INT: George Miller

George
Miller is one of the most diversely talented directors in film
today. He has worked in an
apocalyptic future in the MAD MAX franchise to the barnyard
shenanigans or a pig named BABE. Add
to that, the thoughtful and courageous LORENZO’S OIL and the
wickedly fun THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK.
He now returns with a little penguin named Mumble who can’t
carry a tune, but can dance his little penguin feet off in HAPPY
FEET.
This is a surprisingly smart work of animation art and quite
frankly one of the best films I’ve seen this year (this coming
from a guy who loves horror films).

I
had a chance to talk penguin with Mr. Miller at the Beverly Regent
Hotel in

Beverly Hills

. Not only is he an incredibly
talented writer and director, he is also a wonderful human being who
truly cares about what he does and the people that surround him.
He is also very good at not divulging too much information
about upcoming projects (MAD MAX 4, for example).
So after you check out CASINO ROYALE this weekend, make sure
you catch HAPPY FEET as well, it’s one of the smartest animated
films I’ve seen in a long time.

George
Miller

Why
dancing penguins? How did that
come about?

I
saw a documentary, I think about eight years ago called LIFE IN THE
FREEZER done by the BBC and National Geographic. 
And even though, you know, coming from that part of the
world… what an amazing life they lead, the way they harness their
energy to survive.  They’re
half the size of a human, they’re massive really. 
I didn’t know that.

I
didn’t know that.

Yeah,
an emperor penguin is half the size of a human… 
And I thought, okay they live in the most harsh environment
in the world, the way they live with a community, the way they share
the warmth and share the load, it’s amazing. 
And the way they gave up their flight in order to dive really
deep.  The way they
almost fly under water and in particular the way they sing to each
other.  They all look the
same, you may have twenty-thousand penguins but each has an
individual voice, which we hear as squawking. 
And that’s they way they talk to each other. 
So that lead to the song, and a penguin comes along who
can’t sing but he can dance and then came the musical.

Was
Elijah [Wood] your first choice?

Yeah,
Andrew Lesnie, the cameraman that shot the BABE movies… he would
talk about Elijah and say how funny he was and what a great guy he
was and I spoke to him about the film. 
He was my first choice.  The
way the whole cast came together I was really surprised, I mean I
know that Robin Williams had some sort of falling out with Disney
after ALADDIN and I wasn’t sure he’d end up doing this but he
did and he did two roles.  He
blew me away.  And then
Hugh [Jackman], I knew he could sing and we needed someone who could
sing.

Nicole
[Kidman] we had done a lot of work with, she took on the role
without even reading the script. 
It was amazing.  You
know, they are all good people. 
And, you know we had a song, you know, Nicole sings the song
“Kiss” by Prince and we wanted to change two words in the lyrics
and Prince said no, no one changes my lyrics, which is fair enough. 
And so the guys from Warner [Brothers] said, if he saw the
movie he’d see how it fits.  And
we said we’ll show him the movie, we [brought] it to Minneapolis
where he lives and their showing him the movie.

And
just towards the end of the movie he grabs a guitar and starts
playing and I thought, oh, he’s lost interest in the movie but he
was looking for the chords of the final song of the movie and he’s
found it and he said, “Come back in two weeks, I’m going to
write you a song.”  Not
only did he let us change the lyrics, he was so taken by the movie
that he wrote this great song which was directly in response to the
movie.  Somehow the film
just attracted these people.

One
of the things I like about you’re work is that you always take
these people that are having to fight oppression, LORENZO’S OIL
especially, even THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK.
What is it that attracts you to kind of the “little guy”
fighting back?

You
know it’s probably not conscious, it’s basically… completely
unconscious but I’m always attracted to the hero myth; someone
who’s an outsider who is basically the agent of change. 
So people always say; what’s the common [factor] for Babe
and Max, Lorenzo’s Oil and Happy Feet? It’s basically, amongst
all of them in the subtext is the hero, the outsider who confronts
all sorts of forces and somehow through courage or being true to
themselves they come through.  That’s
exactly what Happy Feet is.  And
that’s not something… just as I never intended to make a
musical, I never intend to make a hero story but in its own way it
is.

Now
you mentioned Mad Max; Mad Max 4, where do you want to go with that?

Well,
we were about to do Mad Max 4 before Happy Feet, we were looking at
three months of shooting and the Iraqi War happened.
The American dollar collapsed against the Australian dollar
and we lost twenty-five percent of our budget.
And more importantly, we couldn’t get our vehicles because
of security issues. The ports
were held up and also we had trouble getting insurance.
So that was held up and then Warner’s had the script of
Happy Feet and said, okay, we’ve gotta move, one or the other 
But I have the script done and I have another film to do
after this and then hopefully…

What’s
your next film?

It’s
a small film I’ve been working on, I’ll announce it soon.

Okay.

I’m
gonna have a break after this and then… it’s not an animation. 
Not that I didn’t fall in love with animation but it takes
a long time.

Is
the going to be family oriented?

No,
it’s a [dark], weird story.

Excellent,
you do weird well.

Yeah,
I’m always drawn to projects when I’m curious about the story. 
And it doesn’t matter what it is, meaning that there’s
not one particular genre.  Wherever
the story is, is where I’ll go.

Let
me know what you think. Send
questions and comments to [email protected].