MUSE talks with John Carter and Co.

From the director of WALL-E, Finding Nemo and Toy Story, comes John Carter, a stunning action film about a man with a lost purpose. John Carter, a former confederate captain, winds up on Mars and is tasked with saving its people from an impending threat. Our very own MUSE had the opportunity to partake in a nationwide college conference call for an interview session with both the director, Andrew Stanton, and the lead, Taylor Kitsch.

MUSE: How is directing a live action film [different] from directing an animated film?

ANDREW STANTON: It’s actually not that different.  People think that when you work on an animated film, it’s as if I’m talking to a bunch of computers my whole life.  I actually talk to two hundred people every day, two hundred people that have different jobs, like how to do the lighting, the camera, the costume work.  So it’s very similar actually in live action.  I’m talking to people that do the camera, the costumes, you know, the actors, and, um, it’s just that you’re doing it outside instead of inside.  And you’re doing it under a very-very tight schedule whereas you have a lot more banker’s hours when you’re doing animation.  So, the big difference is just physical stamina.  I know that’s not sexy, but that’s the truth of it.

MUSE: Did your experience at Pixar help with the CGI on the film?

ANDREW STANTON: My experience Pixar was tremendously helpful.  I don’t think I could have done this if I hadn’t had that experience. Making John Carter was basically making two movies.  Almost literally two different film productions.  One was the live action side that took almost a year to do, and then the graphic side. Half my main characters are completely C-G and half the world is sort of C-G. Doing that was another year and a half of work, and that only happened after I shot the live action.  So I was in this live action world for a long time, with all the sort of production rules and pipelines.  And then I moved onto animation and I worked in the same kind of pipeline and production flow that I would work on for a Pixar movie.  And that, I knew, I knew I would know that half of it really well.  I was working with people I hadn’t worked with before but it was fun.  I think they really enjoyed working with a director who actually knew and cared about animation.

MUSE: What challenges did you meet in this film that you’ve never met before?

ANDREW STANTON: Uh, um, weather [laughs]. The physicality of standing up, animators don’t stand up. They sit all the time.  So, having to stand, to be on your feet all day for fifteen hours in any kind of weather, whether it be really hot or really cold.  And with no breaks, that was really it.  Although, you know, that sounds like I’m complaining, that’s just the hard part of it.  But I always like to equate the journey with deciding to sail across the ocean. It’s going to be hard work, there’s going to be a lot of manual labor involved, but you know you’re going to see some amazing things, have some amazing stories, and events that you could not have otherwise.  And you’re also going to hit some storms and some maelstroms [laughs] that you would want to avoid.   But it’s all in the journey of wanting a one of a kind adventure.

MUSE: Did you approach the film and the story any differently than you would have had it been an animated film?

ANDREW STANTON: I didn’t approach the story any differently. To be honest, I think that’s the misconception about animation. We don’t approach our stories any differently than we would otherwise; we just treat every character like an actor is going to play it.  And that we’re going to have a real set. And we’re going to have real locations, and we’re going to do all this stuff.  We have since day one on Toy Story. To me there is no difference. It’s only when you get into the practical aspect of how you’re going to execute it that you have to think differently.  But everything else is for dramatic reasons. I do have the luxury in animation that if I decide that we should suddenly go to a whole new city, maybe we have many more options of being able to actually build that city and do it, whereas it might be too costly in live action to go there. To be honest, there’s a budget in animation just as much as there is in live action.  And everything has a cost to it.  So we get our hands slapped and told we can’t do things with animation all the time.  People have this myth that if you can do anything it also means you can afford to do anything, and you can’t. Everything has a budget and a schedule. It’s just different kinds of restrictions.

MUSE: did you feel a certain kind of pressure tackling a story so many people already knew?

