Catching up with the actor at the film's LA Premiere, I had the opportunity to find out what life was like on the set, how Scolari feels about working with his long-time friend, Tom Hanks, and why "The Polar Express" book has such an effect on children and adults:
INTERVIEW WITH PETER SCOLARI ('Lonely Boy'):
Can you describe the physical process of getting into the motion capture suit?
It’s an early call time, I’ll tell you. 5:30, 6:00… When you get a 6:20 call time, you think you’re sleeping in. The neoprene, or whatever that wetsuit was that we wore everyday, had reflective sensors on the knees, ankles, wrists, elbows, shoulder joints, to give the digital capture guys that size, so that they could correctly sort of reconfigure you proportionately down so that your body ends up looking like your body.
It’s live-action photography with 180 or more reflective [markers] glued on our faces every morning. And that’s the money stuff. I don’t mean what they spent money on – of course they did. God only knows how expensive each individual one was. But they were laid in with a great attention to the key muscle groups in our faces. There must have been 60 of them around our eyes. There were lots through our smiles lines and the muscles we use to articulate our speech.
[The process] took well over an hour and it’s not like building a big prosthetic and doing that all up. That didn’t occur in this movie. That would be the animator’s job. But the make-up artist, Danny Striepeke, the key make-up artist who has been the key on so many of Tom’s movies, he’s a switch watchmaker. So it’s not surprising the talent of the people he brought in. I think there were 6 or 8 of them in one trailer and 6 or 8 of them in another. I don’t know that there have been many movies that have this amount of make-up expertise.
Are you aware the markers are on you?
One of the eerie things is if you’d walk by the light on a set at a certain angle, you’d get like a camera flash – which is really cool. It took me back to the 70s for a while.
How difficult was it for you to get into the character of a lonely boy at Christmas time?
I think the trickiest part, which came from Bob Zemeckis’ precise direction, is that he said, “I don’t want you to act this. I want you to live this. Simple, understated.” This is not a happy disposable Christmas movie, and we love those. This is a drama. This is a journey and you really had to trust. I found it challenging whenever I thought about it. Bob was always able on any day to take you out of that and say, “You don’t need to help me here. You just need to remain still.”
Some of the most powerful moments in the film to me are when Tom [Hanks] looks over his glasses as The Conductor and there’s just a knowledge there, or an awareness. And for my character, just points when his eyes would finally come off the floor and he’d look up, because there had been that underplaying value. It’s exhilarating.
You didn't have the benefit of really working off any physical props, did you?
We had some big pieces of gray foam so that the motion capture photography would know what the size of the prop was going to be. Tom’s lantern as The Conductor. My little Lonely Boy gift that he finally gets at the end of the movie. But that’s all. The train benches were wrought metal. They looked like screens. So again, the motion capture would get just enough to be able to say what it is visually.
Was it more like theater work?
Yes. I’m so glad you said that. That had been in my head. Yes, it’s very much like theater work.
What was it like reuniting with Tom Hanks?
Oh well, I love Tom. We’re very close friends. We’re closer than the “Bosom Buddies.” I’ve been a part of projects that he’s done for the last 10 or 15 years, but that he’s directed. “From the Earth to the Moon,” “That Thing You Do.” To really work that intimately with him... And, of course, there were times when we had to be separated because Zemeckis said, “I’m not leaving you two to ruin my set with your ‘ha-ha Bosom Buddies’ comedy.” But much of what we did in those days was not on the page, and that was true here filming.
Additional Interviews from the Premiere of "The Polar Express:"
Nona Gaye / Tom Hanks & Robert Zemeckis / Daryl Sabara / Producer Steve Starkey
