Flicks’s intrepid reporter ASHLEY BIRD is in London for the highly anticpated debut of the Roald Dahl, stop-frame animated adaptation…
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It’s 9am on the first day of the Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival and Leicester Square is being decked out with scaffolding runways and lights for tonight’s gala opening. Already, there are a group of film fans camped out with warm blankets, flasks and folding chairs, eager to get a good spot for festivities which are still a good eight hours away. Why so keen? Well, Wally Wolodarsky’s in town, people. Yeah! He’s written and produced episodes of
The Simpsons! And Eric Anderson’s here. High five! He played Air Kentucky Pilot in The Life Aquatic. Other than that it’s just a bunch of lesser-known names – Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Wes Anderson, some dude called George Clooney. Isn’t he in ER?
In truth, the UK press is going crazy about Clooney’s presence in London, with his Italian girlfriend in tow. The man’s taken over the city – indeed he’s in three separate films showing at the festival so there’s no wonder his profile is through the roof. And the first of those – Fantastic Mr Fox, set to premiere tonight – is the reason we’re here. Directed by the aforementioned offbeat genius Wes Anderson, it’s an animated adaptation of the Roald Dahl tale about a chicken-thieving fox who tries to ‘go straight’ for the sake of his wife and stroppy kid, but just can’t ignore his wild instincts and ends up getting everyone embroiled in a war with three ‘orrible farmers with ‘orrible English accents called Boggis, Bunce and Bean.
While London’s finest scaffolding men prepare their erections for Clooney to mount later (couldn’t resist), a group of international film press types – including us, yay! – are ushered into the glitzy Odeon cinema to check the film out before anyone else. And guess what, it’s brilliant. It’s not Wes Anderson doing a kids film (a lot of the jokes will go right over the heads of many young ‘uns), it’s Wes Anderson doing a Wes Anderson film based on characters from a kids’ book. In old-school stop-motion animation. With real fur. All his visual ticks are in place – perpendicular, symmetrical framing, point-of-view shots, the lot – and many of the voices, from Schwartzman and Murray to cameos by Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson and more – will be familiar from previous Anderson films such as The Darjeeling Ltd and The Royal Tenenbaums. But while his live action films err towards being a bit over-long, this is a tidy hour-and-a-half of great gags, naughty behaviour and charming visuals.
George Clooney and his Italian ladyfriend at the gala premiere; Bill Murray, who plays Badger, director Wes Anderson and one of the puppets used in the film at the press conference.
Political subversion, Bill Murray and George Clooney…
Some writer from some Scottish mag: “My question is for Wes. On the topic of stop-motion animation, I’m wondering whether you intentionally evoked the cultural history of that form, specifically Czech filmmakers like Jan Spankmeyer who used it for politically subversive ends?”
Bill Murray: “That’s the kind of question we’ve been hoping for. That’s why we flew over here. Go get ‘em Wes…”
It’s an odd situation, an international film festival press conference featuring some of Hollywood’s hottest talent. There are about 150 or so variously odd/annoying journalists in a glitzy, chandelier-lit ballroom in the Dorchester hotel, possibly the swankiest in London (and London has a lot of swank). There’s a bank of TV cameras at the back of the room. There are cute girls scuttling discreetly about, giving microphones to those chosen journos who get to ask questions. And at the front, from left to right, sit today’s moderator David Gritten (film critic for The Telegraph), Eric ‘brother of Wes’ Anderson (who plays Mr Fox’s nephew Kristofferson), Bill Murray (who plays Badger), Wes ‘brother of Eric’ Anderson, George Clooney from ER (Mr Fox), Jason Schwartzman (Mr and Mrs Fox’s son Ash), Wally Wolodarsky (Kylie the opossum) and ex-Pulp man Jarvis Cocker who appears as a rubbish folk singer called Petey. Meryl Streep (Mrs Fox) was supposed to be here, but rumour has it she has flu, which will later disappoint a gaggle of foamy-mouthed Streep fanatics hoping to shake her hand when she arrived at the big premiere. In front of each actor is the puppet of their character from the film – and before they came in, we were able to go see them up close. I had a good look at Bill Murray’s badger. Cute.
