Connect with Deadline online!
https://www.facebook.com/deadline/
https://twitter.com/DEADLINE
https://www.instagram.com/deadline/
https://www.facebook.com/deadline/
https://twitter.com/DEADLINE
https://www.instagram.com/deadline/
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00You voiced Stitch.
00:04I did.
00:05And this is where I give full credit to Dean Diplo, my co-director and co-writer on Lilo
00:10and Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon.
00:11And Dean said, you know, there's this annoying voice that you have always used to bother
00:16us.
00:17I would call people up and go, Dean, Dean, what are you doing, Dean?
00:22I would do that.
00:23And he's like, you use the voice when you pitch the boards.
00:25Why don't you just do the boards?
00:27Because nobody wants to hear more of you.
00:29I was like, you know what, that's a good.
00:30So I started doing the voice, the official voice.
00:42So what are you going to name him?
00:43I assign to you, Gosling, 0-0-0-1.
00:47OK, that sucked.
00:49That sucks.
00:51You got to learn to make stuff up.
00:56Come on.
00:58What's in that inside you searching anything yet?
01:07No.
01:08Just have a little fun for once, Gosling 0-1-8-6 there.
01:15You see what I did?
01:17His numbering is out of sequence.
01:25His name can't have numbers.
01:28It's like someone didn't even like him.
01:30My name has numbers.
01:32It's got to be personal.
01:33Personal.
01:34Processing personal.
01:35Bright Bill.
01:36Bright Bill.
01:37Is that satisfactory?
01:38Bright Bill.
01:39Processing beep, beep, boop, boop.
01:40Satisfactory.
01:41Welcome to Behind the Lens.
01:52Today he is a four-time Oscar nominee, including this year.
01:56His films include Lilo and Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods, and now one
02:02of the most acclaimed films of the year, and I have to say animated or otherwise, is The
02:08Wild Robot.
02:09Congratulations.
02:10Chris Sanders, welcome.
02:13You are, of course, director here, writer as well.
02:16You adapted the book by Peter Brown.
02:18I don't think you have voiceover in this one.
02:20I didn't do a voice in this one.
02:22I should have probably done like a little something somewhere, but I didn't think of
02:26it.
02:27A little Hitchcock kind of thing.
02:28Something, like a squirrel.
02:29Yeah, I didn't think of it.
02:30Yeah, because you are master of the voiceover, which we'll get to, but how about this?
02:35The Wild Robot is actually nominated for three Academy Awards, which is unusual for animation.
02:43You don't always get into those other categories, like sound and Chris Bauer's incredible music
02:48score.
02:50Yeah.
02:51Did you just know right away, the books had been around for a while, and I think DreamWorks,
02:57which you're working with, had them there, but how did you come upon that you knew, I
03:02wanted to make this my next thing?
03:04Yeah, I was looking for my next gig.
03:06I wanted to get something going as quickly as possible.
03:08I don't like not being busy, so I contacted DreamWorks to see what was in development,
03:13and I dropped in, and Margie and Kristen and Eric put out just a whole bunch of stuff.
03:19Basically, it lined it up on a table, and there were scripts and books, and as they
03:22were describing everything, they came to this book, The Wild Robot, and just the first description,
03:29there's no question, I was like, that's the one I'm interested in.
03:32It just lined up with the kind of stuff I like, and I took it home, read it, and I think
03:37I-
03:38What was it about the kind of stuff you liked that you saw in it that early?
03:42It's the subtle type of relationships in it.
03:45I like stories that are less hero and villain, which I love those, and I've worked on those,
03:50but I like the stuff that's a little bit more like us, like a little more intricate kind
03:54of relationship.
03:55I think those are the kind of stories that have the biggest emotional payoffs.
03:59There was a robot as a lead.
04:01I love robot movies, so that was a huge plus, but overall, I think more than anything, at
04:08the core of the story was a mother, and moms are kind of famously missing from animated
04:13films.
04:15Ever since Bambi, when they killed her off, right away.
04:20There's a reason for that, I realized.
04:22Really?
04:23Really.
