Interview: George Lopez and Carlos PenaVega of “Spare Parts”
Posted on January 22, 2015 at 3:50 pm
Copyright Nell Minow 2015
Spare Parts is based on the true story of four undocumented high school students who entered a robotics competition and beat the team from MIT. I was lucky enough to get a chance to talk to George Lopez, who produced the film and stars as a character based on the two teachers who worked with the boys, and Carlos PenaVega of Big Time Rush, who plays Oscar, the most serious-minded and responsible member of the team.
PenaVega talked about how much fun the actors who played the team had with the robot built for the film. “It’s kind of like movie magic because we show up, the robots are built and then we get to play. But they let us drive them around a bit so I kind of get to be like a pilot for a day.” He is ebullient and talkative, not much like the character he played, who he described as “an incredible human being. He and I spoke through emails for a while but he was very vague and we got to finally meet on set, they came for a whole week, all the boys both teachers. And I think each one of us took time to just sit down with them, talk to them it’s like tell me your story out of your mouth, no more like online. I mean these kids went through so much and Oscar is such a strong human being especially for someone who speaks very little English, or who speaks but still has an accent. He just so inspiring because we all have obstacles in our lives. In my opinion he had some of the most difficult obstacles and he got through it. He can do it, so can we.” He was especially happy when his wife, Alexa PenaVega (“Spy Kids”) was cast as his character’s girlfriend. “It was such a blessing because we had just gotten engaged and being apart for two, three months would have been difficult. And she was amazing and you know just having George and my wife and Jamie Lee Curtis and Marisa, it was such good company and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.” He was grateful for the three pieces of advice he got from Jamie Lee Curtis. “Always be on time, which I’m working on. Always know your lines. And number three never ask anybody to do something that you could do for yourself. Like if there is a glass of water over there and you can clearly get it, don’t be like, ‘Can you get me this?'” To relax between scenes, the cast enjoyed singing show tunes and other songs.
He was very glad to get away from the buzz cut hairstyle his character has in the film. “Continuity is a big thing in films so they would give me a buzz cut every day. Every single day. You know what, in the first month it was great but in the next months, I was like ‘no more, no more haircuts.'”
Lopez gave the young actors some advice as well. Before shooting began, he took them to dinner and told them “to work hard and let’s make something that the kids could be proud of. That everybody would be proud of. ” He was paying tribute not only to the characters in the story but to his own teachers who inspired and supported him. “I had it when I was growing up and I had teachers that would talk to me kind of take me under their arm and stuff and tell me things I wanted to hear. And sometimes the things I did not want to hear and did not understand at that particular time but then I did later on.”
Lopez was eager to talk about why the story was so important to him. “The fact that you could beat so many great universities with spending under $800 and how intelligence has no color. And ingenuity and determination and will can outweigh what somebody might learn in a book. They were relentless and they would not give up. The only reason they entered against the colleges was because they thought they didn’t want to lose to another high school. They didn’t go into win; they went to not lose to all the high schools. So that’s inspiring and it is a little bit of a kind of a thing that Latinos have, like you always feel a little bit uncomfortable even when you’re welcome. So hopefully this movie will be able to show people. The movie is entertaining but it also shows Latinos that whatever they aspire to be can happen.” He said it was the first movie he produced that had “such an incredible and credible cast. Having Jamie Lee Curtis do the movie and have her be so great in it but also to get Marisa Tomei in there and Esai Morales — I called him personally and asked him to be in it. And then finding these young men who were amazing actors and who also felt the story so it wasn’t really just another job for them. They felt the responsibility to do this movie and to make sure it was done properly. To honor the actual young man who we became quite friendly with.”
Meredith Anne Bull stars in this week’s release “Strange Magic,” an animated musical fairy tale based on a story by George Lucas. She plays Dawn the “young, naive, unaffected and thrilled with life” younger sister of the heroine, Marianne, played by Evan Rachel Wood. She has done voice-over work before, but this was her first time as the voice of a feature film animated character. She says she felt very comfortable working in a recording studio, which is a challenge for some actors who don’t have a musical background. But it was a challenge to create a performance alone in a recording booth, “without the other actors around you to interact with. Sometimes the director will feed you lines and sometimes you are out there on your own and you have to pull from your imagination.” She did get to see some of the movie’s visuals, especially more recently. She began working on the film in 2011, before most of the animation work had been completed. And the storyline changed over the year. But in the last year she got to see some short clips and had a better idea of what the final version would be like. She says her favorite fairy tales are “Red Riding Hood” and “Goldilocks,” which she thinks is “hilarious.”
