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Interview with Epic’s Chris O’Dowd and Aziz Ansari #EpictheMovie

May 23, 2013 By 6 Comments

 

Epic-Character-MubGrub

 

Tomorrow the film Epic comes to theaters across the country. Earlier today I shared an interview I participate in with the film’s Director, Chris Wedge, as well as two of the stars from the film, Amanda Seyfried (MK) and Colin Farrell (Ronin). You can find that interview here.

Prior to their interview my group had the opportunity to interview two other voice actors from the film, Chris O’Dowd and Aziz Ansari.

I have participated in many interviews in the post, both in group settings and one-on-one. I have to say that this was one of the funniest interviews I have ever participated in. Chris and Aziz had us in stitches the whole time. We could have easily chatted with them all day. :-)

Chris O’Dowd is probably best known from the hit film Bridesmaids. He played the part of Officer Rhodes. Chris has also appeared in 3,2,1…Frankie Go Boom, Gulliver’s Travels and This is 40. Chris was born and raised in Ireland and has a really nice accent (I love accents!).

Chris is a tall man with a very “laid back” quality about him. He’s also very funny and has a quick wit. He is just naturally a funny guy.

Chris voices the character of Grub.

Chris O'Dowd as Grub

Chris O’Dowd as the voice of Grub the snail.

Aziz Ansari is best known for being the voice of Squint in all of the Ice Age movies. He also plays the part of Tom Haverford in the series Parks and Recreation. Aziz also used to be a stand up comedian. He started stand up comedy when he was only 18 years old.

Even though Aziz was dressed up in a nice suit, he had a very cool and relaxed vibe about him. Just like Chris, Aziz is a very funny man, able to quickly come back at Chris with humorous remarks.

Aziz voices the part of smooth talking, but slimy, Mub the slug.

Amanda Seyfried as the voice of MK

Aziz Ansari as the voice of Mub.

Chris and Aziz have incredible chemistry together, both in the film and in person.

I’m not 100% certain but I believe Amanda said that Chris and Aziz were sharing a hotel room together. Seeing how these two are together I’m sure that laughter was echoing from the room all night long. :-)

Here is our interview with Chris O’Dowd (Grub) and Aziz Ansari (Mub).

I left some of the bantering back and forth between Chris and Aziz because I thought it highlighted just how well these two play off each other and why they have such fabulous chemistry both on and off screen. Humm… maybe there will be a Mub and Grub spin-off? LOL!

Q: What was your favorite movie as a kid?

Aziz Ansari:  That is a good question.  That might be the first good question I’ve heard ever in my history of doing interviews.

Chris O’Dowd:  I’m trying to think what I loved.

Aziz Ansari:  Did they have kids movies in Ireland?

Chris O’Dowd:  Yes, we had movies.  What did I love?  Jaws?  Does that count?

Aziz Ansari:  Jaws?

Chris O’Dowd:  It’s not a kids movie.

Blogger:  A child friendly movie.

Chris O’Dowd:  A child friendly movie.  Well, ET – loved ET.

Aziz Ansari:  ET I think was the first movie I saw in the theaters. I’d just been born when ET came out, and I think my mom and dad took me to ET.

ET is great.  What else did I see?

I watched Flight of the Navigator.  Do you guys remember that?

That was good.  You know what I’m talking about.  What else did I love?  Terminator 2 – I watched that a lot as a kid.

Chris O’Dowd:  Was Fast and the Furious out then?

Aziz Ansari:  That was when I was just born. Fast 1 had just come out when I was born.

Chris O’Dowd:  Yes, Vin Diesel had hair.

Mub and Grub Epic Premiere

Q: Did it take any convincing at all for you guys to decide that you wanted to be a part of this movie, or was it a pretty quick decision, you were like, oh, my gosh, this is going to be great, this is going to be huge?

Aziz Ansari:  I’d worked with some of the same team before on a little film called Ice Age 4:  Continental Drift.  And so, I knew it was that team, and we had a lot of fun working together on that.  And it just seemed like a cool idea to do an animated film set in this universe.  So, I signed up pretty quickly and was on board.

Chris O’Dowd:  Yes, I wasn’t 100 percent sure, to be honest, because I hadn’t done it before.  And I thought, I don’t know if I’ll enjoy it.  But, I realized Chris [Director Chris Wedge], and he was so enthusiastic, and he brought me into this room where they had started doing a lot of the early drawings for it, and it just looked so magical.  So, that was very, very tempting.  And then, I really wanted to work with Aziz.

Q: When you ran over the script and everything, was it kind of right in the front of your mind that you thought, wow, this is a great environmental message, this is something I want to be a part of?

Chris O’Dowd:  That was it. That was a big selling point that they were even selling to me at the time, I remember, which it is.  And there isn’t anything really like that out there at the moment.  I know The Lorax I guess was kind of like that. I didn’t see it, but I know it had a message in that kind of area.  But, it’s great.  It is great because forests are nice, aren’t they?

Aziz Ansari:  This was actually a struggle for me because I really into deforestation, and I don’t agree with the message of the film, but I could always separate my personal views from my creative work.  No, I’m for the environment.  I’m pro environment, just to be clear.

Q: How much of what you guys did in the film was improv?  You have such a good rapport together. 

Aziz Ansari:  There are a few things here or there, but generally, what you see is a scripted.

Chris O’Dowd:  Yes.  You’re a tiny piece of this massive thing.  People are drawing it just for so long, they don’t draw it any more probably.  But I think by the time it gets down to it, you kind of just do your bit, which is mostly scripted.

Q: Were you together when you did the voices?

Aziz Ansari:  This is something people are very interested about.  We’ve been asked this a few times.

Chris O’Dowd:  Yes, and what we were wearing.

Aziz Ansari:  No, you went to the stock questions.

We did our first big session together, which was where we did like a lot of the stuff, and then he was shooting a film in Ireland, I believe.

Chris O’Dowd:  That’s right.

Aziz Ansari:  And I was filming in Los Angeles, so we were not in the same area.  But, we were lucky enough to do the one major big session together, which was fun.

Chris O’Dowd:  Yes, it was really good.  And that kind of gave us the idea of what the chemistry would be and what the dynamic would be and all that kind of stuff.  So, it was good but, I had to go back to Ireland and shoot something, and it was great.  And Chris was kind of enough to of come over and record some of my stuff there, which was fun.

Mub and Grub

Q: I have a question about the process.  Is it hard? Because when you’re acting you’re face-to-face.  So, how is it with animation?  Are you seeing it on the screen as you’re doing the voices so you can get the feel of it?

Aziz Ansari:  Well, early on, they just show you kind of drawings of the characters and stuff and just kind of sketches and things like that and the concept art.  And then, as you go along, it gets more and more animated but, you don’t really see the finished thing until maybe the last couple of sessions, if there’s a couple of things you need to fix, some audio tweaks they need to make, then you see it.

But, generally, for most of it, you’re just kind of doing it into the microphone and you don’t see anything.  And so, by the time you finally see it, it’s really cool to see how it all kind of comes together.

Chris O’Dowd:  I had a framed headshot of Aziz’s, and we’d just pretend that he was there.

Aziz Ansari:  I had an actual snail that I just pretended was Chris, and I would look down at him for inspiration.

Q: Do they base the characters on you guys at all?

Chris O’Dowd:  Just physically, yes.

Aziz Ansari:  Well, you look at our faces.  I look like a slug, of course.

