Cast Interview, BOLT

MoviesOnline caught up with executive producer John Lasseter, directors Chris Williams and Byron Howard, and actors John Travolta, Susie Essman, and Mark Walton at the Los Angeles press day for Walt Disney Pictures new animated feature film, “Bolt.”

For super-dog Bolt (voiced by John Travolta), every day is filled with adventure, danger and intrigue—at least until the cameras stop rolling. When the star of a hit TV show is accidentally shipped from his Hollywood soundstage to New York City, he begins his biggest adventure yet—a cross-country journey through the real world to get back to his owner and co-star, Penny (voiced by Miley Cyrus). Armed only with the delusions that all his amazing feats and powers are real, and the help of two unlikely traveling companions—a jaded, abandoned housecat named Mittens (voiced by Susie Essman) and a TV-obsessed hamster named Rhino (voiced by Mark Walton) -- Bolt discovers he doesn’t need superpowers to be a hero.

Here’s what the executive producer, directors and cast had to tell us about “Bolt”:

MoviesOnline: You have a very long development process for your characters in terms of how they walk, what they do, etc. How different was it to do an animated character? Did you have to get in touch with your inner dog?

John Travolta: Fortunately I’m already in touch with my inner dog, but secondly it is a new process for me, or was a new process for me, and although I had done advertisement voiceovers as a kid, I did radio and television voiceovers, I was very comfortable with the microphone, but I had not yet gone on the journey of discovering how animated features are put together. So our director here and his partner really helped me, guided me, through this process, because it’s to some degree a leap of faith because you don’t have the other actors with you, and you don’t really know what the animators are conjuring up as an end result. So therefore you have a bit of a “take me there, show me the way, and I’ll just give you a Chinese menu options.”  So, you do 15 to 25 versions of one sentence and then the animators hopefully like one of them and then they put it together, so that’s kind of it.

MoviesOnline: John, I wanted to ask you about working with Miley. You probably didn’t do a lot of voice recording with her, but how about singing?

John Travolta: We finally did the video together where we sang together, but we had to sing our part separately like Frank and Barbara did I guess on the duet. But we did do the video together where we sang together.

MoviesOnline: I’m sure your kids are nuts about her?

John Travolta: I was so popular when I got home after the news of doing a song with Miley, and doing a movie with her was big enough news and then singing and dancing with her was a whole other – I can dine out on that for months.

MoviesOnline: Could you relate to your character’s loyalty and commitment to friends?

John Travolta: I do have close friends in my life and I’m very loyal to them, and have been for many, many years so that’s the easiest part to identify with in this character was the friendship part. I’m a big guy in that area, of loyalty and commitment to my friends.

MoviesOnline: Did you draw on any experience with your action movies because this is a bombastic action movie in some places?

John Travolta: Yes, actually I did, because again I wasn’t sure, and Chris was directing me, I wasn’t sure how much of a reality to put – am I Clint Eastwood at some points, and I felt well, maybe a little bit, I’m John Travolta in “Broken Arrow” or these other action movies, “Face/Off,” and I thought, it’s an animated feature geared mostly towards young people, so I can’t do the edgier stuff, but I could do a modified version of that and then balance it with all the naiveté and the guilelessness. So, to some degree, yes.

John Lasseter: I think one of the things that we are able to tap into with Bolt are a lot of the great roles that John has played. He’s played real heavies, real tough guys and he’s always great. And I think that one of the reasons for that is that there is, if you don’t mind me saying this, sort of an innately likeable, genuine, sweet side to John that always is there, and so I think we knew that he was going to be the right guy to play Bolt.

John Travolta: Balance it out, yeah.

MoviesOnline: Was there a time where you were thinking of having Tinkerbell theatrical? What is this quality that is able to capture the attention of children but at the same time holds onto adults?

John Lasseter: It’s quality. Quality is the best business plan. It’ll be three years in January when they announced that Pixar and Disney were merging, and there were a number of projects already in the works that I jumped in to work on, and to help. And “Bolt” had just gotten started, and so it was one of the ones that I really rolled my sleeves up and said, this one I want to make great for this studio, for Walt Disney, the whole company, but also for this studio in particular and all the artists here. But the same goes for Tinkerbell. I’ve always loved the character of Tinkerbell. It’s been one of my favorite Disney characters. There’s a kind of real spunk and sassiness to her, and I just love the idea of fairies as small. They can fly, and the idea of where did she come from and were there more fairies like her, which originally came out of the Disney publishing, they did some really great books. And it had great potential, I knew it had great potential for the company, but again quality is the best business plan.

