Posted on August 16, 2011 at 10:00 am
Robert Rodriguez told me that his favorite gadget in the new “Spy Kids” movie is the robot dog with the voice of Ricky Gervais. Here’s a closer look.
Posted on August 15, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Robert Rodriguez is a ground-breaking movie director whose first film, “El Mariachi,” was made on a micro budget of $7000 (with another $220,000 after it was purchased for release). He is known for striking visuals and ultra-violence in movies like Once Upon a Time in Mexico and “From Dusk til Dawn” and for wildly imaginative family movies like Shorts and the Spy Kids series. Rodriguez continues to operate outside of the film-making establishment. He has established his own film-making set-up in his home town of Austin, Texas, and works with his family, writing, editing, shooting, and directing himself, with his ex-wife, Elizabeth Avellan, and his sister as his producers, and his cousin Danny Trejo appearing in many of his movies, including this one as “Uncle Machete.”
I spoke to him about the fourth in the “Spy Kids” series, this one in “4D.”
What does 4D mean?
It’s been a very scrappily innovative series since the beginning. In “Spy Kids 2” we started shooting digital. And with the digital camera, I thought, “Hey, I think I could bring 3D back.” It hadn’t been tried in 20 years. I tried it with “Spy Kids 3” and that became the biggest “Spy Kids” of all, and Jeffrey Katzenberg took note of that and said, “We’re really going to bring 3D back.” In keeping with the series, with everyone being 3D, we really had to go to 4D. I remembered a film with “Odorama” called “Polyester.” That wasn’t a family film, but I said, “That would be a terrific gimmick in a family movie and I’m sure the technology has gotten a lot better.” It has — everything doesn’t smell like batteries.
How do you keep the smells from colliding with each other?
They don’t do that any more. It used to be that all the smells had a real chemical base to them and they all started smelling the same after about the third or fourth one. Once you got to the dirty socks, everything kind of smelled that way. But now they call stay really distinct. The technology has really gotten better, and I didn’t have to do anything but pick which flavors I wanted and they put them on the card for me. And it’s free, just as with the 3D movie where we gave the glasses away for free as well. It’s a level of interactivity that you just don’t get in a movie. Kids are so into interactive things like video games for entertainment. A movie can be very passive by comparison. This brings back the active excitement of putting yourself one step closer to the actors and the characters on screen because you’re smelling exactly what they’re smelling at the same time. In the tests we did, the kids felt it was really a home run as far as making them feel they were a part of the action. That’s what you hope to do with another dimension, just make them feel closer to what is going on in the movie.
One of my favorite things about theThe Spy Kids Trilogy
There’s a dog they could never understand who watches over the kids in the house and he turns out to be a robot dog voiced by Ricky Gervais. That’s probably my favorite. He can do just about anything. He’s like a multi-tool gadget knife and James Bond car all built into a dog. And another of my favorite gadgets is the hammer hands that the boy puts on, like Hulk hands — they can smash through anything you touch. I think my little boy would really love them.
I love the way the “Spy Kids” movies have a lot of action but very little violence.
There’s a very comic line to the action and a lot of it comes back on the kids themselves, so it really promotes adventure and not violence. That’s what parents have always loved about the series. I’m always very careful not to put anything over the kids heads in my family films.
Is there anything you wanted to include in this one that you didn’t get to do?
I wanted to do a James Bond-type song over the end credits with the dog’s head like Sheena Easton but we didn’t make it happen. Maybe next time!
How do you cast a villain? What do you look for?
You want a surprising quality. The villains in my movies are never really villains; they’re just misguided. The children always teach the villain a lesson. They don’t defeat him. This movie’s villain is the Timekeeper, and he’s very much me. I’m always worried about time there is. Seeing my kids grow up so fast, I always want to freeze time. So he is just a little eccentric and it turns out he has a tremendous amount of heart. He’s a super-villain with family values. You need someone who’s a real chameleon. I knew Jeremy Piven could create three or four distinct characters and pull it all together. He has a lot of heart as an actor.
The “Spy Kids” movies are always about the importance of family. In the earlier movies, there was a typical nuclear family but in this one there’s an issue a lot of kids have to deal with — adapting to a blended family.
