Entrevista con los directores de Enredados

Transcribo de latinoreview.com esa entrevista en inglés con Byron Howard y Nathan Greno, directores de Enredados.

Podéis leerla también en su site original latinoreview.com

Last week I posted an early sneak peek at Disney's Tangled, the upcoming 50th animated feature from Walt Disney Animation Studios. During my time at the mouse house, I had a chance to speak to Nathan Greno and Byron Howard, co-director's of the project formerly known as Rapunzel.

In this interview, Nathan and Byron talk about the short time they had to work on the film, why there isn't a short in front of it, (despite Disney saying they'll be doing shorts in front of all their animated films), how Rapunzel ranks amongst the other Disney princesses, Easter eggs in the movie and if they've already got future projects lined up.

Unfortunately I had to share my 1-1 time with a journalist from France who managed to ask every softball question on the planet. So if there's a question here you don't like, just blame it on her. That's what I did. I'm sure Disney will have another junket closer to the film's release on November 24th so I'll drill these guys then.

Alright, let's dive right in and talk Tangled with Nathan Greno and Byron Howard!

Greno: We’d both worked together at the very end of “Bolt”. John Lasseter had said he wanted to do a short on the DVD, and he asked me if I had any ideas. I was head of story on “Bolt” and Byron was co-directing. So I pitched some ideas to John and he really liked one of them. He gave me the keys to the “directing car” and I started doing it. There were a lot of departments I wasn’t familiar with because of the capacities I’ve worked in this building, and Byron WAS familiar with all these other departments. He was there going to these meetings, showing me the ropes and helping me out. Then at some point John asked if I wanted to direct “Rapunzel” and I said, “Yes, of course I do!”

When he asked you that did you have to prove anything, say what you would do?

Greno: Part of what doing a short was to prove you had some directing ability. Every time you have a screening you’re proving you’re the right person for the job. When he asked me he asked, “is there anyone you’d like to direct with, you’re gonna be on a very quick schedule.” I said, “Definitely Byron!” Luckily Byron was up for it after just getting done with “Bolt”.

Speaking of shorts, I’m curious why there isn’t going to be a short in front of this movie?

Howard: I think it’s mostly a time thing. We had this movie get so big, it kept becoming a bigger rollercoaster ride. We asked our animators to do so much on the film that I think just the time-crunch, in order to get the film done to the quality we wanted it required us to take more time than was necessary. It precluded the ability to get a short on there.

Greno: In order to get this movie done in a short period of time we had to absorb all these artists into the building to help with that, and it didn’t leave anyone to make a short. (laughs)

You’ve been stressing how you tried to make this contemporary. Are you scared of how the audience might respond to all that novelty?

Howard: When people hear that you want to do a non-traditional take on a story they think it’s going to be cynical. They think we don’t like these kinds of stories and we’re making fun of them, which we’re not at all. We love these types of stories. If you look at it it’s told in a very genuine way. We love Rapunzel and Flynn and its got drama to it, its got action. When we changed the title to “Tangled” we thought it represented the film better because it became about both of them. When we did that people panicked a little and said, “Oh we don’t want you to ruin the story.”

When you say “people” who do you mean?

Howard: Core Disney fans. There are people who love traditional Disney like we do, I think they don’t want it to be cynical like other films that are takes on fairy tales.

Greno: I think they didn’t want us to make fun of the fact that we’re making this movie. We don’t. We very much respect the characters and the world. If you look at the architecture of the world it definitely has that classic look of Disney from the 40s and 50s. We’re very much into our roots, we love that stuff! At the same time we’re making this movie for a contemporary audience. This movie isn’t being released in nineteen-fifty-whatever. It’s being released now, that means we’re competing with other movies. We wanted to make sure our action, our pacing, our storytelling, our humor all felt very contemporary, very now. I believe we were able to achieve a really great balance between respecting our roots and at the same time making a very contemporary, unexpected movie.

Are you curious how people are going to react?

Greno: We’re pretty confident people are gonna like the movie!

Howard: The movie has very deep emotional parts, and very dark parts as well. Hopefully it’s about establishing a balance. When we go to movies I want to laugh really hard, I want to tear-up, and I want to be taken on a great ride. We wanted this movie to be for everybody, something people could take their kids to, but at the same time we have humor in there that’s built for adults. The whole relationship between Flynn and Rapunzel is where a lot of the humor comes from. We’re just excited to show the film.

Greno: We had a couple of preview screenings for the film. At the screenings they have a focus group afterwards. They asked how they liked the movie, overall it was very awesome that people were excited for it, and somebody raised their hand and said, “This is like classic Disney but better!” We’re like, that’s great, that’s exactly what we’re looking for. It’s for today’s audience.