Bull told me she originally auditioned for the part of Marianne, singing “Thriller” and “Like a Virgin.” They asked her to read for Dawn, though she says it is Marianne who is more like her in real life, more independent, with more of a dark sense of humor. “But they saw some part of Dawn in me. They’re more to her than being irresponsible and flying off the handle. She’s sensitive, and she really cares about her sister. Sometimes she can be self-centered, and she lets her sister down at one point, but you see how much she cares about what her sister thinks of her. She’s not just happy all the time, though that is certainly her go-to emotion.”
The movie has an assortment of contemporary songs, including a duet with Elijah Kelley, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” “They’re not like the typical Prince Charming and Princess. She’s like three feet taller than he is!”
She says the best piece of advice she ever got was from Kelley, who told her not to be intimidated, no matter who she was working with. “This was kind of my first big film. I was not exactly intimidated but a little squirrely to be around these people who are very established. Elijah talked to me about not being intimidated — we are all people, we all have families, we all have insecurities and disappointments. You should never let anyone make you feel less than you are.”
Ten years ago, would anyone have believed there would be popular fairy-tale-inspired television series both serious (Once Upon a Time, Grimm), and comic/musical (Galavant)? Why do fantasy and fairy tales mean so much to us? I asked one of my favorite people, a specialist in the role that fantasy plays in our lives, for her thoughts. Kate Fowkes is a Professor of Media and Popular Culture in the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication at High Point University. She holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.A. from Reed College. She is the author of The Fantasy Film, and Giving Up the Ghost. She has also contributed to a number of book anthologies on subjects ranging from film ghosts to Tim Burton movies. She currently teaches an undergraduate course called “Myth and Media,” in which she and her students examine fantasy and fairy tale movies.
Of course fairy tales and fantasy have been around since stories began, but it seems we are in the midst of a revival of interest in very traditional stories about princesses and princes and quests and magic. What is it about the enduring themes of these stories that seems so timely now?
This is a tough question to answer. Part of it may be that with our increased instant access to both old and new media (including electronic versions of older print stories), it is simply easier to rely on these old stories and characters as fodder for new movies and remakes. Hollywood has always loved to draw on proven successes both in adapting movies from books and in re-visioning previous movie successes—so this trend is perhaps merely a more exaggerated version of business as usual.
It also doesn’t hurt that visual and special effects, and movie-making technology in general are all better than they’ve ever been. This obviously facilitates the portrayal of fantastical creatures and magical events and makes for a very satisfying and wondrous movie-going experience.
It must be said that the success of “Star Wars” was hugely helpful in showing that fantasy-themed films could work (granted it was also a sci-fi/Western, but its emphasis on the mystical Force, etc. was part of what made the movie popular). In an ironic kind of time-travel way, it was partly the popularity of the “Lord of the Rings” book trilogy (which was originally one book) that paved the way for “Star Wars.” Not only did “Star Wars” make mysticism popular (thus paving the way for LOR eventually—see what I mean about the time loop) but George Lucas drew on the works of Joseph Campbell, who championed the importance of myth, folk-tales, and story-telling. This was all popularized further by screenwriting manuals such as one by Christopher Vogler who drew on Campbell to show how the “hero’s journey” could either be used to describe many Hollywood movies but could also be used as a template for screenwriters as they devised new screenplays.
While there had been some successful fantasy and fairy tale movies prior to 2001 (including “The Princess Bride”), 2001 was nevertheless a watershed year for fantasy and fairy tale movies. With the huge success of both the first LOR movie and the first Harry Potter film, the floodgates were open for movies that adopted or adapted fairy-tale and fantasy elements.
Copyright 2010 Wiley-Blackwell
(Also see my response to the question below.)
Do stories with fantasy and magic tend to be more popular in some eras more than others? Does it correlate with particular political or economic challenges?
Many scholars would agree that the rise in popularity of science fiction movies throughout the 50s was at least in part due to the historical moment. The bulk of the films were scary and featured hostile aliens. The films might be said to reflect or mediate anxiety about technology (nuclear bombs), the space age (if we go to outer space, what will we find there?), and the burgeoning Civil Rights movement combined with Cold War paranoia (the alien “others” could represent our fear of all kinds of real-world, human others—from Communists to illegal aliens, to non-white ethnicities.)
