Johnny Depp voices the titular pet lizard, who winds up in the middle of Nevada after his aquarium is jettisoned out of his owner's vehicle. Rango, who already fancies himself a bit of a thespian, uses his skills as an actor and somehow convinces the nearby creatures of Dirt -- a town with quite the water crises -- to bestow on him the title of sheriff. As you've seen from the winning trailers, chaos then ensues. Movieline spoke to Verbinski about making an adult animated movie, why it's being marketed as more of a children's film, and why you should feel comfortable bringing your "sharp" kid to see Rango.
I have to be honest, I was dreading seeing this movie. But it was not at all what I expected. I mean, it's "gritty." Does that make sense?
Yeah, I think so. We tried consciously not to -- well, not knowing how to make an animated movie -- but we just never thought if it, really, as an animated movie. We tried to keep it feeling as raw as possible and intuitive as possible. And that's a completely bizarre word for animation because everything is fabricated.
It's interesting that you didn't consider it an animated movie because this movie is rated PG and I feel like the target audience was, well... me. If kids are the target, a lot of it might go over their heads. Is that a concern?
It was not a concern for me, I actually made it for the child within. You ultimately have to make movies for yourself and hope that there are enough people who like them. It's certainly a concern when it hit the marketing engine. We came into the view of the marketing machine and Paramount. There is a sense that animated movies are suddenly a genre; I just don't believe they are, it's a technique to tell a story. I should say, we have screened it for a wide audience and kids, oddly, stick with it. And some sense in the parts they don't understand, they're being invited into the forbidden world and I think kids love that. We always sort of speak down to them and, for some reason, I don't know where along the line, we sort of said that if it doesn't fit into Happy Meal boxes, it's not for kids. Those flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz, they scarred me for life... Old Yeller. And so I think kids can handle a lot more than we think they can.
I think so, too. And that's an interesting point because when I was five my parents brought me to see The Empire Strikes Back, which is a scary movie for a five-year-old, but I absolutely loved it. Do parents today underestimate their children to handle something like this?
Absolutely. But I mean, I'm responsible for my own kids and not responsible for anyone else's. So I think that's what PG means, "parental guidance." There are some witty five-year-olds. I mean, sharp five-year-olds out there. So, if you've got one of those, bring them. You know? But it's interesting to see -- I've seen girls who are four and five afterwards, freezing in the kitchen, pretending to be Beans [Isla Fisher]. When you talk to the kids, not the parents, but the kids, I think they're really fascinated with the textures. You mention the humor is over their heads, when they come home, it sort of penetrated them in a way.
What's the over/under on age to get the Hunter S. Thompson reference?
Yeah, I have an 11 and a 15-year-old boy and neither of them get that. So, no [laughs], I think you have to be first year in college reading Fear and Loathing. But, you know, there's a crazy man driving a Cadillac as a lizard splats on the window and he says, "there's another one!" and hits the windshield wiper. I think the music and everything gets them right through it.
How do you direct an animated movie, compared to the movies you're used to directing? Unless the Budweiser frogs count as animation work?
Not so much, those are animatronic puppets. It comes from storyboarding, basically, as a language of telling a story. We certainly did thousands of computer generated shots in the Pirates films. This one wasn't a screenplay that was handed to me, this was an idea that we self generated and took a year-and-a-half off with four artists in a hose in the hills above Pasadena and just started to draw and conjure the narrative from scratch. So there was a commitment to making a western with creatures of the desert early on. And the origins were quite lo-fi, every shot that you see in the final result was done as a pencil sketch.
If you hear that Seth Rogen is going to voice an animated character, it's going to sound like Seth Rogen. On the other hand, Johnny Depp makes a great choice for voice work because he can do so many types of voices and dialects.
He's a chameleon. I mean, he is. This was an idea that we came up with in 2003 and wrote a 12 page outline. And we made two more Pirate films together and I would talk to him on set, "I really want to do this lizard movie." And he was in basically under premise. There was no screenplay for him to read. He said, "Yeah, I'd love to do that." So that year-and-a-half when we just worked on the story for real, he was off doing [Public Enemies], but we had done three films with him, we were designing it for what he does so well. And we'd talk on the phone about that Rango is basically a liar; fabricating all of these things. When people lie, sometimes, [starts talking in a high pitch] they talk a little higher. We talked about Don Knotts, we talked about Clint Eastwood -- a variety of voices. And to have all of the actors together on set at one time really crested the sense of keeping it all real.
Did you approach Clint Eastwood at all?
No, that was always intended to be a parody.
You know how most animated films today are described as "for the kids, but something's in there for the parents, too"? Is Rango the first film of this kind to truly be "for the adults, but something's in there for the kids, too"?
I'd like to sort of consider it a bump. This is a point five on our journey to seeing some PG-13 animated movies. In the '70s, animation was all over the map. And you could afford to go make an animated movie for one quadrant. So I think PG-13 movies are still [doable], I think when you get into R it's a little tougher for the price tag. I'd like to say that we are pushing it to a baby step in that direction. I'd love to do a PG-13 animated adventure. It would be great.