Hello. I'm Sam Fell.
And I'm David Bowers. And welcome to the director commentary on Flushed Away.
With the opening shot of the movie, London.
So, the film's set in London.
And we wanted to make it feel like a really London, British movie,
so, you knew exactly where we were when we started.
So, we went for all the, like, the London landmarks.
All the famous ones that everyone knows around the world.
And we had some others, but they, people weren't quite so aware of them, were they?
No, we, we tried to pick landmarks that we were doing
when Roddy goes into the city later that we, we'd see there.
So, we'd see our own version of Tower Bridge
and we'd see our own version of Big Ben.
Yeah. And all this is...
I remember all this is, like, we did this,
sort of, near the end of the production, really,
this opening sequence.
And it was all really about just, sort of, grabbing the audience and,
and, kind of, really announcing the film.
And Harry Gregson did an amazing score there at the start, didn't he?
- I loved that. - He did.
Just sort of launched us into... big movie territory.
Yeah. Here we are and...
That's the introduction to our hero, Roddy.
Yeah. And he, and he lives in a cage.
He's got a nose.
And I think the idea was that he doesn't wear clothes all the time.
He just puts clothes on when the family go away.
But that's maybe not quite clear.
But it doesn't really matter, you know?
'Cause the film's not really about the family.
It's more about Roddy being on his own in this big place,
and just loving this, loving this life he has here.
Hey, what are you all standing around for...
I mean, Roddy wasn't always this, sort of, exciting, excitable.
We had... He went through very, many iterations of Roddy, really.
Yeah, the first Roddy was, like, this... he was more like David Niven, wasn't he?
He was like a very elegant, rather, sort of, staid Englishman.
And he even had a couple of hamster butlers, didn't he...
- He did. - ...very early on, you know?
But it was a bit of a slow start to the film, really, wasn't it?
You know, it's just, like...
It changed. He wasn't fun enough.
And so we just, we just jumped in to make him more fun.
More energetic.
But I think the main, the main thing is that he just loves this life
and thinks he's got everything.
Although, I think, I think it's clear, just from watching this,
that he probably hasn't, he hasn't quite got everything, is he?
'Cause it's, it's a bit weird hanging around
with a bunch of dolls, really, you know?
Game point! Service!
We win. We win, team! We win.
He's quite lively.
- He is full of beans. - He's lively, you know.
And then we go into this James Bond thing, didn't we?
- We liked the thought of being... - We did.
Also, very funny titles on that DVD shelf.
Yeah. We pause it.
- All the President's Own Teeth. - Yeah.
That was a little... homage to James Bond.
And it's kinda fun, I guess, that he, you know,
wears that tuxedo and thinks he's a bit of a Bond character. Bit of a playboy.
Having a good time, darling?
Thank you.
See you tomorrow!
- I love that. It's funny, isn't it? - I love this scene.
And, off he goes to bed, on his own.
Good night.
And that was the whole reason for picking "Dancing By Myself," wasn't it?
The Billy Idol track.
We thought it was a bit gloomy, but it really told the story.
Yeah. But it sets the character up really well, doesn't it?
And, you know, coupled with him just muck playing with the dolls.
You can sorta tell that there's something missing in his life, I guess,
from that opening sequence.
It is.
I mean, well, I think, well, this next scene...
- Says it all, doesn't it? - It does.
Sort of passed over from being slightly eccentric
to actual mental illness.
- He's actually mad, isn't he? - He is.
There really is, like, something lacking there.
This is... this was, we thought this was quite political at the time.
Yeah. It was a bit funny, wasn't it,
having the, the guy mention weapons of mass destruction and stuff.
This felt a bit odd to, kind of, you know,
step into the political arena a little bit.
- But it was funny, so we left it. - Yeah.
- We liked it. - It's just a joke, isn't it, really?
I think we're most successful when we try and make ourselves laugh,
- aren't we, really? - Yeah, no, I mean, like, it's been a lau...
I've really enjoyed the whole thing, it has been a laugh, you know?
Just tryin' to think of things that make you laugh.
- Me personally? - Yeah. You personally.
- Thank you. - 'Cause I like to see you smile.
- I like to... - I've got a lovely smile.
Yes, yes, you've got a nice smile.
Yeah. But it's funny, isn't it? 'Cause as we worked on this film,
this, the, the opening of the film got shorter and shorter, really, you know?
And we were just trying to...
In the end we found that we really wanted to get to this point when Sid arrives,
kind of, as soon as we could.
Because, you know, you can spend so long,
like, mucking around and showing a character and have him, you know,
in his little world, but until there's a story there, there's nothing really...
And the story doesn't really start until...
- Roddy is flushed down his own loo. - Yeah.
So, that's what we had to... that's what we had to race for.
Yeah. I guess this is it, isn't it?
Now, now his world's invaded.
Now it's interesting. Now there's a drama.
There's something going on between them.
I don't know!
It's so great to see Hugh and Shane doing this scene because we,
we asked when we were trying to develop the character of Roddy,
we eventually decided not to make him a snob,
and to move away from the class thing.
And we just wanted to be more, more like Hugh,
who is a very funny, very charming, lovely man.
And he's, sort of, always enthusiastic about, you know,
even though we've had him come in here hundreds of times for the same lines
over and over again 'cause we tend to noodle around with things forever.
He's... he was always, he's always game for it.
- Yeah. - And you know,
he's a really great, like, comedian as well.
And Shane was fantastic as Sid. Shane just came in, he ad-libbed, he had fun.
And he, you know, again, we had Shane come in loads and loads of times.
But he was always, he was always up for it,
no matter how silly the jokes.
He's so enthusiastic.
He brought so much to the role.
Yeah. Yeah.
England versus Germany in the World Cup Final.
Not really the most fantastical element of the story, I guess.
We were hoping it would happen.
But, predictably, it didn't.
It was weird, actually, 'cause as it was going on,
that we were thinking...
for a moment we did think they might get into the final, you know?
- We did. We did. - Like, it was silly, really.
- I don't know what got into us. - Yeah.
But then when they lost, we thought,
"It doesn't really matter, you know, it's just part of the film, isn't it?"
- It's just silly. - Yeah.
And I love all the soccer footage that we, you know,
we just let the animators go mad on that stuff.
And they j, just said, like, "Just make it funny."
And if you watch the, watch the soccer footage throughout the film,
it's always funny stuff going on on the screen, you know?
...the kitchen, Jeeves. And be snappy about it.
Yes, sir.
- Right away, sir. - That's more like it.
But, before breakfast is served...
perhaps Sir would care to take a whirl in the Jacuzzi?
A Jacuzzi.
You know what you are? You're a real gent.
Well, after a hard day of navigating sewer pipes,
there's nothing better than relaxing in a Jacuzzi, whirlpool bath.
That looks so inviting.
Yes, yes. The water looks perfect.
Now, you hop in and I'll press this lever to get the bubbles going.
Right. In we go!
Wait, wait, wait.
I know we got off on the wrong foot before, right?
But, you know, I really think we're gonna get along. Don't you?
Swimmingly.
Be seeing you, my friend.
You plonker.
You think I don't know a toilet when I see one? You were gonna flush me...
We debated back and forth 'cause we were, you know,
We wanted this movie to be very, to be very British and Aardman.
But we also wanted it to be very international as well.
So there's, we... People seemed to be confused and vexed
when we showed to preview audiences by words like "plonker,"
and the old "cream cracker."
And we, we took it out and we changed it to a very unconvincing "me old donkey."
- That's right. - And it didn't really work.
- So, we changed it back. - Yeah.
- And it's much better for it. - Yeah.
This... the effects in this sequence are actually stunning.
- Yeah, this is one of the... - So pleased.
So pleased.
This is one of the big sequences for us.
- Isn't it? - It really is.
We spent, like, lot of money on this, I guess.
Have you seen my dad?
Here's a tribute to Caddyshack, everyone said.
- Well... - Although, I've never seen Caddyshack,
so I don't know what they're talking about, but...
We knew we had to deal with the issue of Roddy being flushed down a loo,
and the rather unpleasant connotations.
So, we thought we'd get it all out in this one sequence. And we did.
So, after this sequence, Roddy goes into Ratropolis
- and everything's nice and clear. - Yeah. Yeah. It's the evolution.
It was like the 900-pound gorilla in the room, wasn't it?
We couldn't get away without the occasional...
- Yeah. No, it's good to do that. - Poo joke.
Yeah, just the one.
But there was so... yeah, there was lots of,
there was a lot of little ones along the way, weren't there?
But we didn't... Do you remember that one where he popped up and he looked up,
and there was a big bum coming towards him?
Oh, yes, he, sort of, ended up going down another pipe
and ended up in somebody else's toilet with a huge bottom bearing down at him.
- He swam the other way. - That was so funny.
- That was great. - That was so funny, but...
This, this slug.
I don't know, it... Something... It's funny how things...
You're... you'll be, you know, you're boarding a movie,
and you're, you're testing it, and you're seeing how it works,
and things just jump out at you that people love.
Just love. That you would never have expected them to love and this...
These slugs somehow struck a chord.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny that joke, wasn't it?
- 'Cause it was, like... - It was.