Perhaps the same could be said for the historical moment of 2001 which featured not just LOR and Harry Potter in the movies, but which saw the country (and the world) reeling (so to speak) from the 9/11 attacks. What strikes me about this confluence of events is, in part, the complete and utter incomprehensibility of the fall of the twin towers and how we watched the footage over and over again on T.V. Was it really real? Could it really have happened? Because at first, it sure looked like a Hollywood action/disaster movie to a lot of us.
One of the things that J.R.R. Tolkien said about the value of “faery” stories is their ability to provide escape, recovery, consolation and “eucatastrophe.”
According to Tolkien, escape might be seen as a bad thing, but if you’re escaping from something unthinkably bad, it might serve an important cathartic purpose (and to most of us, 9/11 was unthinkably bad). In addition whether or not escape is good or bad will depend very much on the quality of what you’re escaping into.
By recovery, he meant that faery stories help us to rediscover the miraculousness and wonder of the ordinary world. (—“Re-(dis)-covery?”) If we experienced 9/11 as a heretofore “impossible” scenario, there was also the feeling that maybe the world was not as we thought we knew it. This is precisely the story told by fairy tales and other fantasies. Nothing is what it seems and impossible things happen all the time (take nothing for granted!). Maybe this type of story serves as a kind of antidote to the horrific feeling of unreality experienced by many people after 9/11. (Just as Gothic horror might be seen as the counterpart or mirror image of upbeat fantasy.)
If 9/11 was a terrible catastrophe, then Tolkien’s consolation and eucatastrophe (catastrophe’s opposite) describe the notion that we can suffer the most terrible defeat and still come out the other side –we can find consolation and even joy because we have faced our worst nightmares and lived to tell the tale, as “Into the Woods” articulates in the final scene. (The forest or woods are here seen as a metaphor for our deepest fears or greatest challenges.) So I might be going out on a limb here (to extend the “woods” metaphor), but I absolutely think that some of these films might operate in the way Tolkien described. (Note: Tolkien had a very specific idea of what qualifies as a “faery” story and if he were here, would disqualify many of the movies discussed here. While I am aware of that, I still think his ideas can be applied to a wide variety of fantasy movies.)
What are some of the ways that our current versions of fairy tales employ twists on the traditions and conventions of fantasy to make them more contemporary?
One way is to call attention to the “unrealistic” nature of the tales, playing up the fact that these are indeed stories and not reality. But at the same time, while many of the new movies cleverly suggest that elements of classic fairy tales are unrealistic and unbelievable, they then go on to fulfill the magical happy endings anyway, albeit often through humorous, self-referential routes. (See, for example, discussion of “Shrek” and “The Princess Bride” below). The viewer thus gets to critique and examine the old story tropes, but also gets the fairy tale happy ending promised by classic fairy tales.
Another tactic is to examine classic fairy tale events and characters through a contemporary lens. In “Shrek” this happens by inverting gender stereotypes to highlight the disconnect between today’s smart, competent, athletic women and the classically sweet, passive and helpless princess. Other examples include imagining the magic mirror from Snow White as both the “reflection” of a foppish prince’s vanity (usually reserved for female characters), while also turning the mirror’s magical illusions into a parody of a modern dating-game T.V. show. Another humorous example is portraying the three blind mice employing contemporary aids for the blind as they sport dark glasses and find their way about with canes.
Finally, many of the newer fairy tales take advantage of the long format of feature length films (not to mention the long format of T.V. serials like “Once Upon a Time”) to explore and expand upon traditional two-dimensional characters. Much as the stage musical “Wicked” does, some of these newer movies provide satisfying backstories and motivations for otherwise simplistic characters, especially villains.
Do children today who see movies like “Tangled,” “Into the Woods,” “Shrek,” “The Princess Bride” and the new show “Galavant” understand fairy tales and Mother Goose well enough to appreciate the meta-humor?
Younger children probably don’t get much of the meta-humor but most of the “revisionist” fairy tales work on multiple levels so that all ages can find something to like. Just as the T.V. show, “The Simpsons” succeeded in part because of its dense layers of funny intertextual references, these films use their intertextuality so that viewers can access the story and its humor in many different ways.
