By Cassandra Pinkney
Matteo Lane is a New York City-based comedian from Chicago, IL, with an impressive breadth of talent. A creative in every sense of the word, Lane explored many other creative pursuits before beginning his comedy career—including oil painting, opera singing, and fashion illustration. That inborn creativity led him to gravitate toward Disney at a young age, where he began to develop an impressive knowledge of the studios’ history.
His latest comedy special, Matteo Lane: The Al Dente Special, premiered May 16 on Hulu and Disney+; written, performed, and executive produced by Lane, the special covers his travels, unique family background, and friendships in his signature snarky and sassy wit.
D23 had the chance to sit down with Lane to talk about The Al Dente Special—but not before chatting with the comic about all things Disney!
D23: What are some of your first memories with Disney?
Matteo Lane (ML): Sleeping Beauty. I’m a fan of [Disney Legends] Marc Davis and Eyvind Earle, and a lot of the artists that came out of that era of Disney, from like 1937 through basically the 1960s. I love Marc Davis—he’s my favorite artist of all time. I just think he was an amazing draftsman and an amazing animator; he created Maleficent and Cruella de Vil. He did a lot of the female drawings because he was very good at drawing a believable body, which is something that’s very difficult to animate. I went to art school, and I worked as a storyboard artist and animator and fashion illustrator for so long, so that’s how my appreciation for Disney comes in.
D23: Like you said, you have a very artistic background with a lot of skills that can be seen as quintessentially Disney. So how has Disney influenced your art?
ML: Like I said, I was very influenced by the things I liked. I love Sleeping Beauty. I thought it was really highly stylized, and it looked different than the other animated movies. I think a lot of my influence came from that and the art direction of Earle, and Davis—and the coloring and styling of the “Renaissance tapestry” look of those of those backgrounds and character design. It was like a mix of 14th century French medieval tapestries and the 1950s. So it was that aesthetic that always stuck with me. A lot of my sketch or line work, or character work, all has that feel to it.
D23: What about Disney resonated with you as a child, and what continues to resonate with you as an adult?
ML: Well in the 1990s, we got VHS tapes of Disney movies. We didn’t have DVDs; we didn’t have Netflix; we didn’t have Disney+. So, you had eight Disney movies, and you watched those over and over again, like Aladdin and The Lion King and stuff like that.
It’s an outlet for kids to express themselves and to sing and to watch stories that may have difficult themes to them, but the guise of animation makes them more approachable. You learn about death, you learn about family, you learn about love, and you learn about bad versus good. There are all the tropes of a childhood story but just thrown into a broader animated musical.
D23: You’ve ranked your favorite Disney Villains before…
ML: Number one is Maleficent!
D23: …But can we ask you to rank some other Disney favorites? Who are your top three favorite Disney Princesses?
ML: In terms of design, in my opinion, one of the prettier princesses is Cinderella—in the pink dress before it gets ripped up. I always loved the design of that dress… I like the way it looked; it had the ruffles coming out of the two bows in the front, with the sort of drape. I actually never liked Cinderella in the ball gown that the Fairy Godmother made her, because they put her hair up—and as a kid I hated when the hair went up! Like when Belle put her hair up… let the hair down! I want the hair down with that dress! So, I would say Cinderella’s pink dress.
I would then say Jasmine in the red was great, because it was like a slightly different. There’s something about just changing an already existing outfit into something slightly different, like Sleeping Beauty with the blue and the pink dress.
You know what? Before Cinderella’s, I’d put Sleeping Beauty in the pink dress. I always preferred it pink. I didn’t like it blue. I liked it pink! So, in order, I would say, Sleeping Beauty in pink, Cinderella in pink, and Jasmine in red.
D23: We’re sensing a love of warm tones…
ML: Yeah, I like warm tones. My favorite color is orange. I like orangey reds; I like orangey yellows. I don’t like purple, I don’t know why. I prefer Marc Davis’s original design of Maleficent with the red coat rather than the purple. But, you know, Eyvind Earle had a vision, and we all followed suit.
D23: Okay—what are your top three favorite Disney films?
ML: Number one, Sleeping Beauty. Number two, 101 Dalmatians… We’re keeping it to animated films, right?
D23: You can choose whatever you want!
ML: I’ll keep it to animation. So, I would say, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians—which were right after each other, by the way—and then I guess I have to pick one from the 1990s… Let me see—well, I do love the music of Hercules the best. But maybe Mulan. I’ll do Mulan for number three!
D23: What are your top three favorite Disney songs?
ML: Number one would probably be “A Star is Born” from Hercules. Then number two would be “Go the Distance” from Hercules. And then number three would be… you know, I always loved “I See the Light” from Tangled. I like that song a lot!
D23: You obviously know a lot about Disney history! Where did this knowledge come from?
ML: We had a giant Disney book when I was younger because my mom liked it. It was all about the art of Disney; the sketching and the keyframes and the drawings and the animation and the paintings. And they would go movie by movie. I always loved looking at that book; I loved looking at all the artwork and the drawings. You just pick up a lot from it, you know?
And then, obviously, I was a kid in the 1990s, so our whole life was The Lion King! And you were inundated with ABC—because, you know, we had four channels!)—and so you’re inundated with [announcer voice] “And behind the scenes of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast…” and you’d watch all the voice actors and all that stuff. So yeah, you just pick it up as you go along.
D23: Your new special, The Al Dente Special, is now out on Hulu and Disney+. How does it feel to have your work streaming alongside the films you grew up watching and that mean so much to you?
ML: Well, I feel sorry for the 7-year-old that wants to watch Beauty and the Beast and instead, they’re watching me complain about flying through Europe!
But seriously, it feels cool! it feels great. None of it sinks in—it’ll all sink in later. I’ll have an answer for you a couple months from now. I think.
D23: What can your fans expect from this new special?
ML: I think that this special is just like catching up with a friend at brunch that you haven’t seen over the past year—and they’re telling you all the stories and adventures they’ve been on. Just an hour of escapism. Just laughing. Let’s just laugh!
Matteo Lane: The Al Dente Special is now streaming on Hulu and Disney+!