Alrighty folks, I'm here in Los Angeles for the RUSH HOUR premiere. In a couple of hours I'll be on my way to see it. I really don't want to go. Why? Well, I'm sure it's gonna be a whole lotta fun. I'm sure I'll laugh and be entertained... but... right now, this very second... all I want to do is to go over to a friend's house, put on LAWERENCE OF ARABIA and TEN COMMANDMENTS and CLEOPATRA (the Claudette Cobert version).
Why?
Well, since I was in town for a few extra days, I figured I'd see what I could get myself into. I called up Pheonix Pictures to see if I could get a look at a few shots here and there of A THIN RED LINE, but my contact was in Venice at the Film Festival there.
I called up a few others, then I called up my contact at Dreamworks so I might be able to get a tour of the Dreamworks SKG animation studio. Way back when I did that Dreamworks thing up in Dallas, I was told ta 'just swing on by' next time I was in town. So... I figured I'd just swing on by.
Yeah right.
I got the secretary and got the, we'll get back to ya bit. Forty minutes later the phone rings and I'm told that not only can I 'swing on by', but that they will screen 50 minutes of PRINCE OF EGYPT for me.
WHAT!?!
Well.. gosh... sure.
So yesterday I call up a couple of readers from the site and say, "Congratulations, you've been chosen to join me on a tour of Dreamworks, followed by a screening of 50 minutes of PRINCE OF EGYPT!" Who were these hooligans, these scoundrels? Well, they treated me to a screening of A BUG'S LIFE (review is coming soon)... you may know them as Sir Etch-a-Sketch and Sir Spirograph, that help me acquire a point of view on both Disney and Warners. Being some of the world's biggest fans of animation, I knew they would appreciate it.
So they pick me up and over we head. Glendale, land of Disney's Imagineering. That's where the brains behind Disney plot the way of things to come. Imagine rooms filled with those John Agar BRAINS FROM PLANET AROUS floating around thinking stuff up.
We pull into this College Campus (Dreamworks' Glendale facility) and well, as things always work, we get there 30 minutes early. So into the lobby we go. Stunning framed background art from PRINCE OF EGYPT hangs about the lobby. It's the sort of art you would expect to see in David Lean's collection. Vistas of the Egyptian world that just... well impress, and it's quite obvious that's what they are there for.
We're told our guide would be down in a second and to have a seat. I walk over to the window overlooking the big fountain and the commissary. Instantly I see people in t-shirts, backpacks flung over their shoulders, cans of Coke and Mountain Dew. It looks exactly like a college campus, people walking back and forth, pairs and groups telling stories, gesturing largely. This doesn't look like any studio I've been to before.
Sir Etch-A-Sketch joins me and we begin laughing about the laid back look of things. That's when our guide arrives. She takes us right to the beginning of the tour. The concept room of PRINCE OF EGYPT. Here they have the film storyboarded on out, actors and characters' pictures together. All in all, a nice room. In the first corner I see reference pieces of Gustave Dore, Monet and David Lean. I begin walking towards it, and the guide says that Gustave is for light and shadows, Monet for a sense of color and David Lean for vision and scope.
YEAH RIIIIIIGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHTTTTTT!
Any flick that would bring those three together would have to be some sort of masterpiece. Well, this is gonna take some convincing.
Right next to examples from these three are some paintings from PRINCE OF EGYPT. I'll be damned if they didn't look like those three brought together. One long skinny painting that looked like it would be a pan up or down, started with some cloths at the bottom bathed in a moonlight bluish hue, panning up it became a painted desert reds and browns, as scruffy looking scaffolding with two worn dead workers wilted, with a statue of Pharoah in the distance. A breathtaking work. Sir Etch-A-Sketch took a deep breath and said, "I wanna cry!"
The tour continued. A wall mapping out the psychology of the colors of the film, the impact the tones would have on the audience and on Moses as a character. The ups and downs.
A wall of props, animals, costumes, background characters.. all divided up by doors leading into animators' offices which held sketches of EL DORADO. Mayan designs and conquistador sketches pinned up like rock posters in a college dorm.
We continued to search and be taken. Endless amounts of art. Then at one point our guide opens a door and behind it is William Salazar, the fella that will be responsible for lots of facial tics, furled eyebrows, gesture of the hand, he's the lead animator for the young Moses. I mentioned him a while back when I saw those pencil tests that Sir Magna-Doodle got me. He's quite a nice fella, and since I'm already a fan from his pencil tests... well gosh, it's real cool to put a face to the graphite strokes of his magic pencil.