04:24When I first started working on Aladdin, there was a mom in the story, in the very early
04:27version, and Aladdin goes off, and he does his thing, and there was a lot of trouble
04:33because as he's having these adventures, we would cut back to his mom, who's heartbroken
04:39and worried, and so the whole story just wasn't going to work with that, and you felt
04:46weird about him out having an adventure while his mom is waiting and doesn't know where
04:50he is and stuff, so she disappeared from the story because of that, because you have to
04:55be allowed to make mistakes in these things, and Aladdin needed to go to a market and steal
05:00food, and if your mom's at home, and you come home, and you're like, I was stealing food
05:04all day.
05:05That's not going to go well, right?
05:06So that's why I think that moms are kind of missing, for the most part.
05:11That's interesting.
05:12I never thought of that.
05:13That's wild.
05:14It produced a strange dynamic, and so, yeah, once she was no longer in the story, now he
05:18is by himself, he's on his own, and he can steal food and go on an adventure, and nobody's
05:23waiting for him, right?
05:25So now we have the maternal aspect here, finally, in this little robot.
05:29Yeah, and of course, there's a huge amount of power, and that is unknown territory, I
05:34think, in animation, and for me as well, as a writer and a director.
05:38So there's a lot of reasons I wanted to do that.
05:41One of the funniest bits, because there's a lot of humor in this movie, too.
05:44It's got heart, it's got it all, you know, heart, humor, everything you want to say,
05:49but there's a bit with the mother, with the six kids, or whatever.
05:54Oh, Pinktail, right?
05:55Catherine O'Hara, yeah.
05:56And she has, you know, and I have six, and then you hear a crash, or whatever, well,
06:01I have five.
06:02Yeah.
06:03And it was just so, timing was so perfect for that joke to land.
06:07It was just great.
06:08It was fun to have the two type of perspectives on it, because you have Roz, who unexpectedly
06:14becomes a mom, and she's very nervous about the whole thing, and very precious with Brightville.
06:18She's a first-time mom.
06:19And then you've got Pinktail, Catherine O'Hara, and she has three litters a year, and she
06:26can't even keep track of which one it is, right?
06:29And so all the glamour and the newness has worn off, and so she's got this very unsentimental
06:35sort of viewpoint on it.
06:36So that was just really nice balance, that we had both kind of moms on screen at once.
06:41And it's great to have her there, because she can tell Roz, this is what you need to
06:44do.
06:45Here's the deal.
06:46You know, she can lay it on the line and get Roz pointed in the right direction, you know,
06:49right away.
06:50Exactly.
06:51You know, this has elements of E.T., you name it, of other movies and things, but it's its
06:57own thing.
06:58You know, it seems unique, and also in terms of the animation technique, the visual look
07:03of it, it's not CGI, it's not typical of what you're going to see that's thrown out by studios
07:09every other week.
07:11It's beautiful to watch.
07:13It's a whole new look.
07:14It's a whole new technology that allowed us to do this.
07:19You know, I began in the hand-drawn, hand-painted days of animation, and there's a certain analog
07:24warmth that can only come from that hand-made, human-made thing.
07:30And when CG came along, we got all these amazing gifts, not the least of which is the ability
07:35to move a camera in space.
07:36And there's a huge emotional component that comes from that.
07:39But we were obligated to leave all those hand-made things behind, and it's been decades now.
07:44I think all of us have longed to get that element back into the films, and DreamWorks
07:50had just made some huge advances visually, getting away from that CG look that we were
07:55obligated to technologically, and getting a more hand-made look on screen with Puss
08:01in Boots, The Last Wish, and with Bad Guys.
08:04And we were, I was challenging them to push it even further, because I really hold Bambi
08:10in high regard.
08:12The visuals, Tyrus Wong's styling in Bambi, all the way back to when Disney made that
08:19in the 40s.
08:20I just think there's no better forest.
08:23I would say Tyrus Wong's styling in Bambi, and Miyazaki's forests, those are the gold
08:30standard for forests.
08:32And so we identified, one of our visual development artists, who was in France, Daniel Cuquon.
08:39His paintings in particular had a very impressionistic style, very loose, very relaxed, very colorful.
08:45And I identified those as, could that be our target?
08:48Could our film look exactly indiscernible from his paintings?
08:51And Jeff Budsberg, our VFX supervisor, and Ramon Zibach, our production designer.
09:00They were pursuing that look, and they actually got all the way there.