ANDREW STANTON: I did and I didn’t, because the harsh truth of it is that not that many people know about it. It’s not like Harry Potter or Tolkien. It’s slowly been a dwindling base and so I knew there wasn’t this massive social pressure about how it was executed.  But I didn’t really worry about that so much. Also, because I’m a huge fan.  I’ve read the books my whole life, and wanted to see them and I’m probably one of the more rabid fans.  So I didn’t want it screwed up. And really, that’s how I got pregnant with this idea.  I was telling Disney, when the property suddenly went back to the estate in 2006, that you’ve got to make this.  I mean, I want to see this on the screen.  I said, I’ve been waiting thirty-five years now, and it’s still not going to happen and somebody has got to make it.  I said I’d be happy to once I finish WALL-E, but I don’t know if you’d ever consider me.  And suddenly they said yes, and gave it to me before I even knew what was going on.  And it was sort of one of those be careful what you wish for things. But, if there was any pressure, it was my own pressure on myself. Now you can put your money where your mouth is, and should put on the screen what you always wanted to see.

MUSE: How much did you draw on the source material when bringing this world to the big screen?

ANDREW STANTON: Well, I was really smart and I don’t like to write by myself. I need objectivity; I need people to bounce stuff off of. I’m always smarter and funnier in the room when I’m working with somebody.  So I got myself two people that I wrote with, Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon.  And both of them were huge lovers of the books growing up as well.  So not only did I get better writing by having these two guys, but I had people that knew all the material and cared about it.  And that really-really helped us be smart about what stuff to keep from the source material.  The source material was always there; we were always referring to it.  But we ended up treating it more like an encyclopedia. He [Burroughs] had so much data in it about names of places and what the cultural rules were and character descriptions.  But with the narrative of the story, how the story moved forward and how the drama was put together, we had to take licenses, because it really didn’t play well as a three-act structure movie that you would see in two hours. And most books have that problem.  So we had the luxury that there were multiple books and so we could tell that there were things that he got better about. Or more interesting characters he discovered, or situations and rules in later books.  And we had the luxury of being able to sort of grab some of those things and move them earlier.  And also take some things away that we knew we could use later, if there were more movies. It’s like doing a television series, and you know there might be a season two and three. You can have the patience and the will power to sort of spread things out differently. Tell a better story was my one big goal. Does watching the movie feel like it felt to read the book, that’s to me the goal. That, and any good adaptation is would make me feel like how I did reading the book.

MUSE: Edgar Rice Burroughs’s original novel was the first part in an enormous series.  Can we expect sequels or other content beyond John Carter?

ANDREW STANTON: That’s me knocking on wood.  I sure hope so. We actually got the rights to the first three books, and we planned all three movies together so that we knew where they were all going.  But I also hated movies that had these unnecessary cliffhangers that suddenly just leave you hanging, as there is this sort of vain assumption that there is going to be another movie.  And I didn’t want to jinx that either.  So we made sure each movie finished in a very satisfying way when we wrote them.  Even though there might be these meta-issues that could keep going.  It’s like having a good conclusion to a television season, and maybe you’ll get picked up for the next year, maybe you won’t, but at least you know there’s closure in the small for what you were dealing with for that season.  So we did that with this movie and we planned it that way for the others.

MUSE: What is the relevance of John Carter to a modern audience?  And what message would you hope the film sends to its audience?

ANDREW STANTON: Um, I don’t really consider those things.  I’ve had a lot of those kinds of questions when I was doing WALL-E, because it seemed to be so appropriate to the times of concern about the environment and things.  But they’re all just ingredients for me, for what’s the drama of the story.  My interest was, what’s the timeless human aspect about the character and the story that will always speak to me, no matter what’s going on in the world.  And having a person that discovers that they think their purpose in life is over and was misguided to begin with, suddenly find where they really do fit in, I think that’s what all of us are searching to do. Heck, that’s why you’re all in college, right, you’re all trying to figure out -where do I fit in and what’s my true calling.  And that’s what this person is dealing with.  And I think I used anything I could, even if it was subject matter that might compare to the day of, you know, if it didn’t.  That would help tell that dramatic drive.  And, and that was it.

