Sci-Fi, Hello Dolly in WALL-E
Writer/Director Andrew Stanton Discusses His Disney/Pixar Film
In Part 1 of this roundtable interview with WALL-E writer/director Andrew Stanton, he admitted that his latest movie, which comes to theatres June 27th, is a major risk for a studio that has always pushed the boundaries of CGI animation.
In this installment, Stanton talks about pantomime, Hello Dolly, and the true theme of WALL-E.
How did you get the film Hello, Dolly in there?
“Isn’t that just the oddest choice ever? I’m going to get asked about that for the rest of my life (laughs).
“I originally used 1930’s French Swing music; I wanted old against the new. And then The Triplets of Belleville came out and I went, ‘I don’t want to look like I’m copying.’ I’m kinda glad that happened because it forced me to look harder and it broadened my scope.
“And so I looked at Broadway musicals, and I stumbled across Hello Dolly. I had done musical theatre in high school, and one of the standards is Hello Dolly. And I heard that phrase ‘out there’ in the song "Put on Your Sunday Clothes" and it was a complete gutteral (sic) aesthetic choice: ‘Out there!’ and then you cut to stars, and it just worked.
"And then I realized why it was working for me: because it’s about these two young guys, stuck in a small town, who just want to sneak away for a day, and have a life, and kiss a girl. And I thought, ‘That’s WALL-E!’ So, you’re going to meet WALL-E’s hopes, dreams, and soul in Frame One before you ever meet him.
“And then I found the song "It Only Takes a Moment" and then I looked at the movie footage, and I saw the two lovers holding hands. That was a big ‘Ah-ha!’ moment for me, because I have a character who can’t actually say ‘I love you’ but he can express it by holding hands. And when you get a gift like that from an initial inspiration, you take it as fate. So I ran with it (laughs).”
I’ve noticed both your movies, Finding Nemo and WALL-E, are quest films –
“There’s always a certain element of the quest in any story. In my mind, WALL-E’s a love story and Nemo’s a father-son love story so there are some similarities in that respect."
One of the big ideas I noticed in WALL-E was people making contact, whether it was WALL-E holding hands with EVE, or when the two humans accidentally touch.
“That was my theme: irrational love defeats life’s programming. And that was what these two characters were doing. They were literally programmed, and the irrationality of WALL-E suddenly having a soul and being able to care, would have an effect on everything else.
"We’re starting to be in a society where you’re able to distract yourself so quickly and so easily, and not have to do the real tough, but satisfying job of making contact with the person next to you and pushing relationships forward, which are messy and they don’t go as planned. But that’s the real reason you’re on this planet.
"So I thought, (using the metaphor of holding hands) was the best way to portray that thematically with everything else going on in the background. Because for me, the main story was just these two characters (WALL-E and EVE).”
What were some other inspirations? The title character felt very Chaplin-esque to me.
“We knew we were going into pantomime territory. We’re always going into pantomime with any of our movies, I don’t care how talky it is. If you go to any of our movies and turn the sound off, you’ll see us struggling to convey the story with the visuals, the actions, and the posing. So, we've taken a layer off, to allow you to appreciate that more.
“But it does create a void where all the other aspects of filmmaking – the music, the lighting, the camera work – have to raise their game and help in the story-telling.”
Some critics are going to argue, ‘the protagonist doesn’t have any dialogue–'
“To which I would argue, he talks throughout the entire movie!”
(Next up, Andrew Stanton talks about the environmental themes in WALL-E, and the working atmosphere at Pixar)
