| By Fred Topel
In Theaters Friday
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The cast of Madagascar seems to have a dynamite rapport in the movie. Of course, this is all an artificial construction of the filmmakers. Each actor recorded his role alone in a studio and they did not even meet until they got together to do press for the film.
“I have just met Ben [Stiller],” said Jada Pinkett Smith. Stiller himself added, “Yeah, we have just been meeting here presently.”
Therefore, the only discussion of friendship between the actors was sarcastic. “The friendship behind the scenes, well there is nothing going on if that is what you are talking about,” Stiller said. “I have known these two [Chris Rock and Andy Richter] before the press tour. Andy and I go back. And Chris and I go back. We all sort of go back like 10, 15 years something.”
“Yeah, we have known each other for a long time,” Richter said. “We went to a high school called Rockefeller Center together.”
That makes Smith the outsider of the group. Stiller said, “Jada is the only person who I am starting to get to know now and I enjoy it.”
Rock concluded the banter with a joke. “She is okay,” he said.
You can see how the stars play off each other in real life. That made working alone so much harder.
“Just being there alone with a microphone and not having anybody to react to, you just have to use your imagination a lot,” Stiller said. “Once you start to see the scenes come back, then you start to get a feeling for it. And also I realised how much I do with my hands because I was standing there in front of the microphone and I realised that the microphone wasn’t picking up any of the [gestures.]”
Smith added, “It is just kind of throwing a bunch of lines out trying different stuff. It is a pretty challenging process because like Ben was saying, there is no one there and you don’t have any sets or props or anything so you are trying some different lines, some different interpretations and then they put it together really fantastically.”
For all the awkwardness and difficulty, the actors love the idea of being in a cartoon.
“It's cool being in a cartoon,” said Richter. “For me that was a big thing. It's fun to do different stuff and it's fun to be in a cartoon. A lot of people say it's good to have for their kids to watch, but my child is a devout contrarian. He doesn't care. So for me, that doesn't even factor in it. It's totally because it's fun to be in a cartoon.”
Stiller agreed. “It's something that I've never done before really. Actually for me, having kids does make it special. Having a three year old now and seeing what a big part these shows are of her life. Watching the old Disney movies like Lady and the Tramp you see them watching them for the first time and you realize just how timeless these films are when they work.”
Rock said what brought him to the movie was simpler. “I thought the story was pretty good.”
Stiller plays Alex, a lion who loves his role as the star of the New York zoo. Rock plays Marty, a zebra who longs to return to the wild. Smith plays a hippopotamus from the zoo and Richter plays a lemur they meet in the jungle of Madagascar.
One might think it would fall on a thankless intern to ask the glamorous Smith to play a hippo, but she had no qualms about it.
“I keep getting asked that question and you know it never occurred to me,” she said. “When Jeffrey [Katzenberg] showed me the picture of Gloria, yeah she is a hippo, I am playing a character, but thought she was adorable so it just never occurred to me that it was something that I should be [offended by].”
Stiller noticed his character evolve as the animators began putting scenes to his vocal tracks. “For me, it didn’t really come together until I started to see the scenes, because I just felt sort of out in space doing it. And then when they start bringing back whole scenes and actually hearing the other actors and seeing Marty and Alex’s friendship, it made it just became a person. Alex became a character. It wasn’t just me doing a voice. That’s what I like about these characters. They all sort of are real characters that aren’t just characterizations of our voice.”
Finally, everyone’s boss, Jeffrey Katzenberg, explained why he is committed to using established celebrities as the voice talent in his cartoons.
“Why movie stars?” he asked. “Having been in movie making for 30 years, it's kind of an obvious thing that took a while to come around. The reason they're movie stars is because they're really, really good at it. These people have celebrity and they have stardom because they are superb at their craft and they have worked at it. Every one of them up her can tell you a long story of a lot of hard work and a lot of pain and sacrifice honing their craft until they are outstanding at it. I look at the directors and the animators I work with and I know I want them to have the best talent in the world to work with, especially when you are doing comedy. The amount of improvisational work these people brought to their characters is equal to if not greater the work we write on the page for them. They own every line that they say in a way that is completely unique and original.”
Madagascar opens Friday. |
