Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
Wallace & Gromit: Auf der Jagd nach dem Riesenkaninchen
The Interview with Nick Park (Director)
Nick Park
47 years old Nick Park fits perfectly into the comfortable ambiance of Jucker Farmart: from his easy-going style and his friendly, almost shy smile you would never guess, how many awards the director of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit already won for his various works: three Academy Awards as well as three BAFTA-Awards, countless other prices and nominations and even the title "Commander of the British Empire", awarded by Her Majesty The Queen herself. Whether or not the creator of films such as Chicken Run and Creature Comforts really cares about these honours, we did not ask him. We did, however, pose a lot of other question to Nick, who joined Aardman in 1985.
Being three journalists, we had around 20 minutes to ask him our questions:
OutNow.CH (ON): In the workshop, you said it was relatively easy to protect the specific quirkiness, Englishness of the film... did the Americans [DreamWorks] never say: this is something the American people will not understand? That happened to other movies; they had to change the taglines, titles and so on...
Nick Park (NP): Well, we were determined to keep things the way they were, you see. From the beginning, you know. There were disagreements. They generally went with the basic idea. There was nothing like "this is too quirky" or anything. It was more "this aspect of the story does not work". It was quite - if anything - objective criticism most of the time, and helping us to tell the story we planned. But we had to make the decisions. While they gave help for criticism a lot, it was always up to us to find the solutions. They came from me and Steve Box, the other director. Steve did the penguin in The Wrong Trousers. He animated that for me. And we got together to direct this one.
But there was something with the title "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit", you know. At first they said you can't have "curse" in the title. But we stuck to our guns most of the time. For me, "cursed" is a dark word in Middle America and you can't use it. But to me, it's a spoof of a horror movie, so it has to be part of it.
ON: The original was a British horror movie, so they probably didn't even know it.
NP: Yeah, that's true, that's true! It took a while before they discovered this was a spoof horror movie. There is a fear in America: they focus on target groups a lot, have test screenings and such things. It takes one person to say: "I wouldn't take much out to see this", and then...
ON: Do you consider your films as films for children? What audience do you have in mind?
NP: Well, as I started making Wallace & Gromit at college, I never really thought about an audience. They where kind of just done out of ideas on top of my head and I never thought beyond my fellow students and myself, really... I was never trained to be aware of certain target audiences or anything. And I sort of carried on that kind of instinct, really. If anything, I think there is more of an adult orientation to them than children, but they communicate to children as well because of the ideas. It is not geared for children, though. I don't want to talk down to children or aim at children particularly. I've just done what we've always done.
ON: Speaking of "have always done": this time you use quite a lot of CGI parts in the movie. What's your opinion on full CGI movies? In your films, one can actually see things are handmade, there are details like fingerprints on the puppets instead of smooth surfaces...
NP: I really admire some CGI films, you know. I'm a big fan of The Incredibles, I thought that was really good. And the graphic style the director Brad Bird brings to his movies is incredible, I like that. And I thought Madagascar had a good graphic style as well. I think when artists are in control of computers, then it really works. But there is an obsession about technicalities, like how to make hair look really flowing... Who cares! I don't care about that kind of things.
ON: So we hopefully won't see a Wallace & Gromit 100% CGI movie...
NP: Nah, I don't think we will. I think it is because clay is just the right media for me. I don't dislike CGI, it's more like that I've always found this media right [fumbels around the Gromit figure]. Gromit was born from being clay. When I first did A Grand Day Out, my college film, I first thought that I was going to make Gromit like a "bouncy" dog, you know, exuberant. But when it came to the first scene, I found I could do far more by simply moving the eyebrow [demonstrates it] and that comes from being clay. I'm not sure I would have arrived to that if I designed Gromit on a computer. I just like the material, I don't mind fingerprints. The kind of immaturity of the craft aspect...
ON: I was really surprised how small these models are. Why don't you make them bigger, wouldn't that make work easier for you?
NP: No, I mean, this is the kind of size I found is just right because if it was bigger, there would be more clay to move around. And furthermore, if the puppets get bigger, they get more endangering to work with. If you try to move a leg the whole body might fall over [moves Wallace's leg]... these sorts of things. Working with something this size you can just get what you want and you are in control. And still it is small enough to handle things like the brow very easily and create different expressions. You can put all in your hands. You can, for example with Gromit [works on Gromit], change his brow very easily without working too much. You can change him to sympathetic, for example.
ON: How did you get the inspiration for that story? You are a vegetarian, aren't you?
NP: Oh, I'm not, actually! Not specifically... maybe it's because a lot of my stories are about animals, but no... I love vegetables. But I don't mind vegetarians; I don't have anything against them.
I think it's all just inspired by the humour, really. Vegetables are intrinsically funny! [laughs] I was playing around and doodled a lot with veggies and was doing pictures with Gromit and giant vegetables. I was thinking of an idea about bunnies, rabbits stealing vegetables. And I knew there was a story in that somewhere. And then I was thinking, where - for a future film - where haven't we been with Wallace and Gromit before? You now, because in the short films, we went to film noir, Hitchcock, brief encounters, films like this. And then, I suddenly thought sitting in a pub in Bristol: "What about the were-wolf movies! And what if it were a rabbit, a big rabbit stealing people's vegetables before the annual vegetable competition". It could take on all the atmosphere and possibilities, like a vegetarian's horror movie. Like a were-wolf movie with vegetables. Because it would then be very Wallace & Gromit as it's not flesh and blood, not gory. It's funny because it's about vegetables.
