WALL.E - Talking to the talent behind the film

Disney/Pixar’s latest animation, WALL.E, was released in UK cinemas on 18 July and is proving to be a major hit with audiences.

Director Andrew Stanton, sound designer Ben Burtt, producer Jim Morris and actress Segourney Weaver, took time out to talk to John Miller about this cute and captivating robot movie.

Question: Jim, can we discuss the look of the film, which is clearly crucial for letting the whole audience enter into the world of WALL.E, and convincing them about its futuristic setting?

Jim Morris: We wanted WALL.E to have a ‘filmed’ look, and Andrew [Stanton] wanted to give it a heightened sense of believability so the audience felt they were watching a real movie with a cameraman shooting it.

Question:  Andrew, take us through the germ of the idea to actually having the Eureka moment, when you knew you’d hit the jackpot and made a film regarded as a masterpiece.

Andrew Stanton: Well, it was at a lunch in 1994 and we were in the middle of making Toy Story.  We said: “What if mankind left earth and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off?” The idea of something doing the same thing forever to me was like the ultimate definition in futility and I just thought it was the saddest character I have ever heard of.

We also thought it should speak the way it was built, much like R2-D2. But we hadn’t even finished Toy Story or proved we could make a movie. So it took another five or six more movies for me to get more confident as a filmmaker and for technology to improve. So seven years later, in the middle of Finding Nemo, I found my brain drifting to this little lonely robot. I realised it was the loneliness that appealed to me, and the opposite of loneliness is love, so I thought it should be a love story. Then the idea combined with the sci-fi genre and I finally had confidence in the audience’s trust of Pixar.

Question: Ben, legend has it that you use everything in your life, even your wife during childbirth, as part of the sounds you create for the screen. Will you share that intimate moment with the world’s press?

Ben Burtt: When you are trying to create illusions with sound, pulling sounds from the world around us is a great way to help cement those illusions. You can record an elevator in George Lucas’s house and it will have that motor sound, like an elevator. But if you use it in a movie people will believe it is a force field or a space ship door opening.

On Invasion of the Body Snatchers, my wife and I went to listen to a sonogram of my daughter, Alice, and there was a great throbbing sound. At the time I was looking for sounds of alien pods germinating and it sounded exactly like that. It worked because it was a heartbeat from the womb and in the film the alien characters come alive.

Question: Sigourney, you joined this production quite late after Andrew [Stanton] plucked up the courage to ask you to be the voice of the ship’s computer. But I believe you are such a fan of Pixar that you almost did it for no money?

Segourney Weaver: Yes, I was absolutely delighted. I was a stalwart fan of Pixar and was delighted even when I found out why I was cast – it was not for my talent but because I was in Alien. It’s funny because all of the robot entities have so much character, soul and heart, but being a computer, I start as the voice of a rather evil corporation that’s got us into this mess. But by the end, I want to go back to earth and find out what a ‘hoe down’ is. So it was a wonderful world to enter, even as a computer, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Question: Sigourney, these guys are way too shy and full of humility to repeat what you said today about what you think about the quality of this film…

Segourney Weaver: Well, I think it’s a perfect movie actually. To me, a movie that succeeds is a movie that’s about much more than the characters. This is a totally captivating story –
adventure and romance, but within a striking context. It shows earth as might be if we don’t take care of it, and I have so much admiration for the way they’ve taken this on.

Question: Are you interested, after all the years spent making this film, to see audience and critics’ interpretation put on it, be it the obesity crisis or environmental issues?

Andrew Stanton: Well, I’ve been accused of making certain statements and then at the same time accused of making the opposite, so it’s almost more a reflection of the beholder than anything else. What I’ll stand behind is that I picked everything in order to reinforce the premise I had; that it takes a random act of kindness or love to get you out of your habits or routines. I happened to pick retail therapy, electronics and literal technology, but you can put anything in there that distracts from the real point of living, which is relationships.

I initially started with the plan, which was environmental. I loved the idea that WALL.E was a manmade machine with something inside him that had been lost on the rest of the world. I wanted him to meet something that was real, but also surrounded by manmade stuff, which was an organic plant.

Question: So, it wasn’t an elaborate way to let us all into the secret of your high school fascination for Hello, Dolly!?

Andrew Stanton: No, but it does reveal my background in high school theatre! I’m not saying I’m a Hello, Dolly! fan, I’m just saying that WALL.E has bad taste in musicals and I can’t do anything about that. Well, I was in the show. I played Barnaby – yes isn’t that funny?

Question: Ben, when you were experimenting with sounds before you came up with your genius idea for WALL.E’s voice, were the issues of the film pertinent?

Ben Burtt: No. Not really. It came out as the film grew. I accepted from the start the premise of the story. My first concern was what does a toxic wasteland sound like? I tried to accomplish sounds that were very lonely, and tones that reflected WALL.E’s isolation. But that agenda was not at the forefront. The reaction to the story coming at this time is a coincidence in that sense. Often issues are in films for legitimate reasons and, as entertainers, they give us an added dimension.