I got the idea from seeing Jessica Alba on the set of “Machete” with her baby, but dressed for filming. I thought, “Wow, she kind of looks like a spy, and having to deal with this baby — wouldn’t that be cool as an element in the ‘Spy Kids’ movies.” I said to her, “You should be the mother in the new ‘Spy Kids’ movie and have to take the baby on a spy mission.” She said, “I’d probably have to be a step-mother because I am too young to be the mother of school-age kids.” So I thought, “that’s even better.” She’d be harboring this big secret and kids are really sensitive. They know when someone is hiding something from them. So they don’t really like her as a stepmom because they can tell she is not being honest. Through this mission they find out what her secret is and everyone becomes closer because of it. I thought that would add a really great wrinkle to the whole idea of what family means.
I also like the way the kids in your movies are real kids but also very brave and capable.
Kids crave things that empower them. Seeing kids on screen flying around saving the world gets into their dreams and they identify with it and pay-act it out. I saw it in my own two youngest, who weren’t born when the first ones came out. I told them I made them but they did not really understand what that meant. They just like them and pretend to be spies and to be strong.
And Machete is in this movie?
Danny Trejo’s code name in the original “Spy Kids” movie was Machete. We were doing a nod to this idea for a movie that we never got off the ground. We had been talking about doing a “Machete” movie since “Desperado.” So we said, “We should make your character’s code name ‘Machete.'” His name was really Isadore. He’s not the same character as in the movie “Machete!”
That’s good to know, but I hope he doesn’t text.
No, he doesn’t text. Some things are sacred!
Posted on July 15, 2011 at 8:00 am
Bryce Dallas Howard
On playing the movie’s villain, Hilly:
“I literally don’t want to look at it – she’s such a terrible person. What’s interesting when you start doing a role is at first the character is really shocking. But then you play the character 18 hours a day and I’m like – look, I have long hair!”
“It’s really fun to be such a terrible character and the feeling on set is so joyful and we’re having such a wonderful experience together. The book and the script is the same way — It’s like a salacious read and really juicy and it does at moments get really quite heavy. But Tate has created this environment on set of making everyone feel really playful so that in those moments when it’s really intense and obviously incredibly loaded given our history as a country we don’t fall into this lull as actors – oh, my god, this is too much. For that reason, normally a character like this I would not be able to sleep at night, but because of the feeling Tate’s created on set when she’s evil it’s more fun than it is scary.’
On the Southern accent:
“Nadia the dialect coach has been really specific and has recorded people whose dialects were pure according to that time period. It’s a mishmash of a bunch of different recordings. It’s really fun and I love it and look forward to and enjoy it but really appreciate and need the support of a dialect coach. I wouldn’t know where to begin in terms of the nuance. The only other time I’ve done a Southern accent, I played a character in the 1920’s from Memphis – there are some similarities but also some distinct differences.”
On finding a way to make the villain a real character:
“She’s a duplicitous character, there’s always that duality. Someone gave me some great advice about the character. I was doing more of an arch-villain at first. She said, ‘You have to protect these women in this time in all its devastating honesty.’ Most women were definitely not like Hilly. She’s a particular person. It’s important to play that she’s not a two-dimensional character. She believes in certain things. Obviously, it’s not only misguided, it’s evil. But there is an origin for her beliefs. To not just play this crazy character, it’s important to understand the psychology behind it.”
On her research:
“The research that I did was fascinatingly personal. My mom was raised a lot in the South and when she was growing up, she was born in the 50s so in the 60s and 70s she was at times ostracized and called a Northerner. She actually started reading The Help and had to put it down because it was so intense for her. She’s picked it up again and she’s like, ‘It’s such a good book but I can’t read it before bed. I can read Stephen King before bed and Anne Rice before bed, but this is too intense.’”
Emma Stone
On her connection to her character:
“Skeeter and I have a lot more in common than I would care to admit. I’m not as brave as she is in what she is taking on. But I do understand being a maybe a little different than your peers. Everyone’s gone through that. I like that she isn’t a martyr and the lessons she learns. I love this girl so I am doing the best I can to accurately bring her to life.”
