Interview: Matt Roloff of “Little People, Big World”

Posted on April 11, 2010 at 10:00 am

Matt Roloff is a businessman, entrepreneur, farmer, husband, and father of four, including teen-age twins. He and his family star on the TLC series Little People, Big World. Matt, his wife Amy, and one of the twins are little people, with genetic disorders that affect their height and limbs. The other three children are not. I spoke with Matt, former head of Little People of America, about the show and about what it is like to be a part of a reality series and let the world see the ups and downs of their family’s life. He is the author with Tracy Summer of Against Tall Odds: Being a David in a Goliath World and Little Family, Big Values: Lessons in Love, Respect, and Understanding for Families of Any Size.

In an especially touching episode of the series, Matt goes to Iraq to visit a family whose children need surgery for dwarfism-related health problems. I began by asking him about that trip.

How did you come to meet with the family in Iraq?

I made three trips all in all. It was mid-2008 and a friend of mine who had a little person daughter was stationed in Iraq as a helicopter pilot and called me from Iraq to say one of their street patrols had stumbled across a family with several children with dwarfism or what we call skeletal dysplasia, that’s the most technical term to describe it. And they are in dire need of medical help. I said, “What can I do over here?” We needed permission from the officials in Washington to bring them to the US and that was going to be a tough road because they are trying to build the medical community over there and not bring people over here.

I got permission to go over there and the military escorted me. We brought the families to a facility to get x-rayed and brought them back over to the states. We were actually able to convince a doctor and an anesthesiologist to go back there with us and perform operations on a couple of the different children. But they needed more serious operations that cannot be done in a tent in a war zone. They needed really sophisticated spinal monitoring equipment. So on the third trip over I was able to bring the kids back. I use the term loosely — there was really an army of people involved, the military, the State Department, I was just an observer of a lot of this, a facilitator, but there was a lot of people really intensely dedicate to these children and this family.

The oldest gal who had the most dire need went first and there was complications and unfortunately we lost her. We knew that was a strong possibility, but it was very sad and disappointing to have made all that headway getting them over here. The reality was heartbreaking.

Is there much of a little people community in Iraq?

There is an active community. They don’t have the kind of organizational structure we have here, with by-laws and everything. The second trip, when I went over with the doctors to do the operation and it turned into a clinic. They announced it and they came out of the woodwork, little people did, parents holding their children, adults, the same variety and a larger percentage than you would get here in the states!

How has the show affected the way Americans see little people?

It has affected us and it has been positive. People see us as real people. Even people that hate our show and dis on us about keeping a messy house and not raising our children right, and that’s fine, that’s what makes our show popular, to have not polarizing but different opinions about us — I think our show has positively affected society’s view of little people. And now, with the other shows, Jen and Bill, The Little Couple, The Little Chocolatiers, we had known all of these people for years and we’re all high-fiving because it gives a more rounded view, other little people who have interesting lives, too. The only thing that’s the same about us is our size.

How did you meet your wife, Amy?

I met her at a little people’s conference in Michigan, that’s where she’s from, in 1986. It was not exactly love at first sight but we stayed in touch by mail. We were both interested in each other. And then about six months later she said she was coming to visit a friend in California. I don’t think she ever actually saw her friend! We ended up spending all of our time together and hit it off pretty heavy that week. I visited her a month later, and she came back to see me. Our total courtship time was three visits in six months. I popped the question, and of course I wanted to elope. But she was a nice conservative Christian girl and she wanted a big wedding. So we compromised and she cooked up a wedding in short order and a couple of months later we were married, in September of 1987.

How has raising your children so publicly made it harder or easier to be a parent?

It has made it harder, absolutely. There’s a lot more influences in their lives, producers and people dragging them around. But one advantage is that I didn’t realize Jacob was hanging out on the roof as much as he was, but I saw it on film and was able to tell him not to. There’s a lot of filming that does not make it to television, and I see things I might not have seen. Or the producers will tell me what they’re up to. But it is harder in a sense because I don’t want to scold them on camera. No one wants that. Some people think what they see is all there is. The bloggers don’t have a clue that it’s quite a bit more balanced that what they’re shown. That is frustrating for us. It seems like a big window on our lives but it’s not everything.

What’s unique about our show compared to other reality shows is that we spend a lot of time hanging out and waiting for something to happen. A lot of shows are much more produced. They’re focused on the activity. There’s hours and hours of just sitting around watching us do nothing in the hopes of a five-minute interaction and then they zone in on how that comes to a conclusion over the next few months, whether a conflict or a triumph. But that means that they will catch one part of an interaction, like maybe some angry words, and not necessarily have or show the other part, kissing and making up. That’s the nature of television.

