The Princess and The Frog Interviews

MoviesOnline sat down with executive producer John Lasseter, directors Ron Clements and John Musker, and composer Randy Newman to talk about their new film, “The Princess and The Frog.” The film is a return to the timeless world of hand-drawn animation at Disney from the revered team who created “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin” and features music by Oscar-winning composer Randy Newman.

“The Princess and The Frog” is an ageless fairy tale, but with a fresh twist that combines everything we look for in great stories:  comedy, adventure, music – and most of all, the kind of heart that always sets Disney animation apart. In this telling of the story, the girl still kisses a frog, but the result is quite different. It’s only one of dozens of surprises in this mix of wacky humor, thrills, melody and emotion. The film features Disney’s newest princess, its next great fairy tale and the Studio’s return to the Disney musical, reminiscent of classics like “Beauty and the Beat,” “The Lion King” and “Aladdin.”

Here’s what John Lasseter, Ron Clements, John Musker and Randy Newman had to tell us about what it was like returning to the classic art form of hand-drawn animation and creating an all-new score for the feature in a range of styles, including jazz, blues, gospel, Dixieland and zydeco.

Q: Randy, how was it to embrace, play and reinvent all these musical traditions that are such a big part of the movie – zydeco and jazz and all of that?

Randy Newman: It does embrace a lot of styles. It’s 1925 also. Luckily, I love the music that was happening. I love Cajun stuff and the jazz of the period, so I took to it well and it interested me. Even if it hadn’t interested me, I would have done it. (Laughs) It was a fairly painless experience writing the songs.

Q: John, could you talk about going back to this kind of animation? Was it hard to find people who could still do it and is there any CGI?

John Lasseter: You know, when I was up at Pixar, when all the studios down here decided that they were not going to do hand-drawn animation any more, it broke my heart, because never in the history of cinema has a film been entertaining to an audience because of the technology. It's what you do with the technology. I really felt like they were blaming poor performance of their movies on that it was hand-drawn as opposed to computer animation. When the merger of Disney and Pixar happened and I returned to the Disney studios, the very first decision we made was we're going to bring back hand-drawn animation. Then we hired John Musker and Ron Clements back to the studio. As we started working on the film and getting people to come back, it was so exciting, because some of the artists had left the studio that were working on hand-drawn animation because they didn't want to be retrained for computer animation. Some of the artists were retrained. So we brought both of those groups back together, and never ever in my career have I worked with a group of artists that had more to prove to the world that this art form is spectacular.

When you see the film, it is just gorgeous from beginning to end. I believe strongly that there are certain kinds of things you can do with hand-drawn animation that you still can't do with [computer animation]. When you watch “The Princess and the Frog” and look at the amazing animation of Louis The Alligator — I'm not sure that would be quite the same way in computer animation. I always say that you look at “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and the animation of the dwarfs themselves is something that's pretty much impossible to achieve in computer animation — that fluidity, that squash and stretch, that kind of stuff, it just works in hand-drawn animation. Also, the rich painted backgrounds.

As we got the artists together, we took a look at the films that Walt Disney made, because I asked them to aim high. I said, let's make great art. So we chose two films — “The Lady and the Tramp” and “Bambi” are the two. “Bambi” for the bayou scenes, the nature, the way that was represented in there, almost an impressionistic point of view at times, and then with “Lady and the Tramp,” the scenes of the humans and the architecture of the character design was the pinnacle of Walt Disney's personal style.

John Musker: I would add just one more thing. Not only was it not a problem finding the staff — people were so eager to work on the movie, it was actually a dream staff of the best artists you could imagine. We got -- in terms of animation clean-up, background painting, effects — everybody who had worked in the medium, no matter what they were doing, and if they'd moved to something else, wanted to come back and do it again. It was pretty much across the board. So it was really one of the strongest staffs of artists I think we've ever had.

Q: What was the inspiration for the “Almost There” sequence?