We begin passing lots of art work for EL DORADO, the second 'traditionally animated' film from Dreamworks. Lush greens, a stark contrasts to the desert tans and deep reds and golden tones. Big ol Captain Blood ships with full sails. The characters designs spill out and well, it's not Pocahontas in the Jungle. They're a bit more real, with some Bode and Frazetta influences.. well that's my perception. But the real jewel of this project are the gorgeous Mayan temples. Instead of the Egyptian style, Mayan structures had stucos with deep reds, greens and blues, the primary colors with which the Mayan's painted their pyramids. A rich tapestry indeed. We go into a background painters den, and see two men working away. One on planks of a ship, and the other on the jungle beach. They explain that after their painting is done, it will be scanned into the computer, and tweaked around. They can begin playing with the shadows of lits on leaves, the textures, the movements... they can manipulate and control the painting, instead of digitally creating it. Thus the hand of a traditional artist can remain. Not to say computer artist can't do great work, but when dealing with 2-D characters... well sometimes a 2-D artist completes the picture in an undefinable sense of perfection, that sometimes is missing in a computer enviroment. Though as I was to learn later, the computer stuff is about to be changed forever.
Then we went down to the effects department and got a glimpse of EL DORADO on their tellys. It really looks interesting. They are doing beautiful work, though I'm not up to date on the story aspects. Suddenly we find ourselves in a room with the VFX Coordinator, named DOUG COOPER, and he began showing us some RED SEA stuff. Particularly the sweeping away of Pharoah's men. There are sooooo many elements it's not even funny. Let's see if I can do it justice. First off there are the wire-frame walls of water and the wire frames of the descending water. There's the hand animated foam that's been replicated and further altered with computers, theres the splashes of the waves, 9 layers, all hand animated, there's the blending, there's the mist, there are the 100s of Egyptian soldiers, then there are the lighting elements. And that's just what I remember.
After this we head over to grab a coke at the commissary. Father Geek gets a quadruple Cappaccino (I murdered that word), Etch, Spiro and I all get a tasty fizzy beverage of the Coca-Cola variety. It's 15 minutes till we 'see the 50 minutes' so we're chilling out in the beautiful air, when suddenly Sir Etch-A-Sketch and Sir Spirograph begin doing that, "I have a chicken bone in my throat," looking thing. I'm telling our guide about A BUG'S LIFE, and the next thing I know there are people walking up to our table. I'm talking so I don't even look at their faces, and just before I get up to slap them two on the back and begin administering the Heimleich... well I notice who the people are. One was Terry Press, the lady I met in Dallas, and the other looked just like the K in Dreamworks SKG.
Then we begin doing introductions and it was him. Cool. I'm a huge fan of the work he ushered in at Disney, and well.. I've had extremely high hopes for PRINCE OF EGYPT, ANTZ, EL DORADO, SPIRIT, SHREK, CHICKEN RUN, etc etc. Soon as Jeffery hears I've seen A BUG'S LIFE, well he got a bit curious. I tell him that I really enjoyed the film, but that the Blue Ant thing just bugged me a bit, but in all you forget that and get swept away with the adventures. GOD that's nowhere near what I said, but right now I can't remember how I said it, but hey, that's not really important, basically I said I really liked it, but it isn't anything like ANTZ, not saying ANTZ is better, just different.
He talks with us for a little bit about PRINCE OF EGYPT, but wanted us to see the 50 minutes before talking any more. So....
THE DREAMWORKS ANIMATION SCREENING ROOM...
It's gorgeous. This place is just lush. Lots of seats, big screen, wonderful speaker system. I need one of these in the backyard. I just have that underground facility with the stainless steel escalators and pneumatic tubes. So the four of us grab our favorite seats, Row 4 Center for me. Spiro and Etch go Row 5.
Those two are sooooo excited at this point that I smell pants being soiled. You see, for a whole bunch of people in the animation world, this film seems to hold an expectation of change. For these two, it's where animation grows up. Or at least that's what they are hoping. Our guide leaves the room and the four of us wait...
The screen's curtain begins to part and as soon as the PRINCE OF EGYPT logo and opening bars of Zimmer's score appear, I'm geeking. At this point I'm going to switch over to review mode, meaning no spoilers.
We did not see the Red Sea sequence, the pillar of fire, the plague of locusts and frogs, the burning hail, the river to blood, the day turn to night. We did not see the Burning Bush, we didn't see God, we didn't see the moments they placed in the trailer.
What did we see?
Enough to say, this is the first time I've seen animated actors instead of characters. Moses is acting, he has doubt, cockiness, weariness, exhaustion, love, fear, awe, etc. He is so expressive beyond just the voice. In a lot of animated films the vocals are... over-performed to make up for not having a fellow person on screen... here the voice are performed as they would be in a serious dramatic film, and the characters' gestures are not over-done. When I went to Dallas that time and saw hints at dramatics... they delivered.