It was dead funny but has nothing to do with the story, or anything, really.
I mean, actually nothing to do with the story, yeah.
I mean, I suppose...
it's a good way of saying, "He's stuck in the sewer."
These little... He meets these slimy creatures...
We wanted him to be frightened by the wimpiest,
tiniest creature there is, didn't we?
Yeah. Yeah. So it kinda works on that level. But...
- Didn't really expect to see 'em again. - No.
- Well, actually, they w... - Imagine our surprise.
Yeah. It was one, at first, wasn't it?
And then we put these ones in, 'cause we thought,
"Let's milk the joke. So we'll just put a load more in."
- And then... - It was funny.
It gets milked again in a minute,
when that running slug pops up again.
So, we thought, after this guy, we thought,
"We've milked... that's it, we've milked those slugs."
And it's quite hard, milking a slug, isn't it?
Quite, they've got quite small... teats.
Yeah, we could do...
This was, this was part of our... It's a good side gag, anyway.
That's a good joke, isn't it? I like a side gag.
...but three years?
I'm just-a finish it this morning.
The first of the rather silly European stereotypes
that we have in the film.
It's the, the ridiculous, Italian pavement drawer guy.
Yes.
- And that bits pricey. - Lovely piece of score there.
This bit here.
Yeah, Harry... Yeah, we really wanted to, sort of, like,
lay on what an amazing place as well... And what a shock, you know?
'Cause, I think the sequence before was like, you know,
this is what you'd expect the sewer to be.
And then Roddy comes through this, into this area, and it's just, like,
you know, this is the last thing you'd expect.
My smalls!
- Is it a bird? - Is it a plane?
That's good, isn't it? Made a Superman joke.
There's a woman in her...
Oh, no, she's gone.
- Face like a fryin' pan. - Come on, honey.
I don't think he speaks English.
The actor who voiced the Texan, a guy called Newell Alexander,
went out for dinner with him,
and he was telling these wonderful stories about hanging out with Johnny Cash,
and we thought,
"What a fantastic link to Johnny Cash we have in our movie."
...forever, you know?
There were, yeah. Seven degrees of separation.
...you can back away from the truth.
It's funny, actually, 'cause of all the debates about the English accents,
I couldn't really understand him very well.
- It's... - Never mind.
- How are you? - Can't complain.
So, this is... I mean, we worked on this for a couple of years, really,
this sequence, didn't we? We did so many versions of it.
We had, do you remember when we had the...
cameo from Nick and Fetcher, from Chicken Run in, in this sequence?
We did, yes.
We did, It wasn't very good though, we took it out.
- Yeah, yeah. - And, they're great characters,
- but we didn't do them justice, really. - Nah, it didn't work fo... so well.
We thought we best, just filling it with British archetypes,
like the old Dixon of Dock Green-style bobby and...
Yeah. Yeah. The insane burger-flipper-pirate guy.
That famous stereotype.
They used to cover every street corner in England.
Yeah. He's very appropriate.
There's a pub in the background.
But that, look at that fountain, it was fantastic.
It is. It is, isn't it?
This is funny, isn't it?
I love it, this idea that, of frying Roddy's hands.
Shady customer.
It's funny, 'cause when you're, you see something like that,
you don't really understand why he's doing it, but.
- Yeah. - I know where it is!
Bit of, it's sort of fun to have a bit of busyness, isn't it?
And here he is.
This joke was in quite early, wasn't it?
- This joke here. - It was. It was.
It's one of our big, funny jokes, early on.
It's these funny, little characters,
like, we had the slug, and the fish, and this peg leg-guy and tadpoles...
They all became more popular,
and we, sort of, tried to find ways to fold them into the film again.
- Yeah. - Just because we enjoyed them so much.
- Yeah. And there they are again. - Once again, the slugs here.
Yeah.
Said we wouldn't have 'em, we thought we'd done with them, but...
you know, this, this came much later, didn't it, really?
- It did. - Much on the sequence for a while.
The Jammy Dodger.
Hello?
Permission to come aboard?
Ahoy there?
I think I can, honestly think we managed to...
We've got some very, very highbrow humor in this movie, if you look for it.
And we've got the lowest of the lowbrow humor, also.
We took, yeah, no, it's good to have a range, isn't it?
- We always like to think. - It is. It is.
Captain Skipper Thingy to you.
I think some of the stuff's highbrow, it's probably not.
- No. - Maybe middlebrow.
Yeah, I wouldn't, I don't think we'd ever get to highbrow.
We're not quite highbrow enough, are we?
Yeah, thank you. Too much information.
I've got my own problems, mate.
- Kate was fa... - Kate Winslet.
- God, she's great. - She rocks, as they say here.
She was, she was so... I mean, she's very, very funny.
But she was so serious, and so professional.
Yeah.
We'd do the se... we'd, we'd record the sequences with her,
we'd animate them, we'd show them to her and she'd have suggestions.
And they were such good suggestions, we'd end up taking the scenes and,
you know, she had a better line reading, we'd do it again.
Yeah.
- I mean... - She was great.
we were so blessed to get her for Rita, weren't we?
'Cause she's just my... Rita's like...
she's kinda like a really strong, authentic female character, really.
- She is. - Yeah.
It's so hard to do that, I guess. You know?
It is, I mean, she really evolved, as the movie went on, but...
well, actually, both Roddy and Rita started out very different characters.
Yeah, they did, yeah.
But, I think, as Roddy changed, we, Rita changed, too.
- Rita was... - Yeah.
She was a loner when we started,
someone who didn't want to get close to anybody,
because she didn't want to be held back
from her dream of sailing off to see the drains of Europe.
That's right, yeah, a hard-bitten loner.
Of course, then we, where we eventually landed with Rita was the polar opposite.
Yeah.
- So, Spike and Whitey. - Yeah, it's funny, here's Whitey.
Bill Nighy and Andy Serkis. Yeah.
They're the only actors who got to work together.
Yeah. Yeah, it was great that day, wasn't it?
- It was. - They got together
ad-libbing about soccer, and football, and stuff, it was brilliant.
They clicked so beautifully, as well, they were...
Yeah, no, a very funny pair.
- They really were. - Yeah.
Who have we got here?
I believe he said...
I love Laurel and Hardy and I know you do,
Yeah.
I think there's an awful lot of Laurel and Hardy
- in Spike and Whitey. - Yeah. Yeah.
We were brought up with those Laurel and Hardy films
You know.
- With the films, not with the people. - Not with the people.
- Actually, I was... - Not that old.
No.
Yeah. But it was great.
I mean, we... for all of the characters we got reference, didn't we, for them?
And I... we got some clips of,
looked at, actually, old, lot of British movies,
like Quadrophenia and there's a lot of Phil,
the Phil Daniels character in Quadrophenia, in this.
And for Whitey we looked at a lot of wardrobes.
Yes. Big wardrobes.
Put wardrobes on legs and looked at those.
And seen what it was like.
It's Danny Green in The Ladykillers, as well, we looked at him.
You get your filthy paws off my stuff.
It's in here somewhere, I can f...
I love all that.
I mean, we didn't, I don't know how much has come through,
there's a few lines, but I love all the backstory,
of Spike being like, 'cause he still lives with his mom,
and his middle name's Lesley, and he's, he's actually like a...
he's never, he's not really a bad guy, you know?
He's like, he's just tryin' to be bad, but he's just basically a sort of,
more of a pimply, 16 year-old tryin' to appear bad and...
I can't believe that Japanese flag joke made it.
- It made it, didn't it? - Yeah. Yeah. It did.
- It was in there at the beginning. - Yeah, yeah.
That's the longest-running jokes, isn't it, really?
Lots of people complained.
Yeah. Well, most people, for years, didn't know, could not
quite hear what he was saying, wasn't it?
So we'd get away with that.
We'd kind of leave it there.
People were like, "Oh, no, no, it's just some background noise,
you don't wanna worry about all that."
You'll be singing like a teakettle.
Good one, Persuader.
I don't even know her. I don't know anything about anything.
Yeah. But it's great.
I think that this... I, like it about all the characters in the film,
is that the, they're, and even The Toad, actually,
is that they've all got a, sort of, reason for why they're like they are,
or they're, you know, they're sort of actually softer,
or you can sort of under... Sort of feel sorry for him.
- Everybody has a sob story. - Yeah.
You sort of feel that they've all got a, sort of, sympathetic side, or...
- The Henchrats are, I mean... - Yeah.
The guy on the left there's Thimblenose Ted.
Tells everybody he lost his nose in a...
Does he say he lost his nose in a knife fight.
It was actually a lawnmower accident and... he's a bit embarrassed and...
Yeah.
And there's Fat Barry as well, isn't there? Who's always eating.
And Ladykiller, who's a bit of a ladies' man.
- He thinks he is. - He thinks he is, but he's...
Actually, well, if you, he doesn't get to take his glasses off,
but he's got the most silly little cross-eyes underneath those dark glasses.
And he's pretty damn ugly, actually, so.
- I love that... - Whitey's backstory's lovely.
Yeah.
See, that, actually, that's amazing, I think,
that we actually got that...
We've, you know, managed to keep that in the film,
just that aside of a secondary character telling their backstory, you know, it's...