John Musker: Actually, it's inspired by Aaron Douglas who was one of the great African-American artists during the Harlem Renaissance. The “Almost There” sequence has a very stylized art deco look to it. We really wanted to do something which was of that period, of the 20s and 30s, so we had this illustration and Sue Nichols, one of our visual development artists, had brought Aaron Douglas's work to our attention. He was a great artist who drew in that very geometric style, and we thought it really reflected that period and would make that song kind of distinctive and separate it from the rest of the movie. I think what's cool is that at the climax of the movie we get to see Tiana's dream realized in this kind of real world. You take those kind of stylized restaurant and art deco shapes and we made them dimensional, so you've got both her fantasy and then the actual reality of it. You get to see it from two different points of view. So it was fun. Eric Goldberg, the great animator, supervised the animation of that sequence, and he really enjoyed working that kind of stylized unreal thing. It was very signature, I think.

Ron Clements: Eric Goldberg animated the genie in Aladdin and he did Louis in this movie. John (Musker) was referring to Louis. [Eric] is one of the star animators that we had.

John Lasseter: It was also great storytelling by John and Ron in the use of style. Everything in the film is there to help tell the story, and the fact that her dream is wrapped around that one piece of paper that her father gave her — right at the very beginning of the film, she carries it with her constantly, so as her dream through the song unfolds, it works so well to then take the style that was in that piece of paper, and blow it out to the whole sequence. I think it was just beautiful storytelling.

John Musker: We were really happy with Terrence [Howard] playing the father. He was sort of the emotional fire that kept Tiana going through the course of the film, the anchor for her. And Terrence's performance, we were so smitten with it. It was very warm and very heartfelt and he really helped propel her dream.

Ron Clements: Terrence did his [part] in one session. It was election day a year ago that he did his recording.

Q: Randy, what kind of guidance were you given by Ron (Clements) and John (Musker) about writing the songs? Did you have the script or did they tell you “we need a zydeco song here and Cajun there” or what? Also, I believe some of these songs may be up potentially for an Academy Award. Which ones do you favor as potential nominations?

Randy Newman: Oh gee. I’d like to talk about the Academy for about a half an hour, if you don’t mind. (Laughs) I know it’s not about me, but... Not really! (Laughs) No. I have no idea. I liked “Down in New Orleans” quite a bit. The waltz turned out very well. But I have no preference or expectation. I had fairly explicit instructions. It’s what I asked for. You know, the type of song is almost suggested by the assignment itself. It was obvious that Ray is from Cajun country and that’s the kind of thing that he would get. But they were specific as to the more adjectives I can get, no matter how simplistic it is. Like with “Almost There,” ‘This is a happy song. It’s meant to show who Tiana is, that she can see her goal and her goal is in sight.’ They were very specific. I often gave them back what they put on the page, essentially.

Ron Clements: We wrote the Facilier song. We did write a scene version of that where he’s basically doing a card reading and Randy took that and he musicalized the thing and added way more. I mean, the great stuff of “C’mon, shake my hand, shake a poor sinner’s hand,” that’s all Randy and his idea for that. And “Friends on the Other Side,” that was his title, his concept for that song, to have that be that title. We talked about a general style of song. We knew he wanted to do a reading in the scene, but then Randy took it from there and really invented all the rest.

John Musker: We were surprised. We were originally thinking that the scene would have music and then go into dialogue as he did his Tarot card reading. Randy actually musicalized the entire thing and put all the information within the music which is very, very tricky to do. He did a beautiful job with that. It wasn’t what we were expecting but it was better than what we expected.

John Lasseter: And the inspiration of his lyrics for “Friends on the Other Side” actually kind of informed the character as a whole and kind of his arc. We kept pulling that in. It really started with Randy and we kept pulling that in all the way through his comeuppance at the end. And then we had the idea to reprise the song for his comeuppance. That’s one of the things about animation. You don’t just write a script and make the movie. It’s this constant journey in plusing the story and evolving and refining. I think working with Randy, and all the years I’ve worked with Randy, it should give him the adjectives, give him the emotions, to talk about the underlying emotion of what’s going on and he needs to know. In this case, it’s a breakdown in song and musical so he needed to know story-wise what’s going on and all those things he gave. And then, we were inspired by him and by what he did and changed things, and he would take it and go “Let me tweak this because I’m inspired now by what you guys did.” So, it was this real wonderful give and take.

