Interview: Star and director of John Carter

Recess’ Ted Phillips joined a Disney conference call with director Andrew Stanton and actor Taylor Kitsch, both of the upcoming film John Carter. The call was open to a number of college newspapers from across the country, and was moderated by a representative of Disney.

Moderator: “How is directing a live action film different from directing an animated film?”

Dir. Andrew Stanton: “It’s actually not that different. People think that when you work on an animated film, that you’re what—you’re like it’s, it’s as if I’m talking to a bunch of computers my whole life. I actually talk to 200 people everyday, 200 people that have different jobs, like how to do the lighting, the camera, the costume work. So it’s very similar actually in live action. I’m talking to people that do the camera, the costumes, you know, the actors, and, um, it’s just that you’re doing it outside instead of inside. And you’re doing it under very, very tight schedule whereas you have a lot more sort of bankers hours when you’re doing animation. So, um, the big difference is just physical stamina. I know it’s not sexy, but that’s the truth of it.”

M: “Did your experience with Pixar help with the CGI on the film?”

AS: “My experience at Pixar was tremendously helpful. I don’t think this had I not—I mean, making John Carter was basically making two movies. Almost literally two different film productions. One was the live action side that took almost a year to do and then the computer graphic side. Because half my main characters are completely CG, and half the world is sort of CG. And that was another year and a half of work, and that happened after I shot the live action. So I kind of was in this live action world with all its sort of production rules and pipelines. And then I moved onto animation and I worked in the same kind of pipeline and production flow that I would work on for a Pixar movie. And that I knew, I knew would know that half of it really well. And I was working with people I hadn’t worked with before but it was fun. I think they really enjoyed working with a director who actually knew and cared about animation.”

M: “What challenges did you meet in this film that you’ve never met before?”

AS: “Weather. (laughs). The physicality of standing up, animators don’t stand up. They sit all the time. So, having to be on your feet all day for 15 hours in any kind of weather, whether it be really hot or really cold. And with no breaks. That was really it. Although, you know, that sounds like I’m complaining, that’s just the hard part of it. But I always like to equate the journey with sort of like deciding to sail across the ocean. It’s going to be hard work, there’s going to be a lot of manual labor involved, but you know you’re going to see some amazing things, have some amazing stories and events that you could not have otherwise. And you’re also going to hit some storms and some maelstroms that you would want to avoid. But it’s all in the journey of wanting a sort of one of a kind adventure.

M: “Did you approach the film and the story any differently than you would had it been an animated film?”

AS: “I didn’t approach the story any differently. To be honest, I think that’s the misconception about animation is that we don’t—we don’t approach our stories any differently than we would no matter—we just treat every character like an actor is going to play it. And that we’re going to have a real set. And we’re going to have real locations, and we’re going to do all this stuff. We have since day one on Toy Story. So to me, there is no difference. It’s only when you get into the practical aspect of how you’re going to execute it that you have to think differently. But everything else is for dramatic reasons. And I do have the luxury in animation that if I decide that we should suddenly go to a whole new city, maybe we have much more options of being able to actually build that city and do it. And, whereas it might be too costly in live action to go there. But to be honest, there’s a budget in animation just as much as there is in live action. And everything has a cost to it. So we get sort of our hands slapped and told we can’t do things in animation all the time. People have this myth that just because you can do anything, means you can afford to do anything, and you can’t. Everything has a budget and a schedule. So it’s just a different kind of restrictions.”

M: “Did you feel a certain kind of pressure tackling a story so many people already knew?”

AS: “I did and I didn’t, because the harsh truth of it is that not that many people know about it. It’s not like Harry Potter or Tolkien. It’s slowly been a dwindling base, so I know there wasn’t this massive social pressure about how it was executed. But I didn’t really worry about that so much. Also because I’m a huge fan. I’ve read the books my whole life. And wanted to see them, and I’m probably one of the more rabid fans. So I didn’t want it screwed up. And then really that’s how I kind of got pregnant with this idea. I was telling Disney, when the property suddenly went back to the estate in 2006, I told them that you’ve got to make this. I mean, I want to see this on the screen. I’ve been waiting 35 years and it’s still not going to happen now and somebody has got to make it. I’d be happy to once I finish WALL-E, but I don’t know if you’d ever consider me. Suddenly, they said yes and gave it to me. Before I even knew what was going on. And it was sort of one of those be careful what you wish for. But if it was any pressure, it was my own pressure on myself, of like okay. Now you can put your money where your mouth is, and should put on the screen what you always wanted to see.”