How are the songs?
I really loved them, they seem to be being performed more as thought than overt singing, with the exception of the little song that Moses' mother sings as she sets him upon the liquid haunches of the Nile. Then there is the 'Miracle' song that you'll be hearing for the rest of your life, but actually my favorite is the Danny Glover song (not sung by him, but his character sings it... can't remember the guy's name, sorry) around a fire, that sort of moves Moses character forward through the years of sheparding. It's really great, the lulaby just lingers. I like the music a lot.
The animation? Well... My god it's beautiful, but for all it's splendor, the thing that sticks with me are the performances, the characters are great. There is a scene between Moses, Aaron and (I'm gonna show my ass here) Moses' sister that is incredible. Dramaticly it's fantastic. Atmosphericly it fantastic. It's just dead on. When Moses finds out who he is... wow. It gave me chills.
Several times, about 14, during the 50 minutes all four of us looked at each other and just had that excited, "We know what we're getting for Christmas" look.
Afterwards we sat in our seats for a bit and just said, "Awwwwwwwwwwwwww maaaaaaaaan, I wannnnnna see the rest!" It's gorgeous, powerful and dead on.
After seeing it I immediately began thinking about how this film will perform. How will America respond. It is not spoon-fed religion, it's a powerful story. Right now I feel we exist in a very cynical time. Everytime we turn around there's a scandal about some political figure, religious leader and entertainment type. Heros and innocence seems to be something that we don't hang on to for very long these days. We tend to laugh at them and think they've probably got some 13 year old love slave in a box under their bed. I hate living in that world where everyone must be a sell out in someone's eyes, where we can't except things at face value, where we look funny at people opening doors for us to walk through. I hate that. I'm not calling for a great big leap into some sort of morality driven universe where we condemn heathens that like a Playboy magazine. No. But at the same time, do those of us with the minds that condemn the religious right have to condemn all religious/moral things as being the items of hypocrites. Because everytime we do that, we are ourselves becoming the person we don't like. But... we exist in that world, where we are all on sides. Where we have to support either Disney or Dreamworks, but not both. Where you are either a godless liberal or a rabid thrower of stones.
I've gotten a bit off track here, but when you are trying to see the market for a film, you have to take into context the world we live in. Mark Maguire just beat Maris' record, Maris existed in the world that created THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. That world was very different. The man who caught the 61st home run would not be hounded by the IRS after giving the ball back to Maris for no money. So what does that say about our world? Can PRINCE OF EGYPT play. It's going to be up against a whole lot of Disney big guns. A BUG'S LIFE will still be playing, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG and ENEMY OF THE STATE... well, what can PRINCE OF EGYPT do?
It can play for months. It can have a very small drop week to week with occasional gains. And when Oscar time comes swiveling around, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN may not be the only Dreamworks nominee, and this could be the frontrunner. From what I saw this isn't a great animated movie, it's merely a great movie. When I finally saw TITANIC I went on a big rap about expanding what the screen can hold, about telling stories as they've never been told. This film has that potential. It's all in how those other 40 minutes play.
What does Jeffrey think?
Well after the film, the four of us took a seat in the lobby and Jeffrey came and planted himself on the floor. He's nervous, don't get me wrong, he knows his film is great, but he doesn't know if the audience will get it. This is a high stakes gamble, this film is what I saw Dreamworks making when I first heard of it 4 years ago. He's passionate about the film, and his vision for animation. It's not Disney. He wants to take animation and not tell cartoon stories. That's a risk, but damn, this story couldn't be told any other way. And I guarantee you if Warners had the balls and treated the Batman/Superman franchise to a deluxe animated film journey, they'd have a treat. But that's what Jeffrey sees. He sees making animated RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARKs, he sees making animation not mean a barrel of monkeys and mice. He doesn't see putting in the obligatory side kick and the ultimate evil bad guy.
This is exciting folks, we're talking about someone wanting to treat a genre of film completely differently. This is momentous, and I hope and pray that as this film begins to pick up steam this Holiday season that we latch on and support it, because I've seen TARZAN and it is a fantastic film, but if only they had not had a Rosie O'Donnell ape. It's that stupid stupid, lack of faith in the ability to tell a story straight that just kills me.
This film can change things, I wonder if it will.
As we drove off from Dreamworks, we were all thinking about what we just saw, what we just walked through, and I think I really do feel I've been through a historic place. I think that in 40 years, they'll point to this little place surrounded by Disney's Imagineering and say... wow, they made Prince of Egypt there. Remember when you saw it... yeah, it was when Maguire hit 68 (projection). What a year.
