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Peter
Lord was nominated for Academy Awards for his animated short
films Wat's Pig (1996) and Adam (1992).
Portland
native Teresa Drilling was one of the creative team of animators
who worked on Chicken Run.
Aardman
Studios worked on
Peter Gabriel's music video "Sledgehammer."
Lord
and Park plan to follow up Chicken Run with The
Tortoise and the Hare, based on the Aesop fable.
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Chicken
Run
Rated
G
Opens
Friday, June 23
The problem with most kids' movies is that they cater to
younger audiences while repulsing adults with idiotic stories
and shameless merchandising. To appreciate the plight of
moviegoing parents, cast a glance at the horrific phenomenon
known as Pokémon. The gulf between children's movies
that can be enjoyed by adults and the films that make Mom
and Dad rethink their birth control choices is as wide as
Julia Roberts' smile. But in the wake of misguided animated
films like Dinosaur, Titan A.E. and this year's
reigning king of kiddie junk, The Tigger Movie, comes
the fun-for-all-ages wonder known as Chicken Run--an
instant classic that will appeal to both generations.
"That's what we wanted to do," explains Peter Lord, co-director
of Chicken Run, during a recent phone interview.
"We don't like the idea of a film made for kids. I'm very
skeptical about it because so often it involves talking
down to them, writing down to them. A bunch of adults sit
around and think of what kids will want to see. It seems
to me very often they go tragically wrong and insult the
audience--patronize the audience very quickly. So we really
made this for ourselves, and kind of trusted that we could
carry the audience with us."
Lord and his creative partner Nick Park, who along with
Chicken Run producer David Sproxton make up Aardman
Studios, are no strangers to cartoons that appeal to adults.
Collectively both men have more than half a century of animating
experience, reaching multigenerational audiences with Oscar-nominated
shorts, music videos and their highly acclaimed Wallace
and Gromit series. The intricately animated clay figures
in shorts such as A Close Shave and The Wrong
Trousers bear a resemblance to the Claymation work of
Portland's Will Vinton, but the real source of inspiration
comes from master animator Ray Harryhausen. Best known for
classic films like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and The
Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Harryhausen has a unique style
of stop-motion animation that captivated Lord in his youth.
"The boy in me just remembers the excitement of seeing Jason
and the Argonauts," says Lord. "What he achieved in
the world of animation is phenomenal."
The inspiration of Harryhausen aside, Lord and Park draw
more influence from such masters of the sweeping epic as
Steven Spielberg and David Lean. "In a way we've always
borrowed more from live action than the animation world,"
confesses Park. "We often see ourselves more as filmmakers
than cartoonists, although we occupy a strange kind of Twilight
Zone which is somewhere in between live-action influences
and cartoon--Tex Avery, Chuck Jones. There's a gritty reality
to our world we've created. The chickens are quite cartoony
looking and yet they have a real weight in the world."
More than four years in the making, Chicken Run
marks the long-awaited debut of Lord, Park and Aardman Studios
into the world of feature films. With plenty of offers from
the top players in Hollywood, Lord and Park were in no hurry
to rush into the big time. Instead the creative team remained
patient, waiting for the right project to come along. Most
importantly, they made sure they didn't fall into the same
trap that has ensnared so many other animated films, including
this year's Dinosaur--they made sure they had a good
story. "In so many films designed for kids, you come out
and say, 'Where the hell was the writing?'" says Lord. "How
could they ever start making a film--because every film
costs a lot of money, every film uses a lot of the world's
resources and a lot of people's time--how can people sit
down and start making a film without spending a little bit
of time on the story?"
Story wasn't the only thing that had the creative team
at Aardman concerned. As in any good work of fiction, the
development of believable characters is essential--especially
in animation, where audiences must relate human attributes
to non-human players.
"You should believe in the characters and care for them,"
explains Park. "That was really a daunting prospect in making
a feature film for the first time, knowing that we've done
it before in a short--created characters--but could we pull
that off in an 80-minute and keep people hooked and wanting
to know what happens to these people? Not writing down to
kids, but respecting them."
The simple plot of Chicken Run draws its primary inspiration
from John Sturges' 1963 classic The Great Escape. Tweedy's
Chicken Farm is the prisonlike home of a flock of feathered
fowl who agonize day in and day out to produce eggs for the
sinister Mrs. Tweedy and her dunderheaded husband. With dreams
of flying the coop and escaping to a promised land where there
are no egg quotas or threats of a chopping block, lead hen
Ginger concocts one ill-fated escape plan after another. And
then one day Rocky, escaped circus rooster and self-proclaimed
"lone free ranger," lands in the compound, bringing with him
a newly invigorated hope that escape is possible. But first
Rocky must teach the hens to fly--and soon--because Mrs. Tweedy
plans to go from harvesting eggs to making chicken pot pies.
Aided by the vocal talents of Julia Sawalha and Mel Gibson,
the characters in Chicken Run come to life with as
much quirky realism as Warner Brothers' Looney Toons at their
finest. Filmmakers Peter Lord and Nick Park, along with a
massive army of creative talent, have put together an exhilarating
mix of comedy and adventure, one of those rare kid's movies
that adults can enjoy.
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