Ronnie del Carmen, Peter Sohn on Up's Russell
Pete Docter, Bob Peterson Direct Disney/Pixar Animated Film
Oct 27, 2009
Disney/Pixar's Up was the biggest box office draw among animated films this summer, and may go on to top critics' polls for most beloved film of 2009.
In Part #2 of this exclusive interview, 'Partly Cloudy' director Peter Sohn discussed the process of making his short, which preceded Up into theatres. Now he and Up story supervisor Ronnie del Carmen reveal the inspiration behind the character of Russell.
S101: Chatting with animator Jason Boose, I learned that the character of Russell was based on you, Peter. Where did that come from?
Ronnie del Carmen: “As part of the Pixar roster, Peter often lends his voice to various characters as we’re studying them. When we were making Up, there was only Carl for the longest time, there was no little boy. When the little boy character was created, we were thinking, ‘What would this little boy be?’ He needed to be this antithesis to Carl.
“When we were talking about these things, we were always looking at Pete, we’d start using him as an example: ‘Yeah, like Pete.’ So when we were fashioning this little boy, all the characteristics were already present in this guy who was there helping us draw the sequence.
“And because Peter has this great ability to add charm to a character. If you’ve seen anything from Pixar, and you know the people who make them, you can see the person behind the creation. When I watch ‘Partly Cloudy,’ I see Pete. With Russell, we wanted that charm and that engaging character: eternally curious but always lovable, and I was thinking, ‘Boy, that was easy!’ (laughs)”
Peter Sohn: “I would remember all the caricatures you would do, when he was turning into that chubby boy, and you were asking me, ‘When you were growing up, did you do these kind of things?’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah, I have a Cub Scout book.’ It was a slow, kind of melding in while they were figuring out the story. But when I saw the Asian thing, I thought, ‘Oh cool! An Asian kid in a movie!’ Like in Temple of Doom: ‘Indiana Jones has an Asian kid buddy? Yeah, I can’t wait to see that!’ (Ronnie laughs)
S101: Minorities in movies tend to be a tough sell in Hollywood. Did you have any resistance with the character of Russell?
RdC: “Not really. It was all about the characterization. Once you see the pairing of the two characters, the fact that he’s Asian is really beside the point. When I travel with the movie in Asian countries, audiences appreciated the fact that while Russell was Asian-looking, we didn’t play up the fact that he was Asian.
“He was just a kid; he wasn’t a caricature. We were very careful to represent a child, not an Asian, because it would have thrown the story off-balance if we had emphasized it.”
S101: It’s fascinating because you have Carl: very set in his ways, blocky, immovable. And then there’s Russell: soft, round, high-energy. What was the process of building the dialogue between these two characters?
RdC: “There was also another person that Pete Docter knew, a young kid around his neighborhood whose name was Russell, who is a Cub Scout. This kid has no ‘Slow’ button, doesn’t edit what he says. He walks into a room and just says what he’s seeing. He doesn’t mean to be disruptive, he just feels like he’s welcome anywhere. He also has a short attention span; he’ll move off right away and onto the next thing.
"Pete Docter brought him into the studio and we watched him doing the tour, and he was just like a top: spinning every which way. He wasn’t annoying; he was quite charming but his energy level was so different from the other kids.
“That scene in the movie where Russell first walks in the house, when it’s hundreds of feet high in the air, he puts down his backpack and starts looking around: ‘I’ve never been in a floating house before. Oh look! Goggles!’ He’s completely into the next moment and that’s quite charming.”
S101: Was Russell totally designed just to be the antithesis of Carl?
RdC: “That’s one of the tools you employ when you’re trying to create a character: put them up in trees and throw rocks at them. For an old man, the complete opposite is a kid. If the old man’s uncommunicative and surly, you want a kid that’s bubbly and full of life. So those opposites will push all the right buttons in Carl: make him annoyed, break him out of what he’s used to. Which is what we’re trying to do.”
(In Part #4 of this interview, Ronnie and Peter discuss working on specific sequences in Up.)
 |
