'The Princess and The Frog' is the first film to emerge from Disney animation since John Lasseter took over and its set to be a return to the glory days of Disney, not only is the film hand animated, but it is also a Broadway style musical, with songs and score by Pixar regular, Randy Newman. Movies.ie caught up with Lasseter to talk Disney, animation and the magic of New Orleans...
What are your thoughts on ‘The Princess and The Frog' being in 2D instead of the ever popular 3D?
JL: I love it. It's one of the films that, in my whole career, that I am most proud of. It's the return to 2D animation but more importantly it's a return to the classic Disney film. I grew up on Disney films and I always remember the films that Walt Disney made. Even as an adult there is just something that you get from those films. There is sincerity, there is humour, there's heart, the great music and how beautiful the films are. That's why I do what I do for a living. I was trained by the artists who created those films; they were my teachers, my mentors, here at the Disney Studios. My interest in computer animation which, right from the beginning, led to me to go up to Northern California and work with LucasFilm, and then we became Pixar. I really enjoyed using and developing the new technology but the film making was always Disney style at heart and I always prided myself in choosing subject matter that leant itself to the medium that I was creating a film with. While I was at Pixar I didn't understand why the Disney studio wasn't making these kinds of films, why they felt that the audiences around the world were not interested in these kinds of films anymore and they decided not to make hand drawn animated films any more. It really felt like the audiences were only interested in watching computer animated films. Never in the history of cinema has a film been entertaining to an audience because of the medium it was made in, it's what you do with it. The story you tell, the characters, the vision of the film. I felt very strongly that 2D animation became the scapegoat for bad storytelling.
Did you use any of the past Disney Classics as inspiration for The Princess and The Frog?
JL: I really wanted the artists to aim high, we got all these great artists back and one of the things that I have noticed happen with certain animated films, that each artist is responsible for a character and they design it and you get a lot of different designs in the same movie and they don't feel like they live in the same world. Some are more realistic and some are more cartoon-ey. So we sat back and we studied all these Disney films - we're kind of students of his work anyway - and it's interesting, when you look at Walt Disney and his artist's style, there is a particular style that is being developed from back in the Mickey Mouse cartoons through ‘Snow White', all the way up and the pinnacle of that style was ‘Lady and the Tramp'. After that was ‘Sleeping Beauty' which became very stylised - it was in the late 1950s - which was kind of the thing to do back then. They are great movies, but the style changed. So we looked at ‘Lady and the Tramp', and to all of us working here in animation, it's a tour de force of Walt Disney. Everything about that film is so beautiful and perfect and it's of the same world. The animal designs, the human designs, the backgrounds, everything fits together so perfectly, yet it's very artistic. We were very inspired by that so we held ‘The Princess and the Frog' up and we said ‘we want this to be like ‘Lady and the Tramp''. We also looked at ‘Bambi' for how the forests and the natural environments were done in such a gorgeous style. So that became the model for the bayou scenes. I got all the animators working and talking together and making all their designs fit, we never did anything in isolation, we wanted to make sure that all the character designs were perfect.
When in the process did the idea come up of making Tiana an African-American heroine?
JL: We're very proud to have our first African-American Disney princess as well. Anika has been unbelievable with this character. We worked very closely with African-American leaders all over the country because we wanted to do this character and this story right. We didn't want to do anything that would upset anybody. Anika was a tremendous help. She believed from the beginning in doing this, she is so excited to be the first African-American Disney princess and she did both the singing and the vocal acting. She's been with us since the beginning and has been a tremendous advocate for this character.
Will there be more hand drawn animated films from Disney?
I am still young! And this studio is still standing! [laughs] What is exciting about the Disney animation studio is that it's the only studio in the world that has the highest quality hand drawn animated films and the highest quality computer animated films being made in the same studio. Pixar is 100% computer animation, (Japanese animator) Miyazaki and his studio just do hand drawn animation so all the other studios focus on just one medium but we really believe in both these mediums and it's choosing the right subject matter for each medium.
It could be said that the public perception of New Orleans is very rooted in images of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, what impact do you hope that this film will have on the perception of New Orleans?
JL: My dream is that audiences around the world will look at this film and fall in love with New Orleans the way I love New Orleans and want to hop on a plane and go visit there because New Orleans is still there. I was just down there last week and I met the mayor, Ray Nagin, and he was saying as he travels around the world, people ask ‘is there still water in the streets?' There are still many devastated parts where the houses are gone and people are slow to come back to those areas but when you come back, the French Quarter wasn't really damaged, the Garden District wasn't really damaged and that is still there and still strong. The food is still as good... The gumbo, the beignets... [laughs] And the music is still in the streets, it's just spectacular. I am hoping that people will look at this and discover New Orleans. It's interesting... My movie ‘Cars' was about Route 66, this beautiful highway that went right across the United States and recently, in the summer, I drove Route 66, I was taking my son to college and visited a lot of the friends I had made along the road and they say ‘John, you don't know how that movie has changed the road'. Families are coming and taking vacations to travel Route 66 because of our movie ‘Cars'. I was so touched by that. Now thinking about Princess and the Frog and New Orleans and I am hoping the same comes. Number one, we want to entertain the audiences but a little side thing, if they want to go and visit New Orleans then that's something special.
Words - Brogen Hayes
Check out more interviews with the cast and crew on Movies.ie over the next week.
THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG is in Irish cinemas from Feb 5th 2010