Interview With Bolt Director Chris Williams
Disney Animated Film Stars John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, Mark Walton
Mar 25, 2009
Last year's Bolt was a sign that the struggling Disney Animation was slowly regaining its mojo after Pixar co-founders John Lasseter and Ed Catmull took over the legendary studio. Although it made less box office than expected – due to opening opposite teen-vampire drama Twilight – the film was a critical success, earning an 85% Fresh rating on review compilation site Rotten Tomatoes.
In this exclusive interview promoting Bolt's debut on DVD (click the link for Dominic Messier's review), Suite 101 chatted with lead director Chris Williams about the film's themes, and what it was like taking over from initial director Chris Sanders.
S101: How are you feeling about Bolt coming out on DVD?
Chris Williams: “We’re really excited about it. We’re really happy with the film and we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished under John Lasseter. He took over Disney Animation about 2 and 1/2 years ago and it’s really transformed the place and really opened up creative avenues for all the artists here and we’re really hungry to make films that we’re really proud of. We’re really proud of how Bolt turned out and really anxious for people to see it in their homes.”
How was your feeling about Bolt’s box office? Right out of the gate, it got hammered by Twilight –
“Yeah, there was that Twilight movie; it had quite a bit of buzz, didn’t it? (laughs) Ultimately, Bolt did really well and we’re happy with that. Of course we’re thinking that it deserved even more, and we wanted people to see it. We don’t make these movies for ourselves; we make them for audiences.
I think one of the things we were proud of is that, even though that first weekend was really tough, that Bolt made even more in the 2nd weekend. You probably know how rare that is. We were happy that audiences enjoyed it, and the reviews and it seemed to earn a lot of goodwill. We’re feeling a 2nd surge of goodwill for the film as it heads to DVD: people are discovering it and hearing from friends that they enjoyed it. We’re excited about the chance for more people to see it.”
When you started on the film, there was already some controversy about you taking over from director Chris Sanders (Lilo and Stitch). What happened there?
“That is something that does happen in animation: Toy Story 2 and Ratatouille had similar back-stories, and it really comes down to creative differences. John and Chris just weren’t seeing eye-to-eye and sometimes John has to make some difficult decisions, and he had to make a change. The nice thing about how John runs Pixar and Disney Animation is that the movie really has to speak to the director: it has something that gets you out of bed and makes you want to come in and do hard work and make the sacrifices you want to make to work in animation.
"So John gave me an opportunity to start from scratch: we kept the premise of the film and nearly all the characters, but the whole storyline was a reboot.”
What was it that spoke to you about the film when you took over?
“The thing I was excited about was the fact that it was a movie about a dog. A lot of movies about dogs aren’t true to what a dog is, and I really wanted to take advantage of having a dog as a main character. I think the reason we all love dogs is they’re so loving and loyal. I really wanted to make the movie about that.
"For me, the movie is about trust: if you’re trusting and you give yourself over to somebody, you definitely become vulnerable and you can be hurt. But it’s necessary to take that risk in order to find real fulfillment in life. A dog really embodies that and that’s why we love them.
“We did have the high-concept premise that a dog believes the action show is reality, and learns that it’s fiction, it’s not reality. But the real thematic idea is about trust, and the risks and rewards of trusting.”
The design of the dog changed a lot. I saw a bunch of rough sketches and at one point Bolt looked at lot like Danger Dog from 101 Dalmations –
“Oh yeah. Very much so.”
How did you come to the final design for Bolt?
“That was a really fluid process. Because our character designer, John Mosier, came in with different iterations and we talked about what the dog should be. For a while, it was a bigger dog, more of a German Shepherd-sized dog, or even a little bigger. But we felt it wasn’t quite as fun in the action scenes, we wanted a more medium-sized dog to make him look a little bit more vulnerable and cuter. That was why he shrunk a little bit, and got cuter as we went into the design stage.”
What were some of your inspirations for the characters?
“A lot of that was due to John Mosier, a fantastic character designer. He’s someone with an immense knowledge of Disney history, and drawing from all the different films. His office is just mounds and mounds of books and papers and reference, so he was drawing from a lot of different sources. For me, it was just looking through those drawings and trying to find the characters together.”
(In Part #2 of this interview, Chris Williams talks more about his inspirations for Bolt, and what happened to his animated short, "Glago's Guest")
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