: "You seem like the kind of person I'd hang around with.

I mean, the way you like cartooning and science fiction.

I'm not really too hard to get along with at all, as long as you're not like that Dalton kid."

Dalton: We got something to say to you, Harris.

We want you off the team.

Harris: Why, because I dance?

Dalton: Because we don't need guys that wear skirts.

female: You're really a jerk, Dalton.

You too, Walter.

Dalton: Wouldn't you know it, he's got girls to protect him.

I guess girls like to stick together.

You're a pansy.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Carmella: In the middle of Dion coming up with this movie and coming up with this idea, our mother got remarried.

Dion: Actually, it was the summer of the Doublemint commercial and the guy she married was not very open, not very tolerant.

Carmella: Our new stepdad wasn't a creative guy.

He wasn't an expressive guy, and I think he picked on Dion quite a bit, and really didn't offer him any support.

Dion: I knew that I just couldn't say anything about any kind of feelings I might have because my mom might be okay with it, but he definitely would not be.

So that made it even worse.

So any kind of adolescent energies I had, it all went into my movies and Ike Eisenmann thing, and that became everything to me.

Carmella: All he wanted to talk about was this movie and the characters and Ike Eisenmann and I just thought, "It's a childhood crush, teenage crush."

Ike was good-looking, he was a hottie, and he's still a hottie.

How can you blame him?

Young Dion: "July 3, 1980.

Getting impatient about Ike's letter."

Dion: As this obsession built and built and built, my plans grew.

Young Dion: "Then I got the idea that maybe, someday, after a few years at the California Institute of the Arts--I wanna go there, we could have our own production company."

Dion: We should have our own TV shows, amusement parks.

I wanted to be the next Disney.

Ike: During shooting "Return from Witch Mountain," I met the head of animation and I had my collection of drawings, and I showed it to him just to get an impression and he literally offered to send me to CalArts but I was still in high school so he said, "When you graduate, come on back.

Let's talk, if you're interested, and we'll set it up."

It was like that.

But kind of by the time I turned 18, I'm graduating high school and figuring out what the next stages are, you know, "Black Cauldron" comes out and Disney's animation, they were just laying people off and it looks like that whole thing is just gonna go away.

And if Disney goes away, there's no reason to be an animator.

I mean, where are you gonna go?

Who are you gonna work for?

Young Dion: "L for Labriola, E for Eisenmann.

L&E Productions.

I figure by the time we do, if we do, although I hate to say it, Disney is not gonna be the big animation studio it used to be.

By that time, this world will be craving some good animation and a lot of other things.

I wanna give them everything I can."

Ike: There were not a lot of prognosticators at the time that could have seen what "Little Mermaid" was gonna do for the world, let alone a studio and the art of animation, period.

♪♪♪ Young Dion: "June 13.

Mailed letter to Ike.

God, I hope it gets there."

Young Dion: "July 7.

Got my letter to Ike back.

I was SO MAD!"

Pat: It was a little frustrating for him because I didn't respond.

Young Dion: "Mom's gonna mail it again--better work!"

Dion: And the frustration just made the obsession even crazier.

I would look through the TV guide to find out when he was gonna be guest starring on shows, 'cause he was always on "Wonder Woman" or "CHiPs" or "Fantasy Island," all those great shows he was a guest star on.

Randy: He's the neatest person I've ever met.

♪♪♪ Young Dion: "I even went to the Auto-Rama last week to see Larry Wilcox."

Dion: Larry Wilcox was one of the stars of "CHiPs."

Barry Lasher: It was an accident.

Let me go.

Jon Baker: Hey, knock it off, will you?

Dion: And I knew that Ike had a starring role on an episode of "CHiPs."

Jon: Like, you live around here?

Dion: So, obviously, they knew each other.

Jon: And is your mom and dad home now?

Barry: My mom's at work.

I don't have a dad.

Dion: So I convinced my parents to drive up to Cleveland, an hour away, sit in the long line to talk to Larry Wilcox.