ON: This is your second full featured movie. Compared to Chicken Run, how different was the making of Were-Rabbit?
NP: While it's very much the same technique, Chicken Run had different kind of problems in terms of how to do it, with the chickens being feathered creatures and how to do that with plasticine. In a sense, it is a bit similar to this movie here, where we went from plasticine to foam latex trousers to make the job easier for the animators. Rather than to resculpt them every time, the chickens had some kind of silicon and foam latex bodies that were sculpted first in plasticine and cast and molded. But yeah, it was a very different kind of film. When it came to Wallace & Gromit, I felt like I was coming home again, to my family. And I wanted to do it in the old handmade technique. I didn't want it to get too slick just because it's a feature film. Otherwise, you might as well do it on a computer. We wanted to get back to the human feeling.
ON: Does this imply that you thought Chicken Run was too slick?
NP: Well, I think it was endangered. I mean some people said the animation was a little bit ropy some times. In some places it is... it varies actually. But I think generally, it was our first feature and it was a natural thing that just hapens when a lot of people work on something. Then it goes towards being slick because everybody finishes everything. [removes a small dent on the Wallace puppet] And so, in this one, we tried to instil into everybody an ethos of "don't finish things too much. Leave fingerprints on it, you know. We might as well do it on a computer if it gets too polished."
The computers are the way forward, and there are so many people who do it well. But we might as well realize our own strengths. And we're very lucky now that there is so much CGI around: there seems to be an enjoying popularity for us because it's not computers. As long as we can remain original and entertaining and everything, it will be okay, I think. It's a matter of playing to your strengths.
ON: Did you have a hard time finding adequate voices for the characters?
NP: Yeah, the voices have always been important to me since Creature Comforts. And animating around voices is always interesting. Take Wallace for example: the voice dictates the design a little bit. I mean, you do the design first, and then, according to the way Wallace says "Cheeeese" make his mouth go wide [makes grimaces], just the way Peter Sallis' mouth does. And northern English people have a way of talking by using quite big vowels "cheeeeeese", "haallo laaad", "theey tooolk laiik thaaat alot" *brabel* [doodels around, imitating voices]
But yeah, I mean, it's important that a voice feels like it's coming from the character, that's why we choose Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter and the rest. The way they speak, they bring a certain quality. And especially as we were introducing two new characters, kind of aristocrats, into the movie. I wanted it to feel like a bygone time, another time, get people to speak in an old fashioned, English way.
We gave them voice tests. We even took clips from their movies and let Lady Tottington talk Helena's character in one of her movies, though I can't remember the film right now. Ralph's test was from The Avengers. It was the nearest character we could find, a true Englishman. We got one line and animated Victor speaking that line. And it worked, so we asked Ralph to do it, and then we did the tests again and again.
ON: When you're recording the voices, do you actually film the actors while they do it to see how they move their mouths?
NP: No. We did that a bit on Chicken Run, because it was interesting to see how Julia Sawalha ("Ginger) used her body language. Sometimes when she was talking she was moving her eyes like this... [demonstrates it] We got that from her and built it into the way Ginger would look. We were using her eyelids in a disgusted kind of way. But a lot of it is made up, really.
To get the voice in synch with mouth movements, we get in front of a video camera with the animators and act through miming to the voice. That acts as a guide for the animators. We don't want them to copy it, because it would become too realistic. But it works as a guide giving information, mainly on timing. It's a good way for me and Steve to convey what we have in our minds. We have a box of props and we often put some Gromit-ears on or a big Lady Tottington wig. We got lots of footages of us acting like characters, which I think is probably going on the DVD as an extra. Which is embarrassing! [laughs]
ON: You mentioned in the workshop that you first wanted to have a man and his cat, but then came up with Gromit, the dog. Are you more of a cat- or a dog-lover then?
NP: I think I like dogs more. I never had a dog, though; Gromit is the dog I never had. The ideal dog, he doesn't bark! But no, I never had... I never felt the need to, really. I like dogs. He [while petting Gromit] is more human in a way than Wallace.
ON: One last question: what's your favourite cheese?
NP: [laughs] My favourite cheese? I'll have to say Wensleydale. Otherwise, the politics would be too big in the UK if we got back to Britain and said another one. There's a cheese war going on at the moment in Britain. Apparently, they saved Wensleydale cheese factory because I was talking about Wensleydale in A Close Shave. The Factory was going out of business, but then suddenly boosted a trade and got back. We've mentioned another cheese, a new cheese, in this film however: Stinking Bishop. And everybody, all the press in England wants to know which cheese stinks; they think we're jumping in and saving them as well. But the guy, it's only one guy who makes like fifty cheeses a month, says: "I don't want to be saved; I don't want all this success!" [laughs]
ON: It was A Close Shave which saved Wensleydale?
NP: Yeah. It was. At the end, when Gwendolyn admits that she doesn't like cheese, Wallace says "not even Wensleydale?" [laughs] I've just chosen it because it's a nice cheese to say. A funny kind of northern cheese. [still laughing]. Wallace only likes cheese because we needed a reason for him to go to the moon and it just developed from there.
ON: Thanks a lot!