In addition, many of the revisionist fairy tale movies also embed mention of fairy tale conventions into the story so that even if viewers didn’t know the conventions in advance, they could still appreciate the jokes. For example, in “Shrek”, the movie opens with a short story-book intro that summarizes the standard “rescue the princess” trope. Shrek reacts to this tradition by scoffing: “like that’s ever gonna happen!” And when Shrek does end up rescuing Fiona, she is indignant that he doesn’t fit the stereotypical prince or act out the usual “script.” This happens also in “The Princess Bride” where the little boy is read a story by his grandfather and is frequently indignant that the story is not going the way it’s supposed to. “Into the Woods” also features such moments and occasionally provides a fairy tale style of voice over narration to call attention to the relationship between character and events to classic fairy tales.. All of these movies use the “frame” of storytelling (“Once Upon a Time,” etc.). And “Into the Woods” ends with an emphasis on the importance of storytelling in general, thus completing the self-referential circle.
Is there a way to teach children about classic fairy tales without giving them messages we feel that we have outgrown about the roles of women? Are there other traditional themes that are hard for us to accept today?
I think that’s exactly what many of these new movies are trying to do, although sometimes with mixed success. Expanding the notion of “true love” beyond a romantic heterosexual idea (as in “Frozen” and “Malificent”) and providing strong, capable female characters is one way both to change the “script” in the real world as well as to make the stories more acceptable and relevant to today’s audience.
But I am still disappointed in some of the films. “Star Dust” does nothing to change the pernicious idea that older women are ugly, evil and jealous of younger women. “Enchanted” sends its heroine out on a shopping spree in a makeover reminiscent of “Pretty Woman” (which is itself a pernicious live-action, contemporary “Cinderella” story), and even “Into the Woods” kills a married female character for kissing a married prince while the prince gets off easy by quipping that, afterall, he’s “charming” not “sincere.” And in another “joke,” the Cinderella character (the prince’s newly estranged wife) opines that she actually enjoys housecleaning. !!! Really??? And then the movie has the gall to drive home the point that we should pay attention to the stories we tell. Can you say “irony??”
Copyright Dreamworks 2004
Even “Shrek” (delightfully funny as it is), doesn’t fully overcome gender and racial stereotypes. In her ogre state, Fiona is hardly hideous (I think she’s quite pleasant) and Donkey perpetuates a long line of comic, subservient black, male characters.
Many of the new versions of fantasy stories interweave characters from different fables into one narrative. What is the appeal and impact of that kind of story-telling?
Whereas a movie like “Enchanted” has fun combining the “real world” with the animated fairy tale world by imagining what would happen if these two worlds intersected, “Shrek” and “Into the Woods” belabor the fact that these characters from different tales actually do all belong to the same magical universe. What’s interesting is that some scholars see fairy tale characters less as characters or people and more as narrative functions. When you recognize that the characters all belong to same type of magical universe it can be a fun game to see how they might interact with each other if you mixed and matched them.
This type of story-telling also provides the possibility of many new-ish variations on well-loved, easily recognized ideas. And as said before, we know that Hollywood loves to capitalize on familiarity and built-in popularity.
If fairy tales are an attempt to explain the inexplicable and control what seems uncontrollable, does our modern understanding of science make us more or less interested in fantasy than people were centuries ago?
The short answer to that is ….we have a different relationship to fantasy today than people did before the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and now the computer age with more and more immersive technologies like 3-D. and virtual reality (For example, just try to imagine someone centuries ago being shown ANY movie much less a mind blower like “Inception.”) It would take me too long to tease out all these difference here, although I do discuss at least a piece of that puzzle in my book “The Fantasy Film.” Maybe this one will have to be a separate interview!
Do you have a favorite fairy tale and why?
I don’t have a favorite classic fairy tale unless you consider the movie, “The Wizard of Oz,” to be a classic fairy tale (Baum wrote the original book with the idea that it would be a modern-day fairy tale). It’s a nostalgic favorite but it holds up for me still. It’s got everything—scary suspense, whimsy and magic, humor, wonderful characters, great musical numbers, and lots of heartfelt sentiment. The Cowardly Lion still makes me laugh after all these years.
I also love “The Princess Bride.” It was one of the first successful revisionist fairy tales and it’s dramatic, sentimental, clever and funny. What more could you ask for? I regret I didn’t include it in my last book, but I didn’t have complete say over what went in there and I was horribly constrained by space issues.