M: “How much did you draw on the source material when bringing this world to the big screen?”

AS: “Well, I was really smart, and I don’t like to write by myself. I need objectivity, I need people to bounce stuff off of. I’m always smarter and funnier in the room when I’m working with somebody. So I got myself two people that I wrote with, Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon. Both of them were huge lovers of the book growing up as well. So not only did I get better writing by having these two guys, but I had people that knew all the material and cared about it. That really, really helped us sort of be really smart about what stuff to keep from the source material. The source material was always there, we were always referring to it. But we ended up treating it more like an encyclopedia. Because he had so much data in it about the names of places and what the cultural rules were and character descriptions. But the narrative of the story, like how the story moved forward and how the drama was put together, we had to take licenses because it really didn’t play well as a three-act structure movie that you would see in two hours. And most books have that problem. So we had the luxury that there were multiple books and so we could tell that there were things that he got better about. Or more interesting characters he discovered, or situations and rules in later books. And we had the luxury of being able to sort of grab some of those things and move them earlier. And also take some things away that we knew that we could use later if there were more movies. It’s like doing a television series, and you know that there might be a season two or three. You can have the patience and the willpower to sort of spread things out differently. To tell a better story. My one big goal was...when you watch the movie, does it feel like what it felt like to read the book? That, to me, is the goal. And that’s to me any good adaptation is that it made me feel like how I did reading the book.”

M: “Edgar Rice Burroughs’ original novel was the first part in an enormous series. Can we expect sequels or other content beyond John Carter?”

AS: “That’s me knocking on wood. I sure hope so. We actually got the rights to the first three books. And we planned all three movies together. So that we knew where they were all going. But I also hated movies that had these unnecessary cliffhangers that suddenly just leave you hanging, as there is this sort of vain assumption that there is going to be another movie. And I didn’t want to jinx that either. So we made sure that each movie finished in a very satisfying way when we wrote them. Even though there might be these meta issues that could keep going. It’s like having a good conclusion to a television season. And maybe you’ll get picked up for next year, maybe you won’t, but at least you’ll know that there’s closure in the small for what you were dealing with for that season. So we did that with this movie and we planned it that way for the others.”

M: “What is the relevance of John Carter to a modern audience? And what message would you hope the film sends to the audience?”

AS: “I don’t really consider those things. I’ve had a lot of those kind of questions when I was doing WALL-E because it seemed to be so appropriate to the times of concern about the environment and things. But they’re all just ingredients for me for what’s the drama of the story. My interest was what’s the timeless human aspect about the character or the story that will always speak to me no matter what’s going on in the world. And having a person that discovers that they think their purpose in life is over and was misguided to begin with, suddenly find where they really do fit in, I think that’s what all of us are searching to do. I mean heck, that’s why you’re all in college, right? You’re all trying to figure out where do I fit in and what’s my true calling. And that’s what this person is dealing with. And I think I’d choose anything I could, even if it was subject matter that might compare to today or even if it didn’t, that would help tell that dramatic drive, and that was it.”

M: “What was it like working with human actors rather than being able to manipulate your characters via computer?”

AS: “Well, I don’t work with the manipulated CG characters, I work with the animators that are human beings that manipulate the characters. So I don’t talk to the puppets, I talk to the puppeteer, and that’s the best way to put it. To me, talking with actors is really no different than talking to an animator. Animators are just shy actors. They may not be as fun, they may not jump around and give you a million great ideas or come back fighting you with their own agendas as much as an actor might be, which is really exciting, but the way an actor’s thinking is exactly how an animator’s thinking. They’re trying to figure out, “what’s my character’s motivation? What are all the choices I have over the tools at my disposal as the character that I am? Where are my marks? When do I come in, when do I exit?” So, talking to an actor was like talking to my animators and my story guides at the same time. My story guides can be really crazy and just try a million things all at once and were just thinking of the wackiest, out there ideas. That’s like a good improv group. So really it was like having these two conversations I’m used to having, in one.”

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