INT: Wood/Williams

What happens when the
director of the MAD MAX franchise as well as THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK
and LORENZO’S OIL decides to make a family film?
Well we got a taste of it in BABE: PIG IN THE CITY and now
for all you dancing penguin fans we get HAPPY
FEET. George
Miller’s music filled tribute to the bird that cannot fly is
surprisingly smart and is filled with some terrific voice talent
including Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman
and a personal favorite of mine, E.G. Daily.

At the Regent Beverly
Wilshire Hotel, Elijah Wood, Robin Williams and Mr. George Miller
himself stopped by to talk penguin. They
spoke about working with “animated animals”, Elijah’s horrible
singing and of course, global warming; HAPPY FEET is not just a
fluffy talking animal movie, it’s a unique, music filled tale of
what happens when you accept who you are, even when nobody else
will. So if you didn’t get
enough of these birds in MARCH OF THE PENGUINS, I recommend you
check this out.

Mr. Miller, can you compare and contrast the
experience the live animals in the BABE films vs. these computer
generated ones [in HAPPY FEET]?

George Miller (GM):
Ah, in a way, it’s a lot easier. Obviously, [it’s] a lot easier
working with computer-generated animals, but a lot slower.

Elijah
Wood (EW): They’re friendlier as well.

GM:
Yeah.

Robin Williams (RW):
And people don’t eat computers.

GM:  Exactly,
exactly…

RW:  Cyber
pork is not very [appetizing]…

GM:  There’s
a good answer. Look, animal trainers, particularly the ones we had
on the BABE films, were really, really surprisingly a lot easier to
work with animals than one would normally think. But of course
working with computer-generated creatures, it’s very painstaking
work. But obviously you can get the creatures to do whatever you
want. And when we first decided to do this movie, we realized that
we weren’t ever going to be able to train penguins. They’re not
domestic animals. You can’t go to
Antarctica
and screw around with their environment. It’s a very delicate
environment so this was the only way to do it.

Elijah, is there any connection whatsoever
between the lonely Hobbit and his lonely voyage in LORD OF THE
RINGS?

EW:
Oh, here we go! [Laughter] Here we go…

RW:  [Imitating
SMEAGOL] He just loves… [Laughter] all these questions…

And a little happy-footed penguin who stands
apart from the crowd and has to find his own destiny?

EW:  Ah,
as much as you’d like to read into it, I guess. That’s about it. No,
I don’t think there’s much of a connection but I’m sure you could
read a connection into that if you’d like.

RW:  Big
Feet.

EW:  Yeah…
big feet.

RW:  Fluffy
feet.

EW:  Fluffy
feet.

RW:  That
was the initial, the Australian title of the movie was, FLUFFY FEET.
[Laughter]

Robin, how
did you go about finding your “inner-macho”?

RW:  [As
Ramón] 
For me to do dis, to be de tiny but very powerful penguin, is
to know the Argentinean male, to say “Más Huevos” a word in
Spanish meaning eggs, also means something else for those who speak
Spanish [“balls”].  But
it is to give him some machismo. 
Small but powerful and we penguins, we say size does not make
a difference.  It is very
important to have dis kind of joke dis early in de morning. 
[Laughter] But, I want to play dis man to give him the
power… Ramón, is a small but
once again, come closer… let me talk to ju and you know dis very
much… and if I day ju, I don’t mean in a like Mel Gibson kind of
way [Laughter] I mean it in a, let me talk to YOU. 
That way… sorry George. 
[Laughter]  But
for me, I love to do dis very much. 
Thank you.

Judging from your earlier work, most of us
probably would not have expected you to get into family films. What
made you realized you could do family-friendly films and still keep
the George Miller sensibility in there?

GM:  I
think basically it’s all driven by story. The thing that gets me
hooked on any project is story, and this was a good story. You know,
at the time we were doing this, we were also preparing to do the
fourth MAD MAX movie. Maybe I’m a little kind of dissonance in my
brain, but I don’t see a lot of difference between those two films
really. I’m trying to tell good stories. The fact is it doesn’t
really matter what medium there is. I think probably I’m getting
also a little wiser somehow. I’ve got kids, the only movies I see
these days at home are basically kid’s movies so you kind of get
into that mold as well.  And
also I love to tell stories that you can see, I like to go to movies
with kids and my teenage daughter and my mother. I like it to be a
family outing. But mainly it’s the story. That’s the main thing that
gets me hooked on a film. Does that make sense?