09:05I was expecting maybe we'd get halfway there, but there definitely came a day, I saw bits
09:09and pieces of the look, and they were assembling a moving test.
09:14And they had a painting that it was supposed to look like.
09:17And every day we looked at the painting, and one day we were looking at the painting, and
09:20they pushed a button, and it began to move.
09:22And I realized that's the finished look of the film.
09:25They made it all the way there.
09:27And very quietly, I had a moment of anxiety, because it was so different looking.
09:32I think any time you get an advance that is that big a leap, it was a little bit anxiety
09:37inducing.
09:38I was like, is it too painterly?
09:39Is it too loose?
09:40Is it going to be, for some reason, maybe just not something that the audience wants
09:43to see?
09:44But as soon as we got our characters in there, and the characters are likewise hand-painted,
09:49all the feathers are brushstrokes, all the fur on every creature is a brushstroke.
09:53They wed and harmonized with that style so beautifully.
09:58And then the anxiety was gone, and I was the opposite.
10:01I was just, every day was a thrill.
10:03Because it makes it look more real to me in that way, too, when you're talking about the
10:08brushstrokes and things on the creatures and their other things.
10:11But CGI tends to, I don't know, smooth them out a little bit too much.
10:15Yeah, it's a weird thing, because we were obligated to a sort of a photo-realism with
10:20CG, where every leaf is very well-defined, and every little hair on a creature is going
10:24to be very well-defined.
10:25And so you're working against that to some degree.
10:28You're trying to make things look imperfect.
10:31And with this painterly style, we literally had matte painters painting the trees, painting
10:37the rocks.
10:38And even the water is hand-painted.
10:39And they found very ingenious ways of making brushstrokes move like water.
10:45And the weird thing was, it evoked a different sort of realism.
10:49And that is something I really didn't expect.
10:51So we could paint dimensionally.
10:54So I went to a demonstration where Baptiste was painting a tree.
10:58And he began to paint it, and he would turn that tree and continue to paint.
11:03Likewise with the bushes and the trees and the grass on the ground.
11:06They're brushstrokes.
11:07And if you look very closely, they come and go.
11:09Like the flowers are literally dots.
11:11They're not like a fully built flower.
11:15That looseness, oddly enough, produced a different sort of realism.
11:20And it's hard to explain unless you just look at it.
11:23When you're looking at a great painting, it looks real.
11:26It feels real.
11:27It's got a solidity.
11:28And it's because you're not looking at all the details.
11:31You're taking in the overall.
11:33And that was the thing that was very interesting, and it was surprising to me as I watched.
11:37There's a wide shot where we're above a waterfall.
11:40And that shot in particular, I thought, it was just breathtaking.
11:43It was more present and believable and real in a way than if it had been photo real.
11:51That's interesting.
11:52It was just an effect we hadn't expected.
11:54It's fascinating.
11:55This is a great year for animation, by the way, that you're in.
11:58I mean, I really have hope for animation after this year.
12:02There's so many different kinds of movies out there being made.
12:05So many opportunities for animation creators.
12:11Is it becoming a golden age again?
12:13I don't know.
12:14I would say yes, because I feel like, again, we were in this wonderful place with CG, because
12:18again, we got so many amazing gifts.
12:20But I feel like we've just come out of a tunnel, like into the Spider-Verse.
12:25That was the big wake-up call for everybody.
12:26Was it?
12:27Oh my gosh.
12:29It was so completely different and illustrated, and it worked so well.
12:35I just feel like we've finally come out of this tunnel, and there are more possibilities
12:39than there have been for a very long time now, visually and creatively.
12:44You certainly know what you're talking about.
12:45You spent 20 years at Disney.
12:47Let me read some of the movies that you were responsible for storyboard, character design,
12:52all kinds of titles that you did on all these movies.
12:55Beauty and the Beast, the very first animated film nominated for Best Picture, before they
13:00even had an animated category of their own, Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan, Lilo and Stitch.
13:08You directed it.
13:10It's had three sequels, three television series, and now it is being turned into a live-action
13:16film.
13:17Yeah.
13:18And you voiced Stitch in all of these, right?
13:22This is like a whole other career.
13:25You do voiceover, but tell me about how you wound up doing this and how it's become like
13:30the cash register for you that never stops.