Chris O’Dowd:  I don’t know actually if in terms of what little mannerisms or things they kind of bring into it, but maybe a touch.

Aziz Ansari:  Yes.  I mean, there aren’t any dots on our faces when we’re in the booth or anything.

I think they do film us when we’re recording, for our mouth movements and stuff like that.  So, I’m sure they draw on some of that stuff for the physicality of the animation.

Q: Are you proud of your helmet?

Chris O’Dowd:  Excuse me?

Blogger:  At the end when he gives you the helmet?

Chris O’Dowd:  Oh, yes, that was great. Yes, I’m very proud of my helmet.  I like the idea of that kind of character who, all he wants to do is be a hero, and he just doesn’t have that ability.  So, it was nice.

Blogger:  Kids can really relate to that.

Chris O’Dowd:  Yes.

Blogger:  It’s such a wonderful message in so many different ways.

Q: Do you find doing animation easy or hard, compared to filming live?

Aziz Ansari:  Definitely easier.

All you do is you just do this, you’re done.  Look out.

Epic - Chris O'Dowd as Grub

Q: Are you doing that much prep work? You could just read your lines compared to memorize them, right?

Aziz Ansari:  Pretty much.

Chris O’Dowd:  That’s very little.

Aiz Ansari:  Acting is very easy. For very brief amounts of time, you’re just pretending, and then it’s done.  It’s a good gig.

Chris O’Dowd:  Let’s blow this joint.

Aziz Ansari:  No, but it’s really fun and the animation, it’s really fun and relaxed, and everyone on the team that worked on this, they’re all easy to work with, and they make it really fun.  So, I have a good time doing them.

Q: Do you think you would do another film, since it’s your first one, will you do another animation?

Chris O’Dowd:  I think so.  It is fun.  It’s a different kind of skill, but I really enjoyed it.  So, yes, hopefully something where I’m more attractive would be good.

Aziz Ansari:  Not another snail part?  You don’t want to get typecast as a snail in every part.

Chris O’Dowd:  Well, that’s the thing – I’m just going to get a lot of mucous based characters.

Aziz Ansari:  Well, Chris, we don’t have any snail based characters in this one, but maybe the next one.

Chris O’Dowd:  Yes, I hope so.  I’d like to.

Q:  Did you have a favorite scene?

Aziz Ansari:  I enjoyed the scenes where Mub was hitting on MK.  That was fun.  I like the idea of a slug that’s that confident in himself to where he thinks he can get it going with a human being – very ambitious.

Chris O’Dowd:  I liked meeting Beyonce.

Aziz Ansari:  Yes.

In real life when we tried to meet Beyonce, her security came and escorted us away – we’re Mub and Grub.  Sure, guys.

Chris O’Dowd:  I’m a snail, I’m a snail.

Q: So, are you guys hoping that all of our kids dress up as snails and slugs for Halloween, then?

Aziz Ansari:  Oh, my gosh.

Chris O’Dowd:  That would be crazy. That would be amazing.

Aziz Ansari:  Mub and Grub Halloween costumes?

Chris O’Dowd:  I love the idea that we’ve given mothers so much work to do.  That’s a tough costume. That’s going to be big.  Oh, I’m so sorry.

Q: What about seeing yourselves merchandised?  Maybe you’ll be stuffed animals.

Chris O’Dowd:  Wow, yes.

Aziz Ansari:  Whoa.

Seems like they’d be pretty cuddly.

Epic - Aziz Ansari as Mub

Blogger:  With a voice chip.

Aziz Ansari:  Oh, my gosh.

Chris O’Dowd:  That would be really cute.

Aziz Ansari:  As long as we get a cut, of course.

Chris O’Dowd:  Yes, yes.

Aziz Ansari:  That would be very cute.

Chris O’Dowd:  That’s such a lovely idea.

Q: Do you guys have some Energy Star appliances and electronics and things at home?  Do you look for that little Energy Star label?  Is that something that you really take note of when you’re shopping?

Aziz Ansari:  Do they have that in Ireland?

Chris O’Dowd:  No, I don’t know what that is.

Aziz Ansari:  So, when you buy a fridge here, sometimes, the fridge has a little star on it, and that means, hey, we’re doing stuff to help save energy.

Chris O’Dowd:  Oh, okay.

Blogger:  So, do they have anything like that in Ireland?

Chris O’Dowd:  I know the kind of thing you mean.  Yes, energy saving tick or something.

Blogger:  To help you reduce your energy.

Aziz Ansari:  I’m really into home appliances.

Blogger:  Well, it sounds like you might be really into energy saving.

Aziz Ansari: I think if you’re a consumer, and you think, oh, well, this company’s going out of the way to make sure it’s an environmentally conscious product, why not support that?

Chris O’Dowd:  I still keep all my meat and food just in a small salt pit, you know?

Aziz Ansari:  So, you’re really saving a lot of energy.

Chris O’Dowd:  Yes, I’m trying to.

Aziz Ansari:  You don’t have a fridge.

Chris O’Dowd:  I don’t use a fridge.  I like things lukewarm.

Blogger:  I like this movie because the message is definitely obviously pro-environment.

Chris O’Dowd:  Yes.

Blogger:  I sometimes think that sometimes environmentalists can kind of turn people off because they just sort of are like, well, are you doing this, are you doing that?

Chris O’Dowd:  That Ed Begley, Jr., right?

Aziz Ansari:  What did he do?

character_main

Blogger:  He’s a little extreme?

Aziz Ansari:  Really?

Chris O’Dowd:  Oh, he’s so great, yes.

Aziz Ansari:  What does he do?  I don’t know anything about it.

Chris O’Dowd:  He’s terrific.

Blogger:  He lives in a tree house.

Aziz Ansari:  Whoa.  All right.  I wasn’t aware.  I’ll have to look into it.

Chris O’Dowd:  No, I know what you mean.  I think it’s a very welcoming message in a movie.  I think it’s nice. You just don’t know if people are going to take onto that kind of thing, and hopefully, kids will.  It’d be great.

Q:  What did you think when you first found out?  Did they just say, would you like to play a snail, or would you like to play a slug, or did you kind of sign up for the film and then find out?

Chris O’Dowd:  Well, I auditioned for the part of Queen Tara, and it wasn’t until a couple of weeks in that they recast, got Beyonce and decided to go a different direction.

Aziz Ansari:  Sorry, Chris, they’re going in a slightly different direction.

Chris O’Dowd:  Yes.

I thought it was kind of a cool idea to play a snail because there aren’t enough on screen, you know?

Aziz Ansari:  Snails are very under-represented.

Chris O’Dowd:  Which is snailist, frankly.

Aziz Ansari:  Yes.

Blogger:  Snailist.

Chris O’Dowd:  Don’t be snailist, yes.

Aziz Ansari:  I mean, I watched Iron Man 3 the other day and there’s not one snail.

Chris O’Dowd:  Not one, not one.

Aziz Ansari:  Not one snail or slug in this world.

Chris O’Dowd:  It’s a pretty snailist movie.

Aziz Ansari:  You’ve just got to focus on the human characters.  Star Trek – same thing–.

Chris O’Dowd:  Nothing, yes.

Aziz Ansari:  It’s really a little discriminatory.  That’s why it’s good EPIC gives snails and slugs a fair shake.

Chris O’Dowd:  And you watch the way that the landscape will change.  There’s going to be a lot of mucous based things.

Aziz Ansari:  Iron Man 4, one of the characters is gonna be a snail, yes.

Chris O’Dowd:  That’s right.

