New DVD: Secret life of Gnomeo & Juliet Revealed by Director

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Wednesday, 08 June 2011 18:12

Written by Brad Balfour

Summer is almost upon us, and so is lawn tending, weeding, planting, and all the gardening tasks shift from background to foreground. And garden gnomes, those funny little stone or cement guardians of gardening, stand watch over all this leisure activity. So what a perfect time to release Gnomeo & Juliet on DVD. And that's just what Disney did.

This animated feature tells the tale of two next door neighbors -- Montague and Capulet -- who are at war, and so are their garden gnomes, who come alive in some mystical way, while their human counterparts are thoroughly unaware of this miniature society.

As in the William Shakespeare tragedy, at the center of the violent feud is two children of the belligerent clans, Gnomeo and Juliet, who are in love. Garden gnomes are at war, yes, but tragic consequences -- well, this is Disney and for kids so the ending is not quite the one Big Bill envisioned.

And in this exclusive interview, veteran director Kelly Asbury (Shrek 2, Spirit - Stallion of the Cimarron) tells his tale of the film's creation and all the in-jokes considered.

Q: Why is a Texan making a movie where everybody speaks in British accents?

KA: Well, because the story is set in Stratford-upon-Avon, which is where Shakespeare was born. I wanted these gnomes to work the very soil from which Shakespeare came so I just figured it had to be England -- it was a great place to set the story. And Elton John was doing the music, so that's another English aspect to it.

Of course, we have a pretty multicultural cast. [They're] not just British. There's a little bit of Spanish, and some Tennessee in there with Dolly Parton. Texas has very little to do with it except that I always liked animation and love to tell stories, so that's as far as it goes.

Q: Did you drag out one of those big Complete Shakespeare books and go through it to figure out the references.

KA: That's not exactly how it worked, but it was sort of like that. We did say, "Let's start by thinking of anywhere we can put in a Shakespeare reference of any kind.

Then you screen these movies and workshop them, play around with it, and hopefully strike the balance. [At some point] you realize, "Okay, that's worn out its welcome, let's stop doing that."

We did have fun doing that and tried a lot of different things. Hopefully the ones that ended up in the final film are the ones that get laughs and that people who know about them do notice them. They're for the Shakespeare fans out there.

Q: Casting Patrick Stewart as Shakespeare was one of the funniest inside jokes.

KA: Absolutely. We had a great time and Patrick did, too. He loved that he was getting to do Shakespeare and he improved a lot of his lines. He really brought a lot to that character, and we had fun in the recording sessions having him do it.

Q: Texas is a perfect place to have gnomes in the front yard, back yard or wherever. Did you know somebody that had gnomes?

KA: There were people who had gnomes in my neighborhood. Everybody has someone in their neighborhood who gardens too much, are a little too attentive to their garden.  Gnomes have been around for a long time.

My parents were avid gardeners and they themed our backyard in the Old West. We had wagon wheels and cow heads and lanterns. It was our own little mini Knott's Berry Farm back there. It's in my blood to understand the tacky gardening mentality.

Q: How did you get involved? Did you come up with the idea from the start or did the producers call you?

KA: They called me. Essentially, it had been in development for some time. I had finished Shrek 2 and my friend Baker Bloodworth, who's one of the producers -- I worked with him years ago on Beauty and the Beast -- asked me to be part of this.

I read the script and thought it was fun. So I got some ideas and we were really able to start from scratch. We gathered the right team of people to start all over and pull it together in a way I hope people are entertained by.

But it wasn't my idea. I wish I could claim it was.

Q: Who first said, "Gnomeo?"

KA: I don't know who it was. The original writers were Rob Sprackling and John R. Smith. But I don't know them and never met them, so I don't know how they came up with the idea. For all I know, one day they just said the name gnome and then went, "Hey wait a minute, that rhymes with Rome." I don't know; I really don't.

Q: Did they do the drawings of these characters or were they your invention?

KA: They had done some, but I didn't want to see them. I was allowed to start from scratch and we hired designers. Our principal character designer, Gary Dunn, did a lot of work. It took a lot of trial and error.

It was about a four-and-a-half-year process -- total, from beginning to end -- to get the movie actually made and in theaters.

