| By Fred Topel
In Theaters November 4
|
Disney’s Chicken Little is a family adventure in which the kids get to save the world from an alien invasion. But at its heart is the father-son struggle between Chicken Little and his unsupportive dad, Buck Cluck. The father-son dynamic took on a personal twist because voice actors Zach Braff (Chicken Little) and Garry Marshall (Buck Cluck) share a connection.
Braff went to Northwestern University where Marshall was already a famous alumnus. “I went to Northwestern and studied in the Garry Marshall Soundstage,” Braff said. “I tell people that, he’s like, ‘Don’t tell ‘em that. They’re going to want more money. Everybody doesn’t need to know I gave that much money.’ But yeah, he’s been very generous to Northwestern and the film school in particular. He came and spoke a couple times and I would always go to hear him speak. He’s wonderfully generous with his time and with sharing anecdotes from all his experiences with young filmmakers.”
Neither Braff nor Marshall had done voice work before, and it might have been Marshall who had the harder time adapting to the process. “This was totally new to me,” Marshall said. “Talking to a wall, I’m acting, there’s nobody and later they let us act together, but I’m petting a microphone, like this. This is not so easy. But I did it and I learned how to do it, learned how they take the character from black and white and they move a little then they move more and then I finally saw the picture, and my grandchildren are going to have a great time and I sat through it and laughed. It’s very hip. That’s what I was really amazed at. How hip it was.”
As the lead in the movie, Braff had more solo sessions than Marshall, but enjoyed the time he was allowed to work with his mentor. “Pretty much Garry and I did all our stuff together because once we did it once and it worked so well, any scene that we had together, we asked that we do it together because it worked so much better for us.”
When Marshall finally saw the film, he was impressed to find himself the victim of some spoofs. “I never was satirized in a picture I was in. There’s a moment where Chicken Little kissed Ugly Duckling and her foot goes up. I did that in Princess Diaries, both of them. So they were taking a shot and it was a good shot.”
Marshall and Braff also share a background in television. Braff’s Scrubs still finds itself moved around in NBC’s weekly lineup, but they are still producing its fifth season.
“It has found such a really loyal core audience,” Braff said. “You have to like comedy that moves fast. Our thing on Scrubs is, a lot of people understandably get home from a hard day’s work and they want to just watch a dumb sitcom where they don’t have to think. The jokes are there and if you don’t know you're supposed to laugh, the audience laughs for you and oh, that’s when I’m supposed to laugh. Scrubs moves so fast it requires of you to think a little bit. You’ve got to go, ‘Oh, that’s because oh.’ It’s a little bit of a puzzle and it’s very fast and we like to think smart. I don't know. I love it. It makes me laugh. I think it’s sort of a Simpsons audience too. Sometimes it just feels like a live action Simpsons.”
A veteran producer of shows from Happy Days to The Odd Couple, Marshall struggles to find such quality programming these days. “I like the Larry David show,” Marshall said. “I like Henry Winkler’s new show, Out of Practice is good. I like House, House is a good show, that guy’s been around, he’s very good.”
Currently, Marshall is working in the theatre, with a slate that includes a musical version of his own Happy Days. “This was one of my most enlightening years for that because this year I directed an opera at the music center. Grand Duchess, 83 people and met a whole different type of artist, and then I did this which is a whole other different type of artist, so it’s nice to know what other people are doing, how they do it. As you get older you want to have more and more knowledge about things. You don’t want to do the same thing. Rodney Dangerfield once said, ‘After you’re 50 years old it’s all reruns.’ And I remember he said that and I said, ‘It doesn’t have to be reruns if you try something else.’”
Braff has two more live-action films coming out next year. “I was able to squeeze two movies into my last hiatus. Next year will be The Last Kiss which is an adaptation of an Italian film called L’Ultimo Bacio and that’s a big ensemble movie with myself and Casey Affleck, Rachel Bilson, Jacinda Barrett, Blythe Danner, Tom Wilkinson. And then I did a fun comedy, almost like an Office Space kind of movie called Fast Track. That’s myself and Jason Bateman as my nemesis. And Charles Grodin and Mia Farrow and Amanda Peet. We lured Charles Grodin and man, did he not want to do it. But we talked him into it.”
After the success of his directorial debut Garden State, Braff also hopes to write and direct again, though he has no ideas at the moment. He does, however, it will be easier to get the money to do it a second time. “Easier is not saying much because I couldn’t find anyone to give me 50 bucks for Garden State. But now there’s plenty of people that are interested in doing it.”
Hear Marshall and Braff together in Chicken Little, opening November 4. |