13:34And this is where I can give full credit to Dean DeBlois, my co-director and co-writer
13:40on Lilo and Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon.
13:43We met on Mulan when we started working on Lilo and Stitch.
13:47The intention in the beginning was that he would never say anything, that he would be
13:51very much like Dumbo.
13:53He would never utter a sound.
13:55And as we continued to develop the story and write the movie, we realized he was going
14:01to have to say a few things, very spare, but he was going to have to say a few things.
14:05And then we were in a conundrum because we were worried that if we hired a very, very
14:10prominent actor, eventually the studio might question, well, why are they saying so very
14:15few things?
14:16Can you give him more dialogue?
14:17And we were very worried that it would throw the movie out of balance.
14:20And Dean said, you know, there's this annoying voice that you have always used to bother
14:24us.
14:25I would call people up and go, Dean, Dean, what are you doing, Dean?
14:31I would do that.
14:32And he's like, you use the voice when you pitch the boards.
14:34Why don't you just do the voice?
14:36Because nobody wants to hear more of you.
14:37You know, I was like, you know what?
14:39So I started doing the voice, the official voice.
14:42And there did come a day when he had, at the very end of the movie, there's this very heartfelt
14:46thing that Stitch says.
14:47And it required something akin to acting.
14:51And I was very concerned that I wouldn't be able to do it.
14:52And on that particular day, I said, I'm going to go in the booth.
14:55I'll be the actor.
14:56I'll be an actor today.
14:57You direct me.
14:58And you get this to the point where you think the line works.
15:01And if I can't make this line work, then we'll hire somebody and we'll redo it all.
15:06And it didn't take very long.
15:07And Dean said, I think you got it.
15:08And I was like, you're sure?
15:09And he goes, I'm absolutely sure.
15:11And yeah.
15:12And after the film was done, eventually one day, they called me into an office.
15:18And they said, we're going to play something for you.
15:19And they played this.
15:20It was somebody else doing the voice.
15:22And I was confused.
15:23I said, why are we doing this?
15:24And they said, well, somebody's going to have to do the voice from here out.
15:29And in an unusually decisive moment, I was like, no.
15:34I will be doing this voice from now on.
15:36And I have ever since.
15:37I do all the parades, the toys, and all that kind of stuff.
15:39Everything.
15:40Beyond just these movies and TV and everything else, there's a lot of call for this.
15:44Yeah.
15:45Every once in a while, I'll go in the studio and I get to revisit him.
15:48And then we have this live action film.
15:49How is that?
15:50How does that look?
15:51I have yet to see it all done.
15:52OK.
15:53Because in this case, I really am just the voice.
15:54Yeah.
15:55And I go in.
15:56I do my voice.
15:57I see bits and pieces.
15:59But I have yet to see the final assembly.
16:02So I am as excited as anybody to see the final assembly.
16:04Well, yeah.
16:05All right.
16:06Let me ask you about another live action movie that you are not, I don't think, involved
16:12with.
16:13Maybe you are.
16:14How to Train Your Dragon, which is coming out as a live action version.
16:17I've seen the trailer.
16:18Yeah.
16:20I have to say, I looked at the trailer and I go like, the animated is just as real as
16:24this live action film to me.
16:26You know?
16:27Just like looking at the trailer.
16:28I can't wait to see the movie and see what they've done with it.
16:31But what do you, have you seen it?
16:34I have seen cuts here and there along the way.
16:38Mostly I was involved, Dean would invite me in as an executive producer to look at his
16:43assemblies in story.
16:45And just have, if I had any input whatsoever.
16:50And I was, again, as excited as anybody to see him building the movie.
16:54And he would send me shots of the set and he would send me shots of the dragons as they
17:00developed them.
17:01And I do have to say that the dragons in this version, very true to the dragons in the cartoon.
17:07Yeah.
17:08That's what I noticed.
17:09But there is a cool extra thing going on.
17:11Oh, cool.
17:12And I think this was, I think, the genius of having Dean direct the movie.
17:15I mean, he knows it inside and out.
17:17No one knows this movie better than Dean and I.
17:20And we know why everything is the way it is and stuff like that.
17:23So I think he could jump into it and I think understand instantly anything that he was
17:29probably desiring as far as, like, we didn't have time for this or maybe couldn't quite
17:34do this and that.