If you put out a bad movie, it’s not going to go anywhere. It’ll go for a little bit, but if you do a really good movie, then it starts giving it legs and people will like to watch it again. My wife always said, “Make sure you make your movies not for the first time someone sees it, but for the 100th time a parent has to suffer through it on video.” And it is so true, because honestly it’s about the depth of the characters, the storytelling, and finding that true emotion. Walt Disney always said, “For every laugh, there should be a tear.” And it’s about making things funny, and having the humor come from the characters, but also it’s about the heart. And those kind of emotions that you expect the audience to feel those, you can’t just tell – I hate the movie where they say okay – I feel like the filmmakers is saying, “Okay, be sad now, these are all the tricks I’ve learned, be sad now,” and you don’t feel it. But if you get people invested in the characters and the journey that these character go through, where you really like these characters, and then you get them into true situations, then that’s where those emotions come from, and that’s why we were very proud of “Tinkerbell,” and I’m really proud of “Bolt” as well.

MoviesOnline: This is the first Disney animation movie that’s like a Pixar movie. Did you bring over the Pixar story process or was this a different process?

John Lasseter: First of all, a studio is not its building, a studio is its people, and the one thing we did bring from Pixar is the notion of making the studio a filmmaker-led studio, a filmmaker-driven studio. And what that means is instead of an executive- led studio, where the stories are thought up by a group of development executives, and then a director is assigned to it, we instead go to the filmmakers and have faith in those filmmakers and the stories come from them and we all surround them with… The other directors and story guys are the creative brain trust, and we’re all very honest with them about their movie. There are no mandatory notes at this studio, and so that philosophy has been brought over, but other than that it’s all the filmmakers here at this studio. We’re like cousins. Every now and then we’ll take a film up to Pixar and show it to the brain trust up there, and the Pixar films will come down here and show them to the brain trust down here, but everything is kept very, very separate.

Chris Williams: Yeah, anyone in the hallway, I think, in the studio now feels like they can speak up about the movie, because they feel invested in it. They feel like anyone if you’re working at the studio, that’s my film too, and that camaraderie and I think that care goes a huge way in making a film, especially when you’re making a film on a tight schedule as we were. Because we knew the film had to be great, we knew we wanted for John and for Ed, who are running this place now, we wanted to make them proud of us and show them what we could do. And just the sense of pride that people have in a project is so much greater when you feel like you’re listening to them. So, that sense of open communication came with the Pixar package, and I think that’s why their films are so great. They beef their stories up. They don’t settle for just okay. They want to do something genuinely great.

Byron Howard: Yeah, I would say that when people say this feels like a Pixar movie, we take that as high praise of course, and I think what they really are saying is that the characters really resonate with that and there’s something very rich about these characters and I think that only comes when you really open yourself up to criticism and when you take the notes and when you are willing to dispense with ideas and build something better and that really all stems from John and Ed and I think that we all understood that this is John Lasseter’s first Disney movie, we all understood that this had to be great. Mark’s new here and now with John here, and so he’s a very inspirational leader, and I think everyone rallied around that idea of John being our boss, this being his first Disney film.

John Lasseter: And it’s interesting, because Pixar films are made in the model of Walt Disney and the films he made and these movie are absolutely for everybody. They have the humor, they have heart, and they’re very smart stories, and when you do something right, as Steve Jobs always said, they could really last for a very, very long time, is something he always talked to me about.

MoviesOnline: Mark, your character has this sense of unbridled optimism, but also captures this really great obsessed fan boy thing.

Mark Walton: You described him well. I’ll put that in the tagline on the movie.

MoviesOnline: What was it like getting into that character?

Mark Walton: As some people have said, I think it may have been a little bit of type casting. It wasn’t a whole lot of reaching or effort for me to get into the excitable, nerd, fan boy geek, because that’s pretty much me if you know me very well. I love animation, I’ve always loved Disney, and having the chance to work at Disney in the first place is pretty much an incredible dream I didn’t ever imagine would come true. Then getting to be a character voice in a Disney film, and in a really good Disney film, in a funny, well written, well animated character, it’s not hard for me to generate a lot of enthusiasm. So yeah, I’d say it’s pretty much me maybe dialed up a little bit more than normal.

John Lasseter: Did you guys hear the story of how he was told he got the part?

