Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Incredible Millions

Here are two recent interviews interviews with filmmakers:

Brad Bird interview

Danny Bole interview

They're both worth reading, here are some highlights of the Danny Bole interview:

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In spite of Damian, who's a God-fearing boy, a friend of the saints, and a help to the poor, Millions never becomes 'preachy.' Was that difficult to do?

You can go through the whole filmmaking experience being careful, saying, "I've got to make sure this isn't preachy." But you can't make a film like that. What you do instead is concentrate on the essentials, the positives: the character and the kid playing the character. You're saying that this is the way he sees the world.
If the movie works, it's because you realize that life absolutely is that simple, the way Damian sees it. It's not like we're preaching at people and saying, "Don't you see it's that simple? Why can't you do that? Come on, cough up the money!" We're actually saying that, "When you look back at what you were like [at Damian's age], it was that simple. And that's not a bad thing." That's still us, even though we've moved on into the venal world of survival and competition.

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The power of those people with their money will always make sure that the industry delivers to them certain kinds of entertainment. But you have to be very careful that we don't turn the movies into opera, which is like, "They're good for you, they're a bit specialized, and they'll be a bit beyond some of you." Within that, you've got to be, like Scorsese says, "cunning." You've got to smuggle good ideas into something that attracts that person to the Friday or Saturday night film. That way they get a bigger kick out of it than they do from those films you're talking about. That's the job. It's not like you've got to ban the bad films... you've just got to make better films more entertaining.

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3 comments:

Queen Mum said...

Maybe I don't know the whole story, but I have very little respect for Disney. Maybe it would take too long to get into it here, but isn't Pixar Disney?

Andrew Price said...

No. Disney does not own Pixar. They have a partnership, but that's soon to end. (After the 2006 release of Cars.)

Anonymous said...

I saw Millions this weekend. It was very interesting. I had a hard time at the end with the naivte of the boy Damian. This could be because my own view is skewed as an adult. But it made for a very stressful last 20 minutes! I didn't know the director also did Trainspotting and Shallow Grave. Very interesting films that made a big impact on my friends in High School. I'd say its a movie definitely worth seeing. Katie