Hey folks, Harry here... My trusty scab of the seven seas is peeling back and letting ooze with the empty set blues... Actually, he's walking around the SPY KIDS sets with Robert Rodriguez and the Fair Spanish Maiden... gathering pictures and stories about how SPY KIDS came about, what's going on in the sequel and so on... He also conducted a full blown interview with Rodriguez where he finds out everything that Robert is willing to fess up to having up his sleeve in terms of future projects. Now sit back and enjoy....
Ahoy there, squirts. ‘Tis I, the super busy and very crusty seaman, Quint, here once more this time with a little peek into the world of Spy Kids. A guided tour if you will hosted by none other than Robert Rodriguez himself.
The film has enjoyed the number 1 spot on the box office for two weeks and it’s a good bet that a lot of you have seen it by now and I’d go so far as to say you have enjoyed it, or else you wouldn’t be interested in reading this little “tour” in the first place. If you disliked the movie, I’m sorry. I wish you had liked it. But why are you here? I’m sure I’ll find out in Talkback...
Anyway, I was scheduled to do an interview with Robert Rodriguez in person,
the day after Spy Kids opened, at Sleeping Shark Productions’ base of
operations. It seemed that the Spy Kids sets were still standing (a
complete rarity in this business, afterall most sets are struck not hours
after the film is wrapped) and Robert invited me out for a little tour of
the sets before the interview.
I didn’t really plan on writing this up, but just to use the pictures that My Fair Spanish Maiden took of the set in the interview itself. But, I have been called to Los Angeles where I’ll be for over a week (starting Tuesday) and without my own personal computer or the time to transcribe the rest of my interview with Robert. I just happened to have my tape recorder on for this little tour, so I had Robert’s words... and pictures... and felt bad for not getting the interview up before this weeklong delay. So, this is for you guys to take a peek at while I’m away... I’m planning on doing some on location write ups for you guys while I’m out there, though, so keep your eyes peeled, squirts.
This is the tour I took, being led by Sr. Rodriguez through a fairly ordinary warehouse filled with extraordinary things. I felt like Charlie walking through the chocolate factory along behind Willy Wonka as he’s telling me secrets he probably shouldn’t be. Unfortunately, Robert didn’t give me the Spy Kids sets when it was all said and done, but the rest was just like WillyWonka!
The tour started late. Robert showed up in the same casual wear that I’ve never seen him without. T Shirt, loose pants with lotsa pockets, etc. He began almost immediatly, taking me back through the office part of the warehouse, navigating through a hallway or two (and a breakroom), trying to find the door that led into the room of wonder and amazement.
“Have you ever been back here?” he asked me.
“Yep, a few times when I was an extra in Faculty. This was the area I wasn’t supposed to be, though. Right over there is where Chris McDonald asked me where craft services was...”
Robert laughs as he pushes open the door to the warehouse
revealing lots of exposed wood wherein the grand sets of Floop’s castle’s interiors lay dormant, waiting to be discovered by one Crusty Seaman and his Fair Spanish Maiden. We all just stood there in amazement... I could’ve sworn I heard faint music growing...
“Hold your breath... Make a wish... count to three... Come with me, and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination,” Robert started singing... OK, so he didn’t, but he should’ve, dammit!
He did say this, though, “Ah, yeah. Since you were here on Faculty, you’ll notice that the sets are built very similar, with all the hallways and all.”
We entered into the first hallway and what struck me first was how much smaller the sets were in real life.
“Remember the scene when the kids were doing the fight scene at the end with the bubble gum and all that?” Robert said. “That’s right here. I just used a 10 mm lens right here when it shows them as they’re walking to face each other. That’s from here! It just warped the whole thing out! I wanted to use a lot of wide lenses. When Floop’s running down the hall and he skids. This little piece! It’s also the piece at the end of the credits. Shot really low with a 10 mm.”
Cool... the first big set piece we went into was Floop’s main, big room and we ended up spending more time in that room than we did in any other during the tour. This is the room with the hand chair, the weird table... the room where the final fight scene takes place. Robert told me that he wanted the room to keep circling up.
“I thought we should make this just sorta curving up like a corkscrew so that things aren’t straight. Windows are a little whacky. I wanted this (room) to be built for the lens, so I put a really wide lens here, figured it be like a 10 mm, I wanted to be able to fit all in, but so that’d have sortuva warped feel. You’d start close the parents and pull back and have it all fit in the lens. So, I build sets now to lenses (laughs). ‘Cause so many times you’ll build a big set and you won’t see it. You can’t ever shoot it, so I say, ‘Well, pick the lens then build the set to fit inside. It fits perfectly inside of a real wide lens. I just chop the set off.
“I just said, ‘Well, have the pillars keep going. We’ll just frame it out on top.’ I was in Europe with my parents and taking pictures of them in front of a cathedral and I thought, ‘These go all the way up, but you just have to take a picture of the body and you got the feeling of a cathedral.’ I thought, ‘That’s so weird. I wonder why that is.’ It was just ‘cause the pillars kept going out of frame.