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Q:  Are you opposed to escargot?

Chris O’Dowd:  Yes.  Well, anywhere that we get mentioned, I don’t mind, even if it’s being eaten.  That’s fine.  I just want to get out there.

Aziz Ansari:  A lot of pressure.

Chris O’Dowd:  Nobody can stand up to the heat.

Q:  Could you give any advice for someone that was either inspiring to be a comedian? Because, I’m sure, obviously, it’s very hard to get into that business. 

Chris O’Dowd:  Just write and write as much as you can, write down any funny things that you have and just send them to me and don’t tell anybody that you’ve done it.  And then, I can just use them.

Aziz Ansari:  Yes, I think, as soon as you can, just start working on whatever it is, whether it’s standup or improv or whatever.

Blogger:  That’s how you started, right, standup?

Aziz Ansari:  I started off doing standup in New York, and I also took classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.  I think you can just do your research and try to go to these places like the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and start taking classes or whatever.

But, I think it’s always good to just start as soon as you can.  I started when I was fairly young, at 18, 19 years old.  But, man, I wish I’d started even younger.  I feel like the more time you put into something, the better you get at it.  And I think just go for it and see what happens.  Good luck.

As you can see these two have a great rapport with one another. That carries over into the film. Mub and Grub add a lot of humor into the movie. I could easily see them being turned into plush stuffed figures (minus the slim of course :-) ).

If you would like to check out Mub and Grub in action go see the film Epic which opens in theaters across the country tomorrow (May 24, 2013).

If you would like to learn more about the film check out the film’s official website, www.EpictheMovie.com. You can also check them out on the film’s social media outlets.

Like Epic on Facebook

Follow @EpicTheMovie on Twitter #EpicTheMovie

Watch Epic videos on YouTube

Follow Epic on Instagram

Epic Interview O'Dowd and Ansari

Kimberly

*I was not compensated for this post. I am sharing this for the enjoyment of my site readers. The opinions expressed are my own and not influenced in any way.

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Interview with Epic movie Director Chris Wedge, Amanda Seyfried and Colin Farrell #EpictheMovie

May 23, 2013 By 3 Comments

 

Epic-Character-MK

On Saturday, May 18, 2013, after watching the “green” carpet premiere of Epic at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City I was fortunate to interview the film’s director, Chris Wedge, and several stars from the film – Amanda Seyfried, Colin Farrel, Chris O’Dowd and Aziz Ansari.

The interviews were broken up into two groups. Chris Wedge, Amanda Seyfried and Colin Farrell were in one group and Chris O’Dowd and Aziz Ansari were in another group.

I’ll break the interviews up into two posts to make it easier. This first post will feature the interview with Director Chris Wedge, Amanda Seyfried and Colin Farrell. If you want to read the interview with Chris O’Dowd and Aziz Ansari you can find it here.

Chris Wedge, the Director of Epic, has directed other family favorites – Ice Age and Robots. He’s been the Executive Producer on other Ice Age films and has even lent his voice to the character of Scrat who appears in all of the Ice Age films.

Chris came across as a quiet man but he was more than happy to chat about his incredible new film, Epic.

Amanda Seyfried is best known for her roles in such films as Les Miserables, Mamma Mia, In Time and Dear John. She also stared as Sarah Henrickson in the HBO series Big Love.

I knew Amanda was a petite young lady, but I didn’t realize just as tiny she was until you see her in person. She also comes across as VERY shy, which is not something you would expect from an actress. She’s very soft spoken and quiet.

Amanda is the voice of MK.

Amanda Seyfried as the voice of MK

Amanda Seyfried as the voice of MK

Colin Farrell was once seen as a “Hollywood Bad Boy”. He has stared in such films as Total Recall, Horrible Bosses, In Bruges and one of my personal favorites, Phone Booth. In 2009 he filled in as the character of Dr. Parnassus in the film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus after the untimely death of Heath Ledger. He filmed the role along with Johnny Depp and Jude Law. Colin donated his salary from the film to Heath’s daughter Matilda.

I was expecting a bit of a cocky attitude from someone once seen as a Hollywood hell raiser, but that was not the case at all. Colin was very friendly, personable and funny. He also was very well spoken and clearly adores his two young sons. I was pleasantly surprised by him. He’s also a lot smaller in person then he comes off as on the big screen.

Colin is the voice of Ronin.

Epic - Colin Farrell as Ronin

Epic – Colin Farrell as Ronin

We interviewed this group after interviewing Chris O’d Dowd and Aziz Ansari. Chris and Aziz had our group laughing hard the entire time. When this group walked in Amanda wanted to know why we were laughing so loud. We told them that Chris and Aziz were just really funny. Colin, not to be outdone by his cast mates, started off the interview with “So, an Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman walk into a bar” to which Chris chimed in “A priest and a Rabbi are walking down the road…”. We asked them to finish but due to time we needed to get on to the interview.

Q: Did the environmental message in this movie have an impact on whether or not you wanted to take a part in it?  Was that something that you said, wow, this is a great way to really get this message out there to the kids?  I mean, obviously, it’s a good thing, but was it something in your thought process?  And for you, Chris, was that a huge part of this for you?

Chris Wedge:  It seemed like a fun magical place to go.  I do what I can to live as small as I can.  It’s kind of hard when you’re working on one of these movies because you’re on airplanes all the time.

Colin Farrell:  Yes.

Chris Wedge:  But, the idea behind the movie was that we would go to a place that seems familiar to us, but we would see the magic inside of it.  And when I wanted always to get in touch with that from an emotional perspective, I thought about the times that I just walk into the forest, whenever I’m by myself, and just stop and listen and just feel it, because you can feel the presence of some kind of nature power going on all the time.

There’s a little movie going on with the squirrels that are chasing around and the things are growing out of trees, and it’s always happening, and you can feel the presence of that.

And, look, we’ve done a very stylized version of a magical forest here, but if it generates some more kind of respect for that in kids, if they think, wow, maybe if I walk out there, I’ll see this, because I am taking perspectives and showing you that, sometimes, it looks just like it does to us, right, you’ll see evidence that this is happening.

So, my hope was that a kid would go out and see like, wow, those birds making all that noise, that’s not just a sparrow chasing a crow away from its nest, it’s Leafman and Boggins that are fighting, that would be it for me.  There’s magic out there that we just don’t pay attention to.

Colin Farrell:  This is me on the environmental warpath, absolutely.  There’s no doubt that there’s a message that’s inherent in the script just by the representation of the beauty of nature and the minutia of nature and the simultaneous fragility and strength of nature.  So, that’s all inherent in the script.

So, to respond to the script, I think you’re responding to those ideals.  But, no, it’s just a case of meeting Chris and his team and really seeing the visuals and just loving the story and loving the world.

And as Chris said, if anyone can come out of this with a moment’s more pause for thought than they would have had before it or if kids want to go out and pick up a rock and see what lies underneath it and put the iPad down for five minutes, happy days, you know?

Colin Farrell as Ronin

Q: When you’re creating the characters and you have the actors in there, how does that work as far as they don’t look like them, but you can tell that their facial expressions, there are things that you can say, oh, that looks like them!

Chris Wedge:  The animated characters are collaborations.  They come from a lot of different places.  So, we write them, and we design them, and we have animators.  But, we get voices from human beings that can create a performance for us.

Every time we record, there’s a little camera watching these guys, watching their faces as reference for our animators.  But, often, the animators don’t ever look at it because so much of the performance comes through in what they hear.