The Toad. The Toad used to be The Weasel.
- Oh, God, yeah. - Remember that, long time ago?
Long time ago and Sam and I, we...
- It was set in Bristol... - We didn't like The Weasel much, did we?
Well, we couldn't draw them very well.
I could never draw a weasel very well.
We were drawing weasels and...
we just... we came... it, happened upon the idea of The Toad.
And we wanted him to look a little bit like Charles Laughton,
- And... - Yeah.
we thought of Noel Coward in The Italian Job, actually.
- Yeah. Yeah. - It was a collection of...
- Yeah, that was fun, wasn't it? - It was fun.
Just, just, developing him and thinking about all the...
making this big, pompous British bloke, you know?
Slightly weird and sinister, as well.
And a little bit of Sydney Greenstreet, as well, at one point.
- Little bit of Sydney Greenstreet. - Yeah. Yeah.
- Or Streep? - Street.
Thank you.
...to my father, and you know it.
Your father...
Dream casting, as well, to have Ian McKellen.
- His wonderful voice. - Theatrical.
- Yeah. - Rich.
Yeah. And we spent so long developing those mouths.
His big, rolling mouth shapes, you know?
And it's really quite difficult to do.
And it was a whole technique for,
for the DreamWorks people to, to make a face like this.
Well, in fact, all the faces were... unlike anything they'd done before.
Poor Ian ended up coming in for so many sessions.
But he was very good about it.
Yeah, he was a good sport, wasn't he? Well, they all were, really.
It must be pretty strange for them when they, 'cause they go,
they must go away and forget about... what the film is, and everything.
- And then they get dragged back. - I think Hugh's done...
about... three...
- No. - I think he's done, like, 39 films.
- Yeah. - That's what it feels like. It feels like.
Whenever you see him, he's, like, got a completely different hairstyle,
or, like, he's, or he's covered in tattoos, or something.
It's, "I'm just doin' another film, mate"
- Aren't these props great? - Yes, I love...
This whole collection room is...
it's one of my favorite parts
- of the film, really. - The thing about CG, yeah.
It's the thing about CG films though, isn't it?
You can't get to keep the props.
You know, like a, like a stop-frame film,
you could probably take that home, you know?
But this is, none of this exists.
I'll make you one out of Plasticine.
- Thanks. - You're welcome.
You could probably buy one. You could buy that torch.
Crown jewel.
- Well, whaddya think? - He's a madman.
- Run away. Ru... - Pardon me, my fly's undone.
I do like puns.
Yes.
- A good pun. - Indeed.
That's a nice bit of animation.
How did it ever find m...
Was this Jason Spencer Galsworthy?
Yeah. Yeah, he really spent a lot of time developing The Toad character,
and, you know...
Just in his acting and technically, as well.
It's very amusing, but I do...
So we came up with the concept of The Toad character, and we, you know,
as, the process, as it works out here, we do, we do outlines and we have script.
And then we, we gave the sequence to our head of story, Paul Fisher,
and he really gave The Toad his voice.
- Yeah, he did, didn't he? - Yeah. He really did.
- Yeah. - I mean, his way of speaking.
- And... - Did some really nice writing, didn't he?
- He did some great writing. - Yeah.
Funny, very talented man.
Heaven help me.
Ice him. Ice them both.
And this was qui... I think, this is quite early, wasn't it?
- When the... - It was.
the sequence is one of the first things that got storyboarded.
Former enemies, one and all.
A catalog of thieves, double-crossers and...
This kind of this joke was there right from the beginning, wasn't it?
It's kinda stuck. A lot of this stuff, you know, hasn't changed.
...your maker. Your ice maker.
It was a great chance for us to, kind of,
write some Spike and Whitey silliness, wasn't it?
- And, kind of get into that. - It was. We love...
The... quite an obscure reference to Larry Grayson there
for anyone in England who's over 40.
Oh, yeah. Shut That Door, yeah.
The Larry Grayson tribute joke, yeah.
- It goes down well in England. - Every movie should have one.
- Blimey, it's cold. - That's why I wore me mittens.
Hit men don't wear mittens.
But I think we when we did this originally,
this conversation between Spike and Whitey,
- it was just pages and pages. - It was, wasn't it?
- They went on and on. - They went on about football and
at his mom's house and what his mom thought and...
It could have...
I think one day we'll have to make
a Spike and Whitey half hour feature or something, you know.
- At least a half hour. - If the money's right.
Yeah, well, I wouldn't do it for nothing.
I'll do this one for nothing, okay?
But, you know, but not the next one, though, I tell ya.
We can definitely make some money on that.
Goodbye, vermin.
So The Toad is a bit, this is his James Bond lair, really.
'Cause we, we both love James Bond films.
Yeah. Yeah. Can't help but be influenced.
Yeah. But be that was a great thing about working in the, kind of,
the Aardman world is you can do it all silly, can't you?
The prize returns to me.
His big death machine is actually just an old fridge with some fridge magnets on it.
I love the ice cream cabinet to the right there
- with the laser-lick ice lolly. - Oh, yeah.
Laser-lick ice lolly.
That's, like, so '70s, isn't it?
It's, kind of, you can tell we're both, like, middle-aged,
and were brought up in the '70s.
Speak for yourself. I'm only 24.
- Yeah. - The...
Good job you teamed up with me, you young whippersnapper. Help me keep me current.
We were worried that Spike and Whitey, we...
Were getting very Keystone Cops-y
when they were running around banging into things.
And then we remembered, fortunately, that we love Keystone Cops. That was okay.
- Yes. - Yeah. I quite like.
It's the simple pleasure of just hitting someone like Spike really hard.
- It never, kind of, wears out, does it? - It doesn't.
There's some really great slapstick coming up as well, actually,
which I love to watch.
No, no, no don't break.
There are things I want to do, sights I want to see.
- That wasn't on the list. - Hey!
Do something.
Here we go. I just love this stuff with Spike.
We've really worked on making it...
that sound sound really painful with his spine cracking.
Keep your legs straight when you hit the water.
- Ouch. - Yeah.
And again, the great, great sound design on all this stuff.
These sound effects, brilliant.
That's high. Quite high, rather high. So very, very high.
It's funny, this little bit of a sequence which is quite painful.
not... we don't really like hitting people in the crotch in animated movies
- because it's been done in so many movies. - Yeah. Yeah.
But we came up with this little sequence just to bridge
the story between, you know, what's just happened and what's just about to happen.
- Yeah. - I've had a sequence in there that...
we just, between us, we, we didn't like it,
but it ended up with Roddy getting punched in the crotch.
And we couldn't shift the sequence, could we?
'Cause people always responded well to it.
So we thought, "Well, we're gonna do this."
If people see Roddy being hit in the crotch,
we'll do the ultimate Roddy-being hit-in the-crotch sequence.
This is the ultimate in nut gags.
It should be, like, the final nut gag
- in humanity, really. This century. - It is.
The hammer.
And gently down.
One, two, my ball. It's my ball. It's mine!
Rita. Rita.
Where is she? Rita!
Target at 12:00 o'clock. Come on.
- Move on to the banana gag. - Let's move on to the banana gag.
This one we did, we kept extending this shot.
And re-animating it, 'cause we thought it was so funny
the way they were creeping around it.
We sent it back to animation about three times, didn't we? Kept extending it.
Some slugs.
- Yeah. This is a surprise. - That sign.
There's a little sign in front of them.
- And the joke is quite repulsive. - Sweet corn, hardly used.
Yuck.
That's it... I mean, mo... it's great being out in the city again.
- This model is fantastic, isn't it? - It really is.
And it's just amazing how real everything looks, you know?
And you, you think that none of it really exists, you know?
You could reach in and touch it, couldn't you?
Yeah, and that's, like, the joy of the, all the Aardman films, really.
It's, they've just got that lovely sort tactile feel and
we just really didn't want to lose that by going into the computer.
What are you? Some kind of rat?
And I me... You know, I knew it would be good,
but I'm surprised at how good it is, actually. How good it looks.
Okay.
This was one of the first sequences...
- Yeah. - ...boarded.
- Yep. - and I think that this sequence
green-lit our movie because we saw
the Roddy-Rita relationship really working and how they sparked off each other.
- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. - Pretty early stuff. Yeah.
And it's pivotal, isn't it? The deal.
And, it's, it's, now, the story'll move on after this sequence.
But yeah, in... You know, when we first start,
we were talking about The African Queen, weren't we?
Was another one. This kind of mismatched couple...
- We were. - ...on this funky old boat.
And she's Humphrey Bogart and he's Katharine Hepburn.
I love the storefronts in the background, as well.
Yeah.
It's funny how he got away... how he dealt with that in the end.
That, that he smashes that ruby,
'cause at one point it seemed like too heavy a thing to do.
Like, you, everyone would just fall out of love with Roddy in that instant.
But we found a way that he could do it.
Roddy St. James saves the day.
And then we found a way that she could punch him in the fa...
punch him in the face, as well.
- And it's all done. - Yeah.
I love the things in this.
I love the little things of odds and sods on the wall.
Yeah. And that peg and the ladder. And this is one of my favorite tracks,
- actually. - Filled with jokes.