On what she gets from shooting on location:
“We’re lucky enough to be shooting in the South, which is so great. Being surrounded by Southerners and hearing their stories and watching civil rights history like Eyes on the Prize or books about Jim Crow that kind of helped me with the back story as far as the time period. But as far as being in the South we are so lucky that we’re in Mississippi because I never knew what the real feeling of being in the South was like, the kind of secrecy, the two sides there are to everybody. We’re in a small town. Everyone’s been so nice and so welcoming. They also know everything that’s going on. They know if I had someone over to my house last night! It really informs what’s going on in the movie. The secrecy required for something that’s illegal at the time is – I now understand so much more how quickly word travels in a small town in the South. It’s good to know what it’s like.”
On the relationship of her character to her frenemy, Hilly:
“Bryce has been pretty note-perfect so far. It’s really important to Tate to establish that Hilly and Skeeter were best friends and really did love each other. And they really do love each other underneath it all but they haven’t spent a lot of time together for the past four years. And in those four very formative college years their opinions on things greatly differ and it becomes more apparent now that Hilly is married and has kids. It’s easy for me because the way she’s playing it has been so fantastic. She can switch from sweet as pie to just awful in a heartbeat. She’s figured out the balance really well and it’s my job to react to whatever mood Hilly’s in.”
On being in a women-centered story:
“Everyone is here to make the same movie and no one’s come with an ego – when that’s the case and its women, I don’t want to sound all girl power here but it’s been a nice empowering environment to be in. And Tate’s keeping a calendar of when who is going through any hormonal times, he’s surrounded by nine emotional actress females.”
Posted on July 14, 2011 at 3:43 pm
Mark Henn was supervising animator for the iconic title character in Disney’s new animated feature, “Winnie the Pooh” and for Christopher Robin as well. He is a Disney veteran, having served in the same role for Princess Tiana in “The Princess and the Frog,” helping to design the character and oversee her animation throughout the film, and worked on Ariel in “The Little Mermaid,” Jasmine in “Aladdin,” and young Simba in “The Lion King.” He talked to me about the challenge of taking on Winnie the Pooh, a character the audience knows well and feels very attached to but who has been interpreted by many different artists over the years.
I love the traditional look of this film.
One of the great sources of inspiration for me has been the golden age of illustration. Early in my career here at the studio I discovered people like N.C. Wyeth, Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, E.F. Ward.
It’s always a little tricky when you’re working with something that’s well-established. And certainly, Disney’s Pooh is — most of us grew up with these characters, the original three featurettes produced at the studio in the 1980’s, “Blustery Day,” “Honey Tree,” and “Tigger Too.” We all knew that some of the very best of the studio had the opportunity to animate it. Now for us it was a great opportunity. You could tell these guys had a lot of fun with the characters. It was light, fun, they had these rich characters and charming stories. We had the same idea now that we had a turn. And it was important to go back to the original material. The directors, Steve and Don , went back to the original stories by A.A. Milne to find elements from previously unused stories to put together our current film. There’s such a charm and sophistication to his story-telling even though it seems very simple. It’s very elegant.
It was a wonderful chance to stand on the shoulders of what has gone before but John Lasseter also encouraged us to make it our own, bring our own sensibilities as artists and animators as well. But for me the biggest compliment is to hear people say, “That’s the Pooh I remember.” Then I feel that I’ve done my job. After all, that’s the Pooh I remember, too!
I was very captivated by the way the characters interacted with the narrator and the actual text.
Again, it goes back to what had been done. We screened the originals several times throughout the production and we all loved that, with the narrator breaking the fourth wall and the characters talking to the narrator. And interacting with the text on the pages — one of my favorites is in “Blustery Day” when the “rain rain rain came down down down” and the lettering gets washed away. We wanted to build on that and we had the chance with the way the story was structured to take advantage of that. For me, in one particular instance, Pooh is dejected and he’s walking out of the woods and the narrator is talking and says he didn’t notice that he walked into the next paragraph. It was just story-boarded that far, with him walking out of the woods. And he says, “What’s a paragraph?” and he finds the yarn that show’s Eeyore’s scarf tail had come unraveled. As I was looking at the sequence in a meeting, thinking about animating the scene and thinking about what would be fun, I said, “How about if he picks up the P for Pooh and says, ‘Is there any honey in this paragraph?'” I liked the idea of his picking up the letter P and looking at it like it might be a box or jar.