So, this part is just what you hear, really.  But, it inspires a lot of what you see.  I mean, we didn’t make these guys jump onto anything and ride it around or do anything crazy.

Colin Farrell:  I just rolled around in the forest before I went into work just to get in the mood.

Chris Wedge:  It’s weird.  His fingers were always dirty when he came in. But, you get all of it from performance.

Q: My blog is called Latina on a Mission, and a lot of my readers are single moms.  So, MK and General Ronin both felt a loss.  So, if you were to channel your character, what kind of advice would you give kids who have loss, whether it’s that their parents separated or something else?

So, I’m wondering, what advice would you give to kids?  What did you get from that character, both of you?

Colin Farrell:  I’m a single father, and both my kids have mothers who are single mothers, single parents, and as wee as it sounds, how a parent treats their child I think is less of a reflection on their child than it is on the parent.

And I think if that can imparted, if somebody treats their child with kindness and with grace and with love, well then, maybe the parents wants to say because they’re proud of their child and they love their child, it’s to do with my child.  I think it’s more to do with a parent in the same way that if a parent abuses their child, treats them with harshness or cruelty, it’s nothing to do with the child.  It’s to do with the parent.

And loss can represent a sense of abandonment, of course, a sense of being unwanted.  Even if that loss is as the result of a passing of a life, as the result of death even, it’s the way human beings are and as sensitive as we are, but certainly, if it’s a father who’s not turning up.

So, I think, love is the most important thing.  And then, if there’s a feeling as an absence of love, as much as it can be explained to the child that that is through no fault of their own, I think that’s a really important thing.

Amanda Seyfried:  Well said.

Chris Wedge:  I have to say, I’ve been worried about that because I thought about it. I mean, obviously, when you’re writing something, you’re trying to create motivations for characters and situations that they have to work through and relationships that can build and be emotionally satisfying.

But, I’ve been watching those scenes in front of audiences and going, hmm, really, hmm, do we really have to wallow in this thing, does she really have to have lost her mom to make this story work.

Amanda Seyfried:  It’s big.  Yes, it’s the worst thing that can happen, I think. But, it just shows that there’s a future.  I mean, I couldn’t imagine a future without my mother, but there is one if that happened.  And, nobody wants to think about that, but life does go on.  Does it?

Chris Wedge:  The point’s about connections in the movie.  And both Ronin and Nod feel as though they’re isolated at the beginning of the movie, and Nod with Ronin realizes that he’s a father surrogate, and MK realizes she never lost her father, she just thought she had.  It was her attitude more than his that had created the visions.

Amanda Seyfried as MK

Q: What was your favorite movie when you were a kid?

Colin Farrell:  Star Wars for me.  I had all the figures and collected all the figures and loved those films, yes, very much so.

Amanda Seyfried: Sonic the Hedgehog. And I was Sonic, so I got to fight evil myself, which is exciting.

Q: I have a question for Collin.  I’m a mom of two boys, so I’m assuming, when you’re out and off on set for a couple of months maybe at a time, do you bring your kids with you?

Colin Farrell:  They visit me, yes, every time I go to work. It’s much harder to leave home than ever.  I mean, to be honest, I love what I do, and I consider myself very lucky to be able to do what I do and make a living doing it.  But, I would love to do one film every year maybe and be at home.

Over the last few years, I’ve had periods where I’ve been off for six months and then periods where I’m off for four weeks between jobs.  It gets harder but the lads visit.

And they seem, as much as I can detect, really well adjusted to how everything is.  And they have two mothers that really adore them, and they have a dad that adores both of them.

And so, a mortal fear of mine is the idea that they will ever feel unwanted or something because of the amount I’m away.  Look, my dad was around every day when I was growing up, and I didn’t feel wanted by that man, and he was there every day.

When I’m not working, if I’m home for six weeks, they’re sick of looking at me.  I’m there all day.  Do you know what I mean?  I don’t have a nine to five.  So, I have these really intense periods of being home.

Q: (Directed to Colin) Have your children seen the movie yet?

Colin Farrell:  No, neither of them have, no.

Blogger:  Are you going to let them see a movie?

Colin Farrell:  I can’t get my hands on that pirate copy I’ve been trying to find.

Amanda Seyfried:  You could just videotape it when you go to the theater.

Colin Farrell:  That would be genius.

Amanda Seyfried:  I’m sure they have some kind of screening. Do they go to movies?

Colin Farrell:  Yes, what have we seen recently?  Sitting down for an hour and a half, James kind of gets bored.  But, Henry made it through Hotel Transylvania.

Q: How old is MK, the character?

Chris Wedge:  I wanted to make her a little older.  But, I wanted her to be right on the cusp.  I wanted her to be 17, 18, just old enough to be on her own, just old enough to be about done with high school, just old enough to do it on her own if she had to.

Amanda Seyfried:  To make her own decisions.

Chris Wedge:  Yes, but she goes in this thing with a purpose.

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Q: Amanda, MK seemed like a really strong character.  So, I’m wondering, how did you feel about that?

Amanda Seyfried:  I’m attracted to those kinds of gals.  Yes, I like to find characters that I can relate to in some way.

When I’m looking for a challenge, a character that I can’t relate to at all is always great.  But, this girl is somebody I can relate to because she’s very headstrong and honest and wants to know what it is she’s about.  And, I’m struggling with that every day.

And that’s real for anybody that age… But, also, she’s really, really brave, and I’m not.  I aspire to be that way.  So, I like playing characters that would react to things in a completely different way.

Colin Farrell:  You may be more brave, I don’t know, than you give yourself credit for.

Amanda Seyfried:  Maybe, yes.  But, if I were shrunken into some other kind of world or even transported–like say I woke up and I was in the middle of the Congo, I would be so paralyzed with fear.

Colin Farrell:  You may shock yourself, you really may.

Amanda Seyfried:  Yes.

Colin Farrell:  I’d say I’m the same.  I’d would say, is this a Michael Crichton book, The Jungle?  You may surprise yourself.  I don’t know.  Human beings are strange creatures.

Amanda Seyfried:  That’s true, actually.

Colin Farrell:  And they’re capable of massive amounts of resilience.

Q: How did you get the images to look like that?  I haven’t seen 3D like that. You could tell from the very first scene it was going to be something different. 

Chris Wedge:  Well, thank you.

Blogger:  The color was so saturated and it was just so beautiful.  Is there something different that you did?

Chris Wedge:  Well, a difference is in the technology that we use.  We’ve been working on this stuff for 25 years, and so there are physicists at Blue Sky that work on the physics of light.

And a lot of it, I have to say, it comes from the art direction.  The idea for this movie, I wanted to make a very romantic fantasy film.  And so, I went back to the illustrations and paintings of NC Wyeth was the main one.  He painted one single beautiful image for Treasure Island or Robin Hood or Sea Hawk, and that incredibly nuanced textured artwork is what I wanted it to look like a storybook.

Epic Interview - Waltz, Seyfried and Farrell

I’m sure that we could have asked more questions but they were very busy and had more interviews to do throughout the day. I even rode in the elevator with Amanda when she headed back to her hotel room.

I hope this interview gives you are little more insight into the movie, Epic, which opens in theaters on Friday, May 24, 2013.

For more information about the film, it’s cast and charters plus photos and activities, visit the official website www.EpictheMovie.com. You can also check it out on all it’s social media sites.

Like Epic on Facebook

Follow @EpicTheMovie on Twitter #EpicTheMovie

Watch Epic videos on YouTube

Follow Epic on Instagram

To find other Epic related posts please use the search box located on the top right side. Simply enter in the word Epic.

