Jack Black provides the voice of an overweight, out of shape panda named Po in the DreamWorks Animation family movie Kung Fu Panda. Po’s a panda with big dreams who doesn’t want to wind up working for the rest of his life in his father’s noodle shop. Instead, he wants to become an expert at kung fu and fight alongside his heroes, the Furious Five: Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Crane (David Cross), Monkey (Jackie Chan) and Viper (Lucy Liu). Po’s not exactly in prime fighting condition, but that doesn’t stop the lovable panda from following his dreams.
At the Los Angeles press conference in support of the animated action comedy, Black admitted providing the voice of Po allowed him to live out his kung fu fantasies. “When I was a child, I took the obligatory one year of karate,” said Black. “I believe I got a yellow belt. I graduated to yellow belt. And then I quit. I don't know why I quit. I got my colored belt and I was on my merry way. And then I also did some judo. I believe I made it to a green belt. But never kung fu. I'd always wanted to do kung fu and I'd seen the movies, all the Bruce Lee and the great television series that Mr. Carradine was in. I'd always been really interested in the mystical art of kung fu. It seemed like the most wise of all martial arts. So this was my chance to explore that world a bit.”
Black joked that now after completing Kung Fu Panda his kung fu skills are highly developed. Asked if he could break a board, Black replied, “With my mind. I don’t even have to use my hands. It's the highest level of kung fu.”
Although there’s usually not as much room to improvise on animated movies as on live-action films, Black revealed he was allowed to stray from the script and add his own twist on the character of Po. “I was allowed to go crazy. I would do what was on the page as written, and then they always allowed me and encouraged me to go crazy and have fun and explore all the different things which I did. I don't know how much they used of it, but they did use skadoosh so I'm gonna take some credit - writing credit. It won't say written by me.”
Because his character is involved in lots of action scenes, Black had to grunt, groan and scream like a panda in motion. The noises accompanying Po’s kung fu moves were recorded a little at a time over the course of production. “It's not like one of those things where I just came in and in one day cranked out the whole movie. I would come in and do a few scenes, and then a month later I'd come back and do a few other scenes, and then go back and redo the scenes that I already did but with slightly different dialogue tweaks,” explained Black. “And every time I would do three or four groans and screams and kee-yahs. For years I've been grunting and groaning and screaming for this movie. It was not all done in one sitting, no.”
Black’s fought on film before (Nacho Libre) and the process of voicing a panda training and fighting in kung fu wasn’t dramatically different. “I did use my body an awful lot, actually,” said Black. “I mean, you don't know it but they're filming us while we're doing our vocal recordings and they used it for reference. To get the proper sounds, I would really do the things that I was supposed to be doing. Like, if I was supposed to be tired from running, I would run around. It was very method acting in that way.”
Having provided the voice of a shark in Shark Tale and now a panda in Kung Fu Panda, Black’s ready to tackle another creature. “I'd like to be a winged creature, like an eagle. Although I kind of was an eagle in Nacho Libre. I had the eagle powers, so maybe next I'd like to be a cheetah. That's always been my favorite animal because of his speed. The fastest of all creatures. Also my favorite superhero was The Flash because he was the fastest. He ran the speed of light. I don't know why I like the fastest of all things because I certainly am not the fastest,” laughed Black.
As with most animated movies, there’s an important moral at the heart of Kung Fu Panda, and Black can connect with the film’s central theme of achieving your dreams by believing in yourself. “…Po becomes a dragon warrior when he realizes that he doesn't have to imitate his heroes, the furious five. He just has to be himself. If he can be himself completely and be the best that he can be, then that would make him a master of his craft. It wasn't until I started, for me, Jack Black, I didn't really have a real career going on until I found my own voice because for many years, I just imitated other actors and comedians that I loved. And then it wasn't until I started writing my own music and scenes and finding my own voice that I became ‘a master of my craft’. Didn't want to go down that road but then I did, I guess.”
Kung Fu Panda isn’t Jack Black’s only movie hitting theaters during the summer of 2008. Black’s also got a starring role in the comedy film Tropic Thunder written, directed by and starring Ben Stiller. Black confessed working on Tropic Thunder was a little difficult. “Even though it's a parody of war films, we were making war film level action sequences in the jungle,” said Black. “Well, it's Hawaii. We did it in Kauai so immediately nobody has any sympathy for me. They're like, ‘What do you mean? You're in paradise?’ There are parts of Hawaii that are like a jungle.”
The busy actor also has a starring role in Year One which will hit theaters next summer. “Year One is done, yeah. Had a great time on that one as well. That one was Harold Ramis at the helm directing and young Michael Cera who is very brilliant. I highly recommend doing a movie with Michael Cera if you get a chance.”
“We just played, me and Michael Cera just played two dudes wandering around in biblical times. We are not famous characters in the Bible,” explained Black.
They don’t play Biblical characters but they do meet some in the film. “Yeah, along the road. It's kind of like the Wizard of Oz in the Bible.”