Chris Williams: The way we work is we’ll do scratch dialogue with the intention of somebody replacing it with the real actor that comes in from the outside, and Mark had been doing the scratch. Obviously the search was over, he was fantastic, so we wanted to find a way to tell him that he had it on camera. So, we set up a mock recording session, we told him we were going to re-record a line with a little bit more enthusiasm this time, and we changed the end of the line to say, “And I’m the voice of Rhino.” So Mark goes through the line and he’s all hyped up and suddenly he stops when he gets to that part of it, and he looks at me and I said, “You’ve got the part,” and he went bananas. We have it all on tape. He was jumping up and down and throwing the music stand around and screaming and going completely crazy. But it was a really genuine reaction and that’s why he’s so great as Rhino, because you sense there’s really truth there.

MoviesOnline: How many theatres is this going to open in 3-D?

John Lasseter: I will in a sec – over 900, they’re adding them as we speak. I love 3-D, I hope everybody gets an opportunity to see it in 3-D. It’s the first film we’ve made here, or was conceived from the very beginning as a 3-D film. We knew it would be seen in 2-D as well as 3-D. Disney has done two other animated films in 3-D, “Meet the Robinsons” and “Chicken Little.” Both of those were primarily made as 2-D films and then a crew within the studio came in and towards the end of production made the 3-D version. I love 3-D. I made a short film at Pixar in 1989 called “Knickknack” in 3-D and there were no theatres to see it in. I mean, it was zero, and so I’m very excited. In fact, people have a hard time believing this, but the year before that in 1988, I got married and I did my wedding photos in 3-D. And so I love 3-D, I’ve always loved 3-D, and so to have theatres now all over the world popping up to be able to see 3-D I think is very exciting. It’s very immersive, and when you see this film in 3-D you get sucked into the film that much more, and I think that “Up” will be the first Pixar film in 3-D, and all the computer animated films from here on at both studios will be 3-D as well.

MoviesOnline: I just got through watching Wall-E in Blu-ray on Home Video, there’s so much information in these films that shows up in Blu-ray. Are you looking also to put design elements in specifically for the down market home video for high definition home now as well?

John Lasseter: One of the things, I’ve always loved technology, and I always think about how we can entertain our audience that much more with new technology, with computer animation, 3-D and we were the first to do that Pixar. When DVD was just still a notion, we started planning ahead so we were the first to start mastering our films digitally, starting with “A Bug’s Life,” which was the first DVD out there. And then of course I’ve been a big fan, I don’t know if you remember the Laser disc, but the Criterion series and all that, the big box Laser disc sets, we’ve been big fans of those, so we save everything in our movies and we’ve always loved the special features on the DVDs, and now that’s become a big part of the DVD and the Blu-ray market. So, we are always looking ahead to plan for special things and we have something up our sleeves that we can’t announce quite yet for “Bolt” that is going to be exceptional.

MoviesOnline: Can you compare doing voice work to live action work? Also, growing up, did you have an animated character that you were partial to?

John Travolta: I’ll answer the second one first, one of my favorites was “101 Dalmatians,” but I also liked “Peter Pan.” Those were probably my two favorite animated features growing up. And as far as the difference is, you only need your voice really except when the animators need a little help with expression. Sometimes they’ll film you doing your voice and you can add another layer there if you want to help them with certain personal expressions, but technically you really only need your voice, and I learned that from actually doing TV ads when I was a teenager, because I was on Broadway and the producer from Madison Avenue said, “John, you’re not on stage right now. I just need it from your voice. I don’t need it from your face.” So, I learned to just kind of focus on the vocal expression to give cadence and different style there.

MoviesOnline: The Penny/Bolt relationship is the foundation for the film, but I found the Mittens/Bolt relationship almost could have overtaken the film. Can you comment on that?

Susie Essman: To me, what attracted me to Mittens in the first place was her story arc and how much she changes, and I kind of feel like she almost has the moral authority of the film. She’s the voice of reality of the film, and because he’s delusional, he’s out of his mind (Rhino), but Bolt is delusional because he’s been misinformed, because he’s been misused and he’s a victim, and I think once I find that out, once I find out that he’s not really crazy, he’s just been treated poorly, then I develop this incredible compassion for him and the friendship starts to evolve. And I think that the emotional arc of the film is the friendship between Bolt and Mittens, I really do. And I think what Mittens learns from Bolt is all about friendship and trust and loyalty. He’s the most loyal, trusting friend, and even in spite of everything, he wants to get back to Penny, even when he knows he’s not a superdog and he knows she’s lied to him in a certain way, he is loyal to his person, and the cynic that I am, typecasting, I learn from him again. I learn to trust and become a loving, trusting kitten again, which I think is so important.