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Kimberly

*I was not compensated for this post. I am posting this for the enjoyment of my site readers. The opinions expressed are my own and not influenced in any way.

 

 

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LINCOLN / Oprah Winfrey Interviews Steve Spielberg, Daniel-Day Lewis and Sally Field

November 30, 2012 By

Photo credit: (c) Harpo Studios, Inc – Photographer: George Burns

I thought some of my readers might be interested in an interview Oprah will be doing Sunday with Academy Award winners Steve Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lews and Sally Field. They are all part of the epic film Lincoln which is in theaters.

The episode will air on Oprah’s OWN network on Sunday, December 2, 2012 from 9:00 – 10:30 PM (EST). It’s part of her “Oprah’s Next Chapter” series. Check your local TV Guide for the channel.

Check out this brief video about the upcoming interviews, including Oprah’s thoughts about this incredible film. If you are reading this via e-mail you can see the video here, http://youtu.be/buYAeEbAVNI.

 

Here is some more information about the episode taken from a press release. Normally I write things in my own words but in this case I didn’t want to forget to include any important information.

Oprah Winfrey talks with Academy Award winners Steven Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field about their collaboration on the feature film Lincoln in a special 90-minute episode of “Oprah’s Next Chapter” airing this Sunday, December 2 (9-10:30 p.m. ET/PT) on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.

In a full circle moment, Winfrey meets Spielberg at DreamWorks Studios in Los Angeles in the same studio building where she first auditioned for him for her role in The Color Purple. In an intimate sit-down interview, Spielberg shares with Winfrey the process of creating Lincoln and how he was moved to tears during filming. They are then joined for a rare interview with Day-Lewis for a fascinating conversation about his first-time collaboration with Spielberg, his yearlong immersion into the life of Lincoln and how together, with the rest of the esteemed cast, they created a “sacred space” on the set. Later, Winfrey shares in a heartfelt conversation with Sally Field from her new home in California. Field talks about the emotional depths she tapped into for her role as Mary Todd Lincoln, how she fought for the part and her immediate connection with Day-Lewis. She also opens up about being plagued by self-doubt, her pride in parenting a son who is gay and the joy she welcomes as she enters the next chapter of her life.

If you haven’t seen the movie yet I would strongly recommend it. I honestly thought I wouldn’t like the film at all because I have never been really interested in history. I was seriously WRONG. I LOVED this film!

You can read my review here, http://bit.ly/Qce6N7 (I shortened the link).

Here is some more information about the film.

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG-13

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Hal Holbrook and Tommy Lee Jones

Director: Steven Spielberg

Producers: Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy

Based in part on the book: “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Steven Spielberg directs two-time Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln, a revealing drama that focuses on the 16th President’s tumultuous final months in office. In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of generations to come.

If you are interested in learning more about the film you can visit the official website, www.TheLincolnMovie.com. You can also “like” Lincoln on Facebook and follow on Twitter.

If you read my blog regularly or follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook you know I love the AMC series The Walking Dead. The season finale airs the same time as this special. I am actually going to watch The Walking Dead when it re-airs later on Sunday night just to watch the interviews with Oprah. That should tell you something. I truly do love this film and I hope that Daniel Day-Lewis wins and Oscar for his incredible performance.

Kimberly

*I was not compensated for this post. I posted this for the benefit and enjoyment of my site readers. Any opinions expressed are my own and are not influenced in any way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Paperman Review & Interview with Producer Kristina Reed

October 29, 2012 By

On Friday, November 2, 2012, Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph will be in theaters across the country. Prior to the start of the film movie goers will have the opportunity to view a short animated film called Paperman.

Here is a brief synopsis of the film;

Introducing a groundbreaking hybrid approach that seamlessly merges computer-generated and hand-drawn animation techniques, first-time director John Kahrs takes the art of animation in a bold new direction with Paperman, a new short from Walt Disney Animation Studios that debuts this November with the Disney feature Wreck-It Ralph. Using a minimalist black-and-white style, the short follows the story of a lonely young man (George) in mid-century New York City, whose destiny takes an unexpected turn after a chance meeting with a beautiful woman (Meg) on his morning commute. Convinced that the girl of his dreams is gone forever, he gets a second chance when he spots her in a skyscraper window across the avenue from his office. With only his heart, imagination and a stack of papers to get her attention, his efforts are no match for what the fates have in store for him.

It all began with a morning commute… 

Director John Kahrs began thinking about the basic premise for Paperman back in the early 1990s when he lived in New York City and commuted 38 miles each way to his job as an animator at Blue Sky Studios in Westchester County. “New York can be an intimidating place,” says Kahrs. “People tend to have their guard up when they’re going about their daily routine. I can remember being on the train wishing I could make a connection with someone and have more of a social life. I would come back through Grand Central Station and go straight home. I kept thinking, ‘Here I am in the most amazing city in the world and I’m just holed up in my apartment.’ Sometimes on my commute, I would see somebody and make eye contact and then that person would be gone forever. I started wondering what if that person was the one for me.

“I also began thinking about the notion of how a couple with a romantic connection would communicate across the big city,” continues Kahrs. “And this idea of throwing a paper airplane from one skyscraper to another was the visual hook that really got my gears turning. I started focusing on how this guy could reconnect with a girl he had made a connection with.”

I think we can all relate to this scenario. Even if it wasn’t from a romantic standpoint. I’m sure most people can relate to making a connection with someone, a total stranger, only to never see that person ever again. I think that is why Paperman felt very realistic – because it’s something that could easily happen in real life.

The film is only a few minutes long, yet in that brief amount of time it tells a complete story about how two people met, then met again through something as simple and innocent as a paper airplane.

It’s hard to describe the look of the film. It’s a combination of hand drawn animation and CGI (computer generated) animation. It has the look and feel of a classic 2-D (hand drawn) animation, but there are elements in it that provide the viewer with greater depth and details that hand drawn animations can’t convey (compliments of the CGI aspects).

The film is done entirely in black and white. I personally feel that it really adds to the film. I think it’s better in black and white then it would be in color. It’s a sweet, simple film. It doesn’t need any “bells and whistles” to get it’s story across.

When you go to see Wreck-It Ralph before to get there a bit early so you can catch the short film Paperman. It’s something you don’t want to miss.

When I was out in Los Angeles myself and the other wonderful bloggers I was with had the opportunity to learn more about the film from it’s Producer, Kristina Reed. Here are some highlights of the interview.

Q: How long did it take? (referring to making the film)

KR: It was about 14 months in all. And there was stretches of time where it was just like him (Director John Kahrs) and me. One of the things about making a short at Disney Animation is it has to fit in the cracks between our big features. So for most of the project, there were never more than 10 people on it. And then every once in a while, we’d get a phone call and it was like, okay, there’s ten animators available for six weeks. What can you do with them? And so we’d scramble around and figure it out and bring them all onto the show and have them work. And then they would go away again. In all there was quite a few people that touched it. But there was really a small crew of us that are the core of the project.

Q: What was the rationale behind the time period?

KR: He (Director John Kahrs)  knew from the very beginning that he wanted it to be in black and white. And he was very entranced by the black and white photography of New York. And then idea of these sky scrapers as sort of canyons and valleys and that you’re a human being are just sort of working your way across this sort of inhospitable landscape, surrounded by lots of people but very much alone. Unless you find someone in the world that you can connect with. So we sort of talk about it as (the) late 40’s, early 50’s New York.