“So, when it came time to do the set, I wanted it to be this big, grand room, but because of the ceiling (on the warehouse) it couldn’t be that tall, so the drawings I started bringing always had all the windows contained within the set. I’d have it go up and just chop it off. So, when you frame like this (holds his hands up in that famous director’s rectangle thing that they’ll look through to similulate looking through the lens of a camera)... it just looks like it keeps going. Then a couple shots we did back here, again with a 10 mm, we’d do one shot from back here and just let it go off frame and then we painted in the rest. Then that other shot, looking up at Floop, we just put a little piece of green behind him and edit that in digitally. Then this is where the parents get lowered down and dropped into... This was a big room.”
Then he sees the table and starts pointing.
““Here’s all the Austin artists at work,” Rodriguez said. “They poured this resin inside... when we made this table, I had them put all these little art things and things that reflect... I love that shot of Floop, when the parents land, when those sets are lit right, (the hallway) just keeps going all the way back. It’s really cool.”
He then goes over to that cool hand chair thing, sits down in it and starts
describing exactly why this particular chair was included in the movie.
“Look at this chair! I always wanted a chair like that with all the faces
arguing with each other.
I’d just put the remote control here (indicates the mouth of the thumb
face).”
He then points along the walls of the room, going into his Floop frame of mind, and why Floop would have designed the room the way he did.
“It’s like, why would he just do pillars?” he said. “They should just make
the room go up like a corkscrew again and have the trim sorta sagging like
it’s melted.
Then every once in a while throw in (something) a little different. He always throws a monkey wrench in everything, so I was like, “Put a monkey wrench up there!” (laughs) It was sorta, “Really, you want a monkey wrench?” I said, “Yeah, that’s sorta the idea. You can’t make it too straight... even this podium has a little Floop shape to it. It’s a little Floopy. We started using the term “Floopy.” It was fun walking around being Floop. “Well, what about this?” I’d be, “Yeah, I think he’d put that in here. That there... like those fruit people ... the big lipstick...”
Then Robert basically told me that a lot of the inspiration for Floop came from himself. I knew it! Robert really is Willy Wonka! How’d I find this out? Well, he asked me if I had ever been to his house. I told him, “No.” He just smiled and said:
“It has like secret passages and everything ‘cause when you’re building your own thing you can put something like that in. As long as you’re building it, why just build a regular house? It’s fine, put a hidden door while we’re here. From that idea I figured if someone can do anything they want, they will. (laughs)”
Then Robert said something scary.
“Let’s go this way, into the dungeon. Cary White brought me a ‘60s like
room... you know, those kinda round cells? Yeah, that would be good for the
cells... then make ‘em metal... Of course, Austin doesn’t screw around, man.
This is real! Real bars!”
We then break off from the main part of the set, the hallways that lead into
the different rooms. We stop off in the arrrsome room that is used to turn
people into Fooglies in the movie and Robert stops to admire his reflection.
Then he stops at a curious little structure made out of cardboard and
various lengths of wood. What could this be?
“This is where the kids are going up... You know, “Thumb-Thumbs everywhere!” We did this so we could get the cameras in there, so we didn’t have to get the cameras to go all the way up. Easy! Believe me, this is easier. Just build this little thing out of cardboard tubes. That’s much easier than trying to haul the kids up there.”
Then he rounds the corner, still outside of the main sets and low and behold
there is a large, yellow pod, the Super Guppie from the movie.
“This is made out of foam, too. This is just carved out of foam (scratches the foam), then they just bondo-ed it, sanded it down and painted it. We pushed in (on the boy hanging from the front), then composited it. We just did it outside. Hauled it out into the parking lot and shot. And that shot of her reaching, trying to grab him, I was on a crane as she reaches over and we put an upper green screen behind them, panned down to him. When I was on the lake, I just aimed the camera and got some sides and composited it. You can’t even tell that’s an effects shot. You can do anything now.”
As the tour wound down, we found ourselves standing outside Floop’s main room, looking in. This is when Robert started telling me about his plans for Spy Kids 2.
“What I wanted to do was use all these sets again in Spy Kids 2, but they’re
all going to be underground caverns and stuff. So, they’ll be completely
redressed. If I have it in the same structured layout it’s easier to write
the script thinking, “Oh, yeah... they can go into a room that’s got
chambers and long, mossy overgrown hallways.... Then a big volcano room with
a volcano in the middle and make this all molten lava (indicates the outside
of Floop’s main room, the one with the jigsaw puzzle windows).”
Can’t you just see the molten lava just running off that, boys and girls? It’ll be glorious!
Anyway, that’s just about it from me. Hope you had fun going through the set with me and Willy Rodriguez... Robert Wonka... damn! You know what I mean.
As always keep yer eye on the horizon squirts. Robert goes into all his upcoming projects in my interview, which’ll be up next week when I get back from LA. Plus I got that onset report thingies comin’, too. Just watch out! If you email me, give me a few days to get back to you as I’m not really sure what the computer situation is going to be while in LA.
‘Til next time, my fellow seamen and lovely mermaids... I bid you a fond farewell and adieu.
-Quint