...and the drains of Buckingham Palace!
Well, maybe the queen wears fake jewelry.
Keep still!
Can we just talk about this?
Real or not, that ruby was gonna change...
We were gonna put in there but we never got around to building it.
We couldn't fit much more in the budget in there, really.
Yeah.
We had lots of different peo...
Different characters on the phone, didn't we?
- And we tried lots of different things. - We did.
- It was phone chat lines and... - Yeah, there were some quiet phones.
Just telephone operator and someone at the BBC.
Yeah.
- Rita? - Just go away, please.
I'm sorry.
- Sorry? - I love this scene. This deflated Rita.
Me and my dad worked these drains...
She's so beautifully sensitive, it's great.
Yeah.
...every bone in his body trying to get that ruby.
It's such good vocal performances.
But... and, and the animation matches it, doesn't it?
- For both of them. - Yeah.
- It's Gromit again.
Yeah.
Funny enough, there's an awful lot of Aardman,
and, you know, a few DreamWorks' references in the background.
And, really often, as we were under such tight schedule,
we didn't have time to design too many props.
- So, Gromit... - Yeah.
...or, it was, or, say, Alex the lion in the little girl's bedroom
was sort of ease, easy to fall into.
Well, it's free design, isn't it?
- It's all done. - It is.
It looks good.
How do I know this ain't just a load of old rubbish?
Well, I suppose you'll just have to trust me.
And we liked to do it.
Yeah, we worked on this one a lot, didn't we?
- The sequence... - We did.
just getting this balance right between the two of them.
And then she spits in her hand, doesn't she?
And, at one point, we had this really great, big lump of green spit.
It was. It was like a small palm of jelly.
Yeah. But then the...
Kids loved it, but their moms didn't, did they?
- No. - People's mothers didn't like that.
So, we had to tone it down a little bit.
Where are those idiots?
"Sands of time whisper through my flippers."
It's an old line, isn't it?
Come on out, my love...
This is just like...
Poor Daddy.
Surrounded by filthy rats in this joyless, sunless void.
I love this piece of animation on this.
And the vocal performance is great.
We will get rid of them all. He will.
They're all be deady weddy.
Ian was so up for anything, as well.
- So... - Yeah.
He's quite worried about his stuff, because...
He's a classy actor, isn't he?
- Yes. And he'll do anything, anything, you...
You expect him to go, "What is this rubbish?"
And throw all the pages across the...
"Come back when you've got something decent."
But no, he will...
Richard III. The sequel Richard IV.
Yeah.
But, no, he'll do anything to accommodate you, wouldn't he?
- He's a good comedian and... - He was.
- He's great. - Yeah.
The ruby's gone.
Now this is the, this was the first thing we ever animated, actually.
The first sequence we animated.
And it was just a small one,
and I don't think we'd quite got all of the characters up and ready.
We just had these three characters.
And I never forget when it first came,
started coming back through lighting, just how good it looked is...
- It's incredible. - Yeah.
We just knew that we, we got it solved.
...with all those goons on our tail.
This is a funny one, isn't it? Now this one...
This is, this was ver, this was a very late breaking sequence.
- And... - Gosh.
We did a hundred versions of this sequence before this one.
They visited Chinatown to see Charlie Wu, who was a very funny character.
They went to a garage that was run by an insane budgerigar.
- They went to a pub. - They went to, they went to a pub to see
the insane socket set that the carriage mechanic.
The carriage mechanic guy, who was gonna fix up the Jammy Dodger
so Rita could sail to the... see the drains of Europe.
But then, the idea of Rita's family
had been sort of hovering peripherally for a long time.
- Yeah, yeah. - And it...
It just seemed so delicious when we started to really consider it.
Yeah.
There's lots of, lots of funny stuff in the background there.
It's... I love, this is the most Aardman-looking
- of all the sequences we've done. - Yeah, I think so.
Well it's, I mean, the great thing is it's a chance to get into an interior.
And really, kind of, see the kind of detail and warmth
that inside this great world down there, as well.
And we didn't have that anywhere else in the film,
a chance to go in into an interior.
But I love all the kitsch, sort of, detail.
Very working class, British houses, you know?
Sort of, set, it's kind of '70s looking.
There's some great family photographs on the wall.
He's very good-looking.
He is not coming in.
Soup's on.
It's lovely, thanks, mom.
I love their wedding picture if you can see it.
Yeah.
- And then... - Very lucky with the actors here as well.
- David Suchet, Kathy Burke as mom and dad. - Yeah.
And Miriam Margolyes is granny.
Granny, yeah.
She's superb, yeah.
Are you going to make an honest woman of my daughter?
Dad.
So warm.
Yeah, he was wonderful.
Look, I just want all of you to know, he's...
Tom Jones!
But it's nice that
we could just make her whole family like really eccentric, you know?
Like, early on I was a bit worried that her whole family sequence,
it might get a bit mawkish and kind of, you know...
Too sentimental.
Too sentimental and too nice.
- Or even dark, actually. - Yeah.
- It got dark at one point. - Yeah.
Like a bit, "Poverty. The poor family."
You know, like a Dickensian version.
But, I'm really pleased the way this turned out. It's just fun, isn't it?
- You know, you can see... - It is just fun.
- It's quite real, as well. - Yeah.
Kitchen. Now.
Got any money, but...
Sing us a song.
They're not miserable.
- They're poor, but they're happy. - Poor but happy.
- Didn't need fun when I was... - Yeah.
No one's ever got past the rapids at Hyde Park.
- Once the currents get you. - Dad, Dad, Dad.
- There it is. - And it's just nice to look at all the,
kind of, little detail in the props and stuff, isn't it?
Stuff going on.
- The cockroach. - Rita's...
Rita's dad has lots of production babies' names all over his cast.
But that cockroach is probably about as highbrow as we get.
Which is a cockroach reading Kafka's Metamorphosis in French.
Yes!
It's one for the critics, that, you know, we hope.
This one, on the other hand, is a bit more,
a bit lower-brow, further down the scale.
Hugh just riffed on this Tom Jones stuff, and it's great, he's...
Well, he can sing, can't he?
- He can sing beautifully. - That's the brilliant thing, you know.
Just like, you get that as well.
- I love you, Tom. - This bloke isn't who he says he is.
His real name...
Now, this is kind of the whole,
this is the thing we always had in this scene.
In what, whatever version,
we always wanted Roddy to think that Rita was, you know, double-crossing him.
Because we really wanted to get to the next scene
where Roddy's stolen the boat,
which we'd, we'd already storyboard
and we loved it so much we'd already put it into production, didn't we?
We were like...
You're from up top?
You know, it's funny how that goes, isn't it?
You, kind of, put something in production,
and then you, kind of, other things around it,
you're not, you know, you're still working on.
Terribly lonely.
This is the emotional heart of the movie, isn't it?
Yeah. And Harry's music on this level, well, on all levels is great.
But, no, I love the way he...
You know, delivers the emotional core of the film, as well as the actors.
- Please. Permit me. - You're such a gentleman.
A little kid walking on the ceiling
with some rubber suckers in the background.
...The Toad and claim the reward,
then we're all sitting pretty for the rest of our lives.
So, yeah. This is pretty much the last thing that went through lighting.
This sequence, you know?
So, you know, it's amazing when you do it all out of order.
- Acting the rat. - We, Malones, never go back on our word.
- He's gonna steal your boat. - He won't steal my boat.
He's stealing your boat.
- He isn't stealing my... - He stole your boat.
- What? - He's like Robin Hood, in reverse.
I thought we had a deal?
It's funny. There's not many kids, there's actually one little kid.
There's only, you know, about four kid models,
but they've all been resurfaced and recolored,
different color, different ways.
You know, and they actually look, you know, they don't,
they don't look like just the same one, really, do they?
They don't. I think they're very individual.
Yeah.
That little girl has always got a finger in her nose.
Yeah, this one was picking her nose. And Shocky is, isn't he?
Double-crossing, little schemer.
There's some guys fishing there on the little paper boats. Which is nice.
We dropped the wing mirror off in that scene, because we,
the wing mirror was causing us no end of problems.
It was getting in the way of composition.
We had to show the reflection every time.
Yeah, in lighting, in terms of lighting, you had to render a whole new scene
in the mirror or something.
So, we knocked it off.
- We knocked it off. - Yeah.
It's the lighting department were thankful for that one. I... you know.
If you're still there when I get back...
One of the few compromises we made, really.
You know, most, mostly we just,
they just did everything we wanted them to, didn't they, really?
- They did. - Gotta go, Rodders.
If I find one thing out of...
That was funny, that scene, wasn't it?
Because Sid used to have a dressing gown on,
but no one recognized him when he came on screen.
He was dressed like Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast.
He had a bathrobe on and a pair of...
- Speedos. - Some Union Jack speedos.
- But it was half funny, half creepy. - But yeah, it came on and people...
And, yeah, the other half, and another half puzzling as well.
- Some more slugs. - Look, more slugs.
Here's a little song I wrote
- Who knew they could sing? - They're so cute.
- They're fantastic. - Yeah.
...for note don't worry
You can't resist them, can you really?
It's like something we'll have to be weaned off, you know?