If I were to include a more traditional fairy-tale movie here it would be Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast” because it is so beautiful to look at. And the Beast is gorgeous (which gives you a hint about what’s going on in that story—we were never meant to find the beast to be completely hideous…)
And despite some minor misgivings, I’m a big fan of “Shrek” and “Shrek 2!”
I first interviewed Nate Parker seven years ago about “The Great Debaters.” It was a great pleasure to catch up with him to discuss his performance in “Beyond the Lights,” one of the year’s best romantic dramas, with sizzling chemistry between the stars and some thoughtful insights into the pressures of celebrity to be hypersexualized.
Copyright 2104 Relativity Media
Your film got a very enthusiastic response at the screening last night!
It seemed as though people enjoyed it. It’s exciting, it’s good when you make something that you are proud of and the response is positive across the board. Gina ‘s scripts and her concise and visionary way of telling stories is something I appreciate, so I was very happy that people responded in a positive way.
We need to take about the karaoke scene.
I think I want to talk to a few record companies on this, you know. I want to do some work together.
I know that it takes a lot of talent to come across as untalented as you did in that scene. So tell me a little bit about how you selected the song and about how you prepared for that scene.
The section of the movie set in Mexico was its own movie in a way. Our characters get away to really find ourselves and to study each other in our relationship. Gina wanted it to be very laid back, very down to earth with the personal side of each of us us, the inner kid in us. And so when she brought the karaoke thing to me she asked me if I can sing. I said, “I can sing a little bit.” And she was like “Ok, well we are going to do something a little bit different.” And she made some suggestions on songs. I am a huge New Edition fan. So we came to that song and she said, “OK, I’m going to have her sing this after,” and I said, “OK, well I’m going to do a terrible job!” And I had fun. I had fun just kind of just playing with it. People are always asking me, “Can you sing in real life?” I think can sing a little bit, I think I do a little bit better than what you see in the film. It was a really good set up as well to be so terrible and then to hear the beauty in her voice, and the song. I think it works, it works in a reverse way. It puts people in very open and vulnerable place to see someone kind of make a fool of himself and kind of sets them up to receive this incredible moment from Gugu’s character.
I think it also is a character moment for your character because anybody that has got that kind of confidence and charm, I think that’s great. We get a very explicit view of what your character teaches her character but tell me a little bit about what you think your character learns from her.
First I learned the dangers of living for someone else because in the film with Danny Glover as my father he also has plans for my life, like her mother has for her. And the implications of following down my father’s path are little less severe but nonetheless it still living someone else’s life. And I think in seeing the way she deals with her mother and seeing that she has no say in her life kind of reminds me of what is happening in my life. And it gives me the courage to stand up to my father, to say that there are things for my life that I think I want to pursue. And being a great father he’s open to allowing this character to explore himself and explore the things that make them happy. So a lot of people asked me if I think that I saved her and I think the real answer is we saved each other. We came into each other’s lives at very pivotal moments and because we leaned on each other for strength we were able to find our own voices in our lives and ultimately make decisions that we were proud of in the end.
I love the fact that your character has those quotes that he likes. And I wondered did you play a role in selecting any of those and are there any quotes that are really important in your life?
Yes, it’s funny you asked. I’m also big on quotes. Gina brought it to me without knowing that about me. And so some of those quotes she pulled, some of them I pulled. I recently read a quote by Dante that given the climate of our country kind of resonates, and has resonated with me. He says, “the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral conflict.” And I’m an activist first, I am very forthright in that. Where there is injustice I try to make a presence and deal with it. Martin Luther King also said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. I think that those things are really, really a focus in my life. I try my very best to select projects that will deal with social issues in a way that can also be entertaining. When you watch this film you see how a woman who is so desperately hyperexualized and so removed from any sense of who she is as a person and even thinking of committing suicide and how it is important for young girls for them to see that you should be careful before they wish someone else’s life on their own. And that they should understand that to love someone else you love yourself first. And to love yourself you have got to know yourself. So these are themes that I think are not only important because they highlight an interesting story but it also sends a message to young people out there. As the father of four daughters, that means even more to me.
Gina mentioned how much she loves working with you. What makes your partnership so successful?