Q: When you're making gnomes, can you make them look like the people the gnomes represent? Somehow, the character Jason Statham voices looks just like him.

KA: That's an interesting thing that happens in the animation process. We record the actors before we animate the characters. A lot of people think it's the other way around, but it's the actor first.

We videotape their faces while they are talking, so the animator works to the soundtrack and has this reference video to look at and get some ideas about how that actor uses [his/her] face.

Some sort of osmosis takes place, because that character's moving a certain way actually takes on the appearance of the actor, sometimes. This happens in animation; it's quite fascinating. It's why the genie in Aladdin somehow looks like Robin Williams, even though he really doesn't at all.

Q: I swore whoever played the flamingo was channeling Robin Williams...

KA: No, that was Jim Cummings, a really talented voice actor. He's great. Jim improved a lot of his lines as well and helped us come up with the idea of this Cuban flamingo from Miami.

Q: Did you entertain getting Robin Williams for that? He sounds like Williams.

KA: We had tried a lot of different ideas and couldn't quite grasp it. When Jim came in we tried several things, and it was his idea to try the Cuban accent. It worked.

Q: As for Dolly Parton, has she ever done animation?

KA: She has never done one, and it's really great. We had this little gnome that was starting the race, a little gnomette, and she sort of has this country girl look to her.

One of our editors said "Why don't you guys get Dolly Parton for this?" We called up Dolly and Dolly said she'd love to do it. We flew to Nashville and we recorded her in an hour. It was fantastic.

Q: You have a bunch of novices for animation in this film.

KA: To some degree. Hulk Hogan and Ozzy Osbourne were great. Everybody was so professional. It's amazing how they all were able to just jump in the studio and give me exactly what I wanted. It was perfect.

Q: Had the two leads, James McAvoy and Emily Blunt, ever played Romeo and Juliet? Should we get ones that have played it or someone that wanted to play it?

KA: You know, we didn't think like that. We just knew we wanted good voices with texture, and voices that fit the character design [who] were also good actors that we knew of.

James McAvoy and Emily Blunt both did, actually -- separately -- play Romeo and Juliet on their own, but we never had that as criteria. The minute we asked them, they fell in love with the idea and they agreed to do it. They were very happy to do it.

Q: Did they tell you, "Actually, we've played it" or was that a secret?

KA: No, they told us in meeting them. That wasn't a criteria to cast the part, though. No, they just happened to have both played those parts in various times of their career.

Q: At least it wasn't the other way around.

KA: Exactly. Of course in the old Shakespeare days, James could have played Juliet because men played the girls‛ parts. We didn't entertain it, but that's a good idea. Maybe that's my next one.

Q: What do you feel are the signature touches to this film, as there are in Toy Story 3?

KA: For me, the world that we're in: these gardens and those hard ceramic and concrete characters coming to life that are all weathered and weather-beaten. The film is very successful in engulfing the audience in this world beneath these leaves and in the garden.

So that's what I'm most proud of in terms of the setting, and how it's explored and exploited in the story as a story point.

Q: Had it always been in the background of the story that there was this other dimension and they're alternate world characters? It's a parallel universe; they're in the human universe and in their own universe.

Was that always a part of the story? Did you ever think about keeping it completely separate from the human universe?

KA: The whole story of garden gnomes is you put a garden gnome in your garden because it's for good luck. The idea that while these humans turn their back the gnomes garden and make sure the garden looks good.

The blue garden is in rivalry with the red garden and vice versa, so they're also neighbors that don't like each other. The human neighbors don't like each other and neither do their gnomes.

So we did decide we didn't want the humans seeing the gnomes move because I wanted it to be a very realistic world. I wanted the humans to look as real as possible and I wanted the gnomes to look real.

So we said, let's make it one of those stories where when the humans turn their backs, this is the secret world of statues and ornaments. It was as simple as that.

Q: When did you decide you were going to veer from big Bill's core story -- was it always in mind?

KA: The idea has always been there that at some point Gnomeo and Juliet -- one of them or both of them -- meet a statue of William Shakespeare, who tells them "This is a very familiar story and it doesn't end well."

We always wanted that. We decided, what if our third act is about Gnomeo and Juliet taking control of their own destiny and coming up with a new ending for themselves that might surprise the audience?