I mentioned, you know, I know that you starred with Ike Eisenmann.

He said, "Yeah, yeah, I remember him."

"Okay, well, then, I'm trying desperately to get in touch with him.

I have important things to discuss with him."

And he was really nice.

He took me seriously, signed his picture and flipped it over and was like, "You should try writing to him in care of The Screen Actors Guild."

But I thought maybe he knew something, so I tried it again.

On February 8, 1981, "Ike," and I always said "Ike."

I never said "Dear Ike," because I didn't want him to get the wrong idea.

Young Dion: "PLEASE, IF YOU STILL LIKE ANIMATION READ THIS LETTER!

SORRY, IT'S SO LONG.

I've sent six of these letters out if you already got one, forget this."

[wind howling] Young Dion: "February 23, 1981.

My letter from Ike came back--I was SO MAD AT the SAG!"

Dion: So at this point, this had been going on for about a year and a half, and I was starting to worry what happens if, after all this time, Ike doesn't even wanna be an animator anymore?

But then-- Young Dion: "September 15.

Went to get '16' magazine.

Big article on Ike Eisenmann."

Dion: "Catch Up With Ike Eisenmann!"

Young Dion: "'These days, Ike's master of his own apartment, the headquarters for his major hobby--drawing.

Ike once dreamed of becoming a film animator and is now going to art school to polish up his work.'"

Dion: Oh my gosh, he's doing it.

He's still doing it.

And then as I read through, there was another address.

So, of course, I got my hopes up again.

This is a new article, and this has got to be it.

♪♪♪ Young Dion: "September 16.

Wrote a letter.

Can't wait!"

Dion: Sent it off and just waited.

Dion: And nothing.

I started telling myself, "Maybe he just gets so much fan mail, he doesn't get a chance to read it.

He's never even heard of me."

Ike: I had a love-hate relationship with fan mail.

I appreciated it but I didn't understand it.

Now, my father lived off of the fans.

He had a live TV show so he had to invigorate and support his fan base.

So it was a big part of what he did.

But when I entered the industry, it was not quite the same.

It was much more of a courtesy to those people who like you and reach out to you, to respond.

And as we started to get envelopes full of these letters, it became unmanageable.

It was simply more than I could handle.

Young Dion: "October 23.

'Return from Witch Mountain' is gonna be on the Movie Channel.

Cannot wait."

Dion: For a while there, "Return from Witch Mountain" was on cable all the time.

Young Dion: "November 14.

Watched 'Return from Witch Mountain.'

Pretty good.

He did good acting."

Tony Malone: Tia!

Tia Malone: What was the matter with you?

Tony: I don't know exactly but I need help.

Young Dion: "His father was in it too."

male: I've got temperature increasing in the furnace.

Let's get that coolant flowing.

Ike: Yes, my father had a small part in it.

[alarm sounding] Ike: In the nuclear plant scene at the end.

male: If it doesn't start cooling soon, the chain reaction will start.

male: Let's be reasonable.

Dion: And then, that gave me the idea, "Well, his father is still a working actor, but he probably doesn't get a lot of fan mail, so maybe if I write to him, a letter will get through."

♪♪♪ Young Dion: "'Dear Mr.

Able, I'm glad you took the time to read this letter.

It's very important.'"

Dion: So I sat down and I wrote Ike's father a letter explaining to him that I'd been trying for years at this point to get in touch with his son and why.

My mom typed it up.

Young Dion: "'I would appreciate it very much if you could, sometime, contact your son and ask him why he hasn't answered me.

These past few years have been very difficult for me and I would like to be able to plan what I'm going to do in terms of art schools and also my career.

Thank you very much for your time and interest.

Sincerely, Dion A.

Labriola.'"

Dion: I don't know if I really expected to hear anything at this point because I'd-- nothing else had worked.

♪♪♪ Young Dion: "April 22, 1982."

Dion: One day I come home from school and there is an envelope, postmark from Van Nuys, California.