It's a...
It's fun though, I mean, it's fun to show a low moment, whether,
in a humorous way, isn't it? It's kind of good to do that.
- Yes. - I love these rats. It's...
This tiny little sequence is nothing but, it's just lunacy.
- Yeah. - Nothing but silly jokes.
Silly stuff.
They've got a map of New Zealand, and...
- And the biological diagram... - The anatomy of a squirrel.
...of a squirrel behind them.
This is where they've been looking for Roddy and Rita.
Nice to, kind of, like, top it with just a tribute of Batman.
Back down into this lovely set again.
Our procedure has... fairly major burn to the hand there.
Smell of burning flesh.
And it's funny that, kinda, just by chance,
we ended up with 5,000 volts picture behind him at the time, you know?
Because when you're shooting this stuff,
it's all grey when you're framing the shots.
Because we just have the basic models in without the surfaces,
Yeah, yeah.
so you're never quite sure what you're gonna end up with.
Yeah, it's always a little surprise and I was really pleased that you got,
you got that sort of danger voltage behind him.
That conniving, little toe rag.
That's one of my favorite lines for an old episode of The Bill.
Yeah. I think it's Inspector Burnside.
"You evil, two-faced, conniving, little toe rag."
Yeah, it's a classic tribute.
You and your family were gonna sell me to The Toad.
What? You dipstick!
That was my stupid little brother's plan.
That gorgeous ending. Yeah. Wonderful.
- Must've missed that part. - How could you think I'd sell you out?
When I make a deal, I make a deal.
Your hair's on fire.
What?
Rita, look.
I'm sorry, all right?
I was wrong and I think we should just, just put it behind us.
Remember we decided to set fire to his hair quite late, as well, didn't we?
Yeah, at the end. We'd actually done the scene, yeah.
Done the scene and the effects guys jumped in and just...
Yeah. Yeah.
...just came through for us.
Yeah, that's the nice thing about CG compared to stop frame, actually,
that you can jump back in and do things like that.
It's a blessing and a curse.
Yeah. Yeah, you never fini... it never finishes in CGI.
Have to drag you away, 'cause, it's one more little tweak.
Pry your hands off the computer console.
Yes.
- Yeah. - Just one more note. One more change.
No.
Eventually they're gonna just lock us out of the building,
once we finish this commentary.
Look, if you're trying to teach me a lesson consider it taught. I'm on a duck.
And this was fun, wasn't it?
- 'Cause I... - It was.
Ice cold Rita
Never did I meet a girl Who's half so cruel
I offered her a jewel
But she left me stuck, stranded on a duck
What a shoddy thing to do to Roddy
Me.
That's Roddy St. James of Kensington
Poor, poor...
And here they are.
And this is great, this bit. And I love this. So funny.
Rita can't you find it in your heart
To help him
- What a lovely, deep voice. - Yeah.
...could one rat be? Ice cold Ri...
It's weird, as it went on you kinda wanted to do more and more music, didn't you?
- 'Cause it's so, it's fun to do, you know? - That's what we did.
- And yeah, that's why we've done it. - We did.
We spent, we spent a lot of time towards the end
tryin' to figure out how to get more music in because it's...
It'd be great to do a full blown musical, wouldn't it, one day?
Rita, I wasn't eavesdropping, I swear.
- All right. - It's not so hard in the sto... you know.
- Let's do it. - Yeah, let's do it.
You know, could get a simple story.
You haven't gotta, like, think about it too much and just do loads of good songs.
Story of a young guy from the north of England
who goes to animation college and...
David Bowers The Musical.
Fantastic. You'd have to get someone else to play you...
- Get Hugh Jackman. - Hugh Jackman.
- Hugh Jackman as David Bowers. - He's not good-looking enough.
Lucky.
Who will play me?
Kathy Burke.
Kathy Burke is Sam Fell.
More of the spitting.
And this is kinda, like, you know, seems significant, doesn't it?
Roddy, now Roddy, sort of, leads the way and he does the first spit.
And he's more, he's more relaxed now, isn't he?
He's like a, his buttoned-up costume is all gone,
- and he's scruffy. - He's not worried about his hair.
And he's more, he's more tousled hair and everything, you know?
He's seeing another side to life.
He's beginning, to fit in and all.
Yeah, it was quite a job to, kind of, track him through the film
and the animation and everything.
Just to make his, kind of, journey, sort of, happen
without hitting people over the head with it, you know?
'Cause something, sort of tempted, didn't it?
To write something that sounds really, like,
just to let everybody know where Roddy is in his journey.
But, but I'm glad that we kept it more subtle, really.
Rita!
These blenderjet ski's are genius,
- and, they are such, such a good idea. - They're fantastic.
Now!
Come and have a go.
This sequence took about a year from beginning to end.
Yeah. At least. At least, I think.
You know, 'cause with the additions and lighting and stuff.
There was a real chance to, kind of, open up this whole world,
wasn't there, you know?
And we wouldn't, we'd struggle with something like this in stop frame.
- We'd really struggle to do this. - Not enough plasticine.
Yeah, just the, it's just the whole scope of it, you know?
We'd had to have a wedding in there
because it's a staple of the James Bond films.
- Yeah, you've got a drive-thru wedding. - If you look in the background,
- It's Chinatown, though. - You see Chinatown, which is, you know,
we built it for when Rita and Roddy were going to Chinatown,
- and... - Yeah.
So we just crammed all our old unused bits and pieces into the scenes.
Yeah. Yeah.
So that little moment was, yeah, the result of...
Makes it feel very rich.
Yeah. And all the signage, as well.
Like all of these road signs pointing different places, they're all silly names.
The silly, kind of, sewer-related London names.
There's a lot to freeze frame in this movie.
Yeah. Yeah. There's also a lot of gags and stuff.
There's that policeman from that previous sequence.
Couldn't afford another one, so we rented him out again.
That's another silly, European stereotype.
Oh yeah. The Ita... Yeah. I know, yeah.
The suave Italian stereotype.
- Take a right. - What?
Just trust me.
I hope you know what...
And this is a chance for Roddy to do something...
Like, this... we picked this moment, didn't we,
to kind of have Roddy use his initiative a bit
and start to get a bit more of a handle on things down there.
Yeah.
- Lovely sound effect. Yeah, I love that.
- I love Thimblenose Ted's voice, - Yeah.
- Chris Fairbank's and... - Yeah.
Such a lovely deep voice.
It's funny, he lost his thimble, there.
And we were toying with him coming back,
in the next scene, with a different thimble.
Like an old lady's thimble.
- With a flower on it, or something. - Little porcelain one.
Little porcelain one. But we didn't.
We thought it might just look weird.
We thought, you know, you might not remember what had happened.
Here's Spike's middle name mentioned.
Danger is my middle name.
I thought it was Lesley.
Anyways, I love all this.
And then, like, in an earlier version,
we had him fly off a boat and land in some honey.
And then in some, he landed in a, in a honey works
and then into a pillow factory, didn't he?
He did.
Kind offended up tarred and feathered.
But, in the end, I think we just went with a brutal, kind of, bashing.
In the dirt.
Carried on with the bashing the head and nuts theme.
...last requests?
Yes, yes. Could you fly, quite suddenly, off the boat, screaming like a girl?
What?
These sound effects hurt, don't they?
They do.
And there's Steve driving the remote control boat. That little plastic man.
And there was a model shoot, and there was a design shoot
of about 30 different versions of Steve to pick from.
We picked the coolest, suavest Steve.
This moment is fabulous, isn't it? I just love this.
And we had this in a very early version and we, we didn't use it.
And then, in the end, we just folded it back in 'cause it worked so well...
Strange, during the story process, things fall away, really good things.
- And we... - Yeah.
you know, we went back and we looked, towards the end of the movie,
which great jokes have we lost that we really loved?
- Yeah. - And we started putting them back in.
That was one of the great jokes, wasn't it?
Bob Buschetty, I think.
- Annoyed with us. - You incompetent...
So now we come to the introduction of Le Frog, you know?
- Yeah. - Le Frog was interesting.
We started to... When we, when we conceived the character, we thought,
we thought we'd go the traditional route
of having a British comedian play a silly, do a silly French accent and...
but then we started to, sort of, think, you know, if we get Jean Reno.
If... Which we though was a bit of a slim chance...
Unlikely, yeah.
So, we thought, "Well, we've got these pages,
and they're full of these terrible French jokes..."
So I remember saying to people at casting,
"Can you let me have the pages back?
I'll rewrite them before you send them out to Jean,
'cause I don't wanna offend him."
- No, they've already gone. - Yeah, yeah, off they went.
Off they go.
He's cool, though, isn't he?
So... he was very cool with it.
He pointed out that it's...
Le Frog is really the only really cool character in the movie.
Yeah. No, he is cool.
I love his just, beautiful, deep voice coming out of that silly little character.
I just think it's such a great combination.
Don't worry. I'll get it...
Kinda moved it on, hasn't it?
- It has. - In its way.
And, I think, as well, having Jean as a fabulous actor
play the character made it believable.
- I think if we'd done... - Yeah.
I think if we'd gone for just a comedian playing a silly accent,
- it wouldn't have been... - Yeah.