What is coming up on the show that we should look forward to?

We have a trip to Europe where the boys go off and do their own thing. They backpack through Germany and Amsterdam. Despite what you may think, the producers do not interfere and if they get lost, they get lost. Then I meet up with them in Paris and we have all of the logistics of travel and who wants to go where and the evolution of the family, what everyone wants to do, Molly’s birthday, and our everyday on the farm stuff happening!

Little People, Big World: Season 5 Episode 21

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Interview: Karley Scott Collins of ‘Amish Grace’

Posted on March 25, 2010 at 3:59 pm

Karley Scott Collins stars in Amish Grace, the real-life story about the Amish community in Nickel Mines, which responded to unthinkable tragedy with compassion and forgiveness. Five little girls were shot and killed and five others severely injured by a man who then took his own life. Hours after the shooting, an Amish neighbor comforted the man’s family. The Amish set up a charitable fund for the family and attended his funeral. Their example of grace and forgiveness has been an inspiring example for people around the world and became a book. And now this movie tells the story.

Karley, just 10 years old, is an accomplished performer, and she spoke to me about her role as the sister of one of the murdered girls.

Amish Grace

Tell me about the character you play in this film.

I play Katie Graber. I’m trying to deal with the loss of my sister, Mary Beth (Madison Davenport), and just like everyone else, I’m having trouble forgiving the man who killed her. And I have guilt because I’m still alive, and I think maybe I shouldn’t have ran out of the school, I shouldn’t still be here. So I have lots of emotions mixing together and I am having trouble with it. If she’s having a hard time forgiving herself than she is not going to be able to forgive others. She has to learn, the reason she forgives, is that Mary Beth when she was dying had forgiveness in her heart. If you don’t forgive him, the only person it hurts is yourself. It doesn’t hurt him, it only hurts you.

Did making the movie teach you something about forgiveness?

I think it’s a really touching movie and it’s really important that you do forgive.

Did you know anything about Amish people before you made the movie?

I didn’t know as much as I do now. I admire them. They just want to be closer to God and I think that’s wonderful. But it would be hard for me because I would not be able to call my friends and my family on the telephone. I like the clothes, though. They have no zippers so they use pins. They are very, very simple, but they are very comfortable. I think that’s pretty cool.

What do you like about acting?

I love that whatever you get in a character becomes a part of you. I love making friends on set and watching it when it’s finished. I find out new things about myself whenever I portray somebody else.

Your mother in the movie is one of my favorite actresses, Kimberly Williams-Paisley. What was it like working with her?

I loved her! In between the scenes she would help me make grass flutes. And everything she did was so real. I really believed she was a mother whose daughter was murdered. And she is so sweet.

Did you get to meet her husband, Brad Paisley?

No, but I did get to go to one of his concerts!

Was there something you saw in a movie or on television that made you want to act?

When I was like five or six, I am not sure which one made me want to act but I loved the Bernie Mac show so it might have been that one. I loved acting like a princess! I had this Aurora outfit and every time I went to Disney, I was Aurora!

What’s the best advice you ever got about acting?

Don’t think about it, just have fun with it!

What do you do for fun?

I love to draw! My favorite artist is Jasmine Becket-Griffith. She draws fairies. I love reading. I fell in love with the Percy Jackson and The Sisters Grimm books. And I love to swim. With my friends we play the Wii, we love Rock Band, and do each other’s nails and dance.

What’s on your iPod?

I love Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus. I also love Guns n’ Roses! “Sweet Child o’ Mine” is my favorite. I also like Rihanna and BeyoncÃ©.

You’re in another new movie, based on a true story, “Letters to God.” What can you tell me about that?

It’s about a boy who has cancer. When he dies, his dad finds all the letters he wrote to God. It’s very touching. I play one of his friends, who sits with him every day at lunch. They call me liverwurst girl, because I love liverwurst. And I am in “Open Season 3,” and I play a little deer. It was so much fun! And it’s hilarious. One of my favorite scenes is where there’s a little bear and a rabbit but I can’t tell you any more about it!