Young Dion: "Came home and got a letter from Albert Able Eisenmann."

Dion: I'd finally gotten through.

♪♪♪ Young Dion: "'Dear Dion, I would like to apologize for my son Ike not answering your letter.

Try to understand something if you can.

Ike probably receives at least 500 letters a week from people all over the world.'"

Dion: It was a really nice letter.

He explained what I thought was true, that Ike just got so much fan mail that he just didn't have time to respond.

He continued to go on and give me some advice about the film industry.

"If you truly want to be a movie producer, then you should learn a little bit about everything," which in hindsight is pretty good advice.

"By the way, he will be starring in a TV movie next month.

It's called, 'Dreams Don't Die.'

Yours shouldn't either, so keep at it.

Sincerely, Albert Able Eisenmann."

Dion: I was happy to just have finally gotten through, whether it was everything I'd hoped for or not, it was good just to finally come to some kind of a resolution, and also at the time I got that letter, I was a junior in high school.

My interests and my plans were all kind of shifting.

I wasn't so much into the cartoons and animation anymore.

I was into painting and art.

And this is 1982.

MTV had just come on air.

That just changed the world, especially for people my age.

Pat: I just remember the MTV logo started to show up everywhere, in a lot of kids' drawings.

Dion: I started to think, "Well, maybe I don't wanna make animated movies.

Maybe I wanna be a music video producer."

And also, through that, I started to really get into music, the Police and Talking Heads, the Clash and X, all the new wave and punk bands.

That really changed me and changed the direction that I was going into.

So that letter was kind of the beginning of the end of the whole Ike Eisenmann obsession.

I knew that I probably wouldn't get in touch with him and, at this point, I had other things that I was pursuing.

Pat: Art in many ways is very magical because you start with an idea and it evolves and it changes and, as you change, that work of act continues to change.

So when you're done, it's not what you originally thought about in the beginning, but it expresses more about who you are and what you are, because you've become so involved in that work.

♪♪♪ Dion: After I graduated high school, I ended up going to the Cleveland Institute of Art for a couple of years and studied painting.

Then I transferred to the Art institute of Chicago where I studied video.

From there, I got a job working as a V.J.

in a nightclub called Berlin.

They were famous for their music videos that they edited there.

Ended up making a couple music videos for some local bands.

Took a couple animation classes.

Took a screenwriting course, and then just decided I'd done as much as I could in Chicago.

I decided to move to Los Angeles.

Ended up working in cable documentaries as an editor.

male: What would happen if every human being on Earth disappeared?

Dion: It was actually the first year I lived here, I was online, chatting.

Andy: We met the old-fashioned way in a Internet chatroom.

Dion: He was living, like, in Pasadena at the time and I'd just moved to L.A. so I didn't have a car, I didn't have any way to get to Pasadena so it's like, "Well, maybe I'll run into you someday."

Andy: We chatted for years.

I mean, it was at least 5 years, off and on.

Dion: I finally met him in person.

Andy: I guess our schedules just aligned.

Dion: And we decided to go out on a date.

Andy: And like all good first dates we ended up going straight back to his place.

Dion: And we, you know, we're just talking, as you do on dates, small talk.

Andy: And the subject turns to Disneyland.

Dion: I'd just been to Disneyland with some friends of mine who came out to visit from Chicago.

Andy: And he stayed for the electric light parade.

And he was excited because Peter Pan was in the parade.

Dion: And Peter Pan was played by an actual guy.

Andy: Which is interesting and unique because we all grew up seeing Peter Pan played by a woman of a certain age, you know, like an older lady.

Dion: And that would infuriate me as a kid.

It was such a disappointment.

So I was happy that they finally actually cast Peter Pan as a guy because, as a kid, I had a crush on Peter Pan.

And then I said, "It went Adam Ant, Peter Pan, and the kid from 'Escape to Witch Mountain.'"

In the end, he laughed and said, "Oh, Ike Eisenmann?"