Q: Will Disney do more of this technique?

KR: We want to play with it some more. We feel honestly like it’s somewhat our responsibility as one of the premiere in animation houses and certainly the house that invented this art. To put new visual looks out into the world for other artists to respond to. And so we’re hoping that this sort of inspires other folks to come in and and play with looks. I mean we feel there’s a vast frontier out there that is not just sort of hyper real CG, which is sort of where a lot of animation’s going right now. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s many stories that that form can tell very effectively. But it’s also partially responsibility to our roots. We feel like we want to make sure that we’ve explored every avenue of artistry that we can with the talent that we have. John is moving on to test this technique in color ’cause it’s very easy to say, whoa, that’s a cool technique. But it really lends itself to the story and only stories in the 40’s and only stories in cityscapes.

Q: Does this process take longer?

KR: It takes twice as long in animation ’cause you’re animating it twice. You’re running it through CG animators and hand drawn animators. And that’s the story because the world has been really captivated by the hybrid nature of that. That’s the story that sort of leads the pack. But the other technological innovation that happened on this project was the notion of simplified CGI. And we actually had a couple of guys on the show who had pioneered something internally. And we brought them on as well to help us. And what they saved in simplifying the CG helped us cover the cost of double animation.

Q: What does the CG contribute to what we’re seeing?

KR: Well, what CG has that hand drawn struggles with is a feeling of depth. Like you feel like you can step into the world. You feel like they’re running on real sidewalks and down real streets. And, you know, the way the light hits them. And you feel like there’s actually volume to those characters. They don’t just feel like two-dimensional paper. So, I feel like we’re very much sort of pulling the best out of both art forms. I feel like you could step into that world. I feel like I could stand next to George and stand next to Meg (referring to the characters in the film). When you go back and look at some of the early 2-D films, you don’t feel as much.

Q: Were both animation teams working at the same time?

KR: Unfortunately not just by availability. So things had to sort of get parked and then wait for someone to be available and then move forward. And that’s just the nature of producing something small when you’re in between other projects. But, yeah, if I were to do it again, I would love to have them work a little more closely. The crews ended up mingling more than they had on any other project. And both sides of the house claimed, wow, this was really a fun, fun project for that reason.

I’ll give you one example. Usually CG lighters are trying to add more volume and more space into a shot. On this project they were asked to flatten everything. Because if things weren’t flat, the line would look really out of place. You can’t go back to a scene from Tangled and add lines to her. It won’t live in the same frame. And so a lot of lighters were saying, wow, this was interesting having to think differently and pursue something different on this project.

Q: What are you doing next?

KR: I am actually moving onto a feature that hasn’t been announced yet. (It’s) coming soon. If you snoop around online, I’m sure you’ll find it.

Q: Live action or animated?

KR: Animated.

Look for Paperman, shown prior the the film Wreck-It Ralph, in theaters starting November 2, 2012.

Kimberly

*I was not compensated for this post. I posted this for the enjoyment of my site readers. Any opinions expressed are that of my own unless otherwise noted.

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Interview with Rich Moore & Clark Spencer – the Director & Producer of Wreck-It Ralph

October 28, 2012 By

I am super excited that Wreck-It Ralph will be in theaters on November 2, 2012. I have already seen the film but I cannot wait to take my family to see it. I know they are going to love it.

A few weeks ago when I was out in Los Angeles I had the opportunity to sit down with the Director of Wreck-It Ralph, Rich Moore, and the movie’s Producer, Clark Spencer, to ask them a few questions about the movie, along with the other bloggers in my group.

Question:  Where did the idea for the movie come from?

RM: I started here, working at Disney, four years ago. (I was) invited John Lassiter, who’s a dear old friend, to develop some ideas for movies, one of which I would direct. There had been a notion of a video game based movie here for several years that had not been cracked. It had been kind of put back on the shelf (for) a year before I started here in 2008. When someone brought that up that there used to be this idea for (a) movie about video game characters. I thought that’s pretty interesting. I like video games. I like that type of world. It could be very kind of rich and fun and something that people would enjoy.

And so without going to kind of the versions that had been done before, I just started with that notion. After about two days, I thought this is a really, really bad idea because the characters have no life. You know, they just kind of have one thing that they do. They have no free will. They do their same job over and over again every day. Who’s gonna want to watch that? That’s boring. And then I took a moment and I thought, well, what if the main character didn’t like his job? What if everyone else loved their jobs? And the main character didn’t like his job. That would be a fantastic kind of internal conflict for a protagonist to have. (It’s a) very simple internal conflict of a character could have. And from there I pitched a few ideas to John. And we both agreed, this is the one.

Question: So this has been four years in the making? 

RM: About four. I would say maybe just over three and a half years.

Comment: The media is eating its tail talking about video games.

RM: I think when like things like the wizard and even like Tron when it first came out, I was a teenager. And I really wanted to kind of just  disappear into it. And it just felt like it was a movie about something… there wasn’t history behind video games at that point. It was just beginning to take off… computer people really got it. And young people kind of got it. But I think it’s hard for people having not been exposed to computer culture and video game culture at that time to really grasp it and understand what that would be like to make it have a life of its own.

Question: How many references are in the film?

RM: There are a lot as you saw. Hundreds I would say. I don’t know. I mean it’s just layer upon layer. We start with characters from other games and references to other games. And then just seeing the other games, seeing the other characters. We have like graffiti referencing certain things from other games. And there’s jokes about other characters and games… I wish I could give you a number. I’m sorry.

CS: But I think one of the things we tried to do is make sure that we did it on multiple levels. So there’s graffiti in there. And if you want to look at the graffiti and if it means something to you you’ll enjoy that aspect of it. Otherwise, if you don’t play games, it’s just graffiti in a train station, which you would expect in a train station.

RM: Right. That just kind of adds to the believability of the world.

Question: Anybody turn you down?

CS: You know what’s interesting? No one turned us down. What was interesting, in the very beginning when we talked about this idea there was sort of that moment where we realized we’re actually gonna have to go forth and ask companies to license the characters. And there was always that questions of will we be able to do it? And if so, how many characters would be available to come into the film? And we had this moment where we went to E3, I guess, two years ago, here in L.A. And we met with a lot of the gaming companies, Namco specifically. And we pitched the film. And you could see the people got excited about the idea of the movie. And their biggest question was to make sure that their character was put into the film in an organic way that felt like it was their character. So in cases where we said, hey, we’d like this character and we’re thinking they may sit in this area. They might say, well, that doesn’t seem like it’s the best fit. So, Nintendo for example, they were like Bowser and Badmouth makes complete sense.

RM:  Where it seemed like it worked.

CS: It totally worked. But we couldn’t find the perfect way to put Mario into the film in a way that felt totally organic.

So that was really more the conversation and to all the gaming companies’ credit. And I think, we’re– we’re the Walt Disney Company. We have lots of characters that we would be as protective of. That’s where their protection was. It was more about if it feels like it’s organic and it makes sense for our character, we’re excited to be apart of it. If it feels like it’s just a cameo for no purpose sake then we’re not as interested.

RM: Right, and they were a real pleasure to work with. It began with kind of sitting down and explaining the movie to them and talking about the characters. We all just kind of agreed that this is a great way to showcase their characters.