The questions asked today are thankfully not all about Eastern European subversive animation. In fact, some are embarrassingly tabloid, attempting to coax the suave and charismatic Clooney in to saying he wants to have children (“Did playing a father in this film make you broody?” etc… he sidesteps them all, at one point declaring he intends to “adopt some of Brad Pitt’s kids”). But for the most part, they are pretty standard, and garner some quite interesting responses. Like this one, from Wes Anderson: “Fantastic Mr Fox was the first book I ever owned. It was a book I loved and the book that introduced me to Roald Dahl’s work in general, so it made a big impression on me. About 10 years ago I approached Felicity Dahl to ask permission to do it, so it’s been a long process. I always intended for it to be stop-motion, I’ve always wanted to do a stop-motion movie with animals with fur. I love the way that looks. It’s magical.”
But the most entertaining bits of the press conference are when everyone loosens up a bit. Clooney and Murray clearly bounce off each other, with jokey exchanges including:
Clooney: “I didn’t enjoy working with Bill. We fought a lot. That’s fair to say, right?”
Murray, in full deadpan Peter Venkman mode: “That’s accurate George.”
Each one of these elicits some over-loud sycophantic chortling from the press corps. As does Clooney’s realisation that his Mr Fox figure is dressed in exactly the same off-beige suit as Wes Anderson. “There’s something a little scary about that,” he points out, to more guffawing from the floor.
So what do we learn from this half hour of collective interviewing, other than the fact that in a room full of other journos, no one dares ask Wes Anderson directly if it’s true he pissed off all his animators by not being present for much of their work, as reported in the LA Times recently? Well, quite a bit actually.
The LA Times issue, recording the voices and celebrating thievery…
Rather than recording voices in a studio, Anderson recorded the actors on location much of the time. “When we were running in the film, we ran, when we were hiding behind bushes we hid behind bushes,” explains Wolodarsky. Roald Dahl’s widow Felicity is “a wonderful, wonderful woman” according to Bill Murray and if he were going to re-marry he’d “take a chance on her”.
Despite Mr Fox’s very Clooney-esque personality, Anderson didn’t have a particular actor in mind when writing the script with Noah Baumbach. “We were thinking of Cary Grant,” he says. Other than a song, Jarvis Cocker only has one line in the film but he hopes people will “sense the preparation and pain that went into doing it”. Bill Murray thinks George Clooney’s voice work in the film is “some of the best voice work I’ve ever seen anyone do.”
Perhaps the most enlightening moments include Anderson touching on the controversy in the LA Times (of his own accord): “I think I shot this film the same way that I would shoot a live action movie. I think some of the people who are used to working on animated movies were a bit thrown off by it at first, but we found a way to make that work and I enjoyed doing it that way.”
Anderson and Dahl's widow Felicity, at the premiere; George and Bill.
Then there’s Clooney’s admission that he wasn’t sure if the film would be easily marketable: “I said to Wes, ‘I don’t know who’ll see it because it’s sort of made for grown ups and sort of made for kids and you don’t know how that will play’. He said: ‘Don’t worry about it, let’s go make the movie and have some fun’.”
Oh, and did I mention that Anderson actually IS into Czech animation after all? “That kind of Eastern European animation was one of the inspirations,” he says. “I hadn’t thought of the political links but Dahl was kind of anarchic and the movie’s a sort of Robin Hood story, so it’s a bit communist I think. But there’s another animated film, a French one called Le Roman de Renard and that was a great influence on us because they used multiple scales, so there are [regular sized] puppets and puppets that are tiny for big wide shots. It’s very charming, and that’s something we stole from that movie.”
So now you know.
But when asked to sum up the message of the film, ER’s George Clooney struggles. “Stealing is good?” he offers. “Yeah, it’s a celebration of stealing,” adds Anderson. “It’s honouring thievery,” tries Clooney again. “I don’t know, what should I say?” A disembodied voice mumbles: “Be true to your animal nature.”
“Okay,” says Clooney. “Let me try that again. I think we just want to be true to our animal nature.”
More overcooked laughter from the press corps. Part one of George Clooney’s London Film Festival takeover complete. And a fantastic movie about a fantastic fox successfully talked up by all involved. Apart from Meryl Streep.