It wouldn't have been a character.
It would have just been a caricature.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, but he's... yeah. He's one of my f... well I love em all, actually.
- I do too. - He's one of my favorites.
I'd be sorry not to, I'll miss these characters.
Definitely. What do you... you think you get each of them
you could delve into each of 'em
and kinda come up with a story for each of them, you know.
It would, you know, at least make a short film, or more.
Volume one details the...
- Again, if the price is right. - Yeah, well, you know, open to offers.
And this backstory is great.
I just love this idea because it's, 'cause he's not just an evil villain.
And you, you kind of get to see, you know, why he's turned out like he has, you know?
- It's very sad. - Yeah, it is quite sad.
- And very silly. - And tragic.
Sweet and ever-magical bond.
And it is, this scrapbook sequence was funny 'cause it didn't,
kind of, fit the way we usually did things. It wasn't 3-D and stuff.
It took us ages to do it, actually.
Rat.
While the poor boy's head was turned, I was cruelly plunged...
And originally, I think we were going to animate it all in 3-D,
and in black-and-white and, you know, do it like a home movie thing.
But it was, you know, decided it would just be better to just keep it simple.
- It's just clearer. - Yeah. It's more graphic.
I like The Toad's memoirs as just volume one.
Yes, that's right.
- Huge book. - Boring memoirs.
Volume 12. And on he goes.
His little champagne bottle top chair behind him there.
The rival of my legs.
Now, this is one of the oldest jokes, isn't it, in the film?
This is one of the first.
We leave immediately.
- That was full... - That was a new joke for us.
We can say all those jokes, whoever we borrowed it from.
It probably existed before, actually, but it's...
No, I mean, in this film it's about four years, you know?
It was in right at the beginning.
It was one of the first jokes written and it's so good. It stayed.
Love.
This was quite late when we did our...
When we wanted to get more slugs in at the end.
We did. Lady and the Tramp tribute.
- This is quite tasty. - Thanks.
This is a nice, quiet, sweet scene, I think.
Yeah, I'm really proud of this 'cause it doesn't it's,
they're quite hard to do ain't they, these kinda quiet campfire scenes
They are.
where you kind of reveal a bit more of the theme in the characters.
...be denied
That isn't rice, that's maggots you're eating.
Larvae, larvae, larvae
Well, that explains why it all ran to one side when I put the salt in.
But I think there's, there's lots of nice, general humor, as well, in it,
between the two characters.
And it, it never gets, sort of, mawkish or sappy or sentimental.
And they, you know, they never kinda sit there
and just say unrealistic things about how they feel, you know?
- What their dreams are. - What their dreams are, yeah.
Those scenes can be so rubbish, couldn't they?
So, but they, you know, when you think about how much work
has went into this scene, into the writing.
...so hard?
Well, we worked on it for an awfully long time.
Over and over. We did so many versions.
I mean, we certainly, we certainly went into that very, very sentimental version.
- Yeah, we did, we did have one, yeah. - But, for the longest time...
- Yeah, we did have one. - we pulled it back and pulled it back
- Yeah, yeah. - and maybe went back too far.
Yeah.
But I think this is great.
I think, I don't, it, it feels so natural.
It's hard to believe that Kate and Hugh weren't recording this together.
Yeah, yeah.
And, in a way, like, it's easy, in it's...
I mean, it's not easy to do something like the boat chase, 'cause, I mean...
But it's easy to be impressive with the boat chase.
But, this is almost hardest to... it's actually the hardest to do this,
- a scene like this. - It's very hard to be quiet
Brothers, sisters, cousins...
Yeah.
I think it's very, very easy to go into the sentimental,
- go to sentimental territory. - Yeah, could have been, yeah.
It's tricky territory.
But I think, I do think we pulled it off, actually.
I do too.
It's one of my favorite sequences for that reason.
No wonder you wanna get home.
- But just, you know... - We still put jokes in there.
Exactly, yeah. So you can end with it in... Yeah.
And you get a laugh at the end, you know?
And this scene, I mean, I just think the lighting and everything it's just a,
'cause it's quiet it actually gives a chance to just, kind of, look at the,
some of the textures and the amazing lighting that's going on, you know?
You're not rushing through. And it's lush.
I just think it's breathtaking.
And the beautiful modelling on the Jammy Dodger as well.
Yeah.
Roddy. Don't let the bed bugs bite.
That was the fly converted into a bed bug.
We had to convert him into the maggots as well.
And use the maggots as well.
You can do a lot with a fly if you keep,
you know, pull his wings off, change his color.
You can do anything with paint and a pair of tweezers.
And then this is just great fun, isn't it?
To get, get, you know...
Now, see, this whole run, I mean, I love the whole film.
But I love this run from here,
all the way through to them landing back in the apartments.
- Le Frog was such fun to write. - Yeah.
- All this frog stuff was such fun to do. - Yeah, it is, isn't it? Yeah.
'Cause you could be as silly as you wanted.
Then we had a wonderful actor at the end of it, making it sound good.
Yeah. And you, sort of, have to be super ridiculous, don't you?
If you're gonna take on that stupid French stereotype thing,
then you just have to push the boat out and go with it all the way.
'Cause you can't go halfway, 'cause people might think,
"Hang on a minute. Do they, have they got a problem with the French?"
- It's not that, it's like... - Or we can...
We can, I don't think anyone would accuse us of going halfway on this stuff.
No, because you gotta have every single French cliché in there.
Even to the point of putting in mimes.
Yeah. You've got it, yeah, mimes.
We originally had one Swedish frog in there.
It used to be Peugeot, Renault, Citroën, Volvo.
And Volvo's was...
- But Marcel took his place. - Yeah.
He missed out on a Swedish stereotype.
Oh, well, maybe in Flushed Away Two if we ever do it.
And this is, sort of, like a great run for me, I thought.
'Cause, you know, Paul did a lovely job storyboarding it and,
and Jeff Newitt was supervising the sequence and he's wonderful.
- And, yeah. - His animation.
Jeff animated the shot, for instance, and then the lighting,
I think was, you know, really superb.
I don't have it anymore.
It's a very strange sequence.
I don't think I've ever seen anything like it in a movie before.
No, it is weird one, isn't it?
Yeah. It's not necessarily like big belly laughs, but I think it...
I'm sort of glad we got to do, sort of, odd things like this.
Somehow it comes back to music hall, really doesn't it?
- Yeah. - To vaudeville...
Yeah, it's like this silly vaudeville sequence, isn't it?
We've got the mushroom coming up in a minute.
There's a shot of Le Frog holding a mushroom and he's not had one before,
or he doesn't want to have one afterwards.
- ...master cable. - "The master" what?
- That shot's gone, mate. - No, it's not, is it?
You blinked.
We missed it. Oh, it's been on, though, already.
The one you're now wearing.
It's funny, 'cause the story, in the storyboard,
there was a picture of him holding a mushroom
from some old version of the sequence.
So, the, the guys who were assessing it said,
"Oh yeah, mushroom. Better get one of those made."
...final this afternoon.
So, now we're sowing little bits of plot.
Leave it to me. We'll get your cable.
- Yeah. Yeah, that, that was... - This next joke is so outrageous.
- I'm actually feeling embarrassed by it. - Yeah.
This is just over the line, isn't it?
- This, you know. - It is.
But, like I say, you gotta push the boat out.
If you gonna do it, you gotta push the boat out.
- If you're gonna do it, you need to do it. - You can't do it half measures.
Yeah, you know? But yeah, I know what you mean, I...
The reindeer of death, in the background there.
We had names for the Kung Fu moves.
Yeah. There's one doing the Reindeer of Death.
Go for it.
Fly at 12:00 o'clock!
Oh, bother.
You fools, grab them!
And I love this idea of, of being underneath Hyde Park,
and it's nice to get out of the city, wasn't it, as well?
- And have a, kind of, rural sequence. - It was.
- ...Cable. - Oh, mon Dieu.
You wretch! This is not over!
And we wanted to get them off the boat, didn't we? All those frogs.
We did.
It was earlier on, and we, we had too many frogs to fight.
And it's storyboarding, and we had a little joke for each frog.
And how to get rid of 'em.
And the sequence was just too long, wasn't it? So...
We planned a huge treatment plant, as well.
It was, it was acid vats, and laser guns,
and shooting bleach, and huge toilet brushes.
- Conveyor belts and crushers. - Yeah!
And big hammers, and, yeah.
And this was the finale of our treatment plant, and it was the best bit.
So, we kept the best bit. We just didn't have enough.
We didn't have enough minutes.
- Or money, probably, actually. - Yeah, yeah, no, it was just...
Or people.
- It was enough, wasn't it really, to go... - It was.
I'm really pleased, in the end,
we just got rid of all the frogs in one go
and did this amazing ride down this waterfall instead, yeah.
But it's so...
I mean, this is... it's great to do this big, kind of, action stuff.
I mean, we could do something like it with stop-frame,
but it was... Just really, kind of, opened things up for us
- didn't it? - It did.
The CG environment for action sequences, you know?
This thing from Jean, which was the "chips and fish"
was a, was a genuine mistake that he made in the recording studio.