17:36And now he's able to do those things.
17:38So yeah, no, it's been so, so exciting to see it go to this new level.
17:45And keep that going.
17:46Yeah, but hang on to all that, all the vibe and all the wonderful things that made the
17:51original what it was, right?
17:53That's what I think is so important.
17:54If you're going to do these live action remakes, capture the magic again, you know, and it's
17:59not as easy as it sounds because what you did in the first one and its sequels, you
18:07know, really works on a level beyond just it's a movie.
18:11It's got heart and people really take it to heart.
18:15So it's important to get it right every time.
18:18Absolutely.
18:19And I can understand the issue because it's a lot like doing a sequel because people want
18:24something new and exciting, but they want it to hold on to the things that they loved
18:29from the first one.
18:30So you always have that sort of, there are expectations that go in all sorts of directions
18:34that you have to attend to.
18:38So I think that's the magic of it.
18:39That's the art of it.
18:40Do you want to direct live action?
18:41You did Call of the Wild with Harrison Ford and everything.
18:44It was a movie I quite liked and I thought it was good, you know, and that's a full out
18:49action live action adventure picture.
18:53And do you have a desire to do more of that kind of thing?
18:56I would love to do it again.
18:57I would love to do it again.
18:58I think I would always want something that has enough of a fantastical element that there
19:02would be an animated component to some degree.
19:05I absolutely did love the immediacy of being on a set on the day.
19:10I mean, it's very stressful and there was not a day that I didn't come in just terrified
19:16that I was not going to get the shots or whatever.
19:19And then you come in in the morning, I think, with a huge anxiety.
19:22And by the end of the day, driving home, I was the opposite.
19:26I was just so thrilled with what had happened.
19:29I think the interactivity in the moment and the inventiveness and the energy of being
19:34on a set, it's absolutely thrilling.
19:36And there is a magic that comes out of it.
19:39And so it's, yeah, I would love to love to do it again.
19:42What was it like working with Harrison Ford?
19:44Amazing.
19:45You're walking on a set, you're essentially a debuting director in this kind of format,
19:51working with a legendary actor.
19:53Yeah.
19:54He was he was he was incredibly supportive and I was incredibly nervous every day, but
20:00he made it as fun as it possibly could have been.
20:03Right.
20:04It's a huge amount of work, but it can be so and it doesn't have to be fun.
20:11There's like it doesn't there's no requirement for fun.
20:13It can be grueling and it is very, very tiring.
20:16But but he just made it so great.
20:18And I was really sorry when I was sorry when it came to an end.
20:21Oddly enough, it was the same way with how to or the Wild Robot.
20:24Wild Robot.
20:25Yeah.
20:26If you are enjoying the process, if you're enjoying the movie, if you love the movie,
20:29nonetheless, it is a huge amount of work over many, many years.
20:32And you come to the point where you're like, OK, it's I'm ready to be done.
20:36But that wasn't what happened on this movie.
20:38The act of making it was the most joyous thing.
20:43And it was a really it was a very emotional moment as as each department finished, particularly
20:49in animation, as each animator came to the end of their inventory.
20:53We always had this moment where they would say, do you have do you have one more shot?
20:58And we would always get choked up.
21:00I'm like, we're out.
21:01I said, if I find another shot, I'll call you immediately.
21:04But the joy of making this was like nothing I've ever experienced before.
21:10The whole message of kindness that was built into Peter's book.
21:14We must give a huge amount of credit, obviously, to Peter Brown.
21:17Like this movie wouldn't be here if he hadn't drawn a robot in a tree one day.
21:22That's what he told me the whole thing came from.
21:23He was doodling and he drew a robot in a tree and this whole idea began.
21:27So that wonderful book started this whole thing.
21:28And the book is all about kindness.
21:30In our very first phone call, Jeff Herman, our producer, and I, we didn't even know what
21:36to ask.
21:37We were just talking to Peter about his book and just asking a few questions.
21:40And he said he revealed the most important thing to the entire production.
21:46He said that while he was writing the book, the guiding principle that was on his mind
21:51was the idea that kindness could be a survival skill.
21:55That was never written into the book on the pages.