But without giving it away, that the audience certainly can enjoy but realize okay, they're going to change the ending to the classic story and they're going to figure out a way to do it.

That's been in the works from the very beginning and something we hoped we pulled off.

Q: Some of the most creative film work is being done in animation.

KA: Animation does seem to be on a roll right now. It's because of the movie itself, not the medium. It's not animation versus live action.

Everything comes in waves and maybe we're on a good wave right now. I hope Gnomeo and Juliet rides that wave a little bit.

I can't explain why so many of the recent animated films have been so successful, except that they're good movies. An audience likes to pay money to see a good movie, and that's what all of us should try to make.

Mighty Movie Podcast: Mali Elfman on Do Not Disturb

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Friday, 03 June 2011 20:08

Written by Daniel Persons

Shot on the proverbial shoestring over seven quick production days, Do Not Disturb is a curious little anthology film with some interesting names attached. Mali Elfman — daughter of Danny — wrote and produced, as well as starring in a couple of segments; Eric Balfour (Skyline) directs one segment and stars in another. Other helmers include music video director Petro Papahadjopoulos and Brandon Nicholas; and daddy Danny chipped in a theme song, with other soundtrack contributions coming from Incubus’ Mike Eizinger and Thenewno2′s Oliver Hecks. The stories, all set in one hotel room, run the gamut from a conventional drama featuring some teen classmates on a school trip, to an alien encounter, to a prostitute contending with a client with esoteric tastes in role-play, to a twist on the ol’ involuntary organ-donor urban myth. Turns out some hotel rooms need a UV sweep; some just deserve to be walled-up and forgotten about.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Mali.

{mp3remote}http://media.blubrry.com/mightymoviepodcast/p/m.podshow.com/download_media/26081/episodes/283426/mightymovie-283426-06-03-2011.mp3{/mp3remote}

Talking the Night With the Director of We Are the Night

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Wednesday, 01 June 2011 05:00

Written by Joseph B Mauceri

A provocative gang of female vampires is living by their own rules and leaving a merciless trail of blood throughout Europe. They return to Berlin where 20-year-old Lena (Karoline Herfurth) survives as a petty thief.

On her nightly run through an underground club, she meets 250-year-old Louise (Nina Hoss), a vampire vixen, who is not only the owner of the club, but also leads this all-female vampire trio -- the other two members are the wild Nora (Anna Fischer) and elegant Charlotte (Jennifer Ulrich).

Louise falls head over heels in love with the scruffy Lena and bites her during their first night together. Lena quickly discovers the curse and the blessing of her new, eternal life. She revels in the glamour, parties and infinite freedom.

Nevertheless, she discovers that the endless blood lust she shares with her new girlfriends comes at a steep price. When she resolves to turn her back on the bloodsucking band of sisters, Louise's temper explodes in a blood fury.

When Detective Tom Serner (Max Riemelt) begins investigating a series of grisly murders, it is just a matter of time before the blood trail leads him to Lena and the other vampires in an out-of-control showdown between the undead and the police.

Dennis Gansel was born in Hannover, Germany on October 4, 1973. He began experimenting with a video camera at the age of 17, in the footsteps of his directing idols Orson Welles, David Fincher, Sydney Pollack and Hal Ashby.

He attended Munich Film School HFF from 1994 to 2000, where he met Christian Becker and they made their first short, The Wrong Trip (1995). Their second short, Living Dead (1996), won the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau short film prize.

After graduating from film school, Dennis shot his first feature film, The Phantom, also produced by Becker, won Cinema magazine's Jupiter Award as Best TV Movie 2000, the Adolf Grimme Prize and the 3sat Audience Award.

In 2001 he made his theatrical debut with hit teen comedy Girls on Top. Together with co-author Maggie Peren, Gansel then wrote the script to Before the Fall, a story set inside the elite Nazi training schools for promising young Aryan boys. In 2007, Dennis Gansel and producer Christian Becker continued their collaboration with The Wave, which took home the German Film Prize in Bronze 2008 and screened around the world.

FEARS: From all the literature to the films, what would you say was the biggest influence on We Are the Night?