This is the first CGI musical, isn’t it?

Howard: I think so, yeah. Music is such a big part. What we loved about Alan when he came in was he said let’s do something different, let’s push it in a different direction. He had this great suggestion to have the music for Rapunzel more guitar driven, kinda more singer-songwriter, like Joni Mitchell. He’d play songs for us, and its great because it gives her a voice.

They’re some of the strongest songs I've heard in a while. It reminded me of “Beauty and the Beast”.

Howard: Sometimes music just does emotional things the dialogue can’t. When you hear the score that Alan wrote, when everything’s emotionally working it’s great for us ‘cause we’ve seen all these pieces in different places and now they’re coming together for the final film.

Where would you rank Rapunzel with the other princesses?

Howard: She’s this dynamic, smart, fun woman. We always strived to make her a heroine for a new generation, someone people can relate to and learn from and admire.

Greno: The interesting thing about it is because she doesn’t know she’s a princess we didn’t look at it like we were making a princess film. She’s very much the girl-next-door, she’s kind of an action hero character, very headstrong, she’s not waiting in this tower to be rescued, she’s gonna find her way out of there. It’s a little apples and oranges comparing her to the other ones just ‘cause she’s so different.

It took two years, why did it take that long?

Howard: They had a release date they were committed to and they asked us, “Can you do this in this amount of time?” and we said “We think so… we will.” Along the way the movie got bigger and bigger, ‘cause we were constantly asking our crew to go the extra mile and make the movie better. “This is an ‘A’, we need to make this an ‘A+’ The movie has to feel bigger, have more action, more humor, more emotion…” We’re very hard on our crew but they’re very passionate about what they’re doing.

Greno: John Lasseter said, “We will never release a bad film.” Even though we were locked into that two-year schedule the goal was to make the best film possible.

Was there a consensus at the beginning, since there were two of you, to agree on certain things?

Greno: Because we worked on the short together we knew we had a lot in common. Right at the very beginning we said, “What kind of movies do you like? What kind of movies do I like?” That way you both get off on the same foot because you understand. “You like these huge rollercoaster movies, I like real emotional movies…”

Can you tell us some of those?

Greno: Yeah! We both love “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”…

Howard: Yeah, you can see a lot of Flynn in Ferris Bueller, we like those kinds of characters. We love the Indiana Jones movies, we also like “Star Wars”. We love emotional movies like “The Color Purple” and “The Joy Luck Club”, these very heartfelt movies. The great part about these films is we’re expected to deliver all these things. They’re not just comedies, or just dramas. It’s a movie for everybody that has everything you want to experience.

Greno: My favorite movie of all time is “Dumbo”. Love that movie. That’s a movie where there’s so much emotion. My girlfriend has trouble wanting to watch it because she’s like, “I don’t want to cry tonight!”

Were you guys able to get in any Easter eggs, hidden Mickeys?

Howard: Oh yeah. There’s stuff in there. There’s stuff in the tower. Pinnochio’s in the movie. If you look very closely in the pub he’s around and about.

Greno: There’s other things in the bookshop, for instance. Look at the covers of those books closely. There’s a lot of references to the legacy of Disney. We love our roots and we love to acknowledge that we love to work at Disney. We’ve both been working here roughly 15-years. It really is this contemporary, unexpected film.

What was your reaction as artists when Pixar started to release their movies?

Howard: I think we’ve always been impressed by what Pixar does. Years ago when things were kind of bad at this studio we were like, “Oh, Pixar’s stuff is so great, wouldn’t it be great if someone like John Lasseter was our boss?”

Greno: “Man, we need someone like John Lasseter to come restructure this place!”

Howard: We said what happened and then it happened. You really couldn’t ask for a better boss because he’s a tough guy to work for, because he says, “Good is not good enough, it has to be excellent”. You have to overdeliver with these movies to make them better than anybody thought you could. We want to make these stories worthy of the people who are working on them. We work with brilliant story artists and musicians and painters and they will give you 100% all the time.

How did Pixar influence you in terms of storytelling?

Howard: Pixar makes great movies and they’re structured like a director-driven, artist-driven studio. This studio used to be like that way back in the day. John restructured it so we CAN make good movies again.

Are you guys currently working on anything now? There’s no Disney Animation movie scheduled for 2012?

Howard: I think there might be a small gap between the CG films. Schedule-wise that’s the way it works out, but there’s a long roster of things. 2-D and 3-D.

Are you gonna keep working together?

Howard: Definitely. We’ve already pitched our next thing. We like working with each other and we pitched 6 ideas to John and he combined two ideas we had. It’ll be crazy and amazing.

Greno: But as you saw at today’s screening there’s still plenty left to finish on this movie. We have direction for our next film but our passion right now is “Tangled”.