As you all know, I was invited to the Red Carpet Premiere of Gnomeo and Juliet (now in theatres). During our trip we were invited to attend several interviews with the cast and crew of the movie. I was very excited to be a part of these interviews and wanted to share them with you.
The first person we interviewed was the Director Kelly Asbury. Here are some of the questions that we asked.
How do you feel with this Gnomeo and Juliet, taking the story from Shakespeare into animation?
When I first took the job, here’s how it all started.
My producer, Baker Bloodworth (who I had worked with on Beauty and the Beast years before)…I had just finished Shrek 2, it was 2005, and I was sort of looking for my next project and he called me and said, “Kelly, I think I have a project that you might enjoy, and it’s using the music of Elton John.” {laughter} And I was like “well, we know that works!” You know, thats good. And he said, “AND it’s about garden gnomes”. And I was like “Well, garden gnomes have never been done before, that’s a brilliant idea, we’ll do something new”…”AND its the story of Romeo and Juliet” and then there was this long pause…and, I thought to myself “Ok, well that’s a good story, but boy, that ending, it’s gonna be tough in a family film”. So we knew early on that, ok, well it can’t have daggers and suicide and poison. So I thought you know, that’s kind of a challenge as a director to be able to say, “ok, you know, I’m just gonna see what this little soup turns out tasting like”. And I hope we succeeded at it, I’m very happy with the movie, but that was the challenges as to how do we find a way for these characters to take control of their own destiny in that third act.
…And as far as Shakespeare is concerned, you know, Westside Story, Bonnie & Clyde, The Titanic, Avator, even Brokeback mountain are all really Romeo & Juliet – they’re just retold. Twilight is Romeo & Juliet. Grease is Romeo & Juliet. So when you have those elements, its kind of tried and true.
…It wasn’t really that hard to out together. Don’t judge a Gnome by the color of his hat, you know? That’s what I say.
Is it six years in the making?
Actually from the day I got the phone call asking if I was interested to it being in theaters February 11. I think it’s almost five years to the day that I got that phone call. That’s how long animation takes, you know, there’s so much development involved in it. And the movie had been developed for some years in development a little longer. Animated films and almost all movies, really do go through a lot of trial and error before they finally find their traction.
This one came together, the planets aligned and it started working. Usually when that starts working, is when they say, you know what? Okay, we’re gonna make it, you have this much money and here’s your release date. Then you have to make it. So that’s kind of what happened with this movie we just had all these dictates that we had to follow and we did it.
How different is it to make a “real” movie with real people versus an animated movie?
Well, I’ve never directed a live action movie. I’ve worked on one live action movie years ago and I’ve been on a lot of sets, and really it’s all storytelling, and it’s really all cinema. So it’s all really a lot of the same considerations you have to have to make the movie and the story structure and the characters and the acting and the reality of the world so that people buy into it, and the sincerity of the character so that people care. You don’t yell “Cut!” and you don’t yell “Action!” and that sort of thing. It’s actually probably not that different except for the practicalities of how you technically make it. The actual movie and the editing process and the structuring of it is no different. Among animation directors, a lot of us sort of feel that “I wish more people understood that you know, we’re making “real” movies”. You would not believe the number of people that will say, “So have you ever thought about making a real movie?” And I go, “You know what, Shrek 2 was a real movie!” “Go look at the box office numbers!” I would love to make a live action movie at some point, and maybe one that encompasses animation.
How did it come to the point to choose which songs from Elton John that you needed?
We tried a lot of things. From the very beginning we wanted the songs to be used by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. And we wanted mainly their love songs, because this was a love story and over time and we just found out what songs gave the best energy and the best emotion for that particular scene. I wanted to use the music in this movie the way they use it in The Graduate, with Simon and Garfunkel’s music, where what they’re singing about is not necessarily what you’re watching, but the emotion of the song supports what you’re watching. And that’s what we tried to do with the music. We tried a lot of things. We couldn’t use The Bitch is Back, at least not the lyrics, case in point, but we did use a little bit of the melody there so people knew what it was. I just don’t think we can have Juliet’s, you know, mowing and you hear bitch is back. I don’t want kids singing that.
As far as the voice talent goes, was there anyone that you really wanted to get?
Fortunately, everyone that’s in the movie, I really wanted. I was able to cast this. The way I cast animated features, in the best case scenario, is we design the character, say Gnomeo, I put the picture of Gnomeo up in front of myself and the casting director gives me a lot of samples of voices and they don’t tell me who they are. Sometimes you recognize them, sometimes you don’t. But in this case, I listened to maybe a hundred different male voices from different movies and said, “Ok, who is that one? That one looks right and feels right”. And it turned out to be James McAvoy. And so that’s how the entire movie was cast. Fortunately, I got Sir Michael Caine, Sir Elton John, Sir Patrick Stewart, Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Julie Walters. So I have Royalty in my movie!
Were the voices always going to be the English accent, is that what you wanted?
We decided that it’s gonna be set in Stratford on Avon, which is, which is Shakespeare’s birthplace. We wanted it to feel like the reason this story is taking place is because the characters are literally living in the soil that Shakespeare sprang from. So the cast was British. We do have a pretty multicultural cast as it turned out.
Kelly Asbury is the Director and co-writer of the 3D computer-animated feature film Gnomeo & Juliet. Asbury’s past directorial efforts include the Oscar-nominated films “Shrek 2” (2004) and “Spirit – Stallion of the Cimarron” (2002).
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