John Lasseter: It’s an interesting structure because you do have to with very little screen time believe that what’s driving Bolt all the way through is his love for Penny, so we have to very efficiently make you really care for those two and really want them to be together. That central argument of the movie, this idea of making connections and the risks and the rewards that come with making those connections, really is played out between Bolt and Mittens. So, they had to play well together and we really needed great chemistry between all three of those animals on their journey, and so we were always tinkering with the balance between them to make sure that dynamic worked between all of them. And obviously there’s something very great about the distinct vocal ranges of the three characters and so we were thrilled to get our first pick with every character.

Chris Williams: As the animation was done on Susie’s character, we were shocked at how emotional you got as you watched her story play out, and that revelation that she makes late in the second act about her back story was so touching and it was very well performed.

MoviesOnline: John, what was it that attracted you to the project in the first place?

John Travolta: Well, what led me to the piece was – my good friends have done great animated features. Tom Hanks did “Toy Story,” Robin Williams did “Aladdin,” and I didn’t want to do an average – I was competitive in a certain way, if I’m going to do an animated feature, I’m going to do a great one. And Mike Eisner had offered me a couple and I didn’t quite think they were there. And then finally Dick Cook called and said, “I think we’re got the one for you, and it’s going to be high end,” and I think John was involved and Miley was involved and you were involved (speaking to Susie), and I thought, “Jeez, this is starting to look really like a high end animated feature, and maybe this is the one to say yes to.” And then I read the script although I couldn’t really imagine what it would end up like, because it’s only in the animator’s imagination. You have to take a little bit of a risk and you have to trust that it’s going in the direction that you want. So I thought, “I can play a dog with my eyes closed.” People always compared me to a dog growing up. I didn’t know whether to be insulted or not. I knew that they needed this other quality that Chris was talking about, this guy that’s in action movies vocal quality, and because I’ve done a slew of those I knew how to do that. Plus I knew how to be the side that’s more of the heartbreaking side, so I knew that I could help them. But whether it was the right one to do or not, I think it was.

MoviesOnline: What did you take away from the part?

John Travolta: It was more after I saw the finished product, it left me with something honestly, because you’re so busy doing a hundred versions of what you think is needed…

Susie Essman: And out of sequence too.

John Travolta: And all out of sequence, so you don’t really get a sense while you’re doing it of the impact you’re creating. You just know that. You’re hoping that the animators like your choices and they find the one out of the hundred takes that is going to be the one for the movie. So it’s really in the totality of the end result that you get the impact as an audience might, and so when I saw it I cried five times and I laughed probably a ton more than that. And I just didn’t know how clever this movie was really in the doing of it. Really only the visionaries had that. It left me as an audience touched and wanting to go home and hug everybody I loved including my pets.

Susie Essman: I also think when you have kids and you see it, when I saw it I was like, “This is the movie I want my kids to see.” There is a message in this movie that I’m happy – because there’s so much out there that I don’t want them to see, and when I saw it I felt like this is something that I’d be so happy to have them see.

John Lasseter: I just want to say one thing about how difficult it is for actors to do this. I think it’s one of the toughest acting jobs because they really do not have the inspiration from the set, from the other cast members, if they’re on stage from the energy of the audience, from even the costume that they’re wearing. They really are just in a studio with a director and they have to go deep inside them for emotions, for energy. We’re always listening for making it sound like it’s natural – what we’re looking for as far as energy. There’s also ambient noise. As a director, you have to talk to them about, “Okay, they’re in a moving car. There’s going to be a lot of ambient noise.” And what’s interesting about animation, other than live action, is that everything has to be slightly faster and slightly louder for it to sound natural in the animated world.

And this is something at the beginning it’s hard for them to comprehend, but what we like to do is every time we have sessions with them, we like to show them, okay now we’re showing you from the last session, here’s your voice in there. And the more they see that, the more they understand what they need to, but they are always recording before the animation, and we take videotapes of them just for reference purposes and it’s there for the animators to be able to see, so that while their characters don’t necessarily look like them, there’s a lot of facial gestures and things like that that do find their way into the animation performances, and so this is where the original voice actors really, really, really influence the characters. This is when people think, well actors don’t have much to do with animation. No, they have a lot to do with animation, because their performances are the inspiration for all of us to create the animation and the characters.

“Bolt” opens in theaters on November 21st.