CS: And one of the amazing things we did was we actually shared all the assets back and forth. So as we built the model, we would send it to them and have them comment on whether they felt like we had captured their character correctly. As we did our animation test, they would look at the animation test and give us feedback as to how the character moved. And was it true to the way they saw their character all the way to the point of final lighting. And I think it was great because it’s the same thing for us. We see things the way we feel our characters should move and act. And there were notes they gave us back that are completely great notes.

Question: What was the hardest part of making the movie?

RM: I never consider it hard because it’s a joy to work with everyone here. I would say the most challenging was was the very different styles of look, of animation, of camera, (that) work in those different worlds.

Question: How much input will you get with the Xbox game?

RM: Well, you know, from your lips to God’s ears. We are pretty heavily involved in all the different things. As you know it’s a big company here.  Before we starting making the movie we are also in the business of selling the movie to people within our own company. You need to  introduce it to all the different arms of the company.

We were involved quite a bit I think with all the ancillary things, with the marketing of it. We see lots of stuff on the toys and the games because we want it to be consistent.

CS: Develop the film and they build stuff off of it. They don’t come and look at the movie and say, well, you know what would be really great is if you added this. Right now the hottest toy is whatever. If you added this into your film somewhere, then it would help sell product, which is the nice thing is they leave us alone in that aspect of it. They definitely come in with a point of view, don’t get me wrong. They’re looking at the movie. They’re saying does this movie feel like it’s gonna work for boys or for girls or for older kids or younger kids. They’re looking at it from their lens. We’re looking at it from a storytelling standpoint and trying to create something that has hopefully longevity to it. But it is nice that for the most part it is more than consulting to understand what is the movie and what kind of product are they gonna create off of it. Make sure that we feel like that seems true to the characters and to the look of the characters more than it is could you please add this it would make our lives easier. And interestingly in this film and it’s something that you learn all the time as we go through this stuff, um, there’s a boy aisle. And there’s a girl aisle. Right?

RM: Yeah, for boys and girls.

Question: Was it a conscious choice to make the female character not princess-y?

RM: I don’t think that it was something from day one that was like we want to do this. It was just these things develop over time. It kind of work with the character. We got to know her, it’s just one of those things where we think that’s not who she is. We love her as her. It  becomes a point where it’s a conscious decision. But it was not something that began on at day one. Oh, she’s gonna be like this. And she won’t become a princess.

CS: Story develop, it got to the place where we said we really want to embrace the idea of these two characters are not gonna try and mold themselves into something they’re not. They’re just gonna accept who they are and that that would be the message in the film is, you know, it’s okay to be who you are. Don’t try and be something you’re not. Uh, just because something else out there might make you feel that’s what you’re supposed to do. and that was definitely over the course of time the story developed, you start to see that. Oh, that’s where this film was ultimately heading. It always feels like there’s a story that’s waiting to be told.

And you started on this journey. And eventually as the thing starts to come together you realize, okay, that’s where our end destination’s gonna be in terms.

RM: Yeah, it is a lot like sculpting something out of a block of stone where you know that it’s in there. You know the thing is in there. And you’re chipping away to get to it. You know, you have kind of a plan of what it’s going to look like. But you don’t know exactly like what the end result is going to be. Or that’s how I feel with it that you’re going to discover things along the way.

Question: To what degree did the actors affect the characters?

RM: I’m really fortunate to have worked with some fantastic actors on this movie. I’m a huge fan of John’s (referring to John C. Reilly, the voice of Wreck-It Ralph). What I love about him is how organic he is in finding his character and- his performances and how he shapes them.

I set up a time where the animators and John could get together and talk about the character. We did a lot of video reference of John acting out scenes as Ralph for the animators to study. I think its so unique about animation. What I love it about it is that it’s a split performance. You have this vocal track. And, you know, one person is doing it. Then you have a group of animators who’s giving physical performance of what you see. And as a director it was great to kind of bring the vocal talent and the visual talent together and have them kind of communicate to one another. It was like watching two halves of a brain kind of come together and talk about their process and how it works.

I think in those kind of unions you start to get something that transcends just like Dorie, for example, in Finding Nemo. I love that character because it’s part Ellen Degeneres but it’s part this fish design. And something about the fusion of the two becomes its own thing. It becomes like this third party that’s unique unto itself.

CS:  And I think because the animators look at that reference it does start to definitely influence the mouth shapes, the eye shapes, the brow shapes, how the hair may move. All of those things become a component of it.

Question: How many pictures and how long does it take to put everything together?

RM:  Film goes through a projector at 24 frames a second. There aren’t drawings in the animation process now in CG. Traditionally in animation it would’ve taken 24 drawings for every second that you watch or 12 drawings exposed on two frames each for every second. That’s a lot of drawings, so there are a lot of frames of digital information to create one of these. But we do begin with paper and pencil,  sketching these things and coming up with the ideas for designs. I would say thousands of drawings are produced in that.

CS: Like, hundreds of thousands.

RM: Hundreds of thousands of drawings are produced in that early development phase.

CS: You render overnight so a shot can take 12, 14, sometimes 24 hours just to render the short because all the information. But in terms of the storyboarding processes, Rich said, we still do that, you know, in a traditional way. We might have 30 some sequences in a screening let’s say. And each of those sequences probably has close to 700 or 800 drawings per sequence. So you’re at 25 to 30,000 drawings for one screen.

—–

Wreck-It Ralph comes to theaters on November 2, 2012.

For more information about Wreck-It Ralph visit the official website, Disney.com/Wreck-It-Ralph. You can also find the movie on Facebook (Facebook.com/WreckItRalph) and on Twitter (@WreckItRalph). You can also check out Disney Animation on Twitter too (Twitter.com/DisneyAnimation).

Kimberly

*I was not compensated for this post. I posted this for the enjoyment of my site readers. Any opinions expressed are my own and are not influenced in any way.

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Actress Cheryl Hines Chats about Halloween #Suburgatory Episode, The Witches of East Chatwin

October 24, 2012 By

Last year I was asked to do a review for a pilot episode of a new series called Suburgatory. I had seen the commercials for the show but I wasn’t sure what it was really about.

I was sent the pilot episode to review. From the moment the episode was over I knew that ABC had a hit on their hands. If you would like to read my review you can find it here.

If you are unfamiliar with the show here is a brief synopsis;

Single father George Altman is doing his best to raise his sixteen-year-old daughter Tessa in New York City. When he discovers a box of condoms in her bedroom he decides the time has come to move her to a more wholesome and nurturing environment: the suburbs. But behind the beautiful homes and perfect lawns lurk the Franken-moms, spray tans, nose jobs, and Red Bull-guzzling teens who have nothing in common with Tessa. It’s a whole new world, one that makes George wonder if they haven’t jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. With the help of suburbanites like old college friend Noah, flirty Alpha mom Dallas and awkward classmate Lisa, George and Tessa slowly learn to navigate the pitfalls of suburban life. With time, they might even find that it isn’t so bad.

They show is really funny. The characters seem a bit over exaggerated, but there really are people in this world a lot like them (although maybe not as over the top). I live in the suburbs of New York City. Some of my neighbors act like they were plucked right out of the series and planted next door to me. I have some really ”odd” neighbors. :-)

Tonight there is a special Halloween episode of Suburgatory called The Witches of East Chatwin.

When Tessa convinces Dalia and the KKK (Kimantha, Kaitlyn and Kenzie) to come up with feminist inspired Halloween costumes, she finds herself the interest of the infamous East Chatswin witch (aka Paula), played by guest star Rachel Dratch. As it turns out Paula isn’t exactly what she seems. Meanwhile George and Noah dress up as each other, and Dallas invites George to be “Ken” to her “Barbie”—but he declines, not realizing that she is asking him out.