Segourney Weaver: Can I ask how you came up with WALL.E’s voice? It’s so sweet and there’s something like a baby calf about it. It goes straight to your heart like you are its mother.

Ben Burtt: Well, I was guided by Andrew [Stanton] and would audition sounds such as motors, beeps and tones. When Andrew first showed me 10 minutes of the film and the storyboards, it was the Hello, Dolly! vocal that connected me to WALL.E. There was a feeling I had of innocence. We had lots of experiments trying WALL.E as motor sounds only, and some that were beeps and whistles like R2-D2. But there was something very charming about that song. Anytime you’re asked to come on board a project like this you try to pick up from the visuals, from the script, gather those elements together and start weaving it. And that was one of them.

Question: Segourney, are you able to watch this movie completely relaxed and entertained – as you haven’t got the biggest part and no one is going to say that movie starring SW?

Segourney Weaver: I’m like a really happy hitchhiker. That’s why it’s so easy for me to talk about the movie. I don’t have any stake in it. I’ve seen it twice and fell in love with every moment.

Question: Andrew how much pressure was there from the studio to anthropomorphise WALL.E and EVE?

Andrew Stanton: We don’t have any men in suits in-house at Pixar, and fortunately when I came up with this idea it was during the near-divorce years between Pixar and Disney, so there was nobody checking in. And a lot of the design decisions were made in the year that you are most under the radar – right after you finish a film. I decided to jump right into developing this idea, so I got almost the entire design up, the whole of the first act and the characters in private. The pure artistic decisions about the look of the film also came from me.

Question: Does Michael Crawford know that, thanks to you, he’s in the biggest movie of his career?

Andrew Stanton: Jerry Herman, who wrote the music for Hello, Dolly!, called him [Michael Crawford] and said you’ve got to see this film, and apparently he was just moved to tears. Michael knew the songs were going to be used but thought it was just a snippet here and there. When he found out he felt very good about it. Those things make you feel like a million bucks.

Question: Segourney, you mentioned how warm the voice of WALL.E makes you feel. But in real life, what are the voices that drive you absolutely nuts?

Segourney Weaver: It’s always that very polite voice at the end of the phone that never hears what you are trying to do, as there’s no correct button to push. That would be the one.

Andrew Stanton: That’s a good one. I don’t like when my GPS tells me I’ve taken the wrong route when I’ve taken the shorter route. I don’t like when it can’t update and smarten itself.

Ben Burtt: I’m too much the day and night of voices to filter out and pick out one, and I’ll go home, have nightmares and hear Darth Vader breathing. But I think it might be the opening line to the sound of the movie. As much as I love it, it won’t go away!

Jim Morris: A spin on Andrew’s response: if anybody knows where you can get that John Cleese GPS that I’ve heard about, but never actually heard, let me know. It’s the one that calls you an imbecile when you take the wrong turn. That would at least be a fun way to experience it.

Question: WALL.E has come out in the US and has been called a masterpiece. Can you share with us your favourite moments from the film, perhaps ones that you’re particularly proud of?

Segourney Weaver: I think my favourite moment is when you see EVE destroy that ship. She’s so like my dream action woman figure; she’s so emotionally destructive and you don’t really understand her until she giggles and her eyes do that funny thing. Then you fall in love with her too. And the fact that WALL.E’s not intimidated by this gorgeous, sleek, destructive woman, just gives us hope.

Andrew Stanton: He is incredibly intimidated but willing to go past that because he is so enamored with her, which is how most men feel.

Question: Ben, what’s your favourite? You don’t have to be modest, you can pick one of your moments?

Ben Burtt: I really love the moment when they are in outer space together with the fire extinguisher. I think it’s the lyrical nature of that, the calm in the middle of the storm. There’s something about putting those two characters out there dancing in space that really takes me back to Peter Pan. That wonderful ability to be transformed into a magical place where you feel warm and completely secure.

Jim Morris: Mine is the first time you see WALL.E go back to the truck he lives in. You haven’t seen any other characters and you don’t really know what’s going on. You’ve had some clues about what may have happened, and then you suddenly see things about his personality and the articles he’s collected. The fact that he’s watching Hello, Dolly!, does this a lot and is even starting to dance a little, is sad and bittersweet. He’s charming but it’s lonely and desolate.

Question: Andrew, you can’t say the whole film is you’re favourite – although you would be entitled to make that claim.

Andrew Stanton: The sequence that’s special to me – a very small moment, but one of the most powerful – is when EVE is in the truck with WALL.E and she discovers his lighter. You catch him privately staring at her whilst she is staring at the lighter. To me there was a level of maturity in using the camera to tell so much from his emotion, and I felt that we tapped into that.

John Miller: I hope you have space at the Pixar offices for all the awards. Get your Oscars® speech ready!

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