So sex and violence doesn’t play a factor
with you?

RW:
Not with Penguins.

GM: 
[Laughs]   Well,
you know… no, it doesn’t. Obviously it’s all story driven. I
don’t make many films, LORENZO’S OIL, you can kind of connect
that with the BABE films or MAD MAX or indeed HAPPY FEET – but I
think the one thing they all have – probably they have two things in
common. One is very conscious, which is to tell the best story you
can, and the second one I guess really is without understanding why,
is that I like telling stories that basically follow the hero myth.
It just happens unconsciously.

Elijah, can you sing?

EW:  Can
I really sing? I can hold a tune. 
My voice is not nearly as bad as Mumble. It was actually kind
of great though because I was called on to sing really poorly for
the film, and I thought I did a pretty competent job of singing
poorly. [Laughter] But they actually digitally made it worse. So
when I saw the film, like I knew what I had done, but my God, they
made it sound horrendous. It’s wonderful.

And what about dancing?

EW: Again, I’ve got rhythm, but I wouldn’t call
myself a competent dancer either.

Robin, have you always had a burning desire to
sing “My Way” in Spanish?

RW:  [As
Ramón]
I have a burning desire… [Laughter] and many of the people I have
been with had to take medication. But it is the idea to sing
“My Way”!!!  It
is a very beautiful song to sing, especially behind another penguin
in kind of a

BROKEBACK

MOUNTAIN

– I love you – kind of I can’t quit you Mumble, kind of way. George
said, don’t go there, but it’s a subtext like the two gay penguins
in the Manhattan Zoo. They were there for a long time and then one
got fed up. “I don’t know who you are any more. I brought you
pebbles and you just sit on them.” 
But I wanted to sing that. It’s fun to do, especially with
that Gypsy Kings. It’s a great thing.

Elijah, you had mentioned that this film had
taken a long time.  Could
you and Robin talk about the process of recording the dialogue and
how long it took?  Was it
improvised or did you work alone?

EW: 
Hmm… Well, to speak about the recording process, we were
lucky enough to work together much of the time, which is nice. 
You know, the nature of doing an animated film is oftentimes
it’s completely based on the actors schedules and its not always
you get to be in a room with the other actors that you’re meant to
be working with.  It
really helps to make the scenes come alive and to breath life into
them when you’ve got other people to play off of.

RW:  Especially
all the Chicano comics were great.

EW:  They
were amazing.

RW:  That
was a pretty wild group of people to have in one room. 
Most of them have other gigs but it was great just to riff.  It
was a good group to play off of and George would let us go and then
pick things and expand upon that, which is once again another luxury
that you don’t normally get.  But
it was certainly fun to do, there was never a time I went home
and… I always left feeling kind of exhilarated because you get to
play in the room with other people.

Mr.
Williams, so much of your comedy is physical, do you feel handcuffed
when you are doing voice work?  Which
kind of work do you prefer?

RW:  Well,
I prefer to be handcuffed just at home [Laughter]. 
But, that’s the idea of… voice work for me is great fun
especially when it’s a chance to do two different voices
especially one that is machismo like Ramon and a chance to sing and
to do a Barry White like character, that for me is a gift. 
It started with ALADDIN and I’ve done a lot of animated
films since and it’s always a gift.

You are free, literally, I mean I love to be
physical but in a weird way, they video tape you and they get a lot
of who I am, even though I never thought of myself as Barry. 
It was fun to know that in a weird sort of way they capture
that, they create a character from ground up. 
There’s nothing like it, that’s the joy of animation. 
I love doing live action movies but there’s a great joy in
doing animation.  Especially
with music, [it’s] pretty extraordinary to have that chance for
me.

Was there
any rotoscoping of the penguins for their physical actions?

GM:  There
was a lot of… we had a guy called Dr. Gary Miller who is known as
Dr. Penguin who spent seventeen years in Antarctica, he knows them
backwards.  We worked on
the characters from their anatomy up, from their skeleton up and
then there was a huge amount of reference material that we got on
two expeditions down there and also a lot of documentary footage and
there was some… we’d study the range of motion, how penguins
swim, how they walked, so there was an enormous amount of study. 
There was a little bit of rotoscoping of actual penguins but
only as a way for the animators to kind of go to penguin school
really.

Robin, did you learn anything from making this
film?