Andy: Well, you know, Ike's one of my best friends.

Andy: The next thing I know, he goes to his closet and starts rummaging around and pulls out this box and he comes back with all these letters that he had written as a kid, letters to Ike.

Andy: I met Ike in 1997.

I was doing a show in Hollywood and he was a fan of the show.

He and his wife came a couple of times.

Another friend of mine in the show connected with them and, one night, mentioned that he was going out with Ike Eisenmann and I went and we just hit it off.

Ike: And we've been friends every since.

Andy: It almost seems like all of this was just meant to be because I had a trip to Florida planned.

Dion: And he was going to Florida to visit Ike Eisenmann.

Ike: I had been looking for places to live that were not Los Angeles.

I just really wanted to be somewhere else.

And turned out I fell in love with a place in Florida and, like that, within months, moved there.

Andy: Ike was producing a cartoon and I was gonna do a voice in the cartoon and sing a song.

Dion: Oh, that's interesting.

Ike Eisenmann actually has an animation studio.

Ike: At that particular time, boutique 3D animation studios were kind of popping up, the software was becoming affordable enough that you could have a small production company.

So we put our little studio together and I did a couple of projects.

I had Andy come out and do the voice for one of my characters.

Andy: I told Dion, "Put a package together.

Let's get all these letters wrapped up and I'm gonna hand deliver them to their destination."

Dion: I had one that had come back from The Screen Actors Guild that I'd kept.

And actually, a few months before this, my mom had died and, going through her things, I found another letter, like a rough draft of a letter that she had kept.

So I had those two letters and I had the letter from his father and the drawing of Simon-Oe.

Put 'em all in an envelope and gave 'em to Andy.

And then Andy went off to Florida and I waited.

Andy: I get to Florida and we go straight to this animation studio.

He had all these animators.

There was a lot of work.

So, I was having trouble finding the perfect time to present Ike with this package of letters.

Meanwhile, Dion's texting me, like, "Did you do it?"

"Did you do it?"

"Did you do it?"

Dion: "Did you give the letters to Ike yet?"

Andy: No, just hold on, I'll do it.

Andy: It wasn't until the last night that I was there.

Everything was done.

We had just finished dinner and that was my moment.

So I just said, "Oh, I've got something for us to look at."

Dion: So I waited and waited and finally got a text, and Andy said, "I have a story for you!"

And that's all he said.

I was like, "You can't tell me the whole thing, like, what happened when you read--" "No, no, I have to tell you in person."

Andy: You know what?

Trust me, you have to wait 'til I get home.

Dion: So, I had to wait again.

Dion: Finally, Andy gets back, and he tells me that one night they sat down.

Andy: I pull out the letters and hand them to Ike.

And he was really confused at first.

He's, like, looking, going, "What the hell?"

And we just kind of went through, one by one.

Dion: They went through them in chronological order.

They read the rough draft first.

Ike: "Ike, before I say what I have to say, I just want to tell you that this is not an ordinary fan letter or anything like that, as you will soon see."

Andy: He was completely blown away.

Thought they were amazing and we were laughing.

Ike: "Another reason I'd like you to be Simon-Oe is that I think you are a darn good actor!"

Thank you very much.

"And you look like a nice kid-- a lot better than some teen actors."

Dion: Got a good chuckle out of it, you know, it's the silly ideas of a teenager.

Then they read the second letter.

Ike: "First, I have to ask, do you know how hard it is to get a hold of you?

My God."

[laughing] No, I had no idea how hard I was to get hold of.

[laughing] Andy: He felt terrible that he was just seeing them for the first time then.

Ike: I don't know if it was because my father had them or they just went into a pile or, I don't know.

Dion: And then Andy pulled out the envelope that had the postmark from Van Nuys, California.

Andy: The letter from Ike's dad.

Dion: And Ike was, like, "What's this?"

Andy: I could see the wheels turning.

He was completely confused, didn't understand what was happening.