It was in everyone’s mind to look at our scenes to see where we could find the entertaining ways to bring these scenes to live within the character and story, which is always the trick.
The backgrounds are beautiful. Were they hand-done?
Yes, but they use a digital paint system. It has the same hand-feel as a brush. It looks like watercolor and the artists still do it by hand but instead of painting on illustration board it’s now done digitally. You hold the stylus in your hand and all the background painters are terrific painters. The head of the background department went to the real 100 acre wood in England on a research trip and did a lot of watercolors on site to capture the feel. They all worked hard to re-create the world that we were so familiar with.
How were you influenced by the original illustrator of the books, E.H. Shepard?
I love his work, I really do. One of the first things we had to do was settle on which Pooh design we wanted to use, proportions and all that. When we looked at the films, we realized that each artist that touched the characters had created a slightly different look. Frank Thomas’ Winnie the Pooh had a slightly different look than Hal Kings, and on down the line. We all kind of agreed that the work that Hal King did on “Honey Tree” was really the definitive model we should use for Pooh. So we had our model sheets built around that, but I took it a step further and went back to Shepard to pull out as many images of his throughout the books and created some inspirational model sheets we had all around and in the office so I could always be reminded of what Shepard had in mind and Pooh-isms and poses.
Posted on July 13, 2011 at 8:00 am
More from the set of “The Help:”
Tate Taylor, writer and director of the film, told us, “I grew up coming to Greenwood. It stopped in time in 1963. These homes, these locations, these trees – we put together a look book. They asked, ‘Where do you want to film, Vancouver?’ We gave the book to Spielberg and he went, ‘Wow.’ Louisiana has tax breaks – it is Southern, but has a very different feel.” So they came to Greenwood, which stood in for Jackson in 1963, and he brought along Mark Richter as the production designer because he was from the South — they had worked together as production assistants on a Gap catalogue photo shoot for $100 a day. Taylor said Northerners don’t understand much about the South. “I’ve been asked if we have malls here. They don’t understand why people are being so nice – What do they want?” He told us about adapting his friend’s novel. “I had to get the first 200 pages of the book into 30 pages of screenplay.” He had just one disagreement with Kathryn Stockett and admitted she was right. “People do not know about the Jim Crow laws. We had to leave that in.”
Chris Columbus, producer, described Greenwood as “In a sense, frozen in time. ‘The Reivers’ was shot here.” He said the production team was energized by the excitement of the community and pride. And they all appreciated “the friendliness – everyone knows what everyone else is doing.” The house where they were filming that day (Elizabeth Leefolt’s home in the movie) “was built around 1958 but it had to have a shimmer of newness about it.”
“I knew Tate because his sister’s kid and my kid were in school together and were friends. I saw his short film, ‘The Chicken Party” and we stayed in touch. He sent me the manuscript and I said, ‘It’s a woman’s book’ and gave it to my wife.” But it turned out to be more than that. He urged the studio to use Taylor even though he was a newcomer. “He seems to really know this world inside out.” And he told us that it was important to have accurate detail but keep the focus on the story: “History is the backdrop. It’s all about the characters. You don’t want it to be a PBS special. What was going on creates a sense of tension and danger. When there’s too much Hollywood [casting big name stars) the authenticity disappears.” Columbus, one of Hollywood’s most successful directors (including the first two Harry Potter films) told us he wanted to be in Greenwood to see the filming. “I’m here almost every day because I love it. It is very inspirational. Why can’t we go back to making films that inspire us? Times really haven’t changed that much in terms of the way we deal with each other. And I love to be working on a movie where you really want to hate the villain. It’s learning an entirely new culture, accent, food. There was a time when the studio was talking about a cookbook, but the food is horrendous!”