- And we liked it, so we kept it. - Yeah, chips and fish.
Yeah. There's some more slugs.
- More slugs! - Popped 'em in. Why not?
Another slug? Go on then. Pop it in your mouth.
Nibble for your life!
So, we thought of many different ways to get them out of the sewer
and up into Kensington, and this was probably
the most sensible, the most fa... the most satisfying.
Yeah, the most simple.
We used something we'd seen earlier, which was the duty-free bag,
the British Airways one and just shot one up through the pipe.
- On the hot air drafts. - Yeah.
Simple and elegant, isn't it?
It's always those solutions that are the best in the end, you know?
We've had lots of elaborate ways.
I love Harry's score here, when they come out. It's so amazing.
- Just so inspiring. - Yep.
The map painter did a beautiful job with that...
giant landscape panorama of London.
- And it's beautifully drawn as well. - It's enormous, isn't it?
- It is. It's just mammoth. - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It is an amazing piece of work, that.
Yeah. Yeah. And we were, some people were worried,
"Can we spend that long looking at a background painting?"
But I think they fit in there brilliantly.
Yeah.
Kensington High street. Try and go left! That's it!
Now, go right!
And again, we didn't wanna spend long, did we?
Because we wanted to get on with the next part of the story, you know?
We wanted to get them home quite quickly.
And, very early on, we had all kinds of mad bits of story
where they went up onto the surface and had to,
they went to a park and they met a bird, and...
We didn't want to feel as though the story had finished when they got out, though.
So, we wanted to feel as though their journey was continuing.
- Yeah. - And it, actually,
this is the resolution of Roddy's journey,
- I mean, physical journey, - Yeah, it's like very emotional
not, not his emotional journey.
His emotional journey.
This took about three, just about three quarters of an hour, wasn't it?
For this whole run to get to this point here where Roddy's arrived, you know?
But he's been changed, but we had all kinds of versions again of this,
what happened when they got back up top, you know?
and there, there used to be a time when Roddy,
there was a whole society of posh rats up there, wasn't there?
That, that Roddy's friends. Lord Monckton.
- Roddy was a... - Clarissa.
Roddy was a social climbing rat,
which, in retrospect, doesn't seem like a very good idea at all.
Yes. No, it didn't really fit, did it?
But we, we struggled with it, we struggled with it for quite a while.
- And... - Yeah.
Well, it's like My Fair Lady for a while, wasn't it?
Like she, she was like the working class rat-girl that didn't quite fit
and she tried to fit in, and they found a nice Barbie dress for her, didn't they?
And she made her entrance.
But she was humiliated and left in tears,
and Roddy didn't quite know what to do.
- Yeah. Yeah. She left. - She left and...
- And there was Roddy in a bosom... - She left.
with his pal, Lord Monckton.
Had a penchant for shiny nuts, it seemed.
He did.
It wasn't very good, though.
- It wasn't. - Sorry for that.
And it went on for ages.
- Ages and ages. - It did.
We spent so long struggling, trying to make it work.
Because we thought that was the way to go within this, you know,
as you start to change characters, new solutions start to reveal themselves.
- And, again, simple and elegant... - Yeah, yeah.
Seemed to be the way to go.
And, to be fair, this whole f...
This whole issue of family that we built in with Roddy that, you know,
that he, he doesn't really have a family,
but he's made a family out of dolls
- and action figures around the house... - Yeah.
...wasn't a part of that story.
- No, that came later, didn't it? - It did.
You know, the front of the film and then this section.
It was just the, the two ends of that.
But it fitted perfectly with the idea of having Rita's family in the film,
and having her surrounded by family and him not really.
It, you know, it all kinda came together,
but we never knew that that's what the film was about, did we, at first?
You know, we thought it was all about you know,
a posh rat that meets a working class rat.
No, no, no, it's not actually.
Then why the lock and bars?
Well, it's my home security system.
So much to see, so little time to see it in. Shall we?
So, this is where Roddy's world is about to come crashing down, sadly.
...here. Aren't you?
Yeah. It was some really sensitive acting here.
The, the animators did a great job.
Who's that?
That would, would be my brother!
Shane Richie coming back to liven things up again.
I think most of this was ad-lib, and we cut it together and actually sadly.
- Hello! - Rita, this is Rupert.
- What? - Rupert, this is Rita.
She's been so looking forward to meeting my brother.
Obviously, there's not a huge family resemblance.
I rather got the brains and, well, actually, I got the looks, too.
Nice bit of acting from Hugh here. It's lovely.
We're pretty close, aren't we, Rupert?
It's funny, really, 'cause this scene, it's like,
probably the longest little dialogue scene,
apart from the bedtime scene, you know?
It's actually one of the, it's like a breather, isn't it really, you know?
- Like, we... - And the film's very frenetic and...
It's very pacey, isn't it?
- And then you get this rest here. - It is.
Come here!
I think we made it a bit too pacey, actually, looking at it critically,
- I think... - At times, yeah.
At times, you think so.
But then I, on the other hand,
it's kinda good that you wanna go back and see it again,
'cause you maybe don't feel like you caught it all, you know.
So, I guess it works on that level.
But I guess we're just old really, aren't we, like...
Speak for yourself only, I mean, I said it before, 24.
- Yeah, you're only 24.
As a, sort of, 50 year-old, I find my pacemaker gets a little bit,
you know, juddery in some of the faster bits of the movie.
Actually, these days I like to say I'm approaching 40,
but I do, I don't say from which direction.
I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to.
I mean, I'd say that's a little more than...
I love Harry's theme that keeps coming back
- in his stuff, you know. - Yeah, it's lovely.
I mean, he really tied the whole story together.
I'm sorry but if you have everything you need then
I really have to get goin'.
I have a serious infestation to deal with.
I'll...
And, it's funny, this scene because you wouldn't get this in like a,
I s'pose you, maybe you would.
It's, kind of, like, this is where, like, DreamWorks meets Aardman, I think.
You know, like, in, certainly in the animation.
You know, it's like this really, sort of, subtle and quite, naturalistic acting.
Lonely I'm Mr. Lonely
I have nobody for my own
Only ten minutes left till half-time
and what an amazing match this has been for England.
Come on, England! This is fantastic!
You really have to watch all the football stuff going on in the background,
because it's, it's, it is hilarious.
And we just let the animators run with it,
and there's a lot of jokes in there for the eagle-eyed.
Yeah, it was fun, wasn't it?
Just to, like, send them off to do it and we didn't see anything,
and then they just came back with a ton of this stuff,
and it's all completely crazy.
It is. And it runs right through till the end of the movie.
Yeah. Yeah. It's very creative.
John Motson puts the odd quip in, doesn't he?
If you listen to the commentary from the TV commentator.
A word of advice, mate. Take it easy with the drinking.
I mean, it's very dry but he is always,
sort of, making Germany sound a bit rubbish.
I think we might've, yeah. I think we picked those takes.
I think John Motson was a bit biased, though.
...don't want to miss any of the game.
Half-time. He's waiting till half-time.
A funny moment coming up where Sid goes all slow-motion.
No!
- Not the master cable! - What do you want...
We quite liked the idea of the joke, but we rushed it.
- Yeah. - I think it's,
I think it's funny to some people, and weird to others.
Yeah.
I wish we'd animated, in the animation,
I wish he'd snapped himself out of it
and looked a bit puzzled himself about it having happened.
But he just goes neutral there, which is a shame.
I wish he was, like, as if he'd been taken over by something for a moment,
but, you know, it's only a few, small things like that you look at,
and you wish you had another shot at it.
We can maybe do a reshoot.
Where's the animator? Let me get in touch with him.
You think he would mind if I pop up round his house?
I thought you could take your computer with you.
Yeah. 'Scuse me, remember that shot?
...first thing about football.
Well, it's fun to get an America, a stupid American stereotype
into the film as well, seeing as we had stupid Italian and French.
And English stereotypes in. - And English.
- Lab reject! - Ha! You missed!
This little joke of Spike falling in the pins was almost an afterthought,
- but, eh, people... - Yeah.
people really seem to enjoy seeing Spike in terrible pain.
Spike spiked.
Hey!
Yeah, things like that, they always look,
they're, like, just very funny in storyboard form,
but then once they're lit and then they're real pins sticking into his...
really sort of solid character,
it looks even, it looks more painful than comic sometimes.
Let there be light!
Le Frog there is just looking at his nails.
You know, it's a tiny little touch.
- He doesn't care. - He's not interested at all.
I love that transition from the previous scene to this scene.
- I thought it worked really well. - Yeah, it did work really well.
- You're right, actually, yeah. - The sound. Sid's scream.
It was more linear, wasn't it?
At one point but then we start in to cutting a lot more, you know,
we... that scene wasn't there for a while.
But we've, we cut ahead to see Rita captured, then back to Roddy,
- and we try to cut back and forward, - Yeah.
and really get the pace going into the third act here.
- ...be the best pet ever. - Then the place is all yours.
And Harry really helped with this score as well.
- He did. - This sense of Roddy becoming a hero.
I love... It's a big job to do down there.
I love that line. Nobody ever laughs at it.
But I'm very happy with that.
Yeah, it makes, it makes me smile.