Dion: So then he opened it and looked down and saw that it was from his father.

Andy: And he really kind of turned white.

He got very serious.

You could really feel the mood in the room change.

Ike: In looking at the date, this would have been post moving out, probably at my most contentious period of time in my relationship with my father.

Andy: When he started reading that letter, I knew instantly that something was up.

It really, really got to him.

Dion: Andy knew that there was something that Ike had not told him.

Andy: It took him a minute but then he explained the reaction.

Dion: Turns out his father had recently died.

Ike: I don't talk about this much but I feel it's kind of important 'cause I've learned a bit about it.

My father took his own life at an advanced age.

Andy: Just months prior to this moment.

Ike: It took me a while to kind of even accept the idea that he took this action and I just couldn't really talk about it 'cause I didn't know how to.

Andy: So it was all very fresh.

Ike: The timing of it, when Andy shared it with me, was pretty sensitive.

Andy: Because of that, the letter also really, really got to him because he thought it was a beautiful letter.

Dion: It was a really kindhearted, generous letter to a kid who needed to hear some kindhearted words.

Ike: "Dear Dion, I would like to apologize for my son Ike not answering your letter.

Ike probably receives at least 500 letters a week from people all over the world.

He doesn't even have time to read many of them, much less answer.

As far as any schools are concerned, my suggestion to you would be to learn all you can right there in Ohio.

By the time you are absolutely sure what vocation you would like to pursue, I know you'll-- I know you'll have several schools in mind.

I might also add if you truly want to be a movie producer, then you should learn a little bit about everything, perform in school plays and community theater, take a screenwriting course, direct something, no matter how small.

The more you learn about all phases of the business, the better you will be as a producer.

I hope I've been some help to you and I hope you understand why Ike cannot correspond.

Believe me, he would if he could.

And by the way, he will be starring in a TV movie next month.

It's called, 'Dreams Don't Die.'

Yours shouldn't either, so keep at it.

Sincerely, Albert Able Eisenmann."

♪♪♪ Ike: And what I'm finding personally interesting, rereading this now, is that I had the same conversation with him but none of these words came out of his mouth.

I wanted to be an artist, I thought I wanted to be an animator.

None of these suggestions were things that he could say to me.

He wasn't capable, for whatever reason, and I'd like to selfishly think this is to me, if you don't mind.

Dion: I'd had that letter for all those years and never thought that that would have that effect on Ike, that there was any of that story behind it.

So it suddenly made the whole crazy obsession, the years I spent trying to get in touch with him, it made it all make sense.

I was happy that that letter finally seemed to reach the person that it really needed to reach.

♪♪♪ Dion: A few months ago, someone asked me what advice I would give to a younger version of myself.

And I actually echoed the words of Ike's father.

I said, "Dreams don't die, so stay at it.

But you also kinda have to let them shift and grow, like a living thing.

And they'll lead you where they wanna lead you."

♪♪♪ Dion: That's you, that would be Simon-Oe.

So let me ask you about Simon-Oe.

Now, do you think you would have interested in doing the Simon-Oe voice?

Ike: Of course.

I mean, absolutely.

Dion: Now, I've never had an idea of what the voice of Simon-Oe would be.

Ike: When it came to character animation, I never really created character voices.

That's such a specialized kind of thing.

I usually--it would just be myself.

So that's what I would have been able to offer that are now-- Dion: I think that's acceptable.

Ike: You know.

Dion: Got it, right.

♪♪♪ [sniffing] [growling] Simon-Oe: Have no fear, young man.

I am the wise and powerful Simon-Oe.

I want you to remember one thing as you venture out into this strange world.

You will always have magic on your side.

Ike: I want you to remember one thing as you venture out into this strange world.

You will always have magic on your side.

Dion: Finally, 40 years in the making.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ David: I had no part at all, but Dion said I could do other things.

Maybe I could be an animator.

Of course, now I would ask him, "Could I do some music?"

But that's another story.

♪♪♪