Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
With my second of three interviews with the creative team that brought the animated film 9 from an award-winning short to feature film. As director and creator of the original short Shane Acker told me in our interview, Tim Burton was on board as a producer the minute he saw the original short, but once you see the film, you immediately see how it fits right in with the kind of animated work Burton has been involved with over the years, from his own short VINCENT to producing THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS to directing CORPSE BRIDE to his STAINBOY shorts. 9 is dark, scary, and absolutely not geared toward young children. This interview took place at Comic-Con in July shortly after the 9 panel, which was held the day after the Disney 3-D panel that featured footage from Burton's ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Since I was unable to attend the Disney panel, I held off asking Burton any substantive questions about the highly anticipated film (for some misguided reason on my part, I also thought one of the other AICN guys had talked to him the day before about it, but I was mistaken on that point).
I was fortunate enough to have Burton paired with one of the voice actors from 9, a fresh-on-the-scene young starlet named Jennifer Connelly, who plays 7, the real action star of the film. Perhaps you've heard of her.
Capone: So, I think the panel went exceedingly well. People seemed really excited about it.
Tim Burton: I can't tell. I don’t know about you, but I’m like a deer in a headlights.
Jennifer Connelly: Me too!
TB: I can’t tell how many… I can’t feel my fingers or toes… I don’t know, but it’s weird.
Capone: A few years back, when the 9 short was making the rounds, I was on a short film jury in Chicago and saw this film and we gave in the top prize. So I have a real love for the short, and I am so excited to see it come to life like this. Do you remember your initial reaction to seeing it?
TB: That's amazing. Yeah, it was probably the same as you, you know? It was like “Wow.” When you see shorts, you see people doing personal animation, but the idea of seeing a feature, a personal feature animated film that is an amazing. That’s why I wanted to get involved, because I really like what Shane [Acker] was doing and just trying to get him in the environment so he could just make his movie, you know?
Capone: I think it was Guillermo Del Toro who told me that the job of a producer is to stay out of the way of the filmmaker, unless there is some interference coming at the filmmaker that you need to stop from interfering. Was that your approach?
TB: Absolutely, because I’ve been through it so many times having to argue about putting eyeballs into Jack Skellington or your know… “He looks a little too thin…” Or this or that and having gone through that so many times, and I still go through it today, you try to create an environment, especially if you like what somebody is doing, that’s the whole point, you know? Let them do it. Don’t try to put your stamp of approval or what you would do or whatever. Shane’s cool. He’s confident enough in what he does that he’s not disturbed by much. If you make a comment, either he will use it or he wont. It was a very good environment that way.
Capone: Jennifer, what do you remember responding to when you saw the short the first time?
JC: I thought it was beautiful. I thought it was art work. I thought it was so creative. I loved the character and thought it was weirdly moving, and I just loved the conceit of it. I thought it was beautifully rendered and that the light was beautiful and his attention to detail was really extraordinary. It was one of those things where I was watching it and thinking “Isn’t it amazing that people can do that sort of thing? Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that incredible that someone took that time and that care and has that level of artistry to be able to do that?” I just thought it was really impressive, and then underneath it, it had good intentions and was about something interesting and it was human.
Capone: I remember when I first saw it that I had to watch it a couple of times, because I thought it was stop motion the first time, because it looks so hand made.
TB: That’s Shane. We talked about that. He is a big fan of stop motion. A lot of his inspirations come from that world, and that’s what I love about it, too, because in the animation and in the actor’s performances, it’s got a naturalness to it, which I found very different than most animated films. You get a lot of times where people try to push the voices broader and this and that. But in the performances and in the animation, he really went for that kind of stop motion grounded reality that I love as well, and he made the right choice, because with the budget he had and then with the kind of camera moves and the kind of action that he wanted, I think he got the best of both worlds with that stuff.
Capone: Since your character wasn’t in the short, did you have any input as to either her look or her personality? Did you talk to Shane about elements you wanted to put in there that you thought would be a little more appropriate or natural for you?
JC: Frankly, no. I think that Shane had spent so much time with this project and everything was so well considered, he was so thorough in his preparation that by the time I came along, the character was so well flushed out. The drawings I thought were beautiful. I talked to him about motivation of different ideas, and for 15 minutes he would talk about what she was like and why she was like that and what he thinks she feels and I thought it was all really interesting. Honestly, this was an instance when I really felt like I just wanted to support his ideas and try to embody his vision as best I could. He had written a pretty kick-ass character, you know? Look at that opening introduction, I mean what’s there to mess with really? I thought that he had written her so well.
-- Capone
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