I had the opportunity to see the episode before it airs tonight. I don’t want to spoil it for you, let’s just say that I loved Rachel Dratch as Paula. I think she needs to say on as a regular character. She really knows how to drive the people of East Chatwin crazy. :-)

I LOVE their Halloween costumes. You won’t believe what lengths George goes to for his costume.

The people have made Paul an “urban legend” in East Chatwin. The grown ups have passed on tales about Paula to their own children. Just like any urban legend, no one really knows if it’s true or not.

There is an urban legend in the county where I live. There is a road called Spook Rock Road. One end of the road, where the stop sign is, is a decline, meaning your car is facing downward. If you put your car in neutral you’ll find that is starts to roll backwards up the hill. I know it sounds crazy but it’s true! My husband and I have tried it a few times and each time it’s worked. We’re not sure if it’s an optical illusion (maybe you are really facing up a hill and not down a hill), or some other kind of “mind game”.

The legend I heard is that Indian lovers were separated and the female was killed (unbeknown to the male). Supposedly he pulls cars back to look inside of them to see if his lost love is inside. True or not I know it freaks my kids out.

Myself and some other bloggers had the opportunity to chat with actress Cheryl Hines who plays the role of Dallas on Suburgatory. I’ll post the entire interview in another post, but for now here are some highlights from the interview.

Question: I know a lot of actors sometimes base characters that they play off someone they know or someone in their life… when you think of Dallas do you think of someone you know? (Kimberly Ortiz, Pretty Pink Mama).

Cheryl: Well my mom grew up in Jacksonville, Florida and she’s very southern. And she pretty much talks like Dallas. So she definitely inspires me. And my mom also likes to have fun and she likes to wear things that are sparkly and glittery and animal print. And my mom cannot imagine why anybody would wear a black dress for any reason. So you know, I have been around that all my life and my mom saying things like “if you got it flaunt it“. And so she’s just always had this attitude of, you know, “shake what your mama gave you“.It’s like  I’m going on a date and I don’t want to shake it. But that’s, you know, my mom. And she’s entertaining. And she’s fun to be around so I do I like to think of her when I’m playing Dallas.

Question: (Is) there any chance that you’ll be showing off your singing skills on Suburgatory? - (Referring to Sudsy Bubbles Seed on Jack’s Big Music Show - Rosa Codero, Accidental Sexiness)

Cheryl: Oh my gosh. I really hope not. Just to call them singing skills as really a stretch. I honestly don’t know how they got me to sing on that show now that I think about it. No,. but I will be doing some dancing. There’s an episode when George and well Tessa and Dalia have a hip-hop dance off and then George – which leads to a Dallas and George dance off. So I’ll be doing enough ridiculous things that hopefully I won’t never have to sing on the show.

Question: What was your favorite Halloween costume that you’ve ever worn? (Kimberly Vetrano, She Scribes).

Cheryl: Favorite Halloween costume? Well one year I went with – he’s my ex-husband now but at the time he was my husband and my best friend - we went as a mariachi band. And it was really funny because when we would get separated from each other it was just a weird costume with a drawn on pencil mustache.

And at the time I was working for HBO and went to this party and most people were not dressed up. And at one point in the party I found myself talking to the President of HBO, you know, with a big hat tassels on it and a black tiny mustache and just trying to have a normal conversation. But anyway it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.

And then one year I dressed up with my brothers and my sister and some friends as Gilligan’s Island. So that was a lot of fun too.

Question: I’m wondering will we see any kind of friction with like Tessa and Dallas because she has kind of taken on more of that mother role for Tessa? (Kimberly Ortiz, Pretty Pink Mama).

Cheryl: Well it’s interesting, it’s surprising. The conflict that it causes it’s not what you think would probably happen. You know, you might think Dallas would be jealous of Tessa’s mom. But what happens is Tessa’s mom when we meet her we find out that she is a very flawed person. Of course she would have to be anyone that deserts their child, I mean they must have things going on that are major, you know, that people usually don’t do that. But it does happen.

George has been around her and he knows her and takes and he knows what she does and he doesn’t fall for her drama. And everyone else in Chatswin feels sorry for her because she seems nice and she seems, you know, like she’s having a tough day so Dallas is – gets a little bit mad at George for not for him not being nicer to Tessa’s mom. And George says this is what she does. This is what she does every day. It’s not just today. This is, you know, so it’s interesting. And I think it’s, you know, it’s interesting to watch because usually that’s such a, you know, those are heavy moments in real life when people are doing that.

On Suburgatory we have a chance to laugh at it which is unusual and great because so there’s that. And then even with Dallas and Tessa really there is more conflict starts happening between Tessa and George because the four of us are spending so  much time together, Dalia and Dallas and Tessa and George. I mean you start to see the complete opposite parenting moments where they - the girls come out of the SATs and Tessa gets an ice cream cone and Dalia gets a new car. So it really sort of – it creates problems between Tessa and George where Tessa says and that’s not fair.

And, you know, George is like it’s you’ve always had ice cream. Yes but look what she gets? So there’s more conflict I think between Tessa and George really than anybody else at this point.

Question: (Cheryl has lived in both Florida and in California) Which coast you think has people more similar to the folks from Chatswin? (Mitch Ketton, Gay NYC Dad).

Cheryl: Living here in LA and being a mom I definitely see these people. I say and I’m sure it’s true in any suburban neighborhood and that’s why this show is funny and why people laugh at it. But, you know, I see the women that get their hair blown out before a PTA meeting and put on their best Versace dress to go to a school function. Oh I see it.

Question: How do you keep from laughing all day with this amazing cast and this group of hysterical people (including) my neighbor Rachel Dratch, who lives down the block? (Mitch Ketton, Gay NYC Dad).

Cheryl: It’s a problem. Rachel Dratch, oh my gosh. Yes I just love her. And I like that she’s an outcast because she hasn’t had anything done, oh my gosh. No I laugh all the time. And sometimes, you know, the poor crew. After, you know, five takes and you still can’t get it because you’re laughing at some ridiculous word it’s not funny but you still can’t – we still can’t get it together because we’re, you know, were dressed in ridiculous outfits and we’re saying crazy things.

Last season had a scene with Carly Chaikin who plays my daughter Dalia. And, you know, we had this scene, a very intimate scene and she’s upset. And I say “I may not be a hangover monkey… (because she wanted a monkey from the hangover movie) but I will always love you.”

And so I had to look in her eyes and say that and it just for whatever reason we could not get through it, we could not because it’s so ridiculous. And so sometimes you may catch us looking off into the distance.

There was a bit more to the interview, but for the sake of space I figured it was best to share the highlights.

I appreciate that Cheryl took the time out to chat with us. Thank you Cherly!

If you are the fan of the show, or interested in learning more about the series, I thought you might like to know about a special Twitter party. Tonight there is a Twitter Viewing Party for the Halloween episode of Suburgatory, The Witches of East Chatwin. You can RSVP to th party here, http://www.o2oblog.com/2012/10/the-middle-and-suburgatory-live-viewing-party. You’ll also have the opportunity to chat about the Halloween episode of The Middle (I ♥ that show!). They will be giving away PRIZES too!

Do YOU like Suburgatory? Do you have a favorite episode or character? I would love to hear from my readers. Please feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Kimberly

*I participated in this sponsored post campaign for One2One Network. All opinions stated are my own.

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