DG: When I started this story, back in 1997, I read a lot about vampires and I discovered the novel that was actually the first vampire novel ever written: Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. The novel dealt with a female vampire duchess traveling through Austria, in the region of Styria. She falls in love with the daughter of a landlord and she bites her and makes her a companion.

This novel was actually the biggest influence on Bram Stoker's Dracula, so much so that he actually wanted Styria to be his setting too, but his editor said he couldn't do it. They were frantically searching for another location and that's when they came up with Transylvania.

I thought if female lesbian vampires who don't bite men is in the very beginnings of vampires' history, it could be very nice for us. And that's where the idea came from.

FEARS: What do you feel is the attraction of vampires for the audience and for you?

DG: The vampire movie is one of the oldest movies genres there is. They've got a lot in them. You've got the classic horror shocker, plus the sex appeal, the interdependent characters and the drive to change oneself.

Looking back, of course, the good vampire films were always also a reflection of their era. The vampire film is part of the German cinema history with Murnau’s Nosferatu, which was unofficially based on Stoker’s Dracula and set in Germany.

FEARS: And there is the sex appeal!

DG: It is interesting.If you read Carmilla or Dracula, there is the Victorian sexual repression that leaps out at you, and this sexual tone is in all the vampire movies They pick[ed] up on that tradition and ran with it, playing with the lure of carnal desires. The fact we can tell the story of We Are the Night with exciting, modern women in today's Berlin makes it all the more suspenseful.

FEARS: One of the lures of becoming a vampire is being immortal, never growing old, etc., but why are your vampires so melancholy?

DG: They just don't know what to do with themselves. They're devoted to total luxury and excess, partying and consuming like crazy. The result is an inner void.

That's what the film is about. If Louise were to withdraw to a quiet country estate somewhere in Ireland, ration her blood baggies, and do something for her mind, for instance, everything would be fine. But she's not like that.

The vampiresses create a glam-glitter world for themselves which sucks Lena in at first, as well. But then she starts seeing behind the veneer: These women, who seem so unimaginably strong and beautiful, are ultimately very lonely, and long for love, tenderness, a home and family.

FEARS: I understand that We Are the Night is a 15 year labor of love. Why did it take so long?

DG: I told Christian Becker my idea for a vampire movie set in the Berlin club scene, centered on a love story, in 1996 when we were film students and roommates together.

Soon thereafter, I had the exposé for The Dawn done and was sure I'd be able to start shooting it soon. But I guess the time just wasn't right. I think The Dawn is one of the most-rejected screenplays in movie history (laughs). There's hardly an agency or distributor we didn't offer it to.

But Christian and I always believed in it and would always joke and say: We'll make this damn movie by the time we're 50. The film was actually released in Germany just after my 37th birthday.

FEARS: The Dawn has become We Are the Night. How has it changed since then?

DG: The characters are the same, but the story has changed. My original script was too much like Twilight. That was a blow for me, of course, that Stephenie Meyer could land a global hit with an idea a lot like the one I'd had much earlier and got rejected everywhere.

Jan Berger told me the story at the center was great. All we had to do was change the point of view, telling the story of someone's initiation into the vampire world. I loved that approach.

FEARS: In working with screenwriter Jan Berger, what vampire elements did you decide to keep?

DG: We were making decisions while we were writing. Actually the one thing we talked about a lot was the fact that they are all female vampires, which raises the question "But what about the male vampires?"

And we thought "Okay, if we were female vampires, we would instantly kill every male vampire because they would obviously be much stronger than we are." We though that the survival rate for female vampires would be much higher because they were less likely to reveal themselves and they wouldn't kill as many people.

And ironically, that is what our female vampires do after Lena joins the group; the body count rises because they want to impress her. Ultimately these male aspects may lead to the extinction of our vampires. We thought that was an interesting side effect.

Still, we didn't actually sit down and make a list, but we just asked ourselves what's cool about vampire movies, and what sucks? Fangs, blood and no reflection -- those were definitely cool. Bats, garlic and crucifixes I thought suck.

Too much mushy romance sucks, too. We wanted to have action. When I watch a movie of this genre, I want to be on the edge of my seat.

FEARS: Given the different periods each of the vampires come from, why did you decide to set the story in modern day Berlin?

