And Tom McCarthy was also involved in the writing?
Yeah! You know Tom?
Well, I won't claim to know him, but I interviewed him last year when he was promoting The Visitor, and I've been following his work, having loved the two films that he's made as a writer-director.
Yeah, me too!
How did he become involved with this project?
Well, we were looking at The Station Agent as one of the many films that we were inspired by, and once we sort of found the structure of this. . . .
And Carl's about the same size as [The Station Agent star] Peter Dinklage . . .
He is! And he’s also, I mean, it’s a similar story, which is sort of a Casablanca story, or A Christmas Carol. You know, sort of a dead character coming back to life. So, I had met Tom, big fan of his film, and said: “Hey, would you know anybody who would be interested in writing?” and he said: “Well, how about me?” So, we got him to move out for about three months, and he did two drafts of the film, and that’s kind of how Russell was developed, during that time.
Speaking of Russell, I'm guessing he's of Korean descent?
Yeah. He was based on a story artist, Pete Sohn, who’s actually doing the short film that’s playing in front of this one.
Oh? What is it?
Partly Cloudy. They just finished it last Friday, or even this Monday. So anyway, he’s one of these guys who can do everything, too. He’s this great storyboard artist, incredible animator and designer, and he is just a really entertaining guy. He’s really funny. He’s one of these guys who has no filter. Like, when you show him something, he just has to tell you the truth, you know? And he reacts really strongly, so we tried to base the character on him. And then, of course, when we cast the voice, it shifted and changed a little bit, but yeah, it’s based on Pete. And then also on a friend of my son’s, whose actual name is Russell. It’s kind of an amalgam of those guys who are both just super-enthusiastic, and if he were here, he would just walk right in and sit down! Again [laughs], he’s kind of got no boundaries, so we kind of based Russell on that.
With Wall•E, a film that I consider nearly perfect, I nevertheless experienced a slight disconnect in the second half of the picture, when the infantalized humans were introduced, solely due to the fact that their ancestors were represented earlier in the film with live actors. I had trouble reconciling the overtly cartoonish design of the characters with the human form of Fred Willard, cartoonish as he may be. This was more problematic in Pixar's early work, from the grotesquely monstrous baby in the short, Tin Toy, to the doll-like children in Toy Story.
Yeah, I know what you mean. And you’ve probably heard about this idea of the “uncanny valley,” where the closer you get to “real” . . . . and so we try to stay on that side of it, and yet, there’s always this balance of believability, and I don’t know, I think we were able to sort of push that and prove that you can still get emotionally connected to characters that are basically a block! But, there was still some nervousness about that early on — are we pushing this stylized thing too far?