One is that she is an activist as well. She’s is very big on perpetuating positivity on in the female space. And having daughters I am also big on that. Also she is a visionary, she’s very clear on what she wants to protect into the world that she does it without compromise and I’ve always admired her for that as a filmmaker. And now as an aspiring filmmaker and going into directing my feature, I very much pull on her and draw on her ideology when it comes to absolute solidarity and collaboration and never compromising on her vision. So she makes it easy to say yes.
What are some of the causes that you are most passionate about?
Oh man, there so many. A lot of what I do revolves around young black man. We started a project in Brooklyn called Leadership and Literacy through Debate where we use this debate platform to inspire young men that don’t know how to read to become literate. We started that with “The Great Debaters” and it continued on over the years. I do a lot of work with Amnesty and the Boys and Girls Club. There’s a project called Peace4Kids that’s been going on for the last 15 years in South Los Angeles. So there are a lot of things that I’m involved with. I always say that where ever there are young people in need you’ll find me there trying to stand in the gap for them.
How do you guide and protect your daughters in a world where there are so many hyper sexualized role models for them?
Number one is history. They have to know their legacy where they came from because from that they will draw their identity. They will know all the moving parts that made them who they are and then through that they will understand that they have a high expectation of achievement moving forward based on what they know of himself. And I think far too often we don’t set the bar high enough for our children. We kind of allow them to be raised by their circumstances and environment. Instead of being intentional in the things that we teach them and the boundaries we set for their lives.
So for me and my girls, I’m big on history. Just teaching them about their ancestry, teaching them about the diaspora, teaching them about the many ancestors that came before them and sacrificed and thrived before them. And I read an article not too long ago, I don’t remember the name of the article but it talked about the three keys to success when it came to parenting and it was something that’s really stuck with me. And one is the superiority complex, believing that you’re here for something, for something greater. The second is, having a chip on your shoulder. Saying that there are people who will come before you, there are people you can make proud. That was big for me, understanding that I could create a life for my family for my mother and my sisters. I have four younger sisters and I have four daughters so it was huge for me knowing that I had the responsibility for creating a life for them. So I’ve always walked around life feeling like I needed to do more, I had something to prove. And the third was impulse control. And that was big for me when I was in school and understanding that if you would take a beat before you reacted in any situation. You would give yourself a better chance of choosing the right solution to that moment. So impulse control was a really, really big one especially in my movement with the young black males. Your instinct is not always the best decision and how to take a moment in that I let that sleep before you move into what you think is the right answer the right choice for your life. And what are the consequences? I guess that’s the thing, that we don’t really understand that everything comes with consequences. Whether it be something as huge as addiction and gateway drugs but or something as small as sleeping in every day. These things all have consequences and once we learn to attach those to everything we do I think that we become a lot more intentional about the way we live our lives and there will be personal or image of success.
An Interview With Planes: Fire & Rescue Stars Erik Estrada and Fred Willard
Posted on November 3, 2014 at 8:00 am
Copyright Disney 2014
Erik Estrada and Fred Willard provide two of the most distinctive voices in Disney’s Planes Fire and Rescue, and it was a great treat to hear those voices through my telephone, as both actors called me to talk about their roles. The DVD/Blu-Ray is available November 4, 2014
Estrada plays a version of himself, or at least himself as a helicopter inspired by his most iconic character, Ponch from the television series CHiPs. “They told me that they were doing a TV show within the movie,” he said. “One of the lead characters actually played a helicopter officer, because you know we are all machines now. They wanted to give him a partner but they wanted to do it in a way that it was called CHoPs in parallel to CHiPs. So that they could bring two characters on and explain why hewas a racer and then became a firefighter. And so they said, ‘We want to do the Ponch character but we want to do him as a helicopter,’ and I said ‘Okay!’ It is Disney and I love Disney and I raised my children on Disney and I practically live in Disneyland and Disney World. I have always had a wonderful experience with Disney and it was great to be hired by them and work for them.” So we did it and it turned out to be really cute, it is really, really cute, the character is funny and it just gave me flashbacks.”