DG: Well, being set among the ultra-hip Berlin club scene, naturally it reflects the zeitgeist of our modern society. We're all obsessed with youth culture, living out our hedonistic desires, giving in to consumerism and partying all night. All we think about is ourselves and our own fun, no one wants to take responsibility.

Society has become apolitical like never before, at least in Germany. In a way, We Are the Night also evokes casting shows like The X Factor or Germany’s Next Topmodel, a phenomenon we didn't have ten years ago.

We Are the Night [is] life as an ultra-hedonistic vampire. We Are the Night is a modern coming-of-age story. Lena is whisked away on a whirlwind journey against her will at first, then finds enjoyment in her new life, but grows and matures as well, finding herself again at the end.

FEARS: How did you pick those eras for the characters?

DG: Louise was a lady-in-waiting at the court of Frederick the Great. That epoch of German history has always fascinated me, and Jan Berger as well. So we felt that had to be in a German vampire film.

The Roaring 20s were the Golden Age of German movies, with silent films like Nosferatu and Dr. Mabuse, so we definitely wanted those in there too, through the figure of Charlotte.

Then there's Nora, hailing from the early-90s techno era. That was an extremely formative time for me, because for the first time I felt that things were changing in Germany, that it was actually cool to be German, with the Love Parade in Berlin becoming world-famous -- which was easily as cool as anything happening in Barcelona or New York City.

I've been living in Berlin again for years now, and find the changes this city has gone through amazing and exciting. So I wanted that in the movie, too.

FEARS: There have been several critically acclaimed genre films to come out of Europe in the past few years. Why did it take so long to make We Are the Night?

DG: We tried it in 2000 and 2004, and I had all the cast in 2006. Everybody said, 'No, we won't do it.'

I said, "Look, there's a new book coming out in the U.S. and it's called Twilight. It's not really my kind of genre, but it's vampires with a love story. Let's do it now." I prepared the movie, but the whole financial issue was too hard for us.

A lot of genre movies were invented in Europe, like Metropolis and Nosferatu. We have such a great tradition of genre movies in Germany that everybody in Germany, especially in the younger generation of directors, wants to make them.

But the financiers always say 'Do comedies,' because the only one who is making money is Til Schweiger, which is true. We want to elevate it a little bit and do different kinds of films.

FEARS: Given the mythology only has female vampires, giving it this Wonder Woman and the Amazons feel, did working with largely a female cast present any unique challenges?

DG: It was rough, yeah. (laughs) I've never shot with that many women, especially so many strong women who want to contribute to crafting their roles themselves.

But at the same time that's a wonderful opportunity, and I'd be stupid not to listen to the input of such a dynamite cast of actresses. After this movie, I think I'm the total ladies' man, and very sensitive to female issues.

FEARS: Given that all your films have a similar tone, they are each very different. Do you enjoy the horror genre?

DG: I think drama and thrillers are the most fun. I was deeply influenced by the New Hollywood cinema and the fun and highly entertaining worlds of Zemeckis and Spielberg. The Super 8 trailer looks amazing, as does the one for Haywire. Something like this would be fun to work on.

FEARS: What can you tell us about your next film, Year of the Dog?

DG: It is my first English language feature and I‛m in the process of editing it right now.

It's about terrorism. It's starring Moritz Bleibtreu as a journalist who comes to Moscow, who wants to have fun and enjoy his life in Moscow. He's working for a magazine, but he's confronting terrorism in Russia and he's caught between terrorists and the government.

Actually, it's about state terrorism and how the government uses terrorism to influence politics. It's a classic political thriller, very entertaining, very much in the same vein as 1970s Hollywood political thriller.

I wrote the original draft more than 10 years ago, and it also took me a long time to do it because thrillers, they have a big tradition in Germany, but, same with other genres, it's tough to get the money.

Terrorism changed the world we are living in right now, so fundamentally, I was really wondering, for the last 10 years, where are all the movies about terrorism? I don't need any more movies about Iraq or Afghanistan.

I really want a big movie like Three Days of the Condor and all this great stuff from the 70s, which really reflect how the CIA and Watergate changed the American society. I always wondered where these movies are right now. Politics can still be very entertaining, and this is my try to make such a movie.