ith the release of the upcoming Shrek 2, Dreamworks Pictures accomplishes a remarkable feat in the world of computer-generated animation, not only technologically but by once again captivating audiences' imaginations with fanciful characters and a genuinely moving story. Almost all of the first film's principal cast returns for the sequel, including Mike Myers as the eponymous ogre, Cameron Diaz as Shrek's wife, Fiona, and Eddie Murphy as their dim-bulb companion Donkey, and adds the voice talents of Antonio Banderas, Julie Andrews, Rupert Everett and John Cleese to flesh out the second volume of this big-screen fairy tale.
Banderas, Everett and Andrews recently spoke to Science Fiction Weekly about their involvement in the project, and were joined by two of the film's three directors, Conrad Vernon and Kelly Asbury, to provide a bit of behind-the-scenes information about the making of Shrek 2.
Antonio Banderas, were you surprised to discover that your character, Puss in Boots, steals the whole movie?
Banderas: Really? Do you think so? When I saw the movie, the character that made me laugh the most was Donkey.
The movie makes a pretty clever play on your Zorro identity.
Banderas: It's interesting, because at the beginning, when I first got on this two years ago, they said to me the guy was thought to be French, kind of a D'Artagnan, from The Three Musketeers, but obviously once I jumped in there with my accent, he became Zorro.
Did they ever discuss giving Puss some of your mariachi moves?
Banderas: No, but sometimes they put cameras in the recording [studio] to copy the way you were performing the lines. I suppose that they went to some of my epic movies like Zorro, Desperado, The 13th Warrior, movies like that. Because sometimes I recognized some moves. I'd say, "Oh my God, that's mine," or a way of looking, things like that. This is the first time I did an animation movie. I didn't know that we were going to have so much input, that the movie is so related to the actors. I thought it was going to be more like "just repeat this line" until the line got totally perfect. They give you two sessions that worked very much in the way that I thought it was going to be, but two months after that, when they came back, they already did some animation with the material, and then they started proposing [different] ways to me, changing lines, sometimes improvising a little bit, or to recite a line in Spanish. It was more creative from the acting point of view than I thought it was going to be.
Do you do movies like this and the Spy Kids series for your kids?
Banderas: No. Actually, I have to say that I am a fanatic of Shrek. My daughter may have seen the movie two times; I saw it like six. I thought it was beautiful, but no, I wouldn't base my whole entire career on my daughter. It's a coincidence that I am in Spy Kids and now this movie; movies that are oriented in some ways for kids. Not so much actually with Shrek. I think Shrek makes an effect in older people. And there are many things in the movie that you saw that are not for kids. Kids would not understand certain things; they are not dangerous for them, because they're not going to understand that when they take the bag [of catnip that resembles marijuana] out of my boot, kids may be saying, "What's that?" But that's just for us.
When we spoke to Melanie Griffith, your wife, on Stuart Little 2, she said she had a tough time. Did she give you any tips?
Banderas: I remember her coming home saying, "It's very heavy. You have to repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat it again, and there is nothing creative about it." But for her it was a different experience, and I suppose that it has to do tremendously with the team that you are working with. Not only just the director of the movie, the team. I remember when I was taken to the studio for the first time, they had a room with still pictures or drawings of what the movie was going to be. Practically the whole entire movie was there, and in that room there were at least 10 people. Drawers, people who were going to be in different departments, and they all were explaining the movie to me. And there was a guy actually who did all the voices. They should have recorded that guy; it was unbelievable. He was doing the whole entire movie with a pointer like this. They wanted you to be integrated in the story as soon as possible, and to be part of it. And I think that's a procedure, it's a method. Some people may follow that and some people may not.
How surprised were you when you saw the final film?
Banderas: Quite. What surprised me the most is that we were working in solitude. We didn't have other actors working with us. Even when I sung "La Vida Loca," I sung my part totally independently of Eddie. So it was nice just to see it all together, not only the animation, which is I think fabulous, but the interaction among all the actors. Sometimes even stepping on the lines of each other is something that we didn't do when we were recording it. How they edited it was masterful.
Rupert Everett, what is it that attracts you to animated films?
Everett: They're kind of, for an actor, a good business to start with; it's a tiny piece of work to do and you're keeping your profile going. Another reason is that I love cartoons. I think in terms of cinema, when I die, the thing I will always remember is going to the theater when you're a little kid and those curtains that were always orange. They'd lift from underneath and the thing came out, the beginnings of those Disney films with the hand opening the book. I can still really access that feeling, being in that huge, open, dark space and seeing that book opening and hearing that melodious voice going [whispering] "Once upon a time ..." That was really it for me.
Had you seen Shrek prior to working on the sequel, and if so, what did you think of it?