Interview: Conor McPherson and Ciarán Hinds of ‘The Eclipse’

Posted on March 25, 2010 at 7:00 am

“The Eclipse” is a ghost story for grown-ups, which means that it is story first, ghost second. It is an Irish film about Michael (Ciarán Hinds) a recent widower with two children, who is volunteering at a local literary festival. Two of the festival guests are the arrogant, self-centered Nicholas (Aidan Quinn), a novelist, and the sensitive Lena (Iben Hjejle), author of a popular non-fiction book about ghosts.
I spoke to Hinds and writer/director Conor McPherson about the film.
What do people ask you most about the film?
CM: They want to know exactly what was going on, to answer the questions the movie leaves unanswered.
Yes, Americans are very concrete, very literal. We want everything explained.
CM: When people are out of their comfort zone, it’s more dramatic, more prone to have more entertaining experiences, get into fights. That’s the dramatic instinct, to move people out of what they know and make them deal with it. In theater it’s all through dialogue in traditional plays. In movies, it’s so lovely, you can show him putting dishes in the dishwasher and everybody just knows what’s going on, that his wife is gone and he has to do everything. You still tell some things with dialogue in scenes but we’ve taken some away…
CH: Pared it away, really.
CM: And that’s enough. Film has that magic.
You play a quiet person in this film. How do you as an actor convey all you have to about what he is thinking and experiencing?
CH: He’s just a guy like anybody. We’re all ordinary in a way. We can all be hurt. We can all be unbalanced. We all have feelings. Life can treat us harshly, even shockingly sometimes. He has minor pretensions but he is a woodwork teacher. He works with his hands. He is a practical man. But though he is doing his best with his wife gone he is out of his depth a bit apart from the grief. He’s a real person but you bring elements of emotion to a heightened situation. He just wants to survive and take care.
I loved his interaction with his kids. It felt very real. The frustration and the need to convey a sense that he is in control.
CH: When Lena says she is sorry to hear about his wife he responds, “It was terrible for the kids.” He knows he hasn’t grieved enough but he has to keep a lid on it for the kids. In the end, in the story, he is allowed to let it all out and properly to grieve.
Do you find that now, like Lena in the film, people want to come and tell you their own ghost stories?
CM: At the first screening last April in New York, it turned into a sort of heavy session with people talking about how they lost people and the film made that feeling come back. It’s probably the last thing you think about when you’re making a film is other people’s problems. You’re thinking about your problem, which is making the movie. But you do have a responsibility. You can’t mess around with people’s emotions.
CH: You find people genuinely relating to something or a truth they felt, and that is what you aspire to.
Do you believe in ghosts?
CM: Yes I do, but I don’t know what they are. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. But if someone said to me, “Last night I saw the ghost of my sibling” or whatever, I wouldn’t say, “That’s impossible,” I’d say, “What was that like?”
CH: I don’t disbelieve.
CM: There’s a very old tradition in Ireland, and as an island at the edge of Europe, for thousands of years with no one knowing what was beyond there, I wonder if a sense of the beyond was internalized into the Irish psyche. We’re very quick to accept the supernatural. And I think Catholicism took root very quickly in Ireland because it’s a very superstitious religion, the holy ghost, the holy spirit, it has a goddess, very visual, the music. For me, philosophically, we don’t know anything anyway. We have this short little life we have to somehow try to get a grip on without understanding anything about the nature of time or existence or the universe or God or infinity. We’re just here for a brief moment and we open up these little eyes and go “What is this?” and then we’re gone! I love stories that frame that: This is what life is about — you don’t have a clue.

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Interview: Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders of ‘How to Train Your Dragon’

Posted on March 24, 2010 at 3:59 pm

Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders are the writer-directors behind one of the best family films of the year, “How to Train Your Dragon.” It was a very great pleasure to talk with them about adapting the popular books and the movies they love most.

One of the great pleasures of this film is the fabulously imaginative assortment of dragons. Were they based on research into legends about dragons or did you start from scratch?

DD: The well-spring of the dragons who are in the film started in the book, of course, but really it was Nico Marlet, who also did designs for Kung Fu Panda. We have seven dragons in the movie, five of which are his designs. He has piles of drawings in his room, no kidding, about two feet thick of other dragons that he drew. It’s endless. We realized we had an opportunity in this movie to do something that had not been done before — not just multiple breeds of dragons but individual personalities.

Each new dragon turned all my thoughts on what a dragon was upside down.

DD: Each of them was based on animals we recognize in the animal kingdom. For example the gronkles, the big, fat, dump-truck-like dragon, was based on the walrus and has walrus-type behavior, lying around in packs and being lazy and grumpy. And then the nadders, the blue ones with the yellow spikes, they’re very parrot-like, and they have bird-like actions. Toothless is very feline. But he has dog in him, too. He’s based in part on the black panther, so he has mammalian qualities to him. One of the characters has two heads and is very snake-like and slithery. So every one of them had an animal reference to it, and that influenced its behavior both in personality and movement.