21:57So I immediately write this down and I'm like, this is going to be on screen.
22:02And that message of kindness and cooperation and just the whole spirit of what Roz is all
22:08about, it just seemed to like inhabit every corner of our production.
22:14I never remember having any day, I mean, there were difficult things, obviously.
22:19Because we're doing new things.
22:20We are breaking new ground technologically.
22:23The whole painterly style, it has never been seen before.
22:26So there were challenges, but it was always like the spirit of cooperation and helpfulness
22:30that just, again, just pervaded the production.
22:33It was a wonder.
22:35I didn't want it to end, oddly enough.
22:37It may not end.
22:38He has other books.
22:39He has other books, so who knows?
22:42And I bet you're going to plan to, I notice you don't do a lot of sequels to stuff.
22:46You do executive producer or you oversee, but you don't definitely direct, are you going
22:51to direct the next Wild Robot?
22:53I mean, if they decide to do another one, I would definitely want to do it again.
22:57Yeah, that's cool.
22:58And the cast, before we go, I have to ask you about, we talked about Harrison Ford,
23:04great actors.
23:05You had Lupita Nyong'o here as Roz, and she's just fabulous in voiceover performance.
23:12I credit Lupita with like deciphering who Roz really is.
23:18She's a very interesting character, very, very different.
23:21There's a certain architecture to the way she thinks that is critical to that character
23:24working.
23:26And Lupita and I worked together every single recording session.
23:30But Lupita in particular took the lead in, again, deciphering and really sculpting that
23:36character, understanding who Roz really is.
23:40Where are the gaps in what she knows and how is she going to overcome the programming gaps?
23:45And she goes off script.
23:46She has to defy her programming, which is a big message of the movie, is that eventually
23:50all of us may come to a moment where we may have to defy our programming in order to accomplish
23:55something, in order to survive something.
23:57Our very first recording session in New York City, I think we talked for well over an hour
24:01before anything was recorded, just going over the scenes.
24:06And it wasn't a one-time thing.
24:07As Roz continued to, I think, come into focus, we would revisit scenes and redo them.
24:13So not only did Lupita really, really craft and sculpt this character, but she worked
24:20tirelessly to redo things and reshape things so that everything was just right.
24:28Make it work perfectly.
24:29And Pedro Pascal as Fink, the fox.
24:33I love this character.
24:34Yeah, I love that character.
24:35He's great.
24:36And he does the greatest voice on it, too.
24:39It's a great joy to watch that relationship here.
24:42He's fantastic.
24:44There was one particular session early on.
24:47It's a line that is no longer in the film.
24:51And at one point, Roz pulls out this tablet.
24:54And there are things that you could order.
24:56Because I really looked at Roz as a product, a real thing that you could order.
25:00And she had things that you could order as accessories.
25:02And so Fink, who's very interested in superpowering this robot so he could dominate the island,
25:08I thought it would be really funny if he wanted to order something.
25:11And he's going through this list of things.
25:13And the line was, ooh, ooh, can we get that?
25:17He read it.
25:18Ooh, ooh, can we get that?
25:20And he just said it like a little kid sitting in a shopping cart in a grocery store pointing
25:26at something.
25:27And to me, that was the touchstone for his character.
25:30He's got this real innocence.
25:33He has this conniving thing about him.
25:36But we grow to understand that that's because of the programming that he has to have to
25:41survive on this island, which is one of the ideas of the movie.
25:45And Roz looks at all the characters on the island, all the animals, and their behavior
25:50she puts in terms that she would understand, which is it's their programming.
25:55And again, we get back to the message.
25:56There comes a point, if you have not seen the film, there comes a moment where everybody
25:59on the island is going to have to change their programming or they will not survive the next
26:05few months.
26:06Wow.
26:07And it's a beautiful moment that, again, that was handed to Lupita as far as...
26:12Actually it's Lupita and Pedro.
26:15He and she dominate this moment and have this big monologue that is beautiful.
26:24And they let the animals know that this is the moment you've got a choice.
26:28You're going to have to make a choice.
26:29It's a great message and a great movie.
26:31The Wild Robot, Academy Award nominee many times, three times, and many other award nominations.
26:38Congratulations and thanks for joining us on Behind the Lens, Chris Sanders.
26:42Thank you so much.