Estrada got to see a picture of his character before he recorded the voice. But it was not hard for him to get back into Ponch mode. “I didn’t have to psyche too much because I am Ponch. Originally when I auditioned for Ponch, he was an Italian American cop, very aggressive, very gung-ho, very gregarious and I have a lot of that in my personal attitude but when I got them I made him a Latin American. I just drew on my background and drew on my insides and basically Ponch was me and I was Ponch. My character in this movie is a bit aggressive, too. He’d call a car ‘punk’ and of course my partner says, ‘Calm down, calm down,’ just like Larry Wilcox would have done on our show.” Estrada especially enjoyed attending the premiere of the film, with a special dinner for the performers, because it was the first chance he had to be with the other actors. “It was great to see all the other planes and trucks, all the characters, it was great. “I got to see everybody I had not seen in a long time. People that I knew, like Stacey Keach who, I had done The New Centurions with back in ‘71, and Ed Harris who has done an episode of CHiPS and he didn’t know how to ride a bike and I gave him a real quick know-how. That was kind of nice seeing him again.” Estrada says he knows why everyone loves stories about cars and planes and trains: “Because we all started out in strollers. We started out in strollers, and the first thing we notice is the wheel. They see that first before they see anything else. And so we relate to it and we liked them little cars, we liked the colours, we liked to make noise and we like them – and if you see them in a movie, then you really want to get them.”
Fred Willard’s character is an important government official, an SUV who is the Secretary of the Interior. “Very political, yes. Very, very political,” he said, “He’s kind of conservative, concerned with his responsibility. I kind of went for the generic official, with the grey suit you see in all these shots of Congress and the Senate, always making very well pre-planned statements and being very aware of his public image and not suffering any stupidity from underlings. He just kind of considered John Michael Higgins’ character as kind of an annoyance. He had to handle him diplomatically but still feeling a little superior to him. I was always fascinated with those kinds of people. I worked in an office in New York for three years when I first started and I had a lot of bosses who were very stuffy, with nonsensical rules and I was always coming in late in the morning and I had to look at these directives about punctuality, and I was kind of secretly amused by some of those characters.”
Willard said, “I like to do voice things because when you see what you portray on the screen, it is not me so I am relaxed, I don’t say ‘how do I look like that at that day, what did I do with my hair, why was I standing this way,’ anything like that. So I usually enjoy that more than seeing myself live on screen. You have to depend a hundred per cent on your voice, so it is a lot easier in some ways and it is more of a challenge, too. Sometimes they put all those electrodes on you and as you move they film your movement, and I’ve done it where they filmed your face and that is strange too, but you still don’t look like yourself.” He recorded alone at first, but then they had him come back to record with his frequent co-star in the Christopher Guest films, John Michael Higgins. “They wanted us to get together to do our lines, maybe come up with some new lines or some interplay. ” Working on the film reminded him of the toys he loves as a kid. “I just kind of think back to my own childhood. I had little toy trucks and cars, and I was into little toy soldiers, I remember, but I was very fascinated with airplanes. When we went into the studio and I saw the little models of all the planes. I just wanted to grab a couple and stick them in my pocket and bring them home. It was fascinating. But here it is pocket size and you’re kind of in charge of it and that gives you a feeling of power.”
I asked him for the best advice he ever got about acting. “To know your lines – not just know your lines but be on top of them so they come second nature. And then step into whatever character you are. And if you’re improvising, just try to stay in the scene and move the scene forward.”
Both Willard and Estrada said they’re hoping for a third “Planes” movie. If so, I hope I get to talk to them again.
, and Giving Up the Ghost. She has also contributed to a number of book anthologies on subjects ranging from film ghosts to Tim Burton movies. She currently teaches an undergraduate course called “Myth and Media,” in which she and her students examine fantasy and fairy tale movies.
, who championed the importance of myth, folk-tales, and story-telling. This was all popularized further by screenwriting manuals such as one by 
who drew on Campbell to show how the “hero’s journey” could either be used to describe many Hollywood movies but could also be used as a template for screenwriters as they devised new screenplays.
, and it was a great treat to hear those voices through my telephone, as both actors called me to talk about their roles. The DVD/Blu-Ray is available November 4, 2014
. “They told me that they were doing a TV show within the movie,” he said. “One of the lead characters actually played a helicopter officer, because you know we are all machines now. They wanted to give him a partner but they wanted to do it in a way that it was called CHoPs in parallel to CHiPs. So that they could bring two characters on and explain why hewas a racer and then became a firefighter. And so they said, ‘We want to do the Ponch character but we want to do him as a helicopter,’ and I said ‘Okay!’ It is Disney and I love Disney and I raised my children on Disney and I practically live in Disneyland and Disney World. I have always had a wonderful experience with Disney and it was great to be hired by them and work for them.” So we did it and it turned out to be really cute, it is really, really cute, the character is funny and it just gave me flashbacks.”