Did you have to think about the physics of the way they moved?

CS: There are links to the larger world that we wanted to create for this film. The believability factor was the most important thing. They have to move and breathe as if they’re really alive. It’s important that they not come across as too cartoony because then we would lose the emotional weight in the film. We wanted people to really believe in this world. Even though the designs are really fanciful, they move and breathe as though they’re really alive. They adhere to a strict set of rules. They never break or shatter that illusion.

The voice talent is terrific. But your Vikings (Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson) have Scottish accents!

DD: It’s a conceit. It’s silly and admittedly flawed, but here it is: growing up in North America, I was in Canada, I had a lot of friends whose parents sounded like they came from somewhere else. There’s always a remnant of the mother tongue in the older generation. When we came on the film, they’d already cast people with very American voices and then they had Gerard Butler. We had to cast someone to be Gerard’s best friend and the confidante to Hiccup. We thought, we’ve already got this Scottish voice in place, and we could just flesh out the rest of the older generation with Scottish accents and then the next generation could have their own assimilated accent.

CS: Gerard really loved it when we encouraged him to be himself. The only casting that we did was Craig Ferguson and he happens to be Gerard’s really good friend and they happen to have the same accent. Craig Ferguson is completely at ease in front of a microphone. It’s funny because Gerard Butler is really funny off-mic, constantly goofing around and talking about pranks, amusing himself. And then when he’s on mic, well, his character is called Stoick. He was a little jealous — “Why is Craig getting all the funny lines?” But Craig, off-mic, was the opposite. He’s so funny when you have the mic running, and then when you stop, he’s actually a serious guy.

I was also thrilled to see that you have three disabled characters. You rarely see that in movies, especially disabled characters who have full personalities and experiences and are not just there to be disabled.

DD: Definitely we brought to the mix the ending, for many reasons. We wanted to give it a little bit of weight, believability, and peril. The satisfying quality of the ending would be generic if he did not come out of it so that he and Toothless can complete each other.

How did you go about adapting the book? You made some big changes.

CS: The main reason Dean and I were asked to come into the film was to “age it up,” giving it a little more weight, more adventure, and one of the very first decisions we made was that in the book there were elements of humans and dragons being in a symbiotic relationship but also elements of humans and dragons being at war. We decided it had to be one or the other. We made the decision that they were mortal enemies, which made it possible for Hiccup to take the greatest risk possible by befriending one. It allowed us to have Hiccup live this double life in the second act. At night he’s repairing a dragon and learning to ride a dragon. By day he is learning to fight one. This is not going to last. This has to get discovered. Everything else came from that.

DD: It’s fun that by the end he gets everything he wanted but he no longer wants it. The attention he’d rather avoid by then.

What movies are your favorites?

CS: Both of us are huge fans of a movie we referenced in this one, The Black Stallion. The scene on the beach is our homage.

DD: What really worked for us was the young protagonist. I love characters that are young and relatable in their childhood but also have adult qualities and are in over their heads in a world of fantasy, like “Escape from Witch Mountain,” “Watcher in the Woods,” and even “E.T.”

The movie is very rich, very exciting, but also exceptionally well-paced and satisfying.

CS: A lot of movies do not have much in the second act, but we really had one packed with events. But it is also important to have moments when the characters are quiet. There are three moments in the film where we let the camera and the acting and the music tell the story.

I liked the fact that he is really an engineer, a problem-solver. And he doesn’t get it right away.

DD: In the concept of the book Hiccup was much younger and they collect eggs and teach the dragons to do tricks. We kept the spirit of the runt Viking who changes the world but we had to give him a dragon who could be ferocious and at the same time cuddly. We thought he’s a nuisance, he’s the bane of the Viking community. He is made an apprentice to get him out of the way but in the shop he learns to compensate for what he doesn’t have. We combined this organic form with early mechanics.

CS: He also discovers that he has to operate it. He is only really himself when they’re together.