MUSE: What was it like working with human actors rather than being able to manipulate your characters via computer?

ANDREW STANTON: Well I don’t work with the manipulated C-G characters.  I work with the animators, you know, human beings that manipulate the characters. So I don’t talk to the puppets, I talk to the puppeteers. And, that’s the best way to put it.  So to me, talking with actors is really no different than talking to an animator. Animators are just shy actors. They may not be as fun as the actor, they may not jump around and give you a million great ideas or, or come back fighting you with their own agendas. But the way an actor is thinking is exactly how an animator is thinking. They’re trying to figure out, what’s my character’s motivation. What are all the choices I have or the tools at my disposal, as the character that I am.  Where are my marks? When do I come in, when do I exit? So it was actually sort of a combination of me talking to an actor, which was like talking to my animators and my story guys at the same time.  Because my story guys can be really crazy and just try a million things all at once.  And we’re just thinking of the wackiest out there ideas, like a good improv group.  And so it was really like having these two conversations I’m used to having as one.

MUSE: Great, thank you so much and we will wrap it up.

ANDREW STANTON: All right, it’s nice talking to you guys.

MUSE Interview with John Carter Star Taylor Kitsch

MUSE: What does it mean to you to portray a character that has existed for a century?

TAYLOR KITSCH: I don’t know, I don’t think you’re going to put more pressure on it because it’s existed this or that. I think that’s a lot of the outside pressure trying to come in.  But no one is going to put more pressure on it than I will. You know, I think the most pressure I’ve truly had was probably playing a guy that’s lived and has passed on in Kevin Carter. I’m not going to prep more because it’s Edgar Rice Burroughs’ vision or anything like that.  But, it’s very flattering to be a part of it.  And I think that the scope of it all is quite cool to be a part of as well.  And, and I think to breathe life, into Stanton’s childhood dream, I think that’s a pretty amazing thing to do and be a part of.

MUSE: What were the physical challenges of the role?  It seems as though there were a lot of scenes that you were pushed to your physical limits, what did you do to prepare?

TAYLOR KITSCH:    There were so many. I think I battled exhaustion throughout, just because you’re in so much of it and you’re working six-day weeks and all that kind of stuff.  The diet is everything.  You know, you’re on that regimen for- it’s the most boring diet you can think of ever. Really.  Just like, surrounding all the meals with protein. I was on it for around eleven months.  And then, just the esthetic part of John. You wake up, four thirty in the morning every day, and you train, and it goes back to boxing, to the core stuff of the wire work, and then the sword training.  And man, I can bore you guys all day with what I ate.  But, yeah I‘ll just leave it there – it was incredibly boring.

MUSE: Do you want to continue to take more action roles?  And what made John Carter different from the other roles?

TAYLOR KITSCH: I think that’s just it.  I don’t see it as just an action role, you know.  Of course the action is going to be insane, and it is in the film.  What really makes me choose a role is just the people I’m surrounded with.  And the character I get to portray, in John Carter, the emotion is no joke in that as well. It’s that arc I got to play, of the guy that’s lost his cause completely.  And then through this action and through these people that come into his life that really do shine that light back in, and that’s why I signed onto it. If it didn’t have that emotional arc, I wouldn’t have done it.  So, as long as that action and then the emotion are balanced, I’m more prone to take the role. But you never know. Hopefully I keep throwing you guys curve balls, so you can’t know what I’m going to do next.  That’s, that’s the joy of it all.

MUSE: From Friday Night Lights to John Carter, you’ve worked with an impressive ensemble of actors, including Kyle Chandler, Willem Dafoe, soon Liam Neeson.

TAYLOR KITSCH:    Yeah, I had to put them all on my back, all of them.

MUSE: What did you learn from working with talent such as this?

