Page 5
George, can you talk about your choice of the music from the ‘70’s and ‘80’s and how that might connect a lot with the parents?
George Miller: “We spent a lot of time talking about the music. Obviously, we went for iconic music given that all the penguins had to [be different] with each having a unique song. So, who is more iconic than Elvis?"
Robin Williams: “Or Prince. Or the artist formerly known as Prince, now back known as. But, for a little while, he was known as a little squiggly symbol.”
Miller: “But his christened name is Prince.”
Elijah Wood: “Prince Rogers Nelson.”
Williams: “Then Michael’s two children are Prince Michael, Prince Michael.”
Miller: “Anyway… So, obviously, The Beach Boys are iconic, Beatles... Obviously there are songs that I like, but the average of people working on this film is 26. Even a song we had at one point, I can’t remember, Elijah heard it and he said, ‘You’re not gonna use that song on a film that I’m in.’ He didn’t say it that way. He said it in a really nice way and people came up to me and said, ‘Look, Elijah hates that song. It’s so uncool.’ I said, ‘Really?’”
Wood: “And now I can’t remember what the song is.”
Miller: “I can’t remember what it was but I said okay because Elijah is such a music nut, and Robin too. We went endlessly through songs. Alan Horn, who runs Warner Brothers, was in a band when he was a young guy and said, ‘Look, let’s get great music.’
I was very pleased at the end of the movie when we wanted to change some of the lyrics of a Prince song. We wanted to change the word ‘sign’ to ‘song’ when Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman sing Kiss. Prince never changes the lyrics to his songs, which is quite right. Gary LeMel and Gary Hinkman from Warners said, ‘Well, if he’d ever seen the movie, he’d see that it was appropriate.’ [Prince] said, ‘Well, show me the movie.’ So they took it to Minneapolis and he watched the movie. Towards the end, apparently, he picked up his guitar and started strumming, looking for a chord. He said, ‘Give me two weeks.’ I said, ‘What?’ ‘I’m going to write a song for the movie.’ He not only let us change the lyrics but wrote this beautiful song for the end of the movie. So I thought, ‘Well, he likes the movie.’ It was a big moment for me because it went from someone saying ‘no’ to giving us a song, which I found was very responsive to the movie. He somehow was inspired by it and he saw it in a pretty rough cut.
The music came from a lot of different sources, a lot of different suggestions. Everyone has got their favorite songs. They certainly weren’t only my favorite songs, they were songs that had to fit the drama. It was like a Rubik’s Cube, trying to get everything to fit. And then we had John Powell who arranged and wrote the score of the movie. He started off classically. He’s from a classic old English [background]. He’s a classical musician but he kind of is somebody who said, ‘I’m a music slut. I’m addicted to every form of music,’ and it proved to be right. He was able to take these very complex songs and rework them, mash them up, and do that well.
I’m not musical but most of the people I work with were. Even Robin, I had no idea he could sing. I remember saying to him, ‘Do you want to sing? It’s in Spanish.’ He said, ‘Well, I’m not sure I can do it,’ but he said he used to try to sing a little bit in that español style.”
How far did you want to push the line of the leopard seals? Kids were upset at the screening.
Miller: “In the case of the leopard seal, in all enduring storytelling to children, you go back to the obvious ones, Hansel and Gretel, Pinocchio, Bambi, all the classic Disney, were the high water marks...”
A large part of the family audience that will see this are members of the Evangelical or Fundamental Christian communities. How will they take to the fundamentalism and stodginess of the elders in the Emperor Penguin community? Also, the idea of global climate change is something they don’t acknowledge.
Williams: “Even evangelicals realize that Pinocchio's father was a carpenter too. That's the old joke.”
Miller: “That’s right. In all those stories, the reason we tell them to children is to show them to confront their fears. The point of the leopard seal, as scary as the leopard seal is in the beginning, he becomes a figure of fun. With the help of the Andeles, Mumble laughs at the thing that terrorized him. I think that's an important lesson: your fears are something that can dissolve if you confront them. This is common in storytelling.
As far as the stodgy world in which we live in, we've all been, whether at school or in our lives with our parents, there are always the people that say, ‘Don't things this way. Do it the other way.’ However, people want to interpret the film politically, it's in the eyes of the beholder. I don't think it has any real issue in terms of evangelicals. We don't have evangelicals in quite the same way in Australia so I'm not sure... They're basically conservative and don't believe in climate change? Is what you're saying? Well, (laughter as Robin makes faces and gestures and goes into an undecipherable devil voice into the microphone) there's always those authoritative characters in stories.
And for people who don't believe in climate change, in the country where I come from – Australia - we have no ozone. We have the highest rate of skin cancer in the world. The further south you go, and more particularly, we've had the worst drought on record that's continuing, so I can see gardens drying up. Something's happening out there. We can’t be in denial about it.”
Williams: “The oceans are rising, but hey.”
Miller: “Sydney's real estate is under threat near the harbor because the water's rising. So, all those issues are present in the world and should be addressed through stories."