Interview: Bindi Irwin of ‘Free Willy 4’

Posted on March 22, 2010 at 1:59 pm

Bindi Irwin, daughter of the late “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, stars in her first feature film, “Free Willy: Escape from Pirate’s Cove.” Inspired by the popular series of movies about a boy and a whale, this new adventure is about Kirra (Irwin), an Australian girl who visits her grandfather (Beau Bridges) in South Africa for the summer. When she discovers a stranded baby orca she names him Willy. She and her grandfather must help the whale get back to his pod before a greedy theme park owner steals him.
I spoke to Bindi and her mother Terri in the studios at a local public radio channel, WAMU, where she was appearing on their Animal House show. Bindi is a joy to talk to — so bright and friendly but also fearless and very passionate about animals, just like her dad.
I have one copy of the DVD to give away to the first person who sends me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “Bindi” in the subject line.
This is your first time acting. You’ve done a lot of documentary-style filming, but this was quite different.
I play a little girl called Kirra Cooper. She does not take no for an answer! This was my first time being someone else and being in a movie and it was very exciting. She was different from me but there was one similarity. She was trying to save this Orca called Willy, who washed over the lagoon wall and into my grandfather’s theme park. And in real life, I am trying to save the Steve Irwin wildlife preserve. It’s in Australia, up on Cape York and it’s in danger of being strip-mined. You can go to our website at Australia Zoo and sign a petition.
And how is Kirra different from you?
I can tell you a funny story about that! In one scene, I had to get really, really angry at the bad guy. My cheeks were getting all red and I was all grumpy. And I went back to the trailer and my mother said, “Bindi, I’ve never seen you that mad!” And I said, “I’ve never seen me that mad, either!” It was really fun to get a chance to do that. Beau Bridges was such an inspiration and he helped me so much. He gave me the book Acting: The First Six Lessons and I listened to it in audio and now I’m reading it, too.
Tell me about working with Beau Bridges!
It was so nice because my mum’s dad died a little over a year ago and so he became like another grandfather to me. In one scene he said when I was going to sleep, “Don’t let the bedbugs bite!” And that was heartwarming because that is what my grandfather used to say to me before I went to bed. I was also glad to work with someone who had been working in movies since he was six years old.
Did you film on location?
We got to go to South Africa for the very first time. My dad had been there before filming documentary films but there was political unrest and malaria so we did not get to go along. While we were filming my brother Robert went off and got to see Africa. His favorite animal is the chameleon and now I don’t think there is a single chameleon in Africa un-wrangled by Robert.
If you said “Boo” to me I wouldn’t sleep for two weeks! I don’t like scary movies. But I love my dad’s movie “Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course” and I liked doing this because it was like his. It isn’t just an action-packed fun family movie. You’d accidentally learn something, too. And there’s a great kid empowerment message. Kirra stands up for herself. She has a voice. A while ago I saw a very old movie and it had a man who said, “Children should be seen and not heard.” And I had to ask my mum what that meant! She said some people thought that children should not have opinions or have a voice. And I really believe we’re the next voters, we’re the next decision-makers, we are the generation making a difference on our planet to decide what will happen on this planet, so we should have a voice and be able to make decisions.
What was the most fun scene to work on?
They were all a lot of fun but the funniest was when I had to be eating an ice cream. But it was mashed potatoes! I’ll never look at ice cream in a movie the same way! They have to do that so it wouldn’t drip everywhere.
What’s the best advice you got about making the movie?
I was so used to documentary filming where it’s one take. You can’t really say, “Make that elephant charge again!” And you talk to the camera. With movie filming you’re talking to someone else. And Beau told me to think of it like you’re having a conversation. That really helped me. And everyone was lovely, even the crew. They all helped me so much. And we all laughed a lot of the time.
What should kids know about animals?
One of the great things that my dad told me was to treat animals the way you’d like to be treated. And it’d not just woodland creatures and conservation. Every time you lose an animal species, it’s like losing a brick from a house. Pretty soon the house just falls down. Snakes for example. People think they’re sticky and monstrous. But they’re cool and gorgeous. We live in a zoo and we get to share all our animals with the people who come in. We really put our animals first, and then the staff, and then the visitors. The animals aren’t pacing; they’re all happy. When you touch an animal, it ultimately touches you.
Do you have a favorite animal?
I love snakes and crocodiles but my favorite is the echidna, like the porcupine they have here. When a predator tries to grab them they curl up into a little ball. Whoever thought them up was very creative! Every August we go to study the saltwater crocodile, the largest reptile on the face of the earth. There’s so much we don’t know about them. You can’t give them a sedative so in order to put in the trackers we actually have to jump on them, use human force. It’s a lot of fun. You haven’t lived until you’ve been lying on a dinosaur. He’s an apex predator, the top of the food chain. And gorgeous!
How can kids help conservation and animal protection?
We’re working with an organization called the Sea Shepherd to try to protect the whales. And we have Wildlife Warriors, a non-profit organization working on protecting the Cambodian forest elephants, with tigers and cheetahs. And we help to train shepherds so they can do a better job of protecting their herds.

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