TAYLOR KITSCH: I can keep going on that list, by the way.  John Travolta, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Oliver Stone, I mean, I’ve been so lucky.  I think it goes back to that answer before, just surrounding yourself, and playing these incredibly character-driven roles.  That’s the beauty of my gig, man, I’m empowered and, that I’m better for it by putting myself with these guys.  And you learn, and you take the best of each of these guys, hopefully, and you try and apply it when you can. Yeah, I hope to continue this kind of path we’re on for sure.  That’s everything. I would love to tell you what the next gig is, but if it is what I think it will be, we’ll continue on that path.

MUSE:  How is it working with Andrew Stanton?

TAYLOR KITSCH: Terrible.  Just terrible. We hate each other, the communication is terrible.  Uh, we can’t even stand to be in the same room with one another, even now…um, no, it’s quite the opposite obviously.  For what he’s achieved, you’re dealing with a guy who has zero ego. I think that’s why the movie is what it is.  I think the biggest compliment you can give to anyone, is, you know, especially when you’re working with someone that, you know, I would go to war with this guy. And I would do whatever it took to do a justice with him. These movies, or any movie will test you, or it should, on so many levels.  And, and waking up every day knowing I can get to go to work with him was an amazing thing.

MUSE: How was the transition from television to film?

TAYLOR KITSCH: I don’t think it was a big thing. I actually started doing film, so I think there is that stigma with it. I love doing film.  And I hope to keep doing film. The time allotted for these character driven things and the time it can take, we can do in a film. A big difference is, we can do a whole day, twelve-hour day, and do one scene. If I’m playing Riggins, I’ve done seventeen pages in one day.  So I think that, in a film, you can really take your time and break it down a lot more. I hope to keep doing film, but you never turn TV down, there are some cable shows that are doing incredibly character-driven stuff.  So, you never know.

MUSE: After your work on Friday Night Lights and the Bang Bang Club, was it strange to be reacting to creatures and objects that weren’t really there?

TAYLOR KITSCH:    Yes.  Next question.  [laughter] uh, no.  I mean, yeah. It’s tough, man.  I think why I was so exhausted too, is you know, if it was a scene with me and him- me and Nick doing it, mano y mano, it’s over and done with after you get the scene.  But once we get the scene on John Carter, we have to do it another ten takes plus. For the effects people, for them to get it right, to make sure we can get through all of it.  That’s just so exhausting.  And I think when you’re acting with nothing, it’s tough, man.  I’ve got big speeches in this film, where you’re looking at clouds.  It’s tough to really connect to anything.  So it just demands that much more of you.

MUSE: How hectic is the promotional period before a movie is released?

TAYLOR KITSCH:    Oh man, I can go on a tangent right now, where the studio would probably just hang up.  [laughter] Um, and, and this whole thing, I mean this is cool what we’re doing here, with all you guys all over the states and, at college listening, that’s pretty cool.  But it’s beyond exhausting, man. I spent the last twenty hours in my home in Austin.  That was the first time in a month that I’ve had that.  And I won’t get to go back for another month plus.  Jet lag is no joke, by the way.  It is no joke.  You lose a job here or there, because of a lack of availability, and that’s the last thing you want to lose a job for.  But, you know, I’ll put the violin away.  And, you just stay focused, you get through it, and it helps when you love the movie and you love the work that you put into it.

MUSE: What do you feel was your great accomplishment with this film?

TAYLOR KITSCH: With this film, getting through it. I keep going back to how tired I was.  But it was truly, you’re on bended knees at times for days, not even able to walk to set, you’re so exhausted.  So I think it was just that task of how many days you question the love of your work, everything- so many times. Just because you just want to sleep for another eight hours or something, you know.  That was probably just getting through it and setting the bar that high for myself personally and keeping it at that level of energy and esthetic and emotion. That’s probably the biggest thing that I’ll take from it, of just like, you did it, you know.  You got through it.