Geronimo!
- This is a lovely shot, isn't it? - Yeah.
Yeah, we didn't, yeah... I didn't think they could do that.
- But they did. - They did.
And he shall be our savior from the Great Flood!
- ...left hand-side. - I'm terribly sorry.
Just two minutes left till half-time.
- Funny football again. - Yeah.
So, how many people in this crowd?
- It's about a thousand, isn't it? - Over a thousand, yeah.
- Astonishing. - A thousand rats.
And there's people standing on the fountains and...
- And they're all unique, which is... - Yeah.
Yeah, they've each got a name, haven't they?
They've each got a first and second name,
like, that goes with their head and body type, or something like that.
So, everyone's got a name, as well as a separate costume.
Rita!
Fans for the fans! Get your England fans here!
This is just... just bizarre.
I do think we've got this thing where we have to try
and make everything funny,
and the only way we could make that funny
was to make him say "balloons" in a funny way.
- So, we... - And fans for the fans.
The actor, Roger Blake, who did the balloon seller,
as well as the policeman, he did it very well.
Yeah. I like that we did that.
I mean, they're not really hilarious things at all,
and they're prob, probably not funny in themselves,
but, I just like it, that we just kept trying
to make everything funny
- It's really quite textured. - as we possibly could just, yeah...
When that whistle blows and everyone up top...
We always try to go for the funny option,
- I think, at the time. - Yeah. Yeah, as well.
And The Toad's got a mace, a mace, is it?
- What is it? A scepter. - Yes.
It's part then, it's a cotton bud with that old ruby,
all glued back together and stuck on it with sellotape.
I don't think you get to quite read it,
but, again, you know, it was just worth doing the funny version.
It was.
The Toad's collection was originally much larger and
- we didn't get to use a lot of the props, - Oh, yeah.
but we did get to use them here. We put them in the grandstand.
- See. - Oh, yeah, there's the bobble heads.
We had the bobble heads of...
We had the whole Royal Family made in bobble-head form, didn't we?
- We did. I would love a set of those. - Yeah.
You don't need us for that.
You think you're so clever, don't you?
Well, I'll be the one laughing when every last, revolting rat is flushed away.
For I shall repopulate the city! With these!
So, this is just beautiful.
They're, this is I think it's one of the most beautiful shots in the movie.
Yeah.
In fact, the lighting in this whole sequence is gorgeous.
Yeah, no, I was really pleased with the lighting in this sequence,
and all of them, actually.
If you look in the background Fat Barry's holding a pickle.
And, just, in that previous shot, when, when Whitey said,
"Oh dear" or "nasty, "you'll see it again in a minute, here comes the pickle.
There! Just on the left-hand side.
Just behind Rita. Barry's got a pickle.
'Cause we had a joke about pickles and jars in,
but we, cut that joke out 'cause it wasn't very funny.
And we, actually, we filled the time with this.
But we had quite a lengthy sequence where the rats, Spike and Whitey resign.
- They resign. - That's right.
And it was, it was very funny, but it was taking so long that we,
- Yeah. - we went with this action-packed...
- Yeah. - ...silly version.
Everything kicked off, yeah. And they'd already started shooting it,
so this pickle was sitting around in the scene by then.
And I asked the guys to leave it in, you know,
and I think they were a bit reluctant
'cause they're such perfectionists, and they do everything so well,
they didn't wanna, didn't want it to look like they'd made a mistake.
So, I had to hold my hand up.
- Take responsibility. - I like it, I think it's funny.
Yeah. It is funny.
So, we're getting to the end of the movie, now,
and it's at this point that we, sort of,
we tried to get all the little loose threads
that we'd set up in the movie, and use things that we'd seen before,
and just finish off The Toad and ruin his plan.
- So... - Yeah.
I'm very happy with the way we used The Toad's tongue
and used Le Frog's tongue, and things with...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It set up with the freezing pipes and saved the day.
It's funny, isn't it, that?
It takes, it's, kind of, quite a puzzle at the end
to get everything to work all, sort of, organically.
It helped that we knew what we were going to do from the very beginning.
We knew we were gonna freeze that wave.
We always knew how it was gonna, yeah, we always wanted to...
- Few people wanted us to shut the gate... - Shut the gate!
- and get The Toad behind it, - Yeah.
but we, we thought the freezing wave would be spectacular,
and exciting, and different.
- I'm so glad we did it. - Yeah.
'Cause trussing that gate would be a bit of an anti-climax, I think.
- Closing that gate... - Yeah.
That would've been appallingly dull.
I quite liked, somebody suggested putting lots of couscous or Semolina in it.
- That would have been good. - The whey of the wave.
Yeah, it would all swell up,
and everyone would be left trudging around
in lots of Semolina for the rest of their...
- And jelly was another suggestion. - That would have been a good one.
We sort of used it in the boat chase eventually,
Yeah, we used that, yeah.
- We thought to put it in the next joke. - Yeah. Yeah.
This water's looking lovely.
Amazing, isn't it?
It's just the power of this. And the sound is extraordinary.
I'm sorry we didn't, make this shot a bit longer.
Yeah, yeah.
It could've been about four times as long. That would've been funny.
We could've really stretched that, couldn't we?
But we lost, well, so, we lost our nerve, I s'pose.
Rita!
- Oh, well. - Ah, well. C'est la vie.
As he would say.
Yeah.
- Feeling a little tongue-tied? - Impossible!
Shocking. Positively shocking.
It's great this bit.
I'm so pleased because it's so bloody stupid,
and, yet, it's kinda thrilling and exciting and feels like a big movie.
But we've managed to do it all in a completely stupid way.
- We kept it silly. - Yeah.
- Yeah. I think that's the key to... - No matter how stupid the jokes.
Yeah, that's a stupid joke for you.
Surfing slugs.
It's the power of this effects work though, isn't it?
- It's wonderful. - I mean, it's so bloody brilliant.
Look at the water swelling as it freezes, it looks wonderful.
Yeah. It's so brilliant.
It just feels so tangible and scary.
And you really can put jokes in amongst that.
And it's just a... you just get a great tone.
I think, because we care about the family, it really makes it... terrifying.
- So, that it's... - Yeah. Yeah.
It gave a lot of reason to get her family.
- It makes it warm and real. - Yeah.
Look! It's Roddy and Rita!
- Good on ya, girl. - Hooray for Millicent Bystander!
Millicent! Millicent!
Apology to The Naked Gun.
You're a hero, Roddy.
Big deal.
I like that. They, he did a great sound job there,
of wrapping the
- frog and toad round that, - Yes, both of them.
without having to animate it. I thought that was brilliant.
We were very lucky, our sound guys were wonderful.
And get your kids a puppy!
- Nice bit of acting here, as well. - Yeah.
It's just beautifully done and sort of, big movie.
...Jammy Dodger Marque-Two,
you wouldn't happen to need a first mate, would you?
So, now we got the Tina Turner song and more slugs.
The big finale.
- Yeah, more slugs - More slugs.
than you can shake a stick at.
I must, this song is actually hugely long,
but it's a really, really fantastic music edit by John Venzon.
- He did a really beautiful job on it. - Yeah, yeah.
He did a lovely job cutting this, didn't he?
He did a lovely job cutting the movie.
- But it's... - Yeah, yeah.
No, he's really good with music, wasn't he?
He's fantastic with music.
- Happy ending. - Yeah.
Well, it's fun, I mean it really plays so well in the theaters, doesn't it?
It really does.
You know, you just let, you,
you go out with a bang and, you know, everyone's kind of jazzed about it.
I was worried, at first, that it would just seem, like,
gratuitous that we were just doing the song at the end.
To try and cheer everybody up.
But it's amazing, just the power of music, and just how it.
- The energy? - Yeah.
Just how it gets everyone going.
Then again, we always tryin' to do it in a stupid way.
Keep it silly.
"England lose on penalties"
- Oh, dear. - Yeah, that too.
Well, I mean it was a bit of a stretch to,
for us to suggest England and Germany were in the World Cup Final.
We couldn't go all the way, and have them win.
No, that is true.
Although, at one point in the summer, I thought we might do it.
I don't know what came over me.
Must have been the hot weather, or something.
Now, Spike.
It's wishful thinking. We're a lot, we all want to win.
- Shall we? - Go for it.
Big wheel keep on turning, turning
There are, there's a ton of slugs now.
Buckets and buckets of slugs.
Tons of them.
On the river
Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river
Too many jokes in this shot.
Probably, you know, just so you could see the mime and the guy thumbing a lift.
- Oh, well. We pack it in. - Get it all in.
Well, it was fun making the film.
It was, it was. - Wasn't it, really, in the end?
And I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.
- And yeah... - I was, too, and that's, I mean.
Yes, I was very happy with the way it turned out.
And that's, that's the end of the movie.
- So, we, you know, we hope you enjoyed it. - Yeah.
I can only assume that if you're bothering to listen to the commentary,
- you probably did. - Yeah, hope so.
Here's our last joke.
I'm home.
Go on. One more.
- One more, please. - "Ambassador, you spoil us".
Thank you very much.
- I'm David Bowers, and... - And I'm Sam Fell.
- Thanks for listening. - Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.