Sarah Ball
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Jan 23, 2009 11:40 AM
We talked to 'Wall-E' director Andrew Stanton last week about his
film and the increasing blurring of the line between animation and
live-action movies -- plus, what makes the gun-wielding probe EVE a sleek, feminine mynx in WALL-E's eyes. Excerpts:
You talked about 'breaking the glass ceiling' in your speech after winning Best Picture from the L.A. Film Critic's Association.
Well,
when we were starting out on "Toy Story," we just felt like animation
was in such a box. You gotta remember that back then, everybody felt
that, in the industry and outside it, if it was animated, that meant it
had to be a musical, that meant it had to be typically some sort of
fairytale, had to have some happy village in it and some villain and
there were just all these unnecessary conventions put on it. And I
would see my favorite reviewers of movies suddenly dumb down and say,
"Good for kids," and that would be the review. It just frustrated the
heck out of me and everybody else. So we felt, well, we're just going
to have build a better movie prove that that isn't the case.
So "Wall-E" was born.
What
people say we've been doing with "Wall-E," we've been doing since the
beginning. But I guess the grooves are so deep in people's thinking
that it took a film that pretty much didn't follow any convention for
people to just finally get it. In a weird way, I don't feel like our
philosophy or our tack on our filmmaking is any different on this one
than it has been on the others.
What does it take to smooth over those grooves, to break down the barrier? Winning awards?
Wearing
people down with good films. And to even think that it's segregating
other artists -- pick a branch, but I know everybody always associates
it with actors -- you know, yeah, agreed, we're not going to hire as
many actors, but we're always going to be hiring actors. You can't
replicate great acting. So I just don't get the fear.
The animated category was initially supposed to empower animated films -- does it now serve to ghettoize them?
It's
just a sign that times have changed. Because from the live action side,
animation -- and computers in general -- are being used as a tool in so
many movies now. The line is just getting so blurry that I think with
each proceeding year, it's going to be tougher and tougher to say
what's an animated movie and what's not an animated movie. And what I'd
love is to get to the point where someone just goes, 'I don't care.'
Because I've been at the 'I don't care' point a long time now.
Are you okay with not breaking the glass ceiling at the Oscars?
I've
never seen so much buzz about anything we've done like this. All the
reviews that have been amazing. And I'll be okay if it doesn't break
another glass ceiling. I already get how people feel. That's really,
really satisfying.
People say, if not this movie in the Best Picture category, then no movie.
It
kills me to hear that. Because I've been such a reverent fan of movies
since I was a little kid, and I think I'm lucky that I work in San
Francisco so I feel like I still am almost more of a fan than an actual
filmmaker, and I just have always wanted to believe, no matter how
naïve it is, that the best films will make it to the attention of the
Academy in their proper place. And I still want to believe that.
Eve
has gotten some blog buzz as the one of the best-written female
characters of the year. Since she goes around blowing things up, what
feminizes her?
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