RW:  Some
of the things I already knew about the nature of over fishing and
environmentally, the one thing that isn’t really in this movie but
is actually happening is
Antarctica
is melting. Both North and South poles are turning into a pool,
literally. There are large areas that don’t exist anymore. Which is
why initially, we were going to just go down and shoot plates but
they thought about it and it was too late. Areas were disappearing.
Areas the size of
New Zealand
and

New Hampshire

would melt which causes areas, if you’re living by the sea, you’ll
notice. In ten to fifteen years, you’ll really notice. Also the idea
of the industrial fishing affects everyone.

Those
factory ships play this game of hit and run with the international
fishing limits and they basically, somebody said it’s like hunting
squirrels with a bulldozer. They pull everything in and they are
only looking for certain types of fish and everything else dies and
they just throw it back. It’s like chumming. They just basically
destroy and have just fished out large populations of fish
throughout the world. If your population depends on that, you’ll
find your food source rapidly depleting and it’s been done over the
last period of last ten years and it’s mainly a few countries and
you know who you are.

[Speaking
in fake Japanese] This issue of controlling that as they push their
way further North, it really screws up the entire food chain and
we’re at it. That combined with the issues of other creatures and
their existence. The number of extinctions recently has dramatically
increased.  Did I learn
that?  I knew it coming
in but I learned more about it. 
The most amazing thing about this was they’ve given
penguins a very unique character because each one of these penguins
is recognizable…  The
animators and the gift they’ve given and what George did with them
is to give them this incredible animation combined with water ballet
that pretty much, even Esther Williams on acid couldn’t do. 
[Laughter]

The
idea of something so extraordinary, I’ve learned about that and
something so beautiful.  And
great beauty exists in this and shouldn’t be allowed to just
deteriorate.  And also,
Mumble’s character, the idea of whether he’s dropped or not, there’s
always someone pushing the envelope in terms of performance or being
slightly out there or different that takes us to a new place. His
desire to explore and say, “Wait a minute. I don’t accept
this.” [It’s] Talking about the idea of how do you survive?
It’s by actually going “no, no. This is not right” and
dealing with that. As human beings, we have to wake up or we’re
gone. The penguins will go first and then it’ll be us because, as a
species we’re kind of holding on.

I
was watching this film, a BBC film last night which talked about
exploring of the planet, we are surrounded by a lot of failed
Eco-systems, Moon being one, Mars, there’s evidence of water on
Mars and rivers and it didn’t take. 
You realize that we have planets that guard us like Jupiter
and Saturn and take the hits of the comets but it is miraculous that
we exist on this planet… that it took. 
Are there others?  I
hope.  Will we find them? 
I hope.  But right
now, existing together and protecting for our own safety because our
survival depends on it.

These
systems work together and when the [North and South] poles rise and
large parts of this world will be under water and other parts will
be in draught.  And the
numbers of hurricanes now have gone through the English alphabet and
they’re now using Hebrew letters. 
The idea that there are massive amounts of scientists saying
you can address this with alternative fuels or whatever but there
are ways of doing it, but Australia with no ozone. 
It cooks people.  Without
[an] ozone you fry.  And
without a magnetic field, we’ll also fry. 
Does a little penguin movie help? 
Well, maybe.

Elijah, what do you want kids to take away from this?

EW: I think the outstanding message for children, but I think
adults can take something from it too, is that sense of
individuality and I think we all go through life, particularly as
young people in a school environment as the most typical place where
we experience that sense of having to conform and not being accepted
or having a character defect or some defect that people pick up on
and excise you from that larger community. But I think adults can
relate to that to. I think it’s something we experience in all
ways of life.

And I think for kids, to see this character who is largely not
accepted by his penguin family, by his friends or the community at
large because he dances and he doesn’t sing… the beautiful thing
about Mumble is he’s sort of… he’s beautifully unaware of it.
It’s not so much confidence as much in the beginning. He just
doesn’t see that there’s anything wrong. He then, as a result of
that, goes on this journey to truly establish who he is and also
look for greater answers for these questions that he has, but I
think it’s a great message for young people to realize these things
that separate us from each other are ultimately the things that make
us who we are. That’s something to be celebrated.

Elijah, did you have any unique traits as a child that someone
frowned on or wanted you to grow out of?

EW:  I
had a lot of energy. I think Robin can relate to that. Yeah, I was
very energetic. And there were times when I was younger, I wasn’t so
much spastic or crazy but I just had a lot of energy and a certain
passion for life and sometimes that wasn’t always accepted or
appreciated mainly by adults.

Let
me know what you think. Send
questions and comments to [email protected].