Q: I think this is one of the best scores you’ve ever done for a film. I’m interested in your reaction to when you see your songs realized on the screen, when they’re given utterance by a character like Louis, the Alligator, for example, how do you feel?

Randy Newman: I feel and am cognizant always – despite the abilities of the actors and the voices that they give to the characters – how miraculous it is that human beings are capable of that kind of animation. It’s just a beautiful looking thing. It’s too small to say that the song is enhanced by what it looks like and what the people sound like. But certainly, in every case, Anika’s (Anika Noni Rose) song and Jim’s (Jim Cummings), they did really well by the songs. I couldn’t have asked for a better representation and all of it is subordinate to the picture. I had no thought of anything standing alone or “God knows you’re not going to find somebody to sing ‘If I Were a Human Being,’” No, though some people could legitimately do that. (Laughs) I’m glad, first of all, that both Johns (John Lesseter and John Musker) and Ron think that the score served the picture. I hope that’s true.

John Lasseter: I just want to add one thing. What’s very important for me in making these films is that we wanted to make a Disney animated film, something that, on the one hand, feels like a very classic Disney animated film, yet is brand new. To me, these films are like an engine that pulls a big train. There’s no other company like the Walt Disney company to take your characters and make them come alive and stay alive beyond the boundary of the film. I had the fortunate opportunity just last week to go down to Disneyland and see. They have this show called Tiana’s Showboat Jubilee at Disneyland and it’s so amazing to hear Randy’s songs in some Mardi Gras parade that comes out of New Orleans Square and goes down to the Mark Twain Steamboat and they use the Steamboat as a stage and it’s the most perfect setting. Talk about synergy. It’s just unbelievable how wonderful this is. It brought tears to my eyes to hear Randy’s songs now sung at Disneyland and you realize how these songs are so perfect for the movie, but also perfect for the longevity of these characters within the Disney Parks and the books and the records and the toys and everything that’s going on, and it’s just exciting that this is the beginning of it.

Q: Randy, I’m interested in your process. How did you prepare for this production as opposed to how you would prepare for another one? Did you have a model in mind as a lyricist and a musical creative person in this genre?

Randy Newman: No model in mind that I can think of. But whatever picture I do, I listen to – if it’s a period thing, which many of them have been, I can’t get out of the 20s lately – I’ll listen to a band of Fletcher Henderson or of Bennie Moten or King Oliver, The Hot Five, The Hot Seven, Louis Armstrong, I’ll listen to a great deal of Cajun music, and then those function as models for you. It’s clear what to do. It’s very well delineated how the songs had to be, what type of song. I mean, you’re not going to have “Ray, the Firefly” sing a song and have a -- well I had a little orchestra with him but I mean it’s not – it still sounded like one violin and an accordion and a harmonica. I listened to Bessie Smith who’s about the best singer I’ve ever heard. I’d heard her before. But, like that, in a way I sort of knew where to go for it.

Q: In the process of creating the score for this film, what was it like for you to work with such a talented group of musicians and singers?

Randy Newman: It was, for the most part, a pleasure. There’s some creative friction at times, but you know very little. I just did what everyone told me to do. (Laughs) It was a pleasure. I was worried. There were things that happened. The girl’s original name was Maddy and I wrote a song for Maddy, a couple of them, and they changed the name to Tiana. And the reasons are, is that it’s a fairytale. I said, “Whoa! Is this a science fiction movie? Can you find a Tiana in the New Orleans phone book in 1925?” And, you know, that’s really not the point, subjecting things to that kind of journalistic verisimilitude. It is a fairytale. I think it’s telling that Anika talked about Snow White and she wanted to see a chocolate brown [Snow White]. If it does something like that, that would be a fantastic thing.

“The Princess and the Frog” opens in theaters on December 11th.