Everett: I loved the first Shrek. I think in show business nowadays you can't observe quite often the most profound reflections of society, really; it's changed, the whole nature of the cinema has changed so much now. When you went as a kid, you saw people on the screen that you identified with. Now you see people on screen whose life you want to have, so it's a very different feeling when you go to see one now. It's made live-action into a kind of empty void, more or less. Then, suddenly, in cartoons, the characters have much more dimension, much more humanity, and they reflect many more of the dilemmas that we have going on in our lives at the moment, whereas the actual live-action movies are just selling us success. So the characters are all totally surreal in live-action, whereas these ones are much more realistic.
Why do you think you're often cast as the villain?
Everett: Oh, because I'm English. [Laughs.]
What did you think of how your character, Prince Charming, ended up looking?
Everett: I didn't think that he looked like me that much, he was nice. [Laughs.] [Someone] said he looked like me, but I didn't think he looked very much like me. They film you all the way through when you're doing the voices there, so I guess they do take something from you.
He's pretty egotistical.
Everett: I had to build up a lot of ego. [Laughs.] Yeah, he's got a twist. He reminds me, of, I don't know if [Americans] know of an actor called Terry Thomas, an old English character actor. He was kind of vocally my role model while I was doing it; you know, that guy who's very brash up until the moment that someone frightens him, and then he turns into a whiny, bratty, spoiled child. So Terry Thomas was my role model, although the character doesn't look like Terry Thomas at all.
Was it tough to work without any other actors in the recording studio?
Everett: It's very modern. It's totally virtual, like being a computer freak. It's like, "you're on your own." You just read your lines and that's it. And that's fine; it's nice, actually. There's no interaction coming into it, so I just figure while I'm doing it, this is modern, this is virtual. This is what the future is. You're doing everything on your own; someone reads the other lines to you, but it's not the real person.
Julie Andrews, you're no stranger to animated films, having done The Singing Princess over 50 years ago.
Andrews: Yes, you're right. That was when I was like 13, I think.
How different is the process now? Is it more difficult?
Andrews: That particular little movie was a Czechoslovakian movie that I re-dubbed in English, and they were very good, the Czechoslovakians, in terms of doing animated things, but it was just singing. In this case, it was a real character that I was creating. It's unlike anything that I've ever done before. It's very new for me, and I had a small role, but it's very stimulating to try and see if you can nail it when you don't know what it is that you're being asked to nail.
As a children's author and a performer who has worked with kids often, do you choose family-oriented projects as much for them as you do yourself?
Andrews: I think you obviously hope that what you bring to it is something that will please them. That is the biggest criteria: "Am I right for it? Can I give them what they think they're going to get from me?" So that's always the big question, what can I bring to the movie. In terms of animation it's very hard, because you don't have anything to cling onto. You literally are flying by the seat of your pants. You don't see [anything]. It's just vocal, and they ask you for endless changes on a single line. "Could you say it more friendly? Could you say it more lovingly? Could you say it worriedly now? Could you say it angrily?" and then they pick which take they need when they discover what it is they need.
Did they ever talk about referencing you or any of your movies directly? Your character, Queen Lillian, is more straightforward than most of the others in the film.
Andrews: The only thing they mostly talked about was how that I'm the peacemaker, the leveler. I think this queen knew that her husband was once a frog.
Has the process of voice recording changed since you first started singing in studios?
Andrews: My first recordings were when I was about 12 years old, and in those days you literally had to back off the microphone if you sang too high or too loud, and you had to learn not to come at them too hard. These days they're so much better able to deal with it.
Is your voice improving now?
Andrews: To my great sadness, it's not. But having said that, I've never been busier.
Is there any research and development going on that could help you?
Andrews: There is, but I imagine by the time it has gotten to the place where it requires FDA approval and it's been tested, I might even be too old or even not here, but I'm very glad that it's going on, because I am their spokesperson. It's all to do with micro-engineering of existing materials, but changing them so that they can help vocal cords. But to find something that moves with the same speed as your vocal cord, something that you can get into the vocal cord, it's huge and utterly amazing and very, very complicated. I'm not the best person to ask.
How similar was doing voice-over on Shrek 2 to the singing you've done in the past?
Andrews: Oh, voice-over is the most different thing. With acting, it's really acting to song and making those lyrics convey to your audience, but in an animated film you just place yourself in the directors' hands and hope that you've given them something they can use. Because it's just vocal, you say, "Have I gone over the top? Could I be more so? Should I be more animated and character-like or should I be more genuine?" I really didn't know any of it. It was like learning a whole new craft.
Kelly Asbury (left) and Conrad Vernon (right), as directors inheriting a franchise, how tough was it to take the storyline of the first film and improve it?
Asbury: I'm not quite sure we were necessarily looking to better it, but to logically take it to the next place emotionally and character-wise. We weren't looking to repeat what we had done on the first one.
Every filmmaker inheriting a sequel says that. What was genuinely hard about doing this sequel in particular?
Asbury: Well, in the first film, our villain was eaten by a dragon. Our hero and our heroine rode off into the sunset to live their happily ever after. The story ended, and the only jump-off point that felt logical was one thing we didn't see in the first film. How would Fiona's parents react to her decision to marry this ogre and that her curse is not reversed? Now she's an ogress all of the time. What would they feel about that? That presented a whole new story to go on, and a whole new place to go. The first film is a quest; we go A to B, and you kind of get to know the characters, who they are, what their fears are, et cetera. With the second film, we kind of wanted to mix up the story a little bit, make it a little bit more twisty and turny, give you a few surprises and see how these characters that we know react to these new situations.
2-D animators have told us that horses are the toughest animal to render. How are they in a CGI universe?
Asbury: Having directed Spirit, and having James Baxter, who was the supervising animator on Spirit and several of the animators working on the donkey-slash-stallion character, that was a great thing to have, because of what they learned. 2-D animators learn about anatomy and kinesiology from the inside out, and they were able to take that knowledge they learned on Spirit and put it into Shrek 2 in such a way that I think the movement on the four-legged characters on this movie is amazing.
Are there any fairy tales you haven't inserted into this world you'd like to highlight?
Vernon: I remember looking through books of fairy tales, and there are some weird fairy tales. I know I read one specifically where there was a little boy who sucks his thumb, and some guy came in this fairy tale and cut the little boy's thumbs off. And he's like running around without his thumbs, and I'm like, "Well, that would be real nice to put into Shrek," some kid with bloody thumb stumps going, "Aahh!"
How much easier or more difficult was the directing process with three people at the helm?
Asbury: It didn't come down to fisticuffs or anything, but it's relay race. It really is, and you hand off the baton to each other at different times. Conrad and I, most of the time, were up north in Northern California working with the animators and the lighters and the surfacing department and the effects artists. We both had been involved with story; Conrad was involved a year before I was. Andy [Adamson, the third director] was involved from the very beginning; he wrote the script and a lot of the outline, and Conrad and I took the baton and went up north to start working with the animators. We were up there, Andrew would be here sometimes to work with the actors in the studio; sometimes I would direct the actors in the studio at various times; it just, really, wherever you are and whatever's needed, you do it. Our job was to stick together and have a shared vision and try to keep the rest of the team on the same page.
Vernon: And if one of us was there and the other one wasn't, we would fill in one another exactly as to what happened. If there was any disagreement, we would work it out right there, and then we kind of set everything on track. And there was rarely anything horrible. I got used to seeing Kelly sometimes go [sighs], but then I would be the one who sat there really quietly and pouted.
Did you run into problems with the DGA, who are notoriously tough about crediting multiple directors?
Asbury: Well, we're not in the DGA, for one thing. We're in the animation guild. In animation, if you look back at Pinocchio and Bambi, there were five to seven of what they called sequence directors at that time, where an individual person was in charge of a sequence in a movie, and they did it themselves, and somehow they managed to collaborate and make cohesive stories. We don't do it that way, because we're all over everything. We're more an umbrella, but we are sort of the keepers of the visions of the movie, and it's a big collaboration. We have to make sure the vision that is put together from all of these committees is made correctly, so we stick with it and we stay with it. Sometimes it's very helpful to have collaborators. I actually have found that to do it alone would be a huge task, and it's possible, but animation takes a long time and a lot of years.
Vernon: It's not necessarily grueling, but over time, it just gets repetitive if you're doing the exact same thing every single day, at the exact same time, as the production keeps marching forward. You're seeing different stuff, and you're always entertained by that, and the film coming to life in front of you, but at 10 a.m., every single day, we were at the animators'. At 5 p.m., we were at the animators' again, and this happened every single day for a year and a half. If you don't feel very well, too bad; you've got to be in there to direct these people. If you've got a doctor's appointment, if you get a flat tire, too bad, you've got to be in there, because there's no one else. There's been plenty of times when Kelly and I would switch off and say, "I'm a little bit late, go ahead and start without me. I'll be right in." And that's what the benefit of having more than one director is.
With so many jokes shoehorned into the fabric of Shrek's world, how do you decide which jokes will be placed more prominently, and which ones will merely fill in the periphery of the story?
Asbury: Well, that's all about layout and composition.
Vernon: And the story kind of dictates that, where if any of the guys ever create a laugh that covers up a line or something important in the story, you obviously have to take it back and take it out. Now, with all of the stuff on Rodeo Drive [in Far Far Away, where Fiona's parents live], and all of the storefronts and all of that, we kind of looked at it and said, it's just part of the world, and the main story point here is Shrek looking at this world and saying "Oh my God, where the heck am I?" and just being really nervous. It was more about looking at this world through Shrek's eyes, so you didn't want to go boom, boom, boom, on every storefront, but while Shrek was a little nervous, if you saw one pass in the background, it was just, you got a little laugh while getting exactly what Shrek